Plays Political

by Dan Laurence

FLAVIA. We saw a police charge. David was arrested.

  SIR ARTHUR. Do you mean to say that you went with those people who were here?

  FLAVIA. Yes: theyve come back to lunch with us.

  SIR ARTHUR. To lunch!!!

  DAVID. Yes. I say: Aloysia’s a marvellous girl.

  SIR ARTHUR [determinedly] I dont mind the girl; but if that young whelp is coming to lunch here he must and shall change his clothes.

  DAVID. He’s gone home to change and shave: he’s dotty on Flavia.

  SIR ARTHUR. Why am I afflicted with such children? Tell me at once what you have been doing. What happened?

  DAVID. The police brought the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make a speech to the unemployed to quiet them. The first thing we heard him say was “Gentlemen: be patient. I promise you you will soon see the one thing that can revive our industries and save our beloved country: a rise in prices.” The mob just gave one howl and went for him. Then the police drew their batons and charged.

  FLAVIA. Davy couldnt stand the way the people were knocked about. He screamed to them to stand. The inspector collared him.

  SIR ARTHUR. Of course he did. Quite right. Such folly! [To David] How do you come to be here if you were arrested? Who bailed you?

  DAVID. I asked the inspector who in hell he thought he was talking to. Then Flavia cut in and told him who we were and that old Basham was like a father to us. All he said was “You go home, sir; and take your sister with you. This is no place for you.” So as I was rather in a funk by that time we collected Aloysia and Toffy and bunked for home.

  SIR ARTHUR. I have a great mind to have that inspector severely reprimanded for letting you go. Three months would have done you a lot of good. Go back to the drawing room, both of you, and entertain your new friends. You know you are not allowed to come in here when I am at work. Be off with you. [He goes back to his seat].

  FLAVIA. Well, what are we to do? Mamma sends us in on purpose to interrupt you when she thinks you have done enough.

  DAVID. She says it’s all we’re good for.

  SIR ARTHUR. A Prime Minister should have no children. Will you get out, both of you; or must I ring for Burton to throw you out?

  FLAVIA. Mamma says you are to lunch, Hilda. She wants another woman to make up the party.

  HILDA. Oh dear! [rising] You must excuse me, Sir Arthur: I must telephone to put off some people who were coming to lunch with me at The Apple Cart. And I must change my frock.

  FLAVIA [squabbling] You neednt dress up for Brollikins, need you?

  DAVID. You let Aloysia alone. You dont want Hilda to dress up for Barking, I suppose.

  SIR ARTHUR [out of patience] Get out. Do you hear? Get out, the lot of you.

  HILDA. Do come, Miss Chavender. Your father is very busy.

  SIR ARTHUR [furious] Get OUT.

  They retreat precipitately through the masked door. Sir Arthur, left alone, rests his wearied head on the table between his arms.

  SIR ARTHUR. At last, a moment’s peace.

  The word rouses the orator in him. He raises his head and repeats it interrogatively; then tries its effect sweetly and solemnly again and again.

  SIR ARTHUR. Peace? … Peace. Peace. Peace. Peace. Peace. [Now perfectly in tune] “Yes, your Grace, my lords and gentlemen, my clerical friends. We need peace. We English are still what we were when time-honored Lancaster described us as ‘This happy breed of men.’ We are above all a domestic nation. On occasion we can be as terrible in war as we have always been wise and moderate in counsel. But here, in this Church House, under the banner of the Prince of Peace, we know that the heart of England is the English home. Not the battlefield but the fireside—yes, your Grace, yes, my lords and gentlemen, yes, my clerical friends, the fire—”

  He starts violently as his eye, sweeping round the imaginary assembly, lights on a woman in grey robes contemplating him gravely and pityingly. She has stolen in noiselessly through the masked door.

  SIR ARTHUR. Ffffff!!! Who is that? Who are you? Oh, I beg your pardon. You gave me such a—Whew !! [He sinks back into his chair] I didnt know there was anyone in the room.

