Pandora

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘I’ll make a fortune one day.’

  ‘Of course you will.’

  David rather wanted another feel of those wonderful breasts, but thought now was the right cut-off moment.

  ‘I can’t expect you to wait for me. You must have lots of kids and a big house.’

  ‘I don’t want—’

  But David had leapt out of the car and, belting round, opened the door; then, as she stumbled out, cried dramatically: ‘Goodbye, Rosemary darling, I love you too much to pull you down to my level.’

  As he roared off, instantly switching to Radio One, in his driving mirror, he could see she was crying. She’d also forgotten her duck doggie bag, which he could eat when he got home.

  David sang ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ at the top of his voice all the way back to his bedsitter in Bayswater.

  Rosemary dolefully clanked her tin in Gloucester Road. She’d been too dispirited to accost anyone and after half an hour had only collected half a crown and an Irish penny for the Cats Protection League. How would the poor strays survive? Catching sight of her, shoppers scuttled past, not wanting to be nabbed, clutching their fares as they plunged into the womb of the tube station. It gave her a dreadful feeling of déjà vu: young men at deb parties had long ago shot into darkened discos with the same averted eyes.

  She jumped at a screech of brakes.

  ‘“Oh Rosemar-ee, I love you,”’ sang a wonderfully familiar tenor.

  Rosemary started to cry. Slowly, through her tears, she became aware of a heavenly vision, a young Apollo framed in the window of Raymond’s dark blue E-Type. The boot was full of canvasses.

  ‘Jump in,’ yelled David.

  Rosemary blushed furiously, aware of astonished passers-by.

  ‘I’m on duty till two o’clock.’

  ‘Fuck duty. Get in.’

  Rosemary did, straight into David’s arms, to be kissed on and on, until every outraged motorist in London seemed to be hooting to the drumming accompaniment of her heart.

  ‘I must go back,’ she gasped as a grinning David finally drove off, making V signs to left and to right.

  ‘You must not.’ Fumbling in the dashboard, David handed her a wad of Galena’s unlaundered greenbacks. ‘That should protect a few pussies.’

  ‘You can’t give me all that money.’

  ‘I’ve booked us into the Royal Garden for a quicky, but only if you promise to marry me to make it respectable.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ gasped Rosemary, as he pulled up in front of the hotel and, throwing his car keys to the door man, seized Rosemary’s hand and belted inside.

  ‘I’ve only been to bed with one and a half men,’ mumbled Rosemary as he wrestled with the endless buttons of her flowered Laura Ashley.

  ‘What didn’t the half one do?’

  ‘Couldn’t get it up.’ Rosemary hung her curly head. ‘Probably didn’t find me exciting enough.’

  ‘Unlike me,’ sighed David, as white breasts flew like doves out of an even whiter bra, ‘I find you wildly exciting.’ Then, dropping to his knees: ‘This is definitely one pussy I want to protect.’

  St George’s horse, he reflected afterwards, gave him one of the nicest rides he’d ever had.

  ‘But you mustn’t tell anyone,’ he begged, ‘until I’ve asked your father’s permission.’

  He was simply dreading breaking the news to Raymond.

  Having made his pile and married very far up, Sir Mervyn Newton approved of young men on the make. He had adored sponsoring Rupert Campbell-Black and seeing the ‘Good as Newton’ slogan emblazoned across Rupert’s showjumping lorry, but he had sadly recognized that Rupert was not going to offer for Rosemary. It looked likely the poor lass might never get a husband. Sir Mervyn was so disappointed there would be no grandson to carry on the line that he had, as a means of acquiring immortality, become obsessed with his art collection.

  The morning after David and Rosemary’s lunchtime romp in the Royal Garden, Mervyn dropped into the Belvedon. Having just acquired a Romney from a somewhat dodgy gallery, he wanted Raymond’s opinion that it was ‘right’. As Raymond was out at Trumper’s having his hair cut, David hastily shoved another foul letter from his bank manager into his top drawer and, after one look, told Mervyn he must take the picture straight back.

  ‘You can still smell the turpentine, sir, probably painted in 1972 rather than 1772,’ then, subtly applauding Mervyn’s taste, ‘but it’s an extraordinarily good copy.’

  ‘How can you tell it’s a copy?’

  ‘It’s like asking a farmer the difference between Guernseys and Friesians.’

