The Potting Shed

by Graham Greene

  BASTON: So did I.

  MRS. CALLIFER: Please, John, both of you, go away. I’ll be all right when I’m alone. But I’m not strong enough yet for sympathy.

  JOHN: Come up soon, Mother.

  MRS. CALLIFER: In a little while. But it’s such a large room. I’ll move into Sara’s when she goes. Good night, my dear. (She kisses John on the cheek.) Good night, Fred. (She lifts her cheek for him to kiss.)

  BASTON: You’ll call me if there’s anything …

  MRS. CALLIFER: Of course. You must look after that sty, Fred. You’ve been picking at it again. And you a doctor.

  JOHN (leaving): Good night, Mother.

  BASTON (absentmindedly, at the door): I’ll look in at Henry— (He stops, aghast at what he’s said.)

  MRS. CALLIFER: Don’t worry, Fred. We’ll all make that mistake for a while. Today when I was ordering lunch I said, “Not string beans.” He always hated them. Now we can have them every day.

  BASTON: Mistakes like that are a kind of immortality. You remember Samuel Butler’s sonnet:

  “Yet meet we shall, and part, and meet again,

  Where dead men meet, on lips of living men.”

  As long as there are you and I—and his books.

  MRS. CALLIFER: Yes, three copies for export. There was once a Callifer Club, do you remember?

  BASTON: Yes. Mary, I was going to write to Macmillan’s and suggest a biography, an intimate biography with letters. …

  MRS. CALLIFER: Don’t, Fred. Wait until a publisher writes to you. I’d rather hope than collect polite refusals.

  BASTON: As you wish. But when he had his first bad illness, they did suggest …

  MRS. CALLIFER: That was thirty years ago. Your oration will do just as well, Fred, for those who are interested. I’ll have it printed. For private distribution only. Do you think two hundred copies? There may be still some members of the club. … It was very dear and generous of you. If only that wretched dog— Oh, well. I’ll read myself to sleep with your book, Fred. Good night.

  BASTON: Good night, Mary.

  MRS. CALLIFER: Turn out the light, dear, as you go.

  He goes out.

  And Mrs. Callifer sits in a straight armchair under a reading lamp. She begins to read, but she can’t concentrate, and almost at once she puts the book down. The door to the garden opens and closes, and she turns with a wild movement, as though she expected to see someone. Then, with knowledge of the truth, and with the despair of it, she whispers, “Henry …” The french window opens and James enters. There is a tenseness in his manner, an impression of fear, and he carries a bowl of water. He sees his mother and stands awkwardly, like a boy caught in an absurd action.

  MRS. CALLIFER (peering into the shadows): Is that you, James?

  JAMES: Yes, Mother.

  MRS. CALLIFER: I thought you were in bed. What’s that you’ve got in your hand, dear?

  It’s as if in this half—darkness they have both shed thirty years. A middle-aged mother is talking to her half—grown son. They have different interests, but they are gentle and kind to each other.

  JAMES: A bowl of water—for the dog.

  MRS. CALLIFER: Oh. (It’s too late at night to be unkind about the animal.)

  JAMES: I started to take it to him. But, Mother—

  MRS. CALLIFER: Yes, dear?

  JAMES: I was too frightened.

  MRS. CALLIFER: Why frightened? Was it the darkness, dear?

  JAMES: No. I don’t mind the dark.

  MRS. CALLIFER: Then what was it? (He puts the bowl down and comes slowly towards her ring of lamplight.) Tell me what happened, dear.

  JAMES: I didn’t want to go. I was frightened before I left the house, just as though I knew someone was waiting for me, among the laurels, on the path to the potting shed.

  Mrs. Callifer makes a movement which might be one of fear or tenderness.

  MRS. CALLIFER: My poor James,

  He sits down, like a child, on the floor at her feet.

  JAMES: Mother, I’m sorry. About the dog and coming here. Disturbing you.

  She runs her hand over his head. It’s almost as though the constraint between them were at last breaking down.

  MRS. CALLIFER: My dear, don’t worry. You’re my son, James.

  JAMES: Yes, I’m your son, Mother. Will you tell me, please, now—now Father’s not here—what’s wrong?

  MRS. CALLIFER: Wrong?

  JAMES: Wrong with me. So that you were afraid to see me. Oh, except between trains at Nottingham when you were taking Anne to school. Do you remember when we met that time for tea at the Kardomah? I made you meet me. But I still hoped that in a way you would be glad to see me. And then I walked in from the street, and you sat there waiting, hard and afraid. Afraid of me. We talked about what the weather had been like here. And then you said you had to catch your train. What did I do, Mother, all those years ago, that was so horrible?

  MRS. CALLIFER: You are imagining things.

  JAMES: No, Mother, there’s usually a moment when parents begin to speak the truth to their children. It’s been a long time delayed in our case.

  MRS. CALLIFER: There never is such a moment. First the children are too young, and then the parents are too old for truth. I’m too old, James. Please.

