Pandora (17 page)

For both social and financial reasons, David was anxious to get married as quickly and quietly as possible. To his relief, his grandmother, with unusual tact, died in June, which gave an excuse for a tiny wedding, to which none of his common relations were invited. To encourage wedding presents, Sir Mervyn threw a drinks party at his club, the RAC, to which David invited his more glamorous Cambridge and art world friends.

As the Boy David’s fortunes prospered, Raymond entered a time of hell. In July, his busiest month, the newly wed Mr and Mrs Pulborough took off on an extended honeymoon to Geneva, Florence, Venice and Kenya. A far worse hammerblow fell a week later. Alizarin, never strong, contracted rheumatoid arthritis. The doctors were hopeful he would grow out of it, but it meant he couldn’t join Jupiter at prep school in September. This in turn meant that when he wasn’t staggering around on crutches, Alizarin spent his time in his parents’ bed, reading, painting or gazing at the Raphael. This made Galena very bad tempered. Worried stiff about her favourite child, she was drinking heavily, not amassing enough paintings for her long-awaited October exhibition and unable to see her lovers.

Fed up with her moods, nannies employed to look after Alizarin and baby Jonathan came and went. As a result, Galena took it out on Raymond. Devastated by David’s marriage, still tormented by jealousy of Casey, Rupert, Etienne and the rest of Galena’s fan club, Raymond was dealt a further blow when thick decorative Fiona announced she wanted a six-month sabbatical from the gallery. She was needed to provide moral support while her sister had her first baby in Hong Kong.

Raymond was appalled. He loathed change. He desperately needed Fiona to organize Galena’s exhibition. She knew all the people that mattered and how to address them on invitations. She had enough taste to send the right flowers, and who would buy all his Christmas presents? She understood all his ways.

‘You can’t abandon me. I need you.’

‘So does my sister. I asked the agency to send you an upmarket older woman.’

‘Sounds like Margaret Newton,’ said Raymond gloomily.

On the Monday the temporary was due to arrive, he felt even gloomier. Jonathan, however adorable, had formed a wrecking party with Shrimpy the Jack Russell. Jonathan had smashed some priceless porcelain and glass. Shrimpy had chewed up the first edition of
Maud
given him by David and, almost more disastrously, Raymond’s address book. Another nanny had given in her notice. Galena had given Raymond hell for abandoning her to drive up to Cork Street.

‘Gallery can’t run itself without David and Fiona,’ he had finally shouted at her. ‘We’ve got to get your fucking invitations out.’

Arriving still shaking at the gallery, failing to find the invitation list, complete with addresses, which Fiona had promised to type, he was dispiritedly opening the post, when out fell David and Rosemary’s wedding photographs.

Rosemary, who’d been incredibly relieved not to have to wear her mother’s tiara, looked happy and jaunty, like a seaside donkey in one of those straw hats that keep off the flies. Beside her David looked heartbreakingly young. Raymond groaned. He hadn’t believed it was possible to miss anyone so much. Even when David finally came back from his honeymoon, it wouldn’t be the same. David would confide in Rosemary now.

There was a knock on the door, or was it on the inside of Pandora’s Box? Hope seemed to have jumped down from the Raphael and flown up to London, as in came one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen. Her short fair curls were swept off an angelic heart-shaped face, which was enhanced by big eyes the colour of love-in-a-mist, a wild-rose complexion, a soft pink smiling mouth, and a little turned-up nose. She was also tiny, with the sweet unformed figure of a twelve-year-old, and gave an impression of being swathed in rainbows. Perhaps he had died of a broken heart and gone to heaven.

Having an Irish mother, Raymond believed in fairies. Then he realized the rainbow effect came from a violet cardigan, a pink floating scarf and a short skirt made out of a patchwork of pastel colours.

‘Mr Belvedon’ – she even had a tiny squeaky fairy’s voice – ‘I’m Anthea Rookhope, your new temp.’

My God, any moment he’d be making jokes about hoping she’d become permanent.

She seemed to dance over to him, a peacock butterfly fluttering across the gallery.

