Pandora

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, the boys are back, and Sir Mervyn Newton and his daughter, Rosemary, have been downstairs for half an hour.’

  ‘Tell them I’m vorking.’

  ‘They’ve come all the way from Cornwall to see you.’

  ‘Well, tell Mrs Robens to give them a drink and get rid of them.’

  ‘You gave the Robenses the day off. She’s gone to see her sister. Sir Mervyn’s expecting supper.’

  ‘Oh, you sort something out.’

  Having left Sir Mervyn and Rosemary on the terrace with more huge drinks, David belted back to the kitchen. Perhaps supper had been left, but as he opened the fridge, only a large raw fish, as balefully uncooperative as Mrs Robens, glared out at him.

  He telephoned Raymond’s favourite local restaurant, the Lark Ascending, only to be told they were fully booked.

  ‘It’s for Raymond Belvedon,’ protested David.

  There was a pause, followed by a different voice.

  ‘We’ve got a wedding party, but we could fit Mr Belvedon into our private room any time after nine.’

  It was only seven now. By nine, Sir Mervyn would be horizontal in the delphiniums.

  ‘Leave it,’ snapped David.

  When he was rich and famous, he vowed, people would empty restaurants to accommodate him and his guests. He was roused by an excited squeak as Maud heaved herself out of her basket and limped out of the kitchen. For the second time, Galena and Rupert were interrupted by thundering on the door.

  ‘Mrs Belvedon, Mr Belvedon’s home.’

  ‘Holy shit.’ Rupert ran to the window. ‘Holy even shittier.’

  Seeing Maud joyfully dancing on her rheumaticky legs to greet her master, Badger, Rupert’s Labrador, bored of being confined to the Rolls, had wriggled through the lowered black glass window, and was now cavorting on the lawn with her.

  Examining the label on Badger’s collar, Raymond read: ‘Campbell-Black, Penscombe 204’. So that was why Galena had been so manic recently.

  Having yelled to David that she’d be down in a minute, Galena ordered Rupert to stay put.

  ‘Raymond’ll change in his dressing room, then go back downstairs to sell pictures. The deal is all. I’ll smuggle you out later.’

  Drenching herself in Mitsouko to disguise the reek of sex, Galena slipped into her flamingo-pink dress and, not bothering to wash or comb her hair, ran downstairs out onto the terrace.

  ‘Forgeeve me, Sir Mervyn, I have been painting since early this morning.’ She clasped Mervyn’s hand, then, turning to Rosemary: ‘This must be your charming daughter. Vy have you got empty glasses, vy didn’t anyone tell me you vere coming? I sack my housekeeper. You should have known!’ She turned furiously on David.

  Fortunately at that moment Raymond came through the french windows. His suit was crumpled and much in need of Sir Mervyn’s pressing services, his eyes bloodshot, his face grey, but his smile as warm as ever.

  ‘My dear fellow, how lovely to see you, and dear Rosemary.’ He bent to kiss her.

  ‘No-one told me they vere coming,’ snapped Galena.

  ‘Never mind, we’re all in one piece,’ said Raymond evenly. ‘I’m late, Mervyn, because I’ve been looking for something really nice for darling Margaret. Why don’t you go along to the warehouse and browse around while I get out of this suit? David, dear boy, could you unload the car?’

  By the time Raymond rejoined Mervyn, the dealer had reasserted itself. The barn which he used as a warehouse was high and cheerless. Normally Raymond would have turned off the overhead lights, and orchestrated the viewing, placing one carefully lit picture on an easel, its colours enhanced by some specially chosen flowers on a side table. Now he had to plunge straight in. He found Sir Mervyn rootling through stacked-up canvasses, frustrated they didn’t have any prices. One didn’t like to admit that one’s choice was determined less by a picture’s beauty than by its likelihood of rocketing in value.

  ‘Good trip?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so,’ said Raymond lightly. ‘Grubbing around a sale room in Paris, I found a picture listed as a copy of a Gainsborough. I’ve got a gut feeling it’s the real thing. Can’t wait to get it back to my restorer in London. Now, about Margaret’s picture.’

  But Sir Mervyn’s purple-veined nose was twitching.

  ‘What sort of price were you thinking about?’

  ‘If it were the real thing, about twenty thousand. Probably isn’t. Now, this is something Margaret might like.’ Raymond picked up his feckless wife’s painting of the wild-flower meadow. ‘I’m not going to tell you who this is by, a contemporary artist, very talented.’

