My Father and Myself (16 page)

As has already been indicated I was far from being the only person engaged in these activities; there was indeed considerable competition and as time passed I got to recognize some of my rivals well by sight. Standing at the various bars, with our token half-pints before us, waiting for the soldiers and sailors to appear, we would eye each other surreptitiously, perhaps registering the fact that, with so many eagles about, if any Ganymede did arrive we would have to work fast. A number of my own intellectual friends shared this taste of mine and might pop in; but it was tacitly understood that this was not a social gathering, like a cocktail party, but a serious occasion needing undistracted concentration, like stalking or chess. To speak to each other would have been a breach of etiquette; a nod or a wink might pass, then to the business in hand. Perhaps one would meet them again later, in some other pub, beating, like oneself, all the known coverts for the blue-jacketed or red-breasted game.... And as the years rolled by I saw these competitors of mine growing older and older, grayer and grayer and, catching sight of myself in the mirrors of saloon or public bars, would perceive that the same thing was happening to me, that I was becoming what guardsmen called an “old pouff,” and “old twank,” and that my chance of finding the Ideal Friend was, like my hair, thinning and receding. Most of my prejudices had now fallen by the way, nothing in the human scene any longer disgusted me (how heart-rending the cry of the pervert to his sexologist: “I want people to shit on my face, but even when I find them they are
never my
type”), dirt and disease worried me no more (though the state of my breath continued to do so for ever), I kept a stock of Blue Ointment handy for the elimination of crabs, and weathered a dose of anal clap without much fuss (anal, yes; I
assured
the young Grenadier that I was quite impenetrable, but he begged so hard to be allowed at any rate to try). I wanted nothing now but (the sad little wish) someone to love me. My last long emotional affair, in the torments and frustrations of which I wallowed for years, was with a deserter, who became frontally infected by a prostitute with the disease I have just mentioned. Confessing this to me when I was hoping to go to bed with him, he unbuttoned his flies to exhibit the proof, squeezing out the pus for my enlightenment. Twenty years earlier, I reflected, such a performance would have dished him for me for ever; now I saw it as one of the highest compliments I had ever been paid.

This account of my love life has taken me rather beyond my plan, but not much. I have continued it until long after my father's death, but it has a relevance to my business with him which will be evident in due course. Curiosity about myself has carried me somewhat further than I meant to go,
³
and to small result; however honestly we may wish to examine ourselves we can do no more than scratch the surface. The golliwog that lies within and bobs up to dishonor us in our unguarded moments is too clever to be caught when we want him—unless by others, to whom this superficial sketch of myself may be of value when I lie under another sort of sod.

1
. This animal, about whom I have written two books, has no place in this one, yet I have dedicated it to her, for reasons which may be found in the Appendix.

2
. Ejaculatio praecox. For a fuller discussion of this see Appendix.

3
. A note in the Appendix carries it still further and beyond the confines of this memoir.

HOW MUCH ABOUT my nature and behavior did my father perceive or guess ? It was a question that interested me only after his death when I could obtain no answer. He was a shrewd man and there must have been clues in plenty. Though I had a few women friends, usually married or lesbian, girls in my life were conspicuous for their absence. There had, it is true, been one in the early 'twenties with whom I was very thick; it was on her account that my mother, with her innuendoes and insinuations, earned her lecture on Otto Weininger, which should have been clue enough. An intellectual literary girl, met with during a short sojourn in Charlotte Street, an artists' colony in those days, where I was to be seen about in my carabiniero's black cloak, she became one of my constant companions and a frequent visitor to my Richmond home. She was far from being a pin-up girl and although my parents, in their thoughts, may have made the best of her as a prospective daughter-in-law, I am sure that neither of them was deeply disappointed when our friendship came to an abrupt end. I had not concealed from her my active homosexual predilections, which she seemed to accept easily enough at first; but as time passed she became increasingly carping and bitter about them: “Poor old Joe! You and your boys!” One evening she said, “I suppose it would disgust you to go to bed with me?” I said, “Yes.” A heroic conversation in its way, for we both uttered unflinching truths, though the heroism was more on her side than mine, for whereas she must have considered her question and the risk of it, I did not consider my reply at all, it was shocked out of me.

