Pandora (53 page)

‘A gorgeous area,’ mumbled Hanna. Oh God, don’t let Jupiter and Alizarin kill each other.

As Jonathan surreptitiously scribbled both Zac’s addresses on the inside of his wrist, Dora was left to defuse the situation. Wriggling out of her chair between Alizarin and Jupiter, who were still glowering and clenching their fists, she said tartly, ‘Chill out, you two yobbos, I do not wish to be used as the Centre Court tennis net.’

Everyone burst out laughing except Jupiter and Alizarin, who, after a lot more scowling, sat down. Dora flounced off down the table to talk to Patience.

‘Mrs Cartwright, Emerald said you rode at the Horse of the Year Show.’

‘Well, I came second in the Working Hunter, and third in the Foxhunter one year,’ admitted Patience.

‘Could you come and meet my pony Loofah?’ begged Dora. ‘He’s brilliant at cross-country because I can’t stop him, but he always ploughs the dressage, because he won’t canter on the right leg and he sits down if I scold him.’

Next moment, Rosemary had cried out, ‘Why, it’s “Virty” Cameron! I’ve just twigged.’

Discovering they’d been at school together, Rosemary and Patience, with screams of laughter, started swapping stories about the dorm and the lax pitch. An utterly fascinated Dora sat on an equally entranced Raymond’s knee to listen to them.

‘Did you really put a drawing pin on the vicar’s chair?’ she asked in awe.

‘I’m afraid we did.’ Patience wiped her eyes.

‘He was so fat, he didn’t feel it!’ Rosemary went off into gales of mirth. ‘And remember the time we undressed Miss Hinton?’

‘Yes, yes,’ cried Patience, ‘the poor woman’s legs wriggled like a bluebottle’s, we were awful, and what about putting your rabbit in Miss Murdoch’s desk.’

‘It was
your
hamster, Virty.’

‘Why d’you call Mum “Virty”?’ enquired a thrilled Sophy.

‘Patience is a Virtue, of course,’ said Rosemary.

Everyone laughed.

‘What was your nickname?’ asked Dora.

‘Rosebud or something inappropriate.’

‘Mildew more likely. Extraordinary that one school could produce two such ugly women,’ Anthea whispered to Si, who didn’t react. Too busy gazing at them in horror, thought Anthea.

Smugly she rose to supervise her pièce de résistance. Green chartreuse waterlilies, decorated with Es of angelica, should elicit more admiration and excitement than the fireworks.

‘Some enchanted evening’, played the string quartet.

Anthea smiled at Zac. Seeing his chance as Raymond also rose to organize the pudding wine, Si abandoned Geraldine on his left, who was bending the ear of an oblivious, still enraged Jupiter, and shot down the table. David, avid to make his number with Si, had already set off round the table to take Anthea’s place, only to find Si moved on and himself reduced to squandering vital networking time on his own mistress.

Si meanwhile had pinched Raymond’s seat and was producing photographs of horses out of his wallet to show Rosemary, Patience and Dora.

‘Much nicer than soppy wives.’ Dora pored over them. ‘He’s great. What’s his name?’

‘Intensive,’ said Si.

‘Didn’t he win the Arc last year?’ gasped Patience.

‘That’s my boy.’

‘I had a monkey on Intensive,’ called out Lily, who was still getting on like a house on fire with Ian. ‘Thank you, Mr Greenbridge.’

‘I never see my mother these days,’ Dora was soulfully telling Patience, ‘she’s so besotted with Emerald.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Patience humbly. ‘They’ve got a lot of years to catch up.’

Rosemary, taking delight in doing a number on the Cartwrights, knowing it would enrage Anthea, loudly suggested she and Patience should go to an Old Girls’ Reunion in London in October.

‘Oh do let’s,’ squeaked Patience in excitement.

‘We could have lunch at the Reform first, I’ve just become a member.’

‘I’ll be back at school,’ said Dora wistfully.

