Plays Political

by Dan Laurence

SIR ARTHUR [patting her] Never mind, dear. They must be let talk. [He returns placidly to his chair]. It’s just like the House of Commons, except that the speeches are shorter.

  FLAVIA. Oh, it’s no use trying to make papa listen to anything. [She throws herself despairingly into Basham’s chair and writhes].

  DAVID [approaching Sir Arthur with dignity] I really think, father, you might for once in a way take some slight interest in the family.

  SIR ARTHUR. My dear boy, at this very moment I am making notes for a speech on the family. Ask Miss Hanways.

  HILDA. Yes. Mr Chavender: Sir Arthur is to speak this afternoon on the disintegrating effect of Socialism on family life.

  FLAVIA [irresistible amusement struggling with hysterics and getting the better of them] Ha ha! Ha ha ha!

  DAVID [retreating] Ha ha! Haw! Thats the best—ha ha ha!

  SIR ARTHUR. I dont see the joke. Why this hilarity?

  DAVID. Treat the House to a brief description of this family; and you will get the laugh of your life.

  FLAVIA. Damn the family!

  LADY CHAVENDER. Flavia!

  FLAVIA [bouncing up] Yes: there you go. I mustnt say damn. I mustnt say anything I feel and think, only what you feel and think. Thats family life. Scold, scold, scold!

  DAVID. Squabble, squabble, squabble!

  FLAVIA. Look at the unbearable way you treat me! Look at the unbearable way you treat Papa!

  SIR ARTHUR [rising in flaming wrath] How dare you? Silence. Leave the room.

  After a moment of awestruck silence Flavia, rather dazed by the avalanche she has brought down on herself, looks at her father in a lost way; then bursts into tears and runs out through the masked door.

  SIR ARTHUR [quietly] Youd better go too, my boy.

  David, also somewhat dazed, shrugs his shoulders and goes out. Sir Arthur looks at Hilda. She hurries out almost on tiptoe.

  SIR ARTHUR [taking his wife in his arms affectionately] Treat me badly! You!! I could have killed her, poor little devil.

  He sits down; and she passes behind him and takes the nearest chair on his right.

  She is a nice woman, and goodlooking; but she is bored; and her habitual manner is one of apology for being not only unable to take an interest in people, but even to pretend that she does.

  LADY CHAVENDER. It serves us right, dear, for letting them bring themselves up in the post-war fashion instead of teaching them to be ladies and gentlemen. Besides, Flavia was right. I do treat you abominably. And you are so good!

  SIR ARTHUR. Nonsense! Such a horrid wicked thing to say. Dont you know, my love, that you are the best of wives? the very best as well as the very dearest?

  LADY CHAVENDER. You are certainly the best of husbands, Arthur. You are the best of everything. I dont wonder at the country adoring you. But Flavia was quite right. It is the first time I have ever known her to be right about anything. I am a bad wife and a bad mother. I dislike my daughter and treat her badly. I like you very much; and I treat you abominably.

  SIR ARTHUR. No; no.

  LADY CHAVENDER. Yes, yes. I suppose it’s something wrong in my constitution. I was not born for wifing and mothering. And yet I am very very fond of you, as you know. But I have a grudge against your career.

  SIR ARTHUR. My career! [Complacently] Well, theres not much wrong with that, is there? Of course I know it keeps me too much away from home. That gives you a sort of grudge against it. All the wives of successful men are a bit like that. But it’s better to see too little of a husband than too much of him, isnt it?

  LADY CHAVENDER. I am so glad that you really feel successful.

  SIR ARTHUR. Well, it may sound conceited and all that; but after all a man cant be Prime Minister and go about with a modest cough pretending to be a nobody. Facts are facts; and the facts in my case are that I have climbed to the top of the tree; I am happy in my work; and—

  LADY CHAVENDER. Your what?

  SIR ARTHUR. You are getting frightfully deaf, dear. I said “my work.”

  LADY CHAVENDER. You call it work?

  SIR ARTHUR. Brain work, dear, brain work. Do you really suppose that governing the country is not work, but a sort of gentlemanly diversion?

