Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey (28 page)

On our way to New City we spent a night in Brattleboro, Vermont. In the evening we drove up the hill on the west side of the town and had a look at Naulakha, Kipling's house. We did not want to inconvenience the present owners, so did not make a call but parked in the narrow road and peered through the hedge at the house, some way up the hill. It was a big house, but the first thing that struck us was its exact resemblance to an Indian hill-station bungalow. Its very presence turned Brattleboro into Simla, the Green Mountains into the Himalayas, and a passing New Englander into a Bhotia shepherd, complete with dog. I stood a long time, staring, for Kipling did much of his best work here, and for a time seemed to be going to make America his home. Was I, too, to write about India on American soil, and then, called by heaven knew what primal need, return to my native land? Except that England wasn't my native land... nor Kipling's, come to that. He was born in Bombay.

We returned to Mystic. I settled down in my working routine: at my desk at 9 a.m. every day; work till 12; lunch; nap; work and 'administration' until 4 (tea); play till 6; Martinis.

The Lotus and the Wind
grew and became stronger. The children turned brown in sun and wind. As I poured a first Martini Barbara told me that the Giants had won again. We settled back in our chairs and told ourselves,
This is it! This is what it's going to be like the rest of our lives.

We said the words, and tried to feel them, but it wouldn't come out right. Something was wrong. What?

We tried to analyse our feeling, but spoke cautiously and with circumlocutions, for it was impossible to admit even to each other that there might be a flaw in the vision that had sent us to this gem of a house beside the sea. Yet some facts could not be concealed. Both our children were bright, and deserved the best possible education; but the local school system was considerably worse than the one in Rockland County. Then, the atmosphere of the little town was more formalized than we liked. People owned fine houses and accepted a gracious way of life as a worthwhile object in itself. There was a noticeable anti-Semitism and narrow-mindedness, both particularly oppressive to us after the far-ranging acceptance and scope of Rockland County. The general attitude was summed up for us in the Daughters of the American Revolution, who were strong in Mystic. This is a society of women claiming descent from someone who fought in the American Revolution (on the American side, it was sometimes necessary to add). In many ways the D.A.R. were entirely praiseworthy, but although they were American, they denied the same status to the recent immigrant; they certainly weren't revolutionary; which left 'Daughters' as the only word defining them. Of this they were proud; but I did not feel that they were proud of their forefathers because they were unkempt farmers and hunters, fighting for individual freedom against the strongest power in the world, but because their early arrival on the American shores was taken to confer a patent of aristocracy on their descendants. We had not come to the United States in search of the aristocratic ideal; we had seen that system working, and pretty well, in England.

Then a neighbour advised us not to paint our shutters blue 'because that's the colour the Italians paint them'. A day later, some aura of dissatisfaction having apparently become visible to others before we ourselves could isolate it, we were asked, should we ever consider selling our house, not to sell it to a Jew or (a laugh at the unthinkable) a Negro. On that occasion I asked the speaker whether she would prefer us to sell to John Dillinger, but did not pursue the matter further. That night I said, 'I've a damned good mind to give the house to Jackie Robinson.'

'Not him,' Barbara said tartly. 'It's far too good for any Dodger. Give it to Willie Mays.' (Jackie Robinson was the first Negro to be permitted to play major-league baseball. He was brilliant — but a Dodger. Willie was also black — but ours.)

Racial prejudice is not the worst sin in the world. Some peoples, notably the Jews and the English, could not have survived without a heavy endowment of it. Our neighbours in Mystic were honest, generous, hard-working, and essentially worth-while to humanity and the United States. But each man's shoe rubs in a different spot, depending on the peculiarities of his feet. I had been driven out of a country where we still had much work to do, and where we would have been welcome to stay and finish it if it hadn't been for our attitude of racial superiority and the social snubbing based on it. I owed my life and reputation to coloured people, and for hours on end had shared holes in the ground with them, fighting a common enemy, who was sometimes white, sometimes coloured. I was taught race prejudice under the guise of race pride. I had grown out of it. I did not want to have anything more to do with it.

