Pandora

by Jilly Cooper

  And you’d have thought Rosemary had chosen the colour of the walls – the rich reddy brown of newly ploughed Larkshire fields – specially to flatter her three marmalade cats: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who sauntered up and down the long scrubbed table as if they were modelling their opulent ginger fur.

  And what was Joanna Trollope’s latest doing with the spine up by the Aga? Rosemary should have been making a cake instead of reading. Now she was handing out bought chocolate cake and not even bothering with cake forks and serviettes. Fancy giving kitchen roll to the Lord-Lieutenant, General Aldridge, with whom Rosemary was on ludicrously chummy terms because he was some cousin of Melanie’s boring husband. Finally, what kind of bag lady did Rosemary think she looked like, still in her old gardening trousers and one of David’s cast-off shirts?

  Hanna looked a wreck too, decided Anthea. She deserved to lose Jupiter if she didn’t smarten herself up. Hanna and Lily, who was puffing away on some disgusting cheroot, flanked Rosemary like neighbourhood witches, all discussing the wild flowers still needed for Hanna’s painting. They made Anthea feel twitchy.

  ‘Cup of tea, Anthea?’ asked Rosemary, brandishing a big brown pot.

  ‘Have you got camomile? No? Well, I’ll have water.’

  ‘Isn’t Rosemary’s kitchen super?’ shouted Lily, who liked stirring things, to a chorus of assent.

  There was a pause while Anthea’s judgement was awaited.

  ‘Well, it certainly makes the room look bigger,’ she said coolly, then, turning to the Lord-Lieutenant: ‘Which Sunday are you opening, General? We had over a thousand through last year. Folk came, of course, to gaze at Sir Raymond as much as the garden.’

  ‘This year they’ll gaze at Emerald,’ snorted Lily. ‘Why don’t you plant her in the herbaceous border?’

  Anthea’s lips tightened.

  ‘Shoo,’ she cried as Shadrach padded purposefully towards her.

  On the wall by the window hung Galena’s Wild-Flower Meadow, which Sir Mervyn had given David and Rosemary and which was being admired by two shopkeepers. Anthea was sure Rosemary had held the meeting in the kitchen so everyone would see it. If Galena had been alive she’d have been a bloated old wino, fat as Falstaff, but because she was dead, everyone hero-worshipped her. Anthea wanted to scream. Shadrach settled purring on Lily’s lap.

  ‘Shall we begin?’ asked Rosemary.

  After touching on the village fête which Emerald was going to open on 3 July, and Limesbridge’s certainty of being the Best Kept Village in Larkshire (if someone could persuade Alizarin to cut his nettles), and the excessive use of pesticides threatening to wipe out the skylarks for which Larkshire was famous, discussion moved on to a proposed clay shoot in aid of the Distressed Gentlefolk.

  ‘Shoot the lot of them and save a lot of bother,’ said the landlord of the Goat in Boots, to sexist guffaws.

  Rosemary then brought up the old chestnut of the Borochova Memorial. Galena, she persisted, had immortalized Limesbridge by making it her home for nearly fifteen years and painting glorious pictures of the Silver Valley. These now hung in the greatest galleries of the world and had saved the valley from developers.

  ‘Here, here,’ shouted Lily.

  Shadrach purred in agreement. Abednego took up perilous residence on the bony thighs of General Aldridge.

  ‘People come from all over the world to honour her,’ went on Rosemary. ‘Surely there should be a statue in her memory in the High Street, and why can’t we apply for lottery money, and turn one of the outbuildings at Foxes Court into a museum about her work?’

  ‘Good idea,’ said the landlord of the Goat in Boots.

  Nice woman, Mrs Pulborough, he reflected. No side to her. Pity she was married to that shit. One of the joys of coming to these meetings had been to gaze at Jupiter’s bonny wife Hanna, but today she looked wretched. Her eyes, once like pale blue lakes on a map, were red and piggy with crying.

  Anthea was furious inside, but putting on her martyred virgin face, said she couldn’t possibly upset Sir Raymond by evoking memories of Galena’s tragic death.

  ‘And as we are already providing accommodation for Sir Raymond’s sister’ – she nodded coldly at Lily – ‘and Jupiter and his wife’ – she nodded coldly at Hanna – ‘and Alizarin, and Jonathan and Sienna when they deign to roll up, there is no room for a museum.’

