Alan Moore - Jerusalem

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 .]