As I worked more shifts – I ended up doing one or two a week – I soon realised the turnover at the Steiner Studio was exceptional. There were new commissions every few days, and Ernst had a group of workers (they were never called artists) operating day and night so that the paintings could be wrapped and boxed for the courier at four in the morning. The courier often appeared in the middle of the night, and no one knew how long he’d been there, nor why Mr Steiner’s paintings had to be shipped at the crack of dawn. His name was Leo, and his face was as smooth as a boxing glove.

I have no idea when Ernst Steiner slept, since he was the one constant in the studio between the day and night shifts. He organised everything from his office, barking instructions to the floor, with the telephone rattling the new orders. The mark was inflating like crazy, but there were always more and more Americans who wanted idylls and riverbanks, farmyards and sunsets; girls with their unending plaits and nursing mothers, all bosoms.

The exchange rate, anyway, made our work cheap.

Surprisingly, the other workers took little notice of me, and, give or take a few stares, I had been accepted into the fold as any other worker would be. Soon they became comfortable enough to gently deride my practice at the Bauhaus. In fact, they thought us spectacularly stupid: I had been laughed away when I told them how we privileged process over output. ‘That,’ said a big man called Daniel, ‘is what people say when they have no talent.’

The money began to flow in. Mr Steiner paid me at the close of each shift by filling my bicycle basket with cash. I wrote to my father and told him I could afford my fees on my own: a part-time job had come up, and I was determined to pay my way at the art school he so hated. He neither replied nor sent me more money. I’m sure he thought I’d soon be back, begging for more, and it did cross my mind that I shouldn’t be too hasty in rejecting his money outright. But the letter was sent by the time I’d thought of this.