Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey

by John Masters

  Winter came, filling the house with the roar of the heating system. We had never seen anything like it, and regarded it with awe and some terror. There was a furnace in the basement on the garage level, and this furnace, fed by natural gas from Texas, heated sucked-in air, which a pump then blew up through a square hole, covered by a grating, in the living-room floor directly above. The hole was called a register, and that was the entire heating set-up. The other rooms downstairs — kitchen and dining-roomhad no heat; and as winter advanced we took to leaving the oven doors open, so that Barbara could work down there. The living-room, containing the register, was usually comfortable, and our bedroom and my study on the same level were tolerable, but upstairs... We didn't appreciate what it was like up there till one cold night Susan and Martin staggered down purple in the face, weeping, their pyjamas sweat-soaked, wailing that it was TOO HOT. We went up and it must have been 99 degrees in their room, for the stairway was open and the register just beside the foot of it. Most of the hot air rushed straight on up so that for every degree we raised the living-room the kids' bedroom went up four. We devised a system of baffles but it was never right, and I have not liked the circulating hot air system since. The register did have one great purpose. All the family put their pyjamas on the register in the evenings and they were warm and welcoming by bedtime — when we laid our underclothes there, to warm up until we rushed through first thing in the morning to put them on.

  Christmas came and the Hills dropped by after dinner for a drink. We gave them pieces of Christmas pudding prepared English style. As it was awash with brandy Ray wasted no time getting his portion into his mouth. Then he gagged, and mumbled, 'What the hell's this?' He felt in his mouth and pulled out a quarter. Susan clapped and told him he was lucky, as most of the coins Barbara had baked into the pudding were only dimes; but he felt his teeth and muttered, 'Crazy British.'

  Farrar Strauss rejected Brutal; no comment.

  We detected suspicious movement on the high ground that dominated our exposed left flank. Through binoculars I saw cannon being hauled into position, and detected the grim faces of the Immigration Authorities directing the operation. Mr Kahn, the immigration lawyer, tried frantically to dig trenches in which I could take refuge. First, he claimed I was a privileged academic (on the grounds of my Staff College teaching); then, that I hadn't really been born in India at all, but on British territory (a British military hospital in Calcutta). Calls for counter-battery fire flew like flights of carrier pigeons to Senators Lodge, Saltonstall, and Kilgore, Congressman Cooley and the appropriately named Mr Battle, a lawyer of Rocky Mount. The responses were not encouraging. Mr Kahn handed me a white flag, and advised me to leave before I was deported, as that would put a permanent black mark against me.

  I began the preparation of the first novel. The subject must be the most powerful to my hand: the Indian Mutiny. I spent two days wondering whether I could afford to start with another, for the Mutiny was so great a subject that I really ought not to tackle it until I was better equipped to do so. But a man being charged by a tiger is wise to use his biggest gun the first time; there may not be a second. So the Mutiny it was.

  I defined my object: To tell an exciting story about the Indian Mutiny. Hell, that was no use. That would fit a potboiler for the pulps, and here I was wanting to pull the heart out of my body to transmit the terror and tragedy of 1857.

  To make readers feel the true facts and emotions of the Indian Mutiny.

  O.K., but was it enough? Where was the second level I had been learning was essential to good writing?

  What was the natural second level of the Mutiny? That stuck out a mile: the fact that good men on both sides were turned into beasts, much (I learned later) as had also happened in the Spanish Civil War.

  To make readers feel the true facts and emotions of the Indian Mutiny, while showing how hatred breeds hatred.

  Long-winded... but after all, I was not about to write an Operation Order for the capture of Mandalay. That was a complicated business; this was going to be much more so. It would do.

