by Cecil Beaton
Wavell has just given me, as a parting present, a dedicated copy of an anthology of all the poems he knows by heart. The Wavells have accepted me almost as one of their family, and my heart is full of gratitude and friendliness for each and all of the remarkable brood. But it is the father who is on a monumental scale: merely watching him be his simple, ordinary self has been an experience which I hope may have taught me a bit about greatness.
A Hungarian doctor got on to the bus with me. He had heard about my activities, knew I had been ill with dengue fever in Calcutta and had stayed so many weeks in Delhi. He said, ‘No doubt you’ve realized how small a country India is. There are millions of Indians, but there is one set that knows everything about each other, and if you go to one city they know all about you in another.’ While waiting for our aircraft he suggested we drink tea and asked the boy that it should be weak. The tea arrived very strong. ‘Could we have extra hot water?’ ‘No, sir,’ the boy laughed. ‘It’s nice and strong now, isn’t it? If we keep it standing it will get weaker, won’t it?’ ‘Yes,’ the boy laughed, and started vigorously to stir the pot with a spoon. ‘You’re stirring it so that it gets weaker, are you?’ ‘Yes, Sahib,’ laughed the boy. The doctor told me, ‘You go into a shop and ask, “Are these chocolates old — nice old stale ones?” “Yes, Sahib.” “Is this nice fresh port wine — quite new wine?” “Oh, yes, Sahib!’”
Thursday, July 27th, Karachi
Most of the air station was flooded out: scraggy Indians waded up to their knees, jeeps drove through waves of café au lait, the runway had become a lake, silver flying fish were marooned by the dozen on the dunes or floating on the sea and a whole area of tents was under water.
We were at an hour’s call, and must not wander from the precincts. Boredom acute. At one point during the day we scrambled to be weighed in, filled in forms; but this activity proved a false alarm: floods had not subsided.
Next morning our chances were good, for other aircraft took off. Again we filled in forms, and were given a rather jolly briefing in case of ditching. ‘Appoint a captain for each dinghy and do everything he says: don’t be wasteful with your water ration for there’s no knowing how long it might have to last! In fact, you must clean your teeth in it, swill it around the mouth for a long time, and eventually drink it! Never get despondent, for help will come eventually, and it’s worth going to where you’re all going (to the US) for there’s a nice ice-cold drink there awaiting you. Now, about your Mae West. Put it on just like a halter, and you know which end of a horse that goes on. And another thing: leave plenty of room to spare under the arms and crotch, for when the thing inflates itself it becomes much tighter and may damage you. You don’t want to take any risks: you don’t want to go where you’re going (to America) with anything wrong with the crotch!’
About a dozen of us trooped into a vast DC46: twin engines: backs to the wall bucket seats: as upholstered as a biscuit tin. Bisbee and myself the only English, all the others Americans; some Merrills Marauders — they were still yellow-complexioned as a result of the atapane they had taken against malaria. One rawboned chap from Alabama, with a tremendous drawl, was now going home having done the flight over the ‘Hump’ fifty times.
A blind take-off from the still water-logged runway. When, at last, the windows cleared of café au lait spray, we discovered we were in the air.
If lucky, it will take us a week to get to Miami. We are not doing the shorter northern route through Casablanca and the Azores, but across Africa from Aden to Ascension Island, then to Brazil, Trinidad and Miami. But time does not mean much when one is in this trance of unreality.
Yes! If lucky! But, it seemed we were not to be — to start off with. After flying over the sea for one and a half hours we were directed to return. The weather had closed in at Missouri. We flew back in this tin hades of a prison to arrive where, four hours ago, we had started.
The life on the air station has become a Kafkaish reiteration of doing once more what one had hoped to have done for the last time. Always more forms to be filled in, more cards for billeting, more tickets for meals.
