Francis Bacon in Your Blood by Michael Peppiatt Page A

The outcome, however, was quite clear. I was left virtually for dead in some stinking gutter, with everything gone – both money and camera having disappeared into thin air.
    â€˜It’s what you might call a recurring pattern, one in two, at a highly conservative estimate, being a thug, my dear. Still,’ John concludes, his eyes rising in liquid appeal to the strange forces of love, ‘I suppose one should be merely thankful one doesn’t get beaten and robbed every single time.’

    If I ever need concrete proof that I now belong to Soho as much as to Cambridge I only have to look at my new Colony Room membership card. No one in Muriel’s club has ever asked me to produce it since I always get a welcome from the barman or from Muriel herself when I go in. So I’ve taken to leaving it prominently on my desk in the rooms in college I’ve been sharing this year with Magnus Linklater, rather like a spy flaunting his double identity. I’ve started telling Magnus bits about Francis and various incidents in Soho, like the one the other day when a literary critic called John Davenport, who’s as wide as he’s tall, picked me up under one arm and carried me along the pavement all the way to Muriel’s bar, which I think would have been impressive even if I hadn’t been heavy enough at school to have proved useful in a rugby scrum. I think I sometimes detect a passing glint of disbelief in Magnus’s eyes as I relate these exploits, although he’s too wary or polite to say anything. This look needles me a bit when I’m in full flow but I realize that I would probably do the same if I were regaled with such tall talk without ever being invited to join in and see for myself. So on my next foray into deepest, darkest Soho I turn up with a slightly sceptical Magnus who nevertheless warmsto Francis and quite sees the point of the extravagant lunch he offers us at La Terrazza, where we are fussed over by Mario, one of the flamboyant Italian owners. Francis tells me he has to pick up some cash at his gallery afterwards and suggests we meet at Muriel’s, so I lead Magnus proudly up the malodorous staircase as if I were taking him to an enchanted realm and am sufficiently buoyed up on lunchtime wine not to flinch when Muriel, sitting erect and regal on her barside stool, says, ‘Does your mother know you’re out, dear?’, then with a condescending look at Magnus, ‘And who have we brought with us, dear, your blowjob?’ But luckily Ian, in a flowered shirt and dark glasses that do nothing to disguise his strawberry nose, stops giggling to open a bottle of champagne and pushes two foaming glasses towards us, which we grasp as symbols of having made it past Muriel’s Cerberus-like presence and into the murky green depths of her club in mid-afternoon.
    There are only about a dozen other drinkers propping up the bar or seated in the gloom. I notice Frank Norman, with the big white scar running down one side of his face, whose ‘Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be’ has become such a success. Then purple-faced Denis Wirth-Miller, looking more pleased with himself than ever, comes over to greet us exuberantly. Behind him, at the far end of the bar, looms the heavy-set frame of David Sylvester, deep in conversation with a slight girl who gazes raptly at him as if expecting a revelation. I become vaguely conscious of a certain unease in the room as I nod toward Sylvester, who looks through me and continues to talk urgently to the girl. Denis meanwhile has been prancing from one side of the room past the silent piano to the bar and back. He’s wearing a light linen suit and his head is thrown back in exultation, as if he were savouring some private triumph.
    â€˜Do stop pooving around, Denis,’ Muriel shoots from the bar. ‘If you can’t keep still, why don’t you open your bead bag and buy all my lovely members some more