The guests are waiting in various attitudes of patience or fatigue. Only Dickie continues to eat steadily at the table: he positions his transistor set in front of him, switching on to a current-affairs programme. Stella, strolling behind him, raises her eye in weary boredom. She continues to stroll, out of the dining-room set onto the stage, where two or three of the cast are grouped, standing or sitting, round a tea trolley.

Pauline is sitting on a chair in her underwear; beside her is a wardrobe mistress stitching her dress.

STELLA   I’ve been having some bizarre dreams lately. I can’t account for them at all.

PAULINE   I can’t bear dreams. What’s the point? As if life wasn’t bizarre enough.

PETER   Tell us your dream.

STELLA   Well –

INT. EMPTY ROOM. DAY.

On the walls are empty picture frames. Stella is in the centre of a group of tourists (played by the guests in different garb) going through empty rooms and corridors (perhaps the studio corridor and an empty stage). The group remains together in the centre of the large room (stage?) while Stella moves out alone to investigate one of the doors.

A soldier sits against the wall by one door, guarding it, his chair tipped back against the wall.

From the room inside comes the sound of terrible tortures. Screams, groans, pleadings.

Stella ventures along the wall, ignored by the sentry, and looks in.

What she sees is a young family, idyllically happy. Husband, wife, the husband holding up their baby and laughing.

INT. DINING ROOM AND STUDIO. NIGHT.

The group round the tea trolley receive Stella’s dream with detached interest.

PAULINE   Are you sure that was a dream? I’m sure I read something like that in the paper.

PETER   That’s very like a dream I’ve been having. Quite different of course.

INT. EMPTY ROOMS. DAY.

The same hall. The same tourists. Another of the doors investigated by Peter. This time the sounds of sex, pantings, groanings.

Peter looks through the door and the two occupants look up, surprised. They are a gentle old schoolmaster and a young pupil, doing a Latin exercise.

INT. DINING ROOM AND STUDIO. NIGHT.

SUE   I don’t dream at all.

PAULINE   Very sensible of you.

SVEND   (speaking good English) I dream a lot. All the time.

STELLA   Tell US.

INT. LARGE EMPTY ROOM. NIGHT.

Like an impromptu hospital, the room is full of sick and dying people. They lie on camp beds or squat against the walls. Nuns are tending them. At the end of the room is a large door covered by a curtain. Music plays beyond the curtain: the last section of Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy.