Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You

somebody! Don’t let him drown!”
    Eugene appeared hanging onto the pier where it came out of the water. He got to his feet, dripping, and stood braced there clearing the hair out of his eyes, while a girl called, “Sea monster, sea monster!” The men, led by Mr. Morey, broke into ironical clapping.
    The recorder player had not paused for any of this.
    “That’s what it amounts to, walking on water,” Mr. Morey said.
    “Don’t let anybody torment him,” said the blind sister. “He did his best.”
    Eugene walked slowly towards them, smiling. “I don’t even know how to swim,” he said, gladly drawing in air. He sounded nearly triumphant. “I crawled along the pier. I could have stood up sooner but I liked—being under water.”
    “Go home and change your clothes if you don’t want to get pneumonia,” said Mr. Lougheed.
    “Was it just a joke then?” said one of the hymn-singing ladies, and though she was not speaking to him Mr. Lougheed turned and said to her harshly, “What did you think it was?” The two ladies looked at each other, pressing in their lips at his rudeness.
    “I’m sorry if this has not been what you all hoped for,” said Eugene in a gently raised voice, looking around. “The fault is all in me. I haven’t reached the point I hoped I might have reached, in my control. However if this has been disappointing for you it has been very interesting and wonderful for me and I have learned something important. I want to thank you.”
    The ladies clapped now kindly, and some of the young people joined them, clapping more exaggeratedly. Two groups with more in common than they knew, Mr. Lougheed was thinking. Neither would have admitted that. But didn’t their expectations run along the same lines? And what was it in them that prompted such expectations? It was despair, it was being at the end of the track. Nevertheless pride should forbid one.
    Without speaking any more to anyone he went off by himself. He went along the beach and up the steps wondering how he had ever managed to get down the bank without breaking a leg, which at his age would have finished him, and all for this nonsense. He walked a mile or so along the sea to a café he knew stayed open Sundays. He sat for a long time over a cup of coffee and then walked back. There was music coming from the open downstairs windows of the house, from Miss Musgrave’s windows; the kind of music they always played. He walked upstairs and knocked on Eugene’s door, calling out, “I just wanted to see if you got those wet clothes off!”
    No answer. After a moment he opened the door. Eugene never locked it.
    “Eugene?”
    Eugene was not there and neither were his wet clothes. Mr. Lougheed had seen the room without Eugene in it before, when he had brought back a book. The sight of it had not bothered him then as it did now. The window was all the way up now, for one thing. Eugene usually put it down before he went out, for fear of rain getting at his books or a wind coming up. There was some wind now. Papers had blown off the top of the bookcase and were scattered on the floor. Otherwise the place was tidy. The blanket and sheets were folded at the end of the mattress, as if he did not intend to sleep there any more.
    Mr. Lougheed knocked on the downstairs door. Calla came.
    “Eugene’s not home. Do you know where he is?”
    Calla turned and called into the room, which was darkened by red and purple curtains, dyed bedsheets, always shut.
    “Did anybody see Eugene?”
    “He went out towards the golf course. He was headed east.”
    “What do you want him for?” said Rex amiably, leaning on Calla’s shoulder.
    Somebody in the background shouted, “Ask him how he liked his door.”
    “Ask him how he liked his bird.”
    Not the cat, then. Calla smiled at him. She had a large, sweet white face, white as chalk, dotted by many little inflamed pimples.
    “Thank you,” said Mr. Lougheed. He ignored Rex.
    “What does he want Yew-gene for?” said another voice in the background, probably Rover’s, his tinny whine. This voice offered a conjecture Mr. Lougheed immediately and ever afterwards pretended he had not heard.
    “Have a fig?” said Calla.

    He took their word for it, there was nothing else he could do. He went east, walking along the sea, retracing his route of that morning. Past the pier, deserted now, past the café where he had drunk his coffee, on to the golf course. It was a pleasant afternoon, there were many