by Tom Stoppard
(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 1. 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 setting 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.
MCTEAZLE: Foreign exchange—the Bank of England.
MRS. EBURY: The multi-national companies.
MCTEAZLE: Not to mention government by Cabinet.
CHAMBERLAIN: Government by Cabal.
MRS. EBURY: Brussels.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: The Whips.
WITHENSHAW: Just a minute—that’ll do—come to order.
MADDIE: 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.
MADDIE: It isn’t the people, it’s the newspapers.
MCTEAZLE: 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?
MADDIE: 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.
MADDIE: … 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, Cockle. 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.
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 ail 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, t
he 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 (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’.
MCTEAZLE: Pecksniff. Chuzzlewit.