Francis Bacon in Your Blood (11 page)

Finals are over and Cambridge is fading, even though the summer light on the ancient courts is so mellow, the celebrations last through the night and the morning's promise arrives undimmed. We are torn between nostalgia at leaving such a gilded haven and the world beckoning beyond, but all of us in our tightly knit little group realize that we are leaving for good.

Real life, whatever that is, won't start quite yet, however. For some months we have been planning to make a major trip together, driving the length of France and down to Barcelona, then the length of Spain to Algeciras, where we will board the ferry to Tangier. Our choice of destination hasn't been picked out of a hat. From my tales of Soho and its master magician (the ‘magician of the night', as I often think of him), Bacon is now part of our group myth, and some time ago I reported back that he would be in Tangier, where I know he's been going for years. So that's where we're headed, since it seems as good a reason as any, though we are also going to make the most of the journey taking us there.

France is pleasant and mild but unremarkable, a series of long roads bordered by plane trees, picnics in fields and efficiently run camping sites. Then Barcelona hits us between the eyes. There had been the odd, mainly chaste encounter on the way down, but what we hadn't expected, once some ancient male instinct had guided us to the red-light district on the lower Ramblas, is the profusion of brightly dressed, amiably chatty whores. Far from the threatening, sleazy atmosphere of the doorway
trade in Soho, the women here seem light-hearted and friendly, as ready to share a drink, a dance and a chat as to proceed to more earnest business between bidet and bed in a dark cubicle. We are entranced, as if we had stumbled on a local fiesta where the girls, while clearly not just out of the convent, nevertheless have a certain natural poise and charm. We are also daunted by the very availability of so much sex, since our experience hasn't gone much beyond unfulfilled gropings with girls of our own background or the very occasional and usually depressing paid transaction. Here we seem to be in an entirely new realm where what is usually furtive and shameful resembles a celebration, with drinks and laughter. We practise our fledgling Spanish and in the badinage that ensues pick up a few memorable phrases, notably one girl's clear demarcation of services rendered – ‘
¡Fuckee fuckee sí, suckee suckee no!
' – that thenceforth becomes a war-cry regularly roared out of the windows of our trusty red Mini as we speed southwards to Grenada and get the first real impact of Arab culture. When we come to Seville, we make a beeline like pilgrims to a shrine for Bacon's favourite hotel there, the Alfonso XIII (or ‘Alfontho Trethe', as he calls it, just as in perfectly camp Castilian he calls his favourite painter ‘Belathqueth'), before beating a hasty retreat to an inexpensive hostel. Both the cities and the landscapes of Andalusia enchant us and we no longer see ourselves as tourists but as intrepid explorers as we continue barrelling across the sierra in search of the gateway to Africa.

From the moment we get off the ferry in Tangier, things speed up even more. A couple of friendly bystanders in striped djellabahs who speak French and are about our age show us the way to the medina and actually take us to a run-down little hotel where they seem to know the owner. The rooms are on the basic, not to say grotty, side but the price seems reasonable enough so we unpack and wash and the two boys are still hanging around when we come down. They call us all ‘Ali Baba', and me in particular ‘Ali Baba in glasses', which is quite funny, and they say we should visit the kasbah right away, and it's true it looks
totally exotic when we get there with great pyramids of olives and spices in sacks and dates on the branch. We get a fantastic flatbread sandwich on the way to the carpet shop which the boys say their uncle runs and it turns out he's sitting on top of this amazing pile of carpets which reaches almost to the ceiling and he's very friendly and says we were predestined to come to his shop even before we set off from Cambridge. It's really mysterious how he could have worked this out, it's not exactly as if we're wearing college scarves and he and the boys have only had a couple of quick, guttural exchanges in Arabic. Before we can ponder this much more they all very generously offer us some kief to smoke. That has been something we wanted to do anyhow but as we puff away, trying to look as if we did it all the time, it doesn't seem to have much effect beyond making us feel pleasantly sleepy and amused. After a while, though, I feel I could lie right down on one of those carpets and doze off and the others feel just the same and in the end, giggling a bit among ourselves, we agree to buy one of the cheaper carpets just so the boys can take us back to the hotel which we've lost track of completely but hope to get to soon before we totally conk out.

When I wake up the next morning I feel dazed and discontent and I become even more irritable when I find the garish, synthetic-looking rug we bought glaring up at me from the floor as well as some kief or hashish or whatever it is neatly tied up in plastic bags at the foot of the bed that I can't even remember buying. A good chunk of our budget for the stay in Tangier has been blown on these stupid purchases for which we didn't even haggle over like the idiots we are, probably could have got them down by half, so we realize we're going to have to pull in our belts, which is unfortunate since the drug seems to have made us ravenous. As we pick our way through the maze of streets and the crowds of veiled women shopping in the souk, I am convinced a couple have winked at me, brown eyes flashing in a yashmak, but put it down to the lingering effects of the weed. We are hoping to find a good, cheap couscous with mint tea but the skewers of lamb are
covered in flies so we settle for another tuna and olive flatbread and wolf it down while gazing at crudely painted earthenware dishes and piles of Moroccan slippers. At least we'll get one good meal this evening, we tell each other, since I've called Francis at his hotel and he's told us to meet him at a posh-sounding French restaurant in the
ville nouvelle
.

