Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey

by John Masters

'So would I,' Dave said. 'Do you know what they're trying to call it now? A Bruce harp. This damned discrimination's driving me nuts!'

  Frank Laskier was killed in a car crash. The driver and only other occupant, who ran the car into a tree, was the pretty young blonde wife of a New York dentist.

  Physically almost unhurt, she was put to bed with acute shock and her husband was urgently telephoned for from the city. He came out hotfoot, to shout at her, 'My God, the insurance!' Later that night he called Marian Hill and said a warming pad was needed urgently. Marian didn't have one. Up and down the Road lights went on as the ever widening ripples of the search for a pad woke up more and more sympathetic people. A couple of hours later one was located and Marian drove off to get it.

  Near 4 a.m., dog-tired but triumphant, she took the pad to the stricken girl. 'Thanks,' the husband said grouchily at the door. 'My back's been killing me.'

  Frank's wife was away and the only people who thought what she would feel like, coming back to his last dirty cup and unwashed plate, were the Young Boys. They went and cleaned the cottage from top to bottom. I felt a boor to have been worrying about the boiler and the safeguarding of his manuscripts. A few days later we attended the funeral. As we entered the funeral parlour Barbara stiffened and muttered, 'Good God, he's on show.' Frank lay in the open coffin with a sardonic half smile under his moustache. 'I bet he'd like me to do the knife-in-the-foot trick,' I muttered back, 'but now I could stick it in his heart. He's the only one who'd laugh, though.' It was the first time we had ever met the American custom of displaying the corpse, dressed and made up, before burial. We did not think it added any dignity to the proceedings, only an unbearable pain to those who had loved the dead.

  John Day turned down Nightrunners, with an explanation: It falls to me in the absence of Mr Erikson to tell you that we cannot take on John Masters' THE NIGHT-RUNNERS OF BENGAL. We already have a number of books on Indian subjects, published or in prospect. And our interest is not very strong in books about past history there, written from the point of view of the British soldier — not promising for American readers I should think. (Signed) T. J. Walsh.

  Our good friends at Immigration redoubled their efforts to keep us from getting bored. Barbara had chest X-rays made and was then told to be out of the country by September 20. (The X-rays showed no disease.) I had blood tests and went twice to the State police barracks in Hawthorn, N.Y., to make more fingerprints. The lawyers advised that although I was determined to fight on it would still be wise to get a legal American domicile for those of us for whom it could be done. This meant that Barbara must go out to Canada with the children and return as an immigrant on the British quota (she was born in England). To prepare the way we sent to the U.S. Consul General in Montreal the documents he had demanded: her passport, birth certificate, marriage certificate, police good-conduct certificates in duplicate, fingerprints, photographs, evidence of support (this from Vyvyan), proof of termination of previous marriage, birth certificates in duplicate for the children, and military service certificate in duplicate. (That last was a teaser, but Barbara found her W.A.C.(I) discharge and sent that.)

  Immigration denied her further brief extension of stay, though the consulate had not processed the papers we had sent up. I wrote to Hanson Baldwin, (military correspondent of the New York Times), Field-Marshal Slim (Chief of the Imperial General Staff), and General Morgan (head of the British Military Mission in Washington), asking each to let the U.S. Army know that they had in me a potentially valuable reserve officer with special qualifications. If they once got that message, I thought, they might be persuaded to pull some strings on my behalf.

  An impassioned letter about the Montreal situation (copies to Senator Kilgore and Representative St George) persuaded Immigration to let Barbara stay until Montreal was ready for her.

  On September 18, having sworn on their honour that they had no intention of devaluating the pound sterling, the British government devalued it by 30 per cent, from $4,03 to $2.80. In the same instant that part of my loss of career gratuity, which they had not yet sent to me, shrank by the same proportion. It was going to be a close race between our dwindling money and the arrival of the next instalment from England in February 1950. We surveyed what we could do to lessen the odds against us. Barbara said, 'We can try to sell my wedding veil.' It was Limerick lace, about 1840. 'And the furniture my grandfather left me.' This was magnificent early Victoria walnut. 'And the George I soup spoons.' Here I interjected, 'Over my dead body.' But it might come to that.

