by Pattie Boyd
I knew nothing about sex. My mother didn’t talk about it and at that time there was no sex education in schools—and certainly not in a convent. When I had my first period I thought I was going to die. I was about thirteen and woke up one morning to find the sheets covered with blood. Luckily I was at home and ran to my mother in a state of great alarm. She didn’t explain anything, just changed the sheets and gave me sanitary towels. At about that time I remember messing around with Colin when he knocked into me. My chest hurt, which it never had before, and Mummy said, rather ominously, “You can’t play with your brother anymore. He might hurt you.” All our information came from friends at school and it wasn’t entirely accurate. Jenny remembers me telling her the facts of life when she was very young. I went through what the man did and, with great authority, explained that afterward the woman bled forever and ever.
According to Bobbie, the reason we moved away from Victoria Drive was that property prices had gone up in Wimbledon and the geographical area he was responsible for at Dunlop had increased, so in moving to a cheaper house at Hadley Wood, he could make money. Bobbie’s only interest in life, it seemed, was money. I never appreciated, as a child, how tight things were for him or how difficult it was to make ends meet. I think he may have thought that when my grandparents died my mother would inherit a lot of money.
They left Kenya about two years after we did, at the height of the Mau Mau rebellion, and a lot of their wealth stayed behind, tied up in the house. It was difficult to sell and worth next to nothing in that climate of fear, and there would have been no point in shipping the furniture home as they didn’t have a house to move into. So the millions never materialized.
At first they lived in a furnished flat in Regent’s Park, then moved to another in Putney, but Grandpa was not well. He had had a series of strokes, and when he and my grandmother were staying in a hotel at the end of our road in Hadley Wood, he collapsed over predinner drinks. I was sharing a room with Jenny, and I remember Lilie running in to wake us in the morning, saying, “Come on, get up, your grandfather’s dead.”
Afterward my grandmother took herself off to live, very comfortably, in a grand hotel on the seafront in Brighton where Colin and I went to visit her. Poor Colin. It was painfully obvious that she preferred me. She had always had favorites and made no attempt to disguise it. My mother grew up knowing that she was second best, that her twin brother, John, was their mother’s favorite. It had done nothing for her confidence and did nothing for Colin’s either.
My beloved grandmother died when I was thirteen, about six months after Grandpa. She was only fifty-eight but she suffered from a thyroid-related complaint. I remember going to the funeral, turning around in the church, looking at my mother, and thinking, God, she’s so beautiful, and then that I shouldn’t be thinking such things about my mother at her mother’s funeral. By the time Granny died she had spent most of her money. She left a hundred pounds to each of us, not that Jenny or I ever saw ours; and I imagine rather more went to my mother, but nothing like the fortune Bobbie might have hoped for. When the money came through, my mother spent it on a set of fine porcelain, which infuriated him.
As children we were convinced that the reason we had moved away from Wimbledon was because Bobbie had fallen in love with a neighbor. She was German, called Ingrid, and had moved into a house two doors away from ours shortly after we had arrived in Victoria Drive. Ingrid was beautiful, glamorous, sophisticated, tall, dark, and vivacious, married to a short, stocky, rather solid German businessman called Wolf. He ran a company selling potash and often had to entertain customers in expensive restaurants and clubs in London and frequently invited my mother and Bobbie along too. He was quite nice but she was the gregarious one and he seemed to adore her. They had two young daughters and she was the perfect housewife—she was a fantastic cook, she made the most delicious chocolate biscuits, and her children were perfectly behaved and dressed. The two families became good friends and we children played together. But we could tell that something was not quite right in the way Ingrid and Bobbie behaved with each other. I noticed that he would often make an excuse to go over to her house, and Ingrid would wear very low-cut dresses. I remember sitting in the car once, waiting to go somewhere with Bobbie, and Ingrid leaning provocatively through the car window to chat to him.