AIRBORNE AT LAST
After two days of waiting to leave Karachi, we all looked a good deal older, dirtier, and more exhausted. I congratulated myself that my experiences in China had made me somewhat immune to further irritations; nevertheless, it wasn’t enjoyable to be called at last into the plane, go back to our familiar buckets, backs to the wall, to be locked in, take position for the run, and then remain while the fuselage lights were merely switched on and off. Eventually, we taxied back to our starting point: ‘Something wrong with the feathering of the air screws,’ the pilot explained. We trooped out again, hung around, then got into the aircraft once more. Another false alarm. The pilot said, ‘Missouri closed down.’ After three false starts we were sent to our beds, and I, for one, was rather thankful not to have to spend that night in the aircraft. But ten minutes after undressing word came round that, after all, we were to take off at midnight.
The chill metal floor of the aircraft was covered with sleeping bodies sprawled out on most of the available space. After a couple of hours of reading sitting upright, I dossed down under my coat, my head on a familiar friend, my peacetime ‘week-end’ bag. It was pleasant to see daylight come through the windows when I turned over on the other painful hip to remain prone until told to fasten ourselves in. Missouri visibility was bad: rockets were sent up in the air for us. Three times we circled the field: we twice overshot the mark. Eventually we landed.
At Aden, ‘the vestibule of the orient’, we said good-bye to the chalky and sultry whiteness of India. Now below us was Africa, with palm trees, mud, marabouts and camels.
The noise of the aircraft makes one feel highly strung, and tears stream when one reads an emotional book. It is curious how, in spite of the volume of noise of the four engines, one hears every additional sound — the click of a playing-card slammed down, the metal ping as someone hits his head against the ceiling of the fuselage, the nasal voices of the passengers shouting to one another. I drifted into a sort of coma; no day had any particular beginning or end. We slept in the aircraft at all times of day and night. We landed at various anonymous-looking American airports scattered about Africa, to be bustled into lorries, to drink a gut-warming cup of coffee in the mess, and, in double quick time, be herded back into the aircraft.
After a day’s flight in a sunny sky, evening clouds caused such ‘disturbance’ that even some of the huskies vomited, I contracted a cold, and everyone looked worse for wear. When a generator burst itself out a padre from Utah said the delay was a blessing as most of the boys could do with a night’s sleep. It was a help to get the long growth of beard off one’s face, and the coating off one’s teeth.
We took off. Landed. Took off again: no idea of the time: once I calculated it would be about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and discovered it was 10.30 in the morning. Sometimes we seemed to endure three nights in one. For instance, after an early dinner at Karno, I had gone into the deepest sleep, to be awakened five hours later. We took offin the darkness; and again I slept. After another four hours, we arrived in the dark at Accra.
Eventually we arrived at the great West African terminal for America. We had achieved half our journey. Here we were to change planes, but how long we might wait nobody knew.
I enjoyed watching the Americans on the station: they are without inhibitions, shyness or modesty; they walk about naked; their latrines are communal and are used as meccas for gossip; if there should be a door they will never shut it. They live in their shop window, letting all the world see their customs, their fears and their hustle. They are ‘machine-made’ in their mental neatness and physical precision. They shave and dress with such ease and nonchalance. They do not seem to contaminate the gum they chew. The clothes they wear never really become part of them and are perpetually being sent to the laundry; I enjoy their luxury; they are for ever buying new garments and presents and are all very be
jewelled, with bracelets, shining watch straps, and enormous signet rings on both hands. Why is it that one always sees the American GI at the moment he takes his first puff at a cigarette — the British Tommy when he is sucking at a discoloured fag end?
Now for the last hop. We flew seven hours through the night, and then, in the early morning sunlight, saw Ascension Island below. The British gave up the idea of ever being able to make this into a landing base, but the American engineers, after dynamiting thousands of tons of rock, have succeeded in manufacturing a magnifient artificial runway. But I felt sorry for the lonely GIs who came out to gossip with us during our breakfast and refuelling interval and who are based on this forlorn island, where not a blade of grass grows. Cheerfully we embarked for another seven-hour hop; the sun moved from one side of the clouds to the other. After covering 2,500 miles we arrived at Natal; an enormous airport, again wonderfully engineered by the Americans, with white starched décolleté sailors and every sort of pilot, including RAF and Brazilians. Although the airport is 100 per cent American, a little of Brazil had infiltrated itself: the car driver wore a suit of ice-cream pink, the waiters spoke Portuguese, and the coffee was exceptionally good. We lined up for cafeteria meals, bought things from the PX. One pilot told me he had spent 300 dollars on trash gifts.