  'You could start darning socks again,' I said.

  She responded briskly, 'Change a light bulb.'

  In the end we cut down on drinking and entertainment generally, sold the furniture for $500, tried to sell the lace but couldn't, and kept the spoons. I sold no more stories because I was writing none; I was plotting another novel, about the ritual murder cult known as Thuggee, which had flourished in India for several centuries, claiming about a million victims, before it was uncovered and destroyed by the British in the 1820s. Otherwise we kept on much as we had been, having decided that we would live American to the end, and, if it came to it, die American, with colours flying. My remark about darning socks was a sort of code word between us and it meant, let us keep our sense of proportion: think American; don't decide how much money you have and then spend less decide how much money you need and then go and get it. No one darned socks, because it was cheaper in time and not much different in money to throw them away and buy new ones. We had also noted that Americans saved themselves a great deal of money by do-it-yourself methods about the house. Very few Englishmen indeed, and only those of a specially mechanical turn, could build sheds, tile roofs, adjust plumbing, and make cabinets, the way our artists and pianists and actors thought nothing of. But this way to save money was unfortunately closed to us: I am the world's most unhandyman; if I don't call in the help of professional electricians before changing a light bulb I will certainly have to do so afterwards.

  Scribner's turned down Nightrunners; no comment.

  Keith poured a drink behind the bar in the Toad & Throstle, his downstairs cellar room. Emily poked the cannel coal fire in the big grate. The low rafters rang to the marching songs of the International Brigade, blaring out from the phonograph. Smoke drifted up from our cigarettes. Keith said, 'You know about the tourist who drove up to this old Vermonter leaning over a gate,' and said, 'Hey my man, how do you get to Rutland?' And the Vermonter looked at him a long time without speaking, until finally he said, 'If I wanted to get to Rutland, I wouldn't start from here.' The accent was flat dead, very funny. Keith was a Vermonter.

  'What about Steinbeck?' I said, 'What's he like? Can you understand Faulkner? Why does he make his sentences so labyrinthine? How do good do you think Thomas Wolfe is? Did you know Hemingway? Does J. P. Marquand ever write about anything but Boston?'

  The guitar strummed, the bourbon drained, we sang. Six little maidens I've drownded here and you the seventh shall be. E. B. White? Thurber? On, the Eer-l-ee was arising, the gin was getting low. Barbara danced in her stockinged feet. The lights momentarily dimmed and Keith cried,

  'Watt's the matter with Rockland Light and Power?'

  Barbara said, 'They don't have ample energy.'

  Keith said, 'That's revolting!'

  Barbara said, 'Oh my!'

  Emily doubled over in her chair, weeping with laughter.

  I covered my head with my hands, groaning.

  Sex. 'No, damn it, it's not a matter of taste or daintiness.

  Women are only dainty, and only want to be treated daintily, until you get their clothes off.' Benny Goodman, louder. Masturbation. Polyandry. Louder, louder. 'Look, I don't think every queer is created by his mother, but I think most are.' Keith asleep on the floor by the phonograph, his head pillowed on a cushion by the speaker.

  'You've got to accept sex as a part of you, like your hand, not a shameful or dirty impulse.' Yes. But. However. Sex. ln fact. Never. Always. Wh
y. Then. Give me another drink.

  Keith snored lightly.

  The squire's sister, Miss Eleaner Deming, had a downstairs room too. We crouched decorously round the fire toasting scallops on fencing swords and getting our fingers burned. Miss Eleanor was over seventy, and about to set off round the world. The man beside me bit into a scallop and swore silently; he had burned his tongue. We talked. He said, 'You must be a disciple of Santayana's.' Who's he? I thought; but said, 'Why?'

  'He said that the best things about America were football, kindness, and jazz.'

