Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey (46 page)

The ship to India was slow and dirty and full of soldiers vomiting in the troop deck. In one year with the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry I grew up ten, and became a man, I joined the 4th Gurkhas, and learned another language, and stood guard in the riot-tom streets of Lahore, and ran all day to utter weariness and thirst over the scorching barrens of Waziristan, and heard the bullets go
smack-clack
over my head. Hitler came and I rode the dusty trucks along the Euphrates, across the Djezireh, over the Jabal Hamrin, up the Paitak pass. I studied war and met Barbara and together we discovered the Himalayas, which I had seen so often, but at a distance, and we found in them respite from war, rest from weariness, and love. I flew over Burmese jungles and fought in the teak forest and crossed the Irrawaddy in a tiny boat by the light of the moon. I killed, and was nearly killed, and breathed battle and destruction, for I was a young god of war.

Then the guns died down, grumbling in the east, and I went back to the Himalayas with my love. We were standing in the holy man's little house, looking at the newspaper he held out to us...

The Rawal was small and dark. His black eyes were soft but they penetrated deep, and I was not certain whether the depth was in an inward or outward direction, into himself or the world. The Auk was big and blond and grizzled. His blue eyes were mild, but they did not yield. When either of them smiled, it was a great beauty.

After the war the British officers who had served in the 4th Gurkhas formed an Association, and dedicated a Garden of Remembrance in the churchyard at Stoke Poges. Any of the Indians who had succeeded us, and might happen to be on duty in England, always attended the annual service and reunion. I met Raj Bir Chopra there, of the 'new guard', and of the old guard, Major-General Sir Arthur Mills, whom everyone called Uncle Arthur. Uncle Arthur was small and erect, with fierce white hair and three D.S.O.s. He had fought in the Boer War and the Great War, commanding Indian cavalry in Palestine and Mesopotamia. He knew only one motto:

The path of DUTY is the way to GLORY... and the GLORY was immaterial, at that. His eldest son Bill had been the adjutant of our 2nd Battalion before me, but at the 1952 reunion he was wearing a dog collar, for at the same time that I retired he became a parson of the Church of England. Beetle Lowis was growing strawberries in Scotland and Hugh Moule farming in Suffolk. John Strickland had disappeared, Willy Weallens was making tweeds in County Mayo, and Flossie Cosens was a tennis pro in South Africa. We had come together in Bakloh from the ends of Britain, and now time and the river flowing had carried us to the ends of the earth.

Roddy McLeod had brought me along the way, with his brutal determination to have the best. Like Helen Taylor over there, talking to Henry Poor. A necessary brutality, a necessary pride, a necessary determination.

And Tim Brennan, who had sat at my right hand during that speech of Fergusson's at the Chindit reunion. Tim reminded me
of
a young Auk, only he was an underwriter of Lloyd's. The sense of his two worlds, of how good he had been as a soldier, how successful in this world of London finance, helped me. We had fought together, he as a colonel of twenty-six and I as a brigadier of twenty-nine, and he had believed in me then, and he had believed in me now.

Other faces were not here that should have been — Frank Laskier, who'd passed on to me, almost like a bishop's Laying on of hands, a sense of the power of the English language. Bill Douglas and Sam Rosenman, and Simon Rifkind, the patient officer of State Troopers at Hawthorne, and the apologetic little official snooper of the Bureau of Immigration who'd asked our neighbours so many questions about us, and at the end left his galoshes in our hallway. And Fernand and Laura Auberjonois who 'could do more for the United States in Europe than we can here'.

Julio and Antonio, the mountaineers of Huesca, definitely; and Milagro singing on her knees in the barn-like passages of the Balaitous; and Sergeant Manolo from the Asturias, with his dreams of bagpipes and cider. All these had added a dimension to my humanity — and that was true of everyone here (whether in the flesh or in memory).

