Francis Bacon in Your Blood by Michael Peppiatt Page A

involved to the hilt in the latest intellectual movements and snortingly dismissive of anybody who wasn’t, rather than this elaborately mannered, deferential older man dressed more like a Swiss banker than a bohemian.
    The real point of the evening, I’m beginning to realize, is for Leiris and Bacon to get to know one another better, and most of the conversation, which I’d thought would be so full of complex, subtle twists and turns I would barely be able to follow, is an exchange of what to any outsider would sound like outrageous compliments. ‘
Votre dernier livre est tellement merveilleux
,’ Bacon has told him several times, opening up his arms to demonstrate how wide the book’s appeal was, and Leiris, his face agitated by depth of feeling, has concluded his appreciation of Bacon’s paintings with a perfectly honed ‘
Elles sont d’une puissance non seulement magistrale mais totalement réaliste
,’ which makes Francis glisten with pride. He knows that Leiris has been closely involved with Picasso and Giacometti, and that praise from Leiris to some extent elevates him to their company. Sensing that the dinner has been a success, Sonia has fallen into a melancholy silence, her drinking and smoking still defiantly confirming her presence even though her essential role has now been played. Sylvester meanwhile, who has known both Bacon and Leiris for many years, has been following the mounting crescendo of compliments and fanning the flames of flattery, his corpulent frame heaving with the enthusiasm of an artistic matchmaker and the witness of a unique moment incultural history as writer and painter see eye to eye on everything from realism to Surrealism (except for one brief moment when they touch on Beckett, whom Bacon dismisses, saying, ‘I loathe all those ghastly dustbins on stage,’ and Leiris defends mildly, saying, ‘There’s enormous charm in the work’).
    I stay behind to help Sonia clear up the mountain of plates, glasses and bottles, and while moving dutifully between table and sink I make a drunken, desperate and wholly inappropriate lunge at my hostess which I expect to be appropriately brushed aside. But, to my surprise, it is reciprocated, without a moment’s hesitation, as though it’s accepted that that’s what men do at this time of night, and all thought of clearing the dishes is suddenly, miraculously, suspended. I am further taken aback, however, when Sonia breaks out of my clumsy fumbling to say, ‘Everybody’s doing it like this in Paris,’ and proceeds with grim efficiency to move on to something I’ve heard of but more as a kind of dirty joke and certainly never done. I try to adapt to this turn of events with enthusiasm as well as a dash of what I hope comes across as Gallic nonchalance, but we both become aware of an urgent pacing up and down just outside the kitchen, and Sonia breaks off to say, ‘I told Cyril to go to bed,’ before we resume, and Cyril, about whom I have heard enough to identify instantly as the great man of letters and Sonia’s former boss at
Horizon
, continues to pad more and more noisily in the corridor outside. Standing with my back to the kitchen door, I feel increasingly detached, imagining myself no longer as a footloose student but as an aspirant against all odds firmly sandwiched now between two great names in literature, Orwell and Connolly, and thus elevated, almost like Francis so recently risen between Picasso and Giacometti, to undreamt-of realms of achievement but in my case with no justification, particularly as the farcical side of the situation begins to overwhelm all else, undoing alas what was so well begun, and crestfallen but oddly relieved I realize that to all my other failures in Sonia’s eyes both intellectual and social I now have to add failure at this. Meanwhile, I repeat to myself,hastily dressing in case an irate man of letters bursts