who were the angry people in the public pool, and why were they so angry

He had acted like such an *beep* to them, screwed them out of money, and let his daughters run wild and be stupid; all stuff that was discussed before.

The smaller guy had a bar in town and Ned had run up a large bar tab. In days gone by, people would keep a tab in bars they regularly frequented. You could go in, make a deal with the establishment, and run up a tab each time you went in to the bar. Once a month you would either pay your tab in person or the bar would send an invoice to your home and you would send them a check. If the bar liked a person and trusted them, they might let that person go on for quite a bit of time without demanding payment, especially if it was a wealthy person. So I think the bar owner and his wife were really ticked off at Ned because he ran up a huge tab at their bar and flaked on it. The other couple also had some sort of service they provided on an account and he had obviously beat them out of a sum of money, although I don't think their business was ever specified. When Ned was confronted by the bar owner and his wife over his overdue bill, Ned said he would send them a check the next day, but the wife was having nothing of it. She knew they hadn't seen him in quite a while and that he was flat broke and they would never see the money. They were angry with him because he had taken advantage of their services, he had started out being far above them in station, but now he was just a broken down bum.

This was the only pool where Ned was angrily confronted publicly. This was the public pool and the people swimming there were far from the gentried class of which Ned had been a part. He was so confronted with reality that he climbed a stone cliff and fell, exhausted, at the top of the cliff, relieved to be away from the reality of the confrontation.