Jerusalem

by Alan Moore

  JOHN CLARE: We’re not entirely sure ourselves. If I were of a kind to make a wager, I’d suppose them to be quarrelling about some manner of an infidelity.

  WIFE: And when was that?

  HUSBAND: What? When was what?

  WIFE: You said “At least to start with”. When was it you started?

  HUSBAND: Does it matter?

  WIFE: Oh, you know it matters. You know very well it matters, with the goings on and when they started. Look me in the eye and tell me, now. When was it?

  HUSBAND: [Uncomfortably.] Well, it was some time ago.

  WIFE: Some time ago. How much? Was it two years ago?

  HUSBAND: I don’t remember. [After a pause.] No. It was longer ago than that.

  WIFE: You filthy thing. You filthy creature. How old? How old was she when you started?

  HUSBAND: [Wretchedly.] You know I’m no good with birthdays. [The WIFE looks at her HUSBAND in anger and disgust before they both once more lapse into silence.]

  BECKETT: This looks very much to me as if the infidelity was with a younger woman. A young girl, you might say.

  JOHN BUNYAN: And would that, in your time, make an awful difference to the matter? Are the infidelity and the adultery not by themselves sufficient to account for their unhappy state?

  BECKETT: That would depend upon how young the other party was, exactly. There are different customs these days than were in your own. They have a thing now that they call “age of consent” and if you mess about with it you’re sure to be in trouble.

  JOHN CLARE: [Suddenly concerned.] And how old would that be?

  BECKETT: I think sixteen is around the usual mark. Why do you ask?

  JOHN CLARE: [Slightly evasively.] No reason in particular. Being a poet I am naturally interested in the facts of things.

  JOHN BUNYAN: [After a pause.] Well, I should be upon my way. The Earl of Peterborough will not wait forever to hand down his edict, and the path I’m on is hard and without ending. It has been instructive talking with you, and if I should wake tomorrow to my cell in Bedford you may be assured that all the curious things which we have said shall be a great amusement for me.

  JOHN CLARE: I shall be right pleased to say I’ve met you, even if only in these ambiguous circumstances.

  BECKETT: Yes, you take care. And between the two of us, what did you genuinely think to your man Cromwell?

  JOHN BUNYAN: Ah, he was all right. [Less confidently, following a pause.] At least to start with. Yet despite his antinomian certainties, you may be sure that he was not a saint. Ah, well. I’ll leave you to your entertainments in this borough of Mansoul. A good night to you, gentlemen. [BUNYAN walks wearily off to EXIT STAGE LEFT.]

  JOHN CLARE: And to you.

  BECKETT: Aye, mind how you go. [CLARE and BECKETT watch BUNYAN depart, and then fall back to their contemplation of the couple sitting on the steps.] Well, for a Roundhead, he seemed nice enough. What was your own impression?

  JOHN CLARE: [Slightly disappointed.] I had thought him not so tall as he seemed in the illustrations. [After a pause.] So, you said that in your own day, I’m well thought of. Is it my Don Juan they like?

  BECKETT: No, that was Byron. You’re admired for all your writings, for the Shepherd’s Calendar and desperate later pieces such as your “I Am” alike. The journal that you kept while on your walk from Essex is regarded as the most heart-breaking document in all of English letters, and with much justification.

  JOHN CLARE: [Amazed.] Why, I’d thought it thrown away! So it’s my hike that they remember, back from Matthew Allen’s prison in the forest to my first wife Mary’s house in Glinton. Ah, that was a rousing odyssey, you may be sure, with all of the heroic things I did and all the places that I went. [A pause, during which CLARE frowns in puzzlement.] How did it end, again? I don’t recall …

  BECKETT: Regarding that first wife of yours? Not well. When you got to her house, well, let’s just say she wasn’t in. By then you’d found what I suppose you’d call your second wife, though, Patty, and she ultimately had you put in the asylum on the Billing Road here, where you later died. I’m sorry to be blunt about it.

  JOHN CLARE: No, it’s all right. I remember now. I lived with Patty and our children for a while, in what’s called Poet’s Cottage out at Helpstone, but nobody could put up with me for long and so … you evidently know the rest of it. Mind, I do not blame Patty, though she always had a jealousy towards my first wife, who I loved the best.

  HUSBAND: She was fifteen. She was fifteen when it all started, with the goings on. There. You can go and tell the police if that’s what your intention is. I’ve got it off me chest.

