by Paul Theroux
There were four elderly people in this carriage. One was reading a paper with the headline MY BATTLE WITH DRUGS. Another old person had been saying as I passed, "It was one of those merciful releases—" There were three families, parents and children, neatly dressed for their outing. A bang outside brought a young woman squinting to the window, and her expression said: It sounded like a car backfiring—but that was what they always said about dangerous explosions these days. A little girl was laughing and gasping and holding a bottle of Tizer: "It went down the wrong way!"
An Englishman across the aisle did an extraordinary thing for an Englishman. He asked me a question.
He said, "Walking?"
I was dressed for it—knapsack, all-purpose leather jacket, oily hiking shoes—and (because we were approaching the coast) I had my map unfolded. I was obviously a foreigner, which made his question a safe one. Class-consciousness tended to keep the English rather watchful and buttoned-up. But this was a Bank Holiday train to Margate. Class was hardly an issue here.
Yes, I said, I was walking and also riding, depending on the weather.
"The weather's been letting us down," he said. The weather in England was not a neutral topic. It was full of personification; it involved struggle and conflict. It could be wayward or spiteful, and then people said, "It's been trying to rain all day." Or it could be toiling on your behalf: "The sun's been trying to come out." Or, as the man said, it could be lazy and selfish; it could let you down. People imagined British weather to be something like the British character: it was a British-like miasma up there, hovering and doing things to you.
We talked about the weather, this miasma. The man shared the English relief that spring had come. It had been a hard snowy winter; the country had seized up. So this was the annual gift, but it was unimaginable. It was impossible to anticipate the beauty of springtime in England. It was sudden, mild, fragrant, and full of color—magic rising out of the mud.
Then he said, "American?"
"Yes," I said, but did not elaborate. I said, "I've always wanted to go to Margate."
"You should go to Canterbury instead."
They always said that, the natives. They sent you to traipse around the sights—the ruins, the churches, the hot streets—and they went to a simple lovely place and had a beer under a tree.
"Full of history," he was saying. "Lovely town, beautiful old cathedral. You could change at Sittingbourne."
No, I thought. No sightseeing; no cathedrals, no castles, no churches, no museums. I wanted to examine the particularities of the present.
I said, "Where are you going?"
I guessed that his name was Norman Mould. It was one of my small talents to be able to tell a person's name by looking at him. Those old people up front—they were the Touchmores. The little girl drinking the Tizer—Judith Memery. The man behind the Express —Roger Cockpole. And so forth.
Mr. Mould said, "Ramsgate," and that was the first indication I had had—his flicker of satisfaction and his willingness with the word and the way he said it, "Ramsgit"—that Ramsgate was probably posher than Margate. But I also thought: That's another reason I don't want to go to Canterbury, Norman. I want to go where everyone else is going.
"It's like this Falklands business," Mr. Mould was saying, but now he was talking to the woman next to him, his wife, Nancy Mould, who was reading a newspaper.
In the next few weeks that was to be a common phrase. Politics would come up, or sometimes it was race or religion, and then someone would say, It's like this Falklands business...
The war had not yet started. The Falklands had been overrun by Argentine troops, and British ships had encircled the islands and had declared an exclusion zone for a radius of two hundred miles. No shots had been fired, no men had been killed; there was little news. Most people assumed this was bluster and bluff and counter-bluff, and that after a period of time the Argentines would climb down. Two nights before this, the American President had smiled at a British journalist on a BBC telecast and said, "I don't see why there should be any fighting over that ice-cold bunch of rocks down there."
Mr. Mould, across the aisle, had turned away from me. Our conversation had ended, and now I saw why: he was eating. He had taken out a bag of sandwiches and a thermos jug, and he and his wife had covered their laps with the newspaper (BRITISH CONVOY IN WAR READINESS OFF FALKLANDS) and were sharing lunch. The English become intensely private and rather silent when they eat; their gestures are guarded and economical and precise. They are tidy and self-conscious. Suddenly, eating, they are alone.
