by Paul Theroux
“Yes, it is true, nearly everything at Butlin’s is free!” the brochure said.
But what most of the people were doing was not free. They were feeding coins into fruit machines and one-armed bandits in the Fun Room. They were playing pinball. They were also shopping for stuffed toys and curios, or buying furs in the Fur Shop, or getting their hair done at the Hair-dressing Salon. They were eating. The place had four fish-and-chip shops. There were tea shops, coffee bars, and candy stores. They cost money, but people seemed to be spending fairly briskly. They were also drinking. There were about half a dozen bars. The Embassy Bar (Greek statues, fake chandeliers, red wallpaper) was quite full, although it was the size of a barn. The Exmoor Bar had 157 tables and probably held a thousand drinkers. It was the scale of the place that was impressive—the scale and the shabbiness.
It was not Disneyland. Disneyland was a blend of technology and farce. It was mostly fantasy, a tame kind of surrealism, a comfortable cartoon in three dimensions. But the more I saw of Butlin’s, the more it resembled English life; it was very close to reality in its narrowness, its privacies, and its pleasures. It was England without work—leisure had been overtaken by fatigue and dull-wittedness: electronic games were easier than sports, and eating junk food had become another recreation. No one seemed to notice how plain the buildings were, how tussocky the grass was, or that everywhere there was a pervasive sizzle and smell of food frying in hot fat.
In that sense, too, it was like a real town. People walked around believing that it was all free; but most pastimes there cost money, and some were very expensive—like a ticket to the cabaret show that night, Freddie and the Dreamers, a group of middle-aged musicians who were a warmed-over version of their sixties’ selves.
If it had a futuristic feel, it was the deadened imagination and the zombie-like attitude of the strolling people, condemned to a week or two of fun under cloudy skies. And it was also the arrangements for children. The kids were taken care of—they could be turned loose in Butlin’s in perfect safety. They couldn’t get hurt or lost. There was a high fence around the camp. There was a Nursery Chalet Patrol and a Child Listening Service and a large Children’s Playground. In the planned cities of the future, provisions like this would be made for children.
Most of the events were for children, apart from whist and bingo. As a Day Visitor, I had my choice of the Corona Junior Fancy Dress Competition, a Kids’ Quiz Show, the Trampoline Test, the Donkey Derby, or the Beaver and Junior Talent Contest Auditions. The Donkey Derby was being held in a high wind on Gaiety Green—screaming children and plodding animals. I went to the talent show auditions in the Gaiety Revue Theatre. A girl of eight did a suggestive dance to a lewd pop song; two sisters sang a song about Jesus; Amanda and Kelly sang “Daisy”; and Miranda recited a poem much too fast. Most of the parents were elsewhere—playing the one-armed bandits and drinking beer.
I wandered into the Camp Chapel (“A Padre is available in the Centre at all times”). There was a notice stuck to the chapel door. At all three services prayers are-being said for our Forces in the Southern Atlantic. I scrutinized the Visitors’ Book. It asked for nationality, and people had listed “Welsh” or “Cornish” or “English” or “Scottish” next to their names. There was a scattering of Irish. But after the middle of April people had started to put “British” for nationality—mat was after the Falklands War had begun.
I found three ladies having tea in the Regency Building: Daphne Bunsen, from Bradford, said, “We don’t talk about this Falklands business here, ’cause we’re on holiday. It’s a right depressing soobject.”
“Anyway,” Mavis Hattery said, “there’s only one thing to say.”
What was that?
“I say, ‘Get it over with! Stop playing cat and mouse!’ ” Mrs. Bunsen said they loved Butlin’s. They had been here before and would certainly come back. Their sadness was they could not stay longer. “And Mavis’s room is right posh!”
“I paid a bit extra,” Mrs. Hattery said. “I have a fitted carpet in my shally.”
