Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey (37 page)

That summer divided itself into two parts: rain, and the rest. Under 'rain' I recall that we were in Llanaber seventy-four days, of which it rained sixty-two. We were able to visit the beach some fifteen days in all, of which several were wet, cold, windswept or all three. With the intention of teaching the children the joys of camping I took them one at a time up Cwm Bychan, a valley along the coast with Roman steps and fine hidden tarns.

Martin came off all right, as it only drizzled, but when Susan's turn came we were flooded out. (Me, after twenty-five years camping all over the world! But the damned stream climbed a hill to get us at 1 a.m.) We stumbled down the mountain in black dark and driving rain, and passed the rest of the night huddled together, soaked, on a pile of manure in a barn. She was nine and afterwards I never could persuade her that camping was really fun.

There was rain at Harlech Castle, rain at Caernarvon Castle, rain slanting over Trawsfynydd, seen from the head of Cwm Bychan, rain at Llanfairpwllgwyngllgogerchwyrndrobwlltysiliogogogoch, rain on the Druidical sites we looked for in Anglesey, rain on the prehistoric hut circles at Tre'r Ceiri (I asked the children to imagine the Roman soldiers trudging up through the gorse, cursing the weather), rain in our camp on a grassy stretch of the deserted light slate railway near Tan y Bwlch, rainy stone walls and rainy slate roofs and rainy pubs closed on Sundays, and waiting in the rain to buy fish and chips wrapped in wet newspaper for supper...

And the rest? Well, the sun shone one day when Barbara and I climbed Cader Idris (but it rained when we walked up Snowdon). The children copied the Welsh lilt, and we all learned to differentiate between Jones the Fish, Jones the Coal, Jones the Bread, Jones the Paper and Jones the Garage. We made pilgrimages to several light and miniature railways then running in Wales, that the children might remember the glory of steam. We dashed round Scotland in a five-day 'It's Tuesday so we must be in Inverness' tour of our own devising.)
But I remember best the climb to Ais Gill summit on the Yorkshire moors, and a pair of curlews, the bleak stone curve of Ribblehead viaduct swinging into the lowering mass of Blea Moor ahead, cloud shadows and a threatening touch of violet
in
the light; and the rhythmic quickening of the beat after Ais
Gill,
the swaying racing passage down the Eden Valley, as rich and lovely as any in Europe, the great gables of the fells slowly falling back.)

And I worked. I had a good strong
Taj Mahal
story, principally because I had found out in my researches that the sons of the Emperor who built it, Shah Jehan, had revolted against him and imprisoned him close by the Taj. This, and some legends about Mumtaz Mahal, the wife whose tomb it was, added some needed salt and lemon to the frosting sugar sweetness of the building and of the basic story.

Bhowani Junction
was in its final editorial process, and the letters winged back and forth between New York and Llanaber. Helen wrote:
On the subject of bearing down hard, Patrick is a prime case in point, and I... would ask you to think about his general character and do more
if
you can. To some readers he is still a stupid oaf and nothing more — not in the least sympathetic. The reason may be the innumerable large and small things against him that are absolutely unrelieved, until you get almost to the end and find that he is a good hunter. He is loud-mouthed and tactless, a bully, a rash and unthinking blunderer. He cannot control his emotions, and he blusters, or he cries childish tears. He is tongue-tied. He cannot ride a motor-cycle well, and he cannot dance well. He drinks badly. He is caught in bed with Rose Mary behaving like an animal. He cannot command the respect of his A.F.I. platoon who titter at him. He bites finger-nails. The basic outlines of his character are clear — that of the unsure and unstable victim of an unfortunate societal environment, whose
worst
qualities come to the fore in any emergency, a man who has learned no
pro
tective coloration whatsoever.

But there is also the suspicion that he is unreliable and worthless, and this may come from that overabundance of detail, from the many times he is scored on by Savage and made to look and feel ludicrous, from his frequent cursings at the Collector, Ranjit and the other Indians. I wish you could think of some saving graces for Patrick, not only because Victoria does love and understand him, but because his last blundering action — which results in the death of Birkhe — is the final straw if one does not like Patrick. See if you can introduce some positive new note... In Victoria's section she might remember something about their growing up together, some fun-loving qualities (which he has) and the tenderness he has always felt for her. Both of their meetings behind the signal light behind her house might not have to end disastrously... On the first, he might even comfort Victoria, and, since he loves her, not think only of himself, but wonder how he can help her. For he really understands their dilemma as Anglo-Indians just as well as she does... He is a soft-hearted man, but not essentially weak...