It was then that the door at the end of the car banged open and I heard the tramp of heavy boots and laughter and shouts.
"I fucking will do 'im if he don't fank me next time!"
"You fucking won't, you wally!"
"Fuck off—I will!"
They were loud—earsplitting—but the picnicking English people across the aisle, and the elderly people, and each young family in its own pew, did not hear a thing. The picnickers went on eating in their tidy way, and everyone else became silent and small.
"—because I fucking said I would!"
I had seen their heads at Chatham passing by the windows of this car. I hoped they would move on to another car, and they had. But they were loud and violent and could not sit still, and now that we were past Gillingham ("...the headquarters of the religious sect known as the Jezreelites, or the New and Latter House of Israel"), they had entered this car. There were seven of them. They called themselves Skinheads.
Their heads were egglike—completely hairless. But it was not baldness, there was no shine; they were pale gray shaved domes, with the bright white snail tracks of scars tagged over them. It was the size of the heads that I found alarming. A head without any hair is a small thing. It can look like a knob with eyes and ears. A human being is changed remarkably by hairlessness: the appearance is hardened and the person looks insectile and dangerous. They had tattoos on their heads, small symbols and words, and tattoos on their earlobes, and earrings. They were dressed identically in short leather bomber jackets, with a T-shirt underneath. The backs of their hands were tattooed. The Union Jack was the commonest tattoo among them. They wore very tight dungarees that were a bit too short, the cuffs reaching the tops of vicious high-laced boots. The boots were shiny; these boys were oddly clean; their faces were very white.
"Look at that fucking bloke out there—what a silly cunt—"
"'ey, leave off, you fucking wally!"
They were frolicking on the seats, thumping each other and still shouting. Mr. and Mrs. Mould were drinking tea out of plastic mugs.
"The long-range forecast called for fine weather," one of the Touchmores whispered.
Then, behind me, I heard, "Daddy—" It was a child's small voice: Dud-day.
"Please, darling, I'm reading."
"Daddy, why—"
"Yes, darling?"
"Daddy, why are those men saying 'fuck off'?"
"I don't know, darling. Now do please let me read my paper."
His voice was nervous, as if he had been holding his breath. I had certainly been holding mine. The seven Skinheads had disturbed the Sunday peace of this jogging train; they had brought uneasiness to the car. They were fooling, but their fooling was violent and their language was terrible and reckless. I am sure that everyone else in the car was paying close attention to our progress along the line. We had passed Sittingbourne and Faversham and were headed toward Whitstable.
"There, Daddy, they just said it again. 'Fucking hell.'"
"Hush, darling. There's a good girl."
"And that one said fuck, too."
"That's enough, darling." The man's voice was very subdued. He did not want anyone to hear. But he was just behind me, and his daughter was next to him—she could not have been more than five or six. I caught a glimpse of her. I was sure her name was Sharon.
"Daddy—"
Dud-day.
"—why don't they put them off the tr
ain?"
The man did not reply to this. He probably would not have been heard, in any case. The Skinheads were screaming and running in the aisle—one had the word Skins tattooed on his neck—and one little Skinhead, a boy of about thirteen, also tattooed and shaven and wearing an earring, was yelling, "You fucking cunt, I'll fucking kill you!" and kicking at another Skinhead, who was older and bigger and laughing at this little infuriated Skin.
Heme Bay had a reputation for riffraff, but the Skinheads did not get off at Heme Bay. They were still swearing and kicking the seats and pushing each other as we pulled out of Heme Bay. And at Birchington-on-Sea ("grave of D. G. Rossetti, d. 1882, memorial window in the church"), one Skinhead screamed, "I'll fucking kill you right now for saying vat!"
They had been an awful irruption, and they had brought a sense of terror to the car. Such language, such fighting! The day was damp-gray and peaceful, but these monkey-faced boys with their tattoos and their tiny heads had made it frightening. And all the while, the decent English people with lowered heads and mugs of tea were pretending that nothing was happening; and the Skinheads were behaving as if no one else existed—as if they were alone in the railway car. In that sense they were very English Skinheads.