  General Aldridge, who was known as ‘General Anaesthetic’ because he was so boring he sent everyone to sleep, had just taken out a subscription to the Erotic Review because his wife was going through the menopause. He also had a thumping crush on Anthea.

  ‘No-one does more for the village than Lady Belvedon,’ he brayed.

  Why didn’t they put up a statue to Anthea instead? suggested Green Jean, the vicar’s wife, who also had a crush on Anthea, and who had been so pleased she, and not the doctor’s wife, had been asked to the silver wedding party.

  ‘We ought to do something in Galena’s memory,’ said Rosemary stubbornly.

  All the local shopkeepers and the landlords of the Mitre and the Goat in Boots, who wanted to attract tourists to the area, agreed noisily.

  ‘We don’t want Searston to get the memorial instead of us,’ called out Lily.

  As the scent of lime blossom drifted in from the churchyard, Rosemary had a brainwave.

  ‘If Lady Belvedon has no room for a Borochova Museum, and as our children have flown the nest’ – Rosemary smiled as she imagined fat Barney taking off like a Christmas turkey – ‘why don’t we convert our empty barn into one instead?’

  Resounding cheers all round.

  ‘Ouch,’ shrieked General Anaesthetic as Abednego plunged his long claws into his thighs before flouncing off.

  Anthea was seething. There was no way she was going to allow the despised wife of her darling David to gang up with Galena’s supporters.

  ‘That would be totally unacceptable, Galena is after all a Belvedon.’

  No-one could see this mattered a scrap and before Anthea could say ‘knayfe’ Rosemary was promising to approach her husband and Geraldine Paxton about lottery funds and the best way of launching an appeal.

  ‘Why don’t we ask local artists to submit ideas for a statue?’ said the doctor’s wife, who’d been forced to go away for the weekend so people wouldn’t know she and her husband hadn’t been invited to Raymond and Anthea’s party. ‘And then we can ask the best three or four to produce maquettes. We gather your new daughter is an accomplished sculptor, Lady Belvedon, perhaps she could enter.’

  ‘I’m still happy to offer you the barn for a museum,’ said Rosemary.

  We’ll see what your husband has to say about this, thought Anthea.

  ‘My daughter-in-law’ – she nodded at Hanna – ‘is doing a lovely watercolour of all the wild flowers contained in Galena’s Wild-Flower Meadow.’ Anthea waved a pretty white hand at the painting on the wall. ‘Surely Hanna’s canvas hanging in the village hall would be a more fitting memorial?’

  ‘It can grace the museum instead,’ said Lily firmly.

  The meeting broke up because the General was pushing off to award prizes to the Guides in Searston.

  ‘Garden’s looking great,’ he told Rosemary as he followed her into the sunshine. ‘And Isobel wanted you to know she’s ordered a thousand of your Borochova snowdrops for the Long Walk.’

  Then, as Rosemary went pink with pleasure, he turned to Anthea, who was just behind them: ‘You’d better get your order in early.’

  ‘I may be old fashioned,’ simpered Anthea, ‘but I prefer my snowdrops to look like snowdrops. Lovely news about Melanie, Rosemary.’

  ‘What?’ demanded Rosemary.

  ‘About the new baby. She hasn’t told you? Oh, stupid me. I expect she wanted to be quite sure. Mind you, she’s always been Daddy’s girl. David is delighted.’

  Hanna, who had followed them out through the front door, looked at Anthea in horror, and put a comforting hand on Rosemary’s arm.

  ‘Did you h
ear that, Hanna? Melanie’s expecting,’ repeated Anthea. ‘High time you and Jupiter got your skates on.’

  Still seething, despite delivering such body blows, Anthea paused in the churchyard on the way home. On the lichened headstone were carved the words: ‘Galena Borochova Belvedon 1932–1973. Heaven lies around us.’

  Someone had left a bunch of meadowsweet and wild roses in a jam jar. In a fit of rage, Anthea kicked it over, then kicked the headstone. Hearing a step, she looked round and gave a gasp of terror. Alizarin was towering over her, blotting out the sun.

  ‘Get away from her,’ he roared.

  Because Visitor had just bounced into Rosemary’s kitchen in search of chocolate cake, Hanna, realizing Alizarin must be in the vicinity, crept into the churchyard hoping for a brief bittersweet word. Then she froze to see him talking to Anthea. No-one would be quicker on the telephone to Jupiter, sneaking about secret trysts.

