Pandora (81 page)

Zac seemed to wake out of a trance, stumbling to his feet, stunned with horror, beads of sweat mingling with tears on his face, his eyes cavernous. ‘It can’t be true,’ he mumbled over and over again as he lurched out into the aisle, staring round in bewilderment.

Next moment a fire-exit door burst open and Sienna hurtled down the red carpeted steps. Ignoring Willoughby Evans and the hissing disapproval of both camps, she flung her arms round Zac, frantically patting his shoulder, holding him close, trying to warm and revive him with her body, gibbering how sorry she was.

‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ hissed Jupiter and Jonathan in unison as two policemen prised her off.

‘That’s enough, Miss Belvedon,’ said Willoughby Evans, who was privately very taken with Sienna. ‘I think this is a good time to adjourn for lunch.’

What a difference from yesterday. Everyone, even Jupiter, was thumping Jonathan on the back.

‘What a shame Rosemary missed it all,’ grumbled Lily, linking arms with M. Le Brun as the Belvedon contingent swarmed off to the George to celebrate.

After lunch both sides addressed the court. Zac didn’t even stay to hear Sampson, after two large gins and tonic, triumphantly tying up the loose ends. The Abelmans had sold the picture, forfeiting any claim, he told the judge. Trebich on oath had also waived any right to it.

‘Bet he’s sorry,’ chuckled Lily, who’d also been at the gin, ‘eight million would have kept him in boyfriends for the rest of his life.’

‘Thank you, Miss Cohen,’ said Willoughby Evans as an utterly deflated Naomi ended her muted peroration, then he beamed benignly at the contestants: ‘I will give my judgement on Monday morning.’

Archie from the
Mail
lent Sienna his telephone to wire her sketch of a snarling shaggy Jonathan and a sleek snorting Zac, fighting over an oval-shaped Raphael, which she’d substituted for the Royal Coat of Arms, through to the
Telegraph
.

‘Bloody good drawing,’ he told her approvingly. ‘You deserve to get your picture back.’

By Monday, Ladbroke’s were offering two to one on a victory for the Belvedons, who consequently set off to court with their tails up. Jupiter, vastly relieved that the gallery and Foxes Court appeared to be saved, insisted Hanna accompany them. Baby Viridian, who’d had a busy weekend trying to cheer up his grandfather, could be left to sleep in the care of Mrs Robens.

Raymond was desperately ashamed of lying and breaking down in court. All seemed to have been saved, except honour. But despite looking close to death, he put his favourite yellow rose, the early Canary Bird, in his buttonhole and insisted on tottering into court on Jonathan’s arm. Predictably he felt very sorry for Zac.

‘Poor fellow, learning those dreadful things about Jacob.’

Anthea was dressed especially delectably in lemon-yellow with a big Antwerp-blue picture hat. Winners, she felt, were entitled to obscure the views of those behind them.

Jonathan had put six bottles of Veuve Clicquot in the fridge for a celebration later. Aunt Lily clattered down the aisle with two hip flasks and a switch to lemon sherbets. Glacier mints, like toothpaste, she had decided, made drink taste disgusting.

Lily had promised to call Dora the moment the result was through, hopefully during break, when the
Independent
, the
Guardian
and the
Mail
would be ringing in for Dora’s reactions. Having discovered a massive hat bill from David Shilling in her mother’s knicker drawer, Dora was planning to auction it to the highest bidder. A second pony was definitely on the cards.

Jean-Jacques Le Brun had stayed over, boosting Raymond’s spirits, reacquainting himself with several of his pictures, delighted, on balance, he had saved the bacon of the Belvedons, particularly that of Jonathan, such a dear boy, who’d made him realize how much he’d missed not having a son.

Only Sienna was in turmoil. Even though the
Telegraph
had devoted nearly half a page to her Lion and Unicorn drawing, which included Willoughby Evans chucking a bucket of water over the contestants, it was too facile an interpretation of Friday’s tragedies.

