VI

The smooth sloping beach had been raked clean by the lifeguard. From the shade of their umbrellas, a dozen or more persons looked up at the party arriving. No one was in the surf; all lay stretched out in the baking sand, indolent; but an expression of curiosity came into their lazy looks. John Grandin knew that his morning would be spent in the same fashion, quiet in the sand. The surf looked much too strong to attempt today, the pounding breakers too high and rough.

Ethel spread her robe and towel, opened her bag to get out the sun-­tan oil, and arranged herself for the morning. Her husband wondered who among these people had heard the shouting in the bedroom last night; and if they had, what were they thinking? He nodded again to the yellow-­haired young man and his mother lying in the sand fifty feet away but received no answering nod of recognition. Affecting a nonchalance he was far from feeling, he took out a cigarette.

Hauman reached down to light it for him. Then as if hearing the breakers for the first time, he dropped his towel and raced for the surf. It was amazing to see a figure of such bulk move with such speed and ease. He plunged headlong into a gray-­green roller and Billie followed. A moment later they emerged, laughing and coughing; and for the next half hour they pulled each other about in the surf, swam far out to ride in with the breakers, or stood in the black sand and allowed the water to slide around their ankles.

The lifeguard approached and introduced himself. “My name is Pete, sir. Would you like an umbrella and some back rests for your party?” He explained the rates by day or week.

Four back rests were engaged for the day and a large sunshade for two weeks. Pete hauled them from a shack and set them up in the spot the Grandins had chosen. He was very young; he was tanned the color of molasses and looked strong enough, but he had the figure of a child, not at all what one expected in a lifeguard. When he bent down to adjust the sunshade, a blond fuzz could be seen on his upper lip and along the jawbone. . . . The war, it’s the war, there’s a war on, don’t you know there’s a war. . . . His chore done, he retired to his perch nearby and resumed his duty of scanning the sea and the surf. But the Haumans were so far from needing his or any help that he might have taken the morning off. No one else was going to be in the water at all.

The mother and son lay on an enormous striped towel like a carpet; their green beach pajamas had been replaced by identical light-­green bathing suits. He was the only man on the beach who did not wear shorts.

With everyone else, Ethel and John Grandin watched the two bathers. Though nothing had been said, it had been a relief to them both when the Haumans had shown up. Her cordial welcome at the bus stop had not been mere politeness.

“You’d better ask them for lunch,” she said.

“If you like.”

The Haumans stood at the edge of the surf with ruffles of white water around their ankles, looking out to sea. His legs were planted wide and firm in the sliding sand, his head thrown slightly back. As he had intimated on the boat, he was faintly inclined to fat, but the excess weight interfered not at all with the noble proportions of his build; it seemed rather to add to the heroic physique, as though he were some giant figure out of mythology come down to show these mortals what a Homeric god looked like. Billie leaned toward him, one knee bent in toward the other and the relaxed foot to the rear, in the accepted pose (consciously or not) of the fashion model or movie star. Her short white skirt flipped and snapped about her wide hips.

“Who’s that, my god,” a woman’s voice murmured over Grandin’s head. Mr. and Mrs. Howard were joining them. “No slouch, he,” she added; “but he looks dangerously like that old Michelin-­tire man.”

“Now Mama, don’t go making fun.”

“I’m not making fun. Quite the reverse. Who is he?”

“A Marine captain we met on the steamer,” Ethel explained. “It happened that his wife had been a student of my husband’s.”

“Is that she? Lovely girl.”

“Mm-­mmm!” Bill Howard made a humming sound deep in the back of his throat, a cross between a grunt and a groan.

“Striking pair. Too bad about those rubber tires, though. And lord, his arms and shoulders—they look positively blown up!” Mrs. Howard laughed at her own notion. “I’ll bet if you stuck a pin in him, you’d hear the wheezing sigh of his collapse all the way to Woods Hole.”

“Always belittlin’,” Mr. Howard said.

“Belittlin’ my foot. I wish you were half as good.”

If the Howards had any inkling of last night’s quarrel, they gave no sign of it. John Grandin felt vastly relieved.

“We hear there’s a movie star in the vicinity,” Mrs. Howard said. “Toni Lansing or somebody.”

