PANDORA

www.booksattransworld.co.uk
Afco by Jilly Cooper

FICTION Riders
Rivals
Polo
The Man Who Made Husbands
Jealous
Appassionata
Score!

NON-FICTION Animals in War
Class
How to Survive Christmas
Hotfoot to Zabriskie Point (with
Patrick Lichfield)
Intelligent and Loyal
Jolly Marsupial
Jolly Super
Jolly Superlative
Jolly Super Too
Super Cooper
Super Jilly
Super Men and Super Women
The Common Years
Turn Right at the Spotted Dog
Work and Wedlock
Angels Rush In
Araminta's Wedding

CHILDREN'S BOOKS Little Mabel
Little Mabel's Great Escape
Little Mabel Saves the Day
Little Mabel Wins

ROMANCE Bella
Emily
Harriet
Imogen
Lisa & Co
Octavia
Prudence

ANTHOLOGIES The British in Love
Violets and Vinegar
JILLY

COOPER

pan DORA

v,
BANTAM PRESS

LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO SYDNEY AUCKLAND
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
61-63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA
a division of The Random House Group Ltd
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RANDOM HOUSE SOUTH AFRICA (PTY) LTD
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Published 2002 by Bantam Press
a division of Transworld Publishers

Copyright ©Jilly Cooper 2002
The right of Jilly Cooper to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBNs 0593 046978 (cased)
0593 046986 (tpb)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the publishers.

Typeset in 11/12 New Baskerville by
Phoenix Typesetting, Ilkley, West Yorkshire
Printed in Great Britain by
Mackays of Chatham PLC, Chatham, Kent

13579108642
To Mark Barry-King, a hero in every way,
with huge love and gratitude
THE LEGEND OF PANDORA'S BOX

There are many variations on the legend of Pandora but I have
used the one that begins with a heroic mortal called Prometheus
boldly storming Mount Olympus, the home of the Gods. As if on
an SAS mission, he stole fire, which had hitherto been the preserve
of the Gods. This audacity outraged Jupiter, their King, not least
because he feared that mortals might now have a means of overthrowing
him.
As retribution, he therefore instructed his Gods and Goddesses
to create the most beautiful mortal ever seen: a woman called
Pandora, which means 'all-gifted'. Jupiter then ordered his messenger,
Mercury, to deliver this exquisite creature to the door of
Prometheus's brother, Epimetheus. A susceptible young man,
Epimetheus ignored his brother's warning not to accept any
presents from the Gods and promptly asked the lovely Pandora to
marry him. His only condition was that she should never open the
oak chest in the corner of the room.
The newly married Pandora, however, was overwhelmed with
curiosity, and one day when Epimetheus was out hunting she
yielded to temptation and opened the chest. Immediately all the
evils and diseases of the world, which had been trapped inside, flew
out. After viciously stinging Pandora and a returning Epimetheus,
they flew off, contaminating the earth with a biological storm and
bringing dreadful pain and misfortune to the human race.
Pandora and Epimetheus were still weeping and writhing in
agony when they heard tapping on the inside of the oak chest and
out stepped a radiant, angelically smiling fairy.
'My name is Hope,' she told them, 'and I have come to bring
comfort and to relieve the suffering of you and all mankind.'
CAST 0

general aldridge

colin casey andrews

zachary ansteig

neville baines
jean baines

raymond belvedon
jupiter belvedon
CHARACTERS

Lord-Lieutenant of Larkshire - so
boring he's known locally as
'General Anaesthetic'.

England's greatest painter,
according to Casey Andrews. A
Belvedon Gallery artist with exalted
ideas of his own genius and sexual
prowess. Long-term lover of Galena
Borochova.

Zac the Wanderer. An American
journalist ofAustroJewish
extraction, whose tigerish beauty
and air of suppressed violence in
no way conjure up cheery images of
The Sound of Music.

Vicar of St James, Limesbridge,
predictably known as 'Neville-onSundays'.


His very tiresome, ecologically
correct wife, known as 'Green
Jean'.

An extremely successful art-dealer,
owner of the Belvedon Gallery in
Cork Street.

Raymond's machiavellian eldest
son, who, after Cambridge, joins
him in the gallery.

XI
hanna belvedon Jupiter's blonde Junoesque wife, a
very gifted painter of flowers.

alizarin belvedon Raymond's second son, a genius
tormented by a social conscience.
Produces vast tortured canvasses
no-one wants to buy.

jonathan belvedon Raymond's colossally glamorous
younger son. A genius as yet
unhampered by any conscience at
all.

sienna belvedon Raymond's elder daughter. A
truculent, talented wild child.

dicky belvedon Raymond's youngest son - an artful
dodger.

dora belvedon Raymond's younger daughter and
Dicky's horse-mad twin sister.

joan bideford A Belvedon Gallery artist and
splendid bruiser with a fondness
for her own sex. Unenthusiastically
married to Colin Casey Andrews.

micky blake The Curator of the Commotion
Exhibition at the Greychurch
Museum in New York.

galena borochova An inspired and extremely volatile
Czech painter with a fondness for
sex.

sampson brunning A brilliant QC, famous for keeping
the Belvedon family out of gaol.

rupert campbell-black Enfant terrible of British
showjumping, as beautiful as he is
bloody-minded, later leading
owner-trainer who dabbles idly in
paintings.

taggie campbell-black His adored second wife - an angel.

adrian campbell-black Rupert's younger brother - a cool
and successful gallery owner in
New York.

Xll
xavier campbell-black Rupert and Taggie's adopted
Colombian son.

colonel ian cartwright Former commanding officer of a
tank regiment, managing director
of a small but very profitable
engineering company in West
Yorkshire.

patience cartwright His loyal wife - a trooper.

emerald cartwright Their elder adopted daughter, a
sculptor as ravishingly pretty as she
is hopelessly overindulged.

sophy cartwright Patience and lan's younger
adopted daughter, a teacher of
splendid proportions and great
charm.

naomi cohen Zachary Ansteig's lawyer, as
ambitious as she is bright and
beautiful.

kevin coley A perfectly awful petfood
billionaire, Chairman of Doggie
Dins. A collector of art as an
investment and sponsor of the
British Portrait Awards.
enid coley His overweight, overbearing wife.
eddie Raymond Belvedon's packer.

mr justice caradoc
WiLLouGHByEvANS A high court judge.

fiona Raymond Belvedon's gallery
assistant, a glamorous well-bred
half-wit.

detective inspector
gablecross A super sleuth.

Si greenbridge A mega-rich American arms-dealer
and a serious collector of pictures.

ginny greenbridge Si's trophy wife, a former Miss New
Jersey.

Xlll
lily hamilton Raymond Belvedon's older sister.

dame hermione harefield World-famous diva, seriously
tiresome, brings out the Crippen in
all.

harriet A radiant henna-haired reporter
from Oo-ah! magazine.

abdul karamagi An amorous Saudi with a penchant
for saucy pictures.

keithie Somerford Keynes's boyfriend, an
exquisite piece of rough trade and
sometime burglar.

somerford keynes A malevolent gay art critic, known
as the 'Poisoned Pansy'.

esther knight Raymond Belvedon's comely
cleaner.

minsky kraskov An unnerving Russian Mafia hood,
who uses art as collateral to raise
money for dodgy deals.

jean-jacques le brun A very great French painter.

natacha A glamorous member of Sotheby's
Client Advisory Department.

sir mervyn newton A rather self-regarding dry-cleaning
millionaire.

lady newton His grander wife, given to
gardening and Pekineses.
rosemary newton Their daughter - an absolute brick.
pascal An American interior designer.

patti Another glamorous member of
Sotheby's Client Advisory
Department.

geraldine paxton A networking nympho, a mover
and shaker in the art world.
peregrine Sampson Brunning's junior.
gordon pritchard A very exalted specialist.

xiv
chris proudlove The genial, indefatigable press
officer at Sotheby's.

david pulborough A Cambridge undergraduate
employed to coach the Belvedon
children in the vac. Later a highly
successful art-dealer with his own
gallery, the Pulborough.

barney pulborough David's son - a seriously dodgy slug
in a Savile Row suit.

robens Raymond Belvedon's
gardener/chauffeur whose
wandering eye is overlooked
because of his green fingers.

mrs robens His long-suffering wife. Raymond
Belvedon's cook and housekeeper
- a treasure.

anthea rookhope A very tempting temp, who
becomes permanent at the
Belvedon Gallery in all senses of
the word.

tamzin Raymond's gallery assistant in 1999
- the 'Dimbo'.

trafford Jonathan Belvedon's unspeakably
scrofulous best friend and painter-
in-crime. A Young British Artist.

slaney watts A glamorous New Yorker and PRO
of the Greychurch Museum.

henry wyndham The charismatic Chairman of
Sotheby's.

zelda An American art student.

zoe David Pulborough's subtly
understated assistant.

xv
THE ANIMALS

badger Rupert Campbell-Black's black
Labrador.

the brigadier Lily Hamilton's white cat.

choirboy Trafford's Newfoundland puppy, as
intent on destruction as his master.

diggory Jonathan Belvedon's sharp-toothed
Jack Russell.

grenville Raymond Belvedon's brindle
greyhound.

loofah Dora Belvedon's delinquent
skewbald pony.

maud Raymond Belvedon's blue
greyhound.

shadrach, meshach Rosemary Pulborough's
and abednego marmalade cats.

shrimpy Galena Borochova'sjack Russell.

visitor Alizarin Belvedon's yellow
Labrador, great-great-grandson of
Rupert Campbell-Black's Badger.
Socialite and ballroom dancer.

xvi
PROLOGUE

In the early hours of 24 August 1944, Raymond Belvedon, a
recently commissioned young subaltern in the Larkshire Light
Infantry, waited in a poplar copse for first light, when he was to
lead an attack on the village of Bonfleuve, which lay below. His
platoon, who had been fiercely fighting their way through
Normandy since D-Day and who had had little sleep for three days,
dozed fitfully around him.
Raymond was too tense to sleep and, with a torch, was reading
Tennyson in a lichen-green leather-bound volume given him by his
older brother, Viridian, for his twentieth birthday back in May. The
volume, which he kept in the breast pocket of his battledress, had
saved his life a few days before, when it had deflected a sniper's
bullet headed for his heart.
In the flyleaf, Raymond had stuck a photograph of his family.
His mother, father and elder sister. Lily, a beautiful, much-sought-
after Wren, were grouped round Viridian, always the centre of
attention, and here laughing on a garden bench with Hereward,
the wire-haired terrier, bristling on his knee.
In the background rose Foxes Court, the glorious golden-stoned
family home in Larkshire, reminding Raymond of the pat of tennis
balls, chocolate cake under the walnut tree, Beethoven drifting out
of the study window, his father grumbling to visitors that the
garden had gone over, his mother sending him inside to fetch her
a cardigan because the evenings were drawing in - all those cliches
of country-house life, which seem so precious in wartime.
And the starry nights were so quiet in Larkshire. By contrast,
here, as though time had stopped on 5 November, a monstrous
everlasting firework party crashed, banged, thundered, roared and
exploded all around him, with flashing and flickerings constantly
lighting the sky until his brain seemed to crumple like a kicked-in
compo tin.
It was already hot and close, but Raymond couldn't stop shiv
ering. It wasn't just from butterflies over the task ahead. The day
before yesterday, during a lull in the fighting, he had been scrib
bling a letter to Viridian, who was serving with the regiment in Italy,
about the deflection of the sniper's bullet.
'Your birthday present stood me in further stead', he had
written, when he became aware of the wireless operator receiving
a signal, which he had immediately taken to the adjutant.
Raymond had noticed them talking gravely, then wondered if
he had failed the company in some way, as the adjutant
approached him with a solemn face.
But instead he had said, 'Awfully sorry, Raymond. Got some bad
news.'
Viridian had been killed near Cassino. As yet there were no
details.
The worst part was imagining the village postmistress pedalling
up the drive with the fatal telegram and not being able to ring
home to comfort his parents.
For how would they ever recover from the loss of such a golden
boy? Viridian, as the elder son, would have inherited Foxes Court
and its fifty acres and the family business, the art gallery in Cork
Street, both of which he would have run effortlessly and with such
panache.
Now the task would fall to Raymond, who had long dreamt of a
gentle academic career, writing books on art, and who felt less
equipped to run a business than Hereward the dog. Raymond had
been so sorry for poor shy, stammering George VI, having to step
into the polished brogues of the glamorous, adored Edward VIII.
Now he was in the same position.
And how would he himself survive without Viridian, whom he
had loved so dearly, and who had been so fearless and certain of
life, always shielding Raymond from bigger boys, never embar
rassed to have a much younger brother hanging around?
Raymond glanced back at his volume of Tennyson, and at
Viridian's strong, sunburnt, laughing face in the photograph, and
quoted despairingly: '"Death has made his darkness beautiful with
thee."'
Oh lucky, lucky death. Raymond had thought he was bearing up
awfully well until last night, when he had stumbled on a poor lone
cow on the verge of a road. Refusing to abandon her dead calf,
whose back legs had been blown off, unmilked for several days,
she was bellowing in pain and desperation. Having been brought
up with animals, Raymond settled down to milk her. Only as he
finished did he realize her reddy-brown flank, where his dark head
had rested, was soaked with tears.
His platoon, most of whom had been recruited from Larkshire
or next-door Gloucestershire and who knew Viridian and his
parents, had been so kind. They hadn't said much, but Private
Treays, who was the son of the local blacksmith, had given him a
four-leaf clover, Private Turner had handed over the remains of
a bottle of Calvados, and Lance-Corporal Formby, who had the
charm of the devil, had wheedled three brown eggs out of a nearby
French farmer, which had been scrambled for Raymond's supper
last night.
On the other hand, the anguish of losing Viridian had made
Raymond even more aware of his responsibility to bring his men
safely through the coming action.
Beside him Private Treays had fallen asleep, head on his knapsack.
From the faint pink glow in the east, rose dore mixed with a
touch of raw sienna, Raymond could see the boy's thin face darkened
with stubble, long lashes drooping over purple shadows, a
half-eaten apple browning in his hand. Raymond wished he had
pastels and paper.
'You must draw for at least a quarter of an hour a day,' his father
was always telling him. 'Then you'll realize how bloody difficult it
is for the artists.'
Once again Raymond wondered how he would ever live up to
Viridian, who had so charmed both artists and collectors. He had
never felt more lonely nor more inadequate.
Unknown to Raymond, however, his platoon sergeant, John
'Spider' Webster, whose face was so round and red it could have
risen instead of the sun, was keeping an eye on him. Raymond's
fortitude worried Sergeant Webster. The lad pushed himself too
hard, constantly living in Viridian's shadow, worrying he wouldn't
be up to the job. In fact he was first rate, brave as a lion and loved
by officers and men alike. Some of those young subalterns were
such berks, but Raymond was so kind, so modest, so unaware of his
good looks, so outwardly unflappable. Spider had only once seen
the boy lose his temper - when Private Turner, mistaking a big
black hound silhouetted in a doorway for a ferocious guard dog,
had shot it dead.

Raymond glanced at his watch, and shoved Tennyson back into his
breast pocket. Nearly time to attack; he had better wake the others.
The fields, heavy with dew, gleamed like sheets of silver in the half
light; a slight breeze bent the corn. Beyond the village on the far
side of a little river, rising out of the mist, he could see the grey
pointed turrets of the chateau, which was rumoured to be occupied
by a Nazi gauleiter, one ofGoering's favourites.
Just before five a.m., his platoon moved off. Raymond's task was
to attack on the right, advancing stealthily through orchards and
back gardens. The distant chatter of Spandaus suggested that the
other platoons had already made contact. There was no time to
lose.
'"Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell,'" muttered
Raymond. He had always worried he wouldn't be able to kill the
enemy, but with Viridian gone, he had no compunction and was
soon shooting everything in his path in a blind fury.
Hearing shells exploding and the chilling swish of rockets,
which indicated both the Artillery and the RAF were pitching in,
Raymond battled his way choking through a smoke-filled cafe out
into the High Street, which had been reduced to rubble. Passing a
little girl sobbing over a dead kitten, he gathered her up, shoving
her into the arms of an old woman, also weeping in a doorway, and
ran on.
By midday, after ferocious fighting, the village was in British
hands. Germans had been winkled out of every other building. In
a barn near the river, the other platoons had cornered forty
prisoners. As they approached with their hands above their heads,
Raymond was struck by how young they were and how old they
looked; their hair prematurely grey with dust from the rubble,
their faces seamed with despair and exhaustion like a defeated
boat-race crew.
A delighted Lance-Corporal Formby, for whom needles leapt
out of haystacks, had discovered a bottle of schnapps in an
abandoned German staff car and gave Raymond a swig. A highly
satisfied Company Commander was conferring with Spider
Webster, his red face now blackened with smoke. Spider put a
hand on Raymond's shoulder: 'You did very well there, sir.'
Delighted but embarrassed by such praise, Raymond quickly
asked if everyone had been accounted for.
'I'm afraid Private Treays bought it, sir. Corporal Turner was
hurt, but only a flesh wound, thank God. The rest of us got
through.'
Noticing Raymond's face working and his sudden pallor
beneath the grime. Spider pointed to the chateau across the river,
parts of which were now ablaze after a direct hit.
Disappointingly, however, no Nazi gauleiter had emerged.
'The bird seems to have flown,' observed the Company

4
Commander. 'Just check if there's anyone inside, could you,
Raymond?'
Numbly remembering how often Private Treays's father had
shod his pony when he was a little boy, Raymond pushed open the
rusty gates of the chateau and ran across a shaggy yellowing lawn.
Kicking in a door, he wandered into a deserted drawing room
where he found a cigar stubbed out in a Sevres plate, with a three-
quarters-drunk bottle of Calvados beside it, and some exquisite
Louis-Quatorze furniture.
He was about to empty several bullets into Hider's portrait over
the fireplace, when his heart stopped at the beauty of a painting
hanging on the right-hand wall. Drawing closer, he realized the
subject was Pandora's Box. Pretty Pandora, in her sky-blue dress,
and her rather insipid husband were writhing from the stings of
the world's evils, newly released from a highly polished oak chest.
To their left, the clearly defined Seven Deadly Sins were lumbering
out of a side door, grumbling like drunks evicted from the pub.
To the right, through a window, shone the full moon, bathing in
light the iridescent rainbow-clad figure of Hope. She was so lovely,
so serene, so radiant with promise of another world, compared
with the bloody carnage and loss around Raymond.
The painting, particularly of the oak chest, was so wonderful, the
colours so glowing, the faces so vivid, that Raymond, having been
brought up widi pictures, suspected it could be a Raphael. Drawing
closer, he noticed a Latin tag, 'Malum infra latet', painted in gold
letters along the bottom of the picture, meaning 'Trouble lies
below'.
Trouble was also breaking out above as crashing beams and
the warning shouts of his comrades brought him back to earth. He
couldn't leave Pandora to burn, or fall back into the hands of the
Nazis, who had after all just murdered Viridian and Private Treays,
and only a philistine would hang a Raphael over a radiator.
Draining the Calvados, Raymond whipped out his knife and cut
the picture out of its frame as his father had taught him. It was
small, only twenty-two inches by eighteen, and easy to roll up,
picture-side outwards, so as not to crack the paint. Glancing round
for something in which to hide it, Raymond found a German First
World War shell case holding fire-irons - the ideal solution and
souvenir.
As the building collapsed, Raymond escaped into the sunlight.
1961

Raymond succeeded beyond everyone's wildest dreams. After the
excitement of liberating Europe and a brief stint at Cambridge, he
found equal thrills in transforming the respectable but slightly
sleepy family gallery, the Belvedon in Cork Street, into one of the
most successful in London.
To begin with, he worked all hours to blot out the horror of
Viridian's death, but gradually he began to enjoy himself, developing
a distinctly buccaneering attitude to art. Draconian export laws
he felt deserved to be broken. Nor should one question too closely
where a beautiful picture came from. Many a masterpiece was soon
being smuggled abroad in the false bottom of his briefcase or
brought home in the hold of the boat in which he took holidays
each summer. Winter saw him with a permanent ski tan acquired
while depositing illegal currency in the gallery's Swiss bank
account.
Back in London, collectors fainted when given the occasional
peep at the Old Masters stored in the Belvedon vaults. Raymond
knew where to find a treasure and where to place it. Each time he
was invited to stay in some great house, he left a less faded square
on the damask wallpaper, having gently convinced his hostess that
this was the optimum time to part with the Velasquez.
As the gallery's success increased, so did Raymond's eligibility.
Invitations poured in for dances, but as Raymond circled the ballrooms
of the Hyde Park Hotel and Claridge's, fluttering the hearts
of the debs and their mothers, he made sure he got his name in
the address book of the fathers: aristocrats who might want to flog
a Gainsborough to pay for the season, nouveau riche businessmen
who needed guidance on adorning the walls of their big new
houses.
Raymond was such a charming chap, so unsnooty, he could be
relied on to act as an advisor and to sell you something really good
when it came along - even if sadly he showed no signs of marrying
your daughter.
Only in the same area had Raymond disappointed his parents.
At nearly thirty-seven, he had still failed to marry and produce an
heir. Raymond's mother had a weak chest and his father, who
was champing to retire permanently to the house in Provence, was
threatening to hand Foxes Court, the main family home, over to
Raymond's elder sister and her husband, who was thinking of
leaving the diplomatic service, if Raymond didn't get a move on.
But Raymond was a romantic. He could no more marry a woman
he didn't love than exhibit an artist whose work he didn't admire.

Raymond, who had a flair for anticipating changes in taste, had
specialized not only in Old Masters and Pre-Raphaelites, which
were beginning to rise in value, but also living artists. Two of the
latter were a married couple in their thirties: Colin Casey Andrews
and Joan Bideford. Casey Andrews's huge part-abstract landscapes
of the Cornish coast were already selling well and in early May
1961, Joan had just completed such a successful debut show at the
Belvedon that she had felt justified in throwing a party to celebrate.
She chose a beautiful Saturday evening -Viridian's birthday, in
fact - Viridian the virile, who would have produced half a dozen
heirs by now, had he not been blown to bits leading his men at
Monte Cassino without even a grave on which to put flowers.
Having taken down Joan Bideford's exhibition on the Friday
before her party, Raymond and Eddie, his packer, had spent hours
hanging the paintings of Raymond's latest discovery, a Frenchman
called Etienne de Montigny, for the private view on Monday. Was
it deliberately to eradicate the memory of Viridian's death that, at
two o'clock in the morning, a sleepless Raymond had wandered
down from the flat above the gallery and, deciding the pictures
looked irredeemably garish and vulgar, had summoned Eddie the
packer from the warmth of his girlfriend's bed in Battersea to
repaint the stark white walls behind them?
Against a background of two coats of Prussian blue emulsion,
the pictures looked sensational, like lit-up liners in a night-dark
sea. Nor had Eddie minded labouring all night and through
Saturday. At seven shillings an hour, he could take his girlfriend
out on the toot this evening, and sleep it off tomorrow.
And Raymond was such a lovely bloke to work for, even if he did
have mad notions and was picky about pictures being hung a
millimetre too far to the left. He was so appreciative. He never

10
talked down, and the tales he'd told Eddie about the Gods and
Goddesses as they rehung the paintings would make your hair curl.
'That nymph being poked by that bull, Eddie, is actually the wife
of the French Minister of Agriculture.'

Having showered upstairs and emerged beautiful as the evening
star in his dinner jacket, Raymond had been distracted by a small
oil of a languid youth admiring his white naked reflection in a
pond.
'Exquisite,' he murmured.
'He'll get sunburn if he don't put on his shirt, and you're going
to be late for that party,' chided Eddie, taking a pale pink rose from
the vase on the reception desk and slotting it into Raymond's
buttonhole. 'I'll lock up. Don't let Joan and Casey Andrews bully
you. Invitation said bring a bottle.'
Oh hell.'
'Here, take the Jack Daniel's that Yank brought you.'
'Thanks, Eddie.' Raymond gazed round happily. 'That blue's
made all the difference. I can't thank you enough. See you
Monday.'
As he emerged from the white-fronted eighteenth-century
terrace house, with the dark blue Belvedon Gallery sign swaying in
the warm breeze, the prostitutes who plied their trade along Cork
Street wolf-whistled.
'Who's the lovely toff?' shouted a handsome blonde.
A pretty brunette started singing a pop song called 'Wooden
Heart', imploring Raymond not to break hers.
Raymond laughed and danced a few steps with her before
coiling his long length into his bottle-green E-Type. The girls were
his friends, whom he often sketched and invited into the gallery
on cold nights for a glass of brandy. Last Christmas they had
clubbed together and given him a bottle ofArmagnac.
As he drove towards Hampstead, he found the sudden heatwave
had brought out good-looking couples, laughing outside pubs
or wandering hand in hand along pavements strewn with pink and
white blossom. Knowing she'd be desolate remembering Viridian,
he'd rung his mother earlier.
'You're such a dear, Raymond,' her voice had trembled, 'you'd
make such a wonderful husband.'
In the spring, the not-so-young man's fancy, reflected Raymond
heavily, turns to thoughts of love.
He felt as though he'd been imprisoned in the gallery for so long
he d missed the spring. The creamy-white hawthorns were turning
brown in the parks, the chestnut candles already over. But as he

11
passed houses garlanded in cobalt-violet wisteria and breathed in
a heady scent ofrainsoaked lilac, it was impossible not to feel optiistic.
He had sold a Reynolds to the National Gallery and a fine
Zoffany to a Canadian collector, and Joan Bideford's nudes had
gone so well that the big bumpy freckled nose of her far more
famous husband was thoroughly out of joint.
Casey, as he was usually known, and Joan were such a repulsive
couple: greedy, egotistical, sexually predatory, insanely jealous of
one another and other artists, that, as an escape route, Raymond
had arranged to dine at nine o'clock back in Mayfair with a rich
collector and some of his friends - hence the dinner jacket. Later
he would take them in wine-jolly strip-club mood back to the
gallery for large drinks and a preview of Etienne de Montigny's
erotic pictures.

12
Arriving at Joan and Casey's red-brick Victorian house, Raymond
tripped over bicycles and a CND placard in the hall. At a recent
demo, Joan had been arrested for socking a policeman. It was
rumoured that during a subsequent stint in Holloway, she had
developed a taste for her own sex.
Judging by the uproar, the party had been going on for several
hours. People were crammed into a double-roomed studio with big
sash windows opening on to the Heath. Lights like striped snowballs
had just been turned on. Even on their walls Joan and Casey
slugged it out. The only paintings on view were Joan's nudes and
Casey's lowering seascapes, bright yellow cliffs over Antwerp-blue
seas.
Raymond had forgotten the party was fancy dress. He could
hardly see the paint-stained floorboards for Whistler's Mothers,
florid Rembrandt self-portraits, Bardots, John F. Kennedys and
Macmillans with drooping moustaches and winged grey hair. A
famously drunken sculptor was causing howls of mirth because
he'd arrived as Margot Fonteyn complete with white tulle tutu and
ballet shoes but had refused to shave off his beard or wear tights
over his hairy legs.
Raymond was desperate for a decent drink before he tackled the
crowd, but the common denominator of the bottles lined up on
the sideboard beside sweating cheese and greying pate was their
cheapness and nastiness. Some still had raffle tickets attached.
Clinging to his bottle of Jack Daniel's, Raymond searched for a
glass, but his hostess saw him first.
'Raymond Belvedon!' she bellowed. 'Have you come as a waiter,
or are you pushing off somewhere else as per usual?'
Everyone swung round because they associated Raymond's

13
name with the gallery's success. Then they stayed looking because
of his height and beauty and the warmth of his smile, which was
belied by the wistfulness in his big turned-down manganese-blue
eyes.
As a jury had recently decided Lady Chatterley 's Lover was not
obscene, Joan Bideford had dressed as Mellors the gamekeeper in
breeches, lace-up boots and a tweed checked cut-away jacket with
a fox fur slung over her shoulders. The fox's eyes were marginally
more glassy than hers.
On a plate, like some instrument of torture, she was brandishing
a half-grapefruit bristling with cocktail sticks threaded with cubes
of cheese and pineapple. Raymond could never look at her without
thinking of Tennyson's poem 'The Revenge', and Sir Richard
Grenville's wounded sailors: Then of Bideford in Devon, And we
laid them on the ballast down below.'
Raymond had no desire to layjoan anywhere. Her big handsome
face was carmine with drink. He decided against kissing her jutting
oblong jaw.
'Just dropped in to congratulate you,' he said. 'Exhibition went
awfully well.'
'Sold any more since yesterday?' demanded Joan. 'No? Well, my
monthly cheque didn't arrive this morning either.'
And I've just bust a gut flogging fourteen of your pictures, you
avaricious bitch, thought Raymond, who had kindly paid her a
retainer to live on while she produced enough canvasses for an
exhibition. But it was no time to argue, Joan weighed more than
he did and her beady bloodshot eyes had lighted on the Jack
Daniel's.
'Casey and I like bourbon, don't waste it on these gannets.'
Grabbing the bottle, she shoved it behind an African mask.
Fortunately she was diverted by the arrival ofSomerford Keynes,
the Daily Post art critic, who'd come as Oscar Wilde and who was
nicknamed the Poisoned Pansy because of his lethal reviews.
'Somerford,' howled Joan, 'did you bring a carbon of your
piece?'

Raymond had managed to find a teacup and was just raiding the
Jack Daniel's bottle when he was accosted by two pretty girls who
thought it hilarious that they'd both rolled up as Lady Chatterley.
Recognizing them as the entwined nudes in Joan's paintings,
Raymond thought how much more attractive artists' models
looked with their clothes on.
'Hello, handsome,' giggled the first. 'We're not going to find any

14
decent John Thomas here, and none of us are safe from Joan or
Casey. Want to come to another party?'
'You'd have much more fun with us,' added the second.
'What a pity, I've got to go out to dinner,' sighed Raymond.
'We know who you are,' they chorused. 'Will you tell your other
artists we're very good models? Casey and Joan are so tight.'
Then they went scarlet, because towering over them, resplendent
as Neptune in a slipping, loincloth, with sea horses and
seaweed painted all over his mighty torso and massive thighs, was
Casey Andrews.
'Dance with you young women later,' he boomed, whacking
them on the bottom with his trident. 'Now push off.'
With his jutting red-bearded jaw almost meeting his huge bumpy
nose, his angry little eyes and vigorous russet curls, Casey looked
more like Raphael's drawing of Hercules wrestling with the Nemean
lion than Neptune. But he was just as capable of causing storms.
It was strange, reflected Raymond, how the picture of Pandora,
which had turned out to be by Raphael and which now hung at
the top of the house at Foxes Court, influenced his judgement of
people. Casey Andrews was guilty of at least six of the Deadly Sins:
pride, wrath, envy, avarice, lust and certainly greed, as he devoured
a huge Stilton sandwich washed down with red wine from a pint
mug. Casey also felt it was his right to seduce every woman, and
their privilege to capitulate. Raymond had nightmare visions of
having to represent thousands of odious Casey Andrews offspring
when he was a doddering old dealer.
Like Joan, Casey immediately got on to money. Had Raymond
sold any pictures, had he heard from Rome and if not why not, and
what about an American exhibition?
'An American car company's interested in that oil ofSt Mawes,'
countered Raymond and, when Casey looked bootfaced: 'They'd
like two more for the boardroom.'
But, as usual, Casey wasn't happy with the price. Commercial
concerns should pay twice as much.
'Andras Kalman's invited me to lunch,' he said bullyingly.
'You'll enjoy it.' Raymond just managed to control his anger.
'Andras is a charmer, and runs a great gallery.'
Casey stormed off.

Nearby two art critics dressed as Roman senators were admiring
Joan's grapefruit hedgehog, which she'd abandoned on a sofa.
'I didn't know Bideford was tackling sculpture,' said one. 'That
piece is very fine.'

15
Raymond suppressed a smile. He was so kind and courteous that
the moment Casey abandoned him, the crowd moved in: artists
who wanted to show him their work; collectors who wanted free
advice or jobs in the gallery for their daughters; critics who wanted
praise for a review. Casey returned for another row and, finding
Raymond surrounded, shoved off again.
'I can't think howyou endure those two,' said a soft lisping voice.
It was the Poisoned Pansy, Somerford Keynes. Everything about
Somerford seemed to flop downwards: his straight sandy locks
from an Oscar Wilde middle parting, his droopy blond moustache
concealing a large flapping upper lip, even his bow tie wilted in
the heat. But he had knowing eyes, as if he were aware of secrets
Raymond didn'twant divulged. Somerford's taste for working-class
louts was equalled only by his desire to be the darling of society
hostesses, among whom he did not list Joan Bideford.
'Thank you for giving Joan such a good review,' murmured
Raymond.
'If I hadn't been devoted to you, dear boy, I'd have annihilated
her; so crude those lardlike bodies, I've perjured myself invoking
the name of Gauguin.'
'Stop, you're driving me crazy,' sang the record player.
A large tabby cat was thoughtfully licking the sardine pate.
'Can you chaps shove through to the next room?' ordered Joan.
'Got to go,' said Raymond, meekly shuffling a few feet forward.
'I'm meeting Francis Bacon at Muriel's later,' murmured
Somerford, 'why not join us after dinner?'
Raymond felt overwhelmed with tiredness, nor did he want to
be sucked into Somerford's underworld.
'I don't seem to have been to bed for days,' he apologized.
'Going to crash out the moment dinner's over.'
But as he glanced briefly into the second room his exhaustion
fell away, for lounging against the piano, dressed as a pirate, was
the sexiest boy he had ever seen. He was about five foot nine, with
straight dark hair hanging in a thick fringe and tied back by a black
ribbon. His shoulders were broadened by the horizontal stripes of
a matelot T-shirt, his hips narrowed by dark blue trousers tucked
into shiny black boots. His face was dominated by long slanting
sloe-dark eyes above very high cheekbones, with a black moustache
and line of beard emphasizing a big sulky red mouth.
But it was the provocative thrust of his body and the disdainful
lift of his head that made him so attractive, as if he were going to
leap onto the deck of Sir Richard Grenville's Revenge, cutlass
hissing, and slay every man alive.
Oh dear, dear God, marvelled Raymond.

16
Then, as the pirate reached back for his glass on the window, the
striped T-shirt tightened against a high breast and jutting nipple
and Raymond realized that he was a girl, that her moustache and
beard were of smudged cork and that several men who normally
showed no interest in women were circling her as though she were
covered in sexual aniseed.
'"A queen, with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes",' muttered
Raymond, but this time there was no Viridian's Tennyson in his
breast pocket to shield his heart from Cupid's arrow.
'More like one of the waiters at La Popote,' mocked Somerford.
'Even I wouldn't mind giving her a jolly roger.'
'Who is she?' asked Raymond.
'Galena Borochova, playgirl of the Mid-European world, defected
last year from Czechoslovakia, rumoured to have slept with
half the secret police in the process, drinks too much to forget,
been causing havoc in Paris. Casey and Joan are equally besotted
and fighting over her. Rumoured to be a good painter. Needs a
dealer' - Somerford looked slyly at a spellbound Raymond - 'to
take her under his wing.'
The pirate was now emptying a bottle of Riesling out of the
window, shouting, 'Nothing good ever came out of Yugoslavia,'
and helping herself to more red.
'That's wasteful, Galena, sweetie.' Appearing from behind, Joan
Bideford lifted up the girl's T-shirt and grabbed her breasts with
huge red paint-stained hands.
'Go avay,Joan.' Galena's voice was deep and husky like a cello
played all its life in smoky nightclubs. 'Just bugger off.'
Then, when Joan didn't, Galena calmly stubbed out her cigarette
on a groping finger.
'You bitch,' howled Joan. Tugging down Galena's T-shirt, she
kissed her bare shoulder. 'But I love you for it.'
Galena shrugged then went berserk as a man dressed as Picasso
tried to take her photograph. Screaming in Slovak, she snatched
his camera, hurling it against the wall with a sickening crunch.
By the time Raymond had fought his way over, Casey Andrews
had seen off the opposition and, armed with a refilled pint of red
and another Stilton sandwich, his red beard smeared with butter
and crumbs, was trying to persuade Galena to dance.
Closer up, Raymond discovered she looked older, perhaps
thirty. He was also reassured to see a few grey hairs in her black
fringe, and lines round the arrogant mouth.
'Who is this?' she demanded, then, examining Raymond's face,
we have met before.'
'We certainly haven't.'

17
'I am never wrong.'
'Where are you from?'
'Bohemia.'
Raymond smiled. 'That figures.'
'Who are you?' she asked impatiently.
'Raymond Belvedon,' snapped Casey, 'Joan and I show at his
gallery.'
'You make a stunning pirate,' stammered Raymond. God, how
wet could one get?
'I come from country viz no coast line,' said Galena. 'In England
ven you feel trapped, you can run and run until you reach the sea.
In Czechoslovakia you end up in Austria, East Germany or Poland.
Now I am here, I can be pirate.'
Noticing a bacon-and-egg pie being carried past, she speared a
big triangle with her cutlass.
Raymond couldn^t take his eyes off her huge sulky mouth.
He longed to stand up the rich collectors and whisk her off to
Annabel's, but she probably wouldn't get in without a tie.
'Somerford likened my work to Gauguin,'Joan was telling everyone.
She and most of the men in the room were preparing to
launch another attack on Galena, who was now arguing with Casey,
wolfing bacon-and-egg pie, waving her cigarette around, coughing,
taking gulps of red wine and all the time keeping her
narrowed, appraising eyes on Raymond.
Finally the drunken sculptor dressed as Margot Fonteyn could
bear it no longer and pirouetted up to Galena, arms, hairy legs and
mug of Spanish Burgundy going everywhere. An outraged Casey
shoved him away. Margot Fonteyn swayed and fell backwards on
Joan's grapefruit hedgehog with a bellow of pain.
'Lucky thing,' grumbled Somerford, 'to have so many pricks in
one go.'
'Poor chap.' Raymond struggled not to laugh.
Galena had no such reserve. Unrestrained guffaws seemed to
bubble up from inside her like lava.
'You said you were going ages ago, Raymond,' said Casey
pointedly.
'I am.'
'You must see myvork.' Grabbing Casey's sketchbook, left on the
piano to be looked at. Galena tore off half a page.
'I've drawn on that,' bellowed Casey.
'My signature will be more vorth than all your drawing one day,'
taunted Galena.
Scribbling down her name, a street which Raymond had never
heard of and a Battersea telephone number, she shoved the piece

18
of paper into his breast pocket, then removed the pink rose from
his buttonhole.
'In Czechoslovakia, it is unlucky to give people even number of
flowers. One rose is OK.'
As Casey was about to run him through with his trident,
Raymond fled.

19
Raymond remembered nothing about dinner. Having downed two
large dry Martinis and left all his Dover sole, he took no-one to see
Etienne de Montigny's erotic pictures. Making a lame excuse
about having to get home to the West Country, he turned south at
Hyde Park and drove over the river.
It was still terribly hot. He had removed his dinner jacket and his
tie and rolled up his sleeves, but his shirt was dripping. Galena lived
in a rough area. No-one was enjoying noisy after-dinner drinks in
their back gardens. He located her room before the number of the
house by the sound of Don Giovanni pouring out of an open
second-floor window.
Raymond ran upstairs, hardly needing to hammer on the door,
his heart was banging so loudly. Galena welcomed him, a glass in
one hand, paintbrush in the other, her fringe drenched with sweat,
paint all over her matelot jersey. She had kicked off her new boots
and put them beside Casey's sketchbook and the remains of
Raymond's bottle of Jack Daniel's on the only chair.
'Casey, vile peeg, was swigging it from the bottle, then he give me
great cheesy kiss, I slap his face and run away.' She filled a tooth
mug with whiskey for Raymond.
'Perhaps you should give back his sketchbook? Those drawings
are probably worth something.'
'Good, I need money for paints.'
Galena's room was dreadful, only large enough to contain a
single bed, stacked up canvasses, an easel, a small rickety table for
her tubes of paint, brushes and palettes, and an ancient gramophone.
The LPs, apart from Don Giovanni, were by Slav composers:
Suk, Bartok, Dvorak and Smetana. On top of the books piled up

20
by the bed was a collapsing copy of Kafka's Castle. In between big
damp patches on the wall were rough sketches and far too many
scribbled telephone numbers. Did they all belong to men? Donna
Giovanna? Raymond was appalled by his jealousy.
Galena had gone back to her easel, thickly applying paint.
Raymond edged towards the canvasses.
'May I?'
'Of course, that is vy you are here.'
And Raymond was overwhelmed by the same churning excitement
he had felt when he first saw the Raphael Pandora in the
flaming chateau. Galena's subject matter was hideous. Farms and
entire villages being sliced in half by the Iron Curtain. Humans and
animals being blown to pieces or burnt to death on high-voltage
electric fences.
'As children,' Galena said flatly, 'we were tormented by the
screams and bangs as foxes, hares, dogs and cats tread on mines.'
The pictures were made more sinister by homely touches: storks
nesting in watchtower chimneys, window boxes filled with orange
nasturtiums. As if in defiance against the horrors and the greyness
of Communist life, Galena revelled like Matisse in the brightest,
most exuberant of palettes.
One large canvas took Raymond's breath away. On the Slovak
side, from a watchtower above the electric fence, border guards
were mowing down defectors in case the mines didn't get them.
Everywhere were screaming mouths, waving hands, terrified eyes,
severed limbs. On the Austrian side, a bunch of grandees were
blasting away at partridge against brilliant autumn colours. A horse
and cart followed, weighed down by picnic hampers and crates of
wine. The contrast made the behaviour of both sides more reprehensible.
It had the power of a Guernica. Galena could capture
sadistic arrogance in a brush stroke.
'These are amazing, has anyone seen them?'
'No. In Prague, I was banned from college for protesting against
Communists. The Volpos, secret police, vatch me and my friends.
They close down my first two exhibitions.' Galena had put on The Bartered Bride, side one, which was even more scratchy.
'Things get too hot, my father was arrested for political activity,
he didn't come home much, my mother die earlier.'
'How did you escape?'
I get to know Volpos, who arrange for me and my sister to
escape over border. She was four years younger.'
Tears were trickling down Galena's face as she went to the
window.

21
'As we get to other side, my sister tread on mine, it blow off her
leg, and knock me unconscious. I came round to hear her last
screams, border guards leave her to die.
'I crawl to safety. A shooting party nearly shoot me instead of
birds. Then they take me to people I know in Vienna. My last
memory of Czechoslovakia is my sister screaming. That is the
picture.' She pointed to the huge canvas.
Raymond longed to comfort her. Her face was a wreckage of
smudged mascara and burnt cork.
'I betray artist friends by leaving Prague, but how can I show
protest if no-one sees it? We live all our lives in Czechoslovakia
under tyranny.'
'The artist has a different loyalty,' said Raymond gently. 'To the
future as well as the present. You were right to come here. I am so
sorry about your sister.'
The music grew louder. Someone banged angrily on the wall.
Galena promptly turned up the volume.
If she were happy, thought Raymond, she might paint happier
pictures. Casey and Joan were like some foul witch and wizard. He
was just dreaming of rescuing Galena from their clutches like an
Arthurian knight when the telephone rang. Galena pounced on it,
tears turning in a trice to fury. Even across the room, Raymond
could hear the caller at the other end roaring as if dinner had been
delayed in the lion house.
A grinning Galena held out the receiver.
'I bought you those boots only yesterday,' Casey was yelling.
Finally Galena caved in and hung up.
'He's coming over,' she told a despairing Raymond, then she
laughed: 'So we must go. Take me to the sea.'
'I'll take you home to Limesbridge, there's a river and a boat.'

Normally the great motorway being built to the West caused
endless hold-ups, but tonight, as if conspiring to catapult him into
committing himself more quickly, there were no roadworks nor
traffic jams.
As they sped through deserted Farringdon and Lechlade,
deeper into the country, it was like a film being played backwards.
Candles once more lit the horse chestnuts, cow parsley frothed
white along the roadside, hawthorn exploded in creamy fountains
in the fields, and wild garlic rioted over the woodland floor
mirroring the Milky Way streaming across the sky above.
Escaping from their velvet ribbon, tendrils of hair striped
Galena's face. As she took swigs of Jack Daniel's, and sang drunken
snatches of the Czech national anthem, her long muscular

22
thighs spread at right angles, taunting Raymond to stroke them.
Never had the hundred-mile journey home passed more
quickly. As they dropped into the Silver Valley, a full moon, ringed
with pale flame, was shining down on the sleeping village of
Limesbridge - so named because of the splendid avenue of limes
on either side of the bridge over the River Fleet. There were also
limes round the village green and the churchyard where all the
Belvedon ancestors were buried except Viridian. Foxes Court,
built in Queen Anne's day, lay to the west of the village with two
acres of walled garden, several cottages and barns and fields
stretching down to the river.
Cherry trees forming a white guard of honour scattered their last
petals like confetti on the E-Type as Raymond and Galena roared
up the drive. Stone nymphs and cherubs peeped round yew
corridors for a first glimpse. The stench of wild garlic from the
churchyard next door overwhelmed the sweet delicate smell of
the pink clematis which swarmed over pergolas and up the north
side of the house.
Swaying like a pirate ship, a bare-footed Galena picked her way
over the gravel. Inside the hall, the yellow Cotswold stone was
covered in faded blue and crimson rugs, the walls with shiny dark
panelling. Halfway up the stairs hung a Matisse of equally swaying
green dancers.
Galena examined it closely, frantically trying not to be too
impressed, nor as she reeled from room to ravishing room to get
too excited over the Courbet flower girl, nor the Pissarro snow
scene, nor the Leonardo drawing of a lion, nor Rossetti's sly sketch
of Tennyson, nor Rodin's maquette of a female nude: enchantments
even a dealer couldn't bear to part with.
There was a patter of feet, and a yawning blue greyhound, claws
sliding, spiny tail banging against the panelling, came bounding
down the stairs.
'This is Maud,' said Raymond as the bitch circled him ecstatically.
'She likes lazing on beds all day, so we spend our time yelling:
"Come into the garden, Maud."'
'How beautiful she is.' Galena fell to her knees, hugging Maud,
smoothing her velvet ears. 'Like Wenceslas's dog on the Charles
Bridge.'
She recognized the Matisse; she loves my dog. It was like
Bassanio passing the tests set him by Portia with flying colours,
thought Raymond.
The kitchen, painted cold air-force blue with fluorescent
"ghting, was less seductive than the other rooms. Galena, however,
discovered rare delights in the refrigerator, and was soon wolfing

23
vegetable pate, made for tomorrow's luncheon party, and sharing
slices of chicken estragon with a delighted Maud.
'How did you get this house?'
'My parents live here, they're coming back tomorrow.'
'And the gallery?'
'Some have greatness thrust upon them, my elder brother was
killed in the war, so I inherited it.'
With her sloe-dark eyes beneath drooping eyelids and that luminous
gold skin, Galena looked very like a Raphael, he thought. She
was now attacking tomorrow's pudding: pale yellow syllabub in six
blue glasses, only awaiting a sprinkling of bitter chocolate.
Pondering on his next move, Raymond said, 'Teach me some
Czech.'
'You should ask: mate znamost.'
'What does it mean?'
'Do you have a boyfriend?'
'Well, do you?'
'Not until now.'
As Raymond felt dizzy with happiness. Galena grabbed another
blue glass. Out of the window, she could see a moonlit lawn
as smooth as a pale grey fitted carpet disappearing into dark
shrubberies.
'This is big house with much land. Are you a lord?'
'No, not at all.'
'In 1949, when the Communists took over' - another black
mood swept over Galena - 'the Czech aristocrats who lived in the
big houses fetched coaches that hadn't been used in years out of
the stables, piling them up with their belongings - leaving in fine
style - smiling bravely. I will never forget the silhouette of those
coaches and horses going along the horizon to Austria.'
'Why didn't you go too?'
'My mother was housekeeper to one of these houses. She
wouldn't leave without my father who was away. The Communists
stormed the house. They took chandeliers and central heating
before starting on the wine in the cellar. Then the most drunken
hurled our puppy down into the courtyard.'
Shaking violently, Galena huddled over Maud, convulsively
stroking her sleek blue coat.
'They play football with puppy, kicking him to death, laughing.
Sylvie, my sister, was such a pretty little girl that my mother hid her
in our part of the house, but when she hear puppy's howls, she
rushed into the courtyard, kicking the soldiers.
'The Cossack Colonel was pervert, who didn't bother with my
mother. Even I was too old at sixteen, but Sylvie was only ten, so he

24
raped her. My mother tried to knife him. The soldiers killed her.'
Embarrassed by such tragic outpourings, soaked with tears,
Maud slid out of the room.
'Christ, I'm so sorry.' Removing the syllabub from Galena's
clutches, Raymond pulled her to her feet. Wailing helplessly, she
collapsed against him.
'I try to make it up to Sylvie. I sleep with Volpos, so we can escape.
I thought if we reach Vest, I could paint and make a home for her.
Why did she tread on mine not me?'
No wonder she had gone berserk over the photographer at the
party, thought Raymond. Spying Volpos must have been behind
every bush.
'Itwasn't a millionth as bad for me.' Raymond stroked her damp
hair, trying to still her shuddering. 'But my brother was blown up
in North Italy. You feel so guilty you're the one who survived.'
Gradually Galena's sobs subsided enough for her to grab her
glass and light a cigarette.
'What did he look like, your brother?'
Raymond took her into the study. To the right of the fireplace
was a portrait ofViridian by Rex Whistler, who had also been killed
in the last war.
The Fates must have been jealous of anyone so clear-eyed and
confident, thought Galena.
'He is very handsome, like Sylvie,' she observed, 'but his face is
not as kind, nor as clever as yours.'
Glancing up through lowered black lashes, she suddenly pressed
a hand against Raymond's cock and, pulling his head down,
flickered a wine-darkened tongue along his lips.
'Show me your bedroom, now!'

25
Raymond led her up two flights of stairs and along dark winding
passages, but when they reached the steep uncarpeted steps up to
his turret bedroom, known as the Blue Tower, she bounded ahead,
flaunting her delectably high bottom like a cabin boy climbing the
rigging.
Moonlight silvered the bare floorboards. Above the crimson-
curtained four-poster, the dark blue vaulted ceiling had been
painted with stars. As Raymond turned on a bedside light, Galena
noticed the walls covered in exquisite erotic paintings.
'It was my parents' love nest,' explained Raymond, unbuttoning
his cork-smudged dress shirt. 'They believed if you had beautiful
things to look at, you would produce beautiful children.'
But Galena was racing round the room, gazing out of the four
windows, at the gold weathercock topping the church spire, at
black yew rides and ivy-clad ruins, and over a cloud of apple
blossom, down to a boathouse and a gleaming silver river.
'It is good escape tower. We can hide ven Casey comes. Oh my
God!' The smile froze on her face as she caught sight of the
Raphael. 'Is it yours?'
Raymond nodded, gazing in wonder at her gazing in such
wonder as she fingered the folds of Pandora's sky-blue dress, examining
each deadly sinner, stopping longest at Hope, shaking her
head in bewilderment.
'It is breath-looking. Has it belong to your family for years?'
'Well, quite a long time.'
Raymond had never identified so much with Lust in his
vermilion coat, leering at Pandora. Unable to hold back any
longer, he crossed the room; he tugged off Galena's ribbon, so her
dark hair fell like a weeping ash to her shoulders. As he took

26
her lithe sinewy body in his arms, he could smell sweat, and feel
muscles heavily developed by painting and lugging around
huge canvasses. Her mouth tasted of cigarette smoke and Jack
Daniel's.
He could have picked her up in a dockland bar in Marseilles. It
was illegal to prefer men to girls, and in those agonizing encounters
with his own sex in the dark, when he was abroad, any ecstasy
had been followed by a descent into a hell of guilt. But now there
was only ecstasy.
There were no underclothes to rip off once he'd removed her
hipsters and striped T-shirt. Terrified his erection might collapse,
he delayed and delayed, laying her on the patchwork counterpane,
kissing her big lascivious mouth, absurdly turned on by the faintest
stubble where the cork moustache had been, kissing each breast
and sticking-out rib. At the end of a sweep of white belly, her pubic
hair rose spiky as a blackthorn copse in the snow. If there were no
sea around Czechoslovakia, there was a river bubbling between
Galena's legs.
Once inside her, her muscles gripped him like an octopus, and
her normally narrowed eyes stayed wide open.
'My beautiful Raymond.'
The bed's creaking grew faster, her gold cross bounced on her
breasts, the smoky whispered endearments grew more incomprehensible.
He felt she was gouging out his heart with her cutlass, as
if he were a little sailing boat on the roughest sea as she bucked
beneath him. Then, spitting on a nail-bitten finger, she reached
round and plunged it deep inside him. Raymond gave a groan of
pleasure and came. Very, very slowly, he returned to earth.
'God, I'm so sorry. I meant you to come.'
'I drink too much,' mumbled Galena, 'I'm too numb to come,'
and, laughing softly as she kissed him on the shoulder, she passed
out.

Raymond was woken by the church bell ringing for early service,
and the sun shining through the thickly cobwebbed eastern
window. Galena, wearing only his dress shirt, was standing on the
bed, gazing at the Raphael. On the bedside table was a large cup
of black coffee and a half-eaten croissant smothered in butter and
black cherry jam.
Grabbing her strong tawny ankle, sliding his hand upwards,
Raymond apologized for sleeping so long. But Galena was preoccupied
with the painting:
Hesiod describe Pandora as meddlesome Nosy Parker, who
"ring all evils of world on mankind, because she open box she was

27
told not to. So vot? Everyone open box. We got few presents at
Christmas, but whenever my mother go out, Sylvie and I went
through her drawer, to find out what we were getting. Without
curiosity there is no art.
'IfEpimetheus' - disdainfully Galena waved a hand at Pandora's
writhing, insect-covered husband - 'had had the self-control not to
marry Pandora - Prometheus, his brother had already warned him
not to - none of these evils would have escaped and plagued the
world.'
If Epimetheus had been overwhelmed with a quarter of my
lust. .. thought Raymond, as his hand caressed the soft underside
of her bottom.
'Raphael also give La Fornarina's face to Pandora,' added
Galena.
And Raymond was lost. No debutante he'd trundled dutifully
round Claridge's ballroom had ever heard ofHesiod or had known
that La Fornarina was Raphael's last beloved mistress.
'"Let me not to the marriage of true minds . .."' he murmured.
Galena jumped triumphantly off the bed.
'I know where I see you before,' she cried. 'It was in Venice. On
the left-hand side of Bellini's Coronation of Christ, there is a portrait
of Jesus, thin faced but strong jawed' - she ran a finger down
Raymond's cheek - 'and with thick hair that springs up if it is not
keeped down with water, a beautiful mouth' - she stroked his lower
lip - 'and the saddest eyes in the world. As you look at his face, you
see the pain setting in. You know he's going to suffer. It's the only
sexy Christ I ever see.'
Galena took a gulp of coffee, then, kneeling down, put her warm
mouth round Raymond's cock, sucking gently. Instantly Raymond
sprang to life.
'My God, where d'you learn these tricks?'
'I need them to convince Volpos.'
The shadows were creeping over her face again.
'It's all right, darling, don't think about them any more.'
Once again came the lightning mood switch. Running her
finger along the top of her half-eaten croissant, Galena smiled
wickedly: 'I do even more exciting things with butter.'
The coffee went cold. Maud, unnoticed, pinched the rest of the
croissant.

'Will you marry me?' asked Raymond.
Galena looked at him appraisingly.
'I should like to live in this house, and for you to put on big exhibition
of my work and buy me my own dog. But I must be free

28
spirit. If I paint all night, I cannot stop to cook your dinner. Don't
expect me to be housevife. Never trap me.'
Raymond pushed back her lank black hair.
'"God gives us love",' he quoted slowly, '"Something to love he
lends us". You will always be free. No more electric fences, no
watchtowers, no secret police nor mines. There's the river.' He
pointed out of the window. 'You can sail away whenever you want,
as long as you come back.'

Raymond's parents didn't mind in the slightest about their
ransacked lunch, and swept all their guests, including Galena,
wearing another of Raymond's shirts, out to lunch at the Lark
Ascending on the Cheltenham Road.
They soon decided, particularly Raymond's father, that Galena
was adorable, and immensely talented, with just the right degree
of vitality and realism to offset Raymond's excessive kindness and
dreamy romantic chivalry. Their critical faculties were slightly
blurred by their relief that Raymond had finally taken the plunge.
Or as Somerford Keynes pointed out to a fulminating Casey
Andrews: 'Those desirous of grandchildren do not look a gift
whore in the mouth.'
Casey was so angry he would have left the Belvedon and moved
to another gallery, if it hadn't meant less access to Galena.
'There's no way one man's enough for her,' he roared at
Raymond. 'You'll be forced to share her.'
Joan Bideford, relieved that Galena hadn't run off with Casey,
was more philosophical.
'Of course we can go on seeing each other, darling,' she told
Galena as she smothered poached salmon with Hollandaise sauce
during lunch at the Ritz. 'But try not to hurt Raymond, he's a nice
man, and we don't want anything to distract him from selling our
pictures. The only thing that worries me is the money. You've
coped so brilliantly with being destitute, sweetie. I'm not sure how
you'll handle being rich.'
'I must be free spirit,' insisted Galena, waving for another bottle
of champagne.

29
Maybe it was the result of gazing at erotic paintings in the Blue
Tower, but within a year, Galena had delighted Raymond and
(almost more) her new in-laws by producing a beautiful heir,
called Jupiter. A second son. Alizarin, named after Galena's
favourite colour, alizarin crimson, arrived two years later.
Raymond returned the compliment by ensuring Galena's first
exhibitions were both critical and commercial successes. After
the monotony of the Czech countryside, Limesbridge and the
surrounding Silver Valley haunted her like a passion. Wandering
in a trance, she had captured the wooded ravines, mist from the
river merging into white orchards, the locals in the Goat in Boots,
Foxes Court serene and golden behind its armoury of ancient
trees, in joyful light-filled paintings that Raymond sold as soon as
she produced them.
The gallery profits soared throughout the sixties. But as Joan
Bideford had predicted, Galena coped with riches far less well than
poverty. Professing a scorn for commercialism, she claimed no
great painting had ever sold in its lifetime. Denied the need to
work, she started drinking heavily, ranting at Raymond that he had
taken away the hunger necessary to a great artist.
Even worse, during the crushing of the Prague Spring by the
Communists in 1968, a young friend of hers had died setting fire
to himself in protest against Russian brutality. Galena suffered
appalling guilt, and her paintings became violent and tortured
again.
Why, she stormed, had Raymond forced her to abandon her
fellow artists? Why had Chamberlain sold the Czechs down the
river in the first place? Why was she trapped in a gilded cage? Over
and over she portrayed as prison bars the trunks of the trees round

30
Foxes Court with herself screaming and anguished at every
window. This gave her the excuse to escape to London, lounging
around with Casey and Joan on big silk cushions smoking dope and
- since she was now an extremely expensive spirit as well as a free
o^e _ gorging on caviare, foie gras and crates of priceless wine.
These days of lethargy and excess would eventually be followed
by more guilt and frenzied work sessions when she would yell at
anyone, particularly the little boys and Raymond, if they disturbed
her.
The Belvedon Gallery in fact did spectacularly well in the sixties
because Raymond was working night and day to forget the horror
of his marriage. For in addition to the drunken ranting, the ingratitude
and the overspending, Galena was sadistically unfaithful.
From the first, she had deliberately picked Raymond's gallery
artists. These included not just Casey and Joan but also Etienne de
Montigny, the handsome Frenchman whose semi-pornographic
paintings Raymond had been hanging the night he met Galena.
All of their revenue Raymond would have lost if he had refused to
represent them any more. Plenty of other lovers soon joined the
circus.
T need new men,' shouted Galena, 'I get tired of drawing the
same one.'
Raymond might have retaliated in kind, if she hadn't so demoralized
him sexually.
'Am I big enough for you?' he had begged her on their honeymoon,
to which she had mockingly replied:
'If you have small villy, you must become genius at sucking off.'
A mortified Raymond had tried so hard, but, putting his mouth
to Galena's gaping red, not very well-washed gash, he found
himself gagging, which Galena in turn construed as rejection, and
their sex life deteriorated. Sometimes, to help him get it up, she
would describe what another wonderful lover looked like or had
done to her, which made Raymond come immediately and Galena
in turn more scornful.
Most men would have cuffed her, or walked out, but it was the
sixties when everyone was far too cool to admit rage or heartbreak.
And, like his hero. King Arthur, whose world collapsed because of
his wife's infidelity, Raymond still loved her.
For when she smiled, the flowers came out. She could be
enchanting, funny, playful, affectionate. She was a glorious, imaginative
cook. She painted wonderful murals in strong Slav
colours all over the house, and she told marvellous stories to little
Jupiter and Alizarin, who absolutely adored her. Raymond in turn
oted on his boys. There was no way they were going to be

31
subjected to a divorce. Finally he felt it his duty, like Theo Van
Gogh, who had so heroically bolstered and bankrolled his mad
tragic brother, to keep Galena on an even keel to create the masterpieces
of which he knew she was capable.

One of the lowest points in his marriage was in early July 1970. At
four o'clock in the morning, still trembling from a row the night
before, he lay on the edge of the crimson-curtained four-poster
listening to the piping of Tennyson's 'half-awakened birds', and
imagining the icicles of white light between the carelessly drawn
dark blue curtains were being plunged into his heart.
For a start, he was convinced Galena had a new lover. He had
left a bottle of champagne in the fridge, which was gone when he
returned yesterday from a couple of days in Venice. The orchids
in the drawing room had certainly not come from the garden.
There was also a pretty new Lalique bowl on her dressing table.
As clinching evidence, she had been grumbling non stop about
Alizarin and Jupiter being home from school for an eight-week
summer holiday, getting under her feet. After the overexcited
little boys had been sent to bed, Raymond and Galena had had a
drink outside in the twilight. A fresh soapy smell of meadowsweet
drifted up from the river. White and pale pink roses cascaded
frivolously over the dark green shoulders of the yews.
As he wandered round the terrace, deadheading geraniums and
stepping over Maud, who was stretched out soothing her stiff old
bones on the still warm flagstones, Raymond broke the good news,
that he had employed an undergraduate for the summer to amuse
the boys and teach them to draw, leaving Galena free to paint.
'Were did you meet him?' asked Galena silkily as she topped up
her third drink.
'At Cambridge when I gave that lecture on the pre-Raphaelites.
This boy, David Pulborough, ex-grammar school, reading history
of art at King's, was assigned to look after me. Later, at dinner' -
Raymond swotted a midge on his forearm - 'we talked about
Arthurian legend, painting and the awful factory jobs he's been
forced to take in the vac to make ends meet. Parents live near
Leeds. Sound a bit repressive.' Fingering the dry earth in a tub
of white agapanthus, Raymond reached for the watering can.
'Father's in local government, regards art as sissy, wanted David to
read law or medicine.'
Raymond didn't add that David Pulborough had wavy tawny hair
to his shoulders, big navy blue eyes and a fair skin that flushed
easily. Nor did he say how touched he'd been that David, obviously
short of money, had tried to pay for dinner.

32
'He's a sweet boy. You'll like him,' Raymond went on, then,
appealing to Galena's fondness for comparing people in real
life with those in paintings, he added, 'Looks exactly like Stjohn
Evangelista in Raphael's painting ofSt Catherine.'
'Ven does he arrive?'
'Tomorrow in time for supper.'
At first he thought Galena's silence was delighted assent. Then
she went berserk. How could Raymond spring this surprise on her,
then push off to London, probably abroad, leaving her to entertain
some boorish youth in the evenings?
'How dare you employ pop squeak to spy on me and to teach the
boys to draw. Do you want their paintings to hang on Green Park
fences?'
Maud, who loathed rows, beat a limping retreat into the house.
The intensity of Galena's rage indicated that she had other mischief
planned for the first weeks of the holidays, particularly when
she yelled at Raymond that she was off to France first thing. No
doubt to stay with Etienne de Montigny, thought Raymond
despairingly.
'And you can bloody veil stay down in country, to velcome your
little queer when he arrives tomorrow,' was her final shot. 'Are you
sure you're safe leaving the boys viz him?'
As she slammed the french windows behind her, she had broken
two panes.
It was now growing light in the Blue Tower. Raymond, listening
to the rusty key-jangling cries of the jackdaws in the tall chimneys,
was still shaking. Alizarin and Jupiter were almost more obsessed
with the Raphael than with their mother, and, oblivious of grubby
sheets that had harboured God knew who, took every opportunity
to creep into their parents' bed in the early mornings and wait
for Hope, Pandora and the rest of the gang to creep out of the
shadows. Raymond, who longed to make love to his wife, tried not
to resent the boys.
He was amazed Galena could sleep so deeply after such a shattering
row. Possessed of earthy charms that in early life don't need
much upkeep, she was a couple of stone heavier than the boyish
pirate he had first married. But she still attracted him unbearably
and he couldn't resist putting a hand on her breast. Galena stirred,
smiling sleepily, not yet identifying the hand. If only he could
psych himself into getting it up ... but the next moment there was
a crash on the door and the boys charged in. Sighing, Raymond
. threw a towel over their mother.
Jupiter at eight had just finished his first term away from
orne at prep school, and was consequently tougher, steelier, more

33
withdrawn. With his cool turned-down sage-green eyes, dark brown
hair and thin freckled face, he was like Raymond, but without
Raymond's openness and generosity. As conniving but colder than
his mother, Jupiter wished he had inherited her talent.
Alizarin, on the other hand, had Galena's looks: black brows,
slitty dark eyes, high cheekbones and straight dark flopping hair.
Gangling and uncoordinated, as tall as Jupiter, he had inherited
his father's sweet nature and anxiously commuted between his
parents trying to keep the peace.
Knowing their mother would soon be off to paint, or, worse, to
London, the boys always tried to waylay her and weave stories
round the Raphael. This morning Jupiter collapsed on the bed
snoring loudly.
'Which deadly sin am I?'
'Sloth,' smiled Raymond.
'Who am I?' Alizarin put a finger under his long greyhound
nose, pushing it into the air. 'I'm Pride.'
He looked so absurd, Raymond and Galena burst out laughing.
'I'm Envy,' snapped Jupiter, pinching his younger brother
savagely on the arm. 'Don't be a drip,' he hissed as Alizarin started
to cry.
Jupiter was extremely jealous of his brother, whom he surpassed
in everything except art, which he knew meant more to their
mother than anything else. He detested the way Galena doted
on Alizarin, calling him her little Slav. Jupiter intended to make
Alizarin his little slave all summer.
Alizarin admired and feared his brother, who after a term
of prep school cricket and swimming seemed ten times more
powerful.
'Tell us about Pandora,' he begged as he crept under the sheet.
'She was a beautiful woman, cruelly treated by the Gods, who
married a feeble husband' - Galena shot a malevolent look at
Raymond - 'who couldn't control her.'
'Tell us about the lion of Prague with two tails,' asked Jupiter,
but, seeing the clock, Galena had leapt out of bed, not even bothering
to keep the towel round her.
'Haven't got time, got a plane to catch.'
Alizarin's tears, despite Jupiter's thumping, lasted for over an
hour. Galena was always cruellest to those who loved her the most.

