Francis Bacon in Your Blood (3 page)

‘Now why don't we have just a little port with the Stilton,' Bacon suggests, and at exactly the same moment the bouncer's head crashes forward on to the table.

‘He's passed out!' Denis cries out exultantly. ‘I thought he might. Our friend here has clearly been on one mighty bender for days and days.'

Once again, Deakin rolls his eyes, as if all the niceties of behaviour to which he is accustomed have been flung to the wind, and gazes over at me meaningfully.

Scenting trouble, two couples finishing their lunch behind us move discreetly to another table. Still smiling, the manager comes bustling over, visibly unfazed by such a minor fracas.

‘Had the one too many, has he, Francis?' he asks.

‘I'm afraid he has,' Bacon replies, with his hands outstretched. ‘I am most terribly sorry. I had simply no idea he was in what's called such an advanced state.'

‘Don't you worry, we'll soon have him right,' says the manager, and with Lucian's help he props the bouncer back in his chair and delicately peels off the fragments of smoked salmon sticking to his face. The bouncer's eyes open unseeingly for a moment then close again as he slumps to one side.

‘I don't really know who he is,' says Bacon. ‘He just always seems to be there whenever I go into the French so I thought I'd better ask him to join us. I'm not even sure what his name is. There it is,' he continues, with an apologetic chuckle towards me, ‘I suppose that's the kind of thing that happens when you lead the sort of gilded gutter life that I do, constantly surrounded by nothing but drunks, layabouts and crooks.'

‘I'm afraid it is,' Deakin intones solemnly. ‘I think it's what's called “the company she keeps”.'

Everyone laughs, the port is poured, the conversation gets under way again, but more slurringly now. Bacon begins to repeat some of the same phrases, with growing emphasis, as if someone were contradicting him. ‘The whole thing is so ridiculous.' But his guests seem to take no notice as they finish their cheese and savour the dark wine. ‘We might as well be absolutely brilliant.' Even Denis nods dutifully in approval at what he clearly accepts as self-evident truths. ‘Bar to bar, person to person.' Drunk as I've become, I want to make sure I don't outstay my welcome, even though no one else makes a move and it looks as if the talk might go on through the rest of the afternoon and into the night.
‘Moment to moment.' I get a rush of panic, not least because my glass has been filled once more to the brim and it occurs to me that, having got here and been so warmly embraced as the newcomer, the latest addition to the group, I may never get out again but be held there in ever-decreasing circles of words for ever. It feels as if all sense of time has been siphoned out of the air and replaced by repetition. ‘Drift and see.' The room, even the ring of faces round the table, is closing in. ‘Drift and see . . .' I'm desperate to leave, even a bit panicky, and decide I'll say I absolutely have to be back in Cambridge this evening. I'll thank my host very sincerely and ask him whether we might meet again to take the interview forward, but before I can struggle to my feet I realize Francis has turned towards me saying, ‘Dan Farson has opened this pub on the Isle of Dogs and he's got a party on there tonight so I thought we might have a little more of this port, it's really rather good, then get a taxi down to the East End. I don't know whether you're at all free this evening but there is something extraordinary about the people Dan manages to lure to his place, a kind of mixture of what they call villains and film stars. I took Bill Burroughs down there the other evening and I think he did actually find the whole thing quite curious. So if you've got nothing better to do why don't you come along, you might just find it amusing.'

I'd been eyeing the door as the only way out of this weird sensation of time circling and decreasing. But the very name of Bill Burroughs stops me in my tracks since at Easter I managed to smuggle Olympia Press's banned edition of
The Naked Lunch
in its murky green covers back from Paris and, quite apart from the jolt its experimental techniques deliver, the very fact I have it prominently displayed in my college room gives me undeniable status as someone in the vanguard, abreast of the radically and dangerously new. The idea of meeting Burroughs – and even being able to think of him as ‘Bill' rather than ‘William' – is astonishing, barely more probable and certainly more exciting than the suggestion that I might rub shoulders with Botticelli, or
even Michelangelo, whose
terribilità
makes him the Renaissance figure I'm most drawn to. But Bill Burroughs, as I suddenly feel empowered to think of him, has completely altered the way we think and write at this our very own point in time, just as Bacon is transforming the effects and future of painting and, even more importantly I'm beginning to sense, the way one feels about life itself. The 5.45pm back to Cambridge slips soundlessly away and I vaguely entertain the possibility of the milk train that I've heard leaves King's Cross towards dawn, since the last late train will no doubt be long gone by the time we get down to the Isle of Dogs, which sounds more like a moated penitentiary than a pub, have a few drinks and manage to get back into town.

