Dirty Linen was supposed to be a play to celebrate Ed Berman’s British naturalization, but it went off in a different direction—New-Found-Land was then written to re-introduce the American Connection.
Ed Berman, an expatriate American, founded Inter-Action, a charitable trust aiming to stimulate community involvement in the arts, in 1968. He now works as the Artistic Director of Inter-Action Productions (including the Ambiance Lunch-Hour Theatre Club, the Almost Free Theatre, the Fun Art Bus and the Dogg’s Troupe). Not coincidentally like the American seeking British naturalization in New-Found-Land and like other members of Inter-Action’s co-operative, he divides his time between the production company and work in schools, youth clubs, mental hospitals, community centres, playgrounds, remand homes and the streets. Most of his time is now spent as Programme Director of Inter-Action Trust, creating new community arts and action projects such as City Farms 1 in Kentish Town, and youth employment programmes. He still manages to direct some ten plays a year, mainly for children’s and community theatre, and to perform in two hundred-odd shows. Ed Berman became a British subject on 5th April 1976, the date of the first public showing of Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land.
TOM STOPPARD
1976
Characters
MADDIE
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE, M.P.
MCTEAZLE, M.P.
CHAMBERLAIN, M.P.
WITHENSHAW, M.P. (the CHAIRMAN)
MRS. EBURY, M.P.
FRENCH, M.P.
HOME SECRETARY
The first performances of Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land were an Ambiance Lunch-Hour Theatre Club presentation at Inter-Action’s Almost Free Theatre, Rupert Street, London WI, on 6th April 1976. The cast was as follows:
Dirty Linen
MADDIE | Luan Peters |
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE, M.P. | Edward de Souza |
MCTEAZLE, M.P. | Benjamin Whitrow |
CHAMBERLAIN, M.P. | Malcolm Ingram |
WITHENSHAW., M.P. (the CHAIRMAN) | Peter Bowles |
MRS. EBURY, M.P. | Christine Ozanne |
FRENCH, M.P. | Richard O’Callaghan |
HOME SECRETARY | Derek Ensor |
New-Found-Land
ARTHUR | Stephen Moore |
BERNARD | Richard Goolden |
Directed by Ed Berman
Designed by Gabriella Falk
Production Management and lighting by Suresa Galbraith
Administration by Martin Turner
Stage Management by Robin Hornibrook and Brenda Lipson
Wardrobe by Carol Betera
The plays transferred to the Arts Theatre on 16th June 1976 with the following cast changes:
MCTEAZLE, M.P. | Frederick Treves |
FRENCH, M.P. | Jonathan Elsom |
An overspill meeting room for House of Commons business in the tower of Big Ben. A committee table with chairs for everybody; separate table with good slammable drawers for MADDIE; large blackboard on easel; shelves of files and books, with portable steps; and two doors.
Ultimately the characters will be seated in the following order, left to right from the audience’s point of view: FRENCH, CHAMBERLAIN, COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE, WITHENSHAW (centre), MRS. EBURY, MCTEAZLE, and MADDIE at separate desk.
The room is empty, MADDIE puts her head round the door cautiously, enters in street coat and carrying a small classy looking bag from a classy lingerie shop, and a handbag. The room is unfamiliar to her. She hangs up her coat on a coat/hat/umbrella stand which is just inside the door, walks to the desk, and after a moment’s hesitation she takes a pair of silk, lace-trimmed French knickers out of the bag and puts them on.
MADDIE finishes putting on her knickers and drops her skirt. The knickers ought to be remembered for their colour—perhaps white silk with red lace trimmings.
MADDIE is now wearing a low cut, sleeveless blouse, buttoned insecurely down the front; a wrap-round skirt, quite short; underneath, suspenders not tights, and a waist-slip which is also pretty, silk and lace, with a slit.
From her bag she takes a notebook and a pencil and puts them on the desk. There are glasses and a carafe on the large table. She picks up the lingerie bag and looks around for a waste-paper basket. Finding none, she leaves by the other door, bag in hand. The first door is now opened by MCTEAZLE who holds it open for COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE.
COCRLEBURY-SMYTHE (entering): Toujours la politesse.
MCTEAZLE (closing the door): Noblesse oblige. (They each carry several newspapers, a whole crop of the day’s papers and the Sundays, which they dump on the big table. They doff their bowler hats and attempt to put them on the same peg.) Mea culpa. (Courteously.)
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Après vous.
(MCTEAZLE signals that COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE should hang up his hat first. They put their brollies in the umbrella stand. COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE sits down.) J’y suis, j’y reste. (He opens the Daily Mail.) Quel dommage.
MCTEAZLE (sitting down): Le mot juste.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: C’est la vie. Che sera sera. (He throws the paper aside.) (MCTEAZLE picks up the Daily Mirror and turns to page 3 which features a glamour picture, not particularly revealing!)
MCTEAZLE: Ooh la-la! (Then he recovers his dignity. Deprecatingly.) Vox populi … plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. (He throws the paper aside and picks up the Guardian.)
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: De gustibus non est disputandum. (Pause.)
MCTEAZLE (hesitantly): A propos … entre nous … vis-à-vis le Coq d’Or.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Ah, le Coq d’Or …
MCTEAZLE: Faux pas, hein?
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Bloody awkward though. Pardon my French. (MADDIE re-enters with a waste-paper basket, MCTEAZLE does not see her as he is engrossed in the Guardian, COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE sees her but registers nothing.) Honi soit qui mal y pense. (On which, without pausing, he produces from an inside pocket a pair of French knickers and hands them to MADDIE as she crosses to her desk collecting them urbanely.) Ergo nil desperandum. (COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE picks up his copy of the Daily Mirror and turns to the pin-up on page 3. He makes a wordless noise appropriate to male approval of female pulchritude. This coincides with MADDIE bending over, showing cleavage, to put the knickers into a drawer of her. desk. This moment of the man reacting to the pin-up photograph, and the coincidental image of MADDIE in a pin-up pose is something which is to be repeated several times, so for brevity’s sake it will be hereafter symbolized by the expletive ‘Strewth!’ It must be marked distinctly; a momentary freeze on stage, and probably a flash of light like a camera flash, MADDIE should look straight out at the audience for that moment.) Strewth! (After the freeze MCTEAZLE sees MADDIE.)
MCTEAZLE: Good afternoon. (He stands up.) I am Mr. McTeazle and you are …?
MADDIE: Miss Gotobed.
MCTEAZLE: Miss Gotobed. And this is Mr. Cocklebury-Smythe.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: How do you do?
MADDIE: Hello.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: So you are going to be our clerk.
MADDIE: Yes.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: May I be the first to welcome you to Room 3b. You will find the working conditions primitive, the hours antisocial, the amenities non-existent and the catering beneath contempt. On top of that the people are for the most part very very very boring, with interests either so generalized as to mimic wholesale ignorance or so particular as to be lunatic obsessions. Their level of conversation would pass without comment in the lavatory of a mixed comprehensive and the lavatories, by the way, are few and far between.
MADDIE: It has always been my ambition to work in the House of Commons. (Sound of Big Ben chiming the half hour.)
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Mine has always been the House of Lords. But then perhaps I have not been willing to make the same sacrifices you have.
MCTEAZLE: Have you had to make sacrifices Miss Gotobed? Not too arduous I hope?
MADDIE: It was hard work but I enjoyed the challenge.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE (quickly): Yes … yes, the P.M. offered me a life peerage, for services which he said he would let me know more about in due course if I were interested. ‘I hear you’re a keen gardener, Cockie,’ he said, ‘we can call it services to conservation.’ ‘Not me, Rollo,’ I said, ‘all I use it for is a little topiary in the summer.’ ‘Services to sport,’ he said, ‘ignorant fool.’ ‘No, no, Rollo,’ I said, ‘I really have no interests of any kind.’ ‘That will be services to the arts,’ he said. ‘Stop making such a fuss—do you want a life peerage or don’t you?’ ‘No I don’t,’ I said to him. ‘What with only a couple of bachelor cousins in line ahead, one of whom is an amateur parachutist and the other a seamstress in the Merchant Navy, I prefer to hang on for a chance of the real thing.’ He said to me: ‘My dear Cockie, life peers are the real tiling nowadays.’ ‘Oh no they’re not, Rollo,’ I said. ‘That’s just the kind of confusion you set up in people’s minds by calling them Lord This and Lord That, pour encourager hoi polloi. They think they’re lords—they skip off home and feed the budgerigar saying to themselves, my golly gorblimey, I’m a lord! They’d be just as happy if you suddenly told them they were all sheiks. They’d put the Desert Song on the gramophone and clap their hands when they wanted their cocoa. Now you’d know they’re not really sheiks and I’d know they’re not really sheiks, and God help them if they ever showed up east of Suez in their appalling pullovers with Sheik Shuttleworth stencilled on their airline bags—no, my dear Rollo,’ I said, ‘I’ll be a real peer or not at all.’ ‘Now look here, Cockie,’ he said to me, ‘if they weren’t real peers they wouldn’t be in the House of Lords would they?—that’s logic.’ ‘If that’s logic,’ I said, ‘you can turn a regimental goat into a Lieutenant Colonel by electing it to the United Services Club.’ ‘That’s an interesting point, Cockie,’ he said. ‘It could explain a lot of my problems.’ Do you suppose we’ve got the wrong day? (He takes out a pocket diary and consults it.) Oh yes—Select Committee, House of Commons—take L.P…. take L.P….? What L.P.?
