by Tom Stoppard
THELMA: You’ve got to admit that a football is more likely.
HARRIS: More likely?
THELMA: In the sense that there would be more footballs than tortoises in a built-up area.
HARRIS: Leaving aside the fact that your premise is far from self-evident, it is more likely, by that criterion, that what the fellow had under his arm was a Christmas pudding or a copy of Whitaker’s Almanac, but I happened to see him with my own eyes——
THELMA: We all saw him——
HARRIS: —and he was an old man with one leg and a white beard, dressed in pyjamas, hopping along in the rain with a tortoise under his arm and brandishing a white stick to clear a path through those gifted with sight——
THELMA: There was no one else on the pavement.
HARRIS: Since he was blind he could hardly be expected to know that.
THELMA: Who said he was blind? You say so——
HARRIS: (heatedly) He had a white stick, woman!
THELMA: (equably) In my opinion it was an ivory cane.
HARRIS: (shouting) An ivory cane IS a white stick!! (This seems to exhaust them both. THELMA irons placidly, though still rebellious. After a while …)
THELMA: (scornfully) Pyjamas … I suppose he was hopping in his sleep. Yes, I can see it now—a bad dream—he leaps to his foot, grabs his tortoise and feels his way into the street——
HARRIS: I am only telling you what I saw! And I suggest to you that a blind one-legged white-bearded footballer would have a hard time keeping his place in West Bromwich Albion.
THELMA: He was a young chap.
HARRIS: (patiently) He had a white beard.
THELMA: Shaving foam.
HARRIS: (leaping up) Have you taken leave of your senses?
THELMA: (strongly) It was shaving foam! In pyjamas, if you insist, striped in the colours of West Bromwich Albion, if you allow, carrying under his arm, if not a football then something very similar like a wineskin or a pair of bagpipes, and swinging a white stick in the form of an ivory cane——
HARRIS: Bagpipes?
THELMA: —but what he had on his face was definitely shaving foam!
(Pause.) Or possibly some kind of yashmak.
(HARRIS is almost speechless.)
HARRIS: The most—the very most—I am prepared to concede is that he may have been a sort of street arab making off with his lute—but young he was not and white-bearded he was!
THELMA: His loot?
HARRIS: (expansively) Or his mandolin—Who’s to say?
THELMA: You admit he could have been musical?
HARRIS: I admit nothing of the sort! As a matter of fact, if he had been an Arab musician, the likelihood is that he would have been carrying a gourd—which is very much the shape and size of a tortoise, which strongly suggests that I was right in my initial conjecture: white beard, white stick, pyjamas, tortoise. I refuse to discuss it any further.
THELMA: You’ll never admit you’re wrong, will you?
HARRIS: On the contrary, if I were ever wrong I would be the first to admit it. But these outlandish embellishments of yours are gratuitous and strain the credulity.
THELMA: (sighing) We should have stopped and taken a photograph. Then we wouldn’t be having these arguments.
HARRIS: (morosely) We wouldn’t be having them if we’d stayed at home, as I myself wished to do.
THELMA: It was for mother’s benefit, not yours. She doesn’t often ask to be taken anywhere, and it didn’t cost you much to let her have her pleasure.
HARRIS: It cost me ten shillings in parking tickets alone.
THELMA: It was only one ticket, and it was your own fault for not putting any money in the meter. The truth is that we are very fortunate that a woman of her age still has an active interest, even if it is the tuba.
HARRIS: Active interest?—she’s an obsessed woman; dragging us half way across London—you’d think having one in the house and playing it morning, noon and night would be enough for anyone. It’s certainly too much for me.
THELMA: She’s entitled to practise, just as much as we are.
HARRIS: But it’s our house.
THELMA: You shouldn’t have asked her to move in if you felt like that.
HARRIS: It was your idea.
THELMA: You agreed to it.
HARRIS: I agreed to her living out her last days among her loved ones—I said nothing about having her underfoot for half a lifetime.
THELMA: You said it would be useful for baby-sitting.
HARRIS: We haven’t got any children!
THELMA: That’s hardly her fault. (Pause.) Or mine.
(HARRIS gets slowly to his feet.)
