Pandora

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘To dinner, you’ve got to eat.’ Then, when she protested: ‘In the last act, your stomach was rumbling loud enough to drown the timps.’

  Zac took her to the Four Seasons. Sienna was in despair. She’d always so longed to go there, and now she was rolling up like a tramp. The Four Seasons felt the same and refused to let her in because she was wearing jeans, so Sienna calmly unzipped and stepped out of them. Pulling Jonathan’s pink shirt to halfway down her thighs, she handed the jeans to the gaping hat-check girl.

  ‘Is that better?’

  ‘Much,’ said Zac approvingly.

  The waiters were all over him. Many of the diners, including some very expensive-looking, pretty women, stopped to say ‘Hi’, no doubt wondering what he was doing with such a dog.

  He obviously isn’t short of money, decided Sienna as a bottle of spectacular Zinfandel arrived. Maybe she’d misjudged him and he really wanted to recover the Raphael for emotional rather than financial reasons. But she mustn’t go soft. After the way he’d behaved, she had no reason to trust him. Unnerved, she took a huge gulp of wine.

  ‘Drink it slowly,’ chided Zac, then, as she tossed her head at the reproof: ‘I’m Viennese of course, I believe wine, women and song should be enjoyed at a leisurely pace, particularly women.’ Mockingly he looked into her eyes and then at her mouth.

  That wasn’t leisurely, that lightning-bolt coupling on the night of the fireworks, thought Sienna going scarlet. She felt a butterfly of desire flickering between her legs.

  Drink on no food soon loosened her tongue, and she found herself telling Zac why she loved the Raphael so passionately.

  ‘I was the only one of Mum’s children who didn’t lie in her arms and watch the sun rise on it. Somehow I had this fantasy about showing my own child . . .’ Her voice trailed off. ‘But it’s not going to happen.’

  She closed up when Zac pressed her on how Raymond had acquired the picture, countering by asking him how his great-grandfather had lost it. All the chattering happy diners around them faded to nothing as the terrible story unfolded.

  ‘Why didn’t they get out before Hitler moved in?’ asked Sienna in horror.

  ‘If you emigrated they only allowed you to take ten per cent of your belongings, kind of like Zimbabwe today. I guess they hoped things would improve.’

  ‘What d’you think happened to the Raphael after the Nazis grabbed it?’

  Zac examined his untouched glass of white.

  ‘I figure it was seized by Goering, the fat fucker had eight huge houses crammed with treasures.’

  ‘Rather like Si Greenbridge,’ said Sienna slyly. ‘What’s your connection with him?’

  ‘Tracking down pictures when he’s too busy to do his own hunting,’ said Zac, picking up the menu. ‘What d’you want to eat? I’m going to have foie gras and Wiener schnitzel, because I’m Viennese,’ he added slyly.

  Relieved to be able to hate him again, furious with herself for being won over, Sienna weighed in. How could he touch such food? Had he no idea how much the poor geese and calves suffered? Her voice was rising. People were looking round.

  ‘Oh per-lease.’ Zac stifled a yawn.

  ‘I bet you approve of experiments on live animals,’ stormed Sienna, leaping to her feet.

  ‘Of course I don’t.’ Once again Zac grabbed her wrist, applying pressure until she winced and sat down again. ‘But when Mom was dying of cancer, I’d have OKed any experiment on any living thing in the world to make her pain less terrible.’

  Sienna scowled at him, then flushed and apologized. There was a long silence. Zac filled her glass.

  ‘At first Mom didn’t mind dying too much. She said life hadn’t been much cop.’

  ‘Not very flattering to you.’

  ‘It wasn’t that. She felt guilty surviving the death camps. And we were so poor. I didn’t care. To keep warm I stayed in bed all day, and read a lot. My Great-aunt Leah took me to museums.’

  ‘What was your father like?’

  ‘A university professor. He survived Auschwitz, so in a way he was a link with my mom’s mother, but he was so much older, and in lousy health and couldn’t work. He died when I was about two. Mom married a goy second time around – more for someone to support her, me and Aunt Leah, I guess. She paid for it. He was a sadistic son of a bitch.’

  Zac was ashen now, his hand shaking as he knocked back a most uncharacteristically huge gulp of wine. ‘I guess he couldn’t hack Leah living with us. Couldn’t beat Mom and me up as he wanted to. After Leah died . . .’

