Pandora

by Jilly Cooper

  Raymond was desperately ashamed of lying and breaking down in court. All seemed to have been saved, except honour. But despite looking close to death, he put his favourite yellow rose, the early Canary Bird, in his buttonhole and insisted on tottering into court on Jonathan’s arm. Predictably he felt very sorry for Zac.

  ‘Poor fellow, learning those dreadful things about Jacob.’

  Anthea was dressed especially delectably in lemon-yellow with a big Antwerp-blue picture hat. Winners, she felt, were entitled to obscure the views of those behind them.

  Jonathan had put six bottles of Veuve Clicquot in the fridge for a celebration later. Aunt Lily clattered down the aisle with two hip flasks and a switch to lemon sherbets. Glacier mints, like toothpaste, she had decided, made drink taste disgusting.

  Lily had promised to call Dora the moment the result was through, hopefully during break, when the Independent, the Guardian and the Mail would be ringing in for Dora’s reactions. Having discovered a massive hat bill from David Shilling in her mother’s knicker drawer, Dora was planning to auction it to the highest bidder. A second pony was definitely on the cards.

  Jean-Jacques Le Brun had stayed over, boosting Raymond’s spirits, reacquainting himself with several of his pictures, delighted, on balance, he had saved the bacon of the Belvedons, particularly that of Jonathan, such a dear boy, who’d made him realize how much he’d missed not having a son.

  Only Sienna was in turmoil. Even though the Telegraph had devoted nearly half a page to her Lion and Unicorn drawing, which included Willoughby Evans chucking a bucket of water over the contestants, it was too facile an interpretation of Friday’s tragedies.

  The weekend papers had also had an embarrassing field day, speculating on Sienna’s transformed appearance and her public embracing of Zac. Had Zac notched up another Belvedon scalp? they wondered. Was that why Emerald had wept in court? ‘Ladette to Lady’, and ‘The Sloane-ing of Sienna’ were among the headlines. Zac, Emerald and Sienna had all been ‘unavailable for comment’.

  I’d have been only too available if Zac had picked up a telephone, thought Sienna desolately. Holding him fleetingly in her arms had brought back all the divine madness of the fireworks evening.

  On her right, as she approached the court, had gathered a large Jewish contingent waving placards demanding the return of all looted art.

  ‘Give Zac back his Raphael,’ shouted a fearsome brunette.

  ‘Oh, fuck off,’ snapped Sienna. ‘And you can fuck off too,’ she added as a torrent of press surged round her. She was flaming well going to sit with her family today.

  David Pulborough was spitting. On Saturday, Rosemary’s cat Shadrach had died of old age, and David thought he’d been especially caring, digging a grave beyond the tennis court. It was only a cat. But Rosemary couldn’t stop crying, refusing to accompany him to a regimental dinner in the evening. Even worse, it looked as though his next-door neighbours were poised for a famous victory.

  Five minutes to blast off. April storms had been forecast. The lights of the court kept flickering on and off. A mean east wind was thrashing horse-chestnut leaves against the window pane.

  A restless Jonathan wandered off to look at the Raphael. Hope and Pandora must be getting gate fever at the prospect of coming home. Sloth on his yellow sofa had probably slept through the whole ordeal. Would Emerald be pleased, wondered Jonathan, that he had been less slothful recently? Or had she wept in court, nagged a nasty little doubt, because she was still carrying a torch for Zac?

  ‘This judgement will be frightfully boring,’ Sampson was telling the rest of the Belvedons. ‘Endless citings of cases and procedure and we won’t get the result till the very end. Oh, here comes the Royal House of Darkness.’

  At least Zac, in Ray-Bans, dark grey polo neck, softest black leather jacket and black cords was sartorially back to normal. He was followed by several guards and a stony-faced Si. The Jewish contingent, who’d moved to the gallery, gave them a round of applause.

  ‘To the victor, the trophy,’ spat Jonathan, as Zac slipped into the row on the left.

  Naomi Cohen looked tired and in low spirits. Cases were like boat races, there was no kudos in coming second.

  Serve her right for turning me down on Friday night, thought Sampson smugly.

  ‘Be upstanding in court,’ called out an usher, as Willoughby Evans appeared smiling broadly through the crimson velvet curtains.

  ‘Hi, Sheriff!’ Taking a slug from Lily’s hip flask, Jonathan waved happily at a clanking bootfaced David, who did not wave back.

