Pandora (11 page)

‘Good trip?’ he asked.

‘I was vorking.’

‘When’s your baby due?’

‘In one hour.’

David went green. What happened if her waters broke all over Raymond’s beloved car? Would they be flooded out? Might he have to deliver the baby in a lay-by? He speeded up, then slowed down as the car bumped over a dead rabbit. He didn’t want to jolt her into giving birth any quicker. Raymond and Mrs Robens should have bloody well told him.

Deciding to soothe her with flattery, he told her her pictures, all over the house, were wonderful.

‘Too accessible.’

‘But so beautiful.’

‘Great art should never seem beautiful on first acquaintance. I hate my first dry Martini, and my first blow job.’ Seeing the shock on David’s face, she burst out laughing.

‘How are my boys?’

‘Fine – sweet.’

‘Sveet! Jupiter!’ Galena’s unplucked ebony eyebrows vanished under her fringe.

‘He’s highly intelligent,’ said David firmly. ‘Yesterday he nearly strangled a boy in the village for bullying Alizarin.’

‘Hates anyone taking over his job.’ Galena shrugged. ‘Perhaps he learn. And Alizarin?’ Her voice softened.

‘A genius, I can’t teach him anything,’ said David, reaching into the dashboard. ‘This is a drawing he did of me.’

‘Alizarin has third eye, sees vot other people don’t.’

Galena was pleased with the sketch, but soon distracted.

‘I met Picasso in Paris.’

‘My God.’ David nearly rammed the car in front. ‘What was he like?’

‘Very old, but still attractive; he give me the hot eye.’

Coals to Newcastle, thought David, Galena’s eyes could scorch the blond hairs off his chest.

‘Raymond tell me you were spitting image of Raphael’s St John Evangelista.’

‘He did?’

‘Patron saint of virgins.’

David wished she wouldn’t make such risqué remarks.

‘When’s your next exhibition?’ he asked.

‘Too soon. How’s my husband?’

‘Wonderful, the nicest person I’ve ever met.’

‘And I’m the nastiest.’ Laughing uproariously, Galena lit one cigarette from another, dropping the first on the floor.

If the car catches fire, perhaps her waters will break and put it out, thought David sourly.

As they came off the motorway, nature seemed to be putting on a huge banquet to welcome Galena. Every elderbush was covered in lacy tablemats. Hogweed, like plates borne aloft by waiters, crowded every verge.

‘Raymond and I have huge row when he announce you are coming,’ said Galena. ‘I vas furious that he provide dull youth to bore me in evenings, but’ – she glanced at David under her eyelashes – ‘maybe you vill do.’

Here’s to you, Mrs Robinson, thought David smugly.

‘But perhaps’ – Galena gave her deep throaty laugh again – ‘Raymond provide himself with little catamite?’

‘Certainly not,’ exploded David, going crimson, ‘that’s the last thing.’

Desperate to change the subject, he asked her what presents she had bought for the boys.

‘Nothing, I forget. Raymond can have brandy, I only drink little from bottle.’ Then, seeing David’s look of disapproval: ‘Children are given too much in England.

As a child I was lucky to get present at Christmas.’

David’s disapproval cost him. Galena borrowed his last fiver to buy a box of Quality Street for the boys in Cirencester and kept the change, which meant he couldn’t escape to the Goat in Boots this evening if she and Raymond had a row. Arriving at Foxes Court, she bounded into the house.

‘Where would you like these put?’ he asked sulkily, having humped all her loot into the hall.

‘I’d like you to open a bottle of red.’

She was flipping through her skyscraper of post. Opening two blue envelopes marked
Private
, skimming the contents, she smirked, and shoved the letters into her bag. She then insisted he had a drink with her.

‘Bit early, the boys might want to play tennis.’

‘Don’t be a little prude.’

When he had filled two glasses, she drained hers in one gulp, then groaned and clutched her belly.

‘My baby is due. Help! I am in labour.’

‘Oh my God, I’ll phone the hospital.’

But next minute, Galena had whipped up her scarlet dress to reveal strong white thighs, a pair of knickers as red as the wine she’d just drunk, edged with curls of black pubic hair. Tied round her waist, resting on her flat belly, was a huge leather money bag. Next moment, she had unzipped it, and, roaring with laughter, was scooping out hundreds of notes and throwing them in the air so they fluttered all over the room.

‘This is my beautiful baby. I sell eight pictures. This vay I pay no tax.’

As she chucked the empty money bag on the sofa, a car door slammed and the boys came racing in. Alizarin couldn’t speak, he just mouthed in ecstasy, then threw himself into Galena’s arms. Jupiter paused, casting an eye over the green carpet of money.

‘Mummy go a-hunting,’ crowed Galena, then scooping up a handful of notes divided them between the boys. ‘The banks will change it. David will find chocolate I buy you. He tell me you paint very well, darling.’ She smiled at Alizarin. ‘And you do everything else brilliant,’ she added vaguely to Jupiter.

You cow, thought David. And for a woman who was alleged to have such contempt for commercialism, she’d got a very shrewd business head.

For a moment, she bombarded the boys with questions, then the telephone rang. Galena took it in the study.

‘That vas Etienne,’ she announced when she emerged ten minutes later, slap into Raymond who was accompanied by Maud, who, forgetting her rheumatism, was leaping joyfully around him.

‘Don’t let her tear the money,’ cried Jupiter in horror and, helped by David, he started shovelling it back into the money bag.

