Pandora (58 page)

Alizarin, in fact, had been with Hanna, whom he’d spent most of the fireworks comforting. Alas, Jupiter had been informed by an indignant Dora that she’d found Hanna and Alizarin in a steamy clinch.

‘We’d better tackle him before Dad gets home,’ he said grimly. Envy and Avarice, red in tooth and claw, he and Anthea belted down to the Lodge. They found Alizarin working on his Free Zone picture, laboriously painting in each despairing face with the aid of a vast magnifying glass.

‘What a mess!’ Anthea gazed round the studio in horror. ‘And when are you going to cut down those nettles?’

‘They provide sanctuary for the peacock butterfly. I’m surprised Emerald isn’t seeking refuge there.’

‘Don’t be cheeky.’ Anthea’s mood was not improved by a hauntingly beautiful portrait of Zac propped against the wall. A forgotten beef sandwich was gathering flies on the window ledge. Anthea shuddered.

‘What d’you want?’ demanded Alizarin. ‘I haven’t got any drink.’

‘You spent a long time with Zac on Tuesday night,’ snapped Jupiter, ‘did he ask you about the Raphael?’

‘He said he was looking for it.’

‘Why didn’t you warn us?’ screeched Anthea.

‘It was the guy’s picture, for God’s sake.’

‘It bloody isn’t,’ exploded Jupiter. ‘I suppose you tipped him off.’

‘I told him he was getting warm. We’ve got all this.’ Alizarin waved his paintbrush in the direction of Foxes Court. ‘His family lost everything.’

‘How dare you! If he’s got nothing, how can he afford all those designer clothes and the jetting around?’ exploded Anthea. ‘And what right have you to talk about what we’ve got? Who pays for your Health Service, your dole money, your libraries? Your father does with his taxes. You don’t contribute a thing. How dare you take this moralizing tone. I know Raymond slips you a bit. You’re thirty-five, for God’s sake, not fifteen. Just get out, you disgusting bum.’

At last she could get her hands on the Lodge for holiday lets.

‘You lost us the Raphael,’ said Jupiter. ‘Have you no idea how tough things are at the gallery? Anthea’s right. If you had any integrity, you’d pack your bags and get out.’

Alizarin was too proud to protest. But after they’d gone he hugged Visitor in terror. He looked round at his pictures which he’d painted with such love but still the world hadn’t liked them. He watched the moon slowly turn from gold to silver, and thought how lovely it would have been to grow old with Sophy and see her blond hair go grey, then found that he was crying.

In the morning he was gone, taking only Galena’s palette, the Etienne de Montigny drawing of her, half a dozen canvasses, and Visitor. He left enough money to pay the milkman, Visitor’s vet’s bills, and for Knightie to put flowers on Galena’s grave.

Raymond was horrified to hear when he got back from London that Alizarin had moved out. Why had the Raphael and all his children deserted him? Anthea replied that Alizarin had confessed to tipping off Zac about the picture. She then lied that, after a row, Alizarin had gone of his own accord.

‘Just the sort of kick up the backside an artist needs,’ she kept saying as she despatched all Alizarin’s pictures and Galena’s furniture to damp and draughty outbuildings. ‘Ridiculous living at home at thirty-five, he’ll be grateful one day.’

One of the first tasks of the workmen renovating the Lodge for holiday lets was to paint the walls Alizarin had used as canvasses. Dora and Dicky were devastated by his departure and they particularly missed Visitor. Who would finish up the food they didn’t like? Who would there be for Diggory to boss or to comfort poor nervous Grenville?

Dora retaliated by scrawling in lipstick all over the hall wallpaper, and being pronounced as ‘thoroughly disturbed’ and ‘in need of a psychiatrist’ by Anthea.

‘I’m going to divorce my mother,’ raged Dora to Harriet of the
Independent
. ‘I’ll give you all the dirt if you pay for some new hall wallpaper.’

‘We can’t afford that.’

‘I’ll go to the
Sun
.’

‘Oh, all right then.’

