Beautiful People: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints

by Simon Doonan

  I was dumbstruck with guilt and horror. My poor aunt Phyllis had dragged herself back from the brink—she had kicked purple hearts!—only to be murdered by her idiot nephew, who wasn’t even a real nephew. I was terrified. Gayelord Hauser could not help her now. Even Lassie looked worried. We both waited for Phyllis to collapse to the ground. She twitched. I twitched.

  I did not have the presence of mind to apologize. Since I had probably killed her, there did not really seem much point. It was too late for regrets.

  She broke the painful silence.

  “Not to worry!” said Phyllis, with the air of a woman who had slammed into worse things, and set off toward home.

  By the time we reached our house, a massive lump had appeared on the front of her head, giving her the appearance of an exotic, prize-winning gourd.

  “Oh maaay Goahwd!” said Betty, whose Belfast accent tended to resurface during times of stress.

  “It’s really nothing. I walked into a lamppost,” said Phyllis, not wanting to get me into trouble. “I think I might just pop upstairs to the attic and lie down for a bit.”

  Phyllis slept until the next morning. When she came down for her Gayelord Hauser–recommended breakfast, we all tried hard not to look at the gourd. Occasionally Phyllis would touch it and emit an “Oooh!” of surprise. It was slightly larger than before.

  The damage was never officially assessed. No doctors were ever consulted. A week later the gourd began to shrink. Six months later it was all but gone, leaving only a three-inch-long indentation.

  * * *

  Our forays to the Slope continued, but not without incident.

  On more than one occasion, raincoat-wearing flashers ogled us from the bushes, taking cruel advantage of Aunt Phyllis’s handicap.

  “Lassie, whatever are you growling at?” Phyllis would say as the horrid, grinning men waved their rhubarb-colored offerings in our direction.

  My sister and I never said anything to Phyllis about these perverts. Why spoil a lovely evening?

  At least the raincoat brigade kept their paws to themselves. The same cannot be said of the horny hounds who regularly launched themselves at Lassie with such relentless fervor. Phyllis took great pride in the fact that she had always successfully managed to defend Lassie against these would-be rapists.

  On one vile and memorable occasion, she lost the battle.

  One sunny evening a demonic black Baskerville hound leapt from the bushes. He fixed his gaze on the alluring Lassie and licked his lips. He then bounded toward us and jumped onto Lassie’s back without so much as a “Lovely weather we’re having!” or a “Do you come here often?”

  We whacked the violator with tree branches and pelted him with conkers and insults. He began to jiggle his nasty jiggle. We screamed. Phyllis used bad language and thrashed him with Lassie’s harness. Nothing could dislodge him. He looked quite happy. To make matters worse, so did Lassie.

  “Run home and get your father, and don’t stop at the sweetshop. Hurry!” commanded Phyllis.

  I barreled through the streets of Reading like a Pamplona person and burst into the living room.

  “Dad! Lassie is—”

  “Shhhhhhh! As soon as this is over.”

  Terry was engrossed in watching Z Cars, a biweekly cop drama which held the whole of early 1960s England in its thrall. As per his edict, I waited patiently until the program had finished. But it was already too late. As the credits rolled, Shelagh and Aunt Phyllis were hurrying in through the front gate, dragging Lassie, who was dragging her new boyfriend. This tableau vivant relieved me of the need to explain the unexplainable.

  Terry rushed outside and turned the hose on the persistent fornicator. This made no difference. He kept on doing his horrid jiggle.

  Eventually fatigue set in, and probably hunger. Lassie’s lover jiggled to a stop and slid off her back. He then loped off down the street without so much as a “We really must do this more often,” or even a “Thanks, luv!”

  Terry was suitably mortified. He apologized profusely for stifling my attempts to communicate and for privileging his TV watching over defending Lassie against rape.

  Nobody seemed inclined to discuss that horrid jiggling. Nobody seemed to have the right words to describe what had occurred. Or the inclination. Jiggling was embarrassing and animalistic and strange. Jiggling involved violence, chaos, and mayhem. No wonder ladies like Phyllis chose not to jiggle.

