The Kingdom by the Sea

by Paul Theroux

  I was setting out to have lunch at Fowey, and I planned to walk on to Par, where there was a railway junction. The grass on this path was wet with mist and dew, and before I had gone half a mile my shoes were soaked, in spite of the oil I had put on them in Looe.

  This was the softer side of Cornwall, damper and greener than the north coast, which was pounded by the Atlantic. The whole cliff was green, from the top to the sea, full of ivy and meadow grass and brambles. The cliffs of Cornwall were depicted always as rocky, like ruined castles and castle walls. "I like Cornwall very much. It is not England," D. H. Lawrence wrote. "It is bare and dark and elemental ... bare and sad under a level sky." He meant the other coast, the Cornish stereotype of black headlands on a choppy sea, and charming desolation. But here on the path to Fowey the cliffs were like steep meadows. The bramble bushes and the gorse made a mild reflection in the water; the trailing ivy gave a delicacy to the sea; and the foliage muffled the wind. The air was sweetened by all this greenery, and the fragrance of the rain was emphasized by its soft stutter on the grass. There was nothing elemental here, thank God.

  Two battered old ladies appeared on the path, tramping toward me out of the gorse—Miss Brace and Miss Badcock. They were half-naked, leathery, and terrifying in halters and faded shorts, and though it was cool on these cliffs, they were perspiring. Old ladies in skimpy clothes could look defenseless. These two looked formidable—rather plump and plain and dauntless, with lined faces, and varicose veins standing out on their calves like thongs. They were very brown. They carried walking sticks with spiked tips. One had a bright patch on her shorts saying Bad-Gastein. They were Ramblers, they said, and then, as if to prove it, said they had walked here from Land's End.

  "And we 'aven't tooched pooblic transport," Miss Brace said. Her rucksack must have weighed a hundred pounds. She had the tent; Miss Badcock had the cooking gear—you could hear the clink of the skillet.

  Miss Badcock said, "'ow mooch does your knapsack weigh?"

  Northerners. I said, "Not much." They plumped it with their hands and weighed it and laughed, taking me for a twinkie.

  "We've got spare shoes," Miss Badcock said.

  "Let's go, Vera," Miss Brace said. And she explained to me. "We're in a hoora to find accommodation in Polperro."

  I said, "Polperro is full of hotels."

  "We want a youth hostel," Miss Brace said.

  A youth hostel? They were each well over sixty—Miss Badcock looked closer to seventy. I could see Miss Badcock's navel.

  They had walked a hundred and fifteen miles since last Thursday. Had they seen anything interesting?

  Miss Brace said, "We 'ad soom nice coves and bays. We 'ad soom nice villages. We joost walk by."

  Miss Badcock said, "We don't stop mooch."

  They asked me where I was going. I said, "To Fowey and then to Par today."

  Miss Brace said, "It's a canny little step."

  A canny little step was similar to a fair old trot. Why didn't the English ever use the word "far"?

  We went our separate ways, and now it began to rain. Miss Brace had said that was the reason they were so scantily dressed—because of the rain: fewer clothes to get wet, and they dried quicker. I had been ashamed to say that I had a hooded plastic raincoat. I now put it on and walked around Lantivet Bay and on to Lantic Bay, where the water was wonderfully marbled with sea foam, the white veiny effect heightened by the luminous blue-green water, which was flat and gleaming.

  Toward lunchtime I walked around Blackbottle Rock and into the village of Polruan. This village was so tiny, and its roads so narrow, a sign to the entrance of the village said: "Vehicular Access to Village Prohibited for Day Visitors 10am-6pm."

  It was strange, the way some of these villages were protected. Polruan was sealed off: no traffic. But people still lived there, taking refuge in their small houses and the distant past. And visitors parked up the road and wandered around, peering through cottage windows and remarking on the cobblestones.

  There was a ferry from Polruan to Fowey, across Fowey Harbour. The ferry sign said:

  Adults 25p

  Children 25p

  Dogs 12p

  Pram 12p

  Cycle 25p

  All these villages looked better from the water, face-on like Fowey from its ferry, with all their watching windows and all the peeling paint and storm damage. Fowey was perpendicular, built around the rock shelves of the steep harbor, and the houses were faded and stately. At the head of the harbor was a green wedge of woods and the emptying Fowey River, and at the harbor mouth high battlements in ruins. Fowey had been a harbor from ancient times. It looked an excellent place to start a long voyage, because it was a beautiful settled place, like a serene lakeside village.

  I had my lunch—a sandwich—on the cliff at the west side of the harbor and, startling the wrens in the hedges, set off again. I walked at the margins of pastures, on the cliff edges above the sea, and around coves to a headland called the Gribbin, where there was a candy-striped beacon—a marker for sailors. From this height I could see St. Austell, and Par sprinkled at the head of St. Austell Bay, and twenty miles of coast—mountainous heaps of china-clay refuse, and Black Head, and the whole of dark blue Mevagissey Bay as far as Dodman Point. The distant rocks in the sea were called the Gwinges.