HARRIS: How dare you? How dare you! Right—that’s it! I’ve put up with a lot of slanders but my indulgence is now at an end. This is my house and you can tell your mother to pack her tuba and get out!
THELMA: But, Reginald——
HARRIS: No—you have pushed me too far. When I married you I didn’t expect to have your mother——
THELMA: (shouting back at him) She’s not my mother—she’s your mother!
HARRIS: (immediately) Rubbish!
(However, he sits down rather suddenly.)
(Calmer) My mother is a … tall … aristocratic woman, in a red mac … answers to the name of …
THELMA: That’s your Aunt——
(HARRIS stands up and sits down immediately. His manner is agitated. He is by now fully dressed. THELMA folds the ironing board and takes it out of the room. MOTHER enters, from her bath, robed or dressed, without the bathing cap, but still hopping on one foot. She hops across the room.)
MOTHER: The bulb in the bathroom’s gone again. (She leaves by the other door. HARRIS gets up and goes to the cupboard, extracting his waders. MOTHER returns, hopping, carrying a large felt bag.) I let the water out.
(HARRIS stuffs the waders back into the cupboard. He moves towards the door, but is most unsettled. He halts, turns and addresses his MOTHER, who is now on the wooden chair.)
HARRIS: (rather aggressively) Would you like a cup of tea, Mum?
(The old lady is startled by the appellation. She looks up, straight ahead, then turns to look at HARRIS in a resentful manner. HARRIS quails. He turns and is about to leave again when there is a loud knocking on the street door. MOTHER continues fiddling with the felt bag, from which, at this moment, she withdraws her tuba. HARRIS, with the air of a man more kicked against than kicking, approaches the pile of furniture and begins to take it apart as MOTHER puts the tuba to her lips. MOTHER plays while HARRIS moves the furniture piece by piece into its proper place. Before he has finished, THELMA enters with a drink in one hand and a flower vase in the other. She puts them down and helps HARRIS with the heavier pieces. The long, low table is placed centrally under the lampshade. The settee goes behind it and a comfortable chair goes either side. This is managed so that MOTHER does not have to move from her position on the wooden chair, or desist from playing her jaunty tune, until the last stages, just before the police enter. When they do so—INSPECTOR FOOT and PC HOLMES—everything is in place, the wooden chair put back against the wall, and the three people seated comfortably. THELMA smoking and holding her drink; the tuba out of view, perhaps behind MOTHER’s chair. The only surviving oddity is the fruit basket, when the door is finally flung open and FOOT charges into the room, right downstage, with HOLMES taking up position in a downstage corner and naturally looking a little taken aback.)
FOOT: What is the meaning of this bizarre spectacle?!!
(Pause. They all squint about.)
THELMA: The counterweight fell down and broke. Is that a crime?
(FOOT clasps both hands behind his back and goes into an aggressive playing-for-time stroll, passing HOLMES. FOOT speaks out of the corner of his mouth.)
FOOT: Got the right house, have you?
HOLMES: Yes, sir.
(FOOT continues his stroll. HARRIS would like to help.)
MOTHER: (uncertainly) Is it all right for me to practi
se?
(FOOT ignores her, his eyes darting desperately about until they fix on the table-lamp. FOOT stops dead. His head moves slightly along the line of the lampshade, reading the words scrawled on it.)
FOOT: (triumphantly) Reginald William Harris?
HARRIS: Thirty-seven Mafeking Villas.
FOOT: You are addressing a police officer not an envelope. Would you kindly answer my questions in the right order.
HARRIS: I’m sorry.
(FOOT turns his back on HARRIS, denoting a fresh start, and barks.)
FOOT: Reginald William Harris!
HARRIS: Here.
FOOT: Where do you live?—you’re doing it again!!!
MOTHER: Who is that man?
FOOT: I am Chief Inspector Foot.
(HARRIS rises to his feet with a broad enchanted smile.)
HARRIS: Not Foot of the Y——
FOOT: (screams) Silence!
(FOOT starts travelling again, keeping his agitation almost under control, ignoring MOTHER’s murmur.)
MOTHER: Can I practice now?
(FOOT arrives at HOLMES, and addresses him out of the corner of his mouth.)
FOOT: Quite sure? You never mentioned the fruit.
HOLMES: (plaintively) There was so much else …
FOOT: Better have a look round.
