by Laura Wade
ALISTAIR: A different lawyer?
JEREMY: I know a man – ex-member himself, as it happens. Very useful at sorting out club scrapes over the years.
ALISTAIR: I think this is a bit more than a scrape.
JEREMY: You should have seen some of the others. Little incident from the 80s threatened to rear its head recently – something about a ball gag – our chap got it hushed up very effectively.
I’d like to bring him in on this. Obviously, I could talk to your father for you if it’s awkward or –
I mean the important thing is making bloody sure that you come out clean.
ALISTAIR: Keeping the club clean while we’re at it?
JEREMY: As I say, he’ll do both.
ALISTAIR: No, then. Not interested.
JEREMY: I’m offering you –
ALISTAIR: I don’t give a shit about the reputation of the club – I’m not even in the club, why would I want to preserve it? Smash it – what’s it good for?
JEREMY: You know, I suppose, that if you go that way we’ll be obliged to come after you with all the might we can muster?
Paint you as an oddball, the delusional loner. People seem to understand that paradigm, don’t they?
ALISTAIR: You won’t have to work very hard to make them dislike me.
JEREMY sits back in his chair.
JEREMY: Of course there’s the other boys to think about.
ALISTAIR: All got their own lawyers, they’ll be fine.
JEREMY: They’re all terrified, frantically trying to second guess what you’re going to do.
It’s a powerful position you’re in. Imagine their relief if they didn’t have to testify. Imagine the gratitude.
ALISTAIR: I don’t plan on seeing them again.
JEREMY: You might find that rather difficult – unless you’re planning to leave the country, you might find your lives moving along rather proximate tracks.
Think about it – nine people pathetically grateful to you for the rest of your life.
ALISTAIR: I’m sorry, I know what you’re doing, trying to manage me. I don’t need managing, I know what I think.
The club is fucking ridiculous. Rich little boys poncing around in tailcoats once a term? Just a bunker, isn’t it? Performing something they haven’t got the guts to be outside of the dinners. Like those fucking loons who dress up and do medieval battles. Reenactment. I don’t want anything to do with it.
JEREMY: Of course we know there’s an element of silliness, letting off steam – It’s what it’s leading to that –
ALISTAIR: Yeah, training up a generation for a life in hiding. So they can end up just like you – sneaking around, desperate not to get into the papers, denying the club ever happened. Pretending you’re the same as everyone else – I’m sorry, I find it shameful.
Just going round in disguise.
JEREMY: Not disguise, no.
ALISTAIR: What then?
JEREMY: I know how you feel, I’ve felt it myself. The first compromise you make winds you like a rugger ball in the stomach. Stays with you like school porridge. But the next time it hurts a little less, you learn to breathe into the pain and move along and each time it’s easier.
Because by then you learn it’s not simply disguise. It’s adaptation.
ALISTAIR: That’s just a different word for –
JEREMY: No, it’s not. It’s survival. We adapt to survive.
It’s what we’ve always done, it’s what we’ll continue to do.
You think the country’s gone to the dogs and we’re going with it, but you’re wrong. You can’t turn a ship around on a sixpence, you know? It’s going to take a while, there’s a longer game to be played and we’ll play it together.
ALISTAIR: The fucking brotherhood. Yeah, comrades in arms? Dropped that idea pretty quickly, didn’t they, the boys?
JEREMY: Alistair. They’re perhaps not as bright as you.
My first club dinner they rolled me down a hill in a barrel full of prunes. Sick all over myself of course, laughable now, but the chap being rolled down the hill next to me, he pretty much runs the country now, and I’m not talking about the PM.
What I mean is, the dinners are just the beginning. The toasts, the scrunches, the high-jinks – a three-year initiation, if you like. Into something bigger, a group of people out in the world, making things happen.
You might have lost your place at college and at the dinner table, but you’re still in the club. You can’t afford not to be.
JEREMY takes a business card out of his pocket and holds it out to ALISTAIR.
I’m not just offering you a better lawyer. I’m offering you a future. One pragmatist to another – it would be worth your while to take it.
ALISTAIR looks at the card.
ALISTAIR: I need to talk to my dad, to –
JEREMY: You’re an adult now.
ALISTAIR takes the card.
Good.
ALISTAIR: Thank you.
JEREMY pours another drink.
JEREMY: You know you’re not at all what I expected.
Guy told me some of the things you were saying at the dinner, rather spicy stuff. Some big ideas there.
ALISTAIR: Didn’t go down too well in the end.
JEREMY: No, I gathered that.
Dangerous weapon you’ve got there. Your brain, I mean.
ALISTAIR: Can’t turn it off.
JEREMY: Do you want to learn to use it to better effect?
ALISTAIR: What d’you mean?
JEREMY: Well, why don’t you come and spend some time at my office, see how we do things?
ALISTAIR: I don’t want anything handed to me on a plate just ’cause I –
JEREMY: I haven’t offered you a constituency, Alistair.
Maybe you’ve got it in you to do something special one day. If that’s the case, I’d rather you be doing it in my camp than in someone else’s.
Has anyone else been. Talking to you?
ALISTAIR: About?
JEREMY: Your career.
ALISTAIR: Um. What? No. I don’t think so.
JEREMY: We’d have to ask for your loyalty, of course.
ALISTAIR: ‘We’?
JEREMY’s phone buzzes in his pocket and he takes it out.
JEREMY: My cue to go.
We’ll talk again.
ALISTAIR puts his drink down.
No no, please, don’t get up. Stay and finish your drink, shame to waste it. Have a look around the building if you like. Not quite as fusty as it looks.
JEREMY stands, goes to leave.
ALISTAIR: You loved it, didn’t you?
JEREMY is stopped in his tracks.
JEREMY: What?
ALISTAIR: You still love it, it’s still in you. You say it’s pathetic, just silly student japes. But you wouldn’t have missed it for the world – the dinners, the toasting, the trashing. The Riot.
JEREMY pauses, puts his hand on the back of his chair.
JEREMY: Did you know the original spelling of Lord Riot’s name, wasn’t R-I-O-T, but R-y-O-T? Two Ts, actually.
ALISTAIR: No, I didn’t.
JEREMY: Nothing to do with the idea of riotous behaviour originally. Don’t know when the change happened, but there it is.
Thank god someone made the switch.
JEREMY smiles at ALISTAIR.
ALISTAIR: Could have just been a mistake.
JEREMY: People like us don’t make mistakes, do we?
JEREMY leaves.
ALISTAIR settles back into his chair and looks up at the portraits on the wall.
ALISTAIR smiles.
Blackout.
The end.
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