Pandora (62 page)

‘Fuck Commotion.’ He was chucking everything back into his case when an apoplectic David Pulborough rang.

‘Where the hell have you been?
Expectant Madonna
arrived late last night but her bulge won’t go through the front door. It’s taken a dozen workmen to winch her through an upstairs window. By some miracle we’ve kept this from the press. Dame Hermione has graciously agreed to be present at the unveiling this afternoon and Micky Blake, who’s curating the exhibition, has even more graciously agreed to lay on refreshments for the media.’

‘I’m going back to England.’

‘Will you stop pissing about,’ David’s language became very unbefitting a future High Sheriff, ‘and get your ass down here and show us how the fucking thing works.’

To avoid a ravening press and the moral majority brandishing placards saying ‘Filth!’ and ‘Go Home, Blaspheming Brits’, Jonathan was smuggled in through a back door. By the time he and a pack of electricians and carpenters had got
Expectant Madonna
up and thrumming behind closed blue curtains and a shield of security guards, it was well into the afternoon.

David, who had designs on Dame Hermione – he’d heard she fucked like a stoat – was still dressed deliberately casually in increasingly tight jeans and no tie. He was very irritated to witness the formal attire of his star artist.

‘Where did you get that suit?’

‘Armani.
Vogue
gave it me as a modelling fee.’

‘I never got my cut on that,’ snapped David, ‘we’ll have to adjust the fee elsewhere.’ Then, as Jonathan looked likely to bolt, ‘Come on, the media want a good hour before Dame Hermione arrives.’

So much excitement and mystique had been generated by Jonathan’s delay that everyone expected him to erupt into the press room plastered and stoned, launch into a stream of expletives, get his dick out, smash a window, punch all the critics who’d slagged him off (who’d all arrived in bullet-proof vests) and then throw up.

To their amazement, Jonathan stalked in sober, clean-shaven, clear-eyed and immaculate. Not only was his beauty astonishing, but he was also cool, focused, extremely detached and not prepared to make outrageous statements on the scandal caused by Commotion, nor about the whereabouts of the Raphael.

The YBAs, who’d been caning it for three days, waiting for Jonathan to lead them into laddish pranks, were bitterly disappointed.

‘I’ve never known anyone come off Concorde sober,’ grumbled Trafford. ‘The zeitgeist today,’ he was now telling a bewildered reporter from CBS, ‘is the body and its foundations. As no-one believes in an afterlife’ – Trafford reached for his quadruple brandy and Benedictine – ‘one’s body and everything that emerges from it is the only temple: snot, spit, vomit, tears, pus, sperm, shit, piss, menstrual blood are all sacred.’

‘How very true,’ chipped in a hovering Geraldine Paxton admiringly.

‘Thank you, Mr Trafford,’ said the reporter from CBS faintly. ‘Can you tell Jonathan Belvedon we’re ready for him?’

On his way to a Channel 4 interview, Trafford paused to speak to Jonathan, who’d just finished with
The New York Times
.

‘I’ve sold five editions of
Oh Nan
and six of
Assholier
.’

‘That’s great, Traff.’ Putting down a cup of black coffee, Jonathan got out his mobile.

‘See that redhead over there? She’s Slaney, the museum PR,’ continued Trafford, then, with all the arrogance of the great artist who can pull anyone: ‘She’s having dinner with me tonight. For five hundred dollars you can hide in my wardrobe.’

‘Sweet of you,’ murmured Jonathan as he punched out:
Missing you hopelessly
. ‘Oh look, there’s Sienna.’

Sienna had just endured a grilling from NBC over the theft of
Pandora
and was getting increasingly twitchy over talk of escalating fines for looted art and swarthy, sinister men following her. She nearly wept with relief when she saw Jonathan. His new beauty made her gasp.

But although he ruffled her hair, admitted he’d missed her and asked what she’d been up to, it was soon clear he wasn’t hearing a word she said. Nor was he interested that everyone was speculating about the Raphael, not even that Si had been lurking in the lobby. Only when she mentioned Zac did his face harden.

‘I’ll kill that shit for hurting Emo.’

‘How is she?’

‘Wonderful, an angel, not at all like we thought.’ Then, hearing a double bleep, he whipped out his mobile.

‘IM YRS 4 EVR MRALD,’ read Sienna over his shoulder.

‘Jonathan, stop coffeehousing,’ bellowed David, ‘
Sky News
want to do you now, and after that
Vanity Fair
.’

‘See you later, sweetheart.’ Pecking Sienna on the cheek, rereading his message, Jonathan rushed off.

‘I stood among them, but not of them; in a shroud Of thoughts which were not their thoughts,’ quoted Sienna despairingly.

Jonathan was so obsessed with Emerald, he’d forgotten today was Sienna’s twenty-sixth birthday, as had the rest of the family. She’d been away so long. When Jonathan had loved her, she hadn’t needed her friends. Now, working so hard to get over him, she hadn’t bothered to get in touch with any of them.

Trying not to howl, drenched by rain, unable to get a taxi, she battled her way back to the hotel, praying someone might have remembered. In her pigeon-hole was one red envelope containing a card of a sleeping Burmese cat.

‘Dearest Sienna,’ she read, ‘Good luck with your exhibition, and have a lovely birthday. See you soon, I hope. Love, Patience (Cartwright).’

The old duck. Sienna bit her lip. How weird that the mother of the girl who was the cause of so much of her unhappiness should be the only one to remember.

‘This has just been delivered, Miss Belvedon.’

The receptionist handed her a parcel.

Tearing the gold paper, Sienna felt the softness of cashmere and drew out a black polo neck from Rosemary and Aunt Lily. The card wished her a happy birthday and begged her to come home soon. Rosemary must have tipped off her friend Patience. But who had delivered the parcel? There was no stamp. Perhaps by some miracle Jonathan had remembered and was organizing a surprise party later.

