The Land of Milk and Honey

All my life I have been addicted to travel. The process of GOING is sometimes just as exciting as arriving, in a new and unexplored country. These days the journeys one undertakes are, alas, frequently marred by long waits at airports, bad weather and strikes. Everyone does it, and sometimes it can be excruciatingly boring. But, forty years ago a long trip was something enjoyed by the privileged few, and the hazards involved were of a different nature. The world was a big place, and despite the lack of radio, modern medicine, the probability of shipwrecks and other disasters, those who encircled it were intrepid and romantic people. Although nothing this side of senility will ever stop me ``travelling hopefully'', I had experienced precious little in the way of it before the war made this great expedition necessary.

As children, we usually went to stay with a widowed aunt in Ireland during the summer. Apart from that, one holiday on the Lake of Annecy, another in Switzerland, and three months spent studying French in Paris were the extent of my wanderings. My father's concern for economy and my mother's health prevented us from venturing farther afield. It was rather disappointing particularly since, as a child, my bosom friend had a father who was enormously rich. They lived in the Canary Islands, had a home in Jamaica, and when they came to London always booked a suite in the Dorchester Hotel. Sometimes they invited me for tea there. My friend's beautiful mother was American, drank cocktails and wore furs right up to her chin. She had a face like hand-painted porcelain, and smelt delicious. I loved the aura of luxury which surrounded them. They spent nearly all the school holidays making journeys in big ships, and I used to persuade my friend to tell me stories about them by the hour, often inviting her, I suspect, to exaggerate wildly. I greatly envied her playing quoits and swimming in turquoise pools on deck, surrounded by tropical seas and putting into ports of unimaginable beauty. Her frequent visits to the legendary New York sounded fabulous. When she travelled in the newly launched Cunarder, the Queen Mary, I almost went mad with jealousy.

It was quite remarkable that in the space of a few years I found myself in this noble ship with that famous city as my destination. We were boarded from a launch, and as the vast hull towering above us emerged from the early-morning mist I could just make out the name of this grande dame of the ocean spelt out, none too clearly, on her war-time dress of sober grey paint. True, the floating city was fitted out for troop-carrying, but the first class decks on which we were accommodated were still recognizable from the pictures in the glossy brochure my childhood friend had given me. The walnut veneer on the handsome companionways had kept its sheen, making me think of whipped cream floating on coffee. The arcade of fashionable shops was still there too, but the luxurious wares they used to have on offer had been replaced by desks, typewriters and busy G.I's. Although our state-room had been stripped of beds and equipped with steel-framed berths, the spacious wardrobes in which Noel Coward could have hung his silk dressing gowns, and the art-deco mirrors conjuring up images of wealthy, famous ladies making up and spraying themselves with ``Chanel'', had me spell-bound. The impressive array of taps in the bathroom, offering a selection of fresh and salt water at varying temperatures, were all there to be admired even if they didn't work the way they used to. As for the meals, served in the broad acres of the dining saloon and prepared from American supplies - they were unlike any I had ever eaten.

In spite of zig-zagging across the Atlantic to escape the possible presence of German U-boats, and the frequent necessity of boat-drill in case we should be torpedoed, it was still a luxury cruise for me. My socialist convictions were clearly not going to survive the temptations that capitalism was about to corrupt me with.

Nearly everyone on board was either travelling on some essential mission or belonged to a family of those who were. There were a number of GI brides: women married to American servicemen who had already returned home. There were journalists, special envoys and officers of the allied forces. The lower decks were crammed with brawny young men serving with the Royal Air Force. Although passengers such as ourselves were not allowed to go that far down, I could see them leaning on the rails eating their meals, far less exciting than ours, from battered mess-tins.

