Book 3, Chapter 6 : The Steps of All Saints

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 nighttime. 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 19^th-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 luster 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 specter 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 mustache. 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 inquiring 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 offense 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, where 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 17^th-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 traveling 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 realized 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 jail 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 realization.] 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.

JOHN BUNYAN: I’m afraid that it is not.

JOHN CLARE: [Disappointed.] What, not the Clare or the Don Juan, now?

JOHN BUNYAN: Neither of them.

JOHN CLARE: Ah, God. Am I not even John Clare? [CLARE lapses into a depressed silence, staring at the ground. BUNYAN regards him, concerned.]

HUSBAND: Look, I’m no saint.

WIFE: [Not looking at him.] You can say that again.

HUSBAND: [After a pause.] What I’m saying is I’m only flesh and blood.

WIFE: [Angrily, turning to glare at him accusingly.] Well, what sort of excuse is that? We’re all just flesh and blood! You show me somebody who’s not! [She looks away from him again, reverting to silence. Behind the pair, CLARE and BUNYAN exchange lugubrious and unconvinced glances.]

JOHN CLARE: [He shrugs.] It strikes me that we’re only getting in the way here. What would you say to the prospect of a nice sit down? It is in my opinion quite the best of postures, and I am convinced that it is only all this standing up and walking to and fro that gets us into so much trouble as a population. Come, let’s take the weight from off our feet.

JOHN BUNYAN: I had intended I should see the nearby marketplace, where was the Earl of Peterborough’s edict handed down that I referred to in that piece of mine about the Holy War. Still, it may be that a few moments’ rest is no great matter in the long yards of posterity. But as for taking weight from off our feet, in our present condition I can’t see that there is any weight to take. Indeed, it is a wonder that we do not float away into the heavens for our want of heaviness.

JOHN CLARE: I had supposed we all must keep an ounce or two of it that’s carried in our hearts for such emergencies. Let us sit down, and then perhaps we can discuss this further. [CLARE begins to lead BUNYAN towards the rear of the space beneath the portico. BUNYAN starts towards the right-side alcove, at which CLARE grows agitated and corrects him.] Oh, no, that won’t do. This fellow is the recess that’s reserved for me, by virtue of my previous habitation. You must have the one upon the other side, that I keep specially for visitors. I’ll own it’s not as sumptuous as mine, but if that inconvenience is the worst thing that Eternity has got to throw at you, you should be glad. [BUNYAN looks disgruntled, but accedes to CLARE’s wishes. Both men take their seats in their allotted alcoves.]

JOHN BUNYAN: You’re right. It’s comfortable enough.

JOHN CLARE: It is. [Pause.] Are you referring to the recess, now, or the Eternity?

JOHN BUNYAN: Primarily the recess. [Pause. From OFF there is the SOUND of a solitary motorcar passing by through the fog. The HUSBAND and WIFE pay the passing car no attention, but CLARE and BUNYAN follow it with their eyes.] I have wondered about those things. They are clearly a variety of wagon, but I cannot fathom how their locomotion is effected.

JOHN CLARE: Well, I’ve given that some thought myself, and I believe the answer lies in some advance of natural science that has made the horse invisible to normal sight.

JOHN BUNYAN: Surely, that conjecture might be easily disproved with the plain observation that there’s no conspicuous abundance of the dung these unseen nags must certainly produce. Answer me that, if you’ve the measure of it.

JOHN CLARE: Ah! Ah! So I will, then. Does it not occur to you that beings that are visible unto plain sight such as ourselves make droppings that are equally apparent to the eye? Does it not follow that an unseen or invisibly transparent horse would thus produce manure that’s of a similar ethereal nature?

JOHN BUNYAN: [After a thoughtful pause.] Surely, though, however rarefied its substance, an unseen evacuation would still stink. Indeed, would not the spectral turd that you propose present a greater inconvenience to the pedestrian, surely more likely to step unawares into your numinous ordure than into an excrescence which is in the common view and therefore may be walked around and so avoided?

JOHN CLARE: [A pause, during which CLARE reconsiders.] I’d not thought of that, and thus withdraw my speculation. [Another pause, as CLARE worriedly contemplates invisible horse manure.] Horse muck that cannot be seen. It is a horror, now I come to understand the implications. Why, there’d be a reeking foulness hidden from the cognizance of all, that never could be cleaned away, in which the purest of things might be inadvertently made filthy …

HUSBAND: Celia, I promise you, there’s nothing going on. Nothing that anybody else can see. You show me where there’s something going on.

WIFE: I’ve got no need to see it. I can smell it. I can smell a rat. I can smell something fishy.

HUSBAND: Celia, listen to yourself. A fishy rat?

WIFE: [She leans forward, staring hard and accusingly into his eyes.] A fishy rat. Yes. That’s the very thing that I can smell, even when someone’s drenched it in cologne. A fishy rat, with hairy fins and scaly ears, that’s got a great long pink worm of a tail to drag behind it through the dirty water. God, you ought to be ashamed.

HUSBAND: I’m not! I’m not ashamed! I haven’t done a thing to be ashamed of! Why, my conscience is a pane of polished glass, without a streak of guilt or birdshit anywhere upon it. What is it that makes you think I’m guilty? Is there something guilty that I’ve said, or something guilty in my manner? Where is all this guilty, guilty, guilty coming from? Because it’s getting on my nerves, and if it keeps up I shall lose my rag. How can I think straight with this noise? And how long is she going to keep on playing that same tune before it drives me mad?

WIFE: [She stares at him, puzzled and then slightly worried.] How long is …? Johnny, she stopped playing nearly half an hour ago.

HUSBAND: [He stares at her blankly.] What, really?

WIFE: A good twenty minutes at the very least.

HUSBAND: [He turns and stares into space, horrified and haunted.] A half an hour. Or at least a good twenty minutes …

WIFE: Split the difference. Call it twenty-five.

HUSBAND: Oh, God. [They lapse into silence. The HUSBAND gazes, haunted, into the fog. His WIFE gazes at him for a few moments, mystified, and then looks away.]

JOHN BUNYAN: [After a respectful pause.] Do you yourself have any notion what it is that vexes them?

JOHN CLARE: Neither the first, nor faintest. I imagine it would be a marital perplexity that’s by and large opaque to the outsider, although having had two wives I am a man of more than ordinary experience. With my first wife Mary, who enjoyed the sweetest disposition, I was happy and there were no quarrels of the stripe we see enacted here. Our marriage bed was filled with harmony, and when I entered into her it was as though I entered into God’s own meadow. With my second wife, with Patty, it was naught but baleful hints and dark recriminations, although she was very often good to me. Still, there were nights that she’d be jealous of the time I had with Mary, who was a much younger girl than Patty was herself. No, as you see, I am no stranger to the married life and its upheavals, though in truth I was not often with my family.

JOHN BUNYAN: Then there’s another thing we hold in common, with our forenames, mutual occupation and our current state of incorporeality. I too had family, from whom I was made separate by my confinement.

JOHN CLARE: [Excitedly.] You were confined? Why, so was I! It is as though we were reflections of each other! Where were you confined?

JOHN BUNYAN: In prison, for my preaching. And yourself?

JOHN CLARE: [Suddenly vague and evasive.] Oh … it was in a hospital.

JOHN BUNYAN: [Concerned.] Then you were ailing in the flesh?

JOHN CLARE: Well … no. Not really. Not the flesh. Mind you, I did once have a nasty limp.

JOHN BUNYAN: So, not the flesh. I see. [From OFF there is the SOUND of the CHURCH CLOCK, striking once.]

HUSBAND: It’s like we’ve been here hours. Was that for half-past twelve or one o’clock, do you suppose?

WIFE: What does it matter? Who cares if it’s half-past twelve or one o’clock? It’s always going to be the same time from now on, as far as you’re concerned. It’s always going to be too late. Or who knows? It might be half-past too late. I couldn’t say. [They lapse into another hostile silence.]

JOHN CLARE: What do you mean, you see?

JOHN BUNYAN: What?

JOHN CLARE: When I said that when confined to hospital I was not ailing in the flesh, you said “So, not the flesh. I see.” What did you see?

JOHN BUNYAN: It was a turn of phrase. Think nothing of it.

JOHN CLARE: I will not think nothing of it, for it seems to me there was an implication, was there not?

JOHN BUNYAN: An implication?

