The Kingdom by the Sea by Paul Theroux Read Free Book Online Page B

guard over such danger zones and prevent enemies from trespassing. But when one of these nuclear power stations blew up or melted down—and the chances were that one would—the map would be wrenched and a contour punched out of the coast, and Britain would not look like a witch riding on a pig anymore, but probably like a dwarf sprawled on a pork chop.
    There was no one on the beach, no one swimming, no one walking, and no boats; but there was something I had seen before—at Margate, at Broadstairs, at Ramsgate, and Walmer, wherever a road came near the seaside: cars parked and piled up, and people in them, always very old people, the old croak named Rathbone in his toy Morris, and the Witherslacks, Donald and Maureen, both of them sitting in the back seat of their green Cortina, and everyone else. They sat in their cars and stared out at the sea. They were on every beach road. When I walked past, they hardly looked at me—perhaps a glance at the bulge in my knapsack, but not more than that.
    If there was a place to park near a beach or a cliff, or any shelf of shore having a clear shot at the sea, the elderly people gathered there, side by side, their tin cars a little tremulous in the wind. I saw them everywhere, eating sandwiches, drinking tea out of plastic cups, reading the paper, looking fuddled. They always faced the water. They were old couples mostly, but they never seemed to be holding conversations. Often the man was asleep, and sometimes the woman was in the back seat and the man in the front ("I've got to have somewhere to put my sandwiches"). They were not bird-watchers or ship-spotters. Indeed, they did not seem to be looking at anything in particular. Their expressions were a little sad and empty, as if they were expecting to see something beyond the horizon or under the surface of the waves.
    It looked somber enough to be an English recreation, but I wondered whether it had any other significance. It seemed to me to hold the possibility of the ultimate fright, an experience of nothingness. It was only on the coast where, if you angled yourself properly, you could look at nothing. I never passed these old people in their parked cars—they did not stir from them—without thinking that, in their own way, they were waiting for Godot.
    I walked in a high wind and its flying grit to Hythe, where I saw a policeman wheeling his push-bike. I asked him if the little railway was still running down the coast. He said yes and directed me across town. "It's a mile," he said, "a long mile, really."
    Down Pulsifier Road and across Albert Street to Saltwood Grove—or names like that—where I asked a lady taking in her wash, "Which way to the station?" And it seemed funny that this was travel, necessitating a knapsack, binoculars, and a knife—and I had a plastic poncho, too! Not here, but sometimes, even on a small suburban road, with a man clipping a hedge and a girl in a school uniform and a whistling mailman, it seemed as foreign and far-off as Gangtok, though often not so safe, since in Sikkim murder is unknown. But it was travel, perhaps in a new sense but in an old place, because I was looking hard at it for the first time and making notes, and because I had no other business there.
    The Romney, Hythe, and Dymchurch Railway was one of the narrowest and smallest in Britain, running from Hythe to Dungeness on fifteen-inch tracks. A sign at the station said, NEXT TRAIN AT 17:10, and it was just after five; but the station was locked.
    Marjorie Gait at a tea stall nearby said, "That stationmaster is barmy. Sometimes he doesn't open at all. Sometimes he's there at midnight."
    But I waited a few more minutes, and the train pulled in, whistling—a steam train, which looked like a toy but had been built to last. A man unlocked the station and beckoned me to the ticket window. I waited there. I was the only traveler.
    There was a little placard stuck to the ticket window:
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