JOSEF: Five o’clock on Tuesdays and on Thursdays.

NANCY: Well, whaddya know? Hang on.

She hastens from the window to put down her glass of whisky and open the street door.

God, the City Club. That’s years ago—

JOSEF: February, 1938 until September, 1939.

She ushers him into the living room.

Twice a week I came in.

NANCY: That’s right, yes. The off nights. [Indicating a chair] Sit down.

JOSEF: [still standing] Tuesdays and on Thursdays. You were not so busy, and it was a better time for talking.

NANCY: Always at the end of the bar, with a book propped up in front of you—of course. That’s why I called you Fieldmouse.

JOSEF: No, that was something else. But it is true I used to bring a book with me—I did not know in those days. Never bring a book into a bar, and never be a Johnny Woodser.

NANCY: Jimmy Woodser.

JOSEF: Jimmy Woodser. So.

NANCY: Then suddenly you took off—no no, wait. I had a letter at the pub, you wrote to me from somewhere?

JOSEF: An internment camp. I was interned when war broke out.

NANCY: Oh hell, yes. I remember now. That’s rotten.

JOSEF: Well, a short time only. Soon I had my clearance—friendly alien. And then because I spoke Italian and some Greek as well as German, I was offered work as an interpreter. Officially, you know. And that is what I have been doing during the war. First in Adelaide, and then in New South Wales.

NANCY: Aah, turned out fine then. Good, I’m glad.

JOSEF: Several times I wrote to you from Adelaide.

NANCY: Did you? [Evasively] Well, Ol and me, we couldn’t settle early in the war. Left the City Club and went to work at Hosie’s, then the Phoenix—lots of letters didn’t reach us.

JOSEF: I thought perhaps that it was so. And why I did not send to you your books. [Unstrapping his briefcase] It seemed much better that I bring them back myself.

NANCY: Books?

JOSEF: I arrived in Melbourne yesterday. Straight off to the City Club. I told them that I had some property of yours—personal, you know—and they gave me your address.

He extracts the volumes from his briefcase.

You will remember that you lent to me a book of poetry, The Golden Treasury. And this book, very funny, Such is Life—

NANCY: For heaven’s sake. I had forgotten—honestly.

He hands her the books.

You don’t mean you’ve been carting these around all through the war?

JOSEF: Was no trouble.

NANCY: Makes me feel awful. ’S not as though they’re valuable. The Golden Treasury I had at school.

JOSEF: [nodding] I saw the writing on the front: ‘Prize for English, Nancy Wells’.

NANCY: Shows you what a little country school it was.