  ‘Beautiful,’ Sir Mervyn murmured, ‘very serene.’

  He mostly bought contemporary work, but also considered himself an authority on early English paintings. After all, a wife wasn’t sixty every day, and Margaret had been a tower of strength.

  ‘Could I have a look at the Gainsborough, even if it is dirty?’

  The subject was a handsome couple, their children and a supercilious King Charles spaniel grouped in lush parkland. Age had turned the husband’s breeches yellow. The spaniel looked as though it had been rolling.

  ‘Stunning,’ gasped David, who’d popped in with bottles to check drinks.

  Raising a hand to hush him, Raymond moved next to Mervyn, seeing who could maintain a silence longest. The ice melted in Raymond’s whisky.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Mervyn non-committally.

  Raymond shook himself out of a trance, and smiled gently. ‘Indeed it is.’

  Another silence ensued.

  ‘Can I see it without its frame?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  Sir Mervyn put on his bi-focals, examining the picture on both sides. What’s he looking for? A sticker saying Woolworths, 5s 6d? wondered David. Turning, Raymond gave him a wink.

  ‘It’s not signed.’ Mervyn puffed out his cheeks importantly.

  ‘No, but the husband looks rather like Gainsborough in the early portraits. These artists love including themselves. And a very happy charming couple like you and Margaret.’

  ‘If it was Gainsborough, it would go up in value?’

  ‘Oh certainly. But I’m hoping whoever buys it appreciates it as great art.’

  Like myself, thought Sir Mervyn smugly. People would certainly sit up to learn he’d bought Margaret a Gainsborough.

  Raymond changed tack.

  ‘Probably isn’t a Gainsborough, but I know how Margaret loves dogs. Maybe a pupil did it. I’ll be able to tell you more next week.’

  Mervyn took a gulp of his freshened gin and tonic, and pursed his lips.

  ‘I’d like to chance it.’

  Once again Raymond raised his hand.

  ‘No, no, I can’t let you, we’ve got till the end of August. Now, what else have we got that Margaret might like?’

  ‘Promise not to sell it to someone else?’

  ‘I promise.’

  There was lots of hearty laughter as Sir Mervyn accused Raymond of being too honest.

  ‘I’d never give you a job in my company,’ then, picking up Galena’s Wild-Flower Meadow, he said, ‘I’d like to buy this picture as well. And while we’re here, have you got any early Casey Andrews?’

  David was enraptured – never had he seen such an example of grace under pressure. A thunderous rumble from Sir Mervyn’s large tummy brought him back to earth. Rosemary’s drink must be empty by now. He raced back to the terrace to find her alone. Galena must have buggered off upstairs.

  ‘Like a Pimm’s?’

  ‘Oh, how delicious. Shall I come and help you make it?’

  For a moment David’s panic about dinner subsided. The Belvedons were always comparing people to characters in paintings. Now he had the fleeting pleasure of recognizing Rosemary Newton as the bouncy grey horse in Raphael’s St George and the Dragon.

  In the picture, the horse looked very secure, almost smug, as if he knew his master was a dab
hand with a sword, and wouldn’t let the fierce dragon bite even a fetlock. Like Rosemary, he had merry, knowing, round, rather small eyes, a curly forelock, and a long white face capable of jauntiness but never beauty. From what he could see, Rosemary also had St George’s horse’s strong white cobby body. David guessed she was about twenty-nine.

  ‘So kind of them to invite us to kitchen sups,’ she was saying as she followed him into the kitchen. ‘Daddy so adores his sessions with Raymond.’ Then, seeing David’s face: ‘They forgot we were coming?’

  David deliberated.

  ‘Well, Mrs Belvedon’s been away too and someone’s torn off July from the calendar.’

  ‘I’ll help,’ said Rosemary, in her brisk Roedean voice. ‘I’ve been a chalet girl for the last three years. Let’s see what we can rustle up.

  ‘There’s a lovely sea trout in here,’ she said, opening the fridge. ‘I’ll gut it and take its head off.’ For a second she cradled the fish in her capable white hands. ‘It’ll take about forty minutes. Let’s see if we can find a fish kettle. We’ll need half a bottle of cheap white and lots of herbs from the garden. I know a quick mayonnaise which we can turn into sauce verte while the fish is cooking.’

  ‘I’ll dig up some potatoes,’ said David gratefully.