Jupiter would have felt more guilty about evicting Alizarin if Hanna hadn’t flipped when she heard the news. Packing her bags, she had gone off to stay with her mother in Norway.

An enraged Jupiter had visions of Alizarin joining her there. But first things first. Feeling it more important to retrieve the Raphael than his wife, Jupiter flew to Geneva. Here he headed for the Free Port, a VAT-exempt zone, full of safe deposits stuffed with cash, valuables and pictures. He prayed one of the family might have thrust Pandora into the Belvedon vault, but when he arrived, he found nothing but David Pulborough and one of his clients, a Russian Mafia thug called Minsky Kraskov, sniffing around on their way to the Hermitage.

Jonathan, convinced that Zac and Si were in league, rang
Mercury
, the New York art magazine for which Zac was allegedly working, and discovered that although he had never written for them, the group was owned by Si.

Determined to find out more about Zac and the fate of the Raphael before 1944 when it fell into Raymond’s hands, Jonathan flew to Vienna in early August. At Emerald’s birthday dinner, Zac had let slip that his great-grandfather had owned a house in a street called Schwindgasse. Hoping for a slum, Jonathan was irritated to find the street lined with beautiful faded ochre houses with balconies and large gardens in one of the oldest, most charming parts of Vienna. At the end of the street was the Schwarzenberg Palace, a splendid baroque pile in its own park, flanking lovely public gardens.

Jonathan got no joy either from the old house or Zac’s family. The present owner, a sleek blonde, initially charmed by Jonathan’s helpless smile and melting dark eyes, admitted that a Jewish family had lived there before the war, but clearly didn’t wish to enlarge on the speed with which they’d been turfed out. As if weeping for their plight, huge drops of rain suddenly poured out of the dark grey clouds above. As Vienna was in the grip of a punishing heatwave, Jonathan revelled in the impromptu cold shower.

Splashing happily up streets named after Goethe, Mahler and Schubert, past theatres, a sculpture by Henry Moore, and the ice-green dome of the great Charles Cathedral, he paused to listen to the joyful din of the Vienna Philharmonic rehearsing for tonight’s concert. On all sides were museums and galleries, many of them showing one of Jonathan’s favourite artists, Gustav Klimt, whose ornate gilded portraits of
femmes fatales
had outraged turn-of-the-century Vienna. The whole area, in fact, was the perfect setting for an enlightened bourgeois Jewish family steeped in the arts. Tomorrow, vowed Jonathan, he’d go on a Klimt crawl. Today he had more urgent plans and splashed on until he reached the spot on the corner of Singer Strasse and Kärtner Strasse where Zac’s Great-uncle Jacob’s gallery had stood in the shadow of Vienna’s other great cathedral, St Stephen’s. Bombed to rubble by the Allies, the splendid old building had been replaced by shops and a block of flats.

Jonathan was about to seek out the porter, when his heart turned a double somersault. For there, drenched, dressed entirely in black, blown against the front door like a poplar leaf, was his own
femme fatale
.

Fortunately, he had plenty of time to regain his cool. So great was Emerald’s self-absorption, she didn’t even seem surprised to see him.

‘I hoped I’d find Zac here, not you,’ she sobbed. ‘Maybe he never loved me, but I can’t stop loving him. I know I’m going to end up an old maid. Sophy’s bound to marry early, she’s always had low standards. Anthea married at twenty. Even Mummy, who looks like a horse, got a husband by the time she was twenty-four. I always vowed I’d be married by the time I was twenty-seven – and that’s less than a year to go. I know I’m going to be left on the shelf.’

‘Can I break into this explosion of shelf-pity?’ interrupted Jonathan, who was having difficulty keeping a straight face. ‘By telling you the word “Raphael” means “God heals” in Hebrew, so you’re going to be OK. And you don’t want to be a bride anyway, white truly isn’t your colour.’

‘Oh shut up, you’ve just rolled up to be objectionable.’