JOHN CLARE: Ah, don’t play the fool with me. I’m twice the idiot you’ll ever be. You know full well the nature of the implication I refer to. You as good as said “If not the flesh, then what?” Deny it if you can.

JOHN BUNYAN: I’ll not deny it. I had but supposed that you were deemed to be afflicted of the mind or spirit, and had been surprised that there were hospitals attending such affairs. Believe me when I say I did not seek to judge your clarity, or lack thereof.

JOHN CLARE: You did not seek to call me lunatic? There are those who would not be so restrained.

JOHN BUNYAN: I have myself been called the same, along with blasphemer and devil. It is ever thus, it seems, for any man who has a vision in his soul and dares to speak it, most especially if that should be a vision inconvenient to the wealthy or the ordinary run of things.

JOHN CLARE: That’s it exactly! You have bound it in a nutshell. When there is a fear that some truth may be told, the teller is put under lock and key and called a criminal or else a madman. My own circumstances make it plain, for if even Lord Byron may be deemed insane, then why not any man? It is beyond my comprehension.

JOHN BUNYAN: [A pause, during which BUNYAN gazes at CLARE with understanding and pity.] And mine likewise. [Another pause, thoughtful and reflective.] Then there are still inequalities and prisons in this age of unseen horses, even. Am I to suppose the New Jerusalem did not arrive?

JOHN CLARE: I must confess I have not noticed it in this vicinity, although it may be that it turned up while I was confined and no one thought to tell me.

JOHN BUNYAN: [He shakes his head, disappointed.] If that were the case, then we should all be saints.

JOHN CLARE: Perhaps we are.

JOHN BUNYAN: That is a dismal summary.

JOHN CLARE: You’re right. It is. That’s worse than the invisible manure. I wish I’d never said it. [He and BUNYAN lapse into a bleak silence.]

HUSBAND: The lion shall lie down beside the lamb. That’s in the Bible.

WIFE: Oh, and does the Bible say whether the lamb’s still there to get up in the morning?

HUSBAND: Celia, I thought you liked the Bible.

WIFE: Lots of things are in the Bible, Johnny. Lots and lots and lots. And then their daughters. So, do you admit it, then? Did you lie down beside the lamb?

HUSBAND: I’m not a saint.

WIFE: Yes, you’ve already told us that. You’re not a lion, either. And you’re not a man. You’re nothing but a snazzy creature that once ran a dance-band, and now you’re not man enough to face the music.

HUSBAND: [Startled.] You said it had stopped.

WIFE: It has. [A pause.] What was it that the grass was whispering about?

HUSBAND: I don’t know. Nothing. You know grass. It’s always whispering. It’s got nothing better to do. What does it know? It’s grass, for heaven’s sake.

WIFE: They say all flesh is grass.

HUSBAND: Well, not my flesh, it’s not. Not me. I’m not grass.

WIFE: Yes you are. You’re grass. Look at you. You’re half-cut and gone to seed. And like all flesh, you’ll have your season and you’ll be mowed down. And then you’ll have it on your conscience for eternity. The music, that’ll still be playing. And the grass will still be whispering. [Beneath the portico behind them, SAMUEL BECKETT enters from OFF, LEFT. He notices the couple on the steps, but does not notice CLARE or BUNYAN in their alcoves. BECKETT wanders over to stand just behind the couple, looking down at them in puzzlement as they ignore him.]

HUSBAND: Eternity. God, there’s a thought. All of that bloody whispering, for eternity.

BECKETT: Hello, now. How are things with you tonight?

WIFE: It’s me shall have to put up with the whispering and all the tongues.

BECKETT: Tongues? I’m not sure I follow you.

HUSBAND: Oh, and that’s my fault, is it?

BECKETT: I’m not saying that it’s your fault, I’m just saying I don’t follow you.

WIFE: Well, you’re the one with all the secrets and the mysteries and the goings on.

BECKETT: Ah, that’s a common thing, to say that I’m impenetrable.

HUSBAND: Oh, not that old tale again. Give it a rest with all of your long silences and all of that evasive and insinuating chatter you’re so fond of. I’m fed up of it.

BECKETT: I’d have to say I don’t think that you’ve understood contemporary drama.

JOHN CLARE: They can’t hear you. We’ve been through all this already.

WIFE: I’m the one who’s fed up of it.

BECKETT: [Startled, BECKETT wheels round to face CLARE and BUNYAN.] Who’s that? What’s all this about?

JOHN BUNYAN: Be not alarmed. My friend here has explained it to me. We, like you, are but departed shades, and living souls such as the pair upon the step can neither see nor hear us.

JOHN CLARE: I’d go further. I do not believe that they can smell us, either.

BECKETT: Departed shade? Don’t you go telling me I’m dead. I haven’t even got a cough. To my mind, it’s more likely that this is a dream of some description.

JOHN BUNYAN: That is very like what I myself supposed, and yet I’m told that we are halfway through the twentieth century after our Lord and I myself beneath the turf more than two hundred years.

BECKETT: Two hundred years? Well, I’m all right, then. [BECKETT looks around and gestures towards the surrounding town center.] All this looks like just after the war, whereas as far as I’m aware I’m sleeping in a hotel in the far from satisfying 1970s.

JOHN CLARE: A hotel! In the 1970s! I do not know which of these things is harder to imagine!

JOHN BUNYAN: Just after the war, you say? Was it another civil war?

BECKETT: A civil war? God, no. Is that the time that you yourself are from? This was a war with Germany, primarily; the second of two world wars that we had. They flattened London so the English firebombed Dresden, and then the Americans dropped something that you can’t imagine on the Japanese, and then it was all over.

JOHN BUNYAN: [BUNYAN also glances around at the surrounding town, his expression mournful.] So, then, it would seem the nation’s pilgrimage has taken it to just beyond the City of Destruction. By my calculations, that would make this place Vanity Fair.

BECKETT: You’re quoting Bunyan at me, now?

JOHN CLARE: It’s not like he can help it. He’s John Bunyan. And I’m Byron.

JOHN BUNYAN: [To BECKETT.] Oh, don’t listen to him. [To CLARE.] No you’re not. You’re making both of us look bad and not to be believed. You said yourself you were John Clare. Stick to your tale or we’ll end up with everyone confused as you!

BECKETT: [BECKETT laughs in amazement.] John Bunyan. And John Clare. Well, now, this is a lively dream. I must book into this hotel again.

JOHN CLARE: [Surprised and incredulous.] John Clare. You’ve heard of him? You’ve heard of me?

BECKETT: Why, certainly. Being myself a writer, I’m familiar with the pair of you and have respect for your accomplishments. You, Mr. Clare, especially. In my day, you’re remembered as the Peasant Poet, as perhaps the greatest lyric voice that England ever entertained and treated so unfairly, what with dying in the madhouse and the rest of it. [A pause.] You were aware of that, the dying in a madhouse? I hope I’ve not been insensitive in breaking it to you like that.

JOHN CLARE: Oh, I already knew about it. I was there around that time. But tell me, is my darling wife remembered also? Mary Clare, who once was Mary Joyce?

BECKETT: [BECKETT regards CLARE with a serious and searching look.] Ah, yes. Your first wife. Yes, yes, it’s a well-known story, still discussed in literary circles.

JOHN CLARE: Then I’m glad. I should be sorry if I were remembered only for the madness.

JOHN BUNYAN: [To BECKETT.] You said that you were a writer also. Would yours be a name that we might know?

BECKETT: I shouldn’t think that’s likely. You’d both have been dead a while before I came along. I’m Samuel Beckett. You can call me Sam if I might know the pair of you as John. This is Northampton, isn’t it? The portico of All Saints Church?

JOHN BUNYAN: I meant to ask what you were doing here. Both Mr. Clare here and myself were born nearby and so often had business here, while from your voice I’d guess that you’re an Irishman. What is it brings you this way, either in posterity or, as you would prefer to have it, in your dreams?

BECKETT: Well, now, in the first instance that would be the cricket, and then later on it was to see a woman.

JOHN BUNYAN: Cricket?

JOHN CLARE: Oh, I’m well acquainted with the ins and outs of it. You ought to see it!

BECKETT: Sure, I played against Northampton at the County Ground. We stayed at the hotel next to the pitch, and on the night after the match my team mates were all of a mind to go out in pursuit of drink and prostitutes, the both of which this town has in abundance. I myself was more inclined to spend the evening in the company of old Northampton’s Gothic churches, which are equally profuse. I would imagine that it is the memory of that night which brings me back here in my dreams, though I’ll admit that you yourselves provide a novel element.