I have no idea when they started their affair, but Bobbie bought Mummy a Triumph Herald—which I learned to drive on the lawn at Gosmore. I was conscious of an atmosphere in the house of silent fury and slammed doors. I climbed into the car one day and noticed a deep scratch on the windscreen. “Look,” I said, pointing it out to my mother. She said a neighbor’s wife had scratched it, but offered no further explanation. In fact, she knew that Ingrid had left it as a calling card for Bobbie: she must have scratched it with her diamond ring after some romantic encounter. But my mother chose not to challenge what was happening under her nose; she denied it, as she did everything else that was unpalatable. Ingrid remained her friend, and she, Wolf, and their children were frequent visitors. I felt angry on Mummy’s behalf, but in some ways I was as frightened of her as I was of Bobbie. She didn’t confide in me, so I was in no position to help or even say anything to her.
Sometimes in the school holidays I would go to stay with Jane Blackiston, a friend from St. Martha’s. Her parents lived in a pretty Northamptonshire village and her mother bought milk in churns from the farm to make her own butter and cream—she also made the most delicious cherry pies I’ve ever eaten. But Jane would make me get onto her horrible pony and hit it over the rump so that it would race off and jump over huge branches that had fallen on the village green, secretly hoping, I have no doubt, that I would fall off. By some miracle, I never obliged.
During the long summer holidays Colin and I were often sent to Cornwall to stay with our grandfather on his farm near Liskeard. Grandpa Boyd was an extraordinary man, quite exotic. He rode a big Triumph motorbike and we didn’t see him much because he was always rushing off. We would take the train from Paddington and meet our grandmother, his estranged wife, at Truro. I didn’t like her, and I’m not sure why we met her there—maybe we had to change trains and she came to make sure we didn’t get lost. She went everywhere with her dachshunds, and was very austere. We would say an awkward hello, then get back on the train and continue our journey.
We had wonderful summers on the farm. We learned to milk the cows and helped take the churns on the tractor down to the end of the lane, where they were collected. We rode horses, fed the chickens, collected eggs, and were chased by pigs. There was no electricity on the farm, so we ate supper by the light of a paraffin lamp and took candles up to bed with us; it was very romantic. Grandpa had a Cornish couple living in the house to look after him. Mrs. Wills cooked everything with saffron, so we had yellow bread, yellow cakes, and yellow buns; strange but delicious. After supper Grandpa would hop onto his motorbike and roar off to the pub for a pint. Some years later, when he felt he’d had enough of life, he drove to Bodmin Moor, parked his bike, and walked until he could walk no further.
After about three years in Hadley Wood we were on the move again, to a huge six-bedroom flat in Hurlingham Court, a mansion block overlooking the Thames in Putney. I didn’t know what my stepfather’s motivation was and assumed he wanted to be closer to Ingrid, who was still in Victoria Drive but whom we saw as often as ever. But apparently the reason for the move was financial. Bobbie was short of money again and the house in Hadley Wood had nearly doubled in value, so he sold it and rented the flat.
He bought himself a boat and we spent a lot of time on the river. I even swam in it. Bobbie once bet me two shillings I couldn’t swim to a certain boat, so I jumped in, thought, Of course I’m going to do it, came back thrilled, happy, and couldn’t understand why everyone was staring at me with horror. I had cut my knee on a piece of glass getting out of the water and blood was gushing down my leg. I had to be carted off to hospital and stitched up.
Bobbie’s boat
was a motor cruiser called Blue Boy, which was moored quite close to the flat and had a little dinghy to ferry us to and from it. We used to go on trips upriver to places like Hampton Court and have picnics on the way. One evening Bobbie wanted to take the boat out for a late-night jaunt so we all piled in. He was steering and my mother was in the galley making supper when Bobbie shouted at Colin, “What’s that ahead?” Like all the Boyds, Colin was nearsighted and said he couldn’t see anything. The next minute there was the most sickening, earsplitting crash as we plowed into a metal weir and the boat was impaled on a two-foot length of metal. Thank God it was stuck—otherwise it would have sunk like a stone and we would have drowned. My mother was scalded by a pan of boiling water but miraculously no one else was harmed, just terrified. Bobbie yelled at us to get out of the boat and stand on the weir while he blew the boat’s horn until the weir-keeper arrived to rescue us. We were made to swear on our graves that we would never mention what had happened to Grandpa Gaymer-Jones.
