Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey Read online

  In Savile Row I ordered the construction of an exceptionally hairy suit of Harris tweed, to make a good impression on the American natives. We sold our furniture, with the proviso that it would not be taken away until we were out of the house, which would be early in January 1948. The children were getting worried by the commotion and I knew we must settle down soon, and for good. Susan had had a short spell of stuttering when we came back from India; it had gone, but now it was starting again. Born in Bombay, she had moved several times across India; then to Claygate; then Camberley, which had become her first remembered home. Now we were on the move again, and she sensed that it was an important and perhaps dangerous change, without knowing its nature. Daddy won't be wearing uniform soon. But Daddy always wears uniform until lunch. What will happen if he doesn't wear uniform?

  And now were fired the first shots of a Seven Years War between myself and the U.S. Immigration authorities. The war was not of my making. The capitalist-imperialist aggressors had the effrontery to... But let me begin at the beginning, for we must go on to the end.

  When we decided to emigrate to the United States I went to the Embassy, picked up the appropriate papers, and took them back to Camberley to fill in. There was a quota system for immigration, I knew, but I also knew that the British quota was 65,000 per annum, and that it was never filled. I set to work on the papers. No, I had no intention of blowing up the President. No, I was not now and had never been a member of the Communist Party. Yes, I would have means to support myself and could prove it. Was I a sink of moral turpitude? I looked at that one dubiously. Who was to define moral turpitude? According to the Pope I was guilty of it because my wife had been someone else's, and there had been adultery and divorce. According to the Presbyter General of the Church of Scotland and several other ecclesiastics I was guilty because I played games on the Sabbath. According to the London School of Economics I was guilty because I had accepted and enjoyed a position in the Imperial Government of India... Well, I would put down No, and explain later, if necessary. All in all, I gave a lot of information, including the fact that I had been born in Fort William Military Hospital, in the city of Calcutta, in the Presidency of Bengal, India, on October 26, 1914, the son of a British officer of the Indian Army. Then I mailed the papers back to the Embassy and waited blithely for them to send me my visa.

  A week or so later I was informed that I had been placed on the Indian quota. The waiting list on that quota was at the moment four and a half years. Still blithe, I wrote again, pointing out that there must have been a mistake; I was British, not Indian.

  They wrote back that there was no mistake. According to the law, a would-be immigrant's quota was decided on the basis of his country of birth, and nothing else. I had been born in India: ergo...

  I spoke to Bill Dodds, who gave me the name of a rumoured-to-be-reasonable American bureaucrat, donned my other suit (dark pin-stripe, sincere) and went to London. The bureaucrat was polite but adamant. The law was as stated. Perhaps the spirit of the law meant something else but they had to go by the letter. No, there was no one who had the authority to bypass the law in special cases. No, it would not help to prove that I was of pure English parentage. There was nothing to be done but wait for my turn on the Indian quota.

  I sat there, staring at him, thinking fast. If I were to accept this place on the Indian quota I would have to take a job here while waiting. What job? And then give it up? Settle my family in, and then uproot them again? Out of the question! What I must do was get to America as a visitor, then, find out whether I could sell the Himalayan tours or the Bra, and take it from there; move on to Canada, perhaps; return beaten to England, perhaps; find a job in the U.S.A., and some way of getting in legally and permanently, as thousands must surely do with such a foolish law as this to contend against.

  I told the bureaucrat I would withdraw my application for an immigrant's visa, and apply instead for a visitor's visa. The man looked almost embarrassed as he mumbled that that was unfortunately now impossible. I felt I was at a mad hatter's tea party. I asked him cautiously why. 'Because you have applied for an immigrant's visa,' he said. 'It's a regulation we have, because so many people who found themselves on long quotas — the delay for Greeks is eighty-one years, you know — would apply for a visitor's visa and then as soon as they got over, disappear. Plenty of them become public charges. So we made this regulation... It may not be so bad,' he said helpfully. 'People drop off the list. You may not have to wait as long as four and a half years.'

