Plays 5

by Tom Stoppard

  Wagner For Christ’s sake!

  Guthrie OK. How are they getting their stuff out?

  Wagner Air freight from KC. There’s nothing closer for pictures. Good chance of a pigeon, too – lots of people flying out at the moment. There’s an overnight plane to London on Fridays – very handy; that gives you about twenty-four hours if you’ve got something for this week. And there’s the AP wire on Saturday if you’re pushed – they’ll print up for you.

  Guthrie Yeh. I checked them out on the way up. Either way, it’s a four-hour drive for that lot.

  Wagner You won’t do any better.

  Guthrie Carson’s got a helicopter.

  He sits down and picks up Alastair’s camera and opens it. He’s going to find a roll of film in his own bag and put it into Alastair’s camera. But this is something which he takes his time over, checking the camera itself, etc. Also, he gets interrupted so the job isn’t completed until later.

  Wagner I can’t take much more of this. Our own telex and a helicopter, and the competition on tom-toms. If this war starts on a Saturday morning you and I are going to be famous.

  Guthrie You’re famous in Dacca. I saw your name in the lavatory in the Inter-Continental.

  Wagner How nice.

  Guthrie It said, ‘Dick Wagner before he dicks you’.

  Wagner (grins) Sour grapes. That was a legitimate beat. I had my own source. By the time that Paki press officer handed it out with an embargo my story was in London – Jesus, it was on the stone.

  Guthrie All right.

  Wagner (getting worked up) I mean, I cracked that story, Gigi. The embargo was just shutting the stable door –

  Guthrie Listen, it’s nothing to me.

  Wagner Yeh, but I know how those stuck-up bastards tell it around – the whole thing gets misreported.

  Guthrie (mildly) And they’re usually so accurate. Did you get me a room?

  Wagner You’re with me. There’s two hotels, both dumps. Journalists hanging out the windows, and a Swedish TV crew sleeping in the lobby, and a lot of good friends from home too. We’re going to make them ill. All we need is a story.

  Guthrie Do you think we’re in the right place?

  Wagner What do you mean?

  Guthrie I don’t know what I mean.

  Wagner Well, everybody else is here.

  Guthrie Yeh. I suppose so.

  Wagner There’s nothing better. Except an interview with the President, and nobody has even seen that mad bastard for six months. Everybody’s had a go.

  Guthrie What’s the story in Jeddu?

  Wagner (shrugs) It’s as near as we can get to Alf.

  Guthrie Who’s he?

  Wagner Them. ‘Who’s he?’ Don’t you ever look at the bits between the photographs? Adoma Liberation Front. The Colonel. Colonel Shimbu.

  Guthrie I was just testing you.

  Wagner Didn’t you know about my famous scoop?

  Guthrie No.

  Wagner Nor did I. Sunday, everyone gets cables. ‘Globe finds Colonel Shimbu. Why Colonel unfound by you’, etcetera. So everybody’s screaming, where is he, Wagner, you bastard? Only, it isn’t my story. I don’t know where the bloody Colonel is. So they want to see my cable – they think it’s a herogram from Hammaker. But of course I can’t show it to them because I don’t know what this happy birthday thing is all about. So then they’re calling me a lying bastard, and following me to the lavatory when they aren’t following armoured car patrols into the bush in broken-down taxis. You never saw anything like it.

  Guthrie Yes I did.

  Wagner Yes you did. There’s a government press officer here who’s the usual lying jerk, but there’s no way of telling whether he’s lying because he knows the truth or because he doesn’t know anything, so you can’t trust his mendacity either – he could be telling the truth half the time, by accident. His line was that the Adoma Liberation Front didn’t exist, and the army had got it completely surrounded. Anyway, the BBC World Service picks up the Globe exclusive, and it turns out to be date-lined up-country with the rebels, interview with the Colonel himself, a party political broadcast wouldn’t have done it better, and furthermore it’s not a rebellion, it’s a secession – get the picture? Media credibility! Well, the press officer goes bananas. He wants to know which side the Globe thinks it’s on. So I tell him, it’s not on any side, stupid, it’s an objective fact-gathering organization. And he says, yes, but is it objective-for or objective-against? (Pause.) He may be stupid but he’s not stupid.

  Guthrie I’ve got a present for you.