And more, much more. I sent her six pages in return, including a total acceptance of her dissections of the characters of Patrick, Victoria, and Rodney. Then I started my counter-battery fire:

There has been the problem of technicalities. I know that S.M. or G.H.Q., or three-tonner, sprung suddenly on the average reader, will be unintelligible. But I am writing about experts, speaking in the first person to other experts, and that is how they speak. And I have always wondered why you pick on the army, which I write about, instead of, say, the sea. Your principles should he applied to those innumerable sea-stories of which I and most other men are very fond. Let us take the standard situation:

'Reef the main t'garns'l,' Captain Joshua roared into the teeth of the gale.

The bo'sun shouted, 'Aye aye, sir' and ran toward the foc'sle.

I love this. Everyone loves it. We don't understand a word of it, but the sailors, thank God, do. They are technical experts, otherwise I wouldn't be on that ship with them, not on your life. But I will edit the above (as you would like it):

Do you see those three big poles stuck in the deck?' Captain Joshua roared. He had to roar because the wind velocity exceeded fifty nautical miles an hour. 'Aye aye, sir,' answered the principal sailor in the vessel (not counting the officers, that is). The captain looked at him reproachfully. He blushed, remembering that he was in a book, and muttered 'I mean, Yes, Captain Joshua, I have followed you so far.' 'Well, take the last one, the one nearest the blunt end of the ship. Follow the pole with our eyes...' But the waves now exceeded seventy feet in height and the ship quickly sank under them, carrying Captain Joshua and all who travelled with him to a merciful oblivion. ?

* * *

?

It is amazingly unhelpful to write the message COARSE in the margin opposite some sentence. You must believe me when I tell you that I meant it to be coarse. It was
a
coarse man speaking in a coarse moment; and even if it wasn't, you must still believe I know the meaning of the simpler phrases I write down. So what? Do you mean that you don't want any coarse people in any book published by the Viking Press? Do you mean that you don't mind coarse people, but they mustn't be
too
coarse? Too coarse
for
whom? You? Harold? The Book Clubs? The average reader? Anything you say that makes sense I will pay great attention to. But the single word COARSE makes no sense, not from an editor to a writer.

?

* * *

?

The many peremptory commands pencilled in the margin — CUT, OUT, NIX, WON'T GO — do make sense of course — from a publisher's editor to a writer. Is this the sense intended?... The problem is a very real one and it won't be solved by writing NIX any more than it will be by me calling the lot of you a pack of literary bystanders. The real problem is that the word may have a greater impact on the reader, if he is not used to it, than it ought to have... Nevertheless there are cases where only the word spoken is the right word. There are forces that may prevent that word being used in a book; our business is to study those forces in every case, and the importance of the book and its characters; please don't emit any further smoke screens about offensiveness, staleness, tastelessness, and so on, People are offensive, stale, and tasteless (outside literary-discussion groups). FUCK is sometimes the best and only right word to use.

Having gone carefully through
Bhowani Junction
I find thirteen really foul words. SHIT (4), FUCK (5), CUNT (1), BUGGER (3). In the milieu, over several weeks, dealing with at least two violently-tempered men, I am amazed at my own restraint. Even they could probably be reduced to half that number without altering anything but the finest shading of a nuance in some characterization. But because I am a coward and because you are all cowards too, I am going to eliminate them. Nobody likes to be brought face to face with his own weakness, and I do not thank you for doing so in this case. This affair has been like an attack that failed. in the safety of the rear areas
we
all talked bravely about the integrity of the artist and the solemn privileges of the publisher. As we advanced into the open the brave words became carefully phrased warnings about artistic necessity and intelligent readers. At last, whimpering of the investigating committees and reader-resistance, the line broke, turned tail, and fled. I am left alone and I haven't got the guts to go on by myself. All I ask, when we are recovering our nerve over a drink ten miles from the firing, is that we should not talk any more about integrity...

