Pandora (69 page)

In his dingy digs in Vienna, Jonathan had reached rock bottom. The room, which was the size of a whelping kennel, was only furnished with a narrow bed, a wireless, and a hundred canvasses, on which wistful variations of Emerald’s wan, white face gazed at him from different landscapes. He had failed to dig up any dirt which might jeopardize Zac’s claim on the Raphael. Having not sold a thing since the summer, he was flat broke. He was shocked by his jealousy that Trafford had won the Whistler and become a media star.

Deciding not to buy a litre of whisky and get plastered because his rent was due tomorrow, Jonathan switched on the radio. The Vienna Phil were about to play Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony.

‘The irony,’ the announcer was saying, ‘is that before Tchaikovsky wrote perhaps his greatest work, he had lost all confidence in himself as a composer. “What I need”, he wrote to his brother Modest, “is to believe in myself again”.’

‘Tchaikovsky
et moi
,’ sighed Jonathan.

The ascending scale of the opening bassoon solo coincided with the telephone ringing.

‘Jonathan, it’s Geraldine.’

‘Oh, go away.’

‘Don’t be silly. You’ve just won the British Portrait Award, and twenty-five thousand pounds.’

‘What for?’

‘Trafford submitted one of your nudes.’

‘Which one? I’ve done so many.’

Outside there was a rosy blur on the linden trees. One day he wanted a shirt like the purple and white striped crocuses being flattened by the rain.

‘Doggie Dins will pay for your flight home,’ insisted Geraldine.

And I’ll be 800 miles nearer Emerald, thought Jonathan.

‘OK. I’ll come.’

‘Don’t tell anyone you’ve won. The press will only know you’ve been shortlisted.’

Jonathan was fractionally cheered up. Perhaps he wasn’t such a meretricious, forgotten artist after all. The BP Award was hugely prestigious. He hoped Emerald would be proud. It would also give him a chance to see Alizarin.

The ballroom at the Dorchester was packed. The Doggie Dins logo of a jaunty mongrel adorned every menu, and flashed orange and green, like the Cheshire cat, above the platform. The shortlisted portraits would be later shown on a huge monitor. The future High Sheriff hopped from table to table, massaging dinner-jacketed shoulders, caressing bare backs, charming, networking, David the player.

‘I wouldn’t be giving away secrets if I told you the Pulborough’s got the winner.’

News that Jonathan had been shortlisted had been just the tonic Raymond needed. He hadn’t seen his darling boy since October. The Belvedons had therefore taken a front-row table and sod the cost. Anthea, on the other hand, was feeling paranoid. David was still livid she’d let him think he was Emerald’s father. Jupiter, who’d always been so affectionate and supportive, appeared to have gone over to Alizarin’s side. Last time she’d seen Jonathan, he’d called her a whore and stolen her David Shilling hat, and now he’d won a prize, God knew what he might get up to.

Anthea was also irked that on a table to the right, David had annexed most of the Belvedon’s big clients. The newly ennobled Lord Coley, looking like a thatched pig with his brick-red face and brushed-forward grey hair, who’d always made passes at Anthea in the past, was now chatting animatedly to Si Greenbridge and Rosemary Pulborough, who looked irritatingly better than usual in dove-grey chiffon. On Si’s right was frightful Geraldine with even more frightful Trafford next to her. Hopefully Trafford would get drunk and embarrass them all. Anthea had never seen anything so disgusting as
Shagpile
. And next to Trafford, like a fuchsia barrel, was Kevin’s ghastly wife Enid, who was ecstatic about becoming Lady Coley. She had been dreadfully patronizing towards Anthea as they’d queued to leave their coats.

‘How embarrassing to find your stepson sleepin’ rough in the gutter,’ she had yelled, ‘and what’s this about you havin’ looted art in your attic?’

Everyone had turned round.

Anthea was also livid with Emerald, who’d flatly refused to show up because it would be too agonizing to see Jonathan. Nor was Emerald very happy about
Sophy of Shepherd’s Bush
.

‘You never told me you’d posed for Jonathan,’ she’d stormed.

‘I sort of forgot,’ mumbled Sophy.

‘Did he sleep with you?’

‘Oh no, no, no,’ lied Sophy, then, truthfully: ‘He was never interested in anyone but you.’

Sophy was worried stiff that Jonathan would be lynched if it leaked out that Alizarin had painted the portrait.

To David, Geraldine and Lord Coley’s consternation, Jonathan’s flight was delayed, and he only reached the Dorchester as the guests were scraping up the last of their mango and ginger ice cream and drifting off for a pee break.

Jonathan, who was wearing Emerald’s blue shirt with his dinner jacket and no cufflinks, was far too nervous to face the family and the agony and the ecstasy if Emerald were with them, so he hovered in a side room, sketching the judges.

Over at David’s table, Lord Coley, talking across dull Rosemary, had been highly gratified by his long chat with Si Greenbridge. You certainly networked when you dined with the Pulboroughs.

Somerford, who didn’t feel that Casey Andrews winning the award was much of a story, and who was looking for a better lead for his column, paused beside Si’s chair.

‘Is it true you’re planning to build a Greenbridge Museum in Detroit?’ he asked. ‘And fill it with works of art for the benefit of the city?’

‘What a wonderfully philanthropic gesture,’ cried Geraldine, ‘I hope I may be allowed to make suggestions.’

‘Bloody good career move, Si,’ grunted Trafford, ‘you’ll be able to launder your dirty money and your murky reputation at the same time.’

‘Trafford!’ thundered a horrified David. Geraldine looked as though she was about to faint, but Si, who seemed in an amazingly good mood, roared with laughter.

‘I’ll remember that remark next time you want me to buy a picture, young man.’