  Guthrie gets up and walks towards the back of the room where he picks up a pile of newspapers. Wagner doesn’t turn to see this.

  Wagner So he spends the briefing attacking the Globe – God bless him, it’s the only story I’ve filed this week – and he’s in a flat spin trying to make everything fit. At the end, this very smooth guy from Reuters says, ‘Let me see if I’ve got this right. It’s not a political movement, it’s just a lot – or rather not a lot – of completely illiterate ivory poachers who’ve been reading too much Marxist propaganda, and they’re all armed with home-made weapons flown by Cuban pilots.’

  Guthrie (coming back) Who’s the Globe special correspondent?

  Wagner I don’t know. I’m famous in Jeddu. Scooped by my own paper. Bloody poaching, that’s what it is. It’s one of those ivory poachers moonlighting for Hammaker. I’d give anything for a copy of last Sunday’s –

  Guthrie dumps the newspapers into Wagner’s lap.

  Aw, Gigi!

  Guthrie I couldn’t get them all, just what they had when I changed planes at Karachi. Second lead.

  The Sunday Globe is a respectable English paper. The African story is the second most important story on the front page. The back page is a sports page. The other papers are: the Sunday Express, the New York Times (Monday not Sunday), the Sunday Times, the Sunday Mirror, the Observer, the Sunday Telegraph and the News of the World. Wagner of course looks at the Globe first.

  Wagner ‘A special correspondent’ –

  Guthrie That’s what I said.

  Wagner What the hell does that mean? Fair old piece. (He turns the paper to look over the fold.) Took care of mine anyway – ‘Richard Wagner adds from Jeddu’ – two paragraphs. (He puts the paper aside.) Well, well. A world beat and no name on it.

  Guthrie A freelance.

  Wagner They have names. I don’t get it.

  Guthrie (picking up the Globe) Where is this place?

  Wagner It’s sort of North Wales.

  Guthrie What do you mean North Wales?

  Wagner I’ve given up on place names here – they all sound like games you play on board ship. If a place isn’t called Tombola it’s called Housey-housey. The way to look at it is, KC is London, Jeddu is up the A40 – Cheltenham – and the Colonel is somewhere in the Welsh hills. (He has found the inside foreign page of the Sunday Express now.) ‘The smouldering heart of this coffee-laden, copper-loaded corner of Africa is being ripped apart by the ambitions of a cashiered Colonel whose iron fist, UN observers fear, may turn out to be holding a hammer and sickle …’ (scornfully) And a New York date-line, who needs it? (He tosses that aside and reads from the front page of the New York Times.) ‘Jeddu, Saturday. This time last week Jeddu was a one-horse town on the road from Kamba City to nowhere. Today you can’t see the town for cavalry, mainly armoured personnel carriers and a few T-47 tanks. In them thar hills to the north-west, the renegade Colonel Shimbu is given no more chance than Colonel Custer – if only he’d stand still. Unfortunately, no one can find the Colonel to tell him to stop playing the Indians and it may be that Jeddu is going to wake up one morning with its armoured cars drawn up in a circle.’ (He throws that aside.) I hate them and their Pulitzer Prizes. All writing and no facts. (The Sunday Times) ‘At five minutes past eight on Wednesday morning, an aide-de-camp on the staff of Supreme Commander and President Ginku Mageeba, his uniform distinguished by Christian Dior sunglasses and unbuttoned flies
, drove a green and white jeep up to the Princess Alice Bar in downtown Jeddu and commandeered it as the nerve centre of Mageeba’s victorious drive against the forces of darkness, otherwise known as the Adoma Liberation Front. The army itself appeared in time for elevenses, and by today the advance had nearly reached the Esso pump three hundred yards up the road towards the enemy.’ Very funny. All facts and no news. (He looks briefly through the Mirror.) Nothing. Well, that’s honest anyway. (The Observer) ‘Sources close to President Mageeba are conceding that the peasant army of the ALF has the tacit support of the indigenous population of the interior and is able to move unhindered through the Adoma hills.’ (Considers this, nods sagely.) True. (Sunday Telegraph) ‘Evidence is emerging that the civilian population of the Adoma region has been intimidated into supporting the Russian-equipped rural guerillas of the ALF, but according to army sources, the self-styled Liberation Front is penned up in the Adoma hills.’ (Considers this, nods sagely.) True. (News of the World – he only glances at the front page.) ‘Is this the laziest man in Britain?’ I did that one once. Different bloke, mind you.

