Pandora

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘I told Emo not to do it,’ she told Jonathan furiously.

  Jonathan was perfect. Used to endless crises at Foxes Court, he put his arms round Patience and hugged her until she stopped crying.

  ‘It’s only a honeymoon,’ he soothed her, ‘Anthea is such a bitch, Emerald’ll suss her out soon. It’s just rather a glamorous set-up.’

  He’d pinched two bottles of champagne from the party, which he proceeded to open. Diggory got a much better reception than he had at the Pulborough and was soon curled up on Patience’s knee, eating crisps and looking interested. Unlike Zac, Jonathan was quite unfazed by the overcrowded sitting room; it reminded him of his own studio. Everywhere he noticed pictures of and by Emerald.

  ‘I feel so awful Emo didn’t confide in us,’ said Patience dolefully. ‘They told us at the adoption society that if we were good parents the children would never feel the need to seek out their real parents. If you can’t have babies, you’re haunted by guilt that you’ve done something wicked to warrant it, that you’re not worthy and certainly not capable of looking after a child or loving it enough.’

  She picked up a Mothering Sunday card, gathering dust on the bookshelf.

  ‘I was so scared of taking on anything as exquisite as Emerald. I nearly dropped her when they handed her over. But by the end of the weekend, I’d fallen in love totally. She was so beautiful, and she had such blue eyes when she was born. We called her Emerald, because it was my mother’s second name.’

  ‘Much better than Charlene,’ said Jonathan, filling up her glass. ‘Diggory was called Spot when I got him from Battersea.’

  ‘Such a dear little dog.’ Patience dropped a kiss on Diggory’s orange and white head. ‘I know we spoiled Emerald, to make up for her losing her real parents, smothering her with love, letting her do what she wanted.

  ‘But it’s always been such a privilege to have her. I’m so proud of her. I don’t expect she said half the things in that horrible article. She’s so talented – you can see where she gets it from now. I always knew we were too dull for her.’

  Sophy, sick of her mother making allowances, raised her eyes to heaven and, worried that Patience was getting drunk, went off to make lunch. Being Monday, no-one had been shopping and she could only find a cauliflower, a chunk of ancient mousetrap decorated with her own toothmarks, and a tin of rhubarb. She could make cauliflower cheese. She borrowed a pint of milk from the gay actors upstairs who, having read the Mail, were deeply sympathetic.

  ‘Tell Patience there’s a large Scotch waiting whenever she wants.’

  ‘Emerald’s always had such high expectations,’ Patience was telling Jonathan. ‘She was so excited when Sophy arrived from Belfast. Mind you, Sophy’s typically Irish, so sweet and easy going, always putting camomile on everyone’s nettle stings. Anyway, when she arrived, one of Emerald’s friends announced: “My baby sister came out of my mother’s tummy.” “My baby sister,” said Emerald proudly, “came out of an aeroplane.”’

  Jonathan laughed and refilled Patience’s glass and let her run on because he was interested, learning that they’d got Emerald from an adoption society in Harrogate, and her mother was definitely Anthea Rookhope, who’d worked in a gallery, but the father had withheld his name.

  ‘We never dreamt it would be someone as distinguished and clever as your father,’ said Patience humbly. ‘I love his programmes. Ian, Emerald’s father, is very unarty.’

  ‘Nice-looking man’ – Jonathan picked up a photograph – ‘and lovely horse you’re riding.’

  ‘I always prayed every night that Tony Blair wouldn’t stop hunting, but sadly I stopped instead.’

  ‘Lunch,’ announced Sophy. ‘I hope you don’t mind eating in the kitchen.’

  Jonathan, who hadn’t eaten since the Quality Street he’d wolfed with Knightie on Saturday afternoon, had two helpings of cauliflower cheese and three of rhubarb crumble, and took a huge shine to Sophy. He liked her merriness, her sweet round face, her beautiful skin, and her soft voice with its faint Yorkshire accent.

  Sophy couldn’t believe Jonathan. He was the most glamorous man she’d ever met, and so cosy and unfrightening, unlike Zac who was coolly contemptuous and who reined in his emotions like a dressage horse. She could hardly eat any lunch, and kept leaping up to examine Jonathan at a different angle: such eyelashes, such cheekbones, such an amused sleepy smile.

  ‘Goodness, it’s five o’clock.’ Patience tottered off to get ready for work.

  ‘D’you think I ought to do her shift for her?’ asked Sophy.

