by John Masters
The lights are really wonderful, aren't they? Look at all those cars, Johnny. There must be ten thousand of them, and all the red lights. (We were looking down the West Side Highway from the George Washington Bridge, the car lights flung like coruscating necklaces of red and white round the icy rim of the river). My, but they could do with some of those lights in England! Huge great lorries with only one tail light the size of a penny! Disgraceful!... Waal, twenty-two skiddoo, this is the bees' knees, Jackie. I'm sorry, Dad, it's twenty-three skiddoo, only no one says it any more. Nor that stuff about the bees' knees and the cat's pyjamas and the caterpillar's spats. Waal, is zat so, bo?
It was a good Christmas season that year. The Masters' family way of life meant that it was very rare for all of us to spend Christmas together. Even now my brother was serving with the British Army in Germany, but this was better than most years. My father and mother marvelled at the abdication of privacy which made everyone put their Christmas tree in the window, and draw back the curtains so that passers-by could share in their celebration. (No hedges, either. How do you keep people out?) There was material plenty with us, and it was good to see that my financial success had eased a load off my parents' minds. For four years they had been worrying over my throwing up my very promising army career. Now they saw that I had made another. Susan and Martin learned that they had grandparents, just like other children.
There's a peculiar-looking dead animal at the side of the road, sort of like a big rat. Hey, it's not dead, it's moving. It's gone!... That was an opossum, Dad, and you saw it actually playing 'possum... Quite a nip in the air this morning, Jackie. There must be five degrees of frost. Let's see, five degrees of frost is 27 above. The temperature when we walked out of the house was 19 below. Look, I can break off hairs of my moustache, like icicles. The cold here is not damp, as in England, but dry. You don't feel it as much.
Dad went skating on Rockland. I watched from the edge of the woods on shore, thinking how very Currier & Ives he looked, in his old-fashioned suit and wool scarf and earmuffs, a cloth cap on his head, leaning slightly forward, circling alone on the large and empty ice, his hands clasped formally behind his back, small and dark against the white background of the hills. He flew alone to Buffalo to see Niagara Falls; and was offered a good price for his tweed jacket, then about thirty-five years old, by our local storekeeper. Mrs Hallam, hearing of this, turned on the storekeeper with a marvellous feudal scorn. 'You —' she cried in broad Lancashire — 'you couldn't wear the colonel's coat in a thousand years!'
Before they sailed back on the Ile de France (a nasty ship, rude stewards, nasty French sauces on everything... couldn't get a decent fried egg for breakfast) they asked when they would see us again. We considered and said, 'The spring'; for now we were free to leave the United States if we wanted to, and we did. The old nostalgia for England had been aroused by my parents' visit and their talk. We had countless friends and relatives to see, and again I realized that I was free to go, come, work, play, wherever I wanted to.
I returned to my desk. The Lotus and the Wind had been received with enthusiasm at Viking, but the editorial war would be fought over it just the same. I began to think what to tackle next. One possibility was a biography of Orde Wingate, the eccentric British soldier and passionate Zionist under whom I had served in Burma. The suggestion had been made to me by one or two men in England, and by my agent there, Laurence Pollinger. The problem was going to be Wingate's widow and family. It seemed probable that they would demand some form of censorship or approval of the book as a price for full co-operation with documents, family letters, etc.; and that I would not agree to. With any subject it puts an unacceptable rein on the writer, and in the case of Orde Wingate it would have forced the book into a mould which the man did not fit. He was brilliant, controversial, violent, detestable, determined, perhaps paranoiac; to bury him under two volumes of evasively laudatory prose would be to damage both our reputations. Still, I determined to try, and asked Pollinger to put me in touch with Wingate's family.
Helen Taylor zeroed in on The Lotus and the Wind... Anne should be sure from the very beginning that Robin was her man, that she was going to let nothing stand in her way of marrying him. I think this is a good idea, (but)... it would seem to alter just a little the innocence and inexperience which you stress in her character. A girl so positive of the man she wants is not apt, even in the Victorian age, to have arrived at the age of twenty-two without some pretty close observation of men and the world.