  ‘And get some mint too.’

  Rosemary was absolutely wonderful and when Jupiter and Alizarin staggered up to the kitchen door, bearing half Raymond’s herbaceous border to match David’s colour chart, she praised them to the skies. Then she averted Raymond and Robens’s wrath by putting the flowers in vases and decorating the dining-room table with the broken flower heads.

  ‘You’re both staying up for supper,’ she told the delighted boys.

  Judging by the laughter on the terrace, Galena was down again.

  ‘Raymond speak of you often, he tell me you are great collector and connoisseur,’ she was lying to Sir Mervyn.

  ‘I collect for the sheer pleasure of possessing beauty,’ Sir Mervyn lied back. ‘I’ve just bought your flower meadow. You stand in front of a picture like that, as Paul Mellon, a good friend of mine, is always saying, and you think: “And what is money?”’

  ‘Vot indeed?’ purred Galena. ‘I would love to meet Paul Mellon.’

  ‘I’m sure it can be arranged,’ said Mervyn warmly.

  Leaving them, Raymond found Rosemary and David in the kitchen.

  ‘Let it cool,’ Rosemary was saying as she lifted the sea trout out of the fish kettle, ‘and I’ll skin it. If you could chop up some cucumber, David.’

  ‘I’m so sorry about the cock-up,’ said Raymond. ‘You two children are such bricks.’

  ‘It’s our secret,’ whispered Rosemary, ‘we mustn’t tell Daddy, he doesn’t understand about being forgotten. Dinner’ll be ready in ten minutes.’

  Outside two magpies were having a domestic and big black clouds were moving in like gangsters. It was growing even hotter. As Rosemary laid the sea trout on a big green plate shaped like a lettuce leaf, and decorated it with chopped cucumber and slices of fennel, David told her about Prometheus carrying fire from Heaven in a fennel stalk.

  ‘How clever to know Greek things,’ said Rosemary.

  She’s really nice, decided David, watching her tossing new potatoes in chopped-up mint and melted butter. Rosemary for remembrance. She’d certainly remember dentist appointments, and the names of collectors’ wives and children, and whether they were coming to dinner. And all that dry-cleaning dosh would make an ascent up the social scale so much easier.

  ‘Supper,’ announced David triumphantly, then groaned, for, staggering up the lawn, a leaning tower of pissed artist, his eyes red as traffic lights, his face creased by sheets, his body not remotely covered by Galena’s crocus-yellow dressing gown, came Casey Andrews.

  Not a trace of anguish that Casey must have been down here screwing Galena and was about to screw up any deal showed on Raymond’s face.

  ‘My dear Casey,’ he murmured, ‘what an extraordinary coincidence. I’ve been showing your pictures to Sir Mervyn, who you know is a great fan. Perhaps you’d like to explain them to him yourself?’

  ‘My work defies explanation,’ said Casey pompously, helping himself to a huge Scotch.

  ‘We’d better lay another place,’ whispered Rosemary.

  ‘And put arsenic in his sea trout,’ whispered back David, letting his lips touch her very clean ear.

  ‘Thrilling for Daddy to meet such a famous artist,’ giggled Rosemary, ‘but isn’t he awful?’

  ‘We’re about to dine, Casey,’ said Raymond firmly, ‘but I suppose we can wait another five minutes.’

  ‘I’ll have another gin then,’ said Sir Mervyn.

  Wearily Raymond led them off to the warehouse. Such were their monumental egos, he daren’t leave them alone.

  By the time they returned, Galena had vanished, but dinner couldn’t be held up any longer. The boys were drooping; Casey and Mervyn both drunk. Searching for his wife, Raymond discovered her back in the Blue Tower sketching a naked Rupert, who was asleep like the young Endymion, his legs longer than Maud’s. Raymond didn’t know which was more beautiful, Rupert or Galena’s drawing of him.

  On the chair near the door was a far more explicit drawing of Rupert, entitled: Orgasm – July 26th. Raymond flipped it over. So that was where the July page of the calendar had gone.

  ‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ he hissed. ‘This place is like a whorehouse. First Casey, then Rupert – don’t you give a stuff the effect it has on the boys, David and the servants?’

  ‘I tell you, I need new models. This one’ – she waved her pencil at Rupert – ‘sits like a rock, he’s got the stillest face I’ve ever seen.’

  Somehow Raymond gained control of himself.