34
David Pulborough's summer with the Belvedons began disastrously.
Bidden to arrive around six in the evening of the
Thursday morning Galena had fled, he had left home near Leeds
too late and run into holiday traffic. The second-hand Ford he'd
paid too much for in order to escape from Foxes Court in the
evenings proceeded to overheat all down the recently opened Ml.
To stop his fashionable new flared trousers flapping on the
ground, he had invested in some high-heeled boots, in which he
soon discovered he couldn't drive, so he had resorted to bare feet.
These swelled up so much in the heat that he couldn't get into his
boots again when, having forgotten Raymond's map, he had to
keep diving into pubs and garages to ask the way.
Worst of all, he had agreed under parental pressure to have a
haircut before Auntie Dot's funeral last Saturday. No doubt tipped
off by David's father, who thought his son looked sissy with long
flowing locks, the local barber had waited until David was
immersed in 'Jennifer's Diary', dreaming of being part of that
gilded set, to give him a hideous short back and sides.
David also had grave doubts about committing himself like Jane
Eyre to eight weeks at Foxes Court. Would he be expected to eat
in the kitchen or in his room or alone with his two charges? Would
^11, dark and extremely handsome Raymond turn into Mr
Rochester, and jump on him all summer? Probably not, now - like
Samson - he had lost his dark gold locks.

he charm of Limesbridge with its higgledy-piggledy houses
clustered at all levels round the High Street was totally lost on
David. Grunting and belching, the Ford only just made it up the
"nve as the church clock struck eight-fifteen.

35
'Some awful drip's rolled up,' announced Jupiter, who was as
outraged as his mother at the prospect of a stranger monitoring
his every move this summer.
Having been allowed to stay up for an early dinner at seven, both
boys were starving and irritable. But not so cross as Mrs Robens,
the cook, who not only felt her dinner had been ruined but that
her position, looking after the boys, had been usurped.
Distracted by the beauty of John Newcombe cruising,
mahogany-limbed, through the Wimbledon semi-finals, Raymond
had not minded the delay. But glancing out of the study window,
his heart sank. Had he allowed the Third World War to break out
within his marriage for this? Stjohn Evangelista appeared to have
turned into a sweaty, red-faced Shropshire Lad with a frightful
haircut, emphasizing a goose neck and sticking-out ears. David was
also wearing a club tie, a dreadful cheap blazer with a badge and
a battery of pens on the breast pocket and acrylic fawn flares.
Raymond the dandy shuddered.
'Go and welcome him,' he told the boys faintly.
'Traffic was terrible,' apologized David as he limped through the
front door, clutching a pile of parcels and some moulting mauve
roses. 'I hope I haven't made you late for your tea.'
'You have. Dinner's been ready since seven,' said Jupiter coldly.
'We were able to stay up later,' added Alizarin kindly.
Confronted by two pudding-basin haircuts with posh voices,
David put up his first black by assuming the taller was the older.
'You're obviously Jupiter,' he said, shaking Alizarin heartily by
the hand, 'the great athlete, and you're the arty one, Alizarin,' as
he turned to Jupiter.
'Wrong again,' drawled Jupiter.
Oh dear, thought Raymond coming out of the study, the boys
are going to pick up the most frightful Yorkshire accent by the end of the holidays. Granny Belvedon, a fearful snob, would be
demented.
Then, feeling thoroughly ashamed of himself, Raymond smiled,
and shook David's sweaty hand.
'My poor boy, what a ghastly hot day to drive down on. You must
be exhausted. Would you like a bath or a large drink?'
'I'd love a gin, please. I've brought these from Dad's herbaceous
border for Mrs Belvedon,' David brandished the roses, which he'd
purchased in a motorway garage, and which promptly shed more
petals.
'My wife's away.' Raymond relieved him of the flowers. 'She'll be
thrilled when she gets back.'

36
'When is she coining home?' asked Alizarin for the thousandth
time.
'Oh shut up,' snapped Jupiter.
There were tears in Raymond's eyes after he opened David's
present of a little red leather-bound first edition of Tennyson's
Maud.
'My dear boy, nothing could give me greater pleasure. "Maud
with her exquisite face, And wild voice peeling up to the sunny sky."
I have a passion for Tennyson, but also my ancient greyhound' -
Maud, lying languidly on the olive-green study sofa, lifted her tail
a centimetre - 'is called Maud. It's so appropriate. Thank you,
thank you.'
David had brought Alizarin a Polaroid camera. 'Very useful
when you're painting and the light changes or someone moves
their position. I'll show you how it works tomorrow.'
Alizarin was speechless with pleasure. Jupiter was less thrilled
with his metal detector.
'Only trogs use them.'
'Jupiter!' growled Raymond.
'As this is such an old property,' said David coolly, 'there are
bound to be ancient coins in the garden and around the church.'
'I'll be able to find my collection money. They're wonderful
presents,' said Raymond, sweeping David through the drawing
room, where pictures covered virtually every square inch of the
priceless, hand-painted, primrose-yellow Japanese wallpaper,
through the french windows out onto the terrace.
'Oh my God,' gasped David, 'what a stunning garden.'
Herbaceous borders on each side of the lawn were dominated
by huge proud delphiniums in every shade of blue, and banks of
regale lilies opening their carmine beaks and pouring forth scent.
Each dark tree and yew hedge had tossed a pale frivolous boa of
roses round its shoulders. In the orchard beyond, apples were
reddening. Across the valley, houses were turning a soft rose and
the Cambridge-blue sky was covered in fluffy salmon-pink clouds,
indicating the sun was setting behind the trees, which sheltered
Foxes Court from the north-west winds.
If only Cezanne were alive to paint it,' sighed David, 'you could
reach out and touch those houses. Thanks.' He accepted a huge
dnnk from Raymond. 'Newcombe won presumably?'
Then remembering Raymond's passion for Tennyson, he
added, 'If they ever filmed Tennyson's "Revenge", John
Newcombe, with those lean, hawklike features, that glossy black
moustache, should play Sir Richard Grenville.'

37
'You're right,' said a delighted Raymond. 'That is such a good
poem: My Lord Howard and his five ships of war, melting like a
cloud in the silent summer heaven.'
'Bor-ing.'Jupiter rolled his eyes.
'I love tennis.' David, who had been in the team at Sorley
Grammar School, saw a chance to shine. 'I'll have to teach you to
play.Jupe and Aly.'
'My name's Jupiter, I can play,' snapped Jupiter, 'and I'm
starving.'
'Let David get his breath back,' said Raymond sharply.
A great deal of ice and tonic had not disguised the brute strength
of the gin in David's glass. He was perking up.
'Can I use your toilet before dinner?'
The downstairs lavatory was a shrine to the sporting achievements
of generations of Belvedons. There was Raymond's father
playing hockey for Cambridge, Viridian hitting a six in the
Rugby-Marlborough match at Lord's, and a framed telegram from
the forties, its pencil message fading: 'Raymond 120 not out against
Uppingham today.' On the left of the mirror was a newly framed
photograph of Jupiter already in a cricket team at Bagley Hall.
David decided he must try and win the little sod over.
As they sat down to dinner, he smiled at Jupiter: 'See you made
the under-nines.'
'I'm captaining them,' said Jupiter haughtily.
'That's great, what are you going to do when you grow up?'
'Run the country.'
'Ted's already doing a grand job,' said David, who'd been
euphoric last month when Edward Heath had been the first
grammar-school boy to become prime minister.
'Too keen to push us into Europe,' said Jupiter dismissively. 'As
an island, it's better for England to remain autonomous.'
Wow! thought David, who was just about to tuck his napkin into
his collar to protect his new blazer, when he noticed Raymond and
the boys had laid theirs over their knees. All round the walls,
portraits of Belvedons gazed snootily down checking his table
manners.
The large lugubrious Mrs Robens, struggling in with a shiny
dark gold chicken dripping in butter and tarragon, might sigh like
a force eight gale, but she was a brilliant cook. Her roast potatoes
were crisp and brown as creme brulee on the outside, her new
peas and tiny carrots had a minty sweetness that never came out
of a packet. The feathery light bread sauce bore no resemblance
to the stodgy porridge run up by his mother. Apple pie and
thickest cream followed. David, who'd survived on a diet of

38
baked beans and sliced bread all term, had seconds of everything.
Dinner was interrupted by several telephone calls. Each time
Alizarin leapt up, longing to learn his mother had arrived safely,
then drooped when it was some man wanting to speak to her or
no-one there. What a waste of divine wine, thought David, as
Raymond mopped up spilt Pouilly-Fume with a desperately
shaking hand.
'Did you come through Cheltenham?' he said to David.
'That's the third time you've asked him that,' taunted Jupiter.
I must pull myself together, thought Raymond. Were David's
parents interested in pictures? he enquired.
'Not very,' sighed David.
His mother, he explained, was kept so busy running her
boutique in a fashionable part of town. His father was in charge of
traffic in Leeds, which had become dreadfully congested with so
many more cars on the road.
Alizarin was yawning his head off.
'Bed,' said Raymond firmly.
'We were going to show him round,' protested Jupiter.
'Come down and say goodnight in your pyjamas.'
'I'd love,' said David, 'to see some of the pictures.'
To Raymond's amazement, David identified ninety per cent of
them: Raymond's grandfather by Orpen, his father by Augustus
John, Viridian, carelessly romantic and death defying, by Rex
Whistler.
'That's an Etienne de Montigny, isn't it?' David paused in front
of a drawing of Galena. 'What a striking woman.'
'That's my wife.'
'Painted before you were married,' observed David archly. 'No
wedding ring.'
'Etienne was reluctant to paint it in.' Raymond tried to make a
joke of it.
'Montigny divorces sex from the soul,' said David dismissively. 'I
admire him as a painter, but he never touches my heart.'
David would have seen passionate gratitude on his new boss's
race if he hadn't turned to a portrait of Raymond himself in a dark
blue open-necked shirt, sleeves rolled up to reveal suntanned
arms' a happy, confident, amused smile playing round the greeny-
blue eyes.
'John Minton clearly adored you,' observed David. 'Was that
Painted while you were at King's?'
No, shortly before I was married.'
Christ, he's aged, thought David, that was only nine years ago.
ihings are not right in this marriage.

39
In the next oil, the artist had transformed great hanging clumps
of violet aubretia into portly bishops in Lenten purple. Slumped
against a Cotswold stone wall, they were swigging beer out of
bottles, having a fag, and eyeing up some young nuns. The picture
was bitchy, blasphemous and strangely beautiful.
'This is distinctly disturbing' - David shook his head - 'but that
picture reminds me very much of a marvellous Czech artist called
Galena Borochova.'
As the boys returned, wearing only striped pyjama bottoms,
because of the heat, Jupiter said, 'That's our mother.'
'When's she coming back?' asked Alizarin.
'Your mother's Galena Borochova?' said an astounded David,
then he took in the wild doodles beside the telephone, the rich
sapphire-blue sofas, the exotic Eastern European preponderance
of gilt and clapped his hand to his forehead.
'Of course, she showed at the Belvedon last year. I never put two
and two together.' Then, turning back to the aubretia bishops:
'This is a masterpiece.'
'It is,' said Alizarin proudly, taking David's hand. 'Come and see
our rooms. Mummy painted Noah's Ark in mine. Jupiter's is
Orpheus with all the animals.'
'I can tell him,' snarled Jupiter.
Raymond shook his head as David was led off. He must have
been seriously drunk that evening at King's. He was sure he'd told
David he was married to Galena. Still, it was good the boys had
taken to him.
Then another icicle was plunged into his heart as he noticed yet
another bottle of champagne flung casually in the wastepaper
basket. In summer, Mrs Robens did the big downstairs rooms every
Monday. Some admirer of Galena's must have looked at the
pictures since then.

Once the boys were in bed, Raymond took David and a bottle of
Armagnac out on the terrace. He knew he shouldn't tank the boy
up on his first night, but he needed company and the comfort.
The Good Friday Music from Parsifalwas now drifting out of the
study window. Rose petals floated down in the windless air
like freefall butterflies. Ravishing scents wafting in from all over
the garden reminded David of how his mother used to drag him
as a little boy through Marshall and Snelgrove's perfume department,
claiming she had no time or money to waste on such
dangerous frippery.
'So lucky to be able to play music loudly,' said David enviously.
'We've got a very deaf old parson in the rectory next door.'

40
'Marvellous pictures inside. What's the secret of being a good
dealer?'
'Tremendous energy,' sighed Raymond, remembering his sleepless
night, 'no stone unturned, even though one uncovers a lot of
woodlice. A good eye. Proof of that is how much more you sell the
picture for in twenty years' time. We're lucky we've got lots of
storage space here. My father bought Turners before the war, kept
them until the early sixties and made a killing. I'm hoping to do
the same with the Pre-Raphaelites. Basically it's the same as shares,
hold onto the good ones, sell at the top of the market.'
In the dusk David looked beautiful again, his face no longer red
from the heat, his eyes huge and trusting.
'How did you enjoy the summer term?' asked Raymond. 'I was
at King's just after the war. One was so glad to be alive, we talked
all night, forging such strong friendships.'
'I found it a let-down,' grumbled David, 'no-one talks about their
feelings any more,' then paused, hoping Raymond might confide
in him about his marriage.
'I imagined you whooping it up.'
'You can't swing if you haven't any money,' said David bitterly.
'I've never been to a nightclub, nor got stoned. I was so green when
I arrived, a girl handed me a joint, I thought it was a fag and
stubbed it out.'
.'You shouldn't have bought us so many presents,' protested
Raymond.
The Good Friday Music had just given way to the March of the
Knights.
'So beautiful,' sighed David. 'I'd love to have heard Melchior in
the title role.'
Overhead the clouds had rolled away, leaving the stage to the
stars.
'"Now glowed the firmament With living sapphires",' quoted
David. Throwing back his head, delectable brandy trickling down
his throat, he idly identified the various constellations.
There's the Swan flying past, the Eagle, the Lyre, the Herdsman,
Hercules striding in the wrong direction and there' - David tilted
his chair back even further - 'is the tail of the Great Bear disappearing
into the wood.'
Admiring the lovely curve of David's neck, Raymond decided he
did look good with short hair. What an incredibly accomplished
young man, he thought hazily, such a knowledge of stars, music,
Pictures, poetry, particularly Tennyson.
1 can't imagine a more w-w-w-wonderful place.' David often
^phasized a slight stammer to sound more vulnerable and

41
appealing. 'That evening in Cambridge changed my life and the
boys are great,' he added, only fifty per cent truthfully.
'I'd be glad if you kept an eye on Jupiter,' murmured Raymond,
'he's going to be form prefect next term, and poor Alizarin's the
only person he can practise on.'
'I can handle Jupiter.' David suppressed a yawn.
'Go to bed,' said Raymond.

David's bedroom was perfect. The dark green silk curtains of the
four-poster were repeated on either side of a window situated
above the front door. Intensely nosy, David would thus be able to
monitor all comings and goings. Across a sweep of gravel, a waterfall
tumbled into a water trough.
Inside the room, Galena had covered the Nile-green walls with
dryads, satyrs and nymphs in various states of undress peering out
from the trees. Hares and deer frolicked in the ferns. To avoid
the attentions of Apollo, Daphne was turning herself into a
laurel.
Also on the walls were a John Bratby of Galena surrounded by
birds, a Samuel Palmer of flowering cherries under an orange
moon, and a bluey-mauve Sickert of Battersea Power Station. On
the dressing table paced a proud little Degas horse. A wardrobe
large enough to accommodate an army of lovers contained only
Raymond's morning coat with a cornflower shrivelling in the
buttonhole.
In the chest of drawers lined with yellowing art magazines David
found lavender bags, and bloody hell! his clothes all neatly folded.
Mrs Robens must have nipped upstairs between courses and unpacked
for him. Racing across the room, David unzipped the
pocket in the top of his suitcase and gasped with relief. The pile of
cuttings and Xeroxes were undisturbed.
Heart still thumping, David flipped through them. The big
piece, from a 1965 Sunday Times colour magazine, had told him
everything about Galena and Raymond. There was also an excellent Ideal Home feature on Foxes Court detailing its wonderful
pictures, particularly those by Galena and other Belvedon artists,
an Observerrevievf of Galena's last exhibition, and a huge profile of
Raymond in the Telegraph.
Other goodies included details of the night sky in July from The
Times, which David had memorized last night, and a photostat of
Tennyson's ten-page entry in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
from which David had been learning thirty lines a day. Listening
to Raymond on Desert Island Discshad familiarized him with his new
boss's taste in music. Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites would stand him

42
in eood stead when Raymond showed him the rest of the pictures
tomorrow.
'Hey diddly dee, a dealer's life for me,' sang David.
What dividends had been reaped from a couple of days in Leeds
Library - and he must learn to rhyme 'one' with 'fun' rather than
'gone' in future.
He was so proud of the delighted surprise in his voice: 'Galena
Borochova's your mother!' That little sod, Jupiter, was going to
need watching, he was much too sharp. Lifting up a rug, David
found a loose floorboard and shoved the cuttings underneath it.
David Pulborough was heterosexual but extremely self-seeking,
and so anxious to escape from the stultifying world of lower-
middle-class Sorley (where his mother actually worked in a
draper's shop and his father as a clerk in the traffic department at
the Town Hall) that he was prepared to use his looks to achieve his
own ends with either sex.
Women were drawn to his rather spiritual beauty, particularly as
he had perfected a technique of standing very close, gazing into
their eyes, and flattering them outrageously. He had also realized
that an almost effortless way up the social scale was to become the
plaything of some rich, grand old queen, and with luck be remembered
in his will.
In his first two years at Cambridge, unbeknownst to each other,
he had been enjoying the favours of his homosexual tutor and that
tutor's good-looking unsatisfied wife. He had only needed to let
a slender arm rub against the shoulders of the former during
tutorials to gain excellent marks, along with invitations to smart parties and the task of looking after the famous Raymond
Belvedon when he visited the college.
The tutor's wife, Petra, was very demanding in bed. In fact young
David had improved so dramatically under her tuition that she was
threatening to leave her husband. David had countered this move,
which would have caused an awful scandal and jeopardized his
degree next summer, by persuading Petra to lend him her running
away money of five hundred pounds to pay off his pressing end-oftenn
debts. Instead he had blued the money on the secondhand
Ford, which appeared to be a write-off, new clothes and presents
tor the Belvedons.
David knew that Raymond was attracted to him, but Raymond
^ not an old queen, he was hugely glamorous, and could intro-
ouce David to everyone in the art world.
For two months, I am going to live on the fat of the land, thought
^d as he soaked in a green-scented bath. The waterfall outside
bunded like a running tap. What bliss not to be shouted at for

43
leaving it on. As he dried himself on a soft emerald-green towel,
admiring his slender body, which would look even better when he
had a tan, he could hear Raymond talking loving nonsense to
Maud as he took her out for a last walk.
Happily David slid between cool white linen sheets. On his
bedside table was a Collected Tennyson, a wireless switched to
Radio Three and a harebell-blue enamel box filled with pink iced
biscuits.
'Not after you've cleaned your teeth.' He could hear his
mother's reproof, as he defiantly bit into one.
Poetry recited last thing at night could often be retained
perfectly in the memory the following morning.

'Till last by Philips farm I flow
To join the brimming river,' mumbled David,
'For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.'

As the waterfall outside converged with Tennyson's 'Brook', he
fell into a deep sleep.

44
For the next few days David absorbed the wonder of Foxes Court:
the glorious pictures, the vast library of books and records, the
romantic garden, the barns and cottages, the prettiest of which he
had earmarked for himself in the future, and Galena's studio off
to the left through ancient woodland.
He helped Alizarin dam the stream which ran through the water
trough under the house, down the garden to the river, which gave
him ample opportunity to quote Tennyson's 'Brook'. He taught
Alizarin to crawl in the swimming pool, the bottom of which was
all looking-glass. In addition, he bowled endlessly to Jupiter, and
let the little beast beat him at tennis, croquet and chess - not difficult
with the hangovers he had most mornings after drinking and
talking long into the night with Raymond.
As he suspected, his new boss was under colossal strain and,
despite his sweetness, had a short temper. He would shout if
anyone forgot to fill up Maud's water bowl, or opened his beloved
Times in the morning before he did. When he wasn't working in
his study, Raymond spent a lot of the day masterminding the
garden like Leonardo, yelling from top-floor bedrooms, 'We need
more vermilion over there, Robbie, and a splash of purple lake to
the right next to those crimson phlox.'
Robbie the gardener, Mrs Robens's husband, a lech with a good
body and wandering eyes, was very jealous of Raymond's partiality
tor David. Nor was he pleased when his plump, gloomy wife
couldn't praise the lad enough.
Room's neat as a new pin, makes his bed, brings in plates from
the garden, gave me a box of chocolates for unpacking his clothes
^d he really keeps those boys amused.'
Having been employed to teach Jupiter and Alizarin to draw,

45
David put this into practice one morning before lunch, escaping
from the heatwave into the shade of a vast oriental plane on the
edge of the lawn.
Bumblebees hung upside down in the catmint. Maud inspected
her master's delphiniums, trying to remember where she'd buried
a pork chop. The Good Friday Music floated once more out of the
study, where Raymond had retreated with a pile of transparencies
to write catalogue blurbs.
'What shall we draw?' asked Alizarin.
'You can draw me,' said David.
'Boring, boring, drawing's boring,' intoned Jupiter.
'Not if you find something new in my face, there's always a
different way of looking at things.'
Jupiter smirked and drew a Hitler moustache. Alizarin chewed
his pencil, dark eyes intent, tongue slightly out.
'Tell us about Pandora,' he asked.
'Pandora's troubles all began because the Gods invented fire,'
explained David. 'They didn't want to share this fire with humans
who they thought would burn themselves like children or, worse
still, set fire to Heaven where the Gods lived.'
'This isn't Pandora,' scoffedjupiter, training David's hair to the
right over one eye and giving him sticking-out ears.
'It is. Prometheus, who was very brave, raided Heaven and stole
fire like an Olympic torch. Your namesake, Jupiter' - David raised
an eyebrow - 'the King of the Gods, was so angry that in revenge
he created the most beautiful woman ever seen.'
'Like Mummy,' piped up Alizarin.
'Only when she dresses up,' sneered Jupiter.
'And he called her Pandora,' went on David, 'and ordered
Mercury, his messenger, to deliver her to the house ofPrometheus's
younger brother, Epimetheus.'
'Ah, your story begins differently.' Jupiter put down his pencil
to listen. Alizarin, frowning, looking constantly up and down from
his pad to David's face, carried on drawing.
'And Prometheus pleaded with his younger brother, who he
protected, just as you protect Alizarin,' said David so sarcastically
that Jupiter blushed. 'He pleaded: Don't accept anything from
Mercury. But when Mercury rolled up with such a stunning girl,
Epimetheus couldn't resist marrying her - on one condition that
she never opened the casket on the shelf.'
'It was a chest in our story,' crowed Jupiter, adding a Mickjagger
pout beneath the Hitler moustache.

46
'Having opened the box and been stung all over far worse than
snakes or scorpions by the evils of the world that flew out,' David
was saying five minutes later, 'Pandora wept and said she wished
she'd listened to her husband Epimetheus - like I'm sure your
mum listens to your dad.'
'She don't,' said Alizarin. 'When's she coming back? Ouch!' he
howled as Jupiter kicked him on an ankle already purple from a
croquet ball.
'Stop it,' exploded David.
Thank God, there was Mrs Robens coming out to lay lunch.
'How d'you know so much about Pandora?' asked David, getting
up to inspect the sketchpads: Jesus Christ!' for Alizarin's drawing
was brilliant.
How, at only six, could he have captured the demurely lowered
lashes, the calculated innocence, the nose twitching in curiosity,
the deeply sensual lower lip? It was like looking in a discerning
mirror.
'Look at that!' David seized the tray from Mrs Robens. Mrs
Robens glanced from the drawing to David in wonder.
'It's more like you than you are yourself,' she cried. 'You'll be as
famous as your mum one day, Alizarin.' Then, catching sight of the
murderous expression on Jupiter's face, 'And yours is very good
too,Jupey.'
'A more abstract concept,' said David, noting the Hitler
moustache and the squint. Don't rise, he told himself.
Parsifal finished, Raymond wandered out into the garden.
'What a lovely day. If only I didn't have to go to London.'
'Alizarin's going to keep you in your old age,' said David, who
was fed up with Jupiter.
Alizarin had certainly captured David's beauty, thought
Raymond wistfully, but praising him at the expense of Jupiter only
encouraged more bullying.
'Excellent, both of you,' he said heartily, then, as Mrs Robens
staggered out bearing tomatoes green with chopped basil, new
potatoes, and cold chicken blanketed with mayonnaise: 'It all looks
wonderful, Mrs R., could you possibly bring out a bottle of wine?'

That was great,' David told Mrs Robens, opening the washing-up
machine later, as he brought back the plates.
'Put them on the side,' hissed Mrs Robens. 'Mr Belvedon's given
me that wretched dishwasher. Can't get to grips with it at all. I'm
not risking coffee cups worth five hundred pounds. After he's
gone, I'll wash everything by hand.'

47
'I'll show you how to work it later,' hissed back David.
After Raymond had finally dragged himself away and Robens
had gone to skittles, David dispatched the furious boys to bed and
dined on macaroni cheese and summer pudding in the kitchen
with Mrs Robens. Immediately he steered the conversation onto
Jupiter.
'The little bastard deliberately serves balls into Alizarin's back,
and yesterday hit him on the ankle with a croquet ball.'
'Jupiter, being the first son, was the apple of everyone's eye,' said
Mrs Robens as she filled up their glasses with cider. 'Then Al comes
along, sickly, not nearly so bonny, but his mother loved him to
death. And he's such a dear little fellow - like his dad. Raymond
gave me that dishwasher because he says I work too hard.'
'You do, it's a brilliantly run house. Such wonderful sugar
biscuits, such a shine on the furniture, I've never stayed in such a
well-appointed spare room.' No need to point out he'd never
stayed in a spare room at all.
Mrs Robens turned pink.
'Robbie and I came here when we first married. Old Mrs
Belvedon trained me. Like Raymond she was only interested in
seeing her guests were comfortable and happy. "Look after my
Raymond," she pleaded, when she and Raymond's dad moved to
France. Galena's not a cherisher.'
After a third glass of cider, Mrs Robens confessed she only stayed because of Raymond and the boys.
Here we go, thought David happily.
'Isn't Galena a good wife?'
'Not for me to say,' said Mrs Robens and did. 'All those letters
marked Private piling up for her?'
'Let's get out the kettle and steam them open.'
'Get on with you.'
They both jumped guiltily as the telephone rang.
David took it in the hall.
'May I speak to Mrs Belvedon?' Itwas a toffsvoice, clipped, light,
yet curiously arrogant.
'I'm afraid she's away.'
'When's she back?'
'We don't know.'
'Tell her Rupert rang.'
'That must be Rupert Campbell-Black.' Mrs Robens puffed out
her cheeks, going even redder in the face. 'He was at the Bath and
West Show earlier this summer, phoned once or twice - trouble if
you ask me.'
Not yet twenty-one, Rupert Campbell-Black was the enfant

48
terrible of British showjumping, as beautiful as he was bloody
minded.
'Mrs Belvedon's old enough to be his grandmother,' said David,
appalled.
'Never stopped her in the past. He'sjupiter's hero.'
'That figures, monsters attract little monsters.'
'Would you like some coffee?' said Mrs Robens.
Both felt they had gone too far.
'I wish I could help,' sighed David.
'You have already. The boys are much happier, and Raymond's
more relaxed and staying home more. He's such a good kind man.'
Raymond might be the 'parfit gentil knight', thought David
disapprovingly, but, like the knight in chess, he slid to one side to
avoid confrontation. He should have beaten the hell out of Jupiter
for terrorizing Alizarin, and out of Galena for neglecting both the
boys and himself.
Gradually, David set about making himself indispensable to his
new boss, opening bottles, collecting newspapers, helping him
with research for an Old Masters exhibition, boosting Raymond's
shattered self-esteem by asking his advice.
'How does one get rid of girls without hurting them?'
He also took charge of die telephone, fending off collectors,
artists and hostesses who, avid for a handsome spare man now
Galena was away, were equally demanding.
'Mr Belvedon's been overworking, he needs peace,' David told
all of them.
He also saved Raymond hurt, fielding calls from Galena's
admirers, trying to distinguish the different accents: French,
German, Cornish and clipped upper-class: 'Where the fuck is she?'
which he assumed was Rupert Campbell-Black again.
Filled out with Mrs Robens's good food, David drifted round in
shorts, his smooth skin warming to the colour of butterscotch.
'Let me run you a bath, Raymond,' he would suggest, or, having
persuaded Raymond to take off his shirt, 'Let me oil you,' and feel
Raymond quivering with longing beneath his languid tender
caresses.
How could he ever have thought David's Yorkshire accent
boorish? wondered Raymond. It was such a long time since he'd
wen stroked by anyone. Did he imagine it, or during tennis
gsmes, did David bend over a fraction too long retrieving a ball,
to show off white jutting buttocks above tanned thighs? Aesthetic-
ly offended by David's cheap wardrobe, Raymond threw out a
otof old Harvie & Hudson shirts, which had gone in the collar.
Flush with his new salary David bought Raymond the latest

49
recording of Debussy's Prelude a I'apres-midi d'un faune, with its
haunting theme of emerging sexuality on a hot summer afternoon.
Unfaithful to Parsifal, Raymond played the LP repeatedly,
dreaming of David joining the gallery when he came down from
Cambridge in a year's time. What a joy and asset he'd be.
At the beginning of the third week, deciding he couldn't justify
any more time at home, Raymond flew to Aberdeenshire, where
some bachelor laird had died, leaving a large collection of pictures. The boys were spending the day with friends. The Robenses had
the day off. David decided to snoop. He was irked to find the door
to the Blue Tower was locked.
Thwarted, he explored Galena's dressing room below, removing
the stopper of a big bottle of Mitsouko, breathing in its sweet,
musky, disturbing smell. He opened Galena's wardrobe, billowing
with brilliantly coloured silks and taffetas, then jumped out of his
sweating skin, as the telephone rang.
'Dear boy' - it was Raymond calling from Scotland - 'if only you
were here, such marvellous watercolours, I'll be home around
seven, but in case I forget, can you put a date in the diary? Sir
Mervyn Newton and his daughter Rosemary are driving up from
Cornwall on Thursday week to buy a picture for his wife's sixtieth
birthday. He's bought Casey Andrews and Etienne de Montigny
before, so we must remember to hang a few on the walls. But he
might go for an Old Master this time. I've invited them to supper.'
Just as David was writing 'Supper Sir Mervyn Newton' on the wall
calendar in the study, Raymond telephoned again in complete
panic.
'Galena's just rung, she's landing at Heathrow at four o'clock.
It's an Air France flight from Paris. I don't get into Birmingham
until six. Can you meet her? Is Mrs Robbie there?'
'It's her day off, but she's left a cold supper,' said David soothingly.
'The boys won't be back till after seven.'
'Take the Rover.'
Wanting something more flash, David took the E-Type.

50
The country had reached the stage when it needed a good haircut.
Blond grasses rusted with docks collapsed in the fields, awaiting
the tractors which were in other fields sailing across bleached
stubble, piling up bales like tower blocks. As the temperature
soared into the nineties, the smell of new-mown hay drifted
through the window each time David slowed down, which was not
often. The E-Type was superb once he got the hang of it.
He was excited, yet nervous of meeting Galena. At least on the
drive home he intended to give her a piece of his muddled mind
- he felt she treated Raymond so appallingly. Having parked the
car at Heathrow, he dived into the Gents to wash off the sweat and
comb his hair. Thank God it had grown a bit and he had a great
tan. Perhaps he should have worn trousers instead of frayed denim
shorts, but Raymond had begged him to hurry. Out in the arrivals
lounge, all the women eyed him up.
'"In the summertime, you can reach up and touch the sky,"' sang
David happily.
Next moment he was spitting. Why hadn't anyone told him
Galena was at least eight months pregnant? She came striding
through the barrier, trailing men, who were buckling under easels,
canvasses, suitcases, and pushing trolleys groaning with duty free.
A French army officer was even carrying her handbag.
David would have recognized her instantly, such was the force
other personality, and the wafts of the same sweet heavy Mitsouko
"lat had hung around her dressing room this afternoon. Instead
of a wedding ring on her left hand, a huge ruby glowed. A scarlet
cheesecloth smock clung to her breasts and swollen belly. She
ooked about to pop. But unlike most heavily pregnant women, she
didn't waddle, she prowled like a huntress.

51
'Mrs Belvedon?' David approached her cautiously.
Galena looked him up and down, taking in the streaked blond
hair flopping over the freckled forehead and Raymond's blue-
striped shirt, with the collar cut off, unbuttoned to reveal a
smooth gold chest, and promptly bid farewell to her fleet of
porters.
'It is good being pregnant,' she told David, 'I was given first-class
seat, champagne, and all those men carry my things.'
Despite living in England for nearly nine years, her Slav accent
was still very strong, her voice deep and husky. David was worried
there wouldn't be room for all her luggage; as it was he had to
make three journeys to the car park.
Only when they were safely on the motorway did he steal a
second glance. Close up, she wasn't beautiful. Her make-up was
old fashioned, too much eyeliner on the heavy lids, too much
blood-red lipstick. Her broad nose was too low in her face, her dark
hair streaked with grey and needing washing. As well as Mitsouko,
he could smell GO and brandy fumes. She'd clearly had more than
champagne on the flight.
His mother would have been appalled. She didn't approve of
pregnant women drinking or wearing such short dresses. Galena
had wonderful ankles although a few black hairs were sprouting
on them. His cousin Denise had had hippopotamus's ankles when
she was pregnant.
Galena was now slotting a fag into her drooping red mouth, not
offering him one, demanding a light, sending him fumbling round
the unfamiliar dashboard.
'Good trip?' he asked.
'Iwasvorking.'
'When's your baby due?'
'In one hour.'
David went green. What happened if her waters broke all over
Raymond's beloved car? Would they be flooded out? Might he
have to deliver the baby in a lay-by? He speeded up, then slowed
down as the car bumped over a dead rabbit. He didn't want to jolt
her into giving birth any quicker. Raymond and Mrs Robens
should have bloody well told him.
Deciding to soothe her with flattery, he told her her pictures, all
over the house, were wonderful.
'Too accessible.'
'But so beautiful.'
'Great art should never seem beautiful on first acquaintance. I
hate my first dry Martini, and my first blow job.' Seeing the shock
on David's face, she burst out laughing.

52
'How are my boys?'
'Fine-sweet.'
'Sveet! Jupiter!' Galena's unplucked ebony eyebrows vanished
under her fringe.
'He's highly intelligent,' said David firmly. 'Yesterday he nearly
strangled a boy in the village for bullying Alizarin.'
'Hates anyone taking over his job.' Galena shrugged. 'Perhaps
he learn. And Alizarin?' Her voice softened.
'A genius, I can't teach him anything,' said David, reaching into
the dashboard. 'This is a drawing he did of me.'
'Alizarin has third eye, sees vot other people don't.'
Galena was pleased with the sketch, but soon distracted.
'I met Picasso in Paris.'
'My God.' David nearly rammed the car in front. 'What was he
like?'
'Very old, but still attractive; he give me the hot eye.'
Coals to Newcastle, thought David, Galena's eyes could scorch
the blond hairs off his chest.
'Raymond tell me you were spitting image of Raphael's Stjohn
Evangelista.'
'He did?'
'Patron saint of virgins.'
David wished she wouldn't make such risque remarks.
'When's your next exhibition?' he asked.
'Too soon. How's my husband?'
'Wonderful, the nicest person I've ever met.'
'And I'm the nastiest.' Laughing uproariously, Galena lit one
cigarette from another, dropping the first on the floor.
If the car catches fire, perhaps her waters will break and put it
out, thought David sourly.

As they came off the motorway, nature seemed to be putting on a
huge banquet to welcome Galena. Every elderbush was covered in
lacy tablemats. Hogweed, like plates born aloft by waiters, crowded
every verge.
'Raymond and I have huge row when he announce you are
coming,' said Galena. 'I was furious that he provide dull youth to
bore me in evenings, but' - she glanced at David under her
eyelashes - 'maybe you will do.'
Here's to you, Mrs Robinson, thought David smugly.
But perhaps' - Galena gave her deep throaty laugh again -
Raymond provide himself with little catamite?'
Certainly not,' exploded David, going crimson, 'that's the last
thing.'

53
Desperate to change the subject, he asked her what presents she
had bought for the boys.
'Nothing, I forget. Raymond can have brandy, I only drink little
from bottle.' Then, seeing David's look of disapproval: 'Children
are given too much in England. As a child I was lucky to get present
at Christmas.'
David's disapproval cost him. Galena borrowed his last river to
buy a box of Quality Street for the boys in Cirencester and kept the
change, which meant he couldn't escape to the Goat in Boots this
evening if she and Raymond had a row.

Arriving at Foxes Court, she bounded into the house.
'Where would you like these put?' he asked sulkily, having
humped all her loot into the hall.
'I'd like you to open a bottle of red.'
She was flipping through her skyscraper of post. Opening
two blue envelopes marked Private, skimming the contents, she
smirked, and shoved the letters into her bag. She then insisted
he had a drink with her.
'Bit early, the boys might want to play tennis.'
'Don't be a little prude.'
When he had filled two glasses, she drained hers in one gulp,
then groaned and clutched her belly.
'My baby is due. Help! I am in labour.'
'Oh my God, I'll phone the hospital.'
But next minute, Galena had whipped up her scarlet dress to
reveal strong white thighs, a pair of knickers as red as the wine
she'd just drunk, edged with curls of black pubic hair. Tied round
her waist, resting on her flat belly, was a huge leather money bag.
Next moment, she had unzipped it, and, roaring with laughter, was
scooping out hundreds of notes and throwing them in the air so
they fluttered all over the room.
'This is my beautiful baby. I sell eight pictures. This way I pay no
tax.'
As she chucked the empty money bag on the sofa, a car door
slammed and the boys came racing in. Alizarin couldn't speak, he
just mouthed in ecstasy, then threw himself into Galena's arms.
Jupiter paused, casting an eye over the green carpet of money.
'Mummy go a-hunting,' crowed Galena, then scooping up a
handful of notes divided them between the boys. 'The banks will
change it. David will find chocolate I buy you. He tell me you paint
very well, darling.' She smiled at Alizarin. 'And you do everything
else brilliant,' she added vaguely to Jupiter.
You cow, thought David. And for a woman who was alleged to

54
have such contempt for commercialism, she'd got a very shrewd
business head.
For a moment, she bombarded the boys with questions, then the
telephone rang. Galena took it in the study.
'That was Etienne,' she announced when she emerged ten
minutes later, slap into Raymond who was accompanied by Maud,
who, forgetting her rheumatism, was leaping joyfully around him.
'Don't let her tear the money,' cried Jupiter in horror and,
helped by David, he started shovelling it back into the money bag.
Over their bowed heads and scrabbling hands, Raymond and Galena gazed at each other. Like so many high-complexioned
Englishmen, Raymond quadrupled his good looks with a tan. His
brushed back hair was striped black and grey like corduroy, his
upper lip stiff as papier mache, long dark lashes tipped with grey
fringed the hurt, bewildered turquoise-blue eyes. As he kissed his
wife, his hands were clenched to stop them trembling.
'You're very brown,' she mocked him. 'While I work, you enjoy
yourself. See, you are not the only person in this house who sell
picture. I sell five to a friend ofEtienne's, three to a collector from
Munich who wants four more.'
'That's awfully good,' said Raymond slowly.
'And you bring me Stjohn Evangelista, who was horrified when
I fooled him I was about to give birth.' Her eyes slid towards David.
'Is that a hint for me to become more virginal?'
'Can we stay up for supper?' begged Alizarin.
'That mean we dine too early.' Galena glanced at her watch. 'I
want to paint for a couple of hours. We'll have dinner at nine. You
can stay up tomorrow. For now you can help David take my stuff
upstairs.'
Grabbing the bottle of red, she wandered out through the
french windows.
What a bitch, thought David, what an absolutely horrible, bloody
gorgeous bitch.
Galena didn't return from her studio until eleven o'clock, by
which time David was drunk and Raymond deathly pale and
beyond eating.
'Painting is like a drug to my wife,' he told David apologetically,
she probably hasn't done much while abroad, and was desperate
for a fix.'

55
Life changed completely after Galena came home. Mealtimes
were awry. Everyone fought for her attention. The household
trembled when her work was going badly. Life was a series of deep
glooms followed by irresistible high spirits. David was in turmoil:
the more he disapproved, the more he was captivated.
Working late, Galena slept under the stars on the flat roof of her
studio, then wandered out naked into the garden to paint, dipping
her brushes in the stream. As the heatwave increased its stranglehold
and the earth cracked, David and Robens fought over the
watering, so they could surreptitiously watch her. Her body had
thickened, no longer as good as she thought it was, but David was
mesmerized by the sight of her swimming naked, the mirror on the
bottom of the pool reflecting her bush whisking up and down like
some furry water rat.
David soon made himself as useful to Galena as everyone else,
picking up paints from Bristol, helping her cook Sunday lunch
before she got too drunk, carrying her easels and canvasses
through the countryside, coming back later with a picnic basket,
breathing in the smell of wild mint as he cooled the white wine in
the stream.
One morning he was sketching the river with the boys.
'Most buses have "Searston" or "Cheltenham" on the front,' he
told them, 'but one magic psychedelic bus had "Further" as its
destination, and that's where you want to go. As an artist you must
always try to go further, and see things in a new way. That acacia
tree, for example, has got yellow in it, which makes it seem warmer
and nearer, but if you want to create distance, like those hills, add
blue.'
A shadow fell across his pad.

56
'You are better teacher than artist,' mocked Galena, 'you better
join Raymond in the gallery.'
The following day, when she opened her paintbox, Galena
found four lines in David's handwriting:

She was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament.

Galena smirked. Like an all-over suntan, one could never have
too many men in love with one. David was a silly little lapdog, but
a useful one.

Raymond meanwhile was aware that he had spent too much of the
summer hanging round David, neglecting the gallery. As July drew
to a close, he set off abroad to sell and replenish stock. David rose
at sunrise to see him off. The brilliant hard light anticipated
autumn as it gilded the trees.
'I'm going to miss you.' David emphasized his stammer. 'I think
I'm turning into Sir Galahad: "Live pure, speak true, right wrong,
follow the King - Else, wherefore born?" You're my King Arthur.'
'Look after my Guinevere.' Raymond tried not to betray how
moved he felt.
'I'll ward off any Lancelot.' Hugging Raymond, David kissed him
briefly on the cheek. 'Please come home soon.'

David's ardour was somewhat cooled by having to watch Jupiter's
hero, Rupert Campbell-Black, triumphing at Wembley all week.
'The handsomest man in England', according to the Daily Mail, he
was greeted by screaming teenagers each time he entered the show
ring. It had become a sudden bond between Jupiter and Galena,
who out-screamed any teenagers whenever he won.

The first night Raymond was away David was resolutely reading
Tennyson in the dusk on the terrace:
'To love one maiden only...' ('maiden'was pushing it-Galena
must be nearly forty) '. .. and worship her by years of noble deeds
for indeed I knew of no more subtle master under heaven . . .
to keep down the base in man.'
He mustn't make a pass at Galena, Raymond was his friend.
The base in David however rocketed sharply a moment later, as
Galena came onto the terrace utterly transformed. A flamingo-
Pmk dress, short and sleeveless, caressed her hot, newly bathed

57
body from which Mitsouko rose like incense. Her hair was clean
and glossy, her make-up for once applied with all the skills of a
great artist. She also smelled of toothpaste rather than fags and
booze.
Well away from herself, she was carrying a still-wet canvas, which
she propped up on a chair. A developer had bought the big field
on the other side of the river, which was rumoured to contain over
a hundred different wild flowers, and was planning to slap houses
all over it.
In Galena's painting of the same field, pink grasses, merging
into olive-green woods and a sky the bright blue of Rupert
Campbell-Black's eyes, were dominated by a full moon, as gold as
the plates Mrs Robens refused to put in the dishwasher.
'It's stunning,' sighed David, 'show it to the Council and they'll
never grant the developers permission to ruin such a lovely spot.'
But all he could think of was that Galena had made herself
beautiful for him on Raymond's first night away.
'Vy did you put that verse in my paintbox?' she asked.
Collapsing onto a nearby chair, she spread her legs. There was
still enough light to see she was wearing no knickers. David hastily
looked away.
Galena laughed: 'I'm waiting.'
And David was lost.
'I've fought it and fought it,' he mumbled, 'but from the
moment you walked out at Heathrow, I realized I'd met my
Waterloo. You're going to break my heart, I know you will' - he
seized her hand and covered it with kisses - 'because I'm so vulnerable
and you're so far out of my league.'
'Hearts mend very quickly at your age,' observed Galena.
'Never! I want to be your cavaliere servente and serve you in
everyway.'
'You can start off by opening a bottle,' mocked Galena. 'And I'm
out of sketchbooks, so you can pop into Searston tomorrow, and
first thing you can run up to the village shop and get me some
Tampax.'
'Oh, I couldn't.' David blushed furiously, not least imagining
where the Tampax was destined. He was about to kiss his way up
her arm, to hell with the boys or Robens looking out of the window,
when everything was spoilt by the telephone ringing. Galena
bolted inside.
'Come at once,' he could hear her saying. 'I'll vait in the studio,
and hurry, my darling.'
Smiling cruelly, she drifted out again.
'If you want to serve me,' she purred, 'get me a bottle ofDom

58
Perignon and tell Raymond, or anyone else who rings, that I'm
painting.'
'The town red,' fumed David.
Dying of humiliation, he retired upstairs, checking the boys on
the way. Tired after another long hot day, they were too fast asleep
to witness their mother's fecklessness.
A prom of Beethoven's Ninth on Radio Three couldn't comfort
David as he lay on his bed smoking. In despair, he took Maud out
for a last walk. The mocking moon overhead was a voyeur like
himself. Next moment, a Rolls-Royce with blacked-out windows
blaring Tn the Summertime' stormed up the drive.
Lurking behind a huge chestnut, putting a hand round Maud's
jaws to stop her barking, David saw the car take the bumpy wooded
path to Galena's studio. There he caught a glimpse of sleek fair
hair, and a cold statue's face, as a man jumped out and bolted up
the steps, to be greeted by screams of joy from Galena. If Rupert
Campbell-Bloody-Black jumped for England, he'd have no difficulty
leaping on Galena.
Ten minutes later, she had the gall to return to the house for a
bottle of whisky.
'Don't look so sulky,' she taunted David. 'Keep your pretty
mouth shut, and don't forget those sketchbooks in the morning.'
Tearing the July page off the calendar to draw on, she was gone.
As a final straw, the stream that ran through the garden had dried
up, so there was no waterfall to soothe him to sleep.

In the morning, Rupert had gone but his presence was everywhere.
David had only just returned from the village shop where he'd
been subjected to hideous embarrassment when the shortsighted
owner, unable to find a price on David's purchase, bellowed, 'How
much is Tampax, Mother?' in front of a long queue of giggling
women.
David had nearly died, particularly when Galena, walking bowlegged
if not wounded after a night's rogering, sent him straight
back for the Daily Telegraph, which had a piece on Rupert,
describing him in terms of gross hyperbole as 'charismatic as the
newly launched Concorde'. As well as being a deb's delight and
showjumping's golden boy, Rupert was evidently a hell-raiser,
given to letting off thunder flashes in church and lopping the tails
of yew peacocks.
And he's the same fucking age as me, brooded David.

59
Galena retired to her studio to paint. Tormented by doubts about
the direction her painting was going, influenced by the Abstract
Expressionists who laid canvasses on the floor and dripped paint
on them in manic squiggles, she had decided to drench her pubic
hair in cobalt violet. She was just face down writhing on a piece of
white paper when her husband's least favourite artist, Colin Casey
Andrews, marched in. Having dropped into the gallery in Cork
Street and found Raymond abroad, Casey had decided to enjoy a
few days at Foxes Court. Picking Galena up, he threw her dripping
paint on the bed. After the ensuing session, the sheets themselves
should have been framed.
David had never met anyone so arrogant, so unpleasant, so
grotesque as this spoilt roaring giant. Casey Andrews treated all
the staff like navvies, and kept dispatching David to Searston to
buy foie gras, caviare and champagne on Raymond's account.
David, having forgotten his own modest pass at Galena, was
violently disapproving. He spent his time protecting the boys,
taking them out on jaunts, while Galena and Casey painted each
other, binged and made drunken love on the roof of the studio.
Robens spent a lot of time up a ladder pruning an oak, so he could
watch them.
Mrs Robens's mouth disappeared totally, as she ceased to find
solace even in indignation meetings with David. She was such a
'treasure', however, that people were always offering her jobs.
Earlier in the week, the newly married and utterly undomesticated
Lady Waterlane from Rutminster Park had telephoned. Mrs
Robens was consequently going for an interview on Thursday,
disguising the fact by asking Galena if she and Robens could have
the afternoon off to go and see her mother.

60
'Take the whole day,' shouted Galena, who was fed up with being
spied on.
On Thursday afternoon, Casey finally passed out on the studio
floor, and Galena, overwhelmed with guilt about not working, told
David she was not to be disturbed. Her first interruption was Jean
Baines, the curate's prim wife, who'd rolled up to snoop and bum
a buckshee picture for the village fete. Galena was so incensed by
the intrusion she picked up the remains of a still life of fruit she'd
started ten days ago, and bombarded her visitor with rotten
kumquats and pomegranates.
Storming over to the house, Galena shouted at David for letting
Jean in.
'How can I paint in this madhouse?'
'Van Gogh did his most brilliant work in an asylum, so cool it,
Mum,' said Jupiter, not looking up from Swallows and Amazons.
'Don't speak to me like that,' howled Galena, then, turning on
David, 'I'm going to paint in the Blue Tower. Take the boys out
somevere to play. Then come back and don't you dare allow
anyone up there.'
David had hardly been back five minutes from farming out the
boys when a Rolls-Royce with blacked-out windows roared up and
a young man jumped out. He had white-blond hair, a brown face,
long blue eyes, a Greek nose and a brutally determined mouth. He
wore only a white shirt and breeches. His feet were bare, his beauty,
despite its familiarity from the papers all summer, astonishing. In
the back of the car, through a lowered window, could be seen a red
coat, several silver cups and a genial black Labrador.
David rushed out feeling hot, sweaty and very unbrave.
'Mrs Belvedon gave orders she wasn't to be disturbed.'
'Not by me, she didn't.'
Rupert was a good five inches taller than David, much broader
in the shoulder and fighting fit.
'Get out of my way, you little twerp.'
Picking David up, disdainfully shoving him to one side like a
bollard, he bounded up the stairs.
Next moment. Galena had thundered down to meet him, crying,
Oh Rupert!' and throwing herself into his arms.
From below David could see Rupert's long fingers going straight
under her skirt:
'I've got some amyi nitrate, it'll blow your mind.'

tTl
i m not going to bed, it's only seven o'clock,' hissed a returning
Jupiter.
Nor am I,' saidAlizarin, 'I'm going to see Mummy in her studio.'

61
Christ, they'd stumble on a drunken Casey.
'She's in the Blue Tower,' said David hastily.
'Fine, we'll go and see her.'Jupiter turned towards the stairs.
David had a brainwave. Robens had painted a shed such a
revolting shade of hen's diarrhoea green that Raymond had asked
David to get a Dulux colour chart, which he now brandished
before the boys.
'I'll give you a pound each,' he said in desperation, 'if you can
match as many colours as possible with flowers from the garden.
Now buzz off.'
David was extremely upset. He might have a monstrous crush on
Galena, but he adored Raymond a great deal more, and hated such
things occurring in what should have been a happy family. Out of
the window, he noticed Rupert's car, which he'd better move
under the trees, before the boys saw it. Thank God, the key was still
in the ignition.
I want to be six foot two, upper class, self-confident, as
charismatic as Concorde, he thought longingly, and have a black-
windowed Roller that I park across the drives of hostesses I screw.
Back in the house, his brooding was interrupted by Maud
barking at the doorbell. Outside a large, self-important, balding
man in a very well-pressed suit was standing beside a rather plain
girl- Tin afraid we're a bit early,' said the man. 'We heard dire stories
of hold-ups and holiday traffic, but it wasn't too bad.'
Twigging they must be Sir Mervyn Newton, the dry-cleaning
king, and his daughter Rosemary come to buy a picture for Lady
Newton's sixtieth birthday, David's heart sank.
'I'm afraid Mr Belvedon isn't back from abroad.'
'He will be soon,' said Sir Mervyn, clearly a man of importance,
unused to being forgotten.
'We can just sit in his lovely garden,' said the plain daughter.
'We're so looking forward to meeting Mrs Belvedon.'
'Ah!' As they entered the dark hall, Sir Mervyn put on his bifocals
to admire a yellow and dark blue oil. 'That's one of Casey
Andrews', one of my favourite artists, I'd love to shake him by the
hand.'
Not if you knew where it had been recently, thought David. Like
a gorilla in a safari park, Raymond kept Casey away from collectors.
'Go through into the garden,' he said, 'I'll get you both a long
cool drink.'

Meanwhile, in the Blue Tower, post coital for a second time,
Galena found exquisite pleasure in watching a long-limbed,

62
golden, naked Rupert examining the pictures, and reached for her
sketchbook.
She wished she were a sculptor. He was so beautiful, and what a
body to sculpt; Borochova's Rupert would stand alongside the
Davids ofDonatello and Michelangelo. It was the utter stillness of
the face, followed by the amazing smile, that made him so irresistible.
He also had the same Greek nose as Pride in the Raphael.
'Nice arse,' Rupert admired a plump Boucher bottom.
Galena explained Raymond's father's theory about beautiful
pictures inspiring beautiful children.
'My parents were probably gazing at a Stubbs foxhound when I
was conceived,' said Rupert. 'Still, it worked with Raymond. Good-
looking bloke, what's he like in bed?'
Galena pointed contemptuously to a working drawing of
Raphael's The Battle of Nude Men, hanging by the door, which
showed a lot of warriors with minute penises hurling spears and
arrows at one another.
'Like that,' she sneered, 'like a little shrimp villy, helplessly
thrashing around.'
'Some have smallness thrust upon them. Not my problem,' said
Rupert, gazing in satisfaction at his suntanned belly and magnificent
already rising cock.
'Nor Colin CaseyAndrews's,' said Galena, to puncture his self-
esteem.
'Column Casey Andrews,' said Rupert, emptying the last of the
champagne into their glasses. 'Are you going to get another bottle?
Is he bigger than me?'
'Much, but not as beautiful.'
As Rupert slid his hand between her legs. Galena carried on
drawing, squinting up at his face.
Was that why he was so attracted to her, wondered Rupert,
because she didn't give a damn? She was fantastic in bed, licking
one everywhere, fingers in every pie, sucking one in like a whirlpool,
but even when she gave you a blow job, you felt she was still
watching your face to see how your hair fell.
'They should bring back National Service for people like you,'
he grumbled. 'Shrimp Villy's a sweet man, gives you everything,
sells your pictures, allows you the run of this ravishing house. All
you do is moan.'
'Not viz desire for him. He's impotent.'
Probably queer like my brother Adrian, who works in an art
gallery. Maybe all dealers are queer.'
^Freud cured Mahler's impotence,' observed Galena.
He'd better cure Raymond then.'

63
'Freud's dead, stupid. Ven I marry Raymond I told him I must
have freedom to do vot I like.'
To have and to cuckhold.' Rupert shook his golden head. 'I
couldn't cope with an unfaithful wife.'
He picked up Galena's sketch.
'That's good, can I have it?'
'Ven I've signed it.' Galena scrawled G.B. on the bottom.
'Thank you.' Rupert laughed. 'We should all have G.B. tattooed
on our bumpers to show we've been to bed with you. Now that is
nice.' Rupert had just noticed the Raphael Pandora, on the right
of the bed. 'Where did Shrimp Villy find that?'
'In some flea market in France.'
'Did he buy that little flea who tried to stop me coming up here?
Who is he?'
'David someone, Raymond hired him for the summer to coach
the boys. Are you jealous?'
'Of that?' asked Rupert incredulously.
I love his arrogance almost more than his beauty, thought
Galena, holding out her arms. 'Come back to bed.'
Her breath reeked of drink and fags. Fucking Galena, reflected
Rupert, was like going to the pub. They were interrupted by thunderous
banging.
'Bugger off!' Rupert hurled the empty champagne bottle at the
door.
'Mrs Belvedon! Galena!'
'Go away.'
'I'm sorry to bother you, the boys are back, and Sir Mervyn
Newton and his daughter. Rosemary, have been downstairs for half
an hour.'
'Tell them I'm vorking.'
'They've come all the way from Cornwall to see you.'
'Well, tell Mrs Robens to give them a drink and get rid of them.'
'You gave the Robenses the day off. She's gone to see her sister.
Sir Mervyn's expecting supper.'
'Oh, you sort something out.'

64
Having left Sir Mervyn and Rosemary on the terrace with more
huge drinks, David belted back to the kitchen. Perhaps supper had
been left, but as he opened the fridge, only a large raw fish, as balefully
uncooperative as Mrs Robens, glared out at him.
He telephoned Raymond's favourite local restaurant, the Lark
Ascending, only to be told they were fully booked.
'It's for Raymond Belvedon,' protested David.
There was a pause, followed by a different voice.
'We've got a wedding party, but we could fit Mr Belvedon into
our private room any time after nine.'
It was only seven now. By nine. Sir Mervyn would be horizontal
in the delphiniums.
'Leave it,' snapped David.
When he was rich and famous, he vowed, people would empty
restaurants to accommodate him and his guests. He was roused by
an excited squeak as Maud heaved herself out of her basket and
limped out of the kitchen. For the second time, Galena and Rupert
were interrupted by thundering on the door.
'Mrs Belvedon, Mr Belvedon's home.'
'Holy shit.' Rupert ran to the window. 'Holy even shittier.'
Seeing Maud joyfully dancing on her rheumaticky legs to greet
her master. Badger, Rupert's Labrador, bored of being confined
to the Rolls, had wriggled through the lowered black glass window,
and was now cavorting on the lawn with her.
Examining the label on Badger's collar, Raymond read:
Campbell-Black, Penscombe 204'. So that was why Galena had
been so manic recently.
Having yelled to David that she'd be down in a minute, Galena
ordered Rupert to stay put.

65
'Raymond'11 change in his dressing room, then go back downstairs
to sell pictures. The deal is all. I'll smuggle you out later.'
Drenching herself in Mitsouko to disguise the reek of sex,
Galena slipped into her flamingo-pink dress and, not bothering to
wash or comb her hair, ran downstairs out onto the terrace.
'Forgeeve me, Sir Mervyn, I have been painting since early this
morning.' She clasped Mervyn's hand, then, turning to Rosemary:
'This must be your charming daughter. Vy have you got empty
glasses, vy didn't anyone tell me you were coming? I sack my
housekeeper. You should have known!' She turned furiously on
David.
Fortunately at that moment Raymond came through the french
windows. His suit was crumpled and much in need of Sir Mervyn's
pressing services, his eyes bloodshot, his face grey, but his smile as
warm as ever.
'My dear fellow, how lovely to see you, and dear Rosemary.' He
bent to kiss her.
'No-one told me they were coming,' snapped Galena.
'Never mind, we're all in one piece,' said Raymond evenly. 'I'm
late, Mervyn, because I've been looking for something really nice
for darling Margaret. Why don't you go along to the warehouse
and browse around while I get out of this suit? David, dear boy,
could you unload the car?'

By the time Raymond rejoined Mervyn, the dealer had reasserted
itself. The barn which he used as a warehouse was high and cheerless.
Normally Raymond would have turned off the overhead
lights, and orchestrated the viewing, placing one carefully lit
picture on an easel, its colours enhanced by some specially chosen
flowers on a side table. Now he had to plunge straight in. He found
Sir Mervyn rootling through stacked-up canvasses, frustrated they
didn't have any prices. One didn't like to admit that one's choice
was determined less by a picture's beauty than by its likelihood of
rocketing in value.
'Good trip?' he asked.
'I think so,' said Raymond lightly. 'Grubbing around a sale room
in Paris, I found a picture listed as a copy of a Gainsborough. I've
got a gut feeling it's the real thing. Can't wait to get it back to my
restorer in London. Now, about Margaret's picture.'
But Sir Mervyn's purple-veined nose was twitching.
'What sort of price were you thinking about?'
'If it were the real thing, about twenty thousand. Probably isn't.
Now, this is something Margaret might like.' Raymond picked up
his feckless wife's painting of the wild-flower meadow. 'I'm not

66
going to tell you who this is by, a contemporary artist, very talented.'
'Beautiful,' Sir Mervyn murmured, 'very serene.'
He mostly bought contemporary work, but also considered
himself an authority on early English paintings. After all, a wife
wasn't sixty every day, and Margaret had been a tower of strength.
'Could I have a look at the Gainsborough, even if it is dirty?'
The subject was a handsome couple, their children and a supercilious
King Charles spaniel grouped in lush parkland. Age had
turned the husband's breeches yellow. The spaniel looked as
though it had been rolling.
'Stunning,' gasped David, who'd popped in with bottles to check
drinks.
Raising a hand to hush him, Raymond moved next to Mervyn,
seeing who could maintain a silence longest. The ice melted in
Raymond's whisky.
'Interesting,' said Mervyn noncommittally.
Raymond shook himself out of a trance, and smiled gently.
'Indeed it is.'
Another silence ensued.
'Can I see it without its frame?'
'Certainly.'
Sir Mervyn put on his bi-focals, examining the picture on both
sides. What's he looking for? A sticker saying Woolworths, 5s 6d?
wondered David. Turning, Raymond gave him a wink.
'It's not signed.' Mervyn puffed out his cheeks importantly.
'No, but the husband looks rather like Gainsborough in the
early portraits. These artists love including themselves. And a very
happy charming couple like you and Margaret.'
'If it was Gainsborough, it would go up in value?'
'Oh certainly. But I'm hoping whoever buys it appreciates it as
great art.'
Like myself, thought Sir Mervyn smugly. People would certainly
sit up to learn he'd bought Margaret a Gainsborough.
Raymond changed tack.
Probably isn't a Gainsborough, but I know how Margaret loves
dogs. Maybe a pupil did it. I'll be able to tell you more next week.'
Mervyn took a gulp of his freshened gin and tonic, and pursed
his lips.
'I'd like to chance it.'
Once again Raymond raised his hand.
No, no, I can't let you, we've got till the end of August. Now,
what else have we got that Margaret might like?'
Promise not to sell it to someone else?'
'I promise.'

67
There was lots of hearty laughter as Sir Mervyn accused
Raymond of being too honest.
'I'd never give you a job in my company,' then, picking up
Galena's Wild-Flower Meadow, he said, 'I'd like to buy this picture as
well. And while we're here, have you got any early Casey Andrews?'
David was enraptured - never had he seen such an example of
grace under pressure. A thunderous rumble from Sir Mervyn's
large tummy brought him back to earth. Rosemary's drink must be
empty by now. He raced back to the terrace to find her alone.
Galena must have buggered off upstairs.
'Like a Pimm's?'
'Oh, how delicious. Shall I come and help you make it?'
For a moment David's panic about dinner subsided. The
Belvedons were always comparing people to characters in paintings.
Now he had the fleeting pleasure of recognizing Rosemary
Newton as the bouncy grey horse in Raphael's St George and the
Dragon.
In the picture, the horse looked very secure, almost smug, as if
he knew his master was a dab hand with a sword, and wouldn't let
the fierce dragon bite even a fetlock. Like Rosemary, he had merry,
knowing, round, rather small eyes, a curly forelock, and a long
white face capable ofjauntiness but never beauty. From what he
could see, Rosemary also had St George's horse's strong white
cobby body. David guessed she was about twenty-nine.
'So kind of them to invite us to kitchen sups,' she was saying as
she followed him into the kitchen. 'Daddy so adores his sessions
with Raymond.' Then, seeing David's face: 'They forgot we were
coming?'
David deliberated.
'Well, Mrs Belvedon's been away too and someone's torn offjuly
from the calendar.'
'I'll help,' said Rosemary, in her brisk Roedean voice. 'I've been
a chalet girl for the last three years. Let's see what we can rustle up.
'There's a lovely sea trout in here,' she said, opening the fridge.
'I'll gut it and take its head off.' For a second she cradled the fish
in her capable white hands. 'It'll take about forty minutes. Let's see
if we can find a fish kettle. We'll need half a bottle of cheap white
and lots of herbs from the garden. I know a quick mayonnaise
which we can turn into sauce verte while the fish is cooking.'
'I'll dig up some potatoes,' said David gratefully.
'And get some mint too.'

Rosemary was absolutely wonderful and when Jupiter and
Alizarin staggered up to the kitchen door, bearing half Raymond's

68
herbaceous border to match David's colour chart, she praised
them to the skies. Then she averted Raymond and Robens's wrath
by putting the flowers in vases and decorating the dining-room
table with the broken flower heads.
'You're both staying up for supper,' she told the delighted boys.

fudging by the laughter on the terrace, Galena was down again.
'Raymond speak of you often, he tell me you are great collector
and connoisseur,' she was lying to Sir Mervyn.
'I collect for the sheer pleasure of possessing beauty,' Sir Mervyn
lied back. 'I've just bought your flower meadow. You stand in front
of a picture like that, as Paul Mellon, a good friend of mine, is
always saying, and you think: "And what is money?'"
'Vot indeed?' purred Galena. 'I would love to meet Paul Mellon.'
'I'm sure it can be arranged,' said Mervyn warmly.
Leaving them, Raymond found Rosemary and David in the
kitchen.
'Let it cool,' Rosemary was saying as she lifted the sea trout out
of the fish kettle, 'and I'll skin it. If you could chop up some
cucumber, David.'
'I'm so sorry about the cock-up,' said Raymond. 'You two
children are such bricks.'
'It's our secret,' whispered Rosemary, 'we mustn't tell Daddy, he
doesn't understand about being forgotten. Dinner'11 be ready in
ten minutes.'
Outside two magpies were having a domestic and big black
clouds were moving in like gangsters. It was growing even hotter.
As Rosemary laid the sea trout on a big green plate shaped like a
lettuce leaf, and decorated it with chopped cucumber and slices of
fennel, David told her about Prometheus carrying fire from
Heaven in a fennel stalk.
'How clever to know Greek things,' said Rosemary.
She's really nice, decided David, watching her tossing new
potatoes in chopped-up mint and melted butter. Rosemary for
remembrance. She'd certainly remember dentist appointments,
and the names of collectors' wives and children, and whether they
were coming to dinner. And all that dry-cleaning dosh would make
an ascent up the social scale so much easier.

69
'Supper,' announced David triumphantly, then groaned, for,
staggering up the lawn, a leaning tower of pissed artist, his eyes red
as traffic lights, his face creased by sheets, his body not remotely
covered by Galena's crocus-yellow dressing gown, came Casey
Andrews.
Not a trace of anguish that Casey must have been down here
screwing Galena and was about to screw up any deal showed on
Raymond's face.
'My dear Casey,' he murmured, 'what an extraordinary coincidence.
I've been showing your pictures to Sir Mervyn, who you
know is a great fan. Perhaps you'd like to explain them to him yourself?'

'My work defies explanation,' said Casey pompously, helping
himself to a huge Scotch.
'We'd better lay another place,' whispered Rosemary.
'And put arsenic in his sea trout,' whispered back David, letting
his lips touch her very clean ear.
'Thrilling for Daddy to meet such a famous artist,' giggled
Rosemary, 'but isn't he awful?'
'We're about to dine, Casey,' said Raymond firmly, 'but I
suppose we can wait another five minutes.'
'I'll have another gin then,' said Sir Mervyn.
Wearily Raymond led them off to the warehouse. Such were
their monumental egos, he daren't leave them alone.

