Paul Theroux - The Kingdom by the Sea - A Journey Around the Coast of Great Britain

I walked out of Hove and on to Portslade and Southwick, which had a handsome power station on a neck of land just offshore, so that with its two tall chimneys it looked like a steamship moored on the coast.

At Southwick I met Mrs. Ralph Stonier. She was standing in the sunshine in her old overcoat, waiting for a bus. She said the buses never came. She was a native of Southwick. She hated it: overbuilt, she said. It used to be very quiet here, but no more. Of course, it was much worse in Brighton. You couldn't live on the coast these days. She didn't know what was going to happen, except that things would surely get worse. She stood stiffly, facing the oncoming traffic. The English could look so tired and so determined at the same time! She was taking the bus because the train was too expensive, even though as a pensioner she traveled for half-fare. She had a country accent, as all the older natives seemed to on the south coast.

"I'm going to Bognor," I said to Mrs. Stonier, not that she had asked.

She said, "That's miles away!"

It was twenty miles. I took the train to Worthing.

Irby and Vitchitt, two schoolboys, were talking behind me in low serious voices on the train. They were each about fifteen years old.

Vitchitt said, "If you could change any feature of your body," and he paused, "what would you change?"

"Me fice," Irby said. He had not hesitated.

Vitchitt said, "Your 'ole fice?"

"Yeah."

Vitchitt was silent.

Irby said, "Me 'ole fice."

"What about your oys?"

"Me oys," Irby said. "I dunno."

"What about your 'air?"

"Me 'air." Irby sounded stumped. "I dunno."

"What about ya rears?"

"Me years," Irby said. "Smaller anyway."

"What about teef?" Vitchitt said.

"Dunno. I have to fink about vat," Irby said.

And then, as they pushed through the door at Worthing, they began to talk about contraceptive devices.

Signs near Worthing said PLEASURE PARK and LEISURE CENTRE and FUN PALACE. In England, such signs spelled gloom. And yet Worthing, with its proud hotels and guest houses, did not look bad. It was a breezy, villagey place, with tree-lined streets, and like the folks who lived in it, Worthing was a little old and a little lame and a little stout, but it still had sparkle. It had the restful friendliness of a favorite uncle or aunt — lots of dignity but no airs, and a great deal of salty gentility and decent fatigue.

These south coast towns could look terribly visited. It gave them a hackneyed, worn-down appearance; then they were a bit frayed and exposed, and there were many more cars than people, and plenty of shows and always a sign saying COACHES WELCOME, and that too-loud heartiness and relentless querying to which the English were prone on holidays: Sleep all right? Enjoying yourself? Have a nice trip down? Find your friends from last year? Fancy a cup of tea? Like the show? and Hope the weather holds — isn't it glorious? The visited towns were stale with this chat, and at certain times of the day and every Sunday morning they looked very dusty and very empty.

Worthing was somewhat like that, but with an overlay of charm; Bognor Regis was this way to the core, and its look was that of a fairground — frenzied when it was busy and desolate when empty. I got there by walking to Goring-on-Sea, where the houses were bigger and smugger than Worthing's, and a pretty girl on the pier was selling a plump Dover sole to a man for a reasonable price. I walked another two miles to Ferring, then sat down on the village green because I had sore feet. Rather than turn the simple trip to Bognor into an ordeal, I took the train the rest of the way. Littlehampton was plain and semidetached and flinty, the sort of place in which the people did little but water their plants. Then across the River Arun (Arundel was upstream, but I had vowed: No castles) to Climping and pretty farms and a bright field deep with yellow mustard; and then Elmer and a Butlin's camp that served as a kind of warning that Bognor was around the bend.

Bognor was empty. Such places could look awful when they were empty. The wind came off the Channel, stirring the suds at the shore, and it blew through the town. Nothing moved, there were no trees, and anything loose had been blown away in the winter. There was just the sound of the wind sawing at the edges of houses and swelling under the eaves. And the emptiness was exaggerated by the presence of Butlin's Holiday Camp on the shore road into town. Butlin's was full and busy — shouts, the struggle of excitement, the sound of bugles — and so, in this empty town, it had the feel of a concentration camp. Everyone in Bognor was at Butlin's, but it was not easy to explain, because the camp was barracklike buildings fenced in like a prison, and the bright paint on its old-fashioned shapes served only to make it look more sinister. And this full camp in empty Bognor made Bognor seem lopsided.

I thought: One of these days I'll have a look inside a holiday camp when it's in full swing. Most of these places were on the coast, so I would be able to take my pick.

"Oh, yes, it's very quiet," Miriam Pottage said as she showed me to my room in the Camelot Guest House. Miss Pottage was in her sixties and had candy in a pocket of her apron, toffees and caramels, which she peeled — depositing the cellophane in another crinkling pocket — and ate continuously the way a chain-smoker smokes. "Mind you," she said, turning on the stairs and still sucking — the caramels gave her mouth a monkey jut—"it's always quiet this time of year."

It was what everyone said, but it never quite accounted for such great emptiness. I was the only person here at Camelot. It was a cold house, full of damp carpets. Miss Pottage explained that they turned the heating off at Easter, and then turned it on again, the downstairs rads, in October. It was a habit, like. And you could always put on a cardigan if you were feeling the cold — better that than running up an enormous bill at the electricity board. And even if it was uncomfortably cold, what was the point in heating a whole house in order to heat one person?

"But when the season's on," Miss Pottage said, "I'll be run off me feet."

She was one of those people who, when they speak, seem to be saying the thing for the third or fourth time, although I am sure that was not the case and it was only that she enunciated slowly. She made me seem clairvoyant, because whenever she opened her mouth I knew what was going to come out. She was a humorless soul, and she had infuriating patience. She was very kind to me and did not charge much for the room.

I liked the quiet here. It was the opposite of Brighton, and it was not elderly, like Worthing. Bognor was not at all bad — that was a pleasant discovery, like finding a virtue in a person no one liked. Bognor was restful; the Front was windswept and bare; the pier was shut; it had no pretensions; practically everyone was at Butlin's Holiday Camp, beyond the big fence.

Night fell on Bognor and turned the town into a village. The wind was still strong, but there was no sound of the sea and nothing salty in the air. I had dinner at the only chip shop in Bognor that was open — I was becoming knowledgeable about fish and chips and English breakfasts, and was starting to dislike them.

"I wrote a book about women because I am a woman and I understand them," a woman said on a radio that was playing behind a bar in a public house. There was more. "We have different bodies and different options. We are completely different from men. I actually quite like being a woman, and I think—"

" Claptrap! " Mr. Love, the barman, said and switched it off and made a face at me. "Makes me want to spew." He was washing glasses, angrily polishing them with a cloth wrapped around his wrist. "Load of bloody cobblers." I thought he was going to smash a glass. "Ever hear such rubbish?"