I've never had this much to drink and so I'm pleased to see as we get up after punishing another bottle of port that I'm walking more or less normally, at least as far as I can make out, as well as feeling more confident and relaxed again. But John Deakin is insisting we go down to some wine cellar he knows and as Lucian slips off with barely a word I wish I could follow him, particularly since the sun's still shining, it's such a beautiful late afternoon you could be reading under a tree in the park, and when we get down to John's
cave
it's pitch black, apart from the candles guttering away on upturned barrels, and a sharp vinegary smell pervades the place. That doesn't stop John from ordering what he calls his favourite Côtes du Rhône or Francis from paying for it, with John acquiescing without a word since Francis says, ‘Look, I've got all this money on me, what's the point of having money if you can't buy things with it.' But when the wine comes Francis pronounces it ‘filthy' and pours his glass on to the ground and we all follow suit, and he orders a fancy-sounding vintage which I can see in the flickering candlelight from a list chalked up on the wall costs several times as much, and which Francis, whose mood seems to have swung, deems possibly corked and barely better. His breathing has become slightly wheezy and laboured.

‘I might live in squalor,' Francis confides in an undertone, ‘but I don't see why I have to drink filth. After all, even if what are
called one's friends have no taste,' and here he shoots a venomous glance at John, who flinches perceptibly, ‘I myself always want the best of everything, for myself and for my friends. I want the best food and wine I can get as well as the most excitement and the most interesting people around. The thing is I have known a few extraordinary people in my life,' he continues, waving a meaty hand towards the ceiling which seems to exclude present company, ‘people with real natural wit and who were tougher and more intelligent than me. And of course when you've known one or two people like that, most of the others just come across as weak and dreary, poor things,' he emphasizes, looking pointedly at John and Denis, but not I'm relieved to find at me, whose eye he catches now.

‘The thing is, Michael,' Francis says, ‘I have known just a few people like that, who thickened the texture of life and took you out of the banality of existence just for a moment, as I believe Velázquez must have done for Philip IV, brightened his existence by his wit and his talent just for a moment. But there it is, life is nothing but a finite series of moments, so the more intense they are the better. Perhaps that's why I don't sleep very much any more even though I have got all these pills to relax me. I can't see the point of relaxing or going to sleep. I could never relax on a beach, the way people do, and just doze. After all, I've got such a big sleep coming up, it's coming closer and closer, always closer and closer,' he adds with a laugh, ‘that there's no point in sleeping,
c'est pas la peine
. There it is. I decided early on that I wanted an extraordinary life, to go everywhere and meet everybody, even if I had to use everybody I met to get there. Life's like that. We all live off one another. You only have to look at the chop on your plate to see that. I expect that sounds pompous, it probably is pompous. But there it is. I've always bought my way through life,' Francis concludes, more exuberantly now, and pulling a ball of banknotes from his pocket he drops the price of another expensive bottle as a tip on to the wine barrel in front of us, ‘but then what else is money for?'

We get to our feet again, and I see John, as imperturbable now as before, eye the large tip greedily as we clump up the steps into the evening, dark into dark, and settle ourselves in a taxi crossing first the heart of the city then some of the grimmest areas of London I have ever seen, with deserted dark streets, low black bridges and the occasional half-reclaimed bombsite on either side, followed by a long trip through a virtual vacuum eerily lit by towering overhead sodium lamps. Francis has insisted I sit in comfort in the back with John Deakin and Denis Wirth-Miller while he has the jump-seat opposite; he clings to the strap overhead with both hands as if his life depends on it. Francis seems to seek out situations where he is worsted or punished. He didn't have to pay for John's bad wine or to leave such a huge tip for the little service it took to plonk two dubious bottles and some glasses down. It's like a sort of masochistic generosity, but I notice that it stops when he expresses opinions about other people which are harsh and apparently definitive. I'm glad to be on the right side of him and wonder if it will last once he gets to know me better and sees through me, as I'm sure he will, with those eyes that seem to pierce and take everything apart even when he's being friendly. I'm cheered, though, to have passed the test this far. We all sit in silence in the jolting, creaking cab for a while; even Denis has stopped talking, numbed by the accumulation of wine which hangs over us like a pall. Drink is our element now, I think confusedly, we have to live by its rules. I lapse into sleep for what I think is a couple of minutes and only wake up as the cab comes to a halt in front of a large, brightly lit building with ‘THE WATERMANS ARMS' announced in gold letters on a red ground running right around its top floor.

