Pandora (26 page)

To economize at weekends, Patience tried to wear out really old clothes. Underneath a holey brown tank top, she was sporting an orange flower-patterned shirt with a long pointed collar, a tweed knee-length gardening skirt, purple legwarmers and bedroom slippers.

Apologizing for dropping by, he’d lost Emerald’s phone number, Zac said he’d found a skip outside the house in Fulham and bags of cement in the front garden.

‘A guy knocking through rooms gave me this address and sent you his best.’

‘How kind,’ brayed Patience. ‘Such a sweet couple, one always minds less if people are nice . . . Emo’s in the drawing room. Emo!’

A door slammed, rattling even Zac’s strong, excellent white teeth, and a fury in a navy-blue camisole top and French knickers erupted into the hall.

‘
You
must have shrunk my flares, Mum.’

Then as if a dimmer switch had been turned up and the sound turned down, light flooded Emerald’s face and the screaming faded to a stammering whisper.

‘Zac – how lovely to see you, what are you doing here? This is my mother.’

God, why did Patience have to look quite so grotesque?

Emerald had been turning out her room. Underwear littered the unmade bed, so she pulled on a red silk dressing gown and reluctantly led Zac into the overcrowded sitting room.

Sophy, who was lying on the carpet, gathering up her scattered reports, looked up.

‘Jesus!’ she gasped in wonder.

Zac grinned. ‘Not quite.’

As Emerald introduced them, Zac half-mockingly clicked his heels together.

‘Colonel Cartwright. Sophy.’

For the first time, Emerald noticed the trace of a German accent. Her father, whose own father had died in a POW camp, clocked it too, and rose unsteadily to his feet.

‘How d’you do,’ he said stiffly.

‘Zac’s a journalist from New York, Daddy, we met at Rupert Campbell-Black’s open day,’ said Emerald, rushing round, plumping cushions, gathering up Toblerone paper, and emptying ashtrays. Oh Christ, there was an empty glass hidden under her father’s chair.

‘What would you like to drink? Red, white or whisky?’ she asked.

Removing Emerald’s tapestry, Zac sat down on the sofa, saying he’d like a Scotch and soda.

‘I’ll get it,’ said Patience, fleeing.

Emerald had forgotten Zac’s ability not to fill silences, letting others stumble into inanities.

‘Did
Mercury
ever do your piece on Rupert?’ she mumbled.

‘It’s scheduled for May.’

He was beautiful, but not awfully cosy, decided Sophy.

‘What are you working on?’ he asked her.

‘Reports. I’m a teacher. Where did you go?’

‘The Hebrew School in New York, then the University of New Hampshire.’

Emerald’s father, Zac decided, was a basket case, gazing into space, food stains all over his green cardigan, his hand shaking as he checked his flies. He was also plastered.

‘I’ll go and help Mummy with the drinks,’ said Emerald, running out of the room in despair.

She found Patience gazing at an empty cupboard. There had been a bottle of red and half-full bottle of whisky that morning.

‘Bloody Daddy must have drunk it,’ hissed Emerald.

‘Don’t say anything,’ pleaded Patience, ‘he’ll only deny it.’

‘There isn’t a drop in the house. Have you got any money?’

‘Not enough,’ sighed Patience.

Back in the drawing room, Ian and Zac were spikily discussing England’s collapse in the Melbourne Test.

‘Stewart’s only bat who showed any gumption,’ Ian was complaining. ‘Fairbrother was a waste of space. Hick made a duck.’

‘Hussain might make a good captain,’ said Zac idly.

‘Hussain?’ exploded the colonel. ‘Can’t have a black captaining England!’ Then, seeing Zac’s raised eyebrow: ‘Man was out first ball.’

Zac looked at Ian in amusement.

‘I think you’ll find it was the second.’

‘Didn’t know you people knew so much about cricket.’

‘Jews, you mean?’ said Zac politely.

‘No, no.’ Ian’s face flushed an even darker red. ‘Americans.’

