One Hundred Summers

by Vanessa Branson

  ‘What’s this?’ he’d ask, showing me an illustration of some masterpiece while covering the description. Once I managed to see the caption before he obscured it.

  ‘Ah, I know this one,’ I said, as he held his hand over the name of a delicately rendered crucifixion.

  ‘You’ll never get it,’ he said.

  ‘Ok, let me think,’ I said, looking to the restaurant ceiling as if summoning the information from the recesses of my mind.

  ‘It’s an oil by Panell!’ I whooped.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Vanessa,’ smiled Hamish. ‘It’s oil on panel, by Bronzino. You’re busted.’

  Hamish caught me out a second time. We’d spent several hours wandering around the Uffizi Gallery, marvelling at Rembrandt’s tragic self-portrait and staring in awe at paintings by Piero della Francesca and Leonardo, when Hamish became transfixed by The Annunciation by Simone Martini. This gave me the opportunity to sneak off and find a corner in which I could furtively read the final chapter of The Pirate.

  ‘Caught you!’ laughed Hamish. He hasn’t let me forget my act of philistinism to this day.

  While flying home from Italy, I realised that I too wanted to study the history of art. I went for an interview with Lucy Knox and Roger Bevan, who were starting a school called The New Academy of Art Studies. Still glowing from my Italian trip, I surprised myself and my potential tutors when I explained that I wanted to become more knowledgeable about the arts so I could communicate their transformative qualities to the masses.

  That academic year was tremendous; Roger and Lucy, who were barely out of university themselves, invited the lecturers they knew would fire our enthusiasm. The course romped through the history of fine, decorative, architectural and sculptural art, from cave paintings to conceptual works. We had four lectures a day from Monday to Thursday, with Fridays reserved for museum and exhibition visits.

  Our lectures were held at the London Sketch Club on Dilke Street in Chelsea. It was here, towards the end of the year, that Antony Gormley delivered a lecture about Stanley Spencer. The sheer physicality of his description of The Resurrection, Cookham was utterly captivating. The sensual manner in which his expressive body rose upwards, his large hands re-enacting the sleepy villagers climbing from their graves, was seared into my impressionable mind – from that moment onwards, I knew that I wanted to work in the arts, and more specifically to work with contemporary artists who would make me look at the world through their eyes and challenge my preconceptions.

  Antony took me to see his Higher Diploma show at the Slade School of Fine Art. One of his works, Breadline, consisted of a ten-metre line of bite-sized mouthfuls of Mother’s Pride bread, their bitten edges facing forward.

  ‘I’m hoping to open out our relationship to the material world by making an object into a journey,’ Antony said as he paced up and down, his hands cupped in concentration. ‘A line along which the viewer can walk.’ I nodded, hoping to convey that I understood what he was saying. ‘Buddhist meditation encourages an awareness of time as a sequence where one mind moment follows another, and this work makes a frame-by-frame movie out of bread, acknowledging mortality and our nature as consumers.’

  A penny dropped somewhere in the recesses of my mind but I remained silent as he walked me around some of his fellow postgraduates’ installations, explaining the ideas behind their work with a clarity that I could just about grasp. I didn’t understand all the work by any means, but something about it drew me in. These students were some of the smartest of their generation, and it was clear that the conceptual language they were developing was going to be worth learning.

  A few weeks earlier, on a crisp April weekend, I’d been to visit Hamish at his Downing College in Cambridge. We spent time in the book-filled rooms of Hamish’s fellow students, listening to records and discussing events of the week over cups of tea. We also went to the Cambridge Union to see a debate about Northern Ireland. I had never witnessed young people displaying such erudition and confidence as those standing up to challenge the politicians. Later, after we’d been to the ADC Theatre to see a comedy revue, Hamish pointed out the silhouette of a man hunched in a wheelchair, beetling across the Downing quad.

  ‘That’s Stephen Hawking,’ he told me. ‘I take him to the loo sometimes when we’re working near each other in the University Library. He’s amazing.’

