‘It is something that primitives have often done but modern painters have shied away from because women are always depicted as sexual objects,’ she asserted. ‘A pregnant woman has a claim staked out: she is not for sale.’
Being in this powerful woman’s presence, surrounded by her paintings, grounded my thoughts. Her insights into allowing yourself periods of reflection were at odds with the messages I’d been given while growing up of thinking about others and exuding positive energy. It was perfectly OK to be walking the Manhattan streets, allowing ideas to ferment gradually.
In 2014, I was invited to a dinner to celebrate an Alice Neel retrospective at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London and was coincidentally seated next to Hartley. ‘Do you remember meeting a girl in the coffee queue at MOMA a lifetime ago, and taking her up to meet your mother?’ I asked him.
He looked at me somewhat perplexed, then smiled and smacked his forehead with his fingers. ‘Yes, of course,’ he laughed. ‘What on earth was I thinking of!’
‘It was a life-changing encounter,’ I reassured him. ‘I’m so glad that I have the chance to thank you for it now.’
My month in New York passed all too quickly, with weekend trips to San Francisco, Washington and Miami to listen to music; Ken was actively looking for artists to sign to the Virgin label. We walked to the Mudd Club to see The Police play an early version of ‘Roxanne’, and when Sting paused slightly longer than expected before rasping, ‘Roxanne, you don’t have to put on the red light’, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Ken was concerned that The Police were going to be one-hit wonders, and Virgin subsequently only signed Sting for his music publishing rights.
We would go to CBGB, at 315 Bowery at Bleecker Street, to see an astonishing array of raw talent including the Patti Smith Group, Blondie, Talking Heads and the B-52’s. We’d inevitably have a drink with the bands after their set; these ambitious, hard-working kids were all relentlessly cool, but they couldn’t hide their eagerness to get to know the people behind this new record company with the strange name, a company that was looking to sign new acts. I was attempting to look as cool as them and praying that I was passing myself off as a hip record company exec. I needn’t have been so self-conscious because everyone was playing with their identities at the time, but I still felt like an imposter. My month in Greenwich Village had been unforgettable, but I was happy to get on the plane home.
Robert had called to tell me that after months of rejections, two publishing houses, Macmillan and Penguin, had offered him a job on the same day. I realised how much I was missing my clever, opinionated, supportive boyfriend – he was waiting for me, and so was working life. A new chapter was about to begin.
9
WORKING GIRL
London, May 2017
Every six months or so, museum groups visit my house to hear a talk about my voyages around the art world while we tour my collection as we drink glasses of wine. Tonight, it’s the turn of the Contemporary Art Society. Some of the works are more saleable than others, but to me they’re all equally precious, souvenirs that represent four decades of life immersed in creativity. It is questionable whether our lives are dictated by the planets, but one thing is certain: I was born under some lucky star to be working in the fertile world of 1980s London.
At that time, a confluence of forces came together to whip the calm waters of the British art scene into a wave that was to build over the next three decades, a convergence of innovative teaching and politically motivated, educated and ambitious working-class artists, fuelled by the patronage of voracious collectors. And I was there from the very first ripple.
***
I started an apprenticeship with Wells and Fitzgerald, a traditional picture-framing workshop in the eaves of a three-storey Edwardian industrial block on Kingley Street, between Carnaby and Regent Street. My education in art, far from finished, was polished by hours of discussion with dealers. We’d lay the paintings or drawings out on an expansive plan chest and discuss each work, deciding how to show it at its best by selecting the most appropriate frame mouldings and mounts. What was the work’s provenance, and who was the artist referencing? We’d discuss the condition of the work, the medium and the labels pasted on the backs of the old frames. We worked with Old Master dealers like Colnaghi and the Fine Art Society, for the auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s, and for a few Cork Street galleries – Waddington Galleries, Bernard Jacobson and Edward Totah.