  Emerald raged with paranoia at the prospect of her birthday party. She was convinced all the Belvedons, except Raymond, Anthea and Dicky, detested her. Patience, Ian and Sophy must loathe her after the way she’d slagged them off in the press and ignored them since the silver wedding. What would happen if the two families hit it off and united in righteous indignation against her? More likely the Belvedons would sneer at the dowdy, plain and two-thirds overweight Cartwrights. And why had Zac ratted on her, when he’d set the whole thing up? She felt as if both her shrink and her bodyguard had gone on permanent leave.

  And now four days before her birthday, she had the added nightmare of opening the bloody fête.

  ‘I’d like to thank everyone in Limesbridge for being so welcoming,’ Emerald was practising her speech in her bedroom before leaving, ‘particularly my new parents, Anthea and Raymond Belvedon.’ Emerald smiled at Raymond who was perched on her bed, nodding approval. ‘And all their wonderful children.’

  The little fuckers, thought Emerald savagely, particularly Dora, who was acting up because Emerald had refused to be run away with in the family trap pulled by a delinquent Loofah through bunting-decked Limesbridge. She had opted instead to arrive at the fête by river in Raymond’s boat.

  ‘How could the bitch deny Loofah such a photo opportunity?’ raged Dora.

  Anthea had already gone down to the wild-flower meadow, where the fête was being held, to rally the troops, but kept ringing up: ‘Where on earth are you? The nation’s press is waiting, we’ve got to begin.’

  ‘We’ll be with you in a minute,’ Raymond told her reassuringly as he topped up Emerald’s glass with Moët.

  He was as reluctant as she was to get down to the fête, having agreed to stage his own Antiques Roadshow at two pounds a go, which meant all the cantankerous old biddies in Larkshire lining up to have their junk valued.

  ‘You look heavenly, darling,’ he reassured Emerald, ‘a sight to make an old man young.’

  Emerald glanced in the mirror. In her rosebud-strewn gypsy dress with the ruched neckline resting on her white shoulders, and the frilled skirt swirling around her slender hips, she agreed with Raymond she looked heavenly. But how could she open a fête with a broken heart?

  ‘Where’s Zac?’ she wailed.

  ‘He’ll turn up,’ comforted Raymond, then as his mobile rang and Anthea could be heard screeching: ‘We’re on our way.’

  Down at the wild-flower meadow, stalls were already trading, because Emerald was so late, and the Belvedons variously helping or hindering. Jonathan, still in a dinner jacket and dress shirt covered in lipstick, was leaning against his dirty Ferrari, drinking a gin and tonic and regaling his supporters with details of last night’s adventures. Sloping off from some dull awards ceremony to have a kip, he had mistaken a BMW belonging to a rather stern married couple for Geraldine’s Mercedes.

  ‘I didn’t wake up until they’d got me home, and things rather went on from there,’ sighed Jonathan.

  An abandoned Geraldine kept on sending him furious text messages.

  Under Jonathan’s arm was an Ian Rankin thriller which had been set aside for him by Aunt Lily, who was helping out Rosemary on the book stall. Three sheets to the wind, Lily had already given someone back £4.50 change from a 50p coin.

  Next door Anthea had paused at the Nearly New stall brandishing a favourite blue dress, which Rosemary had reluctantly sacrificed, crying: ‘Who’d honestly be seen dead in this?’

  Alizarin and Sienna, who’d both worked all night, felt like pit ponies emerging into the sunlight. Sienna had wandered barefoot across the footbridge from her studio. Dark glasses covered her reddened eyes. Her huge canvas about sins done to animals was really getting to her.

  Last night she had been painting chimps with electrodes in their brains, tonight she’d have to move on to the red-hot pokers stuck up the arses of tigers and leopards, so they died with agonizing slowness but without a mark on their pelts. Momentarily comforted to see her brother Jonathan, she had quickly realized he had only driven down to barrack Emerald.

  Alizarin was particularly low because he couldn’t recognize faces in the crowd any more, and kept being accused of cutting people. Hanna was miserable because she was one of the people Alizarin had cut. Languid Jupiter was manning the loudspeaker and fastidiously pressing the flesh in case he was selected as prospective Tory candidate for the area.