'To live as a family unit in a place that offers space, liberty, and opportunity to all of us and, to me, independence in a work that I like.' That was the object we had found for ourselves in that long-ago and far-away Camberley appreciation. We had achieved it. I had found a new career, and Barbara had developed more as an individual than she ever could have attached to the man's world of the Indian Army. For the children the opportunities stretched around them in a profusion unimaginable to the European mind. They could make of themselves anything they wished and had the capacity for.

Susan was showing no particular bent, except for the compulsive reading. It was not the reading in itself which worried us, but the shutting of herself away that was a consequence — or a cause. Still, she was going to be very attractive and had a first-class brain, particularly in mathematics. It was hard to forecast in what direction she would go, and unwise to guide or influence her, at the age of ten. Martin also read, and wrote, and showed an increasingly imaginative gift. I had hopes that he would go to West Point or Annapolis. He would not make much money then, but it looked as though I would be able to help out in that department. If not one of the fighting services which my own background made me consider the most honourable and proper, then a civilian service to the country — the Forest or Park Services, perhaps. He too had the brains for anything to which he was willing to give the application. He was eight.

As I had gone up the army ladder I had gained control over more things and people — including myself. An odd fact about my present situation was that I had begun to feel that this process was going into reverse. I was gradually losing control over the destinies of people. The children, for example over whose future I would once have held decided opinions and a strong hand, were now going to be ruled by other influences at least as much as by Barbara and me. I was changing, sometimes in spite of myself. Events were going their own ways, with me shrugging on the sidelines where once I would have been in there over the centre, barking the signals. New currents of thought were hidden in the air and concealed in the earth — the American environment, the liberal neighbourhood. We were under pressure from traditions and customs, good and bad, that exerted a mysterious force on us. The natives were born to a knowledge of all this, and perhaps with inborn or early acquired immunity to much of it; but we were not — and I did not care.

I had become an American, Barbara soon would, and the children had the right to do so when they reached the age of twenty-one. But what, in truth, was an American, and was our Americanism a reality, or a word on a piece of paper?

I thought that an American must believe that all men are created free and equal. I did.

An American must offer allegiance and support to the Constitution. Allegiance and support — yes; worship — no. I thought that the Constitution sadly needed re-designing if it was to serve the country in the future as it had in the past.

An American must prefer to live in the United States. I did.

An American must accept the burdens and privileges of citizenship in the most powerful of the democracies. I did.

He must accept all other Americans, and give full faith and credence to their beliefs. I was doing my best to do so.

An American must know the names and capitals of all the states, and the true meaning of Tinker to Evers to Chance, the Crimson Tide and the Rambling Wreck, the Manassa Mauler and Jolting Joe, Old Hickory and Old Ironsides, and what the Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of South Carolina. I did.

And in all this, Barbara shared with me; also — so far — the children.

I was earning my living by writing, but was I a writer? As I had defined it to myself a writer is one who, in writing, offers effectively phrased insights into the human condition. He is not a propagandist, or a mechanic, or a communicator and his work need not, indeed probably should not, have a
meaning,
a purpose beyond itself. Writing, as I practised it, was a pure art. It was not for me, nor any critic of my time, but only time itself, to decide whether I was a good artist or not, but an artist as writer, I was.

These two transformations deliberately wrought, of becoming American and becoming a writer, had caused other changes in me. I had learned tolerance — not a great deal, but more than I had before — because Americans do tolerate, and because a writer must: he cannot create without understanding, and he cannot understand without allowing, tolerating. In the same way I had achieved a certain power of sufferance very far from me when I was a fire-eating brigadier or a ruthless chief of staff. Even patience, a quality notoriously lacking in most of my family, I had summoned a little of, by the example of Americans just as quick as I, in P.T.A. meetings and civic association meetings, and discussions formal and informal. I had developed a catholicity of standards, and was able to see many forms of excellence (as America had so many directions) instead of one, the True Light, whether in dress, politics, or 'the höflich manner of eating artichokes'.

