The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [11]
Her hair was yellow and she was fair—long limbed and full breasted with a skittish look that even in the robes of a choir girl, which she had worn, made her look high-tailed and undressed. He took her hand and raised it and brushed her arm, covered with the light hair of an early down, with his lips. “I’d adore to pick blueberries,” she said loudly and for the benefit of the others on the beach. “I’d adore to pick blueberries but let’s take your hat and we’ll put the blueberries in that.”
They climbed the stones above the beach, hand in hand, but the search for a privacy that would satisfy her was lengthy and they went from place to place until finally he stopped her and she agreed, timidly, that there was probably nothing better. He took her bathing suit off her shoulders and when she was naked she lay down cheerfully, gladly in the sunny dirt to take the only marriage of her body to its memories that she knew. Tenderness and good nature lingered between them after they were done and she leaned on his shoulder while she stepped back into her bathing suit and they returned hand in hand to the beach. They went swimming again and unwrapped the sandwiches that his worried mother had made them the night before.
There were deviled eggs and chicken joints, sandwiches, cakes, cookies, and when they had eaten what they could they put the rest away in the hamper and he jogged down the beach and pitched the tennis ball to her from there. The light ball wavered in the wind but she caught it and threw it back to him with a wing that, like her swimming stroke, was short of what was needed, and he caught the ball with a flourish and threw it back to her. Now the catching and the throwing, the catching and the throwing took on a pleasant monotony and through it she felt the afternoon passing. The tide was going out, leaving on the beach seriations of coarser gravel and strands of kelp whose flower shapes burst with a shot when she crushed them between her fingers. The family group had begun to gather their possessions and call to their children. The other couple lay side by side, talking and laughing. She lay down again and he sat beside her and lighted a cigarette, asking, now, now, but she said no and he walked off toward the water. She looked up and saw him swimming in the waves. Then he was drying himself beside her and offering her a cup of whisky but she said no, no, not yet, and he drank it himself and looked out to sea.
Now the pleasure steamers, fat, white, crowded and unseaworthy, that had set out that morning were returning. (Among these was the Topaze.) The swell of the sea had quieted a little. Her date drank off his whisky and wrung the paper cup in his hand. The couple on their left were getting up to go and when they had gone he asked again now, now, and she said no, led on by some vague vision of continence that had appeared to her. She was weary of trying to separate the power of loneliness from the power of love and she was lonely. She was lonely and the sun drawing off the beach and the coming night made her feel tender and afraid. She looked at him now, holding in at least one chamber of her mind this vision of continence. He was staring out to sea. Lechery sat like worry on his thin face. He saw the leonine reefs in the sea like clavicles and women’s knees. Even the clouds in heaven wouldn’t dissuade him. The pleasure boats looked to him like voyaging whorehouses and he thought that the ocean had a riggish smell. He would marry some woman with big breasts, she thought—the daughter of a paper hanger—and go on the road selling disinfecants. Yes, yes, she said, yes now.
Then they drank some more whisky and ate again and now the homing pleasure boats had disappeared and the beach and all but the highest cliffs lay in the dark. He went up to the car and got a blanket, but now the search for privacy was brief; now it was dark. The stars came out and when they were done she washed in the sea and put her white coat on and together, barefoot, they went up and down the beach, carefully gathering the sandwich papers, bottles and egg shells that they and the others had left, for these were neat, good children of the middle class.