She had reddened eyes and a red nose, like a Vick’s advertisement; her scraped-back hair had crinkled in the downpour. She looked quite plain, which cheered Jonathan immensely. He felt much more able to carry out his game plan.

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.

‘Working – and hoping to find out more about the Raphael.’ He held out his hand. ‘Let’s start again. Brother and sister. Did you know that “yes” and “no” mean the same in Vienna? No wonder Zac was dodgy.’

‘Don’t take the piss,’ grumbled Emerald, but she stopped crying. ‘I haven’t got anywhere to stay.’

To win her confidence, convinced, like Jupiter, she wasn’t his sister, Jonathan booked her into the room next to his at his hotel, which was in a quiet street, and overlooked an ivy-clad courtyard at the back, ‘So you can’t grumble about traffic keeping you awake. I expect you’d like to unpack and get out of those sopping clothes, then we’ll explore the city.’

And what a breathtaking city it was. Each building seemed to celebrate the rampant hedonism of the Viennese. On every ledge pomegranates spilt, leaves sprouted, cherubs gambolled, muscular giants wrestled, horses reared up, heraldic lions raised paws.

‘You feel a worship of the Imperial past almost amounting to necrophilia,’ said Jonathan as they dined that evening in a stunning restaurant housed in the Schwarzenberg Palace overlooking the park and floodlit fountains. Emerald for once was starving and was soon tucking into lobster cooked in Chablis sauce to be followed by pigeon cassoulet. Jonathan, who’d seemed awash with cash, had ordered Dom Pérignon, followed by a matchless bottle of red, and was clearly pulling the stops out in preparation for the great pass later, Emerald decided. But his behaviour puzzled her; usually so tactile, he hadn’t laid a finger on her, except grabbing her to prevent her being mowed down by a lorry when she forgot that Austrians drove on the right. The Dom Pérignon was also his first drink of the day. There was colour in his normally pale cheeks, his eyes were clear and the bags beneath them as well as his gut had nearly disappeared.

Looking gorgeous on purpose, just to tempt me, she thought crossly.

‘Why did you paint me as Pandora?’

‘Because Pandora means “all gifted” and because, according to Hesiod, she was the most beautiful woman the Gods could invent.’ Then, as Emerald smirked, he added, ‘But she was also a silly trivial Nosy Parker, who couldn’t resist opening a box she shouldn’t and wrecking everyone’s lives.’

‘Did I really screw things up for your family?’ asked Emerald, appalled.

‘Totally, but in the end it may shake down for the good.’

‘I couldn’t help it.’ Defiantly she clashed her knife and fork together, telling Jonathan he had ruined her appetite. ‘They say it takes a major crisis to force adopted people to seek out their real parents. We lost our wonderful house in Yorkshire, all my stability and roots gone in a trice.’ Her green eyes welled with tears.

‘Sophy told me you loathed the house in Yorkshire and never went there. Now eat up your lobster and don’t be silly.’

‘The bitch, how dare Sophy?’

Jonathan put his head on one side.

‘Emer
ald
,’ he said gently.

For a second she glared at him, then, to his amazement, she laughed. ‘Well, perhaps I did loathe it, but I liked it as a status symbol.’

‘Good girl.’ Delighted at such a concession, Jonathan patted her shoulders. But when she arched against him, provocative as a cat, he steeled himself to whip his hand away.

By the time he’d settled the massive bill it was approaching midnight, but Jonathan suddenly seemed in a hurry to get home.

‘He’s going to pounce,’ thought Emerald, churning in terror and excitement as she pounded the pavements after him.

Her fears were confirmed when he collected both their hotel keys and bundled her into the creaking Art Deco lift. Feeling his wine-flavoured breath lifting her hair and warming her forehead, she rammed herself against her side of the lift. But having opened her bedroom door for her, Jonathan bid her a swift goodnight.

‘I’m off to watch the porn channel. You get five free minutes a night, and if you run them together at midnight, you can get ten minutes on the trot. See you in the morning.’ And to Emerald’s chagrin, he merely pecked her on the cheek and shot into his room.