It is October 1986. I am in Bath’s Royal United Hospital a few days after the birth of my first child, Laura. My bed is next to Stephanie’s, who a few days earlier gave birth to Laurence. Stephanie and I have chatted a little, bonding over our bewilderment at being new mothers, both sore from our unplanned caesareans. It is early evening and we have visitors. Peter is there with a male friend and they are sitting at the end of Stephanie’s bed engrossed in conversation. Stephanie is feeding Laurence, taking no part in the dialogue. Intrigued by their intensity, my husband Phil and I listen in on the conversation for a few minutes, then look at each other and giggle – Peter and his friend are discussing nuclear war. Not really a topic most new mothers, babe in arms wants to consider. I don’t know Stephanie well enough yet to make eye contact, am not sure what her view of the conversation is, but months later we will laugh about it and despair together at the inappropriate conversation.
This was my first introduction to Peter. Stephanie and I become good friends, our children inseparable. We were both new to Bath and glad of each other’s company. It is through my friendship with Stephanie that maybe a year or so after our first meeting that Peter learned I could type. He seemed excited by this discovery and explained that he was setting up an art magazine and needed someone to do some typing. Would I be interested? I was, on reflection, disproportionately excited by this suggestion, but I had not worked since Laura was born. I was committed to being a stay at home mother, but missed the challenge of work and was often lonely. I decided to accept the job offer when I realised that Laurence’s nanny could look after Laura while I worked. Laura would be playing in the family room next to Peter’s study being cared for by someone I knew and trusted.
After my initial excitement about earning much needed money, I soon started to fret, worried that Peter would expect me to know more about art than I did. The art world seemed everything to him and it was no consolation that he knew nothing about my world of pensions admin. Art and writing seemed to occupy his mind almost constantly. I decided it would be best to exaggerate my ignorance. Discussing the magazine over lunch one day, I looked at him and grinned, ‘I don’t know much about art, Peter,’ I said. ‘I only really know Turner.’
Peter smiled. ‘He’s all you need to know.’
In fact, I considered my knowledge of art to be above average – having received no useful art education at school, I was proud that I could identity a Monet, could tell the difference between a Cézanne and a Van Gogh, knew that Lowry was my favourite artist. The next few months would show me I knew nothing. Peter often looked puzzled when he tried to discuss some ‘famous’ artist with me and I had never heard of them. I knew, however, that compared to many of my friends, to my parents, my siblings that my interest in art and knowledge about it was much greater than theirs. I tried to convince Peter that I was the man on the Clapham omnibus, the man in the street, but he never seemed to believe me. I wanted to take him into Bath city centre with pictures by famous painters and stop members of the public to ask them to name the artists. I think he would have been shocked by the results.
Looking through the early editions of ‘Modern Painters’ recently, the only article I can be positive I typed, was the one about Beatrix Potter that appeared in issue one. I may have typed up an article about Graham Sutherland, but I’m not sure – all the articles seem so familiar when I look at them now. I remember loving the paintings by Therese Olton. Through typing up articles and reading the finished magazines, I learnt so much, heard about artists such as Gilbert and George, Lucien Freud, knew for the first time about the Turner prize. I remember reading Prince Charles’s Mansion House speech and being horrified by the pictures of the modern Paternoster Square. I think I typed up Peter’s interview with Anthony Caro where they discussed Henry Moore. It’s shocking now that I can’t be sure I typed it, for at the time, I remember listening, engrossed in the interview while at the same time struggling to get to grips with audio typing. I know I had never heard of Henry Moore before typing the interview which seems unbelievable to me now. I learnt so much in Peter’s freezing cold study as I sat and typed – it was like a crash course in art appreciation and I wondered why no one had thought to teach me any of this at school.
Peter, I think, received a whole day’s tuition on the word processor. He passed on this knowledge to me in half an hour – OK, maybe I’m being unfair, perhaps it was an hour. Hard to believe now that we are all stuck behind computers for much of the day, that in the late 1980s word processors were a novelty. I had learnt to touch type at sixth form, spending hours I should have been studying for my A levels, trying to improve my speed. I became obsessed, buying a Brother portable from my mother’s catalogue – £1.50 week for 52 weeks. I am a fast typist, but not what you’d call accurate. None of this mattered with word processors, but the thing terrified me. On my first morning working for him, I followed Peter into his chaotic study and he proudly showed me the machine, a gift, I think, from Stephanie’s parents. I solemnly wrote the word processing commands down in my diary. I was terrified of the thing, but Peter seemed thrilled with it. It took me months to carry out a simple command such as underline or embolden without having to consult the back of my diary for the appropriate code. The mouse was a long way off.
