Free Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey by John Masters Page A

dancing Gurkha jaunris on St Ives jetty one summer evening, as thousands cheered? How would they take a South Seas Fancy Dress Ball at Police Headquarters, no one allowed to wear more than two blades of grass? Or Sergeant's Wife Swopping (Compulsory) the first Tuesday of every month?
    With regret I tore up the cutting and put thoughts of Cornwall out of my head.
    'Then we must emigrate,' I said. 'What we want is simply not available in this country.'
    The beauty of England was real to me, and so was my love for it, but I had come to love India in much the same way, so I could obviously learn to love other places, once I got to know them. I said as much, but now it was in Barbara's eyes that I saw tears.
    I stopped short. 'What is it? Do you want to stay, so badly?'
    'No, no,' she said. 'We must emigrate... I've got to get the dinner ready.'
    'Wait.' I caught her hand. 'What...?' Then suddenly I understood. When she married me she had had to give up two children by her first marriage. Liz and Mike were now nine and seven, and were in England. As long as we stayed here there was hope of an accommodation with their father which would allow her to see them again.
    I took her in my arms and said, 'Let's approach Hugh again. I believe he's going abroad again, so he might let you have them.'
    She shook her head. 'It won't work... We'll see them some day. Meanwhile there's no point in risking Susan's and Martin's future on the off-chance that we might change Liz's and Mike's.' She kissed me. 'Go on. Work out where we ought to go, and we'll talk about it after dinner.'
    After talking that night, I started first with the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railway offices in London, to learn whether either had an opening for me. My reasoning was that each of those vast enterprises contained almost as many different parts as an army. Like an army, then, surely they must have a co-ordinating staff? I was wrong. They offered jobs — such as hammering spikes into ties in British Columbia — but no definite opportunities for advancement.
    The offices of the other dominions I passed without much hesitation. Many Indian Army officers were buying land in Kenya, but I did not want a 'colonial' life, and I thought Kenya would soon go the way of India, but with more violence. I dismissed Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa because although they all wanted British immigrants, they didn't want my type. Mechanics, skilled or professional men — yes. But not me. I have never had the smallest skill with my hands; and I lack the temperament, the desire, or the patience to grow things. I am a creator or a destroyer, a hunter or a guardian.
    I thought of trade. But in thirteen years of adulthood I had never succeeded in selling anything for more than I paid for it. Trade, even more surely than farming, was just not my métier.
    I wrote to David Niven, who had been a regular officer of the Highland Light Infantry, asking him if I could hope to land a job in movies. I added that I was not an actor, but thought I could do well at the production end.
    Niven replied very helpfully, saying it was really no use trying to plan things ahead in the U.S.A., especially in Hollywood. You had to go, find out, and sell yourself on the spot (as he had done, he did not add). Having been led to thinking of the movies, I tried the J. Arthur Rank organization in England, always on the same tack: I was a trained co-ordinator, I was trained to make decisions — right decisions. Surely somewhere in the civilian world an employer existed who realized that it was easier to teach a person such as me general technical ground work and basic principles, than to teach a long-time technician how to co-ordinate, and accept responsibility in fields other than his own?
    I was wrong again. No such person existed. Or if he did, he wasn't at the helm of Rank's, where a pretty secretary risked her job trying and failing to get me an interview with Mr John Davis, its head.
    Barbara