by Tom Stoppard
ARTHUR: Yes, because he’s American.
BERNARD: Well he’s got a point there.
Do you know America at all?
ARTHUR: Do I know America!
BERNARD: Americans are a very modern people, of course. They are a very open people too. They wear their hearts on their sleeves. They don’t stand on ceremony. They take people as they are. They make no distinction about a man’s background, his parentage, his education. They say what they mean and there is a vivid muscularity about the way they say it. They admire everything about them without reserve or pretence of scholarship. They are always the first to put their hands in their pockets. They press you to visit them in their own home the moment they meet you, and are irrepressibly goodhumoured, ambitious, and brimming with self-confidence in any company. Apart from all that I’ve got nothing against them.
ARTHUR: My America!—my new-found-land! (He takes surprising flight.) Picture the scene as our great ship, with the blue riband of the Greyhound of the Deep fluttering from her mizzen, rounds the tolling bell of the Jersey buoy and with fifty thousand tons of steel plate smashes through the waters of Long Island Sound. Ahead of us is the golden span of the Brooklyn Bay Bridge, and on the starboard quarter the Statue of Liberty herself. Was it just poetic fancy which made us seem to see a glow shining from that torch held a thousand feet above our heads?—and to hear the words of the monumental goddess come softly across the water: ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore …’? The lower decks are crowded with immigrants from every ghetto in the Continent of Europe, a multitude of tongues silenced now in the common language of joyful tears.
(By now BERNARD has fallen asleep.)
The men wave their straw hats. Shawled women hold up their babies, the newest Americans of all, destined, some of them, to become the captains and the kings of industrial empires, to invent the modern age in ramshackle workshops, to put a chicken into every pot, an automobile by every stoop, to organize crime as never before, and to fill the sky over Hollywood with a thousand stars! Nor is the promenade deck indifferent to the sight. Many a good hand is abandoned on the bridge tables, many a diamanté purse forgotten on the zebra-skin divans, as glasses are raised at the salon windows. New York! New York! It’s a wonderful town! Already we can see the granite cliffs and towers of Manhattan, and Staten Island too, ablaze like jewels as a million windows give back the setting sun, and soon we have set foot on the New World.
The waterfront is seething with life. Here and there milling gangs of longshoremen scramble on the ground for the traditional dockets to work the piers, and occasionally two of them would give savage battle with their loading hooks. At the intersection of Wall Street with the Bowery the famous panhandlers, the wretched refuse of cheap barrooms, huddle in doorways wrapped in copies of the Journal. Behind us a body plummets to the ground—a famous millionaire, we later discover, now lying broken and hideously smashed among the miniscule fragments of his gold watch and the settling flurry of paper bonds bearing the promises of the Yonkers Silver Mining and Friendly Society. The air is alive with bells and sirens.
But now a new sound!—ghostly trumpets and trombones caught in the swirling eddies of the concrete canyons!—and a few more steps bring us to Broadway. Every way we turn excited crowds are thronging the electric marquees. Sailors on shore-leave are doing buck-and-wing dances in and out of the traffic, at times upon the very roofs of the yellow taxis bringing John Q. Public and his girl to see the sights of Baghdad-on-the-Subway. In threes and fours, sometimes in lines a hundred wide, the midshipmen strut and swing up the Great White Way chorusing the latest melodies to the friendly New Yorkers, to the dour Irish policeman swinging his night-stick on the corner, to the haughty hand-on-hip ladies of the night who have seen it all before. But it’s time to tip our hats and turn aside, for the tall columned shadow of Grand Central Station falls across our path. We are booked on the Silver Chief.
Begging the pardon of a cheerful Redcap we are directed with a flashing smile to the Chattanooga train. Night is falling as we cross the Hudson. Friendships are struck, hipflasks are passed around, and cigar-smoke collects around the poker schools. A cheerful Redcap with a flashing smile fetches ice. The Silver Chief surges through the night. When we retire behind the curtain of our comfortable berths the roaring blackness outside the windows is complete, save for the occasional pillar of fire belching from the mines and mills of Pennsylvania.
