Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey (26 page)

In December, stemming from the friendships I had made at Fort Knox, I was invited to attend the and annual Student Conference on United States Affairs at West Point. These conferences gathered together forty cadets from West Point and Annapolis and a hundred students from civilian universities across the country. These were grouped into seminars of ten, which spent several days discussing some subject of importance to the country. This year it was 'The Far Eastern Policy of the United States'. What was American policy in the area as a whole, in each country taken individually? What ought it to be? Why?

My position was as an expert adviser on India and Pakistan. I sat in a comfortable office and waited for delegates from the seminars to come along and ask me questions. What were the origins of the Kashmir situation? What was the Hindu population of Pakistan? Was the Indian National Congress a congress, or a political party, or what? I crept into the back of some of the seminar rooms and attended all the general lectures and expositions. It was a thoroughly rewarding experience. The young people worked together, bending good and informed minds to specific problems, and coming up with sensible and practical recommendations. The civilian youths were usually more bellicose than the cadets when it came to dealing with 'enemy' nations, possibly because the cadets knew that they were the ones who would have to put the harsh words into practice.

On January 24, 1951, I handed Keith the complete and final MS of
The Deceivers;
two days later
Nightrunners of Bengal
was published. Viking gave a lunch at Twenty One in my honour and to launch the book.

The main course was, appropriately, curry, but the chefs suffered from the common American delusion that if a dish is good made with water it will be better made with milk and best made with cream. (Our American cookbook includes cream in the recipe for the French dish
quiche lorraine;
the French cook-book does not.) The curry, like much else about West 52nd Street, was rich but tasteless.

I had vowed to read no reviews except what came under my eye, which were those in the
New Yorker, Time,
and the
New York Times.
The
New Yorker
man was bored with all the running about.
Time
thought more highly of it, but opined that the flow of blood had obscured my message (that hatred breeds hatred). I did not agree, naturally, but was delighted that at least one critic had deciphered the message at all. The bloodshed also caused Orville Prescott of the
Times
to drop a stitch in his crochet work. Later he picked it up and, licking his lips, went through the book again, listing the various methods by which death had been inflicted. I was amazed at the bloodthirsty ingenuity shown by both British and mutineers.

The book started to sell well enough, creeping on to the bottom of the best-seller lists for a week or two. Meanwhile we started a siege of sickness, with one or more of us down from February to June: both children had German measles, then measles proper, then flu, then mumps — (in which they were joined by Barbara). I sprained my ankle.

In the middle of all this I was hailed to New York for the hearing on the vital application. I hobbled off, supported by witnesses and stalwart friends, keyed up for a final solution. But I was only asked a few questions I had already answered at length on paper, swore to a few more documents, and was told to go away and wait. I would be informed of the decision in due course. My stalwart friends supported me to a few bars and in the evening rush-hour I returned with Keith to Rockland County via Weehawken and the purgatory of the West Shore. This was a time when we were discussing the technical problems inherent in making a martinicle — a very dry martini in a liquid state inside a globe of ice on the end of a stick, to be picked up by commuters on the run and enjoyed at leisure on the train homeward. We were going to make our fortunes...

Barbara and I faced a new problem. We had desired freedom of living and working conditions. With the Literary Guild's money on the way, we were free. But, as we examined our situation, the size of that freedom was borne in on us. I could make the down payment on any reasonably-sized house, anywhere. We could buy expensive cameras and stock our library with books. Or travel. Or stay here and leak the money away at theatres, cocktail parties, and Chambord. We could go to the sun — Florida, California: to the mountains — Montana, Colorado: to the sea — Maine, Washington: south where land was cheap and labour cheaper — Arkansas, Texas: north to the forests and ice and bitter exhilarating days — Michigan, Minnesota.

We reined back our vaulting imaginations and tried to set sensible limits to the frightening scope of our freedom. We agreed first that we needed to buy a house. The children had been rootless long enough, with the extra disturbance of not knowing when Daddy was going to be deported
(is that the same as executed, Daddy?).
Martin had travelled 11,000 miles and lived in seven houses before he was four.

Where should our house be? We had come to Rockland County through answering the first advertisement that offered a house for rent at a price we could afford to pay. We loved the place and the people, but I could not bring myself to believe that my luck was so great as to take us straight off to the best place in the world to spend the rest of our lives: a good, very good place, yes — but, the
best?
It seemed presumptuous to imagine it.

But Barbara said, 'I think we should stay in Rockland. The people here have been so nice. And they're fun to be with. They're intelligent, they read and talk and write.'

I reiterated my argument. Barbara shook her head dubiously, and repeated, 'I don't see how we could be better off than we are here.'

Then I said, 'I want to live by the sea.' I had always wanted to, and though the longing was originally defined in terms of the Atlantic coast of Cornwall, another sea would do. I wanted the sea for its own sake, and because the children would grow up with boats, able to swim and sail, handling compass and tiller, sail and engine, from the earliest ages.

Barbara hesitated, for she loves the sea as much as I. I said, 'And we'll try again to get Liz and Mike. If we have four kids in the house, really the sea's the only thing that would keep them all busy and happy.' With that, she agreed and we turned to discuss what sea, where. Maine seemed the obvious answer; but for years yet I would be dependent on visits to editors, agents, and publishers. Maine was too far from New York. And there was an old saying about Maine weather 'Down east here we have two seasons... July — and winter.'

At this moment an apparently perfect house appeared for sale in the classified pages of the
New York Times.
It was in Mystic, Connecticut, that same Mystic we had found so attractive on our drive to Maine. We went to look at it. It
was
perfect: old, not large, white-painted lath with green shutters, a few huge sycamore trees standing on an acre and a half of lawn sloping to a low sea-wall. We bought it and arranged to move early in April.

Keith stoked the cannel coal and a cloud of yellow smoke filled the Toad and Throstle. 'Did I tell you about the old Vermonter digging in his yard, and this city slicker comes by and says, "You lived here all your life?" The Vermonter leans on his spade and after a while says, "Not yet."'

Glasses banged, ice tinkled. Emily came down the narrow stairs, doubled with laughter. 'I asked Julie to toss the salad for me. She's tossing it... it's all over the ceiling.' Bill drew judiciously on his pipe. 'My wife's mind is literal rather than literary.' Emily went back upstairs. The boys stuck their heads in and said good night. Nicky grabbed a handful of peanuts before he left.

Joe Wright leaned over the back of Donna Morse's chair, leering pointedly down her cleavage; but his heart wasn't in it, we all knew. He was about to remarry, and Jane was there. 'Hey, Keith,' he cried, 'Let's have the farting contest record, Paul Boomer and Lord Windermere.'

Phil Morse was sweating, his voice angry. 'Bizet never wrote a decent note for Carmen. The good music's all Micaela's. There isn't a soprano today who...' He was not wearing his toupee, which meant that he felt at ease; but with Phil it was hard to tell the difference.

Phyllis Kauffmann hitched up her skirt another notch where she sat, and took another gulp of bourbon. Her face was flushed but she wasn't drunk, yet, Her eye fell on Joe, but he was dancing across to his bride to be. Keith. No. Ralph Barker. No. Me. 'Hi, Jack, why are you leaving us?'

'... he's fluffed!'

'Papa's a great man.'

'I think
Across the river and into the trees
is the worst book of the century. Pretentious crap.'

'Did you read
Across the street and into the grill?'

'Murderous. And the McCarthy piece...'

'Knife in the back. He's too big for people like that.'

'Crap. He's a phony chest beater, both in his writing and his life.'

'I
know
him. He's... big.'

'And do you realize that over 14 per cent of the company's income comes from government leases? Hell, that means a change of administration can cut the ground from under their feet! But Consolidated's on a different basis...'

