NANCY: I heard there was a hint.

BARNEY: Too right there was. I told him. Any outside entertainin’, Allied Forces—

NANCY: Charming.

BARNEY: —they line up outside the pub.

NANCY: Couldn’t have made it plainer, for a hint.

BARNEY: Never even wore a uniform. Why should he get any special privileges?

NANCY: It’s not a case of comforts for the troops. There was a time, before the war and uniforms, when he was very kind to me.

BARNEY: Know what that means, likes of him. A bunch of cut-price violets at the City Club.

NANCY: You really have to push your luck, don’t you?

Pent-up memories and the tensions of the morning bring down many barriers.

Well, it wasn’t at the City Club, as a matter of fact. It was right here. I was sick and off work at the time, I’d had a—how’d you like to hear it now?—a messy sort of an abortion in a pretty little house in Collingwood—that’s about the best that I can do with it. And afterwards I lay here on my back, kiddin’ the world and Olive what I’d done was strain myself, liftin’ crates down in the cellar at the City Club. Sort of tale that always gets a lot of sympathy from fellers at a pub—wounded in the service. But the only customer who really gave a damn in all those days I wished that I was dead was him. He sent me flowers, and books to read, and wrote me notes he didn’t even have the English to—spell properly. So don’t you talk to me about no cut-price bunch of violets!

Unable to contain herself any longer, she runs from the room and up the stairs. BARNEY stands, rooted with shock for a moment, and then starts to follow her. He reaches the foot of the stairs, but there his courage fails him, and he stands looking upwards.

SCENE THREE

Afternoon, around 4 p.m, three days later.

OLIVE is at the table in the living room, sorting through articles in one of the boxes that BUBBA has brought in from next door. A desultory occupation, the filling-in of an idle afternoon.

EMMA is sitting on the front verandah with a supply of peas on one side, shelling them into a bowl at her other side, and collecting the empty pea pods in her aproned lap.

ROO approaches from the street, with an air of inner excitement. He is wearing casual civilian clothing, and is half-concealing a large flattish box, encased in discreetly expensive wrapping paper, and tied with string.

He pauses at the sight of EMMA on the front verandah, to exhibit the box with covert triumph.

ROO: Got it.

EMMA: [unimpressed] Had a feelin’ that you would.

ROO: Where’s Olive?

EMMA jerks her head towards the living room and ROO moves to check on OLIVE’s presence through the front window, before a sotto voce enquiry: