by Ruskin Bond
Working in the same office was a sympathetic soul, a senior clerk whose name was Mr Best. He came from good Lancashire stock. His wife and son had predeceased him, and he lived alone in lodgings near the St Helier seafront. As I lived not far away, I would sometimes accompany Mr Best home after work, walking with him along the sea wall, watching the waves hissing along the sandy beaches or crashing against the rocks.
I gathered from some of his remarks that he had an incurable disease, and that he had come to live and work in Jersey in the hope that a sunnier climate would help him to get better. He did not tell me the nature of his illness; but he often spoke about his son, who had been killed in the War, and about the North Country, which was his home. He sensed that we were, in a way, both exiles, our real homes far from this small, rather impersonal island in the Channel.
He had read widely, and sympathized with my ambitions to be a writer. He had tried it once himself, and failed.
‘I didn’t have the perseverance, lad,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t inventive enough, either. It isn’t enough to be able to write well—you have to know how to tell a good story … Those who could do both, like Conrad and Stevenson, those are the ones we still read today. The critics keep telling us that Henry James was a master stylist, and so he was, but who reads Henry James?’
Mr Best rather admired my naïve but determined attempt to write a book.
On a Saturday afternoon I was standing in front of a shop, gazing wistfully at a baby portable typewriter on display. It was just what I wanted. My book was nearly finished but I knew I’d have to get it typed before submitting it to a publisher.
‘Buying a typewriter, lad?’ Mr Best had stopped beside me.
‘I wish I could,’ I said. ‘But it’s nineteen pounds and I’ve only got six pounds saved up. I’ll have to hire some old machine.’
‘But a good-looking typescript can make a world of difference, lad. Editors are jaded people. If they find a dirty manuscript on the desk, they feel like chucking it in the wastepaper basket—even if it is a masterpiece!’
‘There’s an old typewriter belonging to my aunt, but it should be in a museum. The letter “b” is missing. She must have used that one a lot—or perhaps it was my uncle. Anyway, when I type my stories on it, I have to go through them again and ink in all the missing “b”s.’
‘That won’t do, lad. I tell you what, though. Give me your six pounds, and I’ll add thirteen pounds to it, and we’ll buy the machine. Then you can pay me back out of your wages—a pound every week. How would that suit you?’
I was both surprised and immensely thrilled. I had always thought Mr Best slightly stingy, as he seldom went to cinemas or restaurants. But here he was, offering to advance me the money for a new typewriter.
I accepted his offer and walked down the street in a state of happy euphoria, the gleaming new typewriter in my hand. I sat up late that night, hammering out the first chapter of my book.
It was midsummer then, and by winter end I had paid back six pounds to Mr Best.
I found Jersey cold in the winter. It did not snow but those gales went right through you, and my sports coat (I had no overcoat) did not really keep the cold out. Still, there was something quite stirring, electrifying about those gales. One evening, feeling moody and dissatisfied, I deliberately went for a walk in the thick of a gale, taking the road along the seafront. The wind howled about me, almost carrying me with it along the promenade; and as it was high tide, the waves came crashing over the sea wall, stinging my face with their cold spray. It was during the walk that I resolved that if I was going to be a writer I would have to leave Jersey and live and work in London come hell or high water.
This resolve was further strengthened when, a few days later, I happened to quarrel with my uncle over an entry I had made in my diary.
Keeping a diary or journal is something that I have done fitfully over the years, and sometimes it is no more than a notebook of ideas and impressions which go into the making of essays or stories. But when I am lonely or troubled it takes the form of a confessional, and this is what it was at the time. My uncle happened to come across it among my books. I don’t think he was deliberately prying but he glanced through it and came across a couple of entries in which I had expressed my resentment over the very colonial attitudes that still prevailed in my uncle’s family. He was a South Indian Christian, my aunt an Anglo-Indian, and yet they were champions of Empire!