“Boy, Toni Lansing! Just tell me where,” Bill Howard said.

The Marine Captain was roughhousing at the edge of the surf. He scooped Billie up in his arms and flung her about while she screamed in panic. He turned handsprings along the sand, then a long series of cartwheels. Grandin got the impression, though he couldn’t have said why, that Hauman was doing this neither for his own pleasure nor for Billie’s—that his heart was not in it, in short. He raced back, ducked low, and tackled Billie’s legs, but it seemed make-­believe, somehow. She stood still, crouching, and screeched. The whole beach had heard and was watching, fascinated. Finally they ran up from the surf and began vigorously to dry one another with their towels.

Ethel introduced them to Mrs. Howard. Grandin noticed how she took them in, coldly, objectively, but interested. She glanced at her husband and raised her eyebrows in a cynical yet admiring expression. Bill Howard made a move to give up his place in the shade of the umbrella but they insisted on remaining in the sun. They knelt in the sand and took turns applying sun-­tan oil to each other’s backs.

Before he settled himself to rest, the Captain bent forward, took up a match folder, and lighted the cigarette that Grandin had just put into his mouth. Grandin was amused by these manners (which could hardly be called manners, however, when they ignored the women entirely) but they made him feel old. His own students, who had cause to seek his favors for a dozen reasons, never deferred to him to this extent.

“Were you folks on the boat John and I came over on?” Hauman asked of the Howards.

“We were.”

“Funny we didn’t see you.”

“You just weren’t paying attention to anyone but that beautiful wife of yours. We saw you.”

John Grandin wondered again where or how the Captain had been wounded. From the story of his long hospitalization and the fact that he was still on the sick list, the injuries must have been damaging indeed; yet there seemed to be no outward sign of them whatever. Considering the strenuous athletics in the sand, he was in the best of health. But as Hauman turned his face to the sun, he saw for the first time a thin scar that ran from the left ear down along the jawline to the chin; it was well healed, and must have required the best of surgical skill to leave so fine a scar. Only at the base of the chin, just underneath, reposed a small knot or lump of scar tissue. He wanted to ask about it, but he felt sure that Hauman would be embarrassed in the presence of the Howards; time enough later in the day when they were alone.

Billie was talking to Ethel in low tones; there was an oddly wistful note in her voice “. . . You’ve no idea how homesick I’ve been for that room ever since we left, isn’t it silly? Dad gave me the money to do it over only last month. It’s right next to Mother’s­ room but I have my own bath. We didn’t dream then that Cliff would be back so soon or—or that I’d be a married woman. The whole room is done in a real baby blue and it’s adorable. The dressing table has a mirrored top, of course, and on the tables I have the dearest little mirrored cigarette boxes. I don’t smoke but most of my girl friends do, and anyway they’re darling. The lamps next to my bed and the chaise have blue bows. On the bed, lined up against the bolster, are my dolls. I can’t wait to see it again. And you know? It’s an awful thing to say but I hate to give it up. . . .”

“I don’t see that you’ll have to,” Ethel said. “You and Cliff won’t be able to take a house together for some time.”

“Oh yes, we’re going to find a house just as soon as we get back.”

“But I thought Cliff was to report for duty again?”

“That’s just his talk. Wouldn’t it be silly when he can get compensation and all, for the rest of his life?”

Bill Howard roused himself (and roused them all) with a loud exaggerated yawn. “Going in swimming, Sadie?”

“Certainly not.”

“Good, that let’s me out.” He looked about restlessly. “Well, I don’t know about you-­all, but I-­all am going off and find that Toni Lansing. Mm-­mmm! If she’s anywhere in Sconset, she must be along the beach taking the sun—and probably disappointed as all hell because nobody comes to find her. Want to join me, anyone?”

“I do,” Billie said.

“Okay, if my old lady doesn’t object. Or your old man.”

“My old man,” Billie said. “Funny, I never thought of him that way.”

As Grandin watched them go, his eye was caught by another figure trudging in lonely fashion through the sand a few hundred feet back from the beach, about midway between the sea and the bluff. It was a man in white, walking parallel to the beach, and he appeared to be plodding doggedly, leaning slightly forward, as if he had come a long way and still had far to go. “Pete,” he called out, “who’s that?”

