AMERICAN VOICE: Hoy, hoy, I’m the boy! Hoy, hoy, I’m the boy!

PETER: Your bitterness will pass.

FRANCIS: I can’t get rid of this dream. I have built a bridge. There is a grand opening. The ribbon is cut. Bright happy people begin to walk across the bridge. It collapses like a pack of cards. I have even lost faith in my ability to build something mechanical. How I envied you with your wealth, your background, your sense of past, family, belonging. I am rootless now. It’s not such a bad feeling because it’s no feeling at all.

AMERICAN VOICE: Hoy, hoy, I’m the boy! [More desperately] Hoy, hoy, I’m the boy!

FRANCIS: I wish I could go as mad as him.

PETER: You’ve spent too many years fighting. Everyone has.

FRANCIS: Don’t you see, Peter, the war will never stop; we humans don’t give up until we perfect something. Mind made perfect matter.

PETER: It’s over.

AMERICAN VOICE: [desperately] Hoy, hoy, I’m the boy!

FRANCIS stands on tiptoe to get the last rays of the sun.

FRANCIS: What kept me going was my memories of that time when we found them. God, I was stricken with her.

PETER laughs.

The old geezer doing Lear; I finally realised what it was: the happy version of King Lear.

The sun vanishes.

Poof! Snuffed out.

Pause.

PETER: We were very innocent then.

FRANCIS: So were they.

AMERICAN VOICE: [crying out] Hoy, hoy, I’m the boy!

FRANCIS: [calling out] Hoy, hoy, you’re the boy!

AMERICAN VOICE: [joyfully] Hoy, hoy, I’m the boy!

FRANCIS: Before going in I tell him that. It makes him happy. [Holding out his hand] I have to go in now.

PETER: You’d better. [Smiling] You’ll have to collect your gear. You’ll be flown to England tomorrow and then… a slow boat to Australia. [Pause.] They wanted a way out of it as much as you did. No-one really wants to be reminded of the war anymore. Connections help, the major was a friend of my father.

FRANCIS is stunned.

AMERICAN VOICE: [joyfully] Hoy, hoy, I’m the boy!

PETER: The nightmare is over.

SCENE SIXTEEN

The asylum gardens, an early summer day, 1945. BETSHEB sits, withdrawn, on the bench in a clean hospital gown. It is as if she is a doll that has had all its stuffing removed. FRANCIS enters in civilian clothes. He carries a large bunch of flowers. Escorting him is DR SIMON.

DR SIMON: She always sits on that garden bench.

They look at her.

You’re the first visitor she’s had in a long time.

FRANCIS: No-one else?

DR SIMON: No-one. Not for a year.

FRANCIS: She was supposed to be released once the war was over.