A little later I succeeded in isolating our original mistake, and saw that it was not ours, but mine. In the list of limitations which theoretically narrowed our total freedom I had not given enough weight to the most important: people. A house by the sea may be all very well, but people are a man's best friends. We had no wish to alter the way these people lived their lives in this corner of Connecticut, but nor had we any sense that we could usefully share in it. Barbara had felt this in our original discussion, and now she could have said, 'I told you so.' But she didn't. Instead, when I asked rhetorically, 'Where are
our
people then?' we both answered with one voice, 'Rockland County, New York.'

Next day I telephoned Laura Auberjonois, who acted as a house agent on the side. She said, 'Boy, are you lucky! Helen Eustis has just put her house on the market, at a very reasonable price, with five and a half acres.' We had met Helen once (she had written
Horizontal Man
a few years earlier), but knew her house from the outside only. It was an old red farm house just off the east end of South Mountain Road, about two miles from Eleanor Hope's house, and in the same school district. This meant that we could simply drop back into the same circle of friends we had left in April. The house would be available in November.

It was no moment for hesitation. I told Laura we would buy the house, and a cheque to hold it would be in the mail within an hour. Then we put our Mystic house on the market. Our experiment in Connecticut was to end, after seven months, in failure. We had no regrets. We had learned a lot.

Next day Barbara said, 'Do you realize that there is only one game more to go, and we are tied with the Dodgers in first place?'

'We'll beat those bums,' I said confidently.

But we didn't; we tied them, for each team won its last game, the Dodgers over Philadelphia in fourteen innings, and even then thanks only to some fantastic fielding plays by Jackie Robinson. The Giants' arrival in first place was something of a miracle, for they had been thirteen games behind in mid August. To do it they had had to win thirty-eight out of their last forty-five games. We liked to think that our fervent support from Goat Point, reaching them by E.S.P., had something to do with it. Now the Dodgers and Giants would play a best-of-three-games series to decide who was to meet the champion of the other major league, the American, in the World's Series. Their champion for the year, as for most years, was the most powerful team in baseball, the New York Yankees, Babe Ruth's old team, and the Babe's successor, Joe di Maggio, was still playing.

The Lotus and the Wind,
nearly completed after three re-writes, lay on my desk. A devoted editor at the
Ladies Home Journal
had found a way to compress
The Deceivers
so that it could be published as a one-shot, for which the magazine had offered to pay $7,500. Miriam Howell, my agent, pointed out that since one-shots competed with the book being published simultaneously, I would, according to my contract, share the magazine money fifty-fifty with the Viking Press. She said we should ask the
Ladies Home Journal
for more money on these grounds. I took the train to New York (a lovely ride by Long Island Sound, over great rivers, through green fields and bustling towns) and we went together to the magazine's offices. The editor congratulated me warmly on my writing, and when Miriam broached the money matter said breezily, 'Sure. Of course. We'll pay you $10,000.' I was overwhelmed and began to express my gratitude. The editor got up with a smile, shook my hand, and said, 'It's nothing. I always try to pay as much to our talent as I can because, relatively speaking, it's peanuts. Do you know what our monthly
ink
bill is for this magazine?

$78,000.'

I returned happily to Mystic and the Giants. I will not go into details of the National League play-off series of 1951, because my English readers won't understand a word, while to Americans it is old history, known by heart by everyone who has ever been interested in the national game. Yet there was something there that I must communicate, for the climax of the series was the climactic moment of our involvement with, and commitment to, America. Obviously we had gradually been becoming so involved and committed at deep and emotional levels, but perhaps it needed something as simple and surface as a game to bring out and define our position.

