by Jilly Cooper
‘Are you s-s-sure?’
‘Quite,’ said Rupert, who’d had a tip-off from his brother Adrian, who was going to take most of the pictures for his New York gallery.
‘D’you think Jupiter’ll give me something on them?’ he asked.
‘I can give you ten per cent,’ said Sophy grandly.
‘Fifteen,’ suggested Rupert.
‘Twelve and a half,’ said Sophy. Heavens, she’d soon be haggling away like a carpet salesman.
‘Done.’ Rupert got out his cheque book. ‘I’ll give you a deposit and pay for Dog Star. I’d like to take that with me now to show my son Xav, who’s got a black Lab. I’ll get the rest collected at the end of the exhibition.’
Pandemonium followed, red spots going up like an attack of scarlet fever, yellow invoices falling on the spike like Roman soldiers at Philippi. Lord Coley, who’d had a vicious run-in with Rupert years ago, when he’d had an affaire with the wife of Rupert’s best friend, still admired him as a businessman, and immediately bought three landscapes. Abdul bought two. Minsky Kraskov snapped up the torture paintings, leaving nothing for the head of Twentieth-Century Acquisitions at the Tate.
Tamzin came belting downstairs.
‘I’ve just been chatted up by the Chapman brothers – where’s Rupert Campbell-Black? Oh look, the daffodils have all come out.’
Hanna and Jupiter, who’d just emerged dazed but starry-eyed from the back room to learn the incredible news, were soon pulling Alizarin’s other paintings out of the stock room. They all went. Even the mature Cheddar in its sculptured form was sold for £800.
Sophy started giggling and found she couldn’t stop. Somerford, who’d harboured an unrequited crush on Rupert since the days of Galena, decided to give Alizarin a rave review.
‘Alizarin Belvedon’s work appears gloomy and harsh, but the more one looks, the more visual and emotional strength one finds,’ he wrote on the back of his cheque book.
Suddenly everyone was talking about the dynamic use of colour, the unique complexity, originality and energy of the paintings.
Judy Collins put a reserve on Upside-Down Camels.
‘Could you ask Dicky Belvedon if he’d be prepared to sell? The colour is wonderful.’
‘Dicky’ll be able to pay back the fête committee ten times over and buy an Aston Martin,’ said Jonathan gleefully. ‘And General Anaesthetic’s going to be furious.’
Crossing the room, he thanked Rupert for buying Alizarin’s paintings.
‘I’ve got a lot of your mother’s stuff at home,’ admitted Rupert.
‘You’re not Alizarin’s father, by any chance?’ murmured Jonathan.
Rupert shook his sleek golden head.
‘Alizarin was born long before I – er – knew your mother. My money would be on Etienne de Montigny.’
‘Look,’ Jonathan blushed, ‘your brother Adrian’s been fantastically kind to my sister Sienna. She’s the one who nicked the Raphael. Could I ask you a colossal favour?’
‘Almost certainly not,’ said Rupert, looking wary.
‘Sienna never knew our mother,’ pleaded Jonathan, ‘I was only two when she died. Alizarin is so traumatized, he can’t talk about her at all. Jupiter never liked her much. Dad’s blocked her out and won’t speak about her in case he upsets Anthea. Aunt Lily and Rosemary only knew her socially. Sienna’s so desperate for info.’
‘Not sure my recollections would be entirely suitable.’
‘Perhaps not, but there must have been inter-intercourse bits. With the court case coming up, she’s terribly low.’
And you too, my poor boy, thought Rupert, looking at Jonathan’s gaunt, shadowed face and big haunted eyes.
‘I’ll try and take her out to lunch, next time I’m in America,’ he conceded. ‘But I don’t promise anything.’
Everyone was dying to talk to Rupert but he had Zac’s ability to freeze people out, thought Sophy as she handed him the wrapped-up Dog Star.
‘Thank you,’ said Rupert gravely. ‘You’re much prettier than your gatefold, and those are sensational tits.’
‘There’s that bastard Campbell-Black,’ stormed Casey Andrews, buckling his big red bulbous nose against the Pulborough front window. ‘Little shit was always hanging round Galena in the old days.’