  * * *

  Years passed. Phyllis thrived. Lassie died and was succeeded by various less glamorous varmints. Eventually, Betty decided to give all the lodgers their marching orders. She needed a break from washing people’s undies and cutting up Phyllis’s food into bite-size morsels, which she did religiously and uncomplainingly for years.

  When Betty gave Phyllis notice to move out, the latter dissolved into tears and hid in her garret. Half a bottle of turnip wine later, she had adjusted to the idea.

  Within a matter of weeks, Phyllis relocated to an asbestos bungalow—with no ill effects—where we and other members of her family were regular visitors.

  She never married or jiggled with anyone, as far as I know. Her dogs were the loves of her life. Whenever one of them died, it sent her into a spiral of grief which I have yet to witness in any human bereavement. Fortunately, her last dog—a black Lab called Barney, named after my employer—outlived her. At the time of her death, aged eighty-nine, she was the oldest living guide dog owner on record.

  When I heard of Phyllis’s death and imminent interment, all I could think about was the time she and Lassie (who should probably have had her eyes tested) fell into an open grave at a friend’s funeral. She came home with bloodied knees and grass in her hair. She could hardly get the story out she was laughing so hard.

  CHAPTER 6

  CAMP

  “There’s a lovely bar called the Beachcomber,” said Cyril Biddlecombe with excessive gravity, “and they have a tropical rainstorm every twenty minutes.”

  “It’s a tape recording,” said Biddie, nudging me in the ribs and rolling his eyes.

  It is the summer of 1962. I am going on vacation with the Biddlecombe family. We are traveling to the county of Somerset to spend not one but two weeks at the Butlins Holiday Camp located in the ominously named town of Minehead, a former swamp.

  Sir William Edmund Butlin (1899–1980) started out as a carny. His mission in life was the creation of a leisure culture for working-class folk. Prior to his innovation, the sulky proletariat spent their preglobal-warming vacations cowering from the driving rain in wind-lashed bus shelters at smelly coastal resorts. Then along came Butlins, a bright, shrill, plastic, thigh-slapping, Technicolor antidote to the grim reality of factory life. By the time Biddie and I are disembarking at Mine-head train station, Butlins, with its überjolly uniformed “Redcoat” camp counselors, is an established institution.

  Biddie is a Butlins veteran, albeit of the less enthusiastic variety. He has visited most of the camps in the United Kingdom but is ready to ditch the Butlins experience for a bit of Euro-sophistication.

  “Monte Carlo is supposed to be lovely at this time of year,” he muses as we pull into the train station.

  From the moment we arrive at the Minehead Camp, I am totally overwhelmed. The unflinching commitment to fun hits me like a tidal wave. Everybody at Butlins seems to be screeching his head off with manic glee. Here are all the grim-faced Eleanor Rigbys of England, and they are actually having fun. It is quite terrifying.

  I demand to see the Beachcomber Bar. We dump our suitcases in our “chalets”—underfurnished, mustard yellow, cell-like rooms containing bunk beds and no discernible connection to Switzerland—and head over to catch the first tropical rainstorm.

  The Beachcomber Bar is located inside what appears to be a brightly painted, recycled Second World War airplane hangar. All the Butlins attractions are similarly housed.

  We enter. I gasp. The dreary exterior is a fantastically successful foil for the insanely overdecorated inter
ior. Every surface is covered with Astroturf and bamboo-printed vinyl. Plastic palm fronds and succulents billow from every direction, creating a womblike jungle ambience.

  A sturdy waitress wearing a garland of fake orchids waddles over to our table.

  “A Babycham, please,” says Doreen Biddlecombe, ordering the latest ladylike beer alternative.

  “Nothing for the kids,” says Cyril, “a pint for me. By the way, when is the tropical rainstorm due?”

  “Oops!” says the waitress and scurries off behind a palm tree. She flicks a switch and—bingo! Thunder. Lightning. Instant tropical rainstorm.

  Biddie and I exchange glances. We look around the jungle at the people enjoying their drinks. Here they are, in the middle of a former swamp in a large metal shed which has been stapled with tons and tons of plastic greenery, and they are acting as if they are in Hawaii.

  This is a transformative moment for both of us.

  In one blinding flash we understand the meaning of camp.

