by Tom Stoppard
CHAMBERLAIN: Or to dinner—pilloried for a beef stew in a modest eating house with a professional appointment, for all anyone knows a vicar’s daughter worried sick about the new motorway.
MCTEAZLE: Any cynic can make it look like a hole-in-the-corner affair in an out-of-the-way nook like the Coq d’Or quite probably is, many of these French places are——
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Nor was it a case of holding hands under the table.
ALL: Hear, hear!
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Probably she was passing him the money under the table, or vice versa.
MCTEAZLE: The table under the money——
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE:—him passing her the money under the table—probably a financially embarrassed lobbyist for sexual equality taking an M.P. to a working dinner.
MCTEAZLE: Women’s lib——
WITHENSHAW: One of those American bits.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Quite possibly——
WITHENSHAW: These Americans, they get in everywhere.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Far too many of them about.
MCTEAZLE: Hear, hear!
CHAMBERLAIN: Absolutely!
WITHENSHAW (to MADDIE): Would you care to take my appendix out and pass it round—I’ve something of a reputation for dry humour, you know. Yes, I once took a train journey right across America … (He pauses at the sight of MADDIE in her slip, MADDIE has picked up the sets of appendices and come out from behind her desk and taken two steps before remembering her state of undress, she pauses at the same moment, and then decides to continue. Big Ben starts chiming the three-quarter hour. MADDIE goes round the table placing documents in front of the first couple of places. Big Ben finishes chiming the three-quarter hour.)
… but that’s another story.
(The door opens to admit MRS. EBURY. All look at her as she speaks except MCTEAZLE who tries to hand MADDIE her skirt unnoticed, MADDIE misses this, as she is intent on passing out the rest of the appendices.)
MRS. EBURY: I’m sorry to be late, Malcolm.
WITHENSHAW: Come right in, Deborah—we’re just casting our eye over the media. You’re next to me, lass. (MRS. EBURY hangs up her coat. She also is carrying newspapers and case. To get round the table she has to pass behind the blackboard, as does MADDIE who is making slightly heavy weather of sorting out appendices A, B, C, and D for each member. MRS. EBURY and MADDIE cross over behind the blackboard but do not emerge immediately. Meanwhile the CHAIRMAN has opened the leader page of The Times and has started reading aloud.)
WITHENSHAW: ‘Cherchez La Femme Fatale. It needs no Gibbon come from the grave to spell out the danger to good government of a moral vacuum at the centre of power. Even so, Rome did not fall in a day, and mutatis mutandis it is not yet a case of sauve qui peut for the government——’—what is all this?—’Admittedly the silence hangs heavy in the House, no doubt on the principle of qui s’excuse s’accuse, but we expect: the electorate to take in its stride cum grano salts stories that upwards of a hundred M.P.s are in flagrante delicto, still more that the demi-mondaine in most cases is a single and presumably exhausted Dubarry de nos jours——’ bloody ‘ell. (To MCTEAZLE who has picked up the Guardian.) What does yours say?
MADDIE (only her legs visible behind the blackboard)’. Forget the Golden Carriage, the Cooking Pot and the Coq d’Or. Forget the Golden Carriage, the Watched Pot and the Coq d’Or. Forget the Golden Pot, Claridges and the Watched Cook… (MADDIE’s speech is loud until MCTEAZLB interrupts with the Guardian, but continues softly until MCTEAZLE reaches ‘tedious, or at any rate tendentious …’ where it stops, to be heard again on MCTEAZLE’S ‘Quis custodiet…’ and finally stopping on WITHENSHAW’s ‘Information’.)
MCTEAZLE (reading from the Guardian): ‘Spécialités de la Maison. The House of Commons is no stranger to scandal or to farce but it usually manages to arrange its follies so as to keep the two separate. It would be tedious, or at any rate tendentious, to give a catalogue raisonné of the, at a Conservative estimate 63 Members of Parliament, and at a Labour estimate 114, of whom the homme moyen sensuel on the Clapham omnibus might well be asking, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”’ (MRS. EBURY emerges during this final Latin phrase. Her hair, which had been done up in a bun, is now about her shoulders and her buttoned-up suit is in discreet disarray. She takes her seat.) (Continuing.) ‘—and yet our information——’ (MADDIE emerges from behind the blackboard.)
WITHENSHAW (scornfully): Information! What does the editor of Manchester Guardian know about anything—bloody young pup—what’s his name——
MADDIE (putting documents in front of him): Peter.
WITHENSHAW (to MRS. EBURY): Ah—I don’t think you know Miss Gotobed.
MRS. EBURY: HOW do you do? (CHAMBERLAIN picks up the Daily Mirror.)
CHAMBERLAIN: ‘HOW many cocks on the dung heap? We say too many—see page 2.’ (He turns the page.) (MCTEAZLE is surreptitiously trying to shove MADDIE’s skirt at her as she goes by. She doesn’t notice, and he grabs at her slip.) Strewth! (ALL but MCTEAZLE look at him—ALL freeze. Simultaneously MADDIE’s slip has come away in MCTEAZLE’s hand, leaving her wearing a revealing blouse, knickers, suspender belt, stockings and shoes.
