The Potting Shed

A Play

Graham Greene

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781504054294
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

From the acclaimed author, this Tony Award–winning drama of family secrets delivers "brilliantly effective . . . enormously provocative . . . theatrical suspense" ( New York Post ).

The Callifer family has assembled in the English country home of Wild Grove where its patriarch—a once-renowned rationalist and man of letters—nears death. Arriving unexpectedly to pay his respects is his son, James, a pariah among the Callifers, who finds a dark veil still drawn over his mysterious childhood. It was decades ago, when James was fourteen, that something happened to him in the garden shed, a black hole in his memories. For everyone else, it's an unforgettable source of unease—and for some, unforgiveable. To discover the truth, James seeks out his ostracized uncle, an alcoholic priest with nothing left to lose. What unfolds makes for "some of the most moving, forceful and compelling theatre since Eugene O'Neill" ( The Harvard Crimson).

Graham Greene's Tony Award–winning work for the stage made its Broadway debut in 1957 and was hailed by the New York Times as "an original drama that probes deep into the spirit and casts a spell."

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 talked 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 ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• ACT ONE
• ACT TWO
• ACT THREE
• About the Author
• Copyright