In March 1961 I turned seventeen, and at the end of the summer term, with a sigh of relief, said farewell to St. Martha’s. My parents had never been particularly interested in my education, university was never mentioned, so with three O levels and no idea about what I might do before I married, which is all I had been prepared for, I left school. I had thought it might be fun to be an air hostess but I was told you needed to be very pretty and speak three languages. I didn’t regard myself as pretty and, apart from English, I could only speak a little bit of French, so that was out of the question. The other obvious option was a secretarial course but I didn’t want to sit in an office all day. My only ambition was to get out of Hurlingham Court and away from the dysfunctional family we had become.
My mother knew someone who was quite senior at Elizabeth Arden and she pulled a few strings to get me and my friend Jane Blackiston a job each as apprentices at their beauty salon in Bond Street. In October Jane and I moved into a house in Clareville Mews, just off Queen’s Gate in South Kensington, which we shared with two other girls. The sense of freedom was intoxicating: no nuns, no Bobbie, no tension. If I hadn’t felt so guilty about abandoning my brothers and sisters, life would have been perfect.
For my portfolio.
THREE
Modeling
In June 1961 my mother and Bobbie, Wolf and Ingrid went on a two-week touring holiday in Germany and Italy. Five days into the trip, as they were preparing for dinner one night, Bobbie dropped a bombshell. He told my mother he thought they should get a divorce. Her diary entry from that night is heartbreaking, but typical:
June 27th. A terrific thunderstorm last night. Shutters hitting against the windows kept us awake. After breakfast (in an almost deserted dining room) we all went shopping in funny little Bellagio. Bobbie bought me a blouse and scarf, and a pair of shoes for himself. Whatever else Bobbie might be he is certainly generous over money. Another thunderstorm. While we were changing for dinner Bobbie shocked me by saying he thought as we were always arguing we should get divorced. I am shattered. I prayed to God to help me. I feel numb. Conversation at dinner impossible. Wolf suspicious and angry with Ingrid. A neglected husband and I a neglected wife!
Poor Mummy: she had carried on as though she and Ingrid were the best of friends and Bobbie’s behavior no more than boyish flirtation. She had probably thought the affair would eventually disintegrate. Now that the facts were staring her in the face, now that Bobbie had told her he was in love with Ingrid and wanted out, she swallowed her pride and continued as though it were a minor inconvenience. She didn’t scream and shout; she didn’t pack her bags and take the first train home. Bobbie’s announcement didn’t even interrupt the holiday. Wolf and he weren’t talking for a while, and Wolf and Ingrid weren’t either, but no one stormed out. The next morning they left Bellagio at nine-thirty, arrived at their hotel in Sirmione at two o’clock, went for a walk in the gardens, swam, took a motor-boat to the other side of the lake, and sat down to dinner together on the terrace.
There were ructions when they got back: the affair was out in the open and it was an unsettling time. My mother and Bobbie continued to live at Hurlingham Court together, and in some respects life carried on as normal. His moods were worse. I remember that one night he didn’t like something my mother had cooked for supper so he picked up his plate and threw it at her. Sometimes he would leave the flat and, moments later, Wolf would arrive, pie-eyed and wanting to talk.
It was a year before Bobbie finally left. He went to live with Ingrid in a house he’d bought in Wimbledon and two months later had the cheek to ring Hurlingham Court to invite Jenny to go over to see it. He walked out, leaving my mother with five children and little money to support them. Colin was fifteen and at boarding school in Norfolk; he was immediately taken out of it and sent to Holland Park School in London, where he was one of two thousand pupils. Jenny was thirteen and at St. Martha’s. She, too, was sent to Holland Park. Aged eleven, Paula found the transition from private to state school less traumatic than the others, but it was a shock for them all. David and Boo were eight and six and both at boarding schools in Sussex.
