Francis Bacon in Your Blood (25 page)

It's very odd to think that, from that very first moment in the French pub, I've never stopped interviewing Francis in one way or another. I admire him and I have been hugely influenced by his work and by his way of life. I've adopted all kinds of positions that he holds, though perhaps at a less extreme degree: I'm more of a mild agnostic, for example, than a fervent atheist, because my core belief is that we are aware only of the tiniest fraction of existence, like mayflies dancing for a frenzied instant in a shaft of sunlight, knowing nothing of the dark about to envelop them. He's also influenced my behaviour and, as I'm sometimes embarrassingly aware, quite a few of my mannerisms. You could say I've modelled myself on him in many ways, even though my temperament and my talents, whatever they are, have little in common with his. I'm not willing to put myself continuously at risk, as he appears to do, partly out of his deep-seated masochism and partly out of pride – an innate confidence in his toughness and ability to withstand what life throws at him. I, on the other hand, am at pains to avoid extreme situations because I doubt that I have the capacity and stamina to handle them. What I find most attractive about Francis, I think, is the freedom and energy and total individuality that exude from him. I want to live my life too on my own terms. And so I suppose it makes perfect
sense that I want to spend time with him and listen to what he says on virtually any topic that comes up.

What is more puzzling is why Francis bothers to spend so much time with me. I hadn't really thought about it much before our conversation at the Orangerie and the Crillon the other day because it seems natural enough for him to want me at least to know, if not to actively transmit, his point of view when I write about his work. Most of the artists I've met try to get some control over what you say about them. But the conversations Francis and I have go way beyond the ‘do you do preparatory drawings?' and ‘have you got several canvases on the go?' type of question that usually crops up. Obviously he's drawn to much younger men who are reasonably good-looking and not too stupid but, given his fame and money, he can have his pick of them. With me, he likes the fact that I'm a good listener and, for some reason, he's impressed that I speak a few foreign languages. Part of what he finds attractive about me, perversely, is that I'm not queer, and he takes that as a challenge to his undoubted powers of seduction – ‘
séduire
', as he often likes to say, ‘
c'est tout
' – although after all these years of nothing happening on that front, I should think whatever charms the notion once had are beginning to fade.

When I got back from the Crillon, I did write down what Francis had told me pretty much verbatim. He regularly returns to what he's already said with a slightly differing intonation or emphasis, and since I've developed a good ear for imitating the way he talks, the result is like a recording without all the ums and ers and at least some of the continuous repetitions. Looking at this ‘transcript' along with others I've made over the past few years, I see there's a pattern emerging. Francis proffers a certain amount of information about his life or his work or his attitudes to this, that or the other, and then breaks off in a tantalizing fashion, with a dismissive ‘I don't suppose this will interest anyone' that leaves you hungry. It's a story being told in instalments, a feuilleton, and you're impatient to
know what's coming next since each episode throws up more questions than answers. I think Francis must like the idea of riddles. He's referred to the Sibyl at Delphi at least once when we've been talking, and of course he has painted the Sphinx on several occasions. The pictures themselves talk in riddles. They tell a story, utter a prophecy even, which we are left to interpret as we can.

I don't suppose I'll get another instalment from Francis tomorrow evening as we're meeting Sonia and one of her great Paris friends, Marguerite Duras, for dinner. I've already spoken to Marguerite by telephone because Sonia told her I might have the right voice to dub into English some character in a film she's working on. It sounded like a great idea, so I tried to make myself sound interesting when Marguerite called, but she must have been looking for something else because, disappointingly enough, I haven't heard from her since. We're going to a small bistro called Le Petit Saint-Benoît, just opposite Marguerite's flat, that Francis quite likes because he thinks it's more ‘French' and authentic than a lot of the grander restaurants he goes to; at least it's considerably cheaper. I know I should probably have read one of Marguerite's novels or plays, even though I'm not very convinced by the whole
nouveau roman
idea. Now it's too late, and it doesn't seem to make much difference because Francis arrives in a very exuberant mood and talks almost non-stop, while Marguerite, who's tiny and wears huge spectacles, is quite withdrawn. As for Sonia, she seems mostly preoccupied with whether Francis and Marguerite are getting on well, because Francis has made several rather snide references to how
célèbre
Marguerite's become since the film of her novel,
Moderato cantabile
, came out. Apparently, a French friend tells me, Marguerite's been saying that there have been only three writers in France in the twentieth century: Proust, Céline and ‘
moi
', so perhaps I'd better read her after all. The wine has been coming thick and fast since we all clearly like our drink, but towards the end of the meal, when Francis orders another bottle, Marguerite
protests, ‘Dear Francis, we've already drunk too much,' and Francis, suddenly imperious, comes thundering back: ‘Only too much is enough!'

