Alan Moore - Jerusalem

CAST

JOHN CLARE

HUSBAND

WIFE

JOHN BUNYAN

SAMUEL BECKETT

THOMAS BECKET

HALF-CASTE WOMAN

The three broad front steps and sheltering portico of a late Gothic church with Doric columns left and right, a foggy night-time. In the background beneath the portico, there are recesses set into the limestone front wall of the building, to either side of its locked doors. From off, the almost inaudible sound of a piano in the far distance, playing “Whispering Grass”. Seated in right-hand recess, JOHN CLARE, wearing dusty-looking early 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 lustre when it’s new, but that’s of no use once the tongue has withered and the sole’s worn through. It’s famously a poor show if the nails are digging in your feet. [ Reflective pause as CLARE examines his damaged shoe. ] No, in the main I’m happier with a gaseous posterity, so that the spectre of my backside might revisit all these spots that it was fond of formerly. The only pity is that life goes trudging on for as long as it does, since otherwise presumably there’d be more people of my own age and extinction here to talk to. [ Cocks head, listening to faint music from off. ] That’s a pretty air. I’d like to know who’s furious enough to gouge it into everyone.

[ Dragging footsteps approach from off. Enter HUSBAND and WIFE , front right. They are dressed for an evening out, she in long coat and bonnet with handbag, he in loud yellow plaid jacket and dickey-bow with oiled dark hair and pencil moustache. They come to a halt, standing and staring at the empty church steps. ]

HUSBAND: We could sit here.

WIFE: We can’t sit here. I can still hear the sound of her. It travels farther in the night.

HUSBAND: We’ll have to sit here. If you need to spend a penny there’s the toilets on Wood Hill not far away. She’s sure to cut it out soon, any road. I don’t know what’s got into her.

WIFE: [ Snorts derisively. ] I do.

[ Resignedly, she goes and sits on church’s second step. Her husband stands staring at her for a moment. She does not look at him, but glares angrily into the fog. When he at last sits down next to her, she shuffles a couple of feet away from him. He looks at her, surprised and hurt. ]

HUSBAND: Celia …

WIFE: Don’t.

JOHN CLARE: Hello? I don’t suppose that you’d be dead, now, would you?

HUSBAND: Is this how it’s going to be?

[ She doesn’t answer. HUSBAND stares at her, waiting. JOHN CLARE rises from his alcove and walks hesitantly forward to stand behind and between the seated pair. ]

JOHN CLARE: Excuse me, sir, but were you talking just now to myself or to the lady here? If, in response to my own querying of your mortality, you were enquiring as to whether this fogbound and uneventful continuity was how your afterlife was going to be, then in my own experience the answer’s yes. Yes, this is how it’s going to be. You’ll hang around in fog and nobody will ever come. If you’re anticipating a creator presently arriving to make lucid his intentions, then it’s my guess you’ll be waiting a long time. But, fair’s fair, if he should turn up, then when you’re finished with him, if you could point him in my direction, I’d be grateful. There were matters I was hoping to discuss. [ The pair ignore him. Experimentally, he waves one arm up and down between them, as if to determine whether they are blind. After a moment he stops, and regards the couple glumly. ] Of course, it may be that you were addressing your companion, in which case I hope you’ll pardon me for my intrusion. I intended no offence with my assumption that a couple as apparently ill-suited as yourselves might very well be dead. I am myself no stranger to the inconvenient marriage. When I was with Patty, it was always Mary that I thought of. Often did I –

HUSBAND: I said is this how it’s going to be, all night until the morning? If there’s something on your mind then spit it out, for God’s sake.

WIFE: You know.

HUSBAND: I don’t.

WIFE: I don’t want to talk about it.

HUSBAND: What?

WIFE: You know. The goings on. Just leave me be.

JOHN CLARE: [ Slowly and with deliberation. ] Do you know who I am? [HUSBAND continues to stare at WIFE who glares into the fog. ] I ask not out of wounded vanity, but more in the true spirit of investigation. I’ve a fancy I might be Lord Byron, though it strikes me now I hear it spoke aloud that Byron would most surely not say such a thing. If that is so, then otherwise it may be I am King William the Fourth, in which case I would be obliged for news as to what year we suffer presently, and if my pretty Vicky is still Queen. Please take your time about it. It’s a thing of no great consequence, my true identity, as long as it is somebody well thought-of.

HUSBAND: Goings on? What goings on? [WIFE does not reply. He stares at her for a few moments then gives up and looks down at his shoes in silence. CLARE looks from one to the other, hopeful of further conversation. When none is forthcoming, he sags dejectedly. ]

JOHN CLARE: [ Sighs heavily. ] Oh, never mind. Sorry I’ve bothered you. It’s just a game that I’ve come up with for when no one’s here to talk to. Tell you what, I’ll leave you both alone and mind my business. [CLARE turns and begins to shuffle back towards his alcove. Halfway there he turns and looks back over his shoulder at the couple on the steps. ] Do you know, sometimes I think I am the statue with stone wings atop the Town Hall up the road, and it in turn is everyone? [ The couple do not respond. CLARE shakes his head sadly then continues on towards the alcove, 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. ]