  Willoughby Evans was exhausted but elated. Never had a case engendered such publicity. With any luck he’d notch up enough brownie points to be promoted to the Court of Appeal. He liked the idea of the black and gold robes of a Lord Justice. He had worked very hard on his judgement, which would take around forty-five minutes to deliver, and had treated himself to a glass of champagne with his morning kipper.

  ‘The Raphael Pandora,’ he began in his sonorous Welsh baritone, ‘passed to Benjamin Abelman on the eighth of August 1931, and was stolen from him in Vienna on the twelfth of April 1938. The subject is the opening of Pandora’s Box. I doubt when Raphael painted his exquisite picture, captioning it “Trouble lies below”, he had any idea how prophetic these words would be. In the last few days, all the deadly sins, Pride, Avarice, Lust, Wrath, Envy, Sloth and’ – as Lily crunched a lemon sherbet – ‘even Gluttony, have stalked this court.

  ‘Zachary Ansteig’s family,’ he went on, ‘must have suffered unimaginable horrors and, in seeking what he believed was his birthright, he opened a Pandora’s Box releasing all varieties of evil, not only shredding the reputation of Sir Raymond Belvedon’ – Sienna slid her hand over her father’s – ‘but also of his idol, his Great-uncle Jacob.

  ‘But before you judge these men too harshly, remember the words of L.P. Hartley, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

  ‘Jacob Abelman’ – Willoughby Evans looked at Zac – ‘has been described as a turncoat of many colours. But he was once a highly respected dealer, courageous enough to show art forbidden by the Nazis. He also belonged to the Resistance in Austria. Later he was seduced by the potentially vast profits gained by throwing in one’s lot – as many others did – with the Nazis.

  ‘But remember it was only when the war looked likely to be lost by the Germans that suddenly every man and his dog in the occupied countries claimed to have belonged to the Resistance. Caught between the crossfires of Nazi and Communist rule throughout Europe, people changed sides as often as their shirts. It was a very grey area.’

  Willoughby Evans beamed at Anthea, far from grey in her lemon-yellow. He’d love to put her in his buttonhole. Straightening his wig, gathering his thoughts, he turned to the stricken grey ghost, shrivelled with shame, gazing into space on her left.

  ‘Raymond Belvedon was one of the most admired and beloved figures in the art world until last Friday. But you must remember that, after the war, everyone was souvenir crazy. When my father, among others, liberated Belsen, he remembers soldiers seizing watches off the guards and even taking home lampshades made of human skin.’ Willoughby Evans shuddered.

  ‘Sir Raymond,’ he added kindly, ‘found the Raphael in a blazing collapsing building. If he hadn’t rescued it, none of us would be in court today. He knew he had looted a painting, but had he admitted this, it would have been taken away from him. And when you see the beauty of Pandora, like Helen of Troy amid the burning towers of Ilium, you understand exactly why men have joined battle and suspended moral judgement for her sake. So I repeat, judge neither man too harshly.’

  ‘There, Daddy.’ Patting her father’s cheek, Sienna’s hand felt the wetness of tears.

  ‘I don’t know which way this judgement’s going,’ muttered Jupiter, as Willoughby Evans launched into a prolonged flurry of citings, subjections, proprietorial claims, pursuyvants, and X versus Ys.

  Raymond passed the time by re
ading ‘Ulysses’: ‘It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles.’ Jonathan read Viz. Hanna played battleships with Aunt Lily. Jupiter hoped Willoughby Evans would wrap it up quickly, he’d just received a text message to ring his restorer.

  Sienna was drawing Willoughby Evans as a sweet little field mouse. Zac, she thought, looked like a bombed-out town. Then she realized Willoughby Evans was talking about his beloved uncle.

  ‘Jacob Abelman appropriated the picture in 1941 from Hermann Goering. His painting, you might say. He was the younger son, whose older brother Tobias had killed himself. But Tobias had a daughter, Rebecca, who survived the horrors of Theresienstadt and had a son, Zachary Ansteig. You may think Zachary Ansteig abused both the hospitality and the daughter of the Belvedons’ – Willoughby Evans shot a reproachful look at Zac – ‘but it was his past and his inheritance for which he was searching.’

  Noticing Sampson shaking his head, so the little tassels at the back of his wig shook like lambs’ tails, Sienna redrew her field mouse as a vicious-looking rat. She thawed a little as Willoughby Evans praised the tenacity and enterprise of Jonathan Belvedon.