This was their own business, of course, and they had a right to their views—but what I did resent was their criticism of the fact that I had Indian friends who wrote to me quite regularly. They wanted me to forget these ties and be more British in my preferences and attitudes. Their own children had acquired English accents while I still spoke chi-chi!
I forget the exact words of my diary entry (I threw it away afterwards); but my uncle was offended and took me to task. I accused him of going through my personal letters and papers. Although things quietened down the next day, I had resolved to make a move.
Luckily for me, it was then that I received a letter from a publisher (the third to whom I had submitted the book) saying that they had liked my story but had some suggestions to make and could I call on them in London.
I had saved about six pounds from my salary, and after giving a week’s notice to the public health department, I packed my rather battered suitcase and took the cross-channel ferry to Plymouth. A few hours later I was in London.
The cheapest place to stay was a student’s hostel and I spent a few nights in the cheapest one I could find. The day after my arrival I went to the employment exchange and took the first job that was offered. It didn’t seem to matter what I did, provided it gave me enough to pay for my board and lodging and left me free to write on holidays and in the evenings.
I was alone and I was lonely but I was not afraid. In fact, London swept me off my feet. The theatres and bookshops exerted their magic on me. And the publishers said they would take my book if only I’d try writing it again.
At twenty-two, I was prepared to rewrite a book a dozen times, so I took a room in Hampstead, and grabbed the first job that came my way. I would have to keep working until I established myself as a writer. At that point I did not know how long this would take, but my life was only just beginning in many senses so I was very happy.
For some time I did not send any money to Mr Best. My wage was modest, and London was expensive, and I wanted to enjoy myself a little. I meant to write to him, explaining the situation, but kept putting it off, telling myself that I would write as soon as I had some money to send him.
Several months passed. I wrote the book a third time, and this time it was accepted and I received a modest advance. I opened an account with Lloyd’s, and then, finally, I made out a cheque in the name of Mr Best and mailed it to him with a letter.
But it was never to be cashed. It came back in the post with my letter, and along with it was a letter from my former employer saying that Mr Best had gone away and left no address. It seemed to me that he had given up his quest for better health, and had gone home to his own part of the country.
And so my debt was never paid.
The typewriter is still with me. I used it for over thirty years, and it is now old and battered. But I will not give it away. It’s like a guilty conscience, always beside me, always reminding me to pay my debts in time.
Days of Wine and Roses
LOOKING BACK ON the two years I spent in London, I realize that it must have been the most restless period of my life, judging from the number of lodging houses and residential districts I lived in—Belsize Park, Haverstock Hill, Swiss Cottage, Tooting and a couple of other places whose names I have forgotten. I don’t quite know why but I was never long in any one boarding house. And unlike a Graham Greene character, I wasn’t trying to escape from sinister pursuers. Unless you could call Nirmala a sinister pursuer.
This good-hearted girl, the sister of an Indian friend, took it into her head that I need
ed a sister, and fussed over me so much, and followed me about so relentlessly that I was forced to flee my Glenmore Road lodgings and move to south London (Tooting) for a month. I preferred north London because it was more cosmopolitan, with a growing population of Indian, African and continental students. I had, initially, tried living in a students’ hostel for a time but the food was awful and there was absolutely no privacy. So I moved into a bedsitter and took my meals at various snack bars and small cafés. There was a nice place near Swiss Cottage where I could have a glass or two of sherry with a light supper, and after this I would walk back to my room and write a few pages of my novel.
My meals were not very substantial and I must have been suffering from some form of malnutrition because my right eye started clouding over and my sight was partially affected. I had to go into hospital for some time. The condition was diagnosed as Eale’s Disease, a rare tubercular condition of the eye, and I felt quite thrilled that I could count myself among the ‘greats’ who had also suffered from this disease in some form or another—Keats, the Bröntes, Stevenson, Katherine Mansfield, Ernest Dowson—and I thought, if only I could write like them, I’d be happy to live with a consumptive eye!