HUSBAND: All right! All right, I did it. Does that make you happy?

WIFE: [Coldly, after a pause.] Did it make you happy?

HUSBAND: [Defiantly, after a moment of deliberation.] Yes! Yes, it made me happy! It was wonderful and I was happier than I’ve ever been. [Less confidently, following a pause.] At least to start with.

BECKETT: What’s all this that’s going on? [BUNYAN and CLARE glance at each other, then reluctantly stand up from their stone alcoves and walk slowly across to join BECKETT near the quarreling couple.]

JOHN CLARE: We’re not entirely sure ourselves. If I were of a kind to make a wager, I’d suppose them to be quarreling 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 marvelous.

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 20^th 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.

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 favor.

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.

JOHN CLARE: Oh, no. It’s nothing near as bad as that.

THOMAS BECKET: Am I then to suppose that this is purgatory, this gray place where phantoms wander lost and make their aimless discourse, caught here for all time?

HUSBAND: [Bleakly, still staring into space.] I threw them out, and I got new ones.

WIFE: [The WIFE looks up at her HUSBAND uncomprehendingly.] What?

HUSBAND: The sheets. I threw them out, and I got new ones. And I turned the mattress over.

BECKETT: [To THOMAS BECKET.] What you’ve just said, I think that you might be very near the mark.

WIFE: [She looks at her HUSBAND, shaking her head in incredulous disgust.] That’s you. That’s you forever, in your vest and sweating, trying to turn the mattress over, trying to cover all your stains. And was she watching while you did that? Was she sitting there and watching?

HUSBAND: She were crying.

WIFE: There. What did I say?

HUSBAND: [Hopelessly.] I thought, you know. I thought that it were all of the emotions she was having that had made her weepy.

WIFE: Oh, I dare say. I dare say it was. All the emotions. While she watched her father try to hide her blood because he was so proud of what he’d done.

HUSBAND: [As if understanding what he’s done for the first time.] Oh, God. [After a pause, there is the SOUND from OFF of the CHURCH CLOCK, STRIKING ONCE.] Is that … is that one o’clock, and it was half past twelve before, or is that half past one, and …

WIFE: [Explosively, at her wits end.] Oh, shut up! Shut up! Shut up with everything! It’s always the same time! We can’t move on from this! We’re stuck here on these steps, this night, over and over! [The WIFE starts to weep again. Her HUSBAND also sinks his head in his hands.]

THOMAS BECKET: [Downcast and resigned.] Purgatory, then. But you say they are yet alive?

BECKETT: Again, I think a lot of that depends on your perspective. They’re alive here, in their time, as we are in our own. One way of looking at things, everybody’s dead and always has been. Like your woman here was saying, we’re all stuck. Perhaps we have it all, the good and bad, over and over. Wouldn’t that be all the Heaven and the Hell of it, how everyone was threatened by their pastors?

THOMAS BECKET: I find that a fearful ideology. I had dared hope for better.

JOHN CLARE: I’d feared worse! If it meant I should have my first wife Mary by my side again, then the travails of life should be as nothing and that by itself should be my Heaven.

BECKETT: I’m not saying I believe it. It’s just something I’ve had put to me. The father of the girl I talked about, James Joyce, I can recall him telling me about his fondness for Ouspensky’s notion of what I suppose you’d call a grand recurrence. It had had some bearing upon the eternal day in Dublin that was circumnavigated variously in his greatest novels.

THOMAS BECKET: More and more I hope this to be an outlandish dream and, wishing you no disrespect, the pair of you but figments. It may be this is a night-start after all, born of my apprehensions that I have given the King offense, one that our erstwhile friendship shall not mitigate.

BECKETT: Well, I’ll confess to the same thought myself initially. A dream of some kind would be the most reasonable explanation, although since I don’t subscribe to the interpretations of Professor Freud, I can’t see why I should be dreaming about all this wretched and incestuous back-and-forth. And that’s before I try to fathom how a load of saints and writers that I haven’t thought about in years fit into the arrangement. It’s a mighty puzzle, and I can’t say I’m enjoying it.

THOMAS BECKET: [Looking at couple on steps.] That is the sin that binds them in their disagreement, then? The man has lain down with his daughter?

JOHN CLARE: In the countryside there’s more of it than you’d imagine.

BECKETT: Even in the towns, I wouldn’t say they did so bad. The woman I was talking of, Lucia, there were those who reckoned it was much the same thing that commenced her acting up, all of the incest and the rest of it.

JOHN CLARE: [Shocked.] Her father, that you said was called James Joyce as was my Mary’s, he’d been guilty of the same offense?

BECKETT: Oh, no, not him. He worshiped her. She was the one he wrote for, and about. He might have thought about her in that fashion, I suppose, but if he did he only tried to touch her with his writing, fingering her with a sentence here or there, a feel of tit concealed within a subtext. No, the culprit in a physical regard, if that was anyone, my guess is that it might have been her brother.

THOMAS BECKET: In my day that would be thought as much a sin … at least in open conversation. Privately, I am convinced that there is nowhere it does not go on.

JOHN CLARE: Though I will own it is a grievous matter, I’ve known many that have sported with a brother or a sister and there’s been no great harm come of it.

BECKETT: Well, Lucia was very young when this occurred, now, if occur it did.

JOHN CLARE: But we have said before that your own views upon what is a proper age may not be those appropriate to earlier times.

BECKETT: If I’m right, Lucia would have been ten.

THOMAS BECKET: Unless we speak of Royalty that is an age that even in my times would be thought young.

JOHN CLARE: [Somewhat sheepishly.] Is that a fact? Well, yes, I can see that it would compound the incest.

THOMAS BECKET: Of the sins I would remark it is not, evidently, thought a deadly one, and in my readings of the Holy Bible I have found it something of an ambiguity.

BECKETT: I’d eat my hat if it were not adversely mentioned somewhere in Leviticus.

THOMAS BECKET: That is undoubtedly the truth, but what of the unusual dispensation granted unto Lot after he and his daughters have escaped the Cities of the Plain?

BECKETT: I had assumed that, as a man, God had felt bad about turning the poor chap’s wife to salt. He’d very possibly felt he owed your man Lot a favor and had thought it was the least that he could do, to look the other way for once.

THOMAS BECKET: It’s an unusual interpretation, but …

JOHN CLARE: You know, I’ve always found Eden a puzzle that would suit your argument.

BECKETT: What are you going on about?

JOHN CLARE: Well, Cain and Abel. I’d have thought it would be obvious that even if the Lord had granted Eve and Adam one of each sort rather than two boys, improper love within the family must surely have been unavoidable. More so in Eden than in, say, Green’s Norton, unless there is something I have not considered. It might be that what undid your woman friend and the poor child that is the issue of this sorry pair alike is something that is part of our condition since our origins there in God’s garden.

BECKETT: Eden. Well, you see, there has been some dispute about that place.

THOMAS BECKET: Dispute? What manner of dispute? I have not heard of one.

BECKETT: Ah, well, I don’t want to get into it. There’s those who say that Genesis was written a lot later than some of the other books and only got put at the start through a misunderstanding in the order of the compilation. Otherwise, it’s hard to see how there could be a populated Land of Nod for Cain to serve his exile in, incest or not.

THOMAS BECKET: And I had thought your news of my impending martyrdom this dream’s most hitherto disquieting aspect. I am hopeful that I will forget all this upon my wakening, and am distressed to think I have such blasphemies in even my unbidden thoughts.

BECKETT: It’s not my wish to be upsetting you. You’re someone that I have admired, and I would not have all my conversation with a saint be taken up by what befell Miss Joyce when she was ten.

JOHN CLARE: [Suddenly, in a strangled, anguished voice.] It was an act of matrimony!

BECKETT: [Puzzled.] What? The business with her brother? How do you make that out?

JOHN CLARE: [Momentarily disoriented, then regaining his composure.] How do I … oh! It’s your Miss Joyce you’re speaking of. Pay no attention to my lunatic outpourings. They are less than chaff. I do not know what I am saying half the time. [A pause, while he attempts to find a safe direction for the conversation.] You must have a great fondness for her, for your friend, to visit her in her adversity.

BECKETT: She was a lovely, well-intentioned girl and filled with energy and light much as her name suggests. The things she said were funny and were clever if she took the trouble not to get too convoluted. She was what you’d call a dancer in a million, and the way that she impersonated Charlie Chaplin was a treat, although I don’t expect you’ll be familiar with his work.

