On The Beach

"God forbid." They laughed. "I don't know what they're doing. I should think a copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica would make a good kickoff, but there's an awful lot of it. I really don't know what they're doing. John Osborne might know-or he could find out."

"Just idle curiosity," she said. "It won't affect you or me." She stared at him in mock consternation. "Don't tell me they're preserving any of the newspapers. I just couldn't bear it."

"I shouldn't think so," he replied. "They're not as crazy as that."

Dwight sat up on the sand. "All this beautiful warm water going to waste," he remarked. "I think we ought to use it."

Moira stood up. "Make the most of it," she agreed. "There's not much of it left."

Peter yawned. "You two go and use the water. I'll use the sun."

They left him lying on the beach and went into the sea together. As they swam out she said, "You're pretty fast in the water, aren't you?"

He paused, treading water beside her. "I used to swim quite a lot when I was younger. I swam for the, Academy against West Point one time."

She nodded. "I thought you were something like that. Do you swim much now?"

He shook his head. "Not in races. That's a thing you have to give up pretty soon, unless you've got the time to do a lot of it, and keep in training." He laughed. "I think the water's colder now than when I was a boy. Not here, of course. I mean, in Mystic."

"Were you born in Mystic?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I was born on Long Island Sound, but not at Mystic. A place called Westport. My Dad's a doctor there. He was a navy surgeon in the First World War, and then he got this practice in Westport."

"Is that on the sea?"

He nodded. "Swimming and sailing and fishing. That's the way it was when I was a boy."

"How old are you, Dwight?"

"I'm thirty-three. How old are you?"

"What a rude question! I'm twenty-four." She paused. "Does Sharon come from Westport, too?"

"In a way," he said. "Her Dad's a lawyer in New York City, Lives in an apartment on West 84th Street, near the park. They have a summer home at Westport."

"So you met her there."

He nodded. "Boy meets girl."

"You must have married quite young."

"Just after graduation," he replied. "I was twenty-two, an ensign on the Franklin. Sharon was nineteen; she never finished college. We'd made our minds up more than a year before. Our folks got together when they saw that we weren't going to change, and they decided that they'd better stake us for a while." He paused. "Her Dad was mighty nice about it," he said quietly. "We could have gone on until we got some money somehow, but they thought it wasn't doing either of us any good. So they let us get married."

"They gave you an allowance."

"That's right. We only needed it three or four years, and then an aunt died and I got promoted, and we were all set."

They swam to the end of the jetty, got out, and sat basking in the sun. Presently they walked back to Peter on the beach, sat with him while they smoked a cigarette, and then went to change. They reassembled on the beach carrying their shoes, drying their feet in leisurely manner in the sun and brushing off the sand. Presently Dwight started to put on his socks.

The girl said, "Fancy going round in socks like that!"

The commander glanced at them. "It's only in the toe," he said. "It doesn't show."

"It's not only in the toe," she leaned across and picked up his foot. "I thought I saw another one. The heel's all holes across the bottom!"

"It still doesn't show," he said. "Not when I've got a shoe on."

"Doesn't anybody mend them for you?"

"They've paid off a lot of the ship's company in Sydney recently," he said. "I still get my bed made up, but he's too busy now to bother about mending. It never did work very well aboard that ship, anyway. I do them myself, sometimes. Most times I just throw them away and get another pair."

"You've got a button off your shirt, too."

"That doesn't show, either," he said equably. "It's way down at the bottom, goes underneath my belt."

"I think you're a perfect disgrace," she remarked. "I know what the admiral would say, if he saw you going round like that. He'd say Scorpion needs another captain."

"He wouldn't see it," he replied. "Not unless he made me take off my pants."

"This conversation's taking an unprofitable line," she said. "How many pairs of socks have you got in that condition?"

"I wouldn't know. It's quite a while since I went through the drawer."

"If you give them to me I'll take them home and mend them for you."

He glanced at her. "That's mighty nice of you, to offer to do that. But you don't have to. It's time I got more, anyway. These are just about done."

"Can you get more socks?" she said. "Daddy can't. He says they're going off the market, with a lot of other things. He can't get any new handkerchiefs, either."

Peter said, "That's right. I couldn't get socks to fit me, the last time I tried. The ones I got were about two inches too long."

Moira pressed the point. "Have you tried to buy any more recently?"