JOYCE   Ask somebody? Ask somebody? This is a crime.

GILBERT   What do I do it with?

JOYCE   One of your feet knives. They’re precision tools.

GILBERT   Not for pigs.

JOYCE   It’s got hard skin. I thought you were an expert when it  came to hard skin.
Gilbert shakes his head and goes up to the pig. It nuzzles his shoes.
Listen, Gilbert Chilvers, this country has just emerged from a second world war, a war in which millions of people died, most of them killed by their fellow men.

GILBERT   Not with chiropodist’s tools.

JOYCE   It’s not the tools. It’s the will. It’s doing its business again. Trust you to pick one with diarrhoea.

GILBERT   A strange place. Strange people. You can understand it. We ought to let it settle down.

JOYCE   Settle down? Kill it.
She thrusts a knife into his hand and goes out. Gilbert strokes the pig.

GILBERT   With this? (It is a very small knife.) How?

INT. CHILVERS’ LANDING. NIGHT.

Joyce is spraying scent about from an old-fashioned scent spray. Mother appears in her nightie.

MOTHER   Joyce.

JOYCE   What?

MOTHER   Can you smell a smell? I can smell a smell.

JOYCE   (continuing to squirt) There’s no smell, Mother. You’re  imagining it.

MOTHER   I wondered if it was me. 
Gilbert comes upstairs.

GILBERT   I can’t do it.

MOTHER   (as Gilbert passes) It’s him. He smells, Joyce.

JOYCE   He doesn’t smell, Mother. Go to bed.
Mother goes to bed, unconvinced.

MOTHER   He does smell, Joyce. 
Something is knocked over downstairs.

INT. CHILVERS’ HALL. NIGHT.

Joyce and Gilbert come quickly down the stairs. They find the surgery door ajar.

JOYCE   Oh my God.
There is a noise. They look to the sitting room. The door is ajar.

INT. CHILVERS’ SITTING ROOM. NIGHT.

Joyce and Gilbert appear in the doorway, watching aghast. The pig is eating fruit out of a bowl on the dining-room table.

JOYCE   That bowl was a wedding present.

GILBERT   It’s not to know that.
The pig runs into the kitchen, followed by Gilbert.

INT. CHILVERS’ KITCHEN. NIGHT.

Gilbert shuts the door carefully. Then Joyce opens it a fraction and slips through with a cloth.

JOYCE   Another parcel in the umbrella stand.
Joyce goes to wring the cloth out in the sink. Her eye catches the gas oven.
Maybe we could put it to sleep.
She takes a bowl of food from the larder and puts it into the gas oven.

INT. MOTHER’S BEDROOM. NIGHT.

Mother sits on her bed. She sniffs the air. After a moment’s thought she sniffs herself.

INT. CHILVERS’ SITTING ROOM. NIGHT.

Gilbert and Joyce are waiting outside the kitchen door. We see the crack beneath the door has been stuffed up. Joyce listens at the door.

MOTHER   (out of vision) Joyce.

JOYCE   What?

MOTHER   (out of vision) I think it’s gas.

JOYCE   No.

MOTHER   (out of vision) I can smell gas.

GILBERT   Go to bed.