THOMAS BECKET: I do not think it is a name I know.

JOHN CLARE: I have known various Charlies, but no Chaplins I can think of. What was he like in his manner, that your woman friend made an impersonation of?

BECKETT: He had a walk to him and a mustache, a way he moved his eyebrows and the like. Lucia could do all of that. His art was in the pathos he inspired for the unfortunate or common man, the footsore wayfarer much like yourself but in a time of longer railway lines and higher buildings. He’d make you feel for the great injustices there are in life then make you laugh for all the triumphs of the individual. I do not suppose that he was necessarily a happy man. I can remember reading something by the filmmaker Jean Cocteau … no, don’t ask, it’s far too complicated … where he mentioned Chaplin saying words to the effect that his life’s greatest sadness was the fact he’d gotten rich off playing someone who was poor.

JOHN CLARE: It is the guilt that we were speaking of again, though if my greatest sadness were that I was rich I do not think I should be sad at all.

THOMAS BECKET: It may be that the sorrows of the wealthy life are naught save more expensive ones. It sometimes is as if my king and the companion of my boyhood is made heavy by the weight of gold that’s in his heart.

BECKETT: Well, if it’s guilt you’re after then your royal pal would take some beating. In fact, now I come to think of it that is exactly what he took. The mess he made of things with you, Rome set him to be flogged for penitence and this despite him being king. From what I hear he kneeled there and he took it, too. He must have known he was deserving of his punishment.

THOMAS BECKET: The king was flogged, and he submitted to it?

BECKETT: That he did. It’s a well known occurrence. It was after exhumation when you were discovered to be incorruptible, that was what settled it. In my opinion he was lucky to get off with just the flogging.

JOHN CLARE: I’d have made him get down on his knees and stay there till he’d scrubbed up the cathedral floor. He’d still be there now.

THOMAS BECKET: [Horrified.] He was flogged. The king was flogged. Because of what he’d done to me.

BECKETT: That is the substance of it. No one thought he was judged harshly, put it that way.

THOMAS BECKET: But if he were treated so, then what must he have – ?

BECKETT: You don’t want the details.

JOHN CLARE: All the ins and outs. No, I agree.

BECKETT: You’re better off without them. There’s no benefit in fretting needlessly.

THOMAS BECKET: [Grumpy and resentful.] No. No, there isn’t. For that matter, I don’t see that you were under a compulsion to be mentioning this business in the first place.

BECKETT: I would hate to think I’d tried your patience to the point where it became proverbial.

THOMAS BECKET: To try my patience is the least of it, when you have sought to undercut my faith itself with your sophistications.

BECKETT: I’ve sought no such thing.

THOMAS BECKET: Yet you speak dismissively of Eden and of our first parents, you insinuate a love between Eve and her sons that is unspeakable, and you insist that here about us is the twentieth century of Our Lord and still God has not come?

JOHN CLARE: Yes, Mr. Bunyan who we spoke to a short while since raised a similar complaint regarding the ongoing absence of Jerusalem.

BECKETT: [To THOMAS BECKET.] He never comes. That’s my own understanding of the matter. Or at least, He’s not about when you’ve a need of Him, much in the style of a policeman.

JOHN CLARE: There’s a phrase that I have heard in these parts. Now, what is it? It has something of the meaning of “policeman”, but there is a connotation of the tithing man or rent-man there into the bargain. I cannot recall it at this moment but it’s possible that it will come to me.

THOMAS BECKET: [To SAMUEL BECKETT.] If as you say He never comes, can you be certain He is truly there?

BECKETT: I would imagine that is where the faith comes into it. For my own purposes I like to think His non-arrival is not necessarily an indication of His nonexistence.

THOMAS BECKET: But He does not speak to you?

BECKETT: It isn’t a great matter of importance if He does or not. There’s lots of people who don’t speak to me, or who I never see, but I don’t have a problem about if they’re there or not. It’s not like I feel snubbed or anything.

THOMAS BECKET: But if you never hear His voice …

BECKETT: Sometimes it seems that there’s a certain quality to the long periods of silence.

THOMAS BECKET: Is there?

BECKETT: I believe so. [CLARE, BECKETT and THOMAS BECKET lapse into a thoughtful silence. There is a long pause.]

HUSBAND: I did all of it. I did the lot of what you said. I’m all of what you called me. [Pause.] But you knew.

WIFE: [Turning to regard him contemptuously.] What are you going on about?

HUSBAND: I’m saying that you knew.

WIFE: Knew what?

HUSBAND: About the goings on.

JOHN CLARE: The ins and outs. That’s what he means.

WIFE: The goings on? You’re saying that I knew about them?

HUSBAND: All along. That’s what I’m saying.

WIFE: Oh, how dare you? How dare you sit there and say I knew about the goings on? If I’d have known about the goings on then I’d have stopped them there and then. They wouldn’t have been going on at all.

HUSBAND: You knew. You looked the other way.

WIFE: The other way?

HUSBAND: Deliberately. You know you did. It was convenient.

WIFE: [Guardedly.] Convenient? I don’t know what you mean by that.

HUSBAND: Celia, yes you do. You know the whole of what I mean by it. We’ve hardly touched each other in this last twelve years of marriage. Or had you not noticed?

WIFE: That’s just normal. That’s how everybody is. The thing with you is you’re sex mad, trying it on every five minutes and not bothered if the other party feels like it or not.

HUSBAND: You never felt like it, not every five months, let alone five minutes. And when I stopped bothering you, when I stopped trying it on, did you really believe that I’d lost interest too? That I’d stopped having feelings of that nature just because that’s how it were with you?

WIFE: I … I suppose that I assumed you’d made other arrangements. That you had resorted to a dirty book or something.

HUSBAND: Oh, and what would something be? Would it be an affair outside of marriage, knocking off the barmaid round at the Black Lion, something of that nature?

WIFE: [Appalled.] Oh God, Johnny, tell me that you didn’t. Not with that Joan Tanner. Everyone would know! What would they think? What would they think of me?

HUSBAND: Don’t be so daft. Of course I didn’t. I knew that you wouldn’t want that, everybody knowing.

WIFE: [Relieved.] Oh, thank God. Of course I’d not want anybody knowing. If you’re going to do a bloody stupid thing like that, then you should …

HUSBAND: Keep it to meself?

WIFE: [Uncertainly.] Well … yes.

HUSBAND: Keep it indoors?

WIFE: Yes, I suppose so.

HUSBAND: Keep it in the family? [The WIFE stares at her HUSBAND in silence for a few moments, realizing her own unacknowledged complicity, then turns from him to stare into space with a haunted expression. The HUSBAND looks away, down and to one side.]

BECKETT: Well, it’s a fair point. In my own experience, I think it very rare a woman doesn’t know what’s going on in her own home, even if she’d prefer she didn’t. In the case of Miss Joyce that I mentioned earlier, the trouble that she may have had when she was ten, if that was what occurred I can’t imagine Nora – that was Lucia’s mother – I cannot imagine that she would not know of it. I think that very often women are more adept at the managing of a whole spider’s nest of secrets than most men would have within their capability.

JOHN CLARE: I’m still not utterly convinced in my own heart that ten’s too young.

THOMAS BECKET: The victim’s age, I think, has no material bearing on the sin, nor on its gravity. They are condemned, these wretched creatures, to unending misery, sat here on these hard and unyielding steps awaiting absolution that shall not arrive.

BECKETT: They’re damned then, and beyond the reach of mercy or forgiveness. You appear to be quite certain of the fact.

THOMAS BECKET: The husband has made rut with his own child, one of these little ones that God has said we should not harm. It seems the wife has tacitly consented to the ruinous liaison, with a blameless innocent thus doubly betrayed. I cannot think a just Creator might extend his mercy to those who have never thought to exercise that quality themselves.

BECKETT: Well, you being a saint it follows that you would be an authority on such concerns.

JOHN CLARE: Look, now, when God was speaking of these little ones, did he specifically say they were ten? That’s all I’m getting at.

BECKETT: [Ignoring CLARE.] It seems to me that though the sex of it is very likely woeful and unpleasant, it would still be the betrayal that’s the main thing. With Lucia, when the brother that she thought had loved her more than physically announced that he’d be getting married to an older woman very like his mam, that’s when she started acting up and throwing chairs about. I think it was her brother first suggested she be given psychiatric treatment somewhere, and you might suppose it was because he didn’t want her saying anything that could not be conveniently dismissed as ravings. That, at least, was how it looked to me, and Nora, pretty quickly she fell in with it. Lucia hadn’t been what you might call her favorite child, even before the hurling furniture commenced. They said Lucia was what they called a schizophrenic, although if you ask me it was more that she was young and spoiled and couldn’t cope with disappointment easily. She thought that she was justified in her behavior. She felt immune because of who she was and never dreamed she could end up stuck in an institution, as in fact turned out to be the case.

JOHN CLARE: Well, to be fair, that manner of confinement is a thing that very few of us have properly anticipated or have made allowance for. The general measure of it is, it’s always a surprise. One moment you’re Lord Byron and the next you’re in a morning room that’s full of idiots eating porridge.

THOMAS BECKET: And you said yourself that I’m to quit Northampton and make off for France where it would seem to me that I’m to be in exile, a confinement I was not anticipating.

JOHN CLARE: From what I heard, in the dead of night you made off through a breach was in the castle wall, and then went out the north gate of the town, what’s up there at the end of Sheep Street just past where the old round church is.

THOMAS BECKET: Aye, I know it.

JOHN CLARE: It appears that you went out the gate and rode off to the north, so they should think that was where you were headed, then you doubled back and made away down south to Dover and from there across to France.

THOMAS BECKET: That seems a cautious and a clever thing to do. I shall remember it when I awake.

BECKETT: Yes, I thought that about a line of dialogue that the wife here spoke not half an hour ago, but I have already forgotten it. It strikes me it was something about earwigs.

JOHN CLARE: [To THOMAS BECKET.] There is some controversy about the route you took on your escape. It is a common tale that in your leaving of Northampton you made halt to take a drink from the stone well that’s down by Beckett’s Park. But if indeed you left by the north gate then that would not seem likely.

THOMAS BECKET: That is answered easily enough. I know the well you mean and took a drink there where I next went into Hamtun by its Dern gate. It was in the coming to the town and not the leaving of it but apart from that the tale is true enough, although it seems a thing of little consequence. I am more taken with the thought that there should be a park named for me.

JOHN CLARE: Well, again, there’s some controversy. Although there is the story of the well, the park’s name has two Ts upon the end of it, unlike your own, and so may not be named for you at all.

BECKETT: Two Ts? Well, there’s a thing. I don’t suppose that it could be named after me at all?

JOHN CLARE: The way that I was told, it is a lady benefactor to the town gave the park her name, rather than either of you gentlemen. The stuff about the well is possibly no more than a coincidence. Although now that I come to think about it, I believe the well is likewise spelled with two Ts at the end of it, though that is likely no more than abiding local ignorance and clumsiness with words in their correct expression. I hope that I haven’t let you down with what I’ve said.

THOMAS BECKET: [Sounding disappointed.] Let down? No, I wouldn’t say … no, not let down. It would be a vain man indeed who was let down by such a thing, and have you not already said that I shall be a saint? No. Not let down. Why should I be?

BECKETT: [Sounding similarly disappointed.] Me neither. I had made my comment in the manner of a joke, when the plain truth is that it makes no difference if a park were named for me or not. It’s all the same as far as I’m concerned. To have a park named after you would seem to be a vulgar and a common thing, such as the many parks that bear the name Victoria.

JOHN CLARE: Ah, yes. My pretty little daughter. Have you heard much news about her? How’s she getting on with life?

BECKETT: Dear God, not all this nonsense just when I thought we were done with it. I can’t be bothered with it anymore. And to be frank I’m not expecting much more out of this pair either. I’ve a feeling that they’ve pretty much exhausted what they had by way of conversation.

THOMAS BECKET: There I must agree. They sit half-dazed amid a sorry wreckage of their own accomplishment and neither seek atonement nor can have an expectation of redemption. It is a drear tale too often told and like you I am wearied with it. And besides, if what you’ve told to me is true I have my own drear tale to make a way through. I think I may carry on in that direction [THOMAS BECKET points towards the audience, as if at an off-stage street] to the castle where my former playmate waits for me.

BECKETT: Aye, I might join you. I was planning to walk down that way myself and take a look at old Saint Peter’s Church, the way I first did when I came here for the cricket.

THOMAS BECKET: It is a fine building of the old kind and I know it well. I must say that I am surprised to hear it is still standing, getting on a thousand years since. Has it fallen to neglect? Are all the horrible grotesques that I recall still grimacing from out the stonework?

JOHN CLARE: There’s a few have fallen off or been knocked down across the years, but the majority are still in place. So, both of you are off, then? I cannot persuade you to remain and keep me company so that I shall have someone who can hear me that I can converse with?

BECKETT: I apologize, but no, I cannot be persuaded. It has been a pleasure of a kind to meet with you, for all of your wild fancies and your tale of having impudently bedded Lucia. I should not mind if I met you again, although I must admit I say that in the expectation that it will be not be the case.

JOHN CLARE: For my part I’ll be sorry to be left here on my own, but as a consequence of my insanity I will no doubt have soon forgotten you were ever here, or will have otherwise become convinced of your delusory nature as with my first w– as with some other comical misapprehensions that I may have had. I’ve found you likable enough, the pair of you, but must remark that you are very similar, both in the spelling of your names, and in the fact that I have thought the two of you to be quite grim.

BECKETT: You are not grim yourself, at all?

JOHN CLARE: No. I partake in a great deal of unproductive melancholy, but I don’t think I’ve the courage to be grim. Bleak sometimes, possibly, but not what you’d call grim. I’ve not the stomach for it.

THOMAS BECKET: [Kindly and sympathetically.] Will you not accompany us to the church? I should not like to think that we had left you by yourself.

BECKETT: [Aside, quietly exasperated.] Oh, that’s just great!

JOHN CLARE: [To THOMAS BECKET.] No, thank you for your offer, but I think I shall stay here awhile. I am not sure these two are finished their debate, and am yet hopeful there shall be some poetry to its conclusion. Though not very hopeful. I am after all by nature a realistic man, at least in my descriptions, for all that they say I am romantic or am otherwise a fool. The pair of you enjoy your evening, now, and leave me to enjoy my own. Good luck to you, especially to you, Saint Thomas, and congratulations on avoiding the decomposition.

THOMAS BECKET: Hmm. Yes, well, thank you … though I cannot think in all humility that it was through some effort on my own part.

BECKETT: Aye, good luck to you as well. Remember that John Clare was a much better poet than Lord Byron. That should keep you straight. Farewell, now. [SAMUEL BECKETT and THOMAS BECKET stroll away towards STAGE RIGHT, talking as they go.] So, the being canonized and all of that. Had you no inkling of miraculous abilities prior to the business of not rotting?

THOMAS BECKET: Not that I recall. I had a certain fluency of penmanship, but I myself did not think it miraculous. And for your own part, you are still acquainted with the Holy Church?

BECKETT: Well, I’ll not lie. We’ve had our ups and downs … [They EXIT RIGHT. JOHN CLARE stands in place and follows them with his eyes, first tracking away to STAGE RIGHT, then turning his head slowly until he is peering out over the audience. There is a long pause as he waits to be sure they are too far off to hear.]

JOHN CLARE: I still say that I had your lady friend. The lexicon came out my ears as though it were a sperm of language. It was an encounter I found bracing, and I don’t regret it. [CLARE stands where he is a moment or two longer, idly gazing at the unresponsive HUSBAND and WIFE. When they do not move or speak, he sadly and resignedly turns to shuffle back towards his alcove at the CENTER/RIGHT REAR of the STAGE, where he sits down, staring mournfully at the motionless couple in the foreground. After a few moments more there is the SOUND from OFF of the CHURCH CLOCK STRIKING ONCE. Sitting on their step, the WIFE looks up at this as if appalled, while the HUSBAND does not react.]

WIFE: It’s still one o’clock. How can it still be one o’clock? Why is it always one o’clock?

HUSBAND: [Unsympathetically.] You said yourself, it’s too late from now on. It’s always half past nothing to be done.

WIFE: But that was you. You were the one who brought this down upon us. Why is it still one o’clock for me?

HUSBAND: Because you were as much a part of them as I was, all the goings on. And that’s the thing I’ve learned with goings on. They go on. They continue. Nothing’s ever done with.

