The Kingdom by the Sea

by Paul Theroux

  ***

  My strange encounter took place at the Hotel Harlech, a dismal semiruin not far from the silted-up river. 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 night life."

  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.

  "Oh, heavens," Reeny said. "What shall I do, Paul? You tell me."

  I said to the old woman, "Have a cup of tea."

  "The police have been after me," Reeny said. "They're always looking in." Reeny walked to the cupboard. "I could lose my license." She t
ook out a bottle of beer and poured it. "These coppers have no bloody mercy." The glass was full. "Forty-five pence," she said.

  The woman drank that and then bought two more bottles. She paid and left, without another word. She had taken no pleasure in the drink and there was no satisfaction in having wheedled the beer out of Reeny on a dry day in Cardigan—in fact, she had not wheedled, but had merely stood there gaping in a paralyzed way.

  I said, "It's a hell of a breakfast—a beer."

  "She's an alcoholic," Reeny said. "She's thirty-seven. Doesn't look it, does she? Take me, I'm thirty-three and no one believes it. My boyfriend says I've got the figure of a girl of twenty. You're not going, are you?"

  11. The 10:32 to Criccieth

  THERE WAS no good coastal path north of Cardigan—all the farms and fields were jammed against the cliff edge—but by scaring cows and climbing stone walls, I managed a few miles. Then I came to Aberporth and could go no farther. For the next five miles or more it was an army rocket range—and the rockets were booming. The British were fighting a war, after all—"this Falklands business." Over two hundred and fifty men had died just the day before in the battle for a small sheep station at Goose Green. Most of the dead were Argentines, killed by British paratroopers in fury after word got out that a mock surrender with a white flag by an Argentine patrol had in fact been an ambush, never trust an argie! the headline in the Sun said. Was this why the rockets were exploding at Aberporth?

  It was true that much of the British coast was empty and practically anybody's; yet the rest was impossible. Things that were dangerous (like nuclear power stations) or that stank (like sewage farms) were shoved onto the coast. They were safer that way and out of sight. The coast was regarded as a natural home for oil refineries and gas storage tanks, and there was more rubbish on the coast than in any inland dump. The coast was where you got rid of things: they were borne away and lost in the deep sinkhole of the sea. The coast had more than its fair share of parking lots and junkyards; and out of an ancient islanders' fear of invasion—of alien peoples plaguing her shores—the British had overfortified their coast with military installations, gun emplacements, and radar dishes of the sort I had seen in Dungeness and Kimmeridge. And as if that weren't enough, they also had American missile bases and squads of American Marines in various coves. These places looked as though they were expecting another onslaught of rapacious Danes or shield-biting berserkers. Of course, the coast was perfect for practicing with machine guns or even bombs and cannons. Traditionally, the sea was safe to shoot at. Here at Aberporth it was rockets, and the incautious walker risked being blown up or arrested as a spy.

  I turned back and stumbled up the grassy hill to the coast road. The road was narrow and the speeding cars made it dangerous—just room enough for two lines of traffic. I had to lean against the nettles on the bank to let the cars pass. I walked to Synod Inn, and when I became bored with waiting for a bus, I hitched. With my knapsack and leather jacket and the Ordnance Survey Map in my hand, and needing a haircut, I looked like a hitchhiker—with a unhurried, money-saving, ready-for-anything expression. I got rides easily, with farmers who were going only a quarter of a mile, and with men making deliveries or heading for work. They usually said, "And how are you liking Wales?"

  Emrys Morgan, a carpenter with a ripsaw in his back seat, said, "Aw, the Englishman is a very secretive man. His attitude is 'I look after myself, and God looks after all.'"

  I remarked that the Welsh I had met were very polite.

  "Very polite are the Welsh," Mr. Morgan said. "And much more polite than the English. We're different stock, with a different tradition. We're European Celts, and they're Saxons and Normans."

  Huw Jones took me to Aberaeron in his old gray Singer Gazelle.

  "This is where the Welsh left for Patagonia," he said.

  "I've been there."

  "Aberaeron?"

  "Patagonia," I said.

  Aberaeron was an unusually neat and orderly town of Nash terraces and plain brown houses, and on some streets there were lovely Georgian houses on the left and pebbledash Council houses on the right.

  "Most people in Wales are Labour Party supporters, not Welsh Nationalists," another Jones told me. This Jones was a lawyer—a barrister. He said the Labour Party had a stranglehold on South Wales especially. "They could put a bloody donkey up for Parliament in South Wales, and if they said he was Labour he'd get in."

  We were riding up to Aberystwyth. The coast here was very slopey—the green cliffs slanted down toward the sea. In the little bays and near villages there were always acres of orange tents and caravans.

