Pandora

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘I was hoping Emerald might be free for dinner,’ said Zac.

  ‘What fun, I’m sure she’d love to,’ cried Patience, trying to hide her relief.

  ‘I can answer for myself,’ snapped Emerald.

  It was so uncool not to be going out on a Saturday night.

  ‘I was actually just changing to go out to a party,’ she went on untruthfully. ‘But it wasn’t very exciting. Thanks, I’d love to.’

  ‘Chap’s a bounder,’ said Ian as Emerald, in a silver sequinned suit and a spring-like cloud of Violetta, left with Zac.

  ‘I’m afraid he’ll break Emo’s heart,’ sighed Patience.

  ‘Only if he smashes it with a pickaxe,’ said Sophy crossly.

  Outside, the sky was the dull pink of a pigeon’s breast; the air reeked of curry and hamburgers. As Zac flagged down a rare taxi, a tramp lurched up to Emerald.

  ‘Give us a fiver, darlin’.’

  ‘It’s me who ought to be asking you,’ Emerald told him acidly, and shot across the road into the taxi.

  Zac took her to an extremely cool restaurant in Savile Row called Sartoria, where diners relaxed in squashy dark brown leather sofas, and Emerald’s first course of mozzarella, zucchini, mint and basil was so beautifully laid out it should have been hung on the wall.

  Zac ordered a very expensive bottle of red, a light Barolo, a ’95 vintage.

  ‘And drink it slowly,’ he chided, as Emerald took a great gulp to steady her nerves. ‘I figure I get more turned on by wine menus than pornography these days.’

  ‘Is that why you haven’t been in touch?’

  ‘I’ve been busy. Since I saw you I’ve been to Tokyo, Moscow, Paris, B.A. and the Hermitage.’

  ‘And a few ski slopes.’

  ‘That too.’

  ‘Zac the wanderer,’ said Emerald sulkily. ‘I haven’t been anywhere.’

  ‘What happened to the mansion in Yorkshire?’

  Emerald was still telling him when their next course arrived. Zac forked up her mozzarella and pushed the zucchini to one side, to make room for her scallops.

  ‘And don’t expect me to finish up those. Jews don’t eat shellfish. Why didn’t your father go to the Industrial Tribunal?’

  ‘Says he’s not the grumbling generation.’

  Unlike his daughter, thought Zac.

  ‘He used to be so macho,’ sighed Emerald. ‘I can’t bear seeing him reduced to a shivering jelly, driving minicabs.’

  ‘Not tonight, I hope,’ grinned Zac.

  ‘It’s not funny. I don’t really blame Daddy for drinking’ – Emerald drained her glass of red – ‘we’ve lost everything.’

  ‘Except your talent.’

  ‘That’s gone. I gaze into space like Daddy.’

  ‘Don’t be a wimp, talent doesn’t go away, only the guts to apply it.’

  Emerald was as exotically beautiful, reflected Zac, as the scarlet anemones in the glass vase on the table, which had sucked up most of their water. Like her, they needed constantly topping up, but in her case with endless approval and attention. And then you thought of the parents with whom she’d been lumbered: that raucous technicolour scarecrow, and that bigoted drunk. Zac had disliked Ian Cartwright intensely, he was the kind of goy who’d think it terribly cool to have a ‘clever little Jew, as sharp as ten monkeys’, as his accountant. The whiff of Ian’s anti-Semitism had been even more unattractive than the smell of his wife’s casserole. Zac shuddered. Picking up Emerald’s delicate white hand with the wild-rose-pink fingernails, he examined the fragile wrists.

  ‘Must be some good blood somewhere, you ever thought of tracing your birth mother?’

  Emerald, who’d been thrown into turmoil by his touching her, couldn’t think straight.

  ‘It’d be like opening Pandora’s Box,’ she stammered. ‘She might be a junky, or in gaol or even a prostitute. She might get fixated on me and want to see me all the time. She might live in a ghastly house, although it couldn’t be worse than the dump we’ve got in Shepherd’s Bush.’

  ‘She might want to borrow money off you,’ said Zac with a grin.

  ‘She gave me a dreadfully common name: “Charlene”.’ Emerald was shocked at her own snobbishness.

  ‘Charlene is my darling.’ Zac suppressed a yawn.

  ‘Am I?’ asked Emerald. She wasn’t sure. She must try and talk about him for a change. ‘How long are you here for?’

