Pandora (33 page)

‘What a handsome chap. I love the name Zachary, and Sir Raymond and I simply love the States, and of course any friend of Jupiter’s.’

Now Anthea was taking Emerald’s little sweating hand in her own tiny one.

I’m going to faint, thought Emerald, my heart’s going to smash through my ribs. This is my mother, how beautiful she is, a fairy princess, the same height as me, a twin gazing into my eyes, except hers are cobalt violet. But if I collapse into her arms, as I long to, I’ll send her flying. She was quite incapable of speech.

Noticing the candle-snuffer hidden by its silver wrapping paper trembling frantically in Emerald’s hand, Anthea was touched that some Americans really were unnerved by titles. Accepting the present, she passed it quickly as a relay baton to a hovering Green Jean.

‘Thank you ver’ ver’ much, Emerald. Why, you’re a little person like me. What part of the States are you from?’ and when Emerald was still incapable of replying: ‘Grab yourself a glass of bubbly and rush in, we’re about to dine. Your table’s on the left, near Jupiter.’ Then, seeing Keithie, Somerford Keynes’s burglar boyfriend, sidling out of the drawing room, fat handbag bulging, Anthea rushed towards him. ‘Catch up with you two later . . . Keithie, I didn’t see you arrive. How ver’ ver’ good of you to come.’

Emerald was appalled to find herself thinking Anthea had a dreadfully put-on voice.

‘You’re doing great,’ murmured Zac.

As they entered the marquee, the room fell silent – then everyone launched into a frenzy of ‘Who are they, who are they?’

Amidst the
nouveaux riches
collectors in their white tuxedos and pink carnations, and the upper classes, whose dinner jackets were lichened with age, and the deadpan monochrome art world, Zac dressed entirely in black (his ebony satin dress shirt replacing the traditional white) looked far more a part of the latter group, who far outnumbered the others. But the rest of the art world didn’t have Zac’s long lean elegant T-shaped body, nor his hard gold features, nor the amiable untroubled smile so completely belied by the unblinking, watchful yellow eyes.

‘Wow!’ murmured Sienna. ‘“Tiger, Tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night”.’

‘More like a Beverly Hills funeral director,’ drawled Jonathan, who loathed competition, ‘but I would not kick out his girlfriend.’

Jupiter, still pacing, went utterly still, blood flooding his cold marble face, as he fought his way down an aisle of half-in half-out chairs to welcome them.

She’s the one, thought Hanna Belvedon in despair. What chance have I got?

The girl looked utterly jolted by Jupiter. She was terribly white, and trembling, and dropped first her scarlet bag, then her crimson pashmina, to reveal a slender fairylike figure. Jupiter was clearly just as fazed, diving to pick up her things, breaking the professional habit of a lifetime by gazing at something beautiful with unqualified enthusiasm.

The girl’s handsome boyfriend by contrast looked totally unruffled. With an Adonis like him in tow, maybe she wasn’t that interested in Jupiter.

Glancing round, Hanna noticed both Jonathan and Alizarin had stopped bickering about the right home for the Elgin Marbles and were also staring at the girl. Then Alizarin, with utterly uncharacteristic levity, chucked a paper dart at Hanna. Inside he had written: ‘You’re infinitely more beautiful.’

‘Where did that come from?’ demanded an icy voice. ‘What did it say?’ Jupiter held out his hand.

‘Nothing,’ said Hanna, and as a fleet of waitresses streamed on with the first course, sea trout mousse with a prawn and champagne sauce, to the accompaniment of the ‘Trout’ Quintet, she defiantly tore the paper dart into tiny pieces.

‘Any chink in that marriage and Alizarin will move in,’ observed Aunt Lily to Keithie the burglar on her right. ‘Jupiter will develop the most frightful squint if he tries to keep one eye on Hanna and the other on the exquisite child who’s just walked in. Ugh, here comes Willy of the Valley – even I keep my wrinkly old elbows rammed to my sides when he’s about.’

Attention had been temporarily diverted from Emerald and Zac by the even later arrival of David Pulborough, who had only a hundred yards to walk from the Old Rectory, but who kept his watch deliberately slow so he could always make an entrance.

‘Of Armani and the man I sing,’ mocked Jonathan.