  ‘Nor can anyone, having heard his evidence and that of Miss Sienna Belvedon’ – glancing up, a surprised Sienna encountered a smile of such approval that she promptly softened the vicious rat’s eyes and thickened his whiskers – ‘doubt that the Raphael is as much a part of their past and a link with their dead mother as it is of Zachary Ansteig.’

  ‘Two sets all,’ muttered Sampson.

  ‘I realize how deeply they would feel its loss,’ went on Willoughby Evans.

  ‘Eight million smackers,’ muttered Jonathan. ‘You bet we would.’

  ‘Hush,’ reproved Anthea, who’d been planning a holiday in St Lucia. Raymond would be too frail to make the journey, but she could perhaps take Green Jean as a bag-carrier, whose plainness would be the perfect foil for her own beauty.

  More cases, more statements, more incomprehensible jargon.

  ‘The law is a foreign country,’ Jonathan whispered to Hanna, ‘they say things differently there.’

  The clock had moved round to ten-forty.

  It was getting darker. Outside the rain was hissing on the little green parasols of the horse chestnuts, spattering reporters’ notebooks. Photographers were putting their coats over their cameras. Willoughby Evans was now paying tribute to the skill and industry of all counsel involved, ably supported by their respective teams.

  ‘Oh, get on,’ groaned Jupiter. ‘It was much more exciting on the other days,’ he whispered apologetically to Hanna. ‘I really love you,’ he added.

  Like audiences at boring concerts, everyone was craning to see how many pages Willoughby Evans had left to read. Only two now. Sienna took Raymond’s hand. Please God make it OK.

  ‘For these reasons I have given, I conclude . . .’

  ‘Here we go,’ muttered Sampson, who was playing with his pink brief ribbon. Peregrine parked his chewing gum and stopped playing Solitaire.

  ‘The painting was taken from Benjamin Abelman in 1938,’ intoned Willoughby Evans, ‘but the Nazis who stole it did not become full owners. None of the subsequent transfers established title. Who knows to which son Benjamin would have left his picture, but in the law of this country, the elder son inherits.’

  The pink ribbon snapped in Sampson’s hand. Feeling the blood drumming in his head, Jupiter closed his eyes. They’d lost it. Involuntarily rising out of her seat, Sienna could see a jubilant Naomi’s hand on Zac’s arm. Her pencil broke as she turned Willoughby Evans back into a vicious rat.

  ‘Although Benjamin’s younger son, Jacob Abelman, recovered the Raphael and sold it to Colonel Feldstrasse,’ he was saying sternly, ‘it was not in fact his to sell. Benjamin’s elder son already had a daughter, whose son Zachary Ansteig is the direct heir.’

  As the ecstasy on the faces of the Jewish supporters was illuminated by a biblical flash of lightning, Willoughby Evans’s voice rang out like a chapel bell.

  ‘I will therefore recognize Zachary Ansteig’s title to the painting, as derived from the law of the twelfth of April 1931.’ Then, as a cannonade of thunder rocked the building: ‘Sir Raymond never obtained good title to this painting.’

  Utter pandemonium followed. Everyone was yelling their heads off, except the Belvedons.

  ‘Oh no, no, no, no,’ whispered Raymond.

  We’re going to need that Veuve Clicquot for a wake, thought Jonathan numbly.

  ‘Never – hic – trust a Welshman,’ muttered Lily.

  How dare conniving beastly little Willoughby Evans crinkle his eyes at me all week, thought Anthea furiously, then take away our lovely Raphael?

  ‘We must appeal,’ she cried.

  ‘There isn’t any fucking money,’ snarled Jupiter. ‘We’ll have to pay costs now. With all Si’s dirt-gathering trips in his jets, they’ll be massive.’

  There was no time for tears. Naomi and Sampson were already up at the bench, arguing terms. Naomi haughtily demanded costs and Sampson, wondering if the Belvedons would ever be able to pay him, complained this was far too high and he’d like a more detailed assessment.

  ‘It seems reasonable to me, Mr Brunning. Costs follow the event, do they not?’ said Willoughby Evans, trying and failing to make himself heard over the uproar.

  Sienna sat utterly stunned. Her longing for Zac had fooled her into thinking she didn’t mind so much about the Raphael. Now its loss hit her like an overhanging branch.

