by Alan Moore
In 1897 Henry and Selina stop dead in their tracks to gape, halfway down Scarletwell Street. It’s such an unlikely sight that for a moment it feels like they’re dreaming or enchanted, and they take each other’s hands without a word as if they were a pair of little children. Tied up to its lamppost there outside The Friendly Arms, the animal ignores them. After maybe half a minute, a stout little feller with big side-whiskers comes out from in the public house with a big glass of ale that he gives to the creature, what commences drinking it. The man, who they will later learn is Mr. Newton Pratt, looks from the animal to Henry and then laughs. “Blimey! Did you two know each other, then, back there in the old country?” Henry laughs as well. “Well, speaking personally, I never been to Africa, although I’ll own this feller’s mom and pop could very well have once run into mine. Where did you get him, you don’t mind me asking?” The man doesn’t mind at all. “Got ’im from Whipsnade Zoo when they’d not got the space and they were gunna sell ’im to the knackers yard for glue. Horace, ’is name is. It looks like ’e’s took a shine to your young lady.” Henry looks around and there’s Selina beaming like it’s Christmas morning while the rarity allows her to be petting its dark muzzle. He regards the beast, the black and white stripes of its hide like an amazing jungle flag staked proudly here amongst the cobbles and the chimneypots, the black whisk of its tail keeping the meat-flies off, its bristly mane what’s like the haircut of a Mohawk Indian and swaying like it’s kind of drunk into the bargain. Henry makes his mind up there and then that this is where he’s going to live, him and Selina. They stand talking to the man a while and he tells them that he’s Newt Pratt and that the place they’re in is called the Burrows, or that’s what it sounds like, and now Henry looks he can see creeping, jumping cottontails all over where there’s any grass. The veldt-horse belches. Mr. Pratt asks him his name and he says Henry George, and Newton Pratt says he’ll remember that. But, pretty obviously, he doesn’t.
THE STEPS OF ALL SAINTS
CAST
JOHN CLARE
HUSBAND
WIFE
JOHN BUNYAN
SAMUEL BECKETT
THOMAS BECKET
HALF-CASTE WOMAN
The three broad front steps and sheltering portico of a late Gothic church with Doric columns left and right, a foggy night-time. In the background beneath the portico, there are recesses set into the limestone front wall of the building, to either side of its locked doors. From off, the almost inaudible sound of a piano in the far distance, playing “Whispering Grass”. Seated in right-hand recess, JOHN CLARE, wearing dusty-looking early 19th-century rural dress, including a tall wide-awake hat. The sole is hanging off one shoe. He peers around into the surrounding gloom, hopefully.
JOHN CLARE: Well, this is a haunted sort of evening. Who’s about?
[Pause]
JOHN CLARE: Come on now, look alive … although for me I can’t be bothered with it these days. It’d be alright, perhaps, if not for all the walking and the disappointment. As for what there is of flesh and blood to the arrangement, I’m of the opinion that it’s much like shoes, in that the bodily side of the matter has a fresh smell and a lovely cherry lustre when it’s new, but that’s of no use once the tongue has withered and the sole’s worn through. It’s famously a poor show if the nails are digging in your feet. [Reflective pause as CLARE examines his damaged shoe.] No, in the main I’m happier with a gaseous posterity, so that the spectre of my backside might revisit all these spots that it was fond of formerly. The only pity is that life goes trudging on for as long as it does, since otherwise presumably there’d be more people of my own age and extinction here to talk to. [Cocks head, listening to faint music from off.] That’s a pretty air. I’d like to know who’s furious enough to gouge it into everyone.
[Dragging footsteps approach from off. Enter HUSBAND and WIFE, front right. They are dressed for an evening out, she in long coat and bonnet with handbag, he in loud yellow plaid jacket and dickey-bow with oiled dark hair and pencil moustache. They come to a halt, standing and staring at the empty church steps.]
HUSBAND: We could sit here.
WIFE: We can’t sit here. I can still hear the sound of her. It travels farther in the night.
HUSBAND: We’ll have to sit here. If you need to spend a penny there’s the toilets on Wood Hill not far away. She’s sure to cut it out soon, any road. I don’t know what’s got into her.
WIFE: [Snorts derisively.] I do.
[Resignedly, she goes and sits on church’s second step. Her husband stands staring at her for a moment. She does not look at him, but glares angrily into the fog. When he at last sits down next to her, she shuffles a couple of feet away from him. He looks at her, surprised and hurt.]
HUSBAND: Celia …
WIFE: Don’t.
