Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey (36 page)

To this Hearne replied:
It was most gratifying to see that you spotted my distaste for what you rightly term the 'lesser conflicts'. There's a place for the big politico-social issues but not in the game we're playing. We — the story-tellers, I mean — are after a different beast. None of us, except Shakespeare, maybe, has ever got a really perfect specimen, but it's quite necessary that a few of us try to hunt it down in every generation. There is nothing uglier, to my mind, at least, than to see the phonies going out day after day and bringing back the sham trophies — all dressed up in 'social realism', 'involvement', 'political awareness' and the rest. The only consolation is, that the sham stuff always begins to go rotten after a few years.

Some bright spark at the Rockland Foundation (our county association for the promotion of the arts) dreamed up the idea of a public debate entitled 'Writing for Love or Money'. Harvey Swados agreed to argue that writing must be done purely for love, for the writing's sake; I undertook to defend the proposition that all good writing was done professionally, for gain; and Hortense Kalisher refereed. We three knew each other personally and were friends in the offhand manner of the county, and it was a good debate, with some fine verbal mace work in the clinches and a few notable spear thrusts. But it is memorable to me for what happened afterwards.

Some young fellow newly moved from New York, knowing Rockland's liberal reputation, knowing my imperialist background, seeing me present myself in the most philistine way, thought he would earn a little popularity by sticking a few barbs into me on his own account. So, when the debate was thrown open, he made a rather snide remark and waited for the applause: dead silence. Another, better aimed arrow was met with more silence and, from a corner, one small hiss. He floundered to the end and sat down. My reply was a joke that might have raised a titter in the 3rd grade if they were in a good mood. The large audience practically stood on their chairs applauding. I felt my eyes stinging, for what was happening meant that we had arrived in a far more meaningful sense than the success of any book. We were known, accepted, even liked. That roar was Rockland defending its own — even the curry colonel with his neanderthal opinions. The young man was so embarrassed, in front of his wife, too, that we sought them out for a long friendly talk after the meeting broke up.

From London Alex Korda piped a beguiling decoy note. Would I come to England, with all my family, and write original treatments for two movies, one to be about the Taj Mahal and the other to be based on Kipling's
Second Jungle Book?
The terms were good, both ideas interested me, I was about finished with the creative part of
Bhowani Junction,
and I had nothing better to do. I accepted, and flew over early in April, leaving Barbara to bring the children in June when school came out. By then, I promised, I'd have a place where we could pass the summer while I worked, the essentials being sea, sand, and reasonable proximity to London, since I'd have to go up now and then to consult with Alex.

London that spring was pleasant, dry, and mild. I stayed in a small hotel in Belgravia, and every Sunday morning ate winkles and cockles off a barrow favoured by young Guards officers recovering from all-night debutante parties. All three Korda brothers invited me out. Zoltan was shy and delightful, Vincent warm and friendly, and Alex, of course regally generous. Twice he invited me to men-only dinners in his suite on top of Claridge's, where I felt that I was living in one of John Buchan's novels. The guests, usually about fifteen in number, were Cabinet Ministers, Eminent Financiers, Asian Rulers, Merchant Princes and Foreign Diplomats. Once there were a pair of rich Indian merchants who wanted to get into films, but business as such was never discussed, only affairs of state and occasionally, to show we were all human, minor scandal. The food was England's best — good beef, simply cooked and quietly served, with great wines.

After the port had been put on the table Alex's mistress appeared, a chair was pulled up for her beside him, and we all eased back to make room for her. Alexa was barely twenty-one at this time, but I have never seen a woman of any age carry off a tricky situation better. She was neither loud nor quiet, proud nor humble; she stepped into the stream of talk as though she had been with us all the time; she never said too much and never too little, and what she did say was always sensible and informed; she never flirted and never snubbed. She was a Canadian singer of Ukrainian descent whom Alex had found in a Toronto night-club and eventually brought back to England with him and installed in another part of Claridges. I have seldom admired a woman more. When I left, Alexa pressed my hand with a look that acknowledged my admiration, and expressed her own appreciation and friendship... and nothing more: and that was a feat in itself.

As Alex's guest I attended a huge party thrown at the Savoy Theatre to honour his production of
Gilbert and Sullivan.
The invitation read 'black tie', but the Bakloh moths had used my dinner jacket as their food ration during the war and I had refused to buy another, considering the garment despicable (I liked tails, but they, which should have survived, had gone right out). So, in order to do proper honour to Alex, I bought a flowered waistcoat in gold, black, and red brocade, and wore it with my Brooks Brothers suit. Alex paled and stepped back, a hand to his eyes. David Lean, whom I had met a couple of times (and tried to tell about my admiration for
The Sound Barrier)
cried 'My God, you're the bravest man I've ever met.' I agreed quietly. Also present at the affair was a lady who, in my Sandhurst days, had been one of a trio of debs collectively known to us as Friggem, Bangem, and Pullit. This one had recently acquired a really notable reputation for holding orgiastic camera sessions with several different gentlemen, whether with or without her noble husband's approval and co-operation was never made clear. Perhaps he answered the telephone. Alex introduced us, and I did not remind the lady that that was unnecessary: we had danced together at a Sandhurst ball in, I think, 1933.

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 Taylor's barrage. In other drawers I put away the draft of
Taj Mahal,
and some notes for my next novel.