Then a shadow darkened the white card, Sienna breathed in CK One and whipped round with a gasp of horror to find Zac far too close behind her. He had been working out; she could feel the heat of his body, the caress of his dark green tracksuit. His hair was black with sweat.

‘Happy birthday,’ said Zac, noticing the tears and the terror in her eyes, and the face so pale and vulnerable despite its armour of studs and rings.

Overwhelmed with claustrophobia, Sienna rammed herself against the reception desk.

Zac fingered the cashmere. ‘Nice turtle-neck.’

‘From Rosemary and Lily. I also got a card from Emerald’s mother. No-one else remembered because I’ve been such a bitch,’ sobbed Sienna, and fled for the lift.

Having showered and changed in his office, Zac took a taxi to the Commotion Exhibition to find the building swarming with excited media and public, awaiting Dame Hermione. Zac was greeted warmly by all his friends in the art world, including curators from other museums, who were mostly gay and who’d popped in to catch a glimpse of Jonathan, now being interviewed by CBS.

‘Often takes longer to think up a title than make the installation,’ Jonathan was telling them airily. ‘
White Cliffs of Diva, Womb with a View
, were options, but
Expectant Madonna
seemed more appropriate. You’ll see in a minute.’

‘I gather you employed a team of assistants. Which bits did you do?’

‘I did her face and her pubes,’ grinned Jonathan, who was still ecstatic about Emerald’s text message, ‘and the blue veins on her boobs,’ then, catching sight of Zac, his face hardened: ‘What the fuck are you doing in New York?’

‘I live here,’ snapped Zac. ‘Just wanted to remind you it’s Sienna’s birthday today.’

‘Oh Christ.’ Jonathan’s cigarette nearly set fire to his hair as he clutched his forehead, then, turning to the CBS crew: ‘Sorry, guys, that’s it for now.’

‘Johnny,’ ‘Johnny,’ ‘Johnny,’ tape recorders advanced from all sides.

‘Beat it,’ said Jonathan.

When Sienna, dark glasses covering her swollen eyes, huddled into her new polo neck, fought her way into the Exhibitors’ room, everyone cheered and sang: ‘Happy birthday, dear S’
enn
-ah.’

Jonathan, having unearthed a watch which changed colour that he’d bought for Emerald on the flight over, had charmed Slaney the museum publicist into wrapping it for him. Slaney had also nipped out and bought a huge bunch of white roses delicately tinged with pink, a rainbow cake, which Jonathan had decorated with Smarties, and a big card, which Jonathan had signed.

Greeted by such largesse, Sienna nearly broke down. Strapping on the watch, she fled to the loo to find water for the roses and have a quick blub. She returned to popping corks. Micky Blake, the tall, thin, cadaverous curator of the exhibition, euphoric to have had 300,000 visitors in the past three days, had been only too happy to lay on champagne.

Sienna accepted a glass and hugged Jonathan.

‘Such gorgeous presents,’ she said shakily. ‘I thought you’d forgotten.’

Jonathan blushed slightly as, over her shoulder, his eyes met Zac’s.

‘Let’s get wasted,’ said Trafford.

‘Again,’ said Slaney acidly. ‘A guy’s just been in wanting to buy
Slaughterhouse
,’ she told Sienna, ‘only problem is he’s going back to Russia in a fortnight, and wants to take it just before the end of the exhibition.’

‘I don’t know’ – Sienna’s eyes flickered in sudden panic – ‘I wanted to do a copy first.’ Glancing up, she noticed Zac’s presence for the first time and that he was regarding her speculatively.

‘Who invited
you
here?’

‘Came to look at the exhibition, love your stuff,’ then when she looked mutinous, ‘I’ve brought you a present.’

It was the Decca recording of
Arabella
, with Kiri Te Kanawa singing the title role.

‘That’s cool,’ mumbled Sienna, ‘really kind and thank you for dinner the other night.’

‘Dinner?’ An outraged Jonathan swung round. ‘You sleeping with the enemy?’

‘Don’t be fatuous,’ stormed Sienna, blushing furiously.

‘I figured you might enjoy
Arabella
sung by a proper actress rather than a lump of lard,’ said an amused Zac.

‘For God’s sake shut up, and put that CD away,’ shrieked Slaney as she came off her mobile. ‘Dame Hermione has left the Waldorf. I’m off to whip up a spontaneous ovation.’

‘Are you going to accompany Dame Hermione through the building, Jonathan, and show her your
oeuvre
?’ asked Geraldine Paxton, who’d just walked in and who thought Dame Hermione a self-regarding cow. ‘Or will you receive her beside
Expectant Madonna
?’

‘When’s Jonathan going to do a moony?’ chorused the visiting curators. ‘We’re all dying to see that cute ass.’

Nothing turned Dame Hermione Harefield on like a crowd of press. Radiant in her violet Chanel suit, huge amethysts at her ears and neck, soft brown curls framing her round-eyed rosy face, a mauve pashmina carefully concealing her large bottom, she paused in Commotion’s entrance a good twenty minutes – thus enabling even the
Christian Science Monitor
and the
Osh Kosh Gazette
to get their pictures.

Then, telling the cheering crowd she had no time for autographs, she swept through the museum, ignoring even the most outrageous exhibits until she reached her own, which was still concealed by its pale blue curtains. Delighted to see her elusive artist for once on parade and looking so tidy and handsome, Hermione kissed Jonathan full on the mouth, smearing him with ruby-red lipstick. Furiously, Jonathan wiped it off with his sleeve. That would be the clip Emerald was bound to see on the ten o’clock news tonight.