‘You must have been here before, Francis,’ I suggest eventually. We are almost alone in the great room, apart from a club servant tidying up the newspapers and carrying away coffee cups.
‘You know, I never come to these kinds of places,’ Francis says, regretfully. ‘I do find the rooms absolutely beautiful, but they’d never have someone like me here.’
‘I’m sure they would,’ I protest, taken aback by this sudden self-deprecation. ‘They have all kinds of artists and writers here. It’s a tradition. Eliot and Yeats were both members, and so I seem to remember was Turner. They’d make you a member in a trice, Francis.’
‘Well, I’m not really the right person for these places, not with the kind of gilded gutter life I lead,’ Francis says, firmly terminating further discussion.
He seems to be depressed, not in the vitriolic way that feeling down often takes in him, but melancholy, although his life, like mine to some extent, has gone through a distinct upswing of late. For all his protestations that he’d never have an intimate relationship again, he’s been for some time now with a good-looking East Ender called John Edwards, whom I’ve already met and whose cheerful frankness appeals to me. One of John’s projects is to open a pub called the Bacon, but although Francis seems to go along with the idea quite genially I’d be surprised if it came off. We’re actually having dinner with him, along with Francis’s sister Ianthe, on a visit from Rhodesia, and David Sylvester, who’s bringing some new girlfriend, this evening. Then, on the professional front, he has his new retrospective exhibition being organized at the Tate. Most painters never have a show there, and no one else as far as I’m aware has ever had two in their own lifetime. So I’m wondering why Francis seems depressed and the only thing I can come up with is the sheer volume of alcohol he’s ingested over the past few days. Even Francis must have his limits, though God knows I’ve never been aware of them. I know he doesn’t like being probed about his habits – I remember him savaging Sonia for it – but conversation is proving such unusually hard work with Francis so withdrawn that I chance it.
‘I find really heavy drinking gets me down after a while. Does it have the same effect on you, Francis?’
‘I can’t say it does. I do drink heavily, of course, but I don’t really think about the hangovers and things, though of course they can make you feel very uncomfortable. I don’t believe I’m what’s called a complete alcoholic. Not yet, anyhow. Because although there’s always masses to drink in the studio, I don’t actually touch a drop when I’m alone. I love the sensation you get in drink, because it relaxes me, but nowadays if I’m drinking very heavily I get blackouts and can’t remember anything when I wake up, and then I’m filled with guilt.’
‘Of course alcohol is a kind of depressant,’ I say, draining my whisky. ‘After a couple of days on the drink I can feel it depressing me.’
‘I’m almost never depressed, unless of course what’s called your friends are committing suicide all around you and dying off like flies. For some reason, although I believe in nothing, my nervous system is filled with this optimism. It’s mad because it’s optimism about nothing, though I have to say with this country in the state it is now there’s really no cause at all for optimism. D’you know, Michael, things in England are just grinding to a standstill. Nothing works any more here, unlike Paris, where even the waiters seem to work hard. There’s this atmosphere now that it’s stupid to work. It’s true that people can get just as much on the dole. But it can’t last. London’s filled with young layabouts, all run to fat already and with nothing to do. The pound’s gone to confetti. I suppose it’ll go on going down and down until it’s worthless. I’m not a Fascist, as Sonia says. I’m what used to be called a liberal. I can’t see why Sonia and all those upper-class friends of hers keep going on about helping the workers. It means nothing. They never change anything, they just sit in their expensive houses talking about it all day to give themselves a good conscience. There’s something really rather disgusting about those rich people who are so terribly worried about the working class. It’s as if they’re trying to play both sides at once.’
‘Well, you feel that about Michel Leiris, don’t you?’
‘I’m very fond of Michel, as you know, and I think he’s a superb writer, but I really can’t see how he manages to be both a communist and a millionaire. He says how marvellous life seems to be under Mao, but of course if he lived under Mao he’d never have been allowed to do all the books and things that he has done. The thing is today, there’s simply no one in politics. Who is there? They’re all mediocre wherever you look. I did feel terribly depressed the other evening when I was listening to the news because I thought how similar the conditions were now to Munich. There’s a whole atmosphere of Munich, though of course it will be the Russians this time. It’s obvious that in the next few years they will invade Europe. Sometimes I feel I can almost hear their boots marching. There it is. If I were young, I think I’d go to America and try to make films or something. America will be the last place left when Europe has gone to the Communists.’
As we come out of the club and begin walking along Pall Mall in the evening sunshine, I sense that Francis’s mood has lifted a little but he still radiates a kind of distant, cold sadness.
‘I’ve probably been talking too much, as usual, Michael. I’ve noticed I’m becoming more and more garrulous with age. But this is the thing. When you reach my kind of age, you realize you only have a short time left and all you can do is sort of watch over your own decay. And that’s not a pleasant thought. If there was an operation you could have to restore youth, however disagreeable it was, I’d be the first to have it. Old age is ghastly. It’s like having a terrible disease, and there’s nothing, nothing you can do about it.’
