On The Beach

"They're pretty nice people here," Dwight said appreciatively. "I don't come in so often and I don't spend much when I do come."

"I come here pretty frequently," the girl said. She sat in reflection for a moment. "You know, you're a very lucky man."

"Why do you say that?"

"You've got a full-time job to do."

It had not occurred to him before that he was fortunate. "That's so," he said slowly. "I certainly don't seem to get a lot of time to go kicking around on the loose."

"I do," she said. "It's all I've got to do."

"Don't you work at anything? No job at all?"

"Nothing at all," she said. "Sometimes I drive a bullock round the farm at home, harrowing the muck. That's all I ever do."

"I'd have thought you'd have been working in the city someplace," he remarked.

"So would I," she said a little cynically. "But it's not so easy as that. I took honours in history up at the Shop, just before the war."

"The Shop?"

"The university. I was going to do a course of shorthand and typing. But what's the sense in working for a year at that? I wouldn't have time to finish it. And if I did, there aren't any jobs."

"You mean, business is slowing down?"

She nodded. "Lots of my friends are out of a job now. People aren't working like they used to, and they don't want secretaries. Half of Daddy's friends-people who used to go to the office-they just don't go now. They live at home, as if they were retired. An awful lot of offices have closed, you know."

"I suppose that makes sense," he remarked. "A man has a right to do the things he wants to do in the last months, if he can get by with the money."

"A girl has a right to, too," she said. "Even if the things she wants to do are something different to driving a bullock round the farm to spread the dung."

"There's just no work at all?" he asked.

"Nothing that I could find," she said. "And I've tried hard enough. You see, I can't even type."

"You could learn," he said. "You could go and take that course that you were going to take."

"What's the sense of that, if there's no time to finish it, or use it afterwards?"

"Something to work at," he remarked. "Just as an alternative to all the double brandies."

"Work just for the sake of working?" she inquired. "It sounds simply foul." Her fingers drummed restlessly upon the table.

"Better than drinking just for the sake of drinking," he observed. "Doesn't give you a hangover."

She said irritably, "Order me a double brandy, Dwight, and then let's see if you can dance."

He took her out upon the dance floor, feeling vaguely sorry for her. She was in a prickly kind of mood. Immersed in his own troubles and occupations, it had never occurred to him that young, unmarried people had their own frustrations in these times. He set himself to make the evening pleasant for her, talking about the films and musicals they both had seen, the mutual friends they had. "Peter and Mary Holmes are funny," she told him once. "She's absolutely nuts on gardening. They've got that flat upon a three years' lease. She's planning to plant things this autumn that'll come up next year."

He smiled. "I'd say she's got the right idea. You never know." He steered the conversation back to safer subjects. "Did you see the Danny Kaye movie at the Plaza?"

Yachting and sailing were safe topics, and they talked around those for some time. The floor show came on as they finished dinner, and amused them for a while, and then they danced again. Finally the girl said, "Cinderella. I'll have to start and think about that train, Dwight."

He paid the bill while she was in the cloakroom, and met her by the door. In the streets of the city it was quiet now; the music was still, the restaurants and cafes were now closed. Only the drunks remained, reeling down the pavements aimlessly or lying down to sleep. The girl wrinkled her nose. "They ought to do something about all this," she said. "It never was like this before the war."

"It's quite a problem," he said thoughtfully. "It comes up all the time in the ship. I reckon a man has a right to do the things he wants to when he goes ashore, so long as he doesn't go bothering other people. Some folks just have to have the liquor, times like these." He eyed a policeman on the corner. "That's what the cops here seem to think, in this city, at any rate. I've never seen a drunk arrested yet, not just for being drunk."

At the station she paused to thank him and to wish him good night. "It's been a beaut evening," she said. "The day, too. Thanks for everything, Dwight."

"I've enjoyed it, Moira," he said. "It's years since I danced."

"You're not too bad," she told him. And then she asked, "Do you know when you go off up north?"

He shook his head. "Not yet. A message came in just before we left telling me to report Monday morning in the First Naval Member's offices, with Lieutenant Commander Holmes. I imagine we'll get our final briefing then, and maybe get away on Monday afternoon."

She said, "Good luck. Will you give me a ring when you come back to Williamstown?"