Highly unamused to see such evidence of transaction, David drew Casey and Geraldine into the back room for another bottle of Veuve Clicquot. Now that Somerford had waddled over to the Belvedon, they could discuss the real purpose of the evening: the erection of a Borochova Memorial in Limesbridge.
Anthea was still stalling, explained David. She’d always had such a hang-up about Galena, but public feeling was so strong, she’d be overruled. Sucking up to his new gallery artist, he then said that he and Geraldine felt Casey was the ideal artist to do the memorial.
‘You knew Galena intimately. Like Picasso, you’re as mighty a sculptor as a painter.’
Casey stopped smirking over his entry in Who’s Who in Art, which was almost as long as his beard.
‘Of course I’ll do the memorial. Better order in some Portland stone, there’s been a run on it recently. As you know’ – he flashed green teeth at Geraldine – ‘I’m at work on my memoirs, which will be, I may add, sensational.’ Then, pursing his lips pompously: ‘The world should know I was the great love of Galena’s life.’
‘Hardly surprising. You’re so dynamic,’ murmured Geraldine.
‘Were you the only one?’ asked David innocently.
Casey held out his glass for a refill.
‘The only serious one – Raymond of course is a pansy.’
‘You’re not worried about upsetting the family?’ queried Geraldine.
‘Not in the least,’ boomed Casey, ‘Raymond’s lost his marbles, and I don’t owe anything to those malevolent scallywags.’ Wandering out into the main gallery, he caught sight of Rupert laughing with the scallywag who had told Casey to bugger off the night of Emerald’s birthday party. ‘The Belvedons deserve everything coming to them. When are you proposing unveiling this memorial?’
‘Early 2002,’ said Geraldine, which would give her plenty of time to work on the Arts Council and the Lottery Committee and ensure a huge fee for Casey and a nice cut for David and herself.
‘But as a formality,’ went on David smoothly, ‘to placate the committee and the people of Limesbridge and Larkshire, who will put up half the money, we’d better throw the competition open.’
‘People love competitions,’ urged Geraldine, seeing Casey’s look of disapproval.
‘I’m sure the Western Daily Press will run a piece,’ added David soothingly, ‘and Nigel Reynolds might put something in his Telegraph diary, so we can say we’ve given people a chance to enter. Your ex-wife would probably like a crack. Christ, she was a pest at the British Portrait Awards. The best twenty can bring in their portfolios. We’ll pick out the three best of those besides you to provide maquettes. Then in July we’ll announce the winner, which of course will be you.
‘Better if we go through the formalities.’ He filled up Casey’s glass. ‘Show you’ve despatched the competition, give you splendid publicity as a multi-faceted artist.’
Anything to distract Casey from the pandemonium across the road as the press slid all over the ice to photograph a departing Rupert.
‘Mind you, the Belvedons will be dead in the water after the court case in April.’ Geraldine picked up her bag. ‘Just going to spend a penny, then shall we go and dine?’
As soon as she’d disappeared, David let slip he was going to become High Sheriff in April: ‘Total surprise, must have been lobbied by my friends. Just wondering if I could ask you to paint me in my regalia outside the Old Rectory?’
‘Only if you arrange for me to do that nude of Emerald Belvedon,’ said Casey roguishly.
With the return of his beloved wife, a baby on the way, and a colossally successful private view under his belt, Jupiter was ashamed that he still had time to be secretly miffed tha
t Alizarin wasn’t more grateful.
‘A sodding great cheque will be shortly on its way to pay for his operation in America,’ he grumbled to Sophy as they washed up glasses the following morning. ‘But Al will hardly acknowledge it. I’ve run a gallery for fifteen years. I’ve sold art all over the world, worked from dawn to dusk. The only words I’ve never heard are “Thank you”.’
‘Thank you,’ said Sophy, kissing him on the cheek. ‘It was a gorgeous party, and thank you for giving Alizarin the chance to see again and for my lovely bottle of Joy. It smells like a garden in June.’
Alizarin had, meanwhile, prevailed upon his favourite nurse, Molly Malone, to collect his sickness benefit. Jupiter was therefore staggered the following morning to receive a large jar of his favourite caviare and a startlingly colourful ‘thank you’ card chosen by Molly.