Sophy, sorry for her father but trying not to laugh, was relieved when her mother and Emerald returned.

Scenting trouble, Patience said, ‘I do hope you’ll stay and take pot luck, Zac.’

Behind her mother, Emerald was frantically shaking her head.

‘I was hoping Emerald might be free for dinner,’ said Zac.

‘What fun, I’m sure she’d love to,’ cried Patience, trying to hide her relief.

‘I can answer for myself,’ snapped Emerald.

It was so uncool not to be going out on a Saturday night.

‘I was actually just changing to go out to a party,’ she went on untruthfully. ‘But it wasn’t very exciting. Thanks, I’d love to.’

‘Chap’s a bounder,’ said Ian as Emerald, in a silver sequinned suit and a spring-like cloud of Violetta, left with Zac.

‘I’m afraid he’ll break Emo’s heart,’ sighed Patience.

‘Only if he smashes it with a pickaxe,’ said Sophy crossly.

Outside, the sky was the dull pink of a pigeon’s breast; the air reeked of curry and hamburgers. As Zac flagged down a rare taxi, a tramp lurched up to Emerald.

‘Give us a fiver, darlin’.’

‘It’s me who ought to be asking you,’ Emerald told him acidly, and shot across the road into the taxi.

Zac took her to an extremely cool restaurant in Savile Row called Sartoria, where diners relaxed in squashy dark brown leather sofas, and Emerald’s first course of mozzarella, zucchini, mint and basil was so beautifully laid out it should have been hung on the wall.

Zac ordered a very expensive bottle of red, a light Barolo, a ’95 vintage.

‘And drink it slowly,’ he chided, as Emerald took a great gulp to steady her nerves. ‘I figure I get more turned on by wine menus than pornography these days.’

‘Is that why you haven’t been in touch?’

‘I’ve been busy. Since I saw you I’ve been to Tokyo, Moscow, Paris, B.A. and the Hermitage.’

‘And a few ski slopes.’

‘That too.’

‘Zac the wanderer,’ said Emerald sulkily. ‘I haven’t been anywhere.’

‘What happened to the mansion in Yorkshire?’

Emerald was still telling him when their next course arrived. Zac forked up her mozzarella and pushed the zucchini to one side, to make room for her scallops.

‘And don’t expect me to finish up those. Jews don’t eat shellfish. Why didn’t your father go to the Industrial Tribunal?’

‘Says he’s not the grumbling generation.’

Unlike his daughter, thought Zac.

‘He used to be so macho,’ sighed Emerald. ‘I can’t bear seeing him reduced to a shivering jelly, driving minicabs.’

‘Not tonight, I hope,’ grinned Zac.

‘It’s not funny. I don’t really blame Daddy for drinking’ – Emerald drained her glass of red – ‘we’ve lost everything.’

‘Except your talent.’

‘That’s gone. I gaze into space like Daddy.’

‘Don’t be a wimp, talent doesn’t go away, only the guts to apply it.’

Emerald was as exotically beautiful, reflected Zac, as the scarlet anemones in the glass vase on the table, which had sucked up most of their water. Like her, they needed constantly topping up, but in her case with endless approval and attention. And then you thought of the parents with whom she’d been lumbered: that raucous technicolour scarecrow, and that bigoted drunk. Zac had disliked Ian Cartwright intensely, he was the kind of goy who’d think it terribly cool to have a ‘clever little Jew, as sharp as ten monkeys’, as his accountant. The whiff of Ian’s anti-Semitism had been even more unattractive than the smell of his wife’s casserole. Zac shuddered. Picking up Emerald’s delicate white hand with the wild-rose-pink fingernails, he examined the fragile wrists.

‘Must be some good blood somewhere, you ever thought of tracing your birth mother?’

Emerald, who’d been thrown into turmoil by his touching her, couldn’t think straight.

‘It’d be like opening Pandora’s Box,’ she stammered. ‘She might be a junky, or in gaol or even a prostitute. She might get fixated on me and want to see me all the time. She might live in a ghastly house, although it couldn’t be worse than the dump we’ve got in Shepherd’s Bush.’

