How Dudgeon Won the War

Sogmarsh Wireless Presents — being thirty minutes of a great victory, in a war that never came.

The kitchen, arranged for the dictation of memoirs. A medal Horace has awarded himself gleams on the dresser. Rain — the same rain that fell throughout the campaign.

ANNOUNCER. Sogmarsh Wireless presents How Dudgeon Won the War; in which Mr Horace P. Dudgeon, President for Life of No. 4½ Sump Lane, dictates his war memoirs, concerning a war that did not occur, and which he won.

Interior. The kitchen. HORACE dictates, sonorous. BILLY, appointed scribe, writes slowly. MERCY darns.

HORACE. (grand) Take this down, Billy. Chapter One. "How Dudgeon Won the War." (pause for effect) "For thirty years, the Drudgeford Volunteers stood ready. And in that readiness — in that unbroken, vigilant readiness — lay the victory."

BILLY. (writing) ...How d'you spell "vigilant," Mr Dudgeon?

HORACE. With enormous difficulty, Billy, like all the finest words. (resuming) "The enemy, seeing our readiness, did not come. And a war that does not come — (swelling) — is a war won."

MERCY. (flat) There was no enemy, Horace. There was never a war. You drilled in a field for thirty years because Captain Quail liked drilling.

HORACE. (loftily) The absence of the enemy, Mercy, is the proof of our deterrence. We stood so ready that the war was frightened off. I consider it my finest campaign. (to Billy) New paragraph. "The Battle of the Long Field."

BILLY. Was there a battle?

HORACE. There was a drill, Billy, in the rain, which — for the purposes of the memoir — we shall elevate.

SFX: the door. Enter CAPTAIN QUAIL, aged, ramrod-straight, forever expecting the war any minute now.

QUAIL. (briskly) Dudgeon. Heard you were writing it up. The campaign. Good man. Someone should. (sits) Is it in? The bit about the readiness?

HORACE. (delighted) Captain! The very hero of the piece! Yes — the readiness is central. I have written that our vigilance frightened the war off.

QUAIL. (frowning) Frightened it off? No, no. It's not been off, Dudgeon. It's been coming. Thirty years I've been ready because it's nearly here. Any day now. (taps the table) That's not a war won, man. That's a war not started yet. Big difference. I'll want that corrected.

HORACE. (deflating slightly) ...But Captain, if in thirty years it has not come —

QUAIL. — then it's thirty years closer, isn't it. Stands to reason. (rising, to the window, scanning the horizon) Could be tomorrow. Could be Thursday. That's why a man stays ready. (beat, quieter) It's the readiness that's the life, Dudgeon. Not the winning. There's no winning a war that hasn't come. There's only the standing-ready, together, in case. Thirty years of it. (beat) Best thing I ever did. Wouldn't change a wet minute of it.

A pause. HORACE looks at his medal, at his memoir, at the old man at the window.

HORACE. (quietly) ...So I have not, in fact, won a war.

QUAIL. (kindly, still watching the horizon) No, boy. Nobody wins the war that never comes. (beat) But you turned up. Thirty years, in the rain, you turned up to a field for a war that wasn't there, alongside men who did the same, for no reason but that you'd all said you would. (turns) That's not a victory, Dudgeon. It's better. A victory ends. That just... kept on. Everyone turning up for the thing that never happened. (beat) Put that in your memoir, if you want the true bit.

HORACE. (subdued, to Billy) ...Strike "How Dudgeon Won the War," Billy.

BILLY. What'll I put instead?

HORACE. (after a long moment, and for once his grandeur is aimed at the right thing) ..."How Dudgeon, and Quail, and Rudge, and a field full of damp and ordinary men, turned up for thirty years to a war that never came — and, in the turning up, were not, on the whole, defeated." (quietly) It wants a shorter title. But that is the campaign.

Interior. Later. MERCY. HORACE, the self-awarded medal in his hand.

MERCY. No war won, then.

HORACE. (quietly) No, Mercy. There was no war. There was a field, and the rain, and thirty years of us, ready for nothing, together. (sets the medal down) Quail's right, curse him — it's better than a victory. A victory you win and it's over. We never won and it was never over and we never once stood in that field alone. (beat) You can't strike a medal for that. More's the pity. It's the only campaign worth one.

MERCY. (fond, flat) Keep the medal. Give it a new inscription. "For Turning Up."

HORACE. (a slow, warm return of grandeur) ..."For Turning Up." (polishing it) Mercy, it is the highest honour the realm affords, and I have, for thirty wet years, unknowingly earned it. (beat) We shall all have one. Quail first.

ANNOUNCER. Sogmarsh Wireless has presented How Dudgeon Won the War. The war has not come, and the Drudgeford Volunteers remain ready, as ever, and closer than ever, according to Captain Quail. Mr Dudgeon's memoir has been retitled, and awards its medal — "For Turning Up" — to every man who stood, thirty years, in a field, for nothing, together.

Rain on the Long Field. Slow fade.

— end —