Pandora

by Jilly Cooper

  Kevin caught sight of Jupiter’s head. ‘Bloody hell, who did that? Bloody fantastic.’

  ‘I did,’ said Emerald.

  To Jupiter’s outrage, David Pulborough from his gallery opposite sidled in in Kevin’s wake. Knowing Jupiter couldn’t chuck him out in front of a client, he instantly started chatting up Emerald.

  ‘You’ve really caught the old devil, captured all the arrogance and ice of the grand master. Flattered him, of course, Jupey’s more lined and his eyes are closer together.’

  Emerald looked at the head, constantly smoothing the texture.

  ‘It needs more work.’

  ‘Give us a drink, Jupey,’ said Kevin, ‘I’ve dropped in to have a butcher’s at Daisy France-Lynch’s new stuff. Thinking of commissioning her to paint our Cuddles and the wife in the orangery.’

  ‘Daisy France-Lynch is so passé,’ drawled David, who never said anything nice about other dealers’ pictures, ‘her work’s far too pretty for today’s look.’

  ‘Probably one of the reasons she sells out before every exhibition opens,’ snapped Jupiter.

  ‘I sold a Sickert to the National Gallery this morning,’ boasted David as he flipped through Emerald’s portfolio. ‘These are very good. You should get some postcards printed or a poster of that one. You must give me your card.’

  ‘Me too,’ added Kevin, who was admiring one of Daisy France-Lynch’s grinning English setters. ‘Wonder how that would work on a petfood can?’

  ‘We’ve met before. That’s a nice big girl . . .’ David paused to admire a nude of Sophy. ‘At Rupert Campbell-Black’s open day. I never forget a face.’ Then, gazing deep into Emerald’s eyes, ‘When you walked past me I thought:

  ‘She was a phantom of delight

  When first she gleamed upon my sight;

  A lovely apparition, sent

  To be a moment’s ornament.’

  ‘That is so beautiful,’ sighed a blushing Emerald.

  Having taken Polaroid photographs of Jupiter from all angles, she was now, because she was poor, gathering up all the discarded pieces of clay to use again. It was so nice to be chatted up and praised by such an attractive man. Emerald liked David’s warm dark eyes and, not being tall, he didn’t dwarf her.

  ‘Lovely name, Emerald Cartwright.’ He examined the green card she handed him. ‘You are so promotable, darling.’

  Stepping out of the back office, David noticed his assistant waving frantically from across the road. One of his best clients, also flushed from a good lunch, had just rolled up.

  ‘I’ll call you,’ David told Emerald, and shot back to the Pulborough, shortly to be followed by Kevin Coley, saying he’d almost certainly buy the drawing of the English setter.

  ‘Put a red spot on it, Jupey, Daisy could make a fortune if we used it commercially. Can I have one of your cards too?’ he asked Emerald.

  Shaking with rage, Jupiter poured himself and Emerald glasses of wine, and asked her if she were hungry. Emerald looked at him from under her lashes: ‘Could I have another half an hour on the head?’

  Sitting in position again, Jupiter failed to control his anger.

  ‘How dare fucking David Pulborough swan in here when he’s just poached my brother Jonathan and signed him up for an exhibition in the autumn?’

  ‘Has he?’ asked Emerald in amazement. ‘That’s atrocious.’

  ‘Broke my father’s heart. Jonathan’s always been his favourite child,’ said Jupiter bitterly. ‘David’ll make a fortune if he can get any work out of him. Dad never managed to. Jonathan won’t like it. I concede work suffers if you’re too generous on the advance front, but at least he got paid when we represented him. David’s not only tight, he isn’t straight.’

  Even more upsetting, without his brother as an incentive, all Jonathan’s wild Young British Artist friends would no longer be so keen to show their work at Jupiter’s proposed East End gallery.

  ‘That’s terribly disloyal of Jonathan,’ said Emerald crossly and hypocritically, ‘family should always come first.’

  She was on the floor again, her hair escaping from its violet scarf. As she looked up at his chin and jawline, a smudge of clay enhanced her flawless face like a beauty spot. Jupiter was appalled how much he wanted to rip off her clothes.

  ‘Have you got a boyfriend?’