We came to Margate. The Skinheads pushed to the door and fought their way out. Then we got out, politely—no, you first, I insist. None of us was harmed, but I think most of us would have said it was unsettling, the way you feel with drunks on board, or crazy people. We had felt threatened. I had meant to describe our progress to the coast, and when I had seen the mist over the Cooling Marshes I had wanted to recall the opening chapters of Great Expectations. It was too late for that. It was so hard to remember Dickens or Merrie England or "this scepter'd isle" or the darling buds of May so near to seven roaring Skinheads. All I could think was: "We will fight them on the beaches..."
***
The Skinheads had come to the coast at Margate to fight. There was something nasty and purposeful about them. Everywhere, those tiny heads on big shoulders and the clumping of their jackboots. Their enemies were the Mods. Mods wore knee-length army coats and crash helmets, and they rode motor scooters. They buzzed up and down the Promenade. The Skinheads gathered across the Promenade from the amusement arcade called "Dreamland," in a little park, several hundred of them—all those shaven heads.
It was bleak and cold, and the wind pressed from the leaden-colored Channel. I kept reminding myself that it was the first of May. But there was a holiday crowd at Margate, too, milling around, toting children, wearing hats that said Kiss Me Quick—Squeeze Me Tight.
On Margate Sands I went for a stroll and then looked back at the town, at all the boardinghouses jammed tightly on the terraces like plaster prizes on the shelf of the coconut shy, VACANCIES signs in the empty windows, and canned laughter and real shrieks from Dreamland, and Indian families walking in groups of twelve on Marine Parade, and the Skinheads and seagulls and Mods in helmets, and the broken fingernails of their dirty hands, and scores of policemen, and the low sky and the dank foreshore and the dark corrugated water of the North Sea, and a pop song playing, Kick it—Kick it to death. I could connect nothing with nothing.
Some people wore summer clothes in a hopeful goose-pimpled way, but most were warmly dressed. I saw a number of people wearing scarves and gloves. Mittens in May! There were about ten people standing on the sandy beach, but no one was swimming. They were peering at an oil slick that was a smooth puddle in the sea. On the seawall there were scribbles saying WASTED YOUTH and ANARCHY! and NAZIS ARE THE MASTER RACE. There were rain showers in the east, over the water, tall gray verticals hanging closely like wet towels on a line. It was no day for the seaside, and yet no one looked disappointed. Ten minutes later, when it started to drizzle, no one ran for cover.
Margate had never been fashionable. It had never even been nice. It had become a watering place because doctors in the eighteenth century believed that sea water was healthful—not only sitting in it or swimming, but also washing in it and especially drinking it, preferably in the morning. It was the quest for good health that brought people to Margate and later to Brighton. It was the making of the British seaside resort, not only the notion that sea air was a sexual excitant—this may be true—but also that sea water was good for the bowels: "A pint is commonly sufficient in grown persons to give them three or four sharp stools."
The first bathing machine in the world appeared at Margate. It was a changing room on wheels and, pushed a little distance into the sea, it preserved a prudish swimmer's modesty. Books about sea water and health became best sellers. In 1791, the Royal Sea-Bathing Infirmary was founded on the western cliffs of Margate. But nothing improved the tone of the place. In 1824, a traveler wrote, "From an obscure fishing village, Margate, in the course of little more than half a century, has risen into a well-frequented, if not fashionable, watering-place." A hundred years later, Baedeker's Great Britain described Margate as "one of the most popular, though not one of the most fashionable watering-places in England." So it had always been crummy and Cockneyfied, just like this; people down from London for the day shunting back and forth on the Front in the cold rain, and walking their dogs and gloomily fishing and looking at each other.
I had thought of staying. I'll find a boardinghouse, I thought, and spend the rest of the day milling around and watching the progress of the gang fight between the Skinheads and the Mods. I'll have fish and chips and a stick of Margate rock and a pint of beer. Tomorrow, after a big English breakfast, I'll sling on my knapsack and set off for Broadstairs and Ramsgate and Sandwich, along the coastal path.
The Skinheads had started scuffling, pulling the Mods off their motor scooters. The policemen went after them with raised truncheons. I had no stomach for this. And did I have to spend the night here to confirm what I could easily predict? I was repelled by the tough ugly youths, the aimless people, the nasty music, the stink of frying, the gusts of violence. I decided not to stay. Why should I suffer a bad night in a dreary place just to report on my suffering? I wanted to see the whole coast in a fairly good mood. So I kept walking; I strolled down Marine Parade, past the ruined pier, and I climbed out of Margate in the rain that cold May afternoon and started my tour around the kingdom's coast.
2. An Evening Train to Deal
WHEN I HAD
seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
and compared it to the way some birdbrains kicked the yellow chalk cliffs apart, broke them like crockery and threw the shards onto the Promenade, I concluded that man did more damage than the tides. Outside Margate, the cliffs were broken, and initials and names and dates gouged into them; they had been hacked and scorched. This was the result of the boisterous spirits of the roaming gangs that visited the town and found there was not enough to do there. They also wrote with the chalk: MADNESS, it said on the Promenade—it was homage to a pop group—and PUNX and I WANT TO SKREW YOU.
I climbed some stairs that passed through a "gate"—a cut—in the chalk cliffs and then walked along the path at the top to Cliftonville. This was a sedate suburb of Margate, full of small damp bungalows and ragged sparrows. A hawk flew slowly near the edge of the cliff, and gulls nagged nearer the sea. It was not quiet, what with the gulls and the surf sighing and the wind scraping the hedges, but it was noisy in a peaceful way.
Many signs said DANGEROUS CLIFFS and warned walkers not to go too close to the edge. The chalk was collapsing, and I could see that large bluffs had toppled to the shore. It reminded me that in the few coastal parts of Britain where I had hiked, there had been signs warning of breaking cliffs and unsafe paths. What I had seen of the Dorset coast was slipping into the Channel: portions of pasture land and meadows had fallen, and the fences had gone with them in a tangle of posts and wire. These chalk cliffs of Kent—so white and sturdy when seen from a distance—were frail and friable, and this coast made Britain seem like a country consisting of stale cake that softened and bro
ke in the rain.
The rain was patchy. I saw through its drapes two blind men—one black, one white—being led along the path by two sighted ladies. The black man said, "Just how wide is it?" The white one said, "The dogs need a little space to play." A pair of dogs trotted behind this party, and the men tapped their canes as they went past me. Farther on, I heard music. It was "We'll Gather Lilacs in the Spring Again," being played by a man seated at an organ in an open-air amphitheater. The wind whipped at the folding chairs around him and made their canvas flutter and flap. There were more than five hundred chairs, and all of them were empty. The man went on playing and pulling out stops while the chairs flapped under the gray sky. I continued down the path, along the cloud-mottled water of the sea, and on this drab afternoon I heard a nightingale singing in a hedge. "The nightingale sings of adulterous wrong." T. S. Eliot was here having a mild nervous breakdown in 1921, staying at the Albemarle Hotel right over there in Cliftonville.
The sun came out as I walked along the North Foreland, past Kingsgate with its small pretty cove and its modern castle on one bluff, and a handsome lighthouse like a white peppermill just behind it on a higher point of land. There were cooing doves in the trees, and the high box hedges of the big houses were like fortifications.
Only four miles from Margate and it was the England of fresh paint and flower gardens and tall chimneys. And there was a clearer intimation of this area's respectability: the road smelled of private schools—it was a certain kind of soap and a certain kind of cooking and the sound of young voices and laughter coming from the open windows of large rooms. An hour ago it had been Skinheads and chip shops and rain on Margate Sands, and now this breezy bourgeois headland in bright sunshine, as I approached Broadstairs. I thought: Mexico is one landscape—one visible thing—and all of Arabia is one thing; but I began to suspect that every mile of England was different.