  That one weekend opened my eyes to a life of limitless possibility. Being surrounded by these clever, engaged, funny, curious people while wandering around Cambridge’s majestic streets filled me with an indescribable optimism and a real sense of possibility.

  On the Monday morning, Hamish asked his friend in the next-door room to entertain me while he went to a lecture. Robert was six foot two and stick-thin, with unruly blond hair well below his shoulders. I immediately noticed his elegant fingers and neat fingernails, as well as his dreadful teeth – a saving grace, in my opinion, because I’ve always had a mistrust of men who cruise through left on the strength of their good looks. I’m sure Robert’s heart must have sunk when he was asked to babysit Hamish’s weekend squeeze; but he good-naturedly offered to take me for a walk to see the famous Cambridge Backs.

  By now I was smitten with Cambridge and high on the energy pulsating from the students chatting on street corners, languishing on lawns or gathering in coffee shops. From Downing’s courtyard, we wandered through Pembroke College, down Trumpington Street, over the river, past Queens’ College and the Mathematical Bridge. Over the gently flowing water loomed King’s and then Trinity College. It was easy to imagine my undergraduate father, late for swimming practice, furiously pedalling along these paths, his loyal Great Dane Appin gambolling along beside him.

  As we strolled along the riverbank, Robert told me that this was where he and his parents had come for a picnic to introduce him to the idea of going to the university. I became aware of a busker with a guitar slung around his neck, strumming ballads while walking behind us. We walked in silence and, as we neared the Bridge of Sighs, the realisation slowly dawned that we were being serenaded. We caught each other’s eye, laughed in embarrassment and carried on walking. The troubadour played on. Cupid had fired a direct hit.

  I visited Cambridge every other weekend for the next two years, living the university life vicariously through Robert and my newfound friends, before melting away during the final few months of the academic year, as the hurdle of finals approached. Robert finished with a good degree, but one not quite good enough to pursue the academic career he’d had in his sights.

  The following few years were lived at a furious pace, as I made new friendships and consolidated old ones. I shared a tiny, one-bedroomed flat in Fulham with Ian Harrison, whom I’d met at Cambridge, with me on the sofa-bed and him in the bedroom. I subsequently moved into a grander flat in Kensington, paying rock-bottom rent to my landlady, in return for lying to her father. Whenever he telephoned to speak to her, I was to say that she’d popped out for a bottle of milk and would call him back on her return. On no account was the poor man to know that his trust-fund daughter was actually living in Knightsbridge with her boyfriend.

  On graduating from Cambridge, Robert shared an unmodernised cavern of a flat in Sloane Street with a fluctuating number of friends. There was his old Marlborough schoolfriend Tim Evans, whose uncle owned the flat, who was studying medicine and had a revolving cast of blond beauties back to his room. Hamish lived there too, along with his dress designer girlfriend Anna, who specialised in making wedding gowns. A frequent visitor was another old school friend, Bodley Ryle. Bod was working in Hatchards, the bookshop on Piccadilly, and was also no slouch in picking up girls.

  So many life-long friendships were made during those years. That gloomy basement might not have offered the best sleeping accommodation but boy, you could have a good party there. Everyone was broke, but money never seemed to be an issue. We were blind to our privilege and took the safety nets that our caring parents provided for granted. Every one of us had w
elcoming families offering the free use of washing machines, hot baths and Sunday lunches, as well as stocks of baked beans to take away for the following week. Apart from these home comforts, we were blissfully unaware of the advice that our parents were subtly offering, in the hope that they would nudge us to make the right life decisions. Most importantly, we were oblivious to the freedom that our childhood beds gave us, waiting to offer silent solace following job or relationship failure as we licked our wounds before heading back into the fray.

  The year after graduating, the fledgling year, is a tricky one for many. It’s a time when you’re desperate to show that you can fly after gaining your degree but more often than not you crash-land a number of times before soaring into the future.

  History had been Robert’s passion, but working in publishing was his dream. While he was looking for a job, he spent a dispiriting six months on the dole and volunteering for Amnesty International. My parents were uncomfortable with my boyfriend’s left-leaning politics and were taken aback by his brash over-confidence, though I understood that much of this bravado was maintaining his flagging sense of self-worth while he tried to find a job.