Peter, who by this time was an alert and appealing child, made us many friends for the voyage. It is always amazing what good public relationship material a happy, smiling baby can be. I remember in particular a tall, dignified Chinese doctor who had escaped from the hands of the Japanese disguised as a coolie. He willingly and kindly advised me on a minor childish tummy upset. Peter also endeared himself to a British brigadier from the War Office by making a grab for his red tabs. This high-ranking gentleman had special dispensation from the Captain to smoke in his cabin, otherwise strictly forbidden. He also offered me a drink from a bottle of Scotch, carefully hidden in the bathroom because any ship carrying American forces was absolutely ``dry'', with nothing alcoholic allowed. There was a sad-looking girl from Czechoslovakia going to work for her embassy in Washington. She had lost her little boy from tetanus poisoning while making her escape to England. I also chanced to meet a haughty delegation from the Manchester Cotton Board who seemed too important to bother with a young woman and her child, but who deigned to have coffee with me when I mentioned my father's name.

Most impressive of all as a travelling companion was Professor Oliphant. This large, rosy-faced Australian had a halo of grey, wiry hair, and his spectacle frames looked as if they had been made of the same material. He was a key figure in the vital progress of the work leading to the development of the Atomic Bomb, but he was modest, genial and approachable. He loved children and their antics, and told me amusing tales about his own when they were that age. Peter he always referred to as ``the best behaved baby on board''. We put our clocks back an hour or so every night, and it was amazing how some of the small passengers took longer to adjust to this than today's youngsters take to cope with jet-lag.

We saw nothing from the deck but sea and horizon for five days, which was a novelty for someone who had seldom been beyond sight of land for more than a few hours. I was never bored for a second. Although still early March, it became suddenly sunny and warm one day, which indicated that we were not far from the Azores. I could barely sleep at night, such was my excitement at the prospect of seeing New York. I felt badly let down as we neared land and the weather turned dark and rainy. This was shattering and I almost wept. I had never envisaged anything but a cluster of brilliant white skyscrapers against an ultramarine sky as depicted in the Cunard posters. The Statue of Liberty and the tall Wall Street buildings were shrouded in drizzle. As we steamed up the Hudson River to dock at Pier Ninety, Manhattan didn't look so very different from Manchester. Later in the day I telephoned a friend of my mother who lived on Riverside Drive: ``You certainly brought your weather with you'', was her welcoming exclamation. That was adding the unfairest insult to the bitterest injury!

New York was hardly what I had expected. Having had my imagination fired by movies, I expected EVERYONE to look slick, smart and ready to break into a song and dance act. There was nothing great and white about Broadway. It was a dingy, wet thoroughfare with its traffic brought to a standstill by the St Patrick's Day Parade. I must admit that the yellow Desoto cab into which we were bundled looked a good deal more modern than a London taxi, but it let out several loud bangs and promptly broke down. As Oscar had gone ahead with Professor Oliphant and some of the luggage, I found myself on the sidewalk somewhere on Thirty-Seventh street. Those fantastic skyscrapers I had been dreaming about didn't look so good from where I stood, holding my hefty child with two even heftier suitcases at my feet. Was this really: ``New York, New York, a wonderful town''? If so, ``My hopes were high, but now they were down!''

What was worse, I had not one cent of American money in my purse. Eventually, after some explaining, another cab was stopped and we arrived, dispirited and disillusioned, at our hotel. The elevator which shot us up to the eighteenth floor was a bit more like what I had been led to expect, but the hotel had gone crazy. It was over-crowded and over-booked. St Patrick's Day had gone to the heads of the Irish maids, and our room was a shambles of discarded towels, drinking glasses and over-flowing ashtrays. That evening, after Peter had been fed and had settled down to sleep, Oscar and I went down to the ``first floor'' (I had to learn not to call it the ``ground floor'') in search of some dinner. The restaurant was full, and we were told to wait - unless, of course, we'd care to take a table in the night-club. Now, this might have been quite a way to celebrate our arrival in New York, but - much as I loved Old Ireland - I couldn't enjoy my arsenic-coloured ``Shamrock Chicken'' under a pea-green spotlight with the strains of ``Danny Boy'' deafening me from an electric organ. I was ill at ease, and had to keep leaving the table to ride up and down that elevator like a yo-yo to see whether my child was all right.

