Pandora (60 page)

There was great excitement about Trafford’s gay rights statement, which showed a gigantic puckered anus surrounded by a halo, entitled
Assholier Than Thou
. At the last moment, Sienna, on her animal rights soapbox, had also contributed
Slaughterhouse
, an incredibly powerful painting of an abattoir, showing fat businessmen hanging upside down from a conveyor belt, having their throats cut and slowly bleeding to death. Sienna would have preferred to tackle the subject as a moving installation, but time had been too short.

Arriving at the Greychurch, she found the usual eve-of-preview scraps going on: artists grumbling that their work was in the wrong place, badly lit or improperly installed and querying whether security was tight enough.

‘Who’d want to steal this shit anyway?’ grumbled the guards, who were anticipating riots at the preview.

Having supervised the hanging of
Slaughterhouse
, Sienna dropped in on the ultra-cool Manhattan Gallery, owned by Adrian Campbell-Black, Rupert’s younger brother, who was also an old friend of Raymond. Adrian’s features were gentler than Rupert’s, his hair light brown, his eyes pale grey, but he had the same Greek nose and olive skin without a trace of red, and the ability to turn a suit into a poem. Inside the gallery, arctic-white like an igloo, he was easily the prettiest thing, although the competition wasn’t great, the only other occupant being a vast dung beetle cast in resin.

‘No-one else but museums will buy that,’ complained Sienna as she accepted a glass of wine.

‘That’s where you’re wrong, darling.’ Adrian had the same light, clipped voice as Rupert. ‘I’ve sold three of those this week. Installations are so hot. In order to accommodate these massive excrescences, the rich are competing to build houses bigger than Buckingham Palace.’

‘My brother Jonathan has done a twenty-foot nude sculpture of Dame Hermione with a door in front, so we can all climb inside.’

‘That should do brilliantly.’ Adrian ran a duster over the dung beetle’s shoulder. ‘They adore Dame Hermione here, she’s singing
Arabella
at the Met tonight, first time back after the birth of her baby. Even though she’s ten years too old for the part and about a hundred pounds too heavy, you can’t get tickets for love nor money.’ He shook with laughter, then confided: ‘I’m rather into opera. The love of my life, a tenor called Baby Spinosissimo, is in the same production, he’s gorgeous looking. His ex, Isa Lovell, is now working with Rupert and used to be married to Tabitha – our family is so incestuous.’

‘Any news of the Raphael?’ asked Sienna idly.

‘Not a lot, despite massive publicity. I talked to Jupiter on the telephone last week, he says the police are no wiser and the entire family seem to have buggered off abroad.’

As Sienna paced restlessly round the room, Adrian noticed how tired and ill she looked, her face set and sullen, so marred by those rings and studs. She could be ravishing.

‘You OK, duckie? You’ve lost a lot of weight.’

‘I’m fine. Oh my goodness!’ Flipping through the transparencies and polaroids on the desk, she was amazed to find they were of Alizarin’s pictures.

‘They’re awesome,’ admitted Adrian, ‘like Galena’s in their intense vitality and genius with light, but they’re more intensely felt. I’m desperate to contact Alizarin about a show next year. Raymond says he’s shoved off somewhere. Any idea where he might be?’

Sienna’s joy at such recognition for Alizarin was short lived.

‘Who set this up?’

‘Zachary Ansteig.’

Zac’s name was like a brand on her shoulders.

‘He’s crazy about them,’ went on Adrian. ‘Good thing the poor boy’s got something to take his mind off the Raphael.’

‘I must go.’ Sienna leapt to her feet.

‘Good luck with Commotion,’ said Adrian. ‘It’s going to be huge. The moral majority are already sharpening their knives.’

‘Nothing to Peking,’ said Sienna as he opened the glass door for her. ‘Some artist there has put a corpse on display.’

‘We could always show Geraldine Paxton instead. Look after yourself, darling.’

Returning to the Cameron Hotel on Central Park South, into which all the Commotion artists had been booked, and which remarkably was still standing and had liquor left in the bar, Sienna was bitterly disappointed to find that Jonathan hadn’t checked in. Instead, in her pigeon-hole, was a note from Slaney Watts, the Commotion publicity officer. The media were interested in Sienna’s work. Could she make herself available for back-to-back interviews and photo-calls tomorrow?

Sienna drooped. Having spent the last seven days and nights finishing
Slaughterhouse
, and having flown out early that morning, the last thing she felt up to was a media assault. In the bar she could see Trafford and other YBAs getting hammered. She’d better ring Alizarin before she joined them. But as she took out her mobile, everything was forgotten, for with the relentless prowl of the big cat ever on the hunt, Zac padded into the lobby. He was wearing a dark grey overcoat with the collar turned up and had lost his suntan, but his yellow eyes roved just as speculatively round the foyer.

Sienna had forgotten how fatally glamorous he was. She wanted to bolt into the lift. Then Zac saw her and smiled, and she was quite unable to stop herself stumbling towards him, and thanking him for helping Alizarin.

‘No problem, guy’s a genius.’

Oh, that deep, husky, caressing voice.

‘How’s Jonathan?’ he added mockingly.

‘Haven’t a clue,’ snapped a blushing Sienna. ‘How’s Emerald?’

‘Haven’t a clue.’

For a moment, they gazed at each other, assessing, wondering.

‘My office is round the corner, come and have a drink.’

She had expected black leather sofas, pale grey walls and carpets, state-of-the-art computers, purring, ravishing PAs, the light raindrop patter of laptops, Jackson Pollocks on the walls.