  LADY CHAVENDER. But you dont govern the country, Arthur. The country isnt governed: it just slum-mocks along anyhow.

  SIR ARTHUR. I have to govern within democratic limits. I cannot go faster than our voters will let me.

  LADY CHAVENDER. Oh, your voters! What do they know about government ? Football, prizefighting, war: that is what they like. And they like war because it isnt real to them: it’s only a cinema show. War is real to me; and I hate it, as every woman to whom it is real hates it. But to you it is only part of your game: one of the regular moves of the Foreign Office and the War Office.

  SIR ARTHUR. My dear, I hate war as much as you do. It makes a Prime Minister’s job easy because it brings every dog to heel; but it produces coalitions; and I believe in party government.

  LADY CHAVENDER [rising] Oh, it’s no use talking to you, Arthur. [She comes behind him and plants her hands on his shoulders]. You are a dear and a duck and a darling; but you live in fairyland and I live in the hard wicked world. Thats why I cant be a good wife and take an interest in your career.

  SIR ARTHUR. Stuff! Politics are not a woman’s business: thats all it means. Thank God I have not a political wife. Look at Higginbotham! He was just ripe for the Cabinet when his wife went into Parliament and made money by journalism. That was the end of him.

  LADY CHAVENDER. And I married a man with a hopelessly parliamentary mind; and that was the end of me.

  SIR ARTHUR. Yes, yes, my pettums. I know that you have sacrificed yourself to keeping my house and sewing on my buttons; and I am not ungrateful. I am sometimes remorseful; but I love it. And now you must run away, I am very very very busy this morning.

  LADY CHAVENDER. Yes, yes, very very busy doing nothing. And it wears you out far more than if your mind had something sensible to work on! Youll have a nervous breakdown if you go on like this. Promise me that you will see the lady I spoke to you about—if you wont see a proper doctor.

  SIR ARTHUR. But you told me this woman is a doctor! [He rises and breaks away from her]. Once for all, I wont see any doctor. I’m old enough to do my own doctoring; and I’m not going to pay any doctor, male or female, three guineas to tell me what I know perfectly well already: that my brain’s overworked and I must take a fortnight off on the links, or go for a sea voyage.

  LADY CHAVENDER. She charges twenty guineas, Arthur.

  SIR ARTHUR [shaken] Oh! Does she? What for?

  LADY CHAVENDER. Twenty guineas for the diagnosis and twelve guineas a week at her sanatorium in the Welsh mountains, where she wants to keep you under observation for six weeks. That would really rest you; and I think you would find her a rather interesting and attractive woman.

  SIR ARTHUR. Has she a good cook?

  LADY CHAVENDER. I dont think that matters.

  SIR ARTHUR. Not matter!

  LADY CHAVENDER. No. She makes her patients fast.

  SIR ARTHUR. Tell her I’m not a Mahatma. If I pay twelve guineas a week I shall expect three meals a day for it.

  LADY CHAVENDER. Then you will see her?

  SIR ARTHUR. Certainly not, if I have to pay twenty guineas for it.

  LADY CHAVENDER. No, no. Only a social call, not a professional visit. Just to amuse you, and gratify her curiosity. She wants to meet you.

  SIR ARTHUR. Very well, dear, very well, very well. This woman has got round you, I see. Well, she shant get round me; but to please you I’ll have a look at her. And now you really must run away. I have a frightful mass of work to get through this morning.

  LADY CHAVENDER. Thank you, darling. [She kisses him] May I tell Flavia she is forgiven?

  SIR ARTHUR. Yes. But I havnt really forgiven her. I’ll never forgive her.

  LADY CHAVENDER [smiling] Dearest. [She kisses his fingers and goes out, giving him a parting smile as she goes through
the masked door].

  Sir Arthur, left alone, looks inspired and triumphant. He addresses an imaginary assembly.

