In the autumn we moved to the lower half of an isolated house on a hillside, whose wide terrace above groves of lemon and orange trees gave an unimpeded view over the town and across to the escarpment of Puig Mayor. Four stray cats attached themselves to the paved area around our back door, and were fed when there was anything to spare.
A poem ‘Left as One Dead’ was published in Outposts by Howard Sergeant, and in October ‘The Match’ was finally printed in Carre-four in Paris, though a copy never reached me. Some of Ruth’s poems appeared in the Hudson Review. I started a novel at the beginning of November called Mr Allen’s Island, and finished the first draft of 60,000 words in seven weeks. The story was about the reported sighting of an island near the sensitively strategic Bering Straits, an area notorious for mist and fog. The whole thing was a hoax, perpetrated by Mr Allen, an eccentric millionaire and practical joker, who was only too successful in convincing the world of the island’s reality. In the last chapter the Soviet and United States navies are heading for the non-existent island to claim sovereignty, and become embroiled in a battle for possession which marks the outbreak of the Third World War.
The novel came from my fascination with geography, world politics and warfare, and the extent of my enjoyment in writing it can best be gauged by the slapdash verve of its style and narration. On showing the final typed copy to Robert Graves his response was: ‘Why don’t you write something set in Nottingham? That’s the place you know best.’
Chapter Thirty-one
Mr Allen’s Island went to Rosica Colin on 4 February 1955, and was promptly turned down by an editor, though he (or she) had still to give a decision on The General’s Dilemma. Hope was raised later in the month when a publisher who liked Letters from Malaya thought that even more story would improve it, so I added sixty pages to increase still further the presence of Mimi the Chinese girl. The sixth and what was to be the final version was posted to London in April.
I then began writing The Palisade, a novel which used my RAF hospital experience, about a young man who, though seriously ill, decides to leave the hospital without further treatment. He is the son of a prosperous Lincolnshire farmer, and the nurse who deserts the Service to go with him comes from an ordinary family in Birmingham. They eventually marry, and leave England to live in a place much like Menton. By the end the man is close to a death brought on by the woman’s callous infidelities, and a suicidal carelessness on his part with regard to his illness. The typescript was 300 pages long and, in the earlier hospital chapters at least, I thought the quality of the writing was as good as any I had done so far.
Harry Fainlight, Ruth’s brother, and some Israeli friends from Cambridge came to visit us during the Easter vacation, and we decided to celebrate the homely ritual of Passover. The problem, however, was how to obtain the unleavened bread said to have been hurriedly eaten by the Israelites before fleeing from under the noses of their Egyptian overseers, but it was more or less solved when concocted on a griddle over our charcoal fire.
Every fortnight Ruth and I took the train to Palma so that I could have my pneumothorax refill at the tuberculosis clinic. We had lunch for eleven pesetas at the counter of a small eating place on the main avenue, grandiosely named ‘The Yatté Ritz’, and in the afternoon called on Robert and Beryl Graves at their weekday flat in the northern suburbs, where we talked, had tea, and often came away with borrowed books.
Robert was asked by a printer, publisher and writer in Palma, Luis Ripoll, to translate a book needed for the growing tourist readership, called Chopin’s Winter in Majorca. Robert, being too busy, recommended me as someone who would produce a fluent version. Though doubting that my Spanish was good enough, I agreed to do the job so as to earn the twenty-five pound fee. The 15,000-word book was wanted in a hurry and, with much assistance from a dictionary, I did 2,000 words a day, which left sufficient time before the deadline for revision, and translating the captions of the illustrations.
My Spanish identity card, issued by the General Security Headquarters in Palma, authorized me to live in Majorca for as long as I liked. In the application form my occupation was given as novelist, and beside the photograph, and of almost equal size, was the only fingerprint I have (so far) been asked for. This it was obligatory to provide, otherwise I would have had to relinquish my favoured expatriate life style.
My brother Brian came for three weeks in August, and his contribution to household expenses was helpful. We met Robin Marris, a Cambridge economics don, and his wife, who were on the island for their honeymoon, and the five of us went in Robin’s hired car to a bullfight. At Robert’s sixtieth birthday celebrations in Deya, scores of people, both local and foreign, assembled in the house and garden, where meat roasted on fires and there was champagne to help it down. Robert teased Brian about the antics he was undoubtedly getting up to in Nottingham — that sink of iniquity. Home-style entertainments included the old army game ‘O’Grady Says’, conducted by Robert, who later appeared in toga and laurel leaves to delight us with a simpering ‘Claudius’ act, prior to the concluding fireworks show.
Brian left me a suit before going back to Nottingham, which was rather in the ‘teddy boy’ style of the time, but looked smart enough after some minor tailoring. In return I gave him the handwritten draft of By What Road, both of us hoping it might one day be of some value.
The postman left our mail with the woman of a house on the main road, and one or both of us would goat-foot twice a day to the bottom of the hill to see if any was waiting for us. Most often there would be nothing, but letters from Rosica were always eagerly opened. In one I was informed that Mr Allen’s Island had been turned down. She had, however, sent it somewhere else, though she still thought Letters from Malaya would be the easiest to place. When it was rejected yet again she despatched it, with The General’s Dilemma, to another firm.
Jim Donovan, Elizabeth Trocchi, Ruth and myself set out at midnight with a basket of food, to walk to the monastery at Lluch. A fully risen moon lighted our way along the dusty lane out of Soller and through the silent village of Biniaraix. Up the winding and wooded ravine of Es Barranch the steps were just too far apart for easy progress, being made for donkeys rather than people.
From the zone of glistening olive trees we passed into pines and firs, stopping to drink and smoke by the descending water of an irrigation channel. Dully ringing bells sounded from scattering sheep as the path became something of a spiral staircase, but beyond the shuttered hunting lodge of L’Ofre, free of the ravine at last, we ascended zig-zag over loose stones.
Unfamiliar with the way to the monastery from the Soller direction, my rudimentary map brought us to the 900-metre contour line as first dawn was beginning to light the tableland of the Pla de Cuber. Gathering a few twigs and some grass we made a fire, and drank tea in the chill air with our breakfast of bread and spicy sausage.
The wide valley was as empty as if no human had ever been there, the main peak of the island rising behind the sheer flank of the Sierra de Cuber to our left. A lone figure coming towards us during the next hour of our walk turned out to be a woman well into her seventies, who introduced herself as Lady Shepherd. ‘And who might you be?’ she asked with endearing hauteur. We gave our names, and on hearing mine she exclaimed: ‘Oh! And are you one of the Edinburgh Sillitoes?’ The answer was no, and on we went, passing the untenanted farmhouse of Cuber, then in the increasing oven-heat of the morning resting our feet in the cold blue water of the Gorch Blau.