I was safely out of the equation in South Kensington, exploring the world of boys and bistros. But I had a new burden of guilt, which I discovered, years later, I was not alone in carrying; Colin and Jenny had felt the same, even though we knew that Bobbie had left Mummy because he had fallen in love with Ingrid. I couldn’t help thinking that in some way it was my fault, that I had driven him away by being horrid to him. I thought maybe he had gone because he knew how much I disliked him. Years later I discovered that my mother felt I had let her down, that I should have been more supportive, but since she had never confided in me I don’t know what more I could have done. She was just this angry person slamming doors and saying nothing. I think she found me quite hard to cope with at that time: I was young, nubile, and had everything in front of me, while she was penniless with five children, no husband, and bitterly unhappy. I remember her slapping me once across the face, probably giving herself as much of a fright as she did me. I suspect she was venting her pent-up rage. The slap might have been better directed at either Bobbie or Ingrid.
The job at Elizabeth Arden was deadly boring. I was training to be a beautician but my heart wasn’t in it and I’m not sure I would have made the grade. Elizabeth Arden herself came in one day and berated me for my makeup. She didn’t like the black pencil under my eyes; it was not the Elizabeth Arden look, she informed me. But if the way she was made up was anything to go by, I wasn’t sure it was a look I wanted. But what I did enjoy in the salon were the glossy fashion magazines that were lying around for the clients. I had never seen one before because my mother didn’t take magazines. Lilie’s Woman and Woman’s Own were the extent of my experience, and there was nothing high-fashion about either. Here, I saw wonderful titles like Vogue, Vanity Fair, Tatler, and Queen, with photographs of fabulous models like Jean Shrimpton and Celia Hammond. They looked so different from the models of the fifties, who were stiff and sophisticated. These girls were young, fresh, and different. I wanted to be like them.
Imagine my excitement when a client came into the salon one day and asked if I had ever thought of being a model. I said, “No, but I certainly could.” Sadly, I can’t remember her name, but she worked for a fashion magazine called Honey, and invited me to come to her office in Farringdon Road, just around the corner from Fleet Street, the following Monday. When I arrived she had arranged for her in-house photographer, Anthony Norris, to take test shots of me. He had set up some lights in a little studio and she gave me a couple of outfits to wear—I remember a beret, and having to look sultry smoking a Gitanes. They were black-and-white, moody shots, with a bit of a Parisian feel.
Once she had seen the results, my fairy godmother phoned Cherry Marshall, who then ran one of the top model agencies, and said she was sending me to her. Anthony Norris went with me and told Cherry he thought she should take me on. Cherry was delightful and said I didn’
t need training to walk like a model—I already did. Posture was something my grandmother had been hot on: she would always put a hand behind my back and tell me to sit up straight. Who knows? Maybe all those years of my stepfather’s discipline had paid off too.
I was thrilled. I raced home and told Jane, and she was furious. Years later she said resentfully, “You were the short fat one at Elizabeth Arden.” That wasn’t entirely true: at five feet seven and a half inches I was half an inch shorter than her. In my early teens I had had puppy fat, which had mostly gone by the time I was seventeen. I had always had a big bust and long, skinny legs—at one time I had wanted to chop a bit off them—and in my netball shorts at school I looked gangly. I always felt top-heavy. But one day at school we were lying around reading and a girl called Paula said, “Your eyes are the color of cornflowers.” I thought, How lovely. What a nice thing to say.
Finding an agency was easy; finding a job was the hard part. Every day I would go out with a list of photographers’ names and addresses and trudge around with my portfolio, hoping they would like what they saw in it and use me on a job. And if one did, I would try very hard to get him to give me some prints at a low rate so that I could add them to my portfolio. I must have traveled on every bus and tube in London, and when I was out of money I walked. My diary for those days is full of IOUs for the odd fiver I borrowed from Colin or friends to tide me over.