In Waiting for the Boat, Potter talks of a character being reminded of "the radiance of the religious sense of the world he had once glimpsed as a child - a theme from which I, too, can never wholly escape". The young Philip's religion is best illustrated in the scene where the school-teacher calls on God to point out who defecated on her desk, God becomes the detective. In adulthood Marlow, in pain, says "talk of the book of Job".