  ‘Sort of.’ Emerald waved a pointed stick at the last drawing in her still-open portfolio.

  ‘What nationality is he?’ asked Jupiter.

  ‘American Jewish, originally from Vienna.’

  ‘Great face.’

  Emerald shrugged: ‘I suppose so. He disappears for weeks on end, never says he loves me, I’m not sure of him.’

  Jupiter sighed and said he wasn’t at all sure of his wild sister Sienna and his curmudgeonly brother Alizarin, who had once painted so brilliantly but now exhausted himself producing grotesque unsellable rubbish.

  ‘Alizarin’s pictures should be stuck on the ceiling at the dentist’s, to show people how much fun it is having one’s teeth drilled.’

  Emerald giggled. Such had been her excitement at sculpting Jupiter, she was astounded that she had clean forgotten her original mission.

  ‘How does your mother cope with such a large family?’ she asked innocently.

  Jupiter, whose last memory of Galena was of her being so drunk, she had had to be locked in Raymond’s Bentley during a Bagley Hall Speech Day, said that his mother was dead.

  ‘We’ve got a stepmother.’

  ‘Is she nice?’ Emerald nearly sliced off Jupiter’s clay eyebrow, her hand was suddenly shaking so much.

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Jupiter with unusual warmth. ‘She’s held our family together despite Alizarin and Sienna giving her so much aggro. She and I have always got on and she’s great with Dad, who’s an old drama queen who needs keeping in check, but she always does it nicely.’

  Jupiter’s flat tummy gave a great rumble, as he added, ‘Anthea came to this gallery at eighteen, as a temp, and was so pretty the clients flocked. Dad was her first lover. She picked up the pieces after our mother died.’

  Maybe Raymond was her father. Emerald was enchanted. She felt so grateful to Jupiter for being sweet about Anthea.

  By three-thirty, more punters were trickling in, Jupiter had to get down to hanging Daisy’s pictures and Emerald had nearly finished his head. Jupiter was inwardly ecstatic, in a situation of which every dealer dreams: finding a brilliant young artist whom no-one is yet on to, who can still be bought cheap – and who also he wants to fuck insensible. But all he said was: ‘It’s coming on nicely. Needs another sitting.’

  In the past Jupiter had been accused of giving unimaginative presents. Emerald’s head, he decided, would be the perfect silver wedding present for his father and Anthea.

  As Emerald sprayed the head with water and wrapped it in plastic, Jupiter told her about the party. There would be lots of important dealers and clients there. He would see Emerald and her boyfriend got an invite.

  Quite forgetting he needed a squeaky-clean image if he were to oust William Hague and take over the Tory Party, Jupiter suggested Emerald left the head behind and finished it off tomorrow evening.

  ‘I’ll buy you dinner and we can discuss your career.’

  It was crucial, he told himself in justification, that he signed her up before David Pulborough got his grubby hands on her.

  ‘Limesbridge here I come,’ murmured Emerald in ecstasy as he put her into a taxi. ‘One gorgeous older brother down and two to go.’

  But as they passed the Ritz, she had to jump out and dive into the Ladies, where she threw up and up and up; then she cried her heart out all the way home from shock and nervous tension.

  Two nights later, Emerald finished Jupiter’s head. Afterwards she dined with him at Langan’s and was so anxious to learn more about Anthea and the Belvedons that for once she didn’t talk obsessively about herself, except to thank Jupiter when he promised to help her with her career. Jupiter misconstrued
her frantic dive into a taxi afterwards as an attempt to prevent him jumping on her, when it was only to stop him coming home with her and discovering in what a squalid area she lived. This in no way diminished his lust. Next day Emerald fired the head, leaving it in the kiln for a day, filling in the cracks with car body filler and painting them over, before sending it round to the Belvedon in a taxi.

  As the day of the silver wedding party approached, she became more and more histrionic, picking fights, tidying frenziedly, driving Zac further into himself.

  ‘Jupiter’ll loathe me for tricking him,’ she shouted over the Dyson as she yet again cleaned Zac’s flat, ‘and I really like him. Anthea may look like a fairy princess, but underneath she’s probably more like the wicked stepmother in Snow White. She’ll reject me even more when she realizes we’ve wormed our way in. I don’t know if I’m Charlene or Emerald, or Belvedon or Cartwright or Rookhope. Will I get swallowed up in a big family who are “careless with other people’s lives”? Will I lose Mum, Dad and Sophy, who’ve been good to me in their bumbling way?’

