Pandora (39 page)

Jonathan meanwhile had picked up the latest Pulborough catalogue and, after reading a paragraph or two, chucked it down.

‘The copy’s far too lucid. You must obscure it up a bit, throw in a few “pivotals” and “seminals”. Can I have a drink?’

David looked at his watch. ‘I suppose so.’

As Zoe went off to get a bottle, Jonathan moved on to the subject of Emerald.

‘I cannot imagine Dad shagging Anthea out of wedlock. You were around in October 1972, and much more of a stud than Dad. Are you sure you didn’t give Anthea one?’

‘I was barely back from honeymoon, for Christ’s sake.’ David, turning purpler than his cushions, moved around the gallery fussily straightening straight pictures, lining up folders. ‘Your father was certainly besotted, but so were the clients and the artists, particularly Casey and Joan.’

‘Doesn’t stack up. Dad’s not the sort of person you don’t tell you’re pregnant. Even if he was terrified of Mum finding out, he’d have supported Anthea financially, and he adores children so much, he’d have accepted Emerald if she’d had two heads. I’m pushing for a DNA test. Thanks, angel.’ Jonathan accepted a glass of Sancerre from a blushing Zoe. ‘Any crisps for Diggory?’

‘We don’t keep them,’ snapped David, frowning at Zoe for wasting wine kept for important clients on mere artists.

Gone too were the days when he could scoop up crisps like a starved schoolboy. It irritated the hell out of him that despite being twenty-five years older, Raymond had retained his spare, elegant figure and his mane of silver hair.

Jonathan would have returned to the subject of Emerald, if he hadn’t wanted a further advance from David, who refused to give him one.

‘Gallery owners,’ grumbled Jonathan, ‘always think of artists lying under trees getting drunk on their advances.’

‘Artists,’ replied David crisply, ‘always think of gallery owners riding round in Rolls-Royces, living off their fifty per cent commission. You’ve no idea of the overheads of this place.’

Jonathan then produced the two nudes of Sienna.

Cultivating idiosyncrasies to attract the cartoonists, David had recently taken to wearing a monocle, with which he now examined Sienna’s body.

‘Why does she ruin her beauty with all those studs?’

‘I’m thinking of calling these two
Stud Farm I
and
II
.’

‘Those legs go on for ever,’ sighed David.

Jonathan smiled enigmatically. ‘And they start at an interesting place too. How much can you sell them for?’

‘I can’t,’ said David firmly. ‘She’s your sister, they’re far too controversial. When are you going to get started on Rupert Campbell-Black and Dame Hermione?’

‘Rupert’s always busy,’ complained Jonathan, ‘and I’m terrified of Diggory disappearing down Dame Hermione’s snatch, never to return. That’s the trouble with Jack Russells. I’ll get someone to video her.’

‘She wants you in person,’ said David crossly. ‘And the National Portrait Gallery wants more from you too.’

‘Brian Organ often uses photographs as an aidememoire.’

‘Photographs are only a point of reference. The extent of live sittings
always
enhances the quality. I’ve also had complaints from clients,’ went on David sternly, ‘and particularly from the Arts Council and the Tate, that you’re not providing enough input, that they’ll get a face or perhaps a nose painted by you if they’re lucky.’

‘I don’t understand the fuss,’ said Jonathan sulkily. ‘With the great portrait painters, Raphael, Van Dyck, Reynolds, it was a huge studio operation, someone did the hands, someone else the clothes and the curtains, horses were done by the horse specialist. The lead painter often only did the face, but he got the biggest fee, because he had to do all the smooth talking to get the commissions and take the flak afterwards – like I do.’

‘I’ll be taking all the flak from now on,’ said David firmly. ‘You’ve just got to get that pretty nose to the grindstone.’

The meeting broke up firstly because an incredibly rich and evil member of the Russian Mafia called Minsky Kraskov (who wanted to launder a pile of drug money and whose visit David wanted to keep secret) was due any minute, and secondly because Diggory suddenly decided to mount David’s pinstriped leg.