  One of the pleasures of traveling that fractured coast was a vista like this. The irregularity of the English coast offered unusually long views, and these heights helped. A vantage point like the Gribbin made this part of Cornwall look like a topographical map with raised features in bright colors—the best views were always like dazzling maps. And in contrast to the sea, there were the reassuring pastures: on one side the cows and bees and sheep and slate walls and the smell of manure, and on the other side the gulls and cormorants and the whiff of salt spray—and these were mingled. The gulls crossed into the pastures, the crows strutted on the sand, and the smells of muck and salt were mingled, too.

  I walked on. Under the trees above Polkerris, which was a small harbor and beach, there was a cool shade and a rich aroma—a whole acre of wild garlic.

  Par was small and ugly—a china-clay factory wrapped around half its bay, and the other half a clutter of caravans and broken-down shallys. Rising behind this miserable beach were long terraces of hollow-eyed houses. Factory effluent had stained the water. I had been heading for Par all day, but instead of stopping I walked through the town to the station and caught the train that crossed the narrow part of Cornwall.

  This branch-line train from Par to Newquay was a delight. We were heading west, and the bright sun was propped just above the horizon. I took the seat behind the driver, in the first carriage, and slipped my wet shoes off. There was nothing in the world more restful than an English branch-line train—it seemed like the highest stage of civilization. Nothing was disturbed by it, or spoiled; it did not alter the landscape; it was the machine in the garden, but it was a gentle machine. It was fast and economical and as safe as a vehicle could possibly be.

  Mr. Kemp, the conductor, said, "When I took over this train they said they were going to close the line. That was eighteen years ago! They're still saying it, but they haven't done it yet."

  But of course they would eventually, because they had closed down a hundred others just like it, all over the country. I suggested this to Mr. Kemp.

  He said, "I'll be retired by then. But it'll be a shame if they close it. It's a beautiful line!"

  We went through a green corridor of sunlit trees and sparkling leaves to Luxulyan. And then the landscape became stony and rather bruised-looking, as the interior of Cornwall often appeared. The hills of rubbish from the china-clay factories looked like pyramids—thick, broadbottomed, and sprawling across treeless plateaus—so that the effect was that of a lost city, as empty and geometric as any Aztec ruin. This was not far from the tiny village of Bugle.

  The scars and eruptions—I supposed they were mines—showed clearly on the long low hills falling away
from Roche. I heard someone referring to "barrows," but didn't know whether he meant the china-clay pyramids or the ancient burial mounds in the distance. The train passed under a number of small stone bridges. They were old and solid and symmetrical and looked both Chinese and ecclesiastical to me, but as I was thinking this a man behind me named R. L. Justice began explaining to his friend Maurice that this was Victorian railway architecture. It still looked Chinese and ecclesiastical.

  Most of the people on this train—about sixty of them—were on what they called a "whist holiday," having traveled most of the day from Wolverhampton. I asked what a whist holiday was. It was three days of whist in a hotel at Newquay—just cards, in the lounge, while the Atlantic smashed against the coast. It was quite nice, really, they said. It made a change. They did it every year, taking advantage of the low-season prices. They were old and rather sweet and softly talkative.

  Then there came a loud, deaf-lady's voice. It was one of the widows, Mrs. Buttress. "You see, they're Indian extracts!" she said. "Yes, extracts! From Africa! But they're very refined! And as far as their English is concerned, they could be dark-colored English people. They come from a very well-to-do family. And they're so polite! They are very kind to me, always bringing me things—the loveliest shawl! Sometimes it's food. Well, the food is interesting but you wouldn't want to make a whole meal of it, would you? I never comment on the food, but their fabrics are really quite fine. Now their child is car-mad! Their first names are impossible, but their surname is easy. It's Baden. An Indian name. But it's easy to remember, because it's like Baden-Powell!"

  The train swung around the back of Newquay, which was so thickly piled against the coast, it had displaced the cliffs with three miles of hotels and boardinghouses.

  ***

  About a half-hour after arriving in Newquay I was sitting in a parlor, a dog chewing my shoe, and having a cup of tea with Florence Puttock ("I said leave that shoe alone!"), who was telling me about the operation on her knee. It was my mention of walking that brought up the subject of feet, legs, knees, and her operation. And the television was on—there was a kind of disrespect these days in not turning it on for Falklands news. And Queenie, the other Peke, had a tummy upset. And Mrs. Puttock's cousin Bill hadn't rung all day—he usually rang just after lunch. And Donald Puttock, who lisped and was sixty-one—he had taken early retirement because of his back—Donald was watching the moving arrows on the Falklands map and listening to Florence talking about ligaments, and he said, "I spent me 'ole life in 'ornchurch."

