Francis Bacon in Your Blood (38 page)

While saying this Francis has been sitting on my sofa looking fixedly, critically, at the Leiris portrait, moving his thumbnail to and fro over his lower lip. Eventually he says:

‘You know, Michael, I've been thinking I could make that head of Michel so much better if by any chance I could work on it again. Looking at it now, I can see exactly how to do it.'

I'm dumbfounded by the idea. The picture has become my emblem, part of my identity, and more intimately so than the
Pope
because it represents someone I know. On the other hand, I reason confusedly, it's only here because Francis gave it to me, and who am I to stand in the way of his working further on it? It's obvious what I have to do, even though what I fear most, having seen it happen to other pictures, is that as soon as he gets going on it he will take the whole thing too far and end up destroying it, adding to the hollowed-out canvases I see from time to time in the studio.

‘Of course, Francis. If you want to work on it, you must have it back.'

‘Well, that's marvellous. Thanks most awfully, Michael.'

I wrap the head up in the green Harrods plastic bag I've been using to hide it in, and Francis walks off holding the portrait under his arm.

There's a space further up the rue des Archives I've had my eye on for quite a while. It's a big rambling apartment on the third floor, with a series of smallish rooms on the street and one huge continuous space overlooking the courtyard which has a makeshift rooftop terrace outside. It used to house an anarchist printing press and it now serves as a studio for a sculptor I know called Daniel Milhaud. Daniel, who tells me the space was once blown up by rival anarchists, has found a more convenient, ground-floor studio and is ready to sell the lease to the place but he needs time to reorganize. To raise the money I put my studio on the market and soon find a buyer.

While waiting to move into the Archives flat, which I'm supposed to use as a commercial space only, I have gone out on a limb and rented a small set of rooms in the imposing Château du Marais, less than an hour's drive from central Paris. The château belongs to Violette de Talleyrand-Périgord, Duchesse de Sagan, whose mother, Anna Gould, was a wealthy American heiress who married into the French aristocracy. The building, which dates from the late eighteenth century, is an outstanding example of Louis XVI style, and as you drive up to it you can see its elegant façade shimmering in the huge ornamental lake – or ‘water mirror' – that stretches in front of it. My quarters are in what remains of the old, seventeenth-century château that stands to one side of it and is now known as the
communs
since the building was converted into stables and servants' quarters. Snobbishly I have decided that my château is architecturally finer than the main château, although I have never let on about this of course to Violette, whom I met through friends and who is very easy and friendly, if somewhat scatty and short-sighted. Apart from the grandeur of the whole setting, with its discreetly hidden tennis court and heated open-air swimming pool, I love the forests that surround the château where you can walk and see a medieval pageant of hares, pheasants, deer and wild boar, which sometimes crash through the undergrowth in packs with their greasy black coats bristling with fear; I give the latter a clear berth because I've been warned that their fear can quickly change into aggression. Violette has a new husband, Gaston Palewski, a former cabinet minister once close to De Gaulle, who is also very cordial towards me. I'm intrigued by Palewski because he has had a long, well-known liaison with Nancy Mitford, whose upper-class self-assurance and quick wit impressed me when I sat next to her once at a lunch in Paris. I also like the fact that every morning, before the official Citroën DS sweeps in to the château's
cour d'honneur
to take him to his office, Palewski has been down to the pool, naked under a black cloak, for an early swim.

I no more belong to this world of aristocratic and diplomatic privilege than I do to any other, but I'm grateful to have been received into it, temporarily at least, so gracefully. I pay my modest rent to the maître d'hôtel each month and I am accepted as part of the château's extended family, occasionally invited to an informal meal with Violette and Gaston, but more often left completely to my own devices. Occasionally there are receptions at the château where what they themselves call the ‘old families of France' come together, with everybody braying jovially and addressing the other as
cher cousin
and
chère cousine
. The weight of historical precedent and the strange numbness it instils in contemporary relationships is so strong that, after a while, you imagine, for all the evocative princely and ducal titles bandied around, you have been included in a gathering of well-dressed mental defectives.

