by John Masters
It was no moment for hesitation. I told Laura we would buy the house, and a cheque to hold it would be in the mail within an hour. Then we put our Mystic house on the market. Our experiment in Connecticut was to end, after seven months, in failure. We had no regrets. We had learned a lot.
Next day Barbara said, 'Do you realize that there is only one game more to go, and we are tied with the Dodgers in first place?'
'We'll beat those bums,' I said confidently.
But we didn't; we tied them, for each team won its last game, the Dodgers over Philadelphia in fourteen innings, and even then thanks only to some fantastic fielding plays by Jackie Robinson. The Giants' arrival in first place was something of a miracle, for they had been thirteen games behind in mid August. To do it they had had to win thirty-eight out of their last forty-five games. We liked to think that our fervent support from Goat Point, reaching them by E.S.P., had something to do with it. Now the Dodgers and Giants would play a best-of-three-games series to decide who was to meet the champion of the other major league, the American, in the World's Series. Their champion for the year, as for most years, was the most powerful team in baseball, the New York Yankees, Babe Ruth's old team, and the Babe's successor, Joe di Maggio, was still playing.
The Lotus and the Wind, nearly completed after three re-writes, lay on my desk. A devoted editor at the Ladies Home Journal had found a way to compress The Deceivers so that it could be published as a one-shot, for which the magazine had offered to pay $7,500. Miriam Howell, my agent, pointed out that since one-shots competed with the book being published simultaneously, I would, according to my contract, share the magazine money fifty-fifty with the Viking Press. She said we should ask the Ladies Home Journal for more money on these grounds. I took the train to New York (a lovely ride by Long Island Sound, over great rivers, through green fields and bustling towns) and we went together to the magazine's offices. The editor congratulated me warmly on my writing, and when Miriam broached the money matter said breezily, 'Sure. Of course. We'll pay you $10,000.' I was overwhelmed and began to express my gratitude. The editor got up with a smile, shook my hand, and said, 'It's nothing. I always try to pay as much to our talent as I can because, relatively speaking, it's peanuts. Do you know what our monthly ink bill is for this magazine?
$78,000.'
I returned happily to Mystic and the Giants. I will not go into details of the National League play-off series of 1951, because my English readers won't understand a word, while to Americans it is old history, known by heart by everyone who has ever been interested in the national game. Yet there was something there that I must communicate, for the climax of the series was the climactic moment of our involvement with, and commitment to, America. Obviously we had gradually been becoming so involved and committed at deep and emotional levels, but perhaps it needed something as simple and surface as a game to bring out and define our position.
There was a famous bar and ex-speakeasy on West 52nd Street, owned by a rabid Giant fan. Whenever the Giants won he wrote up the score of the game in large letters on a blackboard at the end of the bar. When the Giants lost, he wrote up NO GAME TODAY. On this playoff series we won the first game 3 — 1; the next day there was NO GAME TODAY; so a final third game had to be played. Barbara and I listened to it on the radio, and as the last strains of Old Glory died away, our hands were sweating. We — particularly Barbara — had suffered through the long 154-game summer with the team. We knew them all by name and peculiarities, and, from occasionally watching TV in bars, by sight. They had been so far behind, their situation so hopeless-seeming; so had ours. They had fought, and never given up; nor had we. They stood on the threshold of final victory — or defeat. At that moment to our eyes, the Dodgers' uniforms might have been lettered U.S. IMMIGRATION SERVICE.
As I have already indicated, a detailed account of what followed would serve no purpose. However, the final moments must be described, and for the convenience of my readers I will do it twice, first in American (in roman type face) and then, in the succeeding italic paragraph, translated into English and into cricket terms.
Two runs behind with one out in the bottom of the ninth, the Giants' cause seemed hopeless. But two men were on base, and then, with one swing of his bat Bobby Thomson rifled Ralph Branca's second pitch into the lower left-field stand just beyond the 315 foot mark for a home run. Then, as the Staten Island Scot began to lope round the bases, were enacted some of the most amazing scenes ever witnessed on a baseball field. 'The entire Giant team swarmed out of the dugout to greet the Hawk as he crossed home plate with Manager Leo the Lip Durocher on his back, and the guards were powerless to prevent thousands of fans rushing on to the field in frenzied enthusiasm to join the melee.
