Pandora

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘Raymond Belvedon!’ she bellowed. ‘Have you come as a waiter, or are you pushing off somewhere else as per usual?’

  Everyone swung round because they associated Raymond’s name with the gallery’s success. Then they stayed looking because of his height and beauty and the warmth of his smile, which was belied by the wistfulness in his big turned-down manganese-blue eyes.

  As a jury had recently decided Lady Chatterley’s Lover was not obscene, Joan Bideford had dressed as Mellors the gamekeeper in breeches, lace-up boots and a tweed checked cut-away jacket with a fox fur slung over her shoulders. The fox’s eyes were marginally more glassy than hers.

  On a plate, like some instrument of torture, she was brandishing a half-grapefruit bristling with cocktail sticks threaded with cubes of cheese and pineapple. Raymond could never look at her without thinking of Tennyson’s poem ‘The Revenge’, and Sir Richard Grenville’s wounded sailors: ‘Men of Bideford in Devon, And we laid them on the ballast down below.’

  Raymond had no desire to lay Joan anywhere. Her big handsome face was carmine with drink. He decided against kissing her jutting oblong jaw.

  ‘Just dropped in to congratulate you,’ he said. ‘Exhibition went awfully well.’

  ‘Sold any more since yesterday?’ demanded Joan. ‘No? Well, my monthly cheque didn’t arrive this morning either.’

  And I’ve just bust a gut flogging fourteen of your pictures, you avaricious bitch, thought Raymond, who had kindly paid her a retainer to live on while she produced enough canvasses for an exhibition. But it was no time to argue, Joan weighed more than he did and her beady bloodshot eyes had lighted on the Jack Daniel’s.

  ‘Casey and I like bourbon, don’t waste it on these gannets.’ Grabbing the bottle, she shoved it behind an African mask.

  Fortunately she was diverted by the arrival of Somerford Keynes, the Daily Post art critic, who’d come as Oscar Wilde and who was nicknamed the Poisoned Pansy because of his lethal reviews.

  ‘Somerford,’ howled Joan, ‘did you bring a carbon of your piece?’

  Raymond had managed to find a teacup and was just raiding the Jack Daniel’s bottle when he was accosted by two pretty girls who thought it hilarious that they’d both rolled up as Lady Chatterley. Recognizing them as the entwined nudes in Joan’s paintings, Raymond thought how much more attractive artists’ models looked with their clothes on.

  ‘Hello, handsome,’ giggled the first. ‘We’re not going to find any decent John Thomas here, and none of us are safe from Joan or Casey. Want to come to another party?’

  ‘You’d have much more fun with us,’ added the second.

  ‘What a pity, I’ve got to go out to dinner,’ sighed Raymond.

  ‘We know who you are,’ they chorused. ‘Will you tell your other artists we’re very good models? Casey and Joan are so tight.’

  Then they went scarlet, because towering over them, resplendent as Neptune in a slipping loincloth, with sea horses and seaweed painted all over his mighty torso and massive thighs, was Casey Andrews.

  ‘Dance with you young women later,’ he boomed, whacking them on the bottom with his trident. ‘Now push off.’

  With his jutting red-bearded jaw almost meeting his huge bumpy nose, his angry little eyes and vigorous russet curls, Casey looked more like Raphael’s drawing of Hercules wrestling with the Nemean lion than Neptune. But he was just as capable of causing storms.

  It was strange, reflected Raymond, how the picture of Pandora, which had turned out to be by Raphael and which now hung at the top of the house at Foxes Court, influenced his judgement of people. Casey Andrews was guilty of at least six of the Deadly Sins: pride, wrath, envy, avarice, lust and certainly greed, as he devoured a huge Stilton sandwich washed down with red wine from a pint mug. Casey also felt it was his right to seduce every woman, and their privilege to capitulate. Raymond had nightmare visions of having to represent thousands of odious Casey Andrews offspring when he was a doddering old dealer.

  Like Joan, Casey immediately got on to money. Had Raymond sold any pictures, had he heard from Rome and if not why not, and what about an American exhibition?

  ‘An American car company’s interested in that oil of St Mawes,’ countered Raymond and, when Casey looked bootfaced: ‘They’d like two more for the boardroom.’

  But, as usual, Casey wasn’t happy with the price. Commercial concerns should pay twice as much.

  ‘Andras Kalman’s invited me to lunch,’ he said bullyingly.

