Cities and towns -- Growth -- Fiction; Wales -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Here's where the donkeys turn. They have red and white housings, and
their names across their foreheads--"_Tiny_," "_Prince_," and so on; the
donkey-rides are a little offshoot of _Porth Neigr Omnibuses_.
Kite-flying's popular here too--that's Mr. Morrell's, the big
star-shaped one. The bathing-tents and deck-chairs are mostly hired from
Howell Gruffydd, but there are no boats yet except Percy Briggs's
twenty-five-pound collapsible one; those who want to go fishing have to
use one of those old Copley Fielding things by the jetty there.... Now
we're coming to the people. Here's Raymond Briggs with Mr. Lacey,
Raymond in his orange-and-black blazer and a white Homburg hat, Philip
in a blue blazer with white braid and a plain straw hat; both with
perfect creamy rippling white trousers and spotless white doeskin boots.
They're talking off-handedly about other holiday-places--Norway, the
Highlands, the Riviera--and they're afraid of showing any enthusiasm or
delight. Of every place they know they say that it has "gone off" since
they first went there. There's a subtle undercurrent of contest about
their conversation. Philip was at Hyères as recently as last winter,
looking at the violets; but Raymond has been three times to Arles and
Nimes. I suppose honours are easy.
"Roman, I've heard?" Philip remarks. (You can hear him as you pass.)
"Yes, Roman, with a Saracenic tower."
"Ah, that tower's Saracenic, is it?"
"Saracenic."
"Wonderful people!"
"Indeed yes!"
"Curious how it takes you back into ancient times."
"Yes, yes, it shortens history."
"But the hotel accommodation!----"
"Oh, bad in the extreme!"
"What they want is entirely new and up-to-date management----"
"Quite so----"
"Can't say I thought much of their _bouillabaisse_."
"An acquired taste, I suppose----"
And they pass on. They'll talk like that the whole morning. They're not
really interested in their subject. As I say, it makes you think of a
sort of contest. Personally, I always want to applaud when somebody
scores a good point. Perhaps the idea is that they're doing Llanyglo a
favour by coming here--
There, stepping over the tent-ropes, are Mrs. Briggs and Mr. Ashton. Mr.
Ashton is Edward Garden's chief London representative, a man of pleasure
and of the world, and for all I know his function may be to keep these
prosperous northerners up to the metropolitan mark. Mrs. Briggs, for
example, who is very short and stout, and wears a lavender bonnet and
pelisse, and certainly will not walk far on the sand in those heels, is
on her mettle now. She is telling Mr. Ashton some London hotel
experience or other. I like Mrs. Briggs. She's worth ten of Raymond. But
I don't think she quite knows which is the paste and which the jewels in
her speech.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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