WIFE: [After a horrified pause, as she reflects on this.] Is this hell? Johnny, have we gone to hell?

HUSBAND: [Wearily, not looking at her.] Celia, I don’t know.

JOHN CLARE: We talked about that earlier, and we thought purgatory to be the greater likelihood. Not that I’m claiming any great authority upon the subject. [A pause.] You can’t hear me. What’s the point of any of it? [Along with the HUSBAND and WIFE, CLARE lapses into a gloomy silence. After a few moments a HALF-CASTE WOMAN ENTERS STAGE LEFT beneath the portico. After a few steps she stops and appraises the scene, looking first at the couple on the steps and then at JOHN CLARE sitting in his alcove.]

WOMAN: You’re the poet, ain’t yer? You’re John Clare.

JOHN CLARE: [Surprised.] I am? You’re sure of it? Not Byron or King William?

WOMAN: [Kindly and sympathetically.] No, love. You’re John Clare. From what I heard, it’s just you get a bit mixed up from time to time.

JOHN CLARE: That’s true. I do. And you don’t find it off-putting?

WOMAN: No. To be honest, darling, when I heard about you, I thought that you sounded like a laugh. And some of what you wrote, it’s lovely. Is that true, about you walking eighty miles back here after you’d legged it from a nut house down in Essex?

JOHN CLARE: Nut house?

WOMAN: Yeah, you know. The funny farm. Napoleon factory. Laughing academy. The loony bin.

JOHN CLARE: [Laughing, amused and delighted.] Oh, you mean the cony hatch. You should have said. Yes, that was where I was. You seem to know a lot about me.

WOMAN: Oh, I know about all sorts of things. You know, it’s really nice to meet you, Mr. Clare. I’m well pleased.

JOHN CLARE: Well, it’s mutual. What’s your name, lass?

WOMAN: Everybody calls me Kaph.

JOHN CLARE: Kath?

WOMAN: Kaph. K-A-P-H. It’s got a P in it.

JOHN CLARE: That’s an unusual name, all right. And which parts of Northampton and eternity would you be from?

WOMAN: Spring Boroughs, 1988 to 2060. Mostly I worked down at the Saint Peter’s annex, next door to the church, trying to sort out all the refugees come from the east.

JOHN CLARE: The east of India?

WOMAN: Of Anglia. Yarmouth and round there. We get a fair bit of trouble with the weather in the time I’m from.

JOHN CLARE: Aye, well, ’twas ever thus in England.

WOMAN: No it wasn’t, sweetheart. Trust me. Not like this it wasn’t. It’s all falling in the sea, love, and when you’ve got all the people moving then they bring their problems with them, and their problems are all that much worse. Drugs and diseases, violence and abuse and all the mental problems that come with ’em. When I was down at the annex I come up with an idea for processing – that means, like, sorting out – big crowds of people who were caught up in emergencies. It wasn’t anything that clever. It was just this questionnaire, done as an app, and it was only common sense from what I’d seen while I was working with the refugees. Anyway, it got took up across the world and saved a lot of lives, apparently.

JOHN CLARE: I am ashamed to say I do not have the first idea of what I have been told just now. The gist I caught was that you are a woman of unusual intelligence and merit, but being the fool I am I got caught up in looking at your bosom and so may have missed the greater part of it. Please don’t think badly of me.

WOMAN: [Laughing.] Oh, you’re all right. You’re John Clare. It’s quite an honor you should make the effort to look at me boobs.

JOHN CLARE: You are a kind woman, I think, and a robust one of a cheery humor. I should pay you the respect of listening to what you say. Please tell it to me all again, and be sure that I look you in the eye.

WOMAN: Ah, you’re a legend. You’re just how I thought you would be from the poetry. I’m not saying I’ve not read a lot of them but there were some of ’em that made me cry. As for me, there wasn’t that much more to tell. The business with the questionnaire meant that I ended up getting a lot more notice than I’d ever wanted or deserved. They started calling me a saint, but to be honest I found that a bit depressing. Like I say, it wasn’t anything I’d ever wanted.

JOHN CLARE: You’re a saint, then?

WOMAN: Not a proper one. Just in the papers. They’ll make anyone a saint. I tried not to have anything to do with it.

JOHN CLARE: We had a real one pass by just now on this very spot. Thomas á Becket.

WOMAN: Really?

JOHN CLARE: Else I dreamed it.

WOMAN: He’s well famous, Thomas Becket.

JOHN CLARE: Aye, he’s famous for a well, all right. We talked about it. He was passing by this spot because he did so on his way to condemnation at the castle. Then the other Mr. Beckett, he was here revisiting the churches of Northampton as he’d done upon a previous occasion, whereas Mr. Bunyan passed through on his way to hear a proclamation in the market. As for me, this is the place I always sat, so that’s the explanation for my presence, but what of yourself? Do you consider yourself to be dead or dreaming, and in either case what brings you here?

WOMAN: Oh, I’m dead. There’s no doubt about it. I got caught up in a water riot when it was getting bad in twenty-sixty and me ticker couldn’t handle it, not in me seventies.

JOHN CLARE: You don’t look seventy.

WOMAN: Well, ta. This is me in me thirties, when I looked me best. To be quite honest, any younger and I was a mess, and I got a bit scrawny after I was knocking on a bit. As for the reason why I’m here, it’s them. [The HALF-CASTE WOMAN nods towards the couple on the steps.]

JOHN CLARE: You know them, then?

WOMAN: Oh, yeah. Well, not in life I never met ’em, no, but I know all about ’em. Him, the bloke, that’s Johnny Vernall and the woman’s his wife Celia. This is the night their daughter locked them out the house in Freeschool Street and they came here and sat beneath the portico until the morning. What it was, I knew their daughter, Audrey.

JOHN CLARE: Ah, yes. That would be the one the things were done to. I was trying to fathom it with all the other ghosts that were here earlier. It sounded like a miserable business.

WOMAN: Oh, it was. It was. But then, I suppose it had to be.

JOHN CLARE: How did you know her, the poor child?

WOMAN: Well, she was an old woman when I met her. It was one night back when I was young, and when I was in trouble, and she saved me life. She was the most frightening, amazing person that I’ve ever seen, and that night turned everything round for me. If what I went on to do later helped a lot of people, it was all because of her. If she’d not helped me, I’d have been dead and then none of that, the questionnaire, none of that would have happened. She’s the real saint, Audrey. She’s the martyr, and this is the night before they took her to the stake. And that’s the reason why I’m here. After what Audrey done for me, I thought that it was only right. I thought that it was only right that I should come and see, and be a witness.

JOHN CLARE: If there is a poetry to all of this, it seems as though hurt women are a central matter. [A pause.] But where are my manners! I’ve got a young lady stood here all this time and never offered her a seat!

WOMAN: [She laughs, starting to walk towards JOHN CLARE’s alcove.] Oh, well, that’s very nice. I –

JOHN CLARE: [Slightly alarmed, fearing she’s misunderstood him.] No, not this one. This is mine. The one there on the other side is what I keep for visitors. I’m told it’s very comfortable.

WOMAN: [Surprised, but more amused than offended.] Oh, right. Okay, then. Over here, yeah? [She goes and sits in the alcove to STAGE LEFT of the door.] Mm. You’re right. It’s very nice. Nice place to sit.

JOHN CLARE: Well, not as nice as this one, but I am sincere in hoping it is to your liking.

WOMAN: [She laughs, charmed by his earnestness.] It’s fine. It’s like a little throne. So, with Johnny and Celia there, what have I missed?

JOHN CLARE: You know the most of it, apparently. The wife berated him a while until he upped and made a full confession, whereat she berated him some more. A little while ago he raised the point of her being aware of what was going on and in this sense being complicit in their abject circumstances.

WOMAN: How did she take that?

JOHN CLARE: Not noticeably well, in the first instance. She made her outraged denials though I could not help but feel they were half-hearted at the bottom of it. Then, after some time it seemed that she accepted what was said, whereafter she became more haunted and contrite. Most recently she seemed concerned by the idea that they might be in hell, although it seems to me a more widespread and popular opinion that the whole of this is purgatory.

WOMAN: What, this? Nah, bollix, this is heaven. All of this is heaven.

JOHN CLARE: Is it?

WOMAN: Well, of course it is. Look at it. It’s miraculous.

JOHN CLARE: What, even with the incest and the misery?

