Pandora

by Jilly Cooper

  As a final straw, Sophy had taken out a loan this week in order to give Emerald a purple pashmina for her birthday, telling her, ‘You can change it, I’ve kept the bill.’

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ Emerald had said casually, ‘not entirely sure purple’s my colour. It’s a bit draining. I’ll see what it goes with.’

  Sophy wanted to cry with frustration. Why do I always fall for it? Why do I always imagine Emo’ll be any different? She must take after her natural mother, Sophy was appalled to find herself thinking. Anthea was absolute hell.

  ‘Move in, Fatso, I can’t get past,’ ordered Emerald as she edged behind Sophy’s chair to sit next to Jonathan, then, hardly lowering her voice: ‘Aren’t Anthea and Raymond lovely?’

  Dinner was decidedly scratchy. The setting was exquisite with the boathouse newly painted duck-egg blue, lit with dark green candles and opened up on one side to the River Fleet, whose flowing water rippled the gold paths cast by flambeaux all along the bank. The table was decorated with jasmine and philadelphus entwined with palest green ivy and enhanced by mauve napkins and the delicate and charming green and purple ‘Violets’ dinner service.

  Anthea made sure everyone knew she’d done the cooking: kicking off with salmon tartlets, untopped admittedly by prawns, and Hollandaise sauce.

  ‘Start at once,’ she ordered Patience, ‘and tell me what you think.’

  Everyone except Alizarin, Jonathan and Sienna dutifully said it was absolutely delicious.

  ‘The tartlet with the heartlet of gold,’ murmured Jonathan, who was as high as the glinting weathercock on the church steeple.

  Tartlets were followed by very rich lamb and asparagus in cream sauce, which Patience felt uneasily churning round inside her alongside Jonathan’s green cocktails. She took a slug of red wine. Raymond, on her left, had been so complimentary about Emerald, Patience wondered rather disloyally if they were talking about the same person. Emerald had been so cruelly unappreciative of Ian and Patience’s birthday present of a seed pearl necklace, which had been in the family for generations and which was now the only jewellery unsold. But she supposed they couldn’t compete with the Belvedon emeralds.

  On Patience’s right, in unrelieved black, was Zac, not her favourite person for orchestrating the finding of Anthea. He made no attempt to engage her in conversation, chatting about pictures to Jupiter’s wife, Hanna, on his right who, despite a blue satin butterfly fluttering gaily in her piled-up blond hair, looked even unhappier than Patience felt.

  I’ve been such a bad wife compared with Anthea, she thought despairingly. Maybe Ian wouldn’t have failed in business if I’d made the house prettier, and ingratiated myself with his customers and colleagues. Look at Anthea dimpling up at the rich and powerful Si Greenbridge. What an asset!

  Anthea was so like Emerald in looks and mannerisms, Patience longed to like her. Ian clearly thought her an absolute poppet.

  ‘You and Emerald are just like sisters,’ he kept saying. He was looking exactly like Sohrab, their old golden retriever, when he’d met a bitch. Any moment Patience expected a gold plumey waving tail to burst out of his DJ trousers. Oh please, God, she prayed, let me one day have another dog.

  ‘OK, Mrs Cartwright?’ shouted Jonathan, who was busy feeding all his lamb to Diggory and Visitor.

  Emerald was delighted that Ian was getting on so well with Anthea and was now nose to nose with Si yakking about the latest lethal weapons. He seemed his own self again, a father she could be proud of.

  ‘Cartwright isn’t at all a typical cab driver,’ whispered Raymond to Rosemary on his left. ‘Got an MC in Korea. Captained the Combined Services at cricket. Likes Matthew Arnold, had a dog called Sohrab, knows about lilies – nice chap.’

  ‘He does seem nice,’ whispered back Rosemary, ‘I’m sure I’ve seen her before, it’s such a good idea to have them here.’

  Beaming up the table, she was amazed to find Si Greenbridge beaming back at her. Buxom Knightie must be hovering behind her offering second helpings of lamb to attract such an approving glance. But when Rosemary glanced round, no Knightie was there and Si was still smiling – perhaps she had asparagus on her teeth.

  Hanna, who’d already had far too much to drink, was in a low voice telling Zac, the inspired listener, how desperate she was to have a baby.

  ‘I’m thirty-eight and Jupiter’s the eldest son – there’s such pressure to produce an heir.’

  ‘Ever thought of adopting?’ asked Zac idly.