  SIR ARTHUR. “My lords and gentlemen: you are not theorists. You are not rhapsodists. You are no longer young”—no, damn it, old Middlesex wont like that. “We have all been young. We have seen visions and dreamt dreams. We have cherished hopes and striven towards ideals. We have aspired to things that have not been realized. But we are now settled experienced men, family men. We are husbands and fathers. Yes, my lords and gentlemen: husbands and fathers. And I venture to claim your unanimous consent when I affirm that we have found something in these realities that was missing in the ideals. I thank you for that burst of applause: which I well know is no mere tribute to my poor eloquence, but the spontaneous and irrestible recognition of the great natural truth that our friends the Socialists have left out of their fancy pictures of a mass society in which regulation is to take the place of emotion and economics of honest human passion.” Whew! that took a long breath. “They never will, gentlemen, I say they never will. They will NOT [he smites the table and pauses, glaring round at his imaginary hearers]. I see that we are of one mind, my lords and gentlemen. I need not labor the point.” Then labor it for the next ten minutes. That will do. That will do. [He sits down; rings the telephone bell; and seizes the milk jug, which he empties at a single draught].

  Hilda appears at the main door.

  HILDA. Did you say you would receive a deputation from the Isle of Cats this morning? I have no note of it.

  SIR ARTHUR. Oh, confound it, I believe I did. I totally forgot it.

  HILDA. Theyve come.

  SIR ARTHUR. Bother them!

  HILDA. By all means. But how am I to get rid of them? What am I to say?

  SIR ARTHUR [resignedly] Oh, I suppose I must see them. Why do I do these foolish things ? Tell Burton to shew them in.

  HILDA. Burton is in his shirt sleeves doing something to the refrigerator. I’d better introduce them.

  SIR ARTHUR. Oh, bundle them in anyhow. And tell them I am frightfully busy.

  She goes out, closing the door softly behind her. He pushes away the breakfast tray and covers it with The Times, which he opens out to its fullest extent for that purpose. Then he collects his papers into the vacant space, and takes up a big blue one, in the study of which he immerses himself profoundly.

  HILDA [flinging the door open] The worshipful the Mayor of the Isle of Cats.

  The Mayor, thick and elderly, enters, a little shyly, followed by (a) an unladylike but brilliant and very confident young woman in smart factory-made clothes after the latest Parisian models, (b) a powerfully built loud voiced young man fresh from Oxford University, defying convention in corduroys, pullover, and unshaven black beard, (c) a thin, undersized lower middle class young man in an alderman’s gown, evidently with a good conceit of himself, and (d) a sunny comfortable old chap in his Sunday best, who might be anything from a working man with a very sedentary job (say a watchman) to a city missionary of humble extraction. He is aggressively modest, or pretends to be, and comes in last with a disarming smile rather as a poor follower of the deputation than as presuming to form part of it. They group themselves at the door behind the Mayor, who is wearing his chain of office.

  SIR ARTHUR [starting from his preoccupation with important State documents, and advancing past the fireplace to greet the Mayor with charming affability] What! My old friend Tom Humphries! How have you been all these years? Sit down. [They shake hands, whilst Hilda deftly pulls out a chair from the end of the table nearest the door].

  The Mayor sits down, rather overwhelmed by the cordiality of his reception.

  SIR ARTHUR [continuing] Well, well! fancy your being Mayor of—of—

  HILDA [prompting] The Isle of Cats.

  THE YOUNG WOMAN [brightly, helping her out] Down the river, Sir Arthur. Twenty minutes from your door by Underground.

  THE OXFORD YOUTH [discordantly] Oh, he knows as well as you do, Aloysia. [He advances offensively on Sir Arthur, who declines the proximity by retreating a step or two somewhat haughtily]. Stow all this fo bunnum business, Chavender.

  SIR ARTHUR. This what?

  OXFORD YOUTH. Oh, chuck it. You know French as well as I do.

  SIR ARTHUR. Oh, faux bonhomme, of course, yes. [Looking him up and down]. I see by your costume that you represent the upper classes in the Isle of Cats.

  OXFORD YOUTH. There are no upper classes in the Isle of Cats.

  SIR ARTHUR. In that case, since it is agreed that there is to be no fo bunnum nonsense between us, may I ask what the dickens you are doing here?

