Pandora (66 page)

‘I’m not interested.’

‘Not in Kate Moss? You must be in a bad way.’

‘I need to talk to Alizarin,’ muttered Jonathan. ‘He went through the same thing over Hanna. I’m going abroad.’

‘Well, don’t forget to leave a forwarding address – look after yourself, dear boy.’

But Jonathan had staggered off into the night.

Back in Duke Street, St James’s, Anthea was flabbergasted when a revived but distraught Emerald confessed she was hopelessly in love with Jonathan.

‘I thought you loved Zac.’

‘Zac’s just a feckless opportunist. Jonathan’s the warmest, sweetest, most loving man I’ve ever met.’

‘I agree about Zac, but I don’t think Jonathan’s any more capable of being faithful—’

‘Than his father was, humping you when he was supposed to be Galena’s besotted husband,’ said Emerald hysterically. ‘Was I conceived right here? Did Galena ever find out you were shagging her husband in the marital bed?’

‘How dare you!’ An enraged Anthea slapped her daughter very hard across the face. ‘High time someone taught you some manners, young lady.’

‘Well, it won’t be you.’

As she hadn’t brought any money with her, Emerald ran most of the way back to Shepherd’s Bush, losing her bag and her shoes on the way.

Hearing the outside doorbell ring just as
Peak Practice
ended, Patience picked up the receiver by the front door.

‘Hello,’ she called out.

There was no reply. It was spooky round here at night when Ian was out minicabbing. Goodness knows what wickedness was luring her to open the downstairs door. Then Patience heard desperate sobbing, her big heart prevailed and she pressed the intercom button. The pattering up the three flights of stairs could have been made by the paws of a little lurcher. The next moment Emerald had collapsed into her arms.

‘Oh Mummy, oh Mummy, I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch, please help me.’

The Belvedons did not enjoy the Millennium. No matter how many times Anthea expressed relief at a step-free Christmas, Raymond, still fretting over the Raphael and the gallery’s fate, couldn’t get used to such a depleted family gathering. Only Lily, Dicky and Dora, who ought to have been in bed, saw the New Year in with them. Grenville, without the support of his friends, Visitor and Diggory, was having a nervous breakdown over the fireworks, which had been banging away for days. Every time Raymond coaxed him into the garden, another rocket would go off and Grenville would bolt back into the house. Dicky and Dora were equally miserable about the dearth of their elder brothers and sisters.

‘I even miss Emerald,’ said Dora in amazement.

‘So do I,’ sighed Dicky.

Nor could Anthea and Raymond invite their old friends, the Pulboroughs, over, even for a drink. David was still punishing Anthea for conning him and Raymond had not forgiven David for annexing Casey Andrews.

Jonathan, meanwhile, unhinged by unhappiness, wandered the streets of Vienna mocked by the manic jollity of the singing Glühwein-swigging revellers, as he relived all the happy times he’d spent with Emerald. He was trapped in his Viennese coffin of despair, with no bell to ring ever to free him.

Back in England, on New Year’s Eve, a landscape by Cézanne was stolen from the Ashmolean, triggering off much talk of a crackdown on art theft, which didn’t bode well for Sienna. Still in New York, she refused to join Adrian Campbell-Black, his boyfriend Baby and their pals in Connecticut for a party. Instead she worked feverishly trying to amass enough pictures for an exhibition to raise money for the court case.

Dora and Dicky were further lowered by the continued absence of Alizarin and Visitor.

‘I want to ring them up and wish them a Happy New Year,’ wept Dora. ‘Visitor always recognized my voice on the telephone.’

Nor were there any lights in Jupiter’s cottage. Since word had sped round that there was a glamorous new spare man in London, an eldest son, who would inherit Foxes Court and who had a dazzling political career in front of him, Jupiter had been bombarded with invitations.

On Millennium night, a stunning divorcee had asked him to a party in her flat overlooking the Thames to watch the River of Fire. But gazing down at the leaping blaze of fireworks as her jewelled hand crept into his, Jupiter realized his heart had already turned to ashes. How utterly meaningless life was without Hanna!