  WIFE: You’ll never have it off your chest. Fifteen. And that’s when it was wonderful, when you were at your happiest. Fifteen.

  JOHN CLARE: Well, that’s not all that young.

  BECKETT: No?

  HUSBAND: Yes! It made me happy! Just the smell, the taste of her, it was like morning in the garden! And the feeling, she was hardly like a heavy, solid thing at all and much more like a piece of down, or like a liquid. Celia, it was marvellous.

  JOHN CLARE: Not in the broader scheme of things. Fifteen is not particularly young, considered from a wide perspective. Not out in the country.

  WIFE: You disgust me. You’re no better than an earwig, wriggling in the muck.

  BECKETT: That’s not a bad line. I’ll remember that, though it’ll more than likely sound like nonsense when I wake. That’s often how it is.

  HUSBAND: It wasn’t all one-sided, Celia. That’s all I’m saying.

  JOHN CLARE: I’m beginning to have sympathy with him. Women bear grudges for no proper reason.

  WIFE: Don’t you speak another word. Don’t you say anything to me.

  BECKETT: I can’t say I think that a fair appraisal. I’ve known women with a painful lot in life.

  JOHN CLARE: That may be so, but in the main I stand by what I said. The life of a romantic man is never easy. Did you not say earlier that other than the cricket, you came here to see a woman?

  BECKETT: That I did. And I will grant you that it was a woman of the difficult romantic kind, at least at first … although it may be she was always in the painful category. These things are by no means easy to determine. It strikes me there could be a degree of overlap between the two varieties.

  CLARE: It may be so. It may be this is usually the case. What was her name, your woman?

  BECKETT: Oh, you wouldn’t know her. She was born a great while after you’d passed on, some way into the 20th century. A Miss Joyce –

  JOHN CLARE: [Astounded, almost frightened.] No, not her! Are you playing a cruel game with me? That is my Mary, Mary Joyce of Glinton …

  BECKETT: Ah, no. This would be another girl entirely that I’m speaking of, that is the daughter of James Joyce.

  CLARE: [Excitedly.] Why, that was Mary’s father’s name! Surely your woman and my own first wife must be one and the same! How is she? Give me news of her.

  BECKETT: [Gently and sympathetically.] No. No, it isn’t her. The Miss Joyce I’m referring to is called Lucia. She was notable in Paris for her dancing in the 1920s, but was brought low by a difficulty in her reason. Sorry if I’ve let you down.

  JOHN CLARE: [Sighs heavily.] Oh, it’s my own fault. Being mad, you know, it’s very self-indulgent. I should buck up and get on with things. [A pause.] What was she like, your personal Miss Joyce? Was she a young thing, like my own?

  BECKETT: They all start out as young things, all of the Miss Joyces.

  JOHN CLARE: Yes, that’s true.

  BECKETT: Mine was a very pretty girl, who was afflicted by the old strabismus in one eye which she perceived as having ruined her. You know women and the low esteem in which they often hold themselves.

  JOHN CLARE: I do.

  BECKETT: There was some trouble with her brother, I believe, when she was young that may have had connection with her later upset. Anyway, the upshot of it was that Lucia lost her marbles.

  JOHN CLARE: [Puzzled
.] I’m not sure I understand your turn of phrase.

  BECKETT: She flipped her lid.

  JOHN CLARE: No, I’m no nearer.

  BECKETT: Away with the fairies.

  JOHN CLARE: Ah! Ah, now, I think I have you. She would be what they call a hysteric?

  BECKETT: Close enough. They sent her off to various sanatoriums and psychiatrists. You know the drill. At last she landed in Saint Andrew’s Hospital along Northampton’s Billing Road, where she remains at present.

  JOHN CLARE: That’s the place where I was kept, although they called it something different then.

  BECKETT: The very same. The institution has an interesting literary pedigree.

  JOHN CLARE: You know, I think I am acquainted with the girl you speak of. If it’s who I’m thinking of, I had a romp with her off in the madhouse woods not long ago.

  BECKETT: No, I’m afraid that’s just your lunacy that’s talking. Though it’s true you were both settled at the same asylum you weren’t congruent in the chronology of things. You hail from two entirely different periods.

  JOHN CLARE: Why, you could say the same of you and me, yet here we are. No, this lass I refer to had dark hair and long legs, very little in the way of bubbies and a lazy eye.

