Plays Political

by Dan Laurence

  SIR ARTHUR. Pooh! I am not going to your retreat.

  THE LADY [steadfastly] I think you are.

  SIR ARTHUR. I give you up. You are factproof. I am lazy; I am idle; and I am breaking down from overwork. How logical!

  THE LADY. All the idlest and laziest of my patients slave from morning to midnight trifling and tittle-tattling about great things. To a retreat, Sir Arthur: get thee to a retreat. I am never mistaken in my diagnosis. I shall telephone to ask whether my number one suite, with private bath and meditation parlor, is vacant.

  SIR ARTHUR. No: I wont be rushed. Do you hear? I wont be rushed. [She is quite unshaken; and he proceeds, much less resolutely] Of course I shall have to go somewhere for a rest; and if you could really recommend it as a bracing place—

  THE LADY. Bracing? What for?

  SIR ARTHUR. Well, bracing, you know. Bracing.

  THE LADY. Curious, how idle people are always clamouring to be braced! Like trousers.

  SIR ARTHUR. Idle people! How you stick to your point! And what a humbug you are! Dont think you can impose on me with your meditation parlor and your dignified airs: I do that sort of thing myself occasionally; and you know it’s no use giving tracts to a missionary. But I feel somehow that you are good for me. You are a dear delightful bighearted wrongheaded half-educated crazyboots; but a woman may be all that and yet have the right instinct as to how to flirt intellectually with a tired thinker. Will you promise to talk to me if I come?

  THE LADY. I will even let you talk to me. I guarantee that in a fortnight you will begin to think before you talk. Your dead mind will come to life. I shall make a man of you. Goodbye. [She goes out quickly through the main door].

  SIR ARTHUR [calling after her gaily] Ha ha! Incorrigible, incorrigible. [He takes her card from the table, and contemplates it]. Oh! I forgot to ask her how much a week she wants for that meditation parlor. [He looks tragic].

  HILDA [emerging from her office] Anything the matter, Sir Arthur?

  SIR ARTHUR. I am going into a retreat. Because my brain is underworked. Do you grasp that idea? Have you ever heard of a retreat for the mentally underworked?

  HILDA. There is a very nice one at Sevenoaks that my aunt was sent to. But that is for inebriates.

  SIR ARTHUR. The one I’m going to is for the mentally underworked, the thoughtless and brainless, the inveterately lazy and frivolous. Yes; the frivolous: your ears do not deceive you.

  HILDA [going to her desk] Oh, well, theyll amuse you: you always get on well with people of that sort. Shall I pack your usual holiday books? some detective stories and Wordsworth?

  SIR ARTHUR. No. You will procure all the books you can find by a revolutionary German Jew named Harry Marks—

  HILDA. Dont you mean Karl Marx?

  SIR ARTHUR. Thats the man. Karl Marx. Get me every blessed book by Karl Marx that you can find translated into English; and have them packed for the retreat.

  HILDA. There are much newer books by Marxists: Lenin and Trotsky and Stalin and people like that.

  SIR ARTHUR. Get them all. Pack the lot. By George, I’ll teach Alderwoman Aloysia Brollikins to give herself airs. I’ll teach her and her rabble of half-baked half-educated intellectual beggars-on-horseback that any Oxford man can beat them at their own silly game. I’ll just turn Karl Marx inside-out for them. [The household gong sounds]. Lunch! Come on: that woman’s given me an appetite. [He goes out impetuously through the masked door].

  HILDA [rushing after him] No, no, Sir Arthur: the Church House! the Church House! youve forgotten that you have to lunch at [her voice is lost in the distance].

  [ ACT II ]

  * * *

  The same scene on the 10th November at 9.30 in the morning. There is a generous fire in the grate; and the visitors wear winter clothes. Basham is on the hearthrug, warming his back and reading The Daily Herald.

  * * *

  BASHAM [amazed by what he reads] Gosh! [He reads further] Wh-e-e-ew!! [He reads still further] Well I’ll be dashed!!!

