The Prize Root

Sogmarsh Wireless Presents — being thirty minutes of horticultural glory, judged on the day of the Weighing.

A marquee, or the near enough of one. Rain drumming on canvas. Trestle tables. The smell of soil and rivalry.

ANNOUNCER. Sogmarsh Wireless presents The Prize Root; in which Mr Horace P. Dudgeon, President for Life of No. 4½ Sump Lane, brings a masterpiece to the Weighing, and learns what the realm actually prizes.

Interior. The kitchen, that morning. HORACE unveils, from under a cloth, a turnip of magnificence.

HORACE. Behold, Mercy. (reverent) The finest root in the history of Sump Lane. Round as the moon. Smooth as a magistrate's conscience. Not a blemish, not a wart, not a whisker. I shall carry it to the Weighing and I shall be crowned.

MERCY. (eyeing it) It's a lovely-looking turnip, Horace. I'll give you that.

HORACE. Lovely is not the word. Sublime is the word. (wrapping it as one wraps an heir) The judges will weep.

MERCY. (mildly) The judge is Prosper Clod. He wrote the Root-Book. He's not one for weeping.

HORACE. Then he shall learn.

Interior. The marquee. PROSPER CLOD, grader, vain in his own right, moves down the tables with a slow, terrible eye. BILLY is there, holding something in a sack, shyly. SOL runs a book on the outcome.

SOL. (low) Six to four the field, evens Clod's own entry, and a very generous twenty to one against anything of Billy's.

HORACE. (placing his turnip, grandly) Make way for the winner, gentlemen. I'll not gloat. (gloating) I merely observe that the field may as well go home.

CLOD. (arriving, gazing at Horace's turnip; a long silence) ...Hm. (picks it up, turns it) Smooth.

HORACE. (swelling) Flawless, sir.

CLOD. Round.

HORACE. As the moon.

CLOD. (setting it down) Beautiful. (beat) It'll be mush by Frost Night.

HORACE. (reeling) I — I beg your —

CLOD. Smooth skin, round shape — all water, all show. A root like that keeps a fortnight and then it's soup you didn't want. (moving on) The Weighing don't prize the prettiest, Mr Dudgeon. Any fool grows pretty in a wet year. The Weighing prizes what keeps. What sees a household through to spring. (stops at BILLY's sack) ...Now then. What've you got, lad.

BILLY. (shyly tipping it out) It's — it's not much to look at, Mr Clod. It's all warty. Nan says it's ugly as sin.

SFX: something knobbled and ungainly thuds onto the trestle.

CLOD. (picking it up with sudden reverence) ...Ohh. Ohh, now. Look at that skin. Thick as a boot. Look at those warts — that's a root that's fought for it. Dense. Heavy for its size. (weighing it in his hand, eyes closed) ...That, boy, is a root that'll still be firm and sweet come the Asking, when every pretty thing in this tent is water and regret. (setting it down like a relic) Where'd you grow it?

BILLY. By the privy. Bad ground. It had to try harder.

CLOD. (nodding slowly) ...It shows. It shows.

HORACE. (aghast) You cannot be — that thing is hideous, mine is a masterpiece —

CLOD. (turning, not unkind) Yours is a portrait, Mr Dudgeon. His is a larder. One of them feeds a family in February. (beat) The realm's been hungry too often to marry the pretty one.

SFX: a small bell. The verdict.

CLOD. (formally) First prize at the Weighing — the warty root, grown in bad ground, by the privy, that tried harder. Billy Saltaway.

SOL. (pained, paying out) ...Twenty to one. I'm ruined. (brightening) Course, I could sell the winning root as breeding stock — Billy, son, a word —

BILLY. (dazed, delighted) I won? With the ugly one? (to Horace) Yours is much nicer-looking though, Mr Dudgeon. Honest.

HORACE. (a long pause; then, deflated, holding his beautiful useless turnip) ...Yes, Billy. It is. It is very nice-looking. (a bitter beat) And it will be soup by Frost Night, and yours will be feeding your Nan at the Asking, and there is a lesson in that which I would rather not have learned in a tent, in the rain, in front of Prosper Clod.

Interior. The kitchen, later. MERCY. HORACE, subdued, his prize turnip on the table.

MERCY. (gently) Well? Did the judges weep?

HORACE. (quietly) The judge said my masterpiece was a portrait, Mercy, and Billy's wart-riddled horror was a larder, and gave the horror the prize. (pause) And the maddening thing — the truly maddening thing — is that he was right. Beauty that doesn't keep is just a slow disappointment.

MERCY. (taking up the turnip) Well. It'll keep till Tuesday. That's long enough for soup. (beat, fond) A good-looking soup, mind. Best-looking soup in Drudgeford.

HORACE. (with the last of his dignity) ...I should like that on the tureen.

ANNOUNCER. Sogmarsh Wireless has presented The Prize Root. The warty champion is keeping beautifully and will see the Saltaways to spring. Mr Dudgeon's masterpiece was, all agree, the finest-looking soup the parish has known. In Sogmarsh, it is not what looks well that wins, but what lasts.

Rain on canvas. Slow fade.

— end —