The Moon’s a Balloon

by David Niven

  Trubshawe adhered to his timetable and by midsummer, he had left the regiment and married Margie Macdougall.

  The junior officers, non-commissioned officers and men of the battalion were sad to see him go. The senior officers had mixed feelings. For me it was disaster, compounded when, almost immediately, over half of my platoon were drafted to India and I was sent on a course to the Machine Gun School at Netheravon. Gloom descended on me like a blanket.

  I was befriended around this time by the Weigall family who lived in a large white Georgian house in Ascot. Sir Archibald was tall, charming, good-looking, pink-faced and vague. Lady Weigall, permanently in a wheel chair, wearing a blonde wig with a blue bow in it, was plump, vivacious, a tremendous gourmet who loved laughing and being shocked. She was attended by two resident doctors, a youngish male social secretary and a mysterious old gentleman called ‘C. J.’ who read Horses Hound all day long, and who was rumoured to have been Lady Weigall’s boy friend before Sir Archibald showed up. Priscilla, the only-child, was a flashing brunette with a delicious sense of humour who was quite correctly considered ‘Deb of the Year’.

  I spent many happy weekends at Ascot and the Weigalls took a great interest in my future. Sir Archie and Lady Weigall thought it fitting that I should go to Australia as A.D.C. to the Governor General. Priscilla had other ideas.

  ‘You should be a movie actor,’ she declared flatly and promptly went to work to promote the idea. First, she introduced me to my boyhood hero, the great Douglas Fairbanks. A chronic anglophile, Fairbanks was enjoying a period of playing the country squire and had rented Mimms, a lovely Queen Anne house in Hertfordshire.

  Fairbanks invited me to play golf with him at Sunningdale which I did and basked happily for eighteen holes in his reflected glory. I was so impressed by the gaiety and simplicity of the great man, I never dared mention Priscilla’s project.

  Undeterred by my cowardice, she next presented me to Bunty Watts, a producer at Sound City, a minute studio nearby, and one Sunday, I appeared in front of the cameras as an extra in a racing film—All the Winners with Alan Jeayes as its star. Greatly to Priscilla’s disappointment, I was not immediately signed to a million-pound contract and returned to Netheravon in time for parade on Monday morning.

  My loathing of the Machine Gun School was only equalled by my pathological hatred of the Vickers Mark IV machine gun, a foul piece of machinery of such abysmal design that it was subject to countless stoppages, all of which we were supposed to be able to diagnose and rectify at a moment’s notice. There were about a hundred officers on the course drawn from every conceivable regiment. Henry Clowes of the Scots Guards was my constant companion and although I nearly killed him one day, when the vintage Bentley skidded and somersaulted on Salisbury Plain, pinning us underneath it, he forgave me and did all he could to help me through the hot mornings when I arrived, sleepless, from London.

  One such morning was the harbinger of military doom. I had escorted Priscilla to a dance and a night club and I screeched up in the Bentley only just in time to take of my tail coat, jump into my brown canvas overalls, cram my Glengarry on my head and relieve Henry of a hideously heavy tripod before my name was called on the early parade.

  ‘Present, sir,’ I puffed.

  All morning we laboured, putting that damn gun together then taking it to pieces again.

  ‘All right, gentlemen,’ said the chief instructor, a full colonel, ‘it’s a very warm day, you may remove your overall jackets and work stripped to the waist.’

  Sighs of relief all round as the officers peeled.

  ‘Mr. Niven, you may remove your overalls,’ said the chief instructor.

  ‘No thank you, sir, I have a sniffle.’

  ‘Remove your overalls, Mr. Niven,’ ordered the colonel.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  I stood in the middle of Salisbury Plain unveiled in white tie, stiff collar, shirt and white waistcoat…Glengarry still on my head. After that I was a marked man.

  The end, militarily speaking, came for me on another stiflingly hot day during the last week of the course. I was much looking forward to a particularly exciting rendezvous in London and my time table was in grave danger of being ruined by a long-winded address being delivered by a visiting major-general. In the hot tin-roofed lecture but he was droning on about fields of fire, close support and trajectories. Bluebottles were buzzing about and my head was nodding. Finally he closed his notes. ‘Any questions, gentlemen?’

