Alan Moore - Jerusalem

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, bollocks, 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 .]