To the Ends of the Earth

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.”