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

It was either that — the Puttocks in their bungalow — or the opposite — vast bare cliffs of windswept stone that were blasted by the Atlantic. I used to leave the bungalow and laugh out loud at the difference. The town of Newquay in its charmless way was bleaker than the cliffs. It was dreary buildings and no trees. But the visitors were decent folks, mainly old people who were rather overdressed for such an ordinary place. The men wore hats and ties and jackets, and the women dresses and pearls. It looked like churchgoing garb, but they were off to buy the Express or the Telegraph or to walk to the bandstand and back. They seldom strayed out of the town and were never on the cliffs.

In a month or so, Mr. Puttock said, it would all be roaring with yobboes — fat mustached youths and oafish girls, drinking themselves silly and doing damage, or at least leaving a trail of vomit along the Promenade. Mr. Puttock intimated that a population composed of the very old and the very young did not exactly make Newquay sparkle.

Dorothy, a half-Indian, half-English girl I met, said this was true — Newquay was slow, she said. Dorothy had spent the past two years sewing buttons on cardigans in a sweatshop in Leicester, so she certainly knew what slow meant. Otherwise, she was full of surprising answers.

Did she like her job at the Indian restaurant?

She said, "I like the hours — six to midnight."

What was her ambition in life?

"I'd like to own a factory."

How had she prepared herself for factory-owning?

"I've got an O-Level in needlework."

What did she do for fun?

"Martial arts, you know? Tae-Kwon-Do. And I like making joompers."

Most people agreed that Newquay was a hard place in which to make a living. The fish-and-chip shops would not open until June, and then it was a short season — two months or less. "And the real problem with chip shops," Mr. Ramsay told me, "is that you can't tell them apart. I can't tell the difference, and I run one! If they use fresh fish and fresh potatoes, that's another story, but not many of them do." Ramsay was on the dole. "I'll open my shop in about a month."

I was beginning to find the Puttocks a little trying. I had told them I was in publishing, and they pestered me with dull questions about books. They regarded books as clumsy, pointless things, and Donald Puttock smiled in pity whenever he mentioned them. What was the use? he seemed to say. He had no objection to them, but what was the good of them? He was entirely ignorant; he had a few harmless opinions. Mrs. Puttock had her dogs and her jigsaw puzzles. There was nothing more. Sometimes I imagined that they were terribly frightened.

One night after the news — an invasion of the Falklands was predicted — I asked Mr. Puttock what he thought about the war.

He said, "I don't know anything about it," and left the room.

I wondered what his politics were, but when I asked him who his Member of Parliament was, he said he did not know.

"We've been so busy for the past couple of years," Mrs. Puttock explained.

If they had secrets I never learned them, but in a superficial way they had made it possible for me to invade their privacy for a few days.

And then I was overcome with the in-law feeling of wanting to go — of stepping outside and never coming back. That morning I studied the weather forecast, because I would need fairly good weather for my walk along the cliffs to Padstow. The Telegraph said, "Scattered clouds… occasional showers." Rut there was a large weather item on the front page:

CLOUDS BEGIN TO THIN OUT

Clouds from Wednesday's intense cold front began to thin out over the Falklands yesterday. Overcast low and broken high clouds still covered the islands and adjacent waters, but the heaviest weather was in the east and north.

The deepening low pressure area was centred at the southern tip of South America.

Fairly good weather meant there would be an invasion of the Falklands by British troops. On the other hand, I had no definite idea of what the weather would be like for me on the coastal path to Padstow.

I slipped away from the Puttocks' bungalow, feeling sprung, and I hurried to the path. It was cloudy and slightly rainy, but the visibility was good and the path was firm. I could see the black headlands in the distance, Beryl's Point, after the sweep of Watergate Bay and Park Head and, in the smoky distance, the giant shadow of Trevose Head.

I walked on. There was no greenery here. It had been torn away. There was only a thin meadow on top of the rock cliffs. The coast was high, hard, and gray, and the rocks split and wrinkled, some of them cleaved open. The coves were great jagged hollows of sloosh-ing surf and waves — what noises came out of the caverns under those cliffs! But it was familiar thunder, for this coast was like the coast of Maine.

The paths were steep and narrow, and by the time I walked the five miles to Mawgan Porth I was ready to stop for coffee. There was a detachment of U.S. Marines guarding — what? — probably an atomic bomb on the cliffs here at Mawgan — but I did not meet them. I met the Wheekers, Marian and Bob, who had just rolled out of bed and were having tea, "and I wouldn't mind a bowl of flakes," Marian said. Her sparse hair was coppery with henna, and she sucked smoke out of the cigarette she had pinched in her fingers.

"I'm tired," Mr. Wheeker said carefully, "because I 'ave just woke up. Heh."

He looked at me and grinned to signal that he had intended a joke.

I asked them whether they had heard the news on the radio — that an attack on the Falklands was expected.

"I never listen to the news," Mr. Wheeker said. "Know why?"

No, I said, I didn't know why.

"Because there's nothing you can do about it. Right, my dear?"

Mrs. Wheeker agreed, and then she narrowed her eyes at me and said, "Course, you people 'ave been criticizing us."

I said I had been under the impression that the United States had given material support to the British and, because of it, had alienated the whole of South America. I wanted to tell him about the Monroe Doctrine, but he was at me again.

"We're in this all alone," he said. "And the French are worse than the Americans."

Mrs. Wheeker said, "My father always said, 'I'd rather have the Germans over here than the French.'"

I said, "Do you mean the German army?"

"The German anything," Mrs. Wheeker said. "It's them French I 'ate."

A car drew up to the hotel and a family tumbled out, yelling.

"Too many tourists 'ere, that's the trouble," Mr. Wheeker said. "That's why the Cornish are so unfriendly, like. They can't stick the tourists."

"Course, that's where all their money comes from," Mrs. Wheeker said. "Kick out the tourists and they wouldn't 'ave a penny."

"You're walking, then?" Mr. Wheeker said, his teacup shaking at his mouth.

I said yes, along the cliffs.

"How many miles you reckon on walking, then?" he asked.

I said I averaged between fifteen and twenty a day.

"We never walk," Mr. Wheeker said, and made it sound like self-abuse.

"We 'ave walked," Mrs. Wheeker said.

I said, "It's not much fun in this weather."

"It's been trying to rain all morning," Mrs. Wheeker said.

I smiled. That was one of my favorite expressions.

"We never minded the weather," Mr. Wheeker said. "We walked fifteen or twenty miles— in an evening. In rain, snow, wind, anything — anything except fog. Never in fog. We couldn't stick fog."

"And another thing about the Cornish," Mrs. Wheeker said, suddenly bored by her husband, who was almost certainly lying about all the walking. "The Cornish mispronounciate their words."

This was wonderful. She mispronounced the word mispronounce!