  My hand went up. I will never know what prompted me to do it, four years of frustration, I suppose, but I opened my mouth and heard myself say, ‘Could you tell me the time, please, I have to catch a train.’

  ‘Stand up that officer.’

  I stood r[-]

  ‘Your name?’ I told him.

  ‘Go to your quarters and remain there.’ I departed.

  Soon an officer of the Seaforths of the same rank as myself joined me in my room, ominously he was wearing a sword. He was very embarrassed. ‘I’m afraid I have been told to…er…stay with you,’ he said. ‘Close arrest?’ I asked.

  ‘Looks like it?’ he said.

  The embarrassment deepened as we sat staring at each other in the hot little room, he in the leather chair, me on the bed. After about an hour, with an exasperated flourish, he took off his sword. ‘This is bloody ridiculous,’ he said, ‘let’s have a drink.’

  I agreed eagerly and summoned the room orderly who was lurking suspiciously close determined not to miss a moment of this juicy situation. A bottle of whisky arrived from the mess and almost in silence the Seaforth Highlander and I drank it, and when I say ‘it’—we drank the whole bottle.

  ‘I’ve a suggestion,’ said the Seaforth as the last dram was drained, and he said it slowly and with great deliberation.

  ‘I’ll go to the lavatory, which I badly need to do, and you escape.’ The beauty and simplicity of this plan would have shamed Field Marshal Montgomery’s famous ‘Left Hook’ at El Alamein.

  The Seaforth, with brimming eyes, then clasped both my hands in his, shook his head mournfully, and tottered off in the general direction of the latrines. I climbed hurriedly out of the window, closed my eyes and leapt into space. Luckily my room was on the ground floor so I found myself in no time up to my chin in rhododendron bushes.

  I ran to the Bentley and drove rapidly, and luckily without incident, to London.

  The girl with whom I had a date I never saw again. I arrived comparatively sober and utterly appalled by what I had done. I rounded up two friends, old friends whom I admired…Victor Gordon-Lennox, an ex-Major of the Grenadier Guards, then the diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, and Philip Astley who, as Adjutant of the Life Guards, had been asked to resign his commission for committing a heinous crime—he had married an actress the gorgeous Madeleine Carroll.

  The three of us dined at White’s, outside, Guinness label gleaming, stood the Bentley. The two ex-Guards officers listened attentively while I told them what had happened. With the port came the inquest.

  ‘How much do you like the Army?’ asked Victor.

  ‘I hate it,’ I answered.

  ‘You’re bound to be court-martialled, why don’t you pack up before you’re thrown out?’

  ‘Because I’m broke,’ I said.

  ‘Do you have any money at all? asked Victor. ‘A few pounds and about half that old Bentley outside.’

  They left me nursing a large glass of Cockburn’s while they murmured together in a bay window overlooking St. James’s Street. I tried to avoid the eyes of an ex-member of White’s who stared down on me disapprovingly from a large gilt frame—the Duke of Wellington.

  Finally the jury returned to their seats.

  ‘There is no question that you are through in the Army,’ said Philip, ‘but Victor has a possible solution.’

  Victor, lately married to a Canadian girl, then spoke, ‘I am sailing on the Empress of Britain tomorrow to pick up Diana from her parents’ island in the Rideau
Lakes, then I’m off to Washington. Give me the Bentley or the part you have paid for and I’ll give you a return trip to Quebec—come and stay on the island for a week or two and you can decide what to do next.’ I was stunned by my good fortune.

  ‘Now, we’ll go downstairs,’ said Philip, ‘and you can write your colonel your resignation—I’ll help you—I’ve done it.’

  Below, by the porter’s desk—the only place in White’s where guests can use the Club stationery—I wrote out a cable to Alec Telfer-Smollett at the Citadel Barracks, Dover:

  DEAR COLONEL REQUEST PERMISSION RESIGN COMMISSION. LOVE NIVEN.