The next day the sun shone and my spirits rose. After making a few telephone calls to people I knew, and having one or two of them visit me, there seemed some hope of finding a few friends in what was beginning to feel like a strange, foreign city. I bought an elemental push-chair for Peter, but there is a limit to what can be done while coping with a heavy little boy who hadn't quite found his feet. I remained glued to the window trying to drink in the atmosphere outside. I could hear the ships' sirens blaring basso profundo from the river, but I was impatient to hear the other sounds, and - need I say? - to see the sights.

In the meantime I had to learn a new vocabulary. In those days American was a far cry from the language I was used to speaking. There were so many different customs and habits to be grappled with too. The first bit of trouble I ran into was getting Peter fed. In England, ``tea'' was a meal, the last in the day for small children. The grown-ups had dinner after the children had been put to bed. I had a few cans of baby-food and some rusks, but when I called room-service and asked for some milk I was told that the restaurant was closed for another hour. ``But I don't want a meal'', I protested, ``just a little milk for my baby's tea''. I was dumbfounded when, in answer to this pathetic plea, a large black porter presented himself at the door with a jug of hot water, a small bag of what looked like dust on the end of a string, and a tiny thimbleful of milk. My nice plump baby couldn't survive on that! Even at home the green rationbook for children under five had enabled me to get a pint most days. I thrust Peter at the poor man, and, begging him to mind the baby for just five minutes, threw on my coat, shot down in the elevator and out into the street. ``Excuse me,'' I stuttered to a bewildered passer-by, ``Can you tell me where I can buy a bottle of milk?'' ``A BOTTLE OF MILK?'' he repeated incredulously, scratching his chin, ``I guess they handle milk in there''. He pointed to a grocery store. I was used to a milkman delivering bottles to my door, or to buying them at dairy shops. I approached the counter and timidly enquired whether milk was available. ``Why yes, honey,'' beamed the grocer as he plonked a large cardboard box in front of me: ``Fifteen cents''. By this time I almost expected that peculiar container to explode with a bang, but it contained liquid right enough. What was more, when I got back to the hotel and opened it with shaking fingers over the bath tub, I realized that it really tasted just like milk.

That was my first lesson in American shopping. Later I was to revel in a variety of canned and packaged goods such as I had not feasted my eyes on for a long time, if ever: the butter, eight ounces at a time, dozens of eggs in boxes, ice-cream, Hershey's chocolate bars and, above all, oranges and lemons the like of which had disappeared from British markets some years before. Most unbelievable of all were the mountains of freshly whipped cream squirted out of dispensers all over pies and cakes in coffee shops and patisseries. Some time afterward, out West, I did experience a little difficulty in getting WHIPPING cream, but there was plenty in the bulbous tops of the bottles that the Golden State Company was still old-fashioned enough to deliver in electric trucks every second day. Of course, I had to be careful to avoid something called ``homogenized''. Occasionally the milkman informed me almost tearfully that there were only one dozen eggs for each customer that day. In England, even the unappetising powdered egg was rationed: we were lucky if we saw a whole egg in two weeks, and when we did it was seldom fresh.

Berkeley, California, was to be our eventual destination, but we were told that we could not expect to get a train reservation for our trip to the West Coast for at least two weeks. Transcontinental journeys were allotted on a system of priorities, and Oscar was still in a fairly junior position. That meant that we had to wait. I didn't mind in the least.

Within a few days our friends had helped me organise my life. My father's friend, Sir Norman Angel, had a secretary who offered accommodation in her apartment and could baby-sit some evenings, which made the problems of caring for Peter much easier. An old friend of my mother lectured me on American politics and institutions. A girl I had known before the war offered all sorts of advice on shopping, and helped me wield the push-chair. Although my funds were sparse we went to Stern's and Bloomingdale's. In Macy's on 34th Street I acquired a seersucker blouse, some disposable diapers and a folding baby-buggy. How much bigger everything seemed! A child's ``crib'' (another entry for my Anglo-American dictionary!) was far roomier than the cot Peter had slept in at home. Although I had never owned a refrigerator I had been envious of friends who possessed them. They now seemed microscopic in comparison with the gleaming white wardrobes Americans used. As for the cars straining to leave the traffic lights, they seemed like monsters ready to flatten you if you delayed an instant. We walked up and down Fifth Avenue and looked at Saks, Tiffany's and Lord and Taylor. My eyes came out of my head like organ stops.