The weekend papers had also had an embarrassing field day, speculating on Sienna’s transformed appearance and her public embracing of Zac. Had Zac notched up another Belvedon scalp? they wondered. Was that why Emerald had wept in court? ‘Ladette to Lady’, and ‘The Sloane-ing of Sienna’ were among the headlines. Zac, Emerald and Sienna had all been ‘unavailable for comment’.

I’d have been only too available if Zac had picked up a telephone, thought Sienna desolately. Holding him fleetingly in her arms had brought back all the divine madness of the fireworks evening.

On her right, as she approached the court, had gathered a large Jewish contingent waving placards demanding the return of all looted art.

‘Give Zac back his Raphael,’ shouted a fearsome brunette.

‘Oh, fuck off,’ snapped Sienna. ‘And you can fuck off too,’ she added as a torrent of press surged round her. She was flaming well going to sit with her family today.

David Pulborough was spitting. On Saturday, Rosemary’s cat Shadrach had died of old age, and David thought he’d been especially caring, digging a grave beyond the tennis court. It was only a cat. But Rosemary couldn’t stop crying, refusing to accompany him to a regimental dinner in the evening. Even worse, it looked as though his next-door neighbours were poised for a famous victory.

Five minutes to blast off. April storms had been forecast. The lights of the court kept flickering on and off. A mean east wind was thrashing horse-chestnut leaves against the window pane.

A restless Jonathan wandered off to look at the Raphael. Hope and Pandora must be getting gate fever at the prospect of coming home. Sloth on his yellow sofa had probably slept through the whole ordeal. Would Emerald be pleased, wondered Jonathan, that he had been less slothful recently? Or had she wept in court, nagged a nasty little doubt, because she was still carrying a torch for Zac?

‘This judgement will be frightfully boring,’ Sampson was telling the rest of the Belvedons. ‘Endless citings of cases and procedure and we won’t get the result till the very end. Oh, here comes the Royal House of Darkness.’

At least Zac, in Ray-Bans, dark grey polo neck, softest black leather jacket and black cords was sartorially back to normal. He was followed by several guards and a stony-faced Si. The Jewish contingent, who’d moved to the gallery, gave them a round of applause.

‘To the victor, the trophy,’ spat Jonathan, as Zac slipped into the row on the left.

Naomi Cohen looked tired and in low spirits. Cases were like boat races, there was no kudos in coming second.

Serve her right for turning me down on Friday night, thought Sampson smugly.

‘Be upstanding in court,’ called out an usher, as Willoughby Evans appeared smiling broadly through the crimson velvet curtains.

‘Hi, Sheriff!’ Taking a slug from Lily’s hip flask, Jonathan waved happily at a clanking bootfaced David, who did not wave back.

Willoughby Evans was exhausted but elated. Never had a case engendered such publicity. With any luck he’d notch up enough brownie points to be promoted to the Court of Appeal. He liked the idea of the black and gold robes of a Lord Justice. He had worked very hard on his judgement, which would take around forty-five minutes to deliver, and had treated himself to a glass of champagne with his morning kipper.

‘The Raphael
Pandora
,’ he began in his sonorous Welsh baritone, ‘passed to Benjamin Abelman on the eighth of August 1931, and was stolen from him in Vienna on the twelfth of April 1938. The subject is the opening of Pandora’s Box. I doubt when Raphael painted his exquisite picture, captioning it “Trouble lies below”, he had any idea how prophetic these words would be. In the last few days, all the deadly sins, Pride, Avarice, Lust, Wrath, Envy, Sloth and’ – as Lily crunched a lemon sherbet – ‘even Gluttony, have stalked this court.

‘Zachary Ansteig’s family,’ he went on, ‘must have suffered unimaginable horrors and, in seeking what he believed was his birthright, he opened a Pandora’s Box releasing all varieties of evil, not only shredding the reputation of Sir Raymond Belvedon’ – Sienna slid her hand over her father’s – ‘but also of his idol, his Great-uncle Jacob.