‘Lord Coley and I,’ butted in Lady Coley, who was determined to keep her very big end up, ‘also feel it is our duty to open our collection to the public next year. As yet we cannot decide what to call it.’

‘What about Art Nouveau Riche?’ murmured Trafford, scooping up all the table’s allocation of petits fours and washing them down with a glass of Barsac.

As a roll of drums sent people racing back to their seats, Casey Andrews could be seen combing his beard in anticipation of accepting the award. As the lights dimmed, Rosemary was amazed to feel Si’s huge warm hand closing over hers and the pressure of his iron thigh against her own. Overjoyed but disbelieving (perhaps he was just stretching?), she edged her leg an inch away. Immediately Si’s leg followed.

Geraldine, looking thin and graceful in silver – like the twigs Anthea used to paint at Christmas, thought Jonathan – mounted the rostrum to give away the prizes.

‘My lords’ – big flashing smile at Lord Coley – ‘ladies, and gentlemen, welcome to the tenth British Portrait Awards sponsored so generously by Doggie Dins.’

After that Jonathan couldn’t take in what she was saying.

‘Although we rejected nine-tenths of the send-in, blah, blah, blah, we were struck by the extraordinary skills, blah, blah, blah, keeping figurative painting alive, blah, blah, blah, Lord Coley, whose huge enthusiasm for art brought this competition into being, blah, blah . . .’

Jonathan, who was busy drawing Kevin Coley’s fourth chin, didn’t look up at the monitor as the winning names were flashed up to loud cheers.

‘I have to confess that this was Lord Coley’s favourite,’ shouted Geraldine over the din, as a beaming yellow face appeared on the screen.

‘Visitor!’ gasped Raymond in delight and anguish.

‘But on balance, we were unanimous about the winner, who has long been regarded as the wild man of the art world,’ continued Geraldine to more cheers and catcalls.

Casey smirked and recombed his beard.

‘But over the years,’ called out Geraldine triumphantly, ‘he has matured astonishingly and produced on this occasion a work of towering genius.’

Next moment,
Sophy of Shepherd’s Bush
flashed up on the screen. A few seconds of silence was followed by tumultuous whoops and wolf whistles.

‘That’s Emerald’s sister,’ cried Anthea in outrage. ‘Why doesn’t she do something about her bikini line?’

‘And the winner of the British Portrait Award 2000,’ shouted Geraldine, ‘is Jonathan Belvedon.’

Looking up from his sketch, Jonathan caught sight of Alizarin’s portrait and felt, like his hero Byron before him, as if ‘an elephant had trodden on his heart’. Not for a moment, however, did he betray his disappointment. Only pausing at David’s table to down a third of a bottle of champagne, he sauntered, cigarette in hand, up onto the platform. The blaze of flashlights showed up his unhealthy pallor and the stone and a half weight loss, but he smiled amiably.

The Belvedon table, who knew that smile of old, wondered nervously what he was about to do next. Massed polyanthus along the edge of the stage cringed, expecting him to throw up. But Jonathan merely seized the mike. It was half a minute before he could make himself heard over the uproar.

‘Abdul Karamagi commissioned me to do this portrait of Sophy in good faith,’ he announced calmly. ‘I hadn’t got the time, so my brother Alizarin got me out of a jam and painted Sophy instead. My only contribution to this picture was to sign it. Hence the work of towering genius.’

Geraldine looked as though she was going to have a coronary.

‘Alizarin’s always followed his own road,’ shouted Jonathan over the din, ‘never shirking, never compromising. He works more hours than anyone I know and has continued to work in this intensely personal way, irrespective of fashion. It’s great, he’s got a big show opening at my father’s gallery in Cork Street tomorrow and an even bigger one at the Campbell-Black in New York later in the year.

‘I am glad to accept the award on his behalf and to be able to bank the cheque’ – Jonathan grabbed them both from a helplessly mouthing Geraldine – ‘to stop him giving it away to even poorer artists. Thank you.’

Having glanced at the Belvedons’ table, to make sure Emerald wasn’t there, only pausing to nick another bottle of David’s champagne, Jonathan looked neither to right nor left as to deafening cheers and a few boos, he sprinted out into Park Lane. Here he shook off the press and, leaping into a taxi, went to see Alizarin.

After the champagne, the beautiful people, the soft lights and the merry bitchy chat about nothing except whose pictures were unjustifiably selling better than others, the contrast was hideous.

Under that glaring fluorescent light in an overcrowded ward surrounded by other desperately suffering people, Alizarin seemed to have become part of that persecuted world he was constantly portraying. How well he would have recorded the scene if he could have seen it.

In his striped pyjamas, his thinness emphasizing his beaky nose, sightless closed eyes, Belvedon eyelashes feathering his wasted cheeks, Alizarin could have been any one of the Holocaust victims Jonathan had been reading about so obsessively in Vienna.

Typically he was not particularly excited by the news he’d won. There was nothing original or visionary about his portrait of Sophy. His imagination hadn’t been stretched.

‘Everyone was knocked out by it.’

‘Shows what lousy taste they’ve got. And twenty-five thousand won’t pay for the operation.’

‘You’ll make a lot more tomorrow. After tonight they’ll flock to the private view.’

‘Doesn’t bring Visitor back.’

‘Oh, Al! Your portrait of him came second, which means another ten grand. Casey Andrews will go apeshit to be beaten by a dog.’

Alizarin smiled faintly.

‘That’s something. Good of you to come.’

‘I wanted to see you.’ Oh Christ, why did everything come back to sight?

On the bedside table, Jonathan noticed scribbles intended as a Valentine card in which the arrow kept missing the heart, and nearly wept. Then he remembered he’d never paid Alizarin his share for Sophy’s portrait. He must get the money somehow.

‘Let’s open this,’ he said, whipping out David’s bottle of champagne from inside his dinner jacket.