MADDIE: It is the right day. I didn’t get a wink of sleep all last night.
COCKLBBURY-SMYTHE (mutters): L.P….
MADDIE: It’s not every girl who gets advancement from the Home Office typing pool.
MCTEAZLE: I expect it’s not every girl who proves herself as you have done, Miss Gotobed. Do you use Gregg’s or do you favour the Pitman method?
MADDIE: I’m on the pill. (Small pause, MCTEAZLE is expressionless.)
MCTEAZLE: Perhaps this might be an opportunity for me to explain to you the nature of the duties expected of a secretary/clerk attached to a Select Committee, duties which for one reason or another you may have got confused in your mind.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE (suddenly): Lace panties. Sorry.
MCTEAZLE: Now, this is a meeting of a Select Committee of Members of Parliament to report on moral standards in the House—not in the House literally, or rather, in the House literally but also, and for the most part, outside the House too.
MADDIE: In the car park?
MCTEAZLE: Not literally in the car park—or rather in the car park too, yes, but also—don’t try to take in more than you can. Now, this is a continuation of a Select Committee set up during the last session of Parliament, though at that time the membership of the Committee was different. A Select Committee must be reconvened with each new session of Parliament, and it is this reconstituted Committee which is about to begin sitting to report on rumours of sexual promiscuity by certain unspecified Members which, if substantiated, might tend to bring into disrepute the House of Commons and possibly the Lords and one or two government departments including Social Security, Environment, Defence, Health, Agriculture and even, I’m sorry to say, the Milk Marketing Board.
MADDIE: Why’s that?
MCTEAZLE: Because I have the honour to be on that Board and I think I can say without fear of contradiction that the M.M.B. has an unrivalled record of freedom from suggestions of being a sexual free-for-all, and furthermore we are now getting yoghurt and single and double cream to every corner of——
MADDIE: Actually what I meant was, why would it bring them into disrepute?
MCTEAZLE: Because the country by and large looks to its elected representatives to set a moral standard …
MADDIE: No it doesn’t——
MCTEAZLE (smoothly)’. No it doesn’t—you’re quite right. Then it’s because the authority of the—er—authorities is undermined by losing the respect of——
MADDIE: I don’t think people care.
MCTEAZLE: No, people don’t care—of course they don’t. In which case I think it is fair to say that this Committee owes its existence to the determination of the Prime Minister to keep his House in order, whatever the cost in public ridicule, whatever the consequence to people in high places, and to the fact that title newspapers got wind of what was going on. It is unfortunate that the well known restraint and sense of higher purpose which characterizes the British press—a restraint which would have treated with utter contempt stories of garter-snapping by a few M.P.s—gave way completely at the rumour that they were all snapping the same garter. You may know, if you are a student of the press, or if you have at any time in the last few weeks passed within six feet of a newspaper, that there is no phrase as certain to make a British sub-editor lose his sense of proportion as the phrase ‘Mystery Woman’. This Committee was set up at the time when the good name of no fewer than 21 Members of Parliament was said to have been compromised. Since then rumour has fed on rumour and we face the possibility that a sexual swathe has passed through Westminster claiming the reputations of, to put no finer point upon it, 119 Members. Someone is going through the ranks like a lawn-mower in knickers. Well, I need hardly say—(he is taking papers out of his brief case)—that we as a Committee are working in a sensitive area, one which demands great tact on all our parts—(MCTEAZLE produces from his brief case a pair of knickers and hands them to MADDIE)—your own not excluded. (MADDIE collects the knickers urbanely and puts them in her knicker drawer; she has changed her position however and has to practically sprawl across the desk to do this, thus showing leg as well as cleavage. Simultaneously COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE has discovered a pin-up picture in the Daily Mail, or any other appropriate paper except the Sun.)
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Strewth! (After the freeze there seems to be nothing to occupy the two men. MADDIE collects herself and sits demurely on her desk. The two men get up and move around.) Well, this is getting us nowhere. Where is everybody? (In the following section, the italicized words are said privately to MADDIE with no change of tone or volume while the other is at the extreme of his perambulation.) Are we going to have a quorum? You may not be familiar with the term quorum incidentally if anyone asks you where you had dinner last night it’s a Latin word meaning ‘of which or of whom’….
MCTEAZLE: Quite simply, it’s the smallest number of members of a committee necessary to constitute the said committee, for example, say you were nowhere near the Coq d’Or on Saturday night then the smallest number of members without which a quorum can’t be said to be a quorum——
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: A quorum is nothing more or less than the largest minimum specified number of members being that proportion of the whole committee, let us say three or four get Coq d’Or Sunday night completely invalid without them. Got it?
MCTEAZLE: It’s not as complicated as it sounds.
MADDIE: Is it a specified number of members of a committee whose presence—God bless them—is necessary for the valid transaction of business by that committee?
MCTEAZLE: Yes … yes, that is pretty well what a quorum is. I can see, Miss Gotobed, that there is more to you than your name suggests—by which I mean (trying to accelerate out of trouble) that you don’t spend all your time flat on your back —or your front—your side, flat on your side, sleeping, fast asleep, when you could be doing your homework instead of living up to your name, which you don’t, that’s my point. (COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE has been standing like stone, his glazed eyes absently fixed on MADDIE’s cleavage.)
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: McTeazle, why don’t you go and see if you can raise those great tits—boobs—those boobies, absolute tits, don’t you agree, Malcolm and Douglas—though good men as well, of course, useful chaps, very decent, first rate, two of the best, Malcolm and Douglas, why don’t you have a quick poke, peek, in the Members’ Bra—or the cafeteria, they’re probably guzzling coffee and Swedish panties, (MADDIE has crossed her legs) Danish, I’ll tell you what, why don’t you go and see if you can raise Malcolm and Douglas—(to MADDIE)—sometimes there are more of these committees trying to meet than there are rooms for them to meet in—that’s why we’re up here in the tower instead of one of those nice rooms on the Committee Floor with the green leather chairs, though I expect you’ve spent a lot of time on the Floor, Miss Gotobed, by which I mean, of course, the Committee Bed, Floor—(getting hysterical)—McTeazle the Division Bell will go before we even get started and then we’ll all have to go off and vote on some beastly amendment to make anyone who buys his own council house a life bishop with the right to wear a nightie on his head, mitre on his head. My God, I could do with a drink——
MCTEAZLE: You go then. No, I’ll go. I’ll tell you what, Miss Gotobed, why don’t you come with me, I’ll show you round the lavatories, round the House, show you the Chamber, the lavatories——
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: She doesn’t want to go trudging round the House inspecting the toilets like a deputation from the Water Board. Let the poor girl alone—she didn’t get a wink of sleep all night. (He ushers MCTEAZLE out and closes the door. He turns and addresses MADDIE immediately. In the following speech the italicized words coincide with MCTEAZLE’s brief re-appearance to take his bowler hat off the hatstand.) Maddie my dear, you look even more ravishing this morning than the smallest specified number of members of that committee of which we will have to be very very careful—it is a cruel irony that our carefree little friendship, which is as innocent and pure as the first driven snowdrop of spring, is in danger of being trampled by the hobnailed hue-and-cry over these absurd rumours of unbuttoned behaviour in and out of both trousers of Parliament—I think I can say, and say with confidence, that when the smoke has cleared from the Augean stables, the little flame of our love will still be something no one else can hold a candle to so long as we can keep our heads down. In other words, my darling girl, if anyone were to ask you where you had lunch on Friday, breakfast on Saturday or dinner on Sunday, best thing is to forget Crockford’s, Claridges and the Coq d’Or.
