The Elevation Society

Sogmarsh Wireless Presents — being thirty minutes of elevated conversation, less interruptions.

A hush. The scrape of a chair on a wet flagstone. Somewhere, a single reed-pipe plays something that thinks a great deal of itself.

ANNOUNCER. Sogmarsh Wireless presents The Elevation Society; in which Mr Horace P. Dudgeon, President for Life of No. 4½ Sump Lane, ascends — as far as the ceiling permits — to Art.

Interior. The kitchen of No. 4½. A bucket drips, keeping time. HORACE enters at speed, coat swirling.

HORACE. Mercy. Mercy Crimp. Put down the mangle and attend, for the man before you is no longer the man who left this morning.

MERCY. (flat) No. That one paid the milk.

HORACE. I have had, Mercy, an Experience. This forenoon, as you know, the municipal drain without our door became blocked.

MERCY. I know. I've been standing in it.

HORACE. And I — with these hands, and a stick — I opened it. I put in the stick, Mercy, and I gazed down, and I saw... the underneath. I saw the grey water meet the grey water and become one grey water. I have looked into the depths of the commonplace and the depths, Mercy, looked back.

MERCY. It's a drain, Horace.

HORACE. (not hearing her, gazing middle-distance) And it came to me, over the stick, that I am not, as the rate-book insists, an unemployed person of no fixed importance. I am an artist. And it further came to me that there exists, above the wheelwright's in Drudgeford, a Society. A Society for the Elevation of the Commonplace. And that they meet — (consults a damp card) — tonight.

MERCY. And you're not invited.

HORACE. Mercy, genius requires no invitation. Genius requires only a clean collar and the confidence of the truly gifted. (beat) Is there a clean collar?

MERCY. No.

HORACE. Then the confidence must do double.

SFX: a door. BILLY SALTAWAY, lodger, literal of mind, wanders in eating something.

BILLY. Where we going, Mr Dudgeon?

HORACE. We are going nowhere, Billy. I am going to be recognised.

BILLY. Can I come and watch?

HORACE. (magnanimous) You may come, Billy, and you may witness. A great man should always take a witness of the lower orders. It lends scale.

Interior. The room above the wheelwright's. A colder, grander hush. AURELIUS CROLE, Master of the Society, speaks as though every word costs him something he can ill afford. ONDINE is present, and breathes.

CROLE. (mid-flow) ...and so the Society is gathered. We shall commence, as ever, by elevating a commonplace object beyond its miserable function. Tonight's object —

SFX: a small reverent thud.

CROLE. — a bucket.

ONDINE. (low, thrilled) A bucket.

HORACE. (entering, booming) AND a fine one! Gentlemen — madam — do not rise. Horace P. Dudgeon. You will have heard the name; if you have not, that is an oversight we shall correct together this evening.

CROLE. (a long, expensive pause) ...We are mid-elevation.

HORACE. Then you'll want a professional. (sotto, to Billy) Note the room, Billy. Note how they hunger for a firm hand. (aloud) I have brought a work. I composed it this forenoon, over a drain, in conditions of some personal danger. I have entitled it — (savouring) — "Confluence."

ONDINE. (exhales) Ohh.

HORACE. (clears throat, one arm to the mantel) "Confluence." By Horace P. Dudgeon. I put in the stick. The dark gave up its secret. Grey meets grey, and is, on consideration, grey. I have seen the underneath of the over. The boots pass. They do not know. I know. I am mauve.

Silence. A drip that isn't there.

HORACE. (prompting) ...I am mauve.

CROLE. (gently, terribly) You have described a drain.

HORACE. I have transcended a drain.

CROLE. No. You unblocked one, and then you told us about it. That is not Art, Mr Dudgeon. That is reportage. Anyone may report a drain. The Society elevates. (turning away) The boy. You — the witness. You had something in your pocket. Give it here.

BILLY. It's only my eel poem. Everyone's got an eel poem.

HORACE. (hissing) Billy. Sit down. Do not embarrass the family.

CROLE. Read it.

BILLY. (shrugging, mouth still half-full) "Eels." By Billy. Down the weir they go, slippy. One bit me. Once. Nan fried the rest. Wet. Wet. ...Hup.

A silence of a completely different quality. ONDINE makes a small wounded sound.

ONDINE. "Hup."

CROLE. (barely a whisper) ..."Hup." He ends it on the ascension. The eel, the frying, the mortal Hup. Do you see, Ondine? He does not describe the weir. He is the weir.

BILLY. I'm not, though. I'm from Sump Lane.

CROLE. (rapturous) And he denies it! The artist who will not admit the burden of his gift! Extraordinary. Extraordinary boy.

HORACE. (strangled) It's — it doesn't even — it's just eels, it's a list of eels —

MERCY'S VOICE. (from nowhere, flat) So was yours, Horace. Yours was just a drain with its collar up.

HORACE. (spinning) Who — Mercy? What are you doing here?

