Pandora

by Jilly Cooper

  As Sienna’s mouth was still so wide open, Zac had to kiss it, then he said, ‘Si didn’t want me to flog the Raphael. He and Rosemary warned me I’d bitterly regret it, that the hurt over Jacob would fade. What they didn’t realize was the only thing I cared about was you. I was convinced I hadn’t a hope in hell. It made me really mean.’ Zac whistled, and shook his head. ‘I’ve got to send Sotheby’s several crates of Krug to apologize.’

  ‘Not when they’re going to sting you for the buyer’s premium and all those expenses,’ said Sienna in outrage.

  ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ Zac pulled her on top of him, so she gasped and arched with pleasure. ‘I’ll pay Si back somehow. Anyway, I’m the richest guy on the planet now I’ve got you.’

  Unnerved at the prospect of more erotic enterprise, Grenville shot off the bed. For Sienna, things were still going too fast.

  ‘Am I imagining things or is Rosemary about to become the fourth Mrs Si Greenbridge?’

  ‘I guess so – but there’s only going to be one Mrs Zachary Ansteig.’ Looking up, Zac took her face between his hands. ‘You are so beautiful.’

  ‘Except for this zit,’ said Sienna ungraciously, because her mind was suddenly careering off again. Had Zac really said what he’d just said?

  ‘It’s a cute zit.’ Zac squinted up at it. ‘Makes you more human if you’ve got one imperfection.’

  As he kissed her, his tongue roving caressingly around her mouth, she could feel his glorious cock leap upwards. But instead of joyfully impaling herself on it, Sienna had to battle not to burst into tears. Utterly confused she rolled off him. Outwardly unmoved, Zac filled up their glasses and started singing the love duet from Arabella.

  ‘If you were a girl from one of my villages,

  you could go to the well behind your father’s house,

  and draw a cupful of clear water . . .’

  ‘I’ve played that song into the ground,’ mumbled Sienna. ‘You have no idea how revoltingly miserable I’ve been, or how hopelessly I’m in love with you.’

  ‘Only if you prove it by marrying me.’

  ‘That cow, Naomi, said you’d never marry out.’

  ‘Ah changed ma mind. I guess I need rescuing just as much as Grenville. Well?’

  Sienna turned towards him, her pale face suddenly radiant. Then Zac realized it wasn’t just happiness making her blush. The sun had risen, casting a soft pink glow on her face and on the Raphael.

  ‘Look, look,’ he said, pointing towards the picture as the characters sprang to life.

  But Sienna had sprung to her feet too. Wrapping herself in a big orange towel, chucking the remains of her champagne out of the window, she ran clutching the glass from the room. A minute later Zac heard the front door bang. Suddenly terrified – perhaps he was going to lose her after all – he ran to the north window, and then smiled. For far below, with Grenville frisking round her, was Sienna, parting the ferns and filling up her glass with ice-cold water from the spring. Glancing up, she waved and smiled at him, her orange towel slipping as, very carefully, she carried the glass back into the house.

  EPILOGUE

  The ancient warder in charge of the Old Masters Gallery at the Abraham Lincoln Museum was taking the weight off his legs during a hot crowded Sunday afternoon. As the sun poured in through the half-open window, a young girl student joined him on the bench and introduced herself.

  ‘My name’s Zelda. You are just so lucky to work here and see these pictures every day.’

  The ancient warder agreed that he never got tired of them, adding that the gallery had never been so busy before the Raphael Pandora arrived.

  ‘It’s that little picture over there, Zelda, glows like a jewel even on the darkest day, always got folk round it. There was a big court case over it years ago.’

  ‘Isn’t that portrait next to it by Raphael too?’ asked Zelda.

  ‘Sure is. That’s Pandora’s companion picture,’ explained the old man enthusiastically. ‘Sitter was a feisty young beauty called Caterina, who evidently gave Raphael the run-around. He nicknamed her “The Proud One”, but at the big ceremony here when the two pictures were reunited after more than three hundred years, folk swear there were tears in The Proud One’s eyes. Probably just a trick of the light.’

  ‘That’s really cool,’ sighed Zelda.

  As she climbed onto the bench to have a better look, a family walked in through a side door and the room fell silent. From the back, the tall guy, who had thick grey hair, looked oldish. He must have brought along his daughter, Zelda decided, and her two teenage kids, a boy and a girl.

