by Paul Theroux
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 “Dad’s 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 groin 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.
“Hands up, all those who aren’t working,” one comedian said.
A number of hands went up—eight or ten—but this was a terrible admission, and down they went before I could count them properly.
The comedian was already laughing. “Have some Beecham Pills,” he said. “They’ll get you ‘working’ again!”
There were more jokes, awful ones like this, and then a lady singer came out and in a sweet voice sang “The Russian Nightingale.” She encouraged the audience to join in the chorus of the next one, and they offered timid voices, singing,
Let him go, let him tarry,
Let him sink, or let him swim.
He doesn’t care for me
And I don’t care for him.
The comedians returned. They had changed their costumes. They had worn floppy hats the first time; now they wore bowler hats and squirting flowers.
“We used to put manure on our rhubarb.”
“We used to put custard on ours!”
No one laughed.
“Got any matches?”
“Yes, and they’re good British ones.”
“How do you know?”
“Because they’re all strikers!”
A child in the first row began to cry.
The dancers came on. They were pretty girls and they danced well. They were billed as “Our Disco Dollies” on the poster. More singers appeared and “A Tribute to Al Jolson” was announced: nine minstrel show numbers, done in blackface. Entertainers in the United States could be run out of town for this sort of thing; in Cromer the audience applauded. Al Jolson was a fond memory and his rendition of “Mammy” was a special favorite in musical revues. No one had ever tired of minstrel shows in England, and they persisted on British television well into the 1970s.
It had been less than a month since the end of the Falklands War, but in the second half of Seaside Special there was a comedy routine in which an Argentine general appeared—goofy dago in ill-fitting khaki uniform—“How dare you insult me!”
I could hear the surf sloshing against the iron struts of the pier.
“And you come and pour yourself on me,” a man was singing. It was a love song. The audience seemed embarrassed by it. They preferred “California Here I Come” and “When I Grow Too Old to Dream,” sung by a man named Derick, from Johannesburg. The program said that he had “appeared in every top night spot in South Africa and Rhodesia.” Say “top night spot in Zimbabwe” and it does not sound the same—it brings to mind drums and thick foliage.
One of the comedians reappeared. I had come to dread this man. I had reason. Now he played “The Warsaw Concerto” and cracked jokes as he played. “It’s going to be eighty tomorrow,” he said. “Forty in the morning and forty in the afternoon!”
His jokes were flat, but the music was pleasant and the singers had excellent voices. In fact, most of the performers were talented, and they pretended to be playing to a full house—not the thirty of us who sat so silently in the echoing theater. The show people conveyed the impression that they were enjoying themselves. But it can’t have been much fun, looking at those empty seats. Cromer itself was very dull. And I imagined these performers were miserably paid. I wanted to know more about them. I played with the idea of sending a message backstage to one of the chorus girls. I’d get her name out of the program. Millie Plackett, the one whose thighs jiggled. “Millie, it’s for you! Maybe it’s your big break!” Meet me after the show at the Hotel de Paris.… That was actually the name of my hotel, an enjoyable pile of brick-and-plaster splendor. But I didn’t look the part. In my scratched leather jacket and torn dungarees and oily hiking shoes, I thought Millie Plackett might misunderstand my intentions.
I stayed until the end of the show, finally admitting that I was enjoying myself. One act was of a kind I found irresistible—the magician whose tricks go wrong, leaving him with broken eggs in his hat and the wrong deck of cards. There was always an elaborate buildup and then a sudden collapse. “Presto,” he said as the trick failed. And then the last trick, the one that looked dangerous, worked like a charm and was completely baffling.
They saved the saddest song for the end. It was a love song, but in the circumstances it sounded nationalistic. It was sentimental hope, Ivor Novello gush, at the end of the pier that was trembling on the tide. I had heard it elsewhere on the coast. It was anything but new, but it was the most popular number on the seaside that year:
We’ll gather lilacs in the spring agine,
And walk together down a shady line …
Typical
ON MY LAST LONG TRUDGE, CURVING DOWN THE RUMP OF England on the Norfolk coast and into Suffolk, I thought: Every British bulge is different and every mile has its own mood. I said Blackpool, and people said, “Naturally!” I said Worthing, and they said, “Of all places!” The character was fixed, and though few coastal places matched their reputation, each was unique. It made my circular tour a pleasure, because it was always worth setting off in the morning. It might be bad ahead, but at least it was different; and the dreariest and most defoliated harbor town might be five minutes from a green sweep of bay.
This was the reason typical was regarded as such an unfair word in England. And yet there was such a thing as typical on the coast—but to an alien, something typical could seem just as fascinating as the mosques of the Golden Horn.