After the freeze MADDIE sits down behind her desk. MCTEAZLE now sits on the skirt and the slip.) (To MADDIE): Well, are you ready for it Miss Gotobed?
MADDIE: Yes.
WITHENSHAW: Well we seem to be a full complement except for
Mr. French. Has anybody heard whether he’s coming?
MRS. EBURY: I hope to God not.
WITHENSHAW: Mr. French always has the best interests of the House at heart. That is why he comes over as a sanctimonious busybody with an Energen roll where his balls ought to be—no need to start writing yet, Miss Gotobed.
MCTEAZLE: I don’t know what the P.M. was thinking of.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: I expect he was thinking of having a balanced committee to lend the kind of credibility to our report which has eluded him in public life.
WITHENSHAW (to MADDIE): Not yet. (Stands.) Now, as this Select Committee has, as it were, lost its Chairman of the last session, our first duty as a Committee is to make good that loss.
(Very rapidly now.)
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Propose Mr. Withenshaw.
MCTEAZLE: Second.
WITHENSHAW: Any other nominations?
The question is put——
ALL: Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Thank you Mrs. Ebury and gentlemen. (Sits.) Let’s get started. (To MADDIE.) Mr. Withenshaw called to chair. The Chairman’s draft report, having been read for the first time—any objections to that?—thank you—was further considered as follows:
Paragraph I. In performing the duty entrusted to them your Committee took as their guiding principle that it is the just and proper expectation of the electorate and the country at large, that its representatives in Parliament should bring probity, honourable intent and decent conduct, not merely to the discharge of the business of government but also to their personal and social behaviour, which needs must stand in an exemplary relationship to the behaviour of the British people generally.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: I must say that strikes an authentic
Lancastrian note. Who wrote this?
WITHENSHAW: Would you mind?
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Was it the P.M.?
WITHENSHAW: No.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: I’ll know if it becomes Tennysonian, you know.
WITHENSHAW: You’re out of order, Mr. Cocklebury-Smythe. (MADDIE has her hand up, the other hand writing busily but laboriously.) Not that bit, Miss Gotobed.
MADDIE: ‘… called to chair.’
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: The chair.
WITHENSHAW (at MADDIE’s speed which is about 30 words a minute): ‘The chair. The Chair-man’s draft report having been read for the first time was further con-sider-ed as fol-lows——’ The next bit is the draft report which you’ve got so you don’t have to write it down again.
MADDIE (with the document): All this about se
tting an example?
WITHENSHAW: Yes.
MADDIE: You should tell them to mind their own business.
WITHENSHAW: Who?
MADDIE: Whoever it is who wants to know. It’s a load of rubbish.
WITHENSHAW: What is?
MADDIE: People don’t care what M.P.s do in their spare time, they just want them to do their jobs properly bringing down prices and everything.
WITHENSHAW: Yes, well…
MADDIE: Why don’t they have a Select Committee to report on what M.P.s have been up to in their working hours—that’s what people want to know.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: It’s rather more complicated than that—er—Arab oil and … (The following speeches overlap each other until the
CHAIRMAN calls the meeting to order.)
CHAMBERLAIN: … the Unions.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: M.P.s don’t have the power they used to have, you know.
MCTBAZLB: Foreign exchange—the Bank of England.
MRS. BBURY: The multi-national companies.
MCTBAZLB: Not to mention government by Cabinet.
CHAMBERLAIN: Government by Cabal.
MRS. BBURY: Brussels.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: The Whips.
WITHENSHAW: Just a minute—that’ll do—come to order.
MADDIB: I’m sorry.
WITHENSHAW: Paragraph 2. Your Committee took it as self-evident that the consent to govern may be withheld if the people lose respect for the Commons either severally or as an institution, either through executive or constitutional deficiency, either on practical or moral grounds. It is on this latter ground—the morality of the honourable 600—that your Committee has fixed its lance, determined to ride fearlessly into the jaws of controversy.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: It is the P.M., isn’t it?
WITHENSHAW: I’m not saying it is, and anyway what’s wrong with Her Majesty’s first minister keeping a close watch on the interests of the people re clean living on the back benches.
MADDIB: It isn’t the people, it’s the newspapers.
MCTBAZLE: That’s true.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Well the newspapers are the people in a sense—they are the channel of the government’s answerability to the governed. The Fourth Estate of the realm speaking for the hearts and minds of the people.
MRS. EBURY: And on top of that they’re as smug a collection of inaccurate, hypocritical, self-important, bullying, shoddily printed sick-bags as you’d hope to find in a month of Sundays, and dailies, and the weeklies aren’t much better.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: They’re not all that inaccurate.
CHAMBERLAIN: You can’t ignore them.