  But as he glanced round, waving and smiling at the warder, Zelda said ‘Wow!’ because he had such an extraordinarily alive, young face and was probably only in his late forties. The family all looked so excited and because of their beauty – like visiting angels – the crowd round the Raphael dispersed to let them through. The grey-haired guy had his arm round the woman as they both pointed out aspects of the picture to the kids.

  ‘They come here two or three times a year,’ said the old warder, offering Zelda a toffee. ‘Seem such a happy family, and they’re always so pleased to see the picture.’

  ‘She looks kinda familiar,’ said Zelda.

  ‘Sure – she’s Sienna Belvedon.’

  ‘Oh wow! Isn’t she British? I’ve heard of her.’

  ‘Should have done,’ reproved the old warder. ‘Stirred up enough controversy around the Millennium. Churchmen and public figures in an uproar over some picture she painted, all threatening to withdraw public money in the UK.’

  ‘I’ve heard of that picture.’ Zelda wrinkled her freckled forehead. ‘Wasn’t it called Visitor’s List?’

  ‘That’s the one. Made a helluva difference,’ conceded the old warder. ‘Drew attention to terrible things we once did to animals. What upset folk most was to have all the poor critters arriving in heaven and being welcomed by God portrayed as a big yellow dog. But the fuss died down. Now it’s regarded as one of the finest pictures of the twenty-first century. Always thought Visitor was a funny name for a dog.’

  A furry tail ending.

  THE END

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Life may be brief, but art, and consequently Pandora, my novel about the art world, is long. Which means a huge number of people to thank.

  Nobody, for a start, could have been more helpful than Sotheby’s and I’m particularly grateful to Diana Keith-Neal, a senior director, for introducing me not only to the Chairman, Henry Wyndham, but also to Richard Charlton-Jones, Lucian Simmons, Natacha Chiaramonte, Patti Wong, Chris Proudlove and Tatiana von Waldersee. All experts in their fields, they were unstinting with both their time and their advice.

  I had fantastic help from many art dealers, who allowed me to infiltrate their private views, took me to auctions, showed me marvellous pictures and beguiled me with outrageous anecdotes. They include Johnny and Sarah Van Haeften and their assistant Camilla Clayton, Tim Bathurst, Christopher Burness, Francis Kyle, Jay Jopling, William Darby, Peyton Skipwith, Edward Horswell, James Colman and Maurice Howard.

  Excellent technical advice or more outrageous tales were supplied by ace picture framer Mark Wallington; by Rungwe Kingdon and Claude Koenig, whose Pangolin Gallery and Foundry is one of the splendours of Gloucestershire; and on the insurance front by Aaron Shapiro, Michael St Aubyn, William Marler and Andrew Colvin.

  There are many sculptors and painters in Pandora, so I am deeply indebted to my dear neighbour Anthony Abrahams, and other fine artists including David Backhouse, Daniel Chadwick, Paul Day, Paul Grellier, Christopher Dean, Hamish Mackay, Caroline Wallace, Tory Lawrence, Charlotte Bathurst, Anna Gibbs-Kennet, Michael and Sybil Edwards and the mighty Maggie Hambling for either allowing me to invade their studios or sharing their secrets with me.

  During my research, my portrait was painted for Yorkshire Television by Alan Hydes and my head sculpted by Frances Segelman. Both artists gave me invaluable insight into the creative proce
ss as well as an end product of great beauty.

  In earlier books I have been accused of making my young heroines too attractive, but anyone meeting Emma Sergeant, Tanya Brett or Georgie Taylor, all three of whom helped me hugely, will vouch that where the art world is concerned I have not exaggerated.

  Most of all I must thank artist extraordinaire, Sargi Mann, who heroically continues to paint despite failing sight. His extraordinarily beautiful oil of a pale blue canal idling through golden autumn fields, which hangs in our bedroom, constantly revealing fresh enchantments when viewed from different angles and at different times of the day, was the initial inspiration for Pandora.

  I never fail to be touched and astonished by the magnanimity of intellectuals prepared to enter into the fun and adventure of producing popular fiction. The Pandora of the title is an invented picture by Raphael of the opening of Pandora’s Box. In her creation and historical background I was enormously privileged to be given advice by Dr Nicholas Penny, Keeper of the National Gallery and one of the greatest experts on Raphael in the world. David Jenkins, a brilliant classics master at Monmouth, threw light on the myths of Pandora and the Seven Deadly Sins. Peter Clarkson, Associate Lecturer in Art History at the Open University, specializing in the Renaissance, lent me endless arcane art books and allowed me to pester him with questions. Denis Napier corrected my Latin. Caterina Krucker, Lecturer in Modern Languages, brushed up my French and Italian.

