Free Francis Bacon in Your Blood by Michael Peppiatt Page B

father himself had manic depression – the same illness under another name. This insidious condition, with its aura of secrecy and shame, had been treated disastrously after the war with electroshock, which in desperation my father had undergone; and after bouts in clinics had yielded no improvement, the illness was supposed to be kept at bay – the violent mood swings held in chemical equilibrium – by the mauve, purple and sky-blue pills that he kept in clusters on his bedside table. Nevertheless our household knew only two totally distinct seasons: the brief, hectic, super-exuberant summer phase, then the never-ending depressive one, each of them so extreme that my mother, sister and I all wordlessly yearned for the change, only to regret it as soon as it got under way.
    The sense of oppression this illness instilled in the family came from never knowing what to expect, coupled with constantly fearing the worst. After months of my zombie-like father being barely able to make it through the day, let alone drag himself into the pharmaceutical company he ran – while keeping the whole family’s plans and hopes on hold – there would be a burst of activity in which suddenly nothing was impossible and no bounds known. Workmen would turn up to add extensionsto house and garden, expensive holidays were booked, cars purchased, outlandish bills (intercepted by my mother) arrived from louche-sounding nightclubs, the drinks cabinet was filled to bursting and as regularly depleted.
    Similarly, where my father had been so withdrawn that it was impossible to get an answer from him, he now became so voluble no one else could get a word in. He shouted in restaurants, made scenes in shops and drove his latest car with aggressive speed and copious hooting; if no one laughed at his jokes, he would repeat them loudly until their wit was acknowledged. Money that had been hoarded morphed into overdrafts and any hint of caution was contemptuously brushed aside. As we cowered in fear and embarrassment, my father came into his own with a vengeance, making up for lost time – just before sinking once again into his long, sad, silent winter. And all this, he promised looking into my eyes, would be mine. I was his son, and he had seen the signs.
    So when I came across an older man in whom bleak despair and spectacular exuberance warred but were miraculously held in check, not by pills but through an iron will and startling inventiveness, I was entranced. It did not matter how warped or distorted the means if it helped me live with the family curse. My father had not known how to survive; he became the victim of his illness, and that gave me an example not to follow but to avoid. Apart from opening all kinds of tantalizing vistas on to the future, meeting Francis ignited a deep, secret hope . . .
    â€˜It is terribly marvellous for you to be going around with him, seeing and hearing simply everything,’ John Deakin is saying in his richly enunciated, plummy tones. I’ve scraped together a little spare cash and, as a belated thank-you for his clever way of introducing me to Francis, I’ve taken him for lunch at a Soho trattoria where he says the
tonno vitellato
is divine.
    â€˜I hope you’re getting it all down, my dear. One day it will be of such value,’ he remarks, nursing a glass of house red. ‘It’s incredible, but you’ve become a sort of Boswell to Francis. It’ssimply marvellous. He talks to you about everything. Even I didn’t foresee that. Don’t screw it all up now, kiddo. Remember. Get it down.’
    Eyes go up in a down-drawn face.
    We talk about the people I’ve met with Francis and the places we’ve been to. John chuckles occasionally at my description of things getting out of hand, like the session with Snowdon, and fills the conversation in with reminiscences of his own.
    â€˜When I first came to London before the war I used