Gloucestershire's cause seemed hopeless with 9 men down in their second innings, 87 runs to make to surpass Yorkshire's grand total of 432, and a mere 50 minutes in which to amass them. But while Parker stolidly held up one end, Goddard hit like a man inspired, playing a veritable cadenza of shots of which no one had believed his rather dour figure capable. With the hands of the clock showing 6 p.m., 17 runs to make, and 3 balls left in the last over, Goddard straight-drove Verity for three successive sixes over the Chapel end sight screen. Then were enacted some of the most amazing scenes ever witnessed on a cricket pitch, as several spectators started to clap, the Gloucestershire captain (B. H. Lyon Esq.) waved his cap from the pavilion, and two men (believed to be visitors from London) stood up and cried 'Well played, sir!'
This was the moment that came to be known as the Miracle of Coogan's Bluff, from the fact that the Polo Grounds are built under a rocky cliff called by that name, which frowns across several roads, a muddle of railroad tracks, and the foul water of the Harlem River, at Yankee Stadium on the other side. The Polo Grounds were so called because New York's bluebloods used to play polo there; but that was a long time ago, and polo surely never produced such a roar as that of October 3, 1951. Keith Jennison told us later that it escaped from the Polo Grounds and filled the whole city. Three seconds after Thomson set out round the bases every office window and door was flung open, and two million people rushed about yelling their hearts out, wordlessly, in the canyons of the streets, and torrents of paper were hurled out of skyscraper windows in a vast ticker-tape parade, with no parade. We heard nothing, for we were hugging each other and dancing round the room screaming, 'We won! We did it!'
Martin ran in from the sea-wall, 'What's the matter? What happened?' he bawled.
'The Giants have won the pennant,' I yelled, '5-4!' 'The Yankees will beat them,' Martin said sourly and returned to his fishing.
We calmed down eventually, went out and sank on to the grass by the sea-wall, beside Martin and Susan. We had a small zinc tub there full of sea water. The kids caught minnows and dumped them into the bath, and that was Tomlinson's icebox. When he wanted a snack he helped himself, munched contentedly and came in with one forepaw wet to the elbow. Once he fell in, stalked furiously into the house, and lay down soaking wet on my pillow.
Tomlinson was there now, but asleep. After all, the kids were catching the fish for him, why should he work? I said to Barbara, 'We'll become American citizens as soon as we can, I think?'
She said, 'Yes. Except for the bit of paper, we already are.'
Chapter Ten
In the World's Series (best of seven games) the Giants sprang away to a 2—1 lead in games. They had the Yankees on the ropes and then, the day of the fourth game, it rained. Their best pitcher had time to rest his arm, and Joe di Maggio to see his analyst. After that... NO GAME TODAY.
That rainy Sunday in New York we took a Foliage Tour of New England. Organized by the Boston & Maine Railroad, it was composed in roughly equal parts of nature lovers and railway fans, plus a few — a very few — like Barbara and myself, who were both. It was a long and crowded train, with three restaurant cars scattered through it, and it was a long and crowded day, whirling through the gold and scarlet forests, climbing to Crawford Notc
h, pausing to admire decrepit round-houses in decaying Merrimac mill towns; and all the while people surging like fish from one side of the car to the other, the click of cameras, the counterpoint of explanation and exclamation: Look at those sumacs... that's the Mechanicsville, Dumbarton & Pacific Railroad spur to Bellows Falls... dogwood, always, at the edges... abandoned in 1893... sugar maples, and one Chinese... outshopped from Baldwin in 1931... glorious... great...
In mid November, having sold our Mystic house at a small profit, we returned to Rockland County, to be greeted with affectionate badinage by the assorted United World Federalists, Unitarians, liberal-Jew-pinkos, faggots, bleeding hearts, and starry-eyed dreamers who constituted much of our circle. We disagreed with some of them about everything and all of them about something, but they were widening, not narrowing, to the mind: and there was always West Point to escape to when the cries of liberal Americans belittling their country became too raucous to be borne with equanimity.