The process of sawing mitre joints for the frames, cutting the glass and slicing through boards to cut bevelled windows, before decorating the mounts with gold lines and watercolour washes, hinging the works behind the mounts and finally knocking the drawings into the frames and sealing them up, was immensely satisfying.
When Rocky, my fellow apprentice, told me that he had just taken out a twenty-one-year mortgage, I was incredulous. How could you agree to spend twenty-one years of your life paying a sizable chunk of your salary towards paying off a loan? I decided that, however much I enjoyed working at Wells and Fitzgerald, the life of a picture framer was not for me. I wanted to start my own business.
I had no capital and was still far too wet behind the ears to open my own a gallery, so I rented a tiny room in the Wendy Wisbey Acting Agency for child actors in Chiswick, and set up Poster Brokers, buying, framing and selling vintage posters. I just about managed to cover the meagre rent. As old Wendy Wisbey and her equally ancient sister were barely able to teeter down the stairs from their first-floor office, I’d offer to open the front door for them. It was always a drama. Streams of eager mothers would thrust their children towards me, and I’d explain that I wasn’t in fact Miss Wisbey and give them time to brush their clothes down, square their shoulders back and launch into their routine again once they’d entered the old ladies’ office. What wasn’t quite as entertaining was having to sit on the edge of the sisters’ urine-sodden chairs as I helped them with some office glitch or other – it was time to move on.
It takes a particular set of characteristics to work on your own, and I don’t possess any of them. The energy generated by working with the right people is contagious. I often think the same holds true for friendship, and so often the line between colleague and friend is blurred. Rewarding social encounters can feel like miraculous exchanges of energy, and looking back I realise that my life has been blessed with many of these miracles.
At home in Surrey, after the years of Christmas evenings with the T. W.s had become tinged with tension, we began to join the Hutley family for games and merriment in their Victorian pile. Anne Hutley, the mother, was eccentric, warm and generous. She would take my hands in hers as she questioned me about my relationship with spirituality. The family saw humour everywhere, and Charlotte, their oldest child, has always been an extraordinary friend. We bonded over a joint party we gave to celebrate the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana in July 1981, a ‘Wed, White and Blue’ party. It was a beautiful day, an excuse to celebrate love and friendship and to snigger at that ridiculous dress!
My early twenties were golden years for making friends. David Teiger, a retired management consultant who was now an art collector, had heard of my interest in art and told me to contact him every time I was visiting New York. He became not only a great friend but also a mentor and guardian angel. I’d tell him when my plane was due to land at JFK and he’d send his driver to pick me up. He’d get tickets for a Broadway musical and would take me out for dinner, where he’d grill me about my business plans and attempt to give my ideas focus.
David had wonderful tales from the world of New York galleries. He told the story of his six-year-old son Douglas, who had once joined the dots, with indelible felt tip marker, on a painting by Andy Warhol called Join the Dots. When David called Andy to see if he would consider repainting the work, Warhol took great pleasure in replying, ‘Dear me, David. It seems you no longer own an Andy Warhol painting – you now own a major work by Douglas Teiger.’ Warhol never replaced
the canvas.
Louise Hallett entered my world like a whirlwind. I’ve never known anyone with an energy like hers. While we worked on our first joint exhibition, I was in awe of her ability to survive on virtually no sleep and to manage the perfect balance of nicotine, caffeine and alcohol. With terrifying speed and a barely disguised impatience, Lou tried to teach me the skills necessary to run a gallery and how to hang and light an exhibition in order to show the works off to their best advantage. She also knew how to catalogue works and, above all, she knew how to clinch a sale.
Looking back over the decades, some of my working relationships have evolved into the most enriching friendships. I’d moved my framing workshop from Chiswick to Fulham and was joined there by Kate Flannery, who introduced some much-needed administrative rigour to my tiny organisation. Kate’s love life was a running soap opera and our days were filled with raucous tales of her misadventures while we puffed our way through packets of Marlboro cigarettes and – strictly after 5 p.m., of course – quaffed cans of Pils lager.
