Posh

by Laura Wade

  ’Cause if someone touched her inappropriately –

  HARRY: What are you alleging?

  CHRIS: I’m saying maybe you assaulted my daughter.

  ALISTAIR: Assaulted her?

  CHRIS: Ten of you in the room, innocent young girl?

  TOBY: No one fucking assaulted your daughter.

  CHRIS: I heard you, muttering obscenities earlier.

  TOBY: Me? What obscenities?

  CHRIS: Something about ‘pussy’.

  TOBY: Fuck’s sake.

  CHRIS: If any of you so much as tapped her on the shoulder –

  ALISTAIR: Mate, we wouldn’t touch her with a bargepole.

  TOBY: Wouldn’t fuck her with a bargepole.

  CHRIS: You what?

  ALISTAIR: He said your daughter’s a fucking slapper. I’ve got a room full of guys who saw her flashing herself about, total prick tease. You don’t wear a black bra under a white shirt without meaning something.

  CHRIS: You want a sexual assault conviction, the lot of you?

  DIMITRI: Sorry – what?

  CHRIS: Follow you around your whole life, that will.

  TOBY: The fuck are you saying?

  CHRIS: ’Cause that’s not something you can pay your way out of.

  ALISTAIR boils over, suddenly aims a swift uppercut at CHRIS’s chin. It comes from somewhere deep and horrible.

  CHRIS stands – it’s unclear if he’s trying to escape or fight back. Guy, HARRY and MILES all throw themselves at him, kicking and punching with fervour.

  TOBY lunges in, too.

  They stop when CHRIS falls to the floor, unconscious. TOBY continues to kick him as the others stop, horrified, looking at what they’ve done.

  GEORGE: Toby. Toby.

  TOBY desists and takes a step back.

  The boys go quiet, looking at CHRIS. Is he dead?

  HUGO: Fuck.

  Guys?

  DIMITRI goes towards CHRIS’s prone body.

  GUY: Is he OK?

  JAMES: (To ALISTAIR.) What the fuck are you doing?

  TOBY: Oops.

  ALISTAIR: He pushed me.

  JAMES: Is he breathing?

  DIMITRI: I don’t know yet.

  JAMES: Jesus.

  ED starts to cry.

  DIMITRI: I don’t know, does anyone know first aid?

  HUGO: First aid? Need a fucking ambulance.

  GEORGE: Find a pulse.

  GEORGE kneels down and listens next to CHRIS’s mouth.

  ED: What have you done?

  TOBY: Shut up.

  JAMES: What if he dies?

  ALISTAIR: He’s not going to –

  JAMES: He might. You beat the living shit out of him.

  ALISTAIR: He fucking pushed me.

  DIMITRI: OK, he’s got a pulse.

  MILES: Thank fuck.

  DIMITRI: Pretty faint, though.

  HUGO takes out his phone.

  HUGO: I’m going to call an ambulance.

  MILES: Mate, please.

  TOBY: My dad is going to –

  ALISTAIR: Hugo, don’t call a –

  MILES goes towards HUGO, as if to snatch the phone, but HUGO steps back, holding up his hand.

  HUGO: Don’t –

  ALISTAIR: Shit.

  HUGO: (Into phone.) Ambulance, please.

  TOBY: Fucking hell.

  DIMITRI: Hang up hang up.

  HUGO: (Into phone.) Yeah, the um, Bull’s Head Inn, Kidsbury. Um, sort of a disturbance.

  ED: I want to go home.

  ALISTAIR: Man up, Eddie.

  HUGO: Someone’s unconscious –

  DIMITRI: Say he fell.

  HUGO: Yeah, he – he fell –

  How what? How did he fall?

  HUGO looks at ALISTAIR.

  He got punched.

  GUY: Fuck’s sake, Tyrwhitt.

  HUGO: No, it’s um – fight’s over.

  TOBY: Mate, seriously –

  HUGO looks at CHRIS.

  HUGO: I don’t know, forties. I don’t know him. He’s the landlord.

  Yeah, he’s unconscious now.

  DIMITRI: Give me the phone.

  HUGO: OK. Yeah. Let me just –

  ALISTAIR: Give him the fucking –

  DIMITRI: Give me the phone.

  HUGO: Fuck off! (Into phone.) No, not you.

  HUGO kneels down, checking if CHRIS is breathing.

  Yeah, he is. Yeah.

  Yeah. Thank you.

  (To the others.) On its way.

