Ruthless (6 page)

By late April 1971, I had been at St. Hill for nearly two months and had completed everything I came to do. My time there really changed me. I was getting ready to head back to the United States. On a clear, crisp spring day I was walking outside with one of the organization's staff members. I told her, “I'm going to bring my whole family back with me next year.” She thought that would be great. We parted and I began to walk away. All of a sudden snow began to fall out of a clear blue sky. It was truly bizarre. I turned back to her and she just shrugged her shoulders. Maybe that happens every once in a while in
England—who
knows?—but I certainly had never seen anything like it.

Eight

David Goes to England

My life seemed unfettered to me as I traveled back home. That is the best word I can think of to describe it,
unfettered.
I did not seem to have any inhibitions. I became more willing to do just about anything. It wasn't as though I turned from Casper Milquetoast into Superman, but I was less troubled by things. Emotionally, I was freer. Outwardly I may not have looked much different. Inwardly, subjectively, I felt different and it was definitely for the better, more than worth the investment I had made in time and money. By then I probably had spent about $5,000, which is a pittance compared to what dedicated Scientologists have to pay today.

My relationships with people were always good, save for my marriage to Loretta. On the way back from the airport, I had to switch from driving on the
left-hand
side of the road to the
right-hand
side, and this became a little irritating. My frustration leaked out and Loretta remarked, “I thought that when you went Clear, you would be nicer.”

I let it drop. In fact, I have always been extroverted and Scientology only made me more so. I also would not back down from a confrontation if I was not in the wrong. That's how I was and Loretta knew it. Scientology had not made me more aggressive; if anything, I became less confrontational because not much bothered me anymore. I was able to let stuff roll off my back, including Loretta's barbs.

Years later she said, “I always wanted to marry a conservative guy.” Wow, how much more wrong could she have gotten? Loretta mainly wanted to get married so she could have kids. Nothing at all wrong with that, and she was good with the kids, great even. She had a problem with me, something that her involvement with Scientology had no great effect on one way or the other.

I began making plans to take the whole family back to England the next year, but I had talked with Loretta about her going to St. Hill first, during the summer of 1971, just after I returned. I paid for her to take the courses I had just completed plus some even more advanced levels.

She was on board with the idea, and other Scientologists she knew were also headed over, so that June Loretta went to England to take her advanced courses. While she was away, I was working and taking care of our four kids. I thought it would be easier if I brought my mother down from Mount Carmel to help me. That was a mistake. With all due respect, looking after kids was not her strong suit.

One day, we painted the kitchen yellow with brown trim. David and the other kids helped. When we finished I asked, “Well, what do you think?”

They looked at it for a while and said, “Face it, Dad, it looks like crap.”

So I went back to the paint store and bought white paint, mixed in a little blue and got powder blue for the trim and we stayed up until 2:00 the next morning repainting the whole kitchen. The first attempt had barely dried and we were at it again. The kids stayed up and helped, and this time it looked great.

The next day I got more of the powder blue trim paint, and we painted our wooden kitchen table and chairs. I had the chairs drying in the living room and my mother sat on one that was still wet. At that point I said, “Mom, this isn't working. I'm taking you back home.”

Meanwhile, Loretta had not called once from England. I finally called her and asked, “How come you're not calling? How's it going? How was your auditing?”

“Oh, it was fine. It's good,” she said noncommittally.

I don't think Scientology ever had the same impact on her life as it had on mine. At one point she even suggested that we move back to Mount Carmel, which would have more or less meant leaving Scientology since there was no center in the town. The most important thing in my life in those days was Scientology. Still, Loretta remained active in Scientology for the rest of her life and ascended to the most advanced levels. In the early years, though, I think her main reason for participating, as I said earlier, was her hope that it would make me a better person.

Nevertheless, after school let out for the summer of 1972, the whole family went to East Grinstead. We were there for the next 15 months, until September 1973.

