GWEN: Now my head’s going to burst. I’m going to take something and then get lunch.

She goes.

JIM: I asked you. I begged you.

MEG: I couldn’t help myself.

JIM: What good could it do? What do you want her to do now, after all this time?

MEG: Smile.

Pause.

JIM: When we were first courting I took her to the pictures to see Gone with the Wind. Afterwards she was so quiet, but excited, something in her head was turning over and over. She was living in this funny little house in Surry Hills then, with all her sisters, it was a pretty dirty area. The next week I went round to take her out to a dance. Everyone else had gone on some church picnic and she was home on her own so I knew we’d have a few minutes alone. I got there a bit early because I couldn’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing. I went round the back and as I went past the kitchen window I could hear her talking to someone. I stopped at the back door. She was saying what old Vivien Leigh said in Gone with the Wind—just before the intermission and the war’s been on and everyone’s dead and the house’s wrecked and the crops burnt and she’s scratching around in the dirt for some old potato or cotton or something just to feed her family and she stands up against that red sky and says: ‘As God is my witness, I will never be hungry again’. I laughed, not at her but I was really bowled over, she was as good as old Vivien any day. She was very embarrassed and so was I and we made a bit of a joke of it. But seeing her upset before made me remember that afternoon. ‘I will never be hungry again.’ It had that effect on a lot of people, that film. Old Scarlett standing in that field and wanting to rule the world.

A clump of CAMPERS comes in.

ALL: Merry Christmas!

JIM: And you

SECOND CAMPER: Having a good time this year?

JIM: Can’t complain.

FOURTH CAMPER: Not so close to the water this year.

JIM: No, we were beaten to it.

ALL: A lot of us were.

THIRD CAMPER: Not one regular got a spot close to the water this summer.

JIM: Oh, well.

FIRST CAMPER: We’ve been talking to a few people.

THIRD CAMPER: Going around the whole site, actually.

FIRST CAMPER: Just saying—

FOURTH CAMPER: Merry Christmas.

THIRD CAMPER: And having a quiet word with the more or less regular campers and caravanners.

FOURTH CAMPER: We’ve even thought of getting up a bit of a petition.

FIRST CAMPER: But that might be a bit drastic to start with.

SECOND CAMPER: So we’re just having a quiet word first.

THIRD CAMPER: To test the water, so to speak.