  I thanked him as warmly as I could manage, which was only a degree above glacially, and returned to Camberley. I was in a fine rage even before the train left Waterloo and my fellow traveller must have thought he was locked in with a madman, for I glared out of the window, muttered to myself, and scribbled furious notes on pieces of paper. This was downright double-dealing. What right had they to keep me out of the United States if I wanted to go? Wasn't the country built on immigrants, on freedom to come and go? Wasn't it barely a week since I had thrilled to learn what was inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty:

  Give me your tired, your poor,

  Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:

  I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

  What generosity, I had thought, what a marvel of welcome! I wasn't sure that I could quite agree to being a huddled mass or a wretched refuse, but I was certainly homeless and yearning to breathe free. What sort of a country would they have now if the Indians (Red) had had an Immigration Service when the Pilgrims set out in 1620?

  Those Pilgrim Fathers had had to fight storms, shipwreck, cold, disease, famine. I saw that this Pilgrim Son would have to battle with the 20th century's stand-ins for natural hazard: red tape, bureaucracy, and ill-written laws.

  I gathered Bill Dodds and all the four American students at my bungalow, told them what had happened, and asked for advice. One shook his head and said, 'You can't fight City Hall,' a remark that I found as irrelevant as baffling. The rest said, keep at it, screw the regulations, hell, a thousand Mexicans are swimming the Rio Grande every week, there are always ways and means, what you need is some influence. Bill was a personal friend of the head of the U.S. Military Mission in Britain. He promised to tell my story to the general, who might be persuaded to talk to the consulate people. Meantime 'It's the Army-Navy game tomorrow,' he said. 'We can get it on the radio. Come and listen.'

  I had seen one game of American football in my life, the Sugar Bowl game of 1939 between Texas Christian and Carnegie Tech, with Davey O'Brien as the hero. That was now nine years ago, and my hazy memories of the great concrete bowl and the yelling crowd were not enough to put any reality behind the announcer's gabble. Second and four on the five... right tackle smash, gain of two... fake to Kellum, Scot has it, there's a hole, a big hole, he's in the clear... The Crabtown defence is beginning to tire... Barbara asked if someone would please tell her what was going on. Although she was then 52 inches round what had been her waist three American majors gallantly clustered about her with eager explanations. Barbara batted her eyelashes at them, while I morosely drank more bourbon, which did nothing to increase my comprehension. I wondered whether I was really equipped for life in the U.S.A. After a long time everyone yelled cheerfully and had several more drinks. Army had won.

  A week later Bill told me he believed I could safely go and see the U.S. Immigration people again. The same bureaucrat received me and told me that in view of my standing as a British officer they were sure I would not go to ground in the United States illegally. They would therefore forget my application for a permanent visa and give me a six months visitor's visa. I thanked him, he wished me good luck, I left. On the return journey to Camberley I mentally drafted a letter asking my mother why she had not had the forethought to get on a boat as soon as she felt that I was imminent. All babies born on British ships at sea a
re registered as having been born in England.

  My passage was booked on the Queen Elizabeth, sailing from Southampton on February 4, 1948. By mid April, we agreed, I must send definite instructions to Barbara as to whether she was to follow, stay, or meet me somewhere else. We found a woman in her early thirties, who would work for Barbara as Nanny in charge of the children, and would come to America if asked to, and work there for a year at her British rate of wages, we to pay her fares both ways. After the year we would either have to raise her wages to American rates, or return her to England. (I should perhaps explain that to people of our generation and background a Nanny was the one indispensable help. We didn't mind cooking, scrubbing floors, weeding, or cleaning lavatories, but if the wife were perpetually tied to the children the marital relationship would be strained.) I made my last appearance in Allenby Hall, as an actor in one of the Combined Operations demonstrations. I was the fuddled major who asks the foolish questions which enable the wise colonel to bring out the lessons we wanted. I rewrote my part slightly so that at the grand finale, when the Signal Corps brigadier revealed that yes, indeed, the Royal Corps could provide twelve non-overlapping radio channels and twenty-seven different cyphers for a single beachhead, I took off my belt and threw it down in the traditional gesture of the disgusted private, and cried aloud the equally traditional words — 'I've had enough! I'll soldier no more!'