There was a famous bar and ex-speakeasy on West 52nd Street, owned by a rabid Giant fan. Whenever the Giants won he wrote up the score of the game in large letters on a blackboard at the end of the bar. When the Giants lost, he wrote up NO GAME TODAY. On this playoff series we won the first game 3 — 1; the next day there was NO GAME TODAY; so a final third game had to be played. Barbara and I listened to it on the radio, and as the last strains of Old Glory died away, our hands were sweating. We — particularly Barbara — had suffered through the long 154-game summer with the team. We knew them all by name and peculiarities, and, from occasionally watching TV in bars, by sight. They had been so far behind, their situation so hopeless-seeming; so had ours. They had fought, and never given up; nor had we. They stood on the threshold of final victory — or defeat. At that moment to our eyes, the Dodgers' uniforms might have been lettered U.S. IMMIGRATION SERVICE.

As I have already indicated, a detailed account of what followed would serve no purpose. However, the final moments must be described, and for the convenience of my readers I will do it twice, first in American (in roman type face) and then, in the succeeding italic paragraph, translated into English and into cricket terms.

Two runs behind with one out in the bottom of the ninth, the Giants' cause seemed hopeless. But two men were on base, and then, with one swing of his bat Bobby Thomson rifled Ralph Branca's second pitch into the lower left-field stand just beyond the 315 foot mark for a home run. Then, as the Staten Island Scot began to lope round the bases, were enacted some of the most amazing scenes ever witnessed on a baseball field. 'The entire Giant team swarmed out of the dugout to greet the Hawk as he crossed home plate with Manager Leo the Lip Durocher on his back, and the guards were powerless to prevent thousands of fans rushing on to the field in frenzied enthusiasm to join the melee.

Gloucestershire's cause seemed hopeless with 9
men
down in their second innings, 87 runs to make to surpass Yorkshire's grand total of 432, and a mere 50 minutes in which to amass them. But while Parker stolidly held up one end, Goddard hit like a man inspired, playing a veritable cadenza of shots of which no one had believed his rather dour figure capable. With the hands of the clock showing 6 p.m., 17 runs to make, and
3
balls left in the last over, Goddard straight-drove Verity
for
three successive sixes over the Chapel end sight screen. Then
were
enacted some of the most amazing scenes ever witnessed on a cricket pitch, as several spectators started to clap, the Gloucestershire captain (B. H. Lyon Esq.)
waved his cap from
the pavilion, and two
men
(believed to be visitors from London) stood up and cried 'Well played, sir!'

This was the moment that came to be known as the Miracle of Coogan's Bluff, from the fact that the Polo Grounds are built under a rocky cliff called by that name, which frowns across several roads, a muddle of railroad tracks, and the foul water of the Harlem River, at Yankee Stadium on the other side. The Polo Grounds were so called because New York's bluebloods used to play polo there; but that was a long time ago, and polo surely never produced such a roar as that of October 3, 1951. Keith Jennison told us later that it escaped from the Polo Grounds and filled the whole city. Three seconds after Thomson set out round the bases every office window and door was flung open, and two million people rushed about yelling their hearts out, wordlessly, in the canyons of the streets, and torrents of paper were hurled out of skyscraper windows in a vast ticker-tape parade, with no parade. We heard nothing, for we were hugging each other and dancing round the room screaming, 'We won! We did it!'

Martin ran in from the sea-wall, 'What's the matter? What happened?' he bawled.

'The Giants have won the pennant,' I yelled, '5-4!' 'The Yankees will beat them,' Martin said sourly and returned to his fishing.

We calmed down eventually, went out and sank on to the grass by the sea-wall, beside Martin and Susan. We had a small zinc tub there full of sea water. The kids caught minnows and dumped them into the bath, and that was Tomlinson's icebox. When he wanted a snack he helped himself, munched contentedly and came in with one forepaw wet to the elbow. Once he fell in, stalked furiously into the house, and lay down soaking wet on my pillow.

Tomlinson was there now, but asleep. After all, the kids were catching the fish for him, why should he work? I said to Barbara, 'We'll become American citizens as soon as we can, I think?'

She said, 'Yes. Except for the bit of paper, we already are.'

Chapter Ten

In the World's Series (best of seven games) the Giants sprang away to a 2—1 lead in games. They had the Yankees on the ropes and then, the day of the fourth game, it rained. Their best pitcher had time to rest his arm, and Joe di Maggio to see his analyst. After that... NO GAME TODAY.