I felt secure enough to invite our parents to visit us. My father and mother were able to accept, Barbara's were not.
Mrs Hallam came over from Lancashire with her husband, long ago. Mrs Hallam had been brought up in the servants' halls of great houses and knew how things ought to be done. She did some cleaning for us, called us Sir and Madam, and kissed me firmly on the lips at Christmas and New Year's, and when we gave her a birthday present.
She couldn't abide people who didn't know their station, like that Mrs Lloyd, who also employed her, but wrung her hands and wailed about degradation to see her on her knees, scrubbing the floor. 'She wants the floor cleaned, doesn't she?' Mrs Hallam demanded.
The Army football team had been annihilated by a cheating scandal. After the expulsions of August the remnants would have had a hard time beating Slippery Rock Teachers. Since the schedules were made up years ahead the season had been one long massacre. We attended the final burial by Navy, our heads high, and our Army favours more prominent. 'Wait till the year after next,' we muttered, 'or maybe two years after that.'
A strange man came one day to empty our garbage cans. 'Where's Capasso?' I asked. 'Oh, he flew to Florida for a couple of weeks' vacation,' the man said. I went back inside, shaking my head. What a country.
We had a dinner party. I glanced at my watch as I poured the drinks. 'Ten!' I called. Susan and Martin, sprawled on the floor, went on reading.
'Nine... eight... seven...'
'What are you shouting for?' Armon asked.
I handed round the drinks, 'Six... five... four...' 'What's going on?' Nancy said.
'Three... two... one...'
The children leaped to their feet and raced for the door.
'Time!' I yelled, and ran after them. They raced up the stairs, screaming. I slapped at their behinds until they hurled themselves into bed and disappeared under the covers. When they emerged I kissed them goodnight, turned out the light and went back to the living room.
'Does this go on every night?' Alan asked.
Barbara nodded. 'Except when he takes a horsewhip to them.'
The Lavalles asked the Auberjonois and ourselves to dinner in their large old house in Piermont, where most of 'Birth of a Nation' had been filmed. During the dinner Ramon Lavalle, an Argentinian, proclaimed his desire to see the Communist Chinese defeat and destroy the American and other U.N. forces in Korea. Laura Auberjonois stiffened, and I felt the hair crawling on the back of my neck. Amelia Lavalle, who had womanned a machine-gun for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War, tried to shush her husband, but he kept on talking in the same vein. Laura pushed back her chair and said, 'I'm going home.' I rose, too, and told Ramon that he was a son of a bitch to misuse America's hospitality to him. l suggested he set out immediately for Red China, leaving a cleaner air for the rest of us to breathe. We left. The Lavalles separated soon afterwards.
There was a letter from Hamish Mackay, late 4th Gurkhas. He and Misha had been back in Great Britain nearly three years now, after retirement from the Indian Army. Hamish wrote: We find the 'couldn't-care-less' attitude of people here little to our liking. Nor can I find any agreeable employment. (What experience have you? they ask. Man management, I answer... clearly a ludicrous reply in the changed conditions.) For the sake of the younger generation we think we should look farther afield. Can you help me find something in the U.S.A.? Thal one made me scratch my chin. Hamish was about fifty-two then, and had served thirty years before retiring as a full colonel with a D.S.O. and bar. He was Highland Scots, wise, quiet, grizzled, very well read. But, like me, he was untrained in any civilian speciality. Thinking of his extra years I was tempted to write back saying, Don't. Then I thought of Capasso and thought, Hell, yes. We'll find something. He's not proposing to make a career, just do a good job for a few years. I wrote to him accordingly.
This year our local grade school, the Street School, put on a Christmas show that could probably not have been equalled by any other small school (about seventy children then) in the world. Each of the eight grades, and the kindergarten, sang a well-known song or carol (one of the songs in Hebrew) while one of the parents drew or painted on a large sheet of cartridge paper a picture illustrating the theme of the song. All were professional artists and some of those sheets of paper would have been worth quite a bit just from the initials scrawled in the corners. On the way home in the frosty dark I reflected that if we had wanted to we parents could have written the songs, composed the lyrics, designed and made the costumes, and staged, produced and directed the performance on Broadway and made it pay. I also reflected on the dichotomy of our community. Between us, the adults in that crowded little auditorium could probably influence two hundred million people all round the world; but we could not influence our Town Board!