Hunger makes sure we arrive at the restaurant promptly and as we troop in to the air-conditioned dining room I realize how rough we've been living between tent, hostel and street food. We look rough, too, in our crumpled shirts and baggy trousers, particularly as the head waiter in immaculate black takes us past waiters in immaculate white tunics with gold buttons to the table where Francis is already sitting. We're also still a little woozy from the weed. I'm always glad to see Francis, but this time he appears like a saviour, lifting us out of scruffy travel and on to an altogether more sophisticated plane. I make the introductions, wondering uncomfortably whether Francis will sound at all like my impersonations of him to my friends, before I note that their attention is completely fixed on the menus they have been given and the expensive, French culinary treats in store. Francis encourages everybody to order lavishly, fills our glasses and also fills in a bit of background.

‘Tangier is a rather curious place,' he says. ‘It's a bit like Muriel's club, Michael, on a large scale. People come here to lose their inhibitions, above all queers from England and America. I'm not sure it will last but it has been a very tolerant place. All the Beats, Ginsberg and the others, were here, as you know, and they made a great thing of going native and living rough, drinking wine out of old tin cans and so on, but of course they always had a return ticket to America in the back pocket of their jeans. So I don't think they were taking too many risks. I used to come here a lot to see a friend of mine, who's unfortunately dead now. But that's another story. I used to see Ginsberg a bit, and Paul and Janie Bowles and Bill Burroughs and people like that. Ginsberg actually asked me to do a picture of him and his
lover having sex on their bed, and he gave me all these photos. So I said, well this could be a bit awkward if you want me to paint you as you're doing it, Allen. How long can you hold it for? Anyway, the lover wasn't very interesting, I'm afraid, but there was something about this striped mattress and the way it spilled over the metal spindles that was so poignant and despairing that I've kept the photos of the bed and used them ever since.'

After our blowout we go on to the Tangier, or
tangerois
as we are already calling it since it sounds more hip than ‘Tangerine', night life. Francis says there's a bar called the Oasis which we might like but it's full of middle-aged homos, all very affable, and we learn that our Cambridge tutor is a regular visitor which amuses us, and we talk to someone our age from London called Mikey Portman who's sure Bill Burroughs will be in, but I feel I've already been waiting too long for Bill Burroughs and what would be much nicer is a cuddly girl to talk to. And Francis seems aware that this is what we're keener on and takes us to a great bar with lots of smooth-looking people of both sexes and we are well oiled enough now not to mind if we look a bit rough, on the contrary we're just following on the great Beat tradition that's made this place what it is, and we're chatting up the ladies like there's no tomorrow and of course Pete has got the prettiest one, a willowy blonde very audibly from the East End, and I notice Francis looking a little concerned and he comes over and takes me aside and whispers: ‘Tell your friend Pete that the Billy Hill mob is in town and he's making a play for Billy's girlfriend and that could get him into real harm.' And I try to relay the message to Pete, who's remained more strung out on the dope than any of us, and he repeats amusedly to the girl, ‘I hear the Billy Hill mob's in town,' and before you know it she's disappeared and Pete's blinking into space and wondering what to do with himself.

I feel I've done enough chaperoning for one evening and go back to Francis's table and share the champagne he's ordered. Although he's tanned and his hair has been bleached by the sun
and he's looking good in his blue gingham shirt and jeans, he seems withdrawn and sad. He's been out to Cape Malabata, he says, where a great friend of his is buried. He pauses for a moment, then launches abruptly into a monologue.

‘I don't know whether I ever told you about Peter Lacy?'

‘You've mentioned him, yes. He had a tremendous effect on you, didn't he?'

‘Listen, in one way I've had a rotten life because I've always lost the people I've been deeply attached to. That side of things has always been impossible, for me at least . . . I don't know why. I met Peter completely by chance one evening at Muriel's bar. I'd known lots of people before but, even though I was over forty and everything, I'd never really fallen in love. Well, what Peter himself liked was young boys. He was actually younger than me, but for some time he didn't seem to realize it. It was one of those very odd things, an anomaly, and he went with me. It was the most total disaster right from the start. Being in love in that extreme way – being utterly obsessed by someone as I was – it's like having a dreadful disease. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. And we had these four years of continuous horror, with nothing but violent rows.

‘Peter was marvellous looking, you know. He had this physique, it was so extraordinary. Even his calves were beautiful. And he could be the most marvellous company. He was a kind of playboy, I suppose. He used to play the piano and sing, and he had that real kind of natural wit, he used to come out with one amusing remark after another – just like that – unlike those people who spend their lives planning what they're going to say from morning to night. But it never worked. You see, he said to me once, “You've ruined my life by making me think about myself.” There you are. Of course, he was also the most terrible kind of drunk.

‘He'd always had plenty of money when he was young, and in that way, since he'd never had to do anything, I think he felt the futility of life more clearly. The war was really ideal for a person like him, he fitted into that kind of tension. He was a fighter
pilot, then when the war ended he worked as a test pilot for a bit. All those things help shatter your nerves, obviously. I must say most of the time he was extremely neurotic, hysterical even.

‘He said to me once, “Why bother to paint?” Of course, he hated my painting and was always trying to destroy it. I know everyone hates it now but he hated it from the start. “You could leave your painting and come and live with me,” he said to me once. And I said, “What does living with you mean?”

‘And he said, “Well you could live in a corner of my cottage on straw. You could sleep and shit there.” He wanted me to live chained to the wall. Well, as it happened, I did terribly want to go on painting. It would never have worked in any case. He was a complete sadomasochist, and kinky in all sorts of ways.'

Asking Francis questions has become almost automatic, even when they're indiscreet.

‘What sorts of ways?'

‘Well, one of the things he liked, these things can be embarrassing to say, but he liked to have someone bugger me and then bugger me himself while what's called the spunk was still there. He also liked having other people watching and that sort of thing. He was very extreme, he had a collection of rhino whips and he went right to the end of everything he did . . .