  ‘Tomorrow, maybe Monday.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Emerald was appalled, ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve banged on.’

  ‘Good Jewish proverb, “It’s better to light a candle than grumble in the dark”.’

  Later, when Zac got his Amex card out of his wallet, Emerald noticed a photograph of a very dark handsome man. Perhaps Zac was bi-sexual, but it looked like an old snapshot. Zac read her thoughts.

  ‘My Great-uncle Jacob,’ adding so bleakly that Emerald shivered: ‘He was murdered by the Gestapo.’

  ‘God, how awful.’ Then, because she was frantic for Zac to make love to her again: ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘Lancaster Gate. An apartment.’

  ‘It’s on the way home,’ hinted Emerald. Then when he didn’t react, she took a deep breath. ‘If I look for my birth mother, will you help me?’ Anything to keep him in the country. ‘She worked in an art gallery, she was only nineteen, I was born on 7 July 1973. We’ve got a file at home. I know the name of the adoption society in Yorkshire.’

  ‘In America,’ Zac was clearly bored with the subject, ‘with the necessary information and a credit card, it’s easy. You can order your birth certificate over the phone.’

  ‘My mother’s bound to be married now and called something different,’ said Emerald fretfully.

  She had chewed off all her pink lipstick, leaving her mouth pale and trembling; her big eyes were shadowed and pleading.

  ‘I can’t ask Mummy and Daddy to help me, they’ve had enough grief recently.’

  ‘What was your mother’s name?’

  ‘She was called Anthea Rookhope.’

  There was a pause, only interrupted by the hiss of the coffee machine, as Zac put the bill and his Amex card back in his wallet. She couldn’t read the expression on his face: triumph, pity, calculation.

  ‘OK. I’ll help you.’

  People were coming out of the theatres. As Zac and Emerald wandered down Piccadilly, they passed Hatchards with a window filled with flowers, ribbons and books by Maeve Binchy, Penny Vincenzi and Rosamund Pilcher, chosen to give pleasure on Mothering Sunday.

  ‘Oh hell, I forgot,’ said Emerald crossly. ‘Bloody Sophy should have reminded me. I bet she did it on purpose to be one up. I’ll have to rush out first thing and get Mummy a card.’ Emerald turned to Zac. ‘Did you remember?’

  ‘My mother’s dead,’ said Zac, so icily he could have directed a blizzard into her face.

  ‘Oh Christ, I’m sorry, I’m so off the wall at the moment, I forget everything, what did she die of?’

  ‘Cancer,’ snapped Zac, who had flagged down a taxi.

  The moment Emerald was inside, he slammed the door.

  ‘Aren’t you coming with me?’ She was suddenly distraught.

  ‘I’ll call you Monday, when I’ve figured out the best way to trace your mom.’ He handed her a £20 note, then told the driver, ‘Five Cowfield Court.’

  ‘But where are you going?’ sobbed Emerald.

  ‘I’m gonna walk.’

  Almost running towards Hyde Park Corner, Zac noticed hanging above the bare plane trees a three-quarters-full moon, with the same sweet, wistful face as his mother, after she’d lost all her lustrous hair.

  ‘Oh Mom,’ groaned Zac, ‘why did you have to leave me?’

  Zac’s family had been almost entirely wiped out by the death camps. His hero, Great-uncle Jacob, had had a gallery in Vienna, which had been closed down by the Nazis. Jacob had later been murdered by the Gestapo for smuggling Jews out of occupied Europe. Art therefore was in Zac’s blood and the impac
t of Hitler’s mass murder burnt deep in his soul.

  When his widowed mother had married a second time, the three-year-old Zac had taken his goy stepfather’s name of Anderson. But on leaving home in his late teens, he had changed his name from Anderson to Ansteig, which means ‘ascent’ in Austrian. This was to symbolize his escape from the poverty of his childhood and the brutality of his stepfather, who drank and beat up both him and his mother.

  Now aged twenty-nine, Zac prowled the world, scouting for rich American collectors and writing pieces for art magazines. Eternally questioning like a psychiatrist, he seldom volunteered information about himself. His tigerish-yellow eyes, wonderful gym-and judo-honed body and deceptive cool made him wildly exciting to women. Zac, however, was more interested in unravelling his past and avenging himself on those who’d destroyed it. Hard on the outside, he refused to admit how much he missed the warmth and sympathetic closeness of the Jewish community he’d left behind in New York. When he allowed himself, he could be kind and wryly funny, but at heart he was angry and desolate, identifying with Schubert’s Wanderer. ‘Wherever I am, happiness is not.’