  (Into phone.) Yeah, I’ll stay on the line, OK.

  ED: Oh my god oh my god.

  DIMITRI grabs HUGO’s phone and hangs up.

  HUGO: She told me to –

  DIMITRI: Got to work out what we’re going to say.

  ALISTAIR: Jesus, why the fuck did you have to –

  HUGO: Ten of us in the room and none of us gets an ambulance, how does that look?

  DIMITRI: Should have talked about it first –

  HUGO: And then maybe he dies while we’re discussing –

  DIMITRI: They’ll send the fucking police, mate – you told them there’s been a fight.

  HUGO: Fuck.

  ALISTAIR: Yeah, fuck. Yeah.

  ED: Shit, the police?

  DIMITRI: OK, let’s just. We have to work out what we’re going to say. Let’s just think properly, OK?

  ED: Fuck fuck fuck.

  DIMITRI: Shut the door.

  Guy.

  GUY goes and shuts the door.

  Put something there so –

  GUY: Yeah.

  GUY wedges a chair under the door handle.

  DIMITRI: OK. Now we think.

  A long, painful pause. They really don’t know what to do. The only sound, for quite a long time, is ED quietly sobbing.

  Anyone got a plan?

  JAMES: Toby – your dad’s a lawyer, right?

  TOBY: No way. No fucking way.

  CHRIS emits a gurgling sound.

  GUY: OK, if he’s making a noise he’s OK, isn’t he?

  MILES: Let’s just go.

  Just walk out, they don’t know who we are, we could climb out the window.

  GEORGE: We can’t just leave him.

  DIMITRI: They’ve got Hugo’s number, mate.

  ALISTAIR: Brilliant.

  DIMITRI: Should have called from the fucking landline.

  MILES: Shit.

  DIMITRI: If we’d fucking talked about it.

  HARRY starts taking off his tailcoat.

  HARRY: Take your tails off.

  JAMES: Why?

  HARRY: ’Cause if they know it’s the club –

  ED starts to take off his tails.

  MILES: I don’t think they’ll give a shit about what we’re wearing.

  HARRY: If this becomes a thing, that’s the club over, isn’t it? If this is splashed all over every –

  ALISTAIR: We say nothing, OK. Absolutely nothing.

  GUY: We stick together.

  JAMES: And all suffer the consequences?

  GUY: We were all here, we’re all, you know, involved.

  DIMITRI: I don’t know how far saying nothing is going to get us – the evidence pretty much speaks for itself.

  ALISTAIR: Have you got a better idea?

  HUGO: Self-defence. He came at us, fists all blazing, we were just defending ourselves.

  DIMITRI: Ten on one?

  HUGO: We were drunk and scared.

  DIMITRI: Plausibility.

  HARRY: We stick together, get each others’ backs.

  ALISTAIR: So we all say the same thing.

  HUGO: We all go down together?

  ED: We’ll get put in prison!

  JAMES: No, hang on. What about –

  What about we give them someone? One person. Only one person goes down.

  DIMITRI: Yes – yes.

  ALISTAIR: What?

  JAMES: Best case scenario.

  ALISTAIR: What d’you mean?

  DIMITRI: I think the idea – is this right, Leighton? �
�� is we all point the finger at one person, say it was them had the fight with the landlord.

  TOBY: What, how d’you mean?

  JAMES: Nine of us stay clean, only one of us goes down.

  DIMITRI: If it’s a one-on-one fight, it doesn’t have to be a gang thing.

  TOBY: What, who are we talking about?

  GEORGE: What happened to looking out for each other? Isn’t that what the club’s for? You don’t leave a man out in the field, it’s not what we do.

  JAMES: We’ll be able to help him, yeah? One man takes a hit for the team, the rest of us pay him back later, look after him, you know, proper brotherhood.

  TOBY: Who are we saying? Last in first out, or something?

  HUGO: I think we should do it.

  ALISTAIR: Mate, think about it.

  HUGO: Not really in the market for thinking right now.

  ALISTAIR: You want to get done for perjury?

  HUGO: We won’t get done for perjury.

  ALISTAIR: What, you’re a lawyer now, are you?

  HUGO: I’m a chap with holes in his pockets and no one useful on speed dial is what I am. Look at me – I wouldn’t last five minutes out there. I’m built for hiding in libraries. I belong at college. Not getting sent down for something I didn’t fucking do.

  The boys look around at each other.

  GUY: So which, um, which one of us? To go down.

  HUGO: I think it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?

