Jerusalem

HUSBAND: But … I mean, I hadn’t thought of that. It isn’t what I’m used to. If a girl, a woman, if she looks at you a certain way. I mean, you know our Audrey, what she’s like …

WIFE: [Furious, in helpless tears.] I don’t! I don’t know what our Audrey’s like, or not how you do, anyway! You tell me, Johnny. Tell me what she’s like. Come on, now, it’ll be a bit of fun. I know: the first time, did it make her cry?

JOHN CLARE: This is a horror. I had not expected this.

HUSBAND: Celia …

WIFE: Tell me, Johnny. Tell me what our Audrey’s like to be in bed with. Did it make her cry? Was she a virgin, Johnny? Was she? And what did you do about the sheets? [The HUSBAND looks at his WIFE, haunted, but simply moves his mouth like a fish and cannot answer her. Eventually he looks away and stares bleakly into space. His WIFE sinks her head in her hands, perhaps weeping silently. While CLARE and BECKETT are still staring in mute horror at the seated couple, THOMAS BECKET ENTERS LEFT and wanders slowly over to join them. They regard him with silent bewilderment. He looks at the haunted couple, then looks at CLARE and BECKETT.]

THOMAS BECKET: Pray, has some great catastrophe befallen them?

BECKETT: It has.

THOMAS BECKET: And can you not console them?

JOHN CLARE: They can’t hear us.

THOMAS BECKET: They are deaf?

BECKETT: No, they’re alive. The rest of us are either dead or dreaming, or that’s how I understand it. Who might you be?

THOMAS BECKET: I am Becket.

BECKETT: I’ll be candid with you: that’s an answer I was not anticipating. I myself am Beckett.

THOMAS BECKET: You are Thomas Becket?

BECKETT: No, I’m Samuel Beckett. This is John Clare. [A pause.] Wait a minute, now, did you say you were Thomas Becket?

THOMAS BECKET: Thomas Becket, Canterbury’s archbishop. Yes, you have me now. What is the stuff you say about me being dead? For all I know I am come here to see the King who is at Hamtun’s castle, that we might be reconciled.

JOHN CLARE: Take it from me, you’re dead all right. Affairs go badly for you at the castle and you skip away to France for a few years. When you come back what happens is you’re down at your cathedral, and …

BECKETT: We don’t need to go into all the ins and outs of it.

JOHN CLARE: Although reportedly there were a lot of them, the ins and outs …

BECKETT: [To CLARE.] Enough of that. Enough of it. [To BECKET] The thing that you should bear in mind is not the brute mechanics of the matter, but its outcome.

THOMAS BECKET: [Worried.] There were brute mechanics?

JOHN CLARE: Ins and outs.

r /> BECKETT: I’ve said already that it’s not a thing to dwell upon. Forget about all that. The salient point in all of this is that you were discovered to be incorruptible. That would explain the business with the sainthood which was latterly bestowed upon you. You’re the first one that I’ve met and I’m not sure what I should make of it.

THOMAS BECKET: Oh, God. Then I am to be martyred?

JOHN CLARE: I’m afraid it is old news. It’s getting on eight hundred years ago, all that.

BECKETT: [Angrily.] Look! [More softly, startled by his own outburst.] Look, all that I mean to say is you were made a saint, and that’s the long and short of it. Surely the very fact outweighs those means by which you came to be in that condition. I’d have thought you would be pleased about it.

THOMAS BECKET: Pleased? To have been burned, or broken on a wheel?

JOHN CLARE: Oh, that’s not so. No, you were only chopped about a bit, as I was told.

THOMAS BECKET: Ah, no, don’t tell me anymore.

BECKETT: [To CLARE.] Quite frankly, you’re not helping. [To BECKET] Is it not a comfort, then, the saintliness of your appointment?