I ought to go and put up a Flag, there on the middle of the lawn, I thought. But to tell the truth the Flag embarrassed us. All that bowing and scraping and hand-over-the-heart, and wrapping it around oneself as a guarantee of inner purity, was as repulsive as Kipling's jelly-bellied flag flapper. But the flag, lower case, moved me greatly and every time I saw it waving in the breeze I got a lump in my throat; but not for the world would I have let anyone know. Of course the Flag was the symbol chosen by the United States to unify peoples from many different races and countries, but was it wise to pin so much on to a piece of cloth? Surely the loyalty must [amount] to an Americanism of the spirit, which I had tried to define? Well, I'd get a flag one day, and fly it high, and everyone who passed by could make up his own mind whether it was a flag or a Flag.

Emily came up and fell on Barbara's shoulder. 'Oh!' she cried, 'I'm so happy for you. It's like a fairy story.'

I hugged her heartily. 'And you knew us when!'

'When you were living on scraps off A. J. Balaban's table,' she said and began to giggle.

'They wouldn't have done it to the Yankees,' Phil Morse said morosely. With such a crowd he was, naturally, wearing his toupee.

'Balls,' I said, 'this year's Giants were the best. Willie won the batting championship, Mueller was second, and Antonelli won twenty-one games. This year they would have beaten Yeshiva Frosh.' Phil stuck out his chin, and then began to laugh.

'Oh, the colours in that maple!' Vyvyan cried, 'Do you remember the first year we listened to the World's Series, in the other house?'

'And he didn't know
anything,'
Eugenie said.

'He didn't know the difference between a bunt and a baulk,' Vyvyan teased.

'Or between lie and lay,' I said.

Joe Wright and Doris Clark passed, dancing their never-ending gavotte. Jane Wright watched pensively from the maple. 'I won $50 on the Series,' Joe called back over his shoulder. 'You were so goddamn sure that I thought it had to come true.'

Troup and Alice Mathews came up. Alice hugged Barbara in the same way, and with almost the same words, as Emily a little earlier. Troup said, 'Horatio Alger, in person.' I took his arm and said, 'Not without help at the beginning, when it was most needed, Troup.'

They moved off. They were going to have a hard time because of McCarthy. Troup had resigned from the Voice of America and was trying to make a living importing South American goat skins for rugs.

When we came to America the Russians had started their advance in Eastern Europe, but they had not possessed atomic weapons. Now they did; and now Red China was on the march in Asia; and, unless we were willing to fight, it was hard to see how or when many small peoples, once free to live in their own life style, could escape their domination. We were not in a shooting war but our enemies were advancing on many fronts by other means, like termites, and as ruthless. As a soldier I feared that by not helping the helpless now we were merely ensuring that our own struggle, when it came, would be that much harder, that much longer.

But I must cultivate my garden. I was going to try to be a better writer. As to how this was to be achieved, I could only try still harder to find the right words, the deeper insights, a truer 'feeling with' the outside world and a truer translation to the inside and the words on paper. I never knew what inspiration was, only the application of my whole mind and experience to this task, for so many hours a day. I had never lacked the will to write. Words, ideas, and thoughts had always come spouting out as from a perpetual spring. The problem was to analyse this flow of material, to channel it effectively — yet not lose the original native force.

I was finding the life satisfying. The early frustrations caused by leaving so much of my personality unused were dying down. I probably no longer had the power of command, or the speaking ability, or the incisiveness of decision that I once had, for they had not been used for seven years and had atrophied. It was a pity, and I missed them, but like boyhood and the Gurkhas and the woodsmoke-and-leather camaraderie of the Indian Army, they were gone beyond recall.

I hoped we were being good Americans. It certainly took up a lot of time. We were founder members of the North Clarkstown Civic Association, where we spent hours each month trying to find ways to make our local politicians uphold the laws, particularly relating to zoning. Rockland County was under tremendous pressure of growth. Thousands of people were anxious to move out of the city into Rockland's rural calm. Hundreds of businessmen, particularly builders, were anxious to make money by turning Rockland into a replica of what the city people were leaving. Some politicians wanted the population growth, some smelled money and some got money. The unions, generally, were against us because they could see no further than jobs for their members.