Pandora (29 page)

They both jumped as the telephone rang. It was Casey Andrews fulminating away on the machine like one of the giants in
The Ring
. Casey’s latest reviews and sales had not been as good as hoped.

‘All art correspondents write about these days is the stratospheric price of Impressionists and my brother Jonathan’s sex life,’ grumbled Jupiter.

Sitting opposite him, Emerald applied wooden callipers to Jupiter’s temples, to the sides of his aquiline nose, to the distance from brushed eyebrow to smooth hairline, from nose to ears, ears to mouth, then transferred each measurement to the lump of clay. The
Guardian
had described him as ‘thin lipped’ last week. Jupiter tried to make his mouth fuller.

‘Wonderful eyes, wonderful strong face,’ murmured Emerald. ‘So nice to sculpt someone older,’ then, with a smile: ‘I’m so used to doing boring students.’

Jupiter was amazed by her total concentration. For the first time in years, he looked at someone else’s face for more than two minutes. Emerald’s green eyes, practically hidden by narrowed feathery dark lashes, looked through him and at him, flickering constantly back to the head as she modelled and gouged, adding then removing little sausages of clay.

Her slightly parted black knees were an inch away from his. The E set with emeralds, practically the only piece of Cartwright jewellery unpawned, rose and fell on her cashmere bosom. As she worked she told him about the disaster that had befallen her family and how her father had been cruelly ousted by a boardroom coup.

Jupiter wryly wished he could get shot of Raymond as easily. As Emerald crawled round on the carpet to catch different views of him, he was amazed to find himself offering to introduce her to other dealers and clients. Pouring himself another glass of wine, he tried to persuade her to join him, but she still would only accept water.

‘Do you mind coming a bit nearer?’

Jupiter edged his chair forward, their knees almost touching. He could smell violets and the sweetness of her breath. The milky green of her jersey was the colour of the dewy lawn at Limesbridge.

To start with he had kept glancing impatiently at his watch, but now he wanted time to go slower and slower, fascinated to see the head emerging more human than himself. That man had mortgage problems, and shouldn’t have bought a big house in Chester Terrace to impress the Tory Party. That man needed to nail Si Greenbridge, curb his father’s excesses and sell more than David Pulborough.

Jupiter loved his wife Hanna, but he was suddenly filled with lust for this girl with her black legs apart, the soft curve of her breast and her darting eyes.

‘You’re very good at keeping still.’ She smiled at him adorably, head on one side. ‘Apparently the person with the stillest face is the Duke of Edinburgh. I haven’t made your eyes deep set enough.’

Telephone messages for Raymond from Greyhound Rescue, from television producers and newspapers, from the NSPCC wanting him to open a fête, from artists wanting money, piled up on the machine.

Emerald was now doing Jupiter’s thick dark locks – his one vanity – applying clay in a frenzy. The sculpture took on even more reality with his hair. Emerald’s eyes were darting quicker and quicker, her little hands and nails burnt umber like his Aunt Lily’s after gardening.

I’ve met this girl before, he thought. Next moment she leant back, stretching and flexing her aching fingers and shoulders.

‘OK. Thanks awfully.’

It was a few moments before they realized the bell was ringing insistently accompanied with banging. Outside was Kevin Coley, a petfood billionaire, whom the Belvedons nicknamed Mr Ditherer, because of his infuriating habit of buying paintings after a good lunch and changing his mind next day.

Kevin caught sight of Jupiter’s head. ‘Bloody hell, who did that? Bloody fantastic.’

‘I did,’ said Emerald.

To Jupiter’s outrage, David Pulborough from his gallery opposite sidled in in Kevin’s wake. Knowing Jupiter couldn’t chuck him out in front of a client, he instantly started chatting up Emerald.

‘You’ve really caught the old devil, captured all the arrogance and ice of the grand master. Flattered him, of course, Jupey’s more lined and his eyes are closer together.’

Emerald looked at the head, constantly smoothing the texture.

‘It needs more work.’

‘Give us a drink, Jupey,’ said Kevin, ‘I’ve dropped in to have a butcher’s at Daisy France-Lynch’s new stuff. Thinking of commissioning her to paint our Cuddles and the wife in the orangery.’

‘Daisy France-Lynch is so passé,’ drawled David, who never said anything nice about other dealers’ pictures, ‘her work’s far too pretty for today’s look.’

‘Probably one of the reasons she sells out before every exhibition opens,’ snapped Jupiter.

‘I sold a Sickert to the National Gallery this morning,’ boasted David as he flipped through Emerald’s portfolio. ‘These are very good. You should get some postcards printed or a poster of that one. You must give me your card.’

‘Me too,’ added Kevin, who was admiring one of Daisy France-Lynch’s grinning English setters. ‘Wonder how that would work on a petfood can?’

‘We’ve met before. That’s a nice big girl . . .’ David paused to admire a nude of Sophy. ‘At Rupert Campbell-Black’s open day. I never forget a face.’ Then, gazing deep into Emerald’s eyes, ‘When you walked past me I thought:

‘She was a phantom of delight

When first she gleamed upon my sight;

A lovely apparition, sent

To be a moment’s ornament.’

‘That is so beautiful,’ sighed a blushing Emerald.

Having taken Polaroid photographs of Jupiter from all angles, she was now, because she was poor, gathering up all the discarded pieces of clay to use again. It was so nice to be chatted up and praised by such an attractive man. Emerald liked David’s warm dark eyes and, not being tall, he didn’t dwarf her.

‘Lovely name, Emerald Cartwright.’ He examined the green card she handed him. ‘You are so promotable, darling.’