MADDIE (concentrating): Crockford’s—Claridges—the Coq d’Or.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Forget—forget.
MADDIE: Forget. Forget Crockford’s, Claridges, Coq d’Or. Forget Crockford’s, Claridges, Coq d’Or. (To herself.) Forget Crockford’s, Claridges, Coq d’Or. Forget Crockford’s, Claridges, Coq d’Or. (COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE sees that this is achieving the opposite.)
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: All right—tell you what—say you had breakfast at Claridges, lunch at the Coq d’Or, and had dinner at Crockford’s. Meanwhile I’ll stick to——
MADDIE (concentrating harder than ever): Claridges, Coq d’Or, Crockford’s. Forget Crockford’s, Claridges, Coq d’Or. Remember Claridges, Coq d’Or, Crockford’s. Remember Claridges, Coq d’Or, Crockford’s. Claridges, Coq d’Or, Crockford’s, Claridges, Coq d’Or, Crockford’s.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: But not with me.
MADDIE: Not with you. Not with Cockie at Claridges, Coq d’Or, Crockford’s. Never at Claridges, Coq d’Or, Crockford’s with Cockie. Never at Claridges, Coq d’Or, Crockford’s with Cockie. (Her concentration doesn’t imply slowness: she is fast, eager, breathless, very good at tongue twisters. Her whole attitude in the play is one of innocent, eager willingness to please.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE sees that he is going about this the wrong way.)
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Wait a minute. (Rapidly.) The best thing is forget Claridges, Crockford’s and the Coq d’Or altogether.
MADDIE: Right. Forget Claridges, Crockford’s, Coq d’Or—forget Claridges, Crockford’s, Coq d’Or——
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: And if anyone asks you where you had lunch on Friday, breakfast on Saturday and dinner last night, when you were with me, tell them where you had dinner on Friday, lunch on Saturday and breakfast yesterday.
MADDIE: Right! (Pause. She closes her eyes with concentration.) (Rapidly.) The Green Cockatoo, the Crooked Clock, the Crock of Gold—and Box Hill.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Box Hill?
MADDIE: To see the moon come up—forget Crockford’s, Claridges, Coq d’Or—remember the Crock of Gold, Box Hill, the Crooked Clock and the Green Door——
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Cockatoo——
MADDIE: Cockatoo. Crock of Gold, Crooked Clock, Green Cockatoo and Box Hill. When was this?
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: When you were really with me.
MADDIE: Right. With Cockie at the Green Cockatoo—
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: No not with Cockie at the Green Cockatoo.
MADDIE:—not with Cockie at the Green Cockatoo, the Old Cook, the Crooked Grin, Gamages and Box Hill.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE (wildly): No—look. The simplest thing is to forget, Claridges, the Old Boot, the Golden quorum can be any number agreed upon by (This is because MCTEAZLE is back.)
MCTEAZLE: Douglas is on his way back. (Hanging up his hat.)
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: I’ve got to have a drink. (He leaves, forgetting his bowler hat, as MCTEAZLE closes the door, MCTEAZLE starts speaking at once. The italicized words correspond to COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE’s momentary reappearances, in the first case to take a bowler hat off the hatstand and in the second case to change hats because he has taken out MCTEAZLE’s hat the first time.)
MCTEAZLE: Maddiening the way one is kept waiting for ours is a very tricky position, my dear. In normal times one can count on chaps being quite sympathetic to the sight of a Member of Parliament having dinner with a lovely young woman in some out-of-the-way nook—it could be a case of constituency business, they’re not necessarily screw-oo-ooge is, I think you’ll find, not in ‘David Copperfield’ at all, still less in ‘The Old Curiosity Sho’-eking though it is, the sight of a Member of Parliament having some out-of-the-way nookie with a lovely young woman might well be a case of a genuine love match destined to take root and pass through ever more respectable stages—the first shy tentative dinner party in a basement flat in Pembridge Crescent for a few trusted friends—Caxton Hall—and a real friendship with the stepchildren—people are normally inclined to give one the benefit of the doubt. But the tragedy is, as our luck would have it, that our gemlike love which burns so true and pure and has brought such a golden light into our lives, could well become confused with a network of grubby affairs between men who should know better and some bit of fluff from the filing department—so I suggest, my darling, if any one were to enquire where you may or may not have spent Friday night or indeed Saturday lunch time or Sunday tea time, forget Charing Cross, the Coq d’Or and the Golden Ox.
MADDIE: Charing Cross, Coq d’Or, Golden Ox. Charing Cross, Coq d’Or, Golden Ox. Charing Cross, Old Door, and the Golden Cock——
MCTEAZLE:—Ox——
MADDIE: Ox.
MCTEAZLE: The Coq d’Or and the Golden Ox. Not the Golden Cock and the Old Door.
MADDIE: Not the Golden Cock and the Old Door but the Golden Ox and the Coq d’Or.
MCTEAZLE: And don’t forget: Charing Cross.
MADDIE: Don’t forget Charing Cross.
MCTBAZLB: I mean forget Charing Cross.
MADDIE: Forget Charing Cross——
MCTEAZLE: Plucky girl——
MADDIE: Plucky girl—Charing Cross—Olden cocks.
MCTEAZLE: But not with me.
MADDIE: Not with Jock at the Old Cock——
MCTEAZLE: Door. (This is because the door has opened.)
MADDIE: Old Coq d’Or—not with Jock. (CHAMBERLAIN has entered.)
MCTEAZLE (hurriedly): Hello, Douglas.
(CHAMBERLAIN is repellently full of zest and heartiness. He also carries an armful of papers which he dumps on the table. He treats MADDIE with open, crude lechery.)
CHAMBERLAIN: Hello!
MCTEAZLE: This is Mr. Chamberlain. Miss Gotobed is going to be our clerk. (CHAMBERLAIN advances on MADDIE who backs off behind her desk and starts opening drawers to look busy.)
CHAMBERLAIN: What?!—that luscious creature is our clerk! Impossible! Where’s her moustache? Her dandruff? Her striped pants? (MADDIE reflexively slams shut her hacker drawer.) What an uncommonly comely clerk you are! My name’s Douglas. I hope you don’t mind me saying that you’re a lovely girl—I don’t mind telling you that if I wasn’t married to a wonderful girl myself with two fine youngsters down in Dorking and an au pair to complicate my life, I’d be after you and no mistake, (During the rest of this speech, MADDIE pushes past CHAMBERLAIN, goes over to her coat and takes a copy of the Sun from her pocket. She returns towards her desk.) my goodness yes, it would be private coaching in a little French restaurant somewhere, a few hints on parliamentary procedure over the boeuf bourgignon, and then off in the Volvo while I mutter sweet definitions in your ear and test your elastic with the moon coming up over Box Hill. (As MADDIE passes the steps, he gooses her so thoroughly that she goes straight up them, still holding the Sun. CHAMBERLAIN slaps a sheet of paper on her desk.) Have you an order of business? (He turns aside.) Well, well, here we are without a quorum and I thought I was going to be late. (To MADDIB.) You’ll know, of course, that a quorum is a specified number of members of a committee whose presence—God bless them—is necessary for the valid transaction of business by that committee—got it? Good. (CHAMBERLAIN opens the Daily Mirror to the pin-up page. MCTEAZLE helps MADDIE down the steps; her skirt comes away in his hand.) Strewth! (After the freeze MCTEAZLE tries to shove the skirt at MADDIE who has sat down primly behind her desk, but
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE enters so
MCTEAZLE sits on the skirt.)
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: DO we have a quorum?
CHAMBERLAIN: Hello, Cocklebury-Smythe.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: SO glad you could come, Chamberlain. You know Miss Gotobed?
CHAMBERLAIN (over-reacts): No.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Mr. Chamberlain—Miss Gotobed.
CHAMBERLAIN: I meant I didn’t know her.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Of course you don’t know her. All we need now is our Chairman. I wish he’d get his clogs on. (The door opens and
WITHENSHAW, the Chairman, enters. He is a Lancastrian. He also carries newspapers and a brief case.)
WITHENSHAW: There’s trouble in t’Mail.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Mill.
WITHENSHAW: Mail. (He throws the papers and his brief case on to the table.)
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Oh yes.
WITHENSHAW (at MADDIE): And who have we got here?
MADDIE: I’m the clerk. Miss Gotobed.