MADDIE: Nothing would happen if you did. They’ve got more people writing about football than writing about you and that’s in the cricket season—they know what they’re about.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: The press, you see, is not just an ordinary
commercial enterprise like selling haberdashery.
MADDIE: Yes it is.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Yes I know it is, but it is also the
watchdog of democracy, which haberdashery, by and large, is not.
MADDIE: If the press is all that, you should be asking them about chasing after anything in a skirt, which they do. You should have a Select Committee on it—‘Your Committee doesn’t think it right for journalists to carry on as if there was no tomorrow.’
WITHENSHAW: Thank you——
MADDIE: You’re just as entitled to enjoy yourself as they are.
WITHENSHAW: Thank you very much——
MADDIE: You should tell them to mind their own business.
WITHENSHAW: Paragraphs 1 and 2 read and agreed to.
MADDIE: I would——
(The CHAIRMAN looks at her.) Sorry. (She starts writing.)
WITHENSHAW: Paragraph 3.
MADDIE (with her hand up): Paragraphs 1 and 2 …
WITHENSHAW: … read and agreed to. Paragraph 3.
MADDIE (with her hand up):… read and …
WITHENSHAW: … agreed to …
MADDIE: … agreed to …
WITHENSHAW: Paragraph 3.
MADDIE: Thank you. Sorry.
WITHENSHAW (clears throat): Your Committee and their
predecessors in the last session have had before them the papers laid before the House including the written depositions (appendix A) and memoranda (appendix B).
(ALL turn over to next page.)
Paragraph 4. Your Committee also had before them a large assortment of press cuttings on this and related matters (appendix C). Your Committee did not feel that any purpose would be served by calling all the authors of these articles, which were in any case frequently anonymous or pseudonymous, and invariably uncorroborated.
MRS. EBURY: Amendment, Mr. Chairman.
WITHENSHAW: Yes, Mrs. Ebury.
MRS. EBURY: Paragraph 4, line 4. After ‘invariably uncorroborated’ insert ‘and actuated by malice’.
WITHENSHAW: Amendment proposed. After ‘invariably uncorroborated’ insert ‘and actuated by malice’. In favour?
ALL (except COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE): Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Against.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: No.
WITHENSHAW: Amendment stands. (To MADDIE.) All right?
MADME: Act…
MCTEAZLE: … u … a … (pause) … ted
CHAMBERLAIN: by …
MADDIE: by …
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Malice.
MADDIE: Mal…
MRS. EBURY: iss … (MADDIE looks up) … ice.
WITHENSHAW: Mrs. Ebury in brackets.
MADDIE (pause): In brack-ets.
WITHENSHAW: No, no just put her in brackets. (Apologetically.)
It’s her first time you know.
ALL: Oh yes … naturally … time to settle down…
WITHENSHAW: Very good. Paragraph now ends ‘invariably
uncorroborated and actuated by malice’.
CHAMBERLAIN: Amendment, Mr. Chairman.
WITHENSHAW: Yes, Mr. Chamberlain.
CHAMBERLAIN: Insert after ‘malice’ the words ‘and cynical
pursuit of cheap sensationalism’.
WITHENSHAW: Amendment put. In favour?
ALL (except COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE): Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Against?
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: No.
WITHENSHAW: Amendment stands.
CHAMBERLAIN (to MADDIE): Me in brackets.
MADDIB: … cyn …
CHAMBERLAIN (at MADDIE’s speed): … ical pursuit
MADDIE: … ical purs …
CHAMBERLAIN: … uit of …
MADDIE: … suit of…
CHAMBERLAIN: … cheap sens …
MADDIE: … cheap sense …
CHAMBERLAIN: … ationalism.
(This may have been fractionally faster than the last amendment.)
MADDIE: … ationalism.
WITHENSHAW: That’s it. You see you’re improving all the time.
ALL: Oh yes … getting the hang of it …
MCTEAZLE: Amendment, Mr. Chairman. (He scribbles on a piece of paper.)
WITHENSHAW: Yes, Mr. McTeazle.
MCTEAZLE: After ‘sensationalism’ insert ‘through a degrading obsession with dirty linen among the Pecksniffs of Fleet Street’. (He hands paper to MADDIE.)
WITHENSHAW: I don’t think these unnatural practices are very …
MCTEAZLE: He’s a character in Dombey and Son
WITHENSHAW (lying): I am well aware he’s a character in
Dombey and Son.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Chuzzlewit.
WITHENSHAW (with spirit): Chuzzlewit yourself, Cockie.
Amendment put. Favour?
ALL (except COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE): Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Against.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: No.
WITHENSHAW: Amendment stands. Paragraph now reads——
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Amendment, Mr. Chairman.
WITHENSHAW: Yes, Mr. Cocklebury-Smythe.
COCKLEBURY-
SMYTHE: Before the words ‘and a cynical pursuit
etcetera’ insert the words ‘in some cases, possibly’.
WITHENSHAW: Amendment put. All in favour?
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Aye.