MERCY. Come to get the bucket back. That's ours.

CROLE. (clutching the bucket) Madam, this bucket is mid-elevation —

MERCY. It's mid-holding-the-milk when it's home. Give it here.

Enter SOL NIPPER, Minister for Trade, who never enters a room he cannot leave richer.

SOL. Evening all. Heard there was a society. Where there's a society, there's subscriptions, and where there's subscriptions —

HORACE. Sol! Thank heaven. Sol, tell them who I am.

SOL. (instantly, to the room) This man is nobody, I've never seen him, and whatever he's ordered I'll take back at a fair price. (beat) What are we elevating?

CROLE. We seek only the Original Elevated Work. Have you a work, sir?

SOL. Have I a — (scoffs) — son, I've got nothing but. Every day of my life's a work. Here — "Interest." By Sol Nipper. Evens the rain, six-to-four the Goose, a threepenny flag and a fourpenny grief, buy the fear cheap and sell it dear, nobody's paid, and everybody owes. Second again. Ka-ching.

ONDINE. (nearly overcome) ..."Ka-ching."

CROLE. The commerce of the soul. The tragedy of the ledger. How you must have suffered, sir, to write that.

SOL. Suffered? (shrugs modestly) It's been murder some weeks, boy. Murder.

HORACE. (exploding) He's a tout! He sells commemorative potatoes! That's not suffering, that's a stall!

CROLE. (icy) And Michelangelo mixed his own plaster. Do not lecture me, Mr Dudgeon, on where Art keeps its hands.

SOL, meanwhile, has picked up the Society's charter and begun, quietly, to read the small print. His eyebrows go up.

SOL. 'Ere. Horace. Come and look at this. (reading) "The Master of the Society is, by ancient charter of the parish, Elevated Above Toil —"

HORACE. (all pomposity gone in an instant) ...Above what?

SOL. "— exempt from all honest labour, and maintained at the parish's expense, in a state of Contemplation, that he may pursue the Higher Things unburdened by the Lower."

A terrible, holy silence. In a land where nobody, but nobody, escapes the work — this is the only true wonder in the room.

HORACE. (hoarse) ...Exempt. From labour. Paid to think.

MERCY. (dry) You're already exempt from labour, Horace. You've been exempt from it for years. The difference is nobody's paying.

HORACE. (seizing the charter) This — this is what I was born for! Crole! I claim the Mastership! I have produced a work — the drain — "Confluence" — I —

CROLE. — described a drain. We settled this. The Mastership passes to the author of the evening's Original Elevated Work. (turning, with immense ceremony) ...Which is, of course —

HORACE. (desperate) — me, it's me, one arm up, I did the mantel and everything —

CROLE. — the boy. Billy. "Hup."

BILLY. (alarmed) I don't want to be exempt from labour. I like the labour. You know where you are with a bit of labour.

CROLE. (placing a reverent hand on Billy's head) And with those words, sir, you are doubly Master. Ondine — the charter — the boy is Elevated.

ONDINE. (swooning audibly) Beautiful. Beautiful.

SOL. (already at Billy's side, arm round him) Course, the Master picks his own lieutenant. Says so here. (taps charter) Second-highest exemption in the Society, that. Now, Billy son, you'll want a man of business at your elbow — someone to handle the contemplating side, the subscriptions, the commemorative Society potato —

BILLY. Can my lieutenant do my labour for me?

SOL. (smoothly) Your lieutenant, Billy, can do anything for a small percentage. (to the room) Right. Memberships, one and six; founder's memberships, three shillings; elevated founder's memberships, whatever you've got on you. Form a queue. No pushing. Art's for everyone.

Interior. The kitchen of No. 4½, later. The bucket drips. HORACE sits, coat off, deflated to his true size.

HORACE. (quietly) I looked into the depths, Mercy. I looked into the depths and I came back with a drain, and the boy went and got the whole underworld out of an eel.

MERCY. (not unkind) You described what you did. He described what he was. That's the difference, Horace, and it's the difference every time.

HORACE. (a flicker of the old fire) ...I could be what I am. I could write that. "Horace P. Dudgeon: A Man, Slightly Damp, Who Wanted —"

MERCY. The drain's blocked again.

HORACE. (rising, magnificent, wounded, immortal) Then fetch me my stick, Mercy Crimp. There is a work in that drain yet, and this time — this time — I shall not merely report it.

SFX: he takes the stick. He goes out. The drip stops. A pause.

MERCY. (to herself, flat, fond) ...He'll be mauve again by supper.

ANNOUNCER. Sogmarsh Wireless has presented The Elevation Society. The bucket has been returned to active service. The Society for the Elevation of the Commonplace meets above the wheelwright's, Thursdays, subscriptions to Mr Nipper. Its Master is contemplating, and does not wish to be disturbed, on account of the labour.

The reed-pipe, thinking a great deal of itself, plays out.

— end —