  The extreme atmosphere and decor of the Beachcomber Bar unleashed in us a correspondingly extreme theatricality. From that moment forward, every second of every day at Butlins presented us with some fresh and irresistible opportunity for exaggeration. The excess of Butlins demanded full-blown demonstrations of uninhibited enjoyment from us, and we were only too happy to oblige. As we sat in the Beachcomber Bar, we automatically found ourselves emulating the poses and animated expressions of people who might be enjoying a tropical hideaway. The minute we adopted the corny body language of happy holidaymakers, we became those happy holidaymakers.

  Finding out that we could do things as if we were doing them was, for Biddie and me, a transcendental and highly addictive discovery. Entering a room as if one was entering a room was so much more amusing and exhilarating than just entering a room. This revelation opened the door to a squishy, dark, velvet-lined place in our respective psyches.

  From that moment on we luxuriated in the cut-price, cheesy pathos of the relentlessly upbeat Butlins experience. We had so much more fun because we were behaving as if we were having fun.

  It was pure camp, literally and figuratively. Effortlessly we nudged and winked our way through the entire rainy holiday. In this desperate hothouse of frenzied kitsch, our camp sensibilities blossomed and flourished and fed off each other. We may not have been sun-drenched, but we were definitely irony-drenched.

  We sang along enthusiastically with the wakey-wakey breakfast song (piped directly into our “chalets”). We cheered the infantile games and endless talent contests. We smiled appreciatively at the gaudiness and schlockiness of the amusements and the decor.

  The epicenter of Butlins was the monumental indoor swimming pool. The entire ceiling was draped with all manner of plastic festoonery: fake birds, leafy plastic vines, and tropical flowers. Every expense was spared. Though the tepid water was treacherously chlorinated and hair, mucus, and Band-Aids clogged the gutters, we neither noticed nor cared. We were too busy acting as if we were in a Busby Berkeley movie.

  I can remember, as if it were yesterday, Biddie’s sister Sheila frolicking in this exotic environment in a bikini with red and black horizontal stripes. She looked like a bumblebee with Fascist leanings. While running round the pool, she slipped and fell, bouncing into the water like a beach ball. I have never seen such slapstick before or since.

  More kitsch lurked underwater. Belowground, the pool was cunningly recessed into an endless, linoleum-floored tearoom. Large windows looked directly into the underwater murk. The glass-topped occasional tables at which we campers sat contained mounds of fluorescent-lit plastic flowers. Here we consumed cups of tea and shrimp-paste sandwiches while watching—through vignettes of plastic corals and Vac-U-Form plastic fish—the semiclad bodies of our fellow holidaymakers.

  There was clearly something disgustingly voyeuristic about the whole arrangement. There were always a few suspect-looking older geezers lingering over their potato chips waiting for some pale-skinned nymph to plop into view.

  Biddie told me that many of the Butlins camps had this fabulous and outrageously kinky architectural feature. The Biddlecombes loved to recall the occasion when Cyril’s square-cut wool swimsuit descended to his ankles, in full view of a cackling crowd.

  After a lazy day poolside, Doreen and Cyril would, as often as not, retreat to the smoke-filled Pig and Whistle, where plastic salamis and jokes on plaques festooned the ceiling.

  My wife’s gone to the West Indies.

  Jamaica?

  No, she went of her own accord!

  * * *

  Much as we adored reading the plaques and watching the adults getting smashed in these themed watering holes, we did not linger.

  “We have a show to catch,” we would announce in a rather grand theatrical manner. Biddie and I then headed over to the Butlins Playhouse. It wasn’t love of the dramatic arts which took us there. It was sadism. We adored nothing more than watching the exhausted Butlins thespians slogging their way through dramatized versions of Agatha Christie and the like, as if they were in some Broadway smash. These turgid productions were poorly attended. As a result we always seemed to have front-row seats.

  One evening in particular stands out. On this occasion Biddie and I were thoroughly transfixed by a stout, mature lady who delivered her lines like a parody of a stout mature lady. Her bust jiggled, and saliva shot from her mouth, onto us, as she denounced her errant son. Bringing her monologue to a thundering crescendo, she flung herself into the nearest armchair.