  Zac stopped suddenly. He’d told no-one these things.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Sienna.

  ‘He finally walked out,’ said Zac wearily. ‘Then a year before she died, Mom met my second stepfather. He married her knowing she’d got cancer. Willing her to fight it. He loved her so much.’

  Sienna longed to put her hand over his.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she mumbled.

  Zac raised his glass.

  ‘To both our moms,’ he said softly. ‘Yours was such a terrific painter.’

  Summoning back the waiter, Zac ordered Sienna tagliatelle with wild mushroom sauce, followed by ratatouille, and then, with a slight smile, chose swordfish and Caesar salad for himself.

  ‘And don’t tell me they stab Caesars in a particularly vicious way,’ he drawled.

  Sienna burst out laughing. She kind of liked him teasing her and was horrified how increasingly she liked him.

  After the second bottle, as they were having coffee, she blurted out, ‘Why were you sauntering bollock naked along the landing the afternoon of Emerald’s birthday party?’

  Zac looked at her meditatively: ‘I’d been fucking your stepmom.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ Black coffee splashed all over the white tablecloth. ‘For Christ’s sake, why?’

  ‘The Blue Tower was the only room I hadn’t checked out. I guessed the Raphael must be there. I should have grabbed it then.’

  ‘How could you have abused my father’s hospitality? He really loves Anthea.’

  ‘I know. He’s got such impeccable taste in every other direction.’

  ‘Stop being so fucking flip,’ exploded Sienna. ‘Did you know your prints are on the frame found by the pond?’

  ‘Is that a fact? I tried to take the Raphael to the window when I was up there. Anthea screamed that it was wired up.’

  ‘Hasn’t it entered your thick greying head,’ snarled Sienna, ‘that Anthea could have lured you upstairs to get your prints on the picture? That she might have nicked it herself?’

  ‘Could be in league with David,’ mused Zac. ‘I saw him belting towards the Old Rectory after the fireworks started, and just after we left the boathouse, he drew Anthea aside. I wonder if he is Emerald’s father?’

  ‘Don’t change the subject. How could you have shagged Anthea when you were having a relationship with Emerald? Poor Emerald, don’t you feel guilty?’

  Zac looked totally unrepentant.

  ‘Emerald was suffocating me,’ he said. ‘Her voice was always filled with longing for something or someone I couldn’t give her. She’s so fucking needy, just like her mom.’ Very gently he tugged the ring in Sienna’s eyebrow. ‘Neither of them was a millionth as good a lay as you.’

  ‘How dare you?’ spat Sienna. ‘I want to go back to the Cameron.’

  Ramming herself against the side of the taxi, clutching her jeans as a shield, she refused to speak on the drive back. So Zac ignored her, singing Mandryka’s part in the love duet.

  ‘If you were a girl from one of my villages,

  you would go to the well behind your father’s house,

  and draw a cupful of clear water

  and offer it to me at the door, so that I should be your betrothed before God

  and all men! O beautiful one!’

  ‘Oh fuck off,’ sobbed Sienna, falling out of the taxi and rushing into the Cameron.

  As she raced across the lobby, she could see Trafford and the
rest of the YBAs in the bar still getting legless.

  ‘Sienna,’ they yelled, as she dived into the lift.

  Once again, like a driven robot, she was appalled when she reached her own floor to find her own bitten finger jabbing the ground-floor button. But as the lift reached its destination, the doors parted like stage curtains on two villains in some dark Jacobean tragedy: Zac and Si Greenbridge standing laughing together, teeth gleaming satanically against their dark stubble. As Sienna cringed against the side of the lift, Si slapped a big gold-ringed hand on Zac’s shoulder and shepherded him out through the front door into a hovering limo.

  Sienna was terrified. Had Zac lured her out to the opera and to dinner so Si’s guards could frisk her room, or leave some terrible booby trap? What secrets had she betrayed about the Raphael? Upstairs she frantically tugged open every drawer, checked every cupboard. Her case lay open on the bed. She couldn’t remember opening it; someone must have picked the lock. Thank God there was no balcony outside for someone to climb along, just the trees of Central Park, ghostly in the moonlight.