  Next day, as promised, Zac applied for a form from the Adoption Contact Register in Southport. This was where parents who’d given children up for adoption left their names and addresses, in the hope that if these children came searching for them, they would know they’d receive a warm welcome.

  ‘If both sides register,’ explained Zac, ‘a reunion after counselling can be arranged.’

  ‘Can I give your Lancaster Gate address?’ asked Emerald as she filled in the form. ‘I don’t want Mummy and Daddy to know what I’m up to.’

  ‘I’m going away,’ said Zac.

  ‘You can’t leave me! At least let me stay in the flat and keep it nice for you, or give me a key in case a letter arrives.’

  ‘No,’ said Zac firmly. ‘The form’ll take time to process, you won’t hear from them for a few weeks, I’ll be back by then.’

  Although she was livid with Zac for abandoning her, Emerald couldn’t resist working herself up into a fever of excitement.

  ‘Imagine my real mother thinking of me every birthday and Christmas and at the beginning of every term. Every day she must wonder if I’ve met Mr Right.’ Emerald looked up under her lashes at Zac. ‘A woman on LBC yesterday said not a day passed, since her daughter was eighteen and officially allowed to search for her, that she didn’t expect a knock on the door, or the telephone to ring and a voice to say, “Hi, Mum”.’

  Instead, three weeks later at the beginning of April, a kind letter arrived from Southport, saying they regretted that no Anthea Rookhope had registered but if, and when, she did she would find Emerald’s, or rather Charlene’s, name waiting for her.

  Emerald, with predictable mood swings, had right up to the last moment been wondering whether she really wanted to meet her birth mother. Denied the opportunity, she was shattered. Zac, back from America, was wonderfully reassuring and patient. The Adoption Contact Register wasn’t widely publicized, he kept telling her. Emerald’s birth mother probably didn’t know it existed.

  ‘You must remember, times were very different when you were born. Young moms gave up their babies expecting never to see or hear from them again. They were forced to make a fresh start. Often they moved abroad to start a new life.’

  ‘I ought to have counselling,’ wailed Emerald, ‘I need a support group.’

  ‘You’ve got me,’ said Zac.

  The next step in the search was to go to the Public Record Office near the Angel, Islington.

  ‘All marriages and births are listed there in year and alphabetical order,’ Zac told Emerald. ‘You’ve seen your original birth certificate, which told you your mom worked in a gallery. So this time, try looking for her marriage certificate. Start from July 1973, when she gave you up for adoption, and troll through the relevant volumes till you come to Rookhope, Anthea. If she was a quarter as pretty as you, she’ll have been snapped up quickly, and it shouldn’t take long.

  ‘This entry,’ he continued, ‘will give you the date and place where she married and the name of her husband. Then you can apply for the marriage certificate, which will give an address you can follow up, and the husband’s profession. If he’s a lawyer or a doctor, it’ll be easy to trace him. Once you know your birth mom’s married name you can also check through the births while you’re there and find out if you’ve got any siblings.’

  ‘It all sounds fearfully complicated,’ grumbled Emerald, ‘I’ll never understand it, unless you come with me.’

  ‘I’m busy, Moaner Lisa,’ said Zac firmly, ‘you can do it yourself.’

  Sulkily, Emerald took a bus to the Angel. How dare Zac accuse her of moaning? She wouldn’t if he made love to her more often and allowed her to stay over in his flat which he kept so private.

  It was a very warm spring afternoon, daffodils nodded approval in the parks, blossom danced in all the squares, but Emerald’s teeth were chattering frantically as she arrived at the Public Record Office. She allowed the men on the door to search her handbag, but ignored the sign telling her to switch off her mobile. In a big light room, below huge signs saying ‘Deaths’, ‘Births’, ‘Marriages’, with ‘Adoptions’, typically, sidelined round the corner, were shelves and shelves filled with huge leather-bound books. Everything – walls, carpets, a mass of potted plants, big armchairs – was green; that traditionally restful colour to soothe those making earth-shattering discoveries.

