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.]
WIFE: [After a long pause, tonelessly and emotionally drained.] God help me, Johnny, but I hate you. I hate you so much that I’m exhausted by it.
HUSBAND: [Equally flatl
y and without real feeling.] And I hate you, Celia. With all my heart, I hate you. I can’t stand you.
WIFE: Well, at least there’s that. At least we still mean something to each other.
HUSBAND: [Without the couple looking at each other, the HUSBAND reaches out and takes his WIFE’s hand. She accepts this without comment or reaction. There is a long pause as they sit and stare expressionlessly into space.] Are we still planning to … you know. With Audrey, and the hospital. Is that still something that we want to do?
WIFE: It’s something that we’ve got to do.
HUSBAND: Yes, I suppose so. [After a pause.] Not just yet though, eh?
WIFE: No. In the morning. I’m not looking forward to it any more than you are.
HUSBAND: No. No, I suppose not. But it’s something that we’ve got to do, you’re right. You’re dead right. In the morning, we’ll go down there and we’ll step up to the bat.
WIFE: Yes. When it’s light.