...Robin's problem is double; his innate understanding of Muralev makes him, without his knowing it, the best British agent to trail Muralev, and his own personal desire to be with Muralev seems at times to be at variance with his duties as a spy Chapter 21. Part of the sameness feeling on this here-we-go business may be a matter of technique. You start describing the countryside again. Why not begin as on page 3 and plunge right into the narrative? Save your description for when it's really needed, when it's superb... No more quibbles — just cuts, and leaving it to you to deal with the geographical thing. Try to pace these last chapters just a bit more quickly, thus achieving another difference.
Thoughts of railway engines filled my head. Steam engines, Indian steam engines, working heavy loads up jungle grades in the hot weather, the Indian fireman leaning out on the shady side, the Anglo-Indian driver hunched forward under the canopy. The Anglo-Indians were a point of conflict. Not quite of the sort I had listed in my original list of the thirty-five books I could write about the British in India; but one that should have been in there. I could tackle it now. I was acquiring the technique... Trains, going somewhere — that fitted the requirement for movement, to interest the reader in where these people are going. That would apply to the Anglo-Indians, as a people, too. I would put Anglo-Indians on trains, where they belonged in real life, their English background perhaps trying to send them one way and their Indian background another, like a junction.
We determined that while we were in Europe we would do some walking. Our first thought was to go back to the French massif central but that seemed a lazy solution, for we already knew the country and the language. 'Spain?' I suggested, with intent, for I have always had a romantic longing to walk in the Pyrenees, among the bandits and the smugglers. Barbara said, 'Suits me,' and that was that. The Spanish Tourist Office in New York told me that the place to start from was Huesca, and I wrote to the mayor there, asking him to put us in touch with some local mountaineering or touring club that could give us advice and maps. Then I bought Molts' 'Learn Spanish' records, and we settled down to acquire the language. This particular set was made during the war, I believe, for the instruction of American soldiers. The talking was done by a Colombian — Colombians are reputed to have the best accents outside Spain — and it was certainly very clear. After Don Pedro we enunciated, 'Buenos dias, amigo.' 'Como está Usted?', and 'Donde está el escusado?' In the true-or-false sections towards the end, when Don Pedro was speaking quite quickly, we shouted True or False in chorus to such statements as 'En Washington hay machos monumentos,' (there are many monuments in Washington), and 'Yo me lava la cabeza con jamón' (I wash my head with ham).
In consultation with Amelia Lavalle I learned a special phrase which I believed I needed for my personal protection. This was 'La siento, pero no puedo comer los calamares, porque me hacen daño' (I am sorry, but I can't eat squid, because they are bad for me). The need for this remarkable avowal arose because a few weeks earlier (1) Amelia gave us french-fried squid rings; it was the first time we had eaten squid, and we loved it; I ate a lot; (2) Two days later I went down with a mild fever and a red rash, which caused most of my skin to flake off, until the bedroom looked like the last act of East Lynne. A doctor came, tapped and thumped, and pronounced that I was suffering from an allergy. I found this embarrassing, as I don't really believe in allergies, and had never had anything of the sort before. Still, there it was, and the squid was the only possible culprit. I was allergic to squid. Having
given me the disease Amelia now gave me the antidote, or, at least, the protective incantation, for use when we reached Spain where, she said, squid would be thrust on us from all sides. In America the chance of coming unawares across a squid in my soup was to all practical purposes nil.
After twelve days of study, an hour a day, we set sail for England in the Mauretania, on April 15, 1952. We were delighted to find that several Colombians were on board. I don't know that they were so pleased to be buttonholed by us and told that 'En Washington hay muchos monumentos', or that, unfortunately, I could not eat squid — but we had to practise on someone. When I tried the escusado phrase on them, though, one of the men said, 'In Colombia we don't usually call the toilet the escusado, but the chicago, because the first ones imported into our country were made there, and had the name prominently engraved on the bowl.'
Also on board were the U.S. Olympic boxing team and our Martin (44 lb.) found occasional employment as sparring partner to the heavyweight, Floyd Patterson. On an afternoon of low cloud, half a gale blowing out of the south-west and the seas running short and steep across our beam, we saw England again, after four years. The Land's End light flashed a brief, recurring welcome. A tiny collier, outward bound, surged up on the crests, disappeared in the hollows. Spray burst like bombs against the distant cliffs and made a thick haze on the wet, green land. 'England, their England!' I thought to myself, yet felt a pang, for I still loved it, and always would.
