JAMES: None yet. I tell him how my marriage broke and about my childhood, all I can remember. How my parents avoided me. Don’t we have to learn love from our parents, like we learn to walk? You taught me to walk, but I’ve no idea what love is.

MRS. CALLIFER: You are wrong, James. You had love, so much love, my dear, until— (She stops.)

JAMES: Until what?

MRS. CALLIFER: I’m very tired, James. Please don’t ask me tonight.

JAMES: I’ll be gone tomorrow.

MRS. CALLIFER: We shouldn’t have buried it; but now it’s been buried such a long time, I don’t know what it would look like.

JAMES: Mother, please. Shut your eyes and think I’m your child. There’s something I don’t understand, and I fear it, and I’ve come running.

MRS. CALLIFER: I’ve got to protect Henry.

JAMES: He’s dead.

MRS. CALLIFER (with a moan of pain): Can’t I be loyal to him for a few hours?

JAMES: It won’t affect him.

MRS. CALLIFER: How do we know?

JAMES: I don’t. I thought you did. (He scrambles to his feet; his appeal is over and the bitterness returns.) Don’t worry. I won’t ask you again. I dreamed for a moment you were my mother and I was your child, and I went to my mother with my fear. For now, I thought, my father isn’t here, to be protected. Doesn’t a child deserve protection too? (Mrs. Callifer’s head is bowed, and she is crying.) I pretended to myself you were a mother like other mothers, and I was a child like any other child. Somebody you can comfort so easily, saying, “They are only shadows,” and lighting a lamp, or giving him a toy spade to dig with—

MRS. CALLIFER (with an elderly whimper of pain): Oh, do you remember that toy spade? You were only six.

JAMES (in excitement): What do you mean?

MRS. CALLIFER: We can be hurt by such silly things. You spoke as though you never liked that spade, but you were so happy …

JAMES: (almost with fear): I’ve never remembered anything as far back as that before. (It is as though at last a whole world of memory is at the door of the mind.)

MRS. CALLIFER: Let me go now. (He makes no move to stop her.) We can talk again—one day. Good-bye. (She kisses his cheek.) I don’t suppose I shall be up when you go. (She goes out.)

And James makes no reply—he is staring at a toy spade that has swum up from the unknown past.

The door opens, and Anne comes in, in her dressing-gown. He doesn’t see her. A long pause.

ANNE: Hullo.

JAMES (turning quickly): What do you want?

ANNE: That’s an awfully difficult question to answer.

JAMES: What have you been doing out there?

ANNE: Listening.