In the autumn of 1943, after the Germans and Italians had been driven out of Africa, a sense of frustration settled upon those troops who were still stationed in the Middle East. They developed a sense both of guilt and grievance. Their families and friends at home were living very different lives, subjected to different privations and to a different strain. Their own garrison life at the base was in many ways more comfortable. They thought that no one in Britain took any interest in them now they were not in action. They felt abandoned. They were afraid that when eventually they were repatriated, they would be treated as a kind of deserter, instead of being welcomed home as heroes. The letters M.E.F. were sneeringly held to stand for ‘Men England Forgot’.
Most soldiers returned with misgivings after long service in the Middle East. Myself I found on my return to London, that I had lost contact with my old friends. We had no longer the same community of interests. For four years they had travelled in one direction, I in another. There was a difference of eight years between us. In time, no doubt, those differences would have disappeared and a new base of shared experience would have been constructed. But within two months of my return, I went to New York. The life of New York had not changed during the war in the way that the life of London had, and I picked up easily the threads of my old friendships and soon made new ones. Later when I began to travel I found that my four years in the Middle East had given me a new sense of kinship with the administrators and businessmen whose careers had been based on foreign service. I felt that I was more qualified to describe their lives and problems than those of the contemporary Londoner. I arranged my life and writing in terms of travel.
My travels took me to the Caribbean, to the Seychelles and the Far East. At the start, I concentrated on travelogues and short stories, but recently I have needed a broader canvas and have written two long novels.
‘Circle of Deception’ is my last full-length short story. It was a lucky one for me. Written in March 1952, it was published in Esquire a year later. During that year my fortunes had reached their lowest ebb. I had worked steadily upon short stories. They weren’t any good. I did not sell one across the water. A novel by which I had set high store, though it did moderately well in England, flopped in the U.S.A. I wondered where I went from there. Then, to everyone’s surprise, Hollywood became excited about ‘Circle of Deception’. Twentieth Century Fox and M.G.M. bid against each other. Their bargaining left me with two years in the clear. I took a long slow breath, then started upon a long, fast novel.
Circle of Deception has taken a little while to reach the screen. The original script was unsatisfactory and it was made into a TV play in the U.S.A. starring Gene Tierney, Trevor Howard and John Williams. This version was shown as a fifty minutes’ supporting film at a few English cinemas during 1956. Sir Carol Reed then became interested in the story, and Nigel Balchin was asked to write a script. But Sir Carol, when he learnt of the TV version, threw in his hand. At the moment of writing (August 1960) it is being shot at Walton-on-Thames, starring the exquisite Susy Parker.
This film, which will presumably have been released before this book appears, is based upon Nigel Balchin’s script. Authors usually complain that film directors alter their plots and spoil their stories. I think Balchin has improved mine. He contrived a twist which I wish I had thought of myself. I was tempted to rewrite the story in terms of it, but in the end I came to feel that I had been able to put over the character of my heroine more intimately by telling her story in the first person; so I have let the original Esquire version stand.
The story went the round of English magazines for forty months before it found a purchaser. Editors said ‘Our women readers will be horrified at the idea that anything like this could happen to a man of theirs.’ I have been asked if it was based on actual experience. It very definitely was not. During the Second War I worked for three years in Military Intelligence in the Middle East, but I was not Baker Street or Broadway, and the cloak-and-dagger boys will know what I mean by that. I was employed in Defensive Security; but in a remote outpost like Baghdad where we all knew each other, I got a glimpse into what was being done in other branches. I think something like this could have happened. I do not say it did. I hope it didn’t. But it might have done. War is not a tea-party on a rectory lawn.