My Father and Myself by J.R. Ackerley Page B

seeing Masefield’s Nan , telling him it was a comedy, and he was wary of me afterwards. He went to the first night of the 300 Club’s presentation of my own play The Prisoners of War , harrowing enough in all conscience, but would not join my party. He took a ticket all by himself at the back of the dress circle so that he could get out quickly and unseen. He had already read the play and knew what he was in for. The Palladium and the Tivoli, where he could have a good laugh and an eyeful of chorus girls, were his mark, Sexton Blake his favorite reading. To finish him up, his manners were always courteous, he was kind. He had very beautiful large hands, and the only lack of refinement I remember in him was an unconscious habit he had, while reading his newspaper in his armchair, of picking his nose abstractedly and rolling the little bit of snot between his thumb and forefinger.
    The cast in my father’s eye was caused by pain. 1 He was in pain so frequently during the ’twenties that it has become, in my recollection of him, almost a part of his personality. We knew it as neuritis; he usually referred to it as his “jumps,” “twinges,” or “twitches.” It was not a continuous pain, I think, unless it was always with him in, so to speak, a lurking way. At any rate there were periods, days at a time, when he seemed free from it. But in the course of years it became more frequent. It might arrive at any moment and he knew when it was coming. Sometimes it was mild, sometimes it was agony. It attacked him everywhere, but its favorite seat, oddly enough considering its effect upon him when it was bad, was in the basic joints of his little fingers. It was the commonest thing to see him, every ten minutes or so when his “jumps” were on him, suddenly grip this finger with his unaffected hand and, hanging on to it, shake all over for a moment until the spasm passed—so common indeed that in course of time we scarcely noticed it unless it was particularly bad. Then he could not hide it or stifle exclamations of pain. He might be presiding over the dinner-table in his usual genial, debonair manner when, with a “Damn” or “Drat the thing,” he would drop his carving knife or fork and vigorously chafe the offending digit, while a profuse perspiration would break out on the brow of this huge man momentarily mastered by a pain in his little finger. I asked him once what the pain was like; he said it was as though a red-hot needle had been jabbed deep into the very bone. Yet he never complained, never spoke of his “jumps” unless asked, and never, except for the occasional curses involuntarily wrung from him, allowed the agony he was plainly enduring to interrupt for more than a moment whatever he was saying. My notebooks give me the following conversation:
    Myself (to my father who has come down to breakfast a little late): How are you?
    My father: Rotten night.
    Myself: Your jumps again?
    My father: Yes. All night.
    Myself: Where?
    My father (indicating the region of the heart): Here. But it’s nothing much. Only a nerve. Damned annoying though. (He moves unsteadily over to the barometer to study the day’s weather.) Did I tell you that story Bilson told me the other day? There was a fellow walking down the street when he saw a pretty girl—Ah! damn you! Why can’t you let up?—in a very short dress bending down to adjust her garter. So as he passed he put his hand up under her skirt between her legs. She was furious at this. “How dare you!” she said, but he passed on with a—Crikey! — a smile. So she called a policeman. “Constable!” she said. “Arrest that man! He’s insulted me!” “What’s he done?” asked the policeman. She told him. “Well,” said the policeman, “I’m afraid the evidence isn’t sufficient. You’ll—Oh, drat the thing!—You’ll