Today Highcliffe's stately Gothic shell stands crowded by bungalows, an incongruous sight, except at the back where the grounds run down to the sea through a public car park. I'd like to have known how the house had come to be in such a parlous and neglected state, but there was noone around its brooding eminence and there were no cars in the car park. I followed some rickety wooden steps down to the beach. The rain had stopped in the night, but the sky was threatening and there was a stiff breeze that made my hair and clothes boogie and had the sea in a frenzy of froth. I couldn't hear anything but the pounding of waves. Leaning steeply into the wind, I trudged along the beach in the posture of someone shouldering a car up a hill, passing in front of a long crescent of beach huts, all of identical design but painted in varying bright hues. Most were shut up for the winter, but about threequarters of the way along one stood open, rather in the manner of a magician's box, with a little porch on which sat a man and a woman in garden chairs, huddled in arctic clothing with lap blankets, buffeted by wind that seemed constantly to threaten to tip them over backwards. The man was trying to read a newspaper, but the wind kept wrapping it around his face.
They both looked very happy or if not happy exactly, at least highly contented, as if this were the Seychelles and they were drinking gin fizzes under nodding palms rather than sitting halfperished in a stiff English gale. They were contented because they owned a little piece of prized beachfront property for which there was no doubt a long waitinglist and here was the true secret of their happiness any time they wanted they could retire to the hut and be fractionally less cold. They could make a cup of tea and, if they were feeling particularly rakish, have a chocolate digestive biscuit. Afterwards, they could spend a happy halfhour packing their things away and closing up hatches. And this was all they required in the world to bring themselves to a state of near rapture.
One of the charms of the British is that they have so little idea of their own virtues, and nowhere is this more true than with their happiness. You will laugh to hear me say it, but they are the happiest people on earth. Honestly. Watch any two Britons inconversation and see how long it is before they smile or laugh over some joke or pleasantry. It won't be more than a few seconds. I once shared a railway compartment between Dunkirk and Brussels with two Frenchspeaking businessmen who were obviously old friends or colleagues. They talked genially the whole journey, but not once in two hours did I see either of them raise a flicker of a smile. You could imagine the same thing with Germans or Swiss or Spaniards or even Italians, but with Britons never.
And the British are so easy to please. It is the most extraordinary thing. They actually like their pleasures small. That is why, I suppose, so many of their treats teacakes, scones, crumpets, rock cakes, Rich Tea biscuits, fruit Shrewsburys are so cautiously flavourful. They are the only people in the world who think of jam and currants as thrilling constituents of a pudding or cake. Offer them something genuinely tempting a slice of gateau or a choice of chocolates from a box and they will nearly always hesitate and begin to worry that it's unwarranted and excessive, as if any pleasure beyond a very modest threshold is vaguely unseemly.
'Oh, I shouldn't really,' they say.
'Oh, go on,' you prod encouragingly.
'Well, just a small one then,' they say and dartingly take a small one, and then get a look as if they have just done something terribly devilish. All this is completely alien to the American mind. To an American the whole purpose of living, the one constant confirmation of continued existence, is to cram as much sensual pleasure as possible into one's mouth more or less continuously. Gratification, instant and lavish, is a birthright. You might as well say 'Oh, I shouldn't really' if someone tells you to take a deep breath.
I used to be puzzled by the curious British attitude to pleasure, and that tireless, dogged optimism of theirs that allowed them to attach an upbeat turn of phrase to the direst inadequacies ' well, it makes a change', 'mustn't grumble', 'you could do worse', 'it's not much, but it's cheap and cheerful', 'it was quite nice really' but gradually I came round to their way of thinking and my life has never been happier. I remember finding myself sitting in damp clothes in a cold cafe on a dreary seaside promenade and being presented with a cup of tea and a teacake and going 'Ooh, lovely!', and I knew then that the process had started. Before long I came to regard all kinds of activities asking for more toast in a hotel, buying woolrich socks at Marks & Spencer, getting two pairs of trousers when I only really needed one as something daring, very nearly illicit. My life became immensely richer.
I exchanged smiles now with the happy couple at their hut, and trudged on along the beach to Mudeford, a hamlet standing on a spit of sandy land between the sea and the reedy sprawl of Christchurch Harbour, with a handsome view across to the Priory. Mudeford was once a refuge of smugglers, but today it is little more than a small, rather tatty parade of shops and a Volvo garage surrounded by houses, all with jaunty nautical names: Saltings, Hove To, Sick Over the Side.
I walked through it and on into Christchurch by way of a long, messy street lined with garages, dustylooking shops and halfdead pubs, thence on to Bournemouth through Tuckton, Southbourne and Boscombe. Time had not done many favours to most of these places. Christchurch's and Southbourne's shopping precincts both appeared to be locked in a slow, untidy spiral of decline, and at Tuckton Bridge a oncelovely pub on the banks of the River Stour had had its lawns sacrificed to make room for a large car park. Now it was something called a Brewers Fayre, an offshoot of the Whitbread organization. It was awful but clearly and depressingly popular. Only Boscombe seemed to have picked itself up a little. Once, the main road through it had been ugly enough to make you gasp, full of blown litter, tacky shops and cruelly unsympathetic supermarkets and department stores crammed into Victorian frontages. Now the street had been smartly pedestrianized along part of its length, the Royal Arcade was being done up with style and care and the whole was generously scattered with antique shops, which were considerably more interesting to look at than the previous range of tanning salons and bedding centres. At the far end, a shop called the Boscombe Antique Market had a big sign in the window that said 'We Buy Anything!', which seemed an unusually generous offer, so I went inside, gobbed on the counter and barked, 'How much for that then?' I didn't, of course it was shut but I'd have liked to.
It was a long haul from Highcliffe to Bournemouth, ten miles or so altogether, and well into my daily happy hour by the time I reached East Overcliff Drive and the last leg to town. I paused to lean on a white fence rail and take in the view. The wind had died and in the pale evening light Poole Bay, as the sea at Bournemouth is called, was entrancing: a long, majestic curve of crumbly cliffs and wide golden beaches stretching from below the Isle of Wight tor the purply Purbeck Hills. Before me the lights of Bournemouth and Poole twinkled invitingly in the gathering dusk. Far below, the town's two piers looked cheerful and dashing, and far out at sea the lights of passing ships bobbed and blinked in the dusky light. The world, or at least this little corner of it, seemed a good and peaceful place, and I was immensely glad to be there.
Throughout this trip, I would have moments of quiet panic at the thought of ever leaving this snug and homey little isle. It was a melancholy business really, this trip of mine a bit like wandering through a muchloved home for a last time. The fact is, I liked it here. I liked it very much. It only took a friendly gesture from a shopkeeper, or a seat by the fire in a country pub, or a view like this to set me thinking that I was making a serious, deeply misguided mistake.