Separate Tables

by Terence Rattigan

  JEAN (hotly). I don’t agree at all. I feel disgusted at what he’s done too, but I think I’m quite right to feel disgusted. I don’t consider myself prejudiced at all, and I think that people who behave like that are a public menace and deserve anything they get.

  CHARLES. Your vehemence is highly suspect. I must have you psycho-analysed.

  JEAN. It’s absolutely logical, Charles. Supposing your son –

  CHARLES. I know. I know. Supposing in twenty or thirty years’ time some Major Pollock on an esplanade asks him for a light –

  JEAN. Exactly (He laughs.) It’s not funny, Charles. How would you feel –

  CHARLES. I hope he’d give him one and hop it. If he doesn’t it’ll be his look out.

  JEAN. Charles, I think that’s absolutely monstrous [ – ]

  Table Number Seven, Scene One

  MISS MEACHAM. Why should I? I’ve been out of the world for far longer than any of you and what do I know about morals and ethics? Only what I read in novels, and as I only read thrillers, that isn’t worth much. In Peter Cheyney the hero does far worse things than the Major’s done – and nobody seems to mind.

  MRS. RAILTON-BELL. I hardly think it’s the point what Peter Cheyney’s heroes do, Miss Meacham. We want your views on Major Pollock.

  Terence Rattigan

  Born in 1911, a scholar at Harrow and at Trinity College, Oxford, Terence Rattigan had his first long-running hit in the West End at the age of twenty-five: French Without Tears (1936). His next play, After the Dance (1939), opened to euphoric reviews yet closed under the gathering clouds of war, but with Flare Path (1942) Rattigan embarked on an almost unbroken series of successes, with most plays running in the West End for at least a year and several making the transition to Broadway: While the Sun Shines (1943), Love in Idleness (1944), The Winslow Boy (1946), The Browning Version (performed in double-bill with Harlequinade, 1948), Who is Sylvia? (1950), The Deep Blue Sea (1952), The Sleeping Prince (1953) and Separate Tables (1954). From the mid-fifties, with the advent of the ‘Angry Young Men’, he enjoyed less success on stage, though Ross (1960) and In Praise of Love (1973) were well received. As well as seeing many of his plays turned into successful films, Rattigan wrote a number of original plays for television from the fifties onwards. He was knighted in 1971 and died in 1977.

  A Nick Hern Book

  This edition of Separate Tables first published as a paperback original in Great Britain in 1999 by Nick Hern Books, The Glasshouse, 49a Goldhawk Road, London W12 8QP by arrangment with Methuen. Separate Tables was included in Volume Three of The Collected Plays of Terence Rattigan published in 1964 by Hamish Hamilton

  This ebook edition first published in 2014

  Copyright © Trustees of the Terence Rattigan Trust 1964

  Introduction copyright © Dan Rebellato 1999

  Front cover photo copyright © Hulton Deutsch Collection

  Typeset by Country Setting. Kingsdown, Kent CT14 8ES

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 78001 359 6 (ebook edition)

  ISBN 978 1 85459 424 2 (print edition)

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  All rights whatsoever in these plays are strictly reserved. Requests to reproduce the plays in whole or in part should be addressed to Nick Hern Books, The Glasshouse, 49a Goldhawk Road, London W12 8QP, tel 44 (0) 20 8749 4953, e-mail info@nickhernbooks.co.uk.

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