WITHENSHAW: And I’m Malcolm Withyou! (He laughs uproariously.) Malcolm Withyou!—’ee you’ve got to be quick—Malcolm Withenshaw, Chairman of Select Committee on Promiscuity in High Places. Have you got an order of business? (He snatches Chamberlain’s piece of paper off her desk.) ‘Forget Golden Goose, Selfridges——’ (MADDIE snatches the paper out of his hand and hands him in the same movement a sealed envelope from her bag.)
MADDIE: This is for you.
WITHENSHAW (generally): Before I saw bloody paper I was going to congratulate you all on a clean bill of health. You can’t have a committee washing dirty linen in the corridors of power unless every member is above suspicion. (On which he produces from the envelope a large pair of Y-front pants which he immediately shoves back into the envelope.) The wheres and Y-fronts, the whys and wherefores of this Committee are clear to you all. Our presence here today is testimony to. the trust the House has in us as individuals and that includes you Maddiemoiselle. (To MADDIE.) Though you have been completely unaware of it your private life has been under intense scrutiny by top man in Security Service, a man so senior that I can’t even tell you his name——
MADDIE: Fanshawe.
WITHENSHAW: Fanshawe—and you passed test. (He has been looking around for a place to put his pants, and decides on MADDIE’s desk drawer.) Indeed the fact that you’ve jumped over heads of many senior clerks indicates that you passed with flying knickers. (This slip of the tongue is because he has discovered the knickers in the drawer; he drops them back and slams the drawer.) So it is all the more unfortunate to find stuff in the press like following: Thank you Cockie. (COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE reads from the Daily Mail.)
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: ‘On the day the Select Committee on Moral Standards in Public Life is due to reconvene I ask—was it wise for one of the members to be seen holding hands under the table with a staggeringly voluptuous, titian-haired green eyed beauty in a West End restaurant at the weekend? And if so, was it modest to choose the Coq d’Or?’ (Meanwhile, WITHENSHAW has finished scribbling a note.)
WITHENSHAW: Right. Bloody smart alec. Still, least said soonest mended. (He tosses the note, which is on white paper the size of an old-fashioned £5 note, on to MADDIE’S desk.) Now then, I think you have received prior copies of my draft report, and we’ll go through it paragraph by paragraph in the usual way——
MCTEAZLE: Excuse me. Are we now in session?
WITHENSHAW: What’s quorum Miss Gotobed?
MADDIE: Is it a specified number of——
CHAMBERLAIN (hurriedly): Four, Mr. Chairman.
WITHENSHAW: Then we’ll kick off. Get your pencil out, lass.
MADDIE: DO I have to write down what you say?
WITHENSHAW: I can see you know your way around these committees, Miss Gotobed. You do speedwriting I suppose?
MADDIE: Yes, if I’m given enough time.
WITHENSHAW: That’s all right. You just tell us if we’re going too fast. Here’s a copy of my draft report, and appendix A, B, C, and D … (He is giving her these things out of his brief case, into which he puts the envelope containing his pants.) … so it’ll just be a matter of keeping a record of amendments, if any.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Excuse me, Withenshaw, but isn’t it rather unusual to have a report by a Select Committee before the Committee has had the advantage of considering the evidence?
WITHENSHAW: Yes, it is unusual, Mr. Cocklebury-Smythe, but this is an unusual situation. As you know sexual immorality unites all parties. This Committee isn’t here to play politics. You’ll have your chance with amendments, for which you can have all the time in the world. In fact the P.M. insists on it—he doesn’t want us to rush into print, he wants a thorough job which he can present to the House the day before the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, along with trade figures.
MCTEAZLE: Isn’t that going to cause rather a lot of flak in the 1922 Committee and the P.L.P.?
WITHENSHAW: Very likely, but by that time, I’m happy to say, I’m going to be well out of it in the Lords—life peerage for services to arts.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Services to the arts?
WITHENSHAW: I’ll have you bloody know Mrs. Withenshaw and I have personally donated the Botticelli-style painted ceiling in the Free Church Assembly Hall. I’ve bought and paid for more naked bums than you’ve had hot dinners.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: I’m glad to say I’ve had more hot dinners.
WITHEKSHAW: I speak sub-cathedra of course—no one else knows except Mrs. Withenshaw, and I shouldn’t have told her—she’s taken to wearing white gloves up to elbows to greyhounds. Anyway, what the P.M. wants is a unanimous report, if possible declaring—(as if remembering)—that there is no evidence that Members have engaged in scandalous conduct above the national average, or alternatively that they may have done in isolated cases, but are we going to judge grown responsible men in this day and age by the standards of Mrs. Grundy—whoever she may be—is it that old bag from Chorleywood South?
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: But what’s the report based on if we aren’t going to call any witnesses?
WITHENSHAW: What witnesses do you want to call?
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Well… I personally wouldn’t wish to call any——
MCTEAZLE: Hear, hear!
CHAMBERLAIN: Absolutely!
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: I’ve no time for stool pigeons admittedly——
MCTEAZLE: Hear, hear!
CHAMBERLAIN: Absolutely!
WITHENSHAW: There aren’t any bloody witnesses. No one has seen anything. It’s all bloody innuendo to sell newspapers in slack period.
ALL: Hear, hear!
WITHENSHAW: What with all the giant killers knocked out of Cup, and Ceylon versus Bangladesh—I don’t call that a bloody test match—the papers naturally resort to sticking their noses into upper reaches of top drawers looking for hankie panties, etcetera. …
ALL: Hear, hear!
WITHENSHAW: I tell you, if those bloody pandas had got stuck in and produced a cuddly black and white nipper for London Zoo, it wouldn’t be us in spotlight——
ALL: Hear, hear!
WITHENSHAW: Or Mark and Anne for that matter.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Steady on, Malcolm.
WITHENSHAW: I don’t mean it would be black and white.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Can we move on?
WITHENSHAW: I was just making the point that there’s nothing to witness just because a member of this Committee is so bowed down with the burden of representing his constituency, while trying to make a decent living in his spare time, that he has to take his—homework—to lunch in a West End restaurant.
ALL: Hear, hear!
CHAMBERLAIN: Or to dinner—pilloried for a beef stew in a modest eating house with a professional appointment, for all anyone knows a vicar’s daughter worried sick about the new motorway.
MCTEAZLE: Any cynic can make it look like a hole-in-the-corner affair in an out-of-the-way nook like the Coq d’Or quite probably is, many of these French places are——
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Nor was it a case of holding hands under the table.
ALL: Hear, hear!
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Probably she was passing him the money under the table, or vice versa.
MCTEAZLE: The table under the money——
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE:—him passing her the money under the table—probably a financially embarrassed lobbyist for sexual equality taking an M.P. to a working dinner.
MCTEAZLE: Women’s lib——
WITHENSHAW: One of those American bits.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Quite possibly——
WITHENSHAW: These Americans, they get in everywhere.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Far too many of them about.
MCTEAZLE: Hear, hear!
CHAMBERLAIN: Absolutely!
WITHENSHAW (to MADDIE): Would you care to take my appendix out and pass it round—I’ve something of a reputation for dry humour, you know. Yes, I once took a train journey right across America … (He pauses at the sight of MADDIE in her slip, MADDIE has picked up the sets of appendices and come out from behind her desk and taken two steps before remembering her state of undress, she pauses at the same moment, and then decides to continue. Big Ben starts chiming the three-quarter hour. MADDIE goes round the table placing documents in front of the first couple of places. Big Ben finishes chiming the three-quarter hour.)
… but that’s another story.
(The door opens to admit MRS. EBURY. All look at her as she speaks except MCTEAZLE who tries to hand MADDIE her skirt unnoticed, MADDIE misses this, as she is intent on passing out the rest of the appendices.)
MRS. EBURY: I’m sorry to be late, Malcolm.
WITHENSHAW: Come right in, Deborah—we’re just casting our eye over the media. You’re next to me, lass. (MRS. EBURY hangs up her coat. She also is carrying newspapers and case. To get round the table she has to pass behind the blackboard, as does MADDIE who is making slightly heavy weather of sorting out appendices A, B, C, and D for each member. MRS. EBURY and MADDIE cross over behind the blackboard but do not emerge immediately. Meanwhile the CHAIRMAN has opened the leader page of The Times and has started reading aloud.)
