by Tom Stoppard
WITHENSHAW: Against?
ALL (except COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE): No.
WITHENSHAW: Amendment fails. (To MADDIE.) Paragraph now reads …
MADDIE (reading from the draft): ‘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 (reads from her notebook) and actuated by malice and a cynical pursuit of cheap sensationalism (reads from paper passed to her by MCTEAZLE) through a degrading obsession with dirty linen among the Pecksniffs of Fleet Street. I’m sitting on your slip. (To MCTEAZLE.) Sorry.
MCTEAZLE (looking at the others): A slip—just a slip.
WITHENSHAW: The question is put that the paragraph stand as
part of the report.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Division, Mr. Chairman.
WITHENSHAW: Division, Committee divided.
Mr. Chamberlain.
CHAMBERLAIN: Aye.
(MADDIE’s hand has gone up.)
WITHENSHAW (to MADDIE): The Com-mit-tee div-id-ed.
MADDIE: … divided. Then what do I do?
WITHENSHAW: Then you draw a line down the middle. (The
CHAIRMAN goes to the blackboard and draws a line down the middle and generally demonstrates on the blackboard. But he spells ‘noes’ as ‘Nose’.) You write ‘ayes’ up there on the left and ‘noes’ up there on the other side and when I call out their names you write them down on one side or the other, according to what they say.
Mr. Chamberlain.
CHAMBERLAIN: Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Mrs. Ebury.
MRS. EBURY: Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Mr. McTeazle.
MCTEAZLE: Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Mr. Cocklebury-Smythe—National Union of Journalists.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: No—I have to make a living in my spare
time too, you know.
WITHENSHAW: Three—one.
MADDIE: Just like the football results.
WITHENSHAW (warmly): Just like the football results. Isn’t it?
ALL: Oh yes … so it is … what a good thought ….
WITHENSHAW: Paragraph 4, read and agreed to. Mr. Cocklebury-Smythe, M.P., N.U.J.; dissenting.
Paragraph 5.
MADDIE: You don’t need all these paragraphs, you know …
WITHENSHAW: ‘Your Committee …’
MADDIE: You’re just playing into their hands.
(WITHENSHAW glares at her.) It’s just my opinion.
WITHENSHAW: Paragraph 5. ‘Your Committee …’
MCTEAZLE (to MADDIE): Whose hands?
WITHENSHAW (to MCTEAZLE): For God’s sake——
MADDIE: The press. The more you accuse them of malice and inaccuracy, the more you’re admitting that they’ve got a right to poke their noses into your private life. All this fuss! The whole report can go straight in the waste-paper basket. All you need is one paragraph saying that M.P.s have got just as much right to enjoy themselves in their own way as anyone else, and Fleet Street can take a running jump.
WITHENSHAW: Miss Gotobed, you may not be aware that the clerk traditionally refrains from drafting the report of a Select Committee.
MADDIE: And anyway, there’s no malice in it. You’ve got that
wrong, too.
WITHENSHAW: Paragraph 5!
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: She’s quite right, of course. It’s simplistic
to speak of malice.
WITHENSHAW: Smart alec-paragraphs about innocent tripe-and-onions with titian voluptuaries?—if that’s not malice I don’t know what is.
MADDIE: They only write it up because of each other writing it up. Then they try to write it up more than each other—it’s like a competition, you see.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE (puzzled): A free press is competitive naturally …
MADDIE: No, the writers. They’re not writing it for the people, they’re writing it for the writers writing it on the other papers. ‘Look what I’ve got that you haven’t got.’ There don’t have to be any people reading it at all so long as there’s a few journalists around to say, ‘Old Bill got a good one there!’ That’s what they’re doing it for. I thought you’d have worked that out by now.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE (I taken aback)-: Not really.
MADDIE: You see, you don’t know the first thing about journalism.
(ALL laugh at COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE. MADDIE stands up—unfolds one of the newspapers on her desk and holds it in front of her, between her and the Committee so that it obscures her skinless, slipless state of undress from the Committee but not from the audience. She walks to the front of the committee table. The Committee react to the photograph on the paper facing them.)
The pictures are for the people.
ALL: Strewth!
(The door opens to admit MR. FRENCH, who enters and hangs up his coat. As the Committee look at him, MADDIE turns and returns to her desk, folding the newspaper.)
CHAMBERLAIN: Hello, French.
FRENCH (to CHAIRMAN, without seeing MADDIE): Mea maxima culpa.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Merde.
WITHENSHAW: All present and correct. (To MADDIE.) Amend list of members present.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE (to MADDIE): French …
MADDIE (to FRENCH): Enchantée …
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: No … no … Mr. French, Miss Gotobed.
