Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey by John Masters Page A

breasts in general. She had engineered a bra designed to hold, lift, divide, support, massage, and comfort all shapes and sizes of bosom. It also, she said, looked attractive, as that was important. America was the land of uplift. Why didn't I take a model of the magic bra with me and see if I couldn't interest someone in patenting and manufacturing it, she and I to share in the proceeds?
    I agreed. I was not quite so sure as the inventor about the bra's natural charm, but it would add another arrow to my quiver (if any metaphor can encompass conducted tours of the Garhwal Himalaya and a prosthetic bra).
    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