WITHENSHAW: ‘Cherchez La Femme Fatale. It needs no Gibbon come from the grave to spell out the danger to good government of a moral vacuum at the centre of power. Even so, Rome did not fall in a day, and mutatis mutandis it is not yet a case of sauve qui peut for the government——’—what is all this?—’Admittedly the silence hangs heavy in the House, no doubt on the principle of qui s’excuse s’accuse, but we expect: the electorate to take in its stride cum grano salts stories that upwards of a hundred M.P.s are in flagrante delicto, still more that the demi-mondaine in most cases is a single and presumably exhausted Dubarry de nos jours——’ bloody ‘ell. (To MCTEAZLE who has picked up the Guardian.) What does yours say?
MADDIE (only her legs visible behind the blackboard)’. Forget the Golden Carriage, the Cooking Pot and the Coq d’Or. Forget the Golden Carriage, the Watched Pot and the Coq d’Or. Forget the Golden Pot, Claridges and the Watched Cook… (MADDIE’s speech is loud until MCTEAZLB interrupts with the Guardian, but continues softly until MCTEAZLE reaches ‘tedious, or at any rate tendentious …’ where it stops, to be heard again on MCTEAZLE’S ‘Quis custodiet…’ and finally stopping on WITHENSHAW’s ‘Information’.)
MCTEAZLE (reading from the Guardian): ‘Spécialités de la Maison. The House of Commons is no stranger to scandal or to farce but it usually manages to arrange its follies so as to keep the two separate. It would be tedious, or at any rate tendentious, to give a catalogue raisonné of the, at a Conservative estimate 63 Members of Parliament, and at a Labour estimate 114, of whom the homme moyen sensuel on the Clapham omnibus might well be asking, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”’ (MRS. EBURY emerges during this final Latin phrase. Her hair, which had been done up in a bun, is now about her shoulders and her buttoned-up suit is in discreet disarray. She takes her seat.) (Continuing.) ‘—and yet our information——’ (MADDIE emerges from behind the blackboard.)
WITHENSHAW (scornfully): Information! What does the editor of Manchester Guardian know about anything—bloody young pup—what’s his name——
MADDIE (putting documents in front of him): Peter.
WITHENSHAW (to MRS. EBURY): Ah—I don’t think you know Miss Gotobed.
MRS. EBURY: HOW do you do? (CHAMBERLAIN picks up the Daily Mirror.)
CHAMBERLAIN: ‘HOW many cocks on the dung heap? We say too many—see page 2.’ (He turns the page.) (MCTEAZLE is surreptitiously trying to shove MADDIE’s skirt at her as she goes by. She doesn’t notice, and he grabs at her slip.) Strewth! (ALL but MCTEAZLE look at him—ALL freeze. Simultaneously MADDIE’s slip has come away in MCTEAZLE’s hand, leaving her wearing a revealing blouse, knickers, suspender belt, stockings and shoes.
After the freeze MADDIE sits down behind her desk. MCTEAZLE now sits on the skirt and the slip.) (To MADDIE): Well, are you ready for it Miss Gotobed?
MADDIE: Yes.
WITHENSHAW: Well we seem to be a full complement except for
Mr. French. Has anybody heard whether he’s coming?
MRS. EBURY: I hope to God not.
WITHENSHAW: Mr. French always has the best interests of the House at heart. That is why he comes over as a sanctimonious busybody with an Energen roll where his balls ought to be—no need to start writing yet, Miss Gotobed.
MCTEAZLE: I don’t know what the P.M. was thinking of.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: I expect he was thinking of having a balanced committee to lend the kind of credibility to our report which has eluded him in public life.
WITHENSHAW (to MADDIE): Not yet. (Stands.) Now, as this Select Committee has, as it were, lost its Chairman of the last session, our first duty as a Committee is to make good that loss.
(Very rapidly now.)
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Propose Mr. Withenshaw.
MCTEAZLE: Second.
WITHENSHAW: Any other nominations?
The question is put——
ALL: Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Thank you Mrs. Ebury and gentlemen. (Sits.) Let’s get started. (To MADDIE.) Mr. Withenshaw called to chair. The Chairman’s draft report, having been read for the first time—any objections to that?—thank you—was further considered as follows:
Paragraph I. In performing the duty entrusted to them your Committee took as their guiding principle that it is the just and proper expectation of the electorate and the country at large, that its representatives in Parliament should bring probity, honourable intent and decent conduct, not merely to the discharge of the business of government but also to their personal and social behaviour, which needs must stand in an exemplary relationship to the behaviour of the British people generally.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: I must say that strikes an authentic
Lancastrian note. Who wrote this?
WITHENSHAW: Would you mind?
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Was it the P.M.?
WITHENSHAW: No.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: I’ll know if it becomes Tennysonian, you know.
WITHENSHAW: You’re out of order, Mr. Cocklebury-Smythe. (MADDIE has her hand up, the other hand writing busily but laboriously.) Not that bit, Miss Gotobed.
MADDIE: ‘… called to chair.’
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: The chair.
WITHENSHAW (at MADDIE’s speed which is about 30 words a minute): ‘The chair. The Chair-man’s draft report having been read for the first time was further con-sider-ed as fol-lows——’ The next bit is the draft report which you’ve got so you don’t have to write it down again.
MADDIE (with the document): All this about setting an example?
WITHENSHAW: Yes.
MADDIE: You should tell them to mind their own business.
WITHENSHAW: Who?
MADDIE: Whoever it is who wants to know. It’s a load of rubbish.
WITHENSHAW: What is?
MADDIE: People don’t care what M.P.s do in their spare time, they just want them to do their jobs properly bringing down prices and everything.
WITHENSHAW: Yes, well…
MADDIE: Why don’t they have a Select Committee to report on what M.P.s have been up to in their working hours—that’s what people want to know.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: It’s rather more complicated than that—er—Arab oil and … (The following speeches overlap each other until the
CHAIRMAN calls the meeting to order.)
CHAMBERLAIN: … the Unions.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: M.P.s don’t have the power they used to have, you know.
MCTBAZLB: Foreign exchange—the Bank of England.
MRS. BBURY: The multi-national companies.
MCTBAZLB: Not to mention government by Cabinet.
CHAMBERLAIN: Government by Cabal.
MRS. BBURY: Brussels.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: The Whips.
WITHENSHAW: Just a minute—that’ll do—come to order.
MADDIB: I’m sorry.
WITHENSHAW: Paragraph 2. Your Committee took it as self-evident that the consent to govern may be withheld if the people lose respect for the Commons either severally or as an institution, either through executive or constitutional deficiency, either on practical or moral grounds. It is on this latter ground—the morality of the honourable 600—that your Committee has fixed its lance, determined to ride fearlessly into the jaws of controversy.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: It is the P.M., isn’t it?
WITHENSHAW: I’m not saying it is, and anyway what’s wrong with Her Majesty’s first minister keeping a close watch on the interests of the people re clean living on the back benches.
MADDIB: It isn’t the people, it’s the newspapers.
MCTBAZLE: That’s true.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Well the newspapers are the people in a sense—they are the channel of the government’s answerability to the governed. The Fourth Estate of the realm speaking for the hearts and minds of the people.
MRS. EBURY: And on top of that they’re as smug a collection of inaccurate, hypocritical, self-important, bullying, shoddily printed sick-bags as you’d hope to find in a month of Sundays, and dailies, and the weeklies aren’t much better.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: They’re not all that inaccurate.
CHAMBERLAIN: You can’t ignore them.
MADDIE: Nothing would happen if you did. They’ve got more people writing about football than writing about you and that’s in the cricket season—they know what they’re about.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: The press, you see, is not just an ordinary
commercial enterprise like selling haberdashery.
MADDIE: Yes it is.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Yes I know it is, but it is also the
watchdog of democracy, which haberdashery, by and large, is not.
MADDIE: If the press is all that, you should be asking them about chasing after anything in a skirt, which they do. You should have a Select Committee on it—‘Your Committee doesn’t think it right for journalists to carry on as if there was no tomorrow.’
WITHENSHAW: Thank you——
MADDIE: You’re just as entitled to enjoy yourself as they are.
WITHENSHAW: Thank you very much——
MADDIE: You should tell them to mind their own business.
WITHENSHAW: Paragraphs 1 and 2 read and agreed to.
MADDIE: I would——
(The CHAIRMAN looks at her.) Sorry. (She starts writing.)
WITHENSHAW: Paragraph 3.
MADDIE (with her hand up): Paragraphs 1 and 2 …
WITHENSHAW: … read and agreed to. Paragraph 3.