  Zac yawned, turned the page of The Art Newspaper and reached for his bourbon and soda.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, turn that fucking thing off, you’ll wear out the carpet,’ he yelled over the din. ‘You and Anthea are like push you, pull me. The person doing the searching agonizes about rejection, the person sought out feels invaded and unable to control events. Anthea’ll be fine once she sees you.’

  ‘How d’you know?’ Furiously Emerald banged the hoover against the skirting board. ‘What’s in it for you anyway? You just want to get inside the Belvedon house, to do a number on all those artists and clients.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘There must be some reason you’re forcing me to do this.’

  For a second, Zac’s face was as blank as the Rothko on the wall behind him, then he drained his drink and got to his feet.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Out – I’ve had you up to here.’

  ‘You can’t leave me, I need to work this through, you’re the only person I can talk to. Sophy’s so disapproving. I haven’t dared tell her we’re crashing Anthea’s party. Fucking hoover. Fuse must have blown.’

  But Zac had pulled out the plug and walked out of the flat slamming the door.

  What was he really up to? wondered Emerald. He’d retreat for hours into his office, endlessly surfing the net, sifting through catalogues and auction lists, gabbling away on the telephone in French, German, Italian and even Russian. He went out a lot; he disappeared to the gym, working out his rage on those huge machines. He wore wonderful designer clothes, but always in blacks, greys or muted umbers as befitting a creature of the night. He devoured German novels and watched cricket on television, but he never seemed to do any writing. The flat was filled with beautiful abstract sculpture and pictures, but it bore no stamp of Zac’s personality – she didn’t even know if he owned it.

  When he came back three hours later, Zac caught her going through his briefcase and really yelled at her.

  ‘Don’t ever do that again.’

  ‘Who’s that woman?’

  ‘My mother, for God’s sake.’

  ‘She’s very beautiful, but at least you were brought up by your own mother. Hearing how lovely Anthea is from Jupiter makes me realize what I’ve missed.’

  As she became more uncertain of Zac, the more demands she made on him. She was still fretting two days before the party over what she was going to give Raymond and Anthea as a present.

  ‘Thirty pieces of silver,’ said Zac.

  ‘Don’t be stupid and I must have something new to wear. I can’t face Anthea unless I feel really good. That’s the trouble with being tiny, you can’t buy things off the peg, skirts flap on the ground, shirts are like shift dresses. I’ll never find anything to fit unless I go to a top designer.’

  As she grabbed Zac’s empty glass, Zac grabbed it back again.

  ‘I might want another bourbon.’

  ‘Jupiter’s promised to give me a thousand pounds for that head,’ pleaded Emerald. ‘Will you lend it to me?’

  In the end Zac gave her £300 for a present and a dress.

  ‘It won’t be enough, you come with me and see.’

  ‘I’m going to Lord’s,’ snapped Zac.

  Sulkily Emerald set off, and after wandering up and down Bond Street, she settled for a silver candle-snuffer from Tiffany’s and a beautiful card. Pouring rain, which kinked her hair, made her even more bad tempered. Moving on to Knightsbridge, she found nothing that fitted or suited her at Harvey Nichols or Harrods, so she drifted towards Joseph – and there it was, on the rail, a dress in clinging chiffon, flower-patterned in green, crimson and Venetian red, with a frilly neckline and a knee-length skirt. It looked infinitely more ravishing on, demure yet seductive, and picking up the green of Emerald’s eyes, with the crimsons and reds showing off her white skin. What would Charlene Rookhope have done if she needed a beautiful dress?

  Emerald had never shoplifted before, but she was in such a turmoil and perhaps wanted to jolt Zac, who’d become increasingly withdrawn, into a reaction.

  Sliding the chiffon dress into the Tiffany bag alongside the silver candle-snuffer, she still had enough cash to buy one of Joseph’s sleeveless orange T-shirts and leave change over. It was so easy. In seconds she was out into the pouring rain and into the womblike safety of a taxi. That was the sort of wild prank Sienna Belvedon would have pulled off, she thought excitedly, as she transferred the chiffon dress to the Joseph bag. Back at the flat, she was unnerved to find cricket rained off, and Zac already home watching a video of one of Raymond’s programmes.