  The lady neither moves nor speaks. She looks at him with deepening pity. He looks at her, still badly scared. He rubs his eyes; shakes himself; looks again.

  SIR ARTHUR. Excuse me; but are you real?

  THE LADY. Yes.

  SIR ARTHUR. I wish youd do something real. Wont you sit down?

  THE LADY. Thank you. [She sits down, very uncannily as it seems to him, in Basham’s chair].

  SIR ARTHUR. Will you be so good as to introduce yourself? Who are you?

  THE LADY. A messenger.

  SIR ARTHUR. Please do not be enigmatic. My nerves are all in rags. I did not see you come in. You appeared there suddenly looking like a messenger of death. And now you tell me you are a messenger.

  THE LADY. Yes: a messenger of death.

  SIR ARTHUR. I thought so. [With sudden misgiving] You mean my death, I hope. Not my wife nor any of the children?

  THE LADY [smiling kindly] No. Your death.

  SIR ARTHUR [relieved] Well, thats all right.

  THE LADY. You are going to die.

  SIR ARTHUR. So are we all. The only question is, how soon?

  THE LADY. Too soon. You are half dead already. You have been dying a long time.

  SIR ARTHUR. Well, I knew I was overworking: burning the candle at both ends: killing myself. It doesnt matter. I have made my will. Everything is provided for: my wife will be comfortably off; and the children will have as much as is good for them.

  THE LADY. You are resigned?

  SIR ARTHUR. No; but I cannot help myself.

  THE LADY. Perhaps I can help you. I am not only a messenger. I am a healer.

  SIR ARTHUR. A what?

  THE LADY. A healer. One who heals the sick. One who holds off death until he is welcome in his proper time.

  SIR ARTHUR. You cannot help me. I am caught in the wheels of a merciless political machine. The political machine will not stop for you. It has ground many men to pieces before their time; and it will grind me.

  THE LADY. My business is with life and death, not with political machinery.

  SIR ARTHUR. In that case I am afraid you can be of no use to me; so will you think it very uncivil of me if I go on with my work?

  THE LADY. Shall I vanish?

  SIR ARTHUR. Not unless you have something else to do. As you are a ghost, and therefore not in time but in eternity, another ten minutes or so wont cost you anything. Somehow, your presence is helping me. A presence is a wonderful thing. Would you mind sitting there and reading The Times while I work?

  THE LADY. I never read the newspapers. I read men and women. I will sit here and read you. Or will that make you self-conscious ?

  SIR ARTHUR. My dear ghost, a public man is so accustomed to people staring at him that he very soon has no self to be conscious of. You wont upset me in the least. You may even throw in a round of applause occasionally; so that I may find out the effective bits to work up.

  THE LADY. Go on. I will wait as long as you like.

  SIR ARTHUR. Thank you. Now let me see where I was when you appeared. [He takes up a scrap of paper on which he has made a memorandum]. Ah yes: Ive got it. Peace. Yes: peace. [Trying to make out a word] Ence—ence—what? Oh, ensue! Of course: a good word. “My friends, lay and clerical, we must ensue peace. Yes, ensue peace. Peace. Disarmament.” A burst of Pacifist applause there, perhaps. “Who says that we need a hundred battleships, gentlemen? Christian brotherhood is a safer defence than a thousand battleships. You have my pledge that the Government will be quite content with—with—” oh, well, my secretary will fill that in with whatever number of ships the Japanese are standing out for. By the way, do you think battleships are any real use now? Kenworthy says theyre not: and he was in the navy. It would be such a tremendous score for us at Geneva if we offered to scrap all our battleships. We could make up for them in aeroplanes and submarines. I should like to have the
opinion of an impartial and disinterested ghost.

  THE LADY. As I listen to you I seem to hear a ghost preparing a speech for his fellow ghosts, ghosts from a long dead past. To me it means nothing, because I am a ghost from the future.

  SIR ARTHUR. Thats a curious idea. Of course if there are ghosts from the past there must be ghosts from the future.

