The Ague

Sogmarsh Wireless Presents — being thirty minutes of a mortal illness, which turns out to be the weather.

The kitchen. A fire built too high. HORACE swaddled in every blanket in the house, propped in the chair like a lord in state. A sniffle of operatic proportions.

ANNOUNCER. Sogmarsh Wireless presents The Ague; in which Mr Horace P. Dudgeon, President for Life of No. 4½ Sump Lane, contracts a cold, and bears it as no man has ever borne anything.

Interior. The kitchen. HORACE, dying nobly. MERCY, unmoved.

HORACE. (feeble, tragic) Mercy. Come close. Closer. I have not — (sniff) — I have not long. Send for the parish. Send for a scribe. My last words should be taken down.

MERCY. You've got a cold, Horace.

HORACE. (rallying, offended) A cold? Mercy, this is no common rheum. This is the Ague. The Great Damp. It rises off the Slough as a miasma — the Miasmatic Register is quite clear — a bad air, a marsh vapour, that selects the finer constitution, the more sensitive soul —

MERCY. It selected Billy and all. He had it Tuesday.

HORACE. Billy is robust. Billy is plentiful. A miasma passes through Billy like wind through a hedge. But a man of my — (enormous sneeze) — my refinement — it settles. It feasts. (collapsing back) I am, I fear, its masterpiece.

SFX: the door. SOL NIPPER, who can smell a sickbed's purse across a parish.

SOL. Horace! Heard you was struck down. Terrible. (brightly) Now. For the Ague, I've got — (unpacking) — Nipper's Miasmatic Draught, keeps the bad air off, tuppence a bottle. A medicinal potato, worn on a string. And, for the discerning invalid, a Certificate of Genuine Suffering, suitable for framing, so visitors know how ill you've been.

HORACE. (reaching weakly, greedily) The draught. And two potatoes. And — (sniff) — the certificate in the large size.

MERCY. (flat) Sol, that draught's bog-water with a bay leaf in it.

SOL. (wounded) It's artisanal bog-water, Mrs Crimp. And the bay leaf is imported. (pocketing coins) Get well slowly, Horace. You're my best account this winter.

CUTHBERT SNIPE, apothecary, arrives to physic the patient — and is, himself, streaming.

SNIPE. (thickly, sneezing) Ooh, Mr Dudgeon, I came the moment — (sneeze) — I heard. A terrible visitation. (sneeze) I've prescribed for half the parish this — (sneeze) — this week.

HORACE. (alarmed) Snipe, you have it too!

SNIPE. (miserably) Everyone has it, Mr Dudgeon. The physician, the parson, the goat that's Bucket-Warden. (sneeze) I've tried every cure in the book. Goose-grease. A red flannel. Standing in the smoke. Not standing in the smoke. (sneeze) Nothing touches it. It runs its course and it goes, and there's not a thing in my whole shop that — (enormous sneeze) — that hurries it.

HORACE. (despairing, theatrical) Then there is no cure? I am to simply — endure? Like a — like a plentiful person?

Enter ASK VANCE — the sceptic, the debunker, who brings every marvel down to earth — and BILLY, robust and recovered.

VANCE. (dryly) I hear there's a miasma. A bad air off the Slough, selecting the finer soul. (surveying the sickroom) Let's see. The physician has it. The parson has it. The goat has it. Billy had it and got over it in a day by ignoring it. (beat) Mr Dudgeon, that's not a miasma selecting the refined. That's a cold, going round, in the wet, in winter, as it does every year. (flatly) It turns out to be the weather. It always turns out to be the weather.

HORACE. (deflating) ...The weather. Not a — not a distinguished affliction of the sensitive —

VANCE. The weather, Mr Dudgeon. Same as everyone's. There's nothing rare about you but the fuss.

BILLY. (helpfully, plainly) I got over mine, Mr Dudgeon. Nan made me drink hot water with honey and go and do something instead of sitting thinking about it. Worked lovely. (beat) Sitting thinking about it makes it worse. That's the main bit. The thinking.

HORACE. (pause) ...Hot water. And doing something.

BILLY. And stop being ill on purpose. That's free.

Interior. The kitchen, later. The fire lower. HORACE, un-swaddled, upright, holding a plain cup of hot water and honey, and — mostly recovered.

MERCY. (mildly) Feeling mortal still?

HORACE. (grudging) ...I find, Mercy, that on drinking hot water and honey, and rising, and sweeping the step because Billy told me to do something — I am, inexplicably, not dying. (sniff) A residual nobility of suffering remains. But the deathbed aspect has, I concede, receded.

MERCY. It was the weather, Horace.

HORACE. (with the last shred of grandeur) It was a distinguished weather, Mercy. It selected me particularly. (beat, then honestly) ...It selected the whole parish and the goat. I know. (sips) ...Billy's right, curse him. It's the thinking about it that's the illness. The cold's just the excuse.

MERCY. (fond, flat) Drink your honey. And Sol wants paying for the bog-water.

HORACE. (rallying, immortal) Sol may frame his own Certificate of Genuine Suffering and eat it. I am cured, Mercy, by hot water and a plain boy, and I have never in my life felt less distinguished, nor, I confess, better.

ANNOUNCER. Sogmarsh Wireless has presented The Ague. The miasma has been identified, on careful investigation, as the weather. It ran its course and went, as it does every year, taking with it Mr Dudgeon's deathbed, several of Mr Nipper's bottles, and nobody at all. As Ask Vance observes: it always turns out to be the weather.

A sneeze, off. The drip. Slow fade.

— end —