The rain dripped steadily from the eaves. I sealed the letter for mailing and picked up my notes on the next novel. I had decided I would tackle the first arrival of the British in India, in about A.D. 1600. What did the British know of India then? Obviously, very little... no maps, no tourist reports, only the smallest commerce and that passing through a score of intermediaries. A time of wonder, when anything could be believed, and was, about the Mysterious East. The golden coasts of Malabar and Coromandel. Coromandel! The name itself was hung with sea-born pearls.

Everyone knows too damn much nowadays.
Then
there would be this sense of marvel, of acceptance of magic, of seeking after Golcondas. A young, a very young hero then, to intensify the youngness of the world, the newness of the British relationship with India. A gullible youth, probably, but intelligent; romantic, certainly. A boy walking at the tail of a Wiltshire plough, dreaming of brown girls. Perhaps he
has
to leave? He has put one of the milkmaids in the family way? No, if he is to be unusual, it must be the lord's daughter, or perhaps two simultaneously, and all the while he is not really thinking of their pliant bodies but of the sand and the palms on the Coromandel coast...
Coromandel!

Chapter Fourteen

'Estribor cinco, a ciento sesenta y tres,'
the captain snapped.

The quartermaster turned the wheel slightly, responding,
'Estribor cinco. Ciento sesenta y tres. Asi, asi, asi!'
Out on the port wing of the bridge the First Lieutenant crouched over the sighting compass, taking a bearing on a point of cliff just visible under low cloud ahead. Snow flurried around him, gathered on the bridge glass and was thrown off by the whirling windshield disc in front of the quartermaster. The Magellan Strait stretched ahead, its waters breaking grey-and white-capped in the earliest light. The great headland plunging black out of the clouds on the starboard bow was Cape Froward, the southernmost tip of the mainland of the American continents. Spray burst over the bow and rimed the canvas of the forward gun.

'Babor dies a…'

Was I asleep? Was I re-living those youthful daydreams of the naval career lost to me by the discovery of my slight colour-blindness? Was I, in a fit of schizophrenia, doing in imagination what I could never do in reality — rap out confident orders, stand swaying in heavy duffel coat, hands in pockets, binoculars slung round the neck, eyes crows-footed from peering into Cape Horn gales?

No, it was real. My feet were cold in the borrowed sea-boots, and I felt a little queasy. In one pocket a cold hand clutched a notebook, for I was on an assignment for
Life International.
Cape Horn lay 150 miles ahead through storm-swept channels. I thought I'd better go and lie down a while.

It was six months since we returned to Rockland County after our Welsh 'summer'. I had a new agent, as Miriam Howell and I had decided to part professional company, in spite of a warm personal attachment (Barbara and I often went into New York to dine and drink with her in her private capacity as Mrs Ralph Warren). The reason was that her strength as an agent lay in the theatre rather than with books and magazines. On the recommendation of Laurence Pollinger I wrote to Helen Strauss, head of the literary department at the William Morris Agency, asking if she would take me on. At a meeting in New York soon after I got back she agreed to do so, and we laid the foundations of another friendship.

The Giants finished 5th in the National League, and we muttered, 'Wait till next year!' Army football was climbing fast out of the cheating doldrums, and we watched Pat Uebel batter out three touchdowns in a 20-7 defeat of Navy. The Auberjonois had a large television set now, and our New Year's Day Bowl Game marathon was conducted in front of open windows, wearing overcoats and carrying flasks and waving banners. But Fernand, still hunted by McCarthy, had made up his mind to leave the country. 'I can do more for America in Europe than I can here,' he said sadly.

Visiting us from the wilds of Centre Island, Hamish and Misha Mackay reported that they were settled in, and all was going well. Misha said that when conversation turned that way, which was probably not too often, the house guests were vaguely surprised to learn that she, the cook, had a Master of Arts degree in Indian and Colonial History; but they were quite flabbergasted to discover that the 'Colonial' part was what
they
had always thought of as American History. This and other accomplishments and talents of the cook having been discovered, Madame la Chatelaine would summon her every morning, not to receive orders on the day's menus, but to hear and pass opinion on the Chatelaine's latest poem. One day the line under discussion was: