Francis Bacon in Your Blood (31 page)

My father may be a manic depressive, but he's not clinically mad and he's very far from being stupid. At University in the mid-1930s he got the top First of his year (compared to my miserable 2:2), and he can marshal facts or solve a crossword with impressive accuracy. But he has just staged one of the weirdest acts I've ever come across. There were about a dozen of us seated in a ring around the huge armchair he now seems welded to in the living room, with its dispiritingly low, beamed ceiling and smoke-blackened inglenook fireplace. On the tacit but quite unfounded assumption that everyone in the room was bound by a deep sense of family unity, my father spoke without pause for a good three hours, weaving a monologue that went from the stockpot that Nana, his French mother, kept going all year in the Clarges Street kitchen through the anti-Mosleyite street fights in which he and his brothers had been involved to his first major breakdown, triggered by the poverty he had witnessed in Italy immediately after the war, and his present battle with depression (‘I have seen the signs of it perpetuated in my own children,' he remarked oracularly, fixing his curiously brown-flecked grey-green eyes on me). Eventually, having gulped down the gin-and-tonics my mother handed around (no mention having been made of my father's parallel battle with the bottle), we were allowed to leave on the pre-arranged transportation and resume our lives, none of us
much the wiser about the reasons why my father had launched into this Lear-like exposition suggesting (as Shakespeare had put it so succinctly but my father had not) that he was more sinned against than sinning.

I've left enough time in London to catch up with some old friends, and I'm really looking forward to it after being exposed to my father's bizarre monologue. Francis has suggested lunch and we meet at a trattoria that's opened on Romilly Street. I sense right away that his mood has changed since we were in Narrow Street. I've seen these swings in him before (my father's clearly not the only one) and realize that the best way to deal with them is to stay at a remove and wait till they blow over. We have a mediocre meal, which does nothing to improve Francis's humour, then start on the clubs. Wherever we go, Francis makes sweeping statements, delivered on hands held out flat and unanswerable, about anything that comes up.

‘I hope,' someone begins.

‘There's no hope,' Francis counters, ‘because there's nothing to hope for. We live and we die and that's it. Can't you see? When I die, I just want to be put in a body bag and thrown into the gutter.'

‘It's a mug's game,' someone else beside the bar says, ‘whether you're going for the horses or the tables.'

‘I don't go for anything,' Francis retorts. ‘I can't think what you're saying. Can't you see, you stupid cunt, there's nothing worth going for?'

Time seems to have flattened out again into a slowly revolving plane where only the same drinks and the same phrases recur. With no noticeable transition we are sitting in another room now with two women who seem familiar. We may have met at the Colony Room, and I know one of them is the dress designer Thea Porter but I can't remember which one. I have a vague inkling that the smaller of the two is making a play for me. It amuses me but sagely I put it down to the drink.

Then I realize we're in a restaurant, but I'm fairly sure no one else has noticed. Certainly none of us can be hungry.

Menus are propped up against the decorative Chianti flask in the middle of the table.

‘I've no idea what I want,' Francis says flatly.

‘There's Parma ham,' I venture.

‘I hate Parma ham.'

‘Or grilled sardines.'

‘I loathe sardines. I simply loathe them,' Francis says with venom. ‘What I'd love really is a boiled egg. Something absolutely simple and delicious. But of course they're far too grand here to have anything that ordinary. In any case, I doubt we'll ever get served.'

‘
Buona sera, signori
,' a waiter says, stepping up briskly.

‘I was just wondering whether I could have something absolutely simple like a watercress salad,' Francis says to him challengingly.

‘Water salad?' the waiter says blankly.

‘Watercress,' Francis repeats. He is wheezing and clearly having trouble breathing. ‘My friend here speaks more languages than exist. I'm sure he knows the Italian for watercress.'