We catch a cab to Wheeler’s where Francis has booked his usual large table just behind the mullioned window. The jovial owner, Bernard Walsh, comes over to greet us, as do several of the waiters. The art world grandee and Picasso expert, Roland Penrose, crosses the restaurant to ask Francis cordially how he is. A distinguished-looking couple at another table wave at Francis and the man gets to his feet. We go over and Francis introduces me to Joan and Paddy Leigh Fermor, whose reputation as a kind of writer-adventurer in Greece rings a faint bell. They are both very charming and as we go back to our table laid for six with a bottle of champagne in its silver bucket I realize that along with Muriel’s this is Francis’s real club, where he knows all kinds of people and is greeted enthusiastically, and I can see his spirits rise almost visibly like the golden bubbles springing off our first glass of champagne. As we wait for the other guests to arrive, a slight, middle-aged man begins to weave his way through the room, clearly drunk and bumping into several tables, until he crashes to a halt by ours, holding on to it like a man in a shipwreck.
‘I don’t think you’ve met Jeffrey Bernard, have you, Michael?’ Francis asks as if nothing were untoward. He’s beaming now, as if this chance encounter had reunited him with the comedy of life.
Jeffrey Bernard attempts to focus on me for a long, blurred moment. He has ruined good looks and an aura of misfortune. He tries to speak, first to me, then to Francis, but no words come out as he sways there.
‘It’s alright,’ Francis says to him. ‘We’ve all been like that.’
He slips some banknotes into Bernard’s jacket pocket, swiftly and firmly. Bernard again tries to speak, but he seems to be falling forward and for a moment I think he’s going to fall headlong on to our table, smashing glasses and shattering plates, but in one last heave, with his eyes closed and as if by pure instinct, he pushes himself away from the table and towards the open door and still falling disappears out into the night.
‘I wonder what Jeffrey will do, now that he has lost his looks,’ Francis comments mildly.
Ianthe arrives on the very dot of eight o’clock – clearly the Bacon children were brought up to be punctual – then comes John, curly-haired and grinning, followed by David Sylvester, w
hose girth and ponderous air always make an impressive entrée, and his slight, much younger, blonde girlfriend. I am seated opposite Ianthe, with the girlfriend to my right, which pleases me because she’s attractive, and Sylvester is already looking anxiously down the table as we begin to chat animatedly. Wheeler’s swings into its polished nightly act and platters of oysters on crushed ice appear along with more champagne and Chablis, and I discover that my dinner companion is also an art critic and a university lecturer and she appears very keen to discuss art and engages me closely in her acute, detailed analysis of conceptualism while over her shoulder I notice Sylvester looking increasingly distraught. The soles have been served, our glasses topped up and I’m enjoying myself but beginning to feel that as a good guest I should also be talking to Ianthe and John, who are looking a bit out of it, but the girlfriend has squared her shoulders very deliberately towards me, half blocking out Sylvester, and she’s begun an intricate discourse on the predominantly political significance of all art and my eyes start wandering beyond her determined monologue up the table to where Sylvester is beginning to heave with what looks like uncontainable emotion.
‘I think David’s getting a bit upset,’ I say to the girlfriend.
‘But don’t you see, Michael,’ the girlfriend continues implacably, ‘that art can’t be anything but political, entirely political, given that everything is political and politics itself is ubiquitous?’
At this point there is an eruption at the top of the table, and David bursts out weeping. His whole massive frame is shaking and tears are streaming down his cheeks in unnatural quantities and dripping on to the table. He gathers up several napkins to try to staunch the flood but it continues in a belligerent wailing that rises over all conversation, bringing a sudden hush to the whole of Wheeler’s. Dotted around the room the other diners are fixated by the spectacle and wait in silent suspense to see what will happen next. Even the owner, a veteran of Soho antics, is standing by hesitant and perplexed. As the girlfriend ceases to talk so Sylvester’s weeping slowly begins to subside into a series of sighs and heaves. His face emerges from the napkins, moonlike and fleshy, with a few teardrops clinging like tiny translucent fruit to his abundant beard.
Tenderly amused, Francis leans forward to pluck them away. Then he turns to our waiter and asks him to call for a taxi.
The whole restaurant still can’t take its eyes off our intimate drama. How will the girlfriend react? Will she leave with her aggrieved partner? Or will she continue to talk and turn her shapely back on him? The cab arrives and revs noisily outside the door. Will the couple make it up in time? An almost audible sigh of relief rises from the room as the girlfriend gets to her feet, icily angry at being upstaged but having little alternative now but to sweep out of the restaurant, in high dudgeon, with her corpulent lover in tow.
‘Vous pahtay déjà?’ Francis calls after them in his best Mayfair French. ‘Vous pahtay déjà vers le bonheur?’
The dinner ends quickly once the drama is over, but the whole incident seems to have restored Francis’s ebullient good humour.
‘After all, who enjoys a lovers’ quarrel more than the spectator?’ he says, paying the bill and slapping down several large notes as a tip. ‘We used to go night after night to the Gargoyle simply to watch couples carrying on the same old argument – it was like a terrific row played out in nightly instalments . . . Now I wonder where we might go to finish off the evening?’ he adds brightly. ‘I know John feels his luck is in and terribly wants to go and have what’s called a little flutter at Charlie Chester’s.’
