means to Lucian, full pelt, hell for leather, as if this is a getaway heâll only get one crack at, and that heâs very skilled at it, so the fear subsides a bit and I begin to enjoy the sense of complete anarchy and the breaking of every rule they teach you when youfirst take to the road. This breathtaking journey turns London into the most compact of cities and within minutes we come to a squealing halt outside a grand townhouse in an elegant crescent in Knightsbridge.
Lucian produces a key from his jacket, and for the first time I notice heâs wearing a well-cut double-breasted grey suit but with no shirt or apparently anything else beneath. Without explanation, though I suppose he must know the grandee who lives here, Lucian opens the front door and ushers me up the stately staircase, past sitting rooms filled with impressive paintings, some Old Masters in carved frames but mainly modern, to a sparsely furnished, low-ceilinged room at the top. There are only two chairs, prepared as if for an interview. The late-autumn light is fading, but Lucian begins a soft, lisping monologue that has vaguely threatening undertones, as if he might at any moment say âWe have ways of making you talk,â but of course he says nothing of the kind but rambles on about the âsituationâ we or painters or somebody is in now and thereâs little we can do about it but attempt to return to a certain truth that only stumbling on through the dark can tell, and truth to tell it has become dark now in the room and I canât note down anything of what Lucianâs saying and heâs got up and heâs moving through the darkness talking, itâs unnerving, heâs become just a disembodied voice, distant, and Iâm trying to make out the soft lisping sounds, it all sounds rather abstract and about âthe way things areâ, then suddenly he comes closer, standing right by me, and Iâm wondering what might happen next, until all the lights suddenly go on in a blaze like the end of a film and Iâm invited to take the stairs down and leave and make whatever I can of these utterances with their quotes from Nietzsche and turn them into something that will pass muster in my magazine, as I find myself back on the street, breathing in the night air, blinking in the lamplight, relieved and suddenly free again.
Knowing Iâd be in London Iâd called Francis and weâve arranged to meet for dinner. Thereâs already something comforting about the whole ritual of a night out as we sit in the snug bar at Wheelerâs and as usual I am starving and make my way through several bowls of peanuts with the first few glasses of wine and Francis chats to the barman who tells us about his girlfriend getting her âknickers in a twistâ, a silly phrase which somehow helps soothe the unrequited sexual pangs that torment me day and night and keep the great enigma of love at bay. Perhaps Francis has sensed this. He seems to accept the fact that I only like women, even if I find the company of homosexual men in many ways more interesting, and frequently more flattering, and if he has made a pass at me it must have been so subtle that I havenât noticed it. So I was intrigued the other day when I went to see him that he suggested I meet one of his models, Henrietta Moraes, whom Iâve heard is very âfreeâ. And he took one of the copies of
Paris Match
he had lying around and over a double page of photographs of war atrocities in Vietnam he wrote me a sort of letter of introduction to her, but while I was waiting for what I thought might be the right moment to make contact with her, John Deakin showed me a sheaf of photographs he had taken of Henrietta naked on the bed, originally commissioned by Francis so that he could do portraits of her. Several of them focused on Henrietta with her legs splayed, and they were so graphic, not to say hirsute, that whatever lust impelled me
Lucian produces a key from his jacket, and for the first time I notice heâs wearing a well-cut double-breasted grey suit but with no shirt or apparently anything else beneath. Without explanation, though I suppose he must know the grandee who lives here, Lucian opens the front door and ushers me up the stately staircase, past sitting rooms filled with impressive paintings, some Old Masters in carved frames but mainly modern, to a sparsely furnished, low-ceilinged room at the top. There are only two chairs, prepared as if for an interview. The late-autumn light is fading, but Lucian begins a soft, lisping monologue that has vaguely threatening undertones, as if he might at any moment say âWe have ways of making you talk,â but of course he says nothing of the kind but rambles on about the âsituationâ we or painters or somebody is in now and thereâs little we can do about it but attempt to return to a certain truth that only stumbling on through the dark can tell, and truth to tell it has become dark now in the room and I canât note down anything of what Lucianâs saying and heâs got up and heâs moving through the darkness talking, itâs unnerving, heâs become just a disembodied voice, distant, and Iâm trying to make out the soft lisping sounds, it all sounds rather abstract and about âthe way things areâ, then suddenly he comes closer, standing right by me, and Iâm wondering what might happen next, until all the lights suddenly go on in a blaze like the end of a film and Iâm invited to take the stairs down and leave and make whatever I can of these utterances with their quotes from Nietzsche and turn them into something that will pass muster in my magazine, as I find myself back on the street, breathing in the night air, blinking in the lamplight, relieved and suddenly free again.
Knowing Iâd be in London Iâd called Francis and weâve arranged to meet for dinner. Thereâs already something comforting about the whole ritual of a night out as we sit in the snug bar at Wheelerâs and as usual I am starving and make my way through several bowls of peanuts with the first few glasses of wine and Francis chats to the barman who tells us about his girlfriend getting her âknickers in a twistâ, a silly phrase which somehow helps soothe the unrequited sexual pangs that torment me day and night and keep the great enigma of love at bay. Perhaps Francis has sensed this. He seems to accept the fact that I only like women, even if I find the company of homosexual men in many ways more interesting, and frequently more flattering, and if he has made a pass at me it must have been so subtle that I havenât noticed it. So I was intrigued the other day when I went to see him that he suggested I meet one of his models, Henrietta Moraes, whom Iâve heard is very âfreeâ. And he took one of the copies of
Paris Match
he had lying around and over a double page of photographs of war atrocities in Vietnam he wrote me a sort of letter of introduction to her, but while I was waiting for what I thought might be the right moment to make contact with her, John Deakin showed me a sheaf of photographs he had taken of Henrietta naked on the bed, originally commissioned by Francis so that he could do portraits of her. Several of them focused on Henrietta with her legs splayed, and they were so graphic, not to say hirsute, that whatever lust impelled me
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