  TOBY: I didn’t even throw the first –

  DIMITRI: Ryle. You want to volunteer?

  ALISTAIR: No. What?

  DIMITRI: Looks quite a lot like it’s your fault, mate.

  HUGO: You did punch him first.

  ALISTAIR: I wasn’t the only person to punch him. And the rest of you wanted to, even if you didn’t.

  JAMES: It was you got everyone wound up.

  ALISTAIR: What?

  JAMES: All that stuff he said. ‘Fuck you, we’re the Riot Club’, all of that. ‘Stop apologising’.

  ALISTAIR: I only said what every other fucker in here was thinking.

  ED: Incitement. It was incitement.

  ALISTAIR: Oh fuck off. What, you can’t think for yourself?

  JAMES: I don’t know how we got to a place where it’s OK to do that.

  Look, from a presidential perspective I think it should be you.

  ALISTAIR: You agreed – you all agreed.

  JAMES: I mean this is supposed to be a dinner, right? Not a rally.

  ED: Can I just say, I know I’m new here, but I think my brother would have told me if I was going to be expected to beat a man shitless.

  ALISTAIR: Fucking hell.

  DIMITRI: Is everyone on board?

  GEORGE: I hate this.

  HUGO: D’you get it, Tubes?

  TOBY: Yeah. Yeah.

  ALISTAIR: Fucking hell, Maitland – I went in to bat for you.

  DIMITRI: When they ask you, what you going to say?

  TOBY: Ryle did it.

  ALISTAIR: I defended you, for Christ’s sa –

  DIMITRI: Anyone else?

  TOBY: Just Ryle.

  DIMITRI: Good man. Eddie, you’re with us, yeah?

  ED: Yeah yeah.

  ALISTAIR: (To TOBY.) And you punched him too – fucking booted him in the –

  TOBY: Can’t get a criminal record, mate.

  JAMES: Sticks to you for life.

  ALISTAIR: Lord Riot would be so proud.

  GUY: Why can’t someone sort this out?

  DIMITRI: They can’t, mate. But we can. Yeah?

  ALISTAIR: Dimitri, you need to stop coercing people to – how fucking British d’you feel now, mate?

  HUGO: Bellingfield?

  DIMITRI: Mate?

  GUY: OK, yeah. OK.

  (To ALISTAIR.) Told my uncle there wouldn’t even be trashing.

  ALISTAIR: Milo – you hit him as well, do the honourable thing.

  MILES: I want to work in America. You can’t do that with a record.

  ALISTAIR: That’s it?

  MILES: Jesus, I’ve only been in the club one night, I don’t want to go down because of it.

  GUY: I promise we’ll look after you.

  ALISTAIR: Villiers – mate. Come on. You know this fucking stinks.

  DIMITRI: Ambulance on its way.

  HARRY: If I get sent down from college –

  ALISTAIR: Mate?

  HARRY: I’m sorry.

  ALISTAIR: Jesus fuck. You hit him too –

  HARRY: You’re the only person who’s going to say that, so –

  DIMITRI: George?

  ALISTAIR: If you say no, mate, they can’t do it. They can’t do it unless they’ve got everyone.

  JAMES: Balf, listen. We’re going to be there for him, yeah? The rest of his life – next year, ten years’ time, twenty. Any kind of shit hits the fan for him –

  DIMITRI: The rest of us swoop in and sort it out.

  ALISTAIR: Because back in the day we beat up a landlord and it made us brothers for life.

  HUGO: We didn’t beat up a landlord, Al. You did.

  DIMITRI: Man up and take it.

  ALISTAIR: We can think of something else, Balf.

  DIMITRI: We haven’t got time.

  GEORGE: They want to save you.

  ALISTAIR: They don’t.

  GEORGE: We’re going to help him, right?

  HUGO: Mate – of course.

  GEORGE: Al, it’s the club, isn’t it?

  ALISTAIR: The fucking club! You know what this is? This is –

  Brotherhood? Fuck off. You don’t love each other, this isn’t love, it’s fear, you’re pathetic, you’re –

  Proud of yourselves, are you?

  Fuck, you’re just as bad as them – you’ve sucked it up till you’re just as bad. In here, this, it’s just pretending isn’t it? Pretending you’re a legend and then tomorrow you go back to ‘oh, ‘scuse me, sorry, did I breathe too much air –

  Where’s your dignity? Look at your faces. ‘How do I weasel my way out of this?’ Little boys in the playground. This is the best days of your life, is it? A bear pit, a dogfight dressed up as –

  The door handle is rattled from the outside.ALISTAIR stops.