  Unfortunately for her, she missed her target and ended up pinioned on the pointy arm of her chair. The surprised expression on her face and the squeal she emitted indicated that this maneuver was not in the script.

  Already in an excitable state, Biddie and I went into paroxysms of uncontrollable laughter. Like the object of our mockery, Biddie and I were also a little stout. As a result our wobbling and poorly muffled giggling proved quite distracting. Eventually the old trouper tired of our derision. She took a huge breath. Leaning forward, and breaking the magical membrane between audience and performer, she screamed “Do shut up!” directly into our chubby, petrified faces.

  Butlins was theatrical, camp, and kitsch, but it was also, on occasion, a tad louche.

  Though prepubescent, we became feverish aficionados of the seedy underbelly of camp life. Tacky Butlins seemed like the opposite of the wholesome American summer camps I had read about, with their frantic canoeing, flag-raisings, and tepees.

  “I think she’s one of the rides,” quipped Biddie’s sister as we spied through the bushes on a female camper with a rock-hard beehive hairdo, yellow boots, and fishnets. This lady clearly spent her holidays, beer and fag in hand, flirting shamelessly with passersby from her chalet threshold. It was nice to know that free-wheeling single gals could afford Butlins too.

  Slags and cocktails were about the only things not included in the cost. All the theatrical entertainments, meals, fairground rides, and cheesy variety shows were “free.”

  Toilet paper was, for some reason, not included in the cost. I had been warned about this and brought my own roll with me. At any given time you could spot a holidaymaker or two sprinting through the rain, clutching a loo roll, on his or her way to communal toilets (known as “the bogs”). This gave Butlins the feeling of a minimum security correctional facility, as did the razor wire which topped off the incredibly high chain-link perimeter fencing.

  Potential freeloaders were said to be a constant threat at Butlins. Biddie and I were greatly amused by the idea of desperate fun seekers breaking into Butlins and availing themselves of the facilities like crazed drug addicts. By the beginning of the second week of our stay, we were bored with mocking the kitsch of Butlins and moved on to more sinister territory. We began to speculate about the strict security measures: were they designed to keep them out, or us in?

  We developed all kinds of extreme persecution scenarios and renamed our camp Butlitz. The communal bathrooms became “del
ousing stations,” and the chalets were our “bunkers.” We started to speak with German accents and pretend to quote from Mein Kampf. The famous Butlins Redcoat counselors were no longer genial hosts but psychopathic camp commandants.

  Biddie and I took great pleasure in spreading vile rumors to other kids about what the Butlitz Redcoats did to people who were reluctant to participate in the nonstop fun!

  “Ve heff vays of mekking you loff!” Biddie would say as he jackbooted round our chalet/bunker. When we saw a Redcoat heading in our direction, we would throw him or her off our scent by hooting with laughter and skipping about.

  I was familiar with the horror of the Holocaust. Blind Aunt Phyllis had a good friend called Inge who had survived Auschwitz. The experience had left her orphaned, partially sighted, and profoundly traumatized. Inge also had a bad case of arrested development. Dressed like a little girl, with white ankle socks and a bow in her hair, she would sit for hours in our living room with a cold cup of tea on her knee. Betty did not mince words about what had happened to poor Inge during the war.

  “Be nice to her!” she would command, adding, in case we thought of doing otherwise, “Her whole family went up the chimney in Auschwitz. Bloody Krauts! Thank God we won the war!”

  Thank God there were no Inges at Butlins to witness our hideous behavior.

  Our perverse fun came screeching to a halt when we both succumbed to food poisoning. I can still remember the dodgy-looking lard-fried eggs that brought it on. The virulence of the attack was made all the more hideous by the fact that we had to schlep to the communal toilets/delousing stations in order to throw up, et cetera.

  Maintaining our newfound sense of irony while suffering through food poisoning was quite difficult, but somehow we managed. I distinctly remember attempting to throw up as if I was throwing up.

  Food poisoning was far from rare at Butlins. This was, I hasten to add, back in the days before E. coli came into common parlance and hand washing became a national pastime. None of the Redcoats seemed remotely surprised or apologetic when they encountered groups of groaning, stomach-clutching campers. They treated food poisoning as if it was one of the rides in the amusement park. Our turn had come. Lucky us.