Inside is the biggest party I've ever seen. There's music and some couples dancing, but most people are just standing round with glasses in their hands talking and laughing. I see some attractive girls but they're all older than me and a bit intimidating in the eye-catching short skirts they're wearing. I'm also struck by how smooth many of the men look in their velvet jackets and
bright ruffled shirts. Nobody seems to mind my dull polo-neck sweater and I'm soon finding my feet (forget those old, cracked shoes) and feeling proud to be at the centre of a new world as Francis's new protégé with lots of fashionable chat and the feel of easy money flowing through the cavernous room. I vow to buy myself a shocking-pink shirt, which I've never seen anywhere in Cambridge, and I fall into conversation with someone in advertising, florid and middle-aged but still boyish-looking, who seems to be very interested in art and my opinions about this and that until he gets a funny look in his eyes and I feel he might be interested in me for the wrong reasons, clearly a lot of it going on here, and I move on, from group to group, exulting in my ease and not even minding being extravagantly propositioned, this one is suggesting I go on to another party, perfectly alright, people he knows, all I have to do is to stand naked and take the whip, a guinea a lash, just have to stand there, nothing to it, won't hurt because they'll probably want the plastic mac bit anyway, you know, breaks the blows but everything shows and flows, and he won't take no it's not something I've ever done for an answer, pursuing me round – fish to water, specially with the mac bit, marvellously handy for some extra cash – until I get back into the orbit of my protector, who's talking to a very manly-looking man with blond hair and bright-blue eyes. ‘Ah Michael,' Francis says, ‘I want you to meet our host Dan Farson, who's been telling me about some of the people who are in tonight. There are plenty of East End villains, of course, Dan has a soft spot for them, don't you, Dan, but more interestingly that man over there', I follow his eyes to where an elegant-looking middle-aged chap in a blazer and dark glasses is chatting to a couple of girls with pale powdered faces and impressive beehives, ‘is Stephen Ward, you know, who's at the centre of all this ridiculous scandal. Now that Profumo has gone I can't think he's got anywhere to hide. But to look at him just chatting those girls up you wouldn't think he had a care in the world. It's very interesting to watch people who are what's called in extreme situations.'

Having given me an inquisitive once-over, Dan says, ‘What I really want to know is where's Philby?' He moves on to greet some newly arrived guests and, chuckling, Francis says in a low voice, ‘You could say that Dan himself is in a kind of extreme situation the whole time. The last time I was here this East End tough told me he'd gone back to Dan's place for a drink and Dan said to him, “Excuse me, I just have to go upstairs to change,” and the next thing he knew, he says, “there's this manly man coming down the stairs in a fur coat with women's undies on like some great big fucking lady!” There it is, you never know about other people's sexuality, or their sexual fantasies, which are really interesting – often the most interesting things about them if you ever get them to tell you what they are. Dan is very strange in that way, because he really doesn't look what's called queer at all but he's queer through and through. You never know with people. They say Hemingway was probably queer, but that he didn't realize it or didn't want to accept it. It doesn't really matter what he was. What difference does it make? But what I did hate about him was the way he wanted to
appear
so masculine. It's the same with Norman Mailer. I've always thought that the way Mailer wears hair on his chest is just like a woman wearing pearls. I mean why is he so keen to convince everyone he's so masculine? Why, I wonder, does he feel he has to go to those lengths? After all, there's very little difference between the sexes if you really think about it. There it is. People try to emphasize the differences, I don't know why. Now I myself have always known I'm queer. There was never any question about it, right from the beginning I used to trail after my father's grooms. I was also attracted to my father, even though we never got on, but that's another story. Of course most people don't know what they are. They're just waiting for something to happen to them . . .'