I left Waterloo East on the 11:33, and at Gravesend I put down my newspaper. Pocahontas — Mrs. John Rolfe — was buried at St. George's Church. The town bore the name Gravesend because, east of it, the dead had to be buried at sea. We approached the River Medway, the joined towns of Rochester and Chatham. My carriage was less than a third full, perhaps because it was a late train — or was it the low gray sky and the uncertain light? It was cool and damp; the weather forecast was "scattered showers" — it was the forecast for Britain nearly every day of the year. It was no day for the beach.
There were four elderly people in this carriage. One was reading a paper with the headline MY BATTLE WITH DRUGS. Another old person had been saying as I passed, "It was one of those merciful releases—" There were three families, parents and children, neatly dressed for their outing. A bang outside brought a young woman squinting to the window, and her expression said: It sounded like a car backfiring — but that was what they always said about dangerous explosions these days. A little girl was laughing and gasping and holding a bottle of Tizer: "It went down the wrong way!"
An Englishman across the aisle did an extraordinary thing for an Englishman. He asked me a question.
He said, "Walking?"
I was dressed for it — knapsack, all-purpose leather jacket, oily hiking shoes — and (because we were approaching the coast) I had my map unfolded. I was obviously a foreigner, which made his question a safe one. Class-consciousness tended to keep the English rather watchful and buttoned-up. But this was a Bank Holiday train to Margate. Class was hardly an issue here.
Yes, I said, I was walking and also riding, depending on the weather.
"The weather's been letting us down," he said. The weather in England was not a neutral topic. It was full of personification; it involved struggle and conflict. It could be wayward or spiteful, and then people said, "It's been trying to rain all day." Or it could be toiling on your behalf: "The sun's been trying to come out." Or, as the man said, it could be lazy and selfish; it could let you down. People imagined British weather to be something like the British character: it was a British-like miasma up there, hovering and doing things to you.
We talked about the weather, this miasma. The man shared the English relief that spring had come. It had been a hard snowy winter; the country had seized up. So this was the annual gift, but it was unimaginable. It was impossible to anticipate the beauty of springtime in England. It was sudden, mild, fragrant, and full of color — magic rising out of the mud.
Then he said, "American?"
"Yes," I said, but did not elaborate. I said, "I've always wanted to go to Margate."
"You should go to Canterbury instead."
They always said that, the natives. They sent you to traipse around the sights — the ruins, the churches, the hot streets — and they went to a simple lovely place and had a beer under a tree.
"Full of history," he was saying. "Lovely town, beautiful old cathedral. You could change at Sittingbourne."
No, I thought. No sightseeing; no cathedrals, no castles, no churches, no museums. I wanted to examine the particularities of the present.
I said, "Where are you going?"
I guessed that his name was Norman Mould. It was one of my small talents to be able to tell a person's name by looking at him. Those old people up front — they were the Touchmores. The little girl drinking the Tizer — Judith Memery. The man behind the Express — Roger Cockpole. And so forth.
Mr. Mould said, "Ramsgate," and that was the first indication I had had — his flicker of satisfaction and his willingness with the word and the way he said it, "Ramsgit" — that Ramsgate was probably posher than Margate. But I also thought: That's another reason I don't want to go to Canterbury, Norman. I want to go where everyone else is going.
"It's like this Falklands business," Mr. Mould was saying, but now he was talking to the woman next to him, his wife, Nancy Mould, who was reading a newspaper.
In the next few weeks that was to be a common phrase. Politics would come up, or sometimes it was race or religion, and then someone would say, It's like this Falklands business…
The war had not yet started. The Falklands had been overrun by Argentine troops, and British ships had encircled the islands and had declared an exclusion zone for a radius of two hundred miles. No shots had been fired, no men had been killed; there was little news. Most people assumed this was bluster and bluff and counter-bluff, and that after a period of time the Argentines would climb down. Two nights before this, the American President had smiled at a British journalist on a BBC telecast and said, "I don't see why there should be any fighting over that ice-cold bunch of rocks down there."
Mr. Mould, across the aisle, had turned away from me. Our conversation had ended, and now I saw why: he was eating. He had taken out a bag of sandwiches and a thermos jug, and he and his wife had covered their laps with the newspaper (BRITISH CONVOY IN WAR READINESS OFF FALKLANDS) and were sharing lunch. The English become intensely private and rather silent when they eat; their gestures are guarded and economical and precise. They are tidy and self-conscious. Suddenly, eating, they are alone.
It was then that the door at the end of the car banged open and I heard the tramp of heavy boots and laughter and shouts.
"I fucking will do 'im if he don't fank me next time!"
"You fucking won't, you wally!"
"Fuck off — I will!"
They were loud — earsplitting — but the picnicking English people across the aisle, and the elderly people, and each young family in its own pew, did not hear a thing. The picnickers went on eating in their tidy way, and everyone else became silent and small.
"— because I fucking said I would!"
I had seen their heads at Chatham passing by the windows of this car. I hoped they would move on to another car, and they had. But they were loud and violent and could not sit still, and now that we were past Gillingham ("…the headquarters of the religious sect known as the Jezreelites, or the New and Latter House of Israel"), they had entered this car. There were seven of them. They called themselves Skinheads.
Their heads were egglike — completely hairless. But it was not baldness, there was no shine; they were pale gray shaved domes, with the bright white snail tracks of scars tagged over them. It was the size of the heads that I found alarming. A head without any hair is a small thing. It can look like a knob with eyes and ears. A human being is changed remarkably by hairlessness: the appearance is hardened and the person looks insectile and dangerous. They had tattoos on their heads, small symbols and words, and tattoos on their earlobes, and earrings. They were dressed identically in short leather bomber jackets, with a T-shirt underneath. The backs of their hands were tattooed. The Union Jack was the commonest tattoo among them. They wore very tight dungarees that were a bit too short, the cuffs reaching the tops of vicious high-laced boots. The boots were shiny; these boys were oddly clean; their faces were very white.
"Look at that fucking bloke out there — what a silly cunt—"
"'ey, leave off, you fucking wally!"
They were frolicking on the seats, thumping each other and still shouting. Mr. and Mrs. Mould were drinking tea out of plastic mugs.
"The long-range forecast called for fine weather," one of the Touchmores whispered.
Then, behind me, I heard, "Daddy—" It was a child's small voice: Dud-day.
"Please, darling, I'm reading."
"Daddy, why—"
"Yes, darling?"
"Daddy, why are those men saying 'fuck off'?"
"I don't know, darling. Now do please let me read my paper."