She found one small, scruffy office, with internet access and fax machine. Tables, shelves and every surface groaned with books on Old Masters, art magazines and catalogues. On the peeling walls, blown up, were his photographs of
Pandora
and the other looted family paintings Zac was trying to trace. Under the desk, all over the floor were boxes and boxes of bound legal briefs and xeroxed documents from archives all over the world.

It was like a huntsman’s tack room, and it smelt of dust and dedication. The only note of tenderness were faded photographs of a beautiful sad-eyed woman and a very dark, vividly handsome man.

‘Mom and my Great-uncle Jacob,’ said Zac, getting a bottle of red out of a filing cabinet.

Having poured her a drink, he listened to his messages in several languages and flipped through his faxes.

‘Have you found the Raphael yet?’ Sienna asked.

Zac shook his head.

‘Trail’s gone cold.’

‘Not through want of trying.’ She looked round the room.

‘I guess not. I gather your brother’s digging around in Vienna.’

‘With Emerald,’ said Sienna flatly.

‘They deserve each other. What d’you want to do this evening?’

‘I’ve been up since five, English time.’

‘Can’t go to bed till bedtime. Only way to get a decent night’s sleep. Would you like to go to the Met?’

‘You’ll never get tickets. Adrian says it’s a sell-out.’

‘Want to bet?’ Not taking his eyes off her face, Zac picked up the telephone.

Having secured two tickets in the stalls, he asked her if she wanted to nip back to the hotel and change, then, looking at his watch: ‘You’ve got forty-five minutes.’

‘Why should I?’ she asked truculently.

‘No reason at all,’ grinned Zac. ‘All eyes will be upon you.’

They were indeed, as, laughing his handsome head off, Zac led her into the lionhunting den of a diamond-encrusted black-tie audience. Sienna, who’d been temporarily distracted by the huge ravishing Chagalls on either side of the entrance, nearly died of embarrassment. She couldn’t believe there could be so many variations on the little black dress. Scents swirled like the garden at Foxes Court in a heatwave.

‘Why didn’t you tell me it was a first night?’ she hissed.

‘You didn’t ask,’ murmured Zac. Because he was so spectacularly handsome, everyone looked to see who he was with, amazed that it should be someone quite so scruffy, with two spots, and rings and studs on her unpainted face, and an inch of dark root to her piled-up straw-blond hair, which had taken on a green tinge since Emerald’s birthday party. Jonathan’s pink shirt with the collar sawn off and ripped jeans completed the lack of picture.

Sienna tried to bolt, but Zac had her wrist in a vice. The bastard was still grinning as they settled into their seats.

‘There’s Adrian Campbell-Black waving from that box.’ Zac waved back. ‘Baby Spinosissimo’s got a minor role as Matteo. An amazing Russian piss artist, Mikhail Bulgakov, is singing Mandryka. He and Baby detest Dame Hermione so it should be a riot.’

Then, conscious of Sienna’s humiliation, he ran a finger down her gritted cheek.

‘New York’s obsessed with celebs,’ he said gently. ‘Once the Commotion opens, this entire audience will be at your feet. I know Strauss is a terrible old Nazi,’ he added, almost apologetically, as he handed her a programme, ‘but his music is to die for, and the story’s set in Vienna.’

How strong his Viennese roots are, thought Sienna.

Thank God the huge chandeliers were dimming and retreating into the ceiling, and people wouldn’t be able to see her any more. Emerald would have known how to dress, she thought savagely.

All her life, Sienna had heard opera, mostly Wagner, pouring out of her father’s study, and treated it with indifference. She was amazed how much she enjoyed
Arabella
.

Dame Hermione, smug and resplendent, had only to raise an eyebrow to send the audience off into rapturous applause. Her voice was exquisite, her stage manners appalling, masking everyone, and singing so far to the front of the stage that the handsome Russian had practically to climb into the pit to sing back to her. In one duet, Sienna saw Hermione kicking him sharply on the ankle and in the half darkness found herself laughing as her eyes met Zac’s.

‘That’s Adrian’s boyfriend,’ whispered Zac, pointing out the dashing, slightly decadent-looking Lieutenant, who was keen on Arabella’s sister, and who’d just stamped deliberately on Dame Hermione’s toes.

Finding too little room for his long thighs, Zac swung them towards Sienna. In panic she swung hers away. Even with jet lag, it was impossible to nod off next to a tiger, but she was soon enraptured by the swooningly beautiful music and the story in which, after a string of misunderstandings, true love triumphs, and Arabella ends up with her solid country squire.

As the bravos rang out, and pink carnations rained down, Zac caught one and handed it to Sienna.

‘Hermione’s going to be milking the applause for the next half-hour, let’s go.’

In the taxi, Sienna asked why at the end Arabella had given Mandryka a glass of water.

‘When a woman accepts a marriage proposal in Austria, instead of saying “yes”, they traditionally present the guy with a glass of water from the well,’ said Zac, adding drily, ‘Must remind you of that boiling water you lured me into drinking at Foxes Court.’

‘Hot water’s your métier,’ snapped Sienna. ‘Where are we going?’

‘To dinner, you’ve got to eat.’ Then, when she protested: ‘In the last act, your stomach was rumbling loud enough to drown the timps.’

Zac took her to the Four Seasons. Sienna was in despair. She’d always so longed to go there, and now she was rolling up like a tramp. The Four Seasons felt the same and refused to let her in because she was wearing jeans, so Sienna calmly unzipped and stepped out of them. Pulling Jonathan’s pink shirt to halfway down her thighs, she handed the jeans to the gaping hat-check girl.

‘Is that better?’

‘Much,’ said Zac approvingly.

The waiters were all over him. Many of the diners, including some very expensive-looking, pretty women, stopped to say ‘Hi’, no doubt wondering what he was doing with such a dog.