FRENCH: How do you do, so sorry to interrupt. (Looking at the blackboard.) What’s that? (He sits down. He has a white silk handkerchief showing in his breast pocket and he uses this to wipe his brow. He does this once or twice during the scene.)
WITHENSHAW: A blackboard. No … No … I was just… (He looks round for something to wipe the board but there’s nothing to hand so he takes the underpants out of the brief case and uses them.)… our clerk, Miss Gotobed, has been assigned to this Committee on the recommendation of I think you-know-who——
FRENCH: Who?
MADDIE: Fanshawe.
WITHENSHAW:—need I say more? Her experience of committee work is not extensive and I was just explaining one or two of the finer points.
FRENCH: Of course.
WITHENSHAW: Well, as I was saying on that last Division
Cocklebury-Smythe is under the ‘noes’.
MCTEAZLB: Pecksniff. Chuzzlewit.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Yes——
MCTEAZLE: Sorry.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Not at all.
(The CHAIRMAN has hurriedly wiped the board clean and is putting his underpants back into his brief case.)
FRENCH: What is that?
WITHENSHAW: Pair of briefs.
FRENCH: What are they doing in there?
WITHENSHAW: It’s a briefcase. Paragraph 5.
FRENCH: What stage are we at, Mr. Chairman?
WITHENSHAW: Second reading of the draft report, Mr. French.
FRENCH: When was the first reading?
WITHENSHAW: Haven’t you gone through it?
FRENCH: Yes. Last night.
WITHENSHAW: That’s when it was. Do you really want me to go through the whole thing again? It’s pure formality.
FRENCH: That may be so, but there is a way of doing things, and if we’re not going to do them in that way let it be shown in the proceedings of this Select Committee that the Committee voted on that point.
WITHENSHAW: Very well. (Very rapidly.)
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Propose.
MCTEAZLB: Second.
WITHENSHAW: Favour.
ALL (except FRENCH): Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Against.
FRENCH: No.
WITHENSHAW: Carried.
(Even more rapidly, absolute breakneck speed because it’s pure ritual.)
FRENCH: Division.
WITHENSHAW: Division. Mr. Chamberlain.
CHAMBERLAIN: Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Mr. Cocklebury-Smythe.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Mrs. Ebury.
MRS. EBURY: Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Mr. French.
FRENCH: No.
WITHENSHAW: Mr. McTeazle.
MCTEAZLE: Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Carried.
MADDIE: Line down the middle?
WITHENSHAW: Line down the middle.
(FRENCH is slightly surprised by this.) Committee divided 4-1.
MADDIE: Home win.
WITHENSHAW: Home win. Mr. French lone scorer for visitors.
FRENCH: I beg your pardon?
WITHENSHAW: The terminology of committee practice is in a constant state of organic change, Mr. French. If you can’t keep up you’ll be no use to us. Paragraph 5.
FRENCH: Excuse me, Mr. Chairman.
WITHENSHAW: Yes, Mr. French?
FRENCH: We haven’t heard any evidence.
WITHENSHAW: Evidence about what, Mr. French?
FRENCH: You know very well, evidence about what—evidence about 128 Members of Parliament making fools of themselves over a latter day Dubarry and bringing the House into public ridicule and disrepute.
WITHENSHAW (heatedly): Do you believe everything you read in the papers, Mr. French?
FRENCH (also heatedly): I wish to have this exchange of views recorded in the minutes.
WITHENSHAW (at MADDIE’S speed, to FRENCH): DO you believe everything you read in the papers, Mr. French?
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE (at MADDIE’s speed, to FRENCH): It is true that some of us have been feeling up … (Pause, ALL react to ‘feeling up’ with some trepidation. COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE continues innocently.) … to now that evidence as such does not exist in these matters.
ALL: Hear (pause) hear!
(FRENCH has taken some time to cotton on to the reason for the rate of speech, because the other Members have tactfully ignored MADDIE. FRENCH goes through various stages of bewilderment and suspicion before noting MADDIE’S writing speed.)
FRENCH: Just a minute—excuse me—is Miss Gotobed a secretary/clerk of the Clerks Department?
WITHENSHAW: Why d’you ask?
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: She can do forty words a minute.
FRENCH: Shorthand?
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: NO—talking.
MRS. EBURY: She is seconded from the Home Office.
FRENCH: What is her job there? A manicurist?
MADDIE: I’m a typist.
WITHENSHAW: Miss Gotobed has been recommended, by different people, I understand, in a period of some difficulty.
FRBNCH: I was expecting to have Mr. Barraclough, a man of irreproachable credentials——
WITHENSHAW: I believe he has taken early retirement for personal reasons.
MADDIE: Barry has?