With the help of a loan from his grandmother, Robert, along with two friends, bought a terrace of condemned cottages next to the railway viaduct in Walworth. The tiny houses shuddered with every passing train and were in serious need of modernisation, but with a price tag of just £4,000, no one was complaining and these dilapidated shells provided his first step onto London’s golden housing ladder. I donned some workman’s overalls and seized the chance to try out my design skills, grouting tiles, hanging wallpaper, helping with the rewiring and generally transforming the ruin into a comfortable home. Us Bransons have limitless energy when faced with a project we want to get our teeth into. Some might call it passion, others obsession, but we like to think of it as ‘focused enthusiasm’.
The house was featured as a double-page spread in Brides magazine, which led to it being sold, sight unseen, to a major returning from the Falklands War: the work had paid off handsomely.
Robert had moved from Macmillan to Virgin to take over the publishing company there and was working insanely hard. He’d spend long hours at the office, but we played hard too. We’d often attempt to recharge our batteries at Tanyards, but weekends there would more often than not turn into a party, as the house filled up with unexpected guests.
Saturday night dinner parties would descend into wine-fuelled debates about the state of the world; Robert often provoked apoplectic responses from my usually balanced father, which would delight the rest of the table. One evening Mum argued that listening to people talking about how to sort out the issues of the day was boring, boring, boring. ‘It’s no good just talking about it – do something about it,’ she said, giving us each a sheet of paper and a pen and instructing us, for reasons known only to herself, to write a letter to the Shamley Green parish magazine. I can’t remember what the rest of us wrote, but Rob’s letter simply said, ‘Is there more to Shamley Green than bricks and mortar?’
When people in the village found out about his letter, there was uproar. How dare this upstart Londoner come down and insult them in this way? To make amends for offending village sensibilities, Mum set up the ‘Bricks and Mortar Colts Cricket Club’, a much-needed initiative that provided a feeder team of younger players for the ageing village team. Once again, Mum’s genius for conjuring calming rabbits from the hats of discontent came to the fore. Our friends Donald Mason and Paul Chesney, who were renting Tanyard Cottage, were volunteered to be head coaches.
Fiona Whitney, her school career having come to an abrupt end, was now a secretary for Rank Xerox and living in north London with her boyfriend Eamonn. They came to stay one weekend, and Donald and Paul invited us all over for a Saturday night drink. Fiona and Eamonn stayed and partied into the night while Robert and I returned to the main house and went to bed. The next morning, we were woken by a phone call. It was Eamonn, calling from London.
‘Tell Fiona that all her belongings are in plastic bags out on the street,’ he said, before hanging up. An hour later Fiona came running into the house, wrapped in a small towel. ‘Oh God, what on earth have I done?’ she giggled, before bursting into tears. It transpired that she had ended up in bed with Donald during the party. On hearing that Eamonn had thrown her out of their flat she threw caution to the wind, and on Sunday night she slept with Paul. The following week she met one of the producers of the ‘Star Wars’ films in a London nightclub and by the weekend she had flown to Los Angeles with him, where she lives to this day.
Robert and I were a good team, and our life together was based on trust. Infidelity didn’t cross either of our minds and we supported the other’s dreams, not complaining if one of us had to work late or go abroad. He also had an interest in art, and listened patiently to me talking about my work. His brilliant critical mind complemented my practical skills, and his extraordinary focus was crucial in helping me see projects through.
Robert developed a deep and mutually respectful relationship with Richard, and having them working together kept me in touch with how Virgin was evolving. We made some lifelong friends during the early years of the business, and our friendships were consolidated by fiercely competitive weekends in the Alps in which we skied ourselves to jelly during the day and played bridge late into the night.
Photographs from the time show Robert and me tanned and with shaggy hair, an easy happiness shining from our eyes. Here we are in September 1980 travelling around Turkey, walking into the abandoned ancient city of Ephesus just ten days after the military coup, the only visitors. And here we are driving through France in my white Mini, camping on the way to join the rest of the family in Menorca. We were laying down memory upon memory of shared experiences, and it all felt too good to be true.
