Can I find community in Brighton?

Brighton, England

Recently I lost my mother, my job and nearly my wife in quick succession (she was diagnosed with breast cancer). My son now needles me by asking what I do all day. “Son, I have seen things you wouldn’t believe. I have dark thoughts.” That is what I want to say, but I don’t have the courage. It is hard to explain to an eleven-year-old that the black dog can be as demanding as any full-time employer. Besides he wouldn’t get the Blade Runner reference. But his niggling question makes me realize I am a man in need of an alibi, or another alias.

My old headmaster once described me as the opposite of a whited sepulcher. I think he intended this as a compliment

My grandfather S.P.B. Mais earned his keep as a novelist, broadcaster, gossip columnist and schoolteacher. As “the first travel journalist of the airwaves,” he was one of the most famous BBC voices of the 1930s and pioneered the “Letter from America” format a decade before Alistair Cooke.

But he dissipated his talents by churning out books to keep the bailiffs at bay. Sometimes he had three on the go at once. With titles such as Some Books I Like and I Return to Switzerland, his bibliography, if not his muse, was inexhaustible and he penned more than 200 books, all of them out of print and (like him) forgotten. But his favorite county and the subject to which he returned was Sussex. It was not the county of his birth, but the county of his adoption. “In my eyes it has but one drawback,” he wrote. “It ruins one for everywhere else.”

Nearly fifty years after his death I have relocated from Oxfordshire to his beloved south coast. It does not feel like a homecoming as I have never liked shingle beaches, dive-bombing seagulls or shabby seaside resorts and I know not a single soul here. Apart, that is, from an ex-convict. Assuming he must have good connections in the overworld as well as the underworld, I reached out to ask him to recommend a good “chippie.” He came back with his favorite three fish and chip shops in Brighton. That’s great, I replied, but what I actually need is someone to install bookshelves.

A week later he forwards me contact details for a self-styled “dancing carpenter.” Not the obvious candidate to entrust with a spirit level, you might think, but in these parts you go with the flow, and he does a wizard job. And his skills come into their own when he is required to plug a burst water pipe with his finger like the little Dutch boy.

I suspect it may be some time before I find my tribe. All I know about Brighton is that it has the lowest birth rate in England and the highest incidence of sexually transmitted diseases via the eye, or so a medical practitioner confidently assured me on the eve of my arrival. It is unnerving to look at locals too closely knowing this information. Even more eye-catching, so to speak, is their body art. Every other person has a piercing or tattoo, and not a day goes by without me being leafleted to join a yoga class. “Open to all sexual denominations,” teased one.

As my wife and I unpack we keep finding cruel reminders of the people we once were in long-forgotten objects stored away in cardboard boxes. I re-consign them to the lumber room, sensing the time has come to try out a new persona. My old headmaster once described me as the opposite of a whited sepulcher. I think he intended this as a compliment, but it didn’t stop him expelling me from school. At this stage in life, I have a perverse yearning to be a whited sepulcher and I hope I haven’t left it too late to become a pillar of the community.

In what universe do you go down a waiting list? A universe, or algorithm, that is conspiring against you

Any community will do, secular or religious. The church is one obvious route to social respectability. Another of my forebears was head of the Baptist church so that could give me a useful calling card. But I have always subscribed to the Augustinian school of theology (“Give me chastity and continence, only not yet”) so heaven’s gate will have to wait.

To nurture a sense of belonging, I instead apply to join the local tennis club. It proves more difficult to penetrate than the Hurlingham Club. “Sorry, we are full up but you are 485 on the waiting list,” comes the automated reply. I feel deflated and calculate I will probably be dead by the time they let me in. My spirits lift when a few weeks later I reach 466. But then two months on I am relegated to 470. In what universe do you go down a waiting list? A universe, or perverse algorithm, that is conspiring against you, that’s what.

If I am going to be blackballed I would rather they did it to my face so I ring the club. But nobody picks up. Day after day the phone goes unanswered. Just hours after I complete on my new home, I go to the club in person to resolve the mystery. Nobody is on site and the office is locked. Then out of the blue I receive another email. “Some positive news. We are now happy to offer you membership.”

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.