Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey

by John Masters

  The Yugo-Slav attacks on unarmed American transports strayed over that country were not merely a snook cocked at the West, but a demonstration to the people of the countries about to go under that no one, not even the United States, was going to help them.

  I left this lecture in a grim mood. It seemed to me that if we accepted this sort of aggression from the Soviets now, we would have to face much worse in the future. They were acting in precisely the same way as Hitler had done in the mid '30s, and we were responding in the same way, too, by talking or waving pieces of paper, instead of instant and overwhelming retaliation. I thought the Americans should have dropped an atom bomb on the Yugo-Slavs within six hours after they shot down the first of those planes, and sent troops in to run another election, a free one this time. If the Russians had tried to interfere, they could have had the same treatment. Instead, no one had done a thing, because we had no politicians with the guts to make the people face the unpleasant truth. So, like everyone else who will not learn the lessons of the past we were going to be condemned to re-live it. We would drag again through the '30s and '40s, under continuous pressure and outrage from an armed and murderous dictatorship (which had already murdered rather more of its own subjects than Hitler killed of his).

  I felt tempted to stay in the army, where I could at least work to see that we won the next war, as we had the last. But the problem was not military, it was political. Only Parliament could save the future, and I had been into all that. I put the sad prospect of an endless grey half-war, with a real war under unfavourable conditions as the only prospect at the end of it, into a corner of my mind, and resolved to stick to my plans.

  In October, on my way to visit the Combined Operations school in North Devon, I turned aside to perform a painful duty. On a day in May 1944, the Japanese had sent a number of 105 mm shells into my brigade headquarters, in North Burma. One splinter stunned my Intelligence Officer, standing next to me in our foxhole. Another killed the artillery major who had just flown in to command our few guns. After the campaign I wrote a letter of condolence to, among others, the mother of the major. She was living with another son, a parson of the Church of England, who was rector of a village under the southern slope of Dartmoor. The parson had long since written asking me to come, if I possibly could, to tell his mother how her son had died. I did not want to do it. Men are killed in many and unpleasant ways in war, and though the major had died almost instantly, what could I say that would make his mother feel better? Still, that was not for me to decide. She wanted it, and now I could make the opportunity to go to her, for my train passed the foot of the valley where the village stood, and I could afford a night there.

  It was a glorious evening in October. The railway runs by the verge of the sea, and the flat sunlight fell on the estuary, on fleets of seagulls anchored on the calm water, on the fishing boats coming back to port. The low hills the other side of the estuary rose soft as a Chinese print out of the haze. This, with the Wiltshire downs and the Cornish cliffs, was an England that I loved with a physical passion. Yet, as we reached the 'courses open to us' in our Life Appreciation, it was becoming clear that to achieve our object we must emigrate.

  But could I leave this beauty? By here I had passed on my bicycle, a young man, a tent on the back and thoughts of a girl in my head. In Cornwall on a summer night, I had slept under a hedge, wondering what was the rhythmic silent beat that throbbed in the air and shook the earth below me. I found it was the swells of the western ocean breaking on the 400-foot granite cliffs ten miles away, a fetch of 3,000 miles behind them. On the grassy cliff tops by Tintagel and King Arthur's Seat I had watched the choughs wheel against a wind from America. In Wiltshire I had walked at night on the short turf, past the White Horse of the West Saxons, alone in moonlight past Stonehenge, awed, exhilarated.

  In my pocket I had a cutting from The Times. The County Council of Cornwall — that very Cornwall of my cliffs and castles and curved surfing beaches — was advertising for a gentleman to fill the post of Chief Constable. In those days Chief Constables, especially in rural areas, were still usually retired officers, and I thought that a young lieutenant-colonel, staff college instructor, with a D.S.O., and an O.B.E., would receive very favourable consideration. The salary was reasonable, a good house went with the job, I would be my own master, the work was for the public good, and it was in Cornwall. My mind raced, and stopped, reversed, and started again. Should I? Shouldn't I?