To everyone’s astonishment, Si then promised to fly her down to see his horses in one of the Greenbridge jets in the Christmas holidays.

‘And if you two ladies would care to join us?’

‘We would indeed,’ said Rosemary. ‘Whatever happened to Biffy Miles?’

Anthea was seething. All these upper-middle-class rituals and talk of people she didn’t know. It was as though they were speaking Chinese. Ah, here was her wonderful dessert.

‘My God,’ said Jonathan, looking down at his plate. ‘Are we eating more Belvedon emeralds?’

Drunks being evicted from the Goat in Boots were having difficulty making their protests heard over rumbling thunder.

‘I wish you were our sister, not Emerald,’ Dicky was telling Sophy.

‘We all do,’ murmured Jonathan, Sienna and Dora in unison.

Patience wanted to shout that Emerald wasn’t really horrible, that she just got defensive and aggressive when she was insecure and frightened. Emo could be so lovely. Patience took another huge gulp of delicious pudding wine; next moment her glass was filled up.

She had so hoped Emo and Jonathan would get on. Alizarin, the one whose name kept tripping off Sophy’s lips, seemed rather an austere chap, watching everyone with those sombre screwed-up eyes, and not addressing a word to poor Sophy. Jonathan’s sister looked as though she wanted to knife everyone too. Such a shame when she was so beautiful, despite all those rings and studs.

All through dinner Sienna had been conscious of her beloved Jonathan’s preoccupation with Emerald, but images of naked Zac kept flickering before her eyes, upsetting her terribly. From time to time he caught her eye across the table, and his mouth lifted at one corner. Occasionally his eyes travelled lazily downwards. Sienna had never had any inhibitions about stripping off in public but suddenly she felt embarrassed to be wearing such a see-through top, and kept folding her arms aggressively over her breasts like a rugger player in a group photograph. She loathed the idea of Zac in bed with Anthea and even more that he and Si could be after their beloved Raphael.

‘Which is the least deadly of the sins?’ she asked Jonathan.

‘Lust,’ replied Jonathan dropping a kiss on the skylark tattooed on her shoulder.

Irked by the ecstasy on Sienna’s face, Emerald felt utterly bewildered.
She
was the birthday girl. Why did so many of the Belvedons seem to prefer fat Sophy and her plain, shiny-faced mother? Dora had just dragged Patience off to meet the appalling Loofah.

‘Don’t be long,’ Anthea called after them. ‘Daddah wants to make a speech, and we’ve got the birthday cake to come, and Charlene, I’m sorry I can’t get out of calling her that, has got to open her gifts before the fireworks.’

Anthea grabbed the spotlight again when Emerald’s cake arrived and everyone said how pretty it was. But no-one said what a caring mother she had been to have made it. I should have asked Neville and Green Jean as a support group, thought Anthea darkly.

‘What are you going to wish for?’ asked Jonathan, as Emerald plunged a knife into the white icing.

‘That you were at the bottom of the river with Chigi’s gold plate,’ spat Emerald.

Raymond tried to smooth things over by making an eloquent, charming speech welcoming all the Cartwrights and particularly Emerald.

‘Let us all drink to my lovely new daughter.’

‘To the green-eyed monster,’ said Jonathan draining his glass.

Ignoring him, Emerald rose to her feet: ‘I’d like to thank Raymond and Anthea, my marvellous new parents, for being so wonderful to me.’

‘Mention Mum and Dad,’ hissed Sophy.

‘And it’s lovely to have Mummy and Daddy and Sofa here and all my family around me,’ added Emerald.

Guiltily aware that he had deeply embarrassed Hanna by winding up Jupiter, Alizarin looked across at Sophy in that dreadful green sack dress, whose pattern his eyes were too bad to distinguish, and thought how adorable she was and how anxious about everyone when she should be enjoying herself. He had relived so often that strange peace he had experienced after collapsing beside her in Jonathan’s studio. He had longed to ring her, but had nothing to offer but poverty and a guide dog’s role. A blind artist was as much use . . .