  OXFORD YOUTH. I am not here to bandy personalities. Whatever the accident of birth and the humbug of rank may have made me I am here as a delegate from the Borough Council and an elected representative of the riverside proletariat.

  SIR ARTHUR [suddenly pulling out a chair from the middle of the table—peremptorily] Sit down. Dont break the chair. [The Youth scowls at him and flings himself into the chair like a falling tree]. You are all most welcome. Perhaps, Tom, you will introduce your young friends.

  THE MAYOR [introducing] Alderwoman Aloysia Brollikins.

  SIR ARTHUR [effusively shaking her hand] How do you do, Miss Brollikins ? [He pulls out a chair for her on the Oxford Youth’s right].

  ALOYSIA. Nicely, thank you. Pleased to meet you, Sir Arthur. [She sits].

  THE MAYOR. Alderman Blee.

  SIR ARTHUR [WITH FLATTERING GRAVITY, PRESSING HIS HAND] Ah, we have all heard of you, Mr Blee. Will you sit here? [He indicates the presidential chair on the Oxford Youth’s left].

  BLEE. Thank you. I do my best. [He sits].

  THE MAYOR. Viscount Barking.

  SIR ARTHUR [triumphantly] Ah! I thought so. A red Communist: what!

  OXFORD YOUTH. Red as blood. Same red as the people’s.

  SIR ARTHUR. How did you get the blue out of it? The Barkings came over with the Conqueror.

  OXFORD YOUTH [rising] Look here. The unemployed are starving. Is this a time for persiflage?

  SIR ARTHUR. Camouflage, my lad, camouflage. Do you expect me to take you seriously in that get-up ?

  OXFORD YOUTH [hotly] I shall wear what I damn well please. I—

  ALOYSIA. Shut up, Toffy. You promised to behave yourself. Sit down; and lets get to business.

  BARKING [subsides into his chair with a grunt of disgust]!

  SIR ARTHUR [looking rather doubtfully at the old man, who is still standing] Is this gentleman a member of your deputation?

  THE MAYOR. Mr Hipney. Old and tried friend of the working class.

  OXFORD YOUTH. Old Hipney. Why dont you call him by the name the East End knows him by? Old Hipney. Good old Hipney.

  OLD HIPNEY [slipping noiselessly into the secretary’s chair at the bureau] Dont mind me, Sir Arthur. I dont matter.

  SIR ARTHUR. At such a crisis as the present, Mr Hipney, every public-spirited man matters. Delighted to meet you. [He returns to his own chair and surveys them now that they are all seated, whilst Hilda slips discreetly out into her office]. And now, what can I do for you, Miss Brollikins ? What can I do for you, gentlemen?

  THE MAYOR [slowly] Well, Sir Arthur, as far as I can make it out the difficulty seems to be that you cant do anything. But something’s got to be done.

  SIR ARTHUR [stiffening suddenly] May I ask why, if everything that is possible has already been done?

  THE MAYOR. Well, the unemployed are—well, unemployed, you know.

  SIR ARTHUR. We have provided for the unemployed. That provision has cost us great sacrifices; but we have made the sacrifices without complaining.

  THE OXFORD YOUTH [scornfully] Sacrifices! What sacrifices? Are you starving? Have you pawned your overcoat? Are you sleeping ten in a room?

  SIR ARTHUR. The noble lord enquires—

  OXFORD YOUTH [furiously] Dont noble lord me: you are only doing it to rattle me. Well, you cant rattle me. But it makes me sick to see you rolling in luxury and think of what thes
e poor chaps and their women folk are suffering.

  SIR ARTHUR. I am not rolling, Toffy—I think that is what Miss Brollikins called you. [To Aloysia] Toffy is a diminutive of Toff, is it not, Miss Brollikins ?

  OXFORD YOUTH. Yah! Now you have something silly to talk about, youre happy. But I know what would make you sit up and do something.

  SIR ARTHUR. Indeed? Thats interesting. May I ask what?

  OXFORD YOUTH. Break your bloody windows.

  THE MAYOR. Order! order!

  ALOYSIA. Come, Toffy! you promised not to use any of your West End language here. You know we dont like it.