  I arrived in darkness at the village. Dartmoor loomed like the silhouette of a giant hound crouched behind the rectory, and above it the sky was bright with autumn stars. The rector and his mother received me with reserved gratitude for making this journey. After dinner the old lady led me to a small sitting-room whose uncurtained windows looked down the valley, where yellow lights shone between the moor and the sea. I told her of those moments in Burma when her son had died. Before I had said a dozen words her small hand crept out and clasped mine. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. She was beautiful. I remember her now more vividly than the clearing there on the hillside, the metallic crash of shells all morning, a voice suddenly shouting, 'The major's hit, sir,' choking dust, a rain of bamboo leaves and cut twigs falling on my head, splinters screaming, Pat Boyle limp at my feet, a little blood trickling over my boots.

  When she could speak, she thanked me, again drawing the cloak of courage about her and speaking with control; for I was a stranger, and only during those moments when there could be no strangers, had she bared herself.

  Back in Camberley I discussed the Chief Constableship with Barbara. Yes, I love Cornwall, too, she said... And, yes, you'd be your own boss. And work your own hours... but do you want to behave like a Chief Constable the rest of your life? That brought me up short. I am not a particularly raffish fellow, but there is no denying I have always favoured a certain bohemianism in life style. Would the County Council appreciate their Chief Constable dancing Gurkha jaunris on St Ives jetty one summer evening, as thousands cheered? How would they take a South Seas Fancy Dress Ball at Police Headquarters, no one allowed to wear more than two blades of grass? Or Sergeant's Wife Swopping (Compulsory) the first Tuesday of every month?

  With regret I tore up the cutting and put thoughts of Cornwall out of my head.

  'Then we must emigrate,' I said. 'What we want is simply not available in this country.'

  The beauty of England was real to me, and so was my love for it, but I had come to love India in much the same way, so I could obviously learn to love other places, once I got to know them. I said as much, but now it was in Barbara's eyes that I saw tears.

  I stopped short. 'What is it? Do you want to stay, so badly?'

  'No, no,' she said. 'We must emigrate... I've got to get the dinner ready.'

  'Wait.' I caught her hand. 'What...?' Then suddenly I understood. When she married me she had had to give up two children by her first marriage. Liz and Mike were now nine and seven, and were in England. As long as we stayed here there was hope of an accommodation with their father which would allow her to see them again.

  I took her in my arms and said, 'Let's approach Hugh again. I believe he's going abroad again, so he might let you have them.'

  She shook her head. 'It won't work... We'll see them some day. Meanwhile there's no point in risking Susan's and Martin's future on the off-chance that we might change Liz's and Mike's.' She kissed me. 'Go on. Work out where we ought to go, and we'll talk about it after dinner.'

  After talking that night, I started first with the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railway offices in London, to learn whether either had an opening for me. My reasoning was that each of those vast enterprises contained almost as many different parts as an army. Like an army, then, surely they must have a co-ordinating staff? I was wrong. They offered jobs — such as hammering spikes into ties in British Columbia — but no definite opportunities for advancement.

  The offices of the other dominions I passed without much hesitation. Many India
n Army officers were buying land in Kenya, but I did not want a 'colonial' life, and I thought Kenya would soon go the way of India, but with more violence. I dismissed Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa because although they all wanted British immigrants, they didn't want my type. Mechanics, skilled or professional men — yes. But not me. I have never had the smallest skill with my hands; and I lack the temperament, the desire, or the patience to grow things. I am a creator or a destroyer, a hunter or a guardian.

  I thought of trade. But in thirteen years of adulthood I had never succeeded in selling anything for more than I paid for it. Trade, even more surely than farming, was just not my métier.

  I wrote to David Niven, who had been a regular officer of the Highland Light Infantry, asking him if I could hope to land a job in movies. I added that I was not an actor, but thought I could do well at the production end.