Another rumble of thunder made them all jump, but it was only Robens trundling Emerald’s presents down in a wheelbarrow.

‘It looks like rain. You’d better open those after the fireworks,’ called out Anthea. ‘Robens can wheel them back up again.’

‘Just let her open mine,’ begged Raymond.

‘Seesaw, Margery Daw, Emerald shall have an Old Master,’ sang Jonathan.

Everyone held their breath. But Raymond’s present turned out to be a beautiful Augustus John pastel of one of his mistresses, which nevertheless caused gasps of admiration.

‘Oh how fabulous,’ cried Emerald, hugging Raymond in delight. ‘You are kind.’

‘Ha, ha, ha,’ whispered Raymond gleefully to Sienna and Jonathan. ‘You avaricious lot thought it was something else.’

‘Now I want Emerald to open
my
present.’ Jonathan handed her another oblong parcel.

But this time when Emerald had ripped off the red paper wishing her congratulations on her retirement, there were gasps of horror, for inside was an exquisite copy of the Raphael.

‘What is it?’ demanded Lily, putting on her spectacles.

‘
Pandora’s Box
,’ announced Jonathan happily, ‘and most of you are in it. Remember Botticelli painted all the important members of the Medici family into his
Adoration of the Magi
? Well, this is the Unholy Family.’

Taking the picture from a bewildered Emerald, he held it up for everyone to see.

‘Look, Emerald is Pandora, opening the box by turning up here. Zac is Epimetheus, I’m Sloth of course, Visitor is Greed, Big Al is Pride, our kid sister natch’ – he ran a finger down Sienna’s furiously mouthing face – ‘is Wrath, Jupiter is Avarice’ – Jonathan started to laugh – ‘our dear stepmother is Envy, but she and Jupiter could easily swap sins!’

‘Ay am not envious or avaricious,’ squawked Anthea.

‘How dare you?’ thundered Raymond.

‘Very easily,’ said Jonathan, who hadn’t really needed to provide a key, his drawings were so lifelike. ‘Here is David with his monocle as Lust, and can you see yourself peering through the window in your tin hat, Dad, Mercury the voyeur?’

‘Shut up,’ roared Raymond going crimson.

‘It’s kinda neat,’ volunteered Si, raising an eyebrow at Zac, who had gone very still.

‘I recognize that picture from somewhere,’ mused Somerford.

‘What the hell are you playing at?’ hissed Jupiter. ‘Put the fucking thing away.’

‘It’s mine.’ Emerald grabbed the picture. ‘Thank you, Jonathan.’

‘I see you left out Hope,’ said Sienna bleakly.

I don’t understand what’s going on, thought Ian Cartwright, but I don’t like it one bit. I don’t want these pirates stealing my darling Emerald.

Everyone jumped as a mobile rang. Anthea answered it.

‘Righty ho, we’ll be up in a mo. Will everyone please converge on the terrace for fireworks?’

‘Must have a pee,’ said Sienna, wheeling off into the darkness. ‘You are so drunk,’ she loudly chided herself.

As they all trooped up to the house, Anthea surreptitiously slid her hand into Zac’s.

‘Shall we nip upstairs for a quickie during the fireworks?’

‘Sure,’ whispered Zac.

‘I’ve left the door to the tower open,’ whispered back Anthea.

‘Great. For safety you’d better switch the alarm off downstairs.’

‘I’ll just have to check everything is all right in the kitchen and that my guests are OK.’

‘The perfect hostess,’ murmured Zac, raising her hand to his lips. ‘Don’t hurry. I’ll wait for you.’

Anthea felt giddy with longing, but as she swayed away from Zac she started like a terrified hare when David grabbed her arm, dragging her into the shadows of an ivied ruin.

‘We must talk about Emerald.’

‘Not now,’ hissed Anthea.