  Mervyn was most impressed. Why didn’t he buy David lunch, while his chauffeur took the Romney plus a flea in the ear back to the rogue gallery?

  ‘Only if you’ll let me pay, sir.’

  ‘We’ll argue about that later.’

  Raymond in fact had double dated, and David had been just about to ring the Ritz and cancel his boss’s favourite table overlooking Green Park, but decided to hang on to it for himself and Mervyn.

  Not only did David remember he drank gin and tonic but never had Mervyn met anyone who found the dry-cleaning business quite so fascinating. Gazing at Mervyn’s gleaming, pinky-brown pate and face, David decided he had never met anyone so like a baked bean. And I won’t have to eat you on toast any more if I marry your daughter, he thought resolutely. His landlady in Bayswater was hectoring him for last month’s rent.

  Staring into a cup of coffee, black as Galena’s eyes, David took a gulp of Pouilly-Fumé.

  ‘I must pay for lunch, sir, because I’m about to ask you a huge favour.’

  An interview for his cousin, thought Mervyn in disappointment. A biro mark his mother can’t get off her new coat. For a second, he didn’t take in the words: ‘daughter’s hand in marriage’.

  ‘I know I’m nine years younger than R-r-r-r-r-rosemary’ – there were tears in the boy’s eyes – ‘I know she’s had a rough time with other chaps. But I truly love, admire and long to cherish her and I’m certain, with her by my side, I could do really well in the art world.’ Impatiently he shook his head at a hovering waiter: ‘Unless you’d like a brandy, sir?’

  ‘I would indeed,’ cried Sir Mervyn joyfully.

  Margaret, his wife, had been seven years older and much better bred than he. He had never been faithful to her, but she had her garden (which was opened more often than her legs these days), and her Pekes, and last year the title (which his hard work had bestowed on her), and they rubbed along very well. David seemed so genuine when he outlined his plans for the future.

  ‘I like Yorkshire folk,’ said Mervyn. ‘They call a spade a spade.’

  All the better to gold-dig with. David fought a hysterical desire to laugh.

  He insisted on paying the bill with the last of Galena’s money.

  Cash, noted Mervyn.

  ‘Sometimes we do deals on paintings,’ murmured David. ‘People are happy to accept considerably less for cash. If you were interested . . . I know you’re in a hurry, sir, but if you really feel it’s OK for me to marry Rosemary, I did go ahead and buy her a ring, just as a present.’

  ‘What does Rosebud feel?’ asked Mervyn fondly. ‘Old girl keeps her feelings reined in.’

  Horses should, thought David.

  ‘She admits she cares for me, enough to marry me. I know I can make her happy, but I wouldn’t dream of putting this on her finger until I knew you and Lady Newton had agreed.’

  On a bed of dark blue velvet lay a huge heart-shaped diamond also paid for by Galena.

  ‘Lovely setting.’ Mervyn examined it. ‘Couldn’t have chosen anything nicer myself. I’m sure Lady N. will be just as pleased. Where are you planning to live?’

  ‘Well, Rosie’s got her little house, and I’ve got plans to rent one of the cottages down at Foxes Court. I imagine Rosie’ll want kids very soon, and I’d like to get her out of the way of the IRA.’

  And I could visit them, reflected Sir Mervyn
, and take that sexy Galena out to lunch.

  Having tipped the waiter exactly ten per cent, David said he ought to get back to the gallery.

  Good conscientious lad, thought Mervyn approvingly.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said. ‘Chauffeur can drive us. What are you showing?’

  ‘Marvellous Pre-Raphaelites downstairs, Casey Andrews drawings upstairs.’

  ‘Loved it when Rupert hit him across the lawn,’ admitted Mervyn. ‘Presumptuous oaf, thinking a lovely woman like Galena could fancy him.’

  ‘I’m the luckiest, happiest man in the world,’ said David, realizing as they glided up Old Bond Street that he could now afford all the ravishing girls they were passing.

  Hey diddly dee, a fat cat’s life for me, sang David under his breath.

  Raymond, who was examining a Rossetti of a redhead in a green silk dress, turned pale and dropped his eyeglass when David broke the news. But true to form, he immediately pulled himself together, congratulated David warmly, and, having sent him off to open a bottle of champagne, told Mervyn what a charming, kind, trustworthy, clever husband he would make.