  Yes, I thought. But we couldn't afford to watch any football at West Point this year. We would have gone up to see the pre-game parades, only we didn't have a car... until kindness enveloped us again: the Girls bought a new car and gave us their old one. It was a 1938 Dodge coupe that did about thirty-five miles to the gallon (of oil). The children travelled in the nimble seat or lying on the shelf under the rear window, jammed in like clams, and as happy.

  The consulate in Montreal at last wrote that they had finished their preparations, and Barbara set off, having arranged to stay with ex-English friends who, she gathered, lived in the city. After an eight hour journey on the Delaware & Hudson, with both children sitting on her lap and crying most of the way (the tracks run close beside the Hudson or Lake Champlain for much of the way; not being able to see any land on that side, they were scared that the train was going to fall in), her friends met them and drove them home... thirty-five miles away in Ste Hyacinthe. Here they had gathered a large party to greet the visitors. The celebration went on most of the night.

  As they did not have an extra car Barbara took the children into Montreal the next day by bus, bought them some rubber toys at a drug-store, and, soon after the doors opened, entered the U.S. Consulate. She was in there until 5 p.m., eight Sisyphean hours. She would join a long line, the children pushing their toys about on the floor, tugging her skirt, or demanding to go to the john; eventually reach the front of the line, and have one document stamped; rush off to get sandwiches and milk and pot the children; then into the next line; at the latter end, near hysteria from fear that they would close for the day before she could get everything done, and she'd have to face it all again the next day; finally the Immigrants' visas issued just before closing time.

  Her immense relief that it had at last been done was for the moment buried under the strains of the moment... another long ride back to Ste Hyacinthe, in a crowded rush-hour bus, both children on her lap; to find her hosts had found some people who had not met her the first time, and invited them to do so now; to bed about 3 a.m., awakened at 5 to catch the bus back to Montreal; nine hours in the train this time, as it ran late, the children now whining and crying without cease. At Peekskill the train stopped just long enough for her to get herself, the children and the bags on to the platform. With a shriek and a clanging of its bell it disappeared. She stood alone beside the glistening tracks, snow falling heavily, looking for me. I was not there. No one was there.

  The Dodge had shed a gasket, and then I had had to drive slowly through the snow. When I arrived, half an hour later, Barbara burst into tears. 'Why weren't you here?' she sobbed, 'Oh God, that's all you had to do and you weren't here!' It was the only time she broke down during all these long and, in truth, nerve-racking years of literary rejection, official harassment, and, except from our parents, universal pessimism about our prospects from England. She wept quietly most of the way back to South Mountain Road, a murderous drive through falling snow on very slippery roads over the Bear Mountain bridge and down 9 W. Marian Hill was at our house when we got there; and after one look at Barbara's face took our children off. As she left she muttered to me, 'Give her a poached egg in the living-room. Off a tray. With tea and whisky.' It was good advice.

  Lippincott rejected Nightrunners, with a letter: After a complete series of readings and a lot of discussions and in spite of my personal enthusiasm — it has been decided to return (Nightrunners) to John Masters. Frankly, I think we are making a mistake and practically lost my voice saying so... (Signed) Tay Hohoff.

  Driving out alone from New York one evening I was flagged down on the George Washington bridge by a police car. I followed it through the tolls and stopped behind it in a dark spot under the mass of the bridge approach on the Jersey side. I got out and went to the cop's car (I had been told never to make a cop get out of his car and approach you; he doesn't know what your intentions are, or whether you have a gun trained on him, and it makes him jumpy and bad tempered). He said I was speeding. I said it was possible, I hadn't been looking at my speedometer. He asked to see my driving licence and the car registration. I showed them to him and waited for him to note down the particulars. It would be annoying to pay a fine, and perhaps have my licence endorsed: I must be more careful in future. The cop did nothing, except stare at me. I waited. He said 'Oh Christ!', threw the papers back at me, engaged gear, and shot off. I climbed back into the Dodge, puzzled. Was the poor fellow not well? Had he realized he had made a mistake? About ten miles up 9 W it struck me that he might have been expecting a bribe. When I got home Barbara said that the local Democratic boss had telephoned, repeating his previous offer — that if I paid $1,000 to party funds my immigration difficulties would be smoothed over; but this time he had said I need not pay until I had the money. I was to call back.

