Four back rests were engaged for the day and a large sunshade for two weeks. Pete hauled them from a shack and set them up in the spot the Grandins had chosen. He was very young; he was tanned the color of molasses and looked strong enough, but he had the figure of a child, not at all what one expected in a lifeguard. When he bent down to adjust the sunshade, a blond fuzz could be seen on his upper lip and along the jawbone. . . . The war, it’s the war, there’s a war on, don’t you know there’s a war. . . . His chore done, he retired to his perch nearby and resumed his duty of scanning the sea and the surf. But the Haumans were so far from needing his or any help that he might have taken the morning off. No one else was going to be in the water at all.

The mother and son lay on an enormous striped towel like a carpet; their green beach pajamas had been replaced by identical light-­green bathing suits. He was the only man on the beach who did not wear shorts.

With everyone else, Ethel and John Grandin watched the two bathers. Though nothing had been said, it had been a relief to them both when the Haumans had shown up. Her cordial welcome at the bus stop had not been mere politeness.

“You’d better ask them for lunch,” she said.

“If you like.”

The Haumans stood at the edge of the surf with ruffles of white water around their ankles, looking out to sea. His legs were planted wide and firm in the sliding sand, his head thrown slightly back. As he had intimated on the boat, he was faintly inclined to fat, but the excess weight interfered not at all with the noble proportions of his build; it seemed rather to add to the heroic physique, as though he were some giant figure out of mythology come down to show these mortals what a Homeric god looked like. Billie leaned toward him, one knee bent in toward the other and the relaxed foot to the rear, in the accepted pose (consciously or not) of the fashion model or movie star. Her short white skirt flipped and snapped about her wide hips.

“Who’s that, my god,” a woman’s voice murmured over Grandin’s head. Mr. and Mrs. Howard were joining them. “No slouch, he,” she added; “but he looks dangerously like that old Michelin-­tire man.”

“Now Mama, don’t go making fun.”

“I’m not making fun. Quite the reverse. Who is he?”

“A Marine captain we met on the steamer,” Ethel explained. “It happened that his wife had been a student of my husband’s.”

“Is that she? Lovely girl.”

“Mm-­mmm!” Bill Howard made a humming sound deep in the back of his throat, a cross between a grunt and a groan.