My Father and Myself (21 page)

With this object, old Arthur said, he had had much fun in his time. Standing beside some “interesting” young man in a pub and getting into conversation with him about the football or the dogs, he would bring out his pin and ostentatiously excavate with its spiky end the dottle of his pipe, awaiting the query: “What have you got there?”, when he would pass it over for inspection and “interesting” developments might ensue. It was indeed by means of this trick that he brought my own defenses finally down, for I too said, “What have you got there?” and after that our cards, which the visiting policemen had already started to deal, were all on the table. But by this time, although he still carried his silver pin about for excavating his pipe, Arthur had become a timid and nervous old man, much preoccupied with his health (“Oh dear, isn't it awful to be old?”), and I doubt whether he did much more than stand about in the notorious Hammersmith urinals, of which there were several, hoping for a glimpse of something not made of silver.

That I don't remember when and how the link between my name and the Count de Gallatin's, both uncommon, was first established and my introduction to his portrait performed is not as surprising as it may appear. It certainly occurred before my father's death in 1929, but would not have made upon me any impression stronger than that of an odd coincidence. For it must be clearly understood that, excepting for a few unrelated facts, the story of my father's life as I have set it down here was not then in my head. It was only after his death, and long after his death, that I investigated it, so far as I could, and put it together. I knew he had started as a guardsman; I knew he had had two friends in his youth, and although I might have had to think twice to recall the name of Mr. Ashmore, the Count de Gallatin's, perhaps for snob reasons, had stuck in my mind. Vaguely I knew that there had been some unpleasantness between them which had terminated their friendship, though I could not have said what it was, and I was aware of his first marriage to Louise Burckhardt, some of whose ivory toilet things, with “Louise” engraved upon them, were still used by my mother. That was about the extent of my knowledge. When the ghosts of his past started prowling about me at No.6 Hammersmith Terrace shortly before he died, I knew little about his life and cared less.

There were two ghosts, one live and one dead. The dead ghost was the Count. So far as I recollect, Arthur asked me, soon after he managed to get at my ear, whether it could have been a relative of mine who, many years ago, had been a friend of his dear old friend the Count de Gallatin. Doubtless I said, “Why, yes, my father. He knew the Count de Gallatin when he was a young man,” and thus my formal introduction to the old gentleman of the portrait was effected. He had lived, it emerged, in a house just round the corner, No. 3 St. Peter's Square, which Arthur had found for him and helped him to move into from Belgravia after Mme. de Gallatin's death. There he was looked after by a man-servant, Tommy, and his faithful housekeeper, Miss Emily Lenfant, and there he had died in 1915. He had been for many years a regular visitor at No. 6, “Never missed a Sunday,” said old Arthur.

“Miss Emily,” as she was always referred to, was the living ghost, and I suspect that it was primarily through her memory rather than Arthur's that the link between the Count and myself was forged. A Catholic orphan of unknown parentage, she was taken as a child by Mme. de Gallatin from the convent orphanage in which she had been reared, given the name of Lenfant
(l'Enfant)
and employed in various capacities, as “help,” lady's maid, and finally housekeeper. She had known my father at The Hermitage, Old Windsor, over forty years ago. When Mme. de Gallatin died, she had continued to devote herself to the Count, until he too died, aged sixty-two, of fatty degeneration of the heart. A woman in the sixties now herself, she had remained on the friendliest terms with the Needhams, was a constant visitor to their house, and was to reside in it and look after the two brothers when Miss Louie died in 1930. It was not until then, the year after my father's death, that I was introduced to her.

It is probable, therefore, that speculation between Arthur and Miss Emily about a link between the new lodger (myself) and the Count began at No.6 directly after my arrival. Indeed there may have been no speculation at all; I don't know to what extent Miss Emily was in Mme. de Gallatin's and the Count's confidence, but some of the drama had passed before her very eyes, and it seems safe to assume that she would instantly have realized that the young Mr. Ackerley who had just rented Arthur's first-floor flat could be none other than the son of that other young Mr. Ackerley who broke the Count's heart in 1887 and joined Arthur Stockley (whom also she would have known) in Elders and Fyffes in 1892. In which case, she and old Arthur having easily worked me out, the form of his opening question to me was merely a diffident and tactful way of gaining information he already possessed —and passing it on to me. How galling therefore it must have been for the intrigued and excited old man to have to control his curiosity for so long, owing to my evasive tactics.

The cat out of the bag, his pent-up loquacity was also let loose and I was shown further relics of the Count, gifts and photographs, mostly signed, in which the mustache, though still waxed, did not turn up at the ends but proceeded on to a directer conclusion. I asked if he had ever spoken of my father, and Arthur said yes, once or twice, but “Oh dear me, you couldn't mention his name! The Count never forgave him for the way he treated him!” Old Arthur, it soon appeared, was a snob, and the words “the Count” were thereafter frequently on his lips, as also was the name of another noble friend of his, Lord Norton. This old gentleman I was once privileged to meet when I ran into him and Arthur promenading in the street, a spruce Nice figure with a silver-headed cane and a flower in his button-hole.