By the time they returned, Galena had vanished, but dinner
couldn't be held up any longer. The boys were drooping; Casey
and Mervyn both drunk. Searching for his wife, Raymond disr- covered her back in the Blue Tower sketching a naked Rupert, who

70
was asleep like the young Endymion, his legs longer than Maud's.
Raymond didn't know which was more beautiful, Rupert or
Galena's drawing of him.
On the chair near the door was a far more explicit drawing of
Rupert, entitled: Orgasm -July 26th. Raymond flipped it over. So
that was where the July page of the calendar had gone.
'What the fuck are you playing at?' he hissed. 'This place is like
a whorehouse. First Casey, then Rupert- don't you give a stuff the
effect it has on the boys, David and the servants?'
'I tell you, I need new models. This one' - she waved her pencil
at Rupert - 'sits like a rock, he's got the stillest face I've ever seen.'
Somehow Raymond gained control of himself.
'Dinner's ready, I don't imagine he's staying.'
He glanced up at the Raphael, particularly at Hope, with her
sweet soothing smile.
'You lying jade,' he told her bitterly.

After dinner, they had more drinks outside. Casey, who'd eaten
most of the sea trout, was getting stuck into the kummel. Having
been impressed by other artists' portraits on the dining-room walls,
Sir Mervyn asked Casey if he'd be interested in painting Margaret.
Having decided that Margaret would probably be as plain as her
daughter Rosemary, Casey said he didn't do portraits.
'Don't be silly, Casey,' chided Galena.
'I like the work of that Froggy who also exhibits at the Belvedon,'
said Mervyn, who didn't understand professional jealousy.
'Edenne de Montigny?' Galena glanced mockingly at Casey.
'That's the fellow, got some of his racy stuff.' Then, checking
across the terrace that Rosemary was still totally preoccupied with
David: 'Mind you, I keep it away from the wife.'
Casey, who couldn't bear any competition, rose to his feet,
blotting out a rising moon more effectively than any gathering
black cloud.
'Wait one minute, I want to show you something.'

Unable to sleep because of the din. Alizarin crept into the spare
room overlooking the terrace. Lurking undetected on the balcony,
he breathed in the sweet tobacco smell of buddleia which that afternoon
had been covered in butterflies. The moon looked like a slice
of lemon waiting to be dropped into one of Sir Mervyn's gins and
onic. Why were grown-ups so thirsty? They didn't run about much.
Alizarin detested Casey Andrews. He was so loud, bossy and rude
°his father. He was also disgusting, with food in his beard and
geys in his hairy nose, which this evening he had buried in a

71
stinking piece of cheese before deciding to cut himself a piece.
Alizarin shuddered. But worst of all was the way Casey monopolized
his mother. He'd seen the horrible giant slide his hand over
Galena's bottom once too often. Alizarin was a stoical little boy,
but, aware he was his mother's favourite, he felt neglected.
To the left he could hear the sound of blinds rattling up, as
sleeping pigeons were roused by Casey's noisy return from
Galena's studio.
'Come and give me a hand,' he yelled to David. 'Careful, the
paint isn't dry. Who says I can't do portraits?' he asked boastfully
as the canvas was leant against a bench, and one of the terrace
lights retrained onto a huge nude of Galena.
There were gasps followed by stunned silence. Half-woman, half-
goat, Galena's lips were drawn back from her long yellow teeth in
a hideous grimace, vine leaves entwined her horned head, a
Gauloise glowed between a cloven hoof, bouncing pink udders
hung below her belly button, with a bleeding slit below.
The stunned silence continued.
'I've called it: In Season,' said Casey sententiously.
'Interesting,' volunteered Sir Mervyn.
Raymond was quivering with rage. But Alizarin lurking on the
balcony was quicker.
'It's a horrible painting,' he shouted. Then, as everyone jumped
and looked up: 'My mother's the most beautiful woman in the
world, and she hasn't got long teef and her bosoms don't hang
down.'
And before anyone could stop him, he tipped an entire tin of
hen's-diarrhoea-green emulsion all over the canvas and the furious
upturned face of Casey Andrews.
'You bastard,' spluttered Casey.
'You horrible little bourgeois,' screamed Galena. 'How dare you
destroy great work of art?'
'Bollocks,' drawled a voice.
It was a barefoot Rupert, back in his white shirt and breeches,
with a great grin on his face.
'Evening, Raymond. Evening, Mervyn, sorry I didn't get back
to you over that sponsorship deal, I've been abroad. And well done,
you,' he shouted up to a trembling Alizarin, 'fucking marvellous.'
Then he walked towards the dripping canvas.
'That painting is perfectly frightful. Any self-respecting goat
would take you to court, Casey.' Peering at the few bits not
drenched in green emulsion: 'And I don't think your brush strokes
are very smooth either. I certainly won't employ you to paint my
stable doors.'

72
'How dare you!' roared Casey.
'Very easily.' Turning to bolt, Rupert looked frantically round
for his moved car. Having located it under the plane tree, however,
he had to wait for Badger, who was bidding a lingering farewell to
a smug-looking Maud. This enabled Casey to catch up with him
and grab him by his shirt.
'You little weasel.'
'And you're about to go pop.' Swinging round, Rupert smashed
his fist into Casey's furious face.
For the second time that day, England's self-confessed greatest
painter passed out cold. A second later, his wife Joan Bideford
came storming up the drive on a Harley Davidson.
'I thought I'd find you here, Casey,' she bellowed.
'Can I have your autograph, Mr Campbell-Black?' said Jupiter
admiringly.

'What a brave little chap that Alizarin is,' sighed Rosemary as she
and David loaded Mrs Robens's dishwasher.
'Would you like a walk round the garden?'
'Yes please.' Then, as soon as they drew out of earshot: 'That
painting's Mrs Belvedon, isn't it, and she had two chaps here, Casey
and Rupert?'
David nodded.
'What a tart! Raymond's such a dear. He always remembers one's
name and gives one a kiss at parties.'
'He's wonderful,' said David.
Rosemary had a nice voice, he decided, slightly raucous, but
definitely patrician. It turned him on.

Having waved Rupert off, Raymond went upstairs to see the boys
and found Rosemary saying goodnight to Alizarin.
'You were very brave to pour paint on that revolting man.'
'Shall I show you a picture I've done of him?'
'Yes, please.'
Rosemary didn't realize Alizarin had put Casey's red roaring
face on the body of Gluttony, portrayed in the Raphael.
'It's awfully good!' She couldn't stop laughing. 'I'd love to buy
it, would you accept two pounds?'
Rupert Campbell-Black's already given me a tenner,' said
Alizarin. 'You can have it for ten shillings.'
I think you're going to need a really good dealer to handle the
business side,' said Rosemary smiling up at Raymond.
Rosemary drove home to her parents' house near Oxford.
Mervyn, very drunk, couldn't stop laughing. Not for nothing

73
did his colleagues call him 'Pissed-asaNewton'.
'Bohemians always behave like that. We've been seeing life,
Rosie. Damned attractive woman, that Galena, good painter, going
to buy more of her stuff.'
Rosemary was about to say she thought Galena was a slut, when
her father switched to Rupert.
'His father Eddie's got a marvellous shoot. Rupert's going to do
some adverts for us. Bloody good-looking chap.'
David's much nicer-looking, thought Rosemary, and he'd taken
her telephone number.

At Foxes Court at four in the morning, they were woken by thunder
and deluge. Checking his garden when he got up, Raymond was
distraught to find all his delphiniums snapped in two, their proud
blue heads hanging. Galena, helped by David, cooked lunch: beef
goulash, dumplings with sour cream and lemon and cranberry
sauce.
'You did well yesterday, Evangelista,' she said mockingly, and
kissed him briefly on the mouth.
David was in turmoil. Perhaps he should get out now, escape
back to Yorkshire, out of charm's way.
Despite a black eye and green hair Casey as well as Joan stayed.
on for lunch as if nothing had happened. For pudding there was
cherry pie. Alizarin was dreamily counting his cherry stones: 'Rich;:
man, poor man, bugger man, thief.'
Galena burst out laughing. 'It's your father who's the bugger
man.' i
Raymond threw down his napkin and walked off into the garden;
David tracked him down in the boathouse by the river, crying
helplessly. '
'My delphiniums, my delphiniums.' Raymond groped for a
green silk handkerchief. 'So sorry, whole thing's been a bit of a
strain.' ;
David patted Raymond awkwardly on the shoulder. 'It's my fault.
You asked me to look after Mrs Belvedon. I'm utterly on your side,;?
we all are. She's such a bitch.' ?
Raymond looked up, eyes streaming. 4
'Will you come and work in the gallery when you come down
from Cambridge?'
David's face lit up the gloom of the boathouse like a Leonardo.
'I can't think of anything more wonderful. Despite the dramas,
this has been the happiest summer of my life.'
On 6 April 1971, on the alleged anniversary both of Raphael's birth
^jmd his death, Galena gave birth not to wads of francs and
SDeutschmarks, but to a third son, Jonathan. Five weeks premature,
ICarly for the last time in his life, Jonathan was a charming, indolent
g&ries, who smiled, ate and, unlike his elder brothers, slept through
|he night.
I" When he didn't look like Etienne, nor Rupert, nor Casey
lAndrews, nor even Joan Bideford, as Somerford Keynes, the Daily
|IW critic, bitchily observed, the art world charitably assumed he
must be Raymond's - particularly when Raymond seemed even
paore besotted with this little chap than either of the others.
I The art world was even more excited that autumn when David
Kame down from Cambridge and joined the Belvedon, enviously
sfcssuming David was Raymond's boyfriend, and the old dear had
iBnally come out.
?; Envy quadrupled when they realized the Boy David, as he was
-known, was not just a pretty face. He had a cool head, and didn't
get carried away at auctions. He also had huge energy. At weekends,
when he wasn't at Foxes Court, bouncing baby Jonathan on
his knee, or dispatching Jupiter and Alizarin to match autumn
leaves to colour charts, he toured the provincial galleries and art
schools ever searching for new talent.
Raymond was exhausted by hard work and ten years not
sleeping over Galena. David on the other hand could whoop it
^P all night, discussing ideas with these new artists or with collecs,
and still be bright and alert at his desk the following
morning. "
A delighted Raymond fed off the boy's daring and youthful

75
enthusiasm, took advantage of his fresh eye and occasional
boxed David's ears when he got too big for his new hand-ma<
ankle boots.
Early on David discovered Raymond wasn't perfect. He mig
spend hours mopping up the tears of an old duchess worried abo
selling a family painting, but, having acquired the painting, he h;
no scruples about disposing of it profitably.
'Always remember,' he told David, 'that a thing of beauty
infinitely more of a joy for ever if you can sell it for four dm
as much.'
David approved of the gallery making money and enjoy<
spending it even more. From the moment he arrived, there w
never any petty cash in the till. Fiona, Raymond's assistant, a glai
orous well-bred half-wit, spent her time cashing cheques at the pi
round the corner.
David had a hill sheep's ability to climb socially, apir
Raymond's every mannerism, his pronunciation, his wonderf Trumper's aftershave: West Indian Extract of Lime, his style i
dressing. The man-made fibres were chucked in the bin. A snc
with expensive tastes, David was unable to resist the siren call i
tailors in Savile Row, shirts in Jermyn Street, restaurants in Soh
Fortnum's, Hatchards and Burlington Arcade, teeming wil
expensive little presents for the impossibly chic and beautiful gii
gliding up and down nearby Bond Street. It was soon clear Dav
was not going to be able to live on his salary. Petra, his still unpai
back tutor's wife, was threatening to sue him. The bank manager
letters grew nastier.
One April afternoon at Foxes Court, when Raymond wi
proudly wheeling a year-old Jonathan in his pushchair round tl
village, David discussed the problem with Galena. He W
immensely flattered because she had asked him to sit for her. fi
was now perched on the window seat in the drawing room, wi<
Shrimpy, the Jack Russell which Rupert had given Galena for h<
birthday, perched on his knee.
'You need a vife,' said Galena.
'If I married someone as sexy as you,' grumbled David, 'I'd I
too worried to concentrate on work.'
'You want someone plain, rich, capable and kind,' said Galen
'then you have safety net to come home to.
Jealousy is stupid. Shrimpy,' she went on, blowing a kiss at h<
little dog, 'screw everything. Every bitch he meet, table leg, anfc
of vicar, but he love me best and always come back to me. What <J
I care what he gets up to?'
Although David had made himself useful putting Galena's ii

76
ntten gains into Swiss bank accounts when he went abroad, she
°s getting tired of picking up bills for him, suspecting Raymond
did the same.
'Why don't you marry Rosemary Newton?'
'The thought had crossed my mind.'
David had been very impressed the summer before last by her
calm resourcefulness, and her father's dry-cleaning fortune. He
had taken her to a couple of concerts, but had ducked out when
she asked him to a ball. You didn't dance the last waltz with St
George's horse.
'She's a nice girl,' said Galena with rare enthusiasm. 'She sent
me large bottle of scent and a Tiffany christening mug when
Tonathan was born. She often drop in. Alizarin and Jupiter adpre
her. You must not appear gold-digger.' Mixing terra rosa with
burnt sienna, she began painting Shrimpy's red patches.
"The rich detest freeloaders. Take her to nice restaurants, buy
her pretty undervear, write her charming notes, flatter her, cherish
l.her. It work with my husband,' Galena added slyly. 'He was eating
^,out of your hand in a few days that first summer.'
;,; 'Oh come on,' David flushed, 'I love the bloke.'
g< 'But you don't want to be roped to his apron for ever.'
e Shrimpy was getting bored, bristling after the vicar's tabby who
|ewas padding through the daffodils, trying to wriggle out of David's
sjClutches.
| 'Can't we have a break?'
|-^ 'Two more minutes.'
h David supposed it was worth it. Galena was beginning to stock- gpile pictures for her exhibition in October. A handsome portrait
I of himself would do his reputation no harm. He could see
IjSomerfbrd Keynes's definitive biography: The greatest influence
r0n Borochova's painting was undoubtedly David Pulborough, seen
here with her beloved Jack Russell, Shrimpy.'
If he were going to woo Rosemary seriously, he needed an
advance.
'Can you lend me fifteen hundred? Ouch, you little bugger.'
Seeing Raymond, Maud and baby Jonathan returning from their
walk. Shrimpy had plunged his claws into David's thighs and shot
out of the room.
'It's OK. I've finished.'
Preparing a charming compliment, that only Goddesses could
confer immortality on mere mortals, David crossed the room to
admire his portrait. Bloody hell! The bitch had only painted
onnmpy and left him out altogether. He'd have shouted at her, if
ne hadn't needed the money.

77
Galena gave it to him in cash: 'Be careful, it needs laundering.'
'Perhaps Sir Mervyn will dry clean it,' said David sourly.

The IRA were incredibly active in London that summer. Most of
the restaurants were boarded up with sandbags. On their third
date, for a more relaxed atmosphere, David drove Rosemary out
to a very smart expensive restaurant overlooking the Thames.
He had written her wonderful letters, liberally spiced with
Lamartine and Catullus. He had also given her Ma Griffe, pretty
underwear, a pale blue Hermes scarf covered in butterflies, and a
navy blue cashmere jumper from Burlington Arcade, all of which
Rosemary was wearing that evening.
Attempting to be fashionable, she had bought a pair of flared
trousers, which unfortunately emphasized her cobby thighs.
Catching sight of them in a nearby mirror, she had hastily covered
her lap with her table napkin.
Rosemary had been at a very low ebb when David had called her.
On the eve of her thirty-first birthday, she had discovered the 5
impoverished young charmer who'd been wooing her had been
simultaneously sleeping with two of her girlfriends. David had I
picked up the pieces, making her laugh by writing 'Ban Fortune-
Hunting' on a sticker in large letters to put in her rear window, j
David's jokes made Rosemary laugh anyway, because she was I
already curly head over flat heels in love with him. Used to |
attracting women easily, David recognized the terror of betraying }j
this longing in her round, normally merry little eyes, and was r<
touched. ^
The menu was colossally expensive; he'd have to wrap this J
courtship up soon. He hadn't made a pass yet, because he had no ^
desire to, and because he wanted her to think his intentions were |
honourable. He ordered a bottle ofMoet et Chandon. Rosemary, ;;
so churned up with nerves she could hardly eat, asked for Dover j|
sole off the bone. David chose duck a 1'orange. Restaurants had »
ceased to frighten him: he had mastered gulls' eggs, artichokes, ;
asparagus, avocado pears. He no longer asked for vichyssoise and
steak tartare to be heated up. ;
He had just taken delivery of his first bespoke suit, pinstripe and .
single breasted; it made him look taller, and older, as did the spectacles
he put on to read the menu.
Perhaps a nine-year gap wasn't too impossible, thought
Rosemary. David was so good looking, she tried not to stare; such
a sweet sensitive face, and his big dark eyes so full of sincerity.
They had lots to talk about: die Belvedons, ghastiy Casey
Andrews, Rupert Campbell-Black's latest atrocity, and Fiona,

78
Raymond's ravishing assistant, who had been in the Upper Fourth
at boarding school when Rosemary had been head girl.
'Every Friday, Fiona leaves at lunchtime,' grumbled David,
'having phoned home and said: "Mummy, can you arrange to have
the train stopped?" Evidently the Carlisle Express runs across her
parents' estate, so she just jumps down from her first-class carriage
and scampers across the fields to some mansion.' David tried to
keep the envy and antagonism out of his voice. Fiona had recently
repelled his advances.
'She is so thick,' he went on, 'but Raymond likes her contacts.'
'She's a duck,' said Rosemary, very relieved that David wasn't
smitten.
'And talking of duck, here's mine,' said David.
God, it looked divine, pity he was supposed to be off his food
with love, he must remember not to eat too much.
'This is fun,' said Rosemary as the waiter placed her sole in front
of her.
The word 'macho' was beginning to be bandied around in
London. David took one look at Rosemary's Dover sole, and
summoning the head waiter loudly ticked him off for not taking it
off the bone.
'It doesn't matter,' mumbled Rosemary.
'Yes it does, I do not expect restaurants of your calibre to make
mistakes.'
The head waiter, who didn't like upstarts, let David run, bywhich
time the entire restaurant was listening; then, as David drew
breath, said: 'Sir, you have paid me the greatest compliment.'
'Don't be bloody rude.'
In answer the head waiter lifted the top half of the sole. 'My chef
removed the bone, without you noticing it.'
David was hugely and furiously embarrassed, a little boy being
laughed at in the playground again. It took all Rosemary's tact and
sweetness to calm him down.
'I just want everything to be perfect for you,' he mumbled.
It was a warm evening, and the cashmere jersey had turned her
face scarlet. They were both relieved to retreat for coffee outside.
"s a peace-offering, the head waiter offered them a liqueur on the
house with their After Eights. The river reminded David of Foxes
ourt: lights on the opposite side sending gold snakes writhing
across the river, the water birds calling to each other sleepily, the
P_°fthe oars of a late-night rower, the smell of wet vegetation.
Shall we have lunch tomorrow?'
l can't,' wailed Rosemary, 'I've got to collect for the Cats
Protection League outside Gloucester Road Station.' She could

79
have wept with disappointment, particularly when he didn't
suggest another date.
'It's been such a lovely evening.' Rosemary pointed to the new
moon disentangling itself from the black branches of the alders on
the opposite bank. 'Did you book her to appear too?'
'I'm learning a huge amount from Raymond,' said David idly,
'but one day I'd like my own gallery.'
David was so thoughtful, he made the waiter pack up all the duck
he hadn't been able to eat in foil for Elspeth, Rosemary's mother's
Pekinese.
In the car going home, he sang along to a tape of Schubert
songs. In one about a beautiful wild rose in the hedgerow, he
changed 'Roslein' to 'Rosemary'. Rosemary's little house in
Chelsea had lift gates on the window to keep out burglars.
Embarrassed he might think she expected him to kiss her,
Rosemary opened the door quickly, but David grabbed her right
hand.
'Don't g-g-go,' he stepped up his stammer. 'I can't bear it, I know
I've had a lot of girls in the past but you are so lovely.'
'Don't be silly,' squeaked Rosemary.
'Beauty is in the eye of the b-b-beholder, and I've got a good eye,
Raymond tells me. You're the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.
I've met my Waterloo, Rosemary, I know you're going to break my
heart.'
'Don't be a clot.' ^
'Yes, you will.' David put his head in his hands. 'Because I've;
fallen in love with you. It's utterly presumptuous, the desire ofth<S|
moth for the star. Your family are wealthy, so far above me.'
'We're not grand.' Rosemary cast around desperately: 'I like;
boneless soles much better than chinless wonders.' ;|
'Don't mock me,' said David in anguish. 'I love you. The first's
'H'^
moment at Foxes Court, I thought: "She was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight."' ^
'That's so lovely,' sobbed Rosemary. 'I've loved you too, ever;
since we cooked that sea trout together.' |
'You love me?' said David incredulously. 'I don't believe it. Oh'
darling.' $
She tasted of brandy and After Eights. He was touched by heri
clumsy enthusiasm and lack of experience. Under the cashmere,
he discovered firm, delightfully full breasts, and was just getting^!
her really worked up, when he pushed her away.
'I still can't ask you to marry me. I'm only twenty-two. My salary
all goes on supporting Mum and Dad.'
'Oh, poor you.' Rosemary was mortified. 'You shouldn't

80 }
. bought me that lovely dinner and all those presents.'
'I couldn't help myself. Raymond gives me a small commission.
I sold a drawing by Ingres last week.'
'That's why you've lost weight, you can't afford to eat. I'm not
noor ' she went on tearfully. 'I've got enough for both of us and
your parents, I'm an only child, so one day all Daddy's money . . .'
'I'll make a fortune one day.'
'Of course you will.'
David rather wanted another feel of those wonderful breasts, but
thought now was the right cut-off moment.
'I can't expect you to wait for me. You must have lots of kids and
a big house.'
'I don't want--'
But David had leapt out of the car and, belting round, opened
the door; then, as she stumbled out, cried dramatically: 'Goodbye,
Rosemary darling, I love you too much to pull you down to my
| level.'
1 As he roared off, instantly switching to Radio One, in his driving
I mirror, he could see she was crying. She'd also forgotten her duck
I doggie bag, which he could eat when he got home.
e Davidsang'WhowantstobeamillionaireP'atthetopofhisvoice
E all the way back to his bedsitter in Bayswater.
^
| Rosemary dolefully clanked her tin in Gloucester Road. She'd
I been too dispirited to accost anyone and after half an hour had
; only collected half a crown and an Irish penny for the Cats
; Protection League. How would the poor strays survive? Catching
; sight of her, shoppers scuttled past, not wanting to be nabbed,
clutching their fares as they plunged into the womb of the tube
station. It gave her a dreadful feeling ofdeja vu: young men at deb
parties had long ago shot into darkened discos with the same
averted eyes.
She jumped at a screech of brakes.
'Oh Rosemar-ee, I love you,"' sang a wonderfully familiar tenor.
Rosemary started to cry. Slowly, through her tears, she became
aware of a heavenly vision, a young Apollo framed in the window
of Raymond's dark blue E-Type. The boot was full of canvasses.
'Jump in,' yelled David.
Rosemary blushed furiously, aware of astonished passersby.
Tm on duty till two o'clock.'
'Fuck duty. Get in.'
Rosemary did, straight into David's arms, to be kissed on and on,
^"itil every outraged motorist in London seemed to be hooting to
"^e drumming accompaniment of her heart.

I 81
'I must go back,' she gasped as a grinning David finally drove off,
making V signs to left and to right.
'You must not.' Fumbling in the dashboard, David handed her a
wad of Galena's unlaundered greenbacks. 'That should protect a
few pussies.'
'You can't give me all that money.'
'I've booked us into the Royal Garden for a quicky, but only if
you promise to marry me to make it respectable.'
'Yes, please,' gasped Rosemary, as he pulled up in front of the
hotel and, throwing his car keys to the door man, seized
Rosemary's hand and belted inside.
'I've only been to bed with one and a half men,' mumbled
Rosemary as he wrestled with the endless buttons of her flowered
Laura Ashley.
'What didn' t the half one do?'
'Couldn't get it up.' Rosemary hung her curly head. 'Probably
didn't find me exciting enough.'
'Unlike me,' sighed David, as white breasts flew like doves out of
an even whiter bra, 'I find you wildly exciting.' Then, dropping to
his knees: 'This is definitely one pussy I want to protect.'
St George's horse, he reflected afterwards, gave him one of the
nicest rides he'd ever had.
'But you mustn't tell anyone,' he begged, 'until I've asked your
father's permission.'
He was simply dreading breaking the news to Raymond.

82
Having made his pile and married very far up. Sir Mervyn Newton
; approved of young men on the make. He had adored sponsoring
I Rupert Campbell-Black and seeing the 'Good as Newton' slogan
lemblazoned across Rupert's showjumping lorry, but he had sadly
Irecognized that Rupert was not going to offer for Rosemary. It
[looked likely the poor lass might never get a husband. Sir Mervyn
Iwas so disappointed there would be no grandson to carry on the
IKne that he had, as a means of acquiring immortality, become
|obsessed with his art collection.
| The morning after David and Rosemary's lunchtime romp in the
^Royal Garden, Mervyn dropped into the Belvedon. Having just
| acquired a Romney from a somewhat dodgy gallery, he wanted
|Raymond's opinion that it was 'right'. As Raymond was out at
rTrumper's having his hair cut, David hastily shoved another foul
letter from his bank manager into his top drawer and, after one
look, told Mervyn he must take the picture straight back.
'You can still smell the turpentine, sir, probably painted in 1972
rather than 1772,' then, subtly applauding Mervyn's taste, 'but it's
an extraordinarily good copy.'
'How can you tell it's a copy?'
It s like asking a farmer the difference between Guernseys and
Friesians.'
Mervyn was most impressed. Why didn't he buy David lunch,
while his chauffeur took the Romney plus a flea in the ear back to
the rogue gallery?
'Only if you'll let me pay, sir.'
We'll argue about that later.'
Raymond in fact had double dated, and David had been just

83
about to ring the Ritz and cancel his boss's favourite tab!
overlooking Green Park, but decided to hang onto it for himse
and Mervyn.
Not only did David remember he drank gin and tonic but nev<
had Mervyn met anyone who found the dry-cleaning business quit
so fascinating. Gazing at Mervyn's gleaming, pinky-brown pate an
face, David decided he had never met anyone so like a baked beal
And I won't have to eat you on toast any more if I marry yot
daughter, he thought resolutely. His landlady in Bayswater w;
hectoring him for last month's rent.
Staring into a cup of coffee, black as Galena's eyes, David too
a gulp ofPouilly-Fume.
'I must pay for lunch, sir, because I'm about to ask you a hug
favour.'
An interview for his cousin, thought Mervyn in disappointmen
A biro mark his mother can't get off her new coat. For a secont
he didn't take in the words: 'daughter's hand in marriage'.
'I know I'm nine years younger than R-r-r-r-r-rosemary,' - thel
were tears in the boy's eyes - 'I know she's had a rough time wit
other chaps. But I truly love, admire and long to cherish her an
I'm certain, with her by my side, I could do really well in the ai
world.' Impatiently he shook his head at a hovering waiter: 'Unlei
you'd like a brandy, sir?'
'I would indeed,' cried Sir Mervyn joyfully.
Margaret, his wife, had been seven years older and much bette
bred than he. He had never been faithful to her, but she had he
garden (which was opened more often than her legs these days]
and her Pekes, and last year the title (which his hard work ha
bestowed on her), and they rubbed along very well. David seem®
so genuine when he outlined his plans for the future.
'I like Yorkshire folk,' said Mervyn. 'They call a spade a spade;
All the better to gold-dig with. David fought a hysterical desir
to laugh.
He insisted on paying the bill with the last of Galena's money.
Cash, noted Mervyn.
'Sometimes we do deals on paintings,' murmured Davit
'People are happy to accept considerably less for cash. If you wer
interested ... I know you're in a hurry, sir, but if you really feel it
OK for me to marry Rosemary, I did go ahead and buy her a rin(
just as a present.'
'What does Rosebud feel?' asked Mervyn fondly. 'Old girl keep
her feelings reined in.'
Horses should, thought David.
'She admits she cares for me, enough to marry me. I know I cai

84
ake her happy, but I wouldn't dream of putting this on her finger
until I knew you and Lady Newton had agreed.'
On a bed of dark blue velvet lay a huge heart-shaped diamond
also paid for by Galena.
'Lovely setting.' Mervyn examined it. 'Couldn't have chosen
anything nicer myself. I'm sure Lady N. will be just as pleased.
Where are you planning to live?'
'Well, Rosie's got her little house, and I've got plans to rent one
of the cottages down at Foxes Court. I imagine Rosie'll want kids
very soon, and I'd like to get her out of the way of the IRA.'
And I could visit them, reflected Sir Mervyn, and take that sexy
Galena out to lunch.
Having tipped the waiter exactly ten per cent, David said he
ought to get back to the gallery.
Good conscientious lad, thought Mervyn approvingly.
'I'll come with you,' he said. 'Chauffeur can drive us. What are
you showing?'
'Marvellous Pre-Raphaelites downstairs, Casey Andrews drawings
upstairs.'
'Loved it when Rupert hit him across the lawn,' admitted
Mervyn. 'Presumptuous oaf, thinking a lovely woman like Galena
could fancy him.'
'I'm the luckiest, happiest man in the world,' said David, realizing
as they glided up Old Bond Street that he could now afford
all the ravishing girls they were passing.
Hey diddly dee, a fat cat's life for me, sang David under his
breath.

Raymond, who was examining a Rossetti of a redhead in a green
silk dress, turned pale and dropped his eyeglass when David broke
the news. But true to form, he immediately pulled himself
together, congratulated David warmly, and, having sent him off to
open a bottle of champagne, told Mervyn what a charming, kind,
trustworthy, clever husband he would make.
'Galena, I and the boys are devoted to him.'
Fiona, Raymond's fair assistant, got the giggles.
'Just like winning the pools, David.'
Later, more bottles were opened, Rosemary came over and was
given her ring, and Mervyn bought the Rossetti.
We must tell Mummy,' sighed a starry-eyed Rosemary, 'she hates
being left out.
We're to go over to drinks later,' she said, putting down the
telephone. 'Mummy sounds pleased. Are you the Tadcaster
fulboroughs?' she asked.

85
'No, he's the Pull-everything-in-sightborough,' muttered Eddie
the packer, who'djust returned from a delivery.
'Hush,' giggled Fiona, 'and have some fizz.'
Passers-by, seeing the merry-making and assuming it was a
private view, came in from the street, and Raymond ended up
selling a Millais and two ofCasey's drawings.
'Do you really love her?' he asked David.
'Not as you love Galena, but I think I can make her happy. She
looks happy.' David glanced across the gallery at a flushed
Rosemary, who was shrieking with laughter with Fiona as she whispered
about the wad of greenbacks for the Cats Protection League.
'Quite frankly,' he went on, putting a hand on Raymond's arm,
'I gave my heart away two years ago. Being with you, working with
you, is the most important thing in my life, and there's no way
R-R-R-Rosebud's going to change that. Anyway, she adores you.
First day I met her at Foxes Court, she said you were the most
smashing chap she'd ever met.'
'I hope she thinks you've taken over that role,' said Raymond
drily, but he felt happier, a
'
'Fallen on his fucking feet, hasn't he, Guv,' grumbled Eddie as a
half-cut David was led off to meet Lady Newton, s;
'I hope so,' mused Raymond. 'He's spurned Aphrodite in favour
of Mammon. Reject the Goddess at your peril.'
'There you go, rabbiting on like Fiona about people I've never a
'card of,' grumbled Eddie. 'Let's open another bottle.'

Margaret Newton, who, with her lack of chin and bulging eyes,
resembled a well-upholstered turbot, was less of a pushover than |
her husband. Dom Perignon was opened, toasts drunk, futures
discussed, the exciting art collection admired, by which time David
was plastered and terrified of letting his accent slip. Instead his
glass slipped out of his hand, splashing the polished floor with
champagne, which David proceeded absent-mindedly to wipe up
with Elspeth, his future mother-in-law's Pekinese. Thank God,
Mervyn, not a fan of his wife's dog, thought this extremely funny.

86
For both social and financial reasons, David was anxious to get
married as quickly and quietly as possible. To his relief, his grandmother,
with unusual tact, died in June, which gave an excuse for
a tiny wedding, to which none of his common relations were
invited. To encourage wedding presents. Sir Mervyn threw a drinks
party at his club, the RAC, to which David invited his more glam-
| orous Cambridge and art world friends.
As the Boy David's fortunes prospered, Raymond entered a time
of hell. In July, his busiest month, the newly wed Mr and Mrs
Pulborough took off on an extended honeymoon to Geneva,
Florence, Venice and Kenya. A far worse hammerblow fell a week
later. Alizarin, never strong, contracted rheumatoid arthritis. The
doctors were hopeful he would grow out of it, but it meant he
couldn't join Jupiter at prep school in September. This in turn
meant that when he wasn' t staggering around on crutches. Alizarin
spent his time in his parents' bed, reading, painting or gazing at
the Raphael. This made Galena very bad tempered. Worried stiff
about her favourite child, she was drinking heavily, not amassing
enough paintings for her long-awaited October exhibition and
unable to see her lovers.
Fed up with her moods, nannies employed to look after Alizarin
and baby Jonathan came and went. As a result, Galena took it out
°n Raymond. Devastated by David's marriage, still tormented by
jealousy of Casey, Rupert, Etienne and the rest of Galena's fan
"ub, Raymond was dealt a further blow when thick decorative
riona announced she wanted a six-month sabbatical from the
gallery. She was needed to provide moral support while her sister
had her first baby in Hong Kong.
Raymond was appalled. He loathed change. He desperately

87
needed Fiona to organize Galena's exhibition. She knew all the
people that mattered and how to address them on invitations. She
had enough taste to send the right flowers, and who would buy all
his Christmas presents? She understood all his ways.
'You can't abandon me. I need you.'
'So does my sister. I asked the agency to send you an upmarket
older woman.'
'Sounds like Margaret Newton,' said Raymond gloomily.

On the Monday the temporary was due to arrive, he felt even
gloomier. Jonathan, however adorable, had formed a wrecking
party with Shrimpy the Jack Russell. Jonathan had smashed some
priceless porcelain and glass. Shrimpy had chewed up the first
edition of Maud given him by David and, almost more disastrously,
Raymond's address book. Another nanny had given in her notice.
Galena had given Raymond hell for abandoning her to drive up to
Cork Street.
'Gallery can't run itself without David and Fiona,' he had finally
shouted at her. 'We've got to get your fucking invitations out.'
Arriving still shaking at the gallery, failing to find the invitation
list, complete with addresses, which Fiona had promised to type,
he was dispiritedly opening the post, when out fell David and
Rosemary's wedding photographs.
Rosemary, who'd been incredibly relieved not to have to wear
her mother's tiara, looked happy and jaunty, like a seaside donkey;
in one of those straw hats that keep off the flies. Beside her Davidj
looked heartbreakingly young. Raymond groaned. He hadn't!
believed it was possible to miss anyone so much. Even when David|
finally came back from his honeymoon, it wouldn't be the same»|
David would confide in Rosemary now. S|
There was a knock on the door, or was it on the inside oi|
Pandora's Box? Hope seemed to have jumped down from thtf|
Raphael and flown up to London, as in came one of the prettiest!
girls he had ever seen. Her short fair curls were swept off an angelicj
heart-shaped face, which was enhanced by big eyes the colour oi|
love-in-a-mist, a wild-rose complexion, a soft pink smiling mouthy
and a little turned-up nose. She was also tiny, with the sweeto
unformed figure of a twelve-year-old, and gave an impression oSi^
being swathed in rainbows. Perhaps he had died of a broken heart;
and gone to heaven.
Having an Irish mother, Raymond believed in fairies. Then he^
realized the rainbow effect came from a violet cardigan, a pink
floating scarf and a short skirt made out of a patchwork of pastel
colours.

88
'Mr Belvedon' - she even had a tiny squeaky fairy's voice - 'I'm
Anthea Rookhope, your new temp.'
My God, any moment he'd be making jokes about hoping she'd
become permanent.
She seemed to dance over to him, a peacock butterfly fluttering
across the gallery.
'I am so excited. I know you wanted someone older and more
oublic schooly' - her smiling pink lips parted to show beautiful
little white teeth - 'but I adored art school and I've always wanted
to work in a gallery. What lovely pictures.' She gazed round in
wonder. 'Who painted them?'
'Rory Balniel, one of our younger artists,' stammered Raymond,
'lives in France, used to paint angry tormented stuff; now he's
, happily married, he paints his wife and children.'
'Oh, I love happy marriages,' sighed Anthea. 'Look at those
lovely kiddies. You look tired, Mr Belvedon, let me make you a
coffee.'
The telephone rang.
'Oh God, I don't know how to work the bloody thing,' moaned
I- Raymond.
|i 'I'll answer it,' said Anthea, going rather pink after a minute, and
|t putting her hand over the receiver. 'It's a Mr Casey Andrews saying
Is he hasn't been paid, shall I tell him you're not here?'
| Raymond seized the telephone. 'We have paid you, Casey, and
| if you can't keep a civil tongue in your swollen head, then I suggest
you push off to another gallery.'
The sound of clapping made them both jump.
It was Eddie.
'Well done, Mr B. Stand up to the old bugger,' then, wolf-
whistling at Anthea: Things is definitely looking up.'
Things certainly were. Raymond came back from lunching at the
Connaught with a client to find Anthea had worked through her
lunch hour.
'I've tracked down the list for Mrs Belvedon's exhibition, such
exciting people, are you really asking Paul McCartney and Rupert
Campbell-Black? I also discovered a lot of filing.'
'Where did you find it?'
Well, quite by chance, it was in the dustbin, a lot of yogurt
spilled on the top pages, but I sponged it off, I'm sure Fiona didn't
mean to chuck it all away, just had other things on her mind before
going away.'
Raymond wasn't so sure. Anthea was clearly one of those sweet- earts who saw the best in everyone.
And I found Mr Casey Andrews's cheque.'

89
'Oh God.'
'No, it was OK, He popped in half an hour ago, I explaine
about being a new girl and it probably being my fault. He couldn
have been kinder. I gave him a coffee and he went off with h
cheque like a lamb.'
All the letters Raymond had dictated that morning came bac
immaculately typed.
'These are fine,' said Raymond, signing them, then smiling ;
her, 'but in future could you possibly put Esq. rather than Mr o
the envelope, and I prefer to write in the Dear Somerford or De;
Lady X at the top, more intimate somehow. I've got a borin
dinner this evening, so I'm going to have a shower. See you in th
morning.'
'Give me your jacket,' said Anthea. 'I can't have my handsom
boss going out with a button hanging loose.'
Wiping a hole in the misted-up mirror, Raymond wondered
he was still handsome. When he came out, Anthea had retyped a
the letters.
'You should have gone,' said a shocked Raymond, accustome
to Fiona's insistence that anything after six o'clock was well pa
her party time. 'Particularly with all the tube strikes.'
'I only like leaving an empty in-tray.' Anthea stood on tiptoe t
adjust his collar as she helped him on with his jacket. 'You do loo
smart. Have a lovely evening. Thank you for such a wonderful day

The next day she brought him home-made cake and ajar of pea
jelly.
'I live in Purley, which means "Pear tree lee".'
She really was the most conscientious child. She never too
lunch hours except to shop for the gallery. She revolutionize
Fiona's sloppy filing, dispatched Galena's invitations, had a mu
printed with Raymond's name. She also brought in a small win
less. '
'So we could have a dance when we're not too busy. I so want®
to be a dancer, but I was too little,' she told Raymond, 'butworkifli
in a gallery's so much more exciting.' "
Soon she was adding womanly touches: making cushions alt
chair-covers to enhance the pictures being shown; arrangitt
wonderful flowers, which she'd bought early in Covent Garde*
finding pretty frames for the photographs of Galena and the thre
boys, pointing out Mr Belvedon's beautiful family to everyone.
Raymond found himself missing David less and less. Anthe
was so slender, smelled so sweet and, scorning the flares an'
long skirts that were fashionable, stuck to short, tightly belte'

90
rks and pleated skirts which showed off her pretty legs and tiny

'I'm into femininity, not feminism,' she was always saying.
At the end of the week, the agency rang. They had found an
Ider more experienced woman to replace Anthea.
'Oh no,' said Raymond in horror, 'we all love her, we want Miss
;r,MissEr.. .'
'Rookhope,' whispered Anthea.
'Miss Rookhope to stay as long as possible.'
When he came off the telephone, Anthea gave him a little kiss.
'It's pronounced Rookh'p,' she giggled, 'after a little village in
hu-ham.'
'I shall call you "Hopey",' said Raymond happily, 'after a charac- sr in a picture at home, which one day I'll show you. I must
emember: Rookhope pronounced Rookh'p.'
w'To rhyme with suck'p and shack'p,' muttered Eddie, who was
luch less taken.
;< It was clear Raymond had developed a sodding great crush on
nthea. Eddie had hoped with David and Fiona out of the way, it
ould be him and the Governor together again. Anthea, he
lodced, turned on the charm like an electric kettle. She never
femembered he didn't take sugar and only gave him a slice of
erne-made cake if Raymond were about.
'I'm a good listener,' she was always saying in her silly squeaky
Bice, but, like the Boy David, she was more interested in storing
tformation that could be used later.
'She praised everything Raymond did, noticing dark rings
nder his eyes, a different tie, laughing at his most insane quips.
Bportant collectors and artists got the same treatment.
She might charm the birds off the trees, reflected Eddie, but he
idn't think she'd take them to the RSPCA if they broke a wing in
lefall. ' "
The person she creepily reminded Eddie of was David. Like him,
le was frantic to escape from her dull, relatively impoverished,
tburban background. There would be a battle royal for
aymond's affections when David returned.
Eddie retired to the basement to smoke dope and photocopy his
°ck in the smart new machine ordered by Anthea. Hearing how
reity she was from other artists, Somerford Keynes, the demon
"tic and a great fan of Eddie's, waddled down to the Belvedon to
^e a butcher's.
'She's very small,' he murmured.
°o was Napoleon,' snapped Eddie, 'and about as defenceless.'
* * *

91
In early September, Galena came up to London for a party at tl
Tate, and spent the afternoon at Vidal Sassoon, emergil
with gleaming collar-length hair falling over one eye from a sic
parting. Dramatic make-up, and a beautiful vermilion drei
floating to avoid the spreading waist, but slightly see-through
show off the still exciting breasts, completed the picture. Raymor
felt all the old tugging of his heart strings. Galena's latest tipp
was a pinch of cocaine in a glass of champagne, repeatf
throughout the night.
All the art world were at the party, all smiling brightly to conce
their envy and animosity. Galena received a lot of attention. She
been stuck in the country for months, and news had filtered 01
that an important new exhibition was imminent.
Everyone stopped talking as an extraordinarily handson
Pakistani - a young artist called Khalid - walked in.
'You'd like him, wouldn'tyou?' Galena murmured mockingly i
Raymond.
It took her precisely half an hour. She and Khalid left the par
together. Raymond returned to the flat in Duke Street, St James'
which he'd acquired after the top floor of the gallery in Cork Stre
had been given over to pictures. Here he waited up, churning wit
rage, humiliation and misery, until a dull dawn broke over the dir
city.
'What is life to me without her?'

Arriving at the gallery, he thought he'd been burgled. A Utt
Watteau was missing from the wall, then he realized Anthea W
dusting its frame. Coffee bubbled in the percolator. The peel <
the oranges she had squeezed for him lay in the waste-pap
basket, a croissant was keeping warm in a drying-up cloth. He ab
recognized the opening bars of the Sanctus from the Mis
Solemnis, on the score of which Beethoven had written, 'From til
heart, may it again go to the heart.'
'We're singing it in the choir at home,' explained Anthea.
bought you a tape. Whatever's the matter, didn't you have a love
party?'
A desolate contrast to her new, bright-coloured cushion
Raymond had slumped on the sofa, his head in his hands, h
shoulders shaking.
'Galena never came home.'
'Oh, you poor dear.' Anthea ran over and put her arms roun
him. She was so tiny, it was like being comforted by Alizarin.
'Don't be upset, Daddy, please don't.'
It was Eddie's day off, so they stayed quietly in the gallery, t

92
Anthea cosseted him with chicken soup and tomato sandwiches
made with fresh basil, further details emerged.
'I want to drop her horrible party list in the dustbin,' raged
Anthea.
There was also a train strike. Anthea rang home.
'Mr Belvedon's very kindly lent me his flat. Mum. He's going to
work late and sleep in the gallery, we're so busy.'
She and Raymond were planning to go out to dinner, but over
a bottle of Chablis still more details emerged.
'I can't satisfy Galena. Her contempt makes me impotent. She
complains I'm too small.'
'How beastly of her. I'm so tiny, you'd be quite big enough for
me.' Anthea was edging up to him on the sofa.
'I'm far too old for you.'
'You're not, you're so distinguished looking and you've got a
figure most young fellows would die for.'
Much encouraged, Raymond put an arm round her shoulders,
expecting to encounter angel's wings. He felt like a collector,
taking an exquisite figurine out of a glass case, fondling, examining,
making a miraculous discovery: that he could give her
pleasure. She was so perfect, so responsive, wriggling on his knee
like a little girl, letting him play with her for hours.
'I've got a real Daddy at last.'
Anthea's fortnight ran into months.

93
It was a bright crisp morning at the beginning of October; dry
plane leaves rattled along the gutters. The sun was no longer hot
or high enough to necessitate the green-and-white-striped awning
outside the gallery. Anthea on the telephone could see cobalt-blue
sky between the houses.
'We're showing Kit Eskine this week. Lord Partridge. We're
open till six. We don't close for din-- sorry, lunch. Lovely, see you
later.'
The switchboard meant power and knowledge. Anthea had also
received increasing abuse from Galena, whose pictures were due
in today. The Boy David was due back tomorrow. Anthea had
pinned his postcards on Raymond's cork board.
'I'm like a coffee machine,' she joked to a passing Raymond,
'that's twenty cups I've made this morning.'
'You shouldn't attract so many collectors,' said Raymond fondly
as he retired into the inner office with one of the madder and
richer. 'We don't want to be disturbed.'

David was thrilled to be back in London. His honeymoon had been
pleasant enough. Rosemary had proved a surprisingly easy companion.
He had made good contacts in Florence and Venice, put
more of Galena's money into a Swiss bank while admiring wild
flowers around Geneva, and enjoyed the game reserves. Although
after a bit one giraffe looks very like another.
Leaving his bride to wake up slowly, anxious to show off his
wedding present, he thundered up Piccadilly, only to be distracted
by a beige windmill. It was a frantically waving Somerford Keynes.
'Dear boy, dear boy, how are you enjoying the lap of luxury?
Lovely party at the RAC. Liked your new wife, but aren't people
h'tchv? "There goes David and his pension fund," said some wag.
Tran't remember who. "Don't knock it, "I reproved them, "a young
lad has to get on," particularly now it looks as if you've got com- netition at the gallery. Raymond is positively besotted by his new
popsy'
David was shocked. In private he might fawn over Raymond, but
he hated outsiders thinking there might be something sexual
between them.
'Don't be ridiculous,' he said sharply.
Somerford's sleepy crocodile eyes were suddenly alight with
malice.
'We all know you're Raymond's boy.'
Somehow David managed not to betray his fury. He had
expected widespread envy when he married money. He'd bloody
well show them.
Parking meters had replaced the prostitutes of the sixties in
Cork Street. Fortunately David found a space right outside the
Belvedon.
What a lovely brown man, and what a posh car, thought Anthea,
checking her curls in the little gilt mirror she'd bought to hang by
her reception desk. Since David's absence, there had always been
plenty of petty cash.
'Where's Raymond?' David asked her curtly.
'With a client.' Then, as David strode towards Raymond's door:
'You can't go in. He shouldn't be long.'
David's lips tightened. Fiona had often let in the wrong people.
Not wanting his searchlight charm diffused, Raymond preferred
dealing with one person at a time.
'Would you like a catalogue?' asked Anthea. 'It explains about
the pictures.'
And I wrote the fucking blurb, thought David.
Anthea went back to her press cuttings. David mooched around,
noticing the number of red spots, pausing in front of an exquisite
watercolour of a black girl cuddling an off-white baby.
Anthea decided to charm this unfriendly stranger. He was so
good looking in that white suit and lovely shiny shoes.
'D'you like that picture?'
'Very much.'
She was wearing Penhaligon's Bluebell, noticed David, which
Raymond often gave to clients' wives.
Well, I'll let you into a little secret,' she whispered, 'that's Mr
oelvedon's favourite. I know he'd like to keep it himself, but
they we got so many pictures already in their beautiful Limesbridge
home. I expect you've visited it.'

95
'Frequently,' snapped David.
'Perhaps you'd like to be invited to Mrs Belvedon's private vie
next week? If I ask Mr Belvedon nicely, I'm sure we can smuggl<
you in.'
'How very kind,' murmured David. Let me let you into a litd<
secret, he wanted to shout, I'm Mr Belvedon's favourite.
Next moment Raymond came out of the back room with the rid
mad old collector, who was clutching a china Alsatian wrapped ii
the Daily Mirror.
'This clearly has huge sentimental value,' he was saying to her
'Unfortunately public taste has yet to catch up with it. But hang 01
to it. Who knows what may happen. Thank you so much, I'll ge
my assistant to find you a bag.'
Looking round, he caught sight of David, and his face lit up.
'My dear boy, you look so well.'
'So do you.' Spontaneously David crossed the gallery, embracim
Raymond, kissing him on both cheeks.
'How were the game reserves?'
'Rather tame after Casey and Joan. It was all fine, but it's grea
to be back. Come and see my new car.'
Outside was an olive-green Aston Martin. '
'Won't show up when it's parked under trees on summe)
evenings.' David grinned wickedly. 'It's Rosemary's weddin(
present.'
'What did you give her?' said Raymond, laughing yet diS
approving.
'My undying respect.' '
'You must come and meet Anthea.' ^
Anthea was scarlet - ready to explode like a hurled tomato. How
dare David make a fool of her?
'I'd no idea. You must think me so stupid.'
'I think you're a great operator. She nearly sold me a picture
Raymond. Your favourite evidently.'
'Anthea's wonderful,' said Raymond, detecting tension.
'How about some fresh coffee and home-made chocolate cake?
asked Anthea, frantic to regain the ascendancy, .j
'I'd like something stronger,' said David, who for the past montt
at half past ten in the burning sunshine had been enjoying Bloodj
Marys that scorched the roof off one's mouth.
'Bit early,' said Anthea primly.
David raised an eyebrow: 'I'm still on Kenya time. Come on;
Raymond. Where's Fiona?'
'Gone to Hong Kong for six months.'

96
'You must miss her terribly.'
'Not now I've got Hopey.' Raymond smiled at Anthea.
'Hopey?' 'Mr Belvedon's nickname for me, my name's Rookhope after a
village in Durham.'
'Well you've certainly made some changes, gallery looks like
Laura Ashley. Are we selling cushions as well?'
Wandering into Raymond's office, he picked up the photo-
eraphs of Galena and the children. Asking after each one to
emphasize his intimacy, he was appalled to learn of Alizarin's
rheumatoid arthritis.
'That's terrible. Rosemary and I'll drive down and see him. I
>don't suppose all this has helped Galena.'
I 'No, she's had a terrible time. We're expecting her pictures any
^minute. Eddie's gone down with the van.'
lie David noticed Anthea hovering in the doorway. To get rid of her,
sfc-he asked her to bring in the party list.
I 'When I've finished updating it,' said Anthea coolly.
|1- 'How is Rosemary?' asked Raymond hastily.
| 'About to start househunting, for somewhere near you.' With
I every sentence, David tried to exclude Anthea, emphasizing his
|;and Raymond's closeness. Why the hell didn't she fuck off and
I; leave them?
I 'Where shall we have lunch?' he asked Raymond. 'I'll take you
8 to the Capital in Basil Street - it's wonderful.'
t Oh, the joy of a joint bank account!
i 'I expected you tomorrow,' sighed Raymond, 'I'm committed to
.taking Somerford to Wilton's, softening him up for Galena's
private view.'
'Pity,' said David lightly, then, turning to Anthea, 'Come and
have lunch and tell me' - he smiled slyly at Raymond - 'what the
old fox has been up to.'
Anthea thawed like butter in a microwave.
I've got to chase up the press who haven't replied, and I told
Lord Partridge we stayed open through the dinner hour. Perhaps
Eddie could hold the fort when he gets back.'
Raymond felt distinctly deflated to see his new little friend going
off with his old little friend, but after all, he was ashamed to find
himself thinking, they were the same age and class.

David took Anthea tojules Bar injermyn Street. Outside on the
^1 was a giant royal-blue cocktail glass. Inside was filled with sleek
young bloods in pinstripe suits, noisily discussing the afternoon's

97
racing as they downed large gins and tonic. They all eyed up
Anthea, who confessed to David she was not much of a drinker.
David suggested Pimm's and surreptitiously persuaded the waiter
to add a double measure of gin.
'I'm going to have a steak, very rare,' he announced. He didn't
like bloody meat any more than he liked black coffee, but asked
for them because Raymond did.
'I fancy a prawn cocktail and perhaps a dessert. That gateau
looks tasty,' observed Anthea. 'We mustn'tbe longer than an hour,
Fiona took such frightful liberties.'
She was clearly beady about her predecessor, justifying her
anger by cataloguing Fiona's misdemeanours: 'She left everything
in such a mess.'
'One mustn't speak ill of the deb,' confided David, 'but Fiona's
tiny mind was on other things: Wimbledon, Henley, Ascot,
Goodwood, skiing. Raymond loved her because she was very glam;
orous and knew all the right people. She's a particularly good
friend of my wife. Rosemary.'
Then, seeing Anthea was feeling upstaged, softened his,';
approach.
'Raymond's very pleased with you. He adores small pictures, so;
easy to smuggle, and they don't take up too much room on thea
gallery walls. Similarly he likes small, very feminine ladies; you've^
stepped out of a Fragonard.'
'He's such a gentleman,' sighed Anthea, taking a delicate sip;!
of Pimm's. 'We have so much in common, despite the age gap:!
classical music, fine wine, lovely restaurants.'
She and Raymond had clearly been spending a lot of time in the;
latter recently. She was also able to give David a detailed update o(|
Raymond's family life and the dark horror of Galena's moods and^
Alizarin's illness. 1^
'Little Jonathan seems the only ray of sunshine. Sometimes I feelj
Mr Belvedon can't wait to get back to town. He was so distressed?
when Shrimpy chewed up his address book. I've been making him-i
a new one.' ?;
'With Rookhope at the top of the Rs,' teased David.
Anthea's soft pink lips lifted, but her big blue eyes were serious. ^
'Mr Belvedon seems so lost.'
'That's because I haven't been around,' said David brutally. 'If
I'd known Fiona wasn't going to be here, I'd have come back earty
from Kenya.'
'We've managed,' said Anthea shirtily.
'You've done a wonderful job filling in while I've been away.'
Anthea rootled around in the shredded lettuce and pink sauce
^ more prawns. David, she decided, was very glamorous, but
the make, and not to be trusted. Yet she was so anxious to
mnhasize her value as a helpmate that, after the second Pimm's,
which was really a meal in itself if you spooned out all the fruit, she
tnid him about Galena's leaving the Tate party with Khalid the
handsome Pakistani.
'Poor Ray, I mean Mr B., staggered into the gallery like a sleepwalker
the following morning.'
'I thought she'd given up that sort of caper.' David plunged his
knife into his steak with such viciousness that the blood spurted
out.
'She sounds a bit ofab.,' admitted Anthea. 'She always calls me
Fiona on the phone, and never says please or thank you.'

Back at the gallery, Anthea swayed off to the bog. David rang
SRosemary saying he was going to have a drink with Raymond after
:work.
is 'I'll be home around eight.' Lowering his voice, he added:
iGalena trouble.'
ii 'How lucky he's got you. Have you had lunch?'
| Checking Anthea was still out of earshot, probably throwing up,
David said he'd grabbed a sandwich.
| 'I'll cook you something nice. Love you, darling.'
'Love you too, Rosie.'
r As Raymond had confided in David in the past, it was natural
after a few drinks for him to confess that he'd fallen for Anthea.
'She's such a poppet. Don't know what the collective noun for
Collectors is, but it should be an Anthea. They all flock to see her.
Hie artists all want to paint her, Casey and Joan are positively
moony. Never makes me feel my age. She's so sweet and
unaffected.'
'Unaffected?' said David incredulously.
But Raymond wasn't listening. 'She's just like King Cophetua's
beggar maid,' he quoted happily.

'In robe and crown the king stept down
To meet and greet her on her way;
"It is no wonder," said the lords,
"She is more beautiful than day" . . .
One praised her ankle, one her eyes.'

The Beggar Maid was dark,' protested David, who much
Preferred Raymond as cuckolded King Arthur than randy Kins
^ophetua.

99
Aware that David might be a little jealous, Raymond said hastily,
'So glad you're back, particularly to help me hang Galena's
pictures.'
'Rosemary and I,' said David grandly, 'would like to lend The
Wild-Flower Meadow,' which Mervyn had given them to commemorate
the evening they first met, 'with a red spot on to start the ball
rolling, although I'm sure it won't be necessary.'

Later, brooding on Galena's lapse at the Tate party, David
decided she needed taking down several pegs. Searching for
houses around Limesbridge at the weekend, hoping Raymond
might rent them the lovely cottage overlooking the river, David
and Rosemary dropped in, as promised, on Foxes Court, bringing
presents for little Alizarin. Both were appalled by how ill he
looked. Refereeing rows between his parents, thought David
grimly. ;
While Rosemary read Alizarin Just William, David and Galena
wandered round the garden. Deliberately misreading her very real
worries about Alizarin and her forthcoming exhibition, David reassured
her she mustn't feel remotely guilty about getting off with
the ravishing Khalid, because Raymond was utterly besotted!
with his new assistant at the gallery. :
At the time Galena made absolutely no comment.

Two days before the private view, most of Galena's pictures had|
been hung. Having no idea that Khalid was actually Somerford't
latest boyfriend, Raymond had been persuaded over lunch atg
Wilton's to let a simmering Somerford have an even earlier view.s
Alas, this coincided with a further and totally new picture being!
carried in by a grinning Eddie. ^
'Paint's not the only ring wot isn't dry. Mornin', Somerford.' |
David, who'd been glaring at Galena's charming portrait o(
Shrimpy, still furious he'd been left out, looked round at the]
picture and gave a gasp of laughter. ?
One of the most famous cartoons attributed to Raphael afe
Windsor Castle is entitled The Battle of Nude Men. It shows a crowd"
of naked warriors, one side with spears, the other with bows and;
arrows, a few armed with just shields, having a free-for-all.
All the warriors have the same short curls and even shorter
penises; Raymond had a version of the drawing up in the Blue
Tower. Galena, clearly outraged by news of Raymond's crush on
Anthea, had copied the picture, including instead her lovers.
There were Rupert Campbell-Black, Casey Andrews, Etienne de

100
Montigny, Robens (that must have been a joke) and Somerford's
Khalid et alia, all splendidly endowed. And, oh God, there was
Raymond with the minutest cock, and next to him - David gave a
shout of laughter - clutching a large shield with 'Newton Dry
Cleaners' blazoned across the front, was a very pot-bellied Sir
Mervyn. The old goat!
Raymond and Somerford were up the other end of the gallery,
examining a moonlit view of the River Fleet, when David aroused
their attention.
'Sorry to interrupt, but I don't think we can show this.'
Raymond, who went dreadfully pale, agreed they couldn't without
evoking the wrath of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
'I'd be terribly grateful if you could pretend you haven't seen it,'
he begged Somerford, who'd whipped out his magnifying glass.
'Must go and get some cigarettes,' muttered David.
In the telephone box round the corner, he rang his father-in-
law.
'Are you alone?'
'What is it? Nothing's happened to Rosie?'
David explained about the painting. 'We're withdrawing it.'
Mervyn was almost incoherent with rage.
'Woman's made the whole thing up.'
'There's an appendix scar and a cornplaster.' David had great
difficulty containing his laughter. 'And a tattoo of Cupid above
your belly button,' which was admittedly almost hidden by rolls of
fat. 'I'd just deny it.'
Mervyn decided to throw himself on David's mercy, rather than
his sword.
'Bloody hell, what a bitch, just a bit of fun.'
'Sure, sure, it's all in hand,' said David soothingly, which
sounded even worse. 'Raymond will lock the picture away, mortifying
for him, of course.'
'Is he? Am I?' spluttered Mervyn.
'Much bigger. In fact you come out of it' - there he went again
- 'very well indeed. But I thought you'd like to know in advance.'
'Forewarned is forearmed,' said Mervyn heartily. 'How's the
househunting?'
Raymond is not going to let us have River Cottage, wants to give
u to his sister Lily.'
There was a pause.
The Old Rectory next door to Raymond,' said David idly, 'has
J^st come onto the market. Lovely property, needs a lot of work,
"ut it'd be a terrific investment. Plenty of rooms for a large family.'

101
'Sounds ideal.' Mervyn suddenly realized he was wringing wil
sweat. 'You won't mention anything to Rosie? Awfully loyal to h<
mother.'
'Of course not.'
'How much do they want for that house?'
'About twenty thousand, and quite a bit more spent on it.'
'Let's drive down and see it at the weekend,' said Mervyn.

102
Somerford, who was not so complaisant as Raymond and who had
loved his handsome Khalid, put the boot in. On the morning
before Galena's exhibition opened, his review appeared claiming
the only reason Galena had a show in Cork Street was because her
incredibly tolerant and usually aesthetically foolproof husband
owned a gallery. She might have produced good if self-indulgent
work in the past, but this new collection was derivative tosh.
'Galena Borrowoff-absolutely-everyone', announced the head| line.
I Unfortunately Somerford had been to a private view at the Fine
I Arts Society the night before and had lost no time in telling every
j| other influential critic what junk was about to be shown at the
I Belvedon. He had even produced a proof of what he had written,
I which pointed out that The Battle of Nude Men had been withdrawn.
J-, Like lemmings, the rest of the critics, even those who found they
| admired the pictures, followed suit. Even worse, their reviews were
[ all accompanied by sexy six-year-old photographs of Galena, which
; ensured everyone read the copy.
Galena was so devastated by Somerford's piece she refused to
attend the private view. Raymond had just coaxed her round, when
Lasey rang to report even worse reviews in the London evening
papers, which both mentioned The Battle of Nude Men. This meant
galena's legion of admirers, who'd accepted invitations and might
"aye bought paintings, alarmed they might be in the picture, had
railed to show up.
Rupert Campbell-Black, who didn't read reviews and who was
m ^"don cleaning up at the Horse of the Year Show, sauntered
and aughed at the nude of himself asleep in the Blue Tower,
. "ought it for his mother for Christmas. He also bought the

103
watercolour of Shrimpy and, against his better judgement, even
chatted up Anthea, delicate as a harebell in mauve frills.
The private view was a total disaster, with only Rupert's nude,
Shrimpy and The Wild-Flower Meadow displaying red spots. Galena
was suicidal. Utterly unused to rejection, she knew she hadn't
worked hard enough, hadn't bothered to go sufficiently deeply
into her landscapes, or the characters other sitters, relying on technique
rather than the heart. After the private view, Raymond drove
straight down to comfort her, but she had merely been offensive.
'Why didn't you varn me Khalid was Somerford's boyfriend?' '
'I had no idea.'
'If you were au courantwith art world, you would know. I cannot
go on here. That vaterfall drive me crazy, those church bells send
me crackers.'
Poor Alizarin, who couldn't bear to hear his mother crying,
stumbled between his parents trying to patch things up.
If only Raymond would stand up to me, thought Galena
despairingly.
Next morning, Raymond drove back to London without a word. ;
When Galena tried to call him, Anthea refused to put her through, |
By mid-morning, an already drunk Galena decided to go to .
London. Desperate for reassurance, she needed to see if her|
pictures were as awful as Somerford said they were and to check ;
out Raymond's new assistant, who sounded like Violet Elizabeth f
Bott on the telephone.
Up in London, Raymond and David had taken Anthea out to a ;
very long lunch at Overton's to celebrate her nineteenth birthday ,
and thank her for working so hard. Staging an exhibition was a big :
emotional experience. Galena's might have started disastrously,
but there were still twelve days to go, and in November they might k
recoup any losses when they showed Joan Bideford. ;
'We'll have to supply Anthea with a chastity belt,' teased David. |
Around four o'clock, Anthea had been dropped tight and|
giggling back at the gallery while Raymond and David took a'|
Reynolds they'd picked up cheaply at an auction over to the
National Portrait Gallery. ";
Having arranged some pink chrysanthemums which had arrived ^
for her from Casey Andrews, Anthea settled down to stick the latest |
reviews in the cuttings book. |
She didn't recognize her boss's wife when she walked in.
Galena's lank hair was more grey than black, her face pufiy, her
once white skin criss-crossed with red veins. Her famously sexy eyes
were hidden by dark glasses.
When her fur coat fell open, Anthea could see her black dress i

104 I
had split under the armpit and was wrinkled over the thick waist.
But there was something about the lift of the head, a queenliness
about the walk.
'Were is Raymond?' Galena whipped off her dark glasses, revealing
protruding bloodshot eyes, which were crudely ringed with
black. Anthea nearly dropped the cuttings book.
'He's just popped out, Mrs Belvedon. Pleased to meet you, I'm
Anthea.'
She was nearly asphyxiated by fumes of wine and bad digestion.
Cannoning off the reception desk. Galena looked round disbelievingly
at her canvasses.
'And this is vot Somerford Keynes dismiss as self-indulgent tosh.'
'I'm so furious with him,' stormed Anthea, 'and all the other
reviewers.'
'There are more?'
'I'm not going to let you see them.'
If she hadn't been a bit tiddly, reflected Anthea, she would have
been quite scared of Galena.
'I'm sticking them in for the record,' she added, 'so we don't
invite the same horrid pigs to our next party for Joan Bideford.
Joan always does well. Can I get you a coffee?'
'I want a drink, give me those reviews.' Galena glared at Anthea
and then round the gallery.
'And vot are all those flowers doing? It looks like funeral shop!'
'They've been sent to me. It's my birthday,' simpered Anthea,
opening the drinks cupboard. 'We've only got sherry or Armagnac,
that's Mr Belvedon's tipple.' The old cow might say Happy
Birthday.
'Mr Belvedon and David have just taken me out for a nice meal,'
she went on. 'It was a scream because he and David gave me the
same gift, a lovely Hermes scarf with famous painters on. David's
was navy, Raymond's baby blue. And Casey sent me those lovely
chrysanths. Isn't he a sweetheart?'
Galena, who had endured Casey's lack of sympathy last night,
went on reading her cuttings.
'Even Somerford sent me a PC,' sighed Anthea. 'I think one just
has to know how to handle him, Galena, and look at this lovely lacy
little card from Raymond.'
Dearest Hopey, Thank you for bringing sunshine into my
Me",' read Galena. '"Hopey"?' she asked ominously.
'After a fairy called "Hope" in an Old Master in your house.'
Anthea poured Galena a tiny Armagnac.
I felt really choked this morning, reaching nineteen. It seems
w old. My last year in my teens.' Then, looking at Galena

105
solicitously: 'Would you like to sit down? Come and rest on ri
sofa. Do you like the new covers? I chose ones that would be ni
and feminine for your exhibition. Let me carry your glass.'
Anthea was like a small and very skilled picador plunging dai
into a lumbering old bull. Finally, having no idea that David was
long-term admirer of Galena, she added: 'David is such a naugli
boy, he keeps trying to get me into bed. He said the moment 1
saw me, he'd met his Waterloo. He knew I was going to break t
heart, because I was out of his league. And he's only just back fro
honeymoon. I know Rosemary's very old, at least thirty, and no <
paintin', but he rang her from here the other night, saying, "I'
in Suffolk with an artist. Can't you hear the birds singing and ;
the little squirrels crunching their nuts?" I was shocked, Galen
The moment he put the phone down, he rubbed his hands ai
asked me out for a drink. He's so suave and charming. I said I
got to get back to Purley; he said, "I'll drive you. It's a warm nigl
we'll have the roof down." He sent me this lovely card of
Constable, with such lovely words inside.'
'She was a phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon n
sight', read Galena. Quivering with rage, she filled up her gfa
with Armagnac until it spilled over.
'Pity you missed your do,' sighed Anthea. 'It was such a got
party. Rupert Campbell-Black bought a painting and was we
attentive. He's only twenty-two you know, same age as David, wt
got quite cross when Rupert asked me out for a noggin.' Then,
Galena drained her glass and refilled it, 'I think you've hi
enough, Galena.'
'Andyou.are the face of hell,' said Galena, and picking up alitf
bronze Degas dancer, she hurled it with a sickening crash throi^g
the gallery's front window. 'I

106
(like most wildly promiscuous people, Galena couldn't tolerate
infidelity in others. Maddened with jealousy, she insisted Raymond
sack Anthea, not least for her gross impertinence.
I 'She couldn't have meant it nastily,' pleaded Raymond, 'she's
i^Milyachild.'
^ 'So once was Adolf Eichmann.'
I In an agonizing, tearful renunciation scene, Raymond told a
j-devastated Anthea she must leave the gallery at once:
* 'Galena wants to try again. I can't desert her after a flop like this
||nd I can't abandon the boys, particularly when she's so unstable.
I'm so dreadfully sorry.'
, 'Just like Tristan and Sharon,' sighed David, highly delighted by
|the turn of events, as he watched Anthea sobbing all the way down
|Cork Street.
|- As if trying to disguise the death of an apple tree by growing a
^rambler rose over it, Raymond and Galena's attempt at reconciliation
was fleeting. Galena was of the pre-pill generation and
invariably forgot to put her Dutch cap back in its box. As a result
of the rubber being punctured by Shrimpy's sharp teeth, she was
enraged in February to find herself pregnant again. But abortions
Were not on the cards for healthy married women, unless you could
prove mental instability - which admittedly would not have been
difficult. '
As the nine months passed, Galena sank deeper into depression.
"er doctor had banned alcohol; but finding his desperately
needed glass of whisky having no effect in the evenings, Raymond
^covered the Bell's bottle had been three-quarters filled with
wa h Blowing day, he found Galena swigging green mouth- was" from the bottle. This turned out to be creme de menthe.