And it is to fire that we awake; woods blazing in tangerine shades of burnt umber and old gold—the Fall has come to New England. The train drives relentlessly on, dividing whiteframe villages from their churches, and children from their hoops. And the woods give way to suburbs, and the suburbs to stockyards and slaughter houses, and the wind is slamming off the Great Lake as we pull round the Loop into Chicago—Chicago!—it’s a wonderful town! Tightlipped men in tight-buttoned overcoats and grey fedoras join the poker games. C-notes and G-notes raise the stakes. Shirt-sleeved newspapermen of the old school throw in their cards in disgust and spit tobacco juice upon the well-shined shoes of anyone reading a New York paper. A cheerful shoeshine boy with a flashing smile catches nickels and dimes as he crouches about his business. (He crosses his legs, revealing Stars and Stripes socks.) The air is scented with coffee and ham and eggs.
And the countryside is changing too as we swing south. Blue skies and grass are as one on the azure horizon of Kentucky. Soon thoroughbred stallions race the train on either side. Young girls in gingham dresses wave from whitewood fences. But again untamed nature overcomes the pastures—we climb through mountain ash and hickory into the Tennessee Hills. Tumbledown wooden shacks and rusty jalopies give no hint of life but the eye learns to pick out hillbilly groups sullenly looking up from their liquor jugs and washboards.
We doze and wake in thundery oppressive heat. Thick groves of oak and magnolia darken the windows of the speeding train—and encroach, too, upon the fly-blown shutters of white-porticoed mansions which stand decaying sill-high in jungle grasses that once were lawns. Atlanta is burning. A phlegmatic Redcap serves fried chicken and bottles of cherry soda. The poker players have departed. Big-bellied red-eyed men in white crumpled suits swig from medicine bottles of two-year-old sour mash bourbon.
Enormous women in taffeta dresses stir the air with panhandled fans advertising Dr. Pepper Cordials. The train bursts Alabama-bound into the blinding flatlands where cotton is king and a man and mule dominate a thousand acres of unfenced fields like a heroic sculpture. The sun hangs over them like a threat. Our wheels break into clattering echo as the iron girders of the Mississippi Bridge slash across the windows, sending shock-waves to make the glass pulse woomph-woomph around us. Far below, a boy on a raft looks up wistfully at the mournful howl of the Silver Chief, but that old green river rolls them along toward the bend where chanting Negroes heave on the rudder-poles of barges bringing pig-iron from Memphis and hogsheads from St. Louis—and where the last of the river boats working out of Natchez rides the oily waters like a painted castle way down yonder to New Orleans.
The train slows, crawling through the French quarter of the City on the Delta. The sun hangs like a copper pan over boarding houses with elaborately scrolled gingerbread eaves. In the red-lit shadow of wrought-iron balconies octaroon Loreleis sing their siren songs to shore-leave sailors, and sharp-suited pimps push open saloon doors, spilling light and ragtime to underscore the street cries of old men selling shrimp gumbo down on the levee. A dignified Redcap hums an eight-bar blues—how long, how long, has that evening train been gone?—At the back of the car a one-armed white man takes a battered cornet from inside his shirt and picks up the tune with pure and plangent notes. Soon the whole car—Bible salesmen, buck privates from Fort Dixie, majorettes from L.S.U., farm boys and a couple of nuns—is singing the blues in the night. (He lights a cigarette—American brand.) The sun drops into the smoke stacks of Galveston like a dirty dinner plate behind a sofa. The train picks up s
peed. When we retire behind the curtains of our comfortable berths the roaring blackness outside the windows is complete save for the occasional pillar of fire flaring up from oil wells under the cooling scrub.