Later still I was being given to understand, with many a circumlocution, much tittering, and many fits of coughing, that of course his friend the Count had also been “that way,” “Oh my word, very much so.” This could not have surprised me greatly; I had already written off Lord Norton as another old queen, like Arthur himself, and since we all, as homosexuals, tended, as with any other persecuted group, to find our way into the closed and sympathetic society of our kind, I assumed that Arthur's bosom cronies were probably as “queer” as himself. But I was amused and questioned him: What was the Count like? Oh he was a charming man with a French accent, but (from my notebooks):

I already knew the Napoleon and was to get to know it better and to “carry on” there myself, though with more circumspection than the Count; it is a pub in Knight-bridge, not far from the Horseguards' Barracks, in which my father had once dwelt, a famous resort for picking up cavalrymen. At some point in these confidences I said jokingly to Arthur, “Do you suppose the Count ever tried anything on with my father?” This put him into such a delicious taking that his bronchials went wrong, and coughing and spluttering, “Oh my goodness the things you say! Good gracious me, you've quite took me breath away ... !” he hastened from the room.

Unhappily I made of these conversations with Arthur Needham very few notes. Though amused I was not interested enough and did not foresee how curious I should become later. But I find some other small jottings. He gave me a description of the interior of the Count's St. Peter's Square house at which, of course, he was a frequent visitor. The sitting-room, he recalled, contained a full-length portrait of Mme. de Gallatin, so painted and placed in an alcove that it gave the illusion that she was approaching through a curtained doorway and about to step down into the room between the ferns that had been carefully arranged to conceal the lower edge of the frame. The Count never kept photos or letters, said Arthur; there were certainly no visible relics of my father, “Good gracious no”; a snap or two of current soldiers might be found lying about, but the Count always tore them up when the soldiers let him down. “Dreadfully fat and ugly” in his last years, he was often to be seen in summer time on his veranda in the Square, sitting or parading up and down in a silk dressing-gown, much to the surprise and displeasure of his more conventional neighbors (“Goodness me, the Miss Hughes who lived on the corner, they were
always
complaining, they didn't think it at all
nice”)
, who would have been more surprised and displeased had they known what brought him out, which was to examine the tradesboys flying round the Square on their bicycles. When the war broke out, said Arthur, the Count used to take cigarettes to the wounded soldiers in some local hospital (“Oh yes, wherever soldiers were the Count was sure to be”); but his ill luck in friendship, begun by my father, apparently pursued him throughout his life; even Tommy, his ex-guardsman servant, let him down at last. “A young ‘so' man,” picked up by Arthur in a Hyde Park urinal and subsequently annexed by the Count, he instantly decamped after his master's death and almost before he was cold, with everything portable in the house he could lay hands on and vanished (“Oh, isn't it shocking!”). Having got through three fortunes in his life according to Arthur Stockley, the Count died worth £128. 0s. 4d., but he had also some property in America, and this and everything else that Tommy did not pinch was inherited by the faithful Miss Emily.

THIS STORY, DROPPED into my ears whenever Arthur could gain access to them, took some time to unfold, and so much longer to impress itself that I am vague now about dates and the sequence of events. I reached No.6, as I have said, in 1925, my father died in the autumn of 1929, it was not until at least half-way through that period that I was introduced to the portrait of the Count de Gallatin. How much of the scandalous information about him I received before my father died I don't recall, nor does it matter; had I had it all, as maybe I did, it would have made no difference to my thought and behavior. The story was odd, it was amusing, it had, so far as my father was concerned, absolutely no reality. It must be understood that he was at this time the father-figure I have described in my Chapters 8-10. The story of his double life was not yet disclosed, nor the story of his dealings with my mother, which came later; he was simply my old familiar dad, with his large top-heavy figure, his Elder Statesman look, his Edward VII hat, umbrella, and eternal cigar, his paunch, his mustache, his swivel eye, his jumps and his unsteady gait, his dull commuting, respectable life, his important business, his dreary office pals, and their eternal yarning about chaps putting their hands up girls' frocks (never into boys' flies)—it was difficult enough as I have said, to think of him in any amorous situation at all; to imagine him in the arms of another man was not possible. It must be added that, besides my ignorance of his history, I had not yet seen the photos of him as a young man which illustrate this book; they came into my hands years later from Uncle Denton and Stockley; the only early photo of him in the family album that I recollect was the New Brighton group on the lion-skin rug, an innocent looking affair, if only because there was safety in numbers.

Yes, Arthur Needham's prattlings were certainly odd; it was intriguing to know that my father had once had a close friend who had ended up—to use his own word—a bugger, and my friends and I joked about it together: “Do you suppose they went beddy-bye?”; but to give it serious consideration was another matter. An innocent explanation, after all, lay close at hand in my own young experience; the Count, like myself, may have started his emotional life (continuing it longer than I) by falling for young men whom he was unable to touch but worshipped from afar; his active and predatory homosexuality could have begun later. Indeed, so little thought, let alone suspicion, did I give to the relationship that I am vague now as to what I said to my father about the strange coincidence of my happening upon the Count's tracks. It would not have been easy to say much in any case to this old man with whom I had never had an intimate conversation and who never appeared to invite one, nor for that matter had I much to say, knowing little more about the Count than that he had started as a friend of my father's and ended as a friend of Arthur Needham's; to make insinuations about the latter association would have been out of the question, as also to appear suddenly and unprecedentedly interested in my father's past life. My recollection is that I mentioned, merely as an oddity, that my present landlord had known the Count de Gallatin who had lived and died round the corner from us in St. Peter's Square in 1915, and that no particular interest was evinced in this item of news. I remember asking what the Count had been like, and my father, picking his nose, replied, “A funny chap, a decent sort of fellow, most unfortunately jealous.” I believe I had the New Brighton photo with me—I had taken it to show to Arthur Needham—and asked what had happened to the fourth member of the group, Dudley Sykes. “He married and died,” said my father briefly, returning to his newspaper.