107
During previous pregnancies, Galena had decorated a bedroom
for each child, but this time no Orpheus and his bewitched
entourage sprang to life on the walls of the new baby's room.
Lovers also fell away. Casey and Joan were painting in Australia,
Etienne de Montigny had a new mistress, Rupert had married an.
American beauty appropriately called Helen, a great far
Galena's, who even wanted a picture as a wedding present.
'Fuck off,' had screamed Galena.
Her inability to forgive him for trying to bed Anthea had
soured her relationship with her little lapdog David. This
highly embarrassing, as he and Rosemary had been bought the 01
Rectory next door by Sir Mervyn. David avoided Foxes Court
spending most of his time working in London. Rosemary, bi
supervising builders, however, saw a lot of Galena. Rosemary v about to give birth herself, but found time to play with Jonaths
and read to Alizarin who, still ill, was bearing the brunt of
mother's histrionics.
Jupiter, when he came home from Bagley Hall, worn
Rosemary the most. Withdrawn, cold eyed, he was still desperat
jealous of his younger brother. Winning the history prize a
scoring endless tries for the second eleven were no substitute l
being the centre of his mother's constant if neurotic attention.
Galena spent a lot of time scribbling dark thoughts in her did
Right up to the birth, which she insisted on having at home so;
could continue to drink, she also carried on painting: produc
doomladen landscapes dominated by thunderclouds and bi
of prey, eerily reminiscent of the black crows in Van Gogh's '.
cornfields.
On 1 October 1973, she gave birth to a beautiful six-pou
daughter, Sienna Sylvie, who did not emerge, as Rupert Campb
Black predicted, with a glass of red in one hand and a fag in
other.
Two days later, whilst Mr and Mrs Robens were having an at
noon off, Galena unaccountably dispatched the maternity nurse I
the cinema. Alone at Foxes Court with Alizarin and the baby, st
haemorrhaged and was found dead in a sea of blood at the bottos
of the stairs.
People were alerted to the tragedy by the hysterical yapping S
a blood-stained Shrimpy and the screams of Alizarin who, have"'
been unaccountably locked in his room, despite his arthritis, 1
somehow clambered onto the roof. Utterly traumatized, he
unable to tell the police what had happened.
Poor Raymond was arrested for twenty-four hours and the
released. There was no proof of misconduct. No-one had picke

108
no on the fact that Galena had clean hair and was wearing
scent and make-up for the first time in months. Her diary, which
might have provided clues, and which on her instructions was
not to be read before October 2000, had been seized and hidden
by Raymond's elder sister Lily, who had recently moved into
the cottage overlooking the river. Suicide was suspected but
could not be proved. The coroner recorded a verdict of death by
misadventure.

At midnight a week later, Anthea Rookhope was returning from a
very spartan package holiday in Spain, where none of the men were
as gentlemanly as Raymond. It was over a year since she'd joined
the Belvedon Gallery and enjoyed the happiest weeks of her life.
Poor darling Raymond, she prayed every day that he would have
the courage to leave that awful bitch. But he was so vague, he'd
probably lost her address, particularly now that dopey Fiona was
back working for him.
Barcelona Airport had been on strike and at midnight was still
unbearably hot, with the flights all up the creek. Anthea had
already waited three hours.
'Go away,' she hissed at a leering porter, 'I don't want anything
carried.'
Tomorrow, she'd have to start looking for a job, though it'd be
simpler to go into a convent. She was desperately hungry and
thirsty, but only had enough money for her fare back to Purley. If
she reached England before the trains started she couldn't afford
a taxi.
Flipping through a discarded Sunday Express, she gave a shriek
and collapsed onto a luggage trolley. Galena, it appeared, had
killed herself falling down the stairwell. Drunk again, thought
Anthea. Her heartbroken husband had evidently been left with
three little boys and a new-born baby.
'My sister-in-law had been depressed,' Raymond's sister. Lily, was
quoted as saying, 'but she was thrilled to have a daughter. We are
all convinced it was an accident.'
There was a photograph of Raymond looking devastated and
devastating outside Foxes Court, and another earlier one of
him, with the three boys and Galena, who had turned into a
monster with several heads in Anthea's imagination, but who here
appeared both happy and beautiful.
Even venomous Somerford Keynes was quoted as saying:
Galena was one of the most exciting painters since the war, tragi- ^lly cut off in her prime.'
Not what you wrote this time last year,' muttered Anthea.

109
Then, abandoning her suitcase, she rushed round begging for
change.
'A friend has passed away, I must phone home.'
The Foxes Court number was engraved on her thumping heart.
Perhaps she shouldn't ring so late, people always thought there'd
been an accident. But no worse accident could have befallen those
poor little children.
'Hello, who's that?' The deep musical voice was hoarse with tears
and telling the press to bugger off.
'Raymond, it's Anthea, I'm so sorry.'
'Oh Hopey, I need you, please come at once.'
Anthea left all her luggage and her old life in Barcelona. Robens
met her at the airport. The sun was just creeping over the horizon,
warming the great golden limes as she arrived at Foxes Court. 3
Running out of the front door, feeling as if he'd been stung by
every misfortune in the world, Raymond saw his own Hope
emerging from the dark depths of the Bentley. Anthea looked so
thin, pale and ill, that he realized in wonder, despite his anguish,
that she had missed him quite as much as he had missed her.
'Oh my darling, never leave me again.'
No-one was remotely surprised when they were quietly married
at Searston Register Office on Raymond's fiftieth birthday in May
1974. Anthea was twenty.
''}i
In a very happy marriage, one of the only setbacks was in 1987,|
when the Boy David, who was nearing forty, came to the realization i|
that Raymond, who believed in primogeniture, would eventually!
hand over the entire business to his eldest son, Jupiter, who had
joined the gallery after coming down from Cambridge. ^
David couldn't face working for steely, arrogant Jupiter. He waits
also fed up with being patronized and told to go off and open *|
bottle if he suggested a painting was 'wrong'. He also felt Raymond- had taken too much credit for an Etienne de Montigny retrospec-a
tive at the Tate for which David had done all the leg work. :|
In turn, Raymond and Jupiter felt too many people, when theyi
rang the gallery, were asking for the Pulborough. David was getdngi
far too much post and too many critics were putting 'the Belvedol»|
and the Pulborough' in reviews, three extra words which would be|
better employed saying, 'staggeringly beautiful pictures', observed!
Jupiter. }|
In 1987, therefore, David had walked out of the Belvedon with|
all Raymond's contacts and mailing lists, taking with him several of i
the gallery's biggest artists.
As Sir Mervyn had died in 1986, Rosemary's inheritance had

110
been plundered to start up David's own gallery, which was named
the Pulborough and which was defiantly situated right opposite the
Belvedon in Cork Street. Both galleries did well in the art boom of
the eighties, survived the disastrous slump of the early nineties, but
by 1998, the Pulborough, to Jupiter's fury, was edging ahead of the Belvedon.
In 1995, David had been joined in the business by his son Barney,
a fat pinstripe-suited slug, who also had shares in a Mayfair
gambling club, which came in useful laundering any of the
Pulborough's shadily gotten gains. Barney was very dodgy indeed.
Raymond's six children, who now included the twins. Dicky
and Dora, born to him and Anthea in 1990, referred to Barney and
David as 'Punch and Judas'. Raymond, who'd been devastated
by David's defection, still loved him, but there was spiky and bitter
competition between the two galleries and the two adjoining
households in Limesbridge.

Ill
1998

As Sir Raymond Belvedon prepared to leave Foxes Court on a
chilly October morning in 1998, gold leaves were tumbling thickly
out of the lime trees, symbolizing the money his gallery had
made and the spiritual riches his programmes had brought to so
many viewers. Having consolingly patted his brindle greyhound,
Grenville, who was sulking on the bed, Raymond briefly admired
his reflection in his dressing-room mirror. Still spare and splendid
looking at seventy-four, with bright blue eyes and a shock of silvery
white hair, Raymond had, as a result of his second wife's constant
flattery and expert laundering, become even more of a dandy, with
a penchant for pastel ties, mauve silk handkerchiefs wafting
Extract of Lime and slightly waisted pearl-grey suits.
This flamboyance, together with a belief that you must entertain
any audience in front of you, and an ability to listen and gently
draw out the most difficult artist or critic, had made him in the last
ten years a great hit on television.
On the doorstep, Raymond said goodbye to his eight-year-old
twins, Dicky and Dora, who were on half-term, and to his wife. Soft
and fragile in pearls and cornflower-blue cashmere, Anthea at
forty-five was still enchantingly pretty without a wrinkle or a grey
"air. Raymond gave her a special hug, knowing she was dying to
accompany him. Wild horses, however, couldn't have dragged
Anthea away from a meeting that afternoon of the Limesbridge
Improvement Society in which a Galena Borochova Memorial
would be discussed yet again.
As Galena had immortalized Limesbridge and stopped develpers
slapping houses all over the Silver Valley (which was now
"esignated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty), there was a
csire in the village to honour her memory with a statue in the

115
High Street. There was also pressure on Raymond to transform
one of his nicer cottages into a museum of Galena memorabilia.
Anthea, who had a hang-up about Raymond's first wife, had
managed to quash any public recognition of the twenty-fifth
anniversary of Galena's death last week. She was also opposing any
statue on the false grounds that it would evoke painful memories
for Raymond and Galena's four children. There was no way she
was going to let the pro-Galena faction gain ground behind her
back, and so she reluctantly waved her husband and his chauffeur-
cum-head gardener Robens off in the Bentley.
'Cheerio, cheerio.' Anthea's once squeaky little voice had
become very grand over the years, particularly since she had
become Lady Belvedon when Raymond was knighted last April.
Great mirth had been caused earlier in the month when Anthea
had gone into the crowded village shop, asked for The Times, then,
opening it on the social page, had shrieked, 'Oh heavens, how
embarrassing, they've remembered my birthday.'
Nor was she amused now when Rosemary Pulborough, in awful
gardening clothes, reared up over the wall of the Old Rectory next
door and sarcastically asked the departing Raymond to give her
love to David, if he saw him later.
'David definitely told me he was going to Penscombe,' Anthea
called out to Rosemary. It gave her pleasure to remind Rosemary ;
that she and David confided on a regular basis. Serve ^
Rosemary right for supporting the idea of a memorial to Galena. ^
Raymond sighed and closed the window. At the bottom of the;';
drive Robens turned right past the Lodge where Alizarin lived, with' |
its garden full of nettles, past the approaching scarlet post van
buckling under Raymond's fan mail, past Visitor, Alizarin's
rotund, grinning yellow Labrador, rustling purposefully throught
the leaves. Thursdays were dustbin days: all sorts of goodies would^i
be forthcoming inside punctured black bags. j
Raymond sighed again. The Limesbridge Improvement Society^
this afternoon would no doubt complain yet again about Alizarin's |
nettles and Visitor's binning habits. |
The whole day was bound to stir up painful memories. There 1
had been much fuss in the press recently about owners of national;;
treasures reneging on pledges to make them accessible to the
public in return for huge tax benefits.
Rupert Campbell-Black, for example, had stalled and stalled,
but today had finally agreed to put his stunning collection of
pictures on show in his beautiful house in nearby Gloucestershire.
Raymond was covering the event for the BBC and as an old friend
of Rupert, who had sold the odd picture to pay for a horse or a |

116
Campbell-Black wedding, was being allowed a preview before the
crowds poured in. He smiled slightly when he heard, on the car
wireless, that there was a ten-mile tailback on the M4, caused by
busloads of eager women and gays storming down from London
to gaze at the divinely handsome Rupert rather than his paintings.
Raymond turned to his morning ritual, checking the three Ds:
Divorce, Deaths and Debtors in his beloved Times, sussing out who
might suddenly be flush or needing money, or getting rid of an
important picture.
Ever since he had comforted Rupert's ex-wife Helen after the
murder of Roberto Rannaldini, her famous conductor husband,
in 1996, and been rewarded with the task of selling the Murillo
Madonna which he had achieved at a record price, Raymond had
been nicknamed 'the widow's mate'. Beside him on the back seat
was a delicious cake in a beribboned striped box, which, after
visiting Rupert, Raymond would take on to the recently widowed
Clemency Waterlane at Rutminster Hall, urging her to eat to
keep up her strength, and gently persuading her that parting
with the Waterlane Titian would be the easiest way out of estate
duty.
A great favourite with the Queen Mother and Lady Thatcher,
Raymond had long advised both the royal family and the Tories,
and was currently looking for an artist to paint Prince William.
And there was Rupert's house, lounging like a voluptuous
blonde against its orange pillow of beech woods. In the early
eighties Rupert had switched from showjumping to national hunt
racing, branching out into flat racing as well in the early nineties.
His extremely successful yard lay to the west of the house.
Rupert, not wanting to be ogled by the masses, had clearly done
a bunk. Raymond was relieved to be able to walk through the
rooms admiring the often dirty and badly lit pictures on his own,
overwhelmed by a sick, churning, very painful excitement as so
much of Galena's past returned.
At the top of Rupert's stairs hung a huge oil by her long-term
lover, Etienne de Montigny. This showed Galena as Circe turning
men into swine. There had been a row at the time, because Rupert
had complained the pigs were saddlebacks, a breed not invented
in 2000 be, and demanded his money back.
Next door was A Storm on Exmoor by Casey Andrews, who with
brutal insensitivity was, even twenty-five years after Galena's death,
giving interviews claiming to be her greatest love. Raymond was
ashamed he hadn't sacked Casey as a gallery artist, but as poetic
justice he had at least made a killing out of the disgusting old goat.
And there in the dark of the landing - Raymond caught his

117
breath, heart pounding - was Galena's ravishing drawing of a
naked Rupert asleep in the crimson-curtained four-poster in the
Blue Tower. Raymond so clearly remembered that warm summer
evening when Sir Mervyn and Rosemary had arrived unexpectedly
and Galena had ordered Rupert to remain upstairs.
Galena had later described how Rupert had made love to her
and on occasions even allowed Raymond, through the two-way
mirror she had had installed in the Blue Tower door, to watch
her with Rupert or other lovers. This had been the greatest turn-
on of Raymond's life. He had been so happy with Anthea, she
had put him first, built up his career and confidence. He owed
her everything, but she had never turned his loins to liquid as
Galena had done.
To discourage the crowds, Rupert had turned off the central
heating. Raymond shivered, then jumped as his mobile rang. He
was due to join his television crew in a minute, but it was Anthea
checking he was all right.
'Newsnight wondered if you'd be in town this evening, Melvyn
wants you on the South Bank Show next month, and you'll never
guess: Good Housekeeping want to interview me,' Anthea giggled,
'for a feature on wonderful wives. I can't think why.'
'I can, my darling, you are wonderful.'
'Well, don't forget to give my special love to Rupert.'
'I won't, and, Hopey, don't forget to turn on the alarm when you
go out.'
Alizarin, glowering like Cerberus at the bottom of the drive, was
not a sufficient deterrent to burglars. Now Raymond had become
a cult figure, they couldn't be too careful.
Raymond was glad Anthea had not accompanied him. She had
a totally unreciprocated crush on Rupert, who could be embarrassingly
curt with those he didn't like. And she would certainly
have acted up at the number of Galena's pictures on the walls. This
caused Raymond pain of a different kind. Galena's work had
rocketed in value since her death. What a tragedy that on Anthea's
insistence he'd sold so many of them back in 1974. They'd be worth
a fortune today. He' d also tragically let Anthea paint over Galena's
murals. The fiercely protected children's rooms were about the
only ones left intact.
As he moved towards the film crew at the end of the long gallery,
admiring on the way the Lucian Freud of a muscular nude lying
beside a whippet striped like a humbug, Raymond found himself
still trembling. Galena's end had been so terrible, what with the
ghastly haemorrhaging, and baby Sienna screaming herself blue,
and Alizarin never mentioning his mother's name again, and

118
Raymond himself discovering blood-baths in the Blue Tower as
well as the bottom of the stairs, and all with the Raphael smiling
serenely down.
'Oh Christ.' Raymond sucked in his breath.
For there on the wall was Galena's adorable drawing of Shrimpy,
her little Jack Russell, who'd been found bloodstained and
whimpering under her skirts.
After her death, Raymond couldn't face the thought of sleeping
in the Blue Tower so Anthea, with the help of Mary Fox Linton,
had knocked through walls to make a beautiful bedroom on the
floor below. The Raphael, on the other hand, had remained
locked away in the Blue Tower, so no-one saw it except the children
when they asked permission, or he and Anthea when less and
less frequently they made love up there.
'We're ready. Sir Raymond.' It was his director. 'Are you OK?
You look dreadfully pale. Make-up's in the bootroom, I'll get you
a coffee. Stunning collection isn't it? We thoughtwe'd kick off with
the Turner.'
'And end up with the Rubens,' said Raymond, which he knew
Rupert was keen to sell.

As Raymond finished filming, the crowds started pouring in,
mobbing him, because he was a star and exuded such kindness on
television that everyone thought they knew him.
As he quickly signed autographs, he was suddenly aware of a
beautiful girl thrusting out her catalogue. She was ravishingly but
rather unsuitably dressed for sightseeing in a waisted royal blue
and green striped velvet suit, sheer dark tights and very high heels.
She had long black shiny Pre-Raphaelite hair, luminous white skin,
with the peach flush of an August sunset, the tiniest nose, smudged
pink lips as though she'd eaten too many raspberries, and she
smelt deliciously of violets.
Her demurely cast-down eyelids with their thick dark brown
fnnge of lash seemed almost too heavy to lift as she watched him
scrawl his name. Then slowly she looked up, her eyes like huge
green traffic lights. Go, they seemed to entice him. Go deep into
nay soul. Go fall in love with me. Raymond was jolted.
Dear God, but someone must paint you, my child. Your destiny
is to see your face endlessly immortalized in pictures.'
On the contrary,' replied the girl in a surprisingly clipped
Sloaney voice. 'It's me who wants to immortalize you.'
Her name, she told him, was Emerald Cartwright. She was a
sculptor who'd just left Chelsea College of Art and never missed
his programmes.

119
'I want to do your head, it's such a noble one. Will you look at
my portfolio?'
'Where's Rupert, where's Rupert?' demanded the crowd
behind, which was getting larger and more impatient by the
second and which included, as well as gays, Knightsbridge beauties
and wrinklies, a tidal wave of schoolgirls on half-term and secretaries
on spurious sick leave.
'Ring the gallery and make an appointment,' a blushing
Raymond shouted over the din as he handed Emerald his card.
'What's your next programme about?' she shouted back.
'I'm working on a documentary about Raphael.'
Next moment, a tall man in a gorilla mask pushed his way
through the screaming masses and disappeared through a door
marked 'Private'. It was Rupert avoiding the crush.

120
Raymond, who was feeling exhausted, was so grateful he'd been
invited to lunch. On his way to Rupert's private quarters, he
laughed to see Somerford Keynes mincing along, almost concave
from trying to tuck in his fat bottom and tummy, getting out a huge
spy-glass to examine Galena's drawing of Rupert's very public
hindquarters.
Raymond met Rupert on the way in. Nimrod the lurcher and
assorted dogs were noisily and joyfully weaving round their master,
who was immediately called away to answer the telephone, which
gave Raymond a chance to look round.
The house, surprisingly shabby, was packed with beautiful,
chipped and often threadbare pieces, gathered at random over the
last 250 years by a family who'd always been more interested in
horses, dogs and each other. Anthea's exquisite needlework would
have worked wonders.
Raymond admired a huge oil of a rotund black Labrador, the
great-great-grandfather of Alizarin's yellow Labrador, Visitor. He
was also gratified to see charming pastels of Rupert's children and
grandchildren by one of the Belvedon's most successful gallery
artists, Daisy France-Lynch.
Daisy was so pretty, but so had been that ravishing Emerald
Cartwright. And now Raymond found himself embraced by
another beauty almost as tall as himself . . . for a second he was
pressed against the soft breasts, tickled by the cloudy dark hair,
bewitched by the silver-grey eyes and sweet anxious smile of
Rupert's wife, Taggie.
Oh, how lovely to see you, Raymond, you look frozen, you poor
"^g, would you like one of Rupert's jerseys? There's a nice fire in
"le drawing room. I've got to race, too rude but I promised to take

121
Bianca to Cats. I've left you a sort of picnic.' Then, lowering her
voice: 'I'm so pleased you're here to cheer up Rupert. He's
absolutely fed up with all these people.'
Rupert had gone into the drawing room.
'There he is,' mouthed eager voices at the window; a second
later it was filled with screaming excited faces.
'Fuck off,' snarled Rupert, nearly bringing down the curtains as
he dragged them together.
The sight of Rupert's wife and daughter disappearing in the
familiar dark blue helicopter stepped up the fever.
Seated at the kitchen table with his back to the Aga, Raymond
felt much more cheerful after a large glass of claret, a bowl of leek
soup and home-made brown bread. He had been a friend of
Rupert's profligate father Eddie, often selling pictures for him to
pay off various wives and gambling debts. He had also just after the
war sold Eddie a Rubens of a nude Diana bathing with her naked
nymphs for five thousand pounds. Rupert, who wanted more
capital to buy horses, was interested in selling it.
'Beautiful picture,' enthused Raymond.
'My father loved it for obvious reasons, I can't stand great lardy
lesbians. What's it worth?'
'Five or six million.'
Rupert whistled.
'Wouldn't go through the auction houses. The Louvre, the Met
and the National Gallery would certainly be interested. I could
have a word.' Raymond tried to keep the excitement out of his
voice.
Rupert picked up this excitement as he placed a Stilton, a
glistening apricot flan and a jug of thick cream on the table.
He approved of Raymond's venal streak. Old Shrimp Villy had
also been amazingly forgiving over Galena. Rupert felt he owed
him.
'OK,' he said, 'you handle it.'
While they argued idly over commission and what horses Rupert,;
had running at Cheltenham next month, Rupert spooned up
apricot flan with great speed. It was so delicious, Raymond took his
time.
'Marvellous cook, your Taggie.'
Rupert, like Raymond, had profited from an extremely happy
second marriage. He was still arrogant, short fused, irrational and
spoilt, but, tamed by the sweet, gentle Taggie, he was no longer
relentlessly promiscuous nor insanely possessive. He was also a
wonderful father and a fiercely loyal friend. Age had given
character and strength and a few lines to the flawless face, but no

122
extra flesh. In his presence, Raymond could look nowhere else.
'Did you see that incredibly beautiful dark girl?' he asked.
'Thought she might be one of yours.'
'Christ, I hope not - one can't be too careful with DNA.'
Briefly they discussed Rupert's adopted children, who were both
black. Xavier, the boy, who was at Bagley Hall with Raymond's son, Dicky, had gone hunting.
'He won't get many more chances,' grumbled Rupert, 'with
Blair fucking up the country, or "rural areas" as it's now known.
Can you imagine fighting for King and rural area? I wonder how
the saboteurs will play it. Xav could sue them for racism if they pull
him off his pony. How's that very stylish child who tipped green
paint over Casey Andrews?'
'Alizarin? Hardly a child. He's thirty-four and six foot two and
insists on haunting war zones portraying human suffering on huge
canvasses - probably still trying to blot out the horror of Galena's
death. I really shouldn't,' he added, as Rupert filled up his glass.
'Do you good, you're not driving,' said Rupert, who thought
Raymond was looking very fragile. 'Alizarin got over his rheumatoid
arthritis then?'
'Mostly. He gets stiff and he limps in damp weather. But he never
complains about it.' Raymond shook his head sadly. 'I can't get
close to Alizarin. And he'll never forgive Jupiter, who always had it
in for him, for stealing and marrying the only girl Al ever really
loved. Alizarin used to be incredibly close to Jonathan. Now they're
separated by Alizarin's failure to sell anything and Jonathan's huge
success.
'Jonathan reminds me of you when you were a boy,' went on
Raymond with a smile, 'far too successful and good looking for his
own good. He just had to bat his long lashes at the masters at
school.'
'Thanks,' said Rupert acidly. 'From what I've read Jonathan
spends his time shagging and punching critics. What about the
girl?'
'Sienna? Most screwed up of the lot,' said Raymond wearily.
Gives poor darling Anthea a frightful time. I had to stop vilifying
"ie Turner Prize when she was shordisted last year, but it was fright- "illy embarrassing.'
Sienna's entry, he explained, following the trend for celebrating
bodily fluids, had been called Tampax Tower, and was built of used
^"npons sent her by women of substance. Women beyond
"^nopausal age had been allowed to cheat and dip theirs in red
ink.

It wasn't funny,' protested Raymond as Rupert started to laugh.

123
'What boundaries are there left for young artists to push through?'
Sienna had been much photographed riding round
Limesbridge on a motorbike in the nude.
'I know they had a rackety start,' said Raymond dolefully, 'but
Anthea and I have tried so hard to make up for it.'
It was such a relief to be able to discuss his and Galena's children.
He always found it difficult in front of Anthea.
'How are your lot?' he asked. 'I heard Marcus's prom. He gets
better and better.'
Terdita's playing polo for the American team,' said Rupert,
shoving the Stilton in Raymond's direction, 'Tab's expecting a
baby any minute, then she's going to train for the Sydney Olympics
- got a great horse. She and Wolfie (he's a dream) are in France.
He's producing Tristan de Montigny's latest film.'
'They've done terribly well,' said Raymond enviously.
'They were hellish on the way up,' conceded Rupert. 'It's all due
to Taggie, she's been a wonderfully unwicked stepmother.'
'Anthea's been wonderful too,' said Raymond with slightly less
conviction, then his eyes rilled with tears. 'And I can never fail to
be amazed that such a lovely young girl, thirty years younger than
me, has given me nearly twenty-five years of undivided love.'
Rupert, who passionately regretted a one-minute stand with
Anthea in the back of his Rolls on the night of Galena's last disastrous
exhibition, said nothing.
Watching his host ripping off black grapes with still suntanned
fingers which must have once given Galena such pleasure,
Raymond was overwhelmed with a sick craving to bring her back
by asking Rupert the extent of their affaire. But Rupert was getting
restless, longing to get back to the yard. Jumping up, he peered
through the curtains.
'Oh Christ, here comes Augustus John Thomas.'
Casey Andrews, in a big velour hat and Norfolk jacket, could
be seen striding towards the house, bellowing like an MFH on
Boxing Day, so the crowd would recognize England's greatest
painter.
'His prices are bigger than his canvasses,' said Rupert sourly,
'and his last exhibition looked as though you'd unleashed an
orang-utan with a space gun. The old bugger's only here to see his
picture's hung where everyone can see it and to try and persuade
me to let him paint Taggie. Christ!'
'Casey's a trustee of the Tate,' Raymond shook his head sadly,
'so one has to be nice to him. Means he can block any artist he
chooses from being hung there. Alizarin hasn't a hope after
drenching him with paint.'

124
* * *
As Rupert, back in his gorilla mask, saw Raymond off, they laughed
to see David Pulborough scuttling in from the car park, smoothing
his thinning tawny hair and adjusting his clothes over a spreading
waistline.
'He's got so grand now he won't travel in the same car as his
chauffeur,' observed Rupert, 'but you should hear him dropping
his haitches when he's called in to tell New Labour what to put on
their walls.'
'He's covered his drive with gravel that looks like chopped
chicken breast,' said Raymond. 'Oh God, I mustn't be bitchy.'
'Probably late because he's been screwing some slag,' pronounced
Rupert with all the disapproval of the reformed rake.
'Expect it's Geraldine Paxton. Yes, it is,' said Raymond, as a
gaunt beauty, pretending to arrive from another part of the car
park, holding up a hand mirror as she frantically applied scarlet
lipstick, rushed towards them.
'Ghastly whore,' added Raymond with unusual venom. 'But we
have to suck up to her, like Casey, because she's on the Arts
Council and has such a pull with Saatchi and the Tate. Geraldine,
my dear, how lovely to see you,' he called out. 'Rupert's pictures are
to die for. You have a treat in store. Afternoon, David,' he added
acidly. 'Saw your wife earlier, she sent lots of love.'
Geraldine and David's mouths became even tighter than
Rupert's security, as Robens, who'd been enjoying the crumpet still
queueing up to enter the house, noticed his master and drove up
in the Bentley.
'Hope today hasn't been too much of a bugger,' said Rupert,
lowering his voice as he opened the door for Raymond, 'Galena
would have loathed growing old. Couldn't survive without male
adulation. Her looks were beginning to go.'
'So are yours in that ridiculous mask,' chided Raymond to hide
how touched he was by Rupert's solicitude. Then, unable to resist
asking: 'Do you miss her?'
'Oh, of course,' lied Rupert.
'Thank you,' mumbled Raymond, then rallying: 'Lady Belvedon
sent her love.'

Meanwhile, over in Larkshire in the village hall, Anthea was
addressing a not entirely compliant Limesbridge Improvement
Society.
'My husband's late wife had many unsuitable men friends with
whom she indulged in - well, orgies at Foxes Court. Do we really
want our village associated with that sort of thing? The press so love

125
muck-raking and Ay cannot have Sir Raymond upset. After all, he
is no longer young.'
If Galena had lived, Anthea thought fretfully, she'd now be sixty-
six, a bloated old wino living in Cardboard City, who'd never have
coped with her frightful children. But because she was dead everyone
idolized her. And there was ghastly Rosemary Pulborough, still
in her gardening clothes, with an Alice band rammed into her electrocuted
haystack hair, fanning the flames.
Whatever jokes Anthea and David made about Rosemary, nicknaming
her the 'Wardress' because she was always watching them,
it irritated the hell out of Anthea that her stepchildren were all
unaccountably devoted to Rosemary.

Not wanting to snore or dribble in front of Robens, Raymond
fought sleep. He should never have accepted that third glass of
claret. As the Bentley rolled down Rupert's drive, he observed the
Stubbs-like serenity of sleek, beautiful horses grazing beneath
amber trees, and thought wryly of the worry Galena's children
caused him: Sienna, drinking too much, sleeping around, rowing
with Anthea; Alizarin, tormented and unapproachable; Jonathan
always in trouble. He'd started conducting with his cock during a
boring television programme last week. Worst of all was Jupiter, constantly questioning his father's every decision, implying it was
high time Raymond retired.
'"A doubtful throne is ice on summer seas,"' sighed Raymond.
Jupiter's eye, alas, was not as good as David's, nor was he as adepts
at buttering up clients and wooing young artists - which was one
of the reasons the Belvedon was in danger of dropping behind the^
Pulborough. Odd how it still upset him to see David. ;
Lying back, Raymond shut his eyes. Tomorrow he would ring the
National Gallery about Rupert's Rubens, and perhaps that
ravishing child with green eyes would turn up to sculpt his head.
Quoting his favourite Tennyson:

'Death closes all: but something e'er the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.'

Raymond fell asleep.

126
Emerald Cartwright, the girl with green eyes, had been adopted as
a very small baby by parents who had adored and hopelessly
indulged her for the past twenty-five years. Despite being brought
up in a beautiful Georgian house in Yorkshire with stables, tennis
courts, a long drive and fields, despite being sent to a smart
boarding school in the south, and later to art college in London,
where she had been bought a sweet little house in Fulham to share
with her sister Sophy, Emerald felt fate had dealt her a cruel hand.
A great fantasist, who regarded herself as a cross between
Carmen and Scarlett O'Hara, Emerald imagined she was a
princess's daughter who'd been kidnapped at birth. She hadn't
fallen in love with any of the hordes of men who ran after her
because in her dreams she was saving herself for the prince or great
artist she knew to be her real father.
Rupert Campbell-Black had had legions of women before falling
for his second wife, Taggie. Maybe while he'd been married to his
first wife, thought Emerald longingly, he'd had a fling with some
dark beauty too proud to tell him she was pregnant, who had given
her baby girl up for adoption.
Always the winner of any head-turner prize. Emerald was
unfazed by everyone staring at her as she wandered round the
house. She was only interested in catching sight of Rupert and
looking at his pictures.
Emerald was small, only five feet. As the crowds in front of her
suddenly became a screaming mob, desperate for a glimpse of
weir idol, she wailed that she couldn't see. Next moment a pair
01 h^ds closed round her tiny waist, lifting her up, and she saw
"leback of Rupert's sleek blond head as he vanished like the White
^bbit through another door.

127
'Hell, I've missed him again.'
Breathing in expensive aftershave which she recognized as CK
One, Emerald glanced down and noticed the hands were suntanned
and ringless. Returned to earth, she swung round and
gasped because the man towering over her was twenty years
younger than Rupert but almost as handsome. Her eyes were level
with his breast bone. Between the second and third button of his
black shirt, she could see a silver Star of David. A charcoal-grey
bomber jacket emphasized wide shoulders, black jeans showed
off lean gym-honed hips and long legs. Glancing up she saw black
stubble on a square jaw, a jutting pudgy lower lip, hawklike
Mephistophelean features, a smooth olive complexion, thick dark
lashes fringing unblinking yellow eyes. Although his black glossy
close-cropped hair was flecked with grey, he didn't look a day over
thirty.
Wow, thought Emerald, he's like Bagheera in The Jungle Book.
He then introduced himself in Bagheera's deep purring voice 1
as Zachary Ansteig, an American journalist doing a piece on
Rupert's open day for a New York art magazine called Mercury.
'This guy's like the Pied Piper,' he drawled. 'If he walked into
that lake over there, there wouldn't be a faggot or a woman left in;
England. What's his interest in art?' |
'Mostly dynastic,' said Emerald. 'He chiefly commissions con*|
temporary portraits of his family and his animals. The rest are Old|
Masters handed down by previous generations.'
'Lot ofBorochovas,' observed Zac, turning to Galena's drawing
of Shrimpy. 'She's getting really big in the States. I guess she and
Rupert were an item.'
Emerald, who didn't want to think of Rupert being an item witfij
anyone but herself, was thrilled nevertheless that Zac was followingi
her round. ^
But although she showed off her knowledge of art, makingjl
risque remarks about the pictures and regaling him with gossipfi
about Casey Andrews and Somerford Keynes, who nearly put hri|
neck out gazing at Zac as he passed them, Zac didn't react. Therej
was a sinister stillness about him. He seemed only interested UK«
examining each picture, and kept diving into cordoned-offroona^jj
for recces, until Rupert's minions chucked him out. He made n€(|
notes for his piece.
'Are you a burglar?' asked Emerald.
'Maybe,' said Zac.
She found it disconcerting that the crowds, perhaps as compen"^
sation for not seeing Rupert, gazed at Zac, rather than herself, an«t|
was gratified when a passing David Pulborough gave her aSt|

128
undressing glance behind Geraldine Paxton's immaculately
tailored back.
'I should have done a number on that guy,' she taunted Zac,
'he's rumoured to be even better hung than his pictures and the
Pulborough's hotter for young artists than the Belvedon these
days. That's his mistress with him - one of the great movers and
shakers of the art world.'
They had reached the last room on the tour. As anxious to see
Rupert as Emerald, the sinking sun was peering in through the
jasmine-covered window, casting lace patterns on a lovely
Constable of Cotchester Cathedral. Outside the crowds could be
seen trailing disconsolately towards the car park.
'Let's try and get to see him,' Emerald begged Zac, 'I'm sure
he'd give you a quick interview if you plugged his racehorses and
the yard.'
Glancing at his watch, Zac shook his head.
'I've got to catch a train to Paddington. Great meeting you.'
Irked by his indifference, Emerald was amazed to find herself
offering Zac a lift back to London, when she was in fact headed for
a dance in Dorset.
As they walked towards her car, a young boy on a muddy grey
pony came hurtling across the fields, flying over stone wall and
fence, haughtily scattering the crowds on his way into the yard.
'That must be Xavier, Rupert's adopted son,' said Emerald in
excitement.
This is the world I belong to, she told herself firmly.
Reaching her car, a Golf convertible which smelled like she did
of violets, she plugged in a CD of Abigail Rosen playing
Tchaikovsky's violin concerto and kicked off her shoes. She was so
small, her car seat had to be pushed so far forward that the long-
legged Zac found himself addressing the back of her head.
He also clocked the emerald earrings, the Tiffany cross, the
Cartier watch with diamond numbers, the black leather Dunhill
case in the back. She was a fast but excellent driver. Her mobile
rang the whole time, all men with trembling voices asking for dates.
'I guess that's the reason there's a man shortage in London,'
mocked Zac, 'all the guys are calling you.'
Away from Rupert's pictures he became more chatty. Without
eye contact, Emerald also found herself expanding under his questioning,
explaining that like Rupert's younger children, she was
adopted, but had never felt she fitted in.
Plato believed in adoption,' observed Zac. 'He said kids were
"luch better raised by other people, whose expectations weren't so

129
'I just feel I'm with the wrong family,' sighed Emerald. 'My adoptive
parents are so straight and horsey, and I hate horses, and
they're so buttoned up about their feelings. They've been good to
me, so it seems ungrateful to ask about my natural parents.'
'Who were they anyway?'
'My natural father didn't have the guts to sign the birth certificate,'
said Emerald bitterly.
'Perhaps he was a God who turned into a swan or a shower of
gold to impregnate your mom,' teased Zac. 'You look kinda
Goddess-like. He could hardly put Shower of Gold on a birth
certificate.'
Emerald was not in the mood for jokes.
'I often think he could have been high profile, and not wanted
a scandal. My mother worked in an art gallery.
'If you want to know what it's like to be blind, walk around with
your eyes shut,' she added bitterly. 'But if you want to find out what
it's like to be adopted, go on the tube and look at any couple sitting
next to you, smart, ugly, arguing, holding hands - they could be
your parents. Any guy I go out with could be my brother or myi||
father. I feel like an unstarted symphony.' Emerald's voice was
rattling now. 'I have no past.'
'It's your future that matters.' , i
As Abigail Rosen launched into the last stampeding movements
of the Tchaikovsky, Emerald reached the motorway, and symboli- 3
cally rammed her foot down. i
'I always feel as though I'm hurtling into a future without;
knowing where I've come from. You've no idea how hard that is.' ;
She glanced round at Zac: so fit, tanned and elitist. 'I bet you come;
from a glamorous family.' ^
'They were mostly wiped out in concentration camps,' said Zacjj
flatly, 'I've got no past either, that makes two of us.' ^
'Oh God, I'm sorry.'Jolted out of her self-absorption, Emerakt|j
felt ashamed. 'They always tell you adopted children are chosen^J!
so I'm a member of the Chosen Race too.' H
Then she nearly drove off the road as Zac lifted her cascade ofiq
hair and laid a warm, caressing hand on the back of her neck. 1J
'I was teased at school for being adopted,' she gabbled. 'TheylJ
told me the reason I was small was because I hadn't come out ofej
my mother's tummy.' ^
'I was beaten up for being a "Yid",' countered Zac, 'and, because^
I had a slight Austrian accent (which they assumed was German)^
for being a Nazi as well. Then the Rabbi arranged for me to have
judo lessons. No-one beat me up again,' he added grimly.
'You're Austrian?' said Emerald in surprise. T must sayyou don't^

130
conjure up cheery images of the Blue Danube, Gluhwein and The
Sound of Music:
Turning to him as they reached the outskirts of London, she
noticed Zac's strange gleaming cat's eyes, his face orange from the
glare of the street lights, and felt unsettled and wildly attracted to
him.
'When are you going back to America?' she asked and was
shocked at her desolation when he said, 'Tomorrow.'
He was yawning now and talking about getting an early night.
Emerald couldn't bear it. She must keep him interested.
'Did you see Raymond Belvedon? He's such a duck, he gave me
his card, he wants me to sculpt his head.'
'We get his programmes on PBS,' said Zac. 'They just adore him
in the States. He used to be married to Borochova, that explains
why he was there.'
'His next programme's on Raphael.'
As they reached Hammersmith, Emerald was again astounded
to hear herself, who never made the running, asking Zac if he'd
like to come back to Fulham for a drink.
'Sure,' he said, 'I've woken up now. Has Raymond Belvedon
started shooting the programme on Raphael?'

131
Emerald lived in a charming part of Fulham, just off Parsons
Green. The street of pastel houses was lined with cherry trees,
whose tawny pink leaves carpeted the pavements to welcome them.
Number eighteen was painted pale blue. The tiny front garden was
crowded out by two dreadful-smelling dustbins and a large bicycle
leaning like a dinosaur against a window box of browning plants.
All the lights were blazing.
'I've been away so I don't know if my sister Sophy's here,' said
Emerald, opening the bottle-green front door, then she flipped.
Sophy must have been giving a riotous lunch party for some of
her obnoxious teacher friends, and they'd all pushed off to the
cinema. There were flowing ashtrays, half-empty glasses everywhere,
pudding plates still on the table. The sink in the kitchen
was full of dirty pans. Emerald was gibbering with rage, misdialling
Sophy on her mobile, which refused to answer.
'Sophy sure is a terrific cook,' said a grinning Zac who was calmly
finishing up the shepherd's pie.
'Surrounding herself with lame ducks, I'm amazed she didn't
feed them crusts,' raged Emerald. 'Look at her clothes hung like
drunks over the radiators. Look at my plants she hasn't watered.'
The pictures were crooked, there was no milk, no loo paper
downstairs, no light bulbs, drink all over the drawing-room carpets,
the washing machine was full and queuing up, and there was fluff
left on top of the tumble dryer.
'Bugger bugger Sophy,' screeched Emerald.
As Zac progressed to Sophy's rhubarb crumble, he wandered
round the room admiring Emerald's smart invitations, interspersed
with coloured cards to Sophy: all on a hangover theme.
'Darling Sophy, thanks for a wild party.'

132
Sophy was obviously quite a raver. Examining the photographs
of a big plain raw-boned woman in hunting kit on a large horse and
a straight-backed man with a moustache in a colonel's uniform, Zac
could see why Emerald didn't fit in with her adopted parents. A
chihuahua among mastiffs, she looked as though she came from a
different planet. There was also a rather bad watercolour of a big,
dark grey Georgian house at the end of a drive, over the fireplace.
'That's where we live and the bloody cow's drunk my last bottle
of champagne. Thank Christ she can't fit into my clothes. Come
on, let's go upstairs.'
'Don't look in there!' She slammed the door on a mountain of
discarded clothes on the first landing. 'That's Sophy's bedroom.'
The next flight of stairs led to a door on which hung a tapestry
cushion embroidered with the words: 'Go Away'. Inside they
entered a different world: serene and beautiful.
Black and white tiles covered the entire floor. In one half were
emerald green curtains, a huge bed with a green and white striped
counterpane, and white armchairs with bright green and cobalt-
blue cushions. On the dressing table were bottles ofPenhaligon's
Violetta, which explained the enticing smell of violets. In the other
half, equally tidy, the room was lined with white pillars topped with
terracotta and bronze heads sculpted by Emerald and of astonishing
brilliance. Zac was amazed that someone quite so self-absorbed
should create people so distinctive and so alive. Dotted round the
room were works in progress, shrouded like hooded monks in
black or green plastic bags to keep the clay damp.
In the shelves were books on Epstein, Michelangelo, Rodin and
Picasso. On the walls were photographs of people nose to nose with
their own sculptured heads and drawings of great beauty. Zac
looked at Emerald with new respect.
'This stuff is awesome.'
He was particularly drawn to a curiously romanticized painting
of a darling old lady, white hair drawn back in a bun. On her lap
lay knitting: a blue jumper with the word 'Charlene' in pink on the
front. She was holding out her arms and smiling. Along the bottom
of the painting. Emerald had written in green ink: 'My real grandmother'.

Zac whistled.
'Omigod, what did your adopted grandmom say?'
She went ballistic,' said Emerald happily. 'It won a prize at
school. They printed it in the local paper. Forget Whisder's
Mother. Emerald's Real Granny got much better reviews. She's
^ch a bitch. Granny Cartwright. One day, she said: "Isn't it a pity
none of my grandchildren have green eyes." Mummy protested:

133
"Emerald does." And Granny Cartwright said, "No, I mean my real
grandchildren."'
Emerald had taken a bottle of Chablis from the fridge, but even
with one of those foolproof silver fish corkscrews, her hands were
shaking so much, she buggered the cork. Zac took it from her.
'It's OK, baby.' Putting the bottle down, he ran a soothing hand
down her hair.
'It isn't,' snapped Emerald. 'Look at my mother and father.' She
pointed to another photograph of the plain, straight, middle-aged
couple, this time in evening dress. 'We're light years apart.'
Glancing into the other half of the room, Zac noticed above the
bed a ravishingly executed painting of a beautiful prince and
princess, who bore a strong resemblance to Rupert and Taggie
Campbell-Black, and again in green writing underneath: 'My real
parents'.
Below hung a beautiful drawing of a cat, which Zac recognized
as by Galena Borochova. On a table was a little glass case containing
a musical box, a fluffy green hippo and a yellowing once-white
cardigan.
Those were presents given me by my real mother,' explained
Emerald in a trembling voice, 'before she handed me over. I was
only three days old. What kind of a woman gives up a baby?'
'A very brave one,' said Zac gently. Christ, she was screwed up.
As he gouged out the cork and poured the Chablis into two
glasses, he asked her why, as someone so slender and fragile, she'd
taken up such a back-breaking profession as sculpture.
'If you're adopted and small, you have to prove yourself.'
'When did you start?'
'When I was eight, I brought a rock from the moors into the
kitchen and picked up a knife. My parents were terrified until they
saw I was carving an angel.'
'A self-portrait,' murmured Zac, the irony lost on Emerald.
They were interrupted by her mobile ringing, some young man
in Dorset whose family were expecting her to arrive for dinner
before the dance.
'I'm not coming. Last time I stayed, your mother called me
Emeline all weekend,' snapped Emerald.
Having furiously cut him off, she proceeded to play back her
messages.
'Emo, can you come to this?' 'Are you doing anything on
Thursday night?' 'It's the Bramham Moor Hunt Ball on Saturday.'
'My Uncle Jimmy wondered if you'd like to sculpt my cousin's head
for Aunt Molly's birthday.'
Some of them sounded like tentative Hugh Grants; others,

134
orobably fellow art students, had flat London accents. No girls rang
Emerald, reflected Zac.
Emerald let the tape run to the end to wind him up. Zac didn't
react picking up a book on Degas. He'd hardly touched his drink.
Out of nerves Emerald had knocked back one glass and nearly
finished a second. She couldn't help herself to a third yet without
appearing an old soak.
'What happened to your family?' she blurted out.
Despite his suntan, Zac's face turned as grey as the flecks in his
dark hair.
'My mom was deported to a detention camp called
Theresienstadt when she was two. My grandmother remained
there with her briefly before being dragged off to Auschwitz.
Somehow Mom survived. After the war she joined my Great-aunt
Leah in New York. They were the only family left.'
Zac's voice was so matter-of-fact he might have been describing
a baseball match.
'Your poor mother,' moaned Emerald. 'Did she ever get over it?'
'She died of cancer last year,' said Zac flatly. 'Just beforehand,
we travelled to Auschwitz, and found my grandmother's name and
convoy number in a memorial book. I guess it helped Mom to
grieve. I figure the chemo zapped her; she wasn't strong enough
to resist it.'
'What about your father?'
'He was a survivor -just - of Belsen. He was much older than
Mom and died a couple of years after I was born.'
'Did your mother marry again?'
Zac shrugged. 'She married out. My stepfather was a car
mechanic with fists.'
Emerald burst into tears. 'I'm so sorry I banged on. But at least
you know who your parents were. The awful part is not knowing.'
'Only if someone tells you it's awful.'
Crossing the room, Zac took her in his arms; his heart was level
with her ears and she could hear its steady beat. Unlike her other
fumbling boyfriends, the hands that removed her velvet suit and
dark blue jersey were completely steady. Pushing her gently away,
he sat down on the bed.
'Let me look at you.'
Emerald tossed her head haughtily, Carmen again, so her shiny
hair cascaded over her breasts. Very slowly, never taking her huge
green eyes off his, she removed a pink lace bra.
"hat the hell was she playing at? She never went to bed with men
until the fifth or sixth date, usually never, but Zac had robbed her
°t all willpower.

135
'Put your arms above your head,' he ordered.
Emerald turned around proudly and slowly. Her breasts and
bottom were high, curved and full, compared with her tiny frame.
The throbbing and bubbling between her legs was getting more
insistent.
'Beautiful,' said Zac softly. 'My little Munch Madonna. Come
here.'
Slowly he kissed her nipples until they were as hard and red as
rosehips, gently rubbing her pink silk knickers over her clitoris
until it stiffened in the same way.
'I mustn't,' gasped Emerald. 'Too soon. These things ought to
be taken slowly,' yet found herself pulling off his shirt.
Only a long scar above his heart marred the smooth gold
rippling perfection of his chest.
'Oh Zac, you're beautiful.'
Zac laughed, the stretch of perfect white teeth, the enigmatic
eyes, the flying black brows reminding her unnervingly again of
Mephistopheles. But his shoulders were as smooth, hard and warm
as a bronze in the afternoon sun. As her sculptor's fingers moved
downwards, moulding, kneading, Zac also gasped with pleasure.
His black jeans fell to the floor, followed by Calvin Klein underpants.

Emerald had never been very keen on penises. Having seen too
many hanging like purple wistaria on male models, she felt they
were better hidden by figleaves. But Zac's sprang out so joyfully, so
big, smooth and strong below his taut belly, as if it couldn't wait to
give her pleasure.
Gathering her up like a doll, kissing first one lip, then another,
his tongue lazily exploring her mouth, murmuring endearments,
he laid her on the white counterpane. Then ripping off her
knickers, he kissed her thighs above her black hold-ups, burying
his face in the soft white flesh, teasing her, letting his tongue stray
into every crevice. Then, just as she was quivering on the edge of
orgasm, drawing away, mocking her as she begged him to go on.
Now he was lying beside her, his fingers probing deeply, testing
and stroking, strafing her with his thumb knuckle, until she was
rigid and moaning on the brink.
'Go on, my darling,' then once more he withdrew his hand.
'Please, don't stop, go on,' begged Emerald.
Moving down the bed, Zac put his tongue between her legs
again, mumbling that, like clay, he mustn't let her dry up.
'Don't make bloody jokes!' she sobbed.
Satisfied she was wet enough, he was on top of her, driving his
wonderful cock inside her, deeper and deeper, balancing on one

136
elbow, as his left hand cupped her tiny right hip, his stroking
thumb never losing touch with her clitoris.
'Go for it, baby, go on.'
At last I know what all the fuss is about, marvelled Emerald.
Her pleasure was so intense that it was some time before she
realized Zac was in the shower next door.
'That was a-mazing,' she called out to him.
'A-mazing.' A returning Zac kissed her, then, pulling his clothes
onto his still wet body: 'I've got to go.'
'Can't you stay?'
'I've got a guy to meet and a very early flight.'
Emerald was in a panic: 'When are you coming back?'
'Sometime. I'll call you.' He took one of her cards from the pile
on the desk.
'Where did you get that scar?'
'My stepfather threw a knife at me. What d'you expect from a
goy?' and he was gone.
Bastard, thought Emerald, transporting me up to heaven, then
down to hell. She was also furious when she staggered out of bed
to find she'd lost Raymond Belvedon's card.

137
Emerald was so angry, she picked up the telephone and vented her
rage on Sophy.
'For someone who works in a sink school, it would be nice if you
could occasionally leave your own sink tidy.'
She was so busy listing Sophy's misdemeanours that it was several :
minutes before Sophy could get a word in edgeways.
'For God's sake, Emo, shut up, I had to come home in the j
middle of lunch. Daddy's been fired and it appears we've lost all
our money.' ^
Emerald then had the temerity to go into a rant because she ;
hadn't been told first, ^
'I'm the elder sister. Why are you always the one people tell things
to?'

Emerald drove up to Yorkshire the following morning and found 5
things were much worse. Colonel lan Cartwright, her father, had i
for the last ten years been Managing Director of a small, very ^
profitable engineering business in Pikely-in-Wharfedale. As the ?
former commanding officer of a tank regiment, lan Cartwright I
had made a successful transition to the business world because he 1
was intelligent, hard working and very straight, which appealed to |
his customers. This straightness, however, combined with a mili- |
tary brusqueness, expecting others to jump, and an inability to ?
flatter and drink with the boys, had not endeared him to his fellow ;
directors.
These directors had taken him aside the previous month and
persuaded him that if the business were to prosper, he must tell
the Chairman, who owned the company, that he ought to retire,
and let lan make the major decisions.

138
After nights without sleep, lan was more brusque in his ultimatum
than he intended. The Chairman, a vain old tosser who
liked reading Chaucer out loud to lan's wife Patience in the
evenings, was understandably outraged, and, turning furiously to
the other directors, announced that lan Cartwright wanted him
out. Whereupon they denied all knowledge. lan was sacked the
following morning.
Without the back-up of his salary, lan Cartwright admitted to his
wife that he had been gambling heavily on the stock market to keep
up the mortgage payments on the Fulham house which he had
bought for his beloved Emerald and Sophy. Worst of all, the two
sisters had not appreciated that their grand house, Pikely Hall, with
its rose gardens, tennis court, swimming pool, fields and stables for
their mother's two hunters, had only ever been rented. lan had
used a wing of the house as company offices, for which the gardens
were a splendid show piece.
So overnight everything was wiped out. Pikely Hall had to
be vacated, the Fulham house sold. The horses, to Emerald's
mother's anguish, had to go and a three-bedroom flat, in a rather
seedy part of Shepherd's Bush, rented in London.
Ironically what most worried the family, the day Emerald arrived
from London, was how she would cope with this change. The
answer was with utter hysterics. She had always denigrated the solidarity
and durability of Pikely Hall, a charcoal-grey pile with
castellated turrets, only softened by Virginia creeper and shielded
from the gales by great banks of rhododendrons, spiky monkey
puzzles and towering Wellingtonias. But how impressed the other
girls at boarding school had been when she'd scrawled Pikely Hall,
Yorkshire on her infrequent letters home. Emerald wept and
returned to London the next day.

She didn't return to Pikely until early January, the weekend her
parents moved out. Furious to be travelling by train because
her beloved Golf had had to be sold, she had nipped into the
Ladies at Leeds while waiting for a connecting train.
'Baby-changing facilities', said a large sign.
Pity I can't change my parents, thought Emerald savagely.
Arriving at the Hall, finding Pickfords vans outside, she suddenly
realized, despite the leafless trees and the moors stretching bleakly
above, what a beautiful place it was. If only she'd been able to bring
^ac here. He'd have been knocked out by such a splendid old
Place. Now he'd think she was worth nothing. Or he would if he'd
bothered to ring her.
Overwhelmed by self-pity. Emerald sat on the balustrade gazing

i, 139
across the valley at the stubble of pines and the hairnet of stone
walls keeping the exuberant khaki hills in check. Why the hell
hadn't she painted the view while she had the chance? She sobbed
so violently she developed a migraine and the local GP had to be
summoned to give her some Valium.
'Does your mother get migraines?' he asked solicitously.
'I don't know,' wept Emerald, 'being adopted I have no medical
history!'
Retiring to lie down, Emerald left everyone else to pack up.
The removal vans had been deliberately booked on a Saturday
so lan Cartwright's employees wouldn't be there to gloat or be
embarrassed. The secretaries and lower management had loved
lan, appreciating the kind heart beneath the fierce exterior.
While her parents' rather smeary furniture disappeared into the
vans. Emerald rallied and wasted her best scarlet Dior lipstick
writing 'May you rot' on each Monday in the new 1999 diary of the
treacherous incoming Managing Director.
While her mother's beloved hunters, Jake and Toby, were 1
loaded up to be driven to a new home, Emerald glued the naked |
body of Marilyn Monroe, cut from a poster, onto the portrait of|
the Chairman hanging in the boardroom, so his wrinkled petulant ?
face peered over the top. When Emerald showed this to hetf|
mother. Patience laughed for the first time in days, then found sh©A|
couldn't stop. |
Having in the past spurned Sohrab, the smelly old family golden |
retriever, Emerald sobbed and sobbed when he was given away to |
a friend, because with Patience and lan being forced out to work,^
it wouldn't be fair to leave a big dog all day in a London flat. ^
Hordes of locals with bottles turned up to say goodbye to sweety
plump Sophy and her parents. Again Emerald wept. "I
'Why isn't anyone coming to say goodbye to me? It must be|
because you opted to go to the grammar school, Sophy, and havc|
more local friends. And why haven't they mentioned my name iagj
all the good-luck cards?' ^
Why the hell should they, when you played Little Lady Muck cat|
the rare times you came up here? thought Sophy furiously. I
She looked at her grey-faced, red-eyed parents as they clumsily
tried to comfort a hysterical Emerald, who had not helped matters^
by adding her student loan and her large overdraft to her father's.!
other debts. Why did Emerald always have to be the centre from
attention?

Arriving in Shepherd's Bush, Patience Cartwright tried to make
the best of things. Just think if they'd been kicked out of Bosnia.;

140
At least they were all together, and as Sophy'd been sweet enough
to accept the tiny bedroom next to the kitchen, this meant that
Emerald would be able to sleep and sculpt in the biggest bedroom
overlooking the communal gardens.
Patience Cartwright was a good old girl, big boned, loud voiced,
badly dressed, a dire cook, and terrible at houses, having not had
to bother too hard when she was an army wife. She had tried
valiantly to get on with lan's business colleagues and their wives,
but had much preferred her horsey friends. Every night and every
Sunday in Pikely church, she had prayed that Tony Blair wouldn't
abolish hunting.
Devastated not to be able to have her own children, she felt
humbly privileged to have been able to adopt Emerald and Sophy,
but when Emerald turned out so difficult, she had blamed herself
for being a bad mother. Patience was not, however, deficient in
guts. Having only worked hitherto on charity committees, she
found a job in a local pub. The landlord had felt so sorry for her.
At the age of fifty-eight, she seemed unlikely to raid the till and her
ringing voice would come in useful at closing time.
lan, who had kept going during the move, running it like a military
operation - even the removal vans were his tanks - went to
pieces when he reached London. Sitting for hours, he gazed into
space, twisting his signet ring round and round. Demoralized by
endless interviews which came to nothing, he finally took a job as
a minicab driver, and had started getting fearful headaches, ostensibly
from familiarizing himself with London streets, but actually
because he was drinking heavily.
Sophy was wonderful and helped out with her teacher's wages.
Emerald was hell, bemoaning her lot more than ever. It was OK
for Sophy escaping into the excitement and bustle of the classroom,
but she (Emerald) had nothing to distract her from this
nightmare.
She knew she ought to be pushing for commissions, hawking her
portfolio round galleries. She still hadn't been to see Raymond
Belvedon. But how could she sculpt without her beautiful studio,
and what would Zac, who had dominated her dreams since
October, say when he saw her living in such a grotty flat?

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Matters reached a head on a cold Saturday evening in March, just
before Mothering Sunday. lan Cartwright was gazing unseeingly at
a half-finished Daily Telegraph crossword. His wife Patience was
cooking supper, using a cheap-cut recipe for middle neck with
swedes and parsnips which she had found in the Big Issue and
which was filling the flat with a disgusting smell of stewed sheep.
Sophy, hoping to spoil her dinner by eating her way through a
bar of Toblerone, was writing reports in the sitting room. Her
papers littered the only part of the threadbare Persian carpet
which wasn't covered with dark ugly furniture her parents couldn't
afford to store.
Unashamedly plump, cheerfully referring to herself as Cellulite
City, Sophy had a sweet face, lovely skin, soft blonde ringlets and a
merry heart beating beneath a splendid bosom. She was also a
colossal trimmer. To avoid being duffed up, she always told
the fearsome parents at her rough school that even the most
delinquent of their children were 'real sweethearts doing
brilliandy'.
'Jason has made a real contribution to the class', she was now
writing in her clear round hand about the school dunce.
Jason's bricklayer dad was not the only fadier who after school
had sidled up and asked Sophy for a date.
Sophy cheerfully slagged off Emerald behind her back, but
always gave in to her face to avoid the screaming fits which so
distressed their parents. Now it seemed she was too late, as a quivering
Emerald flung open the sitting-room door, scattering
papers.
'How dare you shrink my black drawstring flares! I was about to
handwash them and you've put them on a hot wash. Now diey're

142
two inches above my ankles. They're the first pair of trousers I've
bought in years, so I could save on tights, and you've gone and
wrecked them.'
'That's enough, darling,' reproved her father, 'Sophy was only
trying to help.'
'You always stick up for her,' Emerald turned on her father,
shouting so loudly she didn't hear the clanking of the ancient lift.
It was Patience, her grey hair on end, her big face red and shiny
who, hoping to escape the storm by putting the rubbish outside,
discovered a man on the doorstep. He was wearing a leather jacket,
a dark grey cashmere polo neck to match his sleek flecked hair,
and those black army trousers which needed such long arms to
reach the pockets. He had a mahogany ski tan, strange unblinking
catlike yellow eyes and smelled of the most delicious aftershave. He
was so good looking, Patience was about to direct him one floor
up to the charming gay actors, who to her delight had asked her if
she'd mind catsitting occasionally. Then the man said in a wonderfully
deep husky voice, 'I guess I've come to the wrong apartment.
I'm looking for Emerald Cartwright.'
'Oh no, you haven't,' cried Patience joyfully, thinking this
ravishing stranger, if anything, would lift Emerald's spirits. 'Come
in, I'm her mother.'
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?

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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.

144
Back in the drawing room, lan and Zac were spikily discussing
England's collapse in the Melbourne Test.
'Stewart's only bat who showed any gumption,' lan 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 lan 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.' lan'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 lan as Emerald, in a silver sequinned
suit and a spring-like cloud ofVioletta, 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.

145
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 river, 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 Barola, 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?'

146
'Says he's not the grumbling generation.'
Unlike his daughter, thought Zac.
«^e 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 lan 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 lan'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.
Tt'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
? 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

147
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.

148
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 twenty-pound 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.
When his widowed mother had married a second time, the
three-year-old Zac had taken his goy stepfather's name of
Anderson. But on leaving home in his late teens, he had changed
his name from Anderson to Ansteig, which means 'ascent' in
Austrian. This was to symbolize his escape from the poverty of his
childhood and the brutality of his stepfather, who drank and beat
up both him and his mother.
Now aged twenty-nine, Zac prowled the world, scouting for rich
American collectors and writing pieces for art magazines. Eternally
questioning like a psychiatrist, he seldom volunteered information
about himself. His tigerish-yellow eyes, wonderful gym- and judo- honed body and deceptive cool made him wildly exciting to
women. Zac, however, was more interested in unravelling his past
and avenging himself on those who'd destroyed it. Hard on the
outside, he refused to admit how much he missed the warmth and
sympathetic closeness of the Jewish community he'd left behind in
New York. When he allowed himself, he could be kind and wryly
funny, but at heart he was angry and desolate, identifying with
Schubert's Wanderer. 'Wherever I am, happiness is not.'

149
Next day, as promised, Zac applied for a form from the Adoption
Contact Register in Southport. This was where parents who'd given
children up for adoption left their names and addresses, in the
hope that if these children came searching for them, they would
know they'd receive a warm welcome.
'If both sides register,' explained Zac, 'a reunion after
counselling can be arranged.'
'Can I give your Lancaster Gate address?' asked Emerald as she
filled in the form. 'I don't want Mummy and Daddy to know what
I'm up to.'
'I'm going away,' said Zac.
'You can't leave me! At least let me stay in the flat and keep it
nice for you, or give me a key in case a letter arrives.'
'No,' said Zac firmly. 'The form'll take time to process, you won't
hear from them for a few weeks, I'll be back by then.'
Although she was livid with Zac for abandoning her. Emerald
couldn't resist working herself up into a fever of excitement.
'Imagine my real mother thinking of me every birthday and
Christmas and at the beginning of every term. Every day she must
wonder if I've met Mr Right.' Emerald looked up under her lashes
at Zac. 'A woman on LBC yesterday said not a day passed, since her
daughter was eighteen and officially allowed to search for her, that
she didn't expect a knock on the door, or the telephone to ring
and a voice to say, "Hi Mum".'
Instead, three weeks later at the beginning of April, a kind letter
arrived from Southport, saying they regretted that no Anthea
Rookhope had registered but if, and when, she did she would find
Emerald's, or rather Charlene's, name waiting for her.
Emerald, with predictable mood swings, had right up to the last

150
moment been wondering whether she really wanted to meet her
birth mother. Denied the opportunity, she was shattered. Zac, back
from America, was wonderfully reassuring and patient. The
Adoption Contact Register wasn't widely publicized, he kept
telling her. Emerald's birth mother probably didn't know it
existed.
'You must remember, times were very different when you were
born. Young moms gave up their babies expecting never to see or
hear from them again. They were forced to make a fresh start.
Often they moved abroad to start a new life.'
'I ought to have counselling,' wailed Emerald, 'I need a support
group.'
'You've got me,' said Zac.

