Francis Bacon in Your Blood

by Michael Peppiatt

  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.

  I’ve also just been down to the studio in the rue de Birague to let the cleaner in and make sure everything is ready for Francis’s next visit. I get the fridge stocked with a few basics, pay the utility bills, which come in my name anyway, and I remember to go to the dry cleaners to pick up his sheets which are noticeably similar to the colours Francis uses for the backgrounds of his paintings: pink, lilac, orange and yellow. If it’s at all cold, Francis likes the heating turned full on before he arrives. Even when it’s been cleaned, the studio still looks pretty messy because I’ve given strict instructions that nothing – and that includes paint tubes and brushes on the floor – should be moved. I’ve also been over to Sennelier on the Quai Voltaire to order some pre-stretched canvases so that Francis has what he needs when he’s ready to work.

  The last time Francis was over, I brought round an American collector I know who’s always calling me, probably because he thinks I’ll lead him to a bargain-price painting, and when he saw the studio, he exclaimed, ‘With the prices you’re making, why do you live in a dump like this?’ The remark tickled Francis enormously, I don’t know why, but sometimes he laughs until he literally cries. He has a neighbour at the rue de Birague, a burly retired railway worker, whom he has got to know, and who popped in when I was there once and mimicked – having no idea of Francis’s own orientation – two queers he’d just seen on the street. Francis found the comedy of errors so funny the tears came coursing down his face, and the neighbour, delighted by the apparent success of his clowning, went on to do more and more grotesque imitations of effeminate men.

  Effeminacy is no doubt the last thing you could accuse Francis himself of. I’ve seen him barely able to walk or turn his head, presumably because he’d had himself so badly beaten up by passing lovers, without ever complaining or explaining, and I know he’s had stitches taken out without anaesthetic. He’ll go for days without sleep and drink everyone under the table and still be ready for more. ‘One is never hard enough on oneself,’ he’s fond of saying. I often wonder how much of this toughness comes from physical resilience and how much from willpower, both of which he has in spades. I can keep up with him for a few days, but then I have to lie low and lick my wounds. There’ll be no lying low for a while, however, because Francis has just called to say he’s arrived at Birague and he’s asking whether I have a moment to pass by.

  I suspect Francis wants to ‘settle’ for the various bills I’ve had to pay. He’s very punctilious about any debts he may have, whether real or perceived. At the beginning I used to keep all the bills and tot them up to show him, but he brushed them aside and gave me two or three times the total. I have to admit that some extra cash would come in very handy now that I’m paying off all the expenses of my move to the rue des Archives.

  When I get to the studio, I’m surprised to find Francis in a red-and-blue-striped dressing gown, though it occurs to me he might have just taken a quick bath. We chat for a while and to my growing alarm, Francis keeps crossing and uncrossing his white, hairless legs and tucking in his gown with exaggerated care as if by some terrible accident his sex might come tumbling out. As he acts out this drama, I train my eyes on a flare of orange paint on the wall above his right shoulder and begin talking in swift succession about various goings-on in the building and the exhibitions I’d seen and whether he’d be staying long in Paris this time. The crisscrossing and tucking eventually subsides without any tumbling, to my considerable relief, and we are able to catch up on various matters and me to invite him to dinner in my new space, along with Denis Wirth-Miller, who’s joining him for a few days in Paris, and wouldn’t that be nice and before I know it Francis has whipped, nothing untoward, a wad of 500-franc Swiss notes out of his dressing gown, saying he has to get rid of them because it will soon be impossible to change them and thanking me profusely for everything I’ve done to keep the studio for him.

  As a bachelor my cooking tends to the quick and filling. Pastas and risottos with the simplest sauces, speedy fry-ups and grills are my staples. I can however go further, and when I’m doing one of my large parties I serve a spicy chicken curry with exotic condiments, much appreciated by my French friends, or for a sit-down dinner I often make a slowly braised boeuf bourguignon, to which in a slight departure from the classic recipe I add mushrooms and top with diced bacon, croutons and crisp-fried parsley – the latter being something I know Francis likes especially, since we had it once in a restaurant on some grilled fish and he pronounced it ‘one of the most delicious things you can possibly eat’. I also make sure that a good bottle of wine goes into it, although I can’t compete with the bottle of the fabled Château Cheval Blanc that Francis told me he once poured into an Irish stew he had on the go. I now boast a dedicated dining room, sparsely furnished but with a small grate where I’ve lit a welcoming fire. Denis Wirth-Miller is on his way with Francis, and I’ve invited Alice, who inspires a degree of chivalry on such occasions, even from the irrepressible Denis. Alice is particularly amused that the ‘two old boys’, as she calls them, will be sharing the bed at the rue de Birague. Fleetingly we wonder whether, improbable as it seems, there has ever been anything between Francis and Denis.

  Once the guests have arrived, we have some champagne in the big room, where Francis stares malevolently at the huge oil collage Dado has given me, then we move into my bare dining room, where Francis stares malevolently at the coloured landscape relief by Raymond Mason that I’ve hung there. I serve my boeuf and hope for the best. True to form, Denis goes purple in the face after a few glasses and gets increasingly garrulous. The talk and the wine take precedence over the food, I note, which is probably just as well.

  ‘I’ve just seen the studio, Michael,’ Denis says, ‘and I think it’s absolutely beautiful and just perfect for Francis.’

  ‘Of course Michael can throw me out any time he feels like it,’ Francis says, slyly.

  I protest vigorously, but of course he knows I never would. He hasn’t got this far in life without being an accurate judge of other people.

  Although no one has expressed even polite interest in the subject, Denis starts outlining the various illnesses he has had, including an operation on a leg that had become infected.

  ‘Somebody asked me whether Francis Bacon had bitten me,’ Denis says, with mock indignation.

  ‘And had you?’ Alice asks Francis.

  ‘Of course not,’ Francis snorts. ‘I wouldn’t be here today if I had.’

  Denis leaves for the lavatory.

  ‘It’s usually when he gets drunk like this that we have a row,’ Francis says.

  Denis returns and starts recounting his recent eye problems.

  ‘For the longest time I went totally blind,’ he insists, purple with wine and the satisfaction of having made himself the centre of attention. />
  ‘You were not blind,’ Francis says irritably. ‘It was your brain that went, not your eyes. And when it comes to illnesses, not that I’d be so boring as to mention them, I’ve had everything. But I don’t think other people are interested in those kinds of things. As it happens.’

  I’ve noticed before that Francis gets restless if the conversation isn’t revolving around him.

  ‘Even so, Francis, I have to say I’ve always found you the most extraordinary person,’ Denis continues, gushingly. ‘I’ve never met anyone who has had as much effect on me as you have. After all I have known you since 1949 . . . I remember sending you a telegram once when you were in Tangier. I was in Aix at the time and absolutely desperate because both Dickie and I had fallen in love with the same man.’

  ‘Who preferred Dickie,’ Francis puts in. ‘Now wasn’t that annoying.’

  ‘Well, I hadn’t a penny to my name and I was so desperate I was suicidal,’ Denis explains unperturbed.

  ‘You weren’t suicidal. You’ve never been suicidal. You just talk about it.’

  ‘Anyway, as soon as Francis got my telegram, he cabled back “Will come”, and on the morning we’d agreed there he was . . . Wasn’t that marvellous? And even though we’ve known each other all this time, he still says things that stop me in my tracks.’

  ‘What’s the old fool saying?’

  ‘Oh but you do, Francis. You say things brilliantly, in so few words . . . I’m not surprised Eric Hall loved you, I don’t think you loved him – the only man you ever really loved was Peter Lacy. But you wouldn’t be what you are today without Eric Hall.’