Ianthe says she’s too travel-weary, so we find a cab to take her back to her hotel and then plunge through Soho on a short cut that John has devised. On our way over we come across a crowd of people milling around a couple of fire engines and several police cars. John asks someone in the crowd what’s happened. ‘Stupid bleeder on the third floor,’ the man says. ‘Shot his girlfriend, then turned the gun on himself.’ Francis listens to him intently and looks up at the building. ‘Well,’ he says as we move on, ‘I suppose it’s a gesture. But it’s a gesture you can make only once.’
Violence is in the air. We cross another couple of dark streets and come upon a gang of youths kicking a curled-up boy in the gutter. With the courage of recently drunk wine, I make to intervene. ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Francis says sharply. ‘They’re like animals. They’ll kick your head in too.’
I’ve heard of Charlie Chester’s but I’ve never been there, and as soon as we arrive it’s clear we’re not there for the atmosphere since the place certainly has none of the panache of Crockford’s, where I went gambling with Francis before. There are various games with evocative names, like crap and blackjack, and numerous silver fruit machines stuck round the walls. Some punters appear to be playing on a couple of tables at once, taking a passing crack every now and then at the one-armed bandits. Francis, pink-faced and chuckling, soon gets into his stride, dropping off little piles of coloured chips. It’s clear that he’s following some system of his own, placing the chips very deliberately. I feel I wouldn’t know where to start, so I just look on, reluctant to risk the money I have set aside to pay for my stay at the Athenaeum. Much like last time, Francis is quickly cleaned out and the three of us go back to the studio to hunt for a wad of cash he’s hidden – again in a dried-out tin of paint – and return, rearmed, to the tables. I’m tempted this time to try my luck with part of my money, and I’m annoyed to find that I lose it almost immediately, with all my chips raked in and nothing to show for it. Fortunately, a bottle of champagne has materialized, no doubt provided by the watchful ‘house’, and I join Francis at a small table where he’s keeping an eye on John’s progress.
‘I really don’t know why I keep coming back to these places,’ he says, clearly delighted by a significant new win. ‘I always think that for a moment my luck might change. It’s mad. What’s terribly nice, though, is that I’ve already managed to win back everything I’d lost earlier and just a bit more. You always lose in the end, naturally, but now and then, if you’re really lucky, you get that marvellous feeling that luck can only work your way. It never lasts for more than an instant, but for that instant it makes life really exciting. If one didn’t lose, of course, these ridiculous places wouldn’t exist. They live off all those fools like me who for some reason think they’re actually going to twist luck in their favour.’
I consider telling Francis that I’ve just lost but think better of it in case he insists on topping me up so that I can play and lose some more. It occurs to me that if I won last time it was partly because I simply didn’t care. Now I care very much and I don’t want to get into money problems, like running up an overdraft or having to borrow some cash. I also wonder whether the fact that I was so down on my luck in every other area of my life didn’t help me win then. Over the last few weeks I’ve been hatching a plan to relaunch the Lugano-based art magazine called Art International from my apartment in Paris. The prospect is hugely exciting; it’s a bit as if I’d fallen in love again and that almost certainly will not favour my luck at the tables. I decide to hang on to my remaining loot and just enjoy Francis’s new-found loquacity.
‘And did you ever manage to twist the way luck went?’
‘It’s happened terribly rarely over the years. Not very long ago, when I was on my way back from the south-west of France with Dickie and Denis, we drove through that what’s it called, that place where you can walk under all those marvellous arcades and never get wet when it’s raining, yes Dinard, and I did for some reason have a bit of luck there and manage to get out with enough to pay for the whole holiday.
‘I don’t think you can know the tremendous draw gambling has unless you’ve been in that kind of position where you terribly need money and you manage to get it by gambling. When you need it and win. It can get a hold of you then. Of course you spend the rest of the time losing it again and God knows how much more. But at those moments there’s this feeling you get of being
able to control the way your life goes.
‘I had a marvellous win, years and years ago now, it must have been about 1950, when I was in Monte Carlo. I was playing on three different tables and I kept thinking I could hear the numbers called before they came up, as if the croupiers were actually calling them out. I had very little money and I was playing for small stakes. But by the time I’d finished I’d got sixteen hundred pounds, which was a very great deal for me at that time. So I went out and took a villa and stocked it with food and drink and invited a lot of people to come and live there. At the end of it all, I didn’t have anything left, naturally, hardly enough to buy a train ticket back to London, but it was marvellous while it lasted, and I had lots of friends.’
‘Do you still go back there?’
‘You know, I don’t much, but I adore the atmosphere of those places. They have a kind of grandeur, even if it’s a grandeur of futility. There’s something so beautiful about the view you get from the casino in Monte Carlo, when you look out on to the bay and the curve of the hills behind. I love that kind of landscape. That and just desert. I love the feeling of all that space with absolutely nothing in it . . . It sounds ridiculous, liking a landscape from behind a window, but I actually can’t stand the countryside itself. After a day or two, I long for streets and people, just to be able to walk and see them.
Francis Bacon in Your Blood Page 35
