(A REPRODUCTION OF CONSTABLE’S THE HAYWAIN IS PROJECTED ON THE BOARD BEHIND HENRY, THE LECTURER)

Now. What I want you to do, is try and think of a way of describing this scene, from this familiar painting, to a blind person who won’t accept the use of any nouns. I know it’s a situation that probably won’t come up... But it's a very important exercise.

(THERE IS A PAUSE, WHILE HENRY LOOKS BEHIND HIM AT THE BOARD, AND SCRIBBLES HIS OWN SUGGESTIONS ON A PIECE OF PAPER.)

OK, how would we do it. Well, how about, the white... no. The wooden carrying... There was wet... The trotting continued slowly through the wet onrushing... I’m having a few problems with the cart, I must say.

The trotting and the wooden turning continued slowly through the wet onrushing and above was clouded.

Not sure if a blind person would get absolutely the whole picture from that... But the point is, you have from an early age accepted some rules of grammar, and now you are frozen within them. They are hampering your ability to think. You need to loosen up. Grammar is very useful at a certain stage of communication. But there’s only so far you can go with it.

(Claps his hands together happily) We’re making progress! You are becoming a new person. Now. I need a volunteer from the audience.

(PAUSE)

Ah! Everybody sits on their hands. Come on, hands up. Or I’ll just pick someone. OK. You. (points at a plant in the audience who hasn’t put hand up) Come up here, please. (The plant comes up to the front) Now, watch CLOSELY.

[A video sweeping around the interior of a bedroom is projected onto the screen. A tray holding a kettle and cup full of teabags and sugarlumps are visible in the background, and a fire notice on the wall. It is obviously a room in a Bed and Breakfast place, from the dusty valance and cheap, impersonal but fussy ornaments. Some jarring details are lingered on for longer: a cut-up dress, a pile of broken glass, a torn-up newspaper.]

Forgive the somewhat amateur camerawork! Now. (Henry hands the ‘volunteer’ a pointer stick) It’s pretty obvious something is wrong here. Can you point out to me the objects you would use to start your deductions from.

[The volunteer points at the tray with the kettle, and the fire notice]

You seem to be paying attention to rather strange things here. (pause) What do you mean by that? (The volunteer stares back silently) We’re talking about deductive reasoning. We’re talking about selective attention. Focus! You seem to be on some complete other line of enquiry!

(PAUSE)

(HENRY SEEMS DISTURBED. HE STARES AT THE ‘VOLUNTEER’ BALEFULLY) You’ve got a long way to go in developing focused, deductive reasoning. There’s no better way to shrink your brain than to be easily distracted. So what’s your line of enquiry? Fill me in.

VOLUNTEER: It’s not a private room. It’s a bed and breakfast. (She points again at the kettle and the fire notice)

HENRY: The room isn’t the point! Those aren’t clues.

VOLUNTEER: It tells you about the person who lives there.

HENRY: No, it doesn’t! No, it exactly doesn’t do that. Please sit down.

VOLUNTEER: They’re short of money, on their own, down on their luck...

HENRY: Sit down.

VOLUNTEER: Also, what institution are you affiliated with? Academically?

HENRY: Er...

VOLUNTEER: Thought so!

HENRY: SIT... DOWN.

(VOLUNTEER RETURNS TO THE AUDIENCE AND SITS DOWN)

HENRY IS TRYING TO RECOVER HIMSELF.
I’d like another volunteer, a better volunteer, please.

(POINTS TO SECOND VOLUNTEER WITH HER HAND UP)
You.

2nd VOLUNTEER: Can I ask you a question?

HENRY: It’s not time for questions yet. Perhaps I should talk you through the deductive process.

2ND VOLUNTEER: What happened to Mrs A? In the case study you were talking about earlier?

HENRY: I can’t answer your question.

2ND VOLUNTEER: Was it Mrs A in the garden?

HENRY: Why are you asking that?

2ND VOLUNTEER: I’m deducing...

HENRY: You’re deducing the wrong things! You’re looking at the wrong things! Look at the board! You might as well start reading the furniture.

2ND VOLUNTEER: (pointing at the board) Whose room is it?

HENRY: This is a reconstruction. The setting itself is unimportant.

1st VOLUNTEER: (stands up) It’s Miss B’s room!

HENRY: It isn’t! It isn’t Miss B’s room.

HENRY raises a hand for silence.

We’ve gone a little... off-piste. (HE LOOKS BEHIND HIM AT THE BOARD, WHICH STILL HAS THE B&B ROOM PROJECTED ON TO IT) You can’t deduce anything from that.

(THE IMAGE DISAPPEARS)

1st VOLUNTEER: (standing up) I want to know if it’s Miss B’s room in that picture, because if so I think I spotted a clue.

HENRY: The Q and A session comes after...

2nd VOLUNTEER: Clue to what?

1st VOLUNTEER: Her disappearance. In Australia.

HENRY: Ladies and gentlemen! Please take your seats! Sherlock Holmes should not be our cognitive role model! He’s a caricature.

1st VOLUNTEER: It’s obviously got to be this guy’s room (pointing at Henry). Isn’t it? (to Henry)

HENRY: Sssh.