But the disease proved curable (for a time, anyway), and I went back to my job at Photax on Charlotte Street, totting up figures in heavy ledgers. Adding machines were just coming in but my employers were quite happy with their old ledgers—and so was I. I became quite good at adding pounds, shillings and pence, for hours, days, weeks, months on end. And quite contented too, provided I wasn’t asked to enter the higher realms of mathematical endeavour. Maths was never my forte, although I kept reminding myself that Lewis Carroll, one of my all-time favourites, also wrote books on mathematics.
This mundane clerical job did not prevent me from pursuing the literary life, although for most of the time it was a solitary pursuit—wandering the streets of London and the East End in search of haunts associated with Dr Johnson, Dickens and his characters,
W. W. Jacobs, Jerome K. Jerome, George and Weedon Grossmith; Barrie’s Kensington Gardens; Dickens’s dockland; Gissing’s mean streets; Fleet Street; old music halls; Soho and its Greek and Italian restaurants.
In these latter I could picture the melancholic 1890s poets, especially Ernest Dowson writing love poems to the vivacious waitress who was probably unaware of his presence. For a time I went through my Dowson period—wistful, dreamy, wallowing in a sense of loss and failure. I had even memorized some of his verses, such as these lovely lines:
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
Poor Dowson, destined to die young and unfulfilled. A minor poet, dismissed as inconsequential by the critics, and yet with us still, a singer of sad but exquisite songs.
A little down the road from my office was the Scala Theatre, and as soon as I had saved enough for a theatre ticket (theatre-going wasn’t expensive in those days), I went to see the annual Christmas production of Peter Pan, which I’d read as a play when I was going through the works of Barrie in my school library. This production had Margaret Lockwood as Peter. She had been Britain’s most popular film star in the forties and she was still pretty and vivacious. I think Captain Hook was played by Donald Wolfit, better known for his portrayal of Svengali.
My colleagues in Photax, though not in the least literary, were a friendly lot. There was my fellow clerk, Ken, who shared his marmite sandwiches with me. There was Maisie of the auburn hair, who was constantly being rung up by her boyfriends. And there was Clarence, who was slightly effeminate and known to frequent the gay bars in Soho. (Except that the term ‘gay’ hadn’t been invented yet.) And there was our head clerk, Mr Smedly, who’d been in the Navy during the War, and was a musical-theatre buff. We would often discuss the latest musicals—Guys and Dolls, South Pacific, Paint Your Wagon, Pal Joey—big musicals which used to run for months, even years.
The window opposite my desk looked out on a huge hoarding, and it was always an event when a new poster went up on it. Weeks before the film was released, there was a poster of Judy Garland in her comeback film, A Star Is Born, and I can still remember the publicity headline: ‘Judy, the World Is Waiting for Your Sunshine!’ And, of course, there was Marilyn Monroe in Niagara, with Marilyn looking much bigger than the waterfall, and that fine actor, Joseph Gotten, nowhere in sight.
My heart, though, was not in the Photax office. I had no ambitions to become head clerk or even to learn the intricacies of the business. It was a nine-tofive job, giving me just enough money to live on (six pounds a week, in fact), while I scribbled away all my evenings, working on the second (or was it the third?) draft of my novel.
How I worked at that book! I was always being asked to put things in or take things out. At first the publishers suggested that it needed ‘filling out’. When I filled it out, I was told that it was now a little too descriptive and would I prune it a bit? And what started out as a journal and then became a first-person narrative finally ended up in the third person. But the editors only made suggestions; they did not tamper with my language or style. And the ‘feel’ of the story—my love for India and my friends in particular—was ever present, running through it like a vein of gold.
