Act 1, Scene 1 Summary

The play opens with Lenny sitting and looking at a newspaper in the large front room of the old London house he shares with his father and brother. His father, Max, comes in, looking for the scissors because he wants to cut something out of the paper. He thinks that Lenny's paper is own, but Lenny tells him it's not. Max sits and asks for a cigarette, and when Lenny doesn't give him one, he takes one out of his own pocket and lights it. Max recalls threateningly how he used to hang around with a tough called MacGregor, a big man who was fond of Lenny's mother, whom Max speaks of in nasty terms. Lenny asks Max for advice on betting on a horse, which gets Max talking about his days at the Epsom racecourse. He speaks of his instinctive...