Pandora (36 page)

‘Jonathan, please.’ Raymond was nearly in tears again. ‘I promise you it’s all true.’

‘You’re covering for Anthea. How did Emerald get in here anyway? Who invited her?’

‘Jupiter did,’ said Sienna.

Alizarin, who’d moved on to Rossetti’s drawing of Tennyson, glanced quickly round at Hanna.

‘I liked the head Emerald did of me,’ snapped Jupiter, ‘I wanted Dad to meet her. She’s got great talent, and I asked her boyfriend as well. Where is he, by the way?’

‘Thought he was probably
de trop
,’ mumbled Raymond. ‘He’s retreated to the Mitre in Searston. Going to ring in the morning. Nice chap.’

‘And she brought my brother’s head in on a platter like John the Baptist,’ said Jonathan. ‘I do not believe that girl or her boyfriend are legit.’

‘She’s the image of Anthea,’ pleaded Raymond.

‘Nothing like you,’ said Sienna beadily.

‘She’s got Granny Belvedon’s wonderful green eyes. It’s miraculous we’ve found her again. I do so want you to love and accept your new sister.’

‘Not until she’s had a DNA test,’ persisted Jonathan.

Dicky, who’d been laboriously pressing buttons, finally looked up from his calculator.

‘If it’s your twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, Dad,’ he said in a shocked voice, ‘you must have put it into Mummy before you were married. Why didn’t you use a condom?’

Jonathan’s shout of laughter was interrupted by a bang on the door, which Alizarin unlocked to find David Pulborough, unable any longer to contain his curiosity.

‘Family confab? Terrific party. Everything all right?’

‘Fine,’ snapped Alizarin, who detested David, ‘now bugger off.’

‘I thought you’d like to know,’ said David, pretending to be concerned, ‘that Casey Andrews, feeling rather neglected by our host and hostess, is threatening to batter Somerford to death with a cricket bat. And there’s an urgent call for you, Raymond.’

Jonathan grabbed the handset. After thirty seconds, he began to laugh.

‘It’s the
Daily Mail
, Dad. They want to know all about Anthea’s love child. Can they have an exclusive?’

Just for a second, the colour drained from David’s flushed face.

‘Of course they can,’ cried Raymond. Anything to get away from the collective disapproval of his children. ‘I want the world to know our beautiful daughter has come home.’

‘Someone must have tipped off the
Mail
,’ said Jupiter, keen to regain the ascendancy, glaring accusingly round the room.

Dora, however, had folded her arms in fury.

‘She’s
my
mother, I should have been allowed to tip off the press. They might have paid me enough to buy Loofah a new saddle.’

Suddenly everyone seemed to be hissing Raymond the pantomime villain. Then a whipcrack of lightning followed by a cannonade of thunder sent Grenville diving under the sofa, with fat Visitor practically con-cussing himself trying to follow. Opening the royal-blue velvet curtains a fraction, Jonathan saw couples racing in from the garden. The heavens had finally opened.

Upstairs Anthea and Emerald were opening their hearts with equal lack of restraint. Chattering, weeping, embracing, they couldn’t stop looking at each other as, like picture restorers, they filled in the gaps of the last twenty-five years. Warmed by endless cups of Earl Grey, buoyed up by more glasses of champagne, they kept laughing and finding their laughs identical, discovering they were both left handed, suffered from migraines, loathed clutter and wearing trousers, and that violets were their favourite flower.

Curled up amid the dolls in the cream-linen four-poster, admiring the porcelain, the pastels of Dicky and Dora, the needlepoint cushions (blurting out she did embroidery too), Emerald thought she had never been in a prettier room.

Anthea had banished Raymond’s blue checked duvet to the dressing room and taken off her rainbow-woven dress and her hairpiece. Now in a white smocked dressing gown, with her blond curls brushed off her tear-stained face, she looked about fourteen. Giddy with relief that the skeleton had finally emerged from the closet and turned out so pretty, talented and nicely spoken, she was now busily re-editing events to show what humiliation and dreadful deprivation she had suffered to ensure Emerald a better life.

‘Ay was only nineteen and a virgin when Sir Raymond seduced me. After one night of love-making to comfort him, I fell pregnant. My parents threw me out, I had no home, no money, all I wanted was you to have a better chance in life than me. Single mothers were treated like scum in those days. Nurses in the maternity ward, social workers, the nuns at the adoption society were all the same.’

Anthea’s voice was rising, her fingers drumming on the bedside table in time to the deluge outside.

‘You poor thing,’ wailed Emerald. ‘But tell me about the rest of the family. You’re so pretty, I must have loads of glamorous cousins, uncles and aunts.’

‘Not very exciting,’ said Anthea firmly. ‘My grandmother was dying of cancer at the time, everyone was terrified she’d find out. Ay had to visit her in hospital in baggy jumpers.’

‘Where was I born? How much did I weigh?’ Emerald was desperate for information.

‘Four and a half pounds. The birth was dreadfully long and difficult. I was utterly exhausted. I remember catching a last glimpse of your tiny hands through the window but I don’t recall signing the papers or driving away. I blocked out the whole heart-rending experience.’

‘You poor thing,’ moaned Emerald, patting her new mother’s shoulders. But a faint voice of disquiet kept saying, I suffered too, I’ve had a terrible time.

Anthea seemed more interested in learning about Patience.

‘Well, they certainly didn’t match us physically,’ admitted Emerald disloyally, ‘she’s large, red-faced and horsey. There was usually a bridle hanging from the bed, and dogs in it.’

‘Ugh!’ said Anthea, who only allowed Nina Campbell’s toile de Jouy monkeys and parrots into
her
bedroom. ‘What did she tell you about me?’