  BECKETT: I’ll admit, that’s very like her.

  JOHN CLARE: Makes a lot of noise about it with the spending. Mind you, in my own ordeal I spent so hard that there were letters of the alphabet came fluttering from my ears.

  BECKETT: Well, you’ve convinced me. That’s Lucia to a T, although I’m mystified about the circumstances of your meeting. You would not be speaking metaphorically?

  JOHN CLARE: I don’t believe so, no.

  BECKETT: Now that’s a mystery. She didn’t mention it to me when last I visited.

  JOHN CLARE: It may be that she was embarrassed. I am not myself what you might call presentable, and I had the impression she was of the better type.

  BECKETT: That may be so. She might have thought you were beneath her.

  JOHN CLARE: Well, then she’d be right. That was exactly the configuration of our bout.

  BECKETT: Leave off with it. You’re getting on my nerves now.

  JOHN CLARE: Then I’ll beg your pardon. You have feelings for her still yourself?

  BECKETT: Not of a carnal nature, no, though once I did. If I am to be truthful, back in those days it was only carnal feelings that I had, though that was not her understanding of the matter. Presently I go to visit her as often as I can. I love her in a way, but not the way she wants. I don’t know why I go so much, to be completely honest.

  JOHN CLARE: Could it be you pity her?

  BECKETT: No, I don’t think that that’s entirely it. She’s happy in her own way. It might very well be that she’s happier than me. In fact, I would have difficulty in believing it were otherwise, so, no, it isn’t pity. I suppose I feel I owe her something. When I met her I was callous and I couldn’t bring myself to see that she was drowning. I could have done more, that’s all I’m saying. Or I could have done less. One way or the other. It’s too late now.

  JOHN CLARE: So it’s guilt, then?

  BECKETT: I expect it is. I often find it’s guilt that’s at the bottom of a thing.

  JOHN CLARE: I tend to share that point of view myself.

  WIFE: What did you mean, it wasn’t all one-sided?

  HUSBAND: I thought that you didn’t want me speaking to you.

  WIFE: Don’t be clever. You’re not clever, Johnny. The last thing you are is clever. Tell me what you meant when you said that it wasn’t all one-sided.

  HUSBAND: I meant it was a duet. It was a tango. Flanagan and Allen. It was something that took two is what I’m saying to you. Why must you be all the while so dense?

  WIFE: So it was something that she wanted, that’s the gist of it?

  HUSBAND: It is! That is the very crux of things, the fulcrum of the subject: it was something that she wanted.

  WIFE: Oh, well, that’s all right then, I suppose.

  HUSBAND: [Sighs, relieved.] I knew that you’d come round.

  WIFE: How did you know?

  HUSBAND: That you’d come round? Oh, well, I know you can’t stay angry with me very long …

  WIFE: [Slowly and deliberately.] How did you know that it was something that she wanted? Is that what she told you? Did she say “It’s something that I want”?

  HUSBAND: Not in as many words, no. No, she didn’t. But …

  WIFE: Well, what words did she use, then? What words did she use when she told you that it was something that she wanted?

  HUSBAND: Well, it wasn’t words as such. She didn’t tell me through the medium of words.

  WIFE: [Increasingly angry.] Well, what? Interpretive dance, was it? Did she mime it for you?

  HUSBAND: [Sounding trapped and uncomfortable.] It was signals.

  WIFE: Signals?

  HUSBAND: Little signals. You know what it’s like, how women are.

  WIFE: I’m not sure that I do.

  HUSBAND: The signals they give out. The little looks and glances, all of that. She was forever smiling at me, cuddling up to me and telling me she loved me …

  WIFE: [Horrified, shouting in rage.] Well, of course she was! Of course she’d do that! Johnny, you’re her father!

  BECKETT: Ah, Christ. There you have it.

  HUSBAND: But … I mean, I hadn’t thought of that. It isn’t what I’m used to. If a girl, a woman, if she looks at you a certain way. I mean, you know our Audrey, what she’s like …

  WIFE: [Furious, in helpless tears.] I don’t! I don’t know what our Audrey’s like, or not how you do, anyway! You tell me, Johnny. Tell me what she’s like. Come on, now, it’ll be a bit of fun. I know: the first time, did it make her cry?

  JOHN CLARE: This is a horror. I had not expected this.

