JULIAN, GEMMA
JULIAN:
Right, let's do this guest list. It's not every day we invite people to a shooting party. Which is just as well since the servants need a day off at least once a month.
GEMMA:
Once a fortnight.
JULIAN:
When did that happen? You leave the country for a few months to help some Old School chums overthrow a government, then come back and find there's been a social revolution!
GEMMA:
Times change, we change with them, Julian. You'll notice you're now an executive director at Lloyds and Barclays?
JULIAN:
Yes, I was going to ask you about that -
GEMMA:
(INTERR.) And you weren't before you left to join Mark and Simon in the attempted coup, were you?
JULIAN:
Now that you mention it … good thinking, Gemma. I assume you just had to put my name forward for rubber-stamping by the Old Boys Network?
GEMMA:
(LAUGHS) Nothing that formal, sweetie, things are a lot more streamlined now! I phoned Horace at Finance International and he sorted it for me. We're going to his god-daughter's christening next week, by the way, and if you want a job in the EU Regulatory Commission he can fill you in on the details then.
JULIAN:
Whoa, hang on, girl, I've already got two jobs – how much time will these others take up?
GEMMA:
Let me talk you though it. First, I'll job-share with you as Chief Exec of the NHS Trust –
JULIAN:
(INTERR.) But don't you have to have - ?
GEMMA:
(INTERR.) I went to A & E when I was eighteen to have my stomach pumped, so that gives me relevant hospital experience.
JULIAN:
It's so obvious when you put it like that. So, how much Chief Exec time, if we split it?
GEMMA:
About five hours a week each. And your other job: as Head of Quality Control for the Prime Minister's Office, you need to go a meeting every two months. Emma's nearly nine now, she can deal with the messages and the other stuff in between her riding lessons -
JULIAN:
(INTERR.) Yes, that's all simple enough.
GEMMA:
And we can give her a bit of extra pocket money.
JULIAN:
But I must be careful not to overdo it – the GP said work-life balance was vital for my health – so I need an income of at least four million a year plus fifteen hours of golf a week. The Bank jobs sound a doddle -
GEMMA:
(INTERR.) I've done the maths: Lloyds and Barclays directorships, four hours a week -
JULIAN:
(INTERR.) Each!?
GEMMA:
Don't be silly! Four hours a week in total.
JULIAN:
But the Europe one – wouldn't I have to go to Berlin or somewhere just as foreign?
GEMMA:
You'll need to go to Brussels three times a year, for a few days. We can make them family freebies. If Emma struggles with the EU correspondence we can get her little friends, Misha and Jon, to help out – and, any translation issues, their parents have got some Latvian and Romanian orphans -
JULIAN:
(INTERR.) Who are probably bi-lingual by now, so they could work as assistants.
GEMMA:
Exactly! Fifty pence an hour would be a fortune to them.
JULIAN:
Sounds good; if I can keep my workload to ten or so hours a week it's do-able, as far as I'm concerned.
GEMMA:
You always were a go-getter, darling. Though now you're more of a stayer at home and let them deliver the money to me -
JULIAN:
(INTERR.) In wheelbarrows!
GEMMA:
If they can find ones that are big enough. Maybe, when you make EU commissioner for Trade and Competition you can pass a regulation so there's a minimum size of wheelbarrow that has to be used -
JULIAN:
(INTERR.) For personal delivery of dosh to Officials only!
GEMMA:
Why not? As long as the neighbours are paid off and we keep the surveillance on them I can't see any downside.
JULIAN:
Good work, wifey. I realise now what your mother was on about when she said you would be an asset to my career. So, what about this guest list for the shoot?
GEMMA:
Why don't we leave it to the butler? He can always check points of etiquette with Emma, like who's sleeping with who -
JULIAN:
(INTERR.) Whom! With whom! Remember, darling, syntactus, syntactus.
GEMMA:
Commander of the seventh legion? How could I forget? Oh, wait, I just have: he was the leader of the Roman senate, wasn't he?
JULIAN:
Yes and no. Yes he might have been, and no, he wasn't either of them. But I agree about giving Emma a bit of responsibility: she's sharp, and can bluff her way through when she doesn't know crucial things.
GEMMA:
Such a tragically competitive world our little duckling's going into, isn't it? How did that ever come about?
JULIAN:
Can't think, Gemma.
Seriously, I can't think – never could.
GEMMA:
But you didn't need to, that's why one has servants. Poor Emma's only got the start in life we've given her plus an annual income of fifty thou from her sixteenth birthday, and the trust fund which she won't get till she's twenty one – have we been too hard on her?
JULIAN:
It might seem harsh, old girl, but she's got to get used to that cruel world out there once she leaves the nest. At the moment it looks as if she'll be able to take only two of the footmen to University with her -
GEMMA:
Julian! We're not that badly off, are we? Have our shares crashed? Or is it that damned tax bill? What's the point of paying expensive criminal accountants if they can't keep the Inland Revenue off our backs?
JULIAN:
No, nothing to do with that – it's just that Cambridge limits the personal security detail to a maximum of two. Except for the major Royals.
GEMMA:
Hah! That's their idea of social justice? And some people say privilege is dead and we're all equal now – what sort of world do they live in!?