  THE LADY. Yes: women and men who are ahead of their time. They alone can lead the present into the future. They are ghosts from the future. The ghosts from the past are those who are behind the times, and can only drag the present back.

  SIR ARTHUR. What an excellent definition of a Conservative! Thank Heaven I am a Liberal!

  THE LADY. You mean that you make speeches about Progress and Liberty instead of about King and Country.

  SIR ARTHUR. Of course I make speeches: that is the business of a politician. Dont you like speeches?

  THE LADY. On the Great Day of Judgment the speechmakers will stand with the seducers and the ravishers, with the traffickers in maddening drugs, with those who make men drunk and rob them, who entice children and violate them.

  SIR ARTHUR. What nonsense! Our sermons and speeches are the glories of our literature, and the inspired voices of our religion, our patriotism, and—of course—our politics.

  THE LADY. Sermons and speeches are not religion, not patriotism, not politics: they are only the gibbering of ghosts from the past. You are a ghost from a very dead past. Why do you not die your bodily death? Is it fair for a ghost to go about: with a live body?

  SIR ARTHUR. This is too personal. I am afraid I cannot get on with my speech while you are there ordering my funeral. Oblige me by vanishing. Go. Disappear. Shoo!

  THE LADY. I cannot vanish. [Merrily changing her attitude]. Shall we stop playing at ghosts, and accept one another for convenience sake as real people?

  SIR ARTHUR [shaking off his dreaminess] Yes, lets. [He rises and comes to her]. We have been talking nonsense. [He pulls out a chair. They sit close together]. You had me half hypnotized. But first, shake hands. I want to feel that you are real.

  He offers his right hand. She seizes both his hands and holds them vigorously, looking straight into his eyes.

  SIR ARTHUR [brightening] Well, I dont know whether this is real or not; but it’s electric, and very soothing and jolly. Ah-a-a-ah! [a deep sighing breath]. And now my dear lady, will you be good enough to tell me who the devil you are?

  THE LADY [releasing him] Only your wife’s lady doctor. Did she not tell you to expect me?

  SIR ARTHUR. Of course, of course. How stupid of me! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, to be sure. And now I am going to be frank with you. I dont believe in doctors. Neither does my wife; but her faith in quacks is unlimited. And as I am on the verge of a nervous breakdown, she is planting every possible variety of quack on me—you will excuse the expression ?—

  THE LADY. I excuse everything from my patients. Go on.

  SIR ARTHUR. Well, I receive them all as I am receiving you, just to gratify her, or rather to prevent her from making my life miserable. They all say the same obvious thing; and they are none of them of the slightest use. You are going to say it all over again. Can you forgive me for saying flatly that I will not pay you twenty guineas for saying it: not if you said it twenty times over?

  THE LADY. Not even if I shew you how to cure yourself? The twenty guineas is an important part of the cure. It will make you take it seriously.

  SIR ARTHUR. I know perfectly well how to cure myself. The cure is as simple as abc. I am Prime Minister of Great Britain. That is, I am an overworked, over-worried, overstrained, overburdened, overdriven man, suffering from late hours, irregular snatched meals, no time for digestion nor for enough sleep, and having to keep my mind at full stretch all the time struggling with problems that are no longer national problems but world problems. In short, I am suffering acutely from brain fag.

  THE LADY. And the cure?

  SIR ARTHUR. A fortnight’s golf: thats the cure. I know it all by heart. So suppose we drop it, and part friends. You see, I am really frightfully busy.

  THE LADY. That is not my diagnosis. [She rises]. Goodbye.

  SIR ARTHUR [alarmed] Diagnosis! Have you been diagnosing me? Do you mean that there is something else the matter with me?

  THE LADY. Not something else. Something different.

  SIR ARTHUR. Sit down, pray: I can spare another two minutes. Whats wrong?

  THE LADY [resuming her seat] You are dying of an acute want of mental exercise.

  SIR ARTHUR [unable to believe his ears] Of—of—of WHAT, did you say?