  On the art establishment side, I am grateful to Robert and Kate Gavron, John Cooper, ex-Head of Education at the National Portrait Gallery, Maggie Guillebaud, formerly of the Arts Council, Christopher and Angela Dowling of the Imperial War Museum, and Francis Corner of Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education.

  As Pandora is also a novel about art that belonged to the Jews being looted by the Nazis, I was unbelievably lucky just before I started writing to lunch with the mercurial, perennially innovative Tom Rosenthal, who was not only illuminating on the contemporary art scene but also dreamed up the way in which my picture could be looted. For further illumination I must thank Karen Pollock and Rosie Barton of the Holocaust Trust; Constance Lowenthal, Commission for Art Recovery, New York, and Eva Kurz, a solicitor specializing in looted art.

  I am especially indebted to Ruth Redmond Cooper, Director of the Institute of Art and Law, and her team. On my way to their conference on Art, Law and the Holocaust at the Courtauld Institute in October 1999, I was involved in the Paddington train crash. Arriving at the conference, I couldn’t have been treated with more kindness and sympathy; and as the speakers in turn described how the Nazis had tried to eradicate not only a people but their art and culture as well, they put any horrors I had experienced earlier in the day into perspective.

  I am extremely grateful too to British Transport Police for later retrieving early chapters of Pandora from the wreckage of the train.

  The law surrounding the restitution of looted art is extremely complex, often involving the legal systems of several countries. I would never have been able to tackle a big court case had it not been for the advice of my dear friends, the Right Hon. Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, President of the Family Division, and the Right Hon. the Lord Hoffman, Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, who also lent me a brilliant and famous judgement on a looted art case by the Hon. Mr Justice Moses, presiding judge at the Royal Courts of Justice. Lawyers John Davies, Elizabeth Jupp, Hetty Cleave, Martyn Daldorph, Graham Ogilvy, Gillian Geddes and Michael Flint also helped me.

  In my travels, I was incredibly lucky to meet Jamie Tabor, QC, who, while wrestling with a long and gruelling case in Norwich, nobly spent his evenings reading my court case chapters for howlers. But as in every aspect of Pandora, I took his, or anyone else’s, specialist advice only in so far as it suited my plot. Any mistakes are mine and in no way reflect on their expertise.

  I am also indebted to Stephen Burrows, Chief Security Officer at the Royal Courts of Justice, to Emma Macdonald, Bob Parry and the staff at the County and Crown Courts at Gloucester, and to Gil Martin, ex-Gloucestershire CID, for his encyclopedic knowledge of matters criminal.

  Writers need geographical locations on which to anchor their stories. Since moving to Gloucestershire, I have been haunted and captivated by two beautiful, historic and adjoining houses flanking our local church. On them I have based Foxes Court and the Old Rectory in Pandora. I should therefore like to thank Simon and Mindy Reading and John and Elizabeth Cowan for allowing me to range freely round their glorious gardens, but would emphasize that they and their sweet families bear absolutely no resemblance to the Belvedons and the Pulboroughs in my story.

  I must equally thank our former High Sheriff of Gloucestershire, Major John Eyre, for explaining the duties of and historical background to the appointment, but would again stress that as a man of great charm and integrity he bears no resemblance to my frightful High Sheriff in Pandora.

  Everyone, in fact, in Pandora, unless they are so eminent, like Joanna Lumley or Sotheby’s Chairman Henry Wyndham, as to appear as themselves, is made up and in no way based on any living person.

  My characters sometimes fall ill and make miraculous recoveries. It was invaluable to be able to seek medical information from Joe Cobbe, Sarah Morris, Pat Pearson, Graham Hall, Tim Crouch and Martin Joyce.

  On a Ritzy front, interior designer Nina Campbell dreamed up a beautiful bedroom for my heroine’s glamorous mother, while Lindka Cierach, Mariska Kay and David Shilling were a constant inspiration for lovely clothes and hats. Aspreys, Tiffany’s, Alfred Dunhill and Robert Young the florists in Stroud were also a great help, and I must especially thank Denise Dean and David Risley of Zwemmers and Stephen Simpson of Hatchards for so tenaciously tracking down books I needed.