On the Immigration front — silence, although by now I knew that as six months had passed since the suspension-of-deportation order, with no overruling action by Congress, I ought to have been advised that I was a legal resident. I had been corresponding frequently with Justice William 0. Douglas about his proposed 1952 trip to Ladakh (also known as Little Tibet), and felt I knew him well enough to ask his advice: how could I find out what was going on? The Justice told me to go and see a lawyer friend of his, Simon Rifkind, in New York. I went, and gave Mr Rifkind a three-minute summary of my problem. He picked up the telephone and spoke for one minute flat. Next day the Immigration Bureau confirmed that I was free and clear; and, a week later, they formally recorded my date of legal entry into the United States as February 9, 1948, which was the date I had arrived as a visitor on the Queen Elizabeth. I at once applied for citizenship. The Immigration people — (God knows what subtle intimations Rifkind had put into that phone call; I didn't hear any threats or promises) — fawningly backdated my application to February 1948, which put me nearly two years ahead of Barbara, whose legal immigration was the only factor that had enabled me to get in at all! The law is indeed too often a ass, a idiot.
My father and mother arrived on the Queen Mary on a bitter December day. I got a customs pass and went down to Pier 90 to meet them. The customs officer glanced at Dad's declaration, clapped him on the back, and said breezily, 'Well, John, let's have a look at these prints.' My father, Lieutenant-Colonel John Masters, D.S.O., The Rajput Regiment, retired, drew himself up to his full 5 feet 5 inches, and bristled his grey moustache at the man. I trod on Dad's foot as the customs officer turned over one of the 19th-century prints of Indian Army scenes which Dad had brought over for me. 'Antiques, I'd say, John, wouldn't you?' the officer said, winking broadly.
'They're not antiques,' my father growled. 'They're...'
I trod on his foot again, and the customs officer slapped him again on the back. 'That's it, John. Antiques! Hope you and the wife have a good time.' He stamped the baggage and passed on with a cheery wave, Dad glaring after him. I explained that antiques pay no duty, and Dad relaxed. He began to chuckle. 'John, he called me!' he said, 'And we'd never even been introduced. Wall, say bo, we're in Amurrica.'
/> The clock turned back, for us, to our first contacts with America, for through my parents we relived much of our own experiences, our own thoughts. The shops are so full of everything, and really very reasonable, not dear at all... A dollar for a haircut! Why, that's seven shillings. That's ridiculous!... Yes, but gasoline's only 28 cents a U.S. gallon say, or about two and three your gallon — less than half what you pay... How can you stand the commercials on the wireless? Commercials? Oh those. Well, I could do without them, but we've developed switch-off ears now, and don't hear them unless they're very bad and insistent, and then we make a vow not to buy whatever they tell us to... The countryside is so beautiful. West Point is really lovely, the chapel, the young men look so smart and stand so well... But why doesn't anyone tidy up the woods? Look at all those fallen trees and dead leaves. Nasty, it looks. untidy... Yes, Mummy, it does, but would you like to come up in an aeroplane and have a look at this country from the air? This is the most thickly populated, heavily industrialized part of the Union, and all you'll see is forest. There simply aren't enough people to tidy up the woods, and no economic necessity for them to pick up sticks for firewood...
Barbara! you're not going to throw away that lovely bit of brown paper, and look at this string, it must have cost a shilling... Yes, they're going out. We had to decide long ago whether the house was for us or for the packagings... People are very chatty, aren't they? The woman in the greengrocer's shop asked me whether we were from England, and then gave me a cabbage. Really!... Do you mean to say those bicyclists are allowed to wander all over the road, driving whichever side they want to?... I'm afraid so. No one's decided yet whether a bicyclist is a vehicle or a pedestrian. Disgraceful!...