  Wagner turns his attention back to the Globe, which Guthrie has put down. He looks at it glumly. The dog barks. A car is arriving.

  Guthrie Carson.

  Wagner (still preoccupied with the paper) I don’t think it’s anybody who’s been around much. It’s good stuff but it’s too much I-was-there. It’s somebody who wants to impress the world and doesn’t know that the world isn’t impressed by reporters and nobody is impressed by reporters except other reporters – who can work out that you were there without having it rammed down their throats.

  We have heard car doors.

  Yeah, I think I’ve got this one’s number – he’s not a star, he’s a boy scout in an Austin Reed safari suit who somehow got lucky.

  Milne appears at the edge of the room. Wagner’s description is not far off. Wagner hasn’t seen him.

  (Almost to himself) Little prick.

  Milne I say …

  Guthrie and Wagner look at him.

  I say, that wouldn’t be a Sunday Globe, would it?

  Guthrie and Wagner look at each other.

  Wagner Care to have a look?

  Milne Not last Sunday’s?! I say – thanks.

  Wagner Have you just come with Mr Carson?

  Milne Yes, that’s right. He’s just gone up to see his wife.

  Wagner gives him the Globe. Milne ignores the front page and thumbs through to the foreign page inside. His disappointment is silent but immense. He tries another page.

  (Miserably; scanning the paper) He’s just gone up to see his wife.

  Wagner and Guthrie, especially Wagner, watch him like people watching a play, tensely waiting for Milne to find his Story. Milne gives up and closes the paper, giving the front page a casual glance. Then he sees his story and the jolt he gets is audible. Wagner and Guthrie relax. Milne reads for a few seconds, lost in himself.

  (To Wagner) Do you need this paper?

  Wagner No. I’d like you to have it.

  Milne Thanks awfully. (reading again) Carson’s just gone up to see his wife and boy.

  Wagner Yes, you said.

  Milne Are you in mining as well?

  Wagner As well as what?

  Milne giggles and goes on reading.

  Anything interesting in the paper?

  Milne finally puts the paper down.

  Milne Actually, I’m a journalist.

  Wagner Oh.

  Milne Actually, I’m on the Sunday Globe.

  Wagner Ah.

  Milne Well, I’m not actually on the Sunday Globe.

  Wagner What are you doing here, actually?

  Milne I’m covering the rebellion. This is my interview with Colonel Shimbu on the front page.

  Wagner That’s very good. How did you find him?

  Milne A bit excitable but quite –

  Wagner (hard edge) How did you find him?

  Milne Oh. It was a bit of luck really. Some of his men stopped a bus I was on.

  Wagner What for? Food? Money?

  Milne No. They give out leaflets and lecture the passengers for a while and let them carry on. But they took me off the bus. I was the only white. That was a month ago before the story broke properly – I mean, the story was there all the time but no one was taking any notice of it, you just heard talk about it. I was in KC so I thought I’d have a recce, and I got kidnapped by this ALF group.

  Guthrie Lucky.

  Milne Yes. I moved around with them for two weeks and finally I persuaded Shimbu he should let his case be properly reported. So he did the interview.

  Wagner How did you get the story out?

  Milne He got it out for me.

  Wagner A pigeon?

  Milne (laughing patronizingly) A pigeon? No, we’ve got a little beyond that in Fleet Street. He gave it to one of his chaps to take over the border and he posted it for me.

  Wagner glances at Guthrie.

  Wagner (expressionless) Posted it.

  Milne To tell you the truth the interview was ten days old but luckily I had Shimbu to myself. By the time the foreign press started to arrive in Kambawe the government got wise and attached the reporters to the army, which sounds promising but it takes away their freedom of movement. On a story like this it’s no good at all until the real shooting starts. The story has got to be with the rebels. They should have known that.

  Guthrie smiles at Wagner.

  Wagner Where was your last job?

  Milne The Grimsby Evening Messenger.

  Wagner The Grimsby Evening Messenger.

  Milne That’s an evening paper in Grimsby, in England. By the way, my name is Jacob Milne.

  Wagner What are you doing here, Jacob?