BERNARD (waking up): Ever seen one of these before, Arthur?—I won this fiver off——
ARTHUR (violently): Ten thousand head of cattle on the hoof, packed together in a rolling river of hide and horn, meet our eye when we are woken with steak and eggs by a surly Redcap! The Silver Chief is on the Chisholm trail to Abilene! Amarillo—Laramie—El Paso—Dodge! The wheels roll, the rails curve, past the crude wooden crosses of Boot Hill where other lean-jawed men who once rode tall now lie in gunslingers’ graves. (He reveals a Sheriff’s star on his waistcoat.) And beyond, the open prairie. Tumbleweed races the train on either side. Lone riders whoop and wave their hats from lathering ponies and are lost to sight as we hit the dustbowls of Oklahoma! Where once the corn stood high as an elevator boy, and the barns shook with dancing farmhands changing partners to a fiddler’s call, now screen doors bang endlessly in the wind which long ago covered up the tyre tracks of bone-rattling pick-ups taking the Okies on their tragic exodus to the promised lands of El Dorado. How easy now on the gleaming rails, now carving a path through the heart of the grain lands where the gigantic mantis-forms of harvesters trawl the golden ocean that fills the breadbaskets of America!
We climb with the sun out of the plains … Carson City—Sioux City—Tucson—Tulsa—Albuquerque—Acheson, Topeka and the Sante Fé—Wichita. … Snow-capped mountains shimmer on the horizon, and still we climb. From the observation platform at the rear we watch the shadows turn the thousand-foot walls of the Colorado River deep red and purple. Huddled in our blanket we sleep. Once we seem to wake to a nightmare of acrylic lights—against a magenta sky huge electric horseshoes, dice, roulette wheels and giant Amazons with tasselled breasts change colour atop marble citadels that would beggar Kubla Khan. But when the cheerful Redcap shakes us all is peace. The Silver Chief is rolling through vineyards and orchards, a sun-bathed Canaan decked with peach and apricot, apples, plums, citrus fruit and pomegranates, which grow to the very walls of pink and yellow bungalows to the very edge of swimming pools where near-naked goddesses with honey-brown skins rub oil into their long downy limbs. Could this be paradise?—or is it after all, purgatory?—for look!—there, where picture palaces rise from the plain, searchlights and letters of fire light up the sky, and a screaming hydra-headed mob surges, fighting and weeping, around an unseen idol—golden calf or Cadillac, we do not stop to see—for now beyond the city, beyond America, beyond all, nothing lies before us but an endless expanse of blue, flecked with cheerful whitecaps. With wondering eyes we stare at the Pacific, and all of us look at each other with a wild surmise—silent——
(The door opens. Several men and a woman barge in as though they owned the place, chatting among themselves.)
I think you got the wrong room, buster.
DIRTY LINEN concluded
The room is occupied by two men, both Home Office Civil Servants, both formally dressed (ARTHUR and BERNARD.)
ARTHUR has a file of papers among other paraphernalia.
(The door opens and in come WITHENSHAW, COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE, MCTEAZLE, MRS. EBURY and CHAMBERLAIN, chatting. WITHENSHAW goes to confront ARTHUR at the secretary|clerk’s desk.)
WITHENSHAW: What?
ARTHUR: I’m sorry—this is a Home Office Departmental Meeting.
WITHENSHAW: What are you doing here?
ARTHUR: We are meeting here for the convenience of the Home Secretary who has to answer the Division Bell.
WITHENSHAW: Well, I’m very sorry, but as you can see this room is occupied by a Select Committee.
ARTHUR: On the contrary, as you can see, it is occupied by a
Home Office Departmental Meeting.
WITHENSHAW: Yes, but we were here first.
MCTEAZLE: Hello, Bernard—still soldiering on?
BERNARD (standing up): Mr. McTeazle, isn’t it?—yes—yes—I was just showing young Arthur here—I bet you haven’t seen one of these for a while (produces £5 note).
(Meanwhile WITHENSHAW is writing another note for MADDIE. By this time COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE, MCTEAZLE, CHAMBERLAIN and MRS. EBURY have sat down. The HOME SECRETARY enters with a rush of words and sits in the Chairman’s place.)
HOME SECRETARY: Good afternoon, gentlemen—what a large gathering—difficult case?—I thought it was only that American—goodness me, let’s keep things tidy can we? (He starts stacking the mess of newspapers on the table.) An orderly table makes for an orderly meeting. (He has the Mirror in his hands.) Strewth!
Tit-tit-tut-tut-oh! (Sees WITHENSHAW whilst folding the pin-up picture away.) Hello Malcolm.
ARTHUR: This lady and these gentlemen are here for another
meeting, Minister.
WITHENSHAW: Sorry, Reg, first come first served.
