Up Island by Anne Rivers Siddons

want you to know about them. But we’re not going to talk about them until after lunch, and we’re certainly not going to talk about Theron’s behavior with that unspeakable little doxy until then. So drink your drink, and maybe we’ll have another and I’ll tell you about Italy, then we’ll have something wonderful for lunch. I think we both deserve it, don’t you?”
    “We do indeed,” I said, liking her more at that moment than I ever had. Charlotte had quite obviously never thought me suitable for her only son and

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    heir, but the advent of the Eel Woman must have improved me considerably in her eyes.
    We sat and sipped, chatting about her trip and looking about us at the flowered terrace. The tables were filling with the lunch crowd, most of whom she knew and some of whom I did, and for once I felt languid and lulled at the club, shaded by flowers and warmed in the sun of Charlotte Redwine’s presence. They all had it, the Redwines, that almost palpable aura of rightness and immutability. Tee had his share, and his father had had his, but I thought it was Charlotte from whom the aura emanated. I waved and smiled at the people I knew, feeling as secure as a tender in the lee of a great ship.
    Charlotte followed my eyes to the lone swimmer in the pool.
    “He’s very good, isn’t he?” she said. “He swims like you used to. Or maybe you still do?”
    “Some,” I said. “I haven’t much this summer. I need to get back to it.”
    And I realized then how much I had missed it, that rhythmic, dreamlike gliding, that suspension in an element as pure and simple as air. Missed the effortless pumping of the arms, the kick of the legs that started high in the hips, the slow, ritualized breathing when the head turned in the water…
    The swimmer reached the end of the pool and pulled himself out with one smooth motion, and I saw that it was not a man after all, but a woman, long and slim and brown, with seal-dark wet hair plaited into a rope that was coiled around her small head. She wore a plain black tank suit cut high on her hips and to her waist in back, and for a moment, as she walked away from us toward an empty table at the edge of the patio,

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    I thought she was Caroline. And then I knew who she was.
    Charlotte saw my face and turned to look, and knew, too.
    “That’s her,” she said in a small, brittle voice. “Isn’t that her?”
    “Yes,” I said. The swimmer could, of course, have been anyone else at all, but I knew that she wasn’t. I heard my breath whistling in my nostrils. It seemed very important not to look away from the woman in the black bathing suit, to take in that bright noon, the full and exact measure of her.
    “How dare she come here?” Charlotte said in simple amazement. “Can she possibly not know this is a private club?”
    I did not speak, because I could not. We watched as Sheri Scroggins held up a hand to Carlton, who was standing at the entrance to the patio, smiling benignly at his people taking their ease. He did not acknowledge her signal. No one had signaled to Carlton for service in decades.
    Sheri’s dark brows knit in annoyance. She snapped her fingers and called, “Waiter!” Heads turned all over the patio.
    Slowly and with immense dignity, Carlton moved to her table. She said something indistinguishable, studying a menu, not looking at him. He bowed slightly and turned and glided away; he might have been on wheels. Before the soft buzz of amazement and outrage could start, he was back with a frothy pink concoction thickly forested with fruit and flowers.
    Sheri did look at him then.
    “Did I say frozen? I did not. I said a plain daiquiri and that’s what I meant. You can take this back right now and bring me another, and this time, get it right.”

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    She did not raise her voice, but the flat twang reverberated around the quiet patio. I could hear indrawn breaths.
    Carlton’s face went dead and still, and