  ‘Christ, no!’ Hanna looked across at Emerald in horror, then, realizing what she’d said, blushed crimson. ‘God, that was bitchy. I’m so sorry, she’s your girlfriend.’

  She was relieved yet unnerved to see Zac was laughing. Didn’t he care in the least that Jupiter was devouring Emerald alive with his eyes?

  Down the river beyond the wild-flower meadow, people were drifting out of the Goat in Boots, making ‘fucking nob’ noises as they caught sight of the Belvedon party. Mosquitoes, encouraged by the impossibly hot, humid night, were now biting the guests as voraciously as the evils of the world once fed on Pandora and Epimetheus.

  ‘Such excitement at the West London Gallery,’ Somerford was telling Sienna and Lily. ‘A ravishing Botticelli loaned by a museum in Venice for their Renaissance Exhibition was withdrawn this very morning because a French-Jewish family are claiming the Nazis stole it from their grandfather in Paris in 1942.’

  ‘Bad luck if you’d forked out millions for a picture only to find it had been looted fifty years before and you’d got to give it back,’ grumbled Lily.

  ‘Hits both ways,’ agreed Somerford. ‘From now on both museums and dealers are going to check the provenance of their stock to see if it’s looted.’

  ‘I’d love to own a Botticelli,’ sighed Lily.

  ‘I’m a Raphael freak myself,’ confessed Si from across the table. ‘My ambition is to own a Raphael.’

  Suddenly the table went quiet.

  He told me not to tell anyone, thought David in fury.

  ‘Dinner tonight is in honour of Raphael as well as Emerald,’ announced Raymond, who loved to impart information. ‘Agostino Chigi, a well-known Rome businessman who used to bankroll the Popes and actually provided the rubies for Julian II’s tiara, was also a great patron of the arts – like one of our guests of honour tonight.’ Smiling, Raymond raised his glass to Si. ‘Chigi had a villa on the river with a loggia in which he used to hold grand dinner parties. On one occasion, to save washing up, the guests were encouraged to chuck all the gold plate into the river.’

  ‘We’re not going to squander our lovely “Violets” plates,’ simpered Anthea who, having admitted Zac to the Blue Tower earlier, was unnerved by any reference to Raphael. ‘Do fill up Patience’s glass, Sir Raymond.’

  But utterly bloody Sienna couldn’t let the subject rest.

  ‘How does Raphael like come into it, Dad?’

  ‘Chigi had commissioned him to paint a mural on the loggia walls. But Raphael kept moonlighting and not getting down to work. Mind you, he was strutting round Rome like a rock star by this time.’

  ‘Like someone else we know, same birthday.’ David tipped back his chair to smile at Jonathan, who ignored him.

  ‘Now the boathouse has been painted, which of you is going to provide our mural?’ Raymond glanced happily around at his children.

  ‘I’ve got too much on,’ said Jonathan flatly. ‘Perhaps Alizarin?’

  But Alizarin, who’d been hitting the red and was spoiling for a fight, was too busy arguing with Jupiter about earlier looting of art.

  ‘Elgin stole those marbles,’ he growled.

  ‘Elgin took the marbles because the Greeks weren’t remotely interested and considered them worthless,’ replied Jupiter coolly. ‘Elgin claimed rightly that it was his divine calling to preserve such treasures for posterity.’

  ‘Ought to be returned to the Greeks, they belong to the Greeks.’

  ‘Not if one believes art is of primary importance,’
said Jupiter disdainfully. ‘The British Museum cherishes the marbles, and this way more people see them.’

  Alizarin’s huge hands gripped the table. Then he roared, ‘So if I make your wife happier, look after her better and allow more people to admire her, I’m entitled to steal her, am I?’

  ‘Touché,’ hiccuped a delighted Lily, who was not a fan of Jupiter.

  ‘I said Si should have brought guards,’ murmured back an even more delighted Somerford, as both brothers jumped furiously to their feet.

  ‘You keep your hands off my wife,’ said Jupiter in a low, furious voice.

  ‘Where did you say your family lived in Vienna?’ Hanna turned desperately to Zac.

  ‘My great-uncle had a gallery and an apartment in a beautiful old building on the corner of Singer Strasse and Kärtner Strasse, overlooking St Stephen’s Cathedral,’ drawled Zac, who was highly amused by the turn of events and who could see Hanna’s imploring hand on Alizarin’s quivering thigh. ‘The Allies bombed it to bits,’ he went on. ‘There are shops and offices there now. My great-grandfather also had a fabulous house in the fourth district in Schwindgasse overlooking the Schwarzenberg Palace.’