The greatest welcome I had was from a lovely, honey-blond girl called Inga Grossmann. She was the fiancée of a friend in Manchester who had been best man at our wedding. Because of racial persecution they had both escaped from Berlin in the mid-thirties, but were separated when he got permission to study in England. She had later moved to New York with her family. They had planned to marry in October 1939, but the events of the previous month had put a stop to that. Their story seemed like a piece of romantic fiction, true though it was. A few months after the war ended, he contrived to arrange a business trip to New York with temporary papers - his naturalization not having come through - and married her four days after landing. It was more than six years since they had last seen each other, and they lived happily ever afterwards.

Meanwhile, Inga and her family gave me the best possible introduction anyone could have to the Big Apple. They were happy and courageous people. Having once enjoyed a prosperous and comfortable life in Germany, where the old man was a front-ranking surgeon, they had been forced to leave most of their money and goods behind. Nevertheless, they had settled down contentedly in what was then known as ``Das Vierte Reich'' (The Fourth Reich). Washington Heights on the northern tip of Manhattan Island was then occupied almost exclusively by German and Austrian professionals - ``gifts from Hitler'' - who were already serving and enriching their new country. Dr Grossmann had to take his medical examinations again in what was for him a foreign language, no easy feat for an elderly man. His wife just kept smiling and rejoicing in the fact that the family were safe and together. Her memory has always served as a shining example of how to behave when times are difficult. I wish I could always have followed it.

Mrs Grossmann's speciality was helping others to enjoy and benefit from New York, and we were no exception. She scooped up Peter and didn't mind how long she cared for him. She was determined that we were to make the most of our visit to the place that had become home to her. I was taken up the Empire State and RCA Buildings to see the dizzy panorama stretching out all around, and the tiny toy cars immediately beneath us. I was told I had to visit the Metropolitan and Modern Art Museums, the Frick Collection, and the Cloisters in Fort Trion Park, not far from their apartment. We went to the theatre to see Gershwin's ``Porgy and Bess'' which made me cry. We ate in interesting restaurants and together with other members of that enterprising family and their friends we went dancing in night clubs. We even heard the fat and famous Sophie Tucker, smothered in orchids and fox furs, at the ``Copacabana''. I was surprised that the ``last of the red hot mommas'' didn't sing. She let her accompanist play a phrase of the well-known melody, and then would rapidly recite the words as he embarked on the next. This technique, I was to learn subsequently, is often used by entertainers whose voices are no longer what they once were. The atmosphere was intoxicating. There was none of my father's puritanism in the entertainment arranged by Mrs Grossmann.

The city seemed to glow. I can't forget stepping out on to the sidewalk after a show and being invited for a drink by our friends. ``Isn't it a little late?'', I asked, having been nurtured in the land of licensing hours. Their laughter as they took me through the revolving doors of a brightly lit bar was so loud that the man in smart livery, who was busy rattling a silver cocktail-shaker high above his head, nearly dropped it. Memories of ``closing-time'', and of watery war-time beer, were soon drowned in ``Manhattans'', ``Sidecars'', ``Gimlets'', and an interesting whisky apparently called ``Ber-bon''. Only when I saw the bottle did I realize that it was named after French royalty.

Those first few weeks were not all culture and fun. There was a side to them that appalled me. I saw the incredible poverty of the Lower East Side, the dirt and squalor of Harlem, and the pathetic degradation of the drunks and ``Bowery Bums''. There were people sleeping on what warmth a subway grating could provide, and ragged children playing on empty parking lots. I caught a few glimpses of what life for an under-privileged immigrant could be like in their squalid rooms, with kitchen and washing facilities as sordid as anything in the Manchester slums. It was pathetic the way that newly washed clothes, hung out on lines operated by pulleys, were covered with soot before having a chance to dry. For those who had so recently escaped persecution the price of freedom was often high.