Over their bowed heads and scrabbling hands, Raymond and Galena gazed at each other. Like so many high-complexioned Englishmen, Raymond quadrupled his good looks with a tan. His brushed back hair was striped black and grey like corduroy, his upper lip stiff as papier mâché, long dark lashes tipped with grey fringed the hurt, bewildered turquoise-blue eyes. As he kissed his wife, his hands were clenched to stop them trembling.

‘You’re very brown,’ she mocked him. ‘While I vork, you enjoy yourself. See, you are not the only person in this house who sell picture. I sell five to a friend of Etienne’s, three to a collector from Munich who wants four more.’

‘That’s awfully good,’ said Raymond slowly.

‘And you bring me St John Evangelista, who was horrified when I fooled him I vas about to give birth.’ Her eyes slid towards David. ‘Is that a hint for me to become more virginal?’

‘Can we stay up for supper?’ begged Alizarin.

‘That mean ve dine too early.’ Galena glanced at her watch. ‘I vant to paint for a couple of hours. Ve’ll have dinner at nine. You can stay up tomorrow. For now you can help David take my stuff upstairs.’

Grabbing the bottle of red, she wandered out through the french windows.

What a bitch, thought David, what an absolutely horrible, bloody gorgeous bitch.

Galena didn’t return from her studio until eleven o’clock, by which time David was drunk and Raymond deathly pale and beyond eating.

‘Painting is like a drug to my wife,’ he told David apologetically, ‘she probably hasn’t done much while abroad, and was desperate for a fix.’

Life changed completely after Galena came home. Meal-times were awry. Everyone fought for her attention. The household trembled when her work was going badly. Life was a series of deep glooms followed by irresistible high spirits. David was in turmoil: the more he disapproved, the more he was captivated.

Working late, Galena slept under the stars on the flat roof of her studio, then wandered out naked into the garden to paint, dipping her brushes in the stream. As the heatwave increased its stranglehold and the earth cracked, David and Robens fought over the watering, so they could surreptitiously watch her. Her body had thickened, no longer as good as she thought it was, but David was mesmerized by the sight of her swimming naked, the mirror on the bottom of the pool reflecting her bush whisking up and down like some furry water rat.

David soon made himself as useful to Galena as everyone else, picking up paints from Bristol, helping her cook Sunday lunch before she got too drunk, carrying her easels and canvasses through the countryside, coming back later with a picnic basket, breathing in the smell of wild mint as he cooled the white wine in the stream.

One morning he was sketching the river with the boys.

‘Most buses have “Searston” or “Cheltenham” on the front,’ he told them, ‘but one magic psychedelic bus had “Further” as its destination, and that’s where you want to go. As an artist you must always try to go further, and see things in a new way. That acacia tree, for example, has got yellow in it, which makes it seem warmer and nearer, but if you want to create distance, like those hills, add blue.’

A shadow fell across his pad.

‘You are better teacher than artist,’ mocked Galena, ‘you better join Raymond in the gallery.’

The following day, when she opened her paintbox, Galena found four lines in David’s handwriting:

She was a phantom of delight

When first she gleamed upon my sight;

A lovely apparition, sent

To be a moment’s ornament.

Galena smirked. Like an all-over suntan, one could never have too many men in love with one. David was a silly little lapdog, but a useful one.

Raymond meanwhile was aware that he had spent too much of the summer hanging round David, neglecting the gallery. As July drew to a close, he set off abroad to sell and replenish stock. David rose at sunrise to see him off. The brilliant hard light anticipated autumn as it gilded the trees.

‘I’m going to miss you.’ David emphasized his stammer. ‘I think I’m turning into Sir Galahad: “Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King – Else, wherefore born?” You’re my King Arthur.’

‘Look after my Guinevere.’ Raymond tried not to betray how moved he felt.

‘I’ll ward off any Lancelot.’ Hugging Raymond, David kissed him briefly on the cheek. ‘Please come home soon.’

David’s ardour was somewhat cooled by having to watch Jupiter’s hero, Rupert Campbell-Black, triumphing at Wembley all week. ‘The handsomest man in England’, according to the
Daily Mail
, he was greeted by screaming teenagers each time he entered the show ring. It had become a sudden bond between Jupiter and Galena, who out-screamed any teenagers whenever he won.

The first night Raymond was away David was resolutely reading Tennyson in the dusk on the terrace:

‘To love one maiden only . . .’ (‘maiden’ was pushing it – Galena must be nearly forty) ‘. . . and worship her by years of noble deeds . . . for indeed I knew of no more subtle master under heaven . . . to keep down the base in man.’

He mustn’t make a pass at Galena, Raymond was his friend.

The base in David however rocketed sharply a moment later, as Galena came onto the terrace utterly transformed. A flamingo-pink dress, short and sleeveless, caressed her hot, newly bathed body from which Mitsouko rose like incense. Her hair was clean and glossy, her make-up for once applied with all the skills of a great artist. She also smelled of toothpaste rather than fags and booze.

Well away from herself, she was carrying a still-wet canvas, which she propped up on a chair. A developer had bought the big field on the other side of the river, which was rumoured to contain over a hundred different wild flowers, and was planning to slap houses all over it.

In Galena’s painting of the same field, pink grasses, merging into olive-green woods and a sky the bright blue of Rupert Campbell-Black’s eyes, were dominated by a full moon, as gold as the plates Mrs Robens refused to put in the dishwasher.

‘It’s stunning,’ sighed David, ‘show it to the Council and they’ll never grant the developers permission to ruin such a lovely spot.’