‘But before you judge these men too harshly, remember the words of L.P. Hartley, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

‘Jacob Abelman’ – Willoughby Evans looked at Zac – ‘has been described as a turncoat of many colours. But he was once a highly respected dealer, courageous enough to show art forbidden by the Nazis. He also belonged to the Resistance in Austria. Later he was seduced by the potentially vast profits gained by throwing in one’s lot – as many others did – with the Nazis.

‘But remember it was only when the war looked likely to be lost by the Germans that suddenly every man and his dog in the occupied countries claimed to have belonged to the Resistance. Caught between the crossfires of Nazi and Communist rule throughout Europe, people changed sides as often as their shirts. It was a very grey area.’

Willoughby Evans beamed at Anthea, far from grey in her lemon-yellow. He’d love to put her in his buttonhole. Straightening his wig, gathering his thoughts, he turned to the stricken grey ghost, shrivelled with shame, gazing into space on her left.

‘Raymond Belvedon was one of the most admired and beloved figures in the art world until last Friday. But you must remember that, after the war, everyone was souvenir crazy. When my father, among others, liberated Belsen, he remembers soldiers seizing watches off the guards and even taking home lampshades made of human skin.’ Willoughby Evans shuddered.

‘Sir Raymond,’ he added kindly, ‘found the Raphael in a blazing collapsing building. If he hadn’t rescued it, none of us would be in court today. He knew he had looted a painting, but had he admitted this, it would have been taken away from him. And when you see the beauty of Pandora, like Helen of Troy amid the burning towers of Ilium, you understand exactly why men have joined battle and suspended moral judgement for her sake. So I repeat, judge neither man too harshly.’

‘There, Daddy.’ Patting her father’s cheek, Sienna’s hand felt the wetness of tears.

‘I don’t know which way this judgement’s going,’ muttered Jupiter, as Willoughby Evans launched into a prolonged flurry of citings, subjections, proprietorial claims, pursuyvants, and X versus Ys.

Raymond passed the time by reading ‘Ulysses’: ‘It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles.’ Jonathan read
Viz
. Hanna played battleships with Aunt Lily. Jupiter hoped Willoughby Evans would wrap it up quickly, he’d just received a text message to ring his restorer.

Sienna was drawing Willoughby Evans as a sweet little field mouse. Zac, she thought, looked like a bombed-out town. Then she realized Willoughby Evans was talking about his beloved uncle.

‘Jacob Abelman appropriated the picture in 1941 from Hermann Goering.
His
painting, you might say. He was the younger son, whose older brother Tobias had killed himself. But Tobias had a daughter, Rebecca, who survived the horrors of Theresienstadt and had a son, Zachary Ansteig. You may think Zachary Ansteig abused both the hospitality and the daughter of the Belvedons’ – Willoughby Evans shot a reproachful look at Zac – ‘but it was his past and his inheritance for which he was searching.’

Noticing Sampson shaking his head, so the little tassels at the back of his wig shook like lambs’ tails, Sienna redrew her field mouse as a vicious-looking rat. She thawed a little as Willoughby Evans praised the tenacity and enterprise of Jonathan Belvedon.

‘Nor can anyone, having heard his evidence and that of Miss Sienna Belvedon’ – glancing up, a surprised Sienna encountered a smile of such approval that she promptly softened the vicious rat’s eyes and thickened his whiskers – ‘doubt that the Raphael is as much a part of their past and a link with their dead mother as it is of Zachary Ansteig.’

‘Two sets all,’ muttered Sampson.

‘I realize how deeply they would feel its loss,’ went on Willoughby Evans.

‘Eight million smackers,’ muttered Jonathan. ‘You bet we would.’

‘Hush,’ reproved Anthea, who’d been planning a holiday in St Lucia. Raymond would be too frail to make the journey, but she could perhaps take Green Jean as a bag-carrier, whose plainness would be the perfect foil for her own beauty.