  RACHEL: Dad? Dad, you in there?

  The boys are still, listening. RACHEL starts to bang on the door.

  Have you got my dad in there?

  If you don’t let me in I’m calling the police.

  ALISTAIR collects himself and opens the door.

  RACHEL comes in, sees CHRIS on the floor and goes to him.

  ALISTAIR: I’ll be having a smoke.

  ALISTAIR goes out.

  An ambulance siren is heard approaching.

  Blackout.

  SCENE

  The gentlemen’s club, as in Act 1 Scene 1. JEREMY stands as ALISTAIR comes in.

  JEREMY: Alistair.

  How d’you do.

  ALISTAIR: My lord.

  JEREMY: Please! Jeremy. Title’s no use when you’re modernising.

  Come – sit sit.

  They sit down.

  How’s your father?

  ALISTAIR: Um. Alright, I think?

  JEREMY: School together.

  ALISTAIR: Right.

  JEREMY: Glad he’s put all that FSA business behind him. Rotten job, that.

  ALISTAIR: It was once the Independent got hold of it, yes. Ten years ago now.

  JEREMY: Didn’t he turn out quite clean in the end?

  ALISTAIR: Nothing irregular at all, but they don’t print that. Most people still think he did it. Just because there was an enquiry.

  JEREMY: Little incident of yours won’t drag it all up again, I hope.

  ALISTAIR: I don’t know.

  JEREMY: Your father worried about that?

  ALISTAIR: Among other things. Look, I’ve spent quite a lot of time recently getting bollocked because of this – I’ve disgraced my family, college, the university and now you’re going to bollock me on behalf of generations of ex Riot
Club members, frankly I’ve heard it all already so –

  JEREMY: I haven’t asked you here for a ticking off.

  ALISTAIR: You haven’t?

  JEREMY: Drink?

  ALISTAIR: Wouldn’t say no.

  JEREMY pours two glasses of whisky.

  JEREMY: Water?

  ALISTAIR: Tiny slosh.

  JEREMY: Ice?

  ALISTAIR: Never.

  JEREMY: Good man. Cheers.

  ALISTAIR: Cheers.

  JEREMY drinks and sits back in his chair.

  JEREMY: Now, it’s true of course we’re not entirely happy about all of this – Bingham goes to the trouble of intervening, one had assumed his guidance would be listened to.

  But the consequences for you clearly go further than a simple beasting, or whatever the weapon of choice is these days.

  You’re due back in court when?

  ALISTAIR: Next month.

  JEREMY: The rotters turned you in.

  ALISTAIR: Yes. Looks like it, yeah.

  JEREMY: You took one for the club.

  ALISTAIR: Sorry, did Guy ask you to see me?

  JEREMY: Guy?

  ALISTAIR: ’Cause we’re not allowed to talk to each other –

  JEREMY: Afraid not, no. But then that would require a reserve of courage I’m afraid my godson simply doesn’t have. Whimpered like a puppy when I saw him.

  ALISTAIR: He was quite sick in the night. I was in the cell next to him, I heard him crying.

  Hats off, though, they all kept their stories straight right through till morning.

  JEREMY: When they paid their little fines and fucked off.

  ALISTAIR: So if Guy didn’t ask you – sorry, I’m really not sure why I’m here –

  JEREMY: You’re with Johnny Russell, right?

  ALISTAIR: Um. Yeah.

  JEREMY: Gather he’s looked after your family for some years.

  ALISTAIR: Since the FSA thing, yes. Dad trusts him.

  JEREMY: He’s a good lawyer. What’s he advising, how to handle this?

  ALISTAIR: I don’t think I should –

  JEREMY: Oh now. Come on, what’s the defence line?

  ALISTAIR: Russell thinks I should say I was bullied into it by the others. By the club.

  That they scapegoated me. Which is pretty much the truth, so –

  JEREMY: So you get off and the club goes down in flames, yes?

  ALISTAIR: Something like that.

  JEREMY: Forgive me, would it not be better for all concerned if the club could be kept out of this?

  ALISTAIR: Better for the PM?

  JEREMY: I’m not acting for the PM here.

  ALISTAIR: I don’t see how the club could be kept out of it.

  JEREMY: With the right lawyer, absolutely. Preserve your reputation and that of the club – see if we can’t stop it getting to court entirely.