At Southampton, grandmothers were at the quayside, to exclaim over the kids' cowboy boots and jeans, and to receive from Martin a genial greeting learned in his Mystic days: 'Fucking bastards.' In London I had lunch with Orde Wingate's brother and sister, and noted, 'Nice people, but cautious. The widow up in Scotland and not anxious to see anyone until the brother and sister have approved.
They all fear for the young son. What effect will it have on him if he grows up with all this publicly known about his father?'
I didn't know what 'all this' might be, except that Wingate tried to commit suicide in Cairo during the war, but that had already been published in Leonard Mosley's perceptive book Gideon goes to war. I wondered vaguely what else the family were trying to hide, and lost a little interest in the project, for I am not a good muck-raker.
About the Anglo-Indian book: Victoria Jones would be a good name for the heroine. Something like d'Souza for the male Anglo-Indian perhaps. But that means Goanese. He must have a British heritage as the source of his inner conflict. A name like Patrick Taylor would be better... Must get a book of Sikh prayer, and find someone who can tell me their views on proselytism... Start making calendars, moon tables, sunrise and sunset charts for the year. And gradient profiles for the stretch of railway line. And invent a name for this junction. Hathipur? Karawala? Devabad? Bhowani? That'll do. Bhowani Junction Must find an expert to tell me what different railwaymen actually do, what are each's skills and responsibilities. Only Kipling and Nevil Shute have so far written novels about work, where a man's work is a part of him.
Most novels are about what men do in their spare time, at home, etc. But his work is really part of a man... Must also make the railway not background but integral to the story, the plot, the characterization, everything. Big drivers turning, hot wind blowing, sex in the sleepers behind. Great!
The Deceivers was published in England and America.
The reviews were fair, on the whole grudgingly admitting that this new novelist could not really be said to have failed at his second jump, as so many do.
On April 29 we caught the Night Ferry at Victoria, for Paris. They looked oddly at my Indian passport, but I said, 'Jee-an, huzoor, ham-log Hindustani hain,' and we passed on to the train.
Chapter Eleven
The tilted plain ran down gold and ochre to a distant tower. To the left snow glittered along the crest of the receding mountain wall, to the right red flowers bloomed in a wide dry water course. The rails ran recklessly down the slope under the catenaries, the car swayed and jerked like a roped animal, the wheels clattered and whined and shrieked, the wind roared, the open windows rattled and banged; but no mechanical noise could compete with the sounds made by the human beings crowding the car — the Spanish. The old man on our right talked with the old woman in front, the young man behind with the young lady on our left, the babies with the ceiling, the soldiers with the girls. The sun and wind leaned in as participants in every conversation. The women's lips were the barrels of machine-guns. They loaded the syllables just behind the teeth, pressed an unseen trigger, and out came a high burst of sound that rattled the woodwork. We said a word to each other and fell silent, appalled, for our own voices seemed to be formed in our bellies.
A girl walked down the aisle to the rear platform, swaying just right, her carriage positive, head high, shoulders back, breasts firm and out-thrust, sure of herself and her sex.
'I don't understand a word,' I said.
Barbara said, 'Nor do I. But I like it.'
We were lonely rocks in an ocean of sound. Our neighbours looked through, past, and over us without a smile or a frown. In a manner, we did not exist; but we had no reservation in Barcelona and we needed advice. After fifteen minutes of rehearsal I turned to the woman across the aisle from me, and said, 'Please, madame, can you give me the name and address of a good cheap hotel in Barcelona?'
The lady was small and energetic. After a brief baffled pause while she tuned in to my extraordinary voice, and I repeated my question, she took off. I slowed her with a despairing cry, Despacio, señora, por favor, más despacio!'
The car coagulated round us. Men leaned over the back of the seat and women huddled in the aisle. A cloud of acrid blue smoke from the black Spanish cigarette tobacco engulfed us. Were we English, Dutch, German, American? We did not look like French. More like Danish, perhaps. Where were we going? Ah, Barcelona naturally.