‘David, how lovely.’ Graciousness met graciousness as Anthea jumped from her chair and ran to greet him.

As David drew her back into the ruched corridor leading into the marquee, Jupiter noticed him bending to kiss Anthea on the mouth, his eyes swivelling to see if Rosemary were watching before groping her bottom. Jupiter hoped David wouldn’t poach too many Belvedon artists or clients this evening. But entering the marquee, the little bounder waved at Casey and Kevin Coley.

David was followed by his mistress, Geraldine Paxton from the Arts Council, who wore a navy-blue watered-silk trouser suit, blood-red lipstick and so much powder she looked as though she’d dipped her face in a barrel of flour. A networking nymphomaniac who advised the rich what to put on their walls, Geraldine was gratified to be on the top table on Raymond’s right, but irked to be so far from David. Anthea, who was unaware of the extent of David’s commitment to Geraldine, greeted her fondly, knowing it would upset Rosemary.

Rosemary, who’d entered the marquee from the garden, had been tormented for nearly twenty-seven years by a tendresse between Anthea and David and had the lack of bloom and quilted jaw of the perennially cuckolded wife. St George’s horse had lost its bounce and looked like a riding-school hack, but she was cheered that the Belvedon children were now noisily yelling, ‘Come and sit with us, Rosie, you can have Visitor’s seat.’

‘You’re over here, Rosemary,’ said Green Jean firmly.

Rosemary knew she couldn’t expect a better placing than between gay Somerford and gayish Neville-on-Sundays, who doted on Jonathan and, knowing of his need for sleep, always muffled the church bells when Jonathan was at home. Both men clearly felt they’d drawn the short straw being seated next to Rosemary. Across the table, Joan Bideford, back from Lesbos and roaring away like a sea lion, clearly did not.

‘Hello, Rosie,’ she yelled, ‘still married to that little squit?’

Suppressing a smile, Rosemary jabbed a finger at a far-off table, where Anthea, knowing David’s ambition to become High Sheriff, had placed him between the equally dowdy wives of the Bishop and the Lord-Lieutenant.

Rosemary then looked for her son Barney, who worked in the gallery with David, noticing that, perhaps with deliberate irony, Anthea had placed him next to the prettiest girl in the room.

Barney, who preferred his own sex and who looked like a pallid version of his grandfather, Sir Mervyn Newton, did many dodgy deals to feed his cocaine habit. Like most children pushed together with the children of their parents’ friends, Barney detested the Belvedons, who used to tease him about being fat.

‘The moment I saw you I thought, “She was a phantom of delight”,’ sighed Barney’s father as he gazed into the rheumy eyes of the Bishop’s wife.

Glancing round at the great and the good and the deeply iffy, Emerald wondered if any of them would like their heads done. She knew she ought to be doing a number on the rest of her table, but having met Anthea, she couldn’t think straight, and, having knocked over her glass of wine, found herself buttering her table napkin.

Any of these men might be my father, she thought. Her panic at being separated from Zac, who was having a lovely time between Hanna Belvedon and Joanna Lumley, was somewhat allayed when she discovered the pasty slob on her left was the son of David Pulborough, who lived next door and who could fill her in with loads of malicious gossip.

‘That’s Alizarin the tormented conflict-junkie,’ Barney was now telling her bitchily, ‘waiting to be famous enough to be played by Daniel Day-Lewis.’

‘I hear your father’s just signed up Jonathan.’

‘Much good it’ll do him,’ snapped Barney, ‘Dad’s already got him fat commissions from the National Portrait Gallery to paint Rupert Campbell-Black and Dame Hermione Harefield, but Jonathan’s done fuck all except squander the advance on booze, drugs and women.’

‘He’s very attractive,’ confessed Emerald, glancing across at Jonathan who was clearly both plastered and coked up to his big bloodshot eyeballs. Seated next to a ferocious beauty with bright red hair, his hands were all over her. Now he was kissing the skylark tattooed on her shoulder, now unzipping her leather catsuit even further, to provide a glimpse of high round breasts and a silver stud gleaming in her belly button. Peering to see if she was wearing a ring, Emerald found she wore them on every finger.

‘Who’s Jonathan snogging?’ she asked Barney. ‘She looks familiar.’

‘His sister, Sienna, and they’re not entirely doing it as a wind-up. With any luck one of them will pass out before they disgrace themselves on the dance floor.’

