In the Club

Richard Bean

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781840027570
• eBook ISBN: 9781849431408
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Hapless MEP Philip Wardrobe has a busy day ahead of him, balancing his less-than-irreproachable political career with his attempts to start a family.
As he prepares for his girlfriend to fly in from Kettering for an afternoon of fertile frolics, his plan to be voted President of the European Parliament is foiled at every turn by unpredictable colleagues: uncouth Yorkshiremen, irate Turks and amorous Frenchwomen… to say nothing of the mysterious man in the linen cupboard. In the Club opened at the Hampstead Theatre in July 2007.

Act Three

(One hour later. They’re all smoking. PHILIP is pacing with twiglets between his toes. He is half-dressed, i.e. bare feet, vest and suit trousers held up by braces. EDDIE’s half-drunk and opening another bottle. SASHA is ironing shirts. The iced water glass is set in the fridge.)

PHILIP: I’ve lost Nicola! I’m forty-six and there’s been a lot of women, and I’m not ashamed of that. I’m incredibly proud of it, actually, in a kind of immature adolescent sort of way, but she’s the only one I’ve ever really loved. I wish I understood women. I went to boarding school where Club International Magazine was our only source of information. I’ve still not recovered from the disappointment of realising that women don’t wear shoes in bed.

SASHA: (Holding Blackberry.) I’ve found her Blackberry. She’ll come back for this. She’s got a mobile, I’ll ring her.

PHILIP: No! Text her.

(SASHA texts.)

EDDIE: And when she comes back – propose. Marriage. Get down on one knee and do the right thing.

SASHA: Did you get down on one knee to propose Eddie?

EDDIE: I’d already been on me knees for twennie minutes. Worst case of carpet burns I’d ever had. Stop sulking! At the end of the day, when all’s said and done, what’s happened? Yer’ve accidentally fucked the wrong woman. It’s easily done. At least you haven’t married the wrong woman like most of the rest of humanity.

SASHA: Did you marry the wrong woman Eddie?

EDDIE: I married the right woman. Me and our lass started when we was sixteen. Mind you she’s always been a frisky one. You only had to sneeze twice and she had twins.

PHILIP: – Too much information Eddie!

EDDIE: Hysterectomy’s med her worse. She blames the operation. She ses all it did was convert the workshop into a playroom.

PHILIP: (Covering his ears.) – I’m not listening!

EDDIE: Even with the change –

PHILIP: Shutup!

EDDIE: Mind you it’s tekken me forty years to find out what our lass really wants in bed.

PHILIP: And what does she want in bed?

EDDIE: George Clooney. My generation in’t the problem, it’s you youngsters. All this women’s rights malarkey –

SASHA: Oh!

EDDIE: Don’t get me wrong. I’m a bit of a ‘new man’ mesen, it’s quite right that our women have careers, work, but that means they have kids much later, or not at all, whereas yer Muslims are knocking ’em out –

PHILIP: Eddie!

EDDIE: – mark my words, hundred years’ time Europe’ll be Eurabia, unrecognisable, and then what!? Well, yer gays and yer Jews –

(Enter ANDRÉ from the cupboard interrupting.)

ANDRÉ: – Messieursdames.

PHILIP: Did you get what you needed? What did Beatrice say?

ANDRÉ: (Reading, from note book.) ‘Encore, encore, non, à gauche, voila! Oh, oh, mon dieu, mon dieu, oui, oui, oui, ooooohhh!’

PHILIP: That’s not gonna stand up in a court is it?

ANDRÉ: ’owever, when she was alone in the room she rang the family physician. Her father is, it seems, on his deathbed as we speak. Her father is Mister Monsieur Bricolage.

PHILIP: Mister Monsieur Bricolage?!

ANDRÉ: Yes! That’s 300 DIY stores throughout France.

PHILIP: That is a lot of nails.

ANDRÉ: Madame Renard should inherit the fortune but the father has stipulated that she will get nothing unless she marries before he dies!

PHILIP: But she’s already married!

ANDRÉ: Exactement! I am right! How you say, once in a row! Jean-Claude Renard, her supposed husband, the chimera, lives in the Dordogne.

PHILIP: Why? Is he English?

ANDRÉ: There are still some French people left in the Dordogne.

SASHA: But Beatrice is the MEP for Strasbourg.

ANDRÉ: Her husband is a tobacco farmer with eighty-three hectares of land. Each year he receives two hundred thousand euros from the Common Agricultural Policy.

EDDIE: Last year I fraudulently claimed sixty thousand quid’s worth of setaside.

PHILIP: What – for land you were still farming?

EDDIE: For the A64 to Scarborough. I give the money back. Onny did it to prove me point.

ANDRÉ: And what exactly is your point?

EDDIE: That you’re all fucking idiots.

ANDRÉ: To prove that Madame Renard is not married to this Jean-Claude we will have to squeeze more information out of her.

PHILIP: I’ve done enough squeezing for one day.

EDDIE: You’re obsessed with Madame Renard aren’t yer?

ANDRÉ: Batman had the Joker; James Bond had Goldfinger; the Man from UNCLE had THRUSH. I want you to ask her to marry you.

PHILIP: What?!

EDDIE: Yeah, don’t yer see, if she agrees to marry yer, that proves that she’s single.

ANDRÉ: And confirms that the tobacco farm is a sophisticated criminal fraud.

PHILIP: Fantastic for you, you’ve only got to catch her, I’ve got to marry her and run an imaginary tobacco farm!

SASHA: Which doesn’t exist.

ANDRÉ: Just propose to her. If she says yes that will be the end of it, I will have my catch.

PHILIP: I’m sorry this is a sensationally bad idea and I’m not having anything to do with it.

ANDRÉ: You forget, I now have solid evidence of your misuse of the expenses budget, particularly in relation to the employment of Miss Nicola Daws who, in her own words, earns eighty thousand euros a year for doing ‘bugger all’. And I can ’ave Sasha put on the next train back to Murmansk.

EDDIE: What yo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Characters
• Set
• Contents
• Act One
• Act Two
• Act Three