  Hilda enters through the main door, and announces an explosive elderly gentleman, evidently a person of consequence, who follows her.

  HILDA. Sir Dexter Rightside.

  SIR DEXTER [joining Basham on the hearth] Ah! That you, Basham? Have you come to arrest him?

  BASHAM. You may well ask. He isnt up yet. Miss Hanways: is there any sign of his getting a move on?

  HILDA [much worried] Lady Chavender wont allow him to be disturbed. She says his speech last night at the Guildhall banquet quite tired him out. People have been ringing up and calling all the morning; but she just puts her back to his door and says that anyone who makes noise enough to waken him leaves her service that minute.

  SIR DEXTER. Nonsense! He must see me. Does Lady Chavender suppose that a Prime Minister can stand the country on its head without a word of warning to his colleagues and then go to bed as if he was tired out by a day’s fishing?

  SIR DEXTER. Basham: go and break open his bedroom door.

  HILDA [desperate] Well, what can I do, Sir Dexter? [She goes to her bureau].

  BASHAM. I cant. I’m a policeman: I mustnt do it without a warrant. Go and do it yourself.

  SIR DEXTER. I have a devilish good mind to. Can you conceive anything more monstrous, Basham? [He sits down in the chair next the end chair]. But I said that this would happen. I said so. When we made this damned coalition that they call a National Government I was entitled to the Prime Ministership. I was the Leader of the Conservative Party. I had an enormous majority in the country: the election proved that we could have done quite well without Chavender. But I had to give way. He humbugged us. He pretended that without his old guard of Liberals and his ragtag and bobtail of Labor men and Socialists and lawyers and journalists-on-the-make and used-up trade union secretaries, and all the rest of the democratic dregs of human society, we couldnt be sure of a majority. His golden voice was to do the trick. He was the popular man, the safe man: I was the unpopular Die Hard who couldnt be trusted to keep my temper. So I stood down. I sacrificed myself. I took the Foreign Secretaryship. Well, what price your safe man now? How do you like your Bolshy Premier? Who was right? the funkers and compromisers or the old Die Hard?

  BASHAM. It’s amazing. I could have sworn that if there was a safe man in England that could be trusted to talk and say nothing, to thump the table and do nothing, Arthur Chavender was that man. Whats happened to him? What does it mean? Did he go mad at the sanatorium, do you think? Or was he mad before that woman took him there?

  SIR DEXTER. Mad! Not a bit of it. But you had better look up that woman’s record: there may be money from Moscow behind this.

  BASHAM. Arthur take money! Thats going too far.

  SIR DEXTER. The woman took the money. It would be waste of money to bribe Chavender: you could always trust him to say whatever he thought would please his audience without being paid for it: damned mountebank.

  BASHAM. But he didnt try to please his audience at the Guildhall. They wanted some of his best soothing syrup about law and order after the attack on the Lord Mayor’s Show in the afternoon by the unemployed; but according to The Daily Herald here he gave them a dose of boiling Socialism instead.

  SIR DEXTER [nervously] By the way, Basham, I hope you have the unemployed well in hand today.

  BASHAM. Quiet as lambs. Theyre all reading the papers. New editions every half-hour. Like 1914 over again.

  Sir Arthur’s voice is heard, singing scales. Hilda looks in.

  HILDA. I think I hear Sir Arthur singing. He must have got up.

  SIR DEXTER. Singing! Is this a moment for minstrelsy ?

  HILDA. He always sings scales after his bath [she vanishes].

  After a final burst of solfeggi the masked door is opened vigorously and Chavender enters beaming.

  SIR ARTHUR. Ah, here you are, Dexy [he proffers his hand].

  SIR DEXTER [like a baited bull] Dont attempt to shake hands with me. Dont dare call me Dexy.

  SIR ARTHUR. What on earth’
s the matter? Got out at the wrong side of the bed this morning, eh? Frightfully sorry to have kept you waiting, Basham. Whats wrong with the Foreign Secretary this time?