Fortunately
Oo-ah!
had been diverted from such lewd behaviour and were busy photographing a beaming Visitor in Anthea’s £3,000 wedding hat.

‘No-one’s really disciplined the Belvedons,’ went on Barney, forking up Emerald’s untouched sea trout mousse. ‘Raymond is used to artists and thinks their behaviour is quite normal. But they’ve been brought up rather as a cat brings up its food, vomited into the world by Galena’s neglect. Yet her charm has somehow extended down the years, enslaving them.’

These are my brothers and sisters, thought Emerald. She had never encountered people so outrageous nor so glamorous. Nor could she take her eyes off Anthea. With the Bishop on one side and the Lord-Lieutenant on the other, their flushed balding heads were bent so far over her, they seemed about to clash like shiny red billiard balls.

‘Lady Belvedon is so beautiful,’ sighed Emerald.

Loyalty to his mother, Rosemary, was Barney’s only decent emotion.

‘And an absolute bitch,’ he said.

‘Surely not.’ Emerald longed to defend Anthea, but was scared of giving the game away.

‘She’s the most ghastly snob,’ said Barney flatly. ‘Anyone who’s not going to advance her socially, or feather Raymond’s nest, is ruthlessly rejected.’

Like she rejected me, thought Emerald darkly.

As they were between courses, Anthea had bidden
au revoir
to the doting Bishop and Lord-Lieutenant and was wandering round the tables, air-kissing and charming.

‘Watch her doing a number only on the really important,’ said Barney savagely. ‘Look at her drooling over that guy with the strange eyes. Must say, he’s seriously gorgeous.’

‘He’s my boyfriend,’ said Emerald.

Because of the stifling heat, men were taking off their jackets, and a side of the marquee had been opened up to the garden. Beneath the sweet heady scent of clematis and lilac lurked the rank sexy smell of wild garlic, as though some courtesan too lazy to have a bath had drenched herself in expensive scent.

Black fluffy clouds with pearly grey linings were advancing on a primrose-yellow moon. In the distance beyond dark shrubberies gleamed the River Fleet. Emerald longed to race down the hill and swim across the moonlit water to freedom. She shouldn’t have come. But, glancing up, she saw Anthea had moved on and Zac, smiling across at her, was making a thumbs-up sign.

After dinner, Jupiter made a smooth speech.

‘Practising for when he takes over the Tory Party,’ said Barney sourly.

‘There are ordinary marriages and delicious marriages,’ began Jupiter. ‘This is a delicious marriage.’

He then praised Raymond, which he found difficult because he despised his father, then Anthea, which he found easy.

‘Anthea’s been a wonderful wife to Dad, for whom she planned this entire day, and she’s been a wonderful stepmother, compensating so much for the tragic loss of our own mother. I cannot thank her enough.’

‘We can,’ shouted Jonathan and Sienna.

‘Shut up,’ snapped Alizarin. ‘Let her have her hour of glory.’

For a while they did, even when Anthea, smiling into the
Oo-ah!
camera lens, brimming with tears but not enough to dislodge her blue mascara, rose to her feet. Having prettily thanked her dearest stepson Jupiter, who had always been such ‘a tower of strength’, she launched into a eulogy to her husband.

‘Round the walls are all the Old Masters Sir Raymond has Saved for the Nation.’

‘And made a pretty penny for himself,’ shouted Somerford Keynes, whose mother-of-pearl binoculars were trained on Zac.

‘Unkind, Somerford!’ Anthea threw him a reproachful glance. ‘Let us all drink to Sir Raymond.’

‘She can hardly see over the table,’ spat Sienna.

‘Thank your lucky stars she isn’t genetically modified,’ said Jonathan, drawing a giant Anthea on the tablecloth. ‘Think of the nightmare if she were six foot two, and no bug could kill her.’

‘My one regret,’ wound up Anthea in a ringing voice, ‘is that Mummy and Daddy are not alaive to witness this wonderful occasion.’

‘Bollocks,’ thundered Aunt Lily, to the horror of Green Jean, ‘Anthea never let them over the threshold.’

‘Boo,’ yelled Sienna, a lone voice amidst the storm of cheering as Anthea sat down. ‘Support me,’ she wailed to Jonathan.