Mushroom Town

by Oliver Onions

And if even Mr. Tudor Williams himself now appeared a little absent-minded among his constituents, and hauled himself, as it were, out of remote fastnesses of thought to grasp them fervently (if indiscriminately) by the hand, and to inquire after their rheumatics and wives and other plagues, well, he was a busy, and not at all a wealthy man. At Llanyglo, as elsewhere, it was not only Welsh and English; it was also Get or Go Wanting. The early bird....

So (to push on) circular smears of white appeared on the windows of the second of Raymond Briggs's houses (it was finished by Christmas), and these gave it the appearance of a sudden new Argus, looking out on every side for other houses to join it; and the scaffold-poles began to rise about the new hotel like a larch-plantation. Raymond came and went, and Mr. Tudor Williams came and went, and short winter day followed short winter day. Then, with cat's-ice still glazing the ruts and pools but a feeling of Spring in the air, Porth Neigr, ten miles away, came bustlingly to life. An emissary of the Lord-Lieutenant of the County took up his quarters at the Royal Hotel, and there he was one day joined by the Lord-Lieutenant himself, with Sir Somebody Something, of the Office of Works. These summoned others, who in turn summoned others, and maps and plans were sent for and a line of route was chosen. Police were drafted in, and folk went up into their upper front rooms to see which bedstead or table-leg would best stand the strain of a rope across the street. The old station had been repainted to suit with the new extension, and masts rose at its entrance. To the residents in the principal streets the Council lent loyal emblems and devices. The sounds of bands practising could be heard. His Royal Highness the Duke of Snell was coming to open the line.

Then on the appointed day, the town broke into a flutter of bunting. The March sun shone merrily on Royal Standard and Red Dragon, on Union Jack and ensign, on gold-fringed banners with "CROESAW" on one side and "WELCOME" on the other. On the new metals a Royal Salute of fog-signals was laid. Warning of the Approach passed along the line, on the red-druggeted platform officials great and small waited, and John Willie Garden's friends, whose picks and shovels had made the clay fly, would no doubt read all about it a few days later in the papers.

So, with detonation of fog-signals, and some cheers, but more wide-eyed gazing, and bared heads and bowing backs, and an Address, and other circumstances of loyalty and fraternisation and joy, His Royal Highness and John Willie Garden between them declared the line open; but only the Duke rode on the footplate of the garlanded engine with the crossed flags on its belly. Probably intensely bored, he rode out about a mile towards Abercelyn, and then returned to luncheon at the Royal Hotel. An hour later, coming out again, he passed away to Lancashire. All was over. Folk might now take down their bunting as soon as they pleased. The trick was virtually done for Llanyglo. A loop at Sarn or a new junction, and a realisation on the part of those in authority that there were things that paid better than Abercelyn manganese, and Llanyglo would be "linked up" with rigid iron to the rest of the world.

Nay, it is already linked up even more straitly. A few poles and a thread of wire, crossing the sandhills and ending at the Llanyglo Stores, have some weeks ago put an end to its isolation. It is the nerve that accompanies the sinew, and Howell Gruffydd now receives and despatches telegrams. All is over bar the shouting, and it will not be long before that begins. They are busy now, painting and papering the new hotel, and decorating and upholstering it. It reeks of new paint and varnish and furniture-polish and the plumbers' blowpipes. It resounds with all the doubly loud noises of a half-empty place—with hammering and tacking, clanking buckets, the "Whoas!" to the horses of the delivery-vans, the jolting of heavy things moved upstairs, the rasp of scrubbing-brushes, the squeak of window-cloths. It is spick-and-span, from the feathery new larches in front to the silvery new dustbins behind.... Wherefore, seeing that we shall only be in the way, with never a chair to sit down on yet, and nothing to eat in the place save what the charwoman and the green-aproned carters and carriers have brought for themselves, we may as well leave all these things to the folk whose business it is to attend to them, and take a nap for a month or two, secure that when we wake up again the scene will be set for Llanyglo's lever de rideau, that starched and polite and not quite real little piece that preludes the main action of our tale. There is heather and wild thyme up the Trwyn, very comfortable to doze on; suppose we have our nap up there?...

Ah-h-h-h!—That was the July sun that woke us. It's a warm and brilliant morning. Stretch yourself first, and then have a look down....

