The Economy Drive

Sogmarsh Wireless Presents — being thirty minutes of thrift, at ruinous expense.

The kitchen. A candle gutters. HORACE studies a ledger with the face of a man discovering the sea is wet.

ANNOUNCER. Sogmarsh Wireless presents The Economy Drive; in which Mr Horace P. Dudgeon, President for Life of No. 4½ Sump Lane, resolves to save money, and spends a great deal doing it.

Interior. The kitchen. HORACE, grave. MERCY darns.

HORACE. Mercy. The accounts of the Republic are in a condition I can only describe as frank. We are, in the plain speech of the ledger, skint.

MERCY. We've always been skint, Horace. It's our natural state. We're good at it.

HORACE. No longer! I am declaring an Economy Drive. As of this morning, the Republic of Dudgeon enters a period of magnificent austerity. Every candle, every crumb, every ha'penny — accounted, husbanded, saved. We shall reckon in the strict Potato Standard, and we shall thrive by not spending.

MERCY. (flat) Right. Blow the candle out, then. Save the tallow.

HORACE. (pause) ...Not this candle. I need this candle. To see the economies by.

SFX: the door. SOL NIPPER, who can hear a man deciding to save money the way a gull hears a chip hit the ground.

SOL. Horace! Word is you're economising.

HORACE. The Republic tightens its belt, Sol.

SOL. Then you'll want my Thrift Kit. (produces a bundle) Economy candles — burn half as bright, so you use two. A ledger for recording your savings, three shillings, best rag paper. And the Dudgeon Austerity Medal, to show the realm you're suffering nobly. One and six.

HORACE. (reaching for his purse) ...A medal is important. One cannot economise in obscurity. And a second ledger, Sol, for recording the savings the first ledger is too full to record.

MERCY. (not looking up) Horace. You've spent four and six saving money you haven't got.

HORACE. (loftily) One must invest in thrift, Mercy. Thrift does not simply happen.

Later. The Economy Drive in full ruinous swing. HORACE has a plan.

HORACE. The chief expense of this house is heat. Therefore — no fire before noon, and the family shall keep warm by brisk industry. Billy! Run round the table till you're warm. It costs nothing.

BILLY. (dutifully jogging) ...I'm hungry now, Mr Dudgeon. Running's made me hungry.

HORACE. (pause) ...Then have a potato.

BILLY. That's the potato we were saving.

HORACE. (strained) ...Have half. Record the half in the ledger.

MERCY. Which ledger.

HORACE. The — the half-potato ledger. (a flicker of despair) ...We may need a third ledger.

MERCY. (setting down her darning) Horace. Sit down. Look at it plain. Since breakfast you've bought two lots of candles, three ledgers, and a medal; you've burned extra tallow "seeing the economies by"; Billy's eaten a saved potato because you made him run for warmth to save the fire; and you're about to buy a ledger to record the potato. (beat) You've spent a fortnight's money in a morning, saving.

HORACE. (deflating rung by rung) ...But the drive. The austerity. The nobility of —

MERCY. The economy of this house, Horace, was doing fine when nobody was managing it. That's how the fen does it. You don't drive thrift. You just quietly don't have things, and don't make a parade of it. The parade's the dear part. The medal's the dear part. You're the dear part.

A long, defeated pause. The economy candle gutters, having cost more than the dark it holds off.

HORACE. (small) ...So the most economical thing I could do —

MERCY. — is stop economising. Yes. Blow the candle out, Horace. Sit in the dark with us. It's free, and it's warm enough, and the company's thrown in.

SFX: HORACE, after a beat, blows out the candle. Dark. The bucket drips.

HORACE. (in the dark, quietly) ...It is, rather. Warm enough. (pause) Billy, stop running.

BILLY. (in the dark) Righto. (pause) Can I have the other half of the potato?

HORACE. (with the magnanimity of the truly ruined) Have the whole one, Billy. The Republic can no longer afford to save it.

SFX: a knock. SOL, at the door, hopeful.

SOL. (brightly) Only me. Heard you'd gone dark. I do a very reasonable line in candles —

MERCY / HORACE. (together, flat) Goodnight, Sol.

ANNOUNCER. Sogmarsh Wireless has presented The Economy Drive. The Republic of Dudgeon returned to its natural and thriving state of having nothing and not mentioning it. Mr Nipper's Austerity Medal is available, at a price, to those who can afford to look poor.

The drip, in the dark.

— end —