  ‘A gorgeous area,’ mumbled Hanna. Oh God, don’t let Jupiter and Alizarin kill each other.

  As Jonathan surreptitiously scribbled both Zac’s addresses on the inside of his wrist, Dora was left to defuse the situation. Wriggling out of her chair between Alizarin and Jupiter, who were still glowering and clenching their fists, she said tartly, ‘Chill out, you two yobbos, I do not wish to be used as the Centre Court tennis net.’

  Everyone burst out laughing except Jupiter and Alizarin, who, after a lot more scowling, sat down. Dora flounced off down the table to talk to Patience.

  ‘Mrs Cartwright, Emerald said you rode at the Horse of the Year Show.’

  ‘Well, I came second in the Working Hunter, and third in the Foxhunter one year,’ admitted Patience.

  ‘Could you come and meet my pony Loofah?’ begged Dora. ‘He’s brilliant at cross-country because I can’t stop him, but he always ploughs the dressage, because he won’t canter on the right leg and he sits down if I scold him.’

  Next moment, Rosemary had cried out, ‘Why, it’s “Virty” Cameron! I’ve just twigged.’

  Discovering they’d been at school together, Rosemary and Patience, with screams of laughter, started swapping stories about the dorm and the lax pitch. An utterly fascinated Dora sat on an equally entranced Raymond’s knee to listen to them.

  ‘Did you really put a drawing pin on the vicar’s chair?’ she asked in awe.

  ‘I’m afraid we did.’ Patience wiped her eyes.

  ‘He was so fat, he didn’t feel it!’ Rosemary went off into gales of mirth. ‘And remember the time we undressed Miss Hinton?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ cried Patience, ‘the poor woman’s legs wriggled like a bluebottle’s, we were awful, and what about putting your rabbit in Miss Murdoch’s desk.’

  ‘It was your hamster, Virty.’

  ‘Why d’you call Mum “Virty”?’ enquired a thrilled Sophy.

  ‘Patience is a Virtue, of course,’ said Rosemary.

  Everyone laughed.

  ‘What was your nickname?’ asked Dora.

  ‘Rosebud or something inappropriate.’

  ‘Mildew more likely. Extraordinary that one school could produce two such ugly women,’ Anthea whispered to Si, who didn’t react. Too busy gazing at them in horror, thought Anthea.

  Smugly she rose to supervise her pièce de résistance. Green chartreuse waterlilies, decorated with Es of angelica, should elicit more admiration and excitement than the fireworks.

  ‘Some enchanted evening’, played the string quartet.

  Anthea smiled at Zac. Seeing his chance as Raymond also rose to organize the pudding wine, Si abandoned Geraldine on his left, who was bending the ear of an oblivious, still enraged Jupiter, and shot down the table. David, avid to make his number with Si, had already set off round the table to take Anthea’s place, only to find Si moved on and himself reduced to squandering vital networking time on his own mistress.

  Si meanwhile had pinched Raymond’s seat and was producing photographs of horses out of his wallet to show Rosemary, Patience and Dora.

  ‘Much nicer than soppy wives.’ Dora pored over them. ‘He’s great. What’s his name?’

  ‘Intensive,’ said Si.

  ‘Didn’t he win the Arc last year?’ gasped Patience.

  ‘That’s my boy.’

  ‘I had a monkey on Intensive,’ called out Lily, who was still getting on like a house on fire with Ian. ‘Thank you, Mr Greenbridge.’

  ‘I never see my mother these days,’ Dora was soulfully telling Patience, ‘she’s so besotted with Emerald.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Patience humbly. ‘They’ve got a lot of years to catch up.’

  Rosemary, taking delight in doing a number on the Cartwrights, knowing it would enrage Anthea, loudly suggested she and Patience should go to an Old Girls’ Reunion in London in October.

  ‘Oh do let’s,’ squeaked Patience in excitement.

  ‘We could have lunch at the Reform first, I’ve just become a member.’

  ‘I’ll be back at school,’ said Dora wistfully.

  To everyone’s astonishment, Si then promised to fly her down to see his horses in one of the Greenbridge jets in the Christmas holidays.

  ‘And if you two ladies would care to join us?’

  ‘We would indeed,’ said Rosemary. ‘Whatever happened to Biffy Miles?’