It was easy to mock Butlin’s for its dreariness and its brainless pleasures. It was an inadequate answer to leisure, but there were scores of similar camps all around the coast, so there was no denying its popularity. It combined the security and equality of prison with the vulgarity of an amusement park. I asked children what their parents were doing. Usually the father was playing billiards and the mother was shopping, but many said their parents were sleeping—having a kip. Sleeping until noon, not having to cook or mind children, and being a few steps away from the fish-and-chip shop, the bar, and the betting shop—it was a sleazy paradise in which people were treated more or less like animals in a zoo. In time to come, there would be more holiday camps on the British coast—“Cheap and cheerful,” Daphne Bunsen said.
Butlin’s was staffed by “Redcoats”—young men and women who wore red blazers. It was a Redcoat named Rod Firsby who told me that the camp could accommodate fourteen thousand people (“but nine thousand is about average”). Where did the people come from? I asked. He said they came from all over. It was when I asked him what sorts of jobs they did that he laughed.
“Are you joking, sunshine?” he said.
I said no, I wasn’t.
He said, “Half the men here are unemployed. That’s the beauty of Butlin’s—you can pay for it with your dole money.”
Happy Little Llanelli
LLANELLI HAD LOOKED PROMISING ON THE MAP. IT WAS IN the southwest corner of Dyfed, on the estuary of the Loughor River. I walked from the station to the docks. The town was musty-smelling and dull and made of decayed bricks. My map had misled me. I wanted to leave, but first I wanted to buy a guidebook to Wales in order to avoid such mistakes in the future.
I passed a store with textbooks in the window. Dead flies lay on their sides on the book covers; they had not been swatted, but had simply starved; they seemed asleep. There were shelves in this bookstore, but not many books. There was no salesperson. A husky voice came from behind a beaded curtain.
“In here.”
I went in. A man was whispering into a telephone. He paid no attention to me. There were plenty of books in here. On the covers were pictures of naked people. The room smelled of cheap paper and ink. The magazines were in cellophane wrappers. They showed breasts and rubber underwear, and there were children on some of them—the titles suggested that the naked tots were violated inside. No guidebooks here, but as this pornography shop was Welsh, the door had a bell that went bing-bong! in a cheery way as I left.
Welsh politeness was softhearted and smiling. Even Llanelli’s Skinheads were well behaved, and the youths with swastikas on their leather jackets and bleached hair and earrings or green hair and T-shirts saying ANARCHY!—even they seemed sweet-natured. And how amazing that the millions of Welsh, who shared about a dozen surnames, were the opposite of anonymous. They were conspicuous individuals and at a personal level tried hard to please. “You’re a gentleman!” one man would cry to another, greeting him on the street.
At Jenkins the Bakers (“Every bite—pure delight”) I saw a strawberry tart with clotted cream on top. Were they fresh strawberries?
“Oh, yes, fresh this morning,” Mrs. Jenkins said.
I asked for one.
“But they’re thirty pence, darling,” Mrs. Jenkins said, warning me and not moving. She expected me to tell her to forget it. She was on my side in the most humane way, and gave a commiserating smile, as if to say, It’s a shocking amount of money for a strawberry tart!
When I bought two, she seemed surprised. It must have been my knapsack and my vagabond demeanor. I went around the corner and stuffed them into my mouth.
“Good morning—I mean, good evening!” Mr. Maddocks the stationmaster said at Llanelli Station. “I knew I’d get it right in the end. It’s patience you want!”
The rest of the people on the platform were speaking Welsh, but on seeing the train draw in—perhaps it was the excitement—they
lapsed into English.
Tenby
THE ELEGANT HOUSES OF TENBY STANDING TALL ON THE cliff reminded me of beautifully bound books on a high shelf—their bay windows had the curvature of book spines. The town was elevated on a promontory, so the sea on three sides gave its light a penetrating purity that reached the market square and fortified the air with the tang of ocean-washed rocks. It was odd that a place so pretty should also be so restful, and yet that was the case. But Tenby was more than pretty. It was so picturesque, it looked like a watercolor of itself.
