The Republic Plants a Window-Box

The Sogmarsh Year — No. 4½ Sump Lane, Drudgeford, in the Light. A radio half-hour: being the founding of a Ministry of Agriculture, and the growing of one radish.

A back kitchen. A waxed string comes down the chimney to a tin cup. A bucket drips into a pail, patient and eternal.

ANNOUNCER. Sogmarsh Wireless presents The Republic Plants a Window-Box; in which Mr Horace P. Dudgeon, President for Life of No. 4½ Sump Lane, meets the coming of the Light with the full apparatus of state, and grows, against every effort of his government, a radish.

HORACE. (grandly, close on the cup) Sump Lane to the realm. The Light is upon us. The season of growth. And a Republic that cannot feed itself, Billy, is no Republic at all.

BILLY. We can't feed ourselves now, Mr Dudgeon. Mrs Crimp feeds us.

HORACE. A temporary arrangement, pending sovereignty.

MERCY. (off, dry) It's been temporary nineteen years, Horace. I'll want notice before it stops.

HORACE. Today, Mercy, I establish the Ministry of Agriculture of the Independent Literary Republic of Dudgeon. Its first and total holding — (a small wooden knock) — this window-box.

MERCY. That's the bread trough.

HORACE. It is requisitioned.

MERCY. It's got the bread in it.

HORACE. (pressing on) Billy — you are appointed Minister of Soil.

BILLY. (pleased) Is there wages?

HORACE. There is honour, Billy, which does not spoil in the damp. Sol! Where is my Minister for Trade —

SOL. (arriving, oily) Here, President, here — and I've the seed. Prime seed. Best in the realm.

HORACE. Excellent. From where.

SOL. (beat) From a man.

HORACE. From what man.

SOL. From a man who's no longer got it, President, on account of me having it. One packet. Radish. To the Ministry, at a very fair —

MERCY. He found it in the yard, Horace. It's the packet Wren dropped in the mud at the frost and cried over. He's dried it on the range and now he's selling it back to the house that owns it.

SOL. (wounded, instantly) I processed it.

HORACE. The Ministry accepts the seed. Draw a Voucher on the Treasury.

SOL. The Treasury's got nothing in it.

HORACE. Then draw two Vouchers, man, and let the Treasury owe itself. Honestly, must I run every department —

SFX: a small delegation arrives at the back door — the scrape of it, the wet of the yard let in.

GRUTCH. (booming) What's this I hear about a Ministry. Am I to have a Ministry down my end of the lane or am I to be a colony.

HORACE. Mavis Grutch. The Hand and Reed is welcome to apply for —

GRUTCH. I'll not apply. I've a window-box would swallow yours whole and grow a marrow you could christen.

DOLLY QUICK. (behind her, delighted) Two marrows, Mavis, you said two in the snug.

GRUTCH. (without turning) Whose side are you on, Dolly.

DOLLY. The side with the tab, love. Always.

HORACE. (rising to it) Then let it be a contest! A Great Exhibition of the Republic! Every window-box in Sump Lane, and a Presidential Rosette to the finest —

MERCY. There's no rosette, Horace. There's no ribbon, there's no cloth, there's the mending basket and I'll thank you not to requisition that.

HORACE. Then the Ministry shall award itself the rosette, and the matter's settled —

EDDIE TUPP. (arriving at a run, breathless) Mr Dudgeon! Mr Dudgeon — I've watered it! I did the first watering, for the Ministry, first thing, whole pail —

HORACE. (warmly) Ah — initiative! You see, Mercy, the citizen rises to —

EDDIE. — only I did the wrong box.

HORACE. (carefully) ...There is only one box, Eddie.

EDDIE. There's the one on the sill and there's the one I thought was on the sill, which was Mr Pottle, asleep, with a sign on him.

BILLY. What did the sign say.

EDDIE. "Temporarily Horizontal." I watered it a full pail before it swore at me.

SFX: from the yard, distant, a wronged and horizontal Mr Pottle, swearing, gently, at the weather.

HORACE. (a statesman rising above crisis) The Ministry regrets the flooding of Mr Pottle and will erect a plaque. Billy — the seed. Into the box. Let the Republic, at last, grow something.

BILLY. (a pause; the small patter of seed) ...In it goes, Mr Dudgeon. All of it.

HORACE. (hushed, moved) There. Sump Lane sows. Let the record show that on the first morning of the Light, the Independent Literary Republic of Dudgeon put seed in soil, by its own hand, in defiance of —

MERCY. (quiet, off) Billy.

BILLY. Mrs Crimp?

MERCY. While they were all shouting about rosettes. The back plot. The real one. Did you get the beans in like I asked, and the rest of that radish, and the peas along the wall where Amos likes to watch them come.

BILLY. (simply) Aye, Mrs Crimp. Hours since. Before the Ministry was up.

MERCY. Good lad. Don't tell the government. It'd only tax it.

SFX: the bucket. The drip. The far, contented swearing of Mr Pottle drying out.

ANNOUNCER. And so the Ministry of Agriculture was founded, and flooded a sleeping man, and grew — in the fullness of the season, in the requisitioned bread trough, watched over daily by the whole apparatus of state — exactly one radish. Which Horace P. Dudgeon ate, at a ceremony, and declared the finest in the realm. He was not wrong. It had been grown, though he never knew it, in the good back plot, by Billy, at dawn, and slipped into the Ministry box by Mercy the night before the judging — because a Republic should have something, she said, and a President should never, ever be told.

SFX: the string goes slack. The bucket drips. Out.