  I sailed for Canada in the morning.

  ∨ The Moon’s a Balloon ∧

  NINE

  The Empress of Britain, like my earlier transatlantic carrier the Georgic, was sunk a few years later by the Germans. She was a beautiful ship and the September crossing was perfect. We ran into fog only once about one day out of the Gulf of St. Lawrence; suddenly, it got much colder and we reduced speed. I remarked on this to a steward. ‘Icebergs about,’ he said. ‘How do you know?’ I asked. ‘We smell ‘em,’ he replied.

  As yet there was no radar in passenger ships and the steward gave it as his considered opinion that the Captain wetted his pants every time they entered these particular waters.

  The fog lifted and everyone was pointing. A mile or so away was a gigantic fortress sailing majestically along. Pale pink in the setting sun on one side and blue-green on the other. It towered out of the water and with nine-tenths out of sight below the surface, imagination boggled at the size of the whole.

  Diana Kingsmill Gordon-Lennox was a rarity—a genuine Canadian eccentric. Dark, with beautiful teeth and a lovely smile, she was highly intelligent, smoked small cigars and wore a monocle. She met us in Quebec and we drove and drove to Portland, Ontario. Diana seemed not at all put out that Victor had arrived with an unknown friend, she intimated that her father and mother were looking forward to having me on the island and was delighted when I told her I loved fishing. ‘Then Daddy will have a playmate,’ she said.

  When we approached the island a loon was calling plaintively across the lake. The maples were turning and I had never seen such blazing beauty, great splashes of red, brown, yellow and gold were reflected in the still water and behind rose the foothills of the Gatineau Mountains all clothed in the same breath-taking colours.

  The island was of about five acres. The main house was surrounded by perhaps four guest cabins, all of wood.

  Admiral Kingsmill and his wife were walking down to the boathouse as we arrived. The Admiral was a famous old Canadian sea-dog and with his forthright manner, pointed white beard and ramrod carriage, he certainly looked the part. Diana had heard my story on the long drive from Quebec and had said it would be better to forget my true exit from the British Army. ‘Just settle for a straight resigning of the commission when talking to the old man,’ she said firmly.

  Lady Kingsmill was a gentle motherly creature and I was immediately made welcome.

  The days slid by. People came from other islands to visit. The Admiral and I endlessly went fishing for the big green bass, the fighting, jumping, black bass; the giant pike and the ferocious muskellon.

  Victor and Diana took me on excursions into the back country and we discussed my future endlessly. Return to England? Hardly. Because of my lack of training in any useful profession the chances of employment seemed brighter in the U.S. than in Canada, so when the time came to move on I made up my mind to cash in my return trip ticket to England and cast my lot in New York.

  On the day of my departure I had an agonisingly sore throat. I didn’t say anything about it because the Kingsmills might have felt they were getting stuck with a permanent guest so when Victor and Diana headed for Washington, I accompanied them as far as Ottawa, where I said goodbye to my saviour and his wife and visited a doctor who said I had chronically infected tonsils which should come out immediately. I imagine he must have done something about the infection first, but anyway he stuffed me into Ottawa General Hospital. Sodium pentathol not having yet come on the market, the operation was carried out after I had first been rendered unconscious by a mixture of gas and ether being pumped into a rubber mask over my face. After the operation, I lay for days with a throat of greatly increased soreness and to take my mind off my misery, I am afraid I indulged in a little gentle plagiarism.

  I hope that the statute of limitations applies in this case and that the Mounties will not be sent to pull me in, and if it will help at all, I offer my belated apologies to the author, Thyrett Drake, who long before had written a book called Fox Hunting in Canada. I found it in the hospital library, copied some of it assiduously and sold four articles to the local newspaper under the title ‘Hunting of the Canadian Fox’. It paid the doctor’s bill.

  I had met some friends of the Kingsmills, Pete and Ginny Bate, and one day they appeared at my bedside.

  ‘We’ve talked to the doctor,’ they said, ‘and he has agreed that we can take you home with us. There’s a room at the top of the house you can have while you are convalescing and it’ll be much more comfy for you. Besides, we would love to have you.’