  JAMES: Then there is a truth.

  MRS. CALLIFER: You’ll have to go somewhere else to find it.

  JAMES: I’ve looked for it already in some strange places.

  MRS. CALLIFER: Yes?

  JAMES: Once a week I go to a doctor and he injects me with methedrine, and I talk and talk.

  MRS. CALLIFER: What good does that do?

  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 t
he 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.

  JAMES: That’s very wrong.

  ANNE: Don’t you ever do anything that’s wrong?

  JAMES: Yes, and sometimes I can’t even remember what.

  ANNE: Are uncles prohibited?

  JAMES: Huh?

  ANNE: As husbands?

  JAMES: Yes.

  ANNE: It’s a pity. We’d get on very well together. You see, I don’t know what love is either.

  JAMES: You certainly have been listening.

  ANNE: I’m curious by nature. I’d make a good detective. I mean—when the vow is finished. You can’t expect a detective to tell the truth.

  JAMES: Why were you listening?

  ANNE: I was on the prowl and I heard voices. There’s an awful lot to be found out everywhere.

  JAMES: Everywhere?

  ANNE: I’m frightened of the laurel walk, too. After dark. That’s why I wouldn’t take the water to Spot. I kept on thinking, “Out, out, damned spot.” Because if there were ghosts, the potting shed might be haunted— (James’s attention is caught) and you can’t be quite certain of anything, can you?

  JAMES: Why—the potting shed?

  ANNE: Something awful happened there once.

  JAMES: How do you know?

  ANNE: I heard the gardener talking one day to a man who’d come for seedlings. He was talking about Potter, the gardener they used to have here years ago. He said, “I always thought Mr. Callifer was pleased when old Potter passed on.” He meant died, you know. The other man said why, and Willis—he’s the gardener now—said, “I reckon it was because he was here when that thing happened. He saw it all. Right here. Something shocking it was.” I don’t like the smell of mould, do you?

  JAMES: (letting it sink in): Something shocking …

  ANNE: I expect they hushed it up, but that’s why I thought, “Out, damned spot.”

  JAMES: I don’t believe you.

  ANNE: You must. Because of my vow.

  JAMES: But it needn’t have anything to do with me. I couldn’t have done anything very terrible. Not at that age.

  ANNE: He said, “Poor Master James.”

  JAMES: I remember nothing. Nothing. I don’t look like someone who’d do anything as shocking as that, do I?

  ANNE: (remembering her vow, looks at him carefully before replying): No. You don’t look like that, but I don’t suppose people usually do. Everything is possible, isn’t it?

  CURTAIN

  Act Two

  Act Two

  SCENE ONE

  A month has passed. This is the living room of James Callifer’s lodgings at Nottingham. The furniture is his landlady’s, and could belong to nobody but a landlady: the bobbed fringes of the sage green tablecloth, the sideboard with a mirror, the glass biscuit box with a silver top, the Marcus Stone engravings.

  The door of the living room is open and voices can be heard outside. Dr. Kreuzer enters, followed by Corner. Kreuzer is an elderly man with a tough, kindly face, obviously in a state of anxiety. Corner is in the early thirties—thin and nervous, a heavy smoker. Kreuzer wears an overcoat. Corner is obviously at home. He clears newspapers from a chair for Kreuzer.

  CORNER: Come in, Dr. Kreuzer. Callifer’s spoken of you many a time.

  KREUZER: You’re Mr. Corner, aren’t you? He’s spoken of you, too. The only real reporter the Globe has, he says.

  CORNER: He doesn’t say it to me. Sit down and wait, Dr. Kreuzer. He must be back soon.

  KREUZER: Haven’t you seen him this morning?

  CORNER: Not since breakfast. He said he had an appointment with you and methedrine. Sounds like a girl.

  KREUZER: Not unlike, Mr. Corner. It makes a shy man talk. Callifer left me two hours ago. I must get hold of him. Have you a phone here?

  CORNER: I wouldn’t use it if I were you. It’s a party line. Unless it’s an emergency. Is it?

  KREUZER: I don’t know. I wish I did.

  CORNER: What’s happened?

  KREUZER: He took something from my desk which I need back.

  CORNER: Stole it?

  KREUZER: No, no. A patient doesn’t steal. It was my fault. (He can’t keep still. He gets up and walks around.)

  CORNER: What’s wrong with him, Doctor?

  KREUZER: I don’t know.

  CORNER: We all have moods.

  KREUZER: Some moods are blacker than others.

  CORNER: But he’s good at his job. Or he wouldn’t have stayed five years on the Globe.

  KREUZER (hardly listening): When he takes a walk, where does he go?

  CORNER: He used to go along the Trent when he had the dog. Or down to the goose market.

  KREUZER: Hasn’t he got the dog still?

  CORNER: It ran away.

  KREUZER: I’m sorry.

  CORNER: He didn’t seem to mind.