WOMAN: That there’s anything alive at all to interfere with its own children; that there’s children; that there’s sexual interference; that we can feel misery. The way I see it, on the whole there’s not much to complain about. Its heaven. Even in a concentration camp or when you’re getting beaten up and raped, even if it’s an off day, it’s still heaven. You’re not telling me that you wrote all that stuff about the seasons and the ladybird and everything and you don’t know that?

JOHN CLARE: Are you sure you’re not a proper saint?

WOMAN: If you knew half the things I did when I was younger then you wouldn’t even ask. We’re either none of us saints, or we all are.

JOHN CLARE: Not just an appointed few of us as Mr. Bunyan was suggesting?

WOMAN: I don’t know who that is, but no. Definitely not. It’s all or nothing, shit or bust across the board. We’re saints and sinners both, the lot of us, or else there’s no saints and no sinners.

JOHN CLARE: Oh, I think there’s sinners, right enough, though I don’t know about the saints. For my own part, I think that in my life I may have done a monstrous and ignoble thing.

WOMAN: Aw, love. You shouldn’t slap yourself about. We’ve all done bad things, or we think we have. It’s only when you can’t face up to ’em and put ’em in perspective that you end up stuck to them, so that that’s who you are and where you are forever.

JOHN CLARE: That’s an awful long time to be stuck to something dismal.

WOMAN: Well, you’re not wrong. [JOHN CLARE and the HALF-CASTE WOMAN lapse into thoughtful silence, gazing at the HUSBAND and WIFE seated on the steps.]

WIFE: [After a long pause, in which her expression has changed from guilty and haunted to a more cold-eyed and pragmatic look.] So, what are we going to do about it?

HUSBAND: [Looks up at her, surprised.] We?

WIFE: You spelled it out. We’re both involved.

HUSBAND: We are. I’m glad you see it.

WIFE: And if it comes out for either of us both of us are done for, or at least round here and where else should we go? I see that, too.

HUSBAND: What are you saying, then?

WIFE: I’m saying that there’s people round here know us. We’ve got friends here, Johnny, and acquaintances. We’ve got our lives here. We’ve got prospects.

HUSBAND: Have we?

WIFE: [Hissing with urgency.] Yes! We’ve got more prospects than if anyone finds out you’ve put that filthy thing of yours in Audrey! And what should they think of me? I won’t let you destroy us, Johnny. And I won’t let her destroy us.

HUSBAND: But … I mean, it isn’t going to come to that for certain. Is it? I mean, perhaps if when she’s calmed down I talked to her …

WIFE: Oh, yes. That’ll help the situation. Evidently you can talk her pants off, and that’s how we got here! She’s out for revenge, you silly sod. She flirts with you and leads you on with all her skirts and brassieres and when you’re Muggins enough to fall for it, she wants her bit of drama, her theatricals.

HUSBAND: She did. She led me on.

WIFE: And now she’s staging her performance so that everyone can hear.

HUSBAND: [Suddenly confused and alarmed.] You were the one said it had stopped!

WIFE: [Frowning as if uncertain.] Yes, well, I thought it had, but I’m not sure. I think I can still hear it when the wind’s in our direction. But that’s not the point. The point is that she’s made her mind up that she’s going to put an end to it by telling everybody and broadcasting from the rooftops. You saw Eileen Perrit coming out to see what all the fuss was, all that noise when Jem and her had just got little Alison to sleep. She could hear everything, the Whispering Grass and everything that dirty, dirty little tart was shouting. Everything. [Thoughtful, after a pause.] I don’t know what she heard. It might already be too late.

HUSBAND: But then what shall we do?

WIFE: [Angry.] I don’t know, Johnny. I don’t know what we shall do. That’s what I’m trying to work out, what we’re going to do. [A pause.] That dirty little tart. She thought I never noticed, in the kitchen, at the sink, washing her hair without her blouse on, and then when she’s drying it and got it held up in the towel, then you, you’re sitting there, you’re sitting there and looking and you’ve got your legs crossed, sitting there, and looking, and you say “Ooh, you look nice, our Audrey, with your hair up”, never mind about you look nice with your blouse off, sitting there and looking with your legs crossed, and then after that she’s always got her hair up so that everyone can see her neck, her neck, look at my lovely neck, look at my little bosoms that aren’t anything at all, look at me swing about when I play my accordion so that my skirt goes up and everyone can come and have a look and see my knees and think about my fanny and she thought I never noticed. [A long, seething pause, during which her HUSBAND looks scared and shaken by her outburst.] Let me think. I’ve got to think. We’ve got to think what shall be done.

JOHN CLARE: [After a pause.] I don’t much care for how this sounds. I have a painful feeling about where all this is headed.

WOMAN: Yeah. They’re gunna cover it all up. They’re gunna bury everything because they can’t face up to what they’ve done. They’re gunna bury Audrey, then inside ’em somewhere they’ll be sitting in the damp and fog and bickering on these steps forever. All because they couldn’t bear to tell the truth of what they were.

JOHN CLARE: [After a long and anguished pause, his secrecy battling with his conscience.] I did something. I did something that I never told the truth about. When I was fourteen. [He closes his eyes. He can hardly bear to speak.]

WOMAN: [Gently and encouragingly.] Yeah? Something went on?

JOHN CLARE: [His eyes still closed, he slowly starts to rock back and forth in his alcove.] When I was fourteen. When I was fourteen. When I was fourteen, there was someone. There was someone. There was someone up the road in the next village. There was. There was. There was someone. There was someone. There was a young … I was fourteen. There was a young woman. A young woman. She was round my own age. Mary. Mary. Mary. She was beautiful. She was more beautiful than anything. When I was fourteen. And I met her. And I met her in the lane and asked her if she would walk out with me and Mary said she would, she said she would walk out with me. She was around my own age. And I walked her down the path. We went. We went. We went beside a stream where was, where was, where was a Hawthorn bush. And I said. I said that I loved her and. And. And. And. And I asked if she would like to marry me. Beneath the Hawthorn bush. Beneath the Hawthorn bush and she laughed and she said she would and we went in. We went in on our hands and knees beneath the Hawthorn bush and I made her a ring. I made a ring. I made a ring of grass for her and put it on her finger and I said. I said. I said that we were married. She was round my own age. I was fourteen. She was, she was, she was a bit younger. A bit younger than what I was. And I. And I. And I joked. I joked. I joked and I said. I said. I said that it was our wedding night. I made a ring of grass for her. I said it was our wedding night and we must. We must take our clothes off and I said it as a joke. I said it so that I should make it seem it was a joke, beneath the Hawthorn bush, but she said, she said, Mary said she would. She was around my own age. A bit younger. Mary said she would and she was laughing. She was laughing, she was taking off her things and I … was … looking at her. I was looking at her, taking off her things and I was hurrying. Was hurrying. Was hurrying to take my own off too and she was looking at me. She was ten. She was ten. She was laughing and I said. I said that we. I said that we. I said that we should do it. She was laughing and she said do what? She said do what and I said, I said that I’d show her and it was all right. It was all right. I’d made a ring for her and we were married and it was all right and then I told. I told. I told her what to do. I told. I told her she she must lie upon her back and she was laughing. She was laughing. She was laughing and I got on top of her and Mary asked. She asked. She asked what I was doing and I tried to get it into her. I was fourteen. She said it hurt. She said it hurt. She said that I was hurting her and that she didn’t want to do it, that she didn’t want to do it, that it hurt, but I said. I said. I said it was all right. I said we were married. It was all right. That she’d start. She’d start to like it in a little while and that she mustn’t. That she mustn’t. That she mustn’t cry. She mustn’t cry. She mustn’t cry. And I. And I went on with it. And she stopped crying in a. In a while. And when I’d finished it we wiped up with my shirt and I said. I said that she was my first wife and would always be my first wife and she should tell nobody, nobody, nobody about it. What we’d, what we’d, what I’d done. Beneath the Hawthorn bush. Beneath the Hawthorn bush. When I was fourteen. I was fourteen. She was ten. I never saw her after that, save in the best of my illusions. [He is weeping by this point. He subsides into silence.]

WOMAN: [After a long pause.] Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to sit over there?

JOHN CLARE: [He looks up at her, anguished.] Would you? Would you? Else I am alone in it. [The HALF-CASTE WOMAN rises from her alcove and then walks across to the alcove in which JOHN CLARE is sitting. She sits down beside him, sympathetically, and drapes one arm around his shoulders.]