  Jonathan shook his head.

  ‘Some of your pupils are bound to pop in for a drink after work and sneak. I’ll drop her off.’

  Having delivered Patience, he returned with more bottles and they carried on drinking with Sophy raging against Emerald.

  ‘My parents are absolutely skint, but bloody Emerald still gets a socking great allowance and the use of a studio. And she lied in that horrible piece. Mum and Dad gave her everything, spoilt her rotten to compensate for her losing her first parents. And it was Emo who insisted on being sent to a boarding school, and got the shock of her life when it wasn’t as jolly as Malory Towers.’

  Jonathan proceeded to give a blow by blow of how Jupiter had been conned, and how Zac had waltzed Anthea out to her doom.

  ‘Not the Blue Danube, but the boathouse by the River Fleet.’

  ‘God, I wish I’d been there.’ Sophy’s eyes – the innocent azure of the sky after a big storm – were absolutely popping.

  ‘What persuaded her to seek out Anthea?’

  ‘I’m sure it was Zac. He met her when we were rich. It was only after he came back from America and discovered Daddy’d gone belly up that she started searching for her natural mother.’

  ‘Nothing natural about Anthea, ask her hairdresser.’

  Sophy giggled.

  ‘Zac’s been pushing her all the way.’

  ‘Must think Dad’s richer than he is. How come you’re so much nicer than Emerald?’

  ‘I’m more of a drip. I went to the local grammar school rather than Emo’s posh boarding school, because I didn’t want to leave Mummy and Daddy and the animals, and I’m a second child,’ said Sophy, ‘and so as parents they were much more relaxed. The only reason I’d like to meet my birth mother is to see what she looked like and find out my medical history. She must have been fat.’

  ‘Wide birth mother,’ grinned Jonathan. ‘Have you got a boyfriend?’

  ‘I’ve got one who takes me to the opera.’

  ‘I bet he bikes to work.’

  ‘How did you know? He tried to make me cycle to school, but I couldn’t get up in time, so he paid for me to go to a gym. Last night, I snogged the instructor,’ confessed Sophy, ‘so I can’t go back.’

  After that, things became hazy. Fading cow parsley and buttercups slapped against their legs as they took Diggory and another bottle for a walk on Barnes Common.

  ‘If only we could have a dog,’ sighed Sophy. ‘I thought of becoming a vet, but I wasn’t sure about shoving my hand up cows.’

  ‘I do all the time anyway,’ said Jonathan and they collapsed with laughter.

  Later they all three dropped into a casino in Mayfair. Under glittering chandeliers, people with obsessive faces gathered round gaming tables. Only the women dragged their eyes away from rattling ball or ace-laced card hand to gaze at Jonathan, whose black curls were flopping over cheekbones increasingly stained with colour.

  Jonathan in turn was increasingly taken by Sophy. He liked the way her unpainted cherubic face looked as pretty at midnight as at midday. Nor was there anything to embellish it in her pink beaded handbag – only three packets of Silk Cut.

  ‘I hate to run out.’

  ‘A fag bag,’ said Jonathan, helping himself, ‘and, talking of fags, that fat slug at the bar in a dinner jacket is called Barney Pulborough. He lives next door to us in the country and sat next to your tricky sister on Saturday night. Probably fed her a lo
t of vitriol about me.’

  ‘Probably jealous.’ Sophy took another slug of champagne. ‘You’re an icon.’

  ‘I con the public, according to Barney’s father, who owns the Pulborough who represent me.’ Jonathan lowered his voice: ‘Barney has shares in this place, and it’s where the Pulborough launder their ill-gotten gains from dodgy deals.’

  ‘Blimey,’ said Sophy in excitement.

  Barney in fact was very happy. Having overheard Raymond talking to Jupiter on Saturday night, he had made a killing selling the story of Lady Belvedon’s Love Child to the Daily Mail. For once therefore he was quite amiable to Jonathan.

  ‘That big Saudi at the roulette table,’ he told him softly, ‘is a client of Dad’s called Abdul Karamagi. He collects nudes and is about to launder half a million pounds – just watch him.’

  The Saudi, whose huge hands were spilling over with chips, proceeded to put half on red, half on black. Round clattered the wheel, down dropped the silver ball, up came black, which paid double, so exactly the same amount of chips were returned to him.

  ‘If he cashes them in in a couple of hours, they’ll be as clean as Anthea’s knickers,’ said Barney.

  ‘What happens if zero comes up?’ asked Jonathan.