Emily came downstairs again, frowning. 'I think that's a bit much.'

'What?'

'I went to the john, locked the door, pulled down my pants, and sat down. As I was getting up a man's voice said, "How's the party going?" It was Bill Ballantine. He was in the bath all the time, three feet away.'

'And you didn't see him?'

'He didn't have time to take a shower before we came up,' Roberta Ballantine said defensively.

We sang a commercial:

?

Christianity hits the spot,

Twelve Apostles, that's a lot,

Jesus Christ and the Virgin, too,

Absolution is the thing for you.

?

Emily said, 'Funny... but sacrilege. Religion is…'

'... crap!'

'You have no right to say that! Some people believe. There are millions of...'

What about the Unitarians then? Anti-Catholicism is the anti-Semitism of the intellectual. Balls. Judo-Christian witch doctors. Sunrise service at St John's-in-the-Wilderness, very moving. Not a hope in hell. Look, what warrant do you have to believe any of...? Would you believe it if the
New York Times...?

The volume of music rose. Dixieland. Keith Was sprawled by the phonograph, his head cushioned. Seven and a half per cent new equipment sure bourbon and water up MacArthur up skirts better oh God no miracles goodbye goodbye goodbye.

Chapter Nine

In Mystic there was a Welcome Wagon, and the ladies who ran it turned out to be good Samaritans indeed. When they called on what is normally a rather commercialized venture (handing the new arrivals free samples from various stores, shop address lists, etc.) I was the only one up; my family were in bed with mumps. Obviously not trusting a
man
to prepare food for the invalids, they undertook to do it themselves. For the next six days one or other of them would drive up with a huge bowl of clam chowder. We ate nothing else, for that week; but I still love the stuff, whether New England or Manhattan style (the latter is thinner, and with tomatoes).

We began to get to know our neighbours. They were a mixed lot — a few painters, but mostly businessmen and simple citizens (very simple, some). The Episcopal clergyman came and gushed over us because of our accents. Martin staggered in one morning a pale green in colour, unable to tell us what was wrong. We put him to bed and worried over him until Susan rushed in with the news that the boys down the road had been showing them how to skin an eel. First they nailed the eel (live) to a board by hammering a nail through its head. Then they made a circular cut round the neck, caught hold of the skin and began to pull it off backwards... Martin's malaise was explained. It was one of these same little boys ho liked to excrete underwater and then chase the results when they bobbed to the surface. A brother was in the 6th grade (age eleven) and could not read.

I buried myself in my writing, and Barbara in housework. My next novel, I decided, would be about the Great Game, the continental chess contest of spy and counterspy in Central Asia during the period of Russia's expansion from the Urals to the Karakorams. This is the subject of
Kim,
and of some of Kipling's short stories, but what I determined to do was translate the plot of the best spy story ever written, Erskine Childer's
The Riddle of the Sands,
from the sea background of North Germany to the mountain background of the Himalayas. To make clear to myself what I was aiming at I at first called my book
The Riddle of the Pamirs;
but certain character developments in it, as I was writing, made me change that to
The Lotus and the Wind.

I went into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Barbara was ironing, the radio on. She had taken to listening to the radio then, to take her mind off the fact that we had again failed to get Liz and Mike. She said, 'Someone called 'Willie Mays has stolen a bass. First bass, I think they said. I suppose the man will have to borrow the second bass's bass. I wonder how many they have, altogether?'

'What the hell are you talking about?'

She indicated the radio. I listened but could only make out that rhubarb was being served, which I supposed took the place of lemons at half time in rugger, or tea in the pavilion at cricket. But
rhubarb?

Barbara said, 'It's from the Polo Grounds. Giants against Cardinals.'

So these people stuffing themselves with rhubarb were circus freaks and princes of the church, and they were playing polo, not baseball, as I had imagined. I returned to the simpler problems of my four-dimensional plot.