Stepping out of the back office, David noticed his assistant waving frantically from across the road. One of his best clients, also flushed from a good lunch, had just rolled up.

‘I’ll call you,’ David told Emerald, and shot back to the Pulborough, shortly to be followed by Kevin Coley, saying he’d almost certainly buy the drawing of the English setter.

‘Put a red spot on it, Jupey, Daisy could make a fortune if we used it commercially. Can I have one of your cards too?’ he asked Emerald.

Shaking with rage, Jupiter poured himself and Emerald glasses of wine, and asked her if she were hungry. Emerald looked at him from under her lashes: ‘Could I have another half an hour on the head?’

Sitting in position again, Jupiter failed to control his anger.

‘How dare fucking David Pulborough swan in here when he’s just poached my brother Jonathan and signed him up for an exhibition in the autumn?’

‘Has he?’ asked Emerald in amazement. ‘That’s atrocious.’

‘Broke my father’s heart. Jonathan’s always been his favourite child,’ said Jupiter bitterly. ‘David’ll make a fortune if he can get any work out of him. Dad never managed to. Jonathan won’t like it. I concede work suffers if you’re too generous on the advance front, but at least he got paid when we represented him. David’s not only tight, he isn’t straight.’

Even more upsetting, without his brother as an incentive, all Jonathan’s wild Young British Artist friends would no longer be so keen to show their work at Jupiter’s proposed East End gallery.

‘That’s terribly disloyal of Jonathan,’ said Emerald crossly and hypocritically, ‘family should
always
come first.’

She was on the floor again, her hair escaping from its violet scarf. As she looked up at his chin and jawline, a smudge of clay enhanced her flawless face like a beauty spot. Jupiter was appalled how much he wanted to rip off her clothes.

‘Have you got a boyfriend?’

‘Sort of.’ Emerald waved a pointed stick at the last drawing in her still-open portfolio.

‘What nationality is he?’ asked Jupiter.

‘American Jewish, originally from Vienna.’

‘Great face.’

Emerald shrugged: ‘I suppose so. He disappears for weeks on end, never says he loves me, I’m not sure of him.’

Jupiter sighed and said he wasn’t at all sure of his wild sister Sienna and his curmudgeonly brother Alizarin, who had once painted so brilliantly but now exhausted himself producing grotesque unsellable rubbish.

‘Alizarin’s pictures should be stuck on the ceiling at the dentist’s, to show people how much fun it is having one’s teeth drilled.’

Emerald giggled. Such had been her excitement at sculpting Jupiter, she was astounded that she had clean forgotten her original mission.

‘How does your mother cope with such a large family?’ she asked innocently.

Jupiter, whose last memory of Galena was of her being so drunk, she had had to be locked in Raymond’s Bentley during a Bagley Hall Speech Day, said that his mother was dead.

‘We’ve got a stepmother.’

‘Is she nice?’ Emerald nearly sliced off Jupiter’s clay eyebrow, her hand was suddenly shaking so much.

‘Wonderful,’ said Jupiter with unusual warmth. ‘She’s held our family together despite Alizarin and Sienna giving her so much aggro. She and I have always got on and she’s great with Dad, who’s an old drama queen who needs keeping in check, but she always does it nicely.’

Jupiter’s flat tummy gave a great rumble, as he added, ‘Anthea came to this gallery at eighteen, as a temp, and was so pretty the clients flocked. Dad was her first lover. She picked up the pieces after our mother died.’

Maybe Raymond
was
her father. Emerald was enchanted. She felt so grateful to Jupiter for being sweet about Anthea.

By three-thirty, more punters were trickling in, Jupiter had to get down to hanging Daisy’s pictures and Emerald had nearly finished his head. Jupiter was inwardly ecstatic, in a situation of which every dealer dreams: finding a brilliant young artist whom no-one is yet on to, who can still be bought cheap – and who also he wants to fuck insensible. But all he said was: ‘It’s coming on nicely. Needs another sitting.’

In the past Jupiter had been accused of giving unimaginative presents. Emerald’s head, he decided, would be the perfect silver wedding present for his father and Anthea.

As Emerald sprayed the head with water and wrapped it in plastic, Jupiter told her about the party. There would be lots of important dealers and clients there. He would see Emerald and her boyfriend got an invite.

Quite forgetting he needed a squeaky-clean image if he were to oust William Hague and take over the Tory Party, Jupiter suggested Emerald left the head behind and finished it off tomorrow evening.

‘I’ll buy you dinner and we can discuss your career.’

It was crucial, he told himself in justification, that he signed her up before David Pulborough got his grubby hands on her.

‘Limesbridge here I come,’ murmured Emerald in ecstasy as he put her into a taxi. ‘One gorgeous older brother down and two to go.’

But as they passed the Ritz, she had to jump out and dive into the Ladies, where she threw up and up and up; then she cried her heart out all the way home from shock and nervous tension.

Two nights later, Emerald finished Jupiter’s head. Afterwards she dined with him at Langan’s and was so anxious to learn more about Anthea and the Belvedons that for once she didn’t talk obsessively about herself, except to thank Jupiter when he promised to help her with her career. Jupiter misconstrued her frantic dive into a taxi afterwards as an attempt to prevent him jumping on her, when it was only to stop him coming home with her and discovering in what a squalid area she lived. This in no way diminished his lust. Next day Emerald fired the head, leaving it in the kiln for a day, filling in the cracks with car body filler and painting them over, before sending it round to the Belvedon in a taxi.

As the day of the silver wedding party approached, she became more and more histrionic, picking fights, tidying frenziedly, driving Zac further into himself.