  ‘You’ll enjoy it.’ Raymond just managed to control his anger. ‘Andras is a charmer, and runs a great gallery.’

  Casey stormed off.

  Nearby two art critics dressed as Roman senators were admiring Joan’s grapefruit hedgehog, which she’d abandoned on a sofa.

  ‘I didn’t know Bideford was tackling sculpture,’ said one. ‘That piece is very fine.’

  Raymond suppressed a smile. He was so kind and courteous that the moment Casey abandoned him, the crowd moved in: artists who wanted to show him their work; collectors who wanted free advice or jobs in the gallery for their daughters; critics who wanted praise for a review. Casey returned for another row and, finding Raymond surrounded, shoved off again.

  ‘I can’t think how you endure those two,’ said a soft lisping voice.

  It was the Poisoned Pansy, Somerford Keynes. Everything about Somerford seemed to flop downwards: his straight sandy locks from an Oscar Wilde middle parting, his droopy blond moustache concealing a large flapping upper lip, even his bow tie wilted in the heat. But he had knowing eyes, as if he were aware of secrets Raymond didn’t want divulged. Somerford’s taste for working-class louts was equalled only by his desire to be the darling of society hostesses, among whom he did not list Joan Bideford.

  ‘Thank you for giving Joan such a good review,’ murmured Raymond.

  ‘If I hadn’t been devoted to you, dear boy, I’d have annihilated her; so crude those lardlike bodies, I’ve perjured myself invoking the name of Gauguin.’

  ‘Stop, you’re driving me crazy,’ sang the record player.

  A large tabby cat was thoughtfully licking the sardine pâté.

  ‘Can you chaps shove through to the next room?’ ordered Joan.

  ‘Got to go,’ said Raymond, meekly shuffling a few feet forward.

  ‘I’m meeting Francis Bacon at Muriel’s later,’ murmured Somerford, ‘why not join us after dinner?’

  Raymond felt overwhelmed with tiredness, nor did he want to be sucked into Somerford’s underworld.

  ‘I don’t seem to have been to bed for days,’ he apologized. ‘Going to crash out the moment dinner’s over.’

  But as he glanced briefly into the second room his exhaustion fell away, for lounging against the piano, dressed as a pirate, was the sexiest boy he had ever seen. He was about five foot nine, with straight dark hair hanging in a thick fringe and tied back by a black ribbon. His shoulders were broadened by the horizontal stripes of a matelot T-shirt, his hips narrowed by dark blue trousers tucked into shiny black boots. His face was dominated by long slanting sloe-dark eyes above very high cheekbones, with a black moustache and line of beard emphasizing a big sulky red mouth.

  But it was the provocative thrust of his body and the disdainful lift of his head that made him so attractive, as if he were going to leap onto the deck of Sir Richard Grenville’s Revenge, cutlass hissing, and slay every man alive.

  Oh dear, dear God, marvelled Raymond.

  Then, as the pirate reached back for his glass on the window, the striped T-shirt tightened against a high breast and jutting nipple and Raymond realized that he was a girl, that her moustache and beard were of smudged cork and that several men who normally showed no interest in women were circling her as though she were covered in sexual aniseed.

  ‘“A queen, with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes”,’ muttered Raymond, but this time there was no Viridian’s Tennyson in his breast pocket to shield his heart from Cupid’s arrow.

  ‘Mo
re like one of the waiters at La Popote,’ mocked Somerford. ‘Even I wouldn’t mind giving her a jolly roger.’

  ‘Who is she?’ asked Raymond.

  ‘Galena Borochova, playgirl of the Mid-European world, defected last year from Czechoslovakia, rumoured to have slept with half the secret police in the process, drinks too much to forget, been causing havoc in Paris. Casey and Joan are equally besotted and fighting over her. Rumoured to be a good painter. Needs a dealer’ – Somerford looked slyly at a spellbound Raymond – ‘to take her under his wing.’

  The pirate was now emptying a bottle of Riesling out of the window, shouting, ‘Nothing good ever came out of Yugoslavia,’ and helping herself to more red.

  ‘That’s wasteful, Galena, sweetie.’ Appearing from behind, Joan Bideford lifted up the girl’s T-shirt and grabbed her breasts with huge red paint-stained hands.

