The Best Women's Travel Writing (28 page)

MARTHA EZELL

Holiday Camp

Two young Texans find work in England—and discover a whole new world.

G
inny tore open the envelope, postmarked from London, a few months before we were to leave.

“Butlin's Bognor Regis welcomes you to your place of employment,” she read. “Assignment: Retail catering.”

The name looked regal enough, with “Butlin's Ltd. of London” embossed in gold across the top of the stationery. Elated, she continued: “Listed below is a brief description of the facilities enjoyed by our staff during off-duty hours. These include use of the indoor and outdoor pool, dancing in the large ballrooms, variety shows, plays and films in the numerous theatres, outdoor and indoor sports.”

“Wow! It must be a fantastic hotel!” I said. “Retail catering?” I repeated, imagining the possibilities. “We'll need a cocktail dress. Lots of cocktail dresses!”

It was the spring of 1969. The Beatles were about to record Abbey Road, John and Yoko were planning a “bed-in” for peace, and the British rock invasion was in full force. Screaming and jumping up and down on the pastel floral bedspread my Mom had recently sewn for my room, we bounced with our arms in the air and our hips making rock-and-roll moves as we realized that our summer would be spent in the land of Mick Jagger, Twiggy, and the Queen.

I was born extremely inland, in Texas, surrounded by open plains and shopping malls. The farthest I'd ever been was across the border to Mexico, which had opened my eyes to other places, but not yet my mind. So, at twenty, I decided to spend the summer in Europe with my best friend Ginny. We paid $25 to a student travel agency that promised to find us work abroad.

Ginny and I arrived in London's Gatwick Airport at 2 A.M. on a June morning, each of us lugging two enormous bags stuffed with matching outfits, several evening dresses with accessories, dozens of shoes, and enough of our favorite hairspray to last three months. Pouring out of the airplane along with the rest of the packed-in college students assigned to the bargain flight, we fell behind as we dragged our bags through the nearly deserted airport. We immediately set out in search of a payphone to look up the address in a phonebook—because the work assignment, we had discovered on the plane, said only “Butlin's Bognor Regis,” with no street number or location. We scoured the phone listings. It wasn't under hotels, motels, or even hostels.

“Come on. Let's ask someone,” I finally said, and we found an official-looking counter.

“We want to go to the Butlin's Bognor Regis Hotel,” said Ginny.

“Don't know it,” came the dismissive answer. We asked a few other travelers and shopkeepers, but no one recognized the name. An airline attendant shook her head. We were too tired from the long flight to panic but were also at a complete loss. Finally, a nearby janitorial attendant overheard us.

“Butlin's is a holiday camp, dearies,” she offered in an accent so thick we could barely understand her, “and Bognor Regis is a town on the South Coast.” A holiday what? Not London? But an hour later we had found the train that would take us the three-hour ride to the southern coastal town of Bognor Regis, and once again all seemed well.

We arrived to watch the rising fog reveal a village full of smoke stacks beside a grey sea.

“You must be staying for quite a while,” the taxi driver remarked as he tried to stuff all four bags into his trunk. “Where to, luvvies?” He resigned himself to sharing his front seat with two of the bags and squeezed the passenger-side door shut.

“Butlin's!” we said at once, now confident in our destination.

“Butlin's?” He gave us the once-over. “Whadd'ya want to go to that dump for?”

We looked at each other, then back at him.

“We're working there,” Ginny said, already defensive and not sure why.

He let out an involuntary guffaw and didn't stop chuckling the entire length of the ride.

Fifteen minutes later, after passing dozens of red-bricked industrial buildings and following a narrow street with a sea wall on one side and dark brown cottages on the other, he stopped the cab. We lined up our bags in front of a compound of low-lying buildings cloaked in mist and surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence. The cabbie wished us luck and drove off, leaving us in the hands of a uniformed guard who stood at the entrance and glumly inspected our papers.

Ginny introduced herself. “We're from Texas,” she said, trying to be friendly.

The guard stared at our belongings, then picked up two of the bags with a gruff “hmmpf.” We followed him through rows of two-story concrete buildings until he pointed to our room number. We opened the door to a small rectangular space with peeling green paint and just enough room for a bunk bed, a pole for our clothes, a sink, and a foreboding-looking intercom mounted on one corner of the ceiling. Were we in prison? We fell onto our bunks and submerged into sleep. After what seemed like mere seconds, the intercom started blaring a song:

Neither of us stirred. But there it was half an hour later, another loud and zany song. When it blasted a third cheery song announcing breakfast, Ginny lunged toward it, looking desperately for the on-off switch. There wasn't one. We would come to find out that all Butlin's rooms, even the guestrooms, were subject to these intrusions, alerting everyone to their mealtimes and daily schedule of activities.

It was all part of the master plan.

Butlin's Holiday Camps were the inspired creation of a former carnival worker who, shortly before WWII, saw British working-class families bored, isolated, and unhappy during their brief, hard-earned vacations. He decided folks just weren't having enough fun. After the war, Sir Billy Butlin (he was knighted for his efforts) slowly began to buy up former army bases and motels in village towns across England. He hired small-time singers, dancers, and comedians and called them “Redcoats,” the glamorous stars and entertainment ambassadors for the camps. It was absolutely mandatory at Butlin's to have a good time. The visitors were kept busy day and night with games, dancing, contests, and Redcoat-led fun. It was inexpensive and predictable, and countless British families flocked to the easy refuge of one week's pay for a week of regimented play.

Butlin's directors wore bright green jackets; supervisors wore blue, managers wore maroon, and we, as service-hands, were issued a drab brown uniform that suggested we were on the bottom rung of our new hierarchy. “Welcome to the British class system,” the young Icelandic girl said cheerfully as she handed us our uniforms.

