related to each other, and they all spoke in the same accent. It wasn’t Welsh, although it had a distinct Welsh lilt; it wasn’t Lancashire, although it had Lancashire’s nasality and flat vowels; and it wasn’t Irish, although it had the thickness of a brogue and the Irish way of saying
d
for
th
.
“Auntie went to Douglas on the train,” the butcher said, breaking a long silence with an interesting fact.
Anti wint ta Dooglus on di treen
.
It was delivered in a series of tom-tom beats or sixteenth notes, as if the butcher were reciting the last line of a chorus of a popular song.
Ań-tĭ-wĭnt-tă-Dóo-glŭs-ŏn-dĭ-tréen
.
Or, set to music:
Indeed, to my ears the whole conversation seemed to be all tune and no content. The men might just as well have been birds in a wood; and I had no idea whether these pleasant bursts of sound were alarm signals, mating calls, or what.
The proprietor was an exiled Englishman: florid, friendly and slow-moving, he had the unsettled-down face of an adolescent boy. He’d been a wartime naval officer, which explained the brass ship’s bell behind the bar and the big tidal clock whose needle pointed at High Tide when it was in fact just coming up past Low Water. After the war he’d had a job in Essex, then run a pub in Wales; in the Isle of Man he had at last found a happy niche for himself—a place where a Lieutenant RNVR, vintage 1921, could come decently home to roost.
“We’re thirty years behind the times here,” he said, putting a superfluous sparkle into the glass he was drying. “And we mean to keep it that way.”
The thrushes were singing at the far end of the bar.
Dooglus. Frocks. Ida. Spoods. Queenies
. The picture window looked out over a gully of pines and tamarisk leading down to a deserted cove where the sea was foaming over rocks. The proprietor assured me that what I was seeing was a New Eden. There was no crime and little income tax. Your daughter could walk alone at night without fear of molestation. There was the Youth Orchestra for culture, and the Gulf Stream for warm winters. There were Manx Shearwaters, if I liked birds. There were—oh, a hundred and onethings that made the Island the best place on earth. The proprietor was himself standing for elective office, as a town councillor or village selectman, in this paradise. “On what platform?”
“As an Independent. We don’t need a Conservative Party here. Everyone’s more conservative than the Conservatives. If Mrs. Thatcher came to the Island, she’d be thought too ruddy left-wing by half.”
Gazing down at the empty cove, the overgrown cliff walk, the ruined jetty in the rocks, I could see one conspicuous serpent in the proprietor’s garden.
“You’ve lost your tourist trade, though.”
“Oh, it’s been a bit off this year. Goes up and down, you know. There’s a guest here now.”
To substantiate the proprietor’s veracity, the hotel’s solitary guest came out to the dining room and sat at my end of the bar, where he ordered a Bacardi-and-Coke. His crushed gray suit looked as if it were in the habit of making flights, in Executive Class, all on its own; although the evening was hardly even warm, the knot of his Playboy Club tie had been wrenched down from his neck, like the ties of reporters in American movies.
“Here on business?” he said.
“Sort of,” I said.
“Super place,” he said wanly. “Smashing,” and sipped his Bacardi-and-Coke. “Wish I could spend longer here.” Saying the words prompted him to consult his watch. It was the sort of watch that one was meant to notice: people who care about Rolex Oysters and Patek Philippes would have acknowledged it with a nod. I knew the names, but couldn’t fit them to their faces.
He was staying on the Island overnight to see an accountant and launder some money. He had a company here—“a useful dodge,” he said. He had rented a car at the airport and was planning to drive to Douglas and spend the rest of the
d
for
th
.
“Auntie went to Douglas on the train,” the butcher said, breaking a long silence with an interesting fact.
Anti wint ta Dooglus on di treen
.
It was delivered in a series of tom-tom beats or sixteenth notes, as if the butcher were reciting the last line of a chorus of a popular song.
Ań-tĭ-wĭnt-tă-Dóo-glŭs-ŏn-dĭ-tréen
.
Or, set to music:
Indeed, to my ears the whole conversation seemed to be all tune and no content. The men might just as well have been birds in a wood; and I had no idea whether these pleasant bursts of sound were alarm signals, mating calls, or what.
The proprietor was an exiled Englishman: florid, friendly and slow-moving, he had the unsettled-down face of an adolescent boy. He’d been a wartime naval officer, which explained the brass ship’s bell behind the bar and the big tidal clock whose needle pointed at High Tide when it was in fact just coming up past Low Water. After the war he’d had a job in Essex, then run a pub in Wales; in the Isle of Man he had at last found a happy niche for himself—a place where a Lieutenant RNVR, vintage 1921, could come decently home to roost.
“We’re thirty years behind the times here,” he said, putting a superfluous sparkle into the glass he was drying. “And we mean to keep it that way.”
The thrushes were singing at the far end of the bar.
Dooglus. Frocks. Ida. Spoods. Queenies
. The picture window looked out over a gully of pines and tamarisk leading down to a deserted cove where the sea was foaming over rocks. The proprietor assured me that what I was seeing was a New Eden. There was no crime and little income tax. Your daughter could walk alone at night without fear of molestation. There was the Youth Orchestra for culture, and the Gulf Stream for warm winters. There were Manx Shearwaters, if I liked birds. There were—oh, a hundred and onethings that made the Island the best place on earth. The proprietor was himself standing for elective office, as a town councillor or village selectman, in this paradise. “On what platform?”
“As an Independent. We don’t need a Conservative Party here. Everyone’s more conservative than the Conservatives. If Mrs. Thatcher came to the Island, she’d be thought too ruddy left-wing by half.”
Gazing down at the empty cove, the overgrown cliff walk, the ruined jetty in the rocks, I could see one conspicuous serpent in the proprietor’s garden.
“You’ve lost your tourist trade, though.”
“Oh, it’s been a bit off this year. Goes up and down, you know. There’s a guest here now.”
To substantiate the proprietor’s veracity, the hotel’s solitary guest came out to the dining room and sat at my end of the bar, where he ordered a Bacardi-and-Coke. His crushed gray suit looked as if it were in the habit of making flights, in Executive Class, all on its own; although the evening was hardly even warm, the knot of his Playboy Club tie had been wrenched down from his neck, like the ties of reporters in American movies.
“Here on business?” he said.
“Sort of,” I said.
“Super place,” he said wanly. “Smashing,” and sipped his Bacardi-and-Coke. “Wish I could spend longer here.” Saying the words prompted him to consult his watch. It was the sort of watch that one was meant to notice: people who care about Rolex Oysters and Patek Philippes would have acknowledged it with a nod. I knew the names, but couldn’t fit them to their faces.
He was staying on the Island overnight to see an accountant and launder some money. He had a company here—“a useful dodge,” he said. He had rented a car at the airport and was planning to drive to Douglas and spend the rest of the
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