When Sophy, drenched in Joy, with her hands smothered in hand cream in case Alizarin wanted to hold one of them, went to see him the following week after school, she found him very cantankerous. Perhaps he was sad about Hanna going back to Jupiter.
His post, he grumbled, contained nothing but requests for money from impoverished artists and charities.
‘I’ve even had a begging letter from Limesbridge Conservatives.’
When Sophy read him his press cuttings, he said nothing, even when Somerford Keynes wrote: ‘I once described Alizarin Belvedon as a rotten painter. I was wrong. I retract every word. It was the tenderness of his latest exhibition that moved me, as though even in the most horrific war scenes, he’d dipped his brush in the milk of human kindness.’
Glancing up, Sophy saw tears trickling out from Alizarin’s poor blind eyes and seized his hands.
‘They’re wonderful reviews.’
‘I know. A successful exhibition fires you up to start again but I can’t . . .’ His voice broke. ‘. . . do that now.’
‘You will again, after the operation.’
‘There’s only a ten per cent chance of success.’
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘You’ve got a job. You can’t let those children down.’
‘I can. They’ll understand. You’re what matters to me.’
‘I’m fine on my own,’ snapped Alizarin. ‘Adrian Campbell-Black’s promised to find me a minder in New York. Sienna’s coming to the airport to meet me.’
‘I’d still like to come,’ pleaded Sophy, but she let go of his hands.
‘You can’t. Just bugger off,’ said Alizarin roughly. ‘Thanks for everything, but I’m leaving tomorrow, and I’ve got masses to organize.’
Sophy managed not to cry until the door to the ward shut behind her. Then she howled. Sweet Molly Malone, however, came racing after her, waving the most hideous bunch of mauve, yellow and red asters.
‘They’re from Alizarin,’ she said. ‘He made me take him down to the hospital shop, he was determined to choose them himself.’
Sophy still went home in utter despair.
Next morning, Alizarin gravely thanked the nurses and doctors who’d been so kind to him. Then, the picture of desolation, he was led shuffling out of the hospital and for a moment enjoyed the soft rain on his sweating face and was transported to the wet walks of Limesbridge, feeling the green silken caress of the wild garlic, which would be soon sweeping over the woodland floor.
‘Taxi’s waiting, Mr Belvedon.’
From then onwards it was all under cover. He was overwhelmed with panic as, trapped in his own tunnel of darkness, he was led by a kind hostess down another tunnel onto the plane. It was like being engulfed for ever in the belly of a whale.
They put him by the window, so he could ‘enjoy the view’. The moment the plane was aloft, he was again transported back to Limesbridge on a warm June evening as a heavenly scent of flowers overwhelmed him.
‘What would you like to drink, Mr Belvedon?’ asked a steward.
‘We’d like two glasses of champagne,’ said Sophy’s sweet, trembling voice from the seat beside him.
Despite the beauty of the March morning, Rosemary Pulborough was in low spirits. Not only had Forbes, her gardener, pruned all the buds off the viburnum intended to smell sweetly under the kitchen window, but he had also mowed away the pink and black fritillaries she’d been nurturing on the edge of the lawn.
To add to her misery, David was catting around more than ever, and, even more lowering, the froideur between him and Anthea had clearly melted. Anthea was once more imparting advance information to Rosemary about Melanie’s second baby, which was due any minute, and more painfully this morning about Si Greenbridge, who was evidently in London and had popped into the Pulborough yesterday.
‘The busiest people always find time,’ had said Anthea smugly.
David had been so incensed by his public humiliation when Alizarin had won the British Portrait Award last month that he had whisked Rosemary away from the Dorchester before she had had time to say goodbye to Si. As Si hadn’t been in touch since then, she became more and more convinced she had imagined the pressure of his leg and the warmth of his huge hand closing over hers. She had clipped out of Hello a photograph of David, herself and Si, with his arm proudly round her shoulders, at the awards, and tucked it into her notecase, behind her credit cards and snapshots of the cats and Melanie’s first baby. Her sole act of defiance had been to cut David out of the picture.
David was forced to be nice to her at the moment because from April as High Sheriff he would need a wife. The prospect of struggling into coats and skirts and little black dresses for an eternity of engagements depressed her even more.