Much of the publishers’ uncertain and contradictory suggestions stemmed from the fact they relied heavily on their readers’ recommendations. A ‘reader’ was a well-known writer or critic who was asked (and paid) to give his opinion on a book. My manuscript was sent to the celebrated literary critic, William Atkins, who said I was a ‘born writer’ and likened me to Sterne, but also said I should wait a little longer before attempting a novel. Another reader, Leslie Lamb, said he had enjoyed the story but that it would be a gamble to publish it.
Fortunately, Antony Dahl was the sort of publisher who was ready to take a risk with a new, young author, so instead of rejecting the book, he bought an option on it, which meant that he could sit on it for a couple of years until he had made up his mind!
My mentor at this time was Donna Stephen, Dahl’s editor and junior partner. She was at least ten years older than me but we became good friends. She invited me to her flat for meals and sometimes accompanied me to the pictures or the theatre. She was tall, auburn-haired and attractive in a sort of angular English way. Donna was fond of me. She could see I was suffering from malnutrition and as she was a good cook (in addition to being a good editor), she shared her very pleasant and wholesome meals with me. There is nothing better than good English food, no matter what the French or Italians or Chinese may say. A lamb chop, a fish nicely fried, cold meat with salad, or shepherd’s pie, or even an Irish stew, are infinitely more satisfying than most of the stuff served in continental or Far Eastern restaurants. I suppose it’s really a matter of childhood preferences. For, deep down in my heart, I still fancy a kofta curry because koftas were what I enjoyed most in Granny’s house. And oh, for one of Miss Kellner’s meringues—but no one seems to make them any more.
I really neglected myself during the first year I spent in London. Never much of a cook, I was hard put to fry myself an egg every morning before rushing off to catch the tube for Tottenham Court Road, a journey of about twenty-five minutes. In the lunch break I would stroll across to a snack bar and have the inevitable baked-beans-on-toast. There wasn’t time for a more substantial meal, even if I could afford it. In the evenings I could indulge myself a little, with a decent meal in a quiet café; but most of the time I existed on snacks. No wonder I ended up with a debilitating disease!
Perhaps the first relaxing period of my London life was the month I spent in the Hampstead General Hospital, which turned out to be a friendly sort of place.
I was sent there for my Eale’s disease, and the treatment consisted of occasional cortisone injections to my right eye. But I was allowed—even recommended—a full diet, supplemented by a bottle of Guinness with my lunch. They felt
that I needed a little extra nourishment—wise doctors, those!
The bottle of Guinness made me the envy of the ward, but I made myself popular by sharing the drink with neighbouring patients when the nurses weren’t looking. One nurse was a ravishing South American beauty, and half the ward was in love with her.
It was a general ward and one ailing patient named George—a West Indian from Trinidad—felt that he was being singled out for experimentation by the doctors. He set up a commotion whenever he had to be given a rather painful lumbar puncture. I would sit on his bed and try to calm him down, and he became rather dependent on my moral support, insisting on my presence whenever he was being examined or treated.
While I was in hospital, I got in a lot of reading (with one eye), wrote a short story, and received visitors in style. They ranged from my colleagues at Photax, to Donna Stephen, my would-be publisher, to some of my Indian friends in Hampstead, to my latest landlady, a motherly sort who’d lost some of her children in Hider’s persecution of the Jews.
When I left the hospital I was richer by a few pounds, having saved my salary and been treated free on account of the National Health Scheme. The spots had cleared from my eyes and I’d put on some weight, thanks to the lamb chops and Guinness that had constituted my lunch.
Before I left, George, the West Indian, asked me for my home address, but for some strange reason I did not expect to see him again.
Calypso Christmas
MY FIRST CHRISTMAS in London was a lonely one. My small bedsitting room near Swiss Cottage was cold and austere, and my landlady disapproved of any sort of revelry. Moreover, I hadn’t much money for the theatre or a good restaurant. That first English Christmas was spent sitting in front of a lukewarm gas fire, eating beans on toast, and drinking cheap sherry. My one consolation was the row of Christmas cards on the mantelpiece—most of them from friends in India.