“The Coast Guard,” Pete said. “He just passed along here behind us, few minutes ago. They patrol the island day and night. See that black post where he’s stopping at now? There’s a time clock there and he punches it every hour. Oh, you’ll see him—or one of the others—going by here good many times a day.”

“Lonely job, I should imagine.”

“Not nearly so lonely as at night,” Pete said. “Still, they have a police dog for company, then. I suppose you know that since the war, civilians aren’t allowed on the beach at night?”

“I didn’t, no.”

“It’s something to keep in mind. After dark, nobody can come within five hundred yards of the beach. If they do and get caught, there’s an awful fine. But the fine’s nothing compared to what those dogs’ll do to you.”

“Is that the Coast Guard station far down the beach?”

“Yeah, down near Tom Nevershead. Good many men live there.”

“Well, that takes care of that,” Mrs. Howard said. “Bill and I planned to spend the evening on the beach, come the night of the full moon. Really, they ought to tell you these things in the catalogue.”

Grandin watched the figure of the Coast Guard disappearing slowly over the reaches of sand, his white uniform like a tiny diminishing spark of light. It was a melancholy job, to say the least, that patrol; and the fact that the coast guardsman’s duties brought him so many times a day past the sun bathers enjoying their leisure couldn’t have made the job any easier to take.

Mr. Howard and Billie came hurrying back. They ran stamping into the group, both of them breathless.

“We saw her,” Billie gasped, “we saw her! She’s sitting down there just like—why, just like you and I!”

“No!” mocked Sarah Howard.

“Mighty worth looking at though, Mama.”

“She’s all in white,” Billie went on rapturously; the fact that she herself was all in white seemed to have escaped her. “White suit and sandals and white jockey cap—even white sun glasses!”

“How could anybody have white sun glasses?” Hauman said.

“I mean the rims, as you very well know. And she has the loveliest red hair, real fiery red! I wonder if it’s real . . .”

Hauman got to his feet. His shorts were so tight that the belt seemed to cut into his flesh. “What do you say, John, shall we take a look too?”

“I don’t mind,” Grandin said, getting up. “Want to come, Ethel?”

“No thanks.”

“I’ll come,” Billie said; “I know just where she is.”

“We’ll find her, you stay here with Ethel and the others,” Hauman said. He took Grandin’s arm and they started off.

Alone with Hauman, Grandin felt self-­conscious; he sensed within himself the feelings of a small boy again, a boy who looked up in hero worship to the other. This became the more unreasonable when he reflected that he was the one looked up to, by Hauman. The responsibility that this put upon him in their relationship was something he would rather not have had.

“Cliff,” he said, “do you ever think of not coming back?”

“Why gee, I hope we do, often! Billie and I love it here.”

“I meant from the South Pacific, or wherever you’re going. After all, a good many of them don’t came back.”

“Oh. Well, that’s something you always think of as happening to the other guy, I guess.”

The beach was hard, smooth and hot under their feet; to the left, the water slid up and back on the wet dark sand.

“You know something? I heard the Major say once that if he named ten guys to go out on a raid and knew in advance that nine of ’em wouldn’t be coming back—and told ’em so, too—there isn’t one of them but what would go. Of course they might look at each other in a funny way, because each one would be thinking they were the one that was coming back and it was tough on the other guys, but they’d all of them go.” Then he added, “I don’t know what it’s like in the Army, but that’s the way it is with the Marines.” He laughed. “Gee, I wouldn’t dare say that in front of Billie. She’d think I was bragging, and anyway she doesn’t like to hear about the war. But darn it, it’s true.”

“What about yourself, Cliff? Doesn’t the thought of death—”

“Thought of death!” He laughed heartily. “Nobody has thoughts of death, don’t you know that, John? That’s just something in people’s mind—not real at all. Anyway you don’t have time, you’re much too busy. Why, the way they keep you jumping out there, you never give it a thought.”

“Not even when someone you know is shot down? Your—well, your buddy, say?” The word made him feel awkward, but he felt it was the one which Hauman would understand.

“That’s just tough luck. But you can’t stop and think about it every time. That wouldn’t get you anywheres. Besides, if you’d seen as much death as I have— Gee, maybe that sounds like bragging again.”