It had not been preserved by the fastidious tyrants who so often took over British villages—the new class who moved in and gutted the houses, and then, after restoring the thatched roofs and mullioned windows, hid a chromium kitchen in the inglenook, which ran on microchips. Such people could make a place so picturesque that it was uninhabitable. Tenby had been maintained, and it had mellowed; it was still sturdy, and I was glad I had found it. But it was the sort of place that denied a sense of triumph to the person who secretly felt he had discovered it—because its gracefulness was well known; it had been painted and praised; it was old even in Tudor times; and it had produced Augustus John (who wrote about Tenby in his autobiography, Chiaroscuro), as well as the inventor of the equal sign (=) in mathematics, Robert Recorde. But, then, there were no secret places in Britain that I had seen; there were only forgotten places, and places that were being buried or changed by our harsh century.
Tenby had been spared, and it was the more pleasing for being rather quiet and empty. I walked around dreamily. For the first time since I had set out on this trip I felt that a watering place was fulfilling its purpose—calming me, soothing me, making me want to snore over a book on a veranda with a sea view.
Naked Lady
MY STRANGE ENCOUNTER TOOK PLACE AT THE HOTEL Harlech, a dismal semiruin not far from the silted-up river in Cardigan. It had been closed for years, and it smelled that way—of mice and unwashed clothes. The smell of rags is like the smell of dead men anyway, but this was compounded with the smells of dirt and wood smoke and the slow river. I knew as soon as I checked in that it was a mistake. I was shown to my room by a sulking girl of fifteen, who had a fat pouty face and a potbelly.
“It seems a little quiet,” I said.
Gwen said, “You’re the only guest.”
“In the whole hotel?”
“In the whole hotel.”
My bed smelled, too, as though it had been slept in—just slept in recently, someone having crawled out a little while ago, leaving it warm and disgusting.
The owner of the Harlech was a winking woman with a husky laugh, named Reeny. She kept a purse in the cleavage between her breasts; she smoked while she was eating; she talked about her boyfriend—“My boyfriend’s been all around the world on ships.” Reeny’s boyfriend was a pale unshaven man of fifty who limped through the hotel, his shirttails out, groaning because he could never find his hairbrush. His name was Lloyd, and he was balding. Lloyd seldom spoke to me, but Reeny was irrepressible, always urging me to come down to the bar for a drink.
The bar was a darkened room with torn curtains and a simple table in the center. There were usually two tattooed youths and two old men at the table, drinking beer with Lloyd. Reeny acted as barmaid, using a tin tray. And it was she who changed the records: the music was loud and terrible, but the men had no conversation, and they looked haggard and even rather ill.
The unexpected thing was that Reeny was very cheerful and hospitable. The hotel was dirty and her food unspeakable and the dining room smelled of urine, but Reeny was kind, and she loved to talk, and she spoke of improving the hotel, and she knew that Lloyd was a complaining old fake. Relax, enjoy yourself, have another helping, Reeny said. She had the right spirit, but the hotel was a mess. “This is Paul—he’s from America,” Reeny said, and winked at me. She was proud of me. That thought made me very gloomy.
One night she introduced me to Ellie. She was red-eyed and very fat and had a gravelly voice; she was somewhat toothless and freckled; she came from Swansea. “Aye,” she said. “Swansea’s a bloody bog.” Ellie was drunk—and she was deaf in the way drunks often are. Reeny was talking about America, but Ellie was still mumbling about Swansea.
“At least we’re not tight,” Ellie said. “Aye, we’re careful, but the Cardies are tight.”
“That’s us,” Reeny said. “Cardies, from Cardigan. Aye, we’re tighter than the Scots.”
Ellie screwed up her face to show how tight the Cardies were, and then she demanded to know why I was not drunk—and she appealed to the silent, haggard men, who stared back at her with dull damp eyes. Ellie was wearing a baggy gray sweater. She finished her pint of beer and then wiped her hands on her sweater.
“What do you think of the Cardies?” she said.
“Delightful,” I said. But I thought, Savages.
At midnight they were still drinking.
“I’m going upstairs,” I said.
“None of the rooms have locks,” Reeny said. “That’s why there are no keys. See?”