HOLMES: Yes, sir.
(THELMA ignores the convention of the ‘aside’, raising her voice and her head.)
THELMA: I’m afraid things are a bit of a mess.
FOOT: (briskly) I can’t help that. You know what they say—clean knickers every day, you never know when you might be run over. Well it’s happened to you on a big scale.
(HARRIS regains his feet.)
HARRIS: Just a minute. Have you got a search warrant?
(HOLMES pauses.)
FOOT: Yes.
HARRIS: Can I see it?
FOOT: I can’t put my hand to it at the moment.
HARRIS: (incredulous) You can’t find your search warrant!
FOOT: (smoothly) I had it about my person when I came in. I may have dropped it. Have a look round, Holmes.
(THELMA rises to her feet with a broad enchanted smile.)
THELMA: Not——
FOOT: (screams) Be quiet!
(THELMA sits down. HARRIS will not.)
HARRIS: Now look here——
FOOT: Can I see your television licence?
(HARRIS freezes with his mouth open. After a long moment he closes it.)
HARRIS: (vaguely) Er, it must be about … somewhere …
FOOT: Good. While you’re looking for your television licence, Holmes will look for the search warrant.
(HARRIS sits down thoughtfully.)
(To HOLMES) It could have blown about a bit or slipped down under the floorboards.
HOLMES: Right, sir. (HOLMES begins to crawl around the room.)
MOTHER: Is it all right for me to practise?
(FOOT ignores her. He stands looking down smugly at HARRIS.)
FOOT: Yes, I expect you’re wondering what gave you away.
HARRIS: (wanly) Was it one of those detector vans?
(But FOOT is already on the move.)
FOOT: Well, I’ll tell you. It’s a simple tale—no hot tips from Interpol, no days and nights of keeping watch in the rain, no trouser turn-ups hoovered by Forensics or undercover agents selling the Evening News in Chinatown—no!—just a plain ordinary copper on his beat! Yes!—the PC is still the best tool the Yard has got!——
(HOLMES is behind him, on his hands and knees.)
HOLMES: Excuse me, sir.
FOOT: (irritated) Not in here; around.
HOLMES: (getting to his feet) Yes, sir. Is this anything, sir? (He hands FOOT a .22 lead slug which he has found on the floor. FOOT accepts it unheedingly; he is already talking. HOLMES leaves the room.)
FOOT: He’s not one of your TV heroes, young Holmes—he’s just a young man doing his job and doing it well—sometimes not seeing his kids—Dean, five, and Sharon, three—for days on end—often getting home after his wife’s asleep and back on the beat before she wakes—tireless, methodical, eagle-eyed—always ready with a friendly word for the old lag crossing the road or sixpence for the old lady trying to go straight——
(HOLMES has re-entered the room and has been dogging FOOT’s footsteps, waiting for an opportunity to speak, which he now deduces, wrongly, has presented itself.)
HOLMES: To tell you the truth, sir, I’m not absolutely sure what a search warrant looks like …
(But FOOT marches on, round the right-angle of the room, while HOLMES plods stolidly on and out without changing course. As FOOT moves he is weighing and jiggling in his hand the lead slug, and he has been becoming more aware of its presence there.)
FOOT: Yes, that’s the sort of metal that has brought you to book.
(FOOT absently examines the object in his hand. He seems surprised at finding it there.)
When Holmes got back to the station and described to me the scene he had witnessed through your window, I realized he had stumbled on something even bigger than even … (He tails off, and whirls on them, holding up the metal slug.) Do any of you know what this is?
(THELMA holds up her hand.)
Well?
(THELMA gets up and takes the slug out of FOOT’s hand.)
THELMA: It’s a lead slug from a .22 calibre pistol. Thank you.
(She tosses the slug into the metal bin wherein it makes the appropriate sound.) A hundred and fifty. (She returns to her seat. FOOT walks over to the metal bin and peers into it. He bends and takes out a handful of lead slugs and lets them fall back. He stoops again and comes up with the broken halves of the porcelain container that had held the slugs and acted as the counterweight to the light fitting. He regards the basket of fruit. He drops the debris back into the bin. He addresses himself to THELMA.)
FOOT: It is my duty to tell you that I am not satisfied with your reply.
