LONDON LETTER
EXILE 'S RETURN
When we left New York at the end of October it was cold and
raining. My wife, by some premonition, already had flu, and the baby
was crying despondently, naggingly. I didn't blame him. The ship
was almost empty and a tiny knot of people huddled together for
warmth in the great shed of the pier. Everyone seemed bored and
speechless with the prolonged farewells. A pretty little blonde tried
waving her handkerchief at us, but no one joined in or replied. When
the ship pulled out the little crowd dutifully trailed down the shed
to the end of the pier, where they stood in the rain, watching us
mournfully. The ship's radio was playing "It's a Long Way to Tip–
perary" and "Over There." But what Expeditionary Force we belonged
to was not clear.
Yet it is surprising what a pleasure it is to arrive home, even
despite yourself. Everything suddenly becomes unexciting, accustomed
and, since this is England, easy. Suddenly, the pressure is off. England
must be the easiest, gentlest country in the world to return to. The
barmaid on the tender that took us off at Plymouth, who served tea,
called everyone "Dearie," and proclaimed incredulously that Arsenal
was head of the League; the depressed clerk at the exchange desk
who immediately ran out of money and sadly left us to queue for
half an hour- the first queue I had been in for fourteen months; the
slow policemen who bullied us mildly from one official to another;
the customs officer, red face and naval uniform like a W. W. Jacobs
salt, who took one flabbergasted look at our vast mound of luggage,
at the crying baby and my wife still peaked and wan with the flu, and
let us through with his condolences; they all had that gently avuncular
air that is the last legacy of the British raj. It has been immortalized
by
The Times
which unfailingly maintains the placidity of a long,
not very newsy letter from some maiden aunt with clerical connections
(it is odd that the only consistently witty writing in that paper should
be in the columns of the two Jamesian stylists who deal with the
cricket and rugger).
Surprising, too, in another way, how immediately pretty and sooth-