We had sold the house, and off we went with all our savings. To some extent it was a roll of the dice, but I looked at it as an adventure. I was searching for a way for me and my family to make more rapid progress through Scientology. It had improved my life radically, and I felt that it would be a good way for my kids to improve their chances for success too. When we left the United States, Ronnie was 15, Dave and Denise were 12, and Lori was 10. When I brought up the idea, they were all for it. Loretta was less enthusiastic, especially because the kids would miss a year of school while in England, but she agreed that it would be good for the family overall.

East Grinstead is a pretty little town with many historic buildings, about an hour's train ride south of London. We rented a house there. The owner's wife did such a thorough job of cleaning the place for us that she even emptied the salt and pepper shakers. When we arrived, we were starving, but there was not so much as a stale crust of bread to be found. It happened to be a bank holiday, so almost everything was closed, but fortunately we found an open sandwich shop. That was our welcome to East Grinstead.

I bought a car, an Austin Westminster, that was large enough to put all four kids in the back, so we could drive the mile or so from our house to St. Hill. I always bought cars from the same guy. I made several trips to England during the 1970s and always picked up a used car from him for 100 pounds or so, real cheap. One car had a hole in the floorboard, and you could watch the road going by as you drove.

The first Scientology service we all took was a study course. Then I did more advanced auditing services, while Loretta and the kids all began training to become Scientology practitioners, or auditors. In those days the place was packed. There must have been hundreds of people studying. Today I would be surprised if there were a fraction of that; press reports indicate that the 2011 British census found only 2,418
self-identifying
Scientologists across England and Wales.

Life in England was good for the whole family. On Friday nights, we usually went to a fish and chips shop for dinner. David, Denise and Ronnie became trained to audit people. Lori decided she wasn't interested, and we did not push her. She was the only child who was in school during that time. The others were doing Scientology training at St. Hill full
time—that
was their schooling. My view was that they would learn more of value by studying Scientology. This was a point of friction between Loretta and me because she thought the kids ought to be in school. The kids sided with me on this point, though, and we won out in the end.

Loretta, though perhaps not as engaged as the rest of us, still was actively studying on the same schedule. Her dream was to one day establish a Scientology center in the United States where the whole family could work and enjoy the togetherness she'd had with her family while she was growing up in Mount Carmel.

Meanwhile, David was enjoying his studies and doing well. He was not a troublemaker. In fact, he was a model student. He tried his best to do everything by the book. Also training at St. Hill at the time was a woman named Helen Whitney who ran a Scientology mission (a smaller version of a church that delivered introductory services) in New Jersey. One day she asked David to inspect a clay model she had made as part of a course assignment. Scientology is big on having students take a concept they have studied and model it in clay on the theory that it helps the student grasp the concept better by making it more real. For example, you could be asked to make a clay demonstration of the difference between a person and his mind. You might take some clay and mold it into a body several inches tall. You would then take a slip of paper and write
body
and stick the label on the figure. Then you might roll out a narrow ring with more clay and place this on your table so it surrounds the figure and label this new piece
mind.
Finally, you could take some smaller blobs of clay and place them inside the ring and label them
memory
to show what the mind contains. The basic idea is to make an idea more real by creating it in three dimensions. After a student makes the demonstration, another student or the course supervisor inspects it to see if it does in fact illustrate the concept.

At any rate, Helen asked David to check out her clay demonstration. David looked it over, studied it for a minute and pronounced, “Flunk.” This is what a student is supposed to say when the model does not clearly show the concept being demonstrated. Helen was taken aback and even came over to me and said, “I don't know what to say about David, but I don't know if he is in his right mind. He flunked my clay demo.”

“Oh, Helen, come on,” I replied. “Dave, are you going to back down on this?”

“No way I'm going back down. I don't see it in the demo.”

