In 1941 Neville, living in America and unaware his mother in Barbados had been ill two years, had booked a month's vacation in Maine when a letter came from his brother in August saying their mother was dying and wanted all her children round her bed; he and his wife cancelled Maine, sailed the next midnight on the Argentina without passports, and he had to get papers from the U.S. Consul in Barbados — returning with duplicates of everything, which the man at the dock said he could be arrested for.