Making Waves
Greer Watson

Arete had tried on some clothes—reassured that it was all in the privacy of another woman’s rooms, though still a little scandalized by the show of leg.  However, she refused to borrow anything, not even underwear.  Instead, she put her πεπλος back on, girding it round her.  When the Secretary suggested that the cloth seemed far too heavy for the hot day, Arete reminded her of the weather back home, and reached for her ιματιον.  It rather resembled an overly colourful horse blanket, thought the Secretary, as Arete began draping and pinning it.

The Secretary drifted over to the window, twitched back the net curtain, and looked out.  Down by the pond, the philosophers were still disputing—quite possibly, indeed, still stuck on the same subject they had been dissecting when she came indoors.  She had overheard them sometimes discussing a topic for hours at a time.  Today, it was the sudden appearance of the pond that fascinated them.

Indeed, it fascinated her.

She wondered if Alexias’s family were ready to come out of the water and eat.  As she looked their way, though, she was surprised to see that Thalia was sitting on land; and with her, besides the baby, were all the little girls.  The only heads in the water belonged to Alexias and his older sons, and another boy.

“Why aren’t the girls swimming?” she said.

“The girls?!”  Arete paused, brooch ready by her shoulder.

The Secretary turned.  “Fortunately, Thalia’s been keeping a good eye on them, I’m sure,“ she said, “but they need to learn to swim, too.”

Arete looked half scandalized, half astonished, at the thought of her modest, shy little daughter swimming naked with the boys, in front of all the men.

As she stammered some of this, the Secretary started to strip, squeezed into the bathing suit so providently in her drawer, and whisked downstairs and out of the clubhouse.  Arete followed, panicked, more than anything else, by the other woman’s garb.

The quick movement at the clubhouse door drew the attention of the men under the willow; but, when they saw the Secretary rush out, they were stricken.

Nudity in men is one thing; but this is flat out indecent.  No hetaira would reveal herself so in public, though a flute girl or tumbler might show a lot of flesh.  But then they would have known what to think of her.  This, though, was the Secretary:  a woman of mature years, and one all considered respectable.  More than one averted his eyes, in an instinctive fear of Mystery.  A woman of her age and figure—this had to be some rite of her people, one with which they were unfamiliar.  There were rituals not for the sight of men.  None of them wished inadvertently to offend a god.

The Secretary ignored them, making a beeline for Thalia.

“Why are your daughter and Charis here, instead of swimming,” she said abruptly.  Thalia, stunned by the sight of a woman’s bare legs in public in front of her, hardly heard the question.  She looked up, past the tight-clad, mature waist and bust, to the outraged face.

“Ww-what?” she stammered.

“Your daughter.  Charis.”

Thalia looked round for the girls, finding them exactly where she expected.

The Secretary reined herself in.  You catch more flies, she thought. “The boys are swimming quite nicely,” she said to Thalia, and then turned toward the pond.  “The boys are swimming nicely,” she called to Alexias.

“Yes, they’re enjoying it,” he called back.

“Have the girls had their lesson yet?”

This struck both Greeks dumb.

“They need to learn, too, you know,” the Secretary said, in a very reasonable tone.  “What if one of them were to slip and fall in.”

“Oh, I don’t let them go near the edge,” said Thalia quickly.

“Wouldn’t they enjoy a swim, too, though?” asked the Secretary, cunningly.  “Would you like a swim?” she asked Charis.

For a moment, the little girl looked startled.  Then she smiled broadly, looked round at the boys with a little jump of glee, and nodded.  She put her doll down, and started to undress.  Arete gave a gasp, rushed past the others, and snatched her daughter’s hands away from the pin.

“No!” she said, indignantly, turning to the Secretary.  “It’s not decent, even at her age.”

What?  Then it occurred to the Secretary, as she looked more closely at the boys in the pond, that they weren’t wearing trunks.  In fact, they weren’t wearing anything.  Ah.  “I’m sure,” she said slowly, “that the House would be very obliging and provide Charis—and the boys, too, for that matter—with swim suits like mine.”

From the look on Arete’s face (and Thalia’s too), this did not really improve the situation.  They could not let their daughters expose themselves in public the way the Secretary was doing, for all that she clearly felt no shame in it.

Yet, on the other hand, she was the Secretary.  All deferred to her, here in her place.  She was an elder woman, too:  they felt her authority, so like that of any matriarch of a Household.

Alexander came out of the wood on the far side of the stream, intending to cross back by the bridge.  The tension in the tableau at the other end of the pond caught his eye.  What was going on?  Surprisingly, as he walked up, no one seemed to notice that he was there.  This was … unusual.  He took in the curious costume worn by the Secretary, and thought that, if one were tallying marvels, she trumped a mere Emperor.  He wondered what Sisygambis would have made of it.  Or his mother.

“What’s going on?” he asked.  Of all the responses, he could make most sense of the Greek women’s modesty, and yet….

He remembered watching the boy in the river, and wondering what it would be like to swim.

He remembered his sister, and the injustices of womanhoood.

“It is not,” he said, thoughtfully, “that you object to the ability to swim, in itself, I take it?”  Arete and Thalia looked puzzled, but did not protest.  “I wonder,” he added, “if your real need is not for privacy.”  He turned, with an expansive gesture that would have done an actor proud, to the male onlookers.  “Should we men, in all decency, not grant the ladies privacy?”  In short order, he had them organized downstream, to a waterhole where the boys could swim, and a fallen log where the elder men could sit and talk.

Back at the pond, with the drakes out of sight, the Secretary shooed her ducklings to the water.

These invitations and interviews are written purely for entertainment, and as a tribute to the creator of the characters and author of the books, Mary Renault.   No copyright infringement is intended.

The story, “ITOW – Making Waves”, was posted to maryrenaultfics on 7 September 2010 by greerwatson.