HAVING LEFT LONDON in a heat wave, to spend the day on Brighton’s nudist beach, I was slightly nonplussed to be greeted by sullen skies and icy winds. As I shivered fully clad on the damp shingle, ludicrously disguised in dark glasses with my hair in a pony tail, the only thing bare was the beach.
I was about to freeze to death when a faint gleam of sunshine appeared, and a gloomy man in maroon started shoving a metal detector over the pebbles. Next a handsome youth, clad from top to espadrilled toe in French navy, sat down beside me, and bravely undressed to his candy-striped underpants.
With the whole beach to choose from, why did the metal detector man feel the need to circle accusingly round and round my towel as though I was sitting over the Masquerade hare. French navy next door, having cautiously removed his underpants, hastily pulled them on again as the metal detector approached.
11 a.m.
Hurray – sunshine, and a vast couple, both looking nine months gone, crunched past us, whereupon she stripped down to her straw hat, and he to the altogether. Odd that he had spent so much time training his spare grey locks over his bald cranium when he was displaying so many acres of spare flesh elsewhere.
Predictably, the man in maroon was soon bearing down on them until, suddenly deflected by a winsome youth in dungarees, he absent-mindedly ran his metal detector over the fat woman’s stomach. Both gave off noisy squawks – perhaps she was on the coil.
The temperature soared, I was down to my bikini, and the beach was filling up, not only with nudists, but also with fully clad spectators, including a Chinaman in an Old Rugbean tie, and an Old English Sheepdog. Several young lads were even frolicking in the sea, which caused a man with a beard and rather too much jewellery to whip out his binoculars and display a keen interest in marine biology.
Nearby, a hefty new arrival bent over, grunting, to remove his socks, and, peering through his legs, caught me looking at him. The trouble with nudist beaches is that everyone hides behind books trying to pretend they’re not looking at everyone else the whole time. Even Jeffrey Archer goes unread.
Noon
After erecting a Wrigley’s spearmint parasol with much wiggling, the fatties were waddling down to the sea for a dip. I gingerly removed my bikini top, only to find an ancient couple had parked themselves on my left. The husband having removed everything except a flapping corn plaster was gazing goatily around him. His wife, rigid with disapproval, remained in her woollen cardigan and floral shirtwaister.
‘It’s disgusting, Gilbert,’ she snapped, mouth shutting like a trap. ‘If they could only see themselves.’
She was right of course. The large majority of people on the beach were men well over fifty, labouring under the illusion that it doesn’t matter what shape you are as long as you’re brown all over. Even worse, their ludicrous uniform is to wear nothing but dazzlingly blancoed gym shoes and a little peaked cap to hide the lack of hair and cast fascinating shadows over the eyes. Half of these ageing satyrs spent their time standing in one place, trying to look noble and boyish like Michelangelo’s David. The rest never stopped sauntering round the beach as though they were modelling birthday suits for the very much fuller figure. Crunch crunch crunch went their white gym shoes on the pebbles.
I was so transfixed by a butch lady with a huge bust, a kind of Alice B. Topless, who was oiling her little husband with great slaps that echoed across the shingle, that I didn’t notice in time that a bespectacled redhead had sat down on my right. Clearing his throat, he peeled speedily down to his freckles.
‘This is the first time,’ he said thickly, ‘I have had occasion to divest myself on a nudist beach. I am what is commonly known as nervous – goodness, these pebbles are sharp.’
Half an hour later, he had not drawn breath. The only pity, he said, was that the lads at the Water Board where he worked would never believe he’d divested himself. Perhaps I could be persuaded to take a photograph of him. Frantic to change the subject, I made the fatuous observation that he must have lots of pressure in his job. Any minute we’d be talking about stopcocks.
Bored with sunbathing – his white skin was already tinged with rose – he produced a camera, and began snapping all and sundry, to their intense irritation. He was just poised to capture goaty Gilbert leering at a buxom brunette, when Gilbert’s shirtwaisted wife gallantly flung herself in front of the camera.
Suddenly my red-headed friend turned on me. ‘You’re the girl who writes for the Mail on Sunday.’
So much for my disguise as an undercovered agent.
‘No I’m not,’ I bleated. ‘I’m always being mistaken for her, but she’s much younger than me – and thinner.’
‘Could have sworn she was you, what’s her name?’
‘Katharine Whitehorn,’ I said firmly.
Mercifully he was distracted by a comely blonde undulating down to the sea with a chain-mail bottom from lying on the pebbles, and promptly snapped her for posteriority.
By afternoon, which was early closing day, the beach was enhanced by some really beautiful people of both sexes. The standard pick-up practice is for a boy to lob pebbles on to a girl’s bare back. If she doesn’t rise mentally or physically, he then goes and swims, and shakes his wet hair all over her. A flurry of Do you Minds invariably follows, and an acquaintance is struck up.
The most absurd female fashion was three naked girls parading round with those space antennae bobbles clipped on to their heads. As though the Martians had landed.
Just below me a plump man, wearing nothing but corespondent shoes, was watching a blond youth in Bermuda shorts playing drakes and drakes. Soon he was joined by a friend. ‘Have you seen Pedro recently? Raoul says he’s all of a sag, isn’t age cruel? Ooch!’ he screeched, leaping in the air as he was goosed by a jolly Labrador.
Spectators were also out in force – mostly middle-aged men in suits. Behind me, a granny in a camel-hair skirt, her two daughters and their assorted yelling offspring had lined up their deckchairs for a jolly good gawp.
‘Look at ’him,’ cackled Granny. ‘Tattooed all over, and I mean all over, must’ave hurt. Stop sucking that pebble, Natalie, you don’t know where it’s been.’
By four o’clock I was dying to swim but too nervous to run the gauntlet of all the eyes. Just as well, for suddenly a large gang of black youths rolled up in immaculate white suits, and stood on the brow of the beach, gazing down at the stretched-out bodies. In such a role-reversed situation, I felt we ought to rise up and do a tribal war dance to entertain them. Aware of incipient menace, male sunbathers started rolling over on their fronts, women huddled into the shingle.
Next minute, the black gang came whooping and zigzagging down the beach, leaping over bodies, ripping away towels.
‘Did you ever see such a grotesque sight, man?’ howled the leader, slithering to a halt behind Alice B. Topless. Instantly they formed a barracking chanting ring round her.
‘Do something, Hildred,’ hissed Alice, quivering with rage. Little Hildred very sensibly cowered behind Iris Murdoch, until the gang got bored and bounded off down the beach to mob-up one of the satyrs, who was nervously employing a C & A carrier bag as a fig leaf. Finally, with a yell of ‘Effing fairies’, the gang took off towards the West Pier, and we all heaved a sigh of relief.
Unable to bear the heat any longer, I crept down to bathe. Those pebbles were such agony to walk on, it’s impossible not to wobble. Entering the sea, I was startled to see two red bums sticking up in the air. They turned out to be two youths diving for pebbles. I suppose boys will be buoys.
Just as I was up to my waist in blissfully cool green water, I realised I’d left my watch on, and had to stagger back up the beach again. Talk about health and inefficiency.
Shadows were lengthening now, everyone was going in. Seaweed littered the beach like discarded loincloths. Only the fatties were still stretched out. Despite their parasol, they looked somewhat overcooked. Red seals in the sunset.