  ‘How d’you get on?’ he asked, switching down the sound.

  ‘Really well,’ said Emerald, brandishing the candle-snuffer. ‘Such a romantic idea – dousing the flickering lights before a night of passion. Oh look, there’s my darling stepfather. Do turn it up.’

  Raymond, in a pale yellow tie and a miraculously cut pinstripe suit, was drifting round the National Gallery followed by a languid-looking greyhound.

  ‘Raphael wasn’t just a miraculous artist,’ he was telling the camera confidingly, ‘he also had such a sweet and generous nature that, according to Vasari, the great Renaissance art historian, not only was he honoured by men, but even by the very animals, who would constantly follow his steps and always love him.’ Raymond paused to put a fond hand on the greyhound’s striped head. ‘Now that, in a not particularly animal-loving country, is a huge recommendation.’

  ‘Raphael would have got on with my mother,’ said Emerald, edging towards the bedroom as the camera panned in on the proud bay horse leading Raphael’s Procession to Calvary.

  But Zac had caught sight of the Joseph bag.

  ‘What else did you buy?’

  Flustered, Emerald muttered that she’d got a dress and T-shirt cheap in a Joseph sale, and fled next door. Alas, Zac the journalist rang Joseph. Discovering there was no sale on, he stalked into the bedroom and slapped Emerald really hard across the face.

  ‘Thou shalt not steal, for Chrissake! Don’t ever do that again, you stupid bitch. You could so easily have been caught. What would have happened if you’d been photographed by Oo-ah! wearing it at the silver wedding party?’

  Grabbing the dress and his wallet, he was off once again, slamming the door behind him. Emerald was still sobbing on the sofa when he returned long after midnight. The rain had turned the grey flecks as black as the rest of his hair; his face was wet and shiny. He chucked a Joseph bag at her. Inside was the dress.

  ‘How did you fiddle it?’ stammered Emerald.

  ‘Said you picked it up by mistake,’ said Zac acidly, ‘and eyed up the assistant. She was so touched by my honesty, she let me have it at a discount.’

  ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry.’ Emerald hung her head. ‘I’ve never stolen anything before.’

  ‘Except hearts.’ Zac’s face softened. ‘C’mon, honey, come he
re.’ Emerald shot across the room into the warmth and security of his arms. This was really the only home she wanted.

  ‘I’m sorry I hit you,’ muttered Zac. ‘We’re both uptight, but we’re so nearly there. Let’s go to bed.’

  Emerald came almost immediately.

  ‘I love you, Zac,’ she whispered and within seconds was asleep.

  Zac wandered into the bathroom, not bothering to switch on the light. The marble basin, magnifying mirror, silver-backed brushes, CK One bottles, all gleamed in the moonlight. Moving towards the window, Zac caught sight of the moon: wistful, huge eyed, desperately not wanting to die. Overwhelmed with sadness, Zac banged his forehead against the window pane.

  ‘We’re getting there, Mom, I promise.’

  Anthea woke early on her silver wedding day, delighted to see blue sky outside, and feel an already warm breeze ruffling her beautiful new white linen curtains, trimmed with crimson glass beads, which made a lovely clatter when drawn. Although she had just had most of the house redecorated, this room was her favourite. The walls had been repapered in crimson toile de Jouy: a glorious extravaganza of fishing Chinamen, pagodas, parrots, monkeys and joyful dolphins designed by Nina Campbell herself.

  Nina, who’d become ‘such a friend’, had also suggested blinds of the same crimson pattern behind the white linen curtains, cream Tibetan rugs on the polished floor and, on Anthea’s four-poster, luxurious self-lined cream linen curtains edged with more crimson.

  An enchantingly pretty room for an enchantingly pretty lady, thought Anthea smugly. Crimson, of course, had been Galena’s favourite colour, but she’d matched it with such strident royal blues and emerald greens. It required taste – like Nina’s, and of course Anthea’s – to bring out the true potential of the colour with creams and whites.