  The only other evidence of invaders was a condom and a chocolate on the pillow of her turned-down bed. Visitor loved chocolate, she thought wistfully. But drawing back the sheet, she half expected to find his severed bloody head. Having chained the door, she rammed every chair against it, but, despite her exhaustion, she was far too scared to sleep.

  Fortunately the next few days were taken up by endless interviews for the Commotion Exhibition. This caused a world-wide scandal, denounced as so obscene by senators and high churchmen and such a negation of art by incensed critics that the Greychurch Museum’s grant was under threat. Hugh Grant on the other hand, along with other celebs and the general public, poured in to see what the fuss was about.

  Other critics, including Somerford Keynes, who’d stirred his fat stumps and arrived on Concorde in time for the opening party, in turn praised the show for courageously confronting all our fears. Sienna’s work was particularly well received. Feminists admired Tampax Tower and thought Aunt Hill witty and significant. Alongside Trafford’s video Oh Nan, it was regarded as a significant step for Grey Power.

  But it was Slaughterhouse that turned Sienna into an animal rights icon. Critics stood on their heads to examine the terrified faces of the hanging businessmen on their grisly conveyor belt.

  Almost as much of a talking point was Assholier Than Thou.

  ‘Stonewall are thinking of using it on their writing paper,’ boasted Trafford, who hadn’t been sober since he arrived.

  David Pulborough, tieless and clad in too-tight jeans and trainers to identify with youth, was much in evidence telling everyone he’d be showing Trafford next spring. He had to smile a great deal to hide his outrage that neither Jonathan nor Expectant Madonna had made the opening party. Commotion without YBA’s superbrat was a bit like Hamlet without the Prince. This was because back in England, Jonathan couldn’t tear himself away from Emerald, insisting on taking her to Harley Street and staying in the room while she had a DNA test so she couldn’t cheat.

  ‘Now all we’ve got to do is to give Dad a nose bleed.’

  ‘But I love your father,’ protested Emerald as she drove him to Heathrow. ‘And if he isn’t my father, I won’t be a Belvedon.’

  ‘He’ll make an even nicer father-in-law. The moment we get the results, I’ll put a ring on your finger, and turn you back into a Belvedon.’

  It was anguish for him to leave her behind but their desire for one another was so white hot, it would be risky to subject it to a media circus. With Trafford in New York, Jonathan also felt safe leaving Emerald in his studio in Hoxton, so she could work on the sculptures she’d been drawing up and, less enthusiastically, look after Diggory.

  Thanks to Concorde, Jonathan reached his hotel room by ten a.m. American time. Ignoring a thousand fax messages, he went up to his room, unzipped his suitcase and nearly wept. Emerald had insisted on packing for him, wrapping his newly pressed clothes in tissue paper, stocking up his sponge bag with toothpaste for sensitive teeth, English Fern aftershave and orange razors. Attached to a flat parcel was a postcard of Gustav Klimt’s Judith. On the back she had written:

  Darling Jonathan,

  I so long to be loved, but I lack the inner secur ity that accepts such a thing. Please bear with me while I learn to trust. Thank you for putting up with me over the last three months, which contrary to my crap behaviour have been the happiest of my life. Good luck with Commotion. Enclosed is something to make you even handsomer. Please come home soon, I love you,

  Emerald

  Blushing with delight, clutching himself in ecstasy, Jonathan danced round the room, reading the card over and over again. Inside the parcel was a Harvie & Hudson silk shirt in Antwerp blue.

  ‘Fuck Commotion.’ He was chucking everything back into his case when an apoplectic David Pulborough rang.

  ‘Where the hell have you been? Expectant Madonna arrived late last night but her bulge won’t go through the front door. It’s taken a dozen workmen to winch her through an upstairs window. By some miracle we’ve kept this from the press. Dame Hermione has graciously agreed to be present at the unveiling this afternoon and Micky Blake, who’s curating the exhibition, has even more graciously agreed to lay on refreshments for the media.’

  ‘I’m going back to England.’

  ‘Will you stop pissing about,’ David’s language became very unbefitting a future High Sheriff, ‘and get your ass down here and show us how the fucking thing works.’

  To avoid a ravening press and the moral majority brandishing placards saying ‘Filth!’ and ‘Go Home, Blaspheming Brits’, Jonathan was smuggled in through a back door. By the time he and a pack of electricians and carpenters had got Expectant Madonna up and thrumming behind closed blue curtains and a shield of security guards, it was well into the afternoon.