‘I am
so
excited. I know you wanted someone older and more public schooly’ – her smiling pink lips parted to show beautiful little white teeth – ‘but I adored art school and I’ve always wanted to work in a gallery. What lovely pictures.’ She gazed round in wonder. ‘Who painted them?’

‘Rory Balniel, one of our younger artists,’ stammered Raymond, ‘lives in France, used to paint angry tormented stuff; now he’s happily married, he paints his wife and children.’

‘Oh, I love happy marriages,’ sighed Anthea. ‘Look at those lovely kiddies. You look tired, Mr Belvedon, let me make you a coffee.’

The telephone rang.

‘Oh God, I don’t know how to work the bloody thing,’ moaned Raymond.

‘I’ll answer it,’ said Anthea, going rather pink after a minute, and putting her hand over the receiver. ‘It’s a Mr Casey Andrews saying he hasn’t been paid, shall I tell him you’re not here?’

Raymond seized the telephone. ‘We have paid you, Casey, and if you can’t keep a civil tongue in your swollen head, then I suggest you push off to another gallery.’

The sound of clapping made them both jump.

It was Eddie.

‘Well done, Mr B. Stand up to the old bugger,’ then, wolf-whistling at Anthea: ‘Things is definitely looking up.’

Things certainly were. Raymond came back from lunching at the Connaught with a client to find Anthea had worked through her lunch hour.

‘I’ve tracked down the list for Mrs Belvedon’s exhibition, such exciting people, are you really asking Paul McCartney and Rupert Campbell-Black? I also discovered a lot of filing.’

‘Where did you find it?’

‘Well, quite by chance, it was in the dustbin, a lot of yogurt spilled on the top pages, but I sponged it off, I’m sure Fiona didn’t mean to chuck it all away, just had other things on her mind before going away.’

Raymond wasn’t so sure. Anthea was clearly one of those sweethearts who saw the best in everyone.

‘And I found Mr Casey Andrews’s cheque.’

‘Oh God.’

‘No, it was OK. He popped in half an hour ago, I explained about being a new girl and it probably being my fault. He couldn’t have been kinder. I gave him a coffee and he went off with his cheque like a lamb.’

All the letters Raymond had dictated that morning came back immaculately typed.

‘These are fine,’ said Raymond, signing them, then smiling at her, ‘but in future could you possibly put Esq. rather than Mr on the envelope, and I prefer to write in the Dear Somerford or Dear Lady X at the top, more intimate somehow. I’ve got a boring dinner this evening, so I’m going to have a shower. See you in the morning.’

‘Give me your jacket,’ said Anthea. ‘I can’t have my handsome boss going out with a button hanging loose.’

Wiping a hole in the misted-up mirror, Raymond wondered if he was still handsome. When he came out, Anthea had retyped all the letters.

‘You should have gone,’ said a shocked Raymond, accustomed to Fiona’s insistence that anything after six o’clock was well past her party time. ‘Particularly with all the tube strikes.’

‘I only like leaving an empty in-tray.’ Anthea stood on tiptoe to adjust his collar as she helped him on with his jacket. ‘You do look smart. Have a lovely evening. Thank you for such a wonderful day.’

The next day she brought him home-made cake and a jar of pear jelly.

‘I live in Purley, which means “Pear tree lee”.’

She really was the most conscientious child. She never took lunch hours except to shop for the gallery. She revolutionized Fiona’s sloppy filing, despatched Galena’s invitations, had a mug printed with Raymond’s name. She also brought in a small wireless.

‘So we could have a dance when we’re not too busy. I so wanted to be a dancer, but I was too little,’ she told Raymond, ‘but working in a gallery’s so much more exciting.’

Soon she was adding womanly touches: making cushions and chair-covers to enhance the pictures being shown; arranging wonderful flowers, which she’d bought early in Covent Garden; finding pretty frames for the photographs of Galena and the three boys, pointing out Mr Belvedon’s beautiful family to everyone.

Raymond found himself missing David less and less. Anthea was so slender, smelled so sweet and, scorning the flares and long skirts that were fashionable, stuck to short, tightly belted frocks and pleated skirts which showed off her pretty legs and tiny waist.

