Read Fires of London (The Francis Bacon Mysteries) Online
Authors: Janice Law
Fires of London (The Francis Bacon Mysteries)
LONDON
JANICE LAW
To Jerry
Francis Bacon was a major twentieth-century British painter. He really did live with his old nanny and his ultra-respectable lover, and he did paint in Millais’s old studio. Some of his acquaintances make cameo appearances in this novel, and I have endeavored to be faithful to their personalities as well as to Bacon’s life and character. However, Bacon’s adventures with corpses, criminals, and cops are purely imaginary, and any resemblance there to persons living or dead is truly coincidental.
Chapter One
“Got a light?” I asked the bulky man silhouetted against the gray night sky and the faint glimmer of the Serpentine. His hand in his pocket, scritch of a match, then blue light fractured and illuminated blunt features, small dark eyes, a heavy brow ridge, and a certain brutality of expression that sent my heart pumping with the frisson of danger: better than I’d hoped. “Thanks.” Darkness again. I took a quick drag of the cigarette, risking my asthmatic lungs for courtesy. “Nice night.”
“Hard to see where you’re bloody going. You need eyes like a cat.”
“I’m surprised you don’t carry a torch.” Really I wasn’t. Darkness was the attraction; the blackout with all its dangers and inconveniences had opened possibilities for night fliers like yours truly and this stranger.
“Well, there are always folk about, aren’t there? Lights enough if you keep your eyes open.”
Something I always do. The dark shape of him, losing detail but distinct against the sky, would be hard to capture but infinitely suggestive. “These warm nights one wants to be out nonetheless.”
“Nonetheless,” came his echo. So we were in harmony. Playing with what chords was the only question. “It’s been a perfect summer.”
“Perfect.” Glorious weather on the edge of invasion, poison-gas attacks, and who knew what other terrors and disasters? An atmosphere I found exhilarating. “We might walk?”
He was agreeable. The splendid park trees loomed only yards away, and I smiled at the simplicity of it, not even the price of a drink between us. I smelled raw earth from the lawns and flower beds, potholed now for gun emplacements and trenches, trampled by military boots; the strong tobacco scent of my companion, who had something vaguely northern in his speech, a geography confirmed by a hint of coarse wool as the moist night dampened his tweed jacket. His voice was hoarse with pleasure and my body alive to everything and anything, the blood pounding in my ears, the tree bark rough against my hands, our frantic bodies.
I stood up, a moment to get a breath, then straightened my clothes. I started to say “We might meet again” when something stopped me. I like the rush of violence and frenzy, I do, but I’ve also developed a sense of self-preservation. Something whispered in my inner ear, Don’t talk to him. Leave.
He was a dark and silent shape against the sky. When I moved to step away, he grabbed me by the throat.
“You’ll say nothing,” he said, and slammed my head back against the tree, once, twice, before leaning close to me. I could feel his breath and saliva on my face and sensed the darkness in his eyes—all exciting but unwise. “You never saw me, you don’t know me. This never happened, you little bugger.”
I put my hand on his wrist. “Suit yourself, mate.” Voice calm; it never does to betray fear.
A beat, a hesitation, then he drew back, the hysterical anger replaced by something else, a sort of stupor. He did not move as I stepped away, and when, well down the path, I turned and looked, he was still a motionless darkness under the trees.
Afterward, I stopped by a pub, pushing through the blackout curtains to the yellow light, the bluish smoke, the possibility of some nightcap adventure. Excess is sometimes just my ticket, but I’d chosen poorly: A few fellows in uniform and several pale-faced boys on the lookout for trade—too young for me and doubtless with neither the cash nor the taste for Champagne.
So I ordered up solitude and consoled myself with weak beer, since my nan and I were on our uppers. I was enslaved to the switchboard of a third-rate London club, the habitat of dedicated swimmers who didn’t pay enough to keep me in paints, never mind Champagne or Nan’s chocs or the oysters we both enjoyed. Bangers and mash or baked beans had become our entrées of necessity, and Nan had pinched the last recognizable meat that graced our table. That’s how she phrased it:
graced our table
. Her former profession required a genteel turn of phrase that can conceal her realism, a quality I’ve appreciated since infancy. Oh, I was lucky in my nanny, for as long as my manners did her credit, she was willing to prepare me for the world as it is rather than as it should be—a circumstance that has saved me more than once and that shortly improved our finances.
It happened that I was having a rare evening in; to tell the truth it was pouring with rain. I was preparing to read out the crime news and the royal calendar my nan enjoys so much when I happened to run my eye down the personals column and laughed.
“I hope you’re not laughing at HRH’s visit to the shipyards,” she said. “He’s far better—far better, stutter and all—than the duke with that trollop Wallis Simpson.”
“Duchess of Windsor now,” I said, just to get a rise out of her.
“Duchess of Windsor my foot. I live to see her head off.” My dear nan regards capital punishment with almost indecent relish.