The evening winds up quite rapidly after that, and Sonia decides she should walk Marguerite back up to her flat. I expect to get home in reasonable time for once, but Francis clearly has other ideas and suggests we go on for ‘one last leet-el drink' at a bar he's found just off the Boulevard Saint-Germain. As we pass the Deux Magots and the Flore, I half expect to see a couple of my heroes, especially Giacometti and Beckett, finishing off the evening together with a
fine à l'eau
. But one is dead and the other not to be caught dead at such obvious places, now filled with tourists lying in wait for a wall-eyed Sartre or a vaguely familiar, decrepit Surrealist of which a surprising number can still be seen flitting around the old haunts, striking attitudes and making arresting remarks. Francis leads the way. He's gone silent and seems to be focusing on something. We go into a discreet, elegant hotel on the rue de l'Université. The bar is dark and almost deserted, and it takes a while for the barman to appear, but he seems to know exactly which champagne Francis likes.

‘I don't know what Sonia and Marguerite find to talk about the whole time,' Francis says once we've settled into the room's restful gloom. ‘Of course Sonia's much more interested in writing than in painting. As you know, she used to work with Cyril on
Horizon
, and I suppose that now Marguerite has become so famous with her books and films and so on Sonia loves to spend time with her. But in any case Sonia's much more interested in women rather than men. Perhaps she's lesbian. I don't really know, and of course I wouldn't be what's called so rude as to ask. I don't actually think she knows herself. After all, most people are neither one thing nor another. They're just waiting for something to happen to them. What did you make of Marguerite? I suppose she's highly intelligent? I
suppose
she is.'

‘I didn't really get a chance to talk to her, Francis. It's odd and a bit pathetic, but because I want to write so much myself
I feel very shy when I meet a well-known writer. I sat next to Henri Michaux at a dinner the other day, and I really admire his work both as a writer and a painter, but I was absolutely tongue-tied and embarrassed. And if I do talk I usually get everything wrong, like when you introduced me to Stephen Spender whose poetry I don't really know, and I talked to him the whole time about Auden.'

‘Well, I detest Auden. I detest that whole hypocritical religious side to him. And I detested Evelyn Waugh, whose books I know you admire, when I met him. He talked all the time in farts, just a series of farts. But I do know what you mean about shyness. I myself was so shy as a young man that I couldn't even go into a shop to ask for something. But of course when we were living in Ireland during the Troubles my father always used to say to us, “If anyone talks to you, run and find a policeman.” You can imagine what a good start that gave us in life, on top of all the gaucheness of having been brought up in Ireland.'

‘But you managed to get over your shyness, didn't you?'

‘Well, as I've probably already told you, I just thought as I got older that it was mad to be both old and shy. I've worked on myself a great deal since then, and in that sense I'm completely artificial – I'm probably the most artificial person you'll ever meet. But my parents were awful in a way. I can't say I actually loathed my father – he was a good-looking man, and at one time I was attracted to him physically, though I was so young I hardly knew it was a physical thing at the time. I didn't really hate him, but he certainly didn't understand anything about me. At first he tried to marry a relation of my mother's who had a good bit more money. Well, when she wouldn't have anything to do with him, he tried my mother. Her whole family was against it, but she just went ahead and married him. All parents are impossible, I suppose. Do you get on with yours?'

