“It’s a deal,” Peter said. “We’ll start as soon as we get back. Let’s turn the little room next to the kitchen into a study. No-one is using it now and it will give us somewhere to get away from your family.”

“Good idea,” I said, “I’ll type everything you write during the day while you are at school.”
So that’s what we did. At first Peter started on a book about his childhood in Owslebury, but realised very soon he couldn’t ever publish it without hurting his parents very much. So he put it aside and began writing poetry again, and then decided to write a novel about an evacuated school during the war.

His health was still not brilliant and he still suffered from a lot of stomach pains, but every evening after supper he went into the study and wrote a few pages – and then read them to me and made any necessary alterations once he heard how they sounded. I typed them next day. Gradually the book took shape. Fired with success he started to write articles and more poems too. We joined a Writers’ Group which met monthly in a pub in Charing Cross Road, and there we met other left-wing writers: Cedric Dover, a race relations expert from India, Randal Swingler, who had written the libretto for Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, George Barker, a poet, and many others. Randal and Cedric became friends.

Peter went to hear Louis Arragon, a French poet, read his poems. It was in a house in one of the posh London squares and the audience sat on elegant little chairs. Peter laughed so much that he fell off his chair, broke it and slit his trousers right down! Luckily he had a mac with him – but they all went off afterwards to the Trade Union built Unity Theatre to dance on the stage after the show. It was really hot and Peter’s partners kept asking him to take his mac off, and thought him very strange that he wouldn’t.

That winter was another bad one, but not quite as bad as the year before. We had quite a lot of snow though, for London, and Gale and Jill, well wrapped up, enjoyed being pulled on the sledge to shop.

Randal Swingler became a close friend and visited us at Blackheath. He invited us to meet his wife, Geraldine Peppen, and her identical twin sister Mary who turned out to be married to Dr Paddy Fisher who, years before, we had heard singing about the fat man watering the workers’ beer. Mary and Geraldine were professional pianists who played together always, on two pianos. Their great friend James Gibb was also a professional pianist and they started inviting us to their concerts, and to the booze-up in a pub afterwards.