MADDIE (with her hand up):… read and …
WITHENSHAW: … agreed to …
MADDIE: … agreed to …
WITHENSHAW: Paragraph 3.
MADDIE: Thank you. Sorry.
WITHENSHAW (clears throat): Your Committee and their
predecessors in the last session have had before them the papers laid before the House including the written depositions (appendix A) and memoranda (appendix B).
(ALL turn over to next page.)
Paragraph 4. Your Committee also had before them a large assortment of press cuttings on this and related matters (appendix C). Your Committee did not feel that any purpose would be served by calling all the authors of these articles, which were in any case frequently anonymous or pseudonymous, and invariably uncorroborated.
MRS. EBURY: Amendment, Mr. Chairman.
WITHENSHAW: Yes, Mrs. Ebury.
MRS. EBURY: Paragraph 4, line 4. After ‘invariably uncorroborated’ insert ‘and actuated by malice’.
WITHENSHAW: Amendment proposed. After ‘invariably uncorroborated’ insert ‘and actuated by malice’. In favour?
ALL (except COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE): Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Against.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: No.
WITHENSHAW: Amendment stands. (To MADDIE.) All right?
MADME: Act…
MCTEAZLE: … u … a … (pause) … ted
CHAMBERLAIN: by …
MADDIE: by …
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Malice.
MADDIE: Mal…
MRS. EBURY: iss … (MADDIE looks up) … ice.
WITHENSHAW: Mrs. Ebury in brackets.
MADDIE (pause): In brack-ets.
WITHENSHAW: No, no just put her in brackets. (Apologetically.)
It’s her first time you know.
ALL: Oh yes … naturally … time to settle down…
WITHENSHAW: Very good. Paragraph now ends ‘invariably
uncorroborated and actuated by malice’.
CHAMBERLAIN: Amendment, Mr. Chairman.
WITHENSHAW: Yes, Mr. Chamberlain.
CHAMBERLAIN: Insert after ‘malice’ the words ‘and cynical
pursuit of cheap sensationalism’.
WITHENSHAW: Amendment put. In favour?
ALL (except COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE): Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Against?
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: No.
WITHENSHAW: Amendment stands.
CHAMBERLAIN (to MADDIE): Me in brackets.
MADDIB: … cyn …
CHAMBERLAIN (at MADDIE’s speed): … ical pursuit
MADDIE: … ical purs …
CHAMBERLAIN: … uit of …
MADDIE: … suit of…
CHAMBERLAIN: … cheap sens …
MADDIE: … cheap sense …
CHAMBERLAIN: … ationalism.
(This may have been fractionally faster than the last amendment.)
MADDIE: … ationalism.
WITHENSHAW: That’s it. You see you’re improving all the time.
ALL: Oh yes … getting the hang of it …
MCTEAZLE: Amendment, Mr. Chairman. (He scribbles on a piece of paper.)
WITHENSHAW: Yes, Mr. McTeazle.
MCTEAZLE: After ‘sensationalism’ insert ‘through a degrading obsession with dirty linen among the Pecksniffs of Fleet Street’. (He hands paper to MADDIE.)
WITHENSHAW: I don’t think these unnatural practices are very …
MCTEAZLE: He’s a character in Dombey and Son
WITHENSHAW (lying): I am well aware he’s a character in
Dombey and Son.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Chuzzlewit.
WITHENSHAW (with spirit): Chuzzlewit yourself, Cockie.
Amendment put. Favour?
ALL (except COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE): Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Against.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: No.
WITHENSHAW: Amendment stands. Paragraph now reads——
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Amendment, Mr. Chairman.
WITHENSHAW: Yes, Mr. Cocklebury-Smythe.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Before the words ‘and a cynical pursuit
etcetera’ insert the words ‘in some cases, possibly’.
WITHENSHAW: Amendment put. All in favour?
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Against?
ALL (except COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE): No.
WITHENSHAW: Amendment fails. (To MADDIE.) Paragraph now reads …
MADDIE (reading from the draft): ‘Paragraph 4. Your Committee also had before them a large assortment of press cuttings on this and related matters (appendix C). Your Committee did not feel that any purpose would be served by calling all the authors of these articles, which were in any case frequently anonymous or pseudonymous, and invariably uncorroborated (reads from her notebook) and actuated by malice and a cynical pursuit of cheap sensationalism (reads from paper passed to her by MCTEAZLE) through a degrading obsession with dirty linen among the Pecksniffs of Fleet Street. I’m sitting on your slip. (To MCTEAZLE.) Sorry.
MCTEAZLE (looking at the others): A slip—just a slip.
WITHENSHAW: The question is put that the paragraph stand as
part of the report.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Division, Mr. Chairman.
WITHENSHAW: Division, Committee divided.
Mr. Chamberlain.
CHAMBERLAIN: Aye.
(MADDIE’s hand has gone up.)
WITHENSHAW (to MADDIE): The Com-mit-tee div-id-ed.
MADDIE: … divided. Then what do I do?
WITHENSHAW: Then you draw a line down the middle. (The
CHAIRMAN goes to the blackboard and draws a line down the middle and generally demonstrates on the blackboard. But he spells ‘noes’ as ‘Nose’.) You write ‘ayes’ up there on the left and ‘noes’ up there on the other side and when I call out their names you write them down on one side or the other, according to what they say.
Mr. Chamberlain.
CHAMBERLAIN: Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Mrs. Ebury.
MRS. EBURY: Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Mr. McTeazle.
MCTEAZLE: Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Mr. Cocklebury-Smythe—National Union of Journalists.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: No—I have to make a living in my spare
time too, you know.
WITHENSHAW: Three—one.
MADDIE: Just like the football results.
WITHENSHAW (warmly): Just like the football results. Isn’t it?
ALL: Oh yes … so it is … what a good thought ….
WITHENSHAW: Paragraph 4, read and agreed to. Mr. Cocklebury-Smythe, M.P., N.U.J.; dissenting.
Paragraph 5.
MADDIE: You don’t need all these paragraphs, you know …
WITHENSHAW: ‘Your Committee …’
MADDIE: You’re just playing into their hands.
(WITHENSHAW glares at her.) It’s just my opinion.
WITHENSHAW: Paragraph 5. ‘Your Committee …’
MCTEAZLE (to MADDIE): Whose hands?
WITHENSHAW (to MCTEAZLE): For God’s sake——
MADDIE: The press. The more you accuse them of malice and inaccuracy, the more you’re admitting that they’ve got a right to poke their noses into your private life. All this fuss! The whole report can go straight in the waste-paper basket. All you need is one paragraph saying that M.P.s have got just as much right to enjoy themselves in their own way as anyone else, and Fleet Street can take a running jump.
WITHENSHAW: Miss Gotobed, you may not be aware that the clerk traditionally refrains from drafting the report of a Select Committee.
MADDIE: And anyway, there’s no malice in it. You’ve got that
wrong, too.
WITHENSHAW: Paragraph 5!
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: She’s quite right, of course. It’s simplistic
to speak of malice.
WITHENSHAW: Smart alec-paragraphs about innocent tripe-and-onions with titian voluptuaries?—if that’s not malice I don’t know what is.
MADDIE: They only write it up because of each other writing it up. Then they try to write it up more than each other—it’s like a competition, you see.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE (puzzled): A free press is competitive naturally …
MADDIE: No, the writers. They’re not writing it for the people, they’re writing it for the writers writing it on the other papers. ‘Look what I’ve got that you haven’t got.’ There don’t have to be any people reading it at all so long as there’s a few journalists around to say, ‘Old Bill got a good one there!’ That’s what they’re doing it for. I thought you’d have worked that out by now.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE (I taken aback)-: Not really.
MADDIE: You see, you don’t know the first thing about journalism.
(ALL laugh at COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE. MADDIE stands up—unfolds one of the newspapers on her desk and holds it in front of her, between her and the Committee so that it obscures her skinless, slipless state of undress from the Committee but not from the audience. She walks to the front of the committee table. The Committee react to the photograph on the paper facing them.)
The pictures are for the people.
ALL: Strewth!
(The door opens to admit MR. FRENCH, who enters and hangs up his coat. As the Committee look at him, MADDIE turns and returns to her desk, folding the newspaper.)
CHAMBERLAIN: Hello, French.
FRENCH (to CHAIRMAN, without seeing MADDIE): Mea maxima culpa.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Merde.
WITHENSHAW: All present and correct. (To MADDIE.) Amend list of members present.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE (to MADDIE): French …
MADDIE (to FRENCH): Enchantée …
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: No … no … Mr. French, Miss Gotobed.
