Separate Tables

Terence Rattigan

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781780013596
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Two linked one-act plays set in a run-down residential hotel in Bournemouth.

In the first of the plays, Table by the Window, a lonely divorcee tracks down her former husband in order to resume a kind of half-life with him. In the other, Table Number Seven, a repressed young spinster offers brave moral support to a fake major accused of importuning women in a local cinema.

Terence Rattigan's play Separate Tables was first produced at the St. James's Theatre, London, in September 1954.

In an alternative version, only recently discovered among Rattigan's papers, the major's offence was revealed to be homosexual; these 'alternative' scenes are published here for the first time.

This edition, edited and introduced by Dan Rebellato, includes a biographical sketch and chronology.

'Few dramatists of this century have written with more understanding of the human heart than Terence Rattigan' Michael Billington

TABLE BY THE WINDOW

Characters

in order of speaking

MABEL

LADY MATHESON

MRS. RAILTON-BELL

MISS MEACHAM

DOREEN

MR. FOWLER

MRS. SHANKLAND

MISS COOPER

MR. MALCOLM

CHARLES STRATTON

JEAN TANNER

Time: Winter.

Scene One: Dining-Room. Dinner.

Scene Two: Lounge. After Dinner.

Scene Three: Dining-Room. Breakfast.

Scene One

Scene: the dining-room of the Beauregard Private Hotel, near Bournemouth. It is small, rather bare and quite unpretentious. A door at back leads into the lounge, a swing door upstage right into the kitchen, and another downstage right into the hall and the rest of the hotel. Windows, left, are curtained at the moment, for it is a winter evening, about seven o’clock, and the guests are at dinner.

Each sits at a small separate table, except for a young couple, CHARLES STRATTON and JEAN TANNER, who, as mere transients, occupy a table together in a corner of the room, not garnished, as are the other tables, with the bottles of medicine and favourite pickles and other idiosyncratic personal accessories of the permanent residents. Surprisingly, for they are an attractive-looking pair, CHARLES and JEAN are paying no attention to each other at all, and each is avidly reading a book propped up on the flower vase between them.

Prominently placed, and indeed a rather prominent-looking person altogether, is MRS. RAILTON-BELL. All the ladies (except JEAN who wears slacks) always change ‘into something’ for dinner, but MRS. RAILTON-BELL always changes into something much grander than the others. All the ladies (except JEAN) wear fur stoles, but MRS. RAILTON-BELL wears silver foxes. All the ladies (except JEAN) wear some small items of jewellery, but MRS. RAILTON-BELL’s are far less small than the others.

MISS MEACHAM sits near her, reading (very close to her unspectacled eyes) a copy of ‘Racing Up To Date’. Although much the same age as MRS. RAILTON-BELL (about sixty-five) she is dressed in a far more sprightly fashion, but has not succeeded in looking any younger.

LADY MATHESON, a Civil Servant’s widow, living on an annuity and therefore the poorest of all the residents, sits close by, a grey-faced, mousy, impeccably dressed woman, rather younger than the other two. MR. FOWLER, ex-public-school master, quiet and impassive-looking, sits further away.

The table by the window is unoccupied – as is another towards the centre of the room and close to MRS. RAILTON-BELL.

Two waitresses, one middle-aged (MABEL) the other young (DOREEN), serve the various tables. MABEL is taciturn, gloomy and dependable. DOREEN is flighty, talkative and undependable. At the moment only MABEL is visible. She is serving LADY MATHESON.

MABEL. Were you medaillon or goulash?

LADY MATHESON (correctly accenting). Medaillon.

MABEL. Sorry. I thought you were goulash.

She stumps with the unwanted goulash to the kitchen door.

LADY MATHESON. It was probably my fault.

MABEL (gloomily). I dare say.

She passes on to MISS MEACHAM.

Now, you were goulash, weren’t you, Miss Meacham?

MISS MEACHAM (deep in her book). What? Oh yes, Mabel. Thank you.