Ellie said, “Aarrgh, it’s a quiet place, Reen!”
“Too bloody quiet, I say,” Reeny said. “We have to drive to Saundersfoot for a little nightlife.”
Saundersfoot was thirty-three miles away.
“What is it, Lloyd?” Reeny said.
Lloyd had been grinning.
He said, “He looks worried,” meaning me.
“I’m not worried,” I said.
This always sounds to me a worried man’s protest. I stood there, trying to smile. The four local men at the table merely stared back with their haggard faces.
“There’s no locks in this place,” Lloyd said, with pleasure.
Then Reeny screeched, “We won’t rob you or rape you!”
She said it so loudly that it was a few seconds before I could take it in. She was vivacious but ugly.
I recovered and said, “What a shame. I was looking forward to one or the other.”
Reeny howled at this.
In the sour bed, I could hear rock music coming from the bar, and sometimes shouts. But I was so tired, I dropped off to sleep, and I dreamed of Cape Cod. I was with my cousin and saying to her, “Why do people go home so early? This is the only good place in the world. I suppose they’re worried about traffic. I’d never leave—”
Then something tore. It was a ripping sound in the room. I sat up and saw a tousled head. I thought it was a man. It was a man’s rough face, a squashed nose, a crooked mouth. I recognized the freckles and the red eyes. It was Ellie.
I said, “What are you doing?”
She was crouching so near to the bed that I could not see her body. The ripping sound came again—a zipper on my knapsack. Ellie was slightly turned away from me. She did not move. When I saw that it was Ellie and not a man, I relaxed—and I knew that my wallet and money were in my leather jacket, hanging on a hook across the room.
She said, “Where am I?”
“You’re in my room.”
She said, turning to me, “What are you doing here?”
“This is my room!”
Her questions had been drowsy in a theatrical way. She was still crouching near my knapsack. She was breathing hard.
I said, “Leave that thing alone.”
“Aarrgh,” she groaned, and plumped her knees against the floor.
I wanted her to go away.
I said, “I’m trying to sleep.” Why was I being so polite?
She groaned again, a more convincing groan than the last one, and she said, “Where have I left me clothes?”
And she stood up. She was a big woman with big jolting breasts and freckles on them. She was, I saw, completely naked.
“Close your eyes,” she said, and stepped closer.
I said, “It’s five in the morning, for God’s sake.”
The sun had just struck the curtains.
“Aarrgh, I’m sick,” she said. “Move over.”
I said,
“You don’t have any clothes on.”
“You can close your eyes,” she said.
I said, “What were you doing to my knapsack?”
“Looking for me clothes,” she said.
I said in a pleading way, “Give me a break, will you?”
“Don’t look at me nakedness,” she said.
“I’m going to close my eyes,” I said, “and when I open them I don’t want to see you in this room.”
Her naked flesh went flap-flap like a rubber raincoat as she tramped across the hard floor. I heard her go—she pulled the door shut—and then I checked to see that my money was safe and my knapsack unviolated. The zippers were open, but nothing was gone. I remembered what Reeny had screamed at me: We won’t rob you or rape you!
At breakfast, Reeny said, “I’ve not been up at this hour for ten year! Look, it’s almost half-eight!”
Reeny had a miserable cough and her eyes were sooty with mascara. Her Welsh accent was stronger this morning, too.
I told her about Ellie.
She said, “Aye, is that so? I’ll pull her leg about that! Aye, that is funny.”
An old woman came to the door. She was unsteady, she peered in. Reeny asked her what she wanted. She said she wanted a pint of beer.
“It’s half-eight in the morning!” Reeny said.
“A half a pint, then,” the old woman said.
“And it’s Sunday!” Reeny said. She turned to me and said, “We’re dry on a Sunday around here. That’s why it’s so quiet. But you can get a drink at St. Dogmaels.”
The woman looked pathetic. She said that in the coming referendum she would certainly vote for a change in the licensing law. She was not angry, but had that aged, beaten look that passes for patience.