  It was a bad night, for we were already sure we would be Democrats if we became citizens. Would we have to accept this debased political and 'official' morality as a counterweight to America's greater honesty in non-political life, for example, in giving an honest day's work for an honest day's wage? We didn't know. We could only play our part. I did not call back.

  Random House rejected Nightrunners; no comment.

  We saw more of the Jennisons. Their two boys were prime exhibits in our study of American education. They were now about twelve and ten, undisciplined but with a natural politeness and evident goodwill towards strangers, and somehow doing what was necessary about the house without a lot of fuss. William Sloane Associates had broken up, and Keith had gone to the Viking Press. Much against my will, I was now forced to think of him as a publisher rather than as a friend. I had never shown him one of my MSS, because I did not think it right to use a friendly intercourse to obtain a business concession, e.g. a reading. In the army, too many times, I had had to tell friends that they were poor officers, and I was going to remove them from their posts. It could never be made a pleasant experience for either of us, and it usually killed the friendship. But, just as friendship had to give way before the demands of the service, so now I was willing to sacrifice it for Nightrunners of Bengal and my writing career, which included our future in the United States. At a party at the Girls, to which the Jennison were also invited, I downed three martinis, backed Keith into a corner and said I would like him to read my book. He said, 'Sure. I've been waiting months for you to suggest it.'

  I gave him the MS next day, with a letter: As you know, I am trying to sell you not only this book but my writing career... Please try to keep me posted on progress, after a reasonable time for preliminary readings. With that proviso you can take your time over it because I want to work with you if it can be done. I need help and advice from someone who knows things I do not, and whom I trust. Let us therefore to our stations and bear ourselves well, for once we are over this hurdle I think there may be great and exciting days ahead.

  Next day, still bearing myself well in my station over the hurdle, I read in a magazine articles that there were 3,700,986 people writing whole or part time in the U.S.A.

  All these were my competitors in the market.

  The weeks passed. We avoided the Jennisons, so that Keith should not think I was fussing round waiting for an answer. I felt again as though I were waiting, high up in one of those Manhattan office buildings, alone in the lobby, forty doors all around. On the frosted glass of each is the name of a publisher, a magazine, an editor; slowly I make the circle, carrying an ever heav
ier load of paper on my shoulder. I ring each bell, knock on each door. No one answers, though I hear whispering behind the glass...

  Vyvyan Donner had an idea. She knew a man, Jack Luedekke, who worked at the Army Film Unit on Long Island. He thought there might be a job for me there. I met Jack a couple of days later at Vyvyan's apartment, and went out to the studios with him. He showed me round, and gave me some scripts to study. I had never heard of such a place — the Indian Army could not afford one — but saw at once that it was a necessity for producing a technical citizens' army, e.g. on mobilization for a major war. The unit made every kind of film. One taught how to embalm corpses for transportation to the U.S.A.

  Obviously the army could not, in peacetime, maintain a large Embalmers' Corps; equally obviously such a corps would be needed in war. This film would train men quickly and cheaply. The cost of making it would be saved many times over. Embalming was hardly my line; nor was the film on the life-cycle of the rat (for the medical corps, to deal with rat-borne diseases); nor the one on security methods to be taught to soldiers going on active service; but there were tactical films which exactly paralleled the instruction I had been giving, by other methods, at Camberley.

  The surprise to me was that films were made from a script. Although I had written scripts for Staff College demonstrations I had always thought that films just happened, the director telling everyone what to do as they went along. After studying the scripts Jack Luedekke lent me, I made a formal application to be allotted a subject, reminding the Signal Corps that I was a British national, and could not be given classified matter. In a little essay accompanying my application, I pointed out to the colonel in charge that he had twenty script writers who in effect knew nothing about soldiering; would he please give a chance to someone who had the reverse qualifications — a professional soldier totally ignorant of script writing?

  The letter disappeared into the mail pouch of the U.S. Post Office's snail-paced horseman. I had rung another bell.