MABEL (serving her). And what to follow – the mousse angelic, or the turnover?

MISS MEACHAM. Which do you think?

MABEL. Turnover.

MISS MEACHAM. Turnover, then.

MABEL drifts away.

MRS. RAILTON-BELL. I think cook’s acquiring a little lighter touch with her pastry, don’t you think?

MISS MEACHAM. Not judging by the tarts we had at tea yesterday. Cannon-balls.

MRS. RAILTON-BELL. Did you think so? I quite liked them. I much preferred them to those pink cakes on Tuesday.

MISS MEACHAM. I didn’t mind the pink cakes. The tarts gave me the collywobbles. I had the most terrible dreams.

MRS. RAILTON-BELL (with a faint smile). I thought you were always having dreams.

MISS MEACHAM. Oh, these weren’t my proper dreams. Not the ones I make myself dream. These were just horrible, pointless nightmares. Cosh boys and things. (After a slight pause.) I talked to Louis XV on Thursday night.

MRS. RAILTON-BELL (plainly humouring her). Did you indeed, dear?

MISS MEACHAM. The goulash’s rather good. I think you made a mistake.

She goes back to her book. There is a silence for a few moments while MISS MEACHAM peruses her ‘Racing Up To Date’ with myopic concentration.

MRS. RAILTON-BELL. Think you’ve found a winner for tomorrow, Miss Meacham?

MISS MEACHAM. Well, according to this form book, Marston Lad is worth a bob or two each way.

MRS. RAILTON-BELL. I never bet nowadays. (After a meditative pause.) When my husband was alive he used sometimes to put as much as five pounds on a horse for me.

MISS MEACHAM (looking up). I used to bet in ponies when my father was alive, and I had an allowance.

She goes back to her ‘Racing Up To Date’.

MRS. RAILTON-BELL (suddenly irritable). Why don’t you get spectacles?

MISS MEACHAM lowers her book.

MISS MEACHAM. Because I don’t need them.

She goes back to her book again. DOREEN, the other waitress, has come in and is now hovering over MR. FOWLER.

DOREEN. Sorry, Mr. Fowler, the goulash’s off.

MR. FOWLER looks up abstractedly.

MR. FOWLER. What? Oh. What about the cold pie?

DOREEN. I shouldn’t have that, if I were you. I saw what went into it. If I were you I’d have the tongue –

MR. FOWLER. All right. Whatever you say.

DOREEN disappears into the kitchen.

MRS. RAILTON-BELL (to LADY MATHESON, meaningly). She won’t last.

LADY MATHESON. I’m afraid not.

MRS. RAILTON-BELL. Still, it’s disgraceful that the goulash’s off, and two people not even in yet.

LADY MATHESON. I know.

MRS. RAILTON-BELL. Of course Mr. Malcolm’s never on time, (She indicates the table by the window.) and really deserves it. (In another confidential whisper.) Anyway, after those long sessions at the Feathers I often wonder if he ever really knows what he’s eating. But the new lady (She indicates the other unoccupied table.) – I mean, my dear, what will she think?

LADY MATHESON. I saw her arrive.

MRS. RAILTON-BELL. Did you?

LADY MATHESON. Did you?

MRS. RAILTON-BELL (slightly annoyed). I was in the lounge, but I didn’t – excuse me – think it quite the thing to peer out of the window at her –

LADY MATHESON (firmly). I happened to be in the hall.

MISS MEACHAM. I met her on the stairs.

MRS. RAILTON-BELL. Really, dear?

MISS MEACHAM (still absorbed in her book). She’s called Mrs. Shankland. She comes from London, she arrived by train, she has four suitcases and a hatbox and she’s staying two weeks.

MRS. RAILTON-BELL (unwillingly impressed). Four suitcases?

MISS ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction to Terence Rattigan
• Introduction to Separate Tables
• List of Rattigan’s Produced Plays
• Dedication and Editor’s Note
• Original Production
• Table by the Window
• Table Number Seven
• Textual Variants
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information