The Midsummer At-Home

The Sogmarsh Year — the Crang house, Cinder-side of the Chancery, Murkminster, in the Long. A radio half-hour: being a garden party the Crangs could not afford, held for the benefit of people who must never find out.

ANNOUNCER. Sogmarsh Wireless presents the Crang house at Midsummer, and the great annual At-Home; in which a family with nothing receives the better part of Murkminster with magnificent grace — on a single ham, a bottle of something that is not wine, and the iron nerve of Great-Aunt Prudence.

The genteel remains of a garden behind the Chancery wall. A too-small gathering doing the work of a large one. Teacups. A brightness held at pitch. Somewhere, a string plucked badly, at expense.

ALOYSIUS (expansive, hostly, then hissing between): Ah — the Pomfrets! So glad — Nevil, the Pomfrets, give them more of the — (aside, low, cornered) — Nevil. What are we giving them.

NEVIL (low): There's a quarter of the ham left, uncle. After that there's the idea of ham.

ALOYSIUS (aloud, smooth as cream): — more of everything! Ha ha! The Crangs are awash!

SFX: cups; a tray set down carefully so its emptiness doesn't ring.

OZZIE (sidling, conspiratorial): I've stretched the cordial with pond — with spring water — and if nobody holds it up to the light —

PRUDENCE (monumental, cutting clean across, to a guest, grand): More cordial, Lady Pomfret? A family recipe. The secret is the water.

(a beat)

OZZIE (stricken whisper): ...she knows everything.

SFX: a gate. A new arrival. The garden's brightness catches, just slightly, like a held breath.

ALOYSIUS (a fraction too bright): Mr — Mr Vellum. You honour us.

VELLUM (smooth, warm, and entirely terrible): Mr Crang. I would not miss the Crang At-Home for the world. One does like to see how one's — investments — are keeping. (a sip) ...Delicious cordial. Is that pond?

(silence)

PRUDENCE (flat, grand, unblinking): Spring, Mr Vellum. As I said.

VELLUM (a small bow — perfectly pleasant, perfectly a blade): ...Of course. Spring.

SFX: the party resumes its brave noise. Under it, two voices step aside.

VELLUM (low, courteous, to Aloysius alone): Charming. Truly. I so admire what the family — maintains. (the lightest pause) The account falls due at the Short, Mr Crang. The whole of it, this year. I did want to say so here, where it needn't spoil anything. I do hope you'll all be... ready.

ALOYSIUS (the mask holding by one thread): The Crangs, Mr Vellum, are always ready.

VELLUM (warm): Of course you are. (moving off, to the room) — what a delightful garden —

SFX: NEVIL, at the gate, slipping out unseen.

A short interior — a shop counter, quick.

NEVIL (breathless, low): Everything you've got, Snipe. Ham, bread, the good biscuits. Here — (coin on wood) — that's my quarter's wage, all of it, don't make a thing of it, don't tell a soul, and quick —

SNIPE: ...You're feeding your own party out your own pocket, Master Crang.

NEVIL: I'm feeding my family's guests, Snipe, which is a different thing, and if you say which it is I'll deny it. Quick.

SFX: back to the garden, the party rescued, plates refilled from nowhere, the brightness restored and never questioned.

Later. The gate shut on the last guest. The garden, and the family, alone with an empty ham-plate and the badly-plucked string gone quiet.

ALOYSIUS (the performance drained out of him all at once, small): ...They'll say it was a fine At-Home. Won't they. The Pomfrets. They'll say the Crangs did it beautifully.

PRUDENCE (after a silence, grand and gentle — the only soft thing she says all year): They will say exactly that, Aloysius. Because we did. (beat) Now go in. It's cold, and you've been warm all afternoon for other people, and that is enough being cold for one family in one day.

SFX: the family going in, one by one. The empty garden. A gate latch. Out.

ANNOUNCER. And the Crang At-Home was, all Murkminster agreed, a triumph; and only five people in the realm ever knew what it had cost, and four of them will never say, and the fifth is Mr Vellum, who is counting the days to the Short.

The Late Line — after the cups come down

The same evening, later; the guests abed, Murkminster dark, the Wireless kept open now the children's cups are off the hook. At the Crang gate, two who did not say all they meant by daylight say it now.

ANNOUNCER (drier, the hour later): Sogmarsh Wireless keeps the line open a while. The At-Home is over, and pronounced a triumph; and at the shut gate, where the lamplight doesn't quite reach, Mr Vellum has not, after all, quite gone — and Great-Aunt Prudence Crang has been waiting for exactly that.

VELLUM (the warmth gone now, quiet, precise): You'll not manage it, ma'am. The whole account, at the Short. You know it, I know it, and that boy spent his year's wage on your ham tonight, which tells me the Crangs are down to the seed of their money. (a pause) So let me be plain, the once, where no one's listening. I don't only take the goods. I take the telling of it. By the Long next year, every soul who drank your pond-water cordial tonight will know precisely what it was, and what you are, and that the Crangs have been nothing for a generation and dear about it.

PRUDENCE (unmoved, monumental, the grandest thing in the dark): Are you finished, Mr Vellum? Take your time. It's the most you'll ever be owed by this house — a hearing.

VELLUM: ...Ma'am.

PRUDENCE: Then hear the plain of it back. You don't lend to paupers; you lend to names — it's the name your money dresses in, the only reason a man like you is let through a gate like this at all. Ruin us, and you've ruined the one door in Murkminster that makes your coin look genteel. You'll have a fine ham-plate and no one left worth frightening. (a beat, colder) And I have buried a husband, two brothers, and every penny this family ever had, Mr Vellum, and I am still, you'll notice, standing at my own gate. You are a hard Short. I have seen off harder, and I did not do it by being ready. I did it by not going in until the last guest had gone. (beat) You are the last guest. Good night.

(a silence. The gale, faint, off the fen. A gate latch.)

VELLUM (after a moment — something almost like respect, and worse for it): ...The account still falls due, ma'am.

PRUDENCE: Everything does, Mr Vellum. That is what makes it bearable to owe. (soft, grand, gone) Mind the step. It's the family's, and it's cold.

SFX: the gate. His footsteps going. The house behind her, warm and broke and hers. Out.