‘
Cressone
,' I say on the spur of the moment.
‘Una insalata di cressone dell'acqua.
'

‘
Si, si
,' says the waiter whom I'm beginning to suspect is more North African than Italian. ‘Tonight we have not.'

‘Well, perhaps we might at least have a little red wine while we're making up our minds.'

‘
Subito, signori
.'

‘He's exactly like a waiter in a novel,' the smaller woman suggests.

‘The thing is, I hate novels,' Francis says emphatically.

‘Well, there are some,' the woman says hesitantly. ‘I mean there's Lowry's
Under the Volcano
, for instance.'

‘I saw nothing in it,' Francis says, sweeping his hand flat and hard over the tablecloth. ‘I know all about that life. I don't have to read novels about it.'

‘That doesn't mean there's nothing in it,' I say. I feel I should come to her rescue, and I'm gratified when she shoots me a meaningful look.

Then I realize Francis is staring at me malevolently.

‘It doesn't go far enough. D'you see? You have to go much further to make a work of art. D'you see? Art's above all a question of going too far.'

His face has turned into a frightening white mask of fury.

The two women nod. Their instant acquiescence irks me.

‘I don't see why you have to exclude all writers and artists except the few you consider great,' I say, more heatedly than I wanted. ‘There are others whose work has had a tremendous—'

‘But what have they invented? Any of them? Just tell me. It's the same thing in painting. Outside Picasso and Duchamp and to some extent Matisse, who has there been?'

His eyes bore into mine. No trace of drunkenness remains.

‘Who else has there been? No one else has gone far enough. That's your trouble, Michael. You've simply never gone far enough. That's why you're stuck in journalism. But then of course I know that journalists write whatever their papers tell them to write. You just write what you're told to. Deep down, all journalists are skunks, I know that. And rotten. Rotten to the core . . . Oh, look. Now of course he's deeply offended.'

I've seen this happen to others, and I've known that one day it will happen to me. It has, but at a moment when I least expected it. Francis knows exactly how to hurt, and I am touched to the quick. All I know is that I can't and won't continue to sit there.

‘I know it sounds phoney to say these things,' the larger woman is saying, ‘but I wanted to tell you how deeply, deeply moved I was by your Paris show.'

‘I'm so glad you liked it,' says Francis mechanically.

‘I wonder if you'll excuse me,' I butt in, getting to my feet. ‘I'm not feeling at all hungry.'

Smarting and confused, I make for the door.

The next morning, coming round in David's ballroom-cum-bedroom, I ponder Francis's sudden savagery. He can be the most tolerant person in the world, accepting all kinds of weaknesses and oddities (except religious belief) in other people, but on questions of taste he's bigoted and unyielding. I'm no particular fan of Malcolm Lowry's, so I could have let it go. I was probably showing off to the smaller woman. Even so, his strictures are unfair and tiresome, and the reaction was completely out of proportion. Thinking back on it, I still find that taut white mask of fury one of the most frightening things I've ever encountered.

‘Phone for you,' says David, coming in fully dressed. I'm always intrigued by the way he puts on coat and tie even when he's working at home.

‘Hallo,' I say, tentatively. I can't think who can be calling me here.

‘Is that you, Michael?' Francis says. ‘Listen. I do hope you don't mind my calling you at David's. I've got to go out to do an interview so I thought I'd call before I left. I've got such a hangover that my brain is simply crackling with energy. I can't think what I'm going to talk about, though.'

‘Well, I just hope that you don't talk the kind of nonsense you were talking last night,' I say. I want to say ‘the kind of bollocks', but it doesn't come out like that.

There's a surprised silence on the line.

‘The thing is,' Francis says eventually, ‘I was wondering if by any chance we could meet at the Ritz this evening. Otherwise I won't see you before you go back to Paris.'

I relish my instant of power. But I have no doubt what the answer will be.

‘Alright,' I say curtly. ‘But I can't be there before seven.'