The next step in the search was to go to the Public Record Office
near the Angel, Islington.
'All marriages and births are listed there in year and alphabetical
order,' Zac told Emerald. 'You've seen your original birth
certificate, which told you your mom worked in a gallery. So this
time, try looking for her marriage certificate. Start from July 1973,
when she gave you up for adoption, and troll through the relevant
volumes till you come to Rookhope, Anthea. If she was a quarter
as pretty as you, she'll have been snapped up quickly, and it
shouldn't take long.
'This entry,' he continued, 'will give you the date and place
where she married and the name of her husband. Then you can
apply for the marriage certificate, which will give an address you
can follow up, and the husband's profession. If he's a lawyer or a
doctor, it'll be easy to trace him. Once you know your birth mom's
married name you can also check through the births while you're
there and find out if you've got any siblings.'
'It all sounds fearfully complicated,' grumbled Emerald, 'I'll
never understand it, unless you come with me.'
'I'm busy, Moaner Lisa,' said Zac firmly, 'you can do it yourself.'
Sulkily, Emerald took a bus to the Angel. How dare Zac accuse
her of moaning? She wouldn't if he made love to her more often
and allowed her to stay over in his flat which he kept so private.
It was a very warm spring afternoon, daffodils nodded approval
in the parks, blossom danced in all the squares, but Emerald's
teeth were chattering frantically as she arrived at the Public Record
Office. She allowed the men on the door to search her handbag,
but ignored the sign telling her to switch off her mobile. In a big
light room, below huge signs saying 'Deaths', 'Births', 'Marriages',
^th 'Adoptions', typically, side-lined round the corner, were

151
shelves and shelves filled with huge leather-bound books.
Everything - walls, carpets, a mass of potted plants, big armchairs
- was green; that traditionally restful colour to soothe those
making earth-shattering discoveries.
Green linoleum even covered the reading table on which
Emerald laid the big sap-green book which said: 'Marriages
registered in England and Wales in the months August,
September, October 1973' in gold lettering on the spine. Inside
the names had been listed on an old-fashioned typewriter, with the
occasional correction in ink.
'Rainsworth, Ralph, Ramm,' read Emerald, 'Reed, Rees,
Roberts, Rookes,' but no Rookhope. Her hands were clammy and
trembling, as she moved to the next volume, and then the next still
with no luck.
Perhaps art students of the future would one day come here to
look up her marriage to Zac: Sculptor and Wanderer, thought
Emerald dreamily as she took down February to May 1974. She
adored Zac so much, she'd happily convert to Judaism. Next door
a man with a beard was purposefully working his way through a
volume of recent births. Perhaps his wife had been up to no
good.
'Ramsey, Ralton, Reading, Rollinson,' read Emerald, then
jumped as the hallowed silence was broken by desperate weeping.
'My mother confessed on her deathbed that in 1949 she gave up
a daughter for adoption,' a distraught grey-haired woman was
telling two kindly officials over at the reception desk. 'Her dying
wish was that this child should know how loved she'd been,' she
sobbed. 'The social workers in Wales know where she is, but they
won't tell me.'
'That's a bloody disgrace.' Dropping February to May with a
crash, Emerald rushed across the room. 'You get a lawyer onto it
at once,' she said, putting her arm round the woman's heaving
shoulders.
'She's my sister,' cried the woman. 'Now that Mother's passed
away, she's the only family I've got.'
It was a few seconds before Emerald realized the disapproval on
the faces of the kindly officials was not entirely directed at Welsh
social workers, and that her mobile was ringing.
'So sorry,' she mumbled, then seeing callon the blank screen of
her mobile, which must be the unlisted Zac ringing, she scuttled
off past a sign saying 'Marine and Consular Births' to answer it.
'You can stop hunting, baby,' said a deep jubilant voice, 'I've
found your mom.'
'Omigod, where is she?'

152
'Get in a taxi, I'll tell you.'
'I haven't any money.'
'I'll pay the other end.'
'Where are you?'
It was the first time he'd given her his Lancaster Gate address.
'Don't forget to get yourself a lawyer,' Emerald yelled to the
distraught grey-haired woman as she ran out into the sunshine.

Emerald felt she'd ascended to Heaven as she stepped out of the
lift into such a beautiful penthouse flat. Zac was waiting with a
bottle ofPouilly-Fume.
'Who is she? Tell me, tell me.'
For a minute Zac teased her like the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet.
First he couldn't find the corkscrew, then there were smears on the
glasses. Then he laughed.
'You are not going to believe this. Adrian Campbell-Black called
me at lunchtime wanting info on Galena Borochova.'
'What's she got to do with it? She's not my mother. For Christ's
sake, Zac.'
'I know, but I knew she was married to Raymond Belvedon, so I
picked up Who's Who to find out the year she died, and guess who
was his second wife?'
'Who, who?'
'Anthea Rookhope.'
Emerald sat down very suddenly on a black leather sofa.
'I am certain,' Zac told her, 'that your mom is living in
Limesbridge, one of the prettiest villages in the Cotswolds, and she
is now Anthea Belvedon, the wife of Sir Raymond Belvedon.'
'I don't believe it!' screamed Emerald. 'It must be fate. And I
even spoke to Raymond, my real father, at Rupert Campbell-
Black's. He's such a darling. And, my God, that means Jonathan
and Sienna Belvedon are my brother and sister. Christ! I mean they
are the two great monster superbrats of the art world. Jonathan is
so gorgeous, students stretch his canvasses for nothing, he's got a
loft off Hoxton Square and a barn in the country. Hardly starving
in a garret and Sienna was shortlisted for the Turner, no wonder
I'm so arty. What a lovely man to have as my father, if he's a Sir
does that make me an Hon.?'
Emerald was hysterical with excitement, flying round the room
like a fairy, knocking back gulps of wine, facts spilling out of her
like a fax machine. Zac brought her down to earth.
'Anthea's your mother, but I don't figure Raymond's your pop.
1 we been digging around. It seems Anthea went to work at the
Belvedon in the early seventies. Raymond was married to

153
Borochova then, who died in October 1973. Anthea didn't marry
Raymond until May 1974, a quiet register office wedding, ten
months after you were born.'
Zac chucked a pile of photostats down on the table.
'So the four elder Belvedon kids,' he continued, 'probably
aren't your blood relatives, but you've got a young half-brother and
-sister, Dicky and Dora. It's a bit blurred on that stat, but they must
be about eight and awfully cute. Also I bought this round the
corner.'
It was a feature on Anthea in April's Good Housekeeping. 'Little
woman, good wife', said the headline.
'Omigod, I recognize her.' Emerald's tears spattered the pages
as she pored over the pictures, frantic for likenesses. 'Of course,
Lady Belvedon! She's always in Hello and Tatler. God, she's pretty,
and tiny like me, look how much smaller she is than Raymond. I
wonder who my father was. If Raymond had been my dad, they'd
surely have gone to court and got me back. Shall we drive down
and give her the thrill other life?'
Then, catching a glimpse of her reflection in a huge mirror,
Emerald decided she first needed a haircut. Far down below, she
could see the crimson blur on the trees in Hyde Park turning to
buff and green. As an omen, the clouds suddenly stopped going
east, and surged westwards towards Limesbridge.
'I guess we ought to take things slowly,' said Zac, topping up
Emerald's glass. 'I know it's hard, but let Anthea get used to the
idea.'
'But she'll be over the moon.'
Zac shook his head.
'It was only in 1976 that adopted kids were given the right to have
access to their records. You were born in 1973, that puts Anthea in
the frame of women who would never expect to be contacted. She
may not have told Raymond about you.'
'In a happy marriage, that's lasted nearly twenty-five years?'
scoffed Emerald, who was back studying the Good Housekeeping
photographs. 'Of course he must know about me.'
In the end Zac agreed to write Anthea a private and confidential
letter.
'I'll make it kind of neutral. Just saying "I know of a young
woman called Charlene Rookhope, who was born on 7 July 1973,
who thinks she might be related to you. It may not be your branch
of the family, but if it is, she'd love to get in touch." I'll give your
mobile as a contact number. If she calls at an awkward moment,
you can always say you'll call her back.'
Emerald insisted they post the letter straight away, kissing the

154
envelope before she popped it in the pillar box, then flinging
herself into Zac's arms.
'You are so brilliant. Let's go back and go to bed to celebrate.'
Fucking Emerald, reflected Zac, as Emerald drifted off to sleep
beside him, was rather like cycling in the Rockies: wonderful views,
but you had to do all the work yourself.

Emerald was still in raging high spirits when she later floated back
to Shepherd's Bush. Sophy, who was eating baked beans and
reading Bridget Jones's Diary, was amazed to see her sister so
cheerful. After their parents had gone to bed, Patience exhausted,
lan plastered, Emerald told Sophy about tracking down Anthea.
Sophy was appalled and begged Emerald to come clean.
'Daddy and particularly Mummy will want to support you
through this, they'll be gutted if they're left in the dark.'
'Zac's helping me, that's all I need,' said Emerald defensively.
'Let me find my mother in my own way, then I'll tell them. They'll
be happy if I'm happy. I need to discover my roots.'
'Whenever I discover mine, I take them straight to the colourist.'
'Why d'you always make stupid jokes, just like Zac?' replied
Emerald through gritted teeth. 'I need to find my real mother.'
'Bollocks!' Sophy lost her temper. 'Your real mother was
Mummy who fed, clothed, and looked after you when you were ill,
and put up with your tantrums.'
'Don't you have any desire to find your family?' demanded
Emerald.
'I don't need another family,' snapped Sophy, 'I've got a
perfectly good one already.'

Emerald, who expected Anthea to be on the telephone next
morning, or at least on the doorstep by midday, rushed out first
thing to have her hair done, then spent the afternoon trying on
different clothes to wear to meet her new mother.
But as the days passed with no reaction, she became increasingly
uptight. Zac's big hands had to do a lot of soothing, massaging oil
into her tense tiny body, lighting candles round the scented
double bath, bringing her to orgasm to make sure -just in case
Anthea got in touch the following day - that she got her nine
hours' beauty sleep. Meanwhile, he paced the floorboards next
door.
Despite this solicitude. Emerald's mood swings became increasingly
extreme.
'It was your idea to get in touch with her in the first place,' she
would storm, then, two minutes later: 'Of course I can handle any

155
response. All I want from Anthea is information, who my father is,
what medical problems she had. Naturally, I'll respect her desire
for privacy.'
But alas, the course of maternal love never runs smooth.
Anthea neither replied to Zac's letter nor telephoned. By the
end of a fortnight, Emerald was in a frenzy of disappointment,
snatching at her mobile.
'It's worse than waiting for you to ring,' she raged at Zac, who
sat down and wrote a second letter: 'Your daughter, Charlene,
would like to meet with you. You will be very proud of her.' He
signed himself Daniel Abelman.
When there was no answer to this and April moved into May, he
winkled Raymond's ex-directory number out of a fellow art correspondent,
and called Foxes Court. A furious Anthea hung up on
him. Next day, a recorded delivery arrived with a Limesbridge postmark.
Inside was a brief letter.

Dear Mr Abelman,
I gave Charlene up for adoption more than twenty-five
years ago, and have now closed the book. Your getting in
touch has unleashed memories of an extremely traumatic
time in my life that were buried long since. I wish Charlene
well but have no desire to see her. If she gets in touch with
me again, I shall have no option but to seek the advice of
my solicitors.

Anthea's handwriting, Zac decided, was very shaky.
'She clearly hasn't told Sir Raymond or the rest of the family.'
'I cannot believe it,' whispered a devastated Emerald. 'This isn't
a can of worms, it's a can of adders, all hissing out of Pandora's
Box. Anthea rejected me, giving me up as a baby, now she's kicking
me in the teeth a second time.
'We should have approached her through social workers,' she
turned on Zac furiously, 'then she wouldn't be worried about
blackmail or fraud. She probably thinks we're a couple of con
artists, particularly with you signing yourself "Abelman".'
Her hysteria was rising so rapidly that Zac was tempted to hit her,
or throw her out, but being a journalist he wanted to know the end
of the story.
'We are not giving up so easily.'

Zac had also noticed a paragraph in Oo-ah! magazine, whose circulation
was creeping up on that of Hello and OK, announcing that
Sir Raymond and Lady Belvedon were giving a big party in late

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May, to celebrate Raymond's seventy-fifth birthday. They were also
intending to reaffirm their marriage vows in a silver wedding
ceremony in St James, Limesbridge, beforehand. No wonder
Anthea didn't want her little pre-marital lapse popping out of the
woodwork at a time like this.
'You and I are getting into Foxes Court another way,' Zac told
Emerald.
'I'm not sure I want to after that horrible letter.'
'Sure you do. Have you still got that card Raymond gave you?'
'I lost it.'
'Doesn't matter.'
Zac, to Emerald's horror, proceeded to ring up the Belvedon
and made an appointment for her to show Raymond her portfolio
at twelve-thirty the following Tuesday.
'But I haven't done any proper work for months.'
'Time you did,' said Zac. 'Get your ass into gear.'
'Can I draw you over the weekend?' which would at least give her
more time with him.
'Only if I have the test match on.'

One beautiful drawing brought Emerald's confidence back. At
college, her party trick had been to take a piece of clay and sculpt
someone's head in two hours.
'I'm going to try this on Raymond.'
'Your idol will have a head of clay,' said Zac.

157
Jupiter Belvedon had abandoned a career as a sculptor and joined
his father in the gallery because he realized his brothers and sister
had much more talent. Nor did Jupiter have Raymond or David's
eye, but he had excellent business sense and was a genius at
hanging and lighting pictures. He was also driven crackers by his
father's kind heart and the time he wasted giving free advice.
Tall, fine featured, too thin both in face and body, Jupiter
looked effete, but a passer-by who'd tried to steal a Caravaggio
from the gallery had been hit halfway down Cork Street. A control-
freak, Jupiter loved bashing things into shape. He utterly
dominated Hanna, his stunning blonde wife. He had plans to open
a satellite gallery in the East End, concentrating on contemporary
artists, but his real ambition was to oust William Hague and totally
resculpt the Tory Party and later the country.
On the morning of Emerald's appointment, Jupiter was not in
carnival mood. Nor for that matter was Emerald. As the taxi bowled
down Bond Street, then turned left and left again into Cork Street,
she reflected how often, nearly twenty-seven years ago, her real
mother must have walked the same way. There was the pretty
Regency terraced house with the green-and-white-striped awning
and a Casey Andrews in the window. Here Anthea must have come
with love in her heart, thought Emerald as, quaking with nerves,
she lugged her folding table, her tools, her lump of clay and her
portfolio through a glass-fronted door flanked by two bay trees.
She found the gallery in disarray. Casey Andrews' s huge oils were
coming down, Daisy France-Lynch's delicate portraits were going
up, canvasses were stacked against every wall.
I'm going to faint, thought Emerald in panic, but I can't do a runner with all this stuff.

158
'Yes?' A tall haughty-looking man, probably in his late thirties,
and very like the Duke of Wellington painted by Thomas
Lawrence, shot out of the inside office.
'I've come to see Sir Raymond Belvedon.'
'Well you can't,' snapped Jupiter.
Raymond had just buggered off to do a television programme
he'd forgotten clean about. Tamzin, their dozy assistant, was
having a sickie, probably a hangover, and Jupiter had been left
manning the gallery. In five minutes he was expecting a major
client, an American arms-dealer called Si Greenbridge. Jupiter was
about to lock up and take him to lunch.
He was therefore extremely unfriendly, telling Emerald to buzz
off and come back and see his doddering old father another day.
Enraged, Emerald tried to talk her way in. This austere, handsome
crosspatch might after all be her first blood relation.
Just let me show you my portfolio,' she pleaded, opening a huge
shiny black book, almost as big as herself.
Jupiter noted glowing testimonials from Chelsea College of Art
and Brighton College, both admittedly from men, and that her
heads were astonishingly good. There was however no market for
heads, unless they were of someone important.
She was also astonishingly pretty, and with her short upper lip,
crazed eyes and rippling dark hair, a dead ringer for Rossetti's
Pandora.
'I can't give you any more time,' he said curtly. 'The client
coming here any second has walls which need pictures. If I can get
inside his head for ten minutes, I can sell them to him, but he's got
so much else to occupy his mind, it's taken me three months to pin
him down today.'
Jupiter would never have bothered with these explanations if the
girl hadn't been so attractive. Just for a second Emerald's eyes
hardened: a tantrum hovering.
My first bloody relation, she thought.
'Go on, beat it,' said Jupiter.
But as he opened the glass door, about to dump her stuff
outside, the telephone rang. Keeping his eyes on her, in case she
swiped a picture, he retreated to the reception desk.
'Belvedon Gallery. It's Jupiter here.' Not by a flicker as he
flipped through some Polaroids did he show how furious he was.
'Sure. I understand. Traffic's been awful all day. Shall we make
another appointment? OK, you call me when you've got a moment.
^uck, fuck, fuck, fuck,' said Jupiter, wondering if the fucks had
started before he'd hung up. He didn't care.
'He cancelled?' asked Emerald.

159
Jupiter nodded. 'He got away.'
'You were right to show him you didn't give a stuff, he'll ring
again.'
'With half the dealers in the world trailing their wares?' sighed
Jupiter. 'Si Greenbridge is so newly crazy about art, he's slinging
out all his racehorses so he can hang pictures in their boxes.'
'I'm very sorry.'
Emerald was now ensconced on the pale grey velvet sofa,
showing off her pretty legs beneath a tight leather mini. Jupiter
had only had black coffee for breakfast. An enticing smell of Irish
stew drifted over from Mulligan's oyster bar, where he'd booked a
table for himself and Si.
'Would you like some lunch?' he was amazed to hear himself
saying.
'Have you got time?'
'I have now.'
'I'd rather sculpt your head.'
'What?'
'It'll only take a couple of hours, I promise you. I was going to
do your father anyway.'

In no time at all, Emerald had tied back her hair with a violet silk
scarf, set up her folding table in the back office, and on a revolving
podium placed a lump of clay, already formed into a head with
rough features. On a side table was more clay in a white pie dish
and her tools: knives, pointed sticks and sticks with wire loops on
the end like fairy dog-catchers. Jupiter meanwhile had opened a
bottle of red, locked the outside door and put on the answering
machine.
'Could you possibly keep your face still and not talk too much,'
begged Emerald, 'just to begin with, so I can see what's coming
out.'
This man is perhaps my brother, she thought as she gazed into
his cool fern-green eyes as if into a mirror. He had the complex,
ascetic, ruthless face of a Robespierre or a young Italian cardinal
on the make in fifteenth-century Rome. Unable to stop herself, she
reached out like a blind man and ran a trembling hand over his
features. Jupiter flinched. Perhaps she was a stalker or a nutter. She
was deathly pale now.
'I'm sorry.' Emerald blushed. 'It helps me to feel the faces I'm
sculpting.' She ran a finger down the long, gritted curve of his jaw.
'I want my work to be touched as well as looked at.'
They both jumped as the telephone rang. It was Casey Andrews
fulminating away on the machine like one of the giants in The Ring.

160
Fasev's latest reviews and sales had not been as good as hoped.
'All art correspondents write about these days is the stratosnheric
price of Impressionists and my brother Jonathan's sex life,'
grumbled Jupiter.
Sitting opposite him. Emerald applied wooden callipers to
Tupiter's temples, to the sides of his aquiline nose, to the distance
from brushed eyebrow to smooth hairline, from nose to ears, ears
to mouth, then transferred each measurement to the lump of clay.
The Guardianhad described him as 'thin lipped' last week. Jupiter
tried to make his mouth fuller.
'Wonderful eyes, wonderful strong face,' murmured Emerald.
'So nice to sculpt someone older,' then, with a smile: 'I'm so used
to doing boring students.'
Jupiter was amazed by her total concentration. For the first time
in years, he looked at someone else's face for more than two
minutes. Emerald's green eyes, practically hidden by narrowed
feathery dark lashes, looked through him and at him, flickering
constantly back to the head as she modelled and gouged, adding
then removing little sausages of clay.
Her slightly parted black knees were an inch away from his.
The E set with emeralds, practically the only piece of Cartwright
jewellery unpawned, rose and fell on her cashmere bosom. As she
worked she told him about the disaster that had befallen her family
and how her father had been cruelly ousted by a boardroom coup.
Jupiter wryly wished he could get shot of Raymond as easily. As
Emerald crawled round on the carpet to catch different views of
him, he was amazed to find himself offering to introduce her to
other dealers and clients. Pouring himself another glass of wine,
he tried to persuade her to join him, but she still would only accept
water.
'Do you mind coming a bit nearer?'
Jupiter edged his chair forward, their knees almost touching. He
could smell violets and the sweetness of her breath. The milky
green of her jersey was the colour of the dewy lawn at Limesbridge.
To start with he had kept glancing impatiently at his watch, but
now he wanted time to go slower and slower, fascinated to see the
head emerging more human than himself. That man had mortgage
problems, and shouldn't have bought a big house in Chester
Terrace to impress the Tory Party. That man needed to nail Si
weenbridge, curb his father's excesses and sell more than David
^ulborough.
Jupiter loved his wife Hanna, but he was suddenly filled with lust
tor this girl with her black legs apart, the soft curve of her breast
"id her darting eyes.

161
'You're very good at keeping still.' She smiled at him adorably,
head on one side. 'Apparently the person with the stillest face
is the Duke of Edinburgh. I haven't made your eyes deep set
enough.'

Telephone messages for Raymond from Greyhound Rescue, from
television producers and newspapers, from the NSPCC wanting
him to open a fete, from artists wanting money, piled up on the
machine.
Emerald was now doingjupiter's thick dark locks - his one vanity
- applying clay in a frenzy. The sculpture took on even more reality
with his hair. Emerald's eyes were darting quicker and quicker, her
little hands and nails burnt umber like his Aunt Lily's after
gardening.
I've met this girl before, he thought. Next moment she leant
back, stretching and flexing her aching fingers and shoulders.
'OK. Thanks awfully.'
It was a few moments before they realized the bell was ringing
insistently accompanied with banging. Outside was Kevin Coley, a
petfood billionaire, whom the Belvedons nicknamed Mr Ditherer,
because of his infuriating habit of buying paintings after a good
lunch and changing his mind next day.
Kevin caught sight of Jupiter's head. 'Bloody hell, who did that?
Bloody fantastic.'
'I did,' said Emerald.
To Jupiter's outrage, David Pulborough from his gallery
opposite sidled in in Kevin's wake. Knowing Jupiter couldn't chuck
him out in front of a client, he instantly started chatting up
Emerald.
'You've really caught the old devil, captured all the arrogance
and ice of the grand master. Flattered him, of course, Jupey's more
lined and his eyes are closer together.'
Emerald looked at the head, constantly smoothing the texture.
'It needs more work.'
'Give us a drink, Jupey,' said Kevin, 'I've dropped in to have a
butcher's at Daisy France-Lynch's new stuff. Thinking of commissioning
her to paint our Cuddles and the wife in the orangery.'
'Daisy France-Lynch is so passe,' drawled David, who never said
anything nice about other dealers' pictures, 'her work's far too
pretty for today's look.'
'Probably one of the reasons she sells out before every exhibition
opens,' snapped Jupiter.
'I sold a Sickert to the National Gallery this morning,' boasted
David as he flipped through Emerald's portfolio. 'These are very

162
(rood. You should get some postcards printed or a poster of that
one. You must give me your card.'
The too,' added Kevin, who was admiring one of Daisy FranceLvnch's
grinning English setters. 'Wonder how that would work on
a petfood can?'
'We've met before. That's a nice big girl . . .' David paused to
admire a nude of Sophy. 'At Rupert Campbell-Black's open day. I
never forget a face.' Then, gazing deep into Emerald's eyes, 'When
you walked past me I thought:

'She was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament.'

'That is so beautiful,' sighed a blushing Emerald.
Having taken Polaroid photographs of Jupiter from all angles,
she was now, because she was poor, gathering up all the discarded
pieces of clay to use again. It was so nice to be chatted up and
praised by such an attractive man. Emerald liked David's warm
dark eyes and, not being tall, he didn't dwarf her.
'Lovely name. Emerald Cartwright.' He examined the green
card she handed him. 'You are so promotable, darling.'
Stepping out of the back office, David noticed his assistant
waving frantically from across the road. One of his best clients, also
flushed from a good lunch, had just rolled up.
'I'll call you,' David told Emerald, and shot back to the
Pulborough, shortly to be followed by Kevin Coley, saying he'd
almost certainly buy the drawing of the English setter.
'Put a red spot on it, Jupey, Daisy could make a fortune if we
used it commercially. Can I have one of your cards too?' he asked
Emerald.
Shaking with rage, Jupiter poured himself and Emerald glasses
of wine, and asked her if she were hungry. Emerald looked at him
from under her lashes: 'Could I have another half an hour on the
head?'
Sitting in position again, Jupiter failed to control his anger.
'How dare fucking David Pulborough swan in here when he's
just poached my brother Jonathan and signed him up for an exhibition
in the autumn?'
Has he?' asked Emerald in amazement. 'That's atrocious.'
Broke my father's heart. Jonathan's always been his favourite
child,' said Jupiter bitterly. 'David'11 make a fortune if he can get
any work out of him. Dad never managed to. Jonathan won't like

163
it. I concede work suffers if you're too generous on the advance
front, but at least he got paid when we represented him. David's
not only tight, he isn't straight.'
Even more upsetting, without his brother as an incentive, all
Jonathan's wild Young British Artist friends would no longer be so
keen to show their work at Jupiter's proposed East End gallery.
'That's terribly disloyal of Jonathan,' said Emerald crossly and
hypocritically, 'family should always come first.'
She was on the floor again, her hair escaping from its violet scarf.
As she looked up at his chin and jawline, a smudge of clay
enhanced her flawless face like a beauty spot. Jupiter was appalled
how much he wanted to rip off her clothes.
'Have you got a boyfriend?'
'Sort of.' Emerald waved a pointed stick at the last drawing in
her still-open portfolio.
'What nationality is he?' asked Jupiter.
'American Jewish, originally from Vienna.'
'Great face.'
Emerald shrugged: 'I suppose so. He disappears for weeks on
end, never says he loves me, I'm not sure of him.'
Jupiter sighed and said he wasn't at all sure of his wild sister
Sienna and his curmudgeonly brother Alizarin, who had once
painted so brilliantly but now exhausted himself producing
grotesque unsellable rubbish.
'Alizarin's pictures should be stuck on the ceiling at the
dentist's, to show people how much fun it is having one's teeth
drilled.'
Emerald giggled. Such had been her excitement at sculpting
Jupiter, she was astounded that she had clean forgotten her
original mission.
'How does your mother cope with such a large family?' she asked
innocently.
Jupiter, whose last memory of Galena was other being so drunk,
she had had to be locked in Raymond's Bentley during a Bagley
Hall Speech Day, said that his mother was dead.
'We've got a stepmother.'
'Is she nice?' Emerald nearly sliced off Jupiter's clay eyebrow,
her hand was suddenly shaking so much.
'Wonderful,' said Jupiter with unusual warmth. 'She's held our
family together despite Alizarin and Sienna giving her so much
aggro. She and I have always got on and she's great with Dad, who's
an old drama queen who needs keeping in check, but she always does it nicely.'
Jupiter's flat tummy gave a great rumble, as he added, 'Anthea

164
came to this gallery at eighteen, as a temp, and was so pretty the
clients flocked. Dad was her first lover. She picked up the pieces
after our mother died.'
Maybe Raymond was her father. Emerald was enchanted. She
felt so grateful to Jupiter for being sweet about Anthea.

By three-thirty, more punters were trickling in, Jupiter had to get
down to hanging Daisy's pictures and Emerald had nearly finished
his head. Jupiter was inwardly ecstatic, in a situation of which every
dealer dreams: finding a brilliant young artist whom no-one is yet
on to, who can still be bought cheap - and who also he wants to
fuck insensible. But all he said was: 'It's coming on nicely. Needs
another sitting.'
In the past Jupiter had been accused of giving unimaginative
presents. Emerald's head, he decided, would be the perfect silver
wedding present for his father and Anthea.
As Emerald sprayed the head with water and wrapped it in
plastic, Jupiter told her about the party. There would be lots of
important dealers and clients there. He would see Emerald and
her boyfriend got an invite.
Quite forgetting he needed a squeaky-clean image if he were to
oust William Hague and take over the Tory Party, Jupiter suggested
Emerald left the head behind and finished it off tomorrow
evening.
'I'll buy you dinner and we can discuss your career.'
It was crucial, he told himself in justification, that he signed her
up before David Pulborough got his grubby hands on her.

'Limesbridge here I come,' murmured Emerald in ecstasy as he
put her into a taxi. 'One gorgeous older brother down and two to
go.'
But as they passed the Ritz, she had to jump out and dive into
the Ladies, where she threw up and up and up; then she cried her
heart out all the way home from shock and nervous tension.

165
Two nights later. Emerald finished Jupiter's head. Afterwards she
dined with him at Langan's and was so anxious to learn more
about Anthea and the Belvedons that for once she didn't talk
obsessively about herself, except to thank Jupiter when he
promised to help her with her career. Jupiter misconstrued her
frantic dive into a taxi afterwards as an attempt to prevent him
jumping on her, when it was only to stop him coming home with
her and discovering in what a squalid area she lived. This in no way
diminished his lust. Next day Emerald fired the head, leaving it in
the kiln for a day, filling in the cracks with car body filler and
painting them over, before sending it round to the Belvedon in a
taxi.

As the day of the silver wedding party approached, she became
more and more histrionic, picking fights, tidying frenziedly,
driving Zac further into himself.
'Jupiter'11 loathe me for tricking him,' she shouted over the
Dyson as she yet again cleaned Zac's flat, 'and I really like him.
Anthea may look like a fairy princess, but underneath she's probably
more like the wicked stepmother in Snow White. She'll reject
me even more when she realizes we've wormed our way in. I don't
know if I'm Charlene or Emerald, or Belvedon or Cartwright or
Rookhope. Will I get swallowed up in a big family who are "careless
with other people's lives"? Will I lose Mum, Dad and Sophy,
who've been good to me in their bumbling way?'
Zac yawned, turned the page of The Art Newspaper and reached
for his bourbon and soda.
'For Christ's sake, turn that fucking thing off, you'll wear out the

166
carpet,' he yelled over the din. 'You and Anthea are like push you,
null me. The person doing the searching agonizes about rejection,
the person sought out feels invaded and unable to control events.
Anthea'll be fine once she sees you.'
'How d'you know?' Furiously Emerald banged the hoover
against the skirting board. 'What's in it for you anyway? You just
want to get inside the Belvedon house, to do a number on all those
artists and clients.'
'What the fuck are you talking about?'
'There must be some reason you're forcing me to do this.'
For a second, Zac's face was as blank as the Rothko on the wall
behind him, then he drained his drink and got to his feet.
'Where are you going?'
'Out - I've had you up to here.'
'You can't leave me, I need to work this through, you're the only
person I can talk to. Sophy's so disapproving. I haven't dared tell
her we're crashing Anthea's party. Fucking hoover. Fuse must have
blown.'
But Zac had pulled out the plug and walked out of the flat slamming
the door.
What was he really up to? wondered Emerald. He'd retreat for
hours into his office, endlessly surfing the net, sifting through catalogues
and auction lists, gabbling away on the telephone in French,
German, Italian and even Russian. He went out a lot; he disappeared
to the gym, working out his rage on those huge machines.
He wore wonderful designer clothes, but always in blacks, greys or
muted umbers as befitting a creature of the night. He devoured
German novels and watched cricket on television, but he never
seemed to do any writing. The flat was filled with beautiful abstract
sculpture and pictures, but it bore no stamp of Zac's personality-
she didn't even know if he owned it.
When he came back three hours later, Zac caught her going
through his briefcase and really yelled at her.
'Don't ever do that again.'
'Who's that woman?'
'My mother, for God's sake.'
'She's very beautiful, but at least you were brought up by your
own mother. Hearing how lovely Anthea is from Jupiter makes me
realize what I've missed.'
As she became more uncertain of Zac, the more demands she
made on him. She was still fretting two days before the party over
what she was going to give Raymond and Anthea as a present.
'Thirty pieces of silver,' said Zac.

167
'Don't be stupid and I must have something new to wear. I can't
face Anthea unless I feel really good. That's the trouble with being
tiny, you can't buy things off the peg, skirts flap on the ground,
shirts are like shift dresses. I'll never find anything to fit unless I go
to a top designer.'
As she grabbed Zac's empty glass, Zac grabbed it back again.
'I might want another bourbon.'
'Jupiter's promised to give me a thousand pounds for that head,'
pleaded Emerald. 'Will you lend it to me?'
In the end Zac gave her three hundred pounds for a present and
a dress.
'It won't be enough, you come with me and see.'
'I'm going to Lord's,' snapped Zac.

Sulkily Emerald set off, and after wandering up and down Bond
Street, she settled for a silver candle-snuffer from Tiffany's and a
beautiful card. Pouring rain, which kinked her hair, made her even
more bad tempered. Moving on to Knightsbridge, she found
nothing that fitted or suited her at Harvey Nichols or Harrods, so
she drifted towards Joseph - and there it was, on the rail, a dress
in clinging chiffon, flower-patterned in green, crimson and
Venetian red, with a frilly neckline and a knee-length skirt. It
looked infinitely more ravishing on, demure yet seductive, and
picking up the green of Emerald's eyes, with the crimsons and reds
showing off her white skin. What would Charlene Rookhope have
done if she needed a beautiful dress?
Emerald had never shoplifted before, but she was in such a
turmoil and perhaps wanted to jolt Zac, who'd become increasingly
withdrawn, into a reaction.
Sliding the chiffon dress into the Tiffany bag alongside the silver
candle-snuffer, she still had enough cash to buy one of Joseph's
sleeveless orange T-shirts and leave change over. It was so easy.
In seconds she was out into the pouring rain and into the womb- like safety of a taxi. That was the sort of wild prank Sienna Belvedon
would have pulled off, she thought excitedly, as she transferred the
chiffon dress to the Joseph bag. Back at the flat, she was unnerved
to find cricket rained off, and Zac already home watching a video
of one of Raymond's programmes.
'How d'you get on?' he asked, switching down the sound.
'Really well,' said Emerald, brandishing the candle-snuffer.
'Such a romantic idea - dousing the flickering lights before a
night of passion. Oh look, there's my darling stepfather. Do turn
it up.'
Raymond, in a pale yellow tie and a miraculously cut pinstripe

168
suit was drifting round the National Gallery followed by a languid-
looking greyhound.
'Raphael wasn't just a miraculous artist,' he was telling the
camera confidingly, 'he also had such a sweet and generous nature
that, according to Vasari, the great Renaissance art historian, not
only was he honoured by men, but even by the very animals, who
would constantly follow his steps and always love him.' Raymond
paused to put a fond hand on the greyhound's striped head.
'Now that, in a not particularly animal-loving country, is a huge
recommendation.'
'Raphael would have got on with my mother,' said Emerald,
edging towards the bedroom as the camera panned in on the
proud bay horse leading Raphael's Procession to Calvary.
But Zac had caught sight of the Joseph bag.
'What else did you buy?'
Flustered, Emerald muttered that she'd got a dress and T-shirt
cheap in ajoseph sale, and fled next door. Alas, Zac the journalist
rangjoseph. Discovering there was no sale on, he stalked into the
bedroom and slapped Emerald really hard across the face.
'Thou shalt not steal, for Chrissake! Don't ever do that again,
you stupid bitch. You could so easily have been caught. What would
have happened if you'd been photographed by Oo-ah! wearing it
at the silver wedding party?'
Grabbing the dress and his wallet, he was off once again,
slamming the door behind him. Emerald was still sobbing on the
sofa when he returned long after midnight. The rain had turned
the grey flecks as black as the rest of his hair; his face was wet and
shiny. He chucked ajoseph bag at her. Inside was the dress.
'How did you fiddle it?' stammered Emerald.
'Said you picked it up by mistake,' said Zac acidly, 'and eyed up
the assistant. She was so touched by my honesty, she let me have it
at a discount.'
'Oh God, I'm so sorry.' Emerald hung her head. 'I've never
stolen anything before.'
'Except hearts.' Zac'sface softened. 'C'mon, honey, come here.'
Emerald shot across the room into the warmth and security of his
arms. This was really the only home she wanted.
'I'm sorry I hit you,' muttered Zac. 'We're both uptight, but
we're so nearly there. Let's go to bed.'
Emerald came almost immediately.
I love you, Zac,' she whispered and within seconds was
asleep.
Zac wandered into the bathroom, not bothering to switch on
w^ light. The marble basin, magnifying mirror, silver-backed

169
brushes, CK One bottles, all gleamed in the moonlight. Moving
towards the window, Zac caught sight of the moon: wistful, huge
eyed, desperately not wanting to die. Overwhelmed with sadness,
Zac banged his forehead against the window pane.
'We're getting there, Mom, I promise.'

170
Anthea woke early on her silver wedding day, delighted to see blue
sky outside, and feel an already warm breeze ruffling her beautiful
new white linen curtains, trimmed with crimson glass beads, which
made a lovely clatter when drawn. Although she had just had most
of the house redecorated, this room was her favourite. The walls
had been repapered in crimson toile de Jouy: a glorious extravaganza
of fishing Chinamen, pagodas, parrots, monkeys and joyful
dolphins designed by Nina Campbell herself.
Nina, who'd become 'such a friend', had also suggested blinds
of the same crimson pattern behind the white linen curtains,
cream Tibetan rugs on the polished floor and, on Anthea's four-
poster, luxurious self-lined cream linen curtains edged with more
crimson.
An enchantingly pretty room for an enchantingly pretty lady,
thought Anthea smugly. Crimson, of course, had been Galena's
favourite colour, but she'd matched it with such strident royal
blues and emerald greens. It required taste - like Nina's, and of
course Anthea's - to bring out the true potential of the colour with
creams and whites.
Anthea sighed. What a tragedy the women this evening wouldn't
be able to admire the new decor when they left their coats on the
bed, but there were too many precious things in the house to let
guests rove unsupervised.
Anthea had pandered to her husband's every whim over the last
twenty-five years, as she was fond of saying. But last night, to ensure
nine hours' sleep before their special day, she had banished
Raymond, who snored, to the dressing room. Raymond had been
rather relieved. It had enabled him to read Tennyson into the
small hours and have Grenville the greyhound on his bed.

171
In an hour or so, after she'd done her exercises, Anthea would
creep downstairs and load up a tray with presents, a posy of lilies
of the valley, freshly squeezed orange juice, and a half-bottle of
champagne, and sing 'Happy Birthday, Sir Raymond' outside his
door.
Anthea stretched. One of Raymond's sex games, early on in the
marriage, had been to take her out of a specially built glass case,
and examine and caress her as if she were a Sevres milkmaid. The
case, which stood by the window, was now filled with pieces of
Anthea's favourite porcelain. On the rare times that she and
Raymond made love, they would climb the stairs to the Blue Tower,
which still seemed to arouse Raymond. As Anthea dutifully slid up
and down his cock, she would gaze up at the Raphael and at her
nicknamesake emerging from Pandora's Box.
Anthea gave a shiver as reality reasserted itself. Never more had
she needed the help of the Radiant Fairy.
'Oh please, Hope and God too' - Anthea fell to her knees 'please
make Charlene go away.'

As most art galleries are undercapitalized, and Raymond and
Anthea were not as flush as they appeared, Anthea had brokered
a wizard £100,000 deal - a Silver Wedding in a Silver Valley - with
Oo-ah! magazine. Oo-ah.'were not only picking up the bill for her
£6,000 wedding suit, £3,000 hat and £10,000 ball dress for the
dinner dance afterwards, but also paying for bridesmaid and page
clothes in fashionable lilac for Dicky and Dora.
In addition, Anthea had dropped a line to guests saying untruthfully
that she and Raymond had been so bombarded with requests
as to what they wanted as silver wedding presents that they had
arranged a list at Asprey's. They would particularly like pieces of
their beloved 'Violets' dinner service, on which Anthea's favourite
flower, the violet, had been hand-painted. Everyone had belted
off there and bought 'Violets' mugs which at forty-eight pounds
were the cheapest thing on the list.
Anthea had hired a lilac-and-white-striped marquee, with an Old
Masters theme inside, which practically covered the big lawn which
Robens had spent so many weeks perfecting. Robens was also
hopping, as was Raymond, at Anthea's last-minute decision to
disrupt the exquisite pastel harmony of the herbaceous border by
planting a bloody great battalion of red geraniums to add a splash
of colour.
Anthea had made more enemies by her decision to use the tent
again the following day for a drinks party for the village and friends
considered too second eleven to be asked to the silver wedding.

172
These included the local doctor, who had not been forgiven for
suggesting Anthea's panic attacks could be the onset of the
menopause.

As the day grew hotter and more muggy with a forecast of thunder,
tempers were further inflamed by an interview Anthea had
defiantly given to Lynda Lee Potter, which had appeared in the
Mail that morning.
After slagging off Galena: 'If your hubby's first wife hurt him by
taking lovers, you make sure you are quadruply faithful and
loving,' which enraged her stepchildren, Anthea had then been
quoted as saying her life was made complete eight years ago by the
arrival of the twins: 'our little autumn crocuses. Oh, the wonder of
holding one's first born in one's arms.'
This enraged not only Emerald, working herself into a frenzy
back at Lancaster Gate, and the twins, already mutinying about
their frightful lilac wedding clothes, but also Oo-ahl, who felt they'd
been scooped.
Determined to get their kilo of flesh, Oo-aA/had photographed
Anthea flapping around her newly decorated bedroom; shoving
vast flower arrangements in front of Galena's few remaining
pictures; seated at the 'pe-arno' playing Chopin ('I am one of
nature's accompanists'); and posing by a terrifyingly good new
portrait of herself in a silver tunic by Emma Sergeant. This she had
given to Raymond as a joint birthday and silver wedding present.
The portrait was now hanging in the hall upstaging the Matisse,
and ready to be admired by arriving guests, before they were shepherded
out through a side door into the garden and the marquee.
The seating plan was also driving Anthea crackers. Somerford
Keynes had attacked Colin Casey Andrews in The Times that
morning, so those two could no longer sit at the same table, and
Somerford's burglar boyfriend, Keithie, a heavily tattooed bit of
rough trade, had to be kept away from Anthea's porcelain collection.
Keithie carried such huge handbags.
Anthea was livid that her very good friend and next-door neighbour,
David Pulborough, was bringing his ugly wife. Rosemary, as
well as Geraldine Paxton from the Arts Council. They had far too
many spare women as it was. Thank God there were tons of gays in
the art world, which would at least give an illusion of even numbers
in the photographs.
'What a tragedy Rupert Campbell-Black has influenza,' she was
now telling Harriet, the svelte henna-haired reporter from Oo-ahl,
such a very old friend. And who on earth are Emerald Cartwright
and ZacharyAnsteig?' she shrieked.

173
'Friends of Jupiter's, Lady B.,' said Jean Baines, the vicar's wife
and Anthea's best friend, who helped out at Foxes Court when
things got too hectic.
'Oh, that's all right then.'
Jupiter's friends, reflected Anthea fondly, could be relied on to
be charming and not cause trouble, which was more than could be
said for Alizarin, Jonathan and Sienna's.

Anthea might have tried hard at first with her stepchildren, but she
had tended to make beds rather than allowances. She had doted
on Jonathan as a little boy, but gone off him as he grew wilder and
less respectful. Alizarin was a left-wing bum, living rent free in the
Lodge, which Anthea longed to renovate for holiday lets, and
Sienna, with her wide drooping mouth, long heavy-lidded eyes
and thick dark hair the colour ofMarmite, was the image of Galena
and quite beyond the pale, calling Anthea 'Hyacanthea Bucket' to
her face.
Even on their father and Anthea's special day, none of the three
had lifted a paint-stained finger to help. Alizarin was no doubt
labouring away at some hideous canvas you wouldn't hang in a
slaughterhouse - how he had the nerve to be so arrogant when his
last exhibition had been a complete flop . . . And because she had
banned his best friend Trafford (who was always sick and broke the
place up) from the party, wretched Jonathan had deliberately
poached Anthea's extremely comely cleaner, Esther Knight, to
pose naked for him in her lunch hour. Mrs Knight and Jonathan
were no doubt now getting stoned.
Even worse, Sienna had just stormed by on her motorbike to get
some cigarettes. And all the workmen putting the finishing
touche" to the marquee had dropped their hammers, because
apart from her tattoos and studs in her belly button, ears, nose and
tongue. Sienna had been completely in the nuddy. Only wrapping
herself in the Limesbridge Echo before going into the village shop,
she had on the way back pinched a bottle of champagne from the
caterer's ice bath.
The twins Dicky and Dora were also acting up. Dicky had been
teased at school about being an autumn crocus, and Dora wanted
to take her delinquent pony Loofah to a gymkhana. Anthea was
fed up with the lot of them. She must keep calm.
'"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,'" she murmured,
rehearsing the poem she was reciting in church.
How could she get herself into the mood for an exchange of
vows and a celebration of true love when she was even fed up with
Raymond? Annoyed that Anthea had badmouthed Galena in the

174
Mail, dismissing the party as women's business, he had disappeared
to the tennis court to play his traditional birthday match
with his three eldest sons. He was then furious because he and
Alizarin had been well beaten for the first time by Jupiter and an
already drunk Jonathan. Alizarin kept missing the ball, until
Raymond had been captured by Oo-ah! yelling at his middle son.

'This is the loveliest time of the year,' Raymond announced every
month, but looking out of his dressing-room window as he
changed after tennis, he decided that late May had the edge and
nature was really putting on her glad rags for Anthea's party.
Roads, fields and the churchyard frothed with cow parsley. Wild garlic, hawthorn and cherry blossom all added bridal whiteness.
Beyond the pink foam of the orchard, proud trees admired their
pale green reflections in the lazily winding river, and beyond that
Galena's wild-flower meadow was streaked with cowslips and
buttercups. In the muggy heat, the scent of lilac was overpowering.
Raymond was painfully reminded that it was at this time of year
he had first brought Galena to Foxes Court. The candles lighting
the great horse chestnuts were so askew, Galena could have clipped
them on when she was plastered.
Gazing down, he was pleased with his flower beds, except for
Anthea's clashing geraniums. He should have banned them as he
should have curbed her spending in every direction. She was so
competitive. David, living next door, was even worse. If ever a film
crew came down to Foxes Court, the sound would instantly be
blotted out by the Old Rectory mowing machines at full throttle.
Below, Raymond could see David's gardener lobbing snails over
their dividing wall as he also rerouted the best rambler roses and
clematis over to the Pulborough side. And David has stolen my
beloved Jonathan, thought Raymond dolefully.
A shriek from Anthea brought him back to earth. She was clean
out of vases to contain the flowers that kept arriving to wish her
and Raymond a happy day. Next moment henna-haired Harriet
from Oo-ah! had butted in:
'We're taking a lunch break, Lady Belvedon. Can we photograph
you getting dressed for the church service immediately
afterwards?'
'Why don't you like take them upstairs to admire the Raphael?'
mocked Sienna, who'd rolled up to steal another bottle.
'Shut up,' hissed Anthea. 'And who's put cow parsley on that
table? I will not have it shedding in the house. Where on earth's
Knightie? She should be back by now.'
* * *

175
'Knight and Day you are the one,' sang Jonathan as he foxtrotted
a naked Mrs Knight round his studio.
Armed with her bottle, Sienna noticed Dicky's football on what
was left of the big lawn.
'Ball-ee,' she cried, kicking it deep into Anthea's geraniums,
sending Visitor the Labrador flatfooting after it.

176
'Why, you look younger than the day I married you. Sir Raymond,'
cried Anthea, straightening her husband's dove-grey tie.
'And you look even more beautiful,' said Raymond truthfully.
The church, through an ancient gate and a hundred yards across
the grass from Foxes Court, also looked beautiful, decorated with
forget-me-nots and cow parsley, which here Anthea didn't mind
shedding at all.
Waiting to welcome her and Raymond was dear Neville Baines,
the vicar of St James, Limesbridge, a beaming happy clappy in his
early fifties, known predictably as 'Neville-on-Sundays'. His beady
wife, Jean, who found working occasionally for Lady Belvedon infinitely
more exciting than being married to a clergyman, was
acting as matron-of-honour. Appropriately dressed in droopy olive
green, she was locally nicknamed 'Green Jean' because of her
extreme ecological correctness. Jonathan and Sienna's inability to
recycle their bottles drove her to a frenzy. In fact, thoughtjean furiously,
out of Raymond's six children, only Jupiter, who walked his
stepmother up the aisle before taking his place beside his wife
Hanna in the family pew and later reading: 'Sweet is the breath of
morn', from Paradise Lost, behaved with any respect.
Galena's other three, spurning the family pew, sat in a truculent
row at the back. Sienna, menacing in a leather catsuit, was reading
out Anthea's interview with Lynda Lee Potter:
'"Ay always bowled to may stepsons in the hols." Did she?'
'A wicket stepmother,' said Jonathan, taking a slug out of his
bottle of champagne, and falling about at his own joke.
Alizarin, tieless as always, had put his old Rugbeian tie on Visitor,
the Labrador who sat grinning in the pew beside him.
The moment Neville-on-Sundays started his pep talk on the

177
sanctity of marriage, the incensed bridesmaid and page belted
back to sit with their half-brothers and -sister. Dora, livid she had
been banned from bringing Loofah into church, dropped her
bouquet and said, 'Bugger.'
Dicky was still seething over his lilac suit. If his mother had worn
a veil, he'd have broken her neck treading on it. As it was, Alizarin
only just stopped him letting off a stink bomb.
'We could always have said Visitor had farted,' said Jonathan.
The entire pew rocked with giggles.
Poor, poor Anthea, to be saddled with such fiends, thought
Green Jean who, as a curate's wife, had never forgiven Galena for
pelting her with rotten kumquats.
Anthea, enchanting in Lindka Cierach's harebell-blue suit and
David Shilling's cloche, composed of pale pink roses, had never
forgiven her Rookhope relations for not supporting her when she
gave birth to Charlene, and had therefore not asked them to the
silver wedding. This was no hardship because they were all fearfully
common. As a result there were no undry eyes in the church,
except Raymond's who always blubbed when he recited Tennyson.
' "One praised her ankles, one her eyes. One her blonde hair and
lovesome mien,"' declaimed Raymond in his beautiful lilting voice,
gazing into Anthea's eyes, and briskly editing as he went along:

'So sweet a face, such angel grace,
In all that land had never been:
Sir Raymond swore a knightly oath:
This perfect maid shall be my queen!'

'Dad wasn't a knight like when he first met Anthea,' hissed
Sienna. 'Silly old tosser.'

'I'm very disappointed by the turnout,' announced a frowning
Dora, when she discovered the Limesbridge Echo and Oo-ah!,
clinging tenaciously onto their exclusive, were the only photographers
outside the church. 'I expected all Fleet Street to be here.'
'That child's the most frightful applause junky,' muttered
Sienna.
'Who d'you think she gets it from?' asked Jonathan as, watched
by a tight-lipped Green Jean, who also disapproved of wasting
paper, henna-haired Harriet from Oo-ah! threw confetti over
Raymond and a dimpling Anthea.
And there's Mum in the graveyard, thought Alizarin bleakly,
how can she rest in peace with this din going on?
* * *

178
t» eight o'clock, guests invited to the church were getting stuck
into the Veuve Clicquot, exclaiming that Raymond's irises were
even more exquisite than Van Gogh's and admiring the blow-
uos of Old Masters, including the Waterlane Titian, in the
marquee.
They were soon joined by influential members of the art world,
livid at being banished from the house and denied a look at
Raymond's pictures, by clients and glamorous celebs who might
buy pictures or want their portraits painted and by some dowdy
and worthy members of the local gentry: the Bishop and the Lord-
Lieutenant and their wives, whom Anthea felt raised the tone.
A string orchestra booked to play light classics and golden
oldies, because Anthea loved ballroom dancing, was already
belting out gems from Oklahoma. After dinner they would alternate
with a heavily vetted pop group.
Raymond, who had swapped his morning coat for a dinner
jacket, welcomed new arrivals alone until his wife, having been
photographed changing by Oo-ah!, put in an appearance. Anthea
had looked enchanting in church but really took the breath away
as she floated down the stairs in clinging ivory silk shot through
with rainbows. Her boyish curls had been swept up into a plaited
hairpiece studded with rubies and intertwined with gold leaves the
exact replica of Hope in the Raphael.
Everyone in the crowded hall on their way to the garden clapped
and cheered. Raymond couldn't speak for a moment. ,
'Oh Hopey,' he muttered, 'what a wonderful thing to do.'
Jupiter was less happy, not wanting the world to know that there
was a Raphael hidden upstairs.
'Brilliant, Anthea' - he kissed her gold-dusted cheek - 'you've
never looked more stunning. All the same' - he dropped his voice
- 'on the grounds of security, it's better not to tell Oo-ah! who
you're supposed to be.'
'Understood.' Anthea smiled up at him. 'This was for your
father.'
'Abandon Hopey, all ye who enter here,' murmured Jonathan,
catching sight of his stepmother.
Despite die warm night air soft as cashmere on her skin, Anthea
shivered as she went into the garden. There was security on the
gate, but so many other ways, through the woods or over the river,
to crash the party.
Oh please, don't let Charlene roll up unexpectedly.

Many of the guests had retreated from the midges into the
marquee and were examining the seating plan. Some were already

179
settled in their allotted places. But not the Belvedon children, who
had commandeered their own table in defiance of any placement
and, all extremely arrogant, were yakking away, making private
jokes.
The waitresses, having read of his laddish pranks, were very
taken by Jonathan, who was as naughty and manipulative as he was
extraordinarily handsome. Deathly pale with thick ebony curls, a
big sulky mouth, a long nose and huge, dark, restlessly roving eyes,
he exuded trouble like a thoroughbred colt about to bolt across a
motorway. He was now wickedly caricaturing guests on a pile of
paper napkins. Each time he finished a drawing, a waitress grabbed
it, aware it might keep her in her old age.
Harriet from Oo-aA/was equally captivated: 'What artists do you
most admire?' she asked earnestly.
'Amanda, my ex-girlfriend, could have told you,' sighed
Jonathan, 'but alas we've split up.'
'Oh dear, why was that?'
'I'm dumb-blonding down, and she hated me falling asleep on
the job. I need my eight hours a night.'
'Your eight whores,' growled Alizarin disapprovingly.
Tall and thin, despite massive shoulders. Alizarin had short,
spiky dark hair, gaunt craggy features, Galena's high cheekbones,
her slanting dark eyes framed by big black spectacles and the
suppressed outrage of someone who had struggled to the top of
Everest to find it wasn't there.
In between reading the latest on Kosovo in the Guardian,
Alizarin gazed at Hanna Belvedon, Jupiter's big blonde wife. The
myth of the eldest son wanting to kill his father, and the second
son wanting to kill the eldest, certainly applied to the Belvedons.
If Jupiter longed to strangle Raymond for being a whimsical old
dodderer, Alizarin wanted to murder Jupiter for stealing and
marrying the one woman, apart from Galena, he had ever really
loved.
Hanna, sitting a couple of tables away, pretending to listen to
the solipsistic ramblings of Casey Andrews, was miserably aware
that her diet hadn't worked, that her black dress was too tight
and that her long hair needed cutting. She was drawing bluebells
on the tablecloth and comfort from Alizarin's dark ferocious
passion.
The marriage service earlier had reminded her painfully of the
hopes and excitement with which she had, five years ago, made her
own vows to Jupiter, who she was convinced was no longer
forsaking all others. He wasn't sleeping. He was curt and silent and,
having hitherto insisted they spent every night together, had

180
suddenly suggested she remain down in Limesbridge next week
because of a forecast heatwave.
'Sprog on the way?' Casey leered at the black silk straining over
Hanna's tummy.
Blushing, she shook her head.
'Career minded, are we? Don't want to leave it too long.'
'Somerford is a-coming in,' sang Jonathan, who was drawing the
venomous critic as an obscenely fat python. Idly caressing his sister
Sienna with his other hand, he asked, 'Why, apart from a crap
review, does Casey want to murder Somerford?'
' Somerford's decided to write a monograph on Joan Bideford
instead of Casey,' said Sienna. 'More interesting really. Joan's like
living on Lesbos with a Swedish bus conductress.'
A swan dressed as a very ugly duckling, Sienna seemed to have
studs on every part of her body not covered by her leather catsuit.
Only that afternoon she had dyed her lovely long Marmite-
coloured hair bright scarlet to match her drooping mouth and
bitten nails.
She was now moodily telling a more subtle redhead, Harriet
from Oo-ah!, about her latest installation on display at the Saatchi
gallery, which was called Aunt Hill and consisted of piled-up stiff-
legged nude models of her Aunt Lily.
'It like illustrates the evils of ageism,' said Sienna with a yawn.
'How like we chuck the old on the scrap heap.'
'Did your auntie mind posing in the nude?'
'Why should she? I gave her a large cheque for Badger Rescue.
Lily's like my Auntie Hero.'
'Any plans for the future?'
'Putting her in a glass case with a bottle of whisky. IfDamien can
pickle sheep and sharks, why can't I like get a hundred grand for
a pickled aunt?'
'It's shocking' - Harriet from Oo-ah! was not sure how to take
Sienna - 'the way we sideline our senior citizens.'

No-one could have looked less sidelined than Aunt Lily,
Raymond's older sister, who'd made a killing on the horses that
afternoon. Nearly eighty, and still beautiful, with Raymond's luxuriant
silver hair and brilliant turquoise eyes, she lived (to Anthea's
intense irritation) in Raymond's nicest cottage overlooking the
nver, and caused coronaries at White's and Boodle's whenever
she threatened to write her memoirs. She had a blonde streak in
her white hair from chain smoking, and was working her way
down a bottle of champagne and observing everyone with intense
amusement.

181
'What did you give Anthea and Raymond for a silver wedding
present?' she shouted at Jonathan, who was now drawing his
brother Jupiter as a lurking wolf.
'A tin of Quality Street. I thought Anthea looked like one of
those women in poke bonnets on the lid. But Knightie and I' -
Jonathan blew a kiss to Mrs Knight who, in a short and fetching
maid's uniform, was directing guests to their seats - 'ate most of
them.'
Overhearing this, a hovering Jupiter, who'd scored a hit with his
present of Emerald's head, looked smug. Glancing contemptuously
at his brothers and sister, unaware that he himself epitomized
Envy, Avarice and, since he'd met Emerald, certainly Lust, he
thought how they personified the deadly sins. Alizarin, refusing to
compromise, was Pride; the constantly raging Sienna was Wrath;
Jonathan, who had just nodded off, pen in hand, head on Sienna's
leather shoulder, was Sloth; and Visitor, the yellow Labrador sitting
in the chair allocated to Jonathan's ex-girlfriend, grinning in his
master's Old Rugbeian tie, was certainly Greed.
Visitor, who always appeared to be trying to compensate for
Alizarin's hostility, was borrowed by other Belvedons if they wanted
to appear more lovable when being photographed by the media.
True to his name, Visitor toured the various Foxes Court houses
every day for pieces of cheese from Raymond, rich tea biscuits from
Anthea (who was surprisingly fond of him), bridge cake and cat
leftovers from Aunt Lily, hash cookies from Jonathan, scrambled
egg from Mrs Robens, and even wiggled his plump hips against
Hanna's bird table in case there were crumbs left to dislodge.
In the past he had carried the rare cheques received by Alizarin
to the bank, where the manager would always give him a piece of
shortbread. Alas, Visitor continued to take cheques there, after
Alizarin had left the bank in a huff for restricting his overdraft,
so Alizarin now posted his even rarer cheques instead.
Visitor's tawny eyes were sparkling. He had already lifted his leg
on several guy ropes and made his number with the chef. Visitor
loved parties. They meant abandoned food, because there were
invariably several Belvedons too uptight to eat, and dancing.
Visitor adored dancing, bouncing round the floor with Dora and
Dicky, who, drowning his sorrows at the prospect of appearing in
Oo-ah! in a purple suit, was getting even drunker than Aunt Lily.
Xavier Campbell-Black, who was in the same form as Dicky, would
piss himself.

182
After an hour and a half of drinking, when the majority of the
guests were seated and the waitresses were revving up to bring on
the first course. Emerald and Zac arrived. They were late because
Emerald kept saying she couldn't go through with it.
Yesterday she had painted awatercolour of herself edging across
a high bridge with half its slats missing. Behind her on the bank
waved the disconsolate Cartwrights. On the bank ahead stood the
hazily drawn Belvedons. Rocks and a raging torrent lay far below.
As she and Zac came off the motorway, a huge red sun was
sinking into the downs. This is the last sunset I'll see before
meeting my real mother, she thought. Tears welled up in her eyes
as she simultaneously experienced intense loneliness and a feeling
of coming home.
The moon was hovering on the horizon like a great gold air
balloon and the sun had set as they drove under the archway of
white blossom. As the big golden house reared up before'them, a
deafening roar could be heard coming from the marquee.
'I'm about to open Pandora's Box,' moaned Emerald, dabbing
at beads of sweat with a powder puff, 'and all the evils of the world
are going to fly out and sting me.'
'I've got insect-repellent in the dashboard,' said Zac calmly, 'but
yourVioletta smells much more exotic.'
'Stop taking the piss,' snarled Emerald.
In her evening bag was the little musical box that played 'One
two three four five, once I caught a fish alive', which Anthea had
given her as a leaving present when she was three days old and
which Patience had hung over her cot. As they walked from the car
park through the garden, Emerald only noticed how beautifully
the sculptures were floodlit.

183
'I'm frightened, Zac.'
'No, you're not. I'll be right beside you all evening.' Zac's fingers
clamped on her elbow, propelling her through the front door.
'Do I rush forward and hug Anthea or appear cool?'
'Neither - remember our game plan. Don't say a word until she
can't escape. Just relax - be yourself.'
'How can I be, when I'm not sure who "myself is? Oh, what a
stunning house!'
Emerald gazed round the hall and through into the drawing
room, admiring glittering chandeliers, gilt cherubs frolicking
around ancient looking-glasses, incredible pictures on faded terra
rosa walls, richly swagged curtains swarming with pink peonies.
At least we've come to the right house, she thought, clocking
Emma Sergeant's portrait of Anthea.
'That's kind of kitsch.' A grinning Zac was pointing to a blowup
under a picture light of Anthea and Raymond outside Buckingham
Palace.
'Shut up,' hissed Emerald.
Her first glimpse of her real mother was Anthea glancing round
in fury because they were so late. Everyone was sitting down. The
orchestra were poised to play 'See, the conquering hero comes!'
The guests led by Green Jean would clap in time as Anthea and
Raymond walked in hand in hand and regally took up their
positions at the top table. The whole marquee was already lit by
flickering candles.
Anthea's rage however evaporated at the sight of such a good-
looking couple. Gushing like a Cotswold stream in February, she
seized Zac's hand when he introduced himself and Emerald.
'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

184
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. Howver' 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.'

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'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.
'OfArmani 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 Somerfbrd and gayish Neville-on-Sundays, who doted

186
on Tonathan 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

187
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 windup.
With any luck one of them will pass out before they disgrace themselves
on the dance floor.'
Fortunately Oo-aA/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.'

188
'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.'
(-» 0
My one regret, wound up Anthea in a ringing voice, 'is that
Mummy and Daddy are not alaive to witness this wonderful
occasion.'

189
'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.
But he was gazing at Emerald, who was smiling because everyone
seemed so delighted with her mother.

'One praised her ankles, one her eyes,' murmured
Jonathan:
'One her dark hair and lovesome mien.
So sweet a face, such angel grace,
In all that land had never been.'

'Christ,' he went on dreamily, 'she's incredible.'
'Another demon Barbie,' snarled Sienna. 'What's happened to
her Nicolas Cage boyfriend?'

Jupiter, who'd recently flushed Keithie the burglar out of the
dining room with an even more bulging handbag, was not amused
to discover Zac prowling around upstairs.
'Just looking for the John,' said Zac blandly, 'easy to get lost in
these old places.'
'There are portaloos in the garden,' said Jupiter icily. He'd
better get Robens to frisk every guest on the way out.

Raymond, who felt guilty he'd been so foul to Alizarin over the
tennis match earlier, had spent much of dinner trying to convince
Geraldine Paxton from the Arts Council that his second son was a
neglected genius.
'If only he'd use a lighter palette or accept a commission we
might have some suitable pictures to hang, but he insists on going
his own road.'
'It might help if he and his brother stopped thumping critics,'
said Geraldine crisply.
Jupiter was very much looking forward later to showing
Geraldine, an expert on being an expert, the head sculpted by his
new protegee Emerald Cartwright. Now the official part of the
evening was over, he could also ask Emerald to dance.

190
Raymond and Anthea opened the ball to 'This Guy's in Love with
You', which they'd discovered was their favourite tune, the year
they met. Raymond was a competent but rather straight dancer,
and very stiff from too much tennis. Anthea however was dying to
show off.
As she and Raymond came off the floor, they bumped into Zac,
so tall, lithe and strong. Next moment he and Anthea had
exchanged a smouldering glance, and Zac had swept her off to
dance. Lighter than an elfin his arms, Anthea was soon telling him
she would have taken up ballet, if she hadn't been so tiny.
'Ay made the other principals and the corps seem like hippos.
And where do you come from, Zachary? You dance so beautifully.'
'Well, originally I guess from Vienna.'
'So you must love to waltz,' cried Anthea. 'Oh, so do I, whirling
around held tightly in your partner's strong arms, so much more
romantic than this modern stuff.'
'Where did you get the idea for that fabulous dress?' Zac
touched the rainbow-woven silk, letting his fingers linger, pressing
the little breast beneath.
'It's a character from a painting,' murmured Anthea, 'but my
lips are sealed.'
'Your lips' - Zac glanced down at them - 'are far too soft and
pretty to be sealed.'

Jupiter, having fortified himself with a large brandy, ignoring the
reproachful blue eyes of his wife, was poised to ask Emerald to
dance, when Jonathan pre-empted him.
I must get your telephone number before I get too hammered.
You've got to sit for me.'

191
Having scribbled Emerald's number on the inside of his wrist,
he led her onto the dance floor, opening his arms like the Angel
of the North, then enfolding her against his body.
'I can't bear it,' groaned Sienna as Jonathan dropped a kiss on
Emerald's dark head, then, tilting up her face, gazed into it with
such intensity, fingering it in bewilderment.
'You've got to let him go, lovey,' muttered Alizarin, who was
also watching the anguish on Hanna's face as she clocked her
seething husband.
Jupiter could hear David Pulborough saying, 'I am appalled
Raymond didn't sell out. People prepared to pay twice as much
keep asking me if I can find them a Casey Andrews. You're being
robbed, Casey.'
There would be time to strangle David later. For the moment,
Jupiter decided, it was more important to break up Emerald and
Jonathan.

The ever courteous Raymond was back in his seat, beside a restless
Geraldine Paxton.
'Did your wife ballroom dance professionally?' she asked him
sourly, then she thought: Oh good, David's stopped propositioning
that dreadful Casey Andrews and is coming to ask me to
dance.
David was just about to twirl his fingers at Geraldine when he
suddenly saw little Dora Belvedon in her lilac bridesmaid's dress
and asked her instead, letting her ride round on his toes, so that
Oo-ah! might take their picture, and everyone think what a caring
charmer he was.
This also gave him the chance to examine close up the incredibly
beautiful girl dancing with Jonathan. Half the men in the room the
rest were gay - seemed to have taken the floor for the same
reason. Then David twigged: she was the girl in the leather mini
who'd been sculpting Jupiter's head last week. She kept glancing
out into the garden, and for once Jonathan looked like the stable
boy trying to cling onto the bolting thoroughbred.
As the band crashed to a halt, Jonathan put his hands on either
side other face and, dropping his dark head, buried his lips in hers,
kissing her on and on. Everyone whooped, the men somewhat
reluctantly. Jupiter's going to kill Jonathan, thought David in
delight. But maybe Emerald would perform the task first.
'What a bloody irrelevant stupid thing to do,' she screamed.
Thrusting Jonathan away, she practically knocked him over as
she whacked him viciously across the face before running off into
the garden.