  The next problem was research: now or later? I knew the principal events of the Mutiny and, more important, I knew roughly why it had come about, and what most British and Indians felt about it at the time. If I did a lot of research I would dredge up more detailed information. I would find out what young ladies wore at formal balls in 1857; what was the correct way to address a deposed Rajah; the names of Havelock's aides. But it was not certain that I would want to use any of this information; so the collection of it might be a waste of time. I also knew, from correcting Staff College papers, that once a man has done research he has a strong tendency to make his readers swallow the fruits of it. I could see the danger.

  After all, it would seem a criminal waste, once I had with so much effort dug up the fact that Tippoo Sahib used to give his pet pug dog champagne for supper, not to use it. To hell with the architectural line and ornamental plan of the book — stick it in.

  Holt rejected Brutal; no comment.

  I decided to leave research to the end. If my broad plan was not right, I had no business writing the novel in the first place. After I had done the first or second draft I would find out whether the greased cartridges were introduced on April 1 or March 1; and I would make out a calendar for the year 1857 so that my Sundays fell on the right dates (the Mutiny began on May 10, and subsequent risings on May 17, 24, and 31 — which is not important; but all those dates were Sundays, which is important, because on Sundays the British troops went to church, leaving their arms behind, until they learned better); I would get the Hindu and Muslim feast days for that year; and go to the Nautical Almanac and make a chart of the times of sunrise and set, and of the moon phases (Barbara told me that in one of his books Rider Haggard has the moon at full seven nights in succession: I did not want such a dreadful story told about me).

  The creation of the book began: the formation of the major characters to achieve my object; how many should there be? Must be at least two, one for the British and one for the Indian points of view. How shape the secondary characters (according to Forster's Law) to reflect light on the major ones?... Narrative flow, how can I get the reader reading, which is after all, Task One? I am not writing this to be chanted to myself in the bath... A strong lead? Someone travelling probably, as it is human nature to want to know where a traveller is going, and why, and what will happen when he gets there... What is the over-all shape of the book? Like the letter X, I think, with the Mutiny as the central point in which everyone meets, and then goes their separating ways afterwards. True to life, but will it be anti-climactic?

  Why not write the Mutiny chapter first, with all characters and events at their crest, so to speak? Then build events back from it, in narrative, tracing what led immediately to it, what led to that, and so back, step by step. The same with the characterizations; by the Mutiny chapter they must all have reached that stage of knowledge, love, whatever, where the impact is greatest: build back step by step, so that they grow to the Mutiny.

  Desmond and I discussed sending the MS of Brutal to British publishers; but I feared that others would think like Victor Gollancz; and in any case, even if the book achieved instant recognition and success for me over there, it would still be in England and not in America. We had gone through an exhausting process to decide that recognition and financial success in England were not what we wanted.

  I began to write the Mutiny novel with frantic concentration. A few more publishers turned down Brutal. Fall passed into winter. Susan had lost her stammer. Tomlinson the kitten was almost a cat. He liked to fight the papers on my desk, and follow us for walks in the forest.

  Josie Balaban suggested that our neighbours should all swear we were nice people and petition Congress to let us stay in the United States. She made up the petition and started collecting signatures. Old Gus Weltie volunteered his help. The Squire of South Mountain Road, a white-haired Viking called Harold Deming, came to inspect and cros
s-examine us before signing the petition.

  On a tip, I went to see the local boss of the Democratic Party. He told me he thought our legal entry could be fixed if I went to Canada, applied to come back in... first paying $1,000 to the Democratic Party funds. Like hell, I thought, with difficulty keeping my open, manly smile in place.

  We took the petition to one pair of prominent neighbours — Mr and Mrs Kurt Weill — in person. An unbalanced washing machine groaned rhythmically off stage as we talked to them, until Lotte cried, 'That awful thing, I can't think while it goes huh-huh-huh like that! It is too sexy!' — and rushed to turn it off. Being both immigrants themselves, they signed at once, with encouraging words. In all, 137 people signed the petition and then it was sent to our district's representative in Congress, Mrs Katharine St George. She agreed to introduce a special bill on our behalf into the House, and Senator Kilgore said he would do the same in the Senate. Turning to that flanking hill, I saw the Immigration gunners withdraw, gnashing their vile teeth, since they were stopped from trying to throw us out until the bills came up and that might take several months. But they left their cannon in position.