‘Bugger off,’ yelled David, ‘and the little bastard’s lifted his leg on that Sisley.’

A trickle could be seen running down a canvas of a poplar wood, which was leaning against the wall.

‘Shows how realistic the trees are,’ said Jonathan unrepentantly.

‘Get out,’ shouted David.

Glancing across Cork Street, Jonathan saw the paparazzi gathered outside the Belvedon watching his brother Jupiter grimly hanging the new Joan Bideford exhibition. With olives from the island of Lesbos as nibbles at the private view, thought Jonathan. Pulling Emerald’s address, which he had transferred from his wrist onto a bit of paper, out of his jeans pocket, he set out for Shepherd’s Bush.

He found Patience, her eyes red and puffy, her crimson-veined face covered in blotches, devastated by Emerald’s piece in the
Mail
. After several large whiskys, Ian had gone off minicabbing. She prayed he wouldn’t lose his licence.

Patience knew adopted children often sought out their real mothers and one mustn’t be clinging, but she’d never dreamt it would hurt so much. It was probably to do with losing the house, working in the bar, and having to boost Ian, who hated having to be endlessly charming to his passengers. It had been rather a grim year and she couldn’t stop crying. Plump Sophy had taken the day off, pleading food poisoning, to comfort her mother.

‘I told Emo not to do it,’ she told Jonathan furiously.

Jonathan was perfect. Used to endless crises at Foxes Court, he put his arms round Patience and hugged her until she stopped crying.

‘It’s only a honeymoon,’ he soothed her, ‘Anthea is such a bitch, Emerald’ll suss her out soon. It’s just rather a glamorous set-up.’

He’d pinched two bottles of champagne from the party, which he proceeded to open. Diggory got a much better reception than he had at the Pulborough and was soon curled up on Patience’s knee, eating crisps and looking interested. Unlike Zac, Jonathan was quite unfazed by the overcrowded sitting room; it reminded him of his own studio. Everywhere he noticed pictures of and by Emerald.

‘I feel so awful Emo didn’t confide in us,’ said Patience dolefully. ‘They told us at the adoption society that if we were good parents the children would never feel the need to seek out their real parents. If you can’t have babies, you’re haunted by guilt that you’ve done something wicked to warrant it, that you’re not worthy and certainly not capable of looking after a child or loving it enough.’

She picked up a Mothering Sunday card, gathering dust on the bookshelf.

‘I was so scared of taking on anything as exquisite as Emerald. I nearly dropped her when they handed her over. But by the end of the weekend, I’d fallen in love totally. She was so beautiful, and she had such blue eyes when she was born. We called her Emerald, because it was my mother’s second name.’

‘Much better than Charlene,’ said Jonathan, filling up her glass. ‘Diggory was called Spot when I got him from Battersea.’

‘Such a dear little dog.’ Patience dropped a kiss on Diggory’s orange and white head. ‘I know we spoiled Emerald, to make up for her losing her real parents, smothering her with love, letting her do what she wanted.

‘But it’s always been such a privilege to have her. I’m so proud of her. I don’t expect she said half the things in that horrible article. She’s so talented – you can see where she gets it from now. I always knew we were too dull for her.’

Sophy, sick of her mother making allowances, raised her eyes to heaven and, worried that Patience was getting drunk, went off to make lunch. Being Monday, no-one had been shopping and she could only find a cauliflower, a chunk of ancient mousetrap decorated with her own toothmarks, and a tin of rhubarb. She could make cauliflower cheese. She borrowed a pint of milk from the gay actors upstairs who, having read the
Mail
, were deeply sympathetic.

‘Tell Patience there’s a large Scotch waiting whenever she wants.’