192
She's a southpaw, thought Alizarin irrationally. Where the hell
had he seen her before?
The heterosexual male half of the party might have followed
Emerald out of the marquee if the leader of the orchestra, who'd
been taken aside by Zac, hadn't launched into the languorous
violin solo which introduces Weber's 'Invitation to the Dance'.
Then suddenly the whole band launched into the main tune, the
most glorious dancing music, conjuring up Vienna, excitement,
beautiful bejewelled women in ball dresses, glittering chandeliers
and handsome men swirling around in tails.
Zac just came up, clicked his heels in front ofAnthea, and swept
her onto the floor. And the room stopped because they were both
such wonderful dancers, circling to this amazingly powerful
swooping beat. Everyone clapped and Visitor the Labrador, seeing
proper dancing, galumphed onto the floor with Dicky and Dora.
As Visitor bounced about, Zac reached down and took Dicky's and
then Dora's hands and they joined up with Anthea and all whirled
around.
Anthea, iridescent as a dragonfly as the rainbows of her dress
caught the light, looked so deliriously happy there was a feeling
round the room that Zac might be about to waltz off with a readymade
family.
'I'm amazed he's not teaching her the goose step: vun, two, vun,
two,' said Jonathan, ruefully rubbing his reddened cheek. 'Vy
don't you elope with Hopey, Herr Ansteig, and leave divine
Emerald viz me.'
As the band paused, there were shouts for an encore! The music
started up again. This time, leaving Dicky and Dora gambolling
with Visitor, Zac whisked Anthea once round the floor, before
dancing her out into the perfumed garden. Across the lawn they
went, under rose-garlanded arches and pergolas, past floodlit
marble nymphs and bronze gods, down shaven lawns between dark
yew ramparts, in and out of the apple trees, beneath a ceiling of
blossom, their speed pegged by rough grass. But still Zac carried
on, driving her with the heat and force of his body, until they
reached the boathouse and the silver river.
Laughing, protesting, Anthea tried halfheartedly to escape. 'Ay
must go back to my guests, you're so macho, Zachary, what a
glorious dance!'
But Zac held on tight, thrusting her into the boathouse. Pressed
against his taut hard muscular body, Anthea's knees gave way. He's
going to kiss me, she thought in ecstasy.
'We mustn't upset Emma,' she said playfully.
Then her pounding heart jerked to a standstill; her blood froze.

193
Her gasp of horror would have soared to a scream if Zac hadn't
clapped his hand over her mouth, as she realized there was
someone else in the boathouse. Against the moonlit cobwebbed
window, a black silhouette quivered.
'Don't you think you've upset "Emma" enough?' said a breathless,
rasping voice. Then, when Anthea didn't react: 'Hi, Mum, I'm
your daughter Charlene, why the hell did you give me up?'
'Ay don't know what you're talking about.' Anthea tried to bolt
in panic, but Zac, leaning against the door, black and menacing as
Emerald's shadow, barred the way.
Then Emerald flipped.
'How dare you give me away,' she screamed, 'you could have got
me back after you married Raymond.'
'You've got the wrong person,' whimpered Anthea.
'Oh no, I haven't. Remember the musical box you gave me?'
Emerald swung it in front ofAnthea's terrified face. 'One two three
four five, once I caught a fish alive. Remember the hippo and your
white cardigan to help me sleep because it smelled of you?'
Suddenly Anthea caved in. 'I didn't know where you were, my
parents chucked me out. I was at my wit's end, I was only nineteen,
I had no money, I tried and tried to find a way to keep you.'
'Not very hard,' hissed Emerald. 'And why did you tell LyndaLee
Potter Dicky and Dora were your first born, and what special joy it
gave you to hold them in your arms?'
'Because I could take them home!' Anthea was hysterical. 'It
wrecked my life giving you up.'
'Why didn't you search for me like other mothers, why didn't
you put your name on the Adoption Contact Register, and wait
desperately hoping every day for a knock on the door?'
'I thought it was unfair to disrupt your life.'
Emerald was swaying like a cobra - about to strike.
' Your life, you mean. Then why did you blow me out when Zac
tried to contact you? You selfish bitch.'
Terrified Emerald was going to claw her face, Anthea backed
into Zac and gave a shriek.
'And who's my father?' screamed Emerald.
Next moment, they all jumped at a hammering and banging
then Jupiter shoved open the warped door. 'What the fuck's going
on?'
'Anthea's my mother,' sobbed Emerald.
In the long pause, she could hear the surflike boom of the band,
the croak of frogs, the gentle swishing flow of the river.
Jupiter's face was as pale as a death mask, the moon shining
through the cobwebs crackling and speckling it like an Old Master.

194
'Is this true?' he asked bleakly.
'If she says so.' Anthea sounded almost sulky.
'I'm sorry I tricked you' - Emerald had turned to Jupiter, auailine at the hatred in his eyes - 'but she wouldn't recognize me,
so I had to get into your house somehow.'
Anthea took the opportunity of shooting past Jupiter out of the
boathouse, racing back up the hill, losing a shoe, twice falling in
the stream, covering herself in mud. All the outside entrances had
been locked for security reasons, including the side door leading
to the marquee. She had to scuttle past the dance floor, packed
with couples swaying to Robbie Williams's 'Millennium', their
merriment such a contrast to her dark nightmare. As she hurtled
through the front door, a worried Green Jean was hovering in the
hall.
'Are you OK, Anthea? Raymond's been searching everywhere.
Oo-ah.'want to photograph you with the children and Visitor. Can
I get you a drink?' But Anthea had fled upstairs, slap into Raymond,
who in horror took in her collapsing hair and mud-stained dress.
'Whatever's the matter, my darling?'
Pushing him out of the way, Anthea threw herself on her new
cream linen counterpane and his mercy, sobbing so wildly it was
some minutes before Raymond could make any sense.
'Darling, angel, it can't be that bad.' A terrible thought struck
him. 'You haven't met someone else?'
'No, no, much worse, there's a girl down in the boathouse who
says she's my daughter.'
'Well, is she?'
Having set herself up as the personification of chastity and
fidelity for the past twenty-five years and the antithesis of promiscuous
Galena, Anthea was not prepared to tarnish this image.
'Yes, but she's yours too,' she cried despairingly.
Raymond was astounded.
'My child? Why on earth didn't you tell me?'
'I only discovered I was pregnant after I'd left the gallery. I knew
how much you adored Galena, how desperate you were to mend
your marriage. I loved you so much, we'd had our one night - or
perhaps two - of love together, then Galena came back and told
you she loved you, I couldn't break up your marriage.'
Anthea's hairpiece woven with gold leaves and rubies was all
askew like a fallen halo, her face streaked with blue mascara and
T^111^' ^"""gh sne shivered frantically, sweat was darkening
the armpits of her dress.
Galena would have gone bananas if she'd found out. So I gave
my baby, my little Charlene up for adoption. I wanted to keep her

195
so badly.' Anthea clasped her tiny trembling hands to her face.
'The adoption society were so fierce and disapproving, they said
I'd be punished by God if I changed my mind. Mummy and Daddy
had chucked me out. Oh Raymond . . .' She was sobbing so much
she had again become incoherent.
'Oh my precious child.' Raymond was crying too.
Dragging the blue checked duvet off the bed in his dressing
room next door, he wrapped it round her shuddering little
body.
'Why didn't you tell me when we got together again? We could
have gone to court.'
'I couldn't do it to Charlene's replacement parents. They'd sent
me such a lovely letter and a beautiful shawl. I've still got it. I
couldn't break their hearts. I wanted to tell you so badly. Don't
think I haven't cried every day inside.'
'What a terrible secret you've had to keep.' Raymond got out a
purple silk handkerchief and wiped both their eyes. 'But she's
come home, we've got all our lives to make it up to her. You can
tell me the details later, but let's go and meet her, and call the
family into the library.'
'But what about the party?' wailed Anthea, quailing too at the
prospect of her censorious stepchildren.
'The caterers will keep the drink flowing. That lot have enough
to squabble about till dawn anyway, and the band's been paid
double. Leave them to it.'
In the distance they could hear strains of 'Hit me, baby, one
more time', and wild shrieks as a couple ran off across the lawn.
'Oh Hopey, I can't bear to think what you've been through.'
Anthea caught a glimpse of her red, swollen, grief-devastated
face in the mirror. Nor could she.
'I can't cope with people at the moment,' she whimpered, 'I'm
still in shock. Will you go and see her?'
'Of course I will, don't worry, wash your pretty face, and I'll get
Jean to bring you up a cup of tea.'
If Dr Reynolds had been invited, he was tempted to joke, he
could have given Anthea a shot. He felt passionately relieved she
was still his.
Buoyed up by champagne, a sense of adventure and the prospect
of another daughter to love - what a wonderful seventy-fifth
birthday present - Raymond went downstairs. There he found
Green Jean, simultaneously avid to find out what was up and having
difficulty keeping the team from Oo-ah!, who'd heard desperate
sobbing, at bay.
'Lady Belvedon is absolutely exhausted,' Raymond told them

196
firmly, 'working her tiny self into the ground, making everything
oerfect for everyone else, so I've sent her to bed. I'm sure you've
got enough material,' he smiled at Harriet, 'but if you need more,
we can cobble it together tomorrow. And if you could bear to take
her a cup of tea . . . ?' he added to Jean.
On the terrace, he met a stony-faced Jupiter.
'Anthea's told me,Jupe. Where's your new sister?'
'In the library.'
Neither of them noticed Barney, who'd been wondering what
had become of Zac, lurking in the shadows.
Raymond almost danced across the hall.
'"A fairy Prince with joyful eyes. And lighter-footed than the
Fox, "'.he quoted happily as he slid into the library, which was
one of the few rooms untouched by Anthea, and locked the
door.
First editions, tall art books, leather-bound classics seemed to be
falling out of their shelves in excitement. Characters in the paintings,
which Anthea had banished from the rest of the house, and
which included a Stanley Spencer miracle, and a homosexual
threesome by John Minton, seemed about to abandon their activities
to witness a more thrilling drama. Alone, on the faded
threadbare crimson sofa, tiny as Anthea, huddled Emerald in her
pretty dress, like a thrown-aside bunch of flowers. Her face was
ashen, her eyes closed.
'My dearest child, welcome home.' Raymond's voice was deep
and tear-choked, then, in amazement: 'Why, we've met before! I
so hoped we'd meet again, where was it?'
'At Rupert Campbell-Black's,' stammered Emerald. 'You gave
me your autograph. I had no idea that Anthea was my mother then.
I hope you don't. . .'
'Of course I don't.'
Raymond held out his arms; Emerald collapsed sobbing into
them. Raymond's handkerchief smelled faintly of Extract of Lime,
his dinner jacket was wet with Anthea's tears and streaked with her
make-up. For a moment Emerald luxuriated in the warmth of his
body, giddy with relief that he wasn't angry.
'You're taking it so well,' she mumbled, 'I didn't mean to upset
Lady Belvedon, I hope it hasn't wrecked your party, and it's not
too painful for you having her child rolling up.'
'And my child too,' said Raymond, proceeding to tell a flabbergasted
Emerald that he was her father, and explain the nightmare
through which Anthea had been. Emerald couldn't take it in. For
so long she'd imagined a father of Rupert Campbell-Black's age,
51111 fit and virile. Raymond must have been fifty when she was born.

197
Now he was seriously old. But he was so kind, sitting beside her, his
arm round her shoulders, patting her hand.
'Anthea was only doing what she thought best for you, darling,'
he told her gently, 'handing you over to a mother and father who
longed for you and would adore you. When she and I finally got
together after my first wife died, she felt she couldn't disrupt your
life. Anthea always puts other people first. You look so like her,' he
added, kissing her forehead.
'May I see her?' begged Emerald.
A minute later. Emerald and Anthea fell into each other's arms.

198
Poor Raymond had the less fun task of breaking the news to the
family. The party was thinning out, but a lot of people were still
dancing and drinking. Rosemary Pulborough, having endured
seeing her husband flirting or caballing all evening, was extremely
glad to have an excuse to leave: escorting a very merry Aunt Lily
back to her cottage.
'I'd like to have said thank you to my brother and his wife,'
protested Lily, 'but they appear to have vanished upstairs to renew
their conjugal vows.'
At least Anthea isn't with David, thought Rosemary wearily.

Earlier, Dicky Belvedon, as a result of all that waltzing and a skinful
of champagne, had just finished being very sick in the lupins, when
he heard raised voices carrying across the hot night air. Stealing
down to the boathouse, he had overheard most of the row,
including the exchange with Jupiter.
Bolting back to the marquee, he found his twin sister talking to
Sienna. Jonathan had nodded off like the dormouse in Alice in
Wonderland. Visitor was waddling up and down the table finishing
up.
"Where's Mummy?' asked Dora. 'Everyone's asking for her.'
'Probably being photographed on the loo in a YSL nightie,' said
Sienna.
'She was down at the boathouse,' panted Dicky.
Whatever for?' demanded Dora. 'Ugh, you've got sick on your
shirt.'
'Some girl's saying Mummy's her mother,' gasped Dicky.
What?' Jonathan was awake in an instant.

199
'That dark girl you were kissing, Jonathan, she was screaming at
Mummy that Mummy was her mother. Then Jupiter barged in and
the girl told Jupiter, and he asked Mummy, and she said it was
true.'
'Don't tell such wicked lies,' said Dora, going very red. 'Mummy
wouldn't do it with anyone else. We're her first born, she said so
in the Daily Mail.'
Sienna, trying to hide her excitement, dropped a napkin in a jug
of water and wiped Dicky's shirt.
'Are you quite sure, Dicko?'
'Quite. Mummy ran up the hill crying, I couldn't keep up
with her, she lost a shoe.' He held up a tiny blue high-heeled
sandal.
'Wow!' said Jonathan in delight. 'It's like discovering the Virgin
Mary's slept with the entire Nazareth rugger team. A new little stepsister
and such a pretty one. Alizarin!' he yelled over the din of the
band to his brother, who was snatching a few moments of conversation
with Hanna. 'Come and hear the latest, Anthea's got a love
child.'
Returning to the table, catching sight of Dicky and Dora, both
near to tears, Alizarin told Jonathan to shut up.
'Who's going to ring Dempster?' demanded Jonathan unrepentantly,
waving to a waitress to bring another bottle. 'You'd
better, Al, you need the money more than me and Jupiter.'

Jupiter arrived next, also very pale, outraged at being tricked by
Emerald but in control of himself.
'You've obviously heard. Dad wants us all in the library in ten
minutes.'
'Then fill up our glasses,' said Jonathan.
'I suggest Hanna puts those two to bed.'Jupiter nodded at Dicky
and Dora.
'It's way past our bedtime,' chorused the twins.
'We're coming too - or I'll go and tell Harriet from Oo-ah!,'
threatened Dora.
'Does that mean I've got two sisters? Oh yuck,' groaned Dicky.
'She's only like a half-sister, like I am,' explained Sienna. 'You
share the same father with me and the same mother with what's
she called.'
'Emerald. And I know which half of her I want,' said Jonathan
evilly. 'Alizarin can have the top half.'

The Belvedons' delight at Anthea's embarrassing lapse after her
hogging the moral high ground for so long soon evaporated when

200
Raymond, with tears in his eyes, imparted the joyful news that
Emerald was his and Anthea's child.
Alizarin, who'd been gazing at the Stanley Spencer, swung
round.
'How old is she?' he demanded.
'Twenty-six in July,' said an unguarded Jupiter, remembering
how he and Emerald had discussed both being born in Cancer
during dinner.
There was a long pause. Dicky sidled towards the calculator on
Raymond's desk.
'So you were shagging Anthea while you were married to Mum,'
said Alizarin bleakly. 'Mum always swore you were. I never believed
her.'
The others were jolted. Since Galena's death. Alizarin had never
spoken her name.
'That means Emerald's like three months older than me,' said
Sienna furiously.
Jonathan took a book of Sickert's drawings off the top shelf.
'Dad the stud,' he drawled, 'humping Mum and Anthea at the
same time but still posing as the wronged husband.'
Raymond, appalled at such antagonism, stumbled on.
'Your mother and I were going through a bad patch,' he stammered.
'Anthea came to the gallery and comforted me. I swear I
only made love to her about once on the office sofa.'
'You naughty man!' said Dora in horror.
'Galena, or rather your mother found out, not about the
sleeping together, but that I was very fond of Anthea, so Anthea
unselfishly left the gallery and only afterwards discovered she was
expecting a baby and not believing in abortion--'
'Correct-shun,' interrupted an enraged Sienna, 'what about the
one she made me have when I was sixteen?'
'My dear,' said Raymond faintly.
'Did you?' Dicky looked up from his calculator in amazement.
'You naughty woman!' thundered Dora.
'Anthea had the baby,' ploughed on Raymond, 'longed to keep
little Charlene, but felt she couldn't let the adopting parents down,
and kept this terrible secret for twenty-five years.'
Three branches of purple lilac, shrivelled up in the heat, were
shedding their petals on the polished table. Hanna sat with her
head in her hands. Jonathan got up and poured himself three
fingers of sloe gin.
That's because you're not the dad. Dad,' he drawled. 'It's the
tallest story from the shortest person I've ever heard. You may have
pulled the assistant, but you've been conned. Emerald and that

201
male model boyfriend, who's a hood if ever I saw one, have cooked
up the whole thing to get their thieving hands on some Belvedon
cash.'
'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,' snappedjupiter, '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.

202
'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 concussing 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 blonde
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
w^ 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
^ble in time to the deluge outside.
You poor thing,' wailed Emerald. 'But tell me about the rest of

203
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 heartrending
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 ACT-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, itwas regarded as criminally

204 i
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.
'Tuly 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 different-coloured hair and eyes.
You look like my younger sister.'
Instantly Anthea dropped her guard, putting an arm round
Emerald's shoulders.

205
'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 lan, then caught sight of the
bedside clock. Even her doting parents wouldn'twant to be roused
at five in the morning.

206
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

207
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.

Having left the party straight after the showdown in the library, and
been painting ever since, Alizarin had needed to clear his aching
head.
Symbolizing the stripping away of the Belvedons' illusions about
Anthea's professed virtue, last night's rain and wind had ripped off
the blossom and shredded the dandelion clocks and the white
starry flowers of the wild garlic. The silver-and-black-striped water
thundering into the mossy water trough always reminded Alizarin
of Galena's fringe. The whole wedding business yesterday had
crucified him. Anthea's spiteful remarks about his mother to
Lynda Lee Potter had further banged in the nails.
And now Anthea's daughter, barefoot, pale as her nightgown,
black plait falling over one breast, wrapped in her crimson shawl
like King Cophetua's beggar maid, stood in the doorway. In the
serpentine curve of her body and her wanton confidence that men
would find her irresistible. Alizarin, like Zac, was reminded of
Munch's Madonna.
Was this the reason Galena had sunk into such despair? he
wondered. Had she discovered Raymond had made another
woman pregnant?
'It's not my fault,' protested Emerald as Alizarin glared at her.
'My mother was a virgin when your father seduced her.'
Blood all over the office sofa, thought Alizarin with a shudder,
blood all over the hall and the Blue Tower when Galena died.
'I didn't ask to be born,' said Emerald sulkily.
The tallest of the brothers, Alizarin towered over her. His dark
hair, black sweatshirt, torn jeans and huge hands were spattered
with brown and khaki paint like camouflage. His stubbly jaw was
set; his eyes hidden by dark glasses, emphasizing his big broken
nose. His mouth was tough and uncompromising. The sun had
gone in but a purple-black cloud provided an appropriate backdrop.
To Emerald, he seemed both savage and mysterious.
'Can I come for a walk with you?'
Recceing her new domain, thought Alizarin bleakly.
'I suppose so. Gumboots are on the right of the front door.'
The pale blue child's pair marked 'Anthea' fitted her perfectly.

208
'Why does Anthea mark her gumboots?' Emerald raced to keep
up with him. 'No-one else could get into them.'
'She's very possessive.' Alizarin glanced down at Emerald's
pearly white parting. 'She won't want to share you. Rightly or
wrongly, you're going to alter the balance of power here. Anthea totally ignored Jonathan and Sienna once Dicky and Dora arrived.
They're all going to be very jealous.'
As they walked down the garden, past weary caterers retrieving
glasses from the bushes, Alizarin pointed out Jonathan and
Sienna's studio, not mentioning that it had once been Galena's,
and Hanna and Jupiter's cottage with all the curtains drawn.
Visitor, who was feeling sick after last night's excesses, ate grass and
drank noisily out of puddles. Before they reached Aunt Lily's
cottage overlooking the river. Alizarin turned right into the trees,
where the downpour had lowered the green ceiling.
'I'm chancing my arm going into the woods with you,' Emerald
said coyly. 'You're the only brother who hasn't made a pass at me.'
Jupiter jumped on you?'
'We had dinner after I did his head. He said his wife didn't like
sex, but they all say that.'
'And?'
'He asked me back to his house, but instead I leapt into a taxi.'
Detesting himself for having pried, Alizarin turned his disapproval
on Zac and Emerald.
'Pretty bloody, conning Jupiter and wrecking a family party.'
'What else was I to do? Anthea rejected me three times, then she
threatened me with an injunction.'
'Did she?' asked Alizarin in surprise. 'I suppose there was lots at
stake. You probably reminded her of all those feelings of loss and
shame when she gave you up.'
'You're very fair,' grumbled Emerald.
'Not always,' said Alizarin.
And terribly attractive, thought Emerald wistfully.
Suddenly, as though they were being pelted with ice cubes, hailstones
clattered down. Opening his jacket. Alizarin pulled her
inside, smelling of turps and sweat, as he protected her from the
bombardment with his huge shoulders. Snuggling up to him,
Emerald felt fleetingly safe as she had when Raymond hugged her
last night.
It was like holding a child, reflected Alizarin, reminded suddenly
snd agonizingly of the baby Hanna had been carrying, whose birth
had been terminated at Jupiter's insistence. My child, who would
be six now, thought Alizarin, churning with loathing for his
brother.

209
The hailstorm only lasted a minute, but the whole steaming
wood now reeked of pestled wild garlic. Visitor's back looked as
though it was covered in rhinestones. Alizarin let Emerald go.
'Nice to have a big brother,' she murmured.
'Have you told your parents?'
'Not yet.'
'The Daily Mailvfi\ tomorrow.'
As they emerged from the wood, Emerald gasped: beyond the
glittering river, a grey horse had taken shelter under one white
hawthorn. Sheep were scattered like daisy petals under another.
The pale green domes of the trees were fluffed up against a thundery
grey sky. Then the sun came out turning the cow parsley an
unearthly white. Everything sparkled as though a shoal of
diamonds had been chucked down.
'Borochova's Silver Valley,' sighed Emerald in ecstasy.
'Been at the cuttings?' snapped Alizarin.
'No, I love her work,' protested Emerald, 'I bought a little
drawing of a cat with my twenty-first birthday money. I'll bring it
down to show you, next time . ..' Her voice trailed off uncertainly.
Alizarin thawed a fraction. As they reached the Lodge, he said,
'That head you did of Jupiter.'
Emerald steeled herself.
'It's very good.'
'It is?' Colour flooded her face, her witchy green eyes widening
in amazement.
She's pretty now, thought Alizarin. How lovely she'd be if she
were happy.
'Thank you,' mumbled Emerald. 'It matters, because you know
Jupiter well.'
'So do you, better than most people. You caught the political
animal - or rather the beast - beneath the skin.'
'I'd rather sculpt you.'
'No, thank you.'
And the door slammed behind him.

Back in her room, Emerald found a tight-lipped Anthea.
'I've dreamed of bringing you breakfast in bed for twenty-five
years. I thought you'd run away.'
Emerald gazed down at the opaque butter on the toast soldiers,
the brown egg probably hard boiled by now.
T'm so sorry, how gorgeous, I'll get back into bed.'
'You're all wet.' Beadily Anthea noticed the flushed cheeks, the
clinging broderie anglaise. 'You haven't been out in your nightie?'
'Alizarin showed me round.'

210
'Alizarin!' squawked Anthea. 'You don't want to waste time on
that pinko. Always whizzing off to places like Bosnia to avoid paying
his debts, then having nervous breakdowns when he comes back so
rude and arrogant.'
'He was lovely about you.'
'Inwhatway?' demanded Anthea suspiciously. 'The onlywoman
Alizarin cares about is Hanna.'
'Jupiter's Hanna?' asked Emerald faindy.
'She was Alizarin's Hanna, for several years, then very sensibly
she decided Jupiter was the better bet. Alizarin would do anything
to get her back.'
Oh my God, thought Emerald in horror. To get Alizarin on her
side, she'd lied about Jupiter making a pass at her. Jupiter hadn't
mentioned anything about the lack of sex in his marriage either.
Oh please, don't let Alizarin say anything to Jupiter, who'd really
been so kind.
'Eat up your breakfast,' chided Anthea.
Emerald looked at the skin floating on the top of her cup of
coffee and nearly threw up.
'The Daily Mail want a telephone interview with you around
eleven,' Anthea continued. 'You'd better not mention this to
Oo-ah!, who want to photograph us all at a family lunch. You must
choose something pretty to wear from my wardrobe. And this
evening, there's a party for the locals. I can't wait to show off my
new daughter.'
Exhaustion overwhelmed Emerald; she suddenly felt quite
unable to cope with such a marathon. And where the hell was Zac?
'Where did you meet Zachary?' asked Anthea, reading her
thoughts.
'At Rupert Campbell-Black's.'
'Really?' Anthea brightened. 'Rupert's an awfully old friend.'
But when Anthea questioned her further about Zac, Emerald
was ashamed how little information she could provide. She must
learn to listen more - although she was getting plenty of practice
with Anthea.
Nor had she noticed Zac secreting a suitcase into the boot last
night. When he banged on her bedroom door half an hour later he
was back in his combats and polo shirt, announcing inevitably
he was off to Moscow via Heathrow, which threw Emerald into a
complete panic.
I can't cope with this lot on my own.'
'You stick around,' ordered Zac. 'After all the trouble we took
to get you in here . . .' Then, pretending to put the little Degas
norse in his pocket: 'The pickings are awesome.'

211
On the way out Zac had a brief encounter with Anthea, who
blushed remembering their waltz into the garden.
'I ought to be very cross. You tricked me.'
'Only because I knew how desperate Emerald was to meet with
you.' Staring deep into her eyes, Zac murmured deliberately
huskily, 'Didn't stop me enjoying that dance. Emerald's my type, I
guess, and you are so like Emerald.'
All very formal and Austrian, he briefly kissed her hand and
was gone. Anthea was aglow. Raymond was already dotty about
Emerald because he claimed she was so like Anthea. In turn it was
nice to be fancied by Zac.

Lunch for eleven under the walnut tree was a disappointment,
both for Oo-ah! and Anthea. Zac had already left. Alizarin had
gone back to work, Hanna and Jupiter, still burning with resentment,
didn't show up, Jonathan was asleep. Dicky and Dora
showed off impossibly and Sienna sat with her trainers on the
table, ostentatiously reading Joanna Trollope's Other People's
Children. Emerald, being small, had earlier clocked love bites
under Sienna's chin and wondered if they'd been given her by
Jonathan.
Raymond had been sweet to Emerald, taking her on a tour of
the marvellous pictures and sculptures. But he looked terribly old,
particularly outside, where Emerald noticed the grey chest hair,
the wrinkly face, and the liver spots freckling his hands.
'Can you move your legs, Sienna?' demanded Anthea, coming
out through the french windows with a handful of silver. 'I want to
lay.' Then, not wanting a row in front of Harriet from Oo-ah!, she
added, 'And thank you for the pretty scarf you gave me.'
Sienna's face, that of a captured terrorist, looked marginally less
sullen.
'But d'you mind awfully if I change it?' went on Anthea, running
aj-cloth over the table. 'The colour is a little too hard.'
'You mean like you're too hard for the colour.'
'Sienna,' chided Raymond.
'I believe in telling the truth,' said Anthea shirtily.
'Not where baby Charlene was concerned,' replied Sienna
bitchily.
'Get out,' roared Raymond. 'I will not have you cheeking your
stepmother.'
'I know when I'm not wanted,' said Sienna in a relieved voice.
'I'm off to London.'
'Lucky you. Can I go and ride Loofah?' asked Dora.
'No, you can't. You can damn well help me lay,' exploded

212
Anthea, then, remembering Oo-ahh 'If you're good you can stay up
and hand nibbles round at the party.'
Lights were flickering in front of Emerald's eyes. She could
hardly see out of the right one.
'I'm terribly sorry, I've got a migraine coming on, I'm afraid I
can't make tonight's party.'
'Mummy's the one who has migraines,' said Dora beadily.
After that Oo-ah.'gave up and returned to London.
'Give me your card,' whispered Dora, accompanying Harriet to
her car, 'I'll keep you posted.'

Alizarin couldn't concentrate on work, he too had a frightful
headache, and he couldn't stop thinking about Hanna. She'd
never implied her marriage was in trouble, he was ashamed how
cheered up he'd been by Emerald's report, and jumped in hope
at a knock on the front door. Looking out of the window he instead
found Dora.
'Can I come up?'
Alizarin sighed and put down his brushes.
'Daddy and Mummy's new daughter is something I can do
without,' grumbled Dora. 'She really takes the biscuit.'
Hearing the magic word, Visitor opened an eye and wagged his
tail.
'Will you give me a pound if I take Visitor for a walk?' said Dora.
During the afternoon a photographer rolled up from the Mail,
and was very disappointed to find Emerald was too ill to be
photographed. A reporter, who'd tagged along to get reactions
from Sienna andjonathan, was equally frustrated. Both men struck
gold, however, with Dora, who in return for the money to buy a
new saddle, posed with Visitor.
'No-one has asked me how I feel about Mummy and Daddy's love
child,' she told them soulfully. 'My brother Dicky was sick four
times last night, Visitor was sick three times.' Visitor thumped his
tail approvingly. 'My new sister's being sick upstairs at the moment.
Sienna says my mother's a slapper, but she only slapped me once
when I bit her because she wouldn't let me watch Brookside.'
Gazing down from an upstairs Old Rectory window, David was
so furious the Belvedons were receiving so much media attention
that he rushed down and suffused the area in a disgusting smell by
throwing his wife's left gumboot on the bonfire.

Sienna cried most of the way back to her studio in the East End.
^ne of Thatcher's children, she had been taught at college to
know her true worth and market herself. To control the art world,

213
you had to be a nuisance because you would only be appreciated
for your ability to shock and behave badly.
More seriously she was now working on a huge canvas of animals
in hell: bears in China, monkeys in laboratories, veal calves in
crates. She could only do a little at a time because it made her cry
so much.
Beneath her aggression, Sienna was a little girl lost, who blamed
herself for her mother's death. She drank too much and slept with
too many men to blot out the fact that she was hopelessly in love
with her brother Jonathan. It had always been them against the
world. Now she was truly terrified. She had seen Jonathan's
reaction to Emerald, and knew life would never be the same again.

214
Oo-ah! Magazine were incensed the following morning to find
themselves pre-empted by the Daily Mail, which contained a
double page exclusive headed: 'Lady Belvedon's Love Child'.
Having reported Raymond's gushings at length, they also
included a telephone interview with Emerald:
'I've found the end of the rainbow at last. My adopted parents
tried, but I always felt an outsider. If they wanted me so much why
did they pack me off to boarding school? My real mum and I are
so alike. We love clothes and making houses beautiful. We're both
size eight, arty, obsessively tidy, terrified of horses and suffer from
migraine. My mother was six years younger than I am now when
she courageously gave me up for adoption and went on to become
a wonderful stepmother to four children. I am very proud of her.
I feel I have come home.'
By eight o'clock, the queue of press and television outside Foxes
Court's firmly locked gates stretched as far as the High Street.
'This is a much better turnout,' announced Dora, waving
happily at cameramen as Robens the gardener drove her to school.
With any luck further revelations might buy her a new bridle or
even a second pony.
An enraged David Pulborough, on his way to the station and the
London train, was tempted to return home and put his wife's right
gumboot on the bonfire.
Alizarin, who'd been trying to paint since first light, was equally
incensed by the hooting din. As the gates were shut, the reporters
fang the bell of the Lodge instead, so Alizarin tipped buckets of
water over them. Visitor, who loved publicity even more than Dora
- camera crews meant biscuits - was whining to be let out. Any
"loment he'd be handing out cups of tea, thought Alizarin sourly.

215
His mother's child, Alizarin, who was as dedicated to righting
wrongs as his sister Sienna, was now painting a scene of appalling
torture in a Serbian police HQ. One young Albanian was being
electrocuted in a revolving chair so he could be flogged at the same
time, another was having his fingers broken in a metal vice. On the torturers' faces was sexual excitement; on that of the cleaner scrubbing
down the walls, mild curiosity. You could hear the screams
and smell the blood.
Every brushstroke was anguish, but Alizarin felt someone had to
tell the world. On other canvasses stacked against the walls were
further atrocities: human shields; starving Albanians in concentration
camps; civilians riddled with bullets, frozen to the hillside.
Alizarin had only returned from Macedonia last week, he must get
it on canvas before the horror faded.
The room reeked of turps and damp dog. Like a surgeon,
Alizarin worked under powerful hospital lights. On the wall,
resting like a butterfly with wings of glowing crimson, bright blue,
rich green and stinging yellow, hung Galena's palette. Beside it was
a beautiful charcoal drawing of Galena herself.
Bloody hell, someone else was hammering on the door. Alizarin
was about to empty another bucket out of the window when he
recognized the dishevelled black curls of his brother Jonathan. The press were going crazy. As Alizarin let him in, Jonathan
announced that he'd just heard the cuckoo.
'Must be Emerald settling into her new nest.'
In fine form after a very long sleep, Jonathan was off to London
to prove that Emerald wasn't Raymond's. Accompanying him was
Diggory, his extremely self-regarding Jack Russell, who was now
yapping round Visitor, grumbling because he'd been shut away
during the silver wedding party in case he bit people.
'These are knockout.' Sighing and shuddering, Jonathan examined
Alizarin's canvasses. 'But gruesome - I'd squeal in a second if
anyone did that to me.'
Alizarin was now holding up a big magnifying glass as he scraped
paint off a torturer's face.
'What d'you want?' he asked ungraciously.
'To talk about our new sister.'
'I'm working.'
Jonathan then made the mistake of showing his brother his latest
nudes of Sienna.
'Content's bound to raise a few eyebrows.'
'Content's fine,' snapped Alizarin, who couldn't praise where he
didn't admire. 'It's the execution that's so bloody vulgar. Frankly,
you're too self-obsessed to be any good as a portrait painter.'

216
'I've always thought of you as Pride,' snapped back a wounded
Tonathan, 'but you're getting more and more like Envy, and you
should stop painting the working classes, they never pay.'
Gathering up Diggory and his canvasses, he stalked out.
Alizarin put his throbbing head in his hands. He was jealous of
Tonathan's effortless success, and was ashamed of himself for being
so belligerent, but he couldn't throw off his black mood.

Pulling a baseball cap over his nose, Jonathan stormed his Ferrari
towards the motorway. Along the verges, cow parsley like some
white-faced religious group was being whipped into a frenzy by a
vicious east wind. Rain lashed the windows.
Fucking Alizarin doesn't even realize, thought Jonathan furiously,
that I only went over to the Pulborough because Jupiter was
refusing to show Al's pictures any more.
'It's because you don't want Alizarin making money and taking
Hanna back off you,'Jonathan had shouted at Jupiter.
'Bollocks,' had howled back Jupiter, 'it's because I can't sell the
bloody things.'
'Then you're not selling me either,'Jonathan had yelled. 'Al's a
genius, it's only a matter of time.'
Raymond, who had not been told the reason for Jonathan's
defection, had been devastated.

Jonathan Belvedon had always been adored slightly too much.
Spoilt by nannies, teachers of both sexes and later by women, he
tended to take the easy option. Smoking dope one afternoon on
his bed at boarding school, he had decided the best way to pull the
most glamorous women in the world was to become a portrait
painter.
Now, at twenty-eight, he had socialites, models and actresses
queuing up to be painted. Poor Alizarin slogged away for days on
a picture. Jonathan dashed things off in half an hour, often from a
photograph or a video taken by an assistant. Like Nijinsky, he was
a superb and instinctive artist, 'to whom technique is only a
servant'.
Jonathan lived in a loft in Hoxton, where droves of young artists,
mostly pretty girls in various states of undress, completed all kinds
of work - landscapes, installations, as well as portraits that he had
started. Recently he'd been too busy modelling Armani suits for
GQ, punching critics and getting his dick out on television to do
much work.
Jonathan never had any money because he was constantly
Porting, drinking or buying dinner for his friends. He and

217
Alizarin had once been inseparable, painting or hell-raising all
night, then lying on the studio floor listening to the Alpine
Symphony as the sun rose. Now they were separated by Jonathan's
runaway success and Alizarin's utter failure. But this didn't stop
Alizarin castigating Jonathan for selling out and producing
rubbish.
Ringing Sienna when he got held up in traffic at the Chiswick
flyover, Jonathan was depressed to find her also working.
'I was so pissed off by bloody Emerald in the Mail,' raged Sienna,
'I had to get stuck into something.'
She was now channelling her rage against the Filipinos who tied
dogs' broken legs behind their backs and rammed their snouts
into tins before flogging them as meat in the market place.
'It's like so fucking cruel!' Sienna was sobbing with anger.
'Where are you off to?'
'To take the piss out of David. D'you think Willy of the Valley's
Emerald's father?'
'I wouldn't wish that fate even on her.'
Diggory meanwhile, who got wildly jealous when Jonathan spent
too long on the telephone, had started yapping furiously.
'I'll call you later,' yelled Jonathan over the din. 'Let's have
supper.'

David Pulborough had always been ahead of the game - still
driving the bus with 'Further' on the front. As the supply of Old
Masters dried up, he increasingly concentrated on young artists.
These he kept on their toes by never letting them feel quite sure
he was retaining them, by not allowing them sufficient advance to
get smug, and by putting on group exhibitions to foster a competitive
spirit. He had also copied the Belvedon's habit of producing
a much admired Pulborough calendar, which each month
featured a painting and a small photo of its artist. Anyone who
underperformed or was playing up was left out. David also went
berserk if any of his artists sold their work privately.
Jonathan, a free spirit, had no desire to be owned, advised or
shaped by David. He just wanted maximum money for minimum
work. Having captured Jonathan, David expected all his starry
entourage to follow him. He'd have such fun bringing that stroppy
little bitch Sienna to heel and Trafford, Jonathan's loftmate, was
unlikely to stay at the Belvedon after being banished from the silver
wedding party.
The nice thing about young artists was that even the unsalubrious
ones like Trafford were always surrounded by pretty girls. Over
the years, David had been a serial humper, a ladies' man for all

218
seasons. Thank God the sofa in the back office couldn't talk. He
was still ^ust in the Seven Deadly Sins, but gradually snobbery was
taking over from lechery. The Pulborough had been so successful
that he was no longer largely dependent on Rosemary, but he
needed her to add gravitas if he were going to have a room in the
Tate named after him and to achieve his ambition in 2000 of
becoming High Sheriff of Larkshire. And if he left Rosemary, what
excuse would he have not to marry all his other girlfriends,
including Geraldine Paxton, who had proved so invaluable at
securing grants and commissions for his proteges?
This had been his game plan, but suddenly Emerald had rolled
up and spoiled everything.

Jonathan reached the Pulborough at midday. Zoe, David's assistant,
slim and understated so as not to upset Geraldine, was typing
catalogue blurbs. She had a terrific crush on Jonathan and was
mortified that her light brown bob had been whipped into a bird's
nest after a weekend sailing.
David believed in giving buyers little choice. On the far wall of
the ground-floor gallery hung a lone Pissarro of a couple by a river.
Peach-pink lupins in a copper vase on a nearby table - a trick he'd
learnt from Raymond - picked up the coral of the woman's dress.
In a back room, a restorer was bent over a large oil, painting out
the vixen being torn apart by two hunt terriers, and replacing her
with a tartan scarf.
'People won't buy anything to do with blood sports these days,'
sighed David. 'But I've got a terrier-mad actress who might give me
two grand for that. She'd buy that dog of yours.' David glared at
Diggory, who glared back.
'I wish you wouldn't bring him in here,' went on David fussily,
as Diggory briskly rearranged the purple silk cushions and curled
up on the white sofa in David's office.
On David's splendid oak desk was a photograph not of Rosemary
nor gay Barney, but of his daughter Melanie, who, like David, had
married up and for money. On Melanie's right on the pale green
Lutyens bench sat a smug David, bouncing a plump grandson on
his knee and looking twice as young as his son-in-law on Melanie's
left, who owned the large, ravishing Elizabethan house in the background.

Jonathan meanwhile had picked up the latest Pulborough cata- °gue and, after reading a paragraph or two, chucked it down.
The copy's far too lucid. You must obscure it up a bit, throw in
a few "pivotals" and "seminals". Can I have a drink?'
David looked at his watch. 'I suppose so.'

219
As Zoe went off to get a bottle, Jonathan moved on to the subject
of Emerald.
'I cannot imagine Dad shagging Anthea out of wedlock. You
were around in October 1972, and much more of a stud than Dad.
Are you sure you didn't give Anthea one?'
'I was barely back from honeymoon, for Christ's sake.' David,
turning purpler than his cushions, moved around the gallery
fussily straightening straight pictures, lining up folders. 'Your
father was certainly besotted, but so were the clients and the artists,
particularly Casey and Joan.'
'Doesn't stack up. Dad's not the sort of person you don't tell
you're pregnant. Even if he was terrified of Mum finding out, he'd
have supported Anthea financially, and he adores children so
much, he'd have accepted Emerald if she'd had two heads. I'm
pushing for a DNA test. Thanks, angel.'Jonathan accepted a glass
of Sancerre from a blushing Zoe. 'Any crisps for Diggory?'
'We don't keep them,' snapped David, frowning at Zoe for
wasting wine kept for important clients on mere artists.
Gone too were the days when he could scoop up crisps like a
starved schoolboy. It irritated the hell out of him that despite being
twenty-five years older, Raymond had retained his spare, elegant
figure and his mane of silver hair.
Jonathan would have returned to the subject of Emerald, if he
hadn't wanted a further advance from David, who refused to give
him one.
'Gallery owners,' grumbled Jonathan, 'always think of artists
lying under trees getting drunk on their advances.'
'Artists,' replied David crisply, 'always think of gallery owners
riding round in Rolls-Royces, living off their fifty per cent commission.
You've no idea of the overheads of this place.'
Jonathan then produced the two nudes of Sienna.
Cultivating idiosyncrasies to attract the cartoonists, David had
recently taken to wearing a monocle, with which he now examined
Sienna's body.
'Why does she ruin her beauty with all those studs?'
'I'm thinking of calling these two Stud Farm /and //.' :
'Those legs go on for ever,' sighed David.
Jonathan smiled enigmatically. 'And they start at an interesting
place too. How much can you sell them for?'
'I can't,' said David firmly. 'She's your sister, they're far too
controversial. When are you going to get started on Rupert
Campbell-Black and Dame Hermione?'
'Rupert's always busy,' complained Jonathan, 'and I'm terrified
of Diggory disappearing down Dame Hermione's snatch, never to

220
return. That's the trouble with Jack Russells. I'll get someone to
video her.'
'She wants you in person,' said David crossly. 'And the National
Portrait Gallery wants more from you too.'
'Brian Organ often uses photographs as an aide-memoire.'
'Photographs are only a point of reference. The extent of live
sittings always enhances the quality. I've also had complaints from
clients,' went on David sternly, 'and particularly from the Arts
Council and the Tate, that you're not providing enough input, that
they'll get a face or perhaps a nose painted by you if they're lucky.'
'I don't understand the fuss,' said Jonathan sulkily. 'With the
great portrait painters, Raphael, Van Dyck, Reynolds, it was a
huge studio operation, someone did the hands, someone else the
clothes and the curtains, horses were done by the horse specialist.
The lead painter often only did the face, but he got the biggest fee,
because he had to do all the smooth talking to get the commissions
and take the flak afterwards - like I do.'
'I'll be taking all the flak from now on,' said David firmly. 'You've
just got to get that pretty nose to the grindstone.'
The meeting broke up firstly because an incredibly rich and evil
member of the Russian Mafia called Minsky Kraskov (who wanted
to launder a pile of drug money and whose visit David wanted to
keep secret) was due any minute, and secondly because Diggory
suddenly decided to mount David's pinstriped leg.
'Bugger off,' yelled David, 'and the little bastard's lifted his leg
on that Sisley.'
A trickle could be seen running down a canvas of a poplar wood,
which was leaning against the wall.
'Shows how realistic the trees are,' said Jonathan unrepentantly.
'Get out,' shouted David.

221
Glancing across Cork Street, Jonathan saw the paparazzi gathered
outside the Belvedon watching his brother Jupiter grimly hanging
the new Joan Bideford exhibition. With olives from the island of
Lesbos as nibbles at the private view, thought Jonathan. Pulling
Emerald's address, which he had transferred from his wrist onto a
bit of paper, out of his jeans pocket, he set out for Shepherd's
Bush.

He found Patience, her eyes red and puny, her crimson-veined
face covered in blotches, devastated by Emerald's piece in the Mail.
After several large whiskys, lan had gone off minicabbing. She
prayed he wouldn't lose his licence.
Patience knew adopted children often sought out their real
mothers and one mustn't be clinging, but she'd never dreamt
it would hurt so much. It was probably to do with losing the house,
working in the bar, and having to boost lan, who hated having to
be endlessly charming to his passengers. It had been rather a grim
year and she couldn't stop crying. Plump Sophy had taken the day
off, pleading food poisoning, to comfort her mother.
'I told Emo not to do it,' she told Jonathan furiously.
Jonathan was perfect. Used to endless crises at Foxes Court, he
put his arms round Patience and hugged her until she stopped
crying.
'It's only a honeymoon,' he soothed her, 'Anthea is such a bitch,
Emerald'11 suss her out soon. It's just rather a glamorous setup.'
He'd pinched two bottles of champagne from the party, which
he proceeded to open. Diggory got a much better reception
than he had at the Pulborough and was soon curled up on
Patience's knee, eating crisps and looking interested. Unlike Zac,

222
Tonathan was quite unfazed by the overcrowded sitting room; it
reminded him of his own studio. Everywhere he noticed pictures
of and by Emerald.
'I feel so awful Emo didn't confide in us,' said Patience dolefully.
'They told us at the adoption society that if we were good parents
the children would never feel the need to seek out their real
parents. If you can't have babies, you're haunted by guilt that
you've done something wicked to warrant it, that you're not worthy
and certainly not capable of looking after a child or loving it
enough.'
She picked up a Mothering Sunday card, gathering dust on the
bookshelf.
'I was so scared of taking on anything as exquisite as Emerald. I
nearly dropped her when they handed her over. But by the end of
the weekend, I'd fallen in love totally. She was so beautiful, and she
had such blue eyes when she was born. We called her Emerald,
because it was my mother's second name.'
'Much better than Charlene,' said Jonathan, filling up her glass.
'Diggory was called Spot when I got him from Battersea.'
'Such a dear little dog.' Patience dropped a kiss on Diggory's orange and white head. 'I know we spoiled Emerald, to make up
for her losing her real parents, smothering her with love, letting
her do what she wanted.
'But it's always been such a privilege to have her. I'm so proud
of her. I don't expect she said half the things in that horrible
article. She's so talented - you can see where she gets it from now.
I always knew we were too dull for her.'
Sophy, sick of her mother making allowances, raised her eyes to
Heaven and, worried that Patience was getting drunk, went off
to make lunch. Being Monday, no-one had been shopping and
she could only find a cauliflower, a chunk of ancient mousetrap
decorated with her own toothmarks, and a tin of rhubarb. She
could make cauliflower cheese. She borrowed a pint of milk from
the gsy actors upstairs who, having read the Mail, were deeply
sympathetic.
Tell Patience there's a large Scotch waiting whenever she
wants.'
Emerald's always had such high expectations,' Patience was
telling Jonathan. 'She was so excited when Sophy arrived from
Belfast. Mind you, Sophy's typically Irish, so sweet and easy going,
always putting camomile on everyone's nettle stings. Anyway, when
she arrived, one of Emerald's friends announced: "My baby sister
came out of my mother's tummy." "My baby sister," said Emerald
Proudly, "came out of an aeroplane."'

223
Jonathan laughed and refilled Patience's glass and let her run
on because he was interested, learning that they'd got Emerald
from an adoption society in Harrogate, and her mother was definitely
An thea Rookhope, who'd worked in a gallery, but the father
had withheld his name.
'We never dreamt it would be someone as distinguished and
clever as your father,' said Patience humbly. 'I love his programmes.
lan, Emerald's father, is very unarty.'
'Nice-looking man' -Jonathan picked up a photograph - 'and
lovely horse you're riding.'
'I always prayed every night that Tony Blair wouldn't stop
hunting, but sadly I stopped instead.'
'Lunch,' announced Sophy. 'I hope you don't mind eating in
the kitchen.'
Jonathan, who hadn't eaten since the Quality Street he'd
wolfed with Knightie on Saturday afternoon, had two helpings of
cauliflower cheese and three of rhubarb crumble, and took a
huge shine to Sophy. He liked her merriness, her sweet round
face, her beautiful skin, and her soft voice with its faint Yorkshire
accent.
Sophy couldn't believe Jonathan. He was the most glamorous
man she'd ever met, and so cosy and unfrightening, unlike Zac
who was coolly contemptuous and who reined in his emotions like
a dressage horse. She could hardly eat any lunch, and kept leaping
up to examine Jonathan at a different angle: such eyelashes, such ;;
cheekbones, such an amused sleepy smile.
'Goodness, it's five o'clock.' Patience tottered off to get ready
for work. ,
'D'you think I ought to do her shift for her?' asked Sophy.
Jonathan shook his head.
'Some of your pupils are bound to pop in for a drink after work ;
and sneak. I'll drop her off.' 1
Having delivered Patience, he returned with more bottles and.3
they carried on drinking with Sophy raging against Emerald. |
'My parents are absolutely skint, but bloody Emerald still gets a a
socking great allowance and the use of a studio. And she lied in I
that horrible piece. Mum and Dad gave her everything, spoilt her|
rotten to compensate for her losing her first parents. And it was |
Emo who insisted on being sent to a boarding school, and got the ^
shock of her life when it wasn't as jolly as Malory Towers.' |
Jonathan proceeded to give a blow by blow of how Jupiter had '|j
been conned, and how Zac had waltzed Anthea out to her doom. |
'Not the Blue Danube, but the boathouse by the River Fleet.' |
'God, I wish I'd been there.' Sophy's eyes - the innocent azure j

I
224 |
r ^g sky after a big storm - were absolutely popping. 'What
persuaded her to seek outAnthea?'
'I'm sure it was Zac. He met her when we were rich. It was only
after he came back from America and discovered Daddy'd gone
belly up that she started searching for her natural mother.'
'Nothing natural about Anthea, ask her hairdresser.'
Sophy giggled.
'Zac's been pushing her all the way.'
'Must think Dad's richer than he is. How come you're so much
nicer than Emerald?'
'I'm more of a drip. I went to the local grammar school rather
than Emo's posh boarding school, because I didn't want to leave
Mummy and Daddy and the animals, and I'm a second child,' said
Sophy, 'and so as parents they were much more relaxed. The only
reason I'd like to meet my birth mother is to see what she looked
like and find out my medical history. She must have been fat.'
'Wide birth mother,' grinned Jonathan. 'Have you got a
boyfriend?'
'I've got one who takes me to the opera.'
'I bet he bikes to work.'
'How did you know? He tried to make me cycle to school, but I
couldn't get up in time, so he paid for me to go to a gym. Last night,
I snogged the instructor,' confessed Sophy, 'so I can't go back.'

After that, things became hazy. Fading cow parsley and buttercups
slapped against their legs as they took Diggory and another bottle
for a walk on Barnes Common.
'If only we could have a dog,' sighed Sophy. 'I thought of
becoming a vet, but I wasn't sure about shoving my hand up cows.'
'I do all the time anyway,' said Jonathan and they collapsed with
laughter.
Later they all three dropped into a casino in Mayfair. Under
glittering chandeliers, people with obsessive faces gathered round
gaming tables. Only the women dragged their eyes away from
rattling ball or ace-laced card hand to gaze at Jonathan, whose
black curls were flopping over cheekbones increasingly stained
with colour.
Jonathan in turn was increasingly taken by Sophy. He liked the
way her unpainted cherubic face looked as pretty at midnight as at
midday. Nor was there anything to embellish it in her pink beaded
handbag - only three packets of Silk Cut.
'I hate to run out.'
A fag bag,' said Jonathan, helping himself, 'and, talking of fags,
"^t fat slug at the bar in a dinner jacket is called Barney

225
Pulborough. He lives next door to us in the country and sat next
to your tricky sister on Saturday night. Probably fed her a lot of
vitriol about me.'
'Probably jealous.' Sophy took another slug of champagne.
'You're an icon.'
'I con the public, according to Barney's father, who owns the
Pulborough who represent me.' Jonathan lowered his voice:
'Barney has shares in this place, and it's where the Pulborough
launder their ill-gotten gains from dodgy deals.'
'Blimey,' said Sophy in excitement.
Barney in fact was very happy. Having overheard Raymond
talking to Jupiter on Saturday night, he had made a killing selling
the story of Lady Belvedon's Love Child to the Daily Mail. For once
therefore he was quite amiable to Jonathan.
'That big Saudi at the roulette table,' he told him softly, 'is a
client of Dad's called Abdul Karamagi. He collects nudes and is
about to launder half a million pounds -just watch him.'
The Saudi, whose huge hands were spilling over with chips,
proceeded to put half on red, half on black. Round clattered the
wheel, down dropped the silver ball, up came black, which
paid double, so exactly the same amount of chips were returned
to him.
'If he cashes them in in a couple of hours, they'll be as clean as
Anthea's knickers,' said Barney.
'What happens if zero comes up?' asked Jonathan.
'You just pray it doesn't. I'll introduce you,' said Barney.
Abdul's chocolate-brown eyes melted when he saw Sophy's
splendid proportions. He had also heard of Jonathan, and over
another bottle and a large plate of smoked salmon for Sophy,
commissioned him to paint her.
Sophy was staggered by the skill with which Jonathan brokered
the deal. Eighty thousand pounds might seem a lot, he explained,
but pubes took for ever to draw, though as he was so taken by
Abdul, he would do him a nude of Sophy for sixty thousand.
'Shut up, you'll get a cut,' he hissed when Sophy protested, then
to Abdul, 'And I'd like an advance of twenty thousand.'
A minute later Abdul was meekly cashing in some chips. Sadly
he couldn't buy Sophy as well, commiserated Jonathan, but the
portrait would be delivered in the middle of June. Once Abdul
returned to the tables, Jonathan slipped Barney four thousand.
'We needn't tell your father?'
'Certainly not,' said Barney, and while standing them another
drink, told them about his new boyfriend, who was a Sister at Guy's.
'What do the patients call him?' asked Sophy.

226
'"Charge Nurse",' smirked Barney, 'but he loves being called
"Sister".'
'I think Barney's sweet,' protested Sophy as she and Jonathan
reeled out into Berkeley Square. All round her the big dark houses
seemed to be dancing a quadrille, whilst the floodlit-patterned
trunks and branches of the plane trees swayed like giraffes amidst
their ceiling of leaves.
Jonathan shoved five hundred pounds inside Sophy's bra.
'I can't take it.'
'It'll pay a few bills at home. You could do with a dishwasher.'
'I can't pose nude.'
'Sure you can, won't take many sittings.'
At least it'll be a chance to see him again, thought Sophy.
Jonathan then hailed a taxi, shoving an outraged Diggory on the
floor because there wasn't room on the seat for him and Sophy,
and kissed her all the way home to his studio in a condemned warehouse
off Hoxton Square. Here they found his louche flatmate,
Trafford, laboriously making a picture called Sick Joke by sticking
pieces ofsweetcorn and red and green pepper onto a canvas then
glazing them.
Trafford had a shaved head, 'You won't regret it' tattooed across
his chest and leered worse than Abdul. He reminded Sophy of a
knowing old Scottie dog, just back from the butcher's with a large
bone and sawdust hanging from his fur tummy.
'The press have been on all day about your new sister,' he told
Jonathan. 'So has Sienna, not best pleased.'
'Oh Christ, I forgot to ring her,' groaned Jonathan, who was
opening a tin of Butcher's Tripe for Diggory.
'The bitch,' screamed Sophy, who had picked up the Evening
Standard, where Anthea in an interview had emerged as Mother
Courage.
'"I knew Raymond loved Galena,'" read out Sophy through
gritted teeth, '"and only turned to me out of unbearable loneliness.
The result was my Charlene. Naturally I'm grateful to
Patience and lan Cartwright for holding the fort, but I can only
thank God my baby's back where she belongs." What a cow.'
'Another session in the re-edit suite,' said Jonathan, putting
down Diggory's bowl. 'Don't let it get to you, darling. Anthea'sjust
in orgasm because she's at last found a smart relation.'
She's good looking, your new sister.' Trafford peered over
Sophy's shoulder at a blurred picture of Emerald. 'When are you
going to bring her round?'
The fumes from the glues and resins were making Sophy's eyes
Water. Diggory was managing to wolf his food and simultaneously

227
growl at a large Newfoundland puppy called Choirboy, who lay on
the chaise longue chewing a Gucci slip-on and adding to the
general chaos. The cork board groaned with Polaroids of women.
Sophy groaned too because they all seemed so beautiful.
Drawing Trafford aside, Jonathan told him to push off.
'I want to take Sophy to bed.'
'Can I watch?' asked Trafford, who'd spent much of the evening
looking at porn on the internet, but who preferred the real thing.
'Only if you waive that three hundred I owe you.'
Jonathan's triple bed shared a room off the studio with a
hundred canvasses, a large wardrobe and a stuffed polar bear
hung with Jonathan's jackets. There were scant curtains. Several
windows in the houses opposite, which mostly belonged to artists,
were still lit up. Jonathan shoved Trafford, armed with a torch, in
the wardrobe.
'How do I escape?' whispered Trafford.
'Women usually belt off to the bog afterwards,' whispered back
Jonathan, 'you can nip out then.'
'You on the pill?' he asked Sophy as, in between kisses, he unbuttoned
her shirt. 'Good, I am now going to shag the arse off you.'
'If only you could,' sighed Sophy. 'It's much too big, and I'm far
too fat. My last boyfriend, the one before the opera buff, nick",
named me "Sofa".' '
'You're my three-piece-sweetheart,' giggled Jonathan, pushing
Sophy back onto the bed. 'I haven't been so excited since I went
on the bouncy castle at Limesbridge fete.'
Sophy was seriously big. Unable to see what was going on over
her backside, Trafford started to emerge from the creaking
wardrobe.
'What's that?' gasped Sophy, hearing heavy breathing.
'Probably a dog,' mumbled Jonathan, who was blissfully losing;!
himself in mountains of soft flesh. 'Shut up, Diggory, shut up |
Choirboy.' He hurled a shoe across the room. |
As they carried on, Trafford, frantic to distinguish some of the}|
magnificent heaving flesh, switched on his torch. 5
'Who's that?' cried Sophy, jumping out of her luscious dimpled|
skin in panic. |
'Light from the knocking shop opposite,' whispered Jonathan ;
soothingly. '"Gestapo bully" is one of their specialities, shining^
lights into clients' faces and threatening to beat them up. Oh, you ;
gorgeous thing.' ^
The ensuing romp so excited Trafford he nearly fell out of the
wardrobe, knocking over a canvas. Furiously Jonathan kicked j
the door shut. But by this time Sophy was far too excited to notice. |
J

228 I
Later, as she ecstatically cradled a snoringjonathan to her breasts,
she wondered if she'd dreamt it, or had a man really slithered out
across the floorboards?

Two streets away, Sienna lay on her bed smoking. Work had been
interrupted all day by the telephone which she'd answered, hoping
it might be Jonathan, but it was always about him - journalists
wanting to know where he was and why his ravishing new sister had
slapped his face. The last call had been from Dicky, who'd crept
out of bed at Bagley Hall.
'All the boys have been teasing me,' he had sobbed. 'Mummy
won't give me away like she did Emerald, will she?'
Switching off the telephone. Sienna had sobbed too. On the
polished floor, where she had set fire to it, lay the blackened fragments
ofAnthea's interview with the Standard. On the wall was a
framed letter from Sir Nicholas Serota, congratulating her on
being shortlisted for the Turner prize.
In the past, when she was sad, she had drawn comfort from visualizing
sweet Hope in the Raphael, but since the silver wedding,
she could only see Anthea's smug little face. And nothing could
alter the fact that Jonathan was far too preoccupied with his new
sister to telephone his old one.

'I feel shocking,' moaned Sophy next morning as she pinched
Jonathan's most voluminous shirt to wear to school.
'At least you look as though you're bravely staggering in after
food poisoning,' mumbled Jonathan sleepily.
'Thank you both for a heavenly day.' Sophy kissed him and then Diggory.
'We enjoyed it too. You can't remember where I left my car, can
you?'

In the middle of Geography, Sophy was called out to take an urgent
call from her sister.
'Why haven't Mummy and Daddy rung me and begged me to
come home?' demanded Emerald.
'Just bugger off,' shouted Sophy and hung up.

On the Saturday after the silver wedding, Anthea was intoxicated
to receive an affectionate airmail from Zac, posted in St
Petersburg, apologizing for his cavalier behaviour and thanking
her for a memorable party. She didn't show the contents to
Emerald, who was bitterly disappointed only to get a neutral postcard
of the Hermitage. Scented by lavender bags, Zac's letter

229
took up residence at the back ofAnthea's underwear drawer.
It intoxicated her that her face was now in the papers as much
as the other Belvedons, that she could manipulate her new
daughter into setting those arrogant, defiant brothers at each
other's throats, and in addition make Sienna wild with jealousy.
She also enjoyed seeing David Pulborough in a jitter. The next few
weeks were going to be fun.

230
Tupiter Belvedon was in turmoil. A control freak, particularly
where he himself was concerned, he had prided himself on his
perfect marriage and, determined to safeguard it, had refused to
let Hanna be parted from him for a single night. Now he was
devoured with lust for a sister who had pretended to be attracted
to him to gain access to Anthea.
Although he had protested to Hanna that he had merely
thought of Emerald as a marketable property, Hanna couldn't stop
crying. Her tears fell on the huge watercolour she was painstakingly
assembling of all the wild flowers in Galena's meadow,
creating a ravishing wet on wet effect. Jupiter, never very good at
communication, couldn't comfort her. Leaving her in the country,
unable to sleep, he worked himself into the ground in London.
God knew what Pandora's Box Emerald had opened. He didn't
believe she was Raymond's daughter any more than Jonathan did.
How could they make their besotted father have a DNA test?
As the days passed, Jupiter grew increasingly fed up with
Journalists ringing the gallery, wanting to interview his father
about the art world and the vain old bugger not realizing they were
fishing about Emerald. Raymond was also getting sloppy. Revving
up for a BBC programme on the High Renaissance, which meant
a lot of research, he had not checked the provenance of a Turner
Md, having sold it to a private collector, discovered it had been
stolen from a museum in Houston, who very much wanted it back.
Even worse, far more punters were going into the Pulborough,
which had gone above the Belvedon in the dealers' profit parade
tor the first time.
Raymond had succeeded in the past by selling paintings on
"nlliantly or hanging on to them until they went up in value. But

231
in recent years he had borrowed huge sums to buy pictures which
had slumped instead. Many of the paintings at Foxes Court were
held as collateral for the loan.
Jupiter kept trying to persuade his father to have the Raphael
revalued so they could borrow against it. Another alternative would
be to sell it, or lend it to a big touring exhibition, which could
treble its value. Best of all, to avoid capital transfer tax, would be
for Raymond to make it over to Jupiter as the eldest son. After
his father's death, Jupiter promised he would split whatever the
picture was worth between the others. But Raymond, who didn't
trust Jupiter, almost hysterically refused. He was only seventy-five,
and his ambition, which he hadn't revealed to Jupiter, was to give
the Raphael to the National Gallery.
Jupiter was also unnerved by the increasing publicity being given
to art looted from the Jews by the Nazis during the last war. More
and more of the original Jewish owners or their descendants were
trying to reclaim their pictures. What if Pandora had been stolen?
Raymond had always been slightly hazy about how he acquired
the Raphael, some story about a dying Kraut handing him the
picture in return for a glass of water in a burning chateau.
Finally, was the picture 'right'? Alarming rumours were coming
out of the Vatican that one of the most famous Raphaels hadn't
been painted by the master at all. No wonder, apart from his obsession
with Emerald, Jupiter wasn't sleeping.