It was usually a Monday that I worked while Peter was in London for the day. The fact that I, in those pre mobile phone days, was not able to contact him, often made me a little stressed, not least because I could never remember how to turn on the radiator in his study. The switch was hidden behind one of the numerous bookshelves and I never seemed to be able to locate it. If Stephanie was out, this meant a cold morning, my coat over my knees until she returned for lunch and rescued me. Sometimes though, not being able to contact Peter was a bit more serious. On one occasion, quite early on in my relationship with the dreaded word processor, I spent the morning typing as fast as I could. Typing as fast as I could, was perhaps my greatest fault – I know Peter despaired at my inaccuracy and Stephanie used to laugh about it, pointing out the number of errors the proof reader had found. Both of them encouraged me to go more slowly and to check what I had typed. I did, but I only saw what I wanted to see and found it difficult to spot mistakes. One particular morning, I had paid heed to their criticism and typed more slowly, going over every word to make sure it was correct. At the end of the morning, I pressed ‘save’. The machine told me that all the memory on the computer was full. I had no idea what to do and my morning’s work was lost. Peter patiently explained to me the importance of saving as I went along. Over twenty years later I still forget to do it.
It was maybe after issue three that I graduated from typing up articles, the task too great for a lone typist. The job became more interesting as Peter asked me to do more varied tasks. One of my jobs was to ring contributors to the magazine to ask them for details of their careers, so that a description of their achievements could be written up in the magazine. This was frankly terrifying – I had not heard of most of the people I had to ring, but felt I should have. The most memorable phone call I made still makes me cringe, or laugh, depending on my mood. I was using the phone in the family room of Stephanie and Peter’s house in Bath. For some reason I attempted to make the phone call while three two-year-olds were in the room with me. I have no idea why the nanny was not there in control or why I didn’t wait until she was there. Maybe the person called me – OK I’ll go with that, it makes me seem less daft. There was a fair amount of noise as the children played and fought over toys and I had half an eye on them, trying to break up fights and stop them doing dangerous things. I can’t remember who it was I was ringing, but when I questioned him about whether he had published any books, he told me he had written a book on Raphael.
‘Raphael?’ I asked. ‘Sorry … can you spell that?’
‘Raphael the artist!’ the man replied.
‘Sorry, sorry, yes … yes, of course.’ I laughed to try and hide how flustered I was. He didn’t sound impressed.
Did I know who Raphael was? Hard to know now – I’m older, have learnt stuff. I like to think I knew who he was, that the noise from the children made it hard for me to concentrate, but I’m not convinced.
The favourite of my new tasks was helping Peter with his fan mail. I was surprised at the enthusiasm he showed for answering the fan letters. As an avid reader, it had never occurred to me to write to my favourite authors, thinking they would think it a nuisance and would never read the letters. Now a writer myself, I understand the need a writer has for contact with readers, understand the satisfaction that receiving compliments gives in what can be a lonely job.
I could not then do shorthand and Peter would dictate his letters to me slowly and I would scribble down the gist and type it up later on my portable typewriter. Using a portable typewriter again was a bit of a challenge and I threw away sheet after sheet of paper and went through bottles of correction fluid. I used to laugh to myself as Peter dictated letters to his fans who wrote to say they had enjoyed a particular article or book he had written. Peter would always thank them and ask if they had read his latest book, ‘Theoria’. At the time I thought such self-promotion rather shocking, felt embarrassed by him suggesting to radio producers that they should consider him for a particular show. I now understand this self- promotion was necessary. I have recently had some success in short story competitions and found myself, after being a runner up in an ITV short story competition, ringing up my local paper to tell them about my success and contacting the judges to thank them for their kind comments. When discussing with my Open University tutor about how I could capitalise on my success, I mentioned that I had once worked for and been a friend of Peter’s and that he had taught me all I know about self publicity. It turned out that my tutor had done an art degree and had been a fan of Peter’s.
I was pregnant with my second child when I stopped working for Peter. Now working on ‘The Sunday Telegraph’ as an art critic and running ‘Modern Painters’, Peter was much busier and the job needed more commitment than I was willing to give it. I was not having a good pregnancy and had no spare energy. I missed it though, but it meant Stephanie and I had more time to sit and chat – something we both are pretty good at. Working for Peter looked good on my CV when I prepared to return to work – a touch of colour amongst the pension admin jobs that preceded and followed it.