  ‘You just pray it doesn’t. I’ll introduce you,’ said Barney.

  Abdul’s chocolate-brown eyes melted when he saw Sophy’s splendid proportions. He had also heard of Jonathan, and over another bottle and a large plate of smoked salmon for Sophy, commissioned him to paint her.

  Sophy was staggered by the skill with which Jonathan brokered the deal. £80,000 might seem a lot, he explained, but pubes took for ever to draw, though as he was so taken by Abdul, he would do him a nude of Sophy for £60,000.

  ‘Shut up, you’ll get a cut,’ he hissed when Sophy protested, then to Abdul, ‘And I’d like an advance of twenty thousand.’

  A minute later Abdul was meekly cashing in some chips. Sadly he couldn’t buy Sophy as well, commiserated Jonathan, but the portrait would be delivered in the middle of June. Once Abdul returned to the tables, Jonathan slipped Barney £4,000.

  ‘We needn’t tell your father?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Barney, and while standing them another drink, told them about his new boyfriend, who was a sister at Guy’s.

  ‘What do the patients call him?’ asked Sophy.

  ‘“Charge Nurse”,’ smirked Barney, ‘but he loves being called “Sister”.’

  ‘I think Barney’s sweet,’ protested Sophy as she and Jonathan reeled out into Berkeley Square. All round her the big dark houses seemed to be dancing a quadrille, whilst the floodlit-patterned trunks and branches of the plane trees swayed like giraffes amidst their ceiling of leaves.

  Jonathan shoved £500 inside Sophy’s bra.

  ‘I can’t take it.’

  ‘It’ll pay a few bills at home. You could do with a dishwasher.’

  ‘I can’t pose nude.’

  ‘Sure you can, won’t take many sittings.’

  At least it’ll be a chance to see him again, thought Sophy.

  Jonathan then hailed a taxi, shoving an outraged Diggory on the floor because there wasn’t room on the seat for him and Sophy, and kissed her all the way home to his studio in a condemned warehouse off Hoxton Square. Here they found his louche flatmate, Trafford, laboriously making a picture called Sick Joke by sticking pieces of sweetcorn and red and green pepper onto a canvas then glazing them.

  Trafford had a shaved head, ‘You won’t regret it’ tattooed across his chest and leered worse than Abdul. He reminded Sophy of a knowing old Scottie dog, just back from the butcher’s with a large bone and sawdust hanging from his fur tummy.

  ‘The press have been on all day about your new sister,’ he told Jonathan. ‘So has Sienna, not best pleased.’

  ‘Oh Christ, I forgot to ring her,’ groaned Jonathan, who was opening a tin of Butcher’s Tripe for Diggory.

  ‘The bitch,’ screamed Sophy, who had picked up the Evening Standard, where Anthea in an interview had emerged as Mother Courage.

  ‘“I knew Raymond loved Galena,”’ read out Sophy through gritted teeth, ‘“and only turned to me out of unbearable loneliness. The result was my Charlene. Naturally I’m grateful to Patience and Ian Cartwright for holding the fort, but I can only thank God my baby’s back where she belongs.” What a cow.’

  ‘Another session in the re-edit suite,’ said Jonathan, putting down Diggory’s bowl. ‘Don’t let it get to you, darling. Anthea’s just in orgasm because she’s at last found a smart relation.’

  ‘She’s good looking, your new sister.’ Trafford peered over Sophy’s shoulder at a blurred picture of Emerald. ‘When are you going to bring her round?’

  The fumes from the glues and resins were making Sophy’s eyes water. Diggory was managing to wolf his food and simultaneously growl at a large Newfoundland puppy called Choirboy, who lay on the chaise longue chewing a Gucci slip-on and adding to the general chaos. The cork board groaned with Polaroids of women. Sophy groaned too because they all seemed so beautiful.

  Drawing Trafford aside, Jonathan told him to push off.

  ‘I want to take Sophy to bed.’

  ‘Can I watch?’ asked Trafford, who’d spent much of the evening looking at porn on the internet, but who preferred the real thing.

  ‘Only if you waive that three hundred I owe you.’

  Jonathan’s triple bed shared a room off the studio with a hundred canvasses, a large wardrobe and a stuffed polar bear hung with Jonathan’s jackets. There were scant curtains. Several windows in the houses opposite, which mostly belonged to artists, were still lit up. Jonathan shoved Trafford, armed with a torch, in the wardrobe.