Help, however, was at hand. Si Greenbridge, the vastly rich arms- ;
dealer who had cancelled lunch with Jupiter the day Emerald had 1
wheedled her way into the Belvedon, was back in London for Royal ;
Ascot and the big antiques and art fairs. ^
Accompanying Si, as well as his four guards, was his third wife ;
Ginny, a former Miss New Jersey who travelled with Pascal, her in- ;
terior designer, and endless colour swatches. Ginny Greenbridge, j
who was only interested in pictures that enhanced the decor, was i
in her late twenties. Si was in his middle fifties. A brusque |
belligerent hunk who looked as if he could crack safes with the lift |
of an ebony eyebrow, Si was a serious collector with many millions |
of dollars to launder. I
In early June therefore, both the Belvedons and the ^
Pulboroughs vied to take Si's money off him and entertain him in ^
the most exciting way. Raymond kicked off with a very smart drinks ^
party at the gallery, with pictures by his leading artists on the faded |j
burgundy-red walls, and some enticing Old Masters in the vaults as ;
a cabaret after dinner. ^1
Despite a damp and dismal evening, the gallery was packed out. I

232
Amid the chattering royalty, the rock stars and the shadow cabinet
ministers Jupiter wished to impress, Si looked like a huge grizzly
who'd gatecrashed a teddy bears' picnic. Among the sprinkling of
ravishing girls, Emerald, in a little kingfisher-blue number from
Amanda Wakeley which turned her eyes an even witchier green,
shone the brightest.
On her first official outing as a Belvedon, however, Emerald was
desperately nervous. She was also mortified that Alizarin, Jonathan
and Sienna had all blacked the party, whilst Jupiter, who clearly
hadn't forgiven her, was looking more adamantine than his head,
which Raymond had subtly lit and proudly displayed in an alcove
and at which everyone giggled and said 'Good evening, Jupiter' to
as they swanned in.
Seeing Emerald quailing as the paparazzi swooped down on her,
Si moved in with the fleetness of a heavyweight boxing champion,
whisking her into a corner and shielding her with his massive
frame, so no-one could get at either of them.
'Oh thank you,' gasped Emerald, 'I always panic in crowds. I'm
so small, I'm terrified of getting trampled underfoot. This is an
incredibly smart party, I've just seen Liz Hurley and King
Constantine walk in.'
'So smart,' replied Si in a very strong gravelly Bronx accent, 'I
can't figure how in hell I got invited.'
Emerald laughed.
'Because you're the most important person in the world.'
Si in fact was incredibly shy and had been so busy dealing in
arms and making fortunes in hotel chains, gambling dens, newspapers
and television stations, he hadn't had much time to acquire
social graces on the way up. He also had a horror of being trapped,
because people always wanted things from him.
Examining his pugnacious cave-giant face. Emerald decided he
was definitely attractive. She'd always liked rich, powerful, older
men; father figures or - in Si's case - godfather figures. In his dark
suit, dark shirt, and tie as white as his beautifully capped teeth, he
could have walked straight out of a Thirties gangster movie. He was
also very brown and fit, his gold-ringed hands were beautifully
manicured and nothing could dim his passion for art. Only stopping
to see her glass was refilled, he fired questions at her about
her sculptures, her taste in pictures and had soon learnt of her
elusive New York boyfriend and her tricky new family.
Si's guards, whose chunkiness added to the crush, never took
their eyes off their boss. Nor did the rest of the guests, from the
shadow cabinet ministers, who wanted vast pledges for the Tory
*arty, to the princes and princesses who wanted freebies in the

233
Greenbridge jets, to the celebs who wanted their picture taken
beside Si, to the photographers and reporters who were climbing
into sofas and chairs to see Emerald over his shoulders, and who
all wanted jobs on Si's highly successful newspapers.
Even Anthea, bashing herself like a pale moth against his dark
wall of back, had no success.
'Mr Greenbridge?'
'In a minute,' snapped Si.
'We've got to get him away from Emerald,' hissed a white-faced
Jupiter. 'People like Michael Portillo are only hanging on to meet
him. There are endless pictures he's got to see.'
'Plenty of time for that after dinner,' said an overjoyed
Raymond. 'If Si commissions work from the darling child, she's
made for life. Look, she's pointing out your head to him.'
Si was so impressed by Jupiter's head that he beckoned over
Ginny, his wife, and suggested Emerald did her head while they
were in London.
Ginny, who disliked competition, pouted, and said she'd rather
be done by Joan Bideford, whose flesh tones matched the poolroom
in Long Island. Lesbianism anyway was so hip in the States.
Anthea, outraged that Emerald had been spurned, took Ginny ;
Greenbridge aside. ^
'My dear, I too married a much older man. Do remember that;
men of that generation are used to calling the shots, and should '|
be pandered to in every way. If Si prefers Emerald's work . . .' l:
But Ginny Greenbridge had belted off to try and melt icy Jupiter,
Anthea, used to being the sex kitten centre of every Belvedon
party, was not enjoying herself. She had been shoved aside by Si in'
his haste to rescue Emerald, and how dare Raymond reproach her.
for spending two thousand pounds on a Meissen parrot at the
ceramics fair, when he was force-feeding everyone Krug? Even Si'»
guards could be seen discreetly knocking it back, and Ginny
Greenbridge was so glittering with diamonds, she must have-1
emptied the jewellery fair at Grosvenor House.
Anthea also regarded it as a personal insult to herself that not"?
only Alizarin, Jonathan and Sienna but also her stepdaughter-^
in-law had boycotted the party. A sharp-eyed reporter from the'
Evening Standard had picked this up. ^
'Surely Hanna Belvedon's a gallery artist?'
Another gallery artist, Casey Andrews, noisier and more
bombastic than ever, a bottle of Krug protruding from the pocket
of his hairy ginger jacket, had decided his destiny was Raymond'^
new daughter. Not realizing how rich Si was, he in turn shoved Si
out of the way, and leered down at Emerald. Noting Casey'|

234
muscling in, aware of Si's perennially itchy feet, Raymond glided
ver murmuring that very shortly they should move on to the
rarrick where he'd booked a table. Whereupon, to his horror, Si
glanced at his Rolex.
'Ginny and I oughta go, we're meeting with David Pulboro' at
eight-thirty.'
'Butyou're dining with us. I've got some ravishing things to show
you later,' protested Raymond, needing all his sang-froid not to
betray his fury, particularly when a drooling Casey announced he
wasn't doing anything and would be only too happy to take Si's
place at the Garrick.
'And I'll take Ginny's place,' boomed Joan Bideford, sliding an
arm round Emerald's waist.
'I'm afraid I can't make it either. Dad,' said Jupiter, who was
quite unable to face the Heaven and hell of dining opposite
Emerald.
Game, set and macho to David. In delight, he clocked
Raymond's frozen smile as, watched by a scribbling press, and
protected by guards with umbrellas, Si and Ginny swept through
driving rain twenty-five yards across the road to the Pulborough.
As his contacts were not as starry as Raymond's, David had
arranged an intimate little dinner at Le Caprice. Rosemary had not
been invited because among the guests was David's mistress,
Geraldine Paxton, whose rich husband Maurice didn't get much
of a look-in either. As someone who advised the affluent on what
to put on their walls, the sexually voracious Geraldine enjoyed
inspiring gratitude in handsome young groovers by introducing
them to generous patrons.
David had therefore ordered his newest grooviest gallery artist
to be present to chat up Geraldine. Jonathan, who had just
returned from Yorkshire, digging into Emerald's past, and who
would much rather have done a number on the delectable Ginny
Greenbridge, grumbled that he didn't like the Arts Council.
'They're a monument to tokenism and political correctness who
spend their time squandering tax-payers' money on works of art by
their friends.'
That's why I want you to become a friend of Mrs Paxton,' said
David smoothly.
He had also dragged fat Barney away from the gaming tables to
persuade Pascal, Ginny's gay interior designer, how much the work
°t Pulborough artists would enhance the Greenbridge properties.
Both Jonathan and Barney struggled not to laugh when Ginny
Greenbridge, on entering the gallery, whipped out a blue and gold
^de plate and rejected a ravishing Burne-Jones because the blues

235
in Guinevere's dress wouldn't quite match the dinner service on
the yacht.
'She's a former Miss New Jersey,' murmured Barney.
'A Miss New Dress and a Miss New Jewellery, judging by that
Tiffany cross disappearing down her cleavage,' murmured back
Jonathan. 'How's Charge Nurse Bisley?'
'Doing nights,' smirked Barney. 'How's Abdul's nude of Sophy
coming along?'
'Nearly finished,' lied Jonathan.
'I like paintings I feel I could fly over or walk through,' confessed
Si, admiring a tiger-ridden Rousseau jungle.
'How did you enjoy my father's party?' asked Jonathan. 'Did you
meet my new sister Emerald?'
'An absolute knockout,' Si admitted, 'and goddam talented. Sir
Raymond is giving her a show in October.'
Dad's given her the slot I would have had if I hadn't defected
to the Pulborough, thought Jonathan, trying to suppress an
explosion of jealousy.
'She was being monopolized by Colin Casey Andrews as we left,*
added Si.
'At least she's met someone with a bigger ego than her own,'
sighed Jonathan. 'What was she moaning about this time?'
'Her boyfriend being away, and the antagonism of her siblings,'
said Si reprovingly.
'Ah,' said Jonathan lightly. 'We may not be her brothereJ
and sisters much longer. In Yorkshire yesterday I unearthed an old.|l
biddy who'd once cleaned for the hospital where Emerald waa6|
born. She clearly remembers Anthea being visited by' -Jonathan's;-!
big dark eyes rolled innocently in David's direction - 'a very prettylj
blond man, young, but not very tall, which doesn't sound like vaf"
father.' |
David choked on his drink. 1
'Probably her brother,' he spluttered. 'Drink up, everyone, taxi'»|
waiting.'

236
Barney, who'd been looking forward to a delicious three-course
blow-out at Le Caprice, was bitterly disappointed. The
Greenbridges, like many rich couples who constantly dine out, ate
little and drank less except for quantities of bottled water. Si
ordered smoked trout and a filet mignon; Ginny, asparagus, then
strawberries.
Si, who had no small talk, was only interested in picking David's
brains, frequently recording information on a dictaphone.
Geraldine Paxton, skeletal thin in a pinstripe suit, and yellow
paisley tie, toyed with a plate of vegetables. Jonathan on her left,
buoyed up by another line of coke, flirted with her outrageously
as he drew first Ginny, then Si, on the backs of two menus. Si had
a good face, strong and square. Although the low forehead and
underhung jaw added a Neanderthal ferocity, the mournful
dark eyes were those of an Alsatian long abandoned in a dogs'
home.
Realizing while he'd been quizzing David everyone else had
practically finished, Si picked up a steak knife and fork to attack
his smoked trout.
'Fish knife, Si,' murmured David.
Feeling he'd done his stuff chatting up Geraldine, Jonathan
turned thankfully to Ginny on his left, who was toying with strawberries,
enhanced by neither cream nor sugar.
How long have you been married?' he asked.
'Six months.'
'Happy?'
Kinda - Si's last wife passed away, but he won't verbalize about
her. My analyst told Si he was being very selfish not helping me to
work it through and bury her ghost.'

237
Hence the sad Alsatian eyes, thought Jonathan.
'It would be worse if he talked about her all the time,' he said,
drawing the thick black hair on the top of Si's head as a jagged
palisade. Next moment his pen shot downwards giving Si a thin
gigolo sideboard as Geraldine, on his right, slid a bony hand under
his table napkin.
'My clients call me their "hired eyes",' she was simultaneously
boasting to Si. 'I help people put art on their walls, not unlike an
interior designer' - she flashed big teeth at gay Pascal - 'but art is
more intellectually stimulating, and does have an asset value.'
'She helps lame dogs over lifestyles,' giggled Jonathan to Ginny.
'Si keeps buying new properties to accommodate our art,'
murmured back Ginny, who was longing to run her hand through
Jonathan's hair - he was so cute.
Geraldine turned to Ginny warmly. 'I am sure I can advise you
and Si. I'd love to introduce you to . . .'
But Ginny had shot off to the Ladies.
'Every time a marriage breaks up, I make a fucking fortune,' gay
Pascal was whispering to Barney. 'The new wife moves in and
changes all the decor and needs fifty million dollars of new art to
go with it.'
'Can'tbe bad.' Barney let Pascal do the talking, enabling himself
to shovel quantities of Scandinavian ice berries smothered with
white chocolate sauce into his face.
As Si was still being clobbered by Geraldine, David pinched
Ginny's chair.
'I've just had a call from Dame Hermione,' he told Jonathan furiously.
'I learn instead ofvideoing her yourself, you sent round that
scrofulous beast Trafford with a Box Brownie. Dame Hermione
is most displeased and threatening to pull out. And Enid Coley is
even more disappointed with her portrait, she doesn't think you
even painted her face.'
'I thought she did that herself with a trowel,' said Jonathan
sulkily.
'Stop being flip. This cannot go on.'
'It can't,' agreed Jonathan. 'I at least did these all myself,' he
added, handing two menus to a returning Ginny Greenbridge,
who went into ecstasies.
'Oh my Gard. This is to die for, so like me. May I keep it? You
have real talent, and look, Si, Jonathan has made you look like a
real gentleman.'
Si was so touched by this miracle - and also because Jonathan
hadn't made a pass at Ginny (most men did) that he promptly
commissioned him to paint her portrait.

238
'Can you do it straight away?' begged Ginny. 'We're off to Berlin
on Sunday. Si and I are global citizens.'
Jonathan tried not to laugh.
'Certainly he can,' said David firmly, 'I'll sort out a price.'
I expected David to be fun and easy to work with, thought
Jonathan darkly. He's just a bloody Hitler.
'I wouldn't tell everyone,' Geraldine was now confiding to Si,
'but Maurice, my husband, and I have given half a million to Tate
Modern.'
'Si gave forty-four million dollars to cultural projects last year,'
interrupted Ginny crushingly, 'and Si and I not only give money,
we give of ourselves.'
Si was still looking at Jonathan's drawing.
'I'm told the Norwich School is a good buy, I kinda like an artist
called John Sell Cotman.'
'Marvellous,' agreed Jonathan.
'Too parochial,' said David dismissively. 'I wouldn't bother.'
'I would,' said Jonathan sweetly. 'My father has a beautiful
Cotman of Duncombe Park with the trees turning at home. He
might be prepared to sell it.'
David was so cross he overtipped by mistake, and as the rain had
stopped, suggested walking back to the Pulborough.
As they strolled along a dripping Jermyn Street, David, remembering
how he had benefited from Raymond's example in the
seventies, warmly recommended Raymond's tailors - whom he
now regarded as his own - to Si. 'They're excellent and very reason-
able.Just mention my name,' he added loftily. 'What are your plans
for tomorrow?'
'Going to the art fair. I'm after a Degas drawing of a jockey.'
As they entered Cork Street, David was amused to see Jupiter and
Tamzin his assistant still wearily clearing up glasses and chucking
out drunks. Across the road, David's assistant, subtle Zoe, had the
coffee on and the liqueurs out.

Brandishing colour swatches, Ginny pored over half a dozen of
Jonathan's canvasses.
'The rest are sold,' said Zoe apologetically. Jonathan's work is
rocketing in value, you'd have a real investment here.'
Tjust adore the little kid with the pink beach ball.' Ginny turned
to Pascal: 'Perfect for the playroom.'
I didn't know you had children.' Jonathan took a swig of
kummel. "
We're thinking about it. Babies are so hip at the moment.'
Boom, why does my art go boom,' sang Jonathan, quickstepping

239
Zoe down the gallery. 'Mrs Greenbridge doesn't realize that the
pink beach ball is the end of the little kid's cock.'
'For God's sake don't tell her,' giggled Zoe.

Meanwhile, in a white-washed back room lit like a chapel hung a
reclining nude by Modigliani priced at ten million pounds.
'Everyone's after it,' murmured David, 'the Tate, MOMA, the
Getty, but I wanted to give you first look.' Then, handing Si a glass
of Napoleon brandy, which cost more than dinner, he added
smoothly, 'I'd be happy to accompany you to Grosvenor House
tomorrow. Dealers at fairs can be iffy if you don't know the ropes.
Although you couldn't do better than the Modigliani.'
Si looked at David meditatively. He might be in thrall to the
daydreams of his wife's designer, but he was not going to be
patronized.
'You can steer me into your smart tailor, David, you can tell me
what knife to use, or even how to hold my dick, but not what art to
buy.'
David went magenta. 'Only making a suggestion,' he spluttered.
'Well, don't,' snapped Si, 'the Modigliani doesn't grab me and
it's way overpriced.'
Jonathan felt increasingly drawn to Si and wanted to stay and
talk to him. But not wishing to bug David too much, and having
been urged to suck up to Geraldine, he offered her a lift home.
Only when Barney had swept Pascal off to his gambling club,
dropping off a weary Ginny at the Ritz on the way, did Si dispatch
Zoe to make him another cup of coffee, and say to David, 'I have
two Leonardo drawings at home, and one by Michelangelo, but my
dream is to own a Raphael.'
David's heart leapt. 'My dream is to find you one. I'll put out
feelers.'
'Keep it low key. If people figure I'm nosing around, the price
will shoot up.'
Getting out his spectacles, Si got up to have another look at the
Modigliani. Turning, he caught David with his hand up Zoe's skirt
as she put the coffee cup down on the table.
'Mrs Pulboro' doesn't like London?' he asked pointedly.
'No, she's a country gal,' replied David heartily. 'I can only tempt
her up to town for the Chelsea Flower Show. Her father was Sir
Mervyn Newton, you know.'
'I look forward to meeting her in July.'
'You do?'
'Sir Raymond has asked us to visit Foxes Court.'

240
David was enraged but not so furious as Geraldine was later.
Although Jonathan thought her a pretentious cow, he made a
detour to Hoxton to show her his pictures. All the way, Geraldine
boasted about her contacts.
'The art industry is built on relationships, Jonathan. If you play
ball your oeuvre could end up on the most influential walls in
Europe.'
Reaching the loft, they found a furiously growling Diggory and
Choirboy having a tug of war over a Hermes scarf. Trafford,
stripped to the waist, was arched over a microscope, drawing his
own sperm. Geraldine was enraptured.
'In an increasingly godless age, one's own body is the only site
of identity,' she cried.
Trafford had been having an annual tidy-out of his bedroom,
which meant using the communal studio as a waste-paper basket.
In the middle rose a pile of beer cans, curry trays, Pedigree Chum
tins, fag ends, twelve months of unopened bills and bank
statements and torn-up photographs of models Trafford had
failed to pull. On top was a dressing of pages torn out of porn
mags.
Mess created by artists seems to electrify the outsider.
'This is very fine,' exclaimed Geraldine, walking round the pile.
'Does it have a title?'
'Cunterpane,' grunted Trafford, intent on his drawing.
'How apt! Perhaps Cunterpane One. I hate to be hard nosed, but
is it for sale? Nothing ventured . . . how much?'
'Hundred thousand,' said Trafford, adding another tadpole.
'A very fair price, I know half a dozen homes for which it could
form a vital centre piece.'
Jonathan, getting bored, wandered off to his bedroom to find
some suitable canvasses to show Geraldine. Geraldine, however,
was more interested in sex. Following him, she shoved him back
on the bed, attacking him like a Dyson. A minute or two later,
she said tartly, 'It isn't a legal offence to move your tongue,
Jonathan.'
She was undressing him briskly and Jonathan was wondering
whether he was capable of performing at all without more Charlie,
when the doorbell rang.
Jonathan, are you there?' yelled a voice through the letterbox.
'I can see your light's on.'
It was Sophy Cartwright, monstrous crush on Jonathan
unabated.
As he tugged on his trousers, Jonathan apologized to Geraldine.

241
'My sister's rolled up' - well, it was nearly true - 'you stay here
while I get rid of her.'
Sophy had arrived with cheesecake, raspberries and a bottle of
Tesco's champagne, all of which Jonathan, who had the serious
munchies, got stuck into.
'It's so lovely to see you,' said Sophy wistfully.
Only when she asked him twenty minutes later what he was
working on at the moment, did Jonathan remember Geraldine.
'Kerist, you've just reminded me. Sorry, darling, there's something
I've got to finish off next door. Here's twenty quid for a taxi.'
It was pouring with rain again. Jonathan felt a sod as he despatched
a desolate Sophy into the cold, wet night.
Trafford was enraged.
'Bloody dog in the manger. Why didn't you pass Sophy on to
me?'
'Shut up,' hissed Jonathan.
'How can you prefer that stick insect?'
'She's a stuck insect now.'
Alas, flipping through Jonathan's canvasses, a marooned
Geraldine had been enraged to discover portraits of many of her
friends in various states of undress. She hadn't dared come out in
case 'Jonathan's sister' knew her or Maurice, her husband. But
hearing the front door bang, she rushed out in a fury, beating
Jonathan round the head with a squash racket. Collapsing on the
floor, lying as still as a reclining nude, Jonathan pretended to
have passed out. Luckily Diggory, who was frantically licking
his master's face to revive him, decided instead to bite one of
Geraldine's incredibly thin ankles, sending her shrieking into the
night. Outside she immediately rang David on his mobile.
'I'm stuck in Hoxton.'
'Si's still here,' lied David, spitting out one ofZoe's pubic hairs,
'I'll call you in the morning.'
'Tell Si I've discovered an important artist.'

Having applied two more squirts of Right Guard to ten other layers
stiffening under his armpits, Trafford caught up with Geraldine in
the middle of Hoxton Square. Drenched, limping, waving her thin
arms, she had all the pathos of a Lowry grandmother.
'Would you like a lift home?' asked Trafford.

Returning much earlier, Si had found his wife awake.
'Gotta call coming through from LA,' he told her. 'Go get your- ^
self ready, baby.' |
Wandering into the bedroom five minutes later, he found |

242 I
Ginny, her long blonde hair in pigtails, naked except for a gym slip
and white socks, skipping in front of a long mirror.
'One, two, three, four,' she counted in a shrill, childish voice,
breasts bouncing, pleated skirt flying, skipping rope hissing
through the air, 'five, six, seven, eight.' Her blonde bush was darkening.
She never got to twenty.

243
As a wet chill June grew even wetter and chiller, Alizarin Belvedon,
who travelled his own road and never complained, realized with
increasing horror that his sight was going. The streaked black and
silver water tumbling into the trough opposite the front door at
Foxes Court, which had always reminded him of Galena's fringe,
was now only a blur. Used to roaming the valley at dusk, he kept
tripping over stones and missing steps. Yesterday he had smashed
a treasured possession, a mug Hanna had given him. The hospital lights used by surgeons, in which he'd invested to enable him to
paint through the night, were now needed all day.
At first he thought he was imagining things, but he kept having
blinding headaches and the vision in his left eye was definitely
narrowing, and he had so much left to paint. He was too terrified
of being told to give up to go to the doctor. Instead he worked until;
he collapsed. Nor had he been able to sell any pictures and earned
barely enough from his day a week teaching at Searston College to
feed Visitor and buy paint.
The news from Kosovo and Chechnya was terrible; he should be ;
there. But he couldn't afford it, he loathed leaving Visitor and a 'j.
still small voice queried whether he would only be going to escape j
from the bills, the bailiffs and his hopeless longing for Hanna. As |
a final injury, Raymond was giving that spoilt brat Emerald an "|
exhibition. Alizarin groaned so loudly that Visitor woke and
waddled across the room to lay a fat paw on his master's knee.
Alizarin had grown up too fast. As a child he had known too
many secrets, which he usually blocked out, but which recently had
returned to him in hideous nightmares. If Galena set him free
perhaps he could paint less tortured, more accessible pictures?
After the silver wedding, there had been much sly media

244
innuendo as to who had really fathered Galena's sons. Jupiter and
Tonathan were perceived to be Raymond's, but rumour persisted
that Alizarin's father was the late Etienne de Montigny, now
regarded as France's greatest painter, who'd been tall and thin,
with a beaky nose and massive shoulders like Alizarin. A week
before she died, Galena had given Alizarin one of Etienne's
ravishing drawings of herself, which hung in the Lodge beside
Galena's palette and which Alizarin wouldn't have sold for the
world. Alizarin had been nine when Galena died, the same age as
Dicky and Dora today. He had spent a lot of time, since Emerald
arrived, comforting them both.
'Ouch,' shouted Alizarin, as Visitor clawed his thigh with his
paw. 'OK, let's go to London.'
Visitor, who adored jaunts, thumped his tail.
The jaunt started humiliatingly. None of the galleries Alizarin
dropped into were remotely interested in his pictures.
'You'll have to become a guide dog sooner than you think,' he
told Visitor.
Heavy rain had slowed down the traffic, and it was late afternoon
before Alizarin braved the Belvedon. Raymond had gone to the
BBC. Jupiter was in the back office sorting out another of his
father's cock-ups. A man called Baxter, who'd arrived with a Rolls- Royce and a chauffeur, and who claimed to be staying at the Savoy,
had been allowed by Raymond to borrow a charming Millais for a
few hours to show his wife. It now transpired there was no Baxter
staying at the Savoy and no sign of the Millais.
Tamzin, Raymond's assistant, yet another comely well-bred
halfwit, whom Jupiter referred to as the 'Dimbo', had been
ordered not to disturb him. She also didn't recognize Alizarin.
'Mr Belvedon hasn't time to look at unsolicited work,' she told
him disdainfully. 'Why don't you send in some transparencies with
a stamped addressed Jiffy bag?'
Alizarin's roar of rage flushed even Jupiter out of the inner
sanctum, but he only allowed his younger brother five minutes, not
even offering him a drink.
'We've got too much of your stuff taking up space already.'
Then, flipping and wincing his way through half a dozen of
Alizarin's recent canvasses, he added, 'You must make your work
more collector friendly. I'll take that little watercolour of Visitor,
if you're really strapped.'
'Fuck off,' howled Alizarin.
He was so angry he drove all the way down a one-way street,
ignoring frantic hooting and waving of fists. For a second he rested
his aching head on the steering wheel. It would take him three

245
or four hours to get back to Limesbridge in the rush hour.
Thoroughly depressed, he drove east to Hoxton where Diggory
and Visitor greeted each other joyfully and where he found
Jonathan in high spirits if under siege.
'David keeps hassling me to finish things, and has just buggered
off to Geneva to top up his tan and shove more millions into his
Swiss bank. Trafford's been arrested for punching a photographer;
I offered to bail him, but he said he needed the rest and that having
a record will increase his street cred. He had a tidy-up last week, although you wouldn't know it.'
At least the pile of rubbish topped with porn magazines had
disappeared to a more elevated location.
'What brings you to London?' asked Jonathan as he rootled
under a chaos of love letters and sketches for a corkscrew.
'Not selling pictures, particularly to the Belvedon.' Cussedly
Alizarin chucked the watercolour of Visitor that his elder brother
had liked into the waste-paper basket. Jupiter's a shit, isn't he?'
'Foul,' agreed Jonathan. 'I'm painting a group of people I most
dislike including Casey Andrews and Somerford Keynes and
calling it Millennium Buggers. I'm thinking of adding Jupiter. He'll
never forgive you for pushing the frontiers forward and because
he knows Hanna admires you more than him.'
Then, as Alizarin blushed and muttered something self-
deprecating, Jonathan continued, 'He does too. And he'll never
forgive Emerald for conning him into asking her to the silver
wedding. I think he even convinced himself she fancied him. How
is she?' he asked casually.
'Disrupting the household.'
'Has that Yank boyfriend turned up again?'
Alizarin shook his head. 'Probably what's making her so tetchy.'
Unable to find a corkscrew, Jonathan rinsed a mug and a teacup
and filled them both with whisky.
Both brothers, particularly in the face of current family ructions,
felt absurdly happy to be friends again. As Jonathan put on the
Alpine Symphony, in which Richard Strauss depicts a day on a
mountain, starting with basses growling around before sunrise,
Alizarin noticed that his brother was looking particularly smart, in
a new very white shirt with the creases still in and a dark blue Sixties
rock-star suit with a faint cerulean check.
As he topped up Alizarin's glass, Jonathan became very
thoughtful.
'Look, I've got myself into a jam.'
'I haven't got any money,' said Alizarin flatly.
'No, for once it isn't that. I've got a sitting in an hour with

246
Hermione Harefield. I daren't cancel. Later I've arranged to see
Geraldine Paxton, I daren't cancel her either, or I'll never get
anything in the Tate. I've also got a commission to deliver first
thine tomorrow morning - a nude. I've already had twenty
thousand up front, but there's still forty thousand to come, which
I'll split with you if you paint it for me.'
'Don't be ridiculous,' exploded Alizarin, thinking what he could
do with twenty thousand pounds. See a decent eye specialist, stock
up on canvasses and paint, mend the hole in the roof, buy a new
collar for Visitor or even dinner for Hanna when Jupiter was in
London.
The Alpine Symphony was growing louder and louder: the sun
was about to burst forth on the snowy peaks.
'Oh please, Al, I'm desperate. You could always copy anyone's
style. I'll be reduced to paying a forger.'
'Don't be fucking stupid.'
'I'll give you twenty-five grand.'
'Who is she?'
The doorbell rang.
That'll be her now.'
Richard Strauss's sun appeared in majestic descending octaves
as Sophy's beaming face came round the door. She was wearing
her mother's tweed coat over a bright yellow strapless dress, and
was weighed down by three bottles of white, smoked salmon, a
quiche and a packet of chocolate biscuits for Diggory, who greeted
her delightedly, all four feet off the ground.
'Sophy, darling!'Jonathan's manner was unnaturally hearty; he
couldn't meet her eyes.
Sophy had a despairing feeling he'd only summoned her
because he needed the rest of Abdul's money, but she put on a
cheery front as Jonathan launched into the rigmarole of his
predicament, leaving out this time, Alizarin noticed, any mention
of Geraldine.
'All you've got to do is to sit for my unbelievably talented brother
instead,'Jonathan said soothingly, 'I've drawn the short straw. I've
got to paint Dame Hermione in the buff. It's going to be called
Expectant Madonna. She's eight months gone so I've really got to
motor. Hope it doesn't pop out, I was never a good slip catch, and
that I've got enough paint. She's absolutely vast.'
Sophy, who was feeling vast herself, after misery eating too many
chocolates, was not only desperately disappointed, but appalled
^d embarrassed at having to strip off instead in front of this gaunt
^gfy giant. Seeing her distress, Alizarin wanted to back out. But
Jonathan was so charming and persuasive.

247
'You've got to dogsit anyway, both of you, Diggory chews up
canvasses if he's left on his own.' Then, whispering to Sophy: 'I'll
be back later, keep the bed warm,' and murmuring to Alizarin: 'Off
to ride my trustee steed,' he sidled out.
Alizarin was absolutely livid.

Sophy found taking her clothes off the worst part. At least she was
super-glammed up for Jonathan, with pink-painted toenails,
shining hair, body lotion rubbed into every acre of her body and
no shoulder strap or knicker elastic marks, because Jonathan had
ordered her not to wear any underwear.
Alizarin kicked Visitor and Diggory off the big sofa and,
spreading a blue sheet over it, arranged Sophy on top. For a
second, she fought back the tears, when she saw the plaster on her
leg, where in her excitement she'd cut herself shaving. But once
Alizarin got going, he was so kind and so quiet. She noticed he kept
polishing his spectacles, his tummy kept rumbling, and twice he
apologized to her shoes thinking he'd stumbled over Diggory.
Worried she might be cold on such a dank, cold evening, he
whacked up Jonathan's central heating, but she noticed how this
made him pour with sweat, obviously not used himself to such
warmth. When he whipped off his checked shirt, which had lost
most of its buttons, and then his dark green T-shirt, she noticed
how little flesh there was on his huge frame.
I wish I could feed him up, she thought, admiring at the same
time the endless legs in the ripped jeans. She was dying to ask him
what he thought of Emerald, but she didn't want to distract
him. Alizarin didn't talk much except to ask if she were all right
and occasionally tell her she had a lovely body.
'Too much of it,' sighed Sophy. 'I expect in Saudi Arabia, where
Abdul lives, there's lots of sand to stretch out on.'
'How long have you known Jonathan?'
'Four weeks and three days.' She blushed. 'I ought to have seen
the writing on the wall. The last time he made love to me, the foreplay
was so fantastic, I didn't realize till afterwards he'd been
watching The Bill with the sound turned down.'
That bloody charm, thought Alizarin furiously, which gets away
with things again and again.
'One good thing,' admitted Sophy, 'I wanted to have something
interesting to talk to him about this evening, so I went to an
exhibition of Raphael's drawings at Buckingham Palace. They
were so wonderful' - Sophy stretched joyfully - 'and I had no idea
that so many Raphaels were painted by so many different people.'
'Like Jonathan's pictures,' said Alizarin drily.

248
'But the ones Raphael did himself are so much greater. He
seems to paint people as they really are, the pupils' stuff looks
chocolate boxy by comparison, as if they were trying too hard to
flatter. Sorry, you know all this.'
As the windows darkened, she told him about the children she
taught, and Alizarin told her about his students.
'They're so trusting. Once you win their confidence, you could
tell them to jump through fire. They've been so short changed,'
he went on roughly. 'A whole generation of students has never
been taught how to draw or paint because it's unfashionable.
Video and the installation are all, and, even more important,
marketing. My old college is run by bank managers.'
'I wish my bank manager would go off and run an art college,'
sighed Sophy.
Increasingly, she marvelled at Alizarin's obsessive concentration,
the tension in his body, and the fire in those long
screwed-up eyes.
Four times they were interrupted by a wrong number. Not
wanting Sophy to alter her position. Alizarin answered it, on each
occasion getting less polite.
'It's some man asking for a Mrs Greenbridge,' he told Sophy.
The telephone rang again. Throwing down his brushes and
palette for the fifth time. Alizarin stalked across the room
and picked up the telephone.
'No, I'm very sorry, Mrs Greenbridge is upstairs being fucked by
the window cleaner,' he snapped and hung up.
Sophy giggled.
'Goodness knows what I've started,' grunted Alizarin. And then
he smiled for the first time, which lifted his harsh features, showed
off beautiful teeth, and softened the suspicious, angry eyes. He's
not ugly at all, thought Sophy in amazement.
At least no-one rang again to break his concentration.
Occasionally, as if in a trance, he wandered over, running his
hands over her to memorize a length of nose or curve of her belly.
'My eyes aren't very good,' he apologized, 'I have to use touch.'
Sophy felt increasing quivers of excitement. When he put a hand
over her breast, a nipple shot out to meet it. Really, Alizarin wasn't
her type.
By two o'clock she had stopped wondering what had happened
to Jonathan. At four, Alizarin realized the time, apologized
profusely to her and the dogs whom he took out for a pee.
Thinking how lovely he was, Sophy rushed off to find the food
she d bought. In the stilling studio, the white wine was nearly
boiling, the quiche had melted and the smoked salmon was

249
practically swimming round the carrier bag, but she laid out a
picnic.
As they tucked in, a mood of euphoria took over.
Sophy, Alizarin decided, was like a handful of coloured balloons
tied to a garden gate, indicating a party within.
'It's been great having someone to talk to,' he confessed. 'One
goes crazy painting away on one's own all day.'
Sophy hadn't looked at the portrait yet. Outside it was getting
light. Alizarin didn't want to pull the curtains and let even the
fading stars look in in case they broke the spell. Between them they
finished the runny quiche and the smoked salmon and gave
the chocolate biscuits to a yawning Visitor. Diggory couldn't be
bothered to wake up.
By the time the painting was finished, at seven, Sophy was
half asleep, only conscious of delicious warmth and rightness, as
Alizarin collapsed beside her.
Alizarin in turn felt incredible peace, not just the happiness of
producing something he knew was good, but also because Sophy
was like summer rain. She would drift through the leaves, reaching
plants never watered before, making everything blossom, even sad,
uptight, bad-tempered Alizarin.

They were woken around nine by Jonathan, curls wet from the
shower, hot from his night on several tiles. Slightly defensive, he
had brought croissants and Sancerre, nicked from Geraldine's
fridge, as a peace offering. He was amazed not to be chewed out
for being so late. He was then decidedly jolted by the extraordinary
beauty and rare tenderness of Alizarin's portrait.
'It's awesome,' he said slowly, 'flooded with inner light, like one
of Mum's crossed with Renoir. Visitor is the only thing you've
painted with as much affection. Fucking marvellous. He's got you,
Sophy.' He ruffled Sophy's hair.
Sophy wept when she finally looked at it. She had expected eyes
in the middle of her tummy, cubes and triangles, rampant ginger
pubes, but Alizarin had made her look absolutely gorgeous, a
radiant contemporary Venus with a pink plastic grip comb just
containing her gold waterfall of hair and a plaster on her plump
leg, celebrating her size rather than hiding it.
'It's the loveliest compliment I'll ever be paid, thank you so
much.' And she stood on tiptoe to kiss Alizarin's stubbly jaw.
Jonathan yawned. He looked so beautiful, even first thing in the
morning, thought Sophy, with just the right shadows under his
eyes. But suddenly she felt he'd only been painted by the pupils,
whereas Alizarin's strength and ruggedness was the real Raphael.

250
Surreptitiously she retrieved the watercolour of Visitor from the
waste-paper basket and put it in her bag.
'How was Dame Hermione?' asked Alizarin.
'Ghastly. I stopped her yakking by telling her her face looked
most beautiful in repose, when she left her lips together like two
lovers asleep on top of each other.'
Sophy caught Alizarin's eye and blushed. She felt sick as
Tonathan signed the canvas. Then he said airily, 'Abdul's flying out
at midday, I'd better take it round at once. It's so effing marvellous,
I ought to charge him ten times as much. How the hell did
you get her left boob to fall like that?'
'Paint's still wet,' snapped Alizarin disapprovingly.
'So's Sophy.'Jonathan slid a sly hand between her legs. 'Christ,
you are too,' then, as Sophy leapt away and Alizarin winced, he
added, not even bothering to lower his voice, 'Keep yourself warm,
darling, I won't be long.'
'I've got to go,' said Alizarin bleakly.
Sophy was appalled how desolate she felt that both her intimacy
with Alizarin and the beautiful painting should disappear so fast.

'Sweet, isn't she?' said Jonathan as he and Alizarin walked towards
the dirty Ferrari and the ancient van.
'Far too sweet for you,' growled Alizarin.
'At least she's not sexually out of bounds.'
'Whadya mean?'
'Didn't she tell you? She's the Green-Eyed Monster's sister.'
As Alizarin drove off with a succession of bangs, a smoking
exhaust and Visitor grinning in the passenger seat, Jonathan
reflected it was time his brother bought a new car. He must hand
Alizarin's cut from Sophy's portrait over to him at once. Then he
started wondering how he could make his portrait of Dame
Hermione even more radiant without throttling her, and forgot all
about the money.

Jonathan, who was basically good-hearted, returned later to the
loft to find Sophy, tidying up as best she could, had unearthed
the corkscrew.
'You are an angel. Let's have a drink. What d'you think of my
brother?'
'Gorgeous - and a genius.'
That too. Alas, he won't compromise. No-one works harder to
less effect. Mind you, if he made any money he'd give it away.'
'He loves his students.'
And they absolutely revere him. Although even they find him a

251
bit left wing. Big Al's very politically erect, he could never get it up
for a Tory.'
Sophy laughed and accepted a glass of red.
'Er - has he ever been married?'
Jonathan explained about Jupiter stealing Hanna from Alizarin.
'The worst part was that Hanna was pregnant with Alizarin's
child, who would be about six now. Jupiter, who's a shit, made her
have an abortion. Al's still hopelessly in love with her. I doubt if
there'll ever be anyone else.'
Jonathan had picked up the Evening Standard, turning to the arts
pages. Looking up a moment later he saw Sophy was crying.
Embarrassed to say she was miserable she'd probably never see
Alizarin again - how fatuous to fall in love in twelve hours - Sophy
confessed things were hell at home.
'Bloody Emo appears to have dumped us. Daddy's drinking and
cab-driving. Mummy cries whenever Daddy's out, and she's lost her
job in the pub, because she kept giving the punters whisky and
tonic.'
Sophy also didn' t add that she should be handing over her wages
to pay bills rather than blueing it on smoked salmon and white
wine for Jonathan. Jonathan, who'djust been paid in cash by an
ecstatic Abdul, forced another five hundred pounds on Sophy as a
modelling fee and said he'd see what he could do.
After she'd gone, he rang Raymond and explained the
Cartwrights were devastated at losing Emerald. Raymond, even
more good hearted than Jonathan, had a brain wave. He and
Anthea were planning a twenty-sixth birthday party for Emerald
on 7 July, to make up for all the birthdays she'd missed with
them. Why didn't they ask the Cartwrights: lan, Patience and
Sophy - he'd just have to square it with Anthea.
Anthea, to his amazement, was wild about the idea. What a
wonderful chance to show off and upstage.
'But just in case the Cartwrights are, well, rather humble - after
all he drives minicabs and she works in a pub,' she suggested, 'why
don't we have an intimate little dinner, instead of a big do, which
might faze them. Just ask the Pulboroughs and us, so all the families
can get to know each other.'
Emerald had already dismissively let slip that at parties in
Yorkshire Patience had always done the cooking: Just plonking
baked potatoes and saucepans of bubbling rabbit stew on the
kitchen table, and telling everyone to get pissed and on with it.'
In a frenzy of competitiveness, Anthea announced she would
cook for Emerald's birthday party.

252
'We must make a note to have a large high tea beforehand,'
Tonathan told Sienna, 'I gather it's black tie.'
'Black eye more likely. Someone's bound to punch someone.'
'I wonder if her sinister boyfriend will make it.'
'He promised to be back for her birthday.'

253
Emerald, meanwhile, had been getting her size three feet under
the table at Foxes Court. She had returned to the flat in Shepherd's
Bush only to shudder at its squalor and seediness and to pillage
photographs of herself at all ages to show Anthea and Raymond.
Out of embarrassment and defiance, she had picked a time when
the family were all out working.
Raymond, far more interested in the photographs than Anthea,
found a lovely art deco tortoiseshell frame for the most beautiful
and placed it proudly among the family snaps on the big table in
the drawing room. The Belvedon children were furious and kept
shoving it to the back.
Raymond had already made a list of rich and famous people for
Emerald to sculpt for her exhibition next year. He had also started
converting one of the barns into a studio for her and had bought
her a new car.
Emerald had in addition become a mini-celebrity, asked to open
the village fete, to take part in a photo shoot for Tatlerand appear
on Richard and Judy. The press rang constantly for interviews.
Smart locals, out of spite because they disliked Anthea intensely,
kept asking her to dinner. Emerald consequently grew more and
more uppity.
Raymond was enchanted and kept quoting Tennyson: 'A
rosebud set with little wilful thorns, As sweet as English air could
make her.'
Anthea was not pleased. Twenty-six years ago, she'd given up a
cuddly little bundle, who'd grown into a critical and opinionated
young woman.
Everyone in the household was affected. Dicky, having said:
'Yuk, another sister,' was now swooning with first love. Dora, accus-

254
tomed to being the rosy-cheeked apple of her parents' eye, bitterly
resented them not having time for her any more. Anthea in particular
had not forgiven Dora for calling her a 'slapper' in the Mail.
'Daddy's going to give Emerald a one-man show,' Dora told Aunt
Lily furiously. 'Don't think one man would be enough for her.'
Poor Hanna in particular was utterly miserable. As well as
painting flowers, she had before she was married been a successful
illustrator of children's books. This, Jupiter had felt, was the ideal
career for a politician's wife: something lucrative and creative
which could be done from home.
In the past, because he had refused to leave her in the country
near Alizarin, Hanna had had to pile everything into the Volvo
on Sunday nights and exhaust herself looking after Jupiter,
accompanying him to meetings, endlessly entertaining clients
and politicians and never having enough time to paint.
How often had she in those days thought longingly of her life
before she was married, when she had her own lovely flat, a job she
adored, an excellent income (Jupiter, needing vast funds to take
over the Tory Party, kept her very short) and half London
including Alizarin in love with her.
Now all Hanna could think about was of a time, before Emerald
rolled up, when she'd been convinced, even if he treated her
harshly, that her husband loved her.
Shopping listlessly in Searston, she passed a secondhand bookshop
with a poster in the window:

'Marry a wife and you'll be happy for a week.
Kill a pig and you'll be happy for a month.
Plan a garden and you'll be happy for ever.'

And she burst into tears.
Alizarin, angry that Hanna was unhappy, watched Emerald
with increasing disapproval. Sienna smouldered with resentment.
Raymond had never offered to convert a barn for her. But when
she raged against Emerald to Aunt Lily, Lily had fairly pointed out
that Emerald was clearly still confused about her identity. When
Raymond had rung from the gallery to say he'd sold one of her
heads, Emerald had burst into tears like Hanna and, saying: 'I must
nng Mummy,' had promptly called Patience.
Anthea had been furious about this and got subtle revenge by
repeatedly asking Emerald if she had heard from Zac, suggesting
Aey had better think of some other man to ask on 7 July, in case
Zac didn't show up.
* * *

255
Next door at the Old Rectory, Rosemary Pulborough, who had not
expected to be invited to her husband's little dinner for Si
Greenbridge, was still harbouring dark suspicions that Emerald
could be David's child.
Rosemary had been half relieved when Galena had died,
because she'd had such a hold over David, but she'd infinitely
preferred Galena's reign to Anthea's. Galena had been great fun.
She, Lily and Rosemary had had merry suppers together, and
Galena had never humiliated nor sidelined her.
Rosemary remembered David going ashen that October
morning nearly twenty-six years ago, when a tear-stained Raymond
had stumbled round to the Old Rectory announcing that everything
was going to be all right because Anthea was on her way.
And from that day, Anthea had never stopped tormenting
Rosemary, subtly putting her down, letting her know that David
had confided some secret, praising everything he did, but quite
unable to acknowledge any of Rosemary's achievements: whether
it was the brilliant marriage made by her daughter Melanie, or the
snowdrop she had propagated in Galena's memory which had won
first prize at Chelsea Flower Show.
Rosemary, however, was planning her revenge. She had recently ^
been appointed Chairman of the Limesbridge Improvement
Society and held her first meeting at the Old Rectory on the after- ;
noon of the third Thursday in June. This was packed out because
everyone was not only dying to see Rosemary's newly decorated |
kitchen but also how Lady Belvedon was looking after her skeleton- ;
outing in the press. Radiantly complacent was the answer.
Anthea arrived early and found the new kitchen something else <
to disapprove of. How could Rosemary have made it so messy so ;
quickly? Look at all that garlic, onions, herbs and lavender hanging ?
from the beams, those ragged recipe and gardening books all 3
jumbled together, those piles of papers and photos of cats and chil- |
dren and all those vases of wild flowers on the table. |
And you'd have thought Rosemary had chosen the colour of the :
walls - the rich reddy brown of newly ploughed Larkshire fields - |
specially to flatter her three marmalade cats: Shadrach, Meshach |
and Abednego, who sauntered up and down the long scrubbed ,j
table as if they were modelling their opulent ginger fur. ,j
And what was Joanna Trollope's latest doing with the spine up |
by the Aga? Rosemary should have been making a cake instead of |
reading. Now she was handing out bought chocolate cake and not I
even bothering with cake forks and serviettes. Fancy giving kitchen -J
roll to the Lord-Lieutenant, General Aldridge, with whom |
Rosemary was on ludicrously chummy terms because he was some

256
cousin ofMelanie's boring husband. Finally, what kind of bag lady
did Rosemary think she looked like, still in her old gardening
trousers and one of David's cast-off shirts?
Hanna looked a wreck too, decided Anthea. She deserved to lose
Tupiter if she didn't smarten herself up. Hanna and Lily, who was
puffing away on some disgusting cheroot, flanked Rosemary like
neighbourhood witches, all discussing the wild flowers still needed
for Hanna's painting. They made Anthea feel twitchy.
'Cup of tea, Anthea?' asked Rosemary, brandishing a big brown
pot.
'Have you got camomile? No? Well, I'll have water.'
'Isn't Rosemary's kitchen super?' shouted Lily, who liked stirring
things, to a chorus of assent.
There was a pause while Anthea's judgement was awaited.
'Well, it certainly makes the room look bigger,' she said coolly,
then, turning to the Lord-Lieutenant: 'Which Sunday are you
opening, General? We had over a thousand through last year. Folk
came, of course, to gaze at Sir Raymond as much as the garden.'
'This year they'll gaze at Emerald,' snorted Lily. 'Why don't you
plant her in the herbaceous border?'
Anthea's lips tightened.
'Shoo,' she cried as Shadrach padded purposefully towards her.
On the wall by the window hung Galena's Wild-Flower Meadow,
which Sir Mervyn had given David and Rosemary and which was
being admired by two shopkeepers. Anthea was sure Rosemary had
held the meeting in the kitchen so everyone would see it. If Galena
had been alive she'd have been a bloated old wino, fat as Falstaff,
but because she was dead, everyone hero-worshipped her. Anthea
wanted to scream. Shadrach settled purring on Lily's lap.
'Shall we begin?' asked Rosemary.
After touching on the village fete which Emerald was going to
open on 3 July, and Limesbridge's certainty of being the Best Kept
Village in Larkshire (if someone could persuade Alizarin to cut his
nettles), and the excessive use of pesticides threatening to wipe out
the skylarks for which Larkshire was famous, discussion moved on
to a proposed clay shoot in aid of the Distressed Gentlefolk.
'Shoot the lot of them and save a lot of bother,' said the landlord
of the Goat in Boots, to sexist guffaws.
Rosemary then brought up the old chestnut of the Borochova
Memorial. Galena, she persisted, had immortalized Limesbridge
by making it her home for nearly fifteen years and painting
glorious pictures of the Silver Valley. These now hung in the
greatest galleries of the world and had saved the Valley from
developers.

257
'Here, here,' shouted Lily.
Shadrach purred in agreement. Abednego took up perilous residence
on the bony thighs of General Aldridge.
'People come from all over the world to honour her,' went on
Rosemary. 'Surely there should be a statue in her memory in the
High Street, and why can't we apply for lottery money, and turn
one of the outbuildings at Foxes Court into a museum about her
work?'
'Good idea,' said the landlord of the Goat in Boots.
Nice woman, Mrs Pulborough, he reflected. No side to her. Pity
she was married to that shit. One of the joys of coming to these
meetings had been to gaze at Jupiter's bonny wife Hanna, but
today she looked wretched. Her eyes, once like pale blue lakes on
a map, were red and piggy with crying.
Anthea was furious inside, but putting on her martyred virgin
face, said she couldn't possibly upset Sir Raymond by evoking
memories of Galena's tragic death.
'And as we are already providing accommodation for Sir
Raymond's sister' - she nodded coldly at Lily - 'and Jupiter and
his wife' - she nodded coldly at Hanna - 'and Alizarin, and
Jonathan and Sienna when they deign to roll up, there is no room
for a museum.'
General Aldridge, who was known as 'General Anaesthetic'
because he was so boring he sent everyone to sleep, had just taken
out a subscription to the Erotic Review because his wife was going
through the menopause. He also had a thumping crush on
Anthea.
'No-one does more for the village than Lady Belvedon,' he
brayed.
Why didn't they put up a statue to Anthea instead? suggested
Green Jean, the vicar's wife, who also had a crush on Anthea, and
who had been so pleased she, and not the doctor's wife, had been
asked to the silver wedding party.
'We ought to do something in Galena's memory,' said Rosemary
stubbornly.
All the local shopkeepers and the landlords of the Mitre and the
Goat in Boots, who wanted to attract tourists to the area, agreed
noisily.
'We don't want Searston to get the memorial instead of us,'
called out Lily.
As the scent of lime blossom drifted in from the churchyard,
Rosemary had a brainwave.
'If Lady Belvedon has no room for a Borochova Museum, and
as our children have flown the nest' - Rosemary smiled as she

258 ;
imagined fat Barney taking off like a Christmas turkey- 'why don't
we convert our empty barn into one instead?'
Resounding cheers all round.
'Ouch,' shrieked General Anaesthetic as Abednego plunged his
long claws into his thighs before flouncing off.
Anthea was seething. There was no way she was going to allow
the despised wife of her darling David to gang up with Galena's
supporters.
'That would be totally unacceptable. Galena is after all a
Belvedon.'
No-one could see this mattered a scrap and before Anthea could
say 'knayfe' Rosemary was promising to approach her husband and
Geraldine Paxton about lottery funds and the best way of
launching an appeal.
'Why don't we ask local artists to submit ideas for a statue?' said
the doctor's wife, who'd been forced to go away for the weekend
so people wouldn't know she and her husband hadn't been invited
to Raymond and Anthea's party. 'And then we can ask the best
three or four to produce maquettes. We gather your new daughter
is an accomplished sculptor. Lady Belvedon, perhaps she could
enter.'
'I'm still happy to offer you the barn for a museum,' said
Rosemary.
We'll see what your husband has to say about this, thought
Anthea.
'My daughter-in-law' - she nodded at Hanna - 'is doing a lovely
watercolour of all the wild flowers contained in Galena's WildFlower
Meadow.' Anthea waved a pretty white hand at the painting
on the wall. 'Surely Hanna's canvas hanging in the village hall
would be a more fitting memorial?'
'It can grace the museum instead,' said Lily firmly.
The meeting broke up because the General was pushing off to
award prizes to the Guides in Searston.
'Garden's looking great,' he told Rosemary as he followed her
into the sunshine. 'And Isobel wanted you to know she's ordered
a thousand of your Borochova snowdrops for the Long Walk.'
Then, as Rosemary went pink with pleasure, he turned to
Anthea, who was just behind them: 'You'd better get your order in
early.'
I may be old fashioned,' simpered Anthea, 'but I prefer my
snowdrops to look like snowdrops. Lovely news about Melanie,
Rosemary.'
What?' demanded Rosemary.
'About the new baby. She hasn't told you? Oh, stupid me. I

259
expect she wanted to be quite sure. Mind you, she's always been
Daddy's girl. David is delighted.7
Hanna, who had followed them out through the front door,
looked at Anthea in horror, and put a comforting hand on
Rosemary's arm.
'Did you hear that, Hanna? Melanie's expecting,' repeated
Anthea. 'High time you and Jupiter got your skates on.'
Still seething, despite delivering such body blows, Anthea
paused in the churchyard on the way home. On the lichened headstone
were carved the words: 'Galena Borochova Belvedon
1932-1973. Heaven lies around us.'
Someone had left a bunch of meadowsweet and wild roses in a
jamjar. In a fit of rage, Anthea kicked it over, then kicked the headstone.
Hearing a step, she looked round and gave a gasp of terror.
Alizarin was towering over her, blotting out the sun.
'Get away from her,' he roared.
Because Visitor had just bounced into Rosemary's kitchen in
search of chocolate cake, Hanna, realizing Alizarin must be in the
vicinity, crept into the churchyard hoping for a brief bittersweet
word. Then she froze to see him talking to Anthea. No-one would
be quicker on the telephone to Jupiter, sneaking about secret"
trysts. ;

260
Emerald raged with paranoia at the prospect of her birthday party.
She was convinced all the Belvedons, except Raymond, Anthea and
Dicky, detested her. Patience, lan and Sophy must loathe her after
the way she'd slagged them off in the press and ignored them
since the silver wedding. What would happen if the two families hit
it off and united in righteous indignation against her? More likely
the Belvedons would sneer at the dowdy, plain and two-thirds overweight
Cartwrights. And why had Zac ratted on her, when he'd set
the whole thing up? She felt as if both her shrink and her bodyguard
had gone on permanent leave.
And now four days before her birthday, she had the added nightmare
of opening the bloody fete.
'I'd like to thank everyone in Limesbridge for being so
welcoming,' Emerald was practising her speech in her bedroom
before leaving, 'particularly my new parents, Anthea and Raymond
Belvedon.' Emerald smiled at Raymond who was perched on her
bed, nodding approval. 'And all their wonderful children.'
The little fuckers, thought Emerald savagely, particularly Dora,
who was acting up because Emerald had refused to be run away
with in the family trap pulled by a delinquent Loofah through
bunting-decked Limesbridge. She had opted instead to arrive at
the fete by river in Raymond's boat.
'How could the bitch deny Loofah such a photo opportunity?'
raged Dora.
Anthea had already gone down to the wild-flower meadow,
where the fete was being held, to rally the troops, but kept ringing
fip: 'Where on earth are you? The nation's press is waiting, we've
got to begin.'

261
'We'll be with you in a minute,' Raymond told her reassuringly
as he topped up Emerald's glass with Moet.
He was as reluctant as she was to get down to the fete, having
agreed to stage his own Antiques Roadshow at two pounds a go,
which meant all the cantankerous old biddies in Larkshire lining
up to have their junk valued.
'You look heavenly, darling,' he reassured Emerald, 'a sight to
make an old man young.'
Emerald glanced in the mirror. In her rosebud-strewn gypsy
dress with the ruched neckline resting on her white shoulders, and
the frilled skirt swirling around her slender hips, she agreed
with Raymond she looked heavenly. But how could she open a
fete with a broken heart?
'Where's Zac?' she wailed.
'He'll turn up,' comforted Raymond, then as his mobile rang
and Anthea could be heard screeching: 'We're on our way.'

Down at the wild-flower meadow, stalls were already trading,
because Emerald was so late, and the Belvedons variously helping
or hindering. Jonathan, still in a dinner jacket and dress shirt
covered in lipstick, was leaning against his dirty Ferrari, drinking
a gin and tonic and regaling his supporters with details of last
night's adventures. Sloping off from some dull awards ceremony
to have a kip, he had mistaken a BMW belonging to a rather stern
married couple for Geraldine's Mercedes.
'I didn't wake up until they'd got me home, and things rather
went on from there,' sighed Jonathan.
An abandoned Geraldine kept on sending him furious text
messages.
Under Jonathan's arm was an lan Rankin thriller which had
been set aside for him by Aunt Lily, who was helping out Rosemary
on the book stall. Three sheets to the wind. Lily had already given
someone back £4.50 change from a 50p coin.
Next door Anthea had paused at the Nearly New stall
brandishing a favourite blue dress, which Rosemary had
reluctantly sacrificed, crying: 'Who'd honesdy be seen dead in
this?'
Alizarin and Sienna, who'd both worked all night, felt like pit
ponies emerging into the sunlight. Sienna had wandered barefoot
across the footbridge from her studio. Dark glasses covered her
reddened eyes. Her huge canvas about sins done to animals was
really getting to her.
Last night she had been painting chimps with electrodes in their
brains, tonight she'd have to move on to the red-hot pokers stuck

262
- (j^e arses of tigers and leopards, so tfley died with agonizing
slowness but without a mark on their pelts. Momentarily
comforted to see her brother Jonathan, she had quickly realized
he had only driven down to barrack Emerald.
Alizarin was particularly low because he couldn't recognize faces
in the crowd any more, and kept being accused of cutting people.
Hanna was miserable because she was one of the people Alizarin
had cut. Languid Jupiter was manning the loudspeaker and fastidiously
pressing the flesh in case he was selected as prospective Tory
candidate for the area.
Dicky, back for the weekend from Bagley Hall, had enraged his
mother by dying his dark hair blond and parting it down the
middle like his idol David Beckham. Ever commercial, he was now
doing a roaring trade exhorting people to guess the weight of
Visitor. Once Emerald opened the fete and pop music began
pouring out of the speakers. Dicky intended branching out and
charging people two pounds to dance with Visitor. Visitor, loving
the attention, was pedalling his back legs like an organist. Every so
often he rushed off to drink deeply out of the big bowl in which
children were bobbing for apples. This, claimed people who'd
already guessed his weight, must make him heavier, and frightful
rows ensued.
'That dog weighs at least twenty stone,' called out Jonathan,
chucking a river into Dicky's tin as he carried large gins and tonic
over to Knightie and Mrs Robens, who'd been roped in to do teas,
and who were incensed Anthea was refusing to pay them, because
the whole thing was for charity. Being referred to as a 'tireless
helper' in the parish mag was no compensation.
The minutes ticked by, the press were looking at their watches.
Green Jean, not realizing she hadn't been invited to Emerald's
birthday party on Wednesday, had already bought one of
Emerald's sketches of Anthea. She was livid on the other hand that
her husband Neville had bought Sienna's nude drawing of Aunt
Lily, of whom he was extremely fond.
He'll have to hang it in the vestry,' spluttered Green Jean who
had already concealed Jonathan's nude of Sienna under a sheet,
which everyone lifted to peer underneath and which had just been
bought by the landlord of the Goat in Boots.
'I'll 'ang it in the public bar,' he said, handingjean a fistful of
tenners.
There was great excitement because Alizarin's abstract, which
J^an had hung upside down, had been bought by a shortsighted
General Anaesthetic, who thought he was acquiring a painting of
tamels in the desert.

263
'Enjoyed riding them in the Desert Mounted Corps,' he was
telling everybody.
The hit of the show, however, was Hanna. Her twelve flower
paintings had all been sold, and re-orders were pouring in. David
Pulborough, who'd just rolled up having done eff-all, and whose
flesh-pressing as prospective High Sheriff consisted of stroking
bare arms and patting shapely bottoms, clocked Hanna's great
success and suggested he sign her up.
'Your wife's so marketable. You'd better give up running the
Belvedon,' David told Jupiter patronizingly, 'and become a kept boy.'
'And use you as a role model,' snarled Jupiter.
'Whoops!' called out a passing Jonathan.
'And you can wipe that grin off your face,' a puce David turned
on Jonathan. 'How dareyou walk out on Geraldine last night, and
when in hell are you going to finish Dame Hermione?'
'Do look,' interrupted Jonathan blithely, 'here comes Dad and
his alleged daughter -just in time to close the fete.'
What right has the old fool to look so fucking proud, thought
David as Raymond in his dark green and black Larkshire Light
Infantry blazer, which he could still fit into, drew up and, jumping
onto the bank, turned to help Emerald out.
'Where have you been, you're three-quarters of an hour late,'
shrieked Anthea, rushing down the path cut through the pink-
tipped grasses. 'I have never been so humiliated in my life.'
'It's OK, we're all in one piece,' smiled Raymond as the press
went berserk.

Zac the Wanderer - ever unpredictable - rolled up even later, just
as Emerald was making her speech. She was so busy thanking
everyone and not goofing in front of the Belvedons and making
herself heard over a sudden deafening ticking din that she didn't^
notice the helicopter landing on the edge of the meadow and a ^
suntanned man in the sharpest white suit leaping out. i
'"Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,"' breathed an]
ecstatic Raymond. ;|
'And I now declare this fete ... Zac, oh Zac!' screamed Emerald. |
Dropping her microphone and her notes, ignoring the curt|
sying little girl with the bunch of salmon-pink gladioli, kicking off 4
her black sandals so her painted toenails flashed like corals in the ^
damp grass, Emerald hurtled across the meadow straight into Zac's 4
arms, whereupon he gathered her up, twirling her round, kissing
her on and on, watched with varying degrees of emotion by the
Belvedon family.

264
'Cut,' yelled Jonathan. This is a church fete not the back row of
the Odeon.'
And you're one hell of an ugly customer, thought Zac, noticing
the hatred on Jonathan's face as everyone laughed and cheered.
Revelling in the muscular strength of Zac's body against hers,
Emerald slowly recovered her breath.
'I've missed you so much, please stay the night,' she gabbled.
'Please be here for my birthday party on Wednesday.'
'Sure.' Zac smiled down like the golden sun warming her. 'I said
I would, didn't I?'
Toyfully Emerald swung round to the press and the gaping
public. 'This is my boyfriend Zac,' she yelled.
Again, everyone laughed, and, having thought Emerald was
pale, peaky, stand-offish and much too Sloaney, they all decided
that, now her eyes sparkled and her cheeks were flushed, she was
very beautiful after all.
Having shaken hands with Raymond and agreed to stay as long
as possible, Zac turned to Anthea, clicking his heels, kissing her
hand, murmuring, 'Beautiful as ever.'
'This is Charlene's day.'
'Doesn't stop you being beautiful.'
'Oh Zachary.'
'Zac, you haven't met my sister, Sienna,' said Emerald sharply.
'Sienna!' Zac's eyes, yellow as lime leaves in autumn, travelled
downwards, taking in her paint-stained, clay-matted, hastily piled-
up hair, her black glasses, the studs in her ears and her long
greyhound nose, the sprinkling of spots on her unhealthily pale
complexion, the furious sulky mouth, the tanktop showing off
tattooed shoulders, the ripped jeans covering endless legs, and the
dirty, ringed bare feet.
'Sienna,' he repeated mockingly, 'are you raw or burnt? A bit of
both, I guess.'
Enraged she was looking so awful, Sienna tossed her head,
frantic to think up some withering reply. Emerald saved her the
bother. Tugging Zac's hand imperiously, she asked him to come
and see her studio.
You have duties. Emerald,' said Anthea coldly. 'You have to
draw the raffle at four-thirty.'
Then when Emerald looked bootfaced, Zac said firmly, 'You've
got to, babe.'
Anthea, determined not to be sidelined, swept them both round
me gaping stall-holders, followed by henna-haired Harriet, ex of
^o-ah!, now an eager young reporter on the Independent.

265
'This is my Aunt Lily,' Emerald told Zac proudly, as they paused
at the book stall.
'That's why I loathe her,' hissed Sienna to Alizarin. 'My house,
my brothers, my father, my studio.'
'She only wants to belong,' said Alizarin reasonably.
'And this is our dog, Visitor. You've got to guess his weight,' went
on Emerald. 'He really adores me,' she added as Visitor thumped
his tail.
'He's my fucking dog,' exploded Alizarin.
'See what I mean?' murmured Sienna.
'Barney not here?' Antheawas asking Rosemary. 'Sad he doesn't
support the village. Gratifying our chaps have turned out in force.'
'Bitch,' snorted Lily, pouring herself another glass of white wine.
'What did you say?' demanded Anthea.
'Bit of a crowd here,' said Lily sweetly.
'And how have your younger children got on with their new
sister, Lady Belvedon, any jealousy?' asked Harriet from the
Independent.
'Certainly not,' said Anthea smugly. 'But Dicky and Dora, probably
because they've always been wrapped round with love, are
awfully well adjusted. Dora's been giving rides in her pony trap and
is about to take Lily home,' before the old witch gets completely
blotto, thought Anthea furiously. 'And Dicky's been raising money
with Visitor all afternoon. We've always tried to instil in them a
respect for older people. Visitor's actually won best pet in show for
the last five years. Do come and have a look, he's just going into the
ring.'
Alas, this year's very large lady judge had other ideas.
'Your Lab is much too fat,' she told Dicky when she reached
Visitor. 'He ought to go on a diet.'
'So ought you,' shouted back an outraged Dicky. 'You're much
fatter than Visitor, you awful old woman.'
'And Visitor doesn't have droopy boobs,' yelled an equally
outraged Dora from the side of the ring.
Jonathan spat out his gin and tonic. Zac met Sienna's eye and;
burst out laughing,
'Dicky! Dora!' screeched Anthea.
'"Droopy boobs",' wrote Harriet from the Independent. ;
Raymond, not enjoying his Antiques Roadshow, gazed down at .
a tray on which was printed a picture of an eighteenth-century
couple out walking with a fluffy white dog.
'I'm afraid this is not painted by Gainsborough.'
'How d'you know?' demanded the furious old biddy. 'You
weren't there when it was painted.'

266
'Don't forget you're drawing the raffle at four-thirty,' yet again
Anthea reminded Emerald.
Fortunately, she was distracted by Dora thundering by in the
trap, trying to prevent Loofah from trampling little contestants in
the egg-and-spoon race.
'Whoa, you fucking animal,' screamed Dora, 'bloody whoa!'
'"Droopy boobs",' chuckled Lily, who bumped unfazed beside
her, by which time Zac and Emerald had escaped across the footbridge.

House martins, flashing their white bellies, were darting in and
out of the boathouse, meadow browns waltzed through a blond
clump of meadowsweet. All round, the grass was flattened by
lovers. Zac put an arm through Emerald's.
'Do you remember last time we were in the boathouse?'
'Anyone who says finding one's birth mother increases one's
self-esteem and provides a bridge with the past is talking garbage,'
stormed Emerald. 'Come and look at my studio.'

267
Even in a dusty barn, Emerald had created order. Bags of clay were
neatly stacked beneath a table on which stood paints, purple and
scarlet sweet peas in a glass vase, and an old top hat filled with
sharpened pencils and brushes. On the easel was a sensitive and
charming drawing of Raymond, in preparation for later tackling
his head.
'That is terrific,' said Zac.
'Raymond's been so sweet. He's having a shower put in and a
kitchen and a little bedroom on a higher level. At the moment I've
only got this.' ;
Pushed against the bare brick wall was an ancient chaise longue,
covered in a white linen sheet, and the bottle-green and white
striped quilt from Emerald's bed in Fulham.
'This is perfectly adequate,' said Zac softly. '"Gather ye rosebuds," '
he added, drawing her gypsy dress off one shoulder.
Emerald stiffened. ;
'I thought I'd never see you again. You never rang, never textedj
me. The Belvedons have been hell. You weren't here to protect me»;
Ah . . .' for Zac's big warm caressing fingers had slid under ones
little breast with the delicacy of a small boy lifting an egg from 3|
blackbird's nest. I
'You can't just waltz in here without a word of explanation.' i
'I had things to do.' Zac's hands were sliding downwards. |
'And expect me to roll over.' ^
'Just belt up.' 4
Gathering her up, dropping her casually on the chaise longuc^
Zac unbuckled his own belt, slapping the leather against his palm.
'D'you want me to use this on you?' ;
Emerald was ashamed to feel herself bubbling widi excitement-i
,tj

268 I
'Yes, no, of course not.'
'You ask for it sometimes.'
'Undress me, Zac.'
Pulling her frock upwards and her knickers down he kissed her
belly, whiter than any house martin. A moment later he was naked,
honed, bronzed, rippling with muscle. I'll never be able to take in
all that without some foreplay was Emerald's last mistaken
thought.
The sweat glistened on her pale forehead, her black ringlets
flew, the chaise longue creaked, a bluebottle caught in a spider's
web buzzed frantically, Emerald closed her eyes mewing in ecstasy.
'Oh Zac, oh Zac.'
Thrusting deeply down inside her, Zac left her on automatic
pilot for a moment. Through the grimy window and olive-green
treetops, amid the tall chimneys and mossy lichened roof of Foxes
Court, he noticed a little turret, topped by a shiny gold weathervane
in the shape of a fox.
'I'm coming,' moaned Emerald, as she stiffened and shuddered.
And I'm getting there, thought Zac, smiling triumphantly down
at her.

