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

It was like a ghastly parody of hard times. In what had been the greatest railway country in the world, and the easiest and cheapest to traverse, the traveler was now told with perfect seriousness, "You can't get there from here."

This was a wonderful thing for my circular tour, because parts of Britain that had been frequented by travelers for hundreds of years had now become inaccessible, and what had been villages well served by railway lines had become curiously anorexic-looking and tumble-down, somehow deserving the epitaph from "Ozymandias." I had thought traveling around Britain would be a breeze; without a car it was often very difficult, but it revealed to me long coastal stretches of unexpected decrepitude.

It sometimes looked the reverse, yet it was decrepitude all the same. One such sight — one of the saddest and most irritating for me in Britain — was the railway station that had been auctioned off and sold to an up-and-comer who had turned it into a bijou bungalow. I found these maddening: the superbly solid Victorian railway architecture now the merest forcing house for geraniums and cats — Nigel and Jenny Bankler ("We're planning to start a baby") presently hogging the whole premises that used to be the station building at Applecross. "That was the waiting room, where Jenny has the breakfast nook, and do you see that funny little window thing, where there's that magnificent jar of muesli? Well, years ago, that was the—" Nigel wanted to call it Couplings, because the weekends they used it (their proper house was a semi in Cheadle), Jenny was practically insatiable. In the end they settled for the Sidings. Most of the other stations had become second homes. Foot-plate Cottage and Level Crossing and Dunrailing were right up the line, and one still had its original ticket window and grille (the Nordleys had trained some variegated ivy up it — looked smashing). "We got this place for practically nothing," they always said. "Mind you, we've put a fair bit of money into it," and then — with a jowly little grin—"We've always liked trains. Haven't we, Petal?"

I could not see one of these railway station bungalows and the owner-occupiers without thinking of Planet of the Apes. And now that the railway strike had started, I could foresee a time when every railway line would be turned into a cinder track for dog-owners and horse-lovers, and all the stations into bungalows. Thousands of miles of railway had already gone that way — why not the rest of it? Many of these lines had been closed by the Beeching Report of 1963. While I was traveling around the coast in the spring and summer of 1982, a new report on British Railways was being written. This was the Serpell Report, offering several options. Option A, greatly favored by the powerful road lobby, slashed the railway network from eleven thousand to sixteen hundred miles, leaving a skeleton service on the rails, and created a traffic jam on the roads that extended from John O'Groats to Land's End.

This trackless railway line took me into Scarborough.

***

Scarborough was the most complete seaside resort I had seen so far in Britain. It was a big full-blooded place, three hundred feet up on a part of the coast that was a geological freak. A buckling during the Jurassic period had given Scarborough a Front like a human face — two bays like eye sockets and the bluff between like a great nose of oolite. (It was a fact that people tended to settle those parts of the coast that had huge and recognizably human features — and the settlers even gave those features anatomical names.) Scarborough had theaters and concert halls and department stores; its ledges and steeps were lined with boardinghouses. The town had the same ample contours as its landladies, and the same sense of life in which even platitudes were delivered with gusto. "The biggest fool to a workingman these days is hisself!" The butchers wore straw boaters and blood-stained smocks, and among their sausages and black puddings were braces of pigeons still wearing feathers. On a coast in which one place was turned into a holiday camp and another was declared bankrupt and a third was sliding into the sea, Scarborough seemed, if not eternal, at least busy, prosperous, and alive.

When a British coastal place was modernized, it seemed to strangle on its own novelty. Scarborough had sensibly remained unchanged, and even its entertainments were antique. It was praised for having good theater, notably Alan Ayckbourne's playhouse — Mr. Ayckbourne was a local resident. But live plays were nothing new in a seaside resort — they were as old a virtue as the music halls and the bandstand concerts, and the end-of-the-pier shows.

At the Floral Hall on the clifftop above North Bay I went to see An Evening of Viennese Operetta, put on by the Scarborough Light Opera Society. The English were such brave and unembarrassed amateurs! They loved graceful waltzers, the ladies in ball gowns, the men in tuxedos; perfumed tits, violins, and gliding feet.

"The year is 1850—and Vienna is the city of dreams," John Beagle said as the curtain rose, and the violins swelled under the baton of Gordon Truefitt.

It was "The Blue Danube"! Two pairs of dancers, Maureen Bosomworth and Albert Marston, and the Pobgees — Elizabeth and Malcolm — swept across the floor. Die Fledermaus was next, Eunice Cockburn singing "The Laughing Song." And there was more: Gypsy songs, polkas, more violins. "My Hero," "The Gold and Silver Waltz," "Girls Were Made to Love and Kiss" ("And who am I to interfere with this?") and Maureen Bosomworth changed her gown for every new number. They ran through Franz Lehar, and then we had Sigmund Romberg's "Golden Days" and selections from "The Dancing Years" by Ivor Novello. The hall was full. "You Are My Heart's Delight" brought forth grateful applause, and the selections from Bitter Sweet, especially "I'll See You Again" ("Whenever spring breaks through again") had people wiping tears away.

It was old hat and corny, but it was done with such attention and energy that it was effective. It was the essence of the place itself: Scarborough was a success because it had stayed old-fashioned.

No one swam at such places. "Let's look round the shops," people said. They milled around until four and then treated themselves to "a meat tea." Or they roamed the gardens at the Spa. They chased their children on the sand and encouraged each other to buy ice cream cones, which they called "cornets." They went to the matinées and saw in the flesh their favorite television stars — that fat comedian, that Cockney magician, that man who sang "There'll Always Be an England" so beautifully; the drag artist who did "Mother Goose."

But mostly the seaside resort was tor sitting in the sunshine, reading something really lurid in the gutter press. Today it was the shooting of the Mad Killer. He had been tracked to Malton, only twenty miles away; he was found crouching in a shed near the tennis club; he was heading for the Malton police station — it was going to be part of what the papers called his "murder spree." He was asked to surrender, and when he refused, he was shot as he lay-in the shed.

An elderly clay-pigeon champion had been watching the police close in. This was John Blades. "I just hoped he would go onto the tennis courts," Mr. Blades said. "I could have shot him between the eyes from two hundred yards, and that's just what I wanted to do." Chris Burr was putting milk bottles out when he heard shots. He said, "It was just like the Alamo out there Really frightening. When it was all over, one policeman said to me, 'He had a ton of lead inside him.'"

This I gathered from a Daily Mail handed to me by Phyllis Barmby, who shared a bench overlooking Clarence Gardens. She was glad the Mad Killer had been gunned down. If they had arrested him, he probably would have got a flipping suspended sentence. Ordinarily she didn't believe in capital punishment, but this lad was a nasty piece of work and deserved everything he got. She was not angry. You could tell she was pleased. The Mad Killer business, and its satisfying conclusion, was just the thing for a breezy day on the Front at Scarborough.