‘Not really. I don't see a great deal of them. We have sort of diplomatic relations. But not much more I'm afraid,' I say,
realizing that I'm much happier when the conversation is about Francis than when it veers suddenly towards me and my background. ‘But in what way did yours make you shy?'

‘They did this awful thing of putting me at this very minor public school called Dean Close in Cheltenham in mid-term. So I was led with them right the way down the dining hall where the whole school was sitting. And of course what's called all conversation stopped and everybody just sat and stared at me. Naturally, I felt I was finished after that and I just went wandering up and down the corridors, up and down the whole time, not daring to talk to anyone. Then this very nice-looking boy came up to me and said, “You can be my friend if you like.” Of course at the time I had no idea what he really meant by being his friend. I thought, how nice to have a friend. Then this other friend – a Persian boy – came along who had “developed” early, as they say.

‘It was all rather ridiculous my life at school. But then, for some reason, I'd always known that life was ridiculous. Even as a child, I knew it was impossible and futile, a kind of charade. I was a complete fool – I could never learn anything, just as I can't learn a foreign language properly now – but a sophisticated fool, and so I became a sort of clown and I used to get along by amusing the other boys.

‘In the end I left Dean Close just before they asked to have me taken away. My younger brother was asked to leave too, for going with other boys. And then he developed TB, which as you know can be an emotional thing, and he died from it. My father had thought he was the one who would follow him into the army and when he died it was the only time I ever saw my father cry. I had an older brother too. We went to Anglesey together on a holiday once and my brother got this crush on the hotel owner's daughter. And once we were back home, he managed somehow to disappear and go and see her. Then my father found out and thought it was so absolutely impossible that Harley should be going with someone of that class that he sent him off to a job in
South Africa. Well, he worked there for a bit then he went up to Northern Rhodesia and joined the police force. And he was out somewhere with them when the Zambesi flooded and by some accident he got lockjaw and they couldn't get him to hospital in time and he died.

‘I don't know whether yours has been like that, Michael, but my family was really a series of disasters. My sister Winnie, for instance, had one catastrophe after another, even before she developed multiple sclerosis. She only had to get on a train for it to burst into flames. She went out to Rhodesia too, after the war, and she fell in love with a man who was sent to prison shortly afterwards for fraud or something. So like a fool she decided to wait for him, and when he came out he simply vanished, she never even saw him, and then she found out he was already married in any case.

‘Towards the end of her life I got to know my mother much better. She was far younger than my father, and of course she was overjoyed when he died. The thing is she just couldn't wait to begin living her own life. She managed to marry twice after his death, and in a way I think she did remake a life for herself. I remember when my father was very ill she kept saying to the doctor: “Can't you help him out? Can't you just help him out?” He went on hating her right to the end. About the day before he died, he said to the nurse, “For God's sake keep that woman out of my room – tittering-tottering all over the place in those high heels!”'

‘Often it seems you have to get away from home to become the person you really are,' I hazard.

‘Well, I certainly had no idea who I was or what I wanted to do, or anything, My parents had told me that I looked horrible and I think I just accepted it. So I was terribly glad when people picked me up because I used to think, well, perhaps I'm not so awful-looking as that after all. It just made me want all the more to get this person or that person to take a fancy to me. Of course you'd never think it, with my looks, but for a moment I
did seem to attract people. When I was very young. I suppose people thought I was pretty. For some reason. Anyway, I used to get by in that fashion, and I don't think I was too particular about how I did it.

‘All human lives are ridiculous – unique and ridiculous,' Francis concludes with an apologetic smile, ‘but sometimes I think mine has been a particularly ridiculous one. Ridiculous and disastrous. You know, my intimate friendships have all been disasters. I mean there was this man, Eric Hall, who thought he liked me. He was very rich and had never had to do anything, and he took me round all the grand hotels eating and drinking too much. In that sense he gave me a kind of education. And he also encouraged me with my painting, which helped a great deal at the time. He was married but he decided he wanted to leave his wife and children and come and live with me. Well, then I got all these threatening letters from his wife – even his father came round and got absolutely furious with me.