Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey

by John Masters

  Alex said, 'I'm going to stay in London till after the coronation, then go to Antibes. Are you planning to watch it?'

  The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II was set for June 2. For me it would be practically a family affair, for the King's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery, and the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, both due to play central roles in the ceremonies, were commanded respectively by Frankie Weldon and Charles Earle, who had both been at Wellington and the Staff College with me; but to Alex I said, 'I don't have a hope of getting a good view and I'm damned if I'm going to pay for one, so I'll probably stay at home and work.'

  'Ah, you are still English at heart,' he said. 'If you were really American you would give your right arm to see it... Would you like to go to Antibes and work on my yacht for a couple of weeks? We'll join you after the coronation.'

  I thought that was an excellent idea and a few days later flew down to Nice for Antibes, and settled into Alex's palatial yacht. There I put my papers aside and studied the burning problem of the hour: supposing that John Hunt's expedition, then more than half-way up the mountain, succeeded in climbing Everest, what rewards would be given to the actual conquerors, and to the expedition leader, Hunt himself? I reckoned that a K. would be about right for Hillary, and since the Order of the British Empire was always favoured for colonials, that he would get a K.B.E.

  If Hillary was knighted his leader would have to be; but Hunt was an officer of the regular army, a brigadier, and regulars didn't get the K.B.E. until they were lieutenant-generals. So I thought it would be suggested that Hunt be made a Knight Bachelor. In due course these things came to pass; but whoever advised Her Majesty to palm Tenzing off with an M.B.E., which in the circumstances was a calculated insult, was a prize ass.

  Alex's yacht was moored alongside in the inner basin of Antibes harbour, and the only other inhabitant, apart from the crew, was an oldish lady, said to have been Gorki's last mistress, and also H.G. Wells's. I called her, privately, Mme Ouspenskaya, and very sweet she was to me, but I worked hard and went out little — the chef was a master — until Alex and Alexa came down; then my horizons expanded. What impressed me most was the continuous high level of Alex's life. His friends were at the top of their professions — not near it, but at the very summit. The subjects of discussion were never easy or petty. Conversation was never banal (or, to tell the truth restful), and if Alex could help it there were never any dull minds present though he couldn't always dodge some alcoholic Dodges he had had the misfortune to meet in the U.S.A.

  Marcel Pagnol, Orson Welles, and Freddie Lonsdale were frequent guests, with assorted British bankers and French cabinet ministers. One oddity was the attitude of Alex and his friends to Lord Beaverbrook. They all knew Beaverbrook personally: all told stories about him: and all the stories revealed the Beaver as a ruthless, thoroughly unpleasant megalomaniac. One day I pointed this out and asked why, if Beaverbrook was such a shit, they all claimed him as their friend. Four eminent men turned on me with flooding explanations — of his charm, his loneliness, his ability. But I think really they liked him because he was as powerful, as rich, and as far removed from the common herd as they, and solely through his own efforts.

  Orson Welles was trying to interest Alex in a screenplay he had written, and one of the evenings he spent on the Yacht is a particularly happy memory for me. There were only the five of us present Alex, Alexa, Mme Ouspenskaya, Welles and myself. All evening Alex and I, emigrants both, debated the relative merits of the British and American ways of life. He spoke for England in a Hungarian accent you could cook a goulash in; I for American in 'Wellington-and-Sandhurst English; the expatriate American Welles refereed in mid-Atlantic.

  I liked Welles and we got on famously, except once when he backed huffily out of a debate on Roman Catholic censorship and freedom of thought on the grounds that it was his personal affair; quite so, but those were not the terms on which debate was held in Alex's cabin. That night, when Welles left, Alex and I walked him to the end of the jetty. As we returned in the sea-scented moonlight, Alex put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Jack, there goes a great actor and a greater director, who wants nothing more than to be a great writer. And he is a terrible writer. Let that be a lesson to you.'