  SIR DEXTER. This time! What do you mean by this time?

  SIR ARTHUR. Well theres nothing very novel about your turning up before breakfast in a blazing rage, is there? What is it, Basham?

  BASHAM. Oh come, P.M.! If you were too drunk last night at the Guildhall to know what you were saying, youd better read the papers [he offers his paper].

  SIR ARTHUR [keeping his hands behind his back to warm them] I remember perfectly well what I said last night. And I drank nothing but barley water.

  BASHAM [insisting] But look at it man. [Quoting the headlines] New program for winter session. Nationalization of ground rents. Nationalization of banks. Nationalization of collieries. Nationalization of transport.

  SIR DEXTER [moaning] Nationalization of women. Why omit it? Why omit it?

  BASHAM. No: nothing about women. Municipalization of urban land and the building trade, and consequent extinction of rates.

  SIR DEXTER. Apostate!

  BASHAM. No: nothing about the Church. Abolition of tariffs and substitution of total prohibition of private foreign trade in protected industries. State imports only, to be sold at State regulated prices.

  SIR DEXTER. Rot! Incomprehensible and unheard-of rot.

  BASHAM. Compulsory public service for all, irrespective of income, as in war time.

  SIR DEXTER. Slavery. Call it by its proper name. Slavery.

  BASHAM. Restoration of agriculture. Collective farming. Nationalization of fertilizer industries. Nitrogen from the air. Power from the tides. Britain self-supporting and blockade proof.

  SIR DEXTER. Madness. Ruin to our foreign trade.

  BASHAM. Ruthless extinction of parasitism.

  SIR DEXTER. You dont even know the present law. You have the Verminous Persons Act. What more do you want?

  BASHAM. Doubling of the surtax on unearned incomes.

  SIR DEXTER. Yes: take our last penny! And when the little that the present ruinous taxation has left us is gone; when we have closed our accounts with the last tradesman and turned the last servant into the streets, where are they to find employment? Who is to pay their wages? What is to become of religion when nobody can afford pewrents or a penny to put in the plate? Even sport will not be safe: our breed of horses will be doomed; our packs of hounds sold or slaughtered; and our masters of hounds will be caddies on motor bicycles. That is to be England’s future!

  SIR ARTHUR. But is that all the papers have reported?

  SIR DEXTER. All!!!

  BASHAM. Oh come! All! Isnt: that about enough?

  SIR ARTHUR. But have they said nothing about our promise to restore the cuts made in the pay of the army and navy and police?

  SIR DEXTER. Our promise! Whose promise?

  BASHAM [interested] What was that you said? Are you going to put my men’s wages up to the old figure?

  SIR ARTHUR. We shall give you another five thousand men; pay the old wages with a rise of ten per cent; and double your salary.

  BASHAM. Whew! That alters the case a bit.

  SIR DEXTER [rising] Basham: you are not going to allow yourself to be corrupted like this! Are you such a dupe as to imagine that free Englishmen will tolerate such a monstrous waste of public money?

  BASHAM. If I have another five thousand men and a rise on the old wages, I’ll answer for the free Englishmen. If they dont like it they can lump it.

  SIR DEXTER. You really believe he can keep all the monstrous promises he has made?

  BASHAM. No: of course he cant. But he can keep this one. He can raise the pay of the ranks and double my salary; and that is all that concerns me. I’m a policeman, not a politician.

  SIR DEXTER. Youre a mercenary gangster and a damned fool: thats what you are. [He flings himself into the end chair].

  BASHAM [calmly] You seem ruffled, Sir Dexter.

  Before Sir Dexter can reply, Hilda returns and announces a new visitor.

  HILDA. Admiral Sir Bemrose Hotspot. [She goes out].

  Sir Bemrose is a halfwitted admiral; but the half that has not been sacrificed to his profession is sound and vigorous.

