The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays (15 page)

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.