  Some Dodges and Ed Lopert were there the night Alex made a classic remark. Lopert had been in the distribution end of the movie business and now wanted to go into the production end. He had come to discuss it with Alex. After dinner he began to tell Alex about Menasha Skulnik, the famous Second Avenue comic. Finally he said, 'He's, well, he's the Jewish Charlie Chaplin.'

  Alex dropped his glasses to the end of his nose, looked over them at Lopert, and inquired carefully — And what does that make Charrrlie Chaplin?'

  It was usually Alexa who brought me mid-morning coffee and biscuits while I was working in the chart room, but once Alex came. I seized my pencil, looking guilty, for he was paying me an awful lot of money and at that moment I was leaning back, day-dreaming. Alex pushed me down and said, 'Don't be afraid of letting the mind lie fallow, Jack. I am not Sam Goldwyn. You know, he had John Drinkwater working for him once in Hollywood. He went into the office they had given Drinkwater, picked up a pencil and said, 'I am coming back at noon, Mr Drinkwater, and by then I want to see this pencil down to here!'

  Then one morning Alexa came in very formally dressed, and said, 'Come to the big cabin.' I went and found Alex also in splendour and Mme Ouspenskaya beaming. Alexa said, 'Jack, we're going to be married today, in the Matisse chapel at Vence. We're not inviting anyone except the prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes, who arranged everything for us, without publicity. Wish us luck.' I kissed her heartily, also Mme Ouspenskaya, and wrung Alex's hand. They deserved happiness for they were civilized and generous people. She was twenty-one and he sixty and the yellow press naturally had a field day when they heard of it, wallowing even more deliberately in the mud (interviews with sex specialists on problems of the ageing male, features on young girls who throw up all for money) because Alex had not made the wedding a Roman spectacle for them.

  A momentary shadow crossed Alex's beaming face, and Alexa said, 'What's the matter?'

  Alex said, 'I just remembered a terrrrible nightmare I had last night. I dreamed I was marrrrying Merrrrle again.'

  A few days later the yacht put to sea on their honeymoon cruise, and I flew back to London. 'Not the famous author?' the man at British immigration said, glancing at my passport. At first I thought I hadn't heard him aright. Then I looked over my shoulder, but there was no one there. Wonderful, perspicacious, intelligent people, the English. Make the best Martinis in the world.

  I started an urgent search for a summer place. After eliminating all south and east coast resorts within reach as being crowded, noisy, and suburban; and regretfully dismissing our old favourites of Devon and Cornwall for other reasons, an ancestral memory sent me on an exploratory trip to Wales. The summer of 1922, when I was seven, (my parents were in India), I spent the summer holidays from boarding-school with an aunt and family in a farmhouse outside Llanbedrog, near Pwllheli, North Wales. The memories were small but clear: a sunbaked lane, between rough stone walls, damsons heavy on the bough overhead; a rocky cove with a little sand; a faintly heaving sea; hot heather, gorse, an adder wriggling across the footpath; an old woman in a shop teaching me Welsh...

  It was clear and sunny that day of my reconnaissance, the natives were friendly and an estate agent in Barmouth had a small house in Llanaber a mile or two up the coast, for rent furnished with — oh extra joy — only the railway line between the house and the beach. I took it on the spot.

  Diana Gray, a cousin of my own age, agreed to spend the summer with us, to help with the kids. I hired a small car, the family flew in from New York, and off we went to our new retreat. While the others ran out on to the sand I arranged a back bedroom as my study and spread out the timetables, gradient graphs, work sheets moon tables, topographical maps, and plot charts of Bhowani Junction, to be ready for Helen Tayl
or's barrage. In other drawers I put away the draft of Taj Mahal, and some notes for my next novel.

  That summer divided itself into two parts: rain, and the rest. Under 'rain' I recall that we were in Llanaber seventy-four days, of which it rained sixty-two. We were able to visit the beach some fifteen days in all, of which several were wet, cold, windswept or all three. With the intention of teaching the children the joys of camping I took them one at a time up Cwm Bychan, a valley along the coast with Roman steps and fine hidden tarns.

