The Lost Continent (12 page)

On this sobering thought I strolled to Water Street, on the Savannah River, where there was a new riverside walk. The river itself was dark and smelly and on the South Carolina side opposite there was nothing to look at but down-at-heel warehouses and, further downriver, factories dispensing billows of smoke. But the old cotton warehouses overlooking the river on the Savannah side were splendid. They had been restored without being over-gentrified. They contained boutiques and oyster bars on the ground floor, but the upper floors were left a tad shabby, giving them that requisite raffish air I had been looking for since Hannibal. Some of the shops were just a bit twee, I must admit. One of them was called The Cutest Little Shop in Town, which made me want to have the Quickest Little Puke in the County. A sign on the door said ‘Absotively, posilutely no food or drink in shop.’ I sank to
my knees and thanked God that I had never had to meet the proprietor. The shop was closed so I wasn’t able to go inside and see what was so cute about it.

Towards the end of the street stood a big new Hyatt Regency hotel, an instantly depressing sight. Massive and made of shaped concrete, it was from the Fuck You school of architecture so favoured by the big American hotel chains. There was nothing about it in scale or appearance even remotely sympathetic to the old buildings around it. It just said, ‘Fuck you, Savannah.’ The city is particularly ill-favoured in this respect. Every few blocks you come up against some discordant slab – the De Soto Hilton, the Ramada Inn, the Best Western Riverfront, all about as appealing as spittle on a johnny cake, as they say in Georgia. Actually, they don’t say anything of the sort in Georgia. I just made it up. But it has a nice Southern ring to it, don’t you think? I was just about at the point where I was starting to get personally offended by the hotels, and in serious danger of becoming tiresome here, when my attention was distracted by a workman in front of the city courthouse, a large building with a gold dome. He had a leaf blower, a noisy contraption with miles of flex snaking back into the building behind him. I had never seen such a thing before. It looked something like a vacuum cleaner – actually, it looked like one of the Martians in
It Came From Outer Space
– and it was very noisy. The idea, I gathered, was that you would blow all the leaves into a pile and then gather them up by hand. But every time the man assembled a little pile of leaves, a breeze would come along and unassemble it. Sometimes he would chase one leaf half a block or more with his
blower, whereupon all the leaves back at base would seize the opportunity to scuttle off in all directions. It was clearly an appliance that must have looked nifty in the catalogue but would never work in the real world, and I vaguely wondered, as I strolled past, whether the people at the Zwingle Company were behind it in some way.

I left Savannah on the Herman Talmadge Memorial Bridge, a tall, iron-strutted structure that rises up and up and up and flings you, wide-eyed and quietly gasping, over the Savannah River and into South Carolina. I drove along what appeared on my map to be a meandering coast road, but was in fact a meandering inland road. This stretch of coast is littered with islands, inlets, bays, and beaches of rolling sand dunes, but I saw precious little of it. The road was narrow and slow. It must be hell in the summer when millions of vacationers from all over the eastern seaboard head for the beaches and resorts – Tybee Island, Hilton Head, Laurel Bay, Fripp Island.

It wasn’t until I reached Beaufort (pronounced Bewfurt) that I got my first proper look at the sea. I rounded a bend to find myself, suddenly and breathtakingly, gazing out on a looking-glass bay full of boats and reed beds, calm and bright and blue, the same colour as the sky. According to my
Mobil Travel Guide
, the three main sources of income in the area are tourism, the military and retired people. Sounds awful, doesn’t it? But in fact Beaufort is lovely, with many mansions and an old-fashioned business district. I parked on Bay Street, the main road through town, and was impressed to find that the meter fee was only 5
That must be just about the
last thing a nickel will buy you in America – thirty minutes of peace of mind in Beaufort, South Carolina. I strolled down to a little park and marina, which had been recently built, from the look of it. This was only the fourth time I had seen the Atlantic from this side. When you come from the Midwest, the ocean is a thing rarely encountered. The park was full of signs instructing you not to enjoy yourself or do anything impertinent. They were every few yards, and said
NO SWIMMING OR DIVING FROM SEA-WALL. NO BIKE-RIDING IN PARK. CUTTING OR DAMAGING FLOWERS, PLANTS, TREES OR SHRUBS PROHIBITED. NO CONSUMPTION OR POSSESSION OF BEER, WINE, OR ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES IN CITY PARKS WITHOUT SPECIAL PERMISSION OF THE CITY. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED
. I don’t know what sort of mini-Stalin they have running the council in Beaufort, but I’ve never seen a place so officially unwelcoming. It put me off so much that I didn’t want to be there any more, and abruptly I left, which was a shame really because I still had twelve minutes of unexpired time on the meter.