HOME SECRETARY: Are you Send-In-A-Gumboot?
WITHENSHAW: What?
HOME SECRETARY: Are you Rubber Goods Import Quota?
WITHENSHAW: NO—no—we’re Moral Standards in Public Life.
HOME SECRETARY: Oh yes, so you are—no hard information, I hear.
WITHENSHAW: We’re not sure, Reg—something came up this afternoon.
HOME SECRETARY: Yes, well, I’m sorry to pull rank on you, Malcolm …
(The Select Committee Members stand up; ARTHUR and BERNARD sit down.)
… but I’ve got to deal with a very sensitive and difficult case——
(The HOME SECRETARY picks up WITHENSHAW’s note to MADDIE, who by this point has entered and is hanging up her coat.)
What’s this? ‘Forget Claridges, the Olden Bottle …’
(WITHENSHAW snatches it out of his hand and tears it into four and scatters the pieces.)
MADDIE (to HOME SECRETARY): Hello, what are you doing here?
HOME SECRETARY: How do you do? My name’s Jones. (To WITHENSHAW.) As I was saying you must have the room of course.
(ARTHUR and BERNARD stand up, WITHENSHAW crosses to his Chairman’s seat and the Select Committee sit down again. The HOME SECRETARY continues, the italicized words aside to MADDIE.)
Noblesse oblige—say no more—anyway I’m expected at an Intrusion of Privacy Sub-Committee of the Forget Le Coq au Vin and La Poule au Pot Departmental Committee on Rag and Bone Men, Debt Collectors and Journalists.
ARTHUR: But Minister what about …?
(ARTHUR holds out the folder. The HOME SECRETARY whips out a pen and signs with a flourish.)
HOME SECRETARY: One more American can’t make any difference. (BERNARD approaches WITHENSHAW with the £5 note.)
BERNARD: Mr. Withenshaw, isn’t it? Take a look at this—there’s quite a story behind it——
(WITHENSHAW snatches the note and tears it into four pieces. BERNARD is crestfallen.)
WITHENSHAW (shouts): Get out!
HOME SECRETARY: A word in your ear, Malcolm. Have you got time for a drink?
(The Home Office men leave.)
WITHENSHAW: Well …
(FRENCH enters and crosses to his place.)
… not really Reg.
HOME SECRETARY: I’ll give you a ring.
(The HOME SECRETARY leaves. An uncomfortable silence descends as the Select Committee settle down.)
WITHENSHAW: Well now … where were we …
(Pause.)
FRENCH: Mr. Chairman …
WITHENSHAW: Oh yes … you were about to make a point, Mr. French.
FRENCH: Thank you Mr. Chairman. I have been giving this matter a great deal of thought during our short adjournment. I think I can say that never has the phrase O tempora O mores come so readily to the lips.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Meaning what?
FRENCH: Meaning, ‘Oh the times Oh the …——’
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: I know what it means. Why was it on your lips?
FRENCH: I am not a whited sepulchre, Mr. Chairman. I take no pleasure in crying ‘j’accuse’. But I ha
ve been talking to Miss Gotobed. She has poured out her heart to me and I may say it was a mauvais quart d’heure for the Mother of Parliaments. Not since Dunkirk have so many people been in the same boat—proportionately speaking. I am faced now with a responsibility which I would dearly like to be without, but it seems I am presented with, to put it in plain English, a fait accompli. I have struggled with my conscience seeking an honourable course and not wishing to drag this noble institution through the mud.
WITHENSHAW: A very responsible attitude, Mr. French.
FRENCH: Thank you. I think I have indeed found a way. I propose we scrap the Chairman’s Report as it stands and replace it with a new report of my own drafting. (He holds up a piece of paper. He clears his throat and starts to read.) 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 every Member of Parliament, no less than for every citizen of this country, that what they choose to do in their own time, and with whom, is …
MADDIE (prompting): … between them and their conscience.
FRENCH (simultaneously with MADDIE): … conscience, provided they do not transgress the rights of others or the law of the land; and that this principle is not to be sacrificed to that Fleet Street stalking-horse masquerading as a sacred cow labelled ‘The People’s Right to Know’.