Almost a Bastable

Sogmarsh Wireless Presents — being thirty minutes of a man climbing toward the gentry, and being kindly shown the view.

The kitchen. HORACE practises a bow at the range and nearly goes in the fire.

ANNOUNCER. Sogmarsh Wireless presents Almost a Bastable; in which Mr Horace P. Dudgeon, President for Life of No. 4½ Sump Lane, sets out to prove himself of noble blood, and is gently, devastatingly, told exactly who he is.

Interior. The kitchen. HORACE, with a chart. MERCY, unimpressed.

HORACE. Mercy. I have been at the parish rolls. And I have discovered — (reverent) — a connection. Four generations back, a Dudgeon married a Puddle, and a Puddle's cousin's second wife was, by one account, almost a Bastable. (rising) Mercy — I may be gentry. I may have been, all this while, a lord in reduced circumstances, set down by cruel fortune in Sump Lane, half a mile beneath my rightful station.

MERCY. (flat) You're above the municipal drain, Horace. That's your station. Half a mile beneath it is the drain.

HORACE. (undimmed) I shall prove the line. I shall take lessons in gentility. And I shall present myself to Aunt Euphemia Bastable herself — who owns, I remind you, the very ground beneath this house — as a long-lost kinsman. And then, Mercy — up the spine. Up the towers. Where a Dudgeon belongs.

SFX: the door. SOL, who has heard the word "gentry" and priced it.

SOL. Horace. Word is you're gentry.

HORACE. Almost, Sol. The proving is a formality.

SOL. Then you'll want the paperwork. (unrolls) One pedigree, hand-illuminated, traces you direct to the first Bastable and a minor saint thrown in free. Iron ink, very convincing. Half a crown. (beat) And etiquette lessons — I do a course. Lesson one: which spoon.

HORACE. (eagerly) There is a wrong spoon?

SOL. Horace, for the gentry there's nothing but wrong spoons. That's what makes 'em gentry. Half a crown for the pedigree, shilling a lesson, and I'll throw in a bow that's done Murkminster.

MERCY. (flat) Sol, that pedigree's still wet.

SOL. (smoothly) Antique documents often are, Mrs Crimp. It's the damp. Adds centuries.

Interior. A cold, high, grand room. AUNT EUPHEMIA BASTABLE, courteous authority, receives HORACE, who has bowed his way in with a flourish and the wet pedigree.

HORACE. (over-refined) Aunt Euphemia. I present myself — a kinsman, long parted from the ancestral line — (producing document) — the proofs, here, in iron ink, tracing my descent, direct, to the first of the Bastables, and a minor saint.

EUPHEMIA. (kindly, taking it, reading) ...How lovely. (beat) This is Sol Nipper's hand. He did me one last year making me descend from a heron. (sets it down gently) But you needn't have troubled with the paper, Mr Dudgeon. You are a kinsman. Distantly. (beat) Everyone in this realm is. Go back far enough and it is all one wet family, Dudgeon and Bastable and Puddle and Crimp, married and re-married round a small damp valley since before the towers. You are my cousin. So is Mercy Crimp. So is the man who empties the bucket. (warmly) You did not need to climb to it. You were always in it.

HORACE. (thrown) But — then — I am gentry! I may come up! Up the spine! To the towers! To my rightful —

EUPHEMIA. (gently, and this is the whole of it) ...Sit down a moment, cousin. Let me tell you what is up here, since you have climbed so far to see it. (pause) It is cold, Mr Dudgeon. The higher you go up the spine, the colder and the further from the kitchen. Up here we are warmed by our rank, which warms nothing. I own the ground beneath a great many houses and I am invited into none of their kitchens, because I am the landlord, and a landlord may not be a neighbour. (quietly) You have a place, down in Sump Lane, at a table, with a woman who darns your coat and a boy who votes for you against a goat, and a whole lane that knows your name and would notice if your window went dark. (beat) That, cousin, is a thing I do not have, and cannot buy, and own no ground valuable enough to purchase. You are asking to climb out of the only warm thing there is.

A long silence. The grand cold room. HORACE, for once, entirely without a performance.

HORACE. (quietly) ...I had not thought of it as up out of. I had thought of it as up into.

EUPHEMIA. (kindly) Most who climb do. (beat) The gentry are the loneliest people in the realm, Mr Dudgeon. We fall the furthest and we fall alone, because we spent our lives making sure there was no one close enough below to catch us. (a small smile) Go home to your lane. Be President of Sump Lane. It is a far greater thing than being one more cold Bastable in a tower, and it is yours, and no pedigree can prove it because it needs no proving. They simply let you in, every evening, and that is the whole of nobility, and you have had it all along.

Interior. The kitchen. MERCY. HORACE, quiet, home, the wet pedigree in his hand.

MERCY. Well? Are you a lord?

HORACE. (after a moment) ...I am a cousin, Mercy. Of yours, as it happens. Of everyone's. (beat) And I went up the spine to be made great, and Aunt Euphemia sat me down in a cold room and told me the greatest thing I have is this — the lane, the table, you, Billy, the two votes, the window someone would notice going dark. (quietly) She said the gentry fall alone because they made sure no one was close enough to catch them. (pause) ...I have never, Mercy, been so thoroughly put in my place, nor so glad of the place I was put in.

MERCY. (fond, flat) You're still above the drain, mind. Don't get ideas the other way.

HORACE. (a slow return of the old grandeur, but warmer now) President of Sump Lane, Mercy. (rising, magnificent, at home) By the acclaim of a lane that lets me in of an evening. (beat) It will do. (beat) It will, in fact, do very handsomely. (sits back down) ...Burn the pedigree. It's still wet, and I find I no longer descend from a saint. I descend from here.

MERCY. (putting the kettle on) Good. Cousin.

HORACE. (warmly) Cousin.

ANNOUNCER. Sogmarsh Wireless has presented Almost a Bastable. Mr Dudgeon remains President for Life of No. 4½ Sump Lane, a station he now holds to be superior to any tower, and is, on the whole, correct. The gentry remain up the spine, warmed by their rank, which warms nothing. Down in the lane, the kettle is on, and the door is open, and that is the whole of nobility.

The kettle. The drip. The door, on the latch. Slow fade.

— end —