  Milne In this house?

  Wagner In Africa.

  Milne Oh. I lost my job in Grimsby.

  Wagner Yes?

  Milne My idea was to get myself in on a good foreign story without too much competition. I thought, Eritrea.

  Wagner This isn’t Eritrea. Is it?

  Milne No – no. Eritrea is up north.

  Wagner I thought it was.

  Milne I couldn’t get in. Then I heard that there was this interesting situation developing in Kambawe.

  Wagner Where did you hear that?

  Milne In Grimsby.

  Wagner waits for more.

  In Time Magazine.

  Wagner Ah.

  Milne Incredible how it’s worked out. Carson says there’s fifty reporters in Jeddu. They’ve got themselves thoroughly lumbered. There’s no story in Jeddu. (Reading from the Globe) ‘… sources close to President Mageeba …’ Sheer desperation … Richard Vahgner. I bet I’ve made him sick. Well, he’s not going to be very pleased about my exclusive, and the awful thing is (looking Wagner in the eye) I’ve got another one. (He sees the awful truth in Wagner’s eyes.) Oh, Christ.

  Wagner Sit down, Jacob.

  Milne Look, I’m sorry – (He turns to Guthrie.) Are you with –?

  Guthrie George Guthrie. Hello.

  Milne Guthrie? – Christ. I thought your Lebanon pictures were just –

  Wagner Sit down. I’m Dick Wagner. Where have you just come from?

  Milne The Kaminco Complex – you know – where the Kaminco mines are – I can never get these places right – what’s it called?

  Guthrie Deck tennis.

  Milne No.

  Guthrie Ping pong.

  Wagner Shut up.

  Milne Malakuangazi. About a hundred and fifty miles north.

  Guthrie What’s Kaminco?

  Wagner Kambawe Mining Corporation. Carson’s outfit. (to Milne) How did you get there?

  Milne With the ALF of course. Shimbu captured it this morning. That’s my story. They shelled it and then went in and killed the garrison.

  Wagner stares at him.

  Wagner Jesus wept.

  Carson enters, heading for the study. Wagner’s interception is slightly ingratiating.

&nbs
p; Mr Carson – I’m Richard Wagner, Sunday Globe.

  Carson Yes. Are you helping Jake on his story?

  Wagner decides to swallow that.

  Wagner That’s right. Fred Hammaker suggested I look you up. Sends his regards. And to Mrs Carson.

  Carson I’m afraid I’ve never heard of him. Excuse me.

  Leaving Wagner looking at the closed study door.

  Guthrie He’s never heard of him.

  Wagner I’m thinking about it. (to Milne) How did Hammaker know about Carson?

  Milne I told him.

  Guthrie When you sent your Colonel Shimbu piece.

  Milne That’s right. I thought Jeddu would be the next place I’d have a chance to file. I was right about that, though for the wrong reasons – like everybody else I thought the Colonel was heading this way.

  Wagner You haven’t filed yet?

  Milne I couldn’t. The land cable was cut in the shelling. That’s why I came out with Carson. Do you know what Carson has got here?

  Wagner Seen it. Happy birthday.

  Milne I knew Geoff Carson slightly. I met him in KC. He spends time in KC and Malakuangazi, it’s a dog-leg with Jeddu at the bend, and he’s also got a small potash operation just down the road from here – where the helicopter came down. Kaminco is mainly copper but there’s some potash and also manganese –

  Wagner Just get on with it.

  Milne Well, I interviewed Carson for a background piece I sent Hammaker when I first arrived in the country. He didn’t use it. Sent me a cable, saying ‘Think stuff unwanted.’

  Wagner Too right.

  Milne It paid off anyway. Carson wanted to check his quotes so he gave me his home telex number. I had it in my book. I told Hammaker it was one place he might be able to reach me.

  Wagner And here you are.

  Milne With bells on.

  He takes his ‘copy’ from his pocket and flourishes it. Wagner takes it from him.

  Wagner Well, you’re a bloody idiot. You should have stayed inside and got Carson to carry your story out. He was the pigeon of a lifetime, with his own little helicopter. Now how are you going to get back in?

  Milne Carson said he’d lend me a Kaminco car.

  Wagner Don’t be a clown – no one’s going to get into Malakuangazi now without a tank.