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WIFE: [Frowning as if uncertain.] Yes, well, I thought it had, but I’m not sure. I think I can still hear it when the wind’s in our direction. But that’s not the point. The point is that she’s made her mind up that she’s going to put an end to it by telling everybody and broadcasting from the rooftops. You saw Eileen Perrit coming out to see what all the fuss was, all that noise when Jem and her had just got little Alison to sleep. She could hear everything, the Whispering Grass and everything that dirty, dirty little tart was shouting. Everything. [Thoughtful, after a pause.] I don’t know what she heard. It might already be too late.
HUSBAND: But then what shall we do?
WIFE: [Angry.] I don’t know, Johnny. I don’t know what we shall do. That’s what I’m trying to work out, what we’re going to do. [A pause.] That dirty little tart. She thought I never noticed, in the kitchen, at the sink, washing her hair without her blouse on, and then when she’s drying it and got it held up in the towel, then you, you’re sitting there, you’re sitting there and looking and you’ve got your legs crossed, sitting there, and looking, and you say “Ooh, you look nice, our Audrey, with your hair up”, never mind about you look nice with your blouse off, sitting there and looking with your legs crossed, and then after that she’s always got her hair up so that everyone can see her neck, her neck, look at my lovely neck, look at my little bosoms that aren’t anything at all, look at me swing about when I play my accordion so that my skirt goes up and everyone can come and have a look and see my knees and think about my fanny and she thought I never noticed. [A long, seething pause, during which her HUSBAND looks scared and shaken by her outburst.] Let me think. I’ve got to think. We’ve got to think what shall be done.
JOHN CLARE: [After a pause.] I don’t much care for how this sounds. I have a painful feeling about where all this is headed.
WOMAN: Yeah. They’re gunna cover it all up. They’re gunna bury everything because they can’t face up to what they’ve done. They’re gunna bury Audrey, then inside ’em somewhere they’ll be sitting in the damp and fog and bickering on these steps forever. All because they couldn’t bear to tell the truth of what they were.
JOHN CLARE: [After a long and anguished pause, his secrecy battling with his conscience.] I did something. I did something that I never told the truth about. When I was fourteen. [He closes his eyes. He can hardly bear to speak.]
WOMAN: [Gently and encouragingly.] Yeah? Something went on?
JOHN CLARE: [His eyes still closed, he slowly starts to rock back and forth in his alcove.] When I was fourteen. When I was fourteen. When I was fourteen, there was someone. There was someone. There was someone up the road in the next village. There was. There was. There was someone. There was someone. There was a young … I was fourteen. There was a young woman. A young woman. She was round my own age. Mary. Mary. Mary. She was beautiful. She was more beautiful than anything. When I was fourteen. And I met her. And I met her in the lane and asked her if she would walk out with me and Mary said she would, she said she would walk out with me. She was around my own age. And I walked her down the path. We went. We went. We went beside a stream where was, where was, where was a Hawthorn bush. And I said. I said that I loved her and. And. And. And. And I asked if she would like to marry me. Beneath the Hawthorn bush. Beneath the Hawthorn bush and she laughed and she said she would and we went in. We went in on our hands and knees beneath the Hawthorn bush and I made her a ring. I made a ring. I made a ring of grass for her and put it on her finger and I said. I said. I said that we were married. She was round my own age. I was fourteen. She was, she was, she was a bit younger. A bit younger than what I was. And I. And I. And I joked. I joked. I joked and I said. I said. I said that it was our wedding night. I made a ring of grass for her. I said it was our wedding night and we must. We must take our clothes off and I said it as a joke. I said it so that I should make it seem it was a joke, beneath the Hawthorn bush, but she said, she said, Mary said she would. She was around my own age. A bit younger. Mary said she would and she was laughing. She was laughing, she was taking off her things and I … was … looking at her. I was looking at her, taking off her things and I was hurrying. Was hurrying. Was hurrying to take my own off too and she was looking at me. She was ten. She was ten. She was laughing and I said. I said that we. I said that we. I said that we should do it. She was laughing and she said do what? She said do what and I said, I said that I’d show her and it was all right. It was all right. I’d made a ring for her and we were married and it was all right and then I told. I told. I told her what to do. I told. I told her she she must lie upon her back and she was laughing. She was laughing. She was laughing and I got on top of her and Mary asked. She asked. She asked what I was doing and I tried to get it into her. I was fourteen. She said it hurt. She said it hurt. She said that I was hurting her and that she didn’t want to do it, that she didn’t want to do it, that it hurt, but I said. I said. I said it was all right. I said we were married. It was all right. That she’d start. She’d start to like it in a little while and that she mustn’t. That she mustn’t. That she mustn’t cry. She mustn’t cry. She mustn’t cry. And I. And I went on with it. And she stopped crying in a. In a while. And when I’d finished it we wiped up with my s
hirt and I said. I said that she was my first wife and would always be my first wife and she should tell nobody, nobody, nobody about it. What we’d, what we’d, what I’d done. Beneath the Hawthorn bush. Beneath the Hawthorn bush. When I was fourteen. I was fourteen. She was ten. I never saw her after that, save in the best of my illusions. [He is weeping by this point. He subsides into silence.]
WOMAN: [After a long pause.] Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to sit over there?
JOHN CLARE: [He looks up at her, anguished.] Would you? Would you? Else I am alone in it. [The HALF-CASTE WOMAN rises from her alcove and then walks across to the alcove in which JOHN CLARE is sitting. She sits down beside him, sympathetically, and drapes one arm around his shoulders.]
WOMAN: [Stroking his hair.] You were fourteen. You were living in the country. It was eighteen-hundred and whatever. These things happen, sweetheart. Both of you were kids, mucking about. If it was guilt about that made you talk of her as your first wife, if it was anything to do with that that made you spend all of that time up at Saint Andrew’s then you’ve punished yourself ten times over when all that you did was love somebody at the wrong time. There’s worse crimes than that, love. There’s worse crimes than that. You shush. You shush now.
WIFE: We could have her put away.
HUSBAND: What do you mean?
WIFE: Up Berry Wood. Up round the turn there at St. Crispin’s. We could have her put away up there.
HUSBAND: The mental home?
WIFE: Up Berry Wood. We could say she’d been acting funny for a while.
JOHN CLARE: Oh, no. Oh, I can see where this is going.
WOMAN: Hush, now. It’s only what happened in the world once. It’s all right.
HUSBAND: Well, I suppose, what with the music, she always been highly strung. You know, with the artistic temperament. And that business tonight, well, there’s the proof of it.
JOHN CLARE: It’s just the same! It’s just the same as what the other Mr. Beckett said befell his friend!
WIFE: Yes, well, it’s well known. If you’re having fits because you’re mad, you could say anything. You might make every kind of accusation and it wouldn’t bother anyone.
HUSBAND: [Uncertain and uncomfortable.] But Celia, I mean. Our Audrey, in a madhouse. I don’t like to picture it.
WIFE: It needn’t be for long. Just until she’d got over her delusions, what they call them, and she isn’t saying things that make no sense.
HUSBAND: But, I mean, they’re not really what you’d call delusions, are they?
WIFE: Johnny, listen to me: yes they are. They’re all delusions. After all, you know it’s in the family. It’s not your fault, we can’t help how we’re born, but there was your dad. And your granddad. And your great Aunt Thursa. It’s no wonder Audrey went the way she did. We can make the arrangements in the morning.
HUSBAND: The arrangements?
WIFE: With the hospital, to have her put away.
HUSBAND: Oh. Oh, yes. The arrangements. I suppose that we can’t …
WIFE: In the morning. It’s what’s best.