  ‘Go avay, Joan.’ Galena’s voice was deep and husky like a cello played all its life in smoky nightclubs. ‘Just bugger off.’

  Then, when Joan didn’t, Galena calmly stubbed out her cigarette on a groping finger.

  ‘You bitch,’ howled Joan. Tugging down Galena’s T-shirt, she kissed her bare shoulder. ‘But I love you for it.’

  Galena shrugged then went berserk as a man dressed as Picasso tried to take her photograph. Screaming in Slovak, she snatched his camera, hurling it against the wall with a sickening crunch.

  By the time Raymond had fought his way over, Casey Andrews had seen off the opposition and, armed with a refilled pint of red and another Stilton sandwich, his red beard smeared with butter and crumbs, was trying to persuade Galena to dance.

  Closer up, Raymond discovered she looked older, perhaps thirty. He was also reassured to see a few grey hairs in her black fringe, and lines round the arrogant mouth.

  ‘Who is this?’ she demanded, then, examining Raymond’s face, ‘Ve have met before.’

  ‘We certainly haven’t.’

  ‘I am never wrong.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Bohemia.’

  Raymond smiled. ‘That figures.’

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked impatiently.

  ‘Raymond Belvedon,’ snapped Casey, ‘Joan and I show at his gallery.’

  ‘You make a stunning pirate,’ stammered Raymond. God, how wet could one get?

  ‘I come from country viz no coast line,’ said Galena. ‘In England ven you feel trapped, you can run and run until you reach the sea. In Czechoslovakia you end up in Austria, East Germany or Poland. Now I am here, I can be pirate.’

  Noticing a bacon-and-egg pie being carried past, she speared a big triangle with her cutlass.

  Raymond couldn’t take his eyes off her huge sulky mouth. He longed to stand up the rich collectors and whisk her off to Annabel’s, but she probably wouldn’t get in without a tie.

  ‘Somerford likened my work to Gauguin,’ Joan was telling everyone. She and most of the men in the room were preparing to launch another attack on Galena, who was now arguing with Casey, wolfing bacon-and-egg pie, waving her cigarette around, coughing, taking gulps of red wine and all the time keeping her narrowed, appraising eyes on Raymond.

  Finally the drunken sculptor dressed as Margot Fonteyn could bear it no longer and pirouetted up to Galena, arms, hairy legs and mug of Spanish Burgundy going everywhere. An outraged Casey shoved him away. Margot Fonteyn swayed and fell backwards on Joan’s grapefruit hedgehog with a bellow of pain.

  ‘Lucky thing,’ grumbled Somerford, ‘to have so many pricks in one go.’

  ‘Poor chap.’ Raymond struggled not to laugh.

  Galena had no such reserve. Unrestrained guffaws seemed to bubble up from inside her like lava.

  ‘You said you were going ages ago, Raymond,’ said Casey pointedly.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You must see my vork.’ Grabbing Casey’s sketchbook, left on the piano to be looked at, Galena tore off half a page.

  ‘I’ve drawn on that,’ bellowed Casey.

  ‘My signature will be more vorth than all your drawing one day,’ taunted Galena.

  Scribbling down her name, a street which Raymond had never heard of and a Battersea telephone number, she shoved the piece of paper into his breast pocket, then removed the pink rose from his buttonhole.

  ‘In Czechoslovakia, it is unlucky to give people even number of flowers. One rose is OK.’

  As Casey was about to run him through with his trident, Raymond fled.

  Raymond remembered nothing about dinner. Having downed two large dry Martinis and left all his Dover sole, he took no-one to see Etienne de Montigny’s erotic pictures. Making a lame excuse about having to get home to the West Country, he turned south at Hyde Park and drove over the river.

  It was still terribly hot. He had removed his dinner jacket and his tie and rolled up his sleeves, but his shirt was dripping. Galena lived in a rough area. No-one was enjoying noisy after-dinner drinks in their back gardens. He located her room before the number of the house by the sound of Don Giovanni pouring out of an open second-floor window.

  Raymond ran upstairs, hardly needing to hammer on the door, his heart was banging so loudly. Galena welcomed him, a glass in one hand, paintbrush in the other, her fringe drenched with sweat, paint all over her matelot jersey. She had kicked off her new boots and put them beside Casey’s sketchbook and the remains of Raymond’s bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the only chair.

  ‘Casey, vile peeg, vas swigging it from the bottle, then he give me great cheesy kiss, I slap his face and run away.’ She filled a tooth mug with whiskey for Raymond.