Feeling an utter shit – again – he left the party, like Cinderella, and now, alone in the gallery, was drinking himself insensible and trying to hang pictures for a sale starting on 2 January, in the hope of raising some quick cash.

He had already smashed the glass on a watercolour and had insufficient strength to lift a vast Landseer into position. Only Alizarin could have done that. Jupiter took another slug from the Armagnac bottle.

‘Unhappy New Year, Jupiter,’ he told himself.

If it weren’t for his stupid pride, he’d have begged Hanna to come back. But he was convinced she was with Alizarin. He groaned in despair as he imagined them laughing over Visitor’s antics, making love, throwing snowballs in a bridal-white Norwegian landscape.

Going into the back room to collect two Dutch still lives of fruit that would look lovely in a group with the Boucher bottom, which he’d hijacked from the Blue Tower, he heard the doorbell ring. Glancing in the monitor, he gasped with joy. For outside the glass door, her sweet face and exuberant gold hair framed by a black velvet hood, stood Hanna. Jupiter rushed out into the main gallery, then groaned with disappointment. Not Hanna – too young, but familiar. Then he realized it was Emerald’s plump sister, Sophy, swaying, with a bottle of Chardonnay in each hand.

‘I’m really sorry,’ she stammered. ‘I was just passing and I wondered if you had any news of Alizarin.’

‘Come in,’ said Jupiter. ‘It’s a bit of a mess.’

‘I was at a party.’ Sophy, clearly drunk, hung her head.

‘So was I,’ said Jupiter.

‘It was such an important time, I suddenly couldn’t bear not to be with someone important,’ mumbled Sophy.

‘I’ve been putting up pictures,’ explained Jupiter, ‘but I’m not seeing them, or anything, very straight. How’s Emerald?’ he asked, as he handed her a glass of Armagnac.

‘Ghastly. I’ve never seen such unhappiness.’ Sophy explained about Jonathan and the DNA test.

‘He was so wonderful for Emo. She’s never been properly loved or in love before. It’s made her really appreciate Mum and Dad. We’d be such a happy family, if . . .’ Sophy’s voice trailed off: ‘she wasn’t so in love with Jonathan and we weren’t so poor.’

‘Poor Jonathan,’ murmured an appalled Jupiter, who’d been so wrapped up in his own misery, he’d not realized what was going on. ‘I just heard there’d been a row, not unusual, and that Jonathan had pushed off abroad.’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t think she was Dad’s daughter either, or I’d never have jumped on her.’

‘You mustn’t feel guilty, everyone falls in love with Emo.’

‘I just wish Hanna hadn’t caught us.’

Jupiter put a frightful nude up on the wall and took it down again. Who the hell had bought that?

‘What’s happened to Alizarin?’ Sophy’s elbow shot off the table. She heaved it back.

‘Anthea and I chucked him out,’ Jupiter was amazed to find himself admitting it. ‘I’ve always been jealous of him. He inherited all Mum’s talents. Only thing she handed on to me was a passion for caviare.’

‘You’re a terrific organizer,’ said Sophy comfortingly, noticing that Jupiter’s dinner jacket, which he’d hung over a chair, had an unexpectedly dashing cherry-red lining.

‘I’m fed up with running a gallery,’ he went on. ‘Dad loves saving pictures for the nation; I just want to save the nation.’

‘You could save the Tories. My father would certainly vote for you.’ Sophy couldn’t resist asking: ‘How’s Hanna?’

Collapsing into a chair, putting his head in his hands, Jupiter said despairingly, ‘She must be with Alizarin, no-one’s heard a squeak out of either of them.’

Ask a silly question, thought Sophy.

‘Alizarin’s got more integrity than I have,’ said Jupiter bleakly.

‘She married you,’ said Sophy stoutly. ‘You’re extremely attractive.’ And terribly like Alizarin, she thought wistfully, as Jupiter squinted up at her with narrowed eyes and his hair all ruffled. It must have been very confusing for Hanna.