  "These people come down from Birmingham and the Midlands," the lawyer Jones said, "and they pitch their little tents. They look around and decide they like it. So they see a farmer. Has he got a cottage for sale? He probably does—farmers are having a very tough time, not enough work for their laborers. He sells the cottage. They're very cheap. It's a second home for these people. They just come and go as they please. Those are the people whose cottages are burned by the nationalists."

  I said, "Wouldn't it be simpler to burn the tents?"

  He laughed at this. So far, I had not met anyone in Wales who objected to the burning of English-owned cottages, and some people seemed to find it considerate and humane, since they were always burned when the owners were away.

  Welshness was also a look of orderly clutter, and Aberystwyth typified it—houses everywhere, but always on streets; the cliffs obliterated with cottages, but tidy cottages; a canyon of flat-faced and barren buildings on the seafront, but green mountains just behind. I stayed in a guest house, Eluned Williams, Prop. "You're not going?" she would say each morning after breakfast. Business was bad. But I wasn't going. I was doing my laundry. I was off to the beach ("well adapted for bathing, and yields cornelians, agates, and other pebbles") to look at the tar-stained stones. I was browsing and sometimes buying in the antique shops—I bought an old walking stick that had a tiger's tooth for a handle. I was looking at the bookstores—the University College of Wales gave Aberystwyth its studious air, but the Act of Parliament (1967) had made Welsh equal in importance to English, which meant that every municipal and university meeting was twice as long, since it was conducted in both languages. One day there was a Peace March in Aberystwyth. There were signs in Chinese characters, and Buddhist monks, and adults and children, protesting the building of a nuclear installation in Wales at Brawdy. "Join us," a man said to me. I was wearing my knapsack. I shook my head. "Can't," I said. "I'm an alien." That was the day I was doing my laundry. I was in my bathing suit, and every other article of clothing I owned was in my knapsack, to be washed.

  I took the narrow-gauge railway to the Devil's Bridge, through the Rheidol Valley and the deep gorge of the Mynach. It was a toy train, and full of pipe-stuffing railway buffs and day-trippers. And there were rowdies, boys "in care," I was told, abandoned by their parents, patronized by the state; they were pale tattooed thirteen-year-olds smoking cigarettes and saying, "It's fulla fucken trees," where William Wordsworth in another mood had written,

  There I seem to stand,

  As in life's morn; permitted to behold

  From the dread chasm, woods climbing above woods,

  In pomp that fades not; everlasting snows;

  And skies that ne'er relinquish their repose...

  And there were parents, too. I treasured their angry remarks.

  "Oh, God, Roger, can't you see he's just desperately tired!"

  The child in question was spitting and kicking and crying, a furious little weevil who did not know where he was and perhaps thought, in his animal way, that he was going to die here.

  And one mother, looking at the tormented face of her wet baby, grew very cold and sarcastic.

  "Someone's going to have a warm bottom in a minute!" she said.

  The baby groaned like a starving monkey and tensed its fingers, indicating fear and frustration.

  The Welsh people on th
e train stared at this behavior and thought: The English!

  ***

  Ever since Tenby I had noticed an alteration in the light, a softness and a clarity that came from a higher sky. It must have been the Atlantic—certainly I had the impression of an ocean of light, and it was not the harsh daytime sun of the tropics or the usual grayness of the industrialized temperate zone; daylight in England often lay dustily overhead like a shroud. The cool light in West Wales came steadily from every direction except from the sun. It was especially strong as a force rising out of the distance and reaching earth again in a purer way as a reflection from the sky. The sunsets in Aberystwyth were vast, full of battle flames, never seeming to move and yet always in motion. It was a severe shore, and those houses looked harsh, but the Welsh light—the immense cold mirror of the Atlantic—made it gleam, and made its sadness visible.

  One evening strolling on the Front at Aberystwyth I remembered that, just a year before, I had stopped smoking my pipe. I had not had a smoke of anything for a year. To celebrate, I bought a cigar, but Mrs. Williams wouldn't let me smoke it at her house ("No one has ever smoked at Y Wyddfa"—it was the name of her house—"and I don't think I could stand it if they did"), so I took it out to the Front and set it on fire and smoked it until there was only an inch of a butt left, which I chucked into Cardigan Bay.

  ***

  I took a tiny two-coach branch-line train out of Aberystwyth, up the west side of the Rheidol Valley, and around the bushy hills. The countryside here was tumbledown and beautiful. Dolybont was an old village of rough stone cottages and a squat church and thick hedges, and with his head out of his bedroom window a white-haired man was reprimanding his dog in Welsh.