Rob and I travelled to Morocco in 1981 and stayed at La Mamounia hotel in Marrakech. We selected a guide from a group sitting on the wall outside the hotel; Mohamed introduced us to the magic of the city, with tales of meeting Churchill as a street urchin and of the ladies pulling at the testicles of the sheep carcases on sale in the souk, to check that they were properly attached and thus that the meat was from a ram and not a ewe. He told us tales of henna being applied on the night before weddings, from where the term ‘hen night’ arose, and how the visiting caravans of Tuaregs arrived on camels and stayed in fonduks, courtyard inns deep in the heart of the medina. He also told us of the Moroccan belief in djinns and omens, mystics and holy men, and about their tradition of taking care of those less fortunate than themselves. Little did I know, back in 1981, that Morocco, and Marrakech in particular, would be responsible for some of the greatest chapters in my life and that Mohamed would remain a friend until this day.
Marrakech, the labyrinthine Rose City, is hidden within thick medina walls. A thousand crumbling, mud-built houses, separated by narrow alleyways, where everything is for sale and everyone is trying to sell you something. The holy medieval city, where customs of old are upheld; where children look you straight in the eye and readily proffer you a cheek and a kiss when saying hello; where people smile if you accidentally bump into them and diesel-pumping mopeds hurtle by, brushing your clothes as they pass. In this mysterious city, where a front door, its paint flaking, conceals opulent interiors while next door a family sleeps ten to a room. Where elegant storks build nests on rooftops, looking down on cool tiled courtyards of such lush vegetation that it’s hard to believe you’re in the heart of the desert.
I was captivated, alive and in love. Robert and I drove over the mountains in a rattling hire car, stopping to eat an exquisite picnic the hotel had prepared on the roadside, and sharing it with a gang of dusty children. On to Ouarzazate and then to the Gazelle d’Or hotel in Taroudant, full of wealthy couples reviving their flagging marriages. With fireplaces in each room and pathways lit by candles, it was unfeasibly romantic. I had never felt so sexually charged, and revelled in spending time with my smooth-limbed, sensual boyfriend. How lucky we were not to be able to see into the future.
Concerned that I was throwing myself
into a project in which I had nothing to gain, Dad asked whether Robert had offered me a percentage of the profit he’d made from the Walworth house sale. When I tentatively raised the issue, Robert replied that I should count myself lucky that he hadn’t been asking me for rent. It began to dawn on me that I was at risk of being a complete sap – happily taking the role of home-maker and carrying much of the domestic burden, while also doing most of the design and some of the building work myself. With a partnership as strong as ours, with our complementary skills, I resolved that we should formalise our relationship. Although there were times when he threatened to overpower me with the force of his personality, I weighed these nagging doubts up against the positives: Robert was never dull and I couldn’t imagine loving another man more.
My parents’ marriage had been fundamentally happy and inspiring, and I presumed that Robert and I would enjoy a similar course. We were travelling along a rewarding road together and though we were perhaps going too fast at times, I saw no reason why our journey shouldn’t be a committed one. Robert was more cautious and expressed concerns that I wasn’t his intellectual equal. His memories of family life were of placating his angry father and consoling his distraught mother, which also prevented him from rushing down the aisle.
However, on 2 July 1983, a blazing hot day, Robert’s twinkly eyed Uncle Tim officiated at our wedding service in Shamley Green’s Christ Church. Tim had suggested that we learn our vows rather than repeat them after him, and I became overwhelmed by the moment and had to use one of Robert’s hired gloves to wipe my tears and streaming nose. The Bricks and Mortar cricket team gave us an unexpected ‘bat of honour’ as we left the church, and the ancient churchyard was soon filled with our wedding guests. As the family had been a big part of the community for thirty-five years, half the village was there too, throwing confetti and wishing us well.
One Hundred Summers Page 19