  The Polish United Workers' Party finally imposed Communism in that country, and the darkness spread. It seemed a little less black than the others, to our eyes. The light here was so bright, and Poland so far.

  We gathered in a neighbour's house to see the old year out. I went in the full dress messkit of my regiment, with miniature medals, for these were my last hours in the Army. After a good many rum punches and the like, some of my friends began plotting to divest me of this militaristic finery by force, but I forestalled them. I slipped away a few minutes before midnight, and changed into civilian clothes — or mufti, as I still thought of them. After fourteen-and-a-half years I was no longer a professional fighting man, but a professional writing man, and nothing else. Since my net total earnings for the year had been $402, this seemed to me rather a bleak statement, or admission.

  Barbara took off her girdle and shoes and began to dance in her bare feet. Peter Burchard put on her girdle, over his trousers, and danced with epicene abandon. Keith sat by the fire, strummed his guitar, and began to sing 'Oh, the Eer-i-ee was arising, the gin was getting low.' Emily hugged my arm and said, 'You know, when we first met you, I thought you were going to be the only sort of Englishman I don't like. But you're not so bad. And Barbara's marvellous!'

  That's fair enough, I thought. Can't do better than that without more practice.

  Chapter Six

  Our sublease of the South Mountain Road house expired. Once again the Mathews came to our rescue, this time by introducing us to Tony Palmer, an actor who had been asked to tour with Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne, but did not want to accept unless his wife could go with him. After a couple of meetings they offered us their cottage in New Jersey, rent free, for three months, if we would look after their two-year-old son. We accepted with gratitude and early in January 1949, made the move piecemeal in the Palmers' Crosley, which they leased to us for a small charge. Twice I drove that car through the Lincoln Tunnel and down U.S.1. In the driver's seat the hub caps of the vast trucks were level with my eye, and so were the exhausts, as they roared past amid sulphurous thunder and a clangorous changing of gears. The sheer wind of their passage jerked me all over the road. I was a trembling wreck by the time we were settled in the sandy wastes outside Milltown; and if I have a complex about small cars, it can be blamed on that experience.

  The cottage was small, wooden, and dilapidated, but comfortable. We thought it might house a poltergeist, as there were mysterious rattlings, groanings, and bangings at night; but the thing did no actual damage, so we asked it to be a little more quiet, and forgot about it. Barbara at once cut out baby Mick Palmer's accustomed night-time bottle, which ensured that he would sleep in a wet bed, and also gave him meat which he had not had before. In the first week he threw a few violent tantrums, in which he hurled himself face down on the floor and screamed his head off, watched in silent astonishment by Susan and Martin. When nothing else happened he cut off the noise as though at a tap, got up sheepishly, and did as he had been told. In the second week, after he had watched me smack our two a couple of times for minor offences, the next time (though he had committed no crime himself) he formed up and held out his own hand. Now I was in rather a quandary. I did not want to let him feel that he was different from ours, but I didn't want him to think a smacking was unconnected with a cause. In the end I told him he didn't have to be smacked but, if he really insisted, I'd give him one and then a kiss; he insisted, and it was so arranged. Most of the time we never saw the kids, for they were out playing in the sand with our Hungarian-and-Polish-American neighbours. In no time our three were talking about griss and theirs about grawss. (The local war memorials showed clearly how the population base of the area had changed. All the dozen or so names on the Civil War memorial were of English, Scottish, or Irish origin; of the forty or so on the World War memorials, only five were.)

  I dug in behind my desk. The piled manuscript of the Mutiny novel grew. Brutal and Licentious lay in the bottom of the yakdan. Barbara said, 'One day you can do to the publishers what I did with my brigadier's silly messages.'

