Jerusalem

JOHN CLARE: [Astounded, almost frightened.] No, not her! Are you playing a cruel game with me? That is my Mary, Mary Joyce of Glinton …

BECKETT: Ah, no. This would be another girl entirely that I’m speaking of, that is the daughter of James Joyce.

CLARE: [Excitedly.] Why, that was Mary’s father’s name! Surely your woman and my own first wife must be one and the same! How is she? Give me news of her.

BECKETT: [Gently and sympathetically.] No. No, it isn’t her. The Miss Joyce I’m referring to is called Lucia. She was notable in Paris for her dancing in the 1920s, but was brought low by a difficulty in her reason. Sorry if I’ve let you down.

JOHN CLARE: [Sighs heavily.] Oh, it’s my own fault. Being mad, you know, it’s very self-indulgent. I should buck up and get on with things. [A pause.] What was she like, your personal Miss Joyce? Was she a young thing, like my own?

BECKETT: They all start out as young things, all of the Miss Joyces.

JOHN CLARE: Yes, that’s true.

BECKETT: Mine was a very pretty girl, who was afflicted by the old strabismus in one eye which she perceived as having ruined her. You know women and the low esteem in which they often hold themselves.

JOHN CLARE: I do.

BECKETT: There was some trouble with her brother, I believe, when she was young that may have had connection with her later upset. Anyway, the upshot of it was that Lucia lost her marbles.

JOHN CLARE: [Puzzled

.] I’m not sure I understand your turn of phrase.

BECKETT: She flipped her lid.

JOHN CLARE: No, I’m no nearer.

BECKETT: Away with the fairies.

JOHN CLARE: Ah! Ah, now, I think I have you. She would be what they call a hysteric?

BECKETT: Close enough. They sent her off to various sanatoriums and psychiatrists. You know the drill. At last she landed in Saint Andrew’s Hospital along Northampton’s Billing Road, where she remains at present.

JOHN CLARE: That’s the place where I was kept, although they called it something different then.

BECKETT: The very same. The institution has an interesting literary pedigree.

JOHN CLARE: You know, I think I am acquainted with the girl you speak of. If it’s who I’m thinking of, I had a romp with her off in the madhouse woods not long ago.

BECKETT: No, I’m afraid that’s just your lunacy that’s talking. Though it’s true you were both settled at the same asylum you weren’t congruent in the chronology of things. You hail from two entirely different periods.

JOHN CLARE: Why, you could say the same of you and me, yet here we are. No, this lass I refer to had dark hair and long legs, very little in the way of bubbies and a lazy eye.

BECKETT: I’ll admit, that’s very like her.

JOHN CLARE: Makes a lot of noise about it with the spending. Mind you, in my own ordeal I spent so hard that there were letters of the alphabet came fluttering from my ears.

BECKETT: Well, you’ve convinced me. That’s Lucia to a T, although I’m mystified about the circumstances of your meeting. You would not be speaking metaphorically?

JOHN CLARE: I don’t believe so, no.

BECKETT: Now that’s a mystery. She didn’t mention it to me when last I visited.

JOHN CLARE: It may be that she was embarrassed. I am not myself what you might call presentable, and I had the impression she was of the better type.

BECKETT: That may be so. She might have thought you were beneath her.

JOHN CLARE: Well, then she’d be right. That was exactly the configuration of our bout.