THELMA: What was the question?
FOOT: That is hardly the point.
THELMA: Ask me another.
FOOT: Very well. Why did it take you so long to answer the door?
THELMA: The furniture was piled up against it.
FOOT: (sneeringly) Really? Expecting visitors, Mrs. Harris?
THELMA: On the contrary.
FOOT: In my experience your conduct usually indicates that visitors are expected.
THELMA: I am prepared to defend myself against any logician you care to produce.
FOOT: (snaps) Do you often stack the furniture up against the door?
THELMA: Yes. Is that a crime?
FOOT: (furiously) Will you stop trying to exploit my professional knowledge for your private ends!—I didn’t do twenty years of hard grind to have my brains picked by every ignorant layman who finds out I’m a copper!
(HARRIS has relapsed into a private brood, from which this outburst rouses him. He has decided to capitulate. He stands up.)
HARRIS: All right! Can we call off this game of cat and mouse?! I haven’t got a television licence—I kept meaning to get one but somehow …
(FOOT turns to him.)
FOOT: Then perhaps you have a diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons.
HARRIS: (taken aback) I’m afraid not. I didn’t realize they were compulsory.
FOOT: (without punctuation) I have reason to believe that within the last hour in this room you performed without anaesthetic an illegal operation on a bald nigger minstrel about five-foot-two or Pakistani and that is only the beginning!
HARRIS: I deny it!
FOOT: Furthermore, that this is a disorderly house!
HARRIS: That I admit—Thelma, I’ve said if before and I’ll say it again——
THELMA: (shouting angrily) Don’t you come that with me!—what with the dancing, the travelling, ironing your shirts, massaging your mother and starting all over every morning, I haven’t got time to wipe my nose!
HARRIS: (equally roused) That’s what I want to talk
to you about—sniff-sniff—it’s a disgusting habit in a woman——
THELMA: (shouting) All right—so I’ve got a cold!—(Turning to the world, which happens to be in the direction of FOOT)—Is that a crime?
FOOT: (hysterically) I will not warn you again! (He patrols furiously.) The disorderliness I was referring to consists of immoral conduct—tarted-up harpies staggering about drunk to the wide, naked men in rubber garments hanging from the lampshade—Have you got a music licence? (As he passes the gramophone.)
HARRIS: There is obviously a perfectly logical reason for everything.
FOOT: There is, and I mean to make it stick! What was the nature of this operation? (FOOT finds himself staring at a line of single greasy footprints leading across the room. He hops along the trail, fascinated, until he reaches the door to MOTHER’s bath. He turns. Quietly.) The D.P.P. is going to take a very poor view if you have been offering cut-price amputations to immigrants.
(HOLMES enters excitedly with the ironing board.)
HOLMES: Sir!
FOOT: That’s an ironing board.
HOLMES: (instantaneously demoralized) Yes, sir.
FOOT: What we’re looking for is a darkie short of a leg or two.
HOLMES: (retiring) Right, sir.
MOTHER: Is it all right for me to practise?
FOOT: No, it is not all right! Ministry standards may be lax but we draw the line at Home Surgery to being in the little luxuries of life.
MOTHER: I only practise on the tuba.
FOOT: Tuba, femur, fibula—it takes more than a penchant for rubber gloves to get a licence nowadays.
MOTHER: The man’s quite mad.
FOOT: That’s what they said at the station when I sent young Holmes to take a turn down Mafeking Villas, but everything I have heard about events here today convinces me that you are up to your neck in the Crippled Minstrel Caper!
THELMA: Is that a dance?
HARRIS: My wife and I are always on the look-out for novelty numbers. We’re prepared to go out on a limb if it’s not in a bad taste.
FOOT: (shouting him down) Will you kindly stop interrupting while I am about to embark on my exegesis!! (Pauses, he collects himself.) The story begins about lunchtime today. The facts appear to be that shortly after two o’clock this afternoon, the taiented though handicapped doyen of the Victoria Palace Happy Minstrel Troupe emerged from his dressing-room in blackface, and entered the sanctum of the box-office staff; whereupon, having broken his crutch over the heads of those good ladies, the intrepid uniped made off with the advance takings stuffed into the crocodile boot which, it goes without saying, he had surplus to his conventional requirements.