Midway through his journey, things gradually take on a darker and ultimately surreal tone. Despite everything taking place during just one afternoon, it becomes unclear how much time has passed. His earlier, youthful energy leaves him, and it becomes increasingly painful and difficult for him to swim on. Finally, he staggers back home, only to find his house decrepit, empty, and abandoned. Is Neddy dead at the end of this story?
There is a long tradition of stories with stings in the tail. This is another such story. In the end, the mood is the important thing about this story rather than the plot, which is simply a wrapper for the mood.
He has also been called Dante of the cocktail hour. This is a well-off suburb, where everyone seems to have a pool and house staff. They throw big parties and employ bartenders. No two pools are alike — quite a feat of description. In fact, the lack of specific time is part of the story itself.
But we do know that this is the Cold-War era, when America is in International expansion mode. His quest is childlike in its enthusiasm. His ego depletes as he swims forth. By the end of the story he may have sobered up, and sees the reality of his life. This is a story about the denial of knowledge. Neddy is able to continue while his life crumbles beneath him.
Theme: People can remain brittle and tenacious even as things fade and dissolve under them. Everything withers and crumbles in the end. We just keep on trucking. He left his trunks at the deep end, walked to the shallow end, and swam back. As he was pulling himself out of the water, he heard Mrs. Beyond the hedge, he pulled on his trunks and fastened them.
They were loose, and he wondered if during the space of an afternoon he could have lost some weight. He was cold, and he was tired, and the naked Hallorans and their dark water had depressed him. His arms were lame. His legs felt rubbery and ached at the joints. The worst of it was the cold in his bones, and the feeling that he might never be warm again. Leaves were falling around him and he smelled woodsmoke on the wind.
Who would be burning wood in the fireplace at this time of year? He needed a drink. Whiskey would warm him, pick him up, carry him through the last of his journey, refresh his feeling that it was original and valorous to swim across the county. Channel swimmers took brandy. He needed a stimulant. That was three years ago. Was he losing his memory, had his gift for concealing painful facts let him forget that he had sold his house, that his children were in trouble, and that his friend had been ill?
You can hear it from here. She raised her head, and from across the road, the lawns, the gardens, the woods, the fields he heard again the brilliant noise of voices over water. They would be honored to give him a drink, they would be happy to give him a drink, they would, in fact, be lucky to give him a drink.
The Biswangers invited him and Lucinda for dinner four times a year, six weeks in advance. They were always rebuffed, and yet they continued to send out their invitations, unwilling to comprehend the rigid and undemocratic realities of their society. They were the sort of people who discussed the price of things at cocktails, exchanged market tips during dinner, and after dinner told dirty stories to mixed company.
He went toward their pool with feelings of indifference, charity, and some unease, since it seemed to be getting dark and these were the longest days of the year. The party when he joined it was noisy and large. Grace Biswanger was the kind of hostess who asked the ophthalmologist, the veterinarian, the real-estate dealer, and the dentist.
No one was swimming, and the twilight, reflected on the water of the pool, had a wintery gleam. There was a bar, and he started for it. When Grace Biswanger saw him, she came toward him, not affectionately, as he had every right to expect, but bellicosely. She could not deal him a social blow—there was no question about this—and he did not flinch.
She turned her back on him and joined some guests, and he went to the bar and ordered a whiskey. The bartender served him, but rudely. Or perhaps the man was new and uninformed.
It was worse than eating your peas off a knife. He dove into the pool, swam its length, and went away. The next pool on his list, the last but two, belonged to his old mistress, Shirley Abbott. Love—sexual roughhouse, in fact—was the supreme elixir, the painkiller, the brightly colored pill that would put the spring back into his step, the joy of life in his heart.
They had had an affair last week, last month, last year. It was he who had broken it off, his was the upper hand, and as he stepped through the gate of the wall that surrounded her pool it seemed to be his pool, since the lover, particularly the illicit lover, enjoys the possessions of his mistress with an authority unknown to holy matrimony. She was there, her hair the color of brass, but her figure, at the edge of the lighted, cerulean water, excited in him no profound memories.
It had been, he thought, a lighthearted affair, although she wept when he broke it off. She seemed confused to see him. If she was still wounded, would she, God forbid, weep again? He dove in and swam the pool, but when he tried to haul himself up onto the curb, he found that the strength in his arms and his shoulders had gone, and he paddled to the ladder and climbed out.
Looking over his shoulder, he saw, in the lighted bathhouse, a young man. Going out onto the dark lawn, he smelled chrysanthemums or marigolds—some stubborn autumnal fragrance on the night air, strong as gas. Looking overhead, he saw that the stars had come out, but why should he seem to see Andromeda, Cepheus, and Cassiopeia?
What had become of the constellations of midsummer? He began to cry. It was probably the first time in his adult life that he had ever cried—certainly the first time in his life that he had ever felt so miserable, cold, tired, and bewildered. He had swum too long, he had been immersed too long, and his nose and his throat were sore from the water. Here, for the first time in his life, he did not dive but went down the steps into the icy water and swam a hobbled sidestroke that he might have learned as a child.
He climbed up the ladder and wondered if he had the strength to get home. He had done what he wanted—he had swum the county—but he was so stupefied with exhaustion that his triumph seemed vague. Stooped, holding onto the gateposts for support, he turned up the driveway of his own house. The place was dark. Had the girls joined her there, or gone someplace else? He tried the garage doors, to see what cars were in, but the doors were locked and rust came off the handles.
The story is intriguing as we are left clueless till almost the middle. There is of course an authorial comment on human obduracy which is generally susceptible to common sense preceding an actual hint from Mrs. Halloran when she commiserates on his misfortune of having had to sell his house.
He denies it and in fact her sympathy sounds preposterous because he says his daughters are staying at home. The suspense is sustained very carefully till the end. Neddy completes his pledge by finishing the cross country swim and an exhausted Neddy reaches and finds it empty, dark and locked. The story is sad and evokes sympathy for Neddy. Whatever the problem Neddy suffered from, it was definitely not obduracy.
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