‘Emerald’s always had such high expectations,’ Patience was telling Jonathan. ‘She was so excited when Sophy arrived from Belfast. Mind you, Sophy’s typically Irish, so sweet and easy going, always putting camomile on everyone’s nettle stings. Anyway, when she arrived, one of Emerald’s friends announced: “My baby sister came out of my mother’s tummy.” “My baby sister,” said Emerald proudly, “came out of an aeroplane.”’

Jonathan laughed and refilled Patience’s glass and let her run on because he was interested, learning that they’d got Emerald from an adoption society in Harrogate, and her mother was definitely Anthea Rookhope, who’d worked in a gallery, but the father had withheld his name.

‘We never dreamt it would be someone as distinguished and clever as your father,’ said Patience humbly. ‘I love his programmes. Ian, Emerald’s father, is very unarty.’

‘Nice-looking man’ – Jonathan picked up a photograph – ‘and lovely horse you’re riding.’

‘I always prayed every night that Tony Blair wouldn’t stop hunting, but sadly I stopped instead.’

‘Lunch,’ announced Sophy. ‘I hope you don’t mind eating in the kitchen.’

Jonathan, who hadn’t eaten since the Quality Street he’d wolfed with Knightie on Saturday afternoon, had two helpings of cauliflower cheese and three of rhubarb crumble, and took a huge shine to Sophy. He liked her merriness, her sweet round face, her beautiful skin, and her soft voice with its faint Yorkshire accent.

Sophy couldn’t believe Jonathan. He was the most glamorous man she’d ever met, and so cosy and unfrightening, unlike Zac who was coolly contemptuous and who reined in his emotions like a dressage horse. She could hardly eat any lunch, and kept leaping up to examine Jonathan at a different angle: such eyelashes, such cheekbones, such an amused sleepy smile.

‘Goodness, it’s five o’clock.’ Patience tottered off to get ready for work.

‘D’you think I ought to do her shift for her?’ asked Sophy.

Jonathan shook his head.

‘Some of your pupils are bound to pop in for a drink after work and sneak. I’ll drop her off.’

Having delivered Patience, he returned with more bottles and they carried on drinking with Sophy raging against Emerald.

‘My parents are absolutely skint, but bloody Emerald still gets a socking great allowance and the use of a studio. And she lied in that horrible piece. Mum and Dad gave her everything, spoilt her rotten to compensate for her losing her first parents. And it was Emo who insisted on being sent to a boarding school, and got the shock of her life when it wasn’t as jolly as Malory Towers.’

Jonathan proceeded to give a blow by blow of how Jupiter had been conned, and how Zac had waltzed Anthea out to her doom.

‘Not the Blue Danube, but the boathouse by the River Fleet.’

‘God, I wish I’d been there.’ Sophy’s eyes – the innocent azure of the sky after a big storm – were absolutely popping.

‘What persuaded her to seek out Anthea?’

‘I’m sure it was Zac. He met her when we were rich. It was only after he came back from America and discovered Daddy’d gone belly up that she started searching for her natural mother.’

‘Nothing natural about Anthea, ask her hairdresser.’

Sophy giggled.

‘Zac’s been pushing her all the way.’

‘Must think Dad’s richer than he is. How come you’re so much nicer than Emerald?’

‘I’m more of a drip. I went to the local grammar school rather than Emo’s posh boarding school, because I didn’t want to leave Mummy and Daddy and the animals, and I’m a second child,’ said Sophy, ‘and so as parents they were much more relaxed. The only reason I’d like to meet my birth mother is to see what she looked like and find out my medical history. She must have been fat.’

‘Wide birth mother,’ grinned Jonathan. ‘Have you got a boyfriend?’

‘I’ve got one who takes me to the opera.’

‘I bet he bikes to work.’

‘How did you know? He tried to make me cycle to school, but I couldn’t get up in time, so he paid for me to go to a gym. Last night, I snogged the instructor,’ confessed Sophy, ‘so I can’t go back.’