With her broad, heelless shoes, thick stockings, and rather scurfy, unwashed appearance, she belonged, I fancy, in my father's ideas, more to the category of “rum ducks” than to that of “plump little partridges”; rummer ducks than she were to be introduced by me into his house, literary, theatrical, musical and other folk, bachelors all. A constant visitor was a retired air-commodore, L. E. O. Charlton, with a charming young male companion, not quite of the same class, to whom he sometimes referred as his secretary, though one might have wondered why he should need one; there were also a young actor, who rendered my father momentarily speechless at dinner one evening by asking him, “Which do you think is my best profile, Mr. Ackerley”—turning his head from side to side—“this, or this?”; a brilliant talkative Irishman, of encyclopedic knowledge, with a thin, carefully curled, cylindrical fringe of a mustache and black paint round the lower lids of his eyes, which looked like mascara but was said to be an ointment for conjunctivitis, who arrived in a leather jacket with a leopard-skin collar and pointed purple suede shoes, and lectured my astonished father on the problem of the uneconomic banana skin; and an intellectual policeman. “Interesting chap,” said my father afterwards, adding, “It's the first time I've ever entertained a policeman at my table.”

Even before this I must have given him food for thought. There was a very early episode, the details of which have vanished from my mind; it concerned a boy I picked up in Shaftesbury Avenue and asked my father to help. The boy was good-looking and well-spoken, in poor health and out of work. Whether I went to bed with him I don't recall; doubtless something took place between us. My father consented to see him, liked him, gave him a job in one of his branches, and regretted it afterwards, I don't remember why. I fancy the boy turned out to be consumptive, he may have been idle or dishonest too; at any rate he gave my father trouble and had to be got rid of at last. A little later I tried the same thing on with the Corsican waiter of the Café de la Paix, whom I have mentioned. Soon after our return from Paris and the dog's turd, our butler gave notice, another had to be found and I suggested to my father, nervously through my mother, that this waiter might be given the job. He was a most attractive boy, we had all been affected by his charm and friendliness and made a point of reserving his table at the Café whenever we lunched or dined there; he had taken to us and it was known that he wanted to come to England to learn the language. It was not known, however, that on one of his afternoons off, I had taken him to a
louche
hotel where I had booked a bedroom: we had been corresponding since. But my father was highly vexed by the suggestion that he should be brought over to be our butler. “Certainly not!” he said, and added, “Joe and his waiter friends!”

As well as “waiter friends” and “rum ducks,” there were my writings.
The Prisoners of War
was published and performed in his lifetime, as I have said;
Hindoo Holiday
he read in typescript not long before he died. In neither of these works do “plump little partridges” abound, the emotional feeling is all between men and boys. Indeed, poor Mme. Louis, in the play, gets a flea in her ear which is gratefully remembered even today by elderly homosexuals.
Mme. Louis:
“You see, Captain Conrad, I hear you do not greatly care for the fair sex.”
Conrad:
“The fair sex? Which sex is that?” My recollection is that, although all my friends had read this play before its publication, my father had to ask if he might see it. Perhaps I was a little self-conscious, so far as he was concerned, about its homosexuality; perhaps I simply hadn't thought to include him. I gave it to him of course. When he had finished reading it he silently handed it back, and I had to request an opinion I felt I should not otherwise get. I expect he was shy and diffident, for the opinion, when it came, pleased me very much. Taking his cigar from his mouth in his rather deliberate way and carefully depositing the ash, he said, “Anyone should be proud to have written it.” I did not put him to the humiliation of asking permission to read
Hindoo Holiday
, but I was cautious enough, before handing it to him, to remove the conversation with Narayan in which the Maharajah's sexual behavior is made plain. Even so he smelt a rat, as I shall relate in a moment. All I am wanting to say here is that whatever sexual guilt I had to cope with in my subconscious mind I had none in my intellect; I thought, wrote, and spoke the love of man for man and, among my friends, even among some intelligent normal ones, made no bones about my activities. I have a letter from Lytton Strachey, whom I knew only slightly, which ends:

