The View from Castle Rock

drink. “Well, Minnie.”
    I knew something about him. I knew that the Hammonds were here for a special holiday because Mr. Hammond had lost his job. Mary Anne had told me this. “He’s very depressed about it,” she had said. “They won’t be poor, though. Aunt Carol is rich.”
    He did not seem depressed to me. He seemed impatient-chiefly with Mrs. Hammond-but on the whole rather pleased with himself. He was tall and thin, he had dark hair combed straight back from his forehead, and his mustache was an ironic line above his upper lip. When he talked to me he leaned forward, as I had seen him doing earlier, when he talked to women in the living room. I had thought then that the word for him was
courtly.
    “Where do you go swimming, Minnie? Do you go swimming?”
    “Yes,” I said. “Down by the boathouse.” I decided that his calling me Minnie was a special joke between us.
    “Is that a good place?”
    “Yes.” It was, for me, because I liked being close to the dock. I had never, till this summer, swum in water that was over my head.

    “Do you ever go in without your bathing suit on?”
    I said, “No.”
    “You should try it.”
    Mrs. Montjoy came through the living-room doorway, asking if the meatballs were ready.
    “This is certainly a hungry crowd,” she said. “It’s the swimming does it. How are you getting on, Ivan? Carol was just looking for you.”
    “She was here,” said Mr. Hammond.
    Mrs. Montjoy dropped parsley here and there among the meatballs. “Now,” she said to me. “I think you’ve done about all you need to here. I think I can manage now. Why don’t you just make yourself a sandwich and run along down to the boat-house?”
    I said I wasn’t hungry. Mr. Hammond had helped himself to more gin and ice cubes and had gone into the living room.
    “Well. You’d better take something,” Mrs. Montjoy said. “You’ll be hungry later.”
    She meant that I was not to come back.
    On my way to the boathouse I met a couple of the guests-girls of my own age, barefoot and in their wet bathing suits, breathlessly laughing. They had probably swum partway round the island and climbed out of the water at the boat-house. Now they were sneaking back to surprise somebody. They stepped aside politely, not to drip water on me, but did not stop laughing. Making way for my body without a glance at my face.
    They were the sort of girls who would have squealed and made a fuss over me, if I had been a dog or a cat.

    The noise of the party continued to rise. I lay down on my cot without taking off my dress. I had been on the go since early morning and I was tired. But I could not relax. After a while I got up and changed into my bathing suit and went down to swim. I climbed down the ladder into the water cautiously as I always did-I thought that I would go straight to the bottom and never come up if I jumped-and swam around in the shadows. The water washing my limbs made me think of what Mr. Hammond had said and I worked the straps of my bathing suit down, finally pulling out one arm after the other so that my breasts could float free. I swam that way, with the water sweetly dividing at my nipples…
    I thought it was not impossible that Mr. Hammond might come looking for me. I thought of him touching me. (I could not figure out exactly how he would get into the water-I did not care to think of him stripping off his clothes. Perhaps he would squat down on the deck and I would swim over to him.) His fingers stroking my bare skin like ribbons of light. The thought of being touched and desired by a man that old-forty, forty-five?-was in some way repulsive, but I knew I would get pleasure from it, rather as you might get pleasure from being caressed by an amorous tame crocodile. Mr. Hammond’s-Ivan’s-skin might be smooth, but age and knowledge and corruptness would be on him like invisible warts and scales.
    I dared to lift myself partly out of the water, holding with one hand to the dock. I bobbed up and down and rose into the air like a mermaid. Gleaming, with nobody to see.
    Now I heard steps. I heard somebody coming. I sank down into the water and held still.
    For a moment I believed that it was Mr. Hammond, and that I had actually entered the world of secret signals, abrupt and wordless forays of desire. I did not cover myself but shrank against the dock, in a paralyzed moment of horror and submission.
    The boathouse light was switched on, and I turned around noiselessly in the water and