“I suppose it’s a matter of—getting used to it.”

“Why say!” Hauman placed a broad hand on his shoulder. “When you see those big bulldozers come grinding along and push ’em all into one big trench, you begin to think life doesn’t amount to very much, or death either. Nobody can take time to bury the bodies with shovels in the old-­fashioned way, in the right kind of grave, and all that.”

“The enemy dead?”

“Oh, our own too! You can’t beat those bulldozers, they do the job on the double. A guy sits up top steering—I’ve done it myself—with nothing on but a helmet and a pair of shorts and boondockers. It’s pretty hot work; those engines give out a lot of heat when they got a big load to shove around.—Look, I’ll bet that’s her now, though Billie didn’t say anything about the officer.”

In the sand some fifty feet back sat the young girl in white whom Grandin had seen twice now, and a young naval officer in a dark-­blue uniform and white cap. They did not talk as they watched Grandin and Hauman go by.

It would have been silly not to turn frankly and look at her; it was what they had come down here for and she must have known it. Grandin saw that their curiosity was not unwelcome. From under the visor of the white jockey cap she returned a gaze as frank as theirs, and her amused smile was a good enough substitute for hello.

“Well, I guess that’s that, John. Let’s go back.”

Grandin felt that for dignity’s sake it might look better if they went on a short distance farther; but in view of the girl’s smile and her frank acceptance of their frank curiosity, he took Hauman’s suggestion and they turned back at once.

“Didn’t we tell you, wasn’t it worth it?” Bill Howard asked, in a fairly accurate imitation of Billie’s excitement.

“Oh I don’t know,” Hauman said, “she’s got to go some to beat Billie.”

“Why Clifford Hauman, thank you very much.”

“Mighty nice husband you’ve got there,” Sarah Howard said, “in more ways than one. If you know what I mean.”

“Never mind, Sadie.”

“By the way, Captain,” she went on.

He came to polite attention at once. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Your wife has been telling us you’re on the sick list.”

“Yes, ma’am, I am.”

“Well? Come come, tell us about those wounds. I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours,” and she roared with laughter.

“Really, Mama, cut it out.”

Hauman’s embarrassment was painful to see. “I guess there isn’t much to tell, ma’am. I’m not a hero, if that’s what you mean. I was wounded, yes, but—well . . .” And now, as if eager to get it over with at last, he told the shameful story almost in one breath. “I was leading a few of my men through a path in the jungle when we were ambushed. It was my own darn fault. I knew the Japs were there but I made a wrong mistake and took the wrong path. Anyway, those rascals jumped us and I don’t remember anything then till I woke up in a hospital tent and they told me it was sixteen days later. Eight of the other fellows were dead, they told me, but one other guy and myself came out of it all right.”

“All right, yes,” Billie snorted, “with ten broken ribs, all his teeth rammed down his throat, his whole face cut open to his jaw, a fractured skull and concussion of the brain—if you call that all right! He laid there in the jungle for two whole days before they found him, didn’t you, Cliff?”

“That’s what they tell me but I don’t know, honey, I don’t remember.”

“Are those store teeth you’re wearing?” Mrs. Howard asked.

“Yes ma’am,” and he smiled obligingly to show them.

“What about the fractured skull?” Bill Howard said.

“I think it’s all right, sir. I get dizzy once in a while and I don’t have any nerves working in the left side of my face, but that’s something that won’t show up in the examination.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, Cliff thinks he’s going to get back into the service,” Billie said.

“I sure am, and I’m going to pass that examination, too! They can’t tell I don’t feel anything in my face.”

Sarah Howard folded her arms and looked at him ­appraisingly. “I think you’re a fine boy and all that,” she said, “and one of the most beautiful I ever saw. But I also think you’re a damned fool.”

Hauman blushed, but one couldn’t have said whether it was because of the extravagant compliment or the word “damn.” “Well,” he said uncomfortably, “I guess it depends on how you feel about these things, ma’am. I mean I’ve been there. And those fellows— Well, I don’t know how to explain it, but I guess that’s where I belong.”

“Did you enjoy it as much as all that?”

“Enjoy it? I don’t know, ma’am, I never thought of it that way. But I know one thing! I sure miss it, and the fellows . . .”