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 offence?
BECKETT: Oh, no, not him. He worshipped 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 favour 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?