There was always an Esplanade, and always a Bandstand on it; always a War Memorial and a Rose Garden and a bench bearing a small stained plaque that said TO THE MEMORY OF ARTHUR WETHERUP There was always a Lifeboat Station and a Lighthouse and a Pier, a Putting Green, a Bowling Green, a Cricket Pitch, a Boating Lake, and a church the guidebook said was Perpendicular. The newsagent sold two GREETINGS FROM picture postcards, one with kittens and the other with two plump girls in surf, and he had a selection of cartoon postcards with mildly filthy captions; the souvenir stall sold rock candy; and the local real estate agent advertised a dismal cottage as “chalet-bungalow, bags of character, on bus route, superb sea views, suit retired couple.” There was always a funfair and it was never fun, and the video machines were always busier than the pinball machines or the one-armed bandits. There w
as always an Indian restaurant and it was always called the Taj Mahal and the owners were always from Bangladesh. Of the three fish-and-chips shops, two were owned by Greeks and the third was always closed. The Chinese restaurant, Hong Kong Gardens, was always empty; FOOD TO TAKE AWAY, its sign said. There were four pubs, one was the Red Lion, and the largest one was owned by a bad-tempered Londoner—“He’s a real Cockney,” people said, he had been in the army.
TO TOWN CENTRE, said a sign on Marine Parade, where there was a tub of geraniums, GOLF LINKS, said another, and a third, PUBLIC CONVENIENCES. A man stood just inside the door of GENTS and tried to catch your eye as you entered, but he never said a word. The man with the mop stood at the door of LADIES. Outside town was a housing estate called Happy Valley. Yanks had camped there in the war. Beyond it was a trailer park called Golden Sands. The best hotel was the Grand, the poorest the Marine, and there was a guest house called Bellavista. The best place to stay was at a bed and breakfast called the Blodgetts. Charles Dickens had spent a night in the Grand; Wordsworth had hiked in the nearby hills; Tennyson had spent a summer in a huge house near the sandy stretch that was called the Strand; and an obscure politician had died at the Rookery. A famous murderer (he had slowly poisoned his wife) had been arrested on the Front, where he had been strolling with his young mistress.
The muddy part of the shore was called the Flats, the marshy part the Levels, the stony part the Shingles, the pebbly part the Reach, and something a mile away was always called the Crumbles. The Manor, once very grand, was now a children’s home. Every Easter two gangs from London fought on Marine Parade. The town had a long history of smuggling, a bay called Smugglers’ Cove, and a pub called the Smugglers’ Inn.
Of the four headlands nearby, the first was part of a private golf course; the second was owned by the National Trust and had a muddy path and wooden steps on the steep bits; the third—the really magnificent one—was owned by the Ministry of Defense and used as a firing range and labeled DANGER AREA on the Ordnance Survey Maps; the fourth headland was all rocks and called the Cobbler and His Dwarfs.
The Pier had been condemned. It was threatened with demolition. A society had been formed to save it, but it would be blown up next year just the same. There was now a parking lot where the Romans had landed. The discotheque was called Spangles. The Museum was shut that day, the Swimming Pool was closed for repairs, the Baptist church was open, there were nine motor coaches parked in front of the broken boulders and ruined walls called the Castle. At the café near the entrance to the Castle a fourteen-year-old girl served tea in cracked mugs, and cellophane-wrapped cookies, stale fruitcake, and cold pork pies. She said, “We don’t do sandwiches” and “We’re all out of spoons,” and when you asked for potato chips she said, “What flavor crisps?” and listed five, including prawn, Bovril, cheese and onion, and bacon. There was a film of sticky marmalade on the tables of the café, and you left with a patch of it on your elbow.
The railway had been closed down in 1964, and the fishing industry had folded five years ago. The art deco cinema was now a bingo hall, and what had been a ship’s chandler was the Cinema Club, where Swedish pornographic films were shown all day (MEMBERS ONLY). There was an American radar station—or was it a missile base? No one knew—it was a few miles away; but the Americans had kept a low profile ever since one American soldier had raped a local lass in his car at the Reach (she had been hitchhiking in her bathing suit after dark that summer night). A nuclear power station quaintly named Thorncliffe was planned for the near future a mile south of the Cobbler. Bill Haley and the Comets had once sung at the Lido. The new shopping precinct was a failure. The dog was a Jack Russell terrier named Andy. The new bus shelter had been vandalized. It was famous for its whelks. It was raining.
Riding the Iron Rooster
Belles du Jour
I WALKED TO ST. BASIL’S, AND TO THE METROPOLE HOTEL, where I had stayed in 1968—it was now a sort of monument—and I strolled through the GUM store, looking at the merchandise.