  I was overwhelmed by such a wonderfully warm-hearted gesture by the slightest of acquaintances, though it is typical of Canadians as a whole. I had at least a week more to spend in bed—apparently it had been an operation with ‘complications’ so I jumped at the idea and, swathed in blankets, was installed, as promised, in a bright chintzy room at the top of their house.

  On a Sunday night Ginny and Pete came up to see me.

  ‘We’re going over to Pete’s mother’s for supper but we’ll be back before eleven. Do you mind being left alone?’

  Of course I didn’t. I was feeling better and due to get up in a day or so. They left me with a radio and departed.

  I went to sleep about ten and woke up some time later literally drowning in my own blood. I had had a terrible haemorrhage in the throat and when I turned on my side, it poured out like a tap on to the floor. The bright chintzy room looked like an abattoir. I had not the faintest idea where the telephone was or what was the doctor’s number but I had a vague idea that the operator could somehow help me.

  I collapsed at the top of the stairs where the poor Bates found me, mercifully a short while later.

  Back to hospital and blood transfusions but finally I made it by train to New York. It was now mid-October and becoming exceedingly cold. I found a room in a cheap hotel on Lexington Avenue—the Montclair—and for a week I lay in bed without the energy to pick up the telephone to try to find some of last year’s companions.

  Finally, I began to make contact with the old group and although they went through the motions of being pleased to see me, I soon realised that there was a big difference between an irresponsible young man over for a short holiday, and an anxious young man badly in need of a job. The background was none too welcoming for a foreigner either, the United States was still in the grip of the depression and there were millions of United States citizens unemployed. I could not have chosen a worse time for my arrival.

  However, good health can overcome the gloomiest thoughts and as my strength returned, my morale improved. I registered with an employment agency and picked up a few dollars here and there working at night for catering companies who handled cocktail parties. It was not a very technical job. The host produced the booze via his bootlegger and the caterers provided the hors d’oeuvres, the barman, the glasses and the waiters. I invested in a white jacket and took great care to check the addresses I was sent to, only accepting jobs where it was very unlikely I would be seen by any of my erstwhile acquaintances.

  John McClain, the reporter, was doing better. He had just been given a daily column to write for the Sun—‘Up the Gangplank’, interviews with interesting arrivals on the ocean liners. One day McClain had a brainwave…

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘prohibition was repealed in April and is due to be ratified in a few days a
nd all booze becomes legal. Jack and Charlie are going to become wine merchants—maybe they’ll give you a job. I’ll have a word with them.’

  The next day I had a meeting with Jack Kriendler and found myself employed on a forty dollars a week retainer against ten per cent of what I brought in in the way of orders. Jack explained that Frank Hunter of the world champion doubles team of Tilden and Hunter would be president of the company and my immediate boss.

  Frank Hunter, a man of great charm and humour, introduced me to my co-worker, a tough professional salesman named Harry Rantzman.

  During the months I held my job, I hardly ever topped four hundred dollars a week in sales which would have ‘augmented’ my ‘retainer’. Harry Rantzman ended up owning several apartment buildings, in the Bronx, a real professional.

  The first day at work Kriendler sent me to F.B.I. Headquarters to have my fingerprints taken and to be photographed with a number round my neck and to this day at ‘21’ is that picture of me: underneath is written—Our First and Worst Salesman.

  The products we had to sell were Justerini and Brooks’ whole line, Ballantyne’s Scotch, George Goulet champagne and a peculiar brandy called Jules Robin.

  ‘Go out now and get the orders,’ said Charlie Burns airily. They gave me a price list and told me my beat.

  ‘East of Lexington over to the river and between 42nd St. and 90th St., that’s for the restaurants and bars—the private customers you pick up anywhere you can.’

  I made my first sale the day before drinking became legal—a case of champagne to ‘Woolly’ Donahue—he needed it at once, Gus the barman gave me the case out of stock and ‘Red’ the doorman and I delivered it in a Yellow Cab just before midnight on 4th December—‘21 Brands Inc’ was in business.