  Anthea was seething. All these upper-middle-class rituals and talk of people she didn’t know. It was as though they were speaking Chinese. Ah, here was her wonderful dessert.

  ‘My God,’ said Jonathan, looking down at his plate. ‘Are we eating more Belvedon emeralds?’

  Drunks being evicted from the Goat in Boots were having difficulty making their protests heard over rumbling thunder.

  ‘I wish you were our sister, not Emerald,’ Dicky was telling Sophy.

  ‘We all do,’ murmured Jonathan, Sienna and Dora in unison.

  Patience wanted to shout that Emerald wasn’t really horrible, that she just got defensive and aggressive when she was insecure and frightened. Emo could be so lovely. Patience took another huge gulp of delicious pudding wine; next moment her glass was filled up.

  She had so hoped Emo and Jonathan would get on. Alizarin, the one whose name kept tripping off Sophy’s lips, seemed rather an austere chap, watching everyone with those sombre screwed-up eyes, and not addressing a word to poor Sophy. Jonathan’s sister looked as though she wanted to knife everyone too. Such a shame when she was so beautiful, despite all those rings and studs.

  All through dinner Sienna had been conscious of her beloved Jonathan’s preoccupation with Emerald, but images of naked Zac kept flickering before her eyes, upsetting her terribly. From time to time he caught her eye across the table, and his mouth lifted at one corner. Occasionally his eyes travelled lazily downwards. Sienna had never had any inhibitions about stripping off in public but suddenly she felt embarrassed to be wearing such a see-through top, and kept folding her arms aggressively over her breasts like a rugger player in a group photograph. She loathed the idea of Zac in bed with Anthea and even more that he and Si could be after their beloved Raphael.

  ‘Which is the least deadly of the sins?’ she asked Jonathan.

  ‘Lust,’ replied Jonathan dropping a kiss on the skylark tattooed on her shoulder.

  Irked by the ecstasy on Sienna’s face, Emerald felt utterly bewildered. She was the birthday girl. Why did so many of the Belvedons seem to prefer fat Sophy and her plain, shiny-faced mother? Dora had just dragged Patience off to meet the appalling Loofah.

  ‘Don’t be long,’ Anthea called after them. ‘Daddah wants to make a speech, and we’ve got the birthday cake to come, and Charlene, I’m sorry I can’t get out of calling her that, has got to open her gifts before the fireworks.’

  Anthea grabb
ed the spotlight again when Emerald’s cake arrived and everyone said how pretty it was. But no-one said what a caring mother she had been to have made it. I should have asked Neville and Green Jean as a support group, thought Anthea darkly.

  ‘What are you going to wish for?’ asked Jonathan, as Emerald plunged a knife into the white icing.

  ‘That you were at the bottom of the river with Chigi’s gold plate,’ spat Emerald.

  Raymond tried to smooth things over by making an eloquent, charming speech welcoming all the Cartwrights and particularly Emerald.

  ‘Let us all drink to my lovely new daughter.’

  ‘To the green-eyed monster,’ said Jonathan draining his glass.

  Ignoring him, Emerald rose to her feet: ‘I’d like to thank Raymond and Anthea, my marvellous new parents, for being so wonderful to me.’

  ‘Mention Mum and Dad,’ hissed Sophy.

  ‘And it’s lovely to have Mummy and Daddy and Sofa here and all my family around me,’ added Emerald.

  Guiltily aware that he had deeply embarrassed Hanna by winding up Jupiter, Alizarin looked across at Sophy in that dreadful green sack dress, whose pattern his eyes were too bad to distinguish, and thought how adorable she was and how anxious about everyone when she should be enjoying herself. He had relived so often that strange peace he had experienced after collapsing beside her in Jonathan’s studio. He had longed to ring her, but had nothing to offer but poverty and a guide dog’s role. A blind artist was as much use . . .

  Another rumble of thunder made them all jump, but it was only Robens trundling Emerald’s presents down in a wheelbarrow.

  ‘It looks like rain. You’d better open those after the fireworks,’ called out Anthea. ‘Robens can wheel them back up again.’

  ‘Just let her open mine,’ begged Raymond.

  ‘Seesaw, Margery Daw, Emerald shall have an Old Master,’ sang Jonathan.

  Everyone held their breath. But Raymond’s present turned out to be a beautiful Augustus John pastel of one of his mistresses, which nevertheless caused gasps of admiration.