JOAN. You said I had to read it.

JAMES. You don’t have to read it.

JOAN. No, I’ve been doing the best job I can, with very limited resources but it’s not enough, is it? I’m still a disappointment, apparently. So I better read your poem too, hadn’t I?

JAMES. You don’t have to read it.

JOAN. No, you’re not going to blame me for not reading your poem, I’m reading your poem.

JAMES. Then read it! Bloody read it to me!

He grabs it up, rifles pages, finds the place he wants.

Here! Here! Read that bit, read it to me! Go on! JOAN hesitates.

JOAN. I don’t always… I don’t have the eyes for small work.

JAMES says nothing. JOAN starts to read, haltingly.

‘And then… I cast down my eyes again

Where I saw walking under the tower,

Half hidden, a new thing, coming here to play,

The fairest and the freshest young flower

That I ever saw, I thought, before that hour…’

JAMES. I wrote that when I was prisoner in Windsor. Looking down into the garden from the tower.

JOAN. It… I used to run in that garden… in Windsor.

JAMES (points). Read.

JOAN (reading again).…

‘I heard a little sound

And after it my eyes eagerly down

I cast, seeing there her little hound

That with his bells played on the ground,

Then I said, and sighed a little too

“Oh lucky dog that plays down there with you.”’

(Breaks off, agitated.) I had a dog! I played in that garden with Bess and she had bells on her collar…

(Gets it.) This is about me.

JAMES. There were some years when they let me roam the court, more years when they kept me locked in my room. I never got out. I used to watch the birds in the tree outside my prison window. They were the only hopeful living thing I ever saw… until I saw you playing in that garden. I never thought I’d meet you. It was a dream. And then it was real.

JOAN. Why didn’t you tell me?

JAMES. I did! I put it in a bloody poem and gave it to you!

JOAN. Well, how am I supposed to understand something if you put it in a poem! Why can’t anyone here ever say anything in plain words!?

JAMES. I love you.

A beat.

Plain enough for you? How can you understand about eels and milk and sides of bacon and not see what’s right in front of your eyes!

A beat.

JOAN. We’ll have bacon now. We killed the pigs today. Did you hear them screaming?

The baby jumped to hear it.

There was a little boy watching, he was only about three, he was terrified. They make such a human sound, don’t they, the pigs? And their feet were scrabbling on the bloody cobbles.

I saw the little boy’s mother wrap her arms round him and then his father picked him up and kissed his soft little cheek and whispered in his ear… I knew what they were saying… ‘This is alright. This is natural. This is just how it has to be. We need salted meat for the winter. Who could get through a winter without meat?’