[Mrs Bradley 55] - Nest of Vipers

diving-boys had demonstrated, you could see a coin lying on the sand at a depth of thirty feet.
I approached the deck steward and asked whether there was time for a swim before we went ashore. He replied that there was about an hour before the ship's boats would be leaving. He warned me that the water was deeper than it looked. Soon all of us who could swim were in the water, and so was our cabin de luxe passenger, who, although she could manage one or two floundering strokes, was not, in my sense of the words, a swimmer.
Whether the clearness of the water deceived her as to its depth, whether she did not realise that water deep enough to float a ship, even one of our tonnage, was too deep for her to be able to put her feet down when she was tired, I do not know. Suddenly she panicked, and got a mouthful of water as she submerged. However, I had no difficulty in getting her back to the safety of the ship's ladder, on to which she was hauled by one of the sailors.
I thought no more of the matter, but after we had returned from the shore excursion she sought me out and thanked me - for 'saving her life'. I replied modestly and sincerely that I had done nothing of the kind. I was the manager of my local swimming pool and accustomed to keeping an eye on people in the water. That, I supposed, was the end of it, for she took no more notice of me for the remainder of the cruise, although the purser, issuing tickets for the shore excursion at Lisbon on the return voyage, did tell me that she had asked for my home address and that he hoped it had been all right to let her have it.
'Not that I should have dreamed of it, had the situation been reversed, of course,' he said.
'You mean if I'd been a blushing maiden and she a lascivious old man? Glad to hear it,' I retorted.
So that was that - or so I thought - for I heard nothing more until, nearly five years later, the letter came from her lawyers. I had been left a considerable house standing in its own grounds and a very substantial sum of money.
My first thought, when I had recovered from the shock of discovering that I had become a landed proprietor and a wealthy man, was that now I should have to marry Niobe. It came as a surprise to me to discover that I no longer wanted to do this. I had come to take our six-year understanding for granted. It seemed to satisfy both of us, although we had never lived together in the accepted sense. Perhaps I had better explain this.
When I left the university with an undistinguished honours degree I tried for work in a publisher's office and then with a literary agency, but found no takers. I was not at all keen on working in an ordinary commercial office, the Civil Service or a bank, let alone becoming a schoolmaster, so I answered an advertisement for superintending and managing a municipal swimming pool. As I held the A.S.A. gold medal and had swum the Channel (although in nothing like record time) they gave me the job.
Niobe Nutley, some few years older than myself, was my opposite number on the women's side and we soon established an easy, comradely relationship. The work was hard and the hours long. I did not much care for the job and the money was nothing much, but, of course, I could swim free of charge every day, which at least was something.
I got digs with a landlady who mothered me, so that I was given plenty to eat, a decent, clean, comfortable bed and no embargo was placed on female or, indeed, any other visitors. I was an orphan, so I was unembarrassed by parental visits or the need to go home at holiday times, and my most frequent guest was Niobe, so we drifted into an understanding that, as soon as my finances warranted such a step, we would marry.
How this arrangement came about I hardly know. She was a good comrade and a loyal second-in-command at the pool, but if there ever had been the beginnings of a passionate relationship between us, I cannot remember when it was. The years came and went - six of them altogether - and any first fine careless rapture must soon have passed. All the same, until my unexpected rise to affluence came about, the mirage of our ultimately getting married was still on the horizon. It was with that perceptiveness which nature, I suppose, has given to women and which is often miscalled their intuition, that, when I told her of my good fortune, Niobe said, living up to her name and becoming tearful:
'So now you won't want me any more.'
I was completely disconcerted by this, for it brought home to me the realisation that she was right. If this seems the reaction of a heel, I'm sorry, but it must be remembered that she and I had had nothing but the most undemanding kind of relationship for at least five years. We had never slept together and, owing to the nature of our jobs, we had never, even at the warmest period of our friendship, spent a holiday together. One or other of us always had to be on duty at the pool, for a deputy could never be placed in full control of the swimming. That was in our contract and the agreement had to be honoured.
Recovering from my surprise at finding that she had hit a nasty smash, with almost uncanny accuracy, straight at my head, unchivalrously I lobbed the ball back into her court.
'You mean that you don't want me any more,' I said. My excuse for saying this was that, now it had come to the crunch, I hoped