I am nevertheless proud, as a middle-class boy with an upwardly mobile penchant, to have gained at least a precarious foothold among these apparently harmless but not overwhelmingly bright, historic folk, and while it lasts I'm keen to share the experience with my friends. Several of them have come out to visit me in my new-found splendour, only to glimpse the château, a trembling mirage of grandeur amid its lakes and forests, and conclude, ‘Michael can't possibly live here,' reversing their vehicles and scouring the environs for more likely abodes. It seems a particular pity, however, not to let Francis in on my posh little secret.

Having divested me of the Leiris head, Francis has upped the ante, if that's the phrase, by presenting me with an extraordinary new, large canvas that represents an entwined couple falling, falling, through the air in sexual abandonment while being watched by an impassive, albeit evil-looking dwarf seated on a stool. I am obviously delighted to possess this major painting, not least because it records such an intimate moment of Francis and George together. The very size of the image, propped up against the half-timbered wall, made my old flat feel particularly restrictive, and it has become an extra incentive to move into
the larger premises at the rue des Archives, which remain tantalizingly out of reach as negotiations over the new lease drag on. This being so, I am more keen than ever to share my good fortune in finding digs in a historic château with Francis, if only to reassure him that, as a protégé of his, I am not letting the grass grow under my feet. Accordingly we find a date when he will venture forth into the countryside, which he otherwise sees as a dread place ‘with all those things singing outside the window' and generally tends to avoid like the plague, sticking to a city centre where, as he says, ‘you can just walk in the streets and see people going about their daily round'. Francis tells me he will be coming with Sonia and Nadine, no doubt for added protection, and I make a lunch booking at the local auberge where the decoration of stags' heads mounted on burgundy-coloured walls might not be to Francis's taste but the food and wine are good, and I've been able to convince the owner not to present a bill but to keep it for me to pay subsequently.

As they arrive by car, I can see Francis and Sonia have been quarrelling and as I lead them straight into the Auberge du Marais they start bickering again about whether Francis should be taking certain pills while he is drinking heavily. I can sense this might be a potentially sticky occasion, and true to form as we settle into the restaurant's cold, empty dining room Francis eyes the stags' heads balefully and says, ‘It's going to be a bit depressing having lunch with all those dead things around.' But the menu passes muster and the meal goes well enough, although I'm panicked when the owner's prim wife tells me we've already had too much to drink and she doesn't want to open any more bottles for us. I wheedle a couple more, but that doesn't seem to quell the argument that is still simmering between Sonia and Francis, who alternates between taking large handfuls of pills and huge, Burgundy-size glasses of wine. I get my unruly crew out of the inn and over the road to the gates of the château and we begin to make our way, all abreast and weaving quite noticeably, along the great tree-lined drive. Halfway down I notice Violette,
probably on some vague errand, walking towards us. I panic slightly, wondering whether Francis or Sonia will be rude to her and also how I should make the introductions. Should she be simply Violette, Violette de Talleyrand-Périgord or the Duchesse de Sagan? And how about Francis, whom she almost certainly won't have heard of, should he be ‘
le grand peintre anglais
'? I have no time to decide before Violette comes over to me, blinking in the sunlight and saying very loudly and formally:

‘
Monsieur, le château est fermé au public.
'

Francis shoots me a look as if to say ‘I knew it all along. Michael's made the whole thing up.'

‘But, Violette,' I say desperately. ‘It's me, Michael. You remember, the Englishman who has an apartment in the
communs
.'

Violette blinks again absent-mindedly and moves closer.

‘Oh, it's you,' she says suddenly in English. ‘I am most dreadfully sorry. People wander in here the whole time, you see. Well, I won't hold you up any longer.'

I continue the guided tour, lingering by the moat and the dungeon, comparing the old château to the new, but the wind has gone out of my sails. Francis is looking at me slyly, as if this is some elaborate hoax I persist in attempting to foist on them. I can see he's determined not to believe that I actually live here, so there seems little point in trooping them all up to my apartment, which is bound to look like part of the same pathetic make-believe now. I walk them to their car, then slink back to my own quarters and savagely demolish the chocolate cake I'd bought as the centrepiece of a lavish tea.

