JAMES: Well, God was taboo. My father had killed that superstition for his generation. Poor Father! I’m glad he didn’t realize how it was beginning to return. Like memory. We were not allowed ghost stories, either. Do you believe in ghosts, Doctor?

KREUZER: No.

JAMES: Or the soul?

KREUZER: I’ve never understood what the word means.

JAMES: If I had a child, I wouldn’t forbid it fairy stories. They might develop the sense of hope. If a pumpkin can turn into a coach, even this dreary room, that tablecloth, those awful ornaments, could be a palace, with limitless corridors.

KREUZER: Did you ever want a child?

JAMES: No. I didn’t want to create new convicts for a prison. To have a child you need hope.

KREUZER: There seems to be plenty of hope, then, around us. Judging by the birth rate.

JAMES: There should be another word for that simple sort of hope.

KREUZER: It’s enough for most of us.

JAMES: Doctor, I’m not sneering. I want it to be enough for me too. Why isn’t it? What happened to me—in that shed?

KREUZER: For six months now I’ve been trying to find out, and you haven’t given me a clue.

JAMES (pleading for hope): I was beginning to remember.

KREUZER: Yes. Outside that door. But what happened when the door shut behind you? Was there a lock? A bolt? A catch? Answer me quickly.

JAMES (in a low voice): I can’t remember.

KREUZER: Were you alone?

JAMES: I don’t know.

KREUZER: Think aloud. Invent. Tell a story—any story—a fairy story. Whatever comes into your head.

JAMES: Our Father methedrine, hallowed be Thy name. (He puts his head in his hands.)

KREUZER: You’ve seen many other sheds like that, haven’t you, besides the one you fear so? Describe them to me. Anything. The spades leaning against the wall. The smell of mould.

A pause, while James tries to remember, to invent.

JAMES: It’s as if there were only one place like that in the world. The walk was called the dark walk. The door was never painted.

KREUZER: Are you inventing?

JAMES: I think so. I don’t know. I kept my spade in there, with the real spades. In that way it seemed to be no longer a toy. But that was years before. Something made a pattern on the path as I walked, like a snake crawling beside me.

KREUZER: A snake?

JAMES: No, not a snake. I don’t know. When I came in sight of the door my heart was beating. I stopped to get my breath. My head was aching too, but I wasn’t unhappy any more. Just frightened.

KREUZER: You’d been unhappy? (James pays no attention to the question.) Was somebody waiting for you?