  Martin came off all right, as it only drizzled, but when Susan's turn came we were flooded out. (Me, after twenty‑five years camping all over the world! But the damned stream climbed a hill to get us at 1 a.m.) We stumbled down the mountain in black dark and driving rain, and passed the rest of the night huddled together, soaked, on a pile of manure in a barn. She was nine and afterwards I never could persuade her that camping was really fun.

  There was rain at Harlech Castle, rain at Caernarvon Castle, rain slanting over Trawsfynydd, seen from the head of Cwm Bychan, rain at Llanfairpwllgwyngllgogerchwyrndrobwlltysiliogogogoch, rain on the Druidical sites we looked for in Anglesey, rain on the prehistoric hut circles at Tre'r Ceiri (I asked the children to imagine the Roman soldiers trudging up through the gorse, cursing the weather), rain in our camp on a grassy stretch of the deserted light slate railway near Tan y Bwlch, rainy stone walls and rainy slate roofs and rainy pubs closed on Sundays, and waiting in the rain to buy fish and chips wrapped in wet newspaper for supper...

  And the rest? Well, the sun shone one day when Barbara and I climbed Cader Idris (but it rained when we walked up Snowdon). The children copied the Welsh lilt, and we all learned to differentiate between Jones the Fish, Jones the Coal, Jones the Bread, Jones the Paper and Jones the Garage. We made pilgrimages to several light and miniature railways then running in Wales, that the children might remember the glory of steam. We dashed round Scotland in a five-day 'It's Tuesday so we must be in Inverness' tour of our own devising.) But I remember best the climb to Ais Gill summit on the Yorkshire moors, and a pair of curlews, the bleak stone curve of Ribblehead viaduct swinging into the lowering mass of Blea Moor ahead, cloud shadows and a threatening touch of violet in the light; and the rhythmic quickening of the beat after Ais Gill, the swaying racing passage down the Eden Valley, as rich and lovely as any in Europe, the great gables of the fells slowly falling back.)

  And I worked. I had a good strong Taj Mahal story, principally because I had found out in my researches that the sons of the Emperor who built it, Shah Jehan, had revolted against him and imprisoned him close by the Taj. This, and some legends about Mumtaz Mahal, the wife whose tomb it was, added some needed salt and lemon to the frosting sugar sweetness of the building and of the basic story.

  Bhowani Junction was in its final editorial process, and the letters winged back and forth between New York and Llanaber. Helen wrote: On the subject of bearing down hard, Patrick is a prime case in point, and I... would ask you to think about his general character and do more if you can. To some readers he is still a stupid oaf and nothing more — not in the least sympathetic. The reason may be the innumerable large and small things against him that are absolutely unrelieved, until you get almost to the end and find that he is a good hunter. He is loud-mouthed and tactless, a bully, a rash and unthinking blunderer. He cannot control his emotions, and he blusters, or he cries childish tears. He is tongue-tied. He cannot ride a motor-cycle well, and he cannot dance well. He drinks badly. He is caught in bed with Rose Mary behaving like an animal. He cannot command the respect of his A.F.I. platoon who titter at him. He bites finger-nails. The basic outlines of his character are clear — that of the unsure and unstable victim of an unfortunate societal environment, whose worst qualities come to the fore in any emergency, a man who has learned no protective coloration whatsoever.

  But there is also the suspicion that he is unreliable and worthless, and this may come from that overabundance of detail, from the many times he is scored on by Savage and made to look and feel ludicrous, from his frequent cursings at the Collector, Ranjit and the other Indians. I wish you could think of some saving graces for Patrick, not only because Victoria does love and understand him, but because his last blundering action — which results in the death of Birkhe — is the final straw if one does not like Patrick. See if you can introduce some positive new note... In Victoria's section she might remember something about their growing up together, some fun-loving qualities (which he has) and the tenderness he has always felt for her. Both of their meetings behind the signal light behind her house might not have to end disastrously... On the first, he might even comfort Victoria, and, since he loves her, not think only of himself, but wonder how he can help her. For he really understands their dilemma as Anglo-Indians just as well as she does... He is a soft-hearted man, but not essentially weak...