  David, who had designs on Dame Hermione – he’d heard she fucked like a stoat – was still dressed deliberately casually in increasingly tight jeans and no tie. He was very irritated to witness the formal attire of his star artist.

  ‘Where did you get that suit?’

  ‘Armani. Vogue gave it me as a modelling fee.’

  ‘I never got my cut on that,’ snapped David, ‘we’ll have to adjust the fee elsewhere.’ Then, as Jonathan looked likely to bolt, ‘Come on, the media want a good hour before Dame Hermione arrives.’

  So much excitement and mystique had been generated by Jonathan’s delay that everyone expected him to erupt into the press room plastered and stoned, launch into a stream of expletives, get his dick out, smash a window, punch all the critics who’d slagged him off (who’d all arrived in bullet-proof vests) and then throw up.

  To their amazement, Jonathan stalked in sober, clean-shaven, clear-eyed and immaculate. Not only was his beauty astonishing, but he was also cool, focused, extremely detached and not prepared to make outrageous statements on the scandal caused by Commotion, nor about the whereabouts of the Raphael.

  The YBAs, who’d been caning it for three days, waiting for Jonathan to lead them into laddish pranks, were bitterly disappointed.

  ‘I’ve never known anyone come off Concorde sober,’ grumbled Trafford. ‘The zeitgeist today,’ he was now telling a bewildered reporter from CBS, ‘is the body and its foundations. As no-one believes in an afterlife’ – Trafford reached for his quadruple brandy and Benedictine – ‘one’s body and everything that emerges from it is the only temple: snot, spit, vomit, tears, pus, sperm, shit, piss, menstrual blood are all sacred.’

  ‘How very true,’ chipped in a hovering Geraldine Paxton admiringly.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Trafford,’ said the reporter from CBS faintly. ‘Can you tell Jonathan Belvedon we’re ready for him?’

  On his way to a Channel 4 interview, Trafford paused to speak to Jonathan, who’d just finished with The New York Times.

  ‘I’ve sold five editions of Oh Nan and six of Assholier.’

  ‘That’s great,
Traff.’ Putting down a cup of black coffee, Jonathan got out his mobile.

  ‘See that redhead over there? She’s Slaney, the museum PR,’ continued Trafford, then, with all the arrogance of the great artist who can pull anyone: ‘She’s having dinner with me tonight. For five hundred dollars you can hide in my wardrobe.’

  ‘Sweet of you,’ murmured Jonathan as he punched out: Missing you hopelessly. ‘Oh look, there’s Sienna.’

  Sienna had just endured a grilling from NBC over the theft of Pandora and was getting increasingly twitchy over talk of escalating fines for looted art and swarthy, sinister men following her. She nearly wept with relief when she saw Jonathan. His new beauty made her gasp.

  But although he ruffled her hair, admitted he’d missed her and asked what she’d been up to, it was soon clear he wasn’t hearing a word she said. Nor was he interested that everyone was speculating about the Raphael, not even that Si had been lurking in the lobby. Only when she mentioned Zac did his face harden.

  ‘I’ll kill that shit for hurting Emo.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Wonderful, an angel, not at all like we thought.’ Then, hearing a double bleep, he whipped out his mobile.

  ‘IM YRS 4 EVR MRALD,’ read Sienna over his shoulder.

  ‘Jonathan, stop coffeehousing,’ bellowed David, ‘Sky News want to do you now, and after that Vanity Fair.’

  ‘See you later, sweetheart.’ Pecking Sienna on the cheek, rereading his message, Jonathan rushed off.

  ‘I stood among them, but not of them; in a shroud Of thoughts which were not their thoughts,’ quoted Sienna despairingly.

  Jonathan was so obsessed with Emerald, he’d forgotten today was Sienna’s twenty-sixth birthday, as had the rest of the family. She’d been away so long. When Jonathan had loved her, she hadn’t needed her friends. Now, working so hard to get over him, she hadn’t bothered to get in touch with any of them.

  Trying not to howl, drenched by rain, unable to get a taxi, she battled her way back to the hotel, praying someone might have remembered. In her pigeon-hole was one red envelope containing a card of a sleeping Burmese cat.