  ‘Dinner’s ready, I don’t imagine he’s staying.’

  He glanced up at the Raphael, particularly at Hope, with her sweet soothing smile.

  ‘You lying jade,’ he told her bitterly.

  After dinner, they had more drinks outside. Casey, who’d eaten most of the sea trout, was getting stuck into the kümmel. Having been impressed by other artists’ portraits on the dining-room walls, Sir Mervyn asked Casey if he’d be interested in painting Margaret. Having decided that Margaret would probably be as plain as her daughter Rosemary, Casey said he didn’t do portraits.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Casey,’ chided Galena.

  ‘I like the work of that Froggy who also exhibits at the Belvedon,’ said Mervyn, who didn’t understand professional jealousy.

  ‘Etienne de Montigny?’ Galena glanced mockingly at Casey.

  ‘That’s the fellow, got some of his racy stuff.’ Then, checking across the terrace that Rosemary was still totally preoccupied with David: ‘Mind you, I keep it away from the wife.’

  Casey, who couldn’t bear any competition, rose to his feet, blotting out a rising moon more effectively than any gathering black cloud.

  ‘Wait one minute, I want to show you something.’

  Unable to sleep because of the din, Alizarin crept into the spare room overlooking the terrace. Lurking undetected on the balcony, he breathed in the sweet tobacco smell of buddleia which that afternoon had been covered in butterflies. The moon looked like a slice of lemon waiting to be dropped into one of Sir Mervyn’s gins and tonic. Why were grown-ups so thirsty? They didn’t run about much.

  Alizarin detested Casey Andrews. He was so loud, bossy and rude to his father. He was also disgusting, with food in his beard and bogeys in his hairy nose, which this evening he had buried in a stinking piece of cheese before deciding to cut himself a piece. Alizarin shuddered. But worst of all was the way Casey monopolized his mother. He’d seen the horrible giant slide his hand over Galena’s bottom once too often. Alizarin was a stoical little boy, but, aware he was his mother’s favourite, he felt neglected.

  To the left he could hear the sound of blinds rattling up, as sleeping pigeons were roused by Casey’s noisy return from Galena’s studio.<
br />
  ‘Come and give me a hand,’ he yelled to David. ‘Careful, the paint isn’t dry. Who says I can’t do portraits?’ he asked boastfully as the canvas was leant against a bench, and one of the terrace lights retrained onto a huge nude of Galena.

  There were gasps followed by stunned silence. Half-woman, half-goat, Galena’s lips were drawn back from her long yellow teeth in a hideous grimace, vine leaves entwined her horned head, a Gauloise glowed between a cloven hoof, bouncing pink udders hung below her belly button, with a bleeding slit below.

  The stunned silence continued.

  ‘I’ve called it: In Season,’ said Casey sententiously.

  ‘Interesting,’ volunteered Sir Mervyn.

  Raymond was quivering with rage. But Alizarin lurking on the balcony was quicker.

  ‘It’s a horrible painting,’ he shouted. Then, as everyone jumped and looked up: ‘My mother’s the most beautiful woman in the world, and she hasn’t got long teef and her bosoms don’t hang down.’

  And before anyone could stop him, he tipped an entire tin of hen’s-diarrhoea-green emulsion all over the canvas and the furious upturned face of Casey Andrews.

  ‘You bastard,’ spluttered Casey.

  ‘You horrible little bourgeois,’ screamed Galena. ‘How dare you destroy great vork of art?’

  ‘Bollocks,’ drawled a voice.

  It was a barefoot Rupert, back in his white shirt and breeches, with a great grin on his face.

  ‘Evening, Raymond. Evening, Mervyn, sorry I didn’t get back to you over that sponsorship deal, I’ve been abroad. And well done, you,’ he shouted up to a trembling Alizarin, ‘fucking marvellous.’

  Then he walked towards the dripping canvas.

  ‘That painting is perfectly frightful. Any self-respecting goat would take you to court, Casey.’ Peering at the few bits not drenched in green emulsion: ‘And I don’t think your brush strokes are very smooth either. I certainly won’t employ you to paint my stable doors.’

  ‘How dare you!’ roared Casey.

  ‘Very easily.’ Turning to bolt, Rupert looked frantically round for his moved car. Having located it under the plane tree, however, he had to wait for Badger, who was bidding a lingering farewell to a smug-looking Maud. This enabled Casey to catch up with him and grab him by his shirt.