  Niven replied very helpfully, saying it was really no use trying to plan things ahead in the U.S.A., especially in Hollywood. You had to go, find out, and sell yourself on the spot (as he had done, he did not add). Having been led to thinking of the movies, I tried the J. Arthur Rank organization in England, always on the same tack: I was a trained co-ordinator, I was trained to make decisions — right decisions. Surely somewhere in the civilian world an employer existed who realized that it was easier to teach a person such as me general technical ground work and basic principles, than to teach a long-time technician how to co-ordinate, and accept responsibility in fields other than his own?

  I was wrong again. No such person existed. Or if he did, he wasn't at the helm of Rank's, where a pretty secretary risked her job trying and failing to get me an interview with Mr John Davis, its head.

  Barbara was seven months gone in her pregnancy, and again we faced the backbreaking job of packing up all our belongings, this time with no idea where we were going. Again, Barbara's mother offered to let us live with her in Claygate until our plans were firm, and we gratefully accepted. My visits to London grew more frequent, more urgent, more dead-endish. Then Bill Dodds said, 'Come to America'.

  It was a simple remark but, spoken by an American, it was like a master-key quietly pressed into my hand. I had driven across the United States in 1938, and had loved it. The wide skies of the west had exhilarated me, the sense of opportunity and freedom lifted me out of myself. I had been offered three jobs on that trip, not to mention two young ladies as prospective wives. Only the call of the 4th Gurkhas and the imminent prospect of war had brought me back. Why had I not thought of it before now? A score of memories echoed Why? I remembered the second night of Oklahoma! at Drury Lane, the sheer impact of the man walking alone through the sunlit corn singing 'Oh what a beautiful morning', and at the end the English audience and the American actors almost physically fusing together in a general passion of love. I thought of H. L. Mencken. A country had to be great to distil such wonderful vitriol in its writers — and survive. And Leonard Ross. I would be a new Hyman Kaplan, with a British accent.

  Barbara said, 'I don't know anything about America except what you've told me, but if you want to go, I'm happy. I'm not happy here.'

  Bill Dodds asked the U.S. Military Attache in London to get me a copy of the New York Times so that I could see what sort of jobs were available. The man sent a full Sunday edition, which weighed some 12 lb. and contained perhaps 450 pages in 8 sections. Days later I emerged from the Classified Section (40 pages) in squinting despair. Channel wire tubing salesman, experienced. Cigar and tobacco jobber. Packing engineer. Moon Hopkins No. 7800 bkpr pkge. Prod desgr ME massprod. I didn't understand a word of it. Ah, here was something more like: INTERESTING friendly full or spare time work your own neighbourhood, Represent well known women's wear. High comma. Interesting indeed, I thought. Selling panties door to door. Why not try them on, madame? I looked back up at the head of the column. Sales Help Wanted — Female. There's always a snag somewhere.

  I restated the position. America, and only America, filled every specification of our object. But what in the name of God was I going to do there?

  Why, follow David Niven's advice, just go, find out, and do it.

  I had a headache. I wished fervently that I was on the D.S. at Quetta instead of Camberley, so that when the course ended we could go on trek in Kashmir, or Assam. Barbara with a pony. Mountains... The wild gleam by then almost permanent in my eyes became wilder. I liked mountains, Barbara liked mountains. Every right-thinking person liked mountains. The Himalayas were the most beautiful mountain mass on earth, and so vast that they could contain all the others and not notice them. I knew a lot about the mechanics of Himalayan travel. Americans were fervid travellers. Why should I not take expeditions of Americans into the Himalayas? For a consideration, of course. It was perfect. The more I thought about it the more it fitted in with everything we wanted.

