Evan Hunter - Lizzie

Dear Lizzie,

You have no idea how happy we were to receive your telegram from Paris with the good news that you had fully recovered and were planning to spend some days with Alison at her villa in Cannes, where I hope this will reach you. It seems a good idea to recuperate in the sun before you once again assume all the rigors of travel, which, though envigorating to be sure, have been exhausting even to those of us in comparatively better health.

I am writing this from our hotel room in Domo D’Ossola (the Hotel de Ville) after a forty-mile journey by diligence from Brieg, which took us all of ten hours on winding Alpine roads that quite scared Anna out of her wits. We had spent the night before, after a seven-hour rail journey from Lake Geneva, in the Three Crowns Hotel at Brieg, which town possesses nothing to detain a traveler, but which served our needs for rest before continuing on into Italy. The town of Domo D’Ossola is equally uninteresting, but the neighborhood is beautiful and affords many pleasant excursions. We went this morning to the marble quarries near Ornavasso, where a guide told us that from hence were brought the stones for the cathedral in Milan, which as you know is our next stop, though we shall be resting at various other places along the way. Well, you have our itinerary.

I am sorry you were not with us in Geneva. The Beau Rivage was delightfully situated, with views of Mont Blanc, and admirably managed, too-although the bees had an annoying habit of getting into the jam pots. I am looking forward to seeing more of Italy than this dreary little town seems to offer. The climate is so delightful, Lizzie! Once we cleared the custom house at Isella, we knew for certain that we were in Italy, so balmy, so lovely!

We miss you, dear friend, and are hoping you will be waiting for us when we arrive in Milan. Until then, please be assured of our fondest thoughts and affection.

Yours sincerely,

Yes, Lizzie thought, I shall be waiting for you in Milan.

All that remained now was to break the news to Alison.

And then, on Saturday morning, Alison seemed abruptly to recover from her lethargy, bursting into Lizzie’s room at the crack of dawn, her blond hair falling loose about her shoulders, sunlight streaming through her beribboned nightdress, an excited gleam in her eyes, a wide smile on her generous mouth.

“Good morning, good morning, lazy shanks!” she called cheerfully. “Hurry and eat your breakfast — is the coffee to your liking? If it isn’t, I shall have cook whipped in the marketplace! Hurry, you must run your tub and then get into your bathing costume! I shall give you one of my outlandish Arabian smocks to put on over it — no one shall see us but George! Take along the bathing slippers you bought, there may be rocks! Hurry, Lizzie — oh, what a glorious day it is!”

An hour later George drove them down into the Old Town, where Alison engaged a fisherman in the port to row them in his dinghy to what she described as a “delightfully deserted sandy beach in a hidden cove”. The fisherman seemed to know the spot well, and Lizzie wondered how actually deserted it might be. But the cove was, in fact, quite hidden from sight and surrounded by a semicircle of forbidding cliffs that made it inaccessible except by the sea. Alison extracted promises from the fisherman, sworn to on his mother’s eyes, that he would pick them up again at four sharp, and then she waded ashore carrying a blanket, towels and the picnic basket cook had prepared. Extending her hand to Lizzie, she helped her over the pebbles that bordered the small sandy beach.

“I find it peculiar,” she said, shrugging out of her tentlike smock, “that bathing in the sea has only recently been proclaimed harmless to the health, whereas I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember.” She dropped the white muslin garment onto the blanket she had spread, and stood facing Lizzie, her hands on her hips. She was wearing a dressy bathing costume of navy blue and white alpaca, trimmed with a coarse white pique lace, and girdled at the waist with a heavy lace-fringed sash. Below the skirt of the costume were pantaloons of the same color and fabric, ending in the same lace trim some three inches below her knee. She wore no cap and no stockings. Her canvas sandals were laced à la grecque with white tapes that wound about her ankles and were knotted somewhere below the shin.

“I find it even more odd,” she said, “that anyone in her right mind should choose to enter the sea as ridiculously clothed as either you or I are,” and to Lizzie’s great surprise, she unbuttoned the back of her costume and lowered the shoulders, shrugging out of the short, lace-edged puffed sleeves, slipping entirely out of the overskirt, and then dropping the pantaloons over her legs to reveal herself quite naked except for the laced sandals. Laughing, she ran into the sea.

She dove beneath the surface almost at once, and then rose again some short distance further, her arms extended above her head as though she were diving in reverse into the air itself, her blond hair plastered to the sides of her face, a wide grin on her mouth as she turned to Lizzie.

“There!” she shouted exultantly. “Naked to the tail! And, oh, how marvelously refreshing it is! Strip off that clumsy garment and come join me.”

She stood grinning in water to her waist, her hands on her hips now, her breasts fully exposed to whoever with a spyglass should choose to—

Lizzie turned in panic, scanning the boulders above the beach.

“There’s no one!” Alison shouted. “Come in, come in, we’re quite alone!”

She turned and dove beneath the surface again. This time she stayed under for quite a time longer, frightening Lizzie. When her head once again reappeared, Lizzie let out her breath in relief and took a tentative step toward the water’s edge. Even through her slippers the sea felt colder than any stream or lake she’d ever bathed in back home. The water touched her ankles now, and now her shins. She was dressed as fancily as Alison had been, wearing a black sailor-style costume with a white-duck sailor collar and a wide tie embroidered with anchors, the full skirt ending just below her knees. Beneath the skirt she wore black-gartered stockings and full bloomers attached to the waistband. Like Alison, she wore no cap, and her heavy canvas slippers were tape trimmed and tied up her legs to almost the shins.

“You shall feel warmer naked!” Alison shouted. “Take off that silly thing!”

“I couldn’t,” Lizzie said, and glanced again at the boulders above. She felt the icy cold water touching her thighs through the mohair skirt and bloomers, touching next the recoiling patch of her womanhood, and then her belly and breasts, the sleeves of the costume now as soddenly cold and clinging as the rest of it, and suddenly she recognized that Alison was right, she would feel warmer without the oppressively wet garment against her flesh — but no, she couldn’t possibly.

She held her breath and dove beneath the surface. The sun disappeared, there was only the cold dark water now, her costume resisting passage through it, scooping water into its neck, flooding it in over her breasts, her nipples puckering in response, the bodice of the costume billowing. She thought — and this took no longer than the five seconds that elapsed as she swam the next little distance under water and reached for the surface — she thought, But truly I am alone here with Alison, and she’s already seen me. Her head broke the surface. Gasping for air, she stood erect in the water, shivering.

Certain she was blushing, she lowered the top of the costume over her shoulders, pulled her arms free of the clinging sleeves, and then stepped entirely out of the overskirt. She waded closer to the beach, wearing only the sodden bloomers, stockings and sandals. She glanced quickly toward the boulders again, lowered the bloomers and hurled the entire costume toward the blanket. Naked but for her gartered black stockings and the white canvas sandals, she lowered herself quickly into the water again and swam to where Alison was waiting.