Why?
Words actually addressed to us were fed one by one, as morsels to a child. We didn't have a hotel room booked?
No. Chirrups, and bursts of dismay. A volley of suggestions was fired from the end of the car and countered by a barrage from the other. Our friend's name was Teresa. She would take us to a place she knew — cheap, good, clean — in the Barrio. She would show us Barcelona.
Barcelona was an underground station brilliant with lights, hospital-clean, jammed full and then suddenly deserted. Up, and without warning into the evening roar of the Plaza de Cataluña, the Ramblas, people, people in tens of thousands, a river of dark eyes, smiles, girls and men eyeing each other, saying nothing, swirling on among the flowers. On at Teresa's side in the taxi, Teresa gesticulating, explaining; narrow streets, towering medieval walls, whores in doorways, soldiers, sailors, a pulsing life, doubly vivid in the dark alleys... the hotel, a meal, bed and at once, like unwound toys, total rest.
Next day Teresa showed us the sights of the city, her city, capital of Cataluna, St George's city, the greatest city of Spain, only those unspeakable Castilians kept the capital in Madrid. She showed us the Diputación (what in hell is a Diputación?), the city hall, the cathedral (dark, high, full of piety and assignations and running boys), the statue of Colon (who's he?), the harbour, and Montjuich.
We drank manzanilla in narrow bars and beer in a huge square called the Plaza Real, surrounded by cloisters and the cloisters full of booksellers. The beer had more body than American beer, much less than British, and was served ice-cold in litre tankards. Perfect. Shrimp, snails, squid rings, mussels, all called tapas, or 'What will you have con liga (to go with the beer)?' Perfect. Do we have to leave Barcelona? Yes. We are going to the Pyrenees.
In the train to Huesca we began to hear what was being said, to see what was being shown. We travelled in a 3rd class wooden car with hard slatted wood seats. Name plates and signs were of brass, well polished. Seats, floor, walls and windows were clean, the toilet at the end of the car a stinking mess of ordure. Thunder and lightning crashed over us and rain streamed down the windows as we climbed out t
o Manresa. The car was full of poorly‑dressed people surrounded by bags, bundles, baskets, vegetables, chickens and wine. A tight-mouthed man with a small moustache and a corduroy suit drifted up and down, occasionally stooping over someone and whispering, and then the someone would produce a bit of paper. On the back platform a pair of Guardia Civil, as handsome, saturnine and confident as the conscript soldier opposite was scruffy and depressed, let the wind blow out their green cloaks and the rain glisten on their patent leather three-cornered hats.
The hours passed, the rain passed, the train passed from tangled scrub-covered hills to a rolling land of crops. The black smoke trailed across vineyards and almonds and olives. Then we were grinding and swaying across a desert. A white road ran across it from nowhere to a more distant nowhere beyond the burning rim. In the centre there was a lone thorn, and under the thorn — no one, nothing, nada. A mile to the south two dark figures crawled on foot across the empty landscape, one on each side of the road. The old lady muttered to me under her breath, as though the figures out there could hear, 'La pareja... That's what we call the Guardia Civil, because they always go in pairs.'
Everything felt vaguely familiar and I did not know why. The view was large. It was hot and uncomfortable but we were at home. Everyone in the long car was talking to everyone else. The little soldier had brought down a guitar from the rack and was plucking it mournfully. Dust whirled by the windows and ahead the engine screamed a long, falling, dying call.
The old lady opened her basket and unwrapped bread, sausage, tomatoes and wine. She held the basket out to us and said 'Le gusto?' (Would you like some?) It looked great, and without hesitation I said, 'Yes, please.' Did I catch a suspicion of alarm and surprise in her face? No matter. We opened our packs and got out the food we had bought for the journey. It was store stuff, nothing like as good as hers, but now definitely her face cleared, as I held out the food to her. She preferred ours, and we hers so the meal went merrily. The man in the corduroy suit secretively flashed a badge and asked to see our passports. The Guardia Civil listened tolerantly to the soldier with the guitar. Wafts of clean sunny air from the plain mixed with gusts from the unspeakable toilet.
