Jerusalem

  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 s
hirt 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 offence – 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 mum 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 flatl
y 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.