FRENCH: How do you do, so sorry to interrupt. (Looking at the blackboard.) What’s that? (He sits down. He has a white silk handkerchief showing in his breast pocket and he uses this to wipe his brow. He does this once or twice during the scene.)
WITHENSHAW: A blackboard. No … No … I was just… (He looks round for something to wipe the board but there’s nothing to hand so he takes the underpants out of the brief case and uses them.)… our clerk, Miss Gotobed, has been assigned to this Committee on the recommendation of I think you-know-who——
FRENCH: Who?
MADDIE: Fanshawe.
WITHENSHAW:—need I say more? Her experience of committee work is not extensive and I was just explaining one or two of the finer points.
FRENCH: Of course.
WITHENSHAW: Well, as I was saying on that last Division
Cocklebury-Smythe is under the ‘noes’.
MCTEAZLB: Pecksniff. Chuzzlewit.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Yes——
MCTEAZLE: Sorry.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Not at all.
(The CHAIRMAN has hurriedly wiped the board clean and is putting his underpants back into his brief case.)
FRENCH: What is that?
WITHENSHAW: Pair of briefs.
FRENCH: What are they doing in there?
WITHENSHAW: It’s a briefcase. Paragraph 5.
FRENCH: What stage are we at, Mr. Chairman?
WITHENSHAW: Second reading of the draft report, Mr. French.
FRENCH: When was the first reading?
WITHENSHAW: Haven’t you gone through it?
FRENCH: Yes. Last night.
WITHENSHAW: That’s when it was. Do you really want me to go through the whole thing again? It’s pure formality.
FRENCH: That may be so, but there is a way of doing things, and if we’re not going to do them in that way let it be shown in the proceedings of this Select Committee that the Committee voted on that point.
WITHENSHAW: Very well. (Very rapidly.)
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Propose.
MCTEAZLB: Second.
ALL (except FRENCH): Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Against.
FRENCH: No.
WITHENSHAW: Carried.
(Even more rapidly, absolute breakneck speed because it’s pure ritual.)
FRENCH: Division.
WITHENSHAW: Division. Mr. Chamberlain.
CHAMBERLAIN: Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Mr. Cocklebury-Smythe.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Mrs. Ebury.
MRS. EBURY: Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Mr. French.
FRENCH: No.
WITHENSHAW: Mr. McTeazle.
MCTEAZLE: Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Carried.
MADDIE: Line down the middle?
WITHENSHAW: Line down the middle.
(FRENCH is slightly surprised by this.) Committee divided 4-1.
MADDIE: Home win.
WITHENSHAW: Home win. Mr. French lone scorer for visitors.
FRENCH: I beg your pardon?
WITHENSHAW: The terminology of committee practice is in a constant state of organic change, Mr. French. If you can’t keep up you’ll be no use to us. Paragraph 5.
FRENCH: Excuse me, Mr. Chairman.
WITHENSHAW: Yes, Mr. French?
FRENCH: We haven’t heard any evidence.
WITHENSHAW: Evidence about what, Mr. French?
FRENCH: You know very well, evidence about what—evidence about 128 Members of Parliament making fools of themselves over a latter day Dubarry and bringing the House into public ridicule and disrepute.
WITHENSHAW (heatedly): Do you believe everything you read in the papers, Mr. French?
FRENCH (also heatedly): I wish to have this exchange of views recorded in the minutes.
WITHENSHAW (at MADDIE’S speed, to FRENCH): DO you believe everything you read in the papers, Mr. French?
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE (at MADDIE’s speed, to FRENCH): It is true that some of us have been feeling up … (Pause, ALL react to ‘feeling up’ with some trepidation. COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE continues innocently.) … to now that evidence as such does not exist in these matters.
ALL: Hear (pause) hear!
(FRENCH has taken some time to cotton on to the reason for the rate of speech, because the other Members have tactfully ignored MADDIE. FRENCH goes through various stages of bewilderment and suspicion before noting MADDIE’S writing speed.)
FRENCH: Just a minute—excuse me—is Miss Gotobed a secretary/clerk of the Clerks Department?
WITHENSHAW: Why d’you ask?
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: She can do forty words a minute.
FRENCH: Shorthand?
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: NO—talking.
MRS. EBURY: She is seconded from the Home Office.
FRENCH: What is her job there? A manicurist?
MADDIE: I’m a typist.
WITHENSHAW: Miss Gotobed has been recommended, by different people, I understand, in a period of some difficulty.
FRBNCH: I was expecting to have Mr. Barraclough, a man of irreproachable credentials——
WITHENSHAW: I believe he has taken early retirement for personal reasons.
MADDIE: Barry has?
WITHENSHAW: I must insist that we get on with the proper business of this Committee. (FRENCH getting hysterical.)
FRENCH: The proper business of this Committee is to examine witnesses!
WITHENSHAW: If you will be so patient, Mr. French, you will be reminded that paragraph 5 will take cognizance of the evidence heard by this Select Committee in its previous incarnation during last session.
FRENCH: I was not a member then.
WITHENSHAW: None of us were members then, Mr. French. This Committee has suffered the resignation for personal reasons of the previous membership—and for medical reasons, of the previous chairman, Sir Joshua Matlock who dislocated his hip——
MADDIE: Both hips——
WITHENSHAW: Both hips. Nevertheless that evidence, such as it was, is something which I have given due consideration in preparing this draft report. (To MADDIE.) NOW. (Generally, at MADDIE’s speed.) Paragraph 5 read as follows. (Normal speed.) (ALL turn to proper place in draft report.) Your Committee also had the advantage of having a number of distinguished journalists regaling the Committee with the moving and heroic tale of the struggle of the British press from time immemorial to become independent watchdogs of the people’s right to know; with many reference to flames, torches, swords, pens, grails and the general impedimenta of chivalrous quest…
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE (giggles): Tennyson’s Disease.
WITHENSHAW: … Unfortunately, the witnesses were considerably less helpful on the subject of their sources for the unsubstantiated speculations which were the chief and only reason for the witnesses being called. In the words of Alfred Lord… (pause) your Committee therefore was unable to conclude that the aforesaid speculations had any basis in fact——
MCTEAZLE: Amendment, Mr. Chairman.
WITHENSHAW: Yes, Mr. McTeazle.
MCTEAZLE: Paragraph 5 line 1 before the word ‘journalists’ to
omit the word ‘distinguished’.
FRENCH: Then we should examine the editors.
WITHENSHAW: Can we dispose of this amendment?
FRENCH: What about the leading article in this week’s New
Statesman? It refers to private information.
WITHENSHAW (jeers): Private information? Gossiping over Bristol
Cream in Vincent Square?
FRENCH: That is your assumption only.
WITHENSHAW: Where else would he pick anything up—young
pup—what’s-his-name——
MADDIE: Tony.
FRENCH: The editors must be in possession of hard information otherwise they would not let the reporters publish the rumours.
WITHENSHAW: Don’t be a fool, man.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: I’m afraid that that does not always follow, Mr. French.
FRENCH: What about The Times? You’re not suggesting that the
editor of The Times—a man of irreproachable credentials——(Heatedly to MADDIE.) Mr. French proposed: that the editor of The Times …
WITHENSHAW: Not so quickly please.
FRENCH (slowly): Mr. French proposed …
MCTEAZLE (to MRS. EBURY): What do you think of it so far?
MRS. EBURY: Rubbish!
FRENCH (continues slowly): … that the editor of The Times
(resuming his normal speed)—whatever his name is——
MADDIE: Willy.
WITHENSHAW (impatiently): This is already dealt with in appendix B. The Times has published no rumours, it’s only reported facts, namely that less responsible papers are publishing certain rumours. That is a written deposition from the editor (rifling through appendix B).
FRENCH: It is not. It is a memorandum from one of the Whips who bumped into him in the interval at Covent Garden. Can any one of us truthfully say that we have really examined the editor of The Times?
CHAMBERLAIN: No.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTIIE: NO.
WITHENSHAW: No.
MRS. EBURY: No.
MADDIB: Not really.
(Or from Stage Right round the table.)
WITHENSHAW: I must insist that we get back to bloody
amendment. The question is put—to omit in line one of paragraph 5 the word ‘distinguished’ before the word ‘journalists’. All in favour.
ALL (except COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE and FRENCH): Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Against.
WITHENSHAW: Arsenal 3 Newcastle 2. Scorers McTeazle, Chamberlain and Ebury for Arsenal. French and Cocklebury-Smythe, own goal, for Newcastle.