“Better raise that hem six inches if you don't want the blokes to laugh,” advised the rough-looking girl with dark curly hair who walked us to our new job. Her skirt showed almost all of her considerable thighs.

It was sound advice. The miniskirt ruled the day, and Nora, our new Irish friend, had worked here for several summers and knew the ropes. Nora showed us the massive cauldrons where we were to steam milk for morning tea and demonstrated how to position our heads as far away as possible to clean the rancid-smelling crust left on the sides each night. She warned us not to be late for our early shift serving tea, never to be caught talking to the Redcoats, and to studiously avoid dates with the guys from Poland. Ginny and I were assigned a split shift from 5:30 to 8:30 A.M. and then 4 to 10 P.M., six days a week for the equivalent of $12.50 per week.

That night after our evening shift ended, Ginny and I decided to check out the camp. The campers' rooms, called “chalets,” were shockingly similar to our own quarters: long straight lines of concrete buildings with rooms of barebones furnishings. Even the yellow, pink, and green paint couldn't hide the resemblance to military barracks. In the evenings, parents were allowed to leave children in their rooms and go out for the evening. Roaming nannies rode bicycles up and down the rows of chalets to listen for crying babies or out-of-bed children and if need be, locate the parents, who were usually enjoying a show at one of the pubs.

After inspecting the guestrooms, we slipped into the back of one such pub, arriving just in time to see a Redcoat placing tiny chairs in a small circle on the stage. He called for volunteers. Multiple hands went up, but he was only interested in the largest and heaviest members of the crowd, and he wasn't afraid to point them out (even if they hadn't volunteered) and coerce them to the stage. A game of musical chairs began, always with one chair too few, and we watched as the guests competed for the tiny chairs and fell awkwardly on the floor, their corpulent bodies like overturned tops struggling to get up. The crowd loved every pratfall, and no one seemed embarrassed. I watched them enjoying themselves and remembered something my Mom used to tell me: “Get off your high horse.”

At 5:30 the next morning, Ginny and I found the workers' mess hall, smelling it blocks before we arrived. Kippers—dried and salted fish—were the first things to greet us in the dark. Luckily, we did have other choices: eggs swimming in grease, sliced white bread smeared with yellow margarine, bacon submerged in even more grease, and tea with milk. We forced down a few eggs and arrived at our posts behind the counter of a tea station.

“I must have my tea boiling hot,” the first customer insisted.

“Mine must have one-quarter milk with tea to the brim, medium hot,” said the next.

I leaned in and listened hard, struggling to understand the thick British slang as each customer specified the precise temperature they needed their tea. It seemed this was the one department in which they were particular, though. I was continually astonished by their utter acceptance of mediocre service, rigid schedules, bland food, and intrusions of the ubiquitous intercom offerings.

Sir Billy's taste clearly informed the décor of the camp. The walls were orange, green, and purple, and plastic flowers were everywhere. Virtually all the tables were covered with garish paper-mache decorations, and large objects hung from the ceilings: painted chairs, buckets, and big glittery stars. One coffee shop even offered an underwater view of the glass-bottom swimming pool so diners could enjoy their tea and watercress sandwiches while watching the bottom half of kids treading water across the glass, occasionally submerging to make faces at them. Contests were also immensely popular at Butlin's, and Ginny and I eventually witnessed the crowning of “Snorer of the Week,” “Baldest Man,” and “Miss Knobby Knees.”

After a few days, the four other American workers showed up at our chalet door with their backpacks. “We're getting out of here tomorrow,” one announced. “This place is too weird, too much work, and it's just not worth the money. You two should come with us.”

Our chance to escape! That night, I wrote plaintively to my mother about the “inexcusable” conditions of the camp: miserable working shifts, terrible food, the carnival-like atmosphere. Ginny and I pondered our options, but we'd been raised to finish our commitments like good Southern girls, and the next morning, we watched as the last link to our American lives packed up and disappeared out the front gate. We stayed on.

“How far is Texas from the United States?” a plain-faced woman asked me as I lined up bread across the counter. Her hairnet was pulled tight over her unruly hair.

I was on special assignment now, working in a small back room with the “sandwich ladies,” helping spread thick margarine over the hundreds of slices of white bread they used to prepare sandwiches each day for picnics and lunches.

“Texas is a part of the United States, Dorothy,” one of the women corrected her.

Undeterred, Dorothy persisted, curious about the cowboys I knew, the wild saloons I must have frequented, and the horses I surely owned. I was amazed by their ignorance—though not yet by my own—but in the end, I loved being with these rumpled, silver-haired, gregarious ladies. They spent six days a week in this back room, perched on high stools around a big square table, talking nonstop as they buttered the bread, laid out mystery meats, cheese, tomatoes, and lettuce, and finally wrapped the finished sandwiches carefully in cellophane for campers on-the-go.

I sat quietly during most of the chatter: Dorothy's daughter had become pregnant at fifteen and was now living at home again. Glenda's husband worked at a nearby factory and stayed drunk at the pubs most nights. Amanda lived in a boarding house and had met an imperfect suitor at her dance lesson on Saturday night. All had dropped out of high school. They got only one day off a week from this repetitive work, yet they seemed strangely content—happy, even. They didn't yearn to be American, as I had previously assumed the entirety of humanity did. In fact, they might not have yearned for anything more than what they already had.

It was in that room, with morning light coming in through the dark wooden shutters around a big table with the Sandwich Ladies, that my mind finally cracked open to life's diverse riches. The simple activity of making sandwiches for hours on end while savoring what the present circumstances had to offer was my entry to other customs and ways of living. I felt completely at ease at this table, in a place I hadn't known existed, with friends I could never before have imagined. From then on, whenever I was invited into unusual or foreign situations that might previously have provoked fear in me, my answer was always: yes.