Claude Bernard has also managed to lure Francis briefly to the country, which I had assumed was almost impossible. Alice has kindly agreed to drive us down to the Loire, and although it's true she can become distracted while at the wheel, particularly when joining in and gesticulating with both hands during an animated conversation, I find the way Francis is holding on to
the passenger strap at the back as if for dear life a bit exaggerated. It's odd for someone who's so reckless in his behaviour to be suddenly so fearful, though I do remember once, when we got caught in traffic crossing the Avenue de l'Opéra and had to run for our lives to get to the other side, he said to me: ‘I'm actually terrified most of the time.' We arrive safely at Claude's house in the soft, lush, flat countryside. It's quite extensive, with rooms for guests, but its main purpose is to hold concerts (Claude has installed an organ in the library tower) and large parties. There's a constant stream of guests here, as in his Paris apartment, and notably many of the big names in the classical music world, which I know little enough about but which comes sharply into focus when I'm introduced to such famous figures as Boulez and Rostropovich. Claude entertains with what he calls smilingly ‘
une grande simplicité
', which usually entails a lavish banquet for a huge list of guests. He has a gift for bringing distinguished people together, and he succeeds in lining up well-known museum directors like Henry Geldzahler from the Met in New York with his French equivalent, or film-makers like Henri-Georges Clouzot, who directed
The Wages of Fear
, with the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, or art writers like the Giacometti expert James Lord with art-world
éminences grises
like the critic and collector Louis Clayeux, who helped select the Galerie Maeght's outstanding stable of artists.

I'm on easy terms with quite a few of Claude's guests and enjoy chatting to art-world insiders like Jean Leymarie, who was director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne here and is now apparently tipped for the French Academy in Rome. Jean amused me especially the other day in Claude's gallery in Paris, when Claude was enumerating the major works of art he had sold over the past few years. ‘Did you really sell all those important works?' Jean asked innocently. ‘I certainly did,' Claude replied proudly. ‘You shouldn't have,' Jean countered slyly. ‘Great dealers keep the best works!' Jean will be taking over from Balthus, who also makes an occasional lordly appearance
at Claude's
fêtes
, and he tells me that, at Claude's instigation, Balthus and Bacon met at one point in Rome. I knew about this, but not in detail, and it appears that Balthus took Bacon all round the Villa Medici, pointing out the great fresco cycles he had restored and the little garden which Velázquez painted when he was in Rome. Bacon was visibly fascinated by the improvements Balthus had effected in the Villa and plied him for the rest of the day with compliments about them as if restoration was Balthus's unique passion and occupation, thus ruthlessly avoiding any talk about Balthus's or his own painting.

Among Claude's guests there is also a large contingent of queer music-lovers, or
mélomanes
, just the kind of limp-wristed homosexuals whom I imagine Francis particularly dislikes. There is one who is always there, smartly dressed in blazer and white trousers, who has his own yacht on the Mediterranean and who manages to maintain a deep smoky tan throughout the year. I've never found out his name because everyone refers to him as the ‘Skipper'. He's obviously just got back from sailing since his tan is darker than ever, and he's showing it off by wearing a white linen suit. I've noticed Francis has it in for him because he has been eyeing his two-tone appearance with undisguised malice. ‘Have you met the Skipper yet?' I ask mischievously. ‘I think you mean the Kipper,' Francis replies promptly. The joke has gone the rounds so quickly that now the poor man is already widely referred to as ‘le Kipper'.

I've signed the lease on my new space at last and moved in. My few bits of furniture and belongings have been swallowed up in its vastness, particularly now that Francis has changed his mind and already taken the
Two Figures
back to work on it further. I'm getting used to having, then not having, his paintings but it's a real pity because one of the walls in the big new room would have been an ideal place to hang it. Meanwhile, with the help of an artist friend who's also a talented builder, I'm going to construct a proper wooden deck for the terrace outside. Otherwise, now
that the floor tiles have been repaired and the walls repainted a luminous white, I'll leave the flat as it is and simply luxuriate in the uncluttered space.