She must pull herself together. It was past eleven and she was still in her dressing gown. Rubbing in moisturizer in front of the bathroom mirror, she wished the hand running down over her face and neck was Si’s instead of her own, stroking her as tenderly as outside the first acid-green criss-cross leaves of the weeping willows were caressing the white sweep of daffodils.
‘“Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the milky way”,’ murmured Rosemary, so lost in sad thought she didn’t at first hear the telephone.
‘Rose-mary?’ Only one voice emphasized the second syllable. ‘This is Si.’ Then, when she couldn’t speak for joy: ‘Si Greenbridge.’
‘How lovely!’
There was an indignant squawk as Rosemary’s knees buckled, and she collapsed on Abednego, who’d been stretched out on the window seat enjoying the sunshine.
‘Sorry, darling.’
‘Is someone with you?’
‘Only one of my cats.’
‘Are you free for lunch?’
‘Golly, yes.’
‘I’ll pick you up.’
‘No,’ squeaked Rosemary, catching sight of Lady Belvedon gathering narcissi next door, ‘Anthea’s home.’
She kicked herself. How presumptuous to think Si was planning anything clandestine. Then her spirits soared as he said, ‘Christ, we don’t want to give that bitch any ammunition. Where’s somewhere safe and quiet for lunch near you?’
Rosemary’s mind went as blank as the untroubled blue sky outside. Finally she stammered, ‘There’s the Grasshopper and Sixpence on the Limesbridge–Rutminster road.’
‘See you there, a quarter after one. If I’m a few seconds late, order a bottle of Krug.’
Switching off the telephone, Rosemary threw her head back, breathing deeply, clutching herself in ecstasy.
After that, everything went wrong. She had just showered and washed her hair, and sent Abednego scurrying out of the bathroom by spraying on deodorant, when Green Jean, that enemy of aerosols, arrived lobbying for jumble and gasping for herbal tea.
Green Jean was followed by the doctor’s wife collecting for the Lifeboats, accompanied by her fox terrier, who promptly treed Shadrach. By the time Rosemary had coaxed Shadrach down, her un-blow-dried hair was sticking out wildly like a greying sunflower.
A sassy new bra gave her a good shape, but if one rammed one’s breasts together over a certain ag
e, one’s cleavage wrinkled like an Australian drought area. Her body hadn’t seen the sun since last September but gardening in all weathers had left a satsuma net of red veins on her pale cheeks.
You’re a very unattractive property, she told herself despairingly, an old wreck coming out of an old rectory.
At least she had a terribly pretty frilly cream silk shirt to wear with her brown velvet suit. But her hands were shaking so much that she pricked her finger while pinning on her cornelian brooch, and bled all over the cream silk, so she had to wear her dreary grey poplin instead. By the time she’d picked a bunch of daffodils and polyanthus for Si, it was twelve-forty-five.
Rushing outside, she found her car battery flat. She was being punished for sinful intent. The only answer was to take David’s vast new Range Rover. She felt so plain she couldn’t bear to glance in the driving mirror. But as she gingerly manoeuvred the great double-decker tank along the twisted Larkshire lanes, it was impossible not to feel optimistic. The cottages were wearing plumes of yellow forsythia in their hats. Flocks of gulls, like outsize snowflakes, followed the tractors over the rich brown earth. Primroses, anemones and celandines shining like little suns crowded the banks on either side of the road. St George’s horse was off to the races.
‘Going to see Si, going to see Si, going to see Si,’ sang Rosemary to the last movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
But drawing up outside the Grasshopper and Sixpence, she gave a moan of horror as she realized she’d picked a motel. What would Si think? Inside, presumably because everyone was busy humping away in the surrounding bungalows, the self-service dining room was deserted. A bored-looking waitress, who occasionally lifted a silver lid and gave some sickly yellow chicken marengo a stir, had clearly never heard of Krug.
There was no sign of Si. Catching sight of General Anaesthetic and his wife driving decorously past in their ancient Rover, followed by a furiously hooting convoy of motorists, Rosemary collapsed into a chair in the foyer, taking refuge behind the Financial Times.
Then she jumped out of her skin as on page three she found a belligerent Si glaring out at her, looking far too busy to take anyone out to lunch. ‘King Midas’, said the headline.