  The Devereux family lived in the north of England, a few miles north of Morpeth in Northumberland and just fifty yards off the A1. His mother Barbara was a much-loved English teacher in the local comprehensive school, while his father Humphrey had a painting and decorating shop on an estate just outside Newcastle. Humphrey was what you might politely call an eccentric, and took pride in taking contrary views and winning arguments with hapless opponents such as council officials or waiters. I’d never witnessed a relationship like theirs: Barbara was skilled at ensuring that Humphrey’s temper didn’t get the better of him and would stand behind him, stroking his back while winking at us over his head. She was clever, sympathetic, quick to laugh and we became instant friends. She would talk to me about her complicated marriage; she seemed to carry the responsibility of the family finances and its emotional stability on her tired shoulders, a heavy burden that she clearly found exhausting.

  On my first visit to Robert’s family, Humphrey picked us up from Newcastle Station in his van. The seats were covered with wallpaper samples and paint charts, which he swept onto the floor before inviting us to sit. When he ran through the first red light, I couldn’t help but let out a little yelp from the back seat; but after the second and third, I realised that this was simply Humphrey’s driving style. The family home was a five-bedroomed mock-Georgian house, set in an acre of garden. It was cosy, but certainly not opulent. I was given Robert’s old dayglow-daubed bedroom.

  Humphrey, Robert and I gathered in the sitting room for tea and Barbara entered with a tray of hot buttered crumpets, whispering that Clare, Robert’s sixteen-year-old sister, would pop in to introduce herself, before going out to meet her friends in town.

  ‘Clare’s desperately self-conscious,’ Barbara continued, ‘so please don’t make any comments on how she looks.’ We all agreed and Clare coyly entered the room. She gave Robert a hug and then turned to her Dad, who immediately said, ‘Golly, aren’t you looking smashing! Are you wearing make-up?’

  Clare’s composure melted as she fled from the room, mascara running down her cheeks. Humphrey simply shrugged his shoulders and looked theatrically nonplussed, and from that moment I realised that my relationship with Robert’s father was never going to be straightforward. However, little did I know just how complicated it would prove to be.

  ***

  At around that time, Mum had an accident that sent shockwaves through our lives. Dad was suffering from kidney stones, and while he was on leave from work and waiting for his operation, my parents offered to take Richard’s steel-hulled houseboat, Arthur, down the Grand Union Canal from Reading to Little Venice, in the heart of London. On entering a lock, Dad asked Mum to tie the boat to a metal bollard on the towpath. He thought the boat was in neutral, but it was actually still in forward gear. Mum placed a coil of rope over the bollard. In an instant, the rope snapped tight around her right hand, squeezing off her index and little finger and badly mangling the rest of her hand. She was taken by ambulance to King Edward VII’s Hospital, where she and Dad were admitted to adjoining rooms, him for his kidney operation and her to have her hand saved and patched up as best as possible.

  The pain Mum suffered was indescribable, as was the guilt Dad felt at causing it. I would visit one of them and then the other, and realised that they were struggling to connect with each other. Mum was also confused about the role she was to play at home, her last child having been shuffled from the nest. She celebrated her freedom while harbouring feelings of grief for the past. She took up a few hobbies perversely challenging to someone with two missing fingers: calligraphy, tapestry and the piano.

  By this time, Lindy and Bertie were living in Brook Green with their new baby, Ned, and Richard was enthralled by a new love, Joan Templeman, whose bewitching beauty and Glasgow common sense was destined to play a vital role in the Virgin story. We should trust in love’s instinct to see in another what others don’t see and to recognise that another person can complement our own strengths. With this fundamental premise, love can withstand many a storm – I witnessed it with my parents and again with Richard and Joan, as they became an anchor for our generation.