  ‘Perhaps you should give back his sketchbook? Those drawings are probably worth something.’

  ‘Good, I need money for paints.’

  Galena’s room was dreadful, only large enough to contain a single bed, stacked up canvasses, an easel, a small rickety table for her tubes of paint, brushes and palettes, and an ancient gramophone. The LPs, apart from Don Giovanni, were by Slav composers: Suk, Bartók, Dvořák and Smetana. On top of the books piled up by the bed was a collapsing copy of Kafka’s Castle. In between big damp patches on the wall were rough sketches and far too many scribbled telephone numbers. Did they all belong to men? Donna Giovanna? Raymond was appalled by his jealousy.

  Galena had gone back to her easel, thickly applying paint. Raymond edged towards the canvasses.

  ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course, that is vy you are here.’

  And Raymond was overwhelmed by the same churning excitement he had felt when he first saw the Raphael Pandora in the flaming château. Galena’s subject matter was hideous. Farms and entire villages being sliced in half by the Iron Curtain. Humans and animals being blown to pieces or burnt to death on high-voltage electric fences.

  ‘As children,’ Galena said flatly, ‘we were tormented by the screams and bangs as foxes, hares, dogs and cats tread on mines.’

  The pictures were made more sinister by homely touches: storks nesting in watchtower chimneys, window boxes filled with orange nasturtiums. As if in defiance against the horrors and the greyness of Communist life, Galena revelled like Matisse in the brightest, most exuberant of palettes.

  One large canvas took Raymond’s breath away. On the Slovak side, from a watchtower above the electric fence, border guards were mowing down defectors in case the mines didn’t get them. Everywhere were screaming mouths, waving hands, terrified eyes, severed limbs. On the Austrian side, a bunch of grandees were blasting away at partridge against brilliant autumn colours. A horse and cart followed, weighed down by picnic hampers and crates of wine. The contrast made the behaviour of both sides more reprehensible. It had the power of a Guernica. Galena could capture sadistic arrogance in a brush stroke.

  ‘These are amazing, has anyone seen them?’

  ‘No. In Prague, I vas banned from college for protesting against Communists. The Volpos, secret police, vatch me and my friends. They close down my first two exhibitions.’ Galena had put on The Bartered Bride, side
one, which was even more scratchy.

  ‘Things get too hot, my father vas arrested for political activity, he didn’t come home much, my mother die earlier.’

  ‘How did you escape?’

  ‘I get to know Volpos, who arrange for me and my sister to escape over border. She vas four years younger.’

  Tears were trickling down Galena’s face as she went to the window.

  ‘As we get to other side, my sister tread on mine, it blow off her leg, and knock me unconscious. I came round to hear her last screams, border guards leave her to die.

  ‘I crawl to safety. A shooting party nearly shoot me instead of birds. Then they take me to people I know in Vienna. My last memory of Czechoslovakia is my sister screaming. That is the picture.’ She pointed to the huge canvas.

  Raymond longed to comfort her. Her face was a wreckage of smudged mascara and burnt cork.

  ‘I betray artist friends by leaving Prague, but how can I show protest if no-one sees it? We live all our lives in Czechoslovakia under tyranny.’

  ‘The artist has a different loyalty,’ said Raymond gently. ‘To the future as well as the present. You were right to come here. I am so sorry about your sister.’

  The music grew louder. Someone banged angrily on the wall. Galena promptly turned up the volume.

  If she were happy, thought Raymond, she might paint happier pictures. Casey and Joan were like some foul witch and wizard. He was just dreaming of rescuing Galena from their clutches like an Arthurian knight when the telephone rang. Galena pounced on it, tears turning in a trice to fury. Even across the room, Raymond could hear the caller at the other end roaring as if dinner had been delayed in the lion house.

  A grinning Galena held out the receiver.

  ‘I bought you those boots only yesterday,’ Casey was yelling.

  Finally Galena caved in and hung up.

  ‘He’s coming over,’ she told a despairing Raymond, then she laughed: ‘So we must go. Take me to the sea.’

  ‘I’ll take you home to Limesbridge, there’s a river and a boat.’

  Normally the great motorway being built to the west caused endless hold-ups, but tonight, as if conspiring to catapult him into committing himself more quickly, there were no roadworks nor traffic jams.