Mr Lamb

Mr Lamb is an elderly man who owns the garden Derry wanders into. His real leg was "blown off, years back" by a bomb in the war, so he now walks with an artificial tin leg, and because of it local children taunt him with the mocking nickname "Lamey-Lamb." What makes him remarkable is that this cruelty has not soured him. He is warm, cheerful, talkative and wise, with a deep and genuine love of life. He keeps his garden gate perpetually open — "All welcome" — delights in his bees, his crab apples and the weeds he refuses to despise, and welcomes strangers with easy friendliness. He makes jelly from his crab apples and toffee with honey, reads books in his "full" house, and claims to have "Hundreds" of friends.

Rather than pitying Derry or recoiling from his face, he treats him as an equal and gently guides him towards a healthier way of seeing himself. His philosophy is simple but profound: fear and self-pity cripple a person far more than any physical injury — "You can burn yourself away inside"; what one is and does matters far more than how one looks; and life is to be embraced, not hidden from. He learns, he says, by "Watching. Listening. Thinking." Yet the play also hints, quietly, at a loneliness in him — for all his cheerfulness he lives alone, and his final words, "They never do, though.... Never do come back," suggest a wistful disappointment beneath the optimism. His accidental fall from the ladder is sudden and sad, but it does not undo the good he has done: th …