  KREUZER: I wonder why he didn’t tell me about it?

  CORNER: Perhaps it wasn’t important enough.

  KREUZER: You live with him, Mr. Corner. What is important to him?

  CORNER: I wouldn’t know.

  The door opens and James enters. He is still in an exalted state from the methedrine.

  JAMES: Well, well—so you’ve hunted me down to my digs, Dr. Kreuzer. Digs—the word sounds like an animal’s hole, doesn’t it?

  KREUZER: I wanted to see the kind of place you live in. It’s a bit anonymous.

  JAMES: A lodging for the night. The slow, dark hours. For me and my colleague, Corner. I’m glad you’ve met Corner. You read him every day. (He picks up one of the newspapers.) Listen to this—“Counselor Worm’s Tour in Europe. Counselor Worm, who has just returned from a visit to Paris and Le Touquet, reports that the French feel deeply.” The text is Corner’s. The headlines are mine. I wanted to call it “A Worm’s-Eye View,” but the chief sub-editor is against gaiety on the Globe.

  CORNER: There’s a telegram for you on the mantelpiece. He’s always like this, Doctor, after he’s seen you. She seems to be a nice girl, methedrine.

  KREUZER: She can let a man down, too.

  JAMES (reading telegram): It’s from my mother. I suppose she’s fetching Anne from school. It’s just as I told you. This is the way they always visit me. Between trains. Lucky Nottingham is a junction. In the summer term I never see them; I suppose there’s a better connection.

  KREUZER: You’re still excited, Callifer.

  JAMES: Well, I’ve remembered something, haven’t I? Did you ever have a toy spade, Corner? Doctor, are all your patients as anxious as I am to be cured?

  KREUZER: They don’t come until they want it enough.

  JAMES: You should try him, Corner. You might stop throwing away half-smoked cigarettes at three and tenpence a packet. It might lend color to your reports of council meetings. A jab in the arms, a little nausea for a few seconds, and then—a desire to talk till the cows come home. What time do cows come home, Corner?

  CORNER: It depends what you mean by cows. Callifer, if your mum’s coming I’m going to my room. She always makes me feel like a cub reporter. Good-bye, Dr. Kreuzer.

  KREUZER: Good-bye, Mr. Corner.

  CORNER: I’ll come for a shot in the arm myself one day.

  Corner leaves. There is a short silence.

  KREUZER: It’s not only the methedrine which is exciting you.

  JAMES: Why are you really here, Doctor?

  KREUZER: I have a sense that I failed you today.

  JAMES: You? Why?

  KREUZER: You came to me with a kind of hope.

  JAMES: I went away with a kind of hope, too.

  KREUZER: We are not in my consulting room now. Perhaps you can talk to me more easily here.

  JAMES: I’ve ta
lked myself dry. Six months of talking. It hasn’t got us far. Perhaps what I really need is action.

  KREUZER: What action? What’s that you’re playing with?

  JAMES: A toy. Something I picked up. We’ve been talking about childhood so long, you mustn’t mind if I start playing with toys again. Not a spade this time. We’ve exhausted the spade.

  KREUZER: Oh, no we haven’t. You brought it up—and there we stopped. You had an important engagement. Don’t you remember?

  JAMES: There’s no point in the spade. Every child has one. Or so I’ve read. I’ve read a lot about childhood. It helped to fill the gap.

  KREUZER: How?

  JAMES: I built up an imaginary childhood. That plot of garden. Seed envelopes with coloured pictures that one bought in shops. But there were more important seeds, Doctor, not in packets. Like the best wine of a region that comes from unlabelled bottles. Seeds in old cardboard boxes. One stole them from the gardener and planted them in the ground and one never knew what flower or vegetable would grow. The boxes lay on the earth in the potting shed. (He stops abruptly.)

  KREUZER: Go on.

  JAMES: I can’t. (He gets up.) It’s too hot in here.

  KREUZER: Sit down. I’ll open the window. (He opens the window behind James’s head, and shivers slightly in the cold air. James remains standing.) In what book did you read about the potting shed?

  JAMES (agitated): I don’t know. I can’t remember.

  KREUZER: Perhaps it was a real potting shed.

  JAMES: Yes. A real potting shed. And a month ago I began to walk down the laurel path towards it. It was dark. I was carrying water for my dog. And I didn’t have the courage even to come within sight of the door. Father, can’t you tell me—

  KREUZER: You called me Father.

  JAMES: So I did. But he’s dead, and he’ll never tell me now.

  KREUZER: Relax. Try not to worry. Talk about something else. Forget the potting shed.

  JAMES: I had. All those years. (He sits.) But you can’t forget forever what exists. Sooner or later, a smell, a touch—our footsteps make such a pattern over the world in forty years, they’d have to tread the same path again sooner or later. Wouldn’t they, Doctor?

  KREUZER: I believe there’s nothing human which can’t somehow with patience be recalled.