BECKETT: Not of a carnal nature, no, though once I did. If I am to be truthful, back in those days it was only carnal feelings that I had, though that was not her understanding of the matter. Presently I go to visit her as often as I can. I love her in a way, but not the way she wants. I don’t know why I go so much, to be completely honest.
JOHN CLARE: Could it be you pity her?
BECKETT: No, I don’t think that that’s entirely it. She’s happy in her own way. It might very well be that she’s happier than me. In fact, I would have difficulty in believing it were otherwise, so, no, it isn’t pity. I suppose I feel I owe her something. When I met her I was callous and I couldn’t bring myself to see that she was drowning. I could have done more, that’s all I’m saying. Or I could have done less. One way or the other. It’s too late now.
JOHN CLARE: So it’s guilt, then?
BECKETT: I expect it is. I often find it’s guilt that’s at the bottom of a thing.
JOHN CLARE: I tend to share that point of view myself.
WIFE: What did you mean, it wasn’t all one-sided?
HUSBAND: I thought that you didn’t want me speaking to you.
WIFE: Don’t be clever. You’re not clever, Johnny. The last thing you are is clever. Tell me what you meant when you said that it wasn’t all one-sided.
HUSBAND: I meant it was a duet. It was a tango. Flanagan and Allen. It was something that took two is what I’m saying to you. Why must you be all the while so dense?
WIFE: So it was something that she wanted, that’s the gist of it?
HUSBAND: It is! That is the very crux of things, the fulcrum of the subject: it was something that she wanted.
WIFE: Oh, well, that’s all right then, I suppose.
HUSBAND: [Sighs, relieved.] I knew that you’d come round.
WIFE: How did you know?
HUSBAND: That you’d come round? Oh, well, I know you can’t stay angry with me very long …
WIFE: [Slowly and deliberately.] How did you know that it was something that she wanted? Is that what she told you? Did she say “It’s something that I want”?
HUSBAND: Not in as many words, no. No, she didn’t. But …
WIFE: Well, what words did she use, then? What words did she use when she told you that it was something that she wanted?
HUSBAND: Well, it wasn’t words as such. She didn’t tell me through the medium of words.
WIFE: [Increasingly angry.] Well, what? Interpretive dance, was it? Did she mime it for you?
HUSBAND: [Sounding trapped and uncomfortable.] It was signals.
WIFE: Signals?
HUSBAND: Little signals. You know what it’s like, how women are.
WIFE: I’m not sure that I do.
HUSBAND: The signals they give out. The little looks and glances, all of that. She was forever smiling at me, cuddling up to me and telling me she loved me …
WIFE: [Horrified, shouting in rage.] Well, of course she was! Of course she’d do that! Johnny, you’re her father!
BECKETT: Ah, Christ. There you have it.
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.
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?
THOMAS BECKET: [Very upset.] Does it seem to you that I am comforted? You tell me I am made a saint, and yet where am I?
JOHN CLARE: Why, that’s nothing but geography. There’s no theology about it. You are underneath the portico of All Saint’s Church here in Northampton and it’s halfway through the century after the one I died in, making it the twentieth. I’m informed that a great war with the Germans has been recently concluded in our favour.