JOHN CLARE: Hello? I don’t suppose that you’d be dead, now, would you?
HUSBAND: Is this how it’s going to be?
[She doesn’t answer. HUSBAND stares at her, waiting. JOHN CLARE rises from his alcove and walks hesitantly forward to stand behind and between the seated pair.]
JOHN CLARE: Excuse me, sir, but were you talking just now to myself or to the lady here? If, in response to my own querying of your mortality, you were enquiring as to whether this fogbound and uneventful continuity was how your afterlife was going to be, then in my own experience the answer’s yes. Yes, this is how it’s going to be. You’ll hang around in fog and nobody will ever come. If you’re anticipating a creator presently arriving to make lucid his intentions, then it’s my guess you’ll be waiting a long time. But, fair’s fair, if he should turn up, then when you’re finished with him, if you could point him in my direction, I’d be grateful. There were matters I was hoping to discuss. [The pair ignore him. Experimentally, he waves one arm up and down between them, as if to determine whether they are blind. After a moment he stops, and regards the couple glumly.] Of course, it may be that you were addressing your companion, in which case I hope you’ll pardon me for my intrusion. I intended no offence with my assumption that a couple as apparently ill-suited as yourselves might very well be dead. I am myself no stranger to the inconvenient marriage. When I was with Patty, it was always Mary that I thought of. Often did I –
HUSBAND: I said is this how it’s going to be, all night until the morning? If there’s something on your mind then spit it out, for God’s sake.
WIFE: You know.
HUSBAND: I don’t.
WIFE: I don’t want to talk about it.
HUSBAND: What?
WIFE: You know. The goings on. Just leave me be.
JOHN CLARE: [Slowly and with deliberation.] Do you know who I am? [HUSBAND continues to stare at WIFE who glares into the fog.] I ask not out of wounded vanity, but more in the true spirit of investigation. I’ve a fancy I might be Lord Byron, though it strikes me now I hear it spoke aloud that Byron would most surely not say such a thing. If that is so, then otherwise it may be I am King William the Fourth, in which case I would be obliged for news as to what year we suffer presently, and if my pretty Vicky is still Queen. Please take your time about it. It’s a thing of no great consequence, my true identity, as long as it is somebody well thought-of.
HUSBAND: Goings on? What goings on? [WIFE does not reply. He stares at her for a few moments then gives up and looks down at his shoes in silence. CLARE looks from one to the other, hopeful of further conversation. When none is forthcoming, he sags dejectedly.]
JOHN CLARE: [Sighs heavily.] Oh, never mind. Sorry I’ve bothered you. It’s just a game that I’ve come up with for when no one’s here to talk to. Tell you what, I’ll leave you both alone and mind my business. [CLARE turns and begins to shuffle back towards his alcove. Halfway there he turns and looks back over his shoulder at the couple on the steps.] Do you know, sometimes I think I am the statue with stone wings atop the Town Hall up the road, and it in turn is everyone? [The couple do not respond. CLARE shakes his head sadly then continues on towards the alcove, w
here he once more takes his seat. There is a long silence during which the piano music from off finishes abruptly halfway through a bar. Nobody reacts.]
HUSBAND: [Eventually.] Look, I’m as in the dark as you are. As for goings on, not that I’m saying I’m aware of any, that’s just life as far as I’m concerned. In life, you’ll always get a lot of goings on. And highly strung young girls, they can have funny turns –
WIFE: There’s goings on and goings on. That’s all I’m saying.
HUSBAND: Celia, look at me.
WIFE: I can’t.
HUSBAND: The chances are, what all this will turn out to be, she’s on her rags.
WIFE: [Turning to him angrily.] You bloody liar. You heard what she shouted.
HUSBAND: What?
WIFE: You heard.
HUSBAND: I didn’t.
WIFE: Everybody heard. They could have heard her in Far Cotton. “When the grass is whispering over me, then you’ll remember.” Well? Remember what? What did she mean? To me, it sounds a funny thing to say.
HUSBAND: Well, that’s … that’s just the song-words, isn’t it? The song that she was playing –
WIFE: You know that those aren’t the words. And you know what you’ve done.
HUSBAND: You mean these goings on of yours?
WIFE: They’re not my goings on. They’re yours. That’s all I’m saying. [While they talk, JOHN BUNYAN enters from off right beneath the portico behind them, dressed in dusty, drab 17th-century attire. He does not appear to notice CLARE sat in the shadows of his alcove, but instead pauses to listen to the bickering couple on the steps with a puzzled frown.]