Belem, where the full moon shone on tropical trees and an airless night, consisted, for us, merely of a compound where Americans behaved typically, having shower baths, going to the movies and spending the minimum time over meals. Again we started off. Although my memory is hazy, I do not think we called anywhere after Puerto Rico. These names sound romantic, but the landings are impersonal: we merely circle a field, our ears buzz and hurt, and we ‘b’rump’ down. The aircraft becomes an oven of heat before we get out to queue for a sandwich, presently returning to the furnace for the next take-off.
BLACKPOOL OF FLORIDA
Miami
The last five hours of the trip before arriving at Miami were the slowest of all, and the bucket seat became intolerably hard. Too exhausted to read, I looked out of the window at the sea and skyscapes. The islands of rock, that one flies over before coming to Florida, were like a Leonardo background. The sea, so extraordinarily clear that one could see to the bottom, was of every different blue and pale green with yellow and apricot streaks reflected from the sky.
One hour and a half to go. Now the clouds, lit on one side by the evening sun, were like snow mountains: they looked quite solid, and indeed, as we flew through them, we felt they were.
The joy on my fellow passengers’ faces as they landed was a pleasure to watch. ‘Oh boy! I’ve not seen anything as good as that for years!’
But the freedom of arrival did not start immediately: many more queues, a series of vigorous investigations, and then a short lecture which impressed me: ‘A good many of you chaps have seen extraordinary things, and your families will want to hear about them. Don’t be unduly secretive. Tell them the names of the places that have appeared in the news; but if you’ve made an escape, and others are likely to try to get away by the same means, don’t confide in your closest friend because, doubtless, he has a friend who writes radio scripts. And, men, don’t criticize your Allies. It doesn’t help any, and there’s plenty of time for that after the war.’
The queries and examinations to which we now had to submit were lengthy and exasperating.
At ‘Movements’ a cheery, moon-faced official, whose sebaceous glands were working overtime, cracked his knuckles and said, ‘You want to hop on to New York? I think we can get you on a plane tonight!’ My fatigue left me instantly.
But it was not to hb! Later, a gorgonzola-complexioned Jeremiah pronounced that my ‘order’ was not for an ‘army’ line. ‘You’ll have to get priority from Washington and go commercial.’ I argued, and lied in my teeth. I pretended that I was the most I of Ps; but I didn’t look very ‘I’, with five days’ growth of beard. Eventually I saw it was no good: nothing to be done until tomorrow at any rate: disappointed, I must wait the night in Miami. ‘Where are you staying?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Well, you’ll never find a room at this hour of the night.’
The big hotels were all taken over by the Navy, and the lesser-known places to which the flea-bitten taxi-driver took me were not particularly inviting. Even so, with my unshaven chin and hobo clothes, I was seen as a delinquent, and not at all welcomed at the desk of several rooming houses. Yes, I knew my clothes stank; I was sick of every part of myself, and yet couldn’t escape. I became desperate, highly critical, and somewhat hysterical. A negro, with grey stubble on his chin, taking me to a room in an evil-smelling hotel said, ‘Are you French?’ ‘Why?’ ‘‘Cos, Mister, there are some French people in dis hotel who want to talk to anyone who can speak French.’
Later I walked out from my furnace cell to buy an evening newspaper. The lights were blinding! Shop windows bursting with spot-lit attractions! Motor-cars had headlights! Pumps were filled with ‘gasoline’! Everything appeared so affluent. An old woman selling so many shiny, fat magazines and such vast, pulpy newspapers, wore a flowered silk dress that an English countess would prize for a garden party.