  Green linoleum even covered the reading table on which Emerald laid the big sap-green book which said: ‘Marriages registered in England and Wales in the months August, September, October 1973’ in gold lettering on the spine. Inside the names had been listed on an old-fashioned typewriter, with the occasional correction in ink.

  ‘Rainsworth, Ralph, Ramm,’ read Emerald, ‘Reed, Rees, Roberts, Rookes,’ but no Rookhope. Her hands were clammy and trembling, as she moved to the next volume, and then the next – still with no luck.

  Perhaps art students of the future would one day come here to look up her marriage to Zac: Sculptor and Wanderer, thought Emerald dreamily as she took down February to May 1974. She adored Zac so much, she’d happily convert to Judaism. Next door a man with a beard was purposefully working his way through a volume of recent births. Perhaps his wife had been up to no good.

  ‘Ramsey, Ralton, Reading, Rollinson,’ read Emerald, then jumped as the hallowed silence was broken by desperate weeping.

  ‘My mother confessed on her deathbed that in 1949 she gave up a daughter for adoption,’ a distraught grey-haired woman was telling two kindly officials over at the reception desk. ‘Her dying wish was that this child should know how loved she’d been,’ she sobbed. ‘The social workers in Wales know where she is, but they won’t tell me.’

  ‘That’s a bloody disgrace.’ Dropping February to May with a crash, Emerald rushed across the room. ‘You get a lawyer onto it at once,’ she said, putting her arm round the woman’s heaving shoulders.

  ‘She’s my sister,’ cried the woman. ‘Now that Mother’s passed away, she’s the only family I’ve got.’

  It was a few seconds before Emerald realized the disapproval on the faces of the kindly officials was not entirely directed at Welsh social workers, and that her mobile was ringing.

  ‘So sorry,’ she mumbled, then seeing call on the blank screen of her mobile, which must be the unlisted Zac ringing, she scuttled off past a sign saying ‘Marine and Consular Births’ to answer it.

  ‘You can stop hunting, baby,’ said a deep jubilant voice, ‘I’ve found your mom.’

  ‘Omigod, where is she?’

  ‘Get in a taxi, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘I haven’t any money.’

  ‘I’ll pay the other end.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  It was the first time he’d given her his Lancaster Gate address.

  ‘Don’t forget to get yourself a lawyer,’ Emerald yelled to the distraught grey-haired wom
an as she ran out into the sunshine.

  Emerald felt she’d ascended to heaven as she stepped out of the lift into such a beautiful penthouse flat. Zac was waiting with a bottle of Pouilly-Fumé.

  ‘Who is she? Tell me, tell me.’

  For a minute Zac teased her like the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. First he couldn’t find the corkscrew, then there were smears on the glasses. Then he laughed.

  ‘You are not going to believe this. Adrian Campbell-Black called me at lunchtime wanting info on Galena Borochova.’

  ‘What’s she got to do with it? She’s not my mother. For Christ’s sake, Zac.’

  ‘I know, but I knew she was married to Raymond Belvedon, so I picked up Who’s Who to find out the year she died, and guess who was his second wife?’

  ‘Who, who?’

  ‘Anthea Rookhope.’

  Emerald sat down very suddenly on a black leather sofa.

  ‘I am certain,’ Zac told her, ‘that your mom is living in Limesbridge, one of the prettiest villages in the Cotswolds, and she is now Anthea Belvedon, the wife of Sir Raymond Belvedon.’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ screamed Emerald. ‘It must be fate. And I even spoke to Raymond, my real father, at Rupert Campbell-Black’s. He’s such a darling. And, my God, that means Jonathan and Sienna Belvedon are my brother and sister. Christ! I mean they are the two great monster superbrats of the art world. Jonathan is so gorgeous, students stretch his canvasses for nothing, he’s got a loft off Hoxton Square and a barn in the country. Hardly starving in a garret and Sienna was shortlisted for the Turner, no wonder I’m so arty. What a lovely man to have as my father, if he’s a Sir does that make me an Hon.?’

  Emerald was hysterical with excitement, flying round the room like a fairy, knocking back gulps of wine, facts spilling out of her like a fax machine. Zac brought her down to earth.

  ‘Anthea’s your mother, but I don’t figure Raymond’s your pop. I’ve been digging around. It seems Anthea went to work at the Belvedon in the early Seventies. Raymond was married to Borochova then, who died in October 1973. Anthea didn’t marry Raymond until May 1974, a quiet register office wedding, ten months after you were born.’