  Mum became increasingly demanding. The accident occurring alongside her menopausal years made for an uncomfortable combination. She’d ask me to run errands that entailed driving through London rush-hour traffic unnecessarily, becoming agitated if I suggested alternative options, and there was also her ever-present irritation at my easy relationship with Dad. I can only think that my solipsism as a seventeen-year-old wrapped up in boyfriend problems, on top of the anguish she was experiencing herself, justified Mum’s behaviour. When Richard invited my parents and Lindy and Bertie to join him and Joan on the holiday of a lifetime, flying first on Concorde to Singapore and then onwards to Bali, I was not invited, I suspect because of some failure of communication on Mum’s part.

  To compensate, Richard suggested that I go to New York to help Ken Berry, who was setting up Virgin America. Ken had recently bought a rambling house on Perry Street in Greenwich Village for Virgin’s head office.

  ‘The house needs a women’s touch,’ Richard told me, kindly giving me some responsibility but not realising that I felt more like a girl than a woman. There was no further discussion, and a week or two later I found myself sitting in a back seat of a Laker Airways plane, chain-smoking for the entire flight across the Atlantic. I was to stay there for a month.

  When we’re young, we’re unaware of just how life-changing experiences can be, and travel can further reinforce their impact. I’d been to New York once before, visiting for a day during a Christmas holiday with Kristen’s family in Southport, Connecticut, an hour to the north. I was in awe of everything about New York, from the height of the buildings and the background thrum of subway trains to the pavement vents that belched steam while checker taxi cabs, their horns honking, bounced over potholes in the roads. Southport was much more civilised, with piles of boxed gifts under the Christmas tree and frozen mist hanging over the silent ocean. Kristen’s neighbours were the Richardson family who owned Vicks, the vapor rub brand, on one side, and the composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia on the other – carols sung around the piano were certainly memorable that Christmas.

  Deep into setting up Virgin America, poor Ken was somewhat perplexed at suddenly having to accommodate his business partner’s little sister into his schedule. Neither of us knew quite what was expected of us; instead of tackling the monumental job of giving the house the ‘woman’s touch’, I filled my days by attending free lectures at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Frick Collection. With barely a cent to my name and not comfortable asking to borrow a dollar or two from Ken, these lectures were my only daytime activity. The talks were wonderful, but I was becoming aware that spending so many days walking around on my own
, barely eating, and going to gigs each night, was unsettling my equilibrium.

  While queuing at the café at MOMA one day, I found myself chatting to a friendly man who then joined me while I sipped my coffee. He introduced himself as Hartley. I told him of my new-found passion for art and how I was spending my days in New York. He explained that his mother was an artist and wondered if I would like to meet her; before I knew it I was getting into a cab with this total stranger and heading for the heart of Harlem. That district was notorious in the seventies as a police no-go area, and the streets were alive with men standing around drinking, dealing drugs and arguing animatedly. Old ladies were sitting on stoops as plastic bags caught in the wind swirled above their heads. I remember realising that I’d broken the first rule of self-preservation in getting in a stranger’s car, but my concern was trumped by the excitement of stepping into the unknown.

  We walked up the litter-strewn staircase of a five-storey apartment block, and as we neared the fourth floor, the air became thick with the smell of linseed oil and turpentine. Hartley called to his mother as he opened the door and my jaw dropped; I had never seen such a space. There were paintings propped against the walls all the way down the corridor, and in every room. Yet more paintings, mainly portraits and many of them nudes, were nailed haphazardly to the walls.

  An elderly woman walked towards us, holding out a welcoming hand and offering us tea.

  ‘This is my mother, Alice Neel,’ said Hartley. ‘I hope you like what she does – I’m sure she’ll be happy to show you around.’

  I spent the entire afternoon with this confident woman, who was well into her seventies. Alice explained how she had come to painting and how her work had been affected by the death of her daughter and subsequent years of depression, including prolonged spells in lunatic asylums. She wanted to challenge the social norms of what was depicted in art, and at that time she was focusing on painting nudes of pregnant women, many of whom were local friends who she invited to sit for her. She explained that she found these paintings exciting because pregnancy is such an important part of the human experience.