  THE LADY. You are suffering from that very common English complaint, an underworked brain. To put it in one word, a bad case of frivolity, possibly incurable.

  SIR ARTHUR. Frivolity! Did I understand you to say that frivolity is a common English failing?

  THE LADY. Yes. Terribly common. Almost a national characteristic.

  SIR ARTHUR. Do you realize that you are utterly mad ?

  THE LADY. Is it you or I who have piloted England on to the rocks?

  SIR ARTHUR. Come come! No politics. What do you prescribe for me?

  THE LADY. I take my patients into my retreat in the Welsh mountains, formerly a monastery, now much stricter and perfectly sanitary. No newspapers, no letters, no idle ladies. No books except in the afternoon as a rest from thinking.

  SIR ARTHUR. How can you think without books?

  THE LADY. How can you have thoughts of your own when you are reading other people’s thoughts?

  SIR ARTHUR [groaning] Oh, do talk sense. What about golf?

  THE LADY. Games are for people who can neither read nor think. Men trifle with their business and their politics; but they never trifle with their games. Golf gives them at least a weekend of earnest concentration. It brings truth home to them. They cannot pretend that they have won when they have lost, nor that they made a magnificent drive when they foozled it. The Englishman is at his best on the links, and at his worst in the Cabinet. But what your country needs is not your body but your mind. And I solemnly warn you that unless you exercise your mind you will lose it. A brain underexercised is far more injurious to health than an underexercised body. You know how men become bone lazy for want of bodily exercise. Well, they become brain lazy for want of mental exercise; and if nature meant them to be thinkers the results are disastrous. All sorts of bodily diseases are produced by half used minds; for it is the mind that makes the body: that is my secret, and the secret of all the true healers. I am sorry you will not allow me to take you a little on the way back to health with me. Good morning. [She rises].

  SIR ARTHUR. Must you go?

  THE LADY. Well, you are so busy—

  SIR ARTHUR [rising] Ah yes: I forgot. I am frightfully busy. Still, if you could spare another minute—

  THE LADY. If you wish. [She sits down].

  SIR ARTHUR [sitting down] You see, what makes your diagnosis so pricelessly funny to me is that as a matter of fact my life has been a completely intellectual life, and my training the finest intellectual training in the world. First rate preparatory school. Harrow. Oxford. Parliament. An Undersecretaryship. The Cabinet. Finally the Leadership of the House as Prime Minister. Intellect, intellect, all the time.

  THE LADY. At Harrow you wrote Latin verses, did you not?

  SIR ARTHUR. Yes, of course.

  THE LADY. Do you write any now?

  SIR ARTHUR. No, of course not. You dont understand. We learnt to write Latin verses not because the verses are any good—after all, it’s only a trick of stringing old tags together—but because it’s such a splendid training for the mind.

  THE LADY. Have all the boys who made Latin verses at Harrow splendidly trained minds?

  SIR ARTHUR. Yes. I unhesitatingly say yes. I dont mean, of course, that they are all geniuses; but if you go into the best society you will see that their minds are far superior to those of persons who have had no classical training.

  THE LADY. You mean that they can
all be trusted to say the same thing in the same way when they discuss public affairs.

  SIR ARTHUR. Precisely. They are an educated class, you see.

  THE LADY [coldly, rising] Yes: I see. I have really nothing more to say, Sir Arthur. [She takes a card from her bag and puts it on the table] That is the address of my retreat in Wales.

  SIR ARTHUR [rising, rather disappointed at having produced no effect] But surely you cannot deny that a man is the better for having been put through the mill of our great educational system.

  THE LADY. If a man is born with a hopelessly bad set of teeth I think it is better for him, and kinder to him, to pull them all out and replace them with a good set of artificial teeth. If some of your political colleagues had not been provided with artificial political minds in the manner you described they would have been left without any political minds at all. But in that case they would not have meddled in politics; and that, I think, would have been a public advantage. May I reserve a bedroom and a private study for you?