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

But King's Lynn was a habitable place and patchily pretty, and it had hopes. The King's Lynn Festival would be starting soon. The brochures promised eight concerts, five orchestras, a jazz band, several plays, poetry readings, numerous movies, and puppet shows. And although it was some miles from the coast — if the Wash could be called the coast — it had the air of a seaport, and the same Dutchness I had sensed in Lincolnshire.

Five railway lines had met at King's Lynn, where there was now one — and it was strike-bound. It was marshy along the shore to Hunstanton. So I took the bus to the top of the Norfolk coast, Wells-next-the-Sea. It was such a tame landscape of meadows and thin woods that it looked like Wimbledon Common for forty miles. Wells and its neighbor, Stiffkey, were famous for their cockles. I walked at the edge of the salt marsh and had some cockles for lunch. They were salty and had the texture of lumps of underdone pasta. Stiffkey had once had a rector at its church who had scandalized—"thrilled" was probably a more apt word — English society by trying to reform prostitutes. I stopped at a public house in Stiffkey to ask about this notorious clergyman, but before I could introduce the subject, the barman (Fred Watmough) began talking about trains. He said there was one at Weybourne that ran to Sheringham, and it was running.

"What about the strike?"

Mr. Watmough said, "This is a private line. They call it 'the Poppy Line.' Very pretty."

I walked to Weybourne, almost ten miles. But Weybourne was no more than a hamlet — flinty cottages, a square-towered church, and a lovely windmill. A small sign said north Norfolk railway and pointed up a country lane. That was another mile, between pines and pastures, and then Weybourne Station.

"The last train — the last proper train — left here in 1964, traveling from Melton Constable to Great Yarmouth," Mr. Winch said. Mr. Winch was a volunteer on the North Norfolk Railway. "And now Melton Constable is just a little village in the middle of nowhere."

"And if you said you wanted to take the train to Great Yarmouth, people would probably laugh," I said.

"In actual fact," Mr. Winch said, "you can't get there from here."

We sat on the platform, watching the poppies tossing in the wind.

Mr. Winch said, "All they'll have left in a few years will be the big intercity routes. King's Lynn won't be on the map. Neither will Cromer or Great Yarmouth or Lowestoft."

"How will people get around?"

He said, "By car. And if they don't drive, they'll live in cities."

"Everyone can't live in the cities," I said.

"Correct," he said. "How's that for a game of soldiers?"

Then he stood up.

"They'll be diddling. Fiddle-faddling," he said. "But they won't get anywhere."

I said, "Buses aren't the answer."

Mr. Winch was looking at the oncoming train. He said, "Buses aren't even a good question. You go to a bus station and ask how to get to Swaffam. And they say, 'Go to Fakenham. You'll probably get a connection there.' They don't even have timetables."

I wanted to say Yes, it's like South America, but I decided not to. And yet Mr. Winch would probably have agreed with me. In a self-critical mood the English could be brutal.

And so I boarded the train. The North Norfolk Railway was a preserved line. It went three miles, to Sheringham, at a donkey trot. People snapped pictures of the engine and smiled admiringly at it. It was the railway buffs who were helping to dismantle British Railways. Their nostalgia was dangerous, since they hankered for the past and were never happier than when they were able to turn an old train into a toy. The commuter who spent two hours a day on the suburban train going to and from his place of work was very seldom a railway buff.

Rosalie and Hugh Mutton collected preserved railways. They had been on the Romney, Hythe, and Dymchurch; the Ravenglass; all the Welsh lines; and more. They loved steam. They would drive hundreds of miles in their Ford Escort to take a steam train. They were members of a steam railway preservation society. They lived in Luton. This one reminded them of the line in Shepton Mallet.

Then Mrs. Mutton said, "Where's your casual top?"

"I don't have a casual top in brown, do I," Mr. Mutton said.

"Why are you wearing brown?"

Mr. Mutton said, "I can't wear blue all the time, can I."

Rhoda Gauntlett was at the window. She said, "That sea looks so lovely. And that grass. It's a golf course."

We looked at the golf course — Sheringham, so soon.

"I'd get confused going round a golf course," Mrs. Mutton said. "You walk bloody miles. How do you know which way to go?"

This was the only train in Britain today, the fifteen-minute ride from Weybourne. It was sunny in Sheringham — a thousand people on the sandy beach, but only two people in the water.

There were three old ladies walking along the Promenade. They had strong country accents, probably Norfolk. I could never place these burrs and haws.

"I should have worn my blooming hat."

"The air's fresh, but it's making my eyes water."

"We can look round Woolworth's after we've had our tea."

It was a day at the seaside, and then back to their cottages in Great Snoring. They were not like the others, who had come to sit behind canvas windbreaks ("eighty pence per day or any portion thereof') and read FOUR KILLED BY RUNAWAY LORRY or WIFE KILLER GIVEN THREE YEARS (she had taunted him about money; he did not earn much; he bashed her brains out with a hammer; "You've: suffered enough," the judge said) or BLUNDESTON CHILD BATTERED (bruised tot with broken leg; "He fell off a chair," the mother said; one year, pending psychiatric report). They crouched on the groynes, smoking cigarettes. They lay in the bright sunshine wearing raincoats. They stood in their bathing suits. Their skin was the veiny white of raw sausage casings.

The tide was out, so I walked to Cromer along the sand. The crumbly yellow-dirt cliffs were like the banks of a quarry, high and scooped out and raked vertically by erosion. Halfway between Sheringham and Cromer there were no people, because, characteristically, the English never strayed far from their cars, and even the most crowded parts of the English coast were empty between the parking lots. Only one man was here, Collie Wylie, a rock collector. He was hacking amber-colored tubes out of the chalk slabs on the shore. Belamites, he called them. "Take that one," he said. "Now that one is between five and eight million years old."

I saw a pillbox down the beach. It had once been on top of the cliff, and inside it the men from "Dads' Army" had conned for Germans. "Jerry would love to catch us on the hop." But the soft cliffs were constantly falling, and the pillbox had slipped a hundred feet and was now sinking into the sand, a cute little artifact from the war, buried to its gunholes.

I came to Cromer. An old man in a greasy coat sat on a wooden groyne on the beach, reading a comic book about war in outer space.

***

Seaside Special '82 was playing at the Pavilion Theatre, at the end of the pier at Cromer. It was the summer show, July to September, every day except Sunday, and two matinées. I had not gone to any of these end-of-the-pier shows. I was nearing the end of my circular tour, so I decided to stay in Cromer and see the show. I found a hotel. Cromer was very empty. It had a sort of atrophied charm, a high round-shouldered Edwardian look, red brick terraces and red brick hotels and the loudest seagulls in Norfolk.

There were not more than thirty people in the audience that night at the Pavilion Theatre, which was pathetic, because there were nine people in the show. But seeing the show was like observing England's secret life — its anxiety in the dismal jokes, its sadness in the old songs.