There was one advantage to life in that city, so sadly lacking there today, and that was safety. The subway train was neither comfortable nor quiet, but one could ride almost anywhere and at any time without fear. No-one had even thought of daubing the cars with bizarre graffiti. Central Park offered no hazards if one wanted to go for an extended walk, and it was possible for two young ladies to go to a movie and take a stroll in Times Square afterwards simply to look at the multi-coloured, fast-changing illuminations. The whirling advertisements, and the news headlines flashed high up on well-lit buildings, were a feast for the eyes after the English blackout, where not even the smallest chink of light was allowed to escape a building after dark for fear of the bombers overhead. No matter what pollution and the crime-rate have done to it since, I shall always see most of New York City through the rose-coloured spectacles of youth. Thanks to the generosity of the Grossmanns and their enthusiasm, the disappointments of my arrival were completely erased.

While inhaling a new atmosphere and drinking in the experience, there were formalities and plenty of documents to be attended to. I had to keep reminding myself that this was not merely a joy-ride. One day we had to make a trip to the Wall Street district. It was somewhere in one of those streets that look like crevasses between the cliffs of the skyscrapers either side that the British Supply Mission had its offices. There Oscar had to enrol for service with the Manhattan District which was the code-name on that side of the Atlantic for the organizations dealing with work on the Atomic Bomb. We also had to complete our immigration and residence applications.

It was here that I first met Professor (later Sir Rudolf) Peierls. He, too, was from Berlin, but had been living in Britain long enough for his naturalization to have arrived shortly after the beginning of the war. Little was I to know at the time what a tremendous influence he and his wife were to be in my life. They remained amongst my closest friends and mentors for the rest of their lives. How this was to come about will appear later, but at the time I was impressed by a man of outstanding gentleness, humour and integrity. In fact, it was Peierls, together with his colleague Otto Frisch, who before the war had shown it theoretically possible to construct an atomic bomb. Already, therefore, a distinguished theoretical physicist, he was shortly to move to Los Alamos where he made further contributions to weapon development. That work was eventually to lead to the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it was typical of him that he devoted a large part of his remaining life and energy to the Pugwash movement, in which scientists from many countries sought, and are continuing to seek, international agreement on nuclear disarmament.

Sharing the office with Rudi Peierls was Dr Klaus Fuchs, a pale, slender, pleasant-looking young man with round spectacles and a tidy dark suit. He had full, sensitive lips and, although still in his early thirties, his high forehead was just starting the transformation into a receding hairline. All I then knew about him was that he was yet another refugee from Germany who, like Oscar, but several months previously, had been granted British nationality speedily as a special case. My first impression of him was of failure to make contact. Everything I said, every attempted conversational opening, was greeted with benign silence. He didn't seem to find it necessary to make any reciprocal comment. It was like talking to a faintly smiling mask. Later I was to think of this as a challenge, but for the time being it struck me that he was abnormally shy. A flustered young woman trying to fill up forms sensibly, even though she has to abandon her efforts every two minutes to prevent her infant crawling into everything and creating havoc, normally evokes some sort of remark. Not from Fuchs: just a nod, a smile - and silence.

Eventually our reservations for the westward journey arrived. Troop movements all over the country meant that priority of accommodation on trains was reserved for senior military officers. The best we could expect was a ``section'' - an upper and lower berth discreetly curtained-off at night and converted into two seats during the day, one of many in a coach on a Southern Pacific train. We changed stations in Chicago, where one of my erstwhile employers met us. This was no miracle because he had been posted there by the British Ministry of Information, for which I had worked as his secretary. This was the scene of my first real quarrel in America. I inadvertently undertipped a porter, and the giant of an ebony-coloured ``Redcap' roared at me with a torrent of abuse, of which only the general trend was even vaguely comprehensible.