  Writers do not always expect kindness from their own profession. Few, however, could have been more welcoming and helpful than Lesley Garner, Nigel Reynolds, Will Bennett, David Lee, Bevis Hillier, Lucinda Bredin, Peter Harclerode, Matthew Collings, the sublime Brian Sewell, Esther Oxford, John Hawkins of Gloucestershire News Service, Robert Pearson of UK Law News, Peter Davies, Philip Jones and Maria Prendergast. I am also grateful that the Art Newspaper, Art Review and the Jackdaw kept me up to date with events.

  I should like to thank Chris Wood of Decca Records for permission to quote five lines from his translation of Richard Strauss’s Arabella, and also William Mann for permission to quote four lines of Hermann Hesse’s poem ‘Going to Sleep’, which form part of the lyrics for Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs.

  The press offices at Middlesex County Cricket Club, the British Show Jumping Association, the All-England Tennis Club, Wimbledon, Conservative Central Office, the Lord Chancellor’s Office, and the staff at the Public Records Office at the Angel, Islington, were wonderful, always stopping whatever they were doing to provide crucial helpful information.

  Another theme in Pandora is an adopted child’s quest for her natural parents. I am eternally grateful to Marjorie Dent, who formerly ran the Phyllis Holman Richards Adoption Society, for her wisdom and constant support; to social workers Clodagh Howe, Sue Jacobs and June Sellars, and to Felicity Collier, Chief Executive of the British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering, for their advice and ideas and for providing helpful literature on the subject.

  I am also much beholden to the authors of the following books, which provided illumination or factual background on looted art, the art world and adoption. They include The Lost Masters by Peter Harclerode and Brendan Pittaway, The Faustian Bargain by Jonathan Petropoulis, Portrait of Doctor Gachet by Cynthia Saltzman, Raphael by Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny, Blimey by Matthew Collings, Boogey Woogey by Danny Moynihan, Duchess of Cork Street by Lillian Browse, Sotheby’s by Robert Lacey, Groovey Bob by Harriet Vyner, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by John Richardson, Birth Records Counselling by Pam Hodgkins, Adopters on Adoption by David Howe and Ithaka by Sarah Saffian.

  My friends as usual came up with endless ideas. They include Dominique Bagley, Pussy Baird-Murray, Francis Bur
ne, Ailsa Chapman, Sarah Collett, Mike Coppen-Gardner, Fran Cook, my stepdaughter Laura Cooper, Michael Cordy, Susan Daniel, Pam Dhenin, John Ferguson, Dorry Friesen, Glyn and Vanessa Hendy, Bill Holland, Ute Howard, Tidl Jefferies, James Johnstone, David Laurie, Bruce and Janetta Lee, Ava Myers, John Parry, Patrick Scrivenor and Heather Ross.

  On my way home from the courts a couple of years ago I met a delightful and elated woman who told me about her daughter’s boyfriend who had longed to be married before he was forty and how the relevant families effected this. Leaping out at Stroud, I asked her if I could use the story in Pandora but failed to catch her name. Wherever she is now, I would like to thank her, and anyone else I may have forgotten.

  Transworld, my publishers, have all been marvellous in every way, but I would particularly like to thank Mark Barty-King, their Chairman, to whom Pandora is dedicated, and my editor Linda Evans, who is simply a darling, who has constantly supplied me with comfort, joy, support and good advice. Richenda Todd has also been a terrific copy editor. Henry Steadman designed the wonderful hardback jacket, on the front of which is a beautiful painting of the myth of Pandora by Chris Brown. Henry has also designed the equally wonderful new cover for this edition. Neil Gower also drew a beautiful map.

  I am extremely grateful to Steve Rubin, president and publisher of Doubleday, Broadway Publishing Group, and Jane Gelfman my agent in New York, for so kindly reading the chapters set in America.

  I cannot thank my agent in London Vivienne Schuster enough for her kindness, enthusiasm and sympathetic encouragement in the many dark days when I thought Pandora would never be finished. Her colleagues at Curtis Brown, Paul Scherer and Jonathan Lloyd, and Euan Thorneycroft, her trusty lieutenant, were also always there when I needed them.