‘I’m into femininity, not feminism,’ she was always saying.

At the end of the week, the agency rang. They had found an older more experienced woman to replace Anthea.

‘Oh no,’ said Raymond in horror, ‘we all love her, we want Miss Er, Miss Er . . .’

‘Rookhope,’ whispered Anthea.

‘Miss Rookhope to stay as long as possible.’

When he came off the telephone, Anthea gave him a little kiss.

‘It’s pronounced Rookh’p,’ she giggled, ‘after a little village in Durham.’

‘I shall call you “Hopey”,’ said Raymond happily, ‘after a character in a picture at home, which one day I’ll show you. I must remember: Rookhope pronounced Rookh’p.’

‘To rhyme with suck’p and shack’p,’ muttered Eddie, who was much less taken.

It was clear Raymond had developed a sodding great crush on Anthea. Eddie had hoped with David and Fiona out of the way, it would be him and the Governor together again. Anthea, he noticed, turned on the charm like an electric kettle. She never remembered he didn’t take sugar and only gave him a slice of homemade cake if Raymond were about.

‘I’m a good listener,’ she was always saying in her silly squeaky voice, but, like the Boy David, she was more interested in storing information that could be used later.

She praised everything Raymond did, noticing dark rings under his eyes, a different tie, laughing at his most insane quips. Important collectors and artists got the same treatment.

She might charm the birds off the trees, reflected Eddie, but he didn’t think she’d take them to the RSPCA if they broke a wing in the fall.

The person she creepily reminded Eddie of was David. Like him, she was frantic to escape from her dull, relatively impoverished, suburban background. There would be a battle royal for Raymond’s affections when David returned.

Eddie retired to the basement to smoke dope and photocopy his cock in the smart new machine ordered by Anthea. Hearing how pretty she was from other artists, Somerford Keynes, the demon critic and a great fan of Eddie’s, waddled down to the Belvedon to have a butcher’s.

‘She’s very small,’ he murmured.

‘So was Napoleon,’ snapped Eddie, ‘and about as defenceless.’

In early September, Galena came up to London for a party at the Tate, and spent the afternoon at Vidal Sassoon, emerging with gleaming collar-length hair falling over one eye from a side parting. Dramatic makeup, and a beautiful vermilion dress, floating to avoid the spreading waist, but slightly see-through to show off the still exciting breasts, completed the picture. Raymond felt all the old tugging of his heart strings. Galena’s latest tipple was a pinch of cocaine in a glass of champagne, repeated throughout the night.

All the art world were at the party, all smiling brightly to conceal their envy and animosity. Galena received a lot of attention. She’d been stuck in the country for months, and news had filtered out that an important new exhibition was imminent.

Everyone stopped talking as an extraordinarily handsome Pakistani – a young artist called Khalid – walked in.

‘You’d like him, wouldn’t you?’ Galena murmured mockingly to Raymond.

It took her precisely half an hour. She and Khalid left the party together. Raymond returned to the flat in Duke Street, St James’s, which he’d acquired after the top floor of the gallery in Cork Street had been given over to pictures. Here he waited up, churning with rage, humiliation and misery, until a dull dawn broke over the dirty city.

‘What is life to me without her?’

Arriving at the gallery, he thought he’d been burgled. A little Watteau was missing from the wall, then he realized Anthea was dusting its frame. Coffee bubbled in the percolator. The peel of the oranges she had squeezed for him lay in the waste-paper basket, a croissant was keeping warm in a drying-up cloth. He also recognized the opening bars of the Sanctus from the
Missa Solemnis
, on the score of which Beethoven had written, ‘From the heart, may it again go to the heart.’

‘We’re singing it in the choir at home,’ explained Anthea. ‘I bought you a tape. Whatever’s the matter, didn’t you have a lovely party?’

A desolate contrast to her new, bright-coloured cushions, Raymond had slumped on the sofa, his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking.

‘Galena never came home.’

‘Oh, you poor dear.’ Anthea ran over and put her arms round him. She was so tiny, it was like being comforted by Alizarin.