The rest of the train-ride was an education. I learnt that snow and heat mirages can be experienced during the same journey, that an inland lake can be so large that it has a horizon just as the sea has, and that the windows could not be opened because of something called air-conditioning. Some of our travelling companions were happy to answer all sorts of queries about the various States on our route. Others asked the most extraordinary questions. Notable amongst them was: ``Is England a democracy? - well, like on account of you have a king?'' Another: ``Can you speak all the European languages?'' Passing through various towns and States made me realize just what an effect the railroad had had on popular music. I was humming all the time, from ``I've got a girl in Kalamazoo'', to ``California, here I come''.

It was mostly prairie country until we crossed the Rocky Mountains, and sadly that happened at night. I remember clearly a long stop at Cheyenne, Wyoming, where the air tingled the nostrils and a totem pole stood out against a clear blue sky. We travelled through the almost never-ending chalky Great Salt Flats, near Salt Lake City in Utah, where Sir Malcolm Campbell had broken the land speed record. At Reno, Nevada, we could look at streets full of night-clubs with neon lights as bright and garish as anything in New York. (This city was the precursor of Las Vegas in gambling, quick divorce, vice and general wickedness.) Once, we only just got back to the train in time to prevent the sleeping Peter from continuing the journey alone. Sometimes, with hindsight, I am quite ashamed of my irresponsibility as a parent. Despite this carelessness, my children have been reasonably easy to bring up and have turned into very successful adults.

Later I was to cross the USA by road twice, and many, many times by air; but for someone who had never been further than a small corner of Europe, the experience was as large as the prairies and deserts we travelled through.

Our arrival at Berkeley, one morning before it was light, was auspicious. The air was warm, and I could smell the eucalyptus trees that I was to get to know so well. Best of all, the kindly Professor Oliphant, his wiry fuzz all ruffled, had risen in the middle of the night in order to come to the ``depot'' to meet us with a car. He informed us that he had a house for us, and dropped us there for a good rest before turning up later to show us something of the area in which we were to live. When he returned, he was accompanied by a spare, sharp-featured man with rumpled, greying hair. Herbert Skinner was to become another very close friend, one who until his untimely death always showed me great kindness. We drove round Berkeley and got our first glimpse of the University of California. There was quite a lot of space between its buildings then. I had never heard the word ``campus'' before, but I knew I was going to love the green grass, the flowers and trees surrounding the tall white campanile from which real tunes were played on an amplified glockenspiel every hour.

We crossed over Bay Bridge to San Francisco. I could not imagine how a bridge could be so long. It was pointed out to me that half of it was ``suspension'' and half ``girder''. I could see that it was really two bridges, with the small Goat Island, or Yerba Buena, separating them. Beside it was the artificial ``Treasure Island'' recently constructed on immense supports sunk into the ocean bed. It had been built for a great exhibition, but was now a busy naval base. In the middle of the Bay I was shown Alcatraz Island - ``The Rock'' - that grim penitentiary for the most desperate and violent of criminals, so heavily guarded by lookout posts and deep water that only one man had ever managed to escape. It was in full use then; now it is no more than a gruesome museum.

Finally, we drove into San Francisco, another city I was to learn to love. But for the moment I was mesmerized by the inclines of the streets, so steep that the front door of one house would be level with the upstairs window of its neighbour, and by the clanging cable-cars that seemed to defy the laws of gravity as they clung to those dizzy slopes; and, in the distance, by the graceful red lines of the Golden Gate Bridge which guarded the Bay from the immense Pacific Ocean.

When we returned to the house I made a cup of tea. There was a whistling kettle, and the gas stove didn't need a match to light it. I opened the heavy door of the enormous refrigerator, which had a handle like a giant lever, and got out the milk so thoughtfully provided, along with a stack of other supplies. I noticed the electric mixer and the fully automatic washing machine, and wondered what it would feel like to use them. Everything was so fresh and shiny, and in mint condition. The frilly, muslin curtains on the window beside the sink were crisp and spotless. ``Tomorrow'', I said, ``is Peter's birthday. I shall make a cake.'' ``Are you going to be ONE?'' Professor Oliphant picked him up and threw him in the air in a way that produced a torrent of delighted chuckles. Then his face turned solemn as he spoke to Oscar: ``I have a pretty stiff programme for you, Buneman. This is just a little sugar before the castor oil.''