  I said, 'What?'

  She said, 'Return them, neatly folded, with a large pin through one corner, where I'd written THIS END FIRST.' (I should explain that the 'Women's Auxiliary Corps in India contained a part-time section manned or womanned — mainly by officers' wives whose husbands were overseas. Thus Sergeant Jones might be Brigadier Smith's personal assistant by day and his hostess that night. Discipline was good, but sometimes highly informal.)

  Meanwhile there was the matter of eating. The money was going faster than I had calculated, and we always had to hold in hand that reserve for getting back to England, so that I could keep my promise never to become a public charge. It would be wise not to run the writing attempt too fine. I should allow a month or two to find some other job before finally deciding to go. Barbara was earning a little by doing typing for Mrs Balaban, who was reworking Aunt Hattie of Cripple Creek, in the ways I had suggested. This took her to New York twice a week, (where the Balabans were now living in the Dorset Hotel on West 54th Street) but as we still had Nanny I was able to keep working. We decided we could maintain this pattern of living for another six months, then we'd have to make the final decisions.

  Winter passed and the wild asparagus began to sprout in the ditches and along the roadsides, to be gathered by the children, cooked by Barbara, and avidly eaten by all, except me: I can't stand the stuff. I decided I had to have a title for my novel. Writing without one was like aiming an arrow at air. Fashions in titles change from generation to generation. Sometimes the small whimpering phrase is In, e.g. And the lights dimmed. Sometimes it is the defiant exclamation: Look homeward, angel; sometimes the simple precis of the contents: Drums along the Mohawk. I wanted a title that would be fair to the prospective reader, and yet would attract his attention in the shop window — that Place Pigalle where lurid jackets take the place of hoisted skirts in catching the wandering eye. I also wanted to include in a single phrase the information (a) that the book was about India; (b) that it contained elements of adventure and suspense; and (c) that it was an action story. After many rejections I decided on Nightrunners of Bengal. I hand-lettered it proudly on a title page, and returned to the story.

  Bill Lewis, a lawyer friend of Vyvyan Donner's, put my case to the firm of which Sam Rosenman was a prominent member. (Judge Rosenman had been a close confidant of President Roosevelt's, and kept considerable political piston in New York and Washington.) Whether privately persuaded by Rosenman or not the Immigration people extended the visas of Barbara and the children for another six months. In Washington the Attorney General's Department advised the appropriate committee against passing the Kilgore-St George bill for the admission of John Masters, on the ground that it would set a precedent. This was, of course, their stock advice on all the many bills o
f this sort which were put into the hopper every session. Nevertheless they also began to gather information about me for the committee's use. I had my first set of fingerprints taken at the Immigration Office in Newark, and obtained my first certificates of good conduct from the New Jersey State Police — and also from the New York State Police, to cover the period we had lived on South Mountain Road.

  Getting into the spirit of things, the Immigration Service asked for Barbara's fingerprints, and the F.B.I. took mine a couple more times. The committee urgently requested good conduct certificates covering my residence in Camberley, England; Claygate, England; New Delhi, India; Ranikhet, India. Burma? The war? Good God, where had I not been? I wrote streams of letters, and spent a fortune on airmail stamps. During a visit to the New York Alpine Club a delightful quiet middle-aged mountain-lover and Wall Street lawyer called Oscar Houston offered me his help — which he gave without stint. Vyvyan Donner signed a pledge guaranteeing that she would be responsible for any charges incurred by the public on my behalf. I offered the immigration service a set of Martin's fingerprints...

  Desmond asked urgently for a couple of chapters of Nightrunners, as he had aroused interest at Doubleday. I sent them off and redoubled my efforts on the rest. Early in April I had the first draft finished — just in time, as Desmond telephoned me that Doubleday liked the two chapters and wanted to see the whole manuscript at once. We were practically in the clear, he said joyfully.