HUSBAND: I’ve done nothing anyone in my position wouldn’t do. You haven’t got the first idea of what it’s like, with my responsibilities for managing the band. All of the travelling around together, there’s an intimacy that develops over time, I’ll grant you that, but –
WIFE: I dare say there’s intimacy! So, am I to take it you admit that there’s been goings on?
HUSBAND: I don’t know what you mean. What do you mean by goings on?
WIFE: I mean the other.
HUSBAND: What?
WIFE: The slap and tickle.
HUSBAND: I’m not getting you.
WIFE: The How’s-Your-Father.
HUSBAND: Oh. [Long pause. WIFE looks angrily away from HUSBAND, who stares bleakly at the ground in front of him.] Well, anyway, we can’t sit here all night.
WIFE: You’re right. We can’t. [Both remain seated. Behind them, BUNYAN regards the silent couple with bewilderment. He still has not noticed CLARE until the latter speaks from the dark alcove in the background.]
JOHN CLARE: Ha! I’ll bet you won’t hear me either, you great nincompoop.
JOHN BUNYAN: [Wheeling about to peer into the darkness under the portico.] What? Who goes there, skulking like a cutthroat?
JOHN CLARE: Oh, no. I’ve miscalculated. This is an embarrassment.
JOHN BUNYAN: Come out! Come out, before I draw my sword! [CLARE rises nervously out of his alcove, tottering hesitantly forward with both palms raised in placation.]
JOHN CLARE: Oh, come now. There’s no need for that. ’Twas but a jest, for which I make apology. I had not realised you were dead as well. It is, I’m sure, a common error.
JOHN BUNYAN: [Surprised.] Are we dead, then?
JOHN CLARE: I’m afraid that is my understanding of the situation, yes.
JOHN BUNYAN: [Turning to look at couple on steps in foreground.] What about them? Are they dead?
JOHN CLARE: Not yet. I expect they’re hanging on to see what happens.
JOHN BUNYAN: This indeed is a conundrum. Dead, then. I had thought that I but dreamed, and had not woken on my gaol cot to make water or turn on my side in an uncommonly long while.
JOHN CLARE: It is a plain fact you will never do these things again.
JOHN BUNYAN: Well, I am astounded. I had thought the world to come a fierier terrain than this, and now am disappointed by the writings that I made about it.
JOHN CLARE: [Interested.] Was it writings that you made? Well, here’s a pretty match. I once was in that kind of work myself, now that I think of it. I wrote all day, I’m sure of it, when I was married first to Mary Joyce and then to Patty Turner. Was I Byron then, or was I king? I can’t remember all the little details now, the way I once did. But what of yourself? Would there be any of your writings I might know of?
JOHN BUNYAN: I’d not think it likely. I once penned some words about a pilgrim, meant to show the pitfalls and the troubles that there are in worldly life. The common people liked it well enough, yet I was not the courtly crawler Dryden was, and when another Charles came to the throne I did not do so well of it. This recent news of being dead makes me suppose the greater part of what I wrote did not survive me.
JOHN CLARE: [Incredulous, with dawning realisation.] You would not be Mr. Bunyan, late of Bedford?
JOHN BUNYAN: [Cautiously flattered.] That I am, unless there is another. Is it so few years since my demise that I am still remembered? But things seem so changed. Were not the pillars of All Hallows Church here built from wood when last I passed this way? Or did that all go in the fire? It makes me pleased to think you know of me.
JOHN CLARE: Why, from the look of things I’d say it must be getting on three hundred years since you were last alive. I take it you’ll have noticed the fine calves and ankles on the woman there, for they were the first things I looked at. It’s outlandish days we’re in, you may be sure, but I would bet a shilling that the progress of your pilgrim is a thing on everybody’s lips, just as your name’s on everybody’s feet. Upon these feet of mine, most certainly, when I made my own progress out of Matthew Allen’s prison in the forest and walked eighty miles back home to Helpstone. You’ll no doubt have heard of it, and of myself. I am Lord Byron, who they call the peasant poet. Does that ring a bell?
JOHN BUNYAN: I cannot say it does. Why do they call you peasant when you are a Lord?
JOHN CLARE: It does seem queer, now that you mention it. And why does Queen Victoria insist she is my daughter? It may be, upon consideration, that I’m not entirely on the mark with the Lord Byron business. It was no doubt all the limping that confused me. It now comes to me that in the very fact of things I am John Clare, the author of Don Juan. There! That will be a name, I think, that’s more familiar to you.