1st VOLUNTEER: You have no academic affiliations, so no lab or anything. You have to assemble your research material in your room.

2nd VOLUNTEER: What qualifications does he have, I wonder.

1st VOLUNTEER: And where does Miss B come into it? Old girlfriend?

HENRY: No!

2nd VOLUNTEER: Sister.

1st VOLUNTEER: Sister!

2nd VOLUNTEER: And you were hiding in the garden, wearing short trousers so fairly young... Am I right? Am I on the right track?

HENRY: This isn’t the point! It isn’t important. Back to your exercises!

2nd VOLUNTEER: Aaah! I’m getting it!

1st VOLUNTEER: Mrs A is the woman in the garden and Mrs A is...

2nd VOLUNTEER: The mother!

1st VOLUNTEER: Bingo!

2nd VOLUNTEER: Go back to that photo. The girl and her travelling companions. From earlier.

1st VOLUNTEER: Of course! That holds the key. I wasn’t really looking.

2nd VOLUNTEER: He warned you to pay attention!

1st VOLUNTEER: He did.

2nd VOLUNTEER: There was a man in the background. I’m sure of it.

1st VOLUNTEER: So what happened to Mr and Mrs A?

HENRY: I can’t tell you.

1st VOLUNTEER: Don’t know or won’t say?

HENRY: It isn’t important.

1st VOLUNTEER: (has got hold of the slide projector) It’s alright! I’ll talk you through it. I’ve got it!

(Slides that have appeared earlier start to be projected, in a new order)

1st VOLUNTEER: The girl checks into a hostel (slide of a rundown building) run by a couple of rough types (slide of suspicious-looking couple). She’s on her own by this stage, because she’s fallen out with her best friend (picture of hard-faced girl). It’s a lowrent sort of place (slide of the B and B interior) and she gets lonely, understandably, so she’s more vulnerable than usual to advances by strangers (picture of the group of travellers). Australians are friendly, everyone knows that, so where’s the harm in being friendly back? It’s this guy, at the back. He’s older than the others. He seems out of place, because he’s in working clothes. In fact, look! The sun is shining, and yet he’s wearing a heavy coat...

HENRY: This is all wrong!

2nd VOLUNTEER: Why don’t you want our help?

1st VOLUNTEER: It’s like he doesn’t want the truth about his sister to come out.

2nd VOLUNTEER: And why could that be?

1st VOLUNTEER: Go back to that B and B room. (slide comes up)
Look at the Haywain on the wall there. Next to it, you can just see. Picture of a girl, hanging...

HENRY: For God’s sake! (He rushes up and grabs the 1st VOLUNTEER by the neck. Everybody freezes)

2nd VOLUNTEER: You’ve hit a nerve there.

(slide comes up with closeup of the picture, which is a drawing of a girl whose limbs are changing into branches and roots)

HENRY: (letting go) That is not a picture of a girl hanging. If you had any education, you would know that that is a representation of a nymph transformed into a tree, weeping tears of amber into the river.

1st VOLUNTEER: What nymph?

HENRY: Just a nymph.

3rd VOLUNTEER: (an authoritative old professor) Aha! (coming up on stage) Now, this is rather interesting in the circumstances. And rather revealing. Because this is not any nymph, this is one of Phaethon’s sisters. (shouldering HENRY off the platform) And Phaethon’s sisters were turned into trees because of his overarching ambition. He’s the one that stole the chariot of the sun and rode it into the sea. Burnt all the Ethiopians black! As a consequence his grieving sisters were turned into trees.

2nd VOLUNTEER: So what does this mean?

1st VOLUNTEER: This guy’s ambition led to the death of his sister! Now it’s haunting him. It’s all in the picture. You just have to look closely enough.

HENRY: This isn’t about my sister! This isn’t about me at all! Why bring me into it?

2nd VOLUNTEER: You brought yourself into it.

3rd VOLUNTEER: For instance, I would like to question what institution you are affiliated with. And what are your qualifications? Such ignorance of classical mythology suggests some educational gaps that I for one find highly disturbing in someone setting themselves up as an instructor.

HENRY: (clutches his head and staggers about the stage) This is what I’m talking about! You’re all trying to make everything fit into what you already know! What’s the point of that?

2nd VOLUNTEER: He’s very defensive when you get him on the subject of qualifications.

3rd VOLUNTEER: Yes, the implications of that have not escaped me.

1st VOLUNTEER: I’d like to go back to this business of the sister.

3rd VOLUNTEER: (starting to count the audience) I mean, if everyone in this audience has paid, what, seven pounds each? That adds up to...

1st VOLUNTEER: Never mind that!

3rd VOLUNTEER: Young man, we are talking fraud here. Of an intellectual kind, at the very least!

1st VOLUNTEER: It’s hardly as important, as the fact that this man killed his sister!

(Pause)

3rd VOLUNTEER: What do you base this accusation on?

1st VOLUNTEER: Let’s go back. To this garden he keeps talking about.

2nd VOLUNTEER: Yes, I was hoping someone would explain that.