In short, I think I can say for myself that I was generally regarded as an open, truthful man, not secretive as my father turned out to be, and if ever he had evinced any curiosity about my private life I believe I would have told him, so long as he had questioned me in an intelligent way. But he never did, though a few opportunities occurred. He muffed one of them, I another. The former came some six months after my return from India, in 1924. On the boat out I had made friends with an Italian sailor of the lower deck, who slept two nights with me in my Bombay hotel before I went up country. We corresponded and agreed to meet again, in Turin where he lived, when opportunity presented itself. It came, as I saw it, awkwardly. I had, in fact, only just returned from Milan, where I had been seeking “on the spot” inspiration for my play about Sforza, when the summons to Turin came. This was in my most self-conscious period when I could write nothing and felt I was becoming a loafer in my father's eyes. It may be, too, though I find the episode hard to recollect, that fresh human interests had brewed meanwhile in England. At any rate I vacillated, I didn't want to go. This indeed was the very moment when that corrective friend of mine sent in his reproving shaft: “You are scared or bored by response.” More, possibly, because I was susceptible to criticism than because I wanted to go, I went. But since I was nervous about my situation with my father I persuaded this critical friend to conspire with me in a thumping lie. I was not going to Turin but to stay with him in his Weybridge home. Reluctantly he permitted this deception. Three or four days after I reached Turin (of which visit I remember nothing whatever) my father had a heart attack at table. Dr. Wadd, summoned by my mother—the occasion when her prompt action saved my father's life—dashed in with a hypodermic syringe of digitalis and jabbed it so hastily, though successfully, into the back of one of his hands that it raised a large lump which he kept to the end of his days. My mother wired to me in Weybridge: my friend there was not on the phone. Realizing that the game was up, he came over to Richmond and told her the truth. It was decided to keep it from my father and a wire was sent to me in Turin. I never got it, for I was already on my way home; I had suddenly recollected that my birthday was about to fall and foresaw muddlement between Richmond and Weybridge. I did not know of my father's illness, therefore, until I reached the house. Unfortunately there was something else I did not know; serious flooding had occurred in the Thames valley. I found my father recovering but still bed-ridden; he asked me at once whether the floods had held me up. I looked perfectly blank. Somehow we got round this for the moment, but I saw I had given myself away. I was upset about him, grieved to see him ill, remorseful for having lied to him. A day or two later, when he was better able to talk, I went to him and said, “I've got something to tell you, Dad. I lied to you about Weybridge. I didn't go there at all.” He said, “I know, old boy. I knew you were lying directly I asked you about the floods.” I said, “I went to Turin.” “Turin, eh?” he said. “That's rather farther,” and then, “I'm very sorry to have mucked up your plans.” This was sickening. I said, “I'm very sorry to have lied to you. I wouldn't have done so if you hadn't once said something about me and my waiter friends. But I don't really mind telling you. I went to meet a sailor friend....” But he interrupted me with “It's all right, old boy. I prefer not to know. So long as you enjoyed yourself, that's the main thing.” Thus did he close the door in my face. At that moment, perhaps through some guilty need to confess, I would, for better or for worse, have told him anything in the world.

The second opportunity occurred a couple of years later when he was reading the typescript of
Hindoo Holiday
. We were alone in the dining-room when he looked up at me and asked, “Was the Maharajah a bugger?” I wish I had said yes. I wonder how the conversation would have continued, if at all, from there. And I dislike lying, though I have got used to it now in the course of years. But he had chosen an unfortunate, for him typical, word. I was romantic about homosexuality then, “bugger” was a coarse, rude, objectionable word I did not care for and never used, except as a joke. I could not allow it to be applied to myself or my friends. I said no, and closed the door on him.