  HUSBAND: Celia …

  WIFE: Tell me, Johnny. Tell me what our Audrey’s like to be in bed with. Did it make her cry? Was she a virgin, Johnny? Was she? And what did you do about the sheets? [The HUSBAND looks at his WIFE, haunted, but simply moves his mouth like a fish and cannot answer her. Eventually he looks away and stares bleakly into space. His WIFE sinks her head in her hands, perhaps weeping silently. While CLARE and BECKETT are still staring in mute horror at the seated couple, THOMAS BECKET ENTERS LEFT and wanders slowly over to join them. They regard him with silent bewilderment. He looks at the haunted couple, then looks at CLARE and BECKETT.]

  THOMAS BECKET: Pray, has some great catastrophe befallen them?

  BECKETT: It has.

  THOMAS BECKET: And can you not console them?

  JOHN CLARE: They can’t hear us.

  THOMAS BECKET: They are deaf?

  BECKETT: No, they’re alive. The rest of us are either dead or dreaming, or that’s how I understand it. Who might you be?

  THOMAS BECKET: I am Becket.

  BECKETT: I’ll be candid with you: that’s an answer I was not anticipating. I myself am Beckett.

  THOMAS BECKET: You are Thomas Becket?

  BECKETT: No, I’m Samuel Beckett. This is John Clare. [A pause.] Wait a minute, now, did you say you were Thomas Becket?

  THOMAS BECKET: Thomas Becket, Canterbury’s archbishop. Yes, you have me now. What is the stuff you say about me being dead? For all I know I am come here to see the King who is at Hamtun’s castle, that we might be reconciled.

  JOHN CLARE: Take it from me, you’re dead all right. Affairs go badly for you at the castle and you skip away to France for a few years. When you come back what happens is you’re down at your cathedral, and …

  BECKETT: We don’t need to go into all the ins and outs of it.

  JOHN CLARE: Although reportedly there were a lot of them, the ins and outs …

  BECKETT: [To CLARE.] Enough of that. Enough of it. [To BECKET] The thing that you should bear in mind is not the brute mechanics of the matter, but its outcome.

  THOMAS BECKET: [Worried.] There were brute mechanics?

  JOHN CLARE: Ins and outs.
r />   BECKETT: I’ve said already that it’s not a thing to dwell upon. Forget about all that. The salient point in all of this is that you were discovered to be incorruptible. That would explain the business with the sainthood which was latterly bestowed upon you. You’re the first one that I’ve met and I’m not sure what I should make of it.

  THOMAS BECKET: Oh, God. Then I am to be martyred?

  JOHN CLARE: I’m afraid it is old news. It’s getting on eight hundred years ago, all that.

  BECKETT: [Angrily.] Look! [More softly, startled by his own outburst.] Look, all that I mean to say is you were made a saint, and that’s the long and short of it. Surely the very fact outweighs those means by which you came to be in that condition. I’d have thought you would be pleased about it.

  THOMAS BECKET: Pleased? To have been burned, or broken on a wheel?

  JOHN CLARE: Oh, that’s not so. No, you were only chopped about a bit, as I was told.

  THOMAS BECKET: Ah, no, don’t tell me anymore.

  BECKETT: [To CLARE.] Quite frankly, you’re not helping. [To BECKET] Is it not a comfort, then, the saintliness of your appointment?

  THOMAS BECKET: [Very upset.] Does it seem to you that I am comforted? You tell me I am made a saint, and yet where am I?

  JOHN CLARE: Why, that’s nothing but geography. There’s no theology about it. You are underneath the portico of All Saint’s Church here in Northampton and it’s halfway through the century after the one I died in, making it the twentieth. I’m informed that a great war with the Germans has been recently concluded in our favour.

  BECKETT: No, it’s not the Great War that’s been recently concluded. That was some time earlier, although the Germans were involved in it so you can be forgiven your confusion. We only referred to it as the Great War because we didn’t know that there was going to be another one.

  JOHN CLARE: A greater one?

  BECKETT: I think a lot of that depends on your perspective.

  THOMAS BECKET: [Exasperated.] All I meant by asking where I am, if I’m a saint, is that I do not seem to be in Heaven.

  BECKETT: No. I’ll own, it doesn’t look much like it.

  THOMAS BECKET: Yet nor is it the unending fire of Heaven’s opposite.