As a result of this, I arrived in Charleston twelve minutes earlier than planned, which was good news. I had thought that Savannah was the most becoming American city I had ever seen, but it thumped into second place soon after my arrival in Charleston. At its harbour end, the city tapers to a rounded promontory which is packed solid with beautiful old homes, lined up one after the other along straight, shady streets like oversized books on a crowded shelf. Some are of the most detailed Victorian ornateness, like fine lace, and some are plain white clapboard with black shutters, but all of them are at least three storeys high and imposing – all the more so as they loom up so near the
road. Almost no-one has any yard to speak of – though everywhere I looked there were Vietnamese gardeners minutely attending to patches of lawn the size of tablecloths – so children play on the street and women, all of them white, all of them young, all of them rich, gossip on the front steps. This isn’t supposed to happen in America. Wealthy children in America don’t play on the street; there isn’t any need. They lounge beside the pool or sneak reefers in the $3,000 treehouse that daddy had built for them for their ninth birthday. And their mothers, when they wish to gossip with a neighbour, do it on the telephone or climb into their air-conditioned station wagons and drive a hundred yards. It made me realize how much cars and suburbs – and indiscriminate wealth – have spoiled American life. Charleston had the climate and ambience of a Naples, but the wealth and style of a big American city. I was enchanted. I walked away the afternoon, up and down the peaceful streets, secretly admiring all these impossibly happy and good-looking people and their wonderful homes and rich, perfect lives.

The promontory ended in a level park, where children wheeled and bounced on BMXs and young couples strolled hand in hand and Frisbees sailed through the long strips of dark and light caused by the lowering sun filtering through the magnolia trees. Every person was youthful, good-looking and well-scrubbed. It was like wandering into a Pepsi commercial. Beyond the park, a broad stone promenade overlooked the harbour, vast and shimmery and green. I went and peered over the edge. The water slapped the stone and smelled of fish. Two miles out you could see the island of Fort Sumter where the Civil War began. The promenade was crowded with cyclists and
sweating joggers, who weaved expertly among the pedestrians and shuffling tourists. I turned around and walked back to the car, the sun warm on my back, and had the sneaking feeling that after such perfection things were bound to be downhill from now on.

FOR THE SAKE
of haste I got on Interstate 26, which runs in a 200-mile diagonal across South Carolina, through a landscape of dormant tobacco fields and salmon-coloured soil. According to my
Mobil Travel Guide
, I was no longer in the Deep South but in the Middle Atlantic states. But it had the heat and glare of the South and the people in gas stations and cafés along the way sounded Southern. Even the radio announcers sounded Southern, in attitude as much as accent. According to one news broadcast, the police in Spartanburg were looking for two black men ‘who raped a white girl’. You wouldn’t hear
that
outside the South.

As I neared Columbia, the fields along the road began to fill with tall signs advertising motels and quick food places. These weren’t the squat, rectangular billboards of my youth, with alluring illustrations and three-dimensional cows, but just large unfriendly signs standing atop sixty-foot-high metal poles. Their messages were terse. They didn’t invite you to do anything interesting or seductive. The old signs were chatty and would say things like
WHILE IN COLUMBIA, WHY NOT STAY IN THE MODERN SKYLINER MOTOR INN, WITH OUR ALL NEW SENSUMATIC VIBRATING BEDS. YOU’LL LOVE ’EM! SPECIAL RATES FOR CHILDREN. FREE TV. AIR-COOLED ROOMS. FREE ICE. PLENTY OF PARKING. PETS WELCOME. ALL-U-CAN-EAT CATFISH BUFFET EVERY TUES 5–7 P.M. DANCE NITELY
TO THE VERNON STURGES GUITAR ORCHESTRA IN THE STARLITE ROOM. (PLEASE – NO NEGROES
). The old signs were like oversized postcards, with helpful chunks of information. They provided something to read, a little food for thought, a snippet of insight into the local culture. Attention spans had obviously contracted since then. The signs now simply announced the name of the business and how to get there. You could read them from miles away:
HOLIDAY INN, EXIT 26E, 4 MI
. Sometimes these instructions were more complex and would say things like:
BURGER KING – 31 MILES. TAKE EXIT 17B 5 MI TO US49 SOUTH, TURN RIGHT AT LIGHTS, THEN WEST PAST AIRPORT FOR 2½ MI
. Who could want a Whopper that much? But the signs are effective, no doubt about it. Driving along in a state of idle mindlessness, suffering from hunger and a grease deficiency, you see a sign that says
MCDONALD’S – EXIT HERE
, and it’s almost instinctive to swerve onto the exit ramp and follow it. Over and over through the weeks I found myself sitting at plastic tables with little boxes of food in front of me which I didn’t want or have time to eat, all because a sign had instructed me to be there.