  We got a big laugh, but I was not so cheerful under the tunic. The Indians and Pakistanis (how strange that latter name still sounded on my lips and in my heart) came for farewell drinks. Such students would continue attending courses at Camberley, but I was the last Indian Army instructor. We talked of what was gone and what would come, and parted. India had many devoted sons, but none more filled with the moral courage that makes nations, than these and those others of their generation, who served the British government loyally — some, like Han and Drag, through physical torture — in order that when their country became free, it should have trained hands as well as ready voices to serve it. Always vilified by their political compatriots, often snubbed by the English, through it all learning to admire what was admirable, giving nothing away, keeping silent when they could, speaking up when they must, above all, never hating — it was these, I thought, who would hold India and Pakistan together.

  One rainy night, and cold, the trees bare and the dead leaves piled dark in the corners of the grass and the edges of the drive and under the single street light outside our gate in the depths of the Staff College woods, Barbara told me her time had come. I telephoned the nursing home in Farnborough, five miles away, where we had long since booked a room, for many babies were being born that second post-war year. My car was full of petrol, all five tyres correctly inflated, the oil and battery checked daily for the last ten days, everything in readiness. It would not start.

  I awakened my neighbour — it was one in the morning — and since he was in the Royal Tank Regiment, the car would start for him! At Farnborough the matron told me to come back the next morning about ten, as nothing would happen before then. I slept little, and early the following day drove to Farnborough, where Barbara's mother joined me. The doctor came into the little anteroom and told us Barbara was well. She had given birth to a seven-pound girl at about six o'clock. This was her fifth child and it had not taken as long as the nurse had expected.

  'How's the baby?' Ethel asked quickly, used to the subtleties of childbirth.

  The doctor did not speak for an instant. Then he said gently, 'She's not well, Mrs Allcard.' He explained that our child had been born with a defect that pressed part of the skull on to the brain. She might live as long as fifteen years. No more, under any circumstances. If she did survive at all, she would live as an idiot; but she might die tomorrow.

  I was far off, thinking. I heard the doctor ask whether we wanted to have the child christened at once. I heard Ethel say Yes. There was a padre in the hospital and they brought the baby and it was done. Barbara and I had long since decided to call our child Caroline if it were a girl, and Alexander, a family name, if it were a boy. Ethel held Caroline for the ceremony, then I took her.

  The padre left us, with a word of comfort. The tiny spot of water gleamed on the baby's forehead. My thoughts slowed, stopped. There had been a day, a million years ago, when I had looked at a doctor as I was now looking at this baby, and nodded; so that he went and put overloaded needles into the flesh of shattered men, men without faces or shoulders, men with no body below the navel, men with half a head and half a chest, the rain falling on their ruptured faces, shells bursting around, the Japanese coming, no way of carrying them. Now Barbara lay in another room here, and in my arms I held a scrap of mortality that would need the constant care of both of us for fourteen years — and then die! What would that do to Susan and Martin? To me? It would destroy Barbara, I knew.

  The floor was stone and hard. Ethel was smiling down at the tiny thing — full of love, no hint of pity or sorrow on her face.

  I could not do it. I gave the baby to her, sweating, and went to Barbara.

  The next day Caroline died. The day after, Ethel and I stood side by side in a little plot of the military cemetery at Farnborough and the padre buried my daughter and they put a small stone over her, where she lies now.

  Chapter Three

  The Queen Elizabeth plunged steadily towards New York. Among the 1st Class passengers were Maharajah Sir Kaiser Shamsher Jangbahadur Rana of Nepal; the Marquess of Linlithgow with his marchioness and daughters; Mr Hugo Rogers; and I. The Maharajah was going to Washington to present his credentials to President Truman as Nepalese Ambassador to the United States. The Marquess, lately Viceroy of India, was going to New York on business connected with the Midland Bank, of which he was chairman. Hugo Rogers was returning to his job as Borough President of Manhattan. And I was a Westward Ho Dick Whittington travelling in unaccustomed luxury on a government-paid passage, the last I would be entitled to. I was on my way to America, speeded by my mother's tears, my father's good wishes, my wife's love and faith, and an otherwise almost universal confidence that I would lose our money, fail in my plan, and return with my tail between my legs.