FRENCH: What the hell are you talking about?
WITHENSHAW: Kindly watch your language—you’re not on
terraces now, y’know.
MRS. EBURY: And there are ladies present.
FRENCH: All right! Cards on the table! I didn’t want to be the one to bring this up, but I rather expected to learn on arriving here today that one of our number—I exclude Mrs. Ebury of course—had seen fit to resign from this Committee. I refer to the paragraph in today’s Mail about the têtte-à-têtte at the Côte d’Or.
MRS. EBURY: Cock.
FRENCH: Coq d’Or.
MRS. EBURY: Double cock.
FRENCH: Without either a resignation or alternatively our joint repudiation of the story I don’t see how this Committee can have the confidence of the House.
MRS. EBURY: Ballocks.
FRENCH: That is not an expression which I would have associated with you, Mrs. Ebury.
MRS. EBURY: I don’t need you to tell me my problems.
WITHENSHAW (aside to MADDIE): The Committee deliberated.
FRENCH: I find the Committee’s silence on this point significant.
WITHENSHAW: Well, we all thought it was you.
FRENCH: I left for my constituency on Friday evening and returned this morning. The only meal I’ve had this weekend in a London restaurant was tea on Friday at the Golden Egg in Victoria Street.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: L’Oeuf d’Or?
MCTEAZLE: Were you with a woman?
FRENCH: I was with the Dean of St. Paul’s.
MCTEAZLE: Is she titian-haired?
CHAMBERLAIN: Come off it McTeazle. (Kindly to FRENCH.) French, can anyone corroborate your story?
FRENCH: The Dean of St. Paul’s can.
CHAMBERLAIN: Apart from her.
FRENCH: We had Jumbo Chickenburgers Maryland with pickled eggs and a banana milkshake. The waitress will remember me.
CHAMBERLAIN: Why?
FRENCH: I was sick on her shoes.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Your story smacks of desperation. Even so you have done us the honour of volunteering your account, so let me reciprocate. I was at various times at Crockford’s, Claridges and the Golden Cock, Clock, the Old Clock in Golden Square, not the Coq d’Or.
CHAMBERLAIN: I was at the Crock of Gold, Selfridges and the
Green Cockatoo.
MCTEAZLE: I was at the Cockatoo, too, and the Charing Cross,
the Open Door, the Golden Ox and the Cuckoo Clock.
WITHENSHAW: I was at the Cross Cook, the Fighting Cocks, the Green Door, the Crooked Grin and the Golden Carriages. (What is happening is difficult to explain but probably quite easy to recognize: the four of them have instinctively joined in an obscuration, each for his own defence. By the time the CHAIRMAN speaks they have all begun to send FRENCH up.)
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: I forgot—I was at the Golden Carriages as well as Claridges, and the Odd Sock and the Cocked Hat.
WITHENSHAW: I didn’t see you at the Cocked Hat—I went on to the Cox and Box.
MCTEAZLE: I was at the Cox and Box, and the Cooks Door, the Old Chest, the Dorchester, the Chesty Cook and—er—Luigi’s.
MCTEAZLE: At King’s Cross.
CHAMBERLAIN: I was at King’s Cross; in the Cross Keys and the Coal Hole, the Golden Goose, the Coloured Coat and the Côte d’Azur.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: I was at the Côte d’Azur——
WITHENSHAW: SO was I.
MRS. EBURY: I was at the Coq d’Or.
CHAMBERLAIN (incautiously): I was at the Coq d’Or too.
(Short pause but everybody comes to his rescue.)
MCTEAZLE: So was I.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: The Coq d’Or, oh yes, I was at the Coq d’Or.
WITHENSHAW: I saw you there—I was there with a voluptuous young woman.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Good heavens, I hope you didn’t see me with mine.
CHAMBERLAIN: Fantastic woman I took there—titian hair, green
eyes, dress cut down to here.
MCTEAZLE: We held hands under the table—(with a crude gesture)
voluptuous, you’ve no idea.
WITHENSHAW: Don’t talk to me about voluptuous—mine was titian like two Botticellis fighting their way out of a hammock.
(During the above speech FRENCH is becoming increasingly agitated, and MADDIE increasingly angry. She gets out her copy of the Sun and opens it to the centre page spread.)
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Wonderful figure of a woman——
FRENCH (shouts): One of you is telling the truth! Where’s the Mail!
(MADDIE gets up and crosses to FRENCH, holding the Sun. MADDIE slams the Sun down on the table in front of FRENCH, open at the centre page spread and stands back to await his reaction.)
WITHENSHAW: That’s the Sun.
(FRENCH does an enormous double-take at the pin-up.)
FRENCH (shrieks): Aagh!—it’s you!!
MADDIE: Yes.
(FRENCH grabs MADDIE by the back of the blouse as she moves to go back to her desk; buttons pop and fly leaving FRENCH holding her blouse and MADDIE in her bra.)
ALL (looking at MADDIE): Strewth!
(MADDIE walks to her seat, taps her pencil on the desk.)
MADDIE (reading): Paragraph 6.
FRENCH: Maddie Takes It Down!
’Madeleine Gotobed, twenty-one, is a model secretary in Whitehall where she says her ambition is to be Permanent Under Secretary. Meanwhile, titian-haired, green-eyed Maddie loves being taken out, but says the men tend to look down on a figure like hers—whenever they get the chance!’—disgusting—‘Matching bra and suspender belt, Fenwicks £5.35. French knickers, Janet Reger £8.95.’ (To MADDIE.) You were in the Coq d’Or! (The Division Bell goes off.)
MADDIE: I was in the Coq d’Or, the Golden Ox, Box Hill,
Claridges and Crockford’s——
WITHENSHAW: Division bell, Mr. French.
MADDIE:—and the Charing Cross, the Dorchester, the Green Cockatoo, Selfridges and the Salt Beef Bar in Rupert Street with Deborah and Douglas and Cockie and Jock.
(MADDIE has pointed to these four. Pause— WITHENSHAW looks relieved.)
And with Malcolm in the Metropole——
(The Committee’s next words are just rattled off underneath MADDIE’s speech which continues without pause.)
WITHENSHAW: Move to adjourn.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Second.
WITHENSHAW: All in favour.
ALL (except FRENCH): Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Meeting adjourned for ten minutes.
(The Committee hurriedly shuffle a few pieces of paper together, leaving all the newspapers behind, and arrange themselves to make their exits in a body, ignoring MADDIE, who chants on.)
MADDIE (continuing until all but FRENCH have left):… and in the Mandarin, the Mirabelle and the Star of Asia in the Goldhawk Road. I was with Freddie and Reggie and Algy and Bongo and Arthur and Cyril and Tom and Ernest and Bob and the other Bob and Pongo at the Ritz and the Red Lion, the Lobster Pot and Simpson’s in the Strand—I was at the Poule au Pot and the Coq au Vin and the Côte d’Azur and Foo Luk Fok and the Grosvenor House and Luigi’s and Lacy’s and the Light of India with Johnny and Jackie and Jerry and Joseph and Jimmy, and in the Berkeley, Biancis, Blooms and Muldoons with Micky and Michael and Mike and Michelle—I was in the Connaught with William and in the Westbury with Corkie and in the Churchill with Chalky. I was at the Duke of York, the Duke of Clarence and the Old Duke and the King Charles and the Three Kings and the Kings Arms and the Army and Navy Salad Bar with Tony and Derek and Bertie and Plantagenet and Bingo.
(During the above speech the Committee all exit through the wrong door, return and re-exit. The door closes, leaving only FRENCH with MADDIE.)
(Yells after them.) And I wouldn’t have bothered if I’d known it was supposed to be a secret—who needs it? (Normal voice.) I sometimes wonder if it’s worthwhile trying to teach people, don’t you Mr. French?
FRENCH: Miss Gotobed, this is going to teach them a lesson they’ll never forget.
MADDIE: I hope so.
FRENCH: I have to go and vote. Please be here in about ten minutes. (He approaches her with the blouse still in hand.)
MADDIE: Excuse me … (She takes the blouse.) … Somebody’s coming.
(At this moment a loud voice is heard approaching.) Could you show me the ladies cloakroom.
(She grabs the rest of her clothes and her handbag. FRENCH takes her coat from the rack and puts it over her shoulders and opens the door, MADDIE exits, FRENCH follows. As soon as the door closes, the other opens and two men enter—but they are in another play.)