The women on the ‘sidewalks’ wore their dyed, crimped-up hair piled on top of their heads, like Marie Antoinette, the whole edifice crowned with cotton flowers, but with a long page-boy mass hanging down their back. Their brilliantly-coloured skirts were as short as tutus; their lips, from which a cigarette hung, were monstrously enlarged (in imitation of Joan Crawford) like tattooed scarlet butterflies. This Constantin Guys parade had the air of an impromptu, horrific fancy-dress party. Old white trash sat on their porches delaying the torture of retiring to an airless bedroom. Yes, this was Miami all right — the Blackpool of Florida! For me, Miami has always been the end of all hellholes, the final stronghold of vulgarity. But Miami, out of season and in wartime! Why had I come all this way?
To see New York again, of course. Early next morning I called at several offices about the ‘priority’. I knew it was as well not to rely solely on getting action from the man in San Francisco to whom I had wired last night. At one office a sympathetic, faceless simpleton called me a ‘victim of circumstances’. ‘You should have been allowed to travel by army plane last night! But go to Colonel Letherbee’s office. Surely you’ll get on one tonight.’ My heart jumped with expectation. Colonel Letherbee, deeply exasperated and looking like a piece of grey, chewed-up string, was doleful. He could give me priority to go by commercial airline only if the Office of Information wanted me in New York. He put a call through. It was dramatic. The man we wanted was in Washington — could be tracked there. When eventually reached, he told me it was impossible for him to give priority. ‘But,’ I said, ‘this gentleman here can give it to me with your consent.’ The receiver changed hands: my heart was now in my mouth. I obtained the priority, paid happily for the ticket, and was all set to leave at 8 o’clock tonight.
To enter a comfortable commercial aircraft with upholstered seats and walls padded against sound was like returning to the womb. The lack of noise was balm to the nerves. This was the first time for months that I was not frightened in the air. A wonderful night of full moon. A great number of stops, with Washington as the last of them. I was too keyed-up to sleep, and enjoyed reading dozens of magazines. As the sky turned pale, we came to New York.
FRIENDS AND MEMORIES IN NEW YORK
August 4th, New York
I was so pleased to arrive that even those pathetic wooden shacks that we passed in the bus from La Guardia field seemed to smile in welcome.
New York, bathed in a lightless, murky haze, was just beginning to wake. The news sellers were already at their kiosks, and radios were playing setting-up exercises in the honeycomb apartment blocks.
As the bus roared into the heart of the city, more memories, oddly in contrast to the experiences of the last five years, came creeping back again. I remembered much of my Manhattan past, from the earliest visit when I arrived, unknown, with sixty
pounds and, by degrees, made my first New York friends, and pocketed my first cheque. I remembered those early plays, the popular tunes, the love affairs. Here were so many familiar milestones to remind me of forgotten frivolities and phases of work. Here was the studio where I’d taken my first advertising photographs, and here the art stores where I bought supplies. Here on 3rd Avenue my favourite florist, and here the cafeteria where, at one time, a group of English used to forgather for lunch; here again the dusty pigeons; the one-way streets, the seldom-green light, and then, at last, the Waldorf, where so many winters had been spent. Curiously, those early days seemed to be innocent of effort.
But an unfamiliar face regarded me from the reception desk. ‘What was my name? What did I want? The hotel was booked solid.’ Eventually I prevailed upon the clerk to allow me to have a bath and a shave.
I felt strangely self-conscious when I essayed out on to the streets and arrived at my favourite haunt of old times, the Colony, for lunch. Margaret Case, most loyal of friends, was standing erect waiting for me. She appeared thinner and older, but her voice had acquired a softness and a sympathy. Perhaps due to sudden exhaustion, or delayed reaction, I suddenly felt that so much had happened while I had been away — why, even the old-fashioned Colony had been re-decorated — that I could not compete with these self-assured men, so full of life and vigour, and the women wearing new clothes, and somehow looking so different in hats like platters strewn with flowers. (I noticed, too, that women exuded a delicious aroma of scent: since the war this luxury had been obsolete in England.) Margaret was following the bandwagon and, with her fragrance and rose-laden platter, was part of the scene. But I hung back as if, suddenly, I had become very old. Had the elderly Rip Van Winkle lost his touch?