  ‘How do I escape?’ whispered Trafford.

  ‘Women usually belt off to the bog afterwards,’ whispered back Jonathan, ‘you can nip out then.’

  ‘You on the pill?’ he asked Sophy as, in between kisses, he unbuttoned her shirt. ‘Good, I am now going to shag the arse off you.’

  ‘If only you could,’ sighed Sophy. ‘It’s much too big, and I’m far too fat. My last boyfriend, the one before the opera buff, nicknamed me “Sofa”.’

  ‘You’re my three-piece-sweetheart,’ giggled Jonathan, pushing Sophy back onto the bed. ‘I haven’t been so excited since I went on the bouncy castle at Limesbridge fête.’

  Sophy was seriously big. Unable to see what was going on over her backside, Trafford started to emerge from the creaking wardrobe.

  ‘What’s that?’ gasped Sophy, hearing heavy breathing.

  ‘Probably a dog,’ mumbled Jonathan, who was blissfully losing himself in mountains of soft flesh. ‘Shut up, Diggory, shut up, Choirboy.’ He hurled a shoe across the room.

  As they carried on, Trafford, frantic to distinguish some of the magnificent heaving flesh, switched on his torch.

  ‘Who’s that?’ cried Sophy, jumping out of her luscious dimpled skin in panic.

  ‘Light from the knocking shop opposite,’ whispered Jonathan soothingly. ‘“Gestapo bully” is one of their specialities, shining lights into clients’ faces and threatening to beat them up. Oh, you gorgeous thing.’

  The ensuing romp so excited Trafford he nearly fell out of the wardrobe, knocking over a canvas. Furiously Jonathan kicked the door shut. But by this time Sophy was far too excited to notice. Later, as she ecstatically cradled a snoring Jonathan to her breasts, she wondered if she’d dreamt it, or had a man really slithered out across the floorboards?

  Two streets away, Sienna lay on her bed smoking. Work had been interrupted all day by the telephone which she’d answered, hoping it might be Jonathan, but it was always about him – journalists wanting to know where he was and why his ravishing new sister had slapped his face. The last call had been from Dicky, who’d crept out of bed at Bagley Hall.

  ‘All the boys have been teasing me,’ he had sobbed. ‘Mummy won’t give me away like she did Emerald, will she?’

  Switching off the tele
phone, Sienna had sobbed too. On the polished floor, where she had set fire to it, lay the blackened fragments of Anthea’s interview with the Standard. On the wall was a framed letter from Sir Nicholas Serota, congratulating her on being shortlisted for the Turner prize.

  In the past, when she was sad, she had drawn comfort from visualizing sweet Hope in the Raphael, but since the silver wedding, she could only see Anthea’s smug little face. And nothing could alter the fact that Jonathan was far too preoccupied with his new sister to telephone his old one.

  ‘I feel shocking,’ moaned Sophy next morning as she pinched Jonathan’s most voluminous shirt to wear to school.

  ‘At least you look as though you’re bravely staggering in after food poisoning,’ mumbled Jonathan sleepily.

  ‘Thank you both for a heavenly day.’ Sophy kissed him and then Diggory.

  ‘We enjoyed it too. You can’t remember where I left my car, can you?’

  In the middle of Geography, Sophy was called out to take an urgent call from her sister.

  ‘Why haven’t Mummy and Daddy rung me and begged me to come home?’ demanded Emerald.

  ‘Just bugger off,’ shouted Sophy and hung up.

  On the Saturday after the silver wedding, Anthea was intoxicated to receive an affectionate airmail from Zac, posted in St Petersburg, apologizing for his cavalier behaviour and thanking her for a memorable party. She didn’t show the contents to Emerald, who was bitterly disappointed only to get a neutral postcard of the Hermitage. Scented by lavender bags, Zac’s letter took up residence at the back of Anthea’s underwear drawer.

  It intoxicated her that her face was now in the papers as much as the other Belvedons, that she could manipulate her new daughter into setting those arrogant, defiant brothers at each other’s throats, and in addition make Sienna wild with jealousy. She also enjoyed seeing David Pulborough in a jitter. The next few weeks were going to be fun.

  Jupiter Belvedon was in turmoil. A control freak, particularly where he himself was concerned, he had prided himself on his perfect marriage and, determined to safeguard it, had refused to let Hanna be parted from him for a single night. Now he was devoured with lust for a sister who had pretended to be attracted to him to gain access to Anthea.