  It was February, 1948. Every day I walked the deck for hours, to work up an appetite for the free meals, and to keep myself out of the bar, for which I had no money to spare. I also spent hours studying the Himalayan plan, preparing myself to answer any possible questions on it. And I practised putting on and taking off The Bra. My demonstration model was made of peach-coloured satin and looked like a novice's class in knot tying.

  The huge ship was almost empty. Most of the passengers seemed to be businessmen from Yorkshire or Ohio, and very few were accompanied by their wives. The only glamour-puss on board, a blonde woman of indeterminate age and some connection with Hollywood, had more attention paid to her than she merited. The attention was shown in concrete form. Never had I seen money spent in the way it was on that ship. I began to realize that in these circles the words 'rich' and 'money' meant something quite different from what I had thought before. In pre-war voyages to and from India, for example, we used to buy tickets for the ship's daily mileage sweepstake for some fixed small sum, about a dollar, perhaps. Some mileages might have many tickets placed on them, some few or none. But here the possible mileages for the next day were auctioned every evening, one by one. They were bought for sums ranging up to $4,000, sometimes by an individual, sometimes by a syndicate. In the bar, too, money flowed like water (well, that flowed with extreme caution), but there was not much gaiety anywhere, neither in the auction room, the bar, the dance floor, or the boutiques where $100 presents were bought like glass baubles. In the manner of so many English visitors to the American shore I began to formulate a suitable generalization: businessmen, particularly Americans, take their pleasures sadly. But, on looking a little closer, I saw that really the money meant nothing to those people. They lacked a feeling that those of us who had never had much money knew well, a feeling that spending mo
ney on non-essentials is somehow immoral unless it produces violent euphoria.

  In the main I kept myself to myself, since it was more economical; but I did strike up an acquaintance with Hugo Rogers, and sounded him out about my Himalayan Holidays. Mr Rogers and his associates (or bodyguards? he was never alone) listened disbelievingly. He was friendly in a cold way, but his answers to my questions were non-informative to the point of evasion. I did not at that time realize what being Borough President of Manhattan implied; and though I could have sorted out the meaning of 'the Democratic Party organization in New York County', I would never have known to shorten the name to 'Tammany'. Then the Ambassador heard that I had served in the 4th Gurkhas, and was kind enough to spend much of his time with me, talking about Nepal's future and Indian politics. Gandhi had been murdered the week before, and we agreed that the most important effect on India would be to leave Nehru without check or rival for as long as he lived. We were both worried by Mr Nehru's tendency to shoot from the hip, and by his absorption with Kashmir (he was a Kashmiri Brahmin), an absorption that had led him to try to enter Kashmir against the Maharajah's order, and get himself arrested at a time when he was supposed to be negotiating with the Cabinet Committee on the fate of India as a whole.

  He kindly introduced me to the Linlithgows, in the hope that they could do something for me in America; but the marquess was not a very forthcoming type, nor could I think of any favour to ask him — I certainly didn't want a job in a U.S. office of his bank — so after a somewhat stilted discussion round a small table, we parted, and I only saw them again at a distance.

  The days passed, cold in the shrieking wind on deck, cosy, somnolent and overfed below. On February 9 I got up well before dawn and went forward. Nine years, to the day, had passed since I last saw New York. I had sailed at night, the Manhattan gliding down the Hudson and I, alone by the rail, hungering for the banked lights of the city. Then I had been a tourist, and though I had had little money in my pocket I had been coming from a secure place, and knew I would return to it — the 4th Gurkhas, a career, a pensioned retirement — unless the bullets got me first. Now, in the last grey of night, the giant throb of the ship almost silenced as the Sandy Hook pilot clambered aboard, lights sparkling along a low lying coast to the north, I felt as I had when the battalion approached the shore of Iraq in 1941. I challenged the unseen land — friend or foe? Would it answer me with gifts, or with shot and shell? A cold wind whined among the forecastle derricks and I huddled deeper into my coat behind the glass of the promenade deck, peering forward.