BARNEY: [recovering] So what’s your civvy job, then—canecuttin’, is it? Well, have to check that for priority. In the meantime, servicemen like you can make yourselves useful. Useful!

EMMA moves along the hallway, heading for the street.

Guardin’ army eggcups in a tin hut at South Kensington. [He rises, stamping to get the feel of the boots on his feet.] You think that’s a joke, don’t you? Honest, there’s a great big pile of crates out there marked ‘Officers’ Amenities’. I had a geek inside the other day, and that’s what they was full of—army flamin’ eggcups.

NANCY: [still engaged with the homework] Well, don’t s’pose that getting out of any war is ever easy. Look at our little stoush. I been waiting on an honourable discharge for years.

BARNEY: [snorting] Yeh, but then you got trouble with the honourable part of it—

As EMMA re-enters the house, sorting a handful of letters:

Any mail for Miss Pacific, 1945? Or have they eased off, now the war is over?

EMMA: Usual bits and pieces.

She passes three airmail letters to BARNEY, and moves on to the kitchen with her own disappointing mail.

Breakfast is on for another ten minutes. After that you starve.

BARNEY takes the letters to NANCY, checking the backs of the envelopes for senders’ names and addresses.

BARNEY: US Navy—US Navy—and one from the US Marines. [Handing her the letters] Like to hear some day how you fought the American Fleet. Single-handed, ’cross a pub counter.

NANCY: Why not? We can swap campaign yarns. All the battles that we both lost.

BARNEY moves out towards the kitchen without further comment. NANCY checks the names on the envelopes, then on an impulse, rises to go to a wastepaper basket. She tears the letters up without opening them and drops the scraps into the basket. She returns to the schoolbooks as OLIVE appears in the hallway.

OLIVE: I’ve asked Bub to bring you in a cup of tea.

NANCY: Not a cup of tea I want.

OLIVE: I know. But tea’ll warm you up. [Taking the stairs at a run] Properly.

NANCY: Jolly dee.

She concentrates on the schoolbooks again as BUBBA enters with a cup and saucer.

BUBBA: What about some toast with this? And marmalade?

NANCY: Please.

BUBBA: I can easy—

NANCY: You sit down. There’s some silly slips in Algebra we ought to look at.

BUBBA: Knew I had a couple wrong. I didn’t get what you was on about last night.

NANCY: I’m not surprised.

BUBBA sits beside her.

Half the time that we were working, you were watching Barney.

BUBBA: Well, he was funny.

NANCY: [indicating in an exercise book] Here and here. It’s these two. You forgot to change the sign when you shifted the x over to the other side.

BUBBA: Oh, yes.

NANCY: Mistakes like that—I mentioned it last night, before you left.