WITHENSHAW: I must insist that we get on with the proper business of this Committee. (FRENCH getting hysterical.)
FRENCH: The proper business of this Committee is to examine witnesses!
WITHENSHAW: If you will be so patient, Mr. French, you will be reminded that paragraph 5 will take cognizance of the evidence heard by this Select Committee in its previous incarnation during last session.
FRENCH: I was not a member then.
WITHENSHAW: None of us were members then, Mr. French. This Committee has suffered the resignation for personal reasons of the previous membership—and for medical reasons, of the previous chairman, Sir Joshua Matlock who dislocated his hip——
MADDIE: Both hips——
WITHENSHAW: Both hips. Nevertheless that evidence, such as it was, is something which I have given due consideration in preparing this draft report. (To MADDIE.) NOW. (Generally, at MADDIE’s speed.) Paragraph 5 read as follows. (Normal speed.) (ALL turn to proper place in draft report.) Your Committee also had the advantage of having a number of distinguished journalists regaling the Committee with the moving and heroic tale of the struggle of the British press from time immemorial to become independent watchdogs of the people’s right to know; with many reference to flames, torches, swords, pens, grails and the general impedimenta of chivalrous quest…
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE (giggles): Tennyson’s Disease.
WITHENSHAW: … Unfortunately, the witnesses were considerably less helpful on the subject of their sources for the unsubstantiated speculations which were the chief and only reason for the witnesses being called. In the words of Alfred Lord… (pause) your Committee therefore was unable to conclude that the aforesaid speculations had any basis in fact——
MCTEAZLE: Amendment, Mr. Chairman.
WITHENSHAW: Yes, Mr. McTeazle.
MCTEAZLE: Paragraph 5 line 1 before the word ‘journalists’ to
omit the word ‘distinguished’.
FRENCH: Then we should examine the editors.
WITHENSHAW: Can we dispose of this amendment?
FRENCH: What about the leading article in this week’s New
Statesman? It refers to private information.
WITHENSHAW (jeers): Private information? Gossiping over Bristol
Cream in Vincent Square?
FRENCH: That is your assumption only.
WITHENSHAW: Where else would he pick anything up—young
pup—what’s-his-name——
MADDIE: Tony.
FRENCH: The editors must be in possession of hard information otherwise they would not let the reporters publish the rumours.
WITHENSHAW: Don’t be a fool, man.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: I’m afraid that that does not always follow, Mr. French.
FRENCH: What about The Times? You’re not suggesting that the
editor of The Times—a man of irreproachable credentials——(Heatedly to MADDIE.) Mr. French proposed: that the editor of The Times …
WITHENSHAW: Not so quickly please.
FRENCH (slowly): Mr. French proposed …
MCTEAZLE (to MRS. EBURY): What do you think of it so far?
MRS. EBURY: Rubbish!
FRENCH (continues slowly): … that the editor of The Times
(resuming his normal speed)—whatever his name is——
MADDIE: Willy.
WITHENSHAW (impatiently): This is already dealt with in appendix B. The Times has published no rumours, it’s only reported facts, namely that less responsible papers are publishing certain rumours. That is a written deposition from the editor (rifling through appendix B).
FRENCH: It is not. It is a memorandum from one of the Whips who bumped into him in the interval at Covent Garden. Can any one of us truthfully say that we have really examined the editor of The Times?
CHAMBERLAIN: No.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTIIE: NO.
WITHENSHAW: No.
MRS. EBURY: No.
MCTEAZLE: NO.
MADDIB: Not really.
(Or from Stage Right round the table.)
WITHENSHAW: I must insist that we get back to bloody
amendment. The question is put—to omit in line one of paragraph 5 the word ‘distinguished’ before the word ‘journalists’. All in favour.
ALL (except COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE and FRENCH): Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Against.
WITHENSHAW: Arsenal 3 Newcastle 2. Scorers McTeazle, Chamberlain and Ebury for Arsenal. French and Cocklebury-Smythe, own goal, for Newcastle.
FRENCH: What the hell are you talking about?
WITHENSHAW: Kindly watch your language—you’re not on
terraces now, y’know.
MRS. EBURY: And there are ladies present.
FRENCH: All right! Cards on the table! I didn’t want to be the one to bring this up, but I rather expected to learn on arriving here today that one of our number—I exclude Mrs. Ebury of course—had seen fit to resign from this Committee. I refer to the paragraph in today’s Mail about the têtte-à-têtte at the Côte d’Or.
MRS. EBURY: Cock.
FRENCH: Coq d’Or.
MRS. EBURY: Double cock.
FRENCH: Without either a resignation or alternatively our joint repudiation of the story I don’t see how this Committee can have the confidence of the Ho
use.
MRS. EBURY: Ballocks.