That's a surprise, isn't it? You didn't quite expect that? Really not much changed, and yet it's entirely changed. Two new houses and an hotel (in this clean air they'll be new-looking for years yet), and that little border of deck-chairs and bathing-tents and slowly moving parasols, not a couple of hundred yards long altogether, and yet the whole appearance of the place is altered. After a moment you find it quite difficult to remember it as it was the last time we were up here. See that little puff of smoke over there? That's a shunting-engine at Sarn; you'll hear the sound in a moment; there!—Butterflies about us, like hovering pansies; you can see just one corner of poor old Terry's Thelema showing; and out there, where the sea changes colour, just where the gulls are rocking, that's a bank of sand a storm threw up three or four years ago. And that's the telegraph-wire I spoke of, running straight across to Howell Gruffydd's shop there. Yes, that links Llanyglo up....

Where did all these people come from? Well, it's hard to say, but no doubt Edward Garden's got them here for one reason and another. He may even have "packed" the place a little carefully; I don't know. At any rate, he's lent "Sea View" there (that's the newer of the two houses) to Gilbert Smythe. Who's Gilbert Smythe? Well, he's the Medical Officer for Brannewsome, Lancs., and a very clever and quite an honest man. But Gilbert's family's grown more quickly than his fortune, live as frugally as he will he's always in debt, and he isn't going to say "No" to the free offer of a well-built, roomy house, not three minutes from the sands where the children can play all day, and furnished from the potato-masher in the kitchen to the little square looking-glasses in the servants' attics. And of course Edward Garden asks nothing in return. But if Gilbert cares to say that the Llanyglo water is abundant and pure, Edward won't object—it is excellent water. And if Gilbert likes to praise its air and low rainfall (low for Wales), well, he'll be telling no more than the truth. And if Gilbert (not bearing ancient Mrs. Pritchard too much in mind) finds the longevity at Llanyglo remarkable, what's the harm in that? As a matter of fact, there is a saying that the oldest inhabitant always dies first at Llanyglo, and the others follow in order of age, which would be a poor look-out for anybody setting up in the Insurance business here.... So if by and by Gilbert signs a statement to this general effect, you can hardly blame him. He has his way to make, and he is a wise man who allows the galleons of the Gardens of the world to give his skiff a tow.

The others? Well, Edward Garden's a cleverer man than I, and you can hardly expect me to explain the workings of his mind to you in detail. But I think we may assume he knows what he is about. I needn't say they're all very well-to-do; you can see that even from here; but there's something else about them, something we saw in Raymond Briggs, that's a little difficult to describe—perhaps it's merely that they too intend (mutatis mutandis, of course) that their children shall have a better time than their parents have had—or perhaps we'd better say their grandparents had, for their parents do themselves very well, indeed. I don't think you can say more about them than that—it's just that dash of Raymond Briggs.... Squire Wynne wouldn't understand them in the least. The Squire's wasted too much time over antiquity. He doesn't know anything about these people who are coming on. Except in their clothes, and so on, he'd see very little difference between them and people Raymond Briggs would look at as if they weren't there. He wouldn't understand Philip Lacey, for example. (Do you see that orange-and-black striped blazer—there by the seaweed: he's pointing; that's Philip Lacey.) Philip is the big Liverpool florist, seedsman, and landscape-gardener; if he hasn't his "roots in the land" in exactly the sense the Squire understands, his plants have; and Philip distinctly does not intend that Euonyma and Wygelia, who are at present at school at Brighton, shall go into one of his fourteen or fifteen retail shops. Philip isn't spending all that money for that.... (Understand me, I think Philip's perfectly right; the only thing I don't quite see is why he should veneer good sound stuff with something that's an obvious sham.) Of his wife, frankly, I don't think very much. Her processes show too plainly. Philip has his business to attend to, but Mrs. Lacey never leaves her one idea, day or night.... There, Philip's stopped and spoken to Mr. Morrell. Mr. Morrell has just as many hopes and plans for Hilda as the Laceys have for Euonyma and Wygelia, but he knows that his "a's" are past praying for, so he makes rather a display of his native speech. I needn't tell you what a trial that is to Hilda....

And bear in mind that these are prosperous people, well-travelled people (though they mostly keep to the beaten tracks where they meet one another—it's Mrs. Briggs's chief recollection of Florence that she met some people she knew in Leeds there), people who put up at far better hotels than you or I do. And if these, who can afford it, can be shown the way to Llanyglo, the chances are that a crowd of other people, who certainly can't afford it but as certainly won't be out of it, will come in their wake.