‘Extremely attractive,’ she repeated owlishly.

And so are you, decided Jupiter in surprise. Very Dawn French, or rather Dawn English Rose with that exquisite colouring.

‘Our assistant, Tamzin, has failed to return from Gstaad, claiming to have fallen in love with a ski instructor,’ he told Sophy. ‘Would you like a job for the rest of the week? We’ve got a sale on.’

‘Oh please, how gorgeous, thank you.’ It would bring her nearer to Alizarin.

‘Look!’ She leapt to her feet. ‘There’s a man in the doorway, slumped like a great black wounded crow. Shall I offer the poor thing a drink?’

‘Christ no, he’s asleep. Don’t encourage him,’ snapped Jupiter.

When he was running the country, he’d get all those homeless scroungers off the streets.

Little did Jupiter realize, as the bitter winter kicked in, that his own brother was sleeping rough less than a mile away around Centre Point. After he had been evicted from the Lodge, Alizarin had eked out a living painting portraits in Leicester Square. But with his sallow skin, black hair, and slanting dark eyes above high cheekbones, he looked too like the asylum-seekers flooding in from the Balkans, allegedly up to every con trick. Too many drug-dealers and criminals were also posing as pavement artists, threatening to beat up customers if they didn’t pay outlandish prices. Consequently the police kept fining Alizarin and seizing his painting equipment. Just before Christmas, his landlady had chucked him out because he couldn’t pay the rent.

He had now been sleeping rough for three weeks. All his dole money went on food for Visitor and in bunging other tramps to pose for him. Too proud to beg, he was stockpiling drawings he hoped he would sell.

Matters were not helped by his last pair of spectacles being smashed in a punch-up and his sight having deteriorated so badly that he could only see faint shapes. He was in addition plagued by murderous headaches. He had suffered terrible humiliations, wandering by mistake into the Ladies near Tottenham Court Road, falling down the escalator with Visitor in his arms. Scared to risk the tube any more he walked everywhere and rationed himself to one shower in the public baths a week.

On the second Wednesday evening in January the temperature dropped to seven degrees below zero. Overhead Alizarin could just distinguish a fuzzy little crescent moon, lounging on an eiderdown of fluffy black cloud. He could have used that eiderdown, his hand was too frozen to hold a pencil. He had wrapped Visitor, whose fur had grown so thick he looked like a yellow husky, in his ancient greatcoat and taken temporary refuge in a doorway at the bottom of Charlotte Street.

Just up the road were the head offices of Saatchi & Saatchi, whose founder had never bought any of his pictures, and Channel 4, who had often employed his father. Tantalizing smells of wine, garlic and herbs kept drifting towards him from the Charlotte Street Hotel and from one of Raymond’s favourite haunts, the fish restaurant Pescatori.

It was like looking out of a basement window, as a blurred tangle of black fishnet legs, velvet cloaks, silver sequinned skirts, pinstripe creases, shining brogues, jeans and trainers passed before his eyes. Alizarin breathed in sweet wafts of scent, newly applied to encourage kisses on the way home.

‘Tax-aaaaay,’ bellowed the Hoorays.

Alizarin had already seen three people he was at school with and two ex-girlfriends of Jupiter. But none of them noticed him as, with a stream of merry chat, they stepped over and round him. Don’t ruin our lovely evening with your embarrassing poverty.

It was gone midnight. Coughing racked his body as the rumble of the last tube shook the pavement. Alizarin eased onto his other hip. He was so thin, a bomber jacket and an old sweater were no protection against the vicious cold.

Before the soup vans went home, he had wangled a bowl of turkey broth for Visitor. Later, as they lurked in a McDonald’s doorway for warmth, a departing customer had chucked a half-eaten hamburger into the gutter. For a second Visitor held back, wagging his tail in case Alizarin’s need was greater, then, at a nod, gobbled it up. Alizarin could never sleep if Visitor hadn’t eaten.