Act 2: Geof, Helen's Return & the Ending
Act 2: A New Domestic Arrangement
Act 2 opens with a dramatic shift. Time has passed. Jo is visibly pregnant and living alone in the flat. Helen has married Peter and vanished from Jo’s life. Into this vacuum steps Geof, a young art student who has been thrown out of his lodgings. Geof moves in with Jo, and together they create something the play has not shown before: a stable, caring domestic partnership.
Geof cooks, cleans, buys baby clothes, and prepares for the birth with a tenderness that exposes how little Helen ever did for Jo. He asks Jo practical questions about the baby and encourages her to see a doctor. His care is unglamorous and everyday — folding nappies, making meals, tidying the flat — but Delaney presents this mundane domesticity as the closest thing to genuine love that Jo has experienced since the Boy left. The line “The dream has gone but the baby is real” captures the shift from romance to reality: the Boy’s promise of love has dissolved, but its consequence — the child — demands practical, selfless care.
“The dream has gone but the baby is real” marks the transition from Act 1’s romance to Act 2’s realism. The Boy’s love was a brief, beautiful dream; the pregnancy is the unavoidable consequence. Geof’s care represents the unromantic but vital work of actually supporting another person.
Geof’s Homosexuality
Geof is strongly implied to be gay. He has been evicted from his lodgings, likely because his landlady discovered his sexuality, and Jo directly asks him about it: “Are you really a homosexual?” Geof’s response is evasive, but the audience understands. In 1958, homosexuality was a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment. Simply presenting a sympathetic gay character on stage was a radical act.
Delaney treats Geof’s sexuality with remarkable matter-of-factness. Jo does not judge him; she accepts him as he is. Their relationship challenges conventional ideas about family — a pregnant teenage girl and a gay man creating a household together, providing for each other the care that mainstream society has denied them both. Helen later weaponises Geof’s sexuality against him, calling him a “pansified little freak”, and Peter sneers at him too, questioning his fitness to be around a child. This homophobia is presented as ugly and ignorant, not as a legitimate concern.
The relationship between Jo and Geof is the emotional heart of Act 2. They bicker like an old married couple, they laugh together, and Geof shows Jo a kind of devotion she has never experienced. When Jo says “You’re just like a big sister,” Geof replies: “I’d sooner be more to you than that.” This moment is poignant because Geof’s love for Jo — whether romantic, platonic, or something in between — cannot fit into any conventional category.
Delaney uses this unconventional household to question what “family” really means. Helen is Jo’s biological mother but fails at every maternal duty. Geof has no biological or legal connection to Jo but provides everything a parent should: care, stability, attention, and selfless love. The play suggests that real family is defined by actions, not by blood or convention.
Helen’s Return
Helen returns to the flat after her marriage to Peter has collapsed. She arrives drunk, loud, and immediately critical of everything Geof has done. Her first instinct is to reassert her authority as Jo’s mother, even though she abandoned that role months earlier. She mocks Geof’s domesticity, questions his sexuality, and begins systematically undermining the stable household he and Jo have built.
Helen’s return is devastating because it destroys the only functional relationship in the play. She does not return out of maternal love — she returns because she has nowhere else to go. Peter has thrown her out, and she needs Jo’s flat as a refuge. Her line “Oh well, it’s a lovely morning for it” resurfaces with bitter irony: the same deflecting humour she used in Act 1, now applied to the wreckage of her marriage. Nothing has changed for Helen. She has learned nothing.
Helen’s return is motivated by her own need, not by concern for Jo. She systematically undermines Geof, mocks his sexuality, and reasserts her dominance over the flat — destroying the only stable domestic arrangement Jo has ever known. Delaney shows that Helen repeats her patterns of selfishness regardless of the consequences for Jo.
Helen’s campaign against Geof is relentless. She calls him a “pansified little freak,” questions his motives for living with a pregnant girl, and makes the flat hostile enough that he has no choice but to leave. Jo does not fight hard enough to make him stay — a silence that mirrors Helen’s failure to defend Jo against Peter in Act 1. The cycle of abandonment continues: the person who offers genuine care is pushed aside in favour of a dysfunctional blood relationship.
Geof’s departure is the play’s cruelest structural repetition. Just as Jo was abandoned by the Boy and then by Helen, now Geof is abandoned by Jo (or at least not fought for). Delaney refuses to let any relationship survive intact. The audience watches the one good thing in Jo’s life being dismantled, knowing that Helen will not provide the same level of care.
The Unresolved Ending
The play ends without resolution. Jo is about to give birth. Helen has discovered that the baby’s father was Black and reacts with racist horror. She goes out for a drink — repeating the pattern of absence that has defined her motherhood throughout the play. Jo is left alone on stage. The baby is coming. There is no happy ending, no dramatic climax, no reconciliation.
This open ending is one of the play’s most powerful dramatic choices. Delaney refuses to offer easy comfort. Will Helen come back? Will she be a better grandmother than she was a mother? Will Jo repeat Helen’s cycle of neglect, or break it? The audience is left with these questions, and the discomfort of not knowing is the point. Life for these characters does not wrap up neatly. The final image — Jo alone, about to become a mother herself — is both terrifying and hopeful, depending on whether you believe Jo has the strength to be different from Helen.
Jo’s final moments include a nursery rhyme and a quiet moment of anticipation. She does not panic or despair. This resilience — this ability to face an impossible situation with dry wit and determination — is what makes Jo one of the most memorable characters in post-war British drama.