‘Your name, and that the adoption society said that you were beautiful, young, very brave and er – working in a gallery.’

‘I was brave,’ agreed Anthea, topping up Emerald’s glass. ‘I sustained myself through the dark days in a ghastly bed-sitter, dreaming of you growing up in a lovely airy home with the sun pouring through the windows, probably designed by your father.’

‘Daddy was in the army,’ said Emerald, perplexed.

‘They lied to me!’ Anthea pleated the counterpane in fury. ‘The adoption society swore you were going to a charming architect and his wife, who’d never need to work, but did a lot for charity. I’d never have signed the papers if I’d known you were going to be shunted from one army billet to another.’

She’ll flip if she finds out Daddy’s driving a minicab and Mummy’s working in a pub, thought Emerald. Then, desperate to change the subject: ‘I always found it difficult to talk to them about adoption.’

‘My parents would never let me mention you,’ countered Anthea. ‘I couldn’t even discuss you with Raymond. Having Dicky and Dora made me realize the extent of my loss. I had to pretend they were my first babies; everyone gave me advice. I wanted to scream, “I’ve been down that road”, but I had to bite my tongue.

‘It’s so unfair. When I was nineteen, it was regarded as criminally selfish to keep your baby and deny it the security of a mother and father; now society regards you as having been criminally selfish if you gave a baby up. I can’t win.’

Like a rescued castaway, Anthea couldn’t stop gabbling.

‘They said I’d get over it, but I never did. I looked into every pram, thought of you every day, particularly on your birthday.’

‘When is it?’ asked Emerald idly.

‘July the ninth. No, the tenth. No, the eighth. You’re trying to trick me,’ flared up Anthea.

So Emerald flared up too.

‘It’s the seventh – actually,’ then, changing tack, ‘Raymond’s so approachable, even if he was married. I’m sure he would have supported you. There must have been oodles of money splashing around. If you’d really loved me.’

‘Of course Ay loved you, I carried you for nine months.’

Anthea’s tummy was so flat, it was hard to imagine a baby in there.

‘I’m sorry, I guess I’m testing you.’ Emerald stifled a yawn and shivered.

The thunder had rumbled away. Over the clatter of rain could be heard the distant boom of ‘American Pie’. Anthea looked at her watch.

‘We must get you to bed.’

Although Anthea lent her the prettiest white broderie anglaise nightgown trimmed with pale pink ribbon, Emerald detected a distinct
froideur
.

‘Oh wow,’ she cried, trying to make amends as Anthea showed her her room.

Painted on the walls was a riotous jumble of trees, Gods, nymphs, satyrs and woodland creatures peering through the greenery.

‘You do have the most wonderful taste.’

‘Sir Raymond’s first wife did this,’ said Anthea icily. ‘So self-indulgent. I long to paint over it, but Raymond thinks it’s a work of art, and her children are determined to hang on to it.’

Remember never to praise the first Mrs Belvedon, thought Emerald as Anthea whisked about, turning down the bed, switching on lights.

‘You are kind.’

‘I like to pamper my guests.’

Emerald glanced at their reflections in the big mirror, stunned by how alike they were, except for differentcoloured hair and eyes.

‘You look like my younger sister.’

Instantly Anthea dropped her guard, putting an arm round Emerald’s shoulders.

‘I’ll find you some lovely clothes to wear tomorrow. Promise not to run away.’

‘No, no, I’d love to stay. There’s only one thing bugging me, do I call you Lady Belvedon, or Anthea?’

‘I hope you’re going to call me Mummy.’

The moment she’d gone, Emerald rang Zac, who to her fury had switched off his mobile. How bloody selfish could you get? She was so desperate for reassurance that she was still adored and special, she was tempted to ring Patience and Ian, then caught sight of the bedside clock. Even her doting parents wouldn’t want to be roused at five in the morning.

Emerald woke whimpering and sweating with terror. On the wall to her right, Galena had painted a lusty Apollo lunging at Daphne, who was slowly turning into a laurel tree: her legs merging with the branches, long eyes and wild hair losing themselves in the leaves. Was this Emerald Cartwright turning into Charlene Belvedon?

She felt defenceless, post natal, utterly exhausted and strangely cheated, as though, having seen the film of a favourite book, the characters were not as she’d imagined. She could no longer fantasize about Rupert Campbell-Black rescuing her in a helicopter if things got rough. She had arrived at Foxes Court believing herself to be the injured party. But Anthea had stolen her role.

She was also freezing and in a hot, jasmine-scented bath felt she was washing away all her Cartwright past. The mirror had misted over; she couldn’t see who she was any more.

As she finished drying herself, the bedroom door opened. Not Jonathan on the pull, nor an outraged Jupiter demanding explanations, but a rotund yellow Labrador waddled in. Knowing he was banned from coming upstairs, Visitor pressed his face against the side of the bed. If he couldn’t see Emerald, she couldn’t see him. Hoping to draw her attention to the tin of sugar biscuits on the bedside table, Visitor wagged his tail.

Hearing whistling, Emerald ran to the window. Below, the forecourt was strewn with petals and shiny with puddles. Through dripping acid-green limes, she caught a tawny glimpse of the Old Rectory. A ginger cat idled along the dividing wall.

This is a glorious place, thought Emerald, running her hand over the little Degas horse on the window sill, this is definitely where I belong.

The whistling grew louder. Alizarin Belvedon, standing by the water trough, was reading the
Observer
. Having conned Jupiter and slapped Jonathan’s face, Emerald felt she’d better get Alizarin on her side.

To hell with clothes and make-up, she was now a bohemian Belvedon. Wriggling back into Anthea’s ravishing white nightgown, flinging her crimson pashmina round her shoulders, Emerald ran downstairs with Visitor galumphing behind her.