  SIR BEMROSE [in the breeziest spirits] Morning, Dexy. Morning, Basham. [Slapping Sir Arthur on the back] Splendid, Arthur! Never heard you in better form. Thats the stuff to give em. [They shake hands cordially].

  SIR DEXTER [sobered by his astonishment] Rosy: have you gone mad too? Have you forgotten that you are a Conservative, and that it was as a Conservative that you were made First Lord of the Admiralty, at my personal suggestion and insistence, in this so-called National Government, which now, thank Heaven, wont last one day after the next meeting of Parliament?

  SIR BEMROSE. Wont it, by Jove! It’s safe for the next five years. What the country wants is straight orders, discipline, character, pluck, a big navy, justice for the British sailor, no sham disarmaments, and absolute command of the sea. If that isnt Conservatism what is Conservatism? But mind, Arthur, I must have twelve new aeroplane-carrying battleships. I have my eye on Japan. And theres America. And, of course, Russia. SIR ARTHUR. You shall have them, Rosy. Twenty-four if you say the word.

  SIR BEMROSE. Good! Then I’ll answer for the House of Commons.

  SIR DEXTER. Dont be silly. What can you do with the House of Commons, except empty it whenever you get up to speak?

  SIR BEMROSE. I leave the speaking to Arthur: it’s his job, not mine. But if there it’s any further attempt to starve the navy it can give you a little surprise at Westminster. How will you feel when you see a submarine come to the surface off the terrace, and the commander sends in word that he gives you just five minutes before he torpedoes the whole damned Front Bench?

  SIR DEXTER. You are talking ridiculous nonsense. Do you suppose for a moment that the navy would be allowed to interfere in politics?

  SIR BEMROSE. Who’s to stop it? Where would Lenin and Stalin and Trotsky and all that Bolshy lot have been without the Baltic fleet and the Kronstadt sailors ? Do you suppose the British navy, with its discipline and its respectable Conservative commanders, couldnt do what these Communist scoundrels did?

  SIR DEXTER. How long would the British navy survive the abolition of property in this country? tell me that.

  SIR BEMROSE. Dont talk to the navy about property. We dont live by property: we live by service. [He takes the chair next to the presidential one, and pursues his personal grievance angrily]. You and your confounded property owners grudge us a clerk’s salary for commanding a battleship, and then dock a quarter off it for income tax. We cant set foot on shore without being rented and rated until we can hardly afford to educate our children. Thanks to Arthur, you are pledged now to give us our pay honestly free of income tax and make these lazy idle lubbers of landlords sweat for it. I call that the essence of Conservatism. Thats the way to dish these Labor chaps and Red flaggers and all the rest of the scum you have been pandering to ever since you gave them the vote. Give them whats good for them; and put their ballot papers behind the fire: thats what this country needs.

  SIR ARTHUR. You see, Dexy: we have the navy and the police on our side.

  SIR DEXTER. May I ask who are “we”?

  SIR ARTHUR. Why, the National Government, of course. You and I, Dexy: you and I.

  SIR DEXTER. It makes me sick to hear you couple my name with yours. It always did.

  HILDA [announcing] The President of the Board of Trade. Mr Glenmorison.

  Glenmorison is an easy mannered Scottish gentleman, distinctly the youngest of the party.

  SIR ARTHUR. Hallo, Sandy. Sit down. Lets all sit down and have it out.

  They settle themselves at the table with their backs to the fire, Sir Arthur in the middle, Glenmorison on his left, Sir Bemrose on his right, and Sir Dexter and Basham right and left respectively.

  GLENMORISON. Well, Sir Arthur, when you were letting yourself go so recklessly you might have said a word ab
out Home Rule for Scotland. We may as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb.

  SIR DEXTER. We! we! we! Who are. we? If you mean the Cabinet, it is not responsible for the Prime Minister’s frantic proceedings. He acted without consulting us. Do you suppose that if I had heard a word of this outburst of Bolshevism I should have consented to it?