“I don’t think they’re going to bring back the headsman, Nan.”
“Country’d be a damn sight better off. Her with the fancy airs and graces and American on top of everything.”
“Though we wouldn’t have George the Sixth, if it hadn’t been for her.”
“You’re set to be naughty,” said Nan. “I can tell, whenever you turn logical. What’s up your sleeve this time?”
“I better have something,” I said. “Every butcher in the neighborhood’s going to be wise to you.”
She made a queer little sneezing “humph.” “I’m half blind. If I don’t see the counter, I sometimes find myself at the door. It’d be scandalous to send me to Holloway.”
“I don’t care to risk that. Listen, what do you think of this: ‘
Gentleman’s companion, complete discretion assured
.’”
“Ha,” said Nan. “I should think so.”
“Sort of a valet, you think?”
“Sort of a bum boy, if you ask me.”
“Nanny, you do surprise me.”
“I had a life before I was put to raising you, you know.”
I couldn’t help laughing.
“What?”
“But he’s advertising in the
Times
.”
“For the aura of respectability. The
Times
lends a certain air, doesn’t it?”
“That’s true. But Nanny, what do you think? Will he get any responses?”
“Is there only the one advert?”
“No, it seems to be a going thing. I’d never noticed.”
“
Gentlemanly gentleman’s companion
,” said Nan straightaway. “That’s what you put in. You’re a cultured man; a painter and decorator who speaks French like a Frog. Not that you want any truck with foreigners.”
I reminded her that I had pretty much learned “the way of the world,” as she liked to phrase it, as a boy on my own in Berlin and Paris.
“That was abroad,” said Nan. “This is England, dear boy. Certain standards apply. See you read me all the responses. Strictly Mayfair and the City is what you want. We might stretch as far as Chelsea, but nothing suburban. Remember that. You look for gentlemen from Mayfair. Nicer manners and apt to pay up better.”
You can see why I adore her. My old nanny can cut to the heart of a problem and find a practical solution. We composed an advert and within the week my career as a “gentleman’s companion” was launched with a small blizzard of letters. While my nan selected the most promising, I shined my shoes, whitened my teeth, painted up just enough—“skillful as any girl,” Nan always said—and set out to make our fortune. Luckily, given my tastes, the gentlemen in question weren’t always such gentlemen, but thanks to Nan’s insight, they all had cash. I even attracted an art lover, a real find, and with his support we managed a certain level of comfort—Chablis if not Champagne—and recognizable meat and boxes of chocolates for Nan and decent canvas and paints for me. Soon we were set, despite the blackout, the Phony War, rationing, and the ever-present possibility of arrest and prosecution to survive very nicely. Such felicity was too good to last. “Call no man fortunate until he is dead,” said the Greeks. They knew the score.
That’s the reason I read the Greeks, especially Aeschylus. I’d like to paint
à la Grec
, too—not classical faces and beaux arts torsos, but the fatalism, violence, and endurance of the ancients. Have I mentioned I’m ambitious? Oh, yes. Picasso showed the way with the distortion of his Dinard paintings, those figures writhing under the pressure of their own desires—and don’t I know about that! Nothing but distortion can convey the mad absurdity of contemporary life, an absurdity that was soon to be unmistakably confirmed for me. But at that precise moment, living with Nan and supported by Arnold—he’s the art lover, crazy about me and about my paintings, too—I was personally as content as I’m likely to be.
For one thing, I’d acquired a new passion—no, not Arnold, though I was fond of him, very fond, and Nan found him congenial, and we both liked his company. He was comfortable, reassuring, and solvent, but for passion, I need a touch of risk and torment such as painting provides and which, thanks to Arnold, I discovered roulette does too.
Soon he had me conversant with
le rouge
and
le noir
, with placing bets
en plein
or choosing to take a flutter with
carré, cheval,
or
traversale.
I took to the wheel wholeheartedly, and it was to keep in gambling funds that we embarked on a little roulette operation of our own. Strictly illegal,
naturellement
, with the possibility of disgrace, imprisonment, and other disasters adding a fillip to the excitement.
Arnold acquired a wheel, and I constructed a table with a painted surface where the punters could place their bets. We ordered cases of Champagne and brushed our suits. Arnold spread the word discretely and hired a few wide boys of our acquaintance to serve as lookouts. We kitted them up as housepainters and set them along the block. Soon the streets around the studio were crawling with limousines. Even the big studio I was renting was barely large enough for the crush, while my dear nan debuted as hat-check girl, keeper of the WC key, and collector of tips.
Oh, we had fine times, and the house made a tidy profit. We’d end our sessions with dawn coming, the three of us sitting on the studio’s moth-eaten velvet armchairs, drinking the last of the Champagne amid the litter of dirty glasses and cigarette butts, the piles of money and chips. Danger, chance, Champagne—all the necessities of life satisfactorily supplied!