  ‘Galena, I and the boys are devoted to him.’

  Fiona, Raymond’s fair assistant, got the giggles.

  ‘Just like winning the pools, David.’

  Later, more bottles were opened, Rosemary came over and was given her ring, and Mervyn bought the Rossetti.

  ‘We must tell Mummy,’ sighed a starry-eyed Rosemary, ‘she hates being left out.

  ‘We’re to go over to drinks later,’ she said, putting down the telephone. ‘Mummy sounds pleased. Are you the Tadcaster Pulboroughs?’ she asked.

  ‘No, he’s the Pull-everything-in-sightborough,’ muttered Eddie the packer, who’d just returned from a delivery.

  ‘Hush,’ giggled Fiona, ‘and have some fizz.’

  Passers-by, seeing the merry-making and assuming it was a private view, came in from the street, and Raymond ended up selling a Millais and two of Casey’s drawings.

  ‘Do you really love her?’ he asked David.

  ‘Not as you love Galena, but I think I can make her happy. She looks happy.’ David glanced across the gallery at a flushed Rosemary, who was shrieking with laughter with Fiona as she whispered about the wad of greenbacks for the Cats Protection League.

  ‘Quite frankly,’ he went on, putting a hand on Raymond’s arm, ‘I gave my heart away two years ago. Being with you, working with you, is the most important thing in my life, and there’s no way R-R-R-Rosebud’s going to change that. Anyway, she adores you. First day I met her at Foxes Court, she said you were the most smashing chap she’d ever met.’

  ‘I hope she thinks you’ve taken over that role,’ said Raymond drily, but he felt happier.

  ‘Fallen on his fucking feet, hasn’t he, Guv,’ grumbled Eddie as a half-cut David was led off to meet Lady Newton.

  ‘I hope so,’ mused Raymond. ‘He’s spurned Aphrodite in favour of Mammon. Reject the Goddess at your peril.’

  ‘There you go, rabbiting on like Fiona about people I’ve never ’eard of,’ grumbled Eddie. ‘Let’s open another bottle.’

  Margaret Newton, who, with her lack of chin and bulging eyes, resembled a well-upholstered turbot, was less of a pushover than her husband. Dom Pérignon was opened, toasts drunk, futures discussed, the exciting art collection admired, by which time David was plastered and terrified of letting his accent slip. Instead his glass slipped out of his hand, splashing the polished floor with champagne, which David proceeded absentmindedly to wipe up with Elspeth, his future mother-in-law’s Pekinese. Thank God, Mervyn, not a fan of his wife’s dog, thought this extremely funny.

  For both social and financial reasons, David was anxious to get married as quickly and quietly as possible. To his relief, his grandmother, with unusual tact, died in June, which gave an excuse for a tiny wedding, to which none of his common relations were invited. To encourage wedding presents, Sir Mervyn threw a drinks party at his club, the RAC, to which David invited his more glamorous Cambridge and art world friends.

  As the Boy David’s fortunes prospered, Raymond entered a time of hell. In July, his busiest month, the newly wed Mr and Mrs Pulborough took off on an extended honeymoon to Geneva, Florence, Venice and Kenya. A far worse hammerblow fell a week later. Alizarin, never strong, contracted rheumatoid arthritis. The doctors were hopeful he would grow out of it, but it meant he couldn’t join Jupiter at prep school in September. This in turn meant that when he wasn’t staggering around on crutches, Alizarin spent his time in his parents’ bed, reading, painting or gazing at the Raphael. This made Galena very bad tempered. Worried stiff about her favourite child, she was drinking heavily, not amassing enough paintings for her long-awaited October exhibition and unable to see her lovers.

  Fed up with her moods, nannies employed to look after Alizarin and baby Jonathan came and went. As a result, Galena took it out on Raymond. Devastated by David’s marriage, still tormented by jealousy of Casey, Rupert, Etienne and the rest of Galena’s fan club, Raymond was dealt a further blow when thick decorative Fiona announced she wanted a six-month sabbatical from the gallery. She was needed to provide moral support while her sister had her first baby in Hong Kong.

  Raymond was appalled. He loathed change. He desperately needed Fiona to organize Galena’s exhibition. She knew all the people that mattered and how to address them on invitations. She had enough taste to send the right flowers, and who would buy all his Christmas presents? She understood all his ways.