And that was that. He was fastidious about doing everything according to standards, which is the mantra hammered into every student: “One hundred percent Standard Tech [technology]. Be standard.” Standard, standard, standard. Dave bought into it wholeheartedly. A few years before, Scientology had cured his asthma, so he had a strong motivation to do things right. He took it seriously because he had personal experience with what a good application could do.

Another student was learning to use the
E-meter
. One of the drills consisted of calling off lists of various fruits, vegetables, dogs, types of flowers and such, and noting any reaction on the meter. The purpose was to gain practice in doing what is called an assessment, so that when it came time to do the real thing in an auditing session, the auditor could do it smoothly. Basically, an assessment is a procedure to help locate something to address in the auditing session. The auditor has a list of items that might cause the meter's needle to react. The theory is that, when the list is read aloud, the item that shows the greatest reaction is the one to address. The auditor simply calls off the first item on the list, notes whether the needle reacts and proceeds through the list until it becomes clear which item on the list should be taken up for discussion. Say a person is having problems with different people in his life. To identify the first person the auditee needs to address in the session, the auditor asks the person who he might be having trouble with, and he lists them: “Um, let's see . . . there's my father . . . my sister . . . my girlfriend, oh, yeah, my English professor . . . there's one of my roommates . . . and my mother. That's all I can think of.” These might cause a reaction as he thinks of them, but if uncertain, the auditor can then simply call off each item again and note the reaction. That is an assessment and how it is used in auditing.

This student, who was not a native English speaker, had the habit of mispronouncing the word
asparagus,
which was one of the practice items on a list of vegetables. He always mispronounced it
aspa-RA
-gus
.
We all heard him saying this in the course room, but David was the only one who pointed it out and told him how to say the word correctly. The guy really appreciated it. David was always determined to do everything correctly, chapter and verse, and help others do it that way too.

The course ended at about 5:00 p.m. each day, and then we usually shopped for food before the stores closed, went home and made dinner. After dinner we all just kind of hung out until it was time for bed. The next morning, we got up, ate breakfast and headed off to the course again. That pretty much describes our family life for the whole time we were at St. Hill.

When I reflect on that period, I can see it was a great time to be a Scientologist in England. As I said, the place was crowded. A grassy hillside opposite the church facilities was always filled at lunchtime with people enjoying a bite and chatting, spending time with their families or just relaxing in the sun (on a sunny day, that is). We usually went to the canteen to buy something to eat and sat out on the lush grass to enjoy our break.

A fabulous camaraderie existed among the people there. We shared a feeling that Scientology was something that was going to help everyone: the world, oneself, one's family, everybody. The expectations of what Scientology could do for people were really high. It infused the entire culture around St. Hill with a positive, hopeful atmosphere. Cottage industries sprung up that manufactured leather or wooden cases to put your
E-meter
and study materials in. People were contributing to the movement because they wanted to, not because they were being badgered or shamed into it, as they are today.

People regularly dropped in at our house for a meal or simply to talk. Our door was always open and anybody was welcome. It was very
laissez-faire
living and really wonderful.

We loved going into the shops in town. The store owners definitely appreciated the extra business that Scientologists brought to East Grinstead. One time I went into WHSmith, a bookshop, to look for a particular dictionary. Hubbard placed a lot of emphasis on knowing the meanings of words you encountered in your studies, so students were always buying dictionaries. I asked the shopkeeper for the dictionary that was currently in favor around St. Hill. He said with some consternation, “Hold on, you mean you don't want the
World Book Dictionary?
Will you people please make up your minds? I've got a roomful of them in the back.”

Everything about East Grinstead was different and quaint. I loved the place. Another time I went into a grocery store and asked for aluminum foil. “We don't do that,” I was told. For some reason I had to go back to Smith's to buy aluminum foil! Go figure.

Housewives shopped daily for ingredients. You'd see them out pushing their perambulators, their babies' cheeks a healthy red from the chill. You could go into a store and buy a quarter of a cucumber.