WOMAN: [Stroking his hair.] You were fourteen. You were living in the country. It was eighteen-hundred and whatever. These things happen, sweetheart. Both of you were kids, mucking about. If it was guilt about that made you talk of her as your first wife, if it was anything to do with that that made you spend all of that time up at Saint Andrew’s then you’ve punished yourself ten times over when all that you did was love somebody at the wrong time. There’s worse crimes than that, love. There’s worse crimes than that. You shush. You shush now.

WIFE: We could have her put away.

HUSBAND: What do you mean?

WIFE: Up Berry Wood. Up round the turn there at St. Crispin’s. We could have her put away up there.

HUSBAND: The mental home?

WIFE: Up Berry Wood. We could say she’d been acting funny for a while.

JOHN CLARE: Oh, no. Oh, I can see where this is going.

WOMAN: Hush, now. It’s only what happened in the world once. It’s all right.

HUSBAND: Well, I suppose, what with the music, she always been highly strung. You know, with the artistic temperament. And that business tonight, well, there’s the proof of it.

JOHN CLARE: It’s just the same! It’s just the same as what the other Mr. Beckett said befell his friend!

WIFE: Yes, well, it’s well known. If you’re having fits because you’re mad, you could say anything. You might make every kind of accusation and it wouldn’t bother anyone.

HUSBAND: [Uncertain and uncomfortable.] But Celia, I mean. Our Audrey, in a madhouse. I don’t like to picture it.

WIFE: It needn’t be for long. Just until she’d got over her delusions, what they call them, and she isn’t saying things that make no sense.

HUSBAND: But, I mean, they’re not really what you’d call delusions, are they?

WIFE: Johnny, listen to me: yes they are. They’re all delusions. After all, you know it’s in the family. It’s not your fault, we can’t help how we’re born, but there was your dad. And your granddad. And your great Aunt Thursa. It’s no wonder Audrey went the way she did. We can make the arrangements in the morning.

HUSBAND: The arrangements?

WIFE: With the hospital, to have her put away.

HUSBAND: Oh. Oh, yes. The arrangements. I suppose that we can’t …

WIFE: In the morning. It’s what’s best.

HUSBAND: Yes. Yes, I suppose so. It’s what’s best for Audrey.

WIFE: It’s what’s best for everybody. [They lapse into thoughtful silence.]

JOHN CLARE: [He has now recovered his composure.] These are terrible affairs that are decided here tonight. [He turns to look at the HALF-CASTE WOMAN sitting next to him.] With you having the admiration for their daughter that you did, I’d say it was a dreadful anger you were feeling.

WOMAN: No, not really. I feel sorry for the lot of them. I mean, look at this couple here. They’re stuck like this now. Yeah, you could say as they’ve brought it on themselves, but how much choice has anybody really got? It’s better not to judge. Even the rapists and the murderers and nutters – no offense – you think about it and they probably got where they were in some dead ordinary way. They had a bit of bad luck or they got into a kind of thinking that they couldn’t shake. When I was younger, I was horrible. It felt to me like it was all my fault, but looking back with kinder eyes I’m not sure that it was. I’m not sure it was anybody’s fault. There comes a point where you get sick of all the punishing.

JOHN CLARE: I like the way that you’re forgiving in your nature. You’ve a generosity in you that makes the rest of us seem small. Are you entirely sure you’re not a proper saint?

WOMAN: Oh, who cares? It’s a word. I mean, you were just saying that you’d met Thomas á Becket. He’s a proper saint. Was he like me?

JOHN CLARE: No. No, he wasn’t.

WOMAN: There you are, then.

JOHN CLARE: It was his opinion that the sins of this unhappy pair put them beyond the reach of any mercy or redemption.

WOMAN: Well, I don’t see that at all. I don’t think he’d considered all the billiards and ballistics of the matter.

JOHN CLARE: And what do you mean by that?

WOMAN: Well, look at it like this: if Johnny Vernall hadn’t read a dirty book or two and got fixated by the thought of having it off with his daughter then she’d not have locked them out the house while she played ‘Whispering Grass’, and her mom wouldn’t have had the idea to get her sectioned off to Crispin’s. So she wouldn’t have still been there when the Tories started closing down the mental homes and wouldn’t have been put out into what they called the care of the community. And when I needed her, when I’d have been dead otherwise, then she wouldn’t have been there, and then I wouldn’t have turned out how I did. There’d be no questionnaire and there’d be thousands of lives over with or different all across the world. And think of all the lives that those lives will affect, for better or for worse, and on and on until you step back and it’s all just billiards. Johnny pulling Audrey’s pants down, that’s all in the rebound off the cushion. That’s all in the break. And none of this is justifying what he did. Johnny and Celia, you and me and everybody, we still have to answer to our conscience. And a conscience is the most vindictive, vicious little fucker that I’ve ever met, and I don’t think that anybody gets off easy. We all judge ourselves. We all sit here on these cold steps, and that’s enough. The rest is billiards. We all feel the impacts and we blame the ball that’s hit us. We all love it when we’re cannoning and on a roll and think it must mean that we’re special, but it’s all balls. Balls and billiards. [A pause.] You’re looking down my top again.

JOHN CLARE: I know. I’m sorry. I suppose it might be argued I was predetermined in my opportunism. If as you say it is my conscience I must answer to, then I believe my answer will be neither difficult nor arduously long.

WOMAN: [She laughs, playfully attracted to him.] You poets. All your lovely language, you use it like Lynx or something, don’t yer, when you want the girls all over yer? And anyway, haven’t you got a wife at home?

JOHN CLARE: Oh, to hear me tell it I’ve got any number of ’em. You pay no attention. All that business with the wives is more than likely nothing but the ravings of a madman. I’m well known for it. [They are both laughing now.]

WOMAN: What are you like? You with your pretty eyes. I don’t think you’re old fashioned in the least. [They are beginning to embrace.] I can see why you like this shady alcove, you old dog. It’s very comfortable. Very convenient.

JOHN CLARE: In all the times I’ve sat here I have never thought to use it for this purpose.

WOMAN: [Kissing him lightly on the cheek and neck.] Haven’t you? Why not?

JOHN CLARE: I was alive. It was broad daylight on a Friday afternoon with people walking past and anyway, I was most usually alone. It wouldn’t have been right. You are a lovely girl. Give me a kiss, as if we were alive, and … Oh! Oh, my. What’s that you’re doing now?

WOMAN: I said already. I’m no saint. [They begin to kiss and caress each other under the obscuring shadows of the recess.]

WIFE: [After a long pause, tonelessly and emotionally drained.] God help me, Johnny, but I hate you. I hate you so much that I’m exhausted by it.

HUSBAND: [Equally flatly and without real feeling.] And I hate you, Celia. With all my heart, I hate you. I can’t stand you.

WIFE: Well, at least there’s that. At least we still mean something to each other.

HUSBAND: [Without the couple looking at each other, the HUSBAND reaches out and takes his WIFE’s hand. She accepts this without comment or reaction. There is a long pause as they sit and stare expressionlessly into space.] Are we still planning to … you know. With Audrey, and the hospital. Is that still something that we want to do?

WIFE: It’s something that we’ve got to do.

HUSBAND: Yes, I suppose so. [After a pause.] Not just yet though, eh?

WIFE: No. In the morning. I’m not looking forward to it any more than you are.

HUSBAND: No. No, I suppose not. But it’s something that we’ve got to do, you’re right. You’re dead right. In the morning, we’ll go down there and we’ll step up to the bat.

WIFE: Yes. When it’s light.

HUSBAND: Will it ever be light?

WIFE: I couldn’t say. I’m waiting for the clock to strike again. If it’s just once we’ll know that we’re in hell or else it’s broken. If it’s twice, it’ll be getting on for morning in an hour or two. We can go down to Freeschool Street and take care of it then.

HUSBAND: Yes. Yes, I will. I’ll be a man about it. I’ll go down there and take the bull by the horns.

WIFE: We’ll see the necessary doctors.

HUSBAND: In the morning, when it’s light, I’ll go down there and do what’s to be done.

WIFE: We’ll go down there. We’ll go down there and set the matter straight.

HUSBAND: We will.

WIFE: We will. We’ll put it all to rights.

HUSBAND: We’ll face the music.

WIFE: [After a long pause.] Do you know, I think the clock’s about to strike.

HUSBAND: I think you’re right.

WIFE: And then we’ll know.

HUSBAND: Yes. Then we’ll know.

CURTAIN