While I was staring at some very inferior-looking alarm clocks, I realized that the woman on my right and the one on my left were sidling nearer to me.
“Is nice clock? You like clock?”
I said, “Alarm clocks wake you up. That’s why I hate them.”
“Is funny,” the woman on my right said. She was dark, in her early twenties. “You want to change rubles?”
The surprising thing to me was that one of these young women was pushing a little boy in a pram, and the other had a bag of what looked like old laundry. They were pretty women, but obviously preoccupied with domestic chores—airing the baby, doing the wash. I invited them to the ballet—I had bought pairs of tickets. They said no, they had to cook dinner for their husbands and do the housework, but what about changing some money? The rate was seventy-two cents to the ruble: they offered me ten times that.
“What would I do with all those rubles?”
“So many things.”
The dark one was Olga, the blonde Natasha—a ballet dancer, she said. Olga spoke Italian; Natasha spoke only Russian, and had a dancer’s slimness and pallor and china-blue eyes with a Slavic slant and an expensive Russian mouth.
I said I was walking—I needed the exercise.
“We will go with you!”
That was why, about ten minutes later, I came to be walking with a Russian woman on each arm, and carrying Natasha’s laundry—Olga pushing little Boris in his pram—down Karl Marx Prospekt. Olga was chatting to me in Italian and Natasha laughing.
“You seem to be doing all right for yourself, Paul!”
It was a group of people from the tour, heading back to the bus. I was delighted that they saw me—what would they make of it?
We stopped at a café and had a hot chocolate and they said they wanted to see me again—“We can talk!” They made a fuss about the time, probably because they were deceiving their husbands, but we agreed on a time when they would call me.
There was a message waiting for me when I got back to the Hotel Ukraine: “Olga will call tomorrow at twelve.” She called on the stroke of noon the next day to say she would call again at two. At two she said she would meet me at three-thirty. These phone calls had the effect of making our meeting seem necessary and inevitable. It was only when I was waiting on the hotel steps that it occurred to me that I had no idea why I was seeing them at all.
Natasha walked by but did not greet me. She was wearing old clothes and carrying a shopping basket. She winked at me; I followed her to a taxi, in which Olga was already sitting and smoking. When I got in, Olga gave the driver an order and he drove off. After that they intermittently quarreled over whether this was the right direction or the quickest way.
After twenty minutes of this—we were now deep in the highrise Moscow suburbs—I said, “Where are we going?”
“Not far.”
There were people raking leaves and picking up litter from the streets. I had never seen so many street sweepers. I asked what was going on.
Olga said that this was the one day in the year when people worked for nothing—tidying up the city. The day was called subodnik and this work was given free to honor Lenin—his birthday was two days away.
“Don’t you think you should be out there with a shovel, Olga?”
“I am too busy,” she said, and her laugh said Not on your life!
“Are we going to a house?”
Olga gave more directions to the driver. He turned right, entered a side street, and then cut down a dirt road and cursed. That bad road connected one housing estate with another. He kept driving on these back roads among tall bare blocks of flats and then he stopped the car and babbled angrily.
“We can walk the rest of the way,” Olga said. “You can pay him.”
The driver snatched my rubles and drove off as we walked toward a sixteen-story building, through children playing and their parents sweeping the pavements in a good subodnik spirit.
No one took any notic
e of me. I was merely a man in a raincoat following two women down a muddy pavement, past walls that had been scribbled on, past broken windows and through a smashed door to a hallway where three prams were parked and some of the floor tiles were missing. It could have been a housing estate in south London or the Bronx. The lift had been vandalized but it still worked. It was varnished wood, with initials scratched onto it. We took it to the top floor.
“Excuse me,” Olga said. “I couldn’t get my friend on the phone. I must talk to her first.”
But by now I had imagined that we had come to a place where I was going to be threatened and probably robbed. There were three huge Muscovites behind the door. They would seize me and empty my pockets, and then blindfold me and drop me somewhere in Moscow. They didn’t go in for kidnapping. I asked myself whether I was worried, and answered: Kind of.
I was somewhat reassured when I saw a surprised and sluttish-looking woman answer the door. Her hair was tangled, she wore a bathrobe. It was late afternoon—she had just woken up. She whispered a little to Olga and then she let us in.
Her name was Tatyana and she was annoyed at having been disturbed—she had been watching television in bed. I asked to use the toilet, and made a quick assessment of the flat. It was large—four big rooms and a central hall with bookshelves. All the curtains were drawn. It smelled of vegetables and hair spray and that unmistakable odor that permeates places in which there are late sleepers—the smell of bedclothes and bodies and feety aromas.