  Dicky, back for the weekend from Bagley Hall, had enraged his mother by dying his dark hair blond and parting it down the middle like his idol David Beckham. Ever commercial, he was now doing a roaring trade exhorting people to guess the weight of Visitor. Once Emerald opened the fête and pop music began pouring out of the speakers, Dicky intended branching out and charging people £2 to dance with Visitor. Visitor, loving the attention, was pedalling his back legs like an organist. Every so often he rushed off to drink deeply out of the big bowl in which children were bobbing for apples. This, claimed people who’d already guessed his weight, must make him heavier, and frightful rows ensued.

  ‘That dog weighs at least twenty stone,’ called out Jonathan, chucking a fiver into Dicky’s tin as he carried large gins and tonic over to Knightie and Mrs Robens, who’d been roped in to do teas, and who were incensed Anthea was refusing to pay them, because the whole thing was for charity. Being referred to as a ‘tireless helper’ in the parish mag was no compensation.

  The minutes ticked by, the press were looking at their watches. Green Jean, not realizing she hadn’t been invited to Emerald’s birthday party on Wednesday, had already bought one of Emerald’s sketches of Anthea. She was livid on the other hand that her husband Neville had bought Sienna’s nude drawing of Aunt Lily, of whom he was extremely fond.

  ‘He’ll have to hang it in the vestry,’ spluttered Green Jean who had already concealed Jonathan’s nude of Sienna under a sheet, which everyone lifted to peer underneath and which had just been bought by the landlord of the Goat in Boots.

  ‘I’ll ’ang it in the public bar,’ he said, handing Jean a fistful of tenners.

  There was great excitement because Alizarin’s abstract, which Jean had hung upside down, had been bought by a shortsighted General Anaesthetic, who thought he was acquiring a painting of camels in the desert.

  ‘Enjoyed riding them in the Desert Mounted Corps,’ he was telling everybody.

  The hit of the show, however, was Hanna. Her twelve flower paintings had all been sold, and re-orders were pouring in. David Pulborough, who’d just rolled up having done eff-all, and whose flesh-pressing as prospective High Sheriff consisted of stroking bare arms and patting shapely bottoms, clocked Hanna’s great success and suggested he sign her up.

  ‘Your wife’s so marketable. You’d better give up running the Belvedon,’ David told Jupiter patronizingly, ‘and become a kept boy.’

  ‘And use you as a role model,’ snarled Jupiter.

  ‘Whoops!’ called out a passing Jonathan.

  ‘And you can wipe that grin off your face,’ a puce David turned on Jonathan. ‘How dare you walk out on Geraldine last nig
ht, and when in hell are you going to finish Dame Hermione?’

  ‘Do look,’ interrupted Jonathan blithely, ‘here comes Dad and his alleged daughter – just in time to close the fête.’

  What right has the old fool to look so fucking proud, thought David as Raymond in his dark green and black Larkshire Light Infantry blazer, which he could still fit into, drew up and, jumping onto the bank, turned to help Emerald out.

  ‘Where have you been, you’re three-quarters of an hour late,’ shrieked Anthea, rushing down the path cut through the pink-tipped grasses. ‘I have never been so humiliated in my life.’

  ‘It’s OK, we’re all in one piece,’ smiled Raymond as the press went berserk.

  Zac the Wanderer – ever unpredictable – rolled up even later, just as Emerald was making her speech. She was so busy thanking everyone and not goofing in front of the Belvedons and making herself heard over a sudden deafening ticking din that she didn’t notice the helicopter landing on the edge of the meadow and a suntanned man in the sharpest white suit leaping out.

  ‘“Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,”’ breathed an ecstatic Raymond.

  ‘And I now declare this fête . . . Zac, oh Zac!’ screamed Emerald.

  Dropping her microphone and her notes, ignoring the curtsying little girl with the bunch of salmon-pink gladioli, kicking off her black sandals so her painted toenails flashed like corals in the damp grass, Emerald hurtled across the meadow straight into Zac’s arms, whereupon he gathered her up, twirling her round, kissing her on and on, watched with varying degrees of emotion by the Belvedon family.

  ‘Cut,’ yelled Jonathan. ‘This is a church fête, not the back row of the Odeon.’

  And you’re one hell of an ugly customer, thought Zac, noticing the hatred on Jonathan’s face as everyone laughed and cheered.

  Revelling in the muscular strength of Zac’s body against hers, Emerald slowly recovered her breath.

  ‘I’ve missed you so much, please stay the night,’ she gabbled. ‘Please be here for my birthday party on Wednesday.’