Jerusalem

THOMAS BECKET: The husband has made rut with his own child, one of these little ones that God has said we should not harm. It seems the wife has tacitly consented to the ruinous liaison, with a blameless innocent thus doubly betrayed. I cannot think a just Creator might extend his mercy to those who have never thought to exercise that quality themselves.

BECKETT: Well, you being a saint it follows that you would be an authority on such concerns.

JOHN CLARE: Look, now, when God was speaking of these little ones, did he specifically say they were ten? That’s all I’m getting at.

BECKETT: [Ignoring CLARE.] It seems to me that though the sex of it is very likely woeful and unpleasant, it would still be the betrayal that’s the main thing. With Lucia, when the brother that she thought had loved her more than physically announced that he’d be getting married to an older woman very like his mam, that’s when she started acting up and throwing chairs about. I think it was her brother first suggested she be given psychiatric treatment somewhere, and you might suppose it was because he didn’t want her saying anything that could not be conveniently dismissed as ravings. That, at least, was how it looked to me, and Nora, pretty quickly she fell in with it. Lucia hadn’t been what you might call her favourite child, even before the hurling furniture commenced. They said Lucia was what they called a schizophrenic, although if you ask me it was more that she was young and spoiled and couldn’t cope with disappointment easily. She thought that she was justified in her behaviour. She felt immune because of who she was and never dreamed she could end up stuck in an institution, as in fact turned out to be the case.

JOHN CLARE: Well, to be fair, that manner of confinement is a thing that very few of us have properly anticipated or have made allowance for. The general measure of it is, it’s always a surprise. One moment you’re Lord Byron and the next you’re in a morning room that’s full of idiots eating porridge.

THOMAS BECKET: And you said yourself that I’m to quit Northampton and make off for France where it would seem to me that I’m to be in exile, a confinement I was not anticipating.

JOHN CLARE: From what I heard, in the dead of night you made off through a breach was in the castle wall, and then went out the north gate of the town, what’s up there at the end of Sheep Street just past where the old round church is.

THOMAS BECKET: Aye, I know it.

JOHN CLARE: It appears that you went out the gate and rode off to the north, so they should think that was where you were headed, then you doubled back and made away down south to Dover and from there across to France.

THOMAS BECKET: That seems a cautious and a clever thing to do. I shall remember it when I awake.

BECKETT: Yes, I thought that about a line of dialogue that the wife here spoke not half an hour ago, but I have already forgotten it. It strikes me it was something about earwigs.

JOHN CLARE: [To THOMAS BECKET.] There is some controversy about the route you took on your escape. It is a common tale that in your leaving of Northampton you made halt to take a drink from the stone well that’s down by Beckett’s Park. But if indeed you left by the north gate then that would not seem likely.

THOMAS BECKET: That is answered easily enough. I know the well you mean and took a drink there where I next went into Hamtun by its Dern gate. It was in the coming to the town and not the leaving of it but apart from that the tale is true enough, although it seems a thing of little consequence. I am more taken with the thought that there should be a park named for me.

JOHN CLARE: Well, again, there’s some controversy. Although there is the story of the well, the park’s name has two Ts upon the end of it, unlike your own, and so may not be named for you at all.

BECKETT: Two Ts? Well, there’s a thing. I don’t suppose that it could be named after me at all?

JOHN CLARE: The way that I was told, it is a lady benefactor to the town gave the park her name, rather than either of you gentlemen. The stuff about the well is possibly no more than a coincidence. Although now that I come to think about it, I believe the well is likewise spelled with two Ts at the end of it, though that is likely no more than abiding local ignorance and clumsiness with words in their correct expression. I hope that I haven’t let you down with what I’ve said.

THOMAS BECKET: [Sounding disappointed.] Let down? No, I wouldn’t say … no, not let down. It would be a vain man indeed who was let down by such a thing, and have you not already said that I shall be a saint? No. Not let down. Why should I be?

BECKETT: [Sounding similarly disappointed.] Me neither. I had made my comment in the manner of a joke, when the plain truth is that it makes no difference if a park were named for me or not. It’s all the same as far as I’m concerned. To have a park named after you would seem to be a vulgar and a common thing, such as the many parks that bear the name Victoria.

JOHN CLARE: Ah, yes. My pretty little daughter. Have you heard much news about her? How’s she getting on with life?

BECKETT: Dear God, not all this nonsense just when I thought we were done with it. I can’t be bothered with it anymore. And to be frank I’m not expecting much more out of this pair either. I’ve a feeling that they’ve pretty much exhausted what they had by way of conversation.

THOMAS BECKET: There I must agree. They sit half-dazed amid a sorry wreckage of their own accomplishment and neither seek atonement nor can have an expectation of redemption. It is a drear tale too often told and like you I am wearied with it. And besides, if what you’ve told to me is true I have my own drear tale to make a way through. I think I may carry on in that direction [THOMAS BECKET points towards the audience, as if at an off-stage street] to the castle where my former playmate waits for me.

BECKETT: Aye, I might join you. I was planning to walk down that way myself and take a look at old Saint Peter’s Church, the way I first did when I came here for the cricket.

THOMAS BECKET: It is a fine building of the old kind and I know it well. I must say that I am surprised to hear it is still standing, getting on a thousand years since. Has it fallen to neglect? Are all the horrible grotesques that I recall still grimacing from out the stonework?

JOHN CLARE: There’s a few have fallen off or been knocked down across the years, but the majority are still in place. So, both of you are off, then? I cannot persuade you to remain and keep me company so that I shall have someone who can hear me that I can converse with?

BECKETT: I apologise, but no, I cannot be persuaded. It has been a pleasure of a kind to meet with you, for all of your wild fancies and your tale of having impudently bedded Lucia. I should not mind if I met you again, although I must admit I say that in the expectation that it will be not be the case.

JOHN CLARE: For my part I’ll be sorry to be left here on my own, but as a consequence of my insanity I will no doubt have soon forgotten you were ever here, or will have otherwise become convinced of your delusory nature as with my first w– as with some other comical misapprehensions that I may have had. I’ve found you likeable enough, the pair of you, but must remark that you are very similar, both in the spelling of your names, and in the fact that I have thought the two of you to be quite grim.

BECKETT: You are not grim yourself, at all?

JOHN CLARE: No. I partake in a great deal of unproductive melancholy, but I don’t think I’ve the courage to be grim. Bleak sometimes, possibly, but not what you’d call grim. I’ve not the stomach for it.

THOMAS BECKET: [Kindly and sympathetically.] Will you not accompany us to the church? I should not like to think that we had left you by yourself.

BECKETT: [Aside, quietly exasperated.] Oh, that’s just great!