David has come in to an inheritance. He's always been better off than me, and very easy and generous with money. One of his passions at the moment is having white suits with bold lapels
and flared trousers made by Tommy Nutter in Savile Row and ordering armfuls of flowered shirts in Jermyn Street. I have been a willing accomplice on these expeditions and I've picked up a nice Prince of Wales check suit in a sale as well as a couple of understated but unmissable kipper ties. No one can say you're not wearing a tie with one of these, I think as I prepare to sally forth to the Ritz, carefully wrapping a piece of mauve silk the width of a codpiece round my neck.

Francis on the other hand, once I've found him among the potted palms and gentle Viennese music, is still wearing as ever his loosely knotted black tie. His mood, however, couldn't be more different from last night's.

‘I've just spent the afternoon at one of those little gambling places in Soho where I usually get completely cleared out,' he announces exultantly as the waiters fuss round us bringing the champagne and dainty little dishes of nuts. ‘But this time I've had the most marvellous win.'

He's kept his big black leather trenchcoat on, and he starts rummaging around in one of its many pockets and produces a thick wad of banknotes wrapped in cellophane.

‘I've simply got masses of money,' Francis says loudly, laughing, and looking round the sedate salon. A couple of the waiters smile back at him, and one of them steps forward to pour a little more champagne.

With his black leather arms outstretched Francis is trying very theatrically to tear the wad of notes open with his teeth. By now he is the undisputed centre of attention, with all the hotel clients and the waiters following his attempts to get the tight cellophane open.

‘Ah,' he exclaims triumphantly, as there's a ripping sound and suddenly the wad explodes and the space around us is thick with large banknotes falling and fluttering. The room looks on in amazement at this spectacular cascade of money. There is a moment's pause, then the waiters all move in, as if on a paper chase, reaching under tables, between ladies' feet and the fronds
of the plants. Whatever they bring back to Francis, he always hands over one large note as a munificent tip. He is clearly in his element, pink with enjoyment and drink, champagne glass in hand and laughing maniacally.

The temperature of the room seems to have shot up. People are talking animatedly. The waiters are darting to and fro, cracking open more champagne. The small string orchestra has moved into a livelier, more confident tempo. Francis is still laughing.

‘It's mad,' he says, diving into an inside pocket. ‘I've simply got masses of it on me.'

And suddenly another thick wad has appeared and it's in my hand and for a split second I wonder whether it's a peace offering and then how much of my mortgage and how many outings with Alice it will pay for before I slide it into my smart new jacket, a comforting bulge against my chest for the rest of the evening and an addictive resource for the wintry weeks to come.

10

The Inspiration of Pain

My studio flat on the rue de Braque is compact and sparsely furnished but it has everything I want. It's on the first floor of a seventeenth-century building in the Marais, with a high, beamed ceiling and one strikingly half-timbered wall. The street dates back to the Templars and over time my house would probably have lodged a few modest families or part of the retinue of a grandee occupying one of the big townhouses that dominate the area. At one end there are several imposing mansions on the rue du Temple and at the other the palace that belonged to the princely Rohan family before it was turned into a storehouse for the National Archives after the Revolution.

I've loved this area since I first came across it in my early wanderings through the centre of Paris. What's especially magical is the sense of fallen grandeur you get at almost every street corner. Most of these beautiful, aristocratic buildings are now in spectacular disrepair, since no self-respecting citizen would have considered living in the Marais once the detested
ancien régime
had been overthrown. Small artisans and other manual workers on the other hand moved in like mice, taking over the whole
quartier
, plying their humble trades in the grand apartments with their frescos and chandeliers and in the purpose-built, lean-to sheds they ran up round the privileged courtyards. Although it is still a fantastic place to get a frame regilded or a wrought-iron
balustrade hammered into shape, the whole area is now generally considered a bit of a slum, and although a few free spirits can be spotted buying their fruit and vegetables from the stalls on the street, it's certainly not a good address for anyone wanting to make a career in Paris.