The Love of a Good Woman

people on the beach had become less distinct; they showed more disposition to flow together. Down at the edge of the water women had taken off their shoes, reached up and pulled off their stockings if they were wearing any, touched their toes to the water. Most people had given up drinking beer and were drinking punch, and the punch had already begun to change its character. At first it had been mostly rum and pineapple juice, but by now other kinds of fruit juice, and soda water, and vodka and wine had been added.
    Those who were taking off their shoes were being encouraged to take off more. Some ran into the water with most of their clothes on, then stripped and tossed the clothes to catchers on shore. Others stripped where they were, encouraging each other by saying it was too dark to see anything. But actually you could see bare bodies splashing and running and falling into the dark water. Monica had brought a great pile of towels down from her house, and was calling out to everyone to wrap themselves up when they came out, so they wouldn’t catch their death of cold.
    The moon came up through the black trees on top of the rocks, and looked so huge, so solemn and thrilling, that there were cries of amazement. What’s that? And even when it had climbed higher in the sky and shrunk to a more normal size people acknowledged it from time to time, saying “The harvest moon” or “Did you see it when it first came up?”
    “I actually thought it was a great big balloon.”
    “I couldn’t imagine what it was. I didn’t think the moon could be that size, ever.”
    Kath was down by the water, talking to the man whose wife and mistress she had seen in Sonje’s kitchen earlier. His wife was swimming now, a little apart from the shriekers and splashers. In another life, the man said, he had been a minister.
    “‘The sea of faith was once too at the full,’” he said humorously. “‘And round earth’s shore, lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled’—I was married to a completely different woman then.”
    He sighed, and Kath thought he was searching for the rest of the verse.
    “‘But now I only hear,’” she said, “‘its melancholy long withdrawing roar, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world.’” Then she stopped, because it seemed too much to go on with “Oh love let us be true—”
    His wife swam towards them, and heaved herself up where the water was only as deep as her knees. Her breasts swung sideways and flung drops of water round her as she waded in.
    Her husband opened his arms. He called, “Europa,” in a voice of comradely welcome.
    “That makes you Zeus,” said Kath boldly. She wanted right then to have a man like this kiss her. A man she hardly knew, and cared nothing about. And he did kiss her, he waggled his cool tongue inside her mouth.
    “Imagine a continent named after a cow,” he said. His wife stood close in front of them, breathing gratefully after the exertion of her swim. She was so close that Kath was afraid of being grazed by her long dark nipples or her mop of black pubic hair.
    Somebody had got a fire going, and those who had been in the water were out now, wrapped up in blankets or towels, or crouched behind logs struggling into their clothes.
    And there was music playing. The people who lived next door to Monica had a dock and a boathouse. A record player had been brought down, and people were starting to dance. On the dock and with more difficulty on the sand. Even along the top of a log somebody would do a dance step or two, before stumbling and falling or jumping off. Women who had got dressed again, or never got undressed, women who were feeling too restless to stay in one place—as Kath was—went walking along the edge of the water (nobody was swimming anymore, swimming was utterly past and forgotten) and they walked in a different way because of the music. Swaying rather self-consciously, jokingly, then more insolently, like beautiful women in a movie.
    Miss Campo was still sitting in the same place, smiling.
    The girl Kath and Sonje called Debbie Reynolds was sitting in the sand with her back against a log, crying. She smiled at Kath, she said, “Don’t think I’m sad.”
    Her husband was a college football player who now ran a body-repair shop. When he came into the library to pick up his wife he always looked like a proper football player, faintly disgusted with the rest of the world. But now he knelt beside her and played