ROO: Would be, yes, but looks to me they’re makin’ some sort of an effort.

OLIVE, returning to the room, pauses to take in the significance of this, and he continues triumphantly:

’Fact, they’re upstairs right this minute, gettin’ ready to go out. Nancy reckons, any luck, the four of us could fluke a table, Mario’s.

He moves in, keen to get the evening under way.

Look—you haven’t even noticed what I’m wearin’. [Tickling her ribs] My demob suit!

OLIVE: Don’t do that.

ROO: Put it on for gala—

OLIVE: [pulling away] That’s the way you get round Bubba. Tickling her ribs.

ROO: [persevering] So what?

OLIVE: [intensely] So I’m thirty years of age—getting on for thirty-one. No-one else imagines I’m a kid—

She shoves him away, the strength of her rejection checking his advances.

—ask ’em round here—Auntie Dee, or any of the married women up and down the street—

ROO: Hey now, steady on there—

OLIVE: Only one who treats me like I’ve got to be looked after’s you. Don’t worry about your mother, I’ll fix any double dealing; I’ve told Nance and Barney, got to cut their capers—you know somethin’? I stood by outside the box while Mum was talkin’ on the phone just now, and I thought: I’ve been through this war as though it never happened. Oh, I read about it, listened to the news, and every now and then, I’d hear of somethin’ rotten—Dickie Pouncett bein’ drowned at sea that awful way—but if you ask me what his ship was called—

ROO: [automatically] The Perth.

OLIVE: —I couldn’t tell you. Stuff like that was other people’s misery. Me, I had the war all set up nice and easy. Didn’t have to worry over you and Barney, you’d arranged it so the two of you could stay together, safe and sound, and other things as well arranged to keep me happy—even half a dozen kewpie dolls on hand to make it seem like life as usual. All I had to do was wait for you two to come home on leave, and I could kid myself that it was summertime, the lay-off, and that everything for us was—