  Somehow, I was home.

  But it was not my home. I had burrowed easily into this cozy privacy, and I could leave any time I wished. I had made the choice, for the alternatives in most seaside towns were a hotel, or a guest house, or a bed-and-breakfast place. This last alternative always tempted me, but I had to feel strong to do it right. A bed-and-breakfast place was a bungalow, usually on a suburban street some distance from the Front and the Promenade and the hotels. It was impossible to enter such a house and not feel you were interrupting a domestic routine—something about Florence's sewing and Donald's absurd slippers. The house always smelled of cooking and disinfectant, but most of all it smelled of in-laws.

  It was like every other bungalow on the street, except for one thing. This one had a sign in the window, saying vacancies. I had the impression that this was the only expense in starting such an establishment. You went over to Maynards and bought a vacancies sign, and then it was simply a matter of airing out the spare bedroom. Soon, an odd man would show up—knapsack, leather jacket, oily hiker's shoes—and spend an evening listening to the householders' stories of the high cost of living, or the greatness of Bing Crosby, or a particularly painful operation. The English, the most obsessively secretive people in their day-to-day living, would admit you to the privacy of their homes, and sometimes even unburden themselves, for just £5. "I've got an awful lot on my plate at the moment," Mrs. Spackle would say. ("There's Bert's teeth, the Hoover's packed up, and my Enid thinks she's in a family way..." When it was late, and everyone else in bed, the woman you knew as Mrs. Garlick would pour you a schooner of cream sherry, say "Call me Ida," and begin to tell you about her amazing birthmark.

  Bed and breakfast was always vaguely amateur, the woman of the house saying she did it because she liked to cook, and could use a little extra cash ("money for jam"), and she liked company, and their children were all grown up, and the house was rather empty and echoey. The whole enterprise of bed and breakfast was carried on by the woman, but done with a will, because she was actually getting paid for doing her normal household chores. No special arrangements were required. At its best it was like a perfect marriage; at its worst it was like a night with terrible in-laws. Usually I was treated with a mixture of shyness and suspicion; but that was traditional English hospitality—wary curiosity and frugal kindness.

  The English required guests to be uncomplaining, and most of the lower-middle-class people who ran bed-and-breakfast places were intolerant of a guest's moaning, and they thought—with some justification—that they had in their lives suffered more than that guest. "During the war," they always began, and I knew I was about to lose the argument in the face of some evidence of terrible hardship. During the war, Donald Puttock was buzz-bombed by the Germans as he crouched under his small staircase in Hornchurch, and, as he often said, he was lucky to be alive.

  I told him I was traveling around the coast.

  "Just what we did!" Mr. Puttock said. He and Florence had driven from Kent to Cornwall in search of a good place to live. They had stopped in all the likely places. Newquay was the best. They would stay here until they died. If they moved at all (Florence wanted fewer bedrooms), it would be down the road.

  "Course, the local people 'ere 'ate us," Mr. Puttock said, cheerfully.

  "Donald got his nose bitten off the other day by a Cornishman," Mrs. Puttock said. "Still hasn't got over it."

  "I don't give a monkey's," Mr. Puttock said.

  Later, Mrs. Puttock said that she had always wanted to do bed and breakfast. She wasn't like some of them, she said, who made their guests leave the house after breakfast and stay away all day—some of these people you saw in the bus shelter, they weren't waiting for the number fifteen; they were bed-and-breakfast people, killing time. It was bed-and-breakfast etiquette to stay quietly out of the house all day, even if it was raining.

  Mrs. Puttock gave me a card she had had printed. It listed the attractions of her house.

  • TV Lounge

  • Access to rooms at all times

  • Interior-sprung mattresses

  • Free parking space on premises

  • Free shower available

  • Separate tables

  The lounge was the Puttocks' parlor, the parking space was their driveway, the shower, was a shower, and the tables tables. This described their house, which was identical with every other bungalow in Newquay.

  I was grateful for the bed-and-breakfast places. At ten-thirty, after the Falklands news (and now every night there was "Falklands Special"), while we were all a bit dazed by the violence and the speculation and Mr. Puttock was saying "The Falklands look like bloody Bodmin Moor, but I suppose we have to do something," Mrs. Puttock would say to me, "Care for a hot drink?" When she was in the kitchen making Ovaltine, Mr. Puttock and I were talking baloney about the state of the world. I was grateful, because to me this was virgin territory—a whole house open to my prying eyes: books, pictures, postcard messages, souvenirs, and opinions. I especially relished looking at family photographs. "That's us at the Fancy Dress Ball in Romford just after the war ... That's our cat, Monty ... That's me in a bathing costume..." My intentions were honorable but my instincts were nosy, and I went sniffing from bungalow to bungalow to discover how those people lived.

  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."