  Equally stony-faced, having secured a Pyrrhic victory, idol in smithereens, proud heritage a mockery, Zac stalked out into the downpour. Such was his suppressed fury, he had no need of guards to fend off the press, who split open like the ground in an earthquake as he disappeared through them into Si’s Mercedes.

  Deprived of their interviews with Zac, the maddened media stampeded the Belvedons, knocking Raymond’s Canary Bird out of his buttonhole, trampling it in the mud.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Raymond mumbled in bewilderment as the storm flashed and crashed overhead, ‘I must get back to Grenville, he’s terrified of thunder.’

  Desperate to get a shot of Pandora before she was packed away, photographers raced back into the court.

  How could Hope still be smiling? wondered Sienna.

  ‘You lying bitch,’ she said slowly.

  Jonathan was relieved not to go back to Foxes Court. He couldn’t face Anthea’s martyrdom, Raymond’s anguish, Jupiter’s cold rage, Sienna’s despair. Le Brun had been coming home for a celebration, but felt now he should return to Paris. Jonathan insisted on accompanying him. As Rupert had repossessed his helicopter, they caught a late afternoon flight and dined at Chez André where Jonathan sunk into deeper and deeper gloom. At least hunting for evidence had distracted him a little from Emerald. Now, alive in his dark coffin without any bell, the bleakness of a future without her terrified him.

  ‘Don’t try to eat,’ said Le Brun, who’d been watching the poor boy pushing exquisite langoustine round his plate. ‘You’re exhausted, which is ninety per cent of depression.’

  ‘I wish,’ sighed Jonathan. If only a decent night’s sleep could get him over Emerald. Then, pulling himself together, he apologized for dragging Le Brun over to England and forcing him to admit such painful things.

  ‘And thank you for trying to salvage Dad’s reputation.’

  ‘You’re not just sad because of the Raphael,’ observed Le Brun.

  ‘I’m pissed off that shit Zac has finally got it.’ Then Jonathan told Le Brun about Emerald.

  ‘Everyone bangs on about the benefits of finding one’s birth mother,’ he said finally. ‘No-one warns you of the hell of falling in love with your real brother.’

  Despite a very long day, Le Brun insisted on coming back to Jonathan’s dusty little room to look at his pictures, which were all of Emerald. Le Brun refused a drink and said nothing because the suffering they conjured up was so excruciating, it reminded him of losing Georgette.

  Oh well, thought
Jonathan.

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve been such a bore,’ he muttered. ‘Do you think the pain ever goes away?’

  ‘Non,’ said Le Brun tersely.

  ‘Right.’ Jonathan took it on the chin. ‘I’ll get you a taxi.’

  ‘It will never go away, because you have immortalized this girl and your unhappiness.’ Le Brun put a consoling hand on Jonathan’s arm. ‘People’s hearts break all the time, but only a handful have the genius to portray this suffering: Catullus, Sappho, Housman, Yeats, Mahler, Munch, now these . . .’ Le Brun waved the other hand round at the pictures. ‘They are also extraordinarily beautiful.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Jonathan fought back the tears. ‘That does help – a lot. But I’d still trade Emerald for any immortality.’

  ‘That’s because you are young. I am old and tired.’ Le Brun sat very suddenly down on the bed. ‘We will talk more tomorrow. Now get me that taxi.’

  Switching on his mobile, Jonathan found a text message from Jupiter.

  ‘Dad’s had a massive stroke,’ he told Le Brun shakily, ‘he’s unlikely to last the night. Can I drop you off on the way to the airport?’

  The first British Airways flight left Charles de Gaulle at a quarter to seven in the morning. Trafford, who met Jonathan at Heathrow, was somewhat the worse for wear after an all-night preview party celebrating the opening of Tate Modern.

  Some prudes, he announced proudly, had dismantled Shagpile and knocked off all the cocks.

  ‘Bloody good publicity. Thinking of replacing the cocks with Brillo pads and renaming it Hagpile,’ then, just sober enough to take in Jonathan’s reddened eyes and corpse-like pallor, he added, ‘Sorry about your dad.’

  ‘Thanks. Sorry to drag you out here, but I wanted to repossess my dog.’

  Perhaps it was desire to escape from a petrol-stinking car park, but any worries that Diggory might have forgotten him were dispelled when an orange-and-white bullet exploded out of Trafford’s filthy jeep, screaming, wriggling, covering his master’s salty face with kisses.