At the North Carolina border, the dull landscape ended abruptly, as if by decree. Suddenly the countryside rose and fell in majestic undulations, full of creeping thickets of laurel, rhododendron and palmetto. At each hilltop the landscape opened out to reveal hazy views of the Blue Ridge Mountains, part of the Appalachian chain. The Appalachians stretch for 2,100 miles from Alabama to Canada and were once higher than the Himalayas (I read that on a book of matches once and have been waiting years for an opportunity to use it), though now they are smallish and rounded, fetching rather than dramatic. All
along their length they go by different names – the Adirondacks, Poconos, Catskills, Alleghenies. I was headed for the Smokies, but I intended to stop
en route
at the Biltmore Estate, just outside Asheville, North Carolina. Biltmore was built by George Vanderbilt in 1895 and was one of the biggest houses ever constructed in America – a 255-room pile of stone in the style of a Loire château, in grounds of 10,000 acres. When you arrive at Biltmore you are directed to park your car and go into a building by the gate to purchase your ticket before proceeding on to the estate. I thought this was curious until I went into the building and discovered that a gay afternoon at Biltmore would involve a serious financial commitment. The signs telling you the admission fee were practically invisible, but you could see from the ashen-faced look on people as they staggered away from the ticket windows that it must be a lot. Even so I was taken aback when my turn came and the unpleasant-looking woman at the ticket window told me that the admission fee was $17.50 for adults and $13 for children. ‘
Seventeen dollars and fifty cents!
’ I croaked. ‘Does that include dinner and a floor show?’

The woman was obviously used to dealing with hysteria and snide remarks. In a monotone she said, ‘The admission fee includes admission to the George Vanderbilt house, of which fifty of the 250 rooms are open to the public. You should allow two or three hours for the self-guided tour. It also includes admission to the extensive gardens for which you should allow thirty minutes to one hour. It also includes admission and guided tour of the winery with audiovisual presentation and complimentary wine tasting. A guide to the house and grounds, available
for a separate charge, is recommended. Afterwards you may wish to spend further large sums of money in the Deerpark Restaurant or, if you are a relatively cheap person, in the Stable Café, as well as avail yourself of the opportunity to buy expensive gifts and remembrances in the Carriage House Gift Shop.’

But by this time I was already on the highway again, heading for the Great Smoky Mountains, which, thank God, are free.

I drove ten miles out of my way in order to spend the night in Bryson City, a modest self-indulgence. It was a small, nondescript place of motels and barbecue shacks strung out along a narrow river valley on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There is little reason to go there unless your name happens to be Bryson, and even then, I have to tell you, the pleasure is intermittent. I got a room in the Bennett’s Court Motel, a wonderful old place that appeared not to have changed a bit since 1956, apart from an occasional light dusting. It was precisely as motels always used to be, with the rooms spread out along a covered verandah overlooking a lawn with two trees and a tiny concrete swimming pool, which at this time of year was empty but for a puddle of wet leaves and one pissed-off looking frog. Beside each door was a metal armchair with a scallop-shaped back. By the sidewalk an old neon sign thrummed with the sound of coursing neon gas and spelled out
BENNETT’S COURT/VACANCY/AIR-CONDITIONED/GUEST POOL/TV
, all in green and pink beneath a tasteful blinking arrow in yellow. When I was small all motels had signs like that. Now you only see them occasionally
in small forgotten towns on the edge of nowhere. Bennett’s Court clearly would be the motel in Amalgam.