  And more, much more. I sent her six pages in return, including a total acceptance of her dissections of the characters of Patrick, Victoria, and Rodney. Then I started my counter-battery fire:

  There has been the problem of technicalities. I know that S.M. or G.H.Q., or three-tonner, sprung suddenly on the average reader, will be unintelligible. But I am writing about experts, speaking in the first person to other experts, and that is how they speak. And I have always wondered why you pick on the army, which I write about, instead of, say, the sea. Your principles should he applied to those innumerable sea-stories of which I and most other men are very fond. Let us take the standard situation:

  'Reef the main t'garns'l,' Captain Joshua roared into the teeth of the gale.

  The bo'sun shouted, 'Aye aye, sir' and ran toward the foc'sle.

  I love this. Everyone loves it. We don't understand a word of it, but the sailors, thank God, do. They are technical experts, otherwise I wouldn't be on that ship with them, not on your life. But I will edit the above (as you would like it):

  Do you see those three big poles stuck in the deck?' Captain Joshua roared. He had to roar because the wind velocity exceeded fifty nautical miles an hour. 'Aye aye, sir,' answered the principal sailor in the vessel (not counting the officers, that is). The captain looked at him reproachfully. He blushed, remembering that he was in a book, and muttered 'I mean, Yes, Captain Joshua, I have followed you so far.' 'Well, take the last one, the one nearest the blunt end of the ship. Follow the pole with our eyes...' But the waves now exceeded seventy feet in height and the ship quickly sank under them, carrying Captain Joshua and all who travelled with him to a merciful oblivion. ?

  * * *

  ?

  It is amazingly unhelpful to write the message COARSE in the margin opposite some sentence. You must believe me when I tell you that I meant it to be coarse. It was a coarse man speaking in a coarse moment; and even if it wasn't, you must still believe I know the meaning of the simpler phrases I write down. So what? Do you mean that you don't want any coarse people in any book published by the Viking Press? Do you mean that you don't mind coarse people, but they mustn't be too coarse? Too coarse for whom? You? Harold? The Book Clubs? The average reader? Anything you say that makes sense I will pay great attention to. But the single word COARSE makes no sense, not from an editor to a writer.

  ?

  * * *

  ?

  The many peremptory commands pencilled in the margin — CUT, OUT, NIX, WON'T GO — do make sense of course — from a publisher's editor to a writer. Is this the sense intended?... The problem is a very real one and it won't be solved by writing NIX any more than it will be by me calling the lot of you a pack of literary bystanders. The real problem is that the word may have a greater impact on the reader, if he is not used to it, than it ought to have... Nevertheless there are cases where only the word spoken is the right word. There are forces that may prevent that word being used in a book; our business is to study those forces in every case, and the importance of the book and its characters; please don't emit any further smoke screens about offensiveness, staleness, tastele
ssness, and so on, People are offensive, stale, and tasteless (outside literary-discussion groups). FUCK is sometimes the best and only right word to use.

  Having gone carefully through Bhowani Junction I find thirteen really foul words. SHIT (4), FUCK (5), CUNT (1), BUGGER (3). In the milieu, over several weeks, dealing with at least two violently-tempered men, I am amazed at my own restraint. Even they could probably be reduced to half that number without altering anything but the finest shading of a nuance in some characterization. But because I am a coward and because you are all cowards too, I am going to eliminate them. Nobody likes to be brought face to face with his own weakness, and I do not thank you for doing so in this case. This affair has been like an attack that failed. in the safety of the rear areas we all talked bravely about the integrity of the artist and the solemn privileges of the publisher. As we advanced into the open the brave words became carefully phrased warnings about artistic necessity and intelligent readers. At last, whimpering of the investigating committees and reader-resistance, the line broke, turned tail, and fled. I am left alone and I haven't got the guts to go on by myself. All I ask, when we are recovering our nerve over a drink ten miles from the firing, is that we should not talk any more about integrity...