  I began to work out the details as though the devil and Roddy McLeod were at my heels. Staff tables, finance, clothing, gathering at U.S rendezvous, air transport to India, transport from airport to roadhead, accommodation, insurance, details of Himalayan route, fishing and game licences, pack animals or porters, cooks, catering, medical... I wrote to the firms in India which ran Himalayan treks, and fishing trips. I spoke to the sales departments of K.L.M. and B.O.A.C. about group fares, commissions, baggage rates. I went to India House and saw Arthur (Anand) Lall, a deputy to the High Commissioner, who gave me much help and promised his government's blessing and co-operation. When I thought that organizationally, speaking I was ready to go ahead I stopped and summarized the position. If it were to work, each party must number at least fifteen, and no more than twenty; I would have to take at least two such parties per year; the cost per person, for a six-week round trip from New York, all inclusive, (including drinks), would be $2,950.

  With this in hand, I felt infinitely better about emigrating. My Himalayan Holiday plan felt as comforting as Dick Whittington's bundle on the end of a stick: it contained something to wrap myself in. In the more material sense my bundle also contained the £300 (then $1,200) a year pension I would be awarded, and my loss-of-career gratuity.

  This loss-of-career gratuity was the only instance I ever came across of a government department — any department, any government — being both generous and sensible in a financial arrangment with its servants. It worked like this: if an officer was twenty and had really not started his Indian Army career, he got nothing, for he had lost nothing. If he was fifty and had earned his full pension, he got nothing, for he had had his career. Between these two ends the sum allotted rose to a peak of about £3,500 for an officer caught at seventeen years service, and about thirty-seven years of age. With fourteen years service, and aged thirty-three, I got £3,000. Others planned to use their gratuities to buy a farm, or a share in a business, to study law or medicine, to take courses in accountancy, or in how to be secretary of a golf club (a favourite, this). I proposed to gamble with mine, that is, bet my gratuity that we could make a living and a home in America before it ran out. Barbara agreed, and I felt even better. The clouds and doubts were rising. We felt uplifted and ennobled.

  Why a reasonably normal couple should feel so close to heroic at the idea of venturing into the world with an assured income of 300 pounds a year, and 3,000 pounds in cash, is hard to explain. But it was so. We were nonchalant in the face of floods, earthquakes, cobras, and leopards under the bed. Ice, snow, long marches, heat and hostile natives did not bother us. We had lived happily and raised children without electricity, gas or plumbing, surrounded by lethal diseases. But Barbara had been brought up to inherited money (lost in the Hatry crash of 1929) and I on an adequate government pension. Our lack of fear of just about everything else was counterbalanced by real terror at even the shadow of insecurity.

  Chestnuts lay under the trees and the brown misty softness of late English autumn thickened the air. Blue smoke from the gardeners' bonfires drifted across the lake. In the ivy-covered building, behind the coat of arms there — an owl astrid
e crossed swords and the motto Tam Marte quam Minerva — we of the D.S. began grading the students and making our recommendations about the line of staff or command duty to which each would probably be best suited. The last exercises were piled up in our racks, the last war games filled rooms and corridors with maps, cables, telephones, and simulated radio sets. We prepared Allenby Hall for the last cloth model demonstrations, and coloured ribbons representing radio channels filled its earth and sky with complicated brilliance. I was presented with my engraved silver owl, the mark that I had instructed at the Staff College.

  A fellow D.S. came up to me in the morning coffee break. 'I hear you're going to America, Jack?'

  'Yes.'

  'Well, my wife has invented a brassiere that she thinks might have a market there...'

  I stared at him. We began to laugh. We arranged to meet for cocktails at his house that night. There Barbara and I learned the mysteries of the brassiere.

  His wife was a friend of a leading British gynaecologist. With him, she had been studying the problems of women's breasts after lactation, and of over-heavy breasts in general. She had engineered a bra designed to hold, lift, divide, support, massage, and comfort all shapes and sizes of bosom. It also, she said, looked attractive, as that was important. America was the land of uplift. Why didn't I take a model of the magic bra with me and see if I couldn't interest someone in patenting and manufacturing it, she and I to share in the proceeds?

  I agreed. I was not quite so sure as the inventor about the bra's natural charm, but it would add another arrow to my quiver (if any metaphor can encompass conducted tours of the Garhwal Himalaya and a prosthetic bra).