‘She might want to borrow money off you,’ said Zac with a grin.

‘She gave me a dreadfully common name: “Charlene”.’ Emerald was shocked at her own snobbishness.

‘Charlene is my darling.’ Zac suppressed a yawn.

‘Am I?’ asked Emerald. She wasn’t sure. She must try and talk about him for a change. ‘How long are you here for?’

‘Tomorrow, maybe Monday.’

‘Oh no,’ Emerald was appalled, ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve banged on.’

‘Good Jewish proverb, “It’s better to light a candle than grumble in the dark”.’

Later, when Zac got his Amex card out of his wallet, Emerald noticed a photograph of a very dark handsome man. Perhaps Zac was bi-sexual, but it looked like an old snapshot. Zac read her thoughts.

‘My Great-uncle Jacob,’ adding so bleakly that Emerald shivered: ‘He was murdered by the Gestapo.’

‘God, how awful.’ Then, because she was frantic for Zac to make love to her again: ‘Where are you staying?’

‘Lancaster Gate. An apartment.’

‘It’s on the way home,’ hinted Emerald. Then when he didn’t react, she took a deep breath. ‘If I look for my birth mother, will you help me?’ Anything to keep him in the country. ‘She worked in an art gallery, she was only nineteen, I was born on 7 July 1973. We’ve got a file at home. I know the name of the adoption society in Yorkshire.’

‘In America,’ Zac was clearly bored with the subject, ‘with the necessary information and a credit card, it’s easy. You can order your birth certificate over the phone.’

‘My mother’s bound to be married now and called something different,’ said Emerald fretfully.

She had chewed off all her pink lipstick, leaving her mouth pale and trembling; her big eyes were shadowed and pleading.

‘I can’t ask Mummy and Daddy to help me, they’ve had enough grief recently.’

‘What was your mother’s name?’

‘She was called Anthea Rookhope.’

There was a pause, only interrupted by the hiss of the coffee machine, as Zac put the bill and his Amex card back in his wallet. She couldn’t read the expression on his face: triumph, pity, calculation.

‘OK. I’ll help you.’

People were coming out of the theatres. As Zac and Emerald wandered down Piccadilly, they passed Hatchards with a window filled with flowers, ribbons and books by Maeve Binchy, Penny Vincenzi and Rosamund Pilcher, chosen to give pleasure on Mothering Sunday.

‘Oh hell, I forgot,’ said Emerald crossly. ‘Bloody Sophy should have reminded me. I bet she did it on purpose to be one up. I’ll have to rush out first thing and get Mummy a card.’ Emerald turned to Zac. ‘Did you remember?’

‘My mother’s dead,’ said Zac, so icily he could have directed a blizzard into her face.

‘Oh Christ, I’m sorry, I’m so off the wall at the moment, I forget everything, what did she die of?’

‘Cancer,’ snapped Zac, who had flagged down a taxi.

The moment Emerald was inside, he slammed the door.

‘Aren’t you coming with me?’ She was suddenly distraught.

‘I’ll call you Monday, when I’ve figured out the best way to trace your mom.’ He handed her a £20 note, then told the driver, ‘Five Cowfield Court.’

‘But where are you going?’ sobbed Emerald.

‘I’m gonna walk.’

Almost running towards Hyde Park Corner, Zac noticed hanging above the bare plane trees a three-quarters-full moon, with the same sweet, wistful face as his mother, after she’d lost all her lustrous hair.

‘Oh Mom,’ groaned Zac, ‘why did you have to leave me?’

Zac’s family had been almost entirely wiped out by the death camps. His hero, Great-uncle Jacob, had had a gallery in Vienna, which had been closed down by the Nazis. Jacob had later been murdered by the Gestapo for smuggling Jews out of occupied Europe. Art therefore was in Zac’s blood and the impact of Hitler’s mass murder burnt deep in his soul.