  ‘You can’t abandon me. I need you.’

  ‘So does my sister. I asked the agency to send you an upmarket older woman.’

  ‘Sounds like Margaret Newton,’ said Raymond gloomily.

  On the Monday the temporary was due to arrive, he felt even gloomier. Jonathan, however adorable, had formed a wrecking party with Shrimpy the Jack Russell. Jonathan had smashed some priceless porcelain and glass. Shrimpy had chewed up the first edition of Maud given him by David and, almost more disastrously, Raymond’s address book. Another nanny had given in her notice. Galena had given Raymond hell for abandoning her to drive up to Cork Street.

  ‘Gallery can’t run itself without David and Fiona,’ he had finally shouted at her. ‘We’ve got to get your fucking invitations out.’

  Arriving still shaking at the gallery, failing to find the invitation list, complete with addresses, which Fiona had promised to type, he was dispiritedly opening the post, when out fell David and Rosemary’s wedding photographs.

  Rosemary, who’d been incredibly relieved not to have to wear her mother’s tiara, looked happy and jaunty, like a seaside donkey in one of those straw hats that keep off the flies. Beside her David looked heartbreakingly young. Raymond groaned. He hadn’t believed it was possible to miss anyone so much. Even when David finally came back from his honeymoon, it wouldn’t be the same. David would confide in Rosemary now.

  There was a knock on the door, or was it on the inside of Pandora’s Box? Hope seemed to have jumped down from the Raphael and flown up to London, as in came one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen. Her short fair curls were swept off an angelic heart-shaped face, which was enhanced by big eyes the colour of love-in-a-mist, a wild-rose complexion, a soft pink smiling mouth, and a little turned-up nose. She was also tiny, with the sweet unformed figure of a twelve-year-old, and gave an impression of being swathed in rainbows. Perhaps he had died of a broken heart and gone to heaven.

  Having an Irish mother, Raymond believed in fairies. Then he realized the rainbow effect came from a violet cardigan, a pink floating scarf and a short skirt made out of a patchwork of pastel colours.

  ‘Mr Belvedon’ – she even had a tiny squeaky fairy’s voice – ‘I’m Anthea Rookhope, your new temp.’

  My God, any moment he’d be making jokes about hoping she’d become permanent.

  She seemed to dance over to him, a peacock butterfly fluttering across the gallery.

  ‘I am so excited. I know you wa
nted someone older and more public schooly’ – her smiling pink lips parted to show beautiful little white teeth – ‘but I adored art school and I’ve always wanted to work in a gallery. What lovely pictures.’ She gazed round in wonder. ‘Who painted them?’

  ‘Rory Balniel, one of our younger artists,’ stammered Raymond, ‘lives in France, used to paint angry tormented stuff; now he’s happily married, he paints his wife and children.’

  ‘Oh, I love happy marriages,’ sighed Anthea. ‘Look at those lovely kiddies. You look tired, Mr Belvedon, let me make you a coffee.’

  The telephone rang.

  ‘Oh God, I don’t know how to work the bloody thing,’ moaned Raymond.

  ‘I’ll answer it,’ said Anthea, going rather pink after a minute, and putting her hand over the receiver. ‘It’s a Mr Casey Andrews saying he hasn’t been paid, shall I tell him you’re not here?’

  Raymond seized the telephone. ‘We have paid you, Casey, and if you can’t keep a civil tongue in your swollen head, then I suggest you push off to another gallery.’

  The sound of clapping made them both jump.

  It was Eddie.

  ‘Well done, Mr B. Stand up to the old bugger,’ then, wolf-whistling at Anthea: ‘Things is definitely looking up.’

  Things certainly were. Raymond came back from lunching at the Connaught with a client to find Anthea had worked through her lunch hour.

  ‘I’ve tracked down the list for Mrs Belvedon’s exhibition, such exciting people, are you really asking Paul McCartney and Rupert Campbell-Black? I also discovered a lot of filing.’

  ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘Well, quite by chance, it was in the dustbin, a lot of yogurt spilled on the top pages, but I sponged it off, I’m sure Fiona didn’t mean to chuck it all away, just had other things on her mind before going away.’

  Raymond wasn’t so sure. Anthea was clearly one of those sweethearts who saw the best in everyone.