END
A LITTLE LIGHT PHILOSOPHY
APRIL 1788, A SALON IN NORTH LONDON.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, ERASMUS DARWIN AND WILLIAM GODWIN ARE IN CONVERSATION.
WINE IS BEING SERVED.
MARY: Do you believe posterity will applaud your evolution theories, Erasmus?
ERASMUS: Posterity be damned! What's it ever done for me? - but they'll take that quip and use it, without attribution, I predict.
WILLIAM: They say you speak of the common ancestry of animals and insects.
ERASMUS: And plants. Let's not forget the infernal plants. But they say all kinds of trash. That's why they're jive-talking common people.
MARY: Yet don't some of your learned colleagues share these opinions?
ERASMUS: You may have noticed that the most evolved of my so-called colleagues are pond life, some of the others are unicellular life forms, and most of the rest are clergymen, who should spend their miserable lives in the stocks. Or under rocks. Trapped in a box. Secured by locks. Or darning their socks. Harassed by a fox. Riddled with pox. Subject to shocks.
WILLIAM: Well, it's a point of view.
ERASMUS: A point of view! You liberal pinko plant-eating buffoon, it's my considered judgement! 'Point of view' be buggered!
MARY: But aren't we all plant-eaters?
ERASMUS: Exactly – we're all ancestor-eating savages and, one could argue – well I could, to be picky – cannibals. So where is the moral superiority here? Answer me that, philosopher! (MARY AND WILLIAM OPEN THEIR MOUTHS TO SPEAK) The question was rhetorical: let me give you the answer. The superiority of intellect! If there is to be a way forward for our race, or species, we must allow the most intellectually endowed to be the guides.
WILLIAM: Who is 'we'?
MARY: Society, William. Social tendencies, if you prefer.
WILLIAM: Society is sluggish and not to be trusted. Oh, sorry, that's me. As for social tendencies - where do you find these words, Mary?
MARY: If you had the soul of a poet you wouldn't ask these things.
WILLIAM: If I had the soul of a poet I'd sell it back to the poet - unless it was Sam Coleridge, then I'd just trade it for laudanum.
ERASMUS: (CHUCKLES) You're a despicable anarchist of a philosopher but at least you're honest!
MARY: Is it possible you're more of a fool than you look? This man is simply drunk. Tomorrow he'll contradict what he says tonight and not even realise it.
ERASMUS: Well, the female of the species now have their chance: I have spoken strongly for the education of women – are you worthy of such favour, Ms Wollstonecraft?
MARY: Let me see. You have stated that the blessed African, Augustine, agreed with your idea that species of life have been transformed slowly over time, not all created in their perfect forms?
ERASMUS: So much is obvious to the meanest intelligence.
MARY: And he also said that mathematicians may have made a pact with the devil 'to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell'?
ERASMUS: Bit of a lad, wasn't he?
MARY: Yet he doesn't claim that women are imprisoned in the same way.
WILLIAM: Your point is well-made but spurious. He obviously couldn't conceive of women being mathematicians.
MARY: Even though his contemporary, Hypatia, was the most celebrated astronomer and mathematician in North Africa?
WILLIAM: That's not fair. You're confusing the issue by bringing in facts.
MARY: There are many things in life that aren't fair – midge bites; nasal hair; capitalism.
WILLIAM: Let's make peace: if you've got views on this and so have I, that must mean, ipso facto, we're both right.
ERASMUS: Good work, William: clearly, The Scientific Revolution Starts Here. With a mind as sharp as yours you'll have calculated the exact number of angels dancing on the average pinhead.
WILLIAM: Help me out here, you must have come across this in the Lunar Society: the problem with serious enquiry and debate is that people who can think, and speak intelligently, have a huge advantage over those of us who are stupid or can't be bothered – I mean, where's the fairness in that? What happens to equality all of a sudden?
ERASMUS: I am so pleased to tell you: you're on your own in this one.
WILLIAM: But if what your theory is asserting is that fish are good at fishing, aardvarks are good at . . aarding, climbers are good at, um, mountains . . ?
MARY: He's close, isn't he Erasmus?
ERASMUS: I've no desire to burden you with details – I feel my grandson will naturally select the right form of words for this. Meantime, I suggest we drink up and cover our tracks.
MARY: (TO ERASMUS) If you hear that my companion here has been foully done to death on his way home tonight you may wish to believe that I had a hand - or two - in it. Publicly, of course, I'll deny all knowledge. There's no celebrating of mystery in science but it can still animate life and enthral a courtroom.
ERASMUS: You'll probably find that it animates the mob, enthrals the lawyer and enhances the fee, but good luck in whatever you decide to do. Remember: utilitarianism.
WILLIAM: Well I don't think either of you is being very 'evolved' about this. Or do I mean enlightened?
Bugger, my brain hurts.
MARY: I feel your pain. Figuratively speaking. Unfortunately, I really feel my own. Who said sentience - or, more specifically, proprioception, as it will come to be called - was an unmixed blessing? (PAUSE) This gives me an idea for a monstrosity – a jumbled-up creature created by Man . . I wonder if a daughter of mine might be interested in such a notion . . ?
END
