by Jilly Cooper
‘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 ha
d 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.
‘Emerald,’ 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.
As the days passed he continued to behave in the same kind, sober but utterly brotherly fashion. Together they explored the cathedrals, the galleries, bought oysters in the market, ate far too much rich chocolate cake with apricot jam, wandered through the Vienna woods and went to the Vienna Phil in the evenings.
They also sketched each other incessantly. Jonathan disappeared a lot to delve around in dusty archives, not letting on to Emerald he was investigating Zac’s past as much as that of the Raphael.
At the end of the second week, Emerald started panicking she hadn’t got her period.
‘I know I’m pregnant, and Zac’s the father,’ she stormed. ‘I’m not going to be a single parent like Anthea, it’d ruin my life. Where can I get an abortion? You’re bound to know a good doctor,’ she added nastily.
Jonathan looked at her meditatively.
‘Dear, dear, dear, how can you be so dismissive of Anthea giving you up as a baby, when you’re not prepared to give yours even a chance?’
Emerald flushed.
‘Look what an awful life I’ve had. It would have been better if I hadn’t been born.’
‘It would have saved everyone a lot of earache. See you this evening.’
It irritated the hell out of Emerald that Jonathan’s friends were always ringing or texting him. Jonathan, in turn, was ashamed how jealous he felt when he learnt that David Pulborough was giving Trafford a big show next year and Trafford had also been shortlisted for a big prize for his video of a masturbating granny entitled Oh Nan. Jonathan vowed to stop squandering his talents, but all he wanted to do was to paint Emerald as they sat for hours in cafés or wine bars trying out bottles of the new vintage.
‘According to Giacometti,’ he told her, ‘who spent weeks painting members of his family, “The adventure, the great adventure, is to see something unknown appear each day in the same face.”’
And as the days passed, and yellow leaves began to cover the parks, and cold clear air could be felt again coming off the mountains, Jonathan noticed the little brackets on either side of Emerald’s mouth when she smiled, and the red patch in the left hollow of her nose, which she tried to cover with concealer, and the yearning melancholy in her eyes, which softened to sage green when she was caught off guard.
Bored with his curls one day, Jonathan had them cut off.
‘Trying to look more like Zac,’ Emerald was horrified to hear herself snapping, but only because she was so jolted by the beauty of his forehead and temples and the strength and grace of his newly revealed jaw and neck.
‘Sorry, that was bitchy,’ she moaned, ‘I’m only frantic about not coming on. I need some Prozac.’
‘You need some anti-Zac,’ drawled Jonathan, ‘you’re just suffering from PMT.’
Predictably, when her period arrived the next day, Emerald made a fearful fuss about having desperately wanted Zac’s child.
‘At least I’d have something to remember him by.’
‘Don’t be fatuous,’ snapped Jonathan, ‘you’ve got what you wanted.’
‘You’ve no idea how important it is for adopted children to have their first blood relation. And I’m so late I’ve run out of Tampax. Jonathan, Jonathan,’ but he had walked out, slamming the door.
Returning twenty minutes later, he found her in tears and chucked a packet of Tampax on the bed.
‘Here you are. A long stop between two short legs.’
‘My legs are not short and I’ve got the most terrible cramps.’
Jonathan flicked on the kettle and filled a hot-water bottle, then he got a little bottle of gin out of the mini-bar. Having emptied it into a glass, he added tonic.
‘Don’t need lemon, you’re quite sour enough.’
‘Why are you so vi
le to me?’ moaned Emerald as he tucked her up in bed and gently began to rub her rigid tummy. ‘Aaah, that’s so nice. How d’you know so much about women?’
‘I had to try and be a mother to Sienna. Poor darling had her first period at ten. Anthea hadn’t bothered to tell her about them. Jupiter, Al and I were all away at school when it happened. Sienna came screaming out of the loo convinced she was bleeding to death. Mrs Robbie had to cope. I know Sienna can be difficult, and it’s debatable whether she or Anthea have given each other the harder time,’ he added, his hands kneading and caressing away the pain, ‘but her life’s been pretty good hell.’
The gin was kicking in. Jonathan noticed Emerald’s eyelashes, lying on her blanched cheek like ragged rooks’ wings.
Oh, please make his hands creep downwards or upwards, Emerald was shocked to find herself praying, as sleep rolled over her. When she woke, Jonathan was gone and it was dark outside. Under her door he’d shoved a drawing of her on her deathbed and underneath had written, Period Peace.
When Jonathan returned long after midnight to his room, a page of Emerald’s sketchpad had been shoved under his door. On it was an exquisite drawing of Christ with Jonathan’s features, complete with halo and Diggory under his arm, instead of a lamb. Underneath, Emerald had written, Self Portrait by Jonathan Belvedon.
Jonathan could hear her television on next door, and instead of watching the porn channel, he poured himself a large whisky, and lay on his bed smoking and gazing into space. He wished Diggory were here to cheer him up. Who the hell could have taken the Raphael?
He left the hotel in the morning without making contact, but when he returned he found all his clothes had been beautifully washed and ironed with a note on top: ‘Sorry I’ve been a complete cow. At least I’ve learnt the Austrian for launderette.’
Emerald felt herself in more and more of a muddle.
‘Do you find me attractive?’ she demanded.
‘Quite,’ said Jonathan, then, when she looked boot-faced, he smiled and added: ‘Quite exceptionally attractive.’