'Sorry I can't offer you a drink here,' said Emerald. 'Let's shower
back at the house and I can show you round while the others are
still at the fete. The pictures are fabulous.'
Sliding her hand into Zac's as they walked across the deserted
lawn, she pleaded, 'Can we go out tonight?'
'Sure - figured I'd ask Raymond and Anthea to join us.'
Then, when Emerald looked mutinous, he yanked her jaw
upwards for a second, stroking her cheek with his thumb.
'It's important that your mom and dad are comfortable with me.
Our time'11 come later.'
There was no mistaking the seriousness in his eyes. He's ready
to make a commitment, thought Emerald joyfully as his beautiful
mouth came down to meet hers.
Alas, Jupiter, who'djust been checking the house for burglars
snd, to be truthful, for Emerald, was looking out of an upstairs
window. Ten minutes later, as Emerald flung open Sienna's
bedroom crying: 'This is where the Larkshire Ladette sleeps, isn't
it a tip?' she found Jupiter sitting on the bed, mending Sienna's
reading lamp.
'What the fuck are you doing here?' he yelled, which was all the
more frightening because he was normally so controlled. 'You
don't own this place - yet - and don't go snooping in other
people's rooms. Get out.'

269
He was quivering with fury.
'Oh dear,' sighed Zac as they reached the safety of Emerald's
bedroom, 'he hasn't forgiven you.'
'None of them has,' wailed Emerald.
'It's quite simple,' said Zac. 'The women hate you because their
guys want to fuck you, and the guys hate you because they can't.'

The fete made a record five thousand pounds but Anthea was far
from happy. She was furious with Emerald for bunking off with Zac
and failing to draw the raffle. She was livid with Dicky and Dora
for behaving badly, and with Raymond, who was exhausted, for
suggesting she and he should stay behind with the twins, who were
probably only acting up because they hadn't seen much of their
parents recently.
'Don't be so selfish,' snapped Anthea, drenching herself in
Shalimar. 'I personally am far too tired to go out but we can't let
Zac and Emerald down.'
She was determined to maintain her image as the gracious,
devoted parent, but Dicky and Dora knew of old their mother's flat ;
voice, her failure to look them in the eye, and her redistributing
of favours. That was why, radiant in amethyst chiffon, with a pink
rose in her hair, she was all over Zac as they later sat on the terrace
watching the ultramarine dusk merge with the blue minarets of
Raymond's delphiniums, s
Raymond, who'd already had a long chat with Zac, discovering ,
their mutual fondness for bourbon and cricket, had also opened ;
a magnum of Moet to celebrate the success of the fete. Defiantly ^
he gave a glass each to Dicky and Dora. 1
'You did very well, darlings, with your rides in the trap and j
Visitor's dancing, and Emerald's speech was excellent, and it's |
great everyone's paintings sold.' |
'Alizarin's didn't,' said Anthea smugly. 'The General soon |
changed his mind when he saw it the right way up.' ,|
'And guess who tipped him off,' muttered Jonadian, not looking |
up from lan Rankin. |
'Anyway, an anonymous buyer came in and paid twice as much,' ]
said Sienna happily. Through the trees she could see lights on in |
the Lodge. Alizarin must be hard at it. She must get on with her t
poor tortured tigers. Champagne always sapped her resolve. |
She was acutely conscious of a lounging Zac, sweating out his »,
bourbon, loafers up on the table, black shirt unbuttoned to show
the Star of David glinting on a smooth brown chest. He was so vain,
she was surprised he didn't pluck out the grey flecks in his dark
hair. Beside his sleek beauty, Jonathan, with his bags under the

270
eves his extreme pallor and the suggestion of a gut spilling over
his belt, looked thoroughly seedy.
Glancing up, Sienna noticed Zac grinning at her, patronizing
bastard, just because she looked so scruffy compared with ponced-
up Anthea. He was so like a tiger: strange, predatory, watchful. She
wouldn't mind taking that smug smirk off his face with a red-hot
poker.
'In what distant deeps or skies Burned the fire of thine eyes?'
wondered Sienna.
'What are you thinking about?' asked Jonathan.
'How odd that tigers are both predators and endangered
species.'
'Not particularly. I don't imagine antelope and waterbuck send
many charity cheques to Save the Tiger.'
Zac took a slug of bourbon and turned to Anthea.
'Garden's looking fabulous.'
Lime blossom, philadelphus and jasmine were fighting a losing
battle with Shalimar. Roses swarmed up dark trees; love-ina-mist
collapsed over the cooling flagstones caressing bare legs.
'Raymond and I enjoy gardening, Zac, that's the secret and, of
course, keeping one's staff. Robens our gardener, who's been
with us for ever, is the salt of the earth.' Anthea rolled off cliches
like amazing new truths. 'Robens in fact is one of Nature's
Gentlemen.'
'I don't like Robens,' said Dora beadily, 'he waved his willy at me
in the shrubbery last week, it was all stiff and purple.'
Sienna and Jonathan exchanged ecstatic glances.
Zac battled not to laugh.
'Why didn't you tell me?' shrieked Anthea. 'Raymond, we must
sack Robens at once.'
'Not before Emerald's birthday party,' said Jonathan acidly.
'Don't be cheeky,' squawked Anthea, then, not wanting to get
into a dingdong with Jonathan in front of Zac, nor discuss Robens's
priapic lapse in front of the twins, she said, 'Time you were in bed,
you two. You've had a long day.'
She was distracted by a telephone call from Green Jean. By the
expression on her face, and the furiously tapping lilac court shoe,
it was pretty serious. Normally Anthea would not have bawled out
Dicky, who had turned lime green, in front of an outsider. But such
^^as her dislike of Alizarin: 'Dicky,' she said, switching off the telephone,
'are you the anonymous buyer?'
'Course I'm not.'
Don't tell porkies. How did you pay for it?'
At first Dicky insisted he'd used his birthday money.

271
'That wouldn't be enough. Jean says you gave her a hundred
pounds.'
'Rotten sneak,' stormed Dora.
'Don't interfere. You're fibbing, Dicky, where did the money
come from?'
'It was Visitor's dancing money.' Dicky stood his ground. 'We
earned it.'
'That money belongs to the fete.'
'Money going to the fete anyway,' said Raymond reasonably.
'Alizarin donated the picture. I really can't think--'
'Let me handle this, Raymond. Dicky stole that money. You're
to give the picture back to Jean.'
'It's mine,' yelled Dicky.
'And where are you going to hang the horrid thing?'
'In my room. Alizarin's the only person round here who cares
about me any more,' and, bursting into tears, Dicky ran into the
house.
'And about me,' agreed Dora, disappearing into the twilight.
'And about me,' agreed Sienna, draining her glass. Retreating
through the french windows, she gave a gasp of horror as she
passed Emerald who, not looking her best in orange, had the over- painted look of someone who's tried too hard.
'What on earth's up with Sienna?' she demanded as she came
out onto the terrace. But as her sweet, musky scent swept over them
like chloroform, Raymond, who had automatically risen to his feet,
collapsed grey and shaking on the bench. Why was he terrified,
unable to breathe, his lungs filled with poison gas?
'Sorry about that everyone, but one must take a stand,' said an
unrepentant Anthea. 'Lovely perfume, Charlene. What is it?'
'Zac gave me it,' said Emerald proudly. 'It's called Mitsouko.'
'Oh bravo, Zac,' drawledjonathan. 'Didn't anyone tell you? This
was the scent in which our mother drenched herself. Even on the
day she was found dead.'

Only a further telephone call, this time from Casey Andrews,
announcing that he'd be dropping in in half an hour to deliver
Emerald's birthday present, persuaded Raymond and the others
to escape out to dinner. Before they left, Jonathan drew his still
trembling father aside in the hall and hugged him.
'I'm really sorry, Dad. I shouldn't have said that about Mum's
death. The smell must have unhinged me, and I don't think Zac's
kosher.'
'Seems a nice chap,' said Raymond dolefully. 'I do wish everyone

272
would stop fighting. Poor little Dicky. Anthea insists we don't go
up to say goodnight.'
'I'll tuck him in after you've all gone. Do you mind if I go up and
look at the Raphael?'
For a second, Raymond glimpsed the deep hurt in the eyes of
his favourite son. 'Of course not. Stay as long as you like. Just lock
up afterwards. Are you missing Mum?'
'I don't remember her enough to miss her. That's probably why
I'm so hard. Thank God for you, Dad.'

273
Zac's return didn't bring Emerald happiness. She had been so
excited with the big bottle of Mitsouko, the first thing (except for
the clothes and money she had demanded from him) that he'd
ever given her, but it had only succeeded in antagonizing the
Belvedons even further.
Raymond was sweet. 'Of course it was a mistake, darling.'
His wife, who couldn't understand why Emerald had emptied
the bottle down the loo, thought it was a hoot.
'How was Zac to know Galena bathed in the stuff, and chucked;
a bottle at Raymond the week before she died? It's all such a long;
time ago, people are much too sensitive.' ;
Emerald was horrified to find herself sometimes hating Anthea.;
Every day she discovered other similarities in their character: theil|
love of Chopin and Tchaikovsky; their need for sleep; most scarf:
of all, their liking for Zac. She prayed it was merely Anthea's desird
to know a future son-in-law better and kept saying, 'I'm so happ||
you and Raymond are still so in love. It restores one's faith ad
marriage.' 1
a?
,
Anthea was so frustrated she could scream. Emerald's return hadi
unleashed a torrent of past emotions: shame, guilt, resentment,
heartbreak, and above all deep longings, stirrings of sensuali^
which she had suppressed during her marriage to Raymond. »
Zac didn't help by smiling speculatively into her eyes, asking to<S
many questions, touching her whenever possible.
Anthea had also married a much older man in the hope ofnevel
suffering from jealousy again. Now she was eaten up by it, because
Raymond, her dear confrere David, her favourite stepson Jupiter,
evil Jonathan and even Dicky were all clearly obsessed by Emeral'1

974
One should not be wildly jealous of one's own daughter.
She wished Raymond wouldn't keep talking about settling large
urns on Emerald for all the years she'd missed out on cultural

stimuli. . r, _, .
'Imagine that precious nower growing on waste ground.
Anthea would have liked to have shown off by making Emerald's
dress for the birthday party, but, short of time, she'd whisked
herself and Emerald off to Lindka Cierach. On the Tuesday before
Wednesday's party, they went up to London for final tweakings and
to pick up their dresses. This gave Raymond the opportunity to visit
? his lawyer in Searston - which made his other children extremely
twitchy.
It also left Zac free to prowl round the garden, the boathouse
-sand the woods, studying Foxes Court and all the outbuildings for
Iblocked-up windows and unaccounted-for spaces. Towards dusk
IAe jogged through the village and collected some bottles of red
pand a steak and kidney pie from the Goat in Boots, where he
admired Jonathan's newly hung nude of Sienna. Ending up at the
WLodge, he dropped in on Alizarin.
|fc Alizarin in fact had had a very bad day. Hanna, increasingly
I miserable with Jupiter, was looking to him for love and protection,
feswhich he felt he could no longer offer her because he was going
t blind. For the same reason, he had tried to knock on the head his
very real liking for Sophy.
to Overwhelmed by guilt that he'd been working flat out for weeks
k and had done nothing to help Raymond with the forthcoming
t |>arty, he had risen earlier even than usual and tried with a long
fork to fish the algae out of the lily pond, a task he'd always loved
s "doing as a boy, rather like tugging skeins of hair out of the plug
»hole. Alas, his sight was so bad he pulled up most of the water lilies
instead and Anthea had screamed at him like a raped vixen.
Returning home dejected to the Lodge, he had found a
beaming Visitor sharing a pork pie with Eddie the packer, who'd
just apologetically arrived from London with all Alizarin's pictures
from the gallery.
We can't wait any longer for a discerning buyer,' Jupiter had
replied coolly when Alizarin had rung him in a fury. 'Frankly,
"ey re taking up too much space. At least you've got firewood for
the winter.'
The Lodge front garden was still an army of nettles - as likely to
song as he himself. Frantically painting to catch the last of the
ylight, Alizarin swore as he tripped over canvasses littering stairs
an- "^l. stumbling downstairs to answer the door.
"^hadjawant?' he snapped.

275
'To look at your pictures.' Zac waved a clanking plastic bag: 'And
I figured you might like a late lunch.'
Alizarin, who was feeling dizzy with hunger, was won over by the
smell of hot steak and kidney.
'Come in.'
Upstairs, having located two plates, knives and forks and a
couple of paper cups, he turned back to his easel. He was painting
a human shield, a Serb tank with crying babies strapped to its front
- each little face was portrayed with such tender anguish. In the
background, black smoke and flames poured out of a burning
village.
As Zac divided the pie, giving seven-eighths to Alizarin, and
poured red wine into paper cups, he noticed cuttings on the
Balkans, Sierra Leone, Chechnya and Northern Ireland carpeting
the floor, rising in stalactites on every surface, lying along the top
of the books. Putting a cup and plate on the table beside Alizarin,
out of reach of a drooling Visitor, Zac settled down to look at the
pictures, and was absolutely blown away.
He had never seen anything so powerful, nor heartrending.
Poking around, clambering over Galena's furniture which had
been chucked out by Anthea, taking canvasses to the fading light
so the mysteries and subtleties of colour could be revealed, he was
soon unearthing earlier work influenced by the Holocaust, along
with the occasional exquisite landscape or portrait.
Having studied them for nearly an hour in silence, he pulled out
a last canvas entitled After the Anschluss, which was when Hitler ';
brutally annexed Austria in 1938. The painting was of a wood of ,
tall, bare skeletal trees, lashed by rain and gales. Only the oc- s
casional beech sapling or little yellow hazel had hung on to their
orange and gold leaves.
If you kept below the parapet, you could sometimes hide your |
treasures from the Nazis, thought Zac. |
'These are awesome, absolute masterpieces,' he told Alizarin, I
with tears in his eyes. 'I'm going to call my old boss, Adrian s|
Campbell-Black, who runs the best contemporary gallery in New «|
York.' |
Alizarin, who up to now hadn't been at all sure about Zac, took a |
lot of persuading; but, gradually succumbing to Zac's enthusiasm |
and understanding of pictures, he melted, ridiculously touched, |
almost childlike in his gratitude. Noticing Alizarin had wolfed the |
pie and drunk most of the red, Zac opened another bottle, and sat |
down on the corner of the ancient rickety sofa not taken up by
cuttings and Visitor.
As they talked. Alizarin abandoned the human shield and

276
'div sketched Zac. As he was losing his sight, his other senses
had become more acute: he could hear tones in voices, smell
desires.
'Why are you here? he asked.
'What d'you mean?'
'It's nothing to do with Emerald.'
Zac took the deepest breath. Somehow he trusted Alizarin.
'My great-great-grandfather, Reuben Abelman, built up a furniture
business in Vienna,' he said carefully. 'His son Benjamin's
even greater success allowed him to indulge his passion for fine art.
Shortly after the Anschluss, two Nazis turned up with guns and
took Benjamin to party HQ where they threatened to shoot him if
he didn't hand over his pictures and sculptures. His collection and
the Rothschilds' were to be the first great acquisitions of Hitler's
Fuhrer museum. My great-grandfather refused to comply. He was
found the next morning clubbed to death. My great-grandmother
was sent to the death camps.
'Having stripped Benjamin's house, the Nazis turned their attention
to his sons. They stopped my grandfather Tobias practising
law, so he committed suicide.' Zac's deep, husky voice was quivering
now, as desolate as the rumble of a distant train. 'And they
confiscated the pictures from my Great-uncle Jacob's art gallery
and sent him to Mauthausen.
'All the Abelmans were wiped out by the Holocaust, except my
Great-aunt Leah, Jacob's wife, who escaped early in the war to
New York, and my mother, who as a child somehow survived
Theresienstadt and joined my great-aunt when she was four.'
Alizarin put down his pencil and, groping for the bottle, filled
up Zac's paper cup, missing slightly, so the wine ran like blood
down the side.
'My mother never got over the guilt of surviving,' went on Zac.
'At first, my Great-aunt Leah mixed with other artistic Jewish
people in New York, as she waited and waited for Jacob. After the
^w, she heard he'd escaped from Mauthausen, but been
murdered by the Gestapo.'
Zac had a beautiful face, thought Alizarin. The scars were all on
the inside.
When I was a kid' - Zac's voice was almost a whisper, a muscle
leaping beneath his smooth gold cheek - 'Great-aunt Leah used
to show me photographs of our house in Vienna in a smuggled-out
""lily album. The floors were covered with Aubusson and Persian
^gs, the rooms filled with eighteenth-century French furniture.
n shelf and alcove was beautiful porcelain: Meissen, Sevres and
resden. But it was the pictures that excited me. In the hall were

277
a Frans Hals and a Bonnard, in the dining room a Renoir and i
Cranach.'
Only Visitor snoring, the tick of the clock, the scratch o
Alizarin's pencil, broke the silence. Zac's suntan had taken on ;
grey tinge.
'Over my great-grandmother's desk in the living room hung thi
Raphael. My great-grandfather bought it to help out a friend, ,
profligate count, in whose family the painting had been for tw
hundred and forty years, who needed to pay his gambling debu
It's small, just twenty-two inches by eighteen. I've only seen it il
black and white but I dream of it in colour.' Zac's words wei
tumbling out in a rush now. 'I've given up on the other picture
they may or may not surface, but I've searched the world for tt
Raphael.'
Zac didn't tell Alizarin that he'd picked up clues since he'd be6
at Foxes Court. On the nursery wall was a framed cast list for a Tr
Raphaelite' Christmas play dated 1975. There was Raymond
nickname forAnthea, 'Hopey', andAnthea's rainbow-woven dreS
which was hard to identify in a black and white photo.
'Have you tried the Art Loss Register?' asked Alizarin.
Zac shook his head.
'I'm shit-scared of raising the alarm and sending the pict
underground. Got to be certain before I make a move.'
Alizarin's eyes were jet black, his face expressionless, as
picked up a magnifying glass to examine his drawing me
closely. Zac's jaw needed more strength, the yellow eyes should!
closer together, removing any suggestion of innocence. Squint'
at Zac he said, 'A lot of looted art's in museums, who won't git
back.'
'Like asking the Mafia to regulate their behaviour,' shrugj
Zac. 'I meet stone walls everywhere. Problem is time's running o<
Owners of looted art know survivors of the Holocaust are getl"
thin on the ground and are likely to die off before they can cla
And if you're not a Rothschild,' he went on wearily, 'yoi
unlikely to get satisfaction through the courts.'
Alizarin began to paint, dipping his brush in a tin which I
'Butchers' Tripe, Lamb and Vegetable Flavour' on the outside. 3
wondered which ochre to use for Zac's skin, which now had a grfi
tinge. His eyes had retreated into hollows.
'What's the subject of the painting?' asked Alizarin, knowing t
answer.
'Pandora's Box,' said Zac.
As the pause went on for ever, Alizarin drenched the paper'
water to get a weeping effect.

278
'It's got a Latin tag along the bottom: "Malum infra latet",'
iddedZac.
'Which means: "Trouble lies below",' said Alizarin. 'You could
je getting warm. That's all I'm going to tell you.'
'Thanks -1 sure appreciate this.' Zac was near to tears again. 'I'll
alk to Adrian Campbell-Black about you next week.'
'It wasn't a trade-off,' said Alizarin roughly, 'I just believe in
ustice.'
Trying to keep the quiver of excitement and jubilation out of his
roice, Zac asked, 'Why's your sister so screwed up?'
'Like your mother' -Alizarin warmed Zac's cheeks with a touch
rfrose madder - 'she suffers the guilt of the survivor. Sienna was
we days old when Mum died.' He went on carefully, 'Mum had
iecorated rooms for me and my brothers before we were born, but
tone nothing for Sienna. We pretended Mum was thrilled to have
^daughter, but she was really too drunk by then to mind what sex
fee had. Drink can make a baby undersized, can damage her
Means. Sienna looks OK, but I guess it's taken a toll on her heart.'
Alizarin clearly had great difficulty talking about his mother. He
(uddenly looked, under those punishing hospital lights, as drawn
Kid drained as a surgeon after a nine-hour operation.
i 'Sienna works so hard,' he went on. 'She feels huge responsiility
for the world, particularly for animals.'
Visitor thumped his tail in approval.
; 'Have you met Emerald's sister?' asked Alizarin casually.
'The roly-poly Rottweiler,' said Zac. 'Not my greatest fan.
llfistrusts my motives.'
'With reason,' retorted Alizarin.
I The second bottle was empty. A car turned into the drive.
Inthea and Emerald were back.
T must go,' said Zac, 'and I really am crazy about your pictures.'
If Alizarin's eyes had been better, and he'd looked out of the
wndow, he would have seen Zac waltzing up the drive in ecstasy,
*is face satanic in the moonlight.

279
The morning of Emerald's birthday was infinitely sunnier than th<
mood ofAnthea's servants. Having been paid nothing for the fet
they had been forced to bull up the house for days, and nowwoul
have to work until God knew what hour this evening.
'It's worse than getting the place clean enough for the caterer
and it's bleedin' hot,' grumbled Knightie when Jonathan rang il
for a progress report. 'Emerald and Zac are still in bed, your dad'l
supervising the fireworks, and Robens has practically mowed
lawns bald.'
'Where's Anthea?'
'Having her legs waxed in Searston.'
'Hopey de-furred,' said Jonathan joyfully.
'Don't forget your dinner jacket.'
'Alizarin will have to wear a strait-jacket to stop him thumpil
Somerford. I cannot tell you how much I'm looking forward to tfc
evening.'
Zac answered the next telephone call. A furious, tearful Did
had broken up, and no-one had remembered to collect hV
Scribbling a note for Anthea and Raymond, Zac borrov
Emerald's new Golf and set off for Bagley Hall. Zac, typic
American, was charming with children, and on the way home (
sun-bleached stubble and bright pink clumps of willow herb, Die
was soon confessing how fed up he was with life.
He loathed all the publicity about Emerald in the papers. He v
very defensive about Anthea, because people took the piss out-t
her. Did Zac think she'd forgotten to collect him because she Wi
still cross about him dying his hair blond, or because he'd bougl
Alizarin's Upside-Down Camels?
'That was a good buy,' said Zac, overtaking an Aston Ma

280
'Hang on to that painting, it'll be worth a fortune one day.'
Dicky became even more confiding, admitting he was teased at
school because he was small, like Anthea.
"There's no such thing as equal rights. Why is it OK for women
to be small and not men, and why do I have to go to boarding
school and not Dora? I want to be at home like her and not miss
things. All Dad and Mummy ever think about is Emerald. I wish
she'd go away.' (Or speak to me occasionally, thought Dicky
wistfully.)
Stopping for petrol, Zac bought Dicky a family pack of wine
eums and a computer game and, driving on, told him about a
secret room in his great-grandfather's house in Vienna.
'That's nothing,' scoffed Dicky. There's a secret passage in
Foxes Court going from the landing down a staircase out of the
fcouse into the garden, and' - Dicky looked furtive, he really liked
;^ac - 'promise not to tell anyone?'
:(? 'Sure, sure. Scout's honour.'
; 'There's a secret room, known as the Blue Tower, above Mum
IKnd Dad's bedroom. There's a staircase leads up to it. And I heard
Snightie and Mum saying Dad's first wife' - Dicky blushed - 'used
to have lots of men there.'
| 'How d'you get into this Blue Tower?' asked Zac, ultra casually.
t 'Dunno.' Dicky went vague. 'There's a password, but I don't
iknow what it is. The room's haunted by Dad's first wife, so no-one
||»nts to go up there.'
t'
pVhen Zac returned with Dicky, Raymond and Anthea, back from
Bfce beauty parlour, were effusive in their thanks. Dicky promptly
jdragged his father and Zac off to play tennis. In the kitchen,
iAnthea was icing Emerald's cake and wresding with tonight's
|»eating plan. She'd put herself opposite her two admirers, David
;and Zac, so they could marvel at her beauty in her ravishing new
Lindka. The weather was getting very close, but if she got too hot,
«he could always whip off the little shrug and show off her pretty
shoulders. Emerald's replacement father, lan, she supposed, had
better go on her right - perhaps he'd give her a minicab discount
next time she was in town - then she could have Si, who was the
real guest of honour, on her left.
°i s wife Ginny was much too busty and predatory to be put
anywhere near Zac: she could go next to Jonathan; and Geraldine,
me pretentious bitch, could go on Jonathan's other side. Ghasdy
^ey Andrews, who had this terrible crush on Emerald, had been
wgling for an invite all week. Raymond had manfully resisted all
hints, then forgotten and instead invited that vindictive

281
Somerford who was bound to bring Keithie the burglar. Alizarini
must therefore be put as far away from Somerford as possible or
he might chuck the sarcastic old pansy into the river. |
It was such a long time since petfood billionaire, Kevin Coley,!
Mr Ditherer, had got out his cheque book at Alizarin's first private,!
view to buy a couple of oils, and Somerford had sidled up hissin
that they were rubbish. Kevin, as was his wont, put his cheque boc
away and Alizarin had hit Somerford through Raymond's gla
door, as his mother had once hurled the Degas. With Somerfoi
spewing poison, Alizarin's career had ended before it began. Ser
Alizarin right really.
And where could she put Rosemary Pulborough? She ai
Alizarin were very fond of one another - so Anthea wasn't goil
to give them the pleasure of sitting together. It was stupid to was
heterosexuals on someone as plain as Rosemary. She could
between Keithie and Dicky - although from the way Dicky w
gazing at Emerald ... Anthea supposed it was a relief Dicky wasa^|
going to turn out gay.
Oh good, here were Zac and the boys back from tennis, not lo
on the court, it was so stiflingly hot. Having arranged the dai
tendrils on her forehead more becomingly, Anthea turned to
more caring pastime of icing Emerald's cake.
'Don't mess up any of the lounges. Dicky,' she called out.
Although the guests probably wouldn't go inside at all. Thati
the maddening thing about summer, all that time wasted polishi
and doing flowers people never saw. Perhaps she could ll
Patience inside for a liqueur.
'Dicky,' bellowed Raymond from the study, 'come and fix i
and we can watch the cricket.'
That was them sorted for three-quarters of an hour, thoi
Anthea. Obviously with the same idea, Zac slid into the kite!
Even though he hadn't removed his black tracksuit top to ]
tennis, he was hardly sweating.
'Her first birthday at home,' quavered Anthea, as she put a gr<
four-leaf clover on the snow-white icing.
'Beautiful.' Zac was standing much too close behind her. 'You^
a great mom.'
'Can I get you anything?'
Zac wanted a glass of water. She loved the way he pronon
it: 'Woturrr'.
'Evian's in the fridge, help yourself. It's tricky putting in
clover stems.'
Hell, here was Sienna drifting in from working all night, yav
and flexing her aching shoulders. Her hair was in a plait and^

282
usual she had got paint and clay everywhere. One of Jonathan's
discarded duck-egg-blue shirts, hardly buttoned up, showed off her
lone pale legs. A stud gleamed like mercury in her belly button.
Noticing Zac taking out the Evian bottle, Sienna said, 'Why not
try tap water? We're like not on the mains, so it comes straight from
a spring up in the woods.'
Peering into the fridge, she was just about to grab a handful of
nrawns, when Anthea shrieked, 'Don't, they're for tonight.'
Turning on the cold tap, Zac filled up a mug, then, distracted
by the glimpse of a comma of pubic hair between Sienna's thighs,
took a huge gulp, and swore as boiling water scalded his tongue
and throat.
'Fuck, that's the hot tap.'
'You get like hot water out of both taps here,' said Sienna evilly.
'Very symbolic,' snapped Zac.
* 'That was wicked, Sienna,' said Anthea in a shocked voice. 'I'm
so sorry, Zac, let the tap run for a minute, it'll come out cold as the
' North Pole.'
fc 'Like someone else round here.' Sienna pulled a face at Zac and,
: grabbing an orange, sauntered out.
b 'I'd be grateful if you didn't take any more towels out of the hot
^cupboard,' Anthea shouted after her. 'Knightie found seven in
; your bedroom this morning and we do have a lot of house guests.
? Little bitch,' she stormed to Zac. 'Galena's children are so horrid
to me. I tray so hard.'
p 'The Jews have a legend that the serpent was Adam's first wife,' said Zac.
'Oh, that's priceless,' giggled Anthea. 'You understand everything.'
a 'And that is such a beautiful cake,' said Zac moving in behind
^ her again.
'I'm off,' said an icily disapproving voice.
It was Emerald, who was driving all the way back to Shepherd's
Bush to put her parents and Sophy through a dress rehearsal.
What the hell was Zac doing deserting her to pick up Dicky and
notch up Brownie points with Raymond and Anthea? she
wondered furiously. She was their ewe lamb, not Zac.
It's my birthday, she told herself. No-one's allowed to be nasty to
me all day. Why hadn't Zac offered to drive her the sweltering 240
"iiles there and back? But she daren't let her family arrive un- ^upervised. Patience had been known to make a scarecrow look
"he Beau Brummell.
Zac saw her off, but his goodbye kiss, in full view of the kitchen
^ndow, hardly grazed her cheek.

283
'I'll give you your birthday present when you get back. Safe
journey,' and, banging the flat of his hand on the top other car,
he loped back into the house.
Suddenly Emerald hated leaving him with Anthea. No-one
warned you in the adoption manuals about your natural mother
getting off with your boyfriend.
Returning to the kitchen, hearing bat on ball and clapping from i
the study, Zac's long fingers met round Anthea's minute waist. |
Anthea's heart started to thump, and she found difficulty saying, g
'Sorry Emerald's being so temperamental. She's very smitten with;!
you, Zac,' and when his fingers climbed her ribs and his thumbs'1;
began caressing and lifting her little breasts, the four-leaf cloverj
suddenly acquired a fifth leaf. |
'Oh Zac,' sighed Anthea. She tried to move away, but he held!
tightly on to her. 'I hoped you were going to marry my Charlene.' |
'Not when I've got the screaming hots for her mom.' Zac buried|
his lips in the back of Anthea's very clean neck.
'We can't hurt Charlene,' gasped Anthea.
'I guess not.' Zac's voice was so husky, his breath so warm,
stroking hands creeping inside her shirt. 'If only we could carvel
out time and find a secret love nest for an hour of heaven.' 1|
Anthea made only half-hearted attempts to finish icing the word^
'Happy'.
'I know somewhere,' she whispered. 'I'll tell Raymond and Dicfc
I've got a migraine coming on. I'll meet you on the top landing il
five minutes.'

Hearing the drone of an electric toothbrush, Zac hovered iro-j
patiently in the shadows until Anthea beckoned him into he»
ravishing crimson and white bedroom. She reeked ofShalimar anc
was still wet from the shower. A white frilly neglige clung to he
body.
'Ay can trust you, Zac.'
'Sure you can.'
'You must promise never to tell anyone where you've been
what you've seen.'
'I promise, I won't notice anything but you anyway.'
Anthea wavered. 'I still feel awful about Emerald.'
'Emerald's a kid,' urged Zac, 'you're a woman.' How the clich(
tripped off his forked tongue. 'You're what Emerald would have
been if you'd reared her.'
How Anthea loved that.
'Kiss me, Zac.'
Zac pressed his lips hard but briefly against hers.

284
'Hurry please, I want you so badly.' (Come on, you bitch, he
thought.)
With a shaking hand Anthea punched out a series of numbers
beside a door next to her dressing table. Nothing happened.
'Sugar,' she squeaked, 'I've forgotten the password.'
'What is it?' Just keeping himself from throttling her, Zac put
warm, steadying hands on her bare arms.
'Parsifal- some stupid opera Raymond likes.' Anthea punched
aeain. 'P-A-S-S--' They could hear someone running down the
landing.
'Hurry,' hissed Zac. 'It's spelt TAR.'
This time she got it right. The door swung open. Softly closing
it behind them, Anthea led Zac upstairs through a door with a
mirror set into it. Inside was a bower of bliss, a heavenly little turret
room with a blue vaulted ceiling scattered with stars, a faded
laimson-curtained four-poster and pictures crowding the walls.
I 'Ay'm afraid it smells musty.' Anthea wrinkled her nose as she
[locked the door behind them. 'But Knightie might get the wrong
sNeasifshe cleaned up here.'
, The pictures were faint making, all of naked or scantily clad men
fcnd women. Zac clocked a Watteau, a breathtaking little Titian, a
^ifonderfully curvaceous white bottom by Boucher, and a Beardsley
Irake examining a naked nymph through a spyglass.
I! 'Omigod,' he said slowly.
I 'Raymond believes some old Italian theory, that if you have
jpaintings of beautiful people on the bedroom wall, you'll produce
peautifal kiddies.'
|; 'And you're the loveliest of them all.'
1^ As he buried his lips in Anthea's, she closed her eyes in ecstasy.
jKac's, however, remained open, roving round the room, until there
|0n the right of the bed, wham, bang, thanks at least ten million
dollars, ma'am, he saw the Raphael, and felt ecstasy shuddering
through his body at such shining beauty. He started to tremble.
How he quivers with excitement, thought Anthea, he truly cares
for me.
Undress me, Zac,' she whispered in Emerald's little girl voice.
He was getting so adept at taking clothes off childlike women,
ne d better get a job as a nanny. The white neglige slid to the floor
"^e an avalanche, followed by the gingham toggle holding back
ev halr- shs^ did indeed have the lovely body of a thirteen-yearold.He could hang a baseball cap on her nipples.
p 2ac' Anthea gasped when she saw the size of his cock.
Raymond's awfully little. Ay hope ay'll be able to accommodate

285
It'd be like an elephant getting his trunk down a mousehole.
'Don't worry, babe,' murmured Zac, 'I'll get you so slippery. Just I
relax.' |
Pushing her across the bed, parting her damp blonde pubici
hair, tongue downwards, he found her tiny clitoris, licking i(|
languorously. Eyes upwards, he joyfully examined the Raphael m|
glorious technicolour for the first time, revelling in the exquisit«|
folds of Pride's rich purple cloak, in Lust leering at Pandora in he
sky-blue dress, and in Gluttony snatching a red and green appi
from the table.
'Oh Zac, oh Zac.'
'Oh darling Anthea.'
Shifting his position, coaxing two fingers in and out of her,
studied yawning Sloth on his yellow couch, being kicked in t
ribs by a red-faced Wrath. Envy in scarlet glowered at Pandora*!
wimpish husband and Avarice pocketed a gold candlestick as a
the Deadly Sins were evicted from the room.
Anthea was so sticky now, Zac could enter her from any angt
Sitting in an armchair, with her straddled across him, he notice
Mercury in his winged hat peering in through the window.
Laying Anthea on the bed on her tummy, he slowly kissed ai
licked his way up her pearly white legs, till he reached her dimpi
bottom, and slid an oiled finger into her anus.
'Oh Zac.' She gave a squeal of pleasure. 'That is so naughty;
lovely, you must stop.'
But Zac was gazing up at Pandora. And as he took Anthea ft
behind, gently caressing her nipples and tickling her clitoris,
noticed how beautifully drawn was Pandora's arm, despairing
raised to ward off the stinging evils of the world.
Mechanically, almost as if he were grilling a sole, he flip]:
Anthea over on her back. As she bucked faster and faster bene
him, he noticed she made the same mewing noises as Emer
when she came.
But he had no difficulty in not coming himself, even when lat
she somewhat cautiously went down on him because it gave hi
the chance really to examine Hope in her rainbow dress. She w
as lovely as the Botticelli Venus or even the Venus ofUrbino, ligt
haloed in light, her piled-up hair glowing with rubies, and h|
sweet optimistic face outshining the shining moon behind her. I
'My little darling, I'm going to take you home,' murmured Zl^
'Oh Zac,' mumbled Anthea with her mouth full, 'are you trut
Pulling out his dick, Zac laid Anthea back on the crumpi
sheets, plunged deep, humped joyfully for a moment, then wit*
shout of triumph exploded inside her. Anthea was in heaven

286
nearest she'd been to orgasm in recent years had been when she
became Lady Belvedon at Buckingham Palace.
Sated by very different pleasures, they lay back on the bed.
'You're exquisite, like a little Fragonard.' Zac stroked her
concave belly.
'Raymond says I'm more like Hope.' Anthea pointed to the
Raphael, which gave Zac the excuse to leap to his feet.
'You were wearing her dress when we first met,' he said in
pretended amazement, edging closer, frantically working out how
the picture came off the wall.
'What a back view,' thought Anthea dreamily. Raymond was a
fine figure in Savile Row pinstripe, but stripped off, he was quite
pink and wrinkled. Zac wasn't going to be the only one making arty
references.
'You've got a naicer botty than Michelangelo's David,' she cried,
stroking it, then sliding her hand between Zac's powerful thighs to
cup and caress his testicles.
But as he put his hands on the gold frame to take the Raphael
to the light, Anthea shrieked and her hand tightened convulsively.
'Ouch!' howled Zac. 'Whadja do that for?'
'Don't touch the Raphael, the alarm's wired up to the police
station.'
'How does that work?' Zac in his excitement was oblivious of the
pain.
'There's a little sensor at the back of the picture, which goes off
if it's moved.'
'Like your clit.' Reaching back, Zac put a hand between Anthea's
legs. 'Where does it turn off?' he murmured, his fingers becoming
more insistent.
Anthea writhed with pleasure.
'In the cellar on the left of the door.'
'And the password?'
'Same as the first four letters to get in here.'
'Why Parsifal'?' asked Zac, wondering if perhaps he could
clamber over the roof and get the painting out through the
window.
It's Raymond's favourite opera.' Anthea ticked the names off
with her fingers. 'And although we had to fudge a bit, it's P for
1'andora, A for Arrogance instead of Pride, S for Sloth - no, it's
^pelt with an R, isn't it, so it's R for Rivalry instead of Envy, now S
ror Sloth, I for Indulgence instead of Gluttony, F for Fury, A for
^ance and L for Lust. It spells Parsifal.'
That's neat,' said Zac. Getting up, he prowled round the room.
e was frantic to grab the Raphael then and there, but out of the

I. 287
window, through a net curtain of cobwebs, he could see men
bashing in posts for fireworks, Robens mowing the top lawn yet
again, and Aunt Lily's fluffy white cat stalking butterflies in the
catmint. Raymond was downstairs, Sienna somewhere; it was too
risky.
'You do really love me, don't you, Zac?' begged Anthea, clamouring
for affection just like Emerald.
'You have made me the happiest man in the world,' replied Zac
truthfully. }
'This is a huge thing for me.'
'And an utterly enormous thing for me.' Reaching into his tracksuit
pocket, Zac produced a camera. 'Honey, I'm off to the States!
tomorrow,' then, when Anthea gave a wail of horror: 'I'll be back.1
May I take a picture to carry against my heart?'
Anthea even posed with her newly waxed legs apart and hei
hands clasped behind her head to raise her breasts.
'Absolutely sensational,' breathed Zac, as he aimed his lens
the Raphael above her.

288
Sienna often returned to stories from the Greek classics, which
Raymond had read her when she was a child. Her favourite had
always been about Nausicaa, a maiden who, like Sienna, had three
inerry bachelor brothers, who were always needing clean shirts for
parties. While dutifully washing these shirts one hot afternoon by
the river, Nausicaa had surprised naked in the rushes a handsome
illegal immigrant called Odysseus, who had hastily slapped an olive
leaf over his cock.
Zac must have been rather like Odysseus, wily, wandering,
opportunistic, loving them and leaving them, reflected Sienna as
die drifted off to sleep that muggy, sweltering afternoon. Waking,
she gave a scream to see a dark figure towering over her. Then she
realized it was the dark green curtained horizontal bar of her four-
poster. Having groped shakily for a cigarette, she decided she'd
never get back to sleep unless she first had a pee.
Wandering out into the landing, she was stunned to find stealing
out of a bathroom a naked Zac. Seeing her, he made no attempt
to cover himself with a leaf from one ofAnthea's sweetheart plants.
He seemed totally unembarrassed, probably because he had such
a lean mean marvellous body. For once, he was looking ecstatic.
I guess I should raise my dick to you,' he murmured as he slid into his bedroom.
Quite unnecessarily for the knowing Dicky and Dora's sake,
Anthea had put Zac and Emerald in separate rooms. Sienna there- tore assumed he had been returning from shagging Emerald.
"limping into Mrs Robens, who'd been checking the rooms
allotted to the Cartwrights, however, she learnt that Emerald had
gone to London at lunchtime.
Sienna felt sick. Could Zac have been with Anthea?

289
Collapsing on her bed she relived the horror of the abortior
Anthea had made her have when she was sixteen.
'We mustn't tell Daddy,' Anthea had kept saying.
The father of the baby had been a very attractive married m<
and Anthea had had to have several lunches with him to talk aboi
'the situation', before persuading him never to see Sienna agaii
He had become quite nasty when Sienna had run away from scho<
and rolled up in floods of tears at his office. Could Anthea be uj
to her old tricks - but this time nicking Emerald's boyfriends?
An hour later, when Zac disappeared off to Searston in Antheal|
car, ostensibly because he'd forgotten to bring a black tie, Sien
crept into his room, breathing in sudden sweetness from the gc
honeysuckle clustering round his window and the CK One
which he must have drenched himself before rushing out. It
Sienna opened a chest of drawers and froze. Under his bla
evening shirt, she found a gun, a cheque for ten thousand dolla
still uncashed, from Si Greenbridge (an arms-dealer no less), a 3
of US currency, several fifty-pound notes, some yen and roubli
and Russian, US and Austrian passports. She also found a tatteri
red-leather collection of Goethe's poems. Sienna's A-level Germi
enabled her to understand that the book had been inscribed'i
spidery black writing to someone called Jacob from his fat
Benjamin in 1925, and to translate the quotation: 'At all tin
pleasure and grief go together. Have faith in pleasure, meet g
with courage.'
What the hell was going on? How long had Zac known
Greenbridge?
As Zac stormed back up the drive she could see his mobile gll
to his ear, the gleam of his white teeth.
'Tiger Tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night.'
Whatever Zac was hunting, it wasn't Emerald.

A terrific tension was building up in the house. Dark purple cloi
bruised the horizon; thunder rumbled threateningly round
valley. It was stiflingly hot. Raymond prayed rain wouldn't do
the fireworks, and turned up the Good Friday Music to blot
Anthea's moaning that his children had put off their allotted <
until she was forced to do them herself.
'There's no point buttering bread too early, it only
protested Sienna.
Dora was crying. Having returned grubby from horse trials;
been ordered to shower at once and not use up too much wa
she had mistakenly drowned a woodlouse. Dicky, to distract fi
the fact that he'd wolfed most of the prawns in the fridge,

290
winding her up: 'It was a single-parent woodlouse,' he kept saying.
'She's left behind four poor motherless baby woodlice.'

Fmerald was on her way down from London with the Cartwrights.
Sonhywas equally nervous and excited to be seeing Alizarin again.
She hadn't dared mention his painting her. Emerald had gone ballistic when she learnt from an unguarded Patience that
Jonathan had taken Sophy out.
'Trust you to muscle in on my new family.'
Nor did Emerald approve of Sophy's black dress: far too much
of Sophy spilling out. Only because she knew it would trigger off a
tantrum and upset her parents had Sophy agreed instead to wear
a leaf-patterned shift, a sort of shirt-no-waister which she'd bought
<for parents' evenings.
$' Sophy, on the other hand, wasn't nearly so nervous as lan, who
tdesperately wished he had a job to compete with Raymond's, or
Patience, who'd been prevailed upon not to take her cerulean
Iwatered silk because Anthea was wearing that colour and 'You'll
Hook like Little and Large.'
|« Patience's old standby: a brown velvet skirt worn with a pie|
frilled collared shirt had become much too tight. If her mother was
> broke, how could she afford to stuff her face? wondered
merald tetchily. She then dragooned Patience into packing her
icient burgundy taffeta, which smelt of mothballs, but at least had
(been made for a silver wedding, albeit ten years ago, by Belinda
Oelville.
I 'You'd better leave the label sticking out,' giggled Sophy.
fc It'll clash with my face, thought Patience despairingly.
The drive down was interminable and suffocating because
Emerald didn't want open windows wrecking her hair.
Arriving at Foxes Court as the sun was sinking, Patience found
the perfection of the whole place utterly depressing. There wasn't
a speck of dust or an undeadheaded rose anywhere. Nor had she
and lan ever stayed in a spare room so enchantingly decorated in
dove greys and apricots, nor so well stocked. On the beeswaxed
William and Mary table beside a vase of pale orange roses lay
the latest Oldies, Spectators, and out of date Toilers, which fell
°pen at Anthea's picture. Beside the electric kettle and pretty
"^'P^temed tea set were sachets of everything herbal and decaffeinated.
The bathroom was like a chemist's shop: Floris and
fenhaligon's, Alka-Seltzer, Anadin Extra, Ibuprofen and Rennie's
oughtfor space. Through the windows, pale roses could be seen
ascading down glossy trees. On the way to their room, Anthea had
ound an excuse to show them her own ravishing toile de Jouy

291
bedroom: 'Just in case you get lost, lan and Patience. These big old
houses are so confusing -- you'll find me in here.'
How could Emerald not have originated from such a wonderful
place? How could she not have such a beautiful mother? Anthea,
still aglow from Zac, fragile in her frilly white neglige, was
appallingly gracious.
'Thank you ver, ver, ver much for bringing up Charlene so
caringly,' she told Patience the moment they were alone. 'Sir
Raymond and I are so grateful. You've really done a great job.'
As if Emerald had been a book she'd returned to them without
dropping it in the bath or turning down the pages, thought
Patience savagely. Looking down at her feet, still in her driving
shoes, she gave a moan.
'Oh bugger, I've left my black high heels behind.'
Anthea, desperate to upstage (she'd never expected lan and
Patience to be - well, so grand) was most sympathetic.
'I'd lend you a pair. Patience, but I'm only size three. I'll phone
our daughter-in-law, Hanna, she's got big feet.'
Patience, catching sight other boiled bacon face in the magnifying
mirror, nearly wept. Visitor, a better host than Anthea,,
heaved himself onto Patience's bed, wagging and eyeing the tin of
shortbread on the bedside table.
'Get down, Visitor,' shrieked Anthea.
'Oh, please let him stay,' begged Patience.
Fortunately Anthea was distracted by the fearful news that Casey
Andrews was in the area wanting to drop in. Jonathan, who'djust
arrived, had grabbed the telephone.
'Casey was on his way back from Cornwall being a Cornish i"
painter,' he informed Anthea. 'I told him to bugger off.'
'That wasn't very wise,' chided Anthea, then suddenly realized
if she eloped with Zac she'd never have to suck up to loathsome ,
Casey again. ^
^
Emerald was desperately embarrassed to see her mother's big|
feet spilling over Hanna's sling-backs, but even more so when^
Patience, on her way out to the terrace, paused to admire the!
drawing-room pictures, crying out in her ringing, raucous voice,
'I so admire your courage, putting your children's paintings on
the walls.'
'Mu-um,' hissed Emerald, 'these artists have paintings in the
Tate.' 'Painting's
such a lovely hobby' - Patience had turned to
Raymond - 'I had a great-aunt who was awfully good at kittens.'
'I may not know much about painting,' muttered lan Cartwright,

292
firmly averting his eyes from a purple nude with a left breast slung
round her shoulder, 'but I know what I don't like.'
'I don't, that's the trouble,' sighed Sophy. 'I'm so easily influenced,
I start liking anything anyone tells me is brilliant.'
Oh please don't let Daddy get on to the subject of elephant
dung, prayed Emerald.
'Goodness, that's awfully life-like,' battled on Patience, admiring
Anthea's portrait. 'Your eyes really follow one around, don't they?'
'Telling one not to leave drink rings all over the furniture,' said
Tonathan, sauntering in looking romantically Byronic in a ruffled
white shirt and tight black trousers.
'You haven't had time to shower,' said Anthea accusingly.
'No, but I've used up most of Dad's Extract of Lime from the
downstairs bog. Hi, darling.'Jonathan kissed Sophy, then, hugging
Patience: 'How's my favourite woman? Will you tie my tie for me?
I have mixed the meanest, greenest cocktail just for you.
'I expect you'd prefer whisky.'Jonathan had turned to lan. 'We
haven't met, but I'm mad about your daughter Sophy, if only she'd
taught me at school. You were Armoured, weren't you? My father's
got some fantastic Ardizzones in the study, come and see them.'
For a second, as his arm was taken, lan stiffened in resentment,
then he seemed to melt in the warmth of Jonathan's friendliness,
particularly when he went on: 'You must meet Aunt Lily. Her
husband was a diplomat and she knows everyone,' then, waving at
a hovering Knightie: 'Can you get Colonel Cartwright an enormous
Bell's, darling?'
Why is he all over my family and so bloody to me, thought
Emerald. 'I'm going up to change,' she added to Patience.
'I hope into someone considerably nicer,' murmured Jonathan.

293
Jonathan was definitely Lord of Misrule, determined to enjoys
himself and stir up trouble. His mean green cocktail soon had mosfj
of the guests plastered. I
Just inside the french windows, a table buckled under a growing^
pile of presents. On the top, ticking away like a timebomb, labelled
'To dearest Emerald. All my love, Raymond', was a flat oblong?.
parcel, which looked unnervingly similar in size to the Raphael. '
After his trip to the lawyers yesterday, could Raymond be making
Pandora over to Emerald? The Belvedons exchanged horrified?!
glances. Anthea was furious. She wanted the Raphael left to heri
and to be the one to make extravagant gestures. I
Sophy was feeling fatter and dowdier by the second. Emerald in
her haste to leave London had not allowed her time to dry her hair,,
so it shot out in all directions. The only answer had been to put it;
up. I look like the school marm I am, Sophy thought dolefully. She
felt even dowdier as a stunning platinum blonde with a drooping;
scarlet mouth and long, dark, heavily kohled eyes marched ou<j
onto the terrace. All in black, she wore a clinging, sleeveless see-i
through top, a groin level leather skirt, and knee-lengthr
high-heeled boots showing off long, slender thighs, i
This must be Jupiter's wife, Hanna, decided Sophy, about whom^
Jonathan had said, Alizarin was quite understandably crazy. ^
Trust her to copy me and dye her hair blonde,' grumbled Dicky»j
'and I bet she doesn't get chewed out by Mum.'
'Dar-ling!' Jonathan stopped discussing war artists with lan, ant
shot across the terrace. 'You look sensational.'
'Good,' said the blonde, kissing him on the mouth.
'This is my sister. Sienna,' Jonathan, wiping off scarlet lipstick,|
told an astounded lan and Patience.

294
'Hi ' nodded Sienna. 'Excuse us,' then, draggingjonathan down
onto the lawn behind a sapphire rampart of delphiniums: 'We've
aotta talk.'
'We sure have,' agreed Jonathan. 'Jupiter's got a buyer for the
Raphael, I heard him talking in the study. He'll cop the lot and
we'll never see any of the cash. We must get it out of here.'
'We've got to watch Zac even more.' Sienna described the
contents ofZac's shirt drawer. 'He and Si Greenbridge must be in
cahoots. Si eats Old Masters for breakfast.'
'Hannibal Collector,' sighed Jonathan. 'But that's immaterial if
Dad's already handed the Raphael over to Madam for her
birthday.'

Si Greenbridge stunned everyone by rolling up without his wife,
Ginny. Anthea, envisaging herself as a bluebird of happiness in her
new cerulean strapless with the tiny shrug, rushed inside to
welcome him.
'Si, Si, so delighted you could make it. Is Ginny freshening up?'
'She's not coming. She's gone back to the States.' Si glanced up
the stairs. 'Isn't that a Henri Matisse?'
Ginny, in fact, had been the Mrs Greenbridge that Alizarin,
when he was painting Sophy, had told the caller was being fucked
by the window cleaner. The caller had been Si, who subsequently
discovered his beautiful wife was not having her portrait painted
by Jonathan, as she had claimed. Instead she was being boned by
Pascal, the interior designer who, not as gay as he pretended, had
long had designs on Ginny's interior. Si, who didn't like cheating
wives, had put her and Pascal, both protesting bitterly, on the next
plane.
'Probably buried her in cement,' whispered Sienna.
'Si will be much easier to sell pictures to without Ginny insisting
on everything matching the wallpaper,' whispered back Jonathan.
A spare man, thought Anthea joyfully, and such a rich and
macho one. Perhaps Si was a little too old for Emerald, but he'd
definitely singled her out at the drinks party at the gallery. He was
very sexy in a thuggish way, and if he bought Emerald a few nice
things, it would make up for losing Zac.
Just so thrilled you could come, Si. You and Somerford Keynes,
our finest critic, are the only outsiders in a special family
gathering.'
More Brownie points for the Belvedons, thought an irritated
Qavid, swiftly goosing Anthea as he swept in with Geraldine and
Rosemary. David's dark brown tan, essential if one were going bald,
^as enhanced by a new cream dinner jacket made in the Far East

295
on a recent very successful selling spree. He looked very dashing
and Anthea told him so. David smirked. He had a cunning plan
for later in the evening.
Emerald, as usual, was last down. Did she inherit her habitual
desire to make an entrance from David, wondered Rosemary, as
Emerald glided out onto the terrace as if from a different age.
Lindka had really excelled herself this time, designing a ravishingly
low-cut dress in viridian-and-white-striped taffeta with a niched
hobble skirt to show off Emerald's snaky hips. Only a touch of
blusher coloured her milk-white face, her smooth red lips were
satin shiny, her dark hair was for once piled up to show off a snow-
white neck, around which glittered the Belvedon emeralds, the
same lovely green as her eyes.
Sienna and Aunt Lily gasped in horror. The emeralds had been
in the family for generations. Jonathan whistled.
'Happy birthday, darling, beautiful dress.'
'Anthea gave it to me,' said Emerald defensively.
'Beautiful necklace. Present from Zac?'
'I haven't opened Zac's present yet.'
Emerald knew she had never looked more seductive, but she
felt suicidal because she no longer ignited any spark in Zac. He
had made no attempt to lay her since the day of his return. He
had not even slid his hands inside her dress when he did up her;
zip. He was just so detached. Turning away from horrible |
Jonathan, Emerald went slap into Jupiter, who terrified her even*!
more - as though she'd chucked a cigarette into the bracken a few
miles away and found the blaze had suddenly caught up with her.
His eyes were so intense, his face twitching with desire andl
loathing. '<
'We must talk about your show.'
'Over lunch?' murmured Emerald, ,vs
'Depends.' Breathing in sweet Violetta, Jupiter smoothed baclBs^
a lock of her hair that had escaped from its pins. Christ, she was <|j
exquisite. <r
'You're not to monopolize your sister, Jupiter,' said Anthea plan's
fully. 'I want her to meet Somerford. Charlene, our daughter, is |
very talented, Somerford. I'll show you some of her heads later.' ?
Somerford was, for once, looking quite amiable. He was so|
thrilled he, and not Casey Andrews, had been asked and, having^
been excited by Zac at the silver wedding party, was glad he'A^
agreed to leave Keithie behind in the Goat in Boots to watch^
Coronation Street and get up to games of his own.
Leaving Emerald with Somerford, Anthea took Zac over to
meet Si.

296
'You know our daughter Charlene,' she said proudly, 'but not
her partner, ZacharyAnsteig.'
'Mr Greenbridge.' Zac clicked his heels and, smiling, held out
his hand. Taking it, Si smiled back.
'Zachary .. . no, we haven't met.'
'Did you hear that?' hissed Sienna to Jonathan. 'Pretending they
don't even know each other.'
'Si's an arms-dealer, probably provided Zac's gun. Lily misheard
and thinks he's an art-dealer, therefore even more suspect,'
giggled Jonathan as he filled up Sienna's glass. 'Lily's getting terribly pissed.'
'So am I,' said Sienna. 'How could you match your killer cocktail
to Emerald's eyes?'
'And her new necklace should be round here.' Jonathan
dropped a kiss on the nape of Sienna's neck. 'It soon will be,
darling, believe you me.'

It was getting hotter, the garden scents more sweetly seductive, as
honeysuckle, philadelphus and rose were joined by night-scented
stock and trumpeting lily. There was not a breath of wind; pigeons
cooed from the ebony shadows of huge olive-green trees so quiver-
ingly still they seemed about to march on the house. Grenville
shuddered at the prospect of an approaching storm. Little
Diggory, who'd been licking clean Grenville's eyes and nose like a
fussy mother, suddenly barked joyfully.
Here he was at last. Sophy leant against a mossy urn for support
as Alizarin, accompanied by a bouncing Visitor, came round the
side of the house.
'Here's that big untalented brute,' whispered fat Somerford,
hastily employing Emerald as a human shield. 'Can't paint, can't
draw- anything except his dole money. I hope Si's brought guards
with him.'
Alizarin was wearing a ripped Prussian-blue smoking jacket, and
a clean white shirt with the buttons done up all wrong. Taller even
than Si and Raymond's delphiniums, he towered over the party
like Goya's giant. He looked very pale, exhausted, furious and
utterly gorgeous, thought Sophy, wishing some fascinating man
was engaging her in sparkling conversation. At least Visitor remembered
her and waddled over, rolling on his back, flashing his
broken teeth, fat tail threshing like a windscreen wiper. Alizarin,
having accepted a large glass of red rushed out to him by Knightie,
"niled at Sophy and was about to join her when Zac grabbed him,
"ogmarching him off to meet Si.
You've got to see this guy's work. It's awesome.'

297
Anthea, hardly able to conceal her dislike of Alizarin, was over
in a trice.
'Must break up you big lads,' she simpered. 'Si, come and meet
our greatest art critic, Somerford Keynes.'
Somerford promptly drew Si aside, urging him on no account
to buy Alizarin's pictures.
'You're a serious collector. Don't waste your money.'
Jupiter, overhearing, was ashamed how gratified he felt. He'd
been so right to shunt back Alizarin's canvasses.

It was only a fortnight after midsummer's eve, but the light was;
fading and the first stars appearing in the drained blue sky. lan
was having a lovely time swapping friends in common with Aunt^
Lily. David had drawn Si into a yew glade.
'So sorry about Ginny,' he said. 'Let's do dinner next week. To(
help you forget her, I'll lay on some amazing young woman.'
'Again,' mocked Jonathan as he sidled up to refill Si's glass. Si;
laughed. David looked absolutely furious.
Priding herself on being a good hostess, Anthea had introduced ;
dowdy Patience and fat Sophy to skeletal Geraldine - 'You all live in I
town' - who didn't seem to have anything in common. Desperate
to escape, Geraldine's eyes were swivelling like lottery balls.
Awfully gauche, those Cartwrights, thought Anthea, who was
floating on happiness. It was priceless the way Zac was feigning
indifference to fool people. She wondered if they dare nip up to '
the Blue Tower for a quickie during the fireworks. Charlene was |
looking lovely too. Si, Jupiter and even Somerford had been vying |
for her attention, which made Anthea feel much less guilty about;
annexing Zac. She'd better go and organize the first course. ^
'Run down to the boathouse and light the candles,' she orderect|
poor rheumaticky Mrs Robens. |
She did hope Aunt Lily wouldn't be too tiddly to walk the three |
hundred yards from the terrace down to the river.

298
Down they trooped, somewhat unsteadily, to the boathouse,
breathing in an innocent smell of meadowsweet and new-mown
hay.
On the river bank a string quartet was playing 'Strangers in
Paradise'.
David sang along but actually felt more in hell. How could
Anthea not have put him on her right or at least left? Now he
wouldn't be able to chat up Si across her throughout dinner. When
he was High Sheriff things would be different.
'You're here. Mummy,' Emerald called to Patience.
I'm her mother, thought Anthea with an explosion of jealousy,
then she realized that utterly bloody Jonathan had been fiddling
with the seating plan. For starters he'd swapped over Zac and
Somerford, so she'd have the silly old fairy up her end between
Sienna and Lily.
Secondly, he'd switched his own place with Alizarin's, which put
Alizarin next to Hanna, which would send Jupiter, who was
supposed to be familiarizing Geraldine Paxton with the top
Belvedon gallery artists, into orbit. Jonathan would now be sitting
between Sophy and her sister, which would enable him to indulge
m some serious Emerald-baiting.
Sienna clocked Jonathan's move in anguish. He was clearly still
obsessed with Emerald. Sophy felt equally miserable. Her father
had started to bray with laughter, a sure sign he was drunk. Her
mother looked terrified, like a second-class passenger who's
strayed into first class, and hopes she won't get caught if she keeps
still enough, and Alizarin, after initially smiling at her, was now
acting as though he hardly remembered her. She supposed he
painted lots of people.

299
As a final straw, Sophy had taken out a loan this week in order
to give Emerald a purple pashmina for her birthday, telling her,
'You can change it, I've kept the bill.'
'Thanks a lot,' Emerald had said casually, 'not entirely sure
purple's my colour. It's a bit draining. I'll see what it goes with.'
Sophy wanted to cry with frustration. Why do I always fall for it?
Why do I always imagine Emo'll be any different? She must take
after her natural mother, Sophy was appalled to find herself
thinking. Anthea was absolute hell.
'Move in, Fatso, I can't get past,' ordered Emerald as she edged
behind Sophy's chair to sit next to Jonathan, then, hardly lowering
her voice: 'Aren't Anthea and Raymond lovely?'

Dinner was decidedly scratchy. The setting was exquisite with the
boathouse newly painted duck-egg blue, lit with dark green
candles and opened up on one side to the River Fleet, whose
flowing water rippled the gold paths cast by flambeaux all along
the bank. The table was decorated with jasmine and philadelphus
entwined with palest green ivy and enhanced by mauve napkins
and the delicate and charming green and purple 'Violets' dinner
service.
Anthea made sure everyone knew she'd done the cooking:
kicking off with salmon tartlets, untopped admittedly by prawns,
and Hollandaise sauce. '
'Start at once,' she ordered Patience, 'and tell me what you
think.'
Everyone except Alizarin, Jonathan and Sienna dutifully said it
was absolutely delicious.
'The tartlet with the heartlet of gold,' murmured Jonathan, who
was as high as the glinting weathercock on the church steeple.
Tartlets were followed by very rich lamb and asparagus in cream
sauce, which Patience felt uneasily churning round inside her
alongside Jonathan's green cocktails. She took a slug of red wine.
Raymond, on her left, had been so complimentary about Emerald,
Patience wondered rather disloyally if they were talking about the
same person. Emerald had been so cruelly unappreciative of lan :|
and Patience's birthday present of a seed pearl necklace, which |
had been in the family for generations and which was now the only :|
jewellery unsold. But she supposed they couldn't compete with the |
Belvedon emeralds. I
On Patience's right, in unrelieved black, was Zac, not her
favourite person for orchestrating the finding of Anthea. He made
no attempt to engage her in conversation, chatting about pictures
to Jupiter's wife, Hanna, on his right who, despite a blue satin

300
butterfly fluttering gaily in her piled-up blonde hair, looked even
unhappier than Patience felt.
I've been such a bad wife compared with Anthea, she thought
Hesnairingly. Maybe lan wouldn't have failed in business if I'd
made the house prettier, and ingratiated myself with his customers and colleagues. Look at Anthea dimpling up at the rich and
powerful Si Greenbridge. What an asset!
Anthea was so like Emerald in looks and mannerisms, Patience
longed to like her. lan clearly thought her an absolute poppet.
You and Emerald are just like sisters,' he kept saying. He was
looking exactly like Sohrab, their old golden retriever, when he'd
met a bitch. Any moment Patience expected a gold plumey waving
tail to burst out of his DJ trousers. Oh please God, she prayed, let
me one day have another dog.
'OK, Mrs Cartwright?' shouted Jonathan, who was busy feeding
(; all his lamb to Diggory and Visitor.
I Emerald was delighted that lan was getting on so well with
i Anthea and was now nose to nose with Si yakking about the latest
I lethal weapons. He seemed his own self again, a father she could
I- be proud of.
j 'Cartwright isn't at all a typical cab driver,' whispered Raymond
; to Rosemary on his left. 'Got an ME in Korea. Captained the
| Combined Services at cricket. Likes Matthew Arnold, had a dog
| called Sohrab, knows about lilies - nice chap.'
ft 'He does seem nice,' whispered back Rosemary, 'I'm sure I've
j seen her before, it's such a good idea to have them here.'
I; Beaming up the table, she was amazed to find Si Greenbridge
I beaming back at her. Buxom Knightie must be hovering behind
? her offering second helpings of lamb to attract such an approving
glance. But when Rosemary glanced round, no Knightie was there
and Si was still smiling - perhaps she had asparagus on her teeth.
Hanna, who'd already had far too much to drink, was in a low
voice telling Zac, the inspired listener, how desperate she was to
have a baby.
I'm thirty-eight and Jupiter's the eldest son - there's such pressure
to produce an heir.'
^Ever thought of adopting?' asked Zac idly.
Chnst, no!' Hanna looked across at Emerald in horror, then,
realizing what she'd said, blushed crimson. 'God, that was bitchy.
1 na so sorry, she's your girlfriend.'
She was relieved yet unnerved to see Zac was laughing. Didn't
e care in the least that Jupiter was devouring Emerald alive with
his eyes? "

* * *

301
Down the river beyond the wild-flower meadow, people were'3
drifting out of the Goat in Boots, making 'fucking nob' noises a
they caught sight of the Belvedon party. Mosquitoes, encouraget
by the impossibly hot, humid night, were now biting the guests a;
voraciously as the evils of the world once fed on Pandora and
Epimetheus.
'Such excitement at the West London Gallery,' Somerford wi
telling Sienna and Lily. 'A ravishing Botticelli loaned by a museui
in Venice for their Renaissance Exhibition was withdrawn this we
morning because a French-Jewish family are claiming the Nz
stole it from their grandfather in Paris in 1942.'
'Bad luck if you'd forked out millions for a picture only to
it had been looted fifty years before and you'd got to give it be
grumbled Lily.
'Hits both ways,' agreed Somerford. 'From now on I
museums and dealers are going to check the provenance of th«
stock to see if it's looted.'
'I'd love to own a Botticelli,' sighed Lily.
'I'm a Raphael freak myself,' confessed Si from across the tat
'My ambition is to own a Raphael.'
Suddenly the table went quiet.
He told me not to tell anyone, thought David in fury.
'Dinner tonight is in honour of Raphael as well as Emer
announced Raymond, who loved to impart informatic
'Agostino Chigi, a well-known Rome businessman who used
bankroll the Popes and actually provided the rubies for Julian F
tiara, was also a great patron of the arts - like one of our gut
of honour tonight.' Smiling, Raymond raised his glass to
'Chigi had a villa on the river with a loggia in which he used-I
hold grand dinner parties. On one occasion, to save washing i
the guests were encouraged to chuck all the gold plate into )
river.'
'We're not going to squander our lovely "Violets" plate
simpered Anthea who, having admitted Zac to the Blue tct
earlier, was unnerved by any reference to Raphael. 'Do fill
Patience's glass, Sir Raymond.'
But utterly bloody Sienna couldn't let the subject rest.
'How does Raphael like come into it, Dad?'
'Chigi had commissioned him to paint a mural on the log
walls. But Raphael kept moonlighting and not getting down
work. Mind you, he was strutting round Rome like a rock star
this time.'
'Like someone else we know, same birthday.' David tipped 1
his chair to smile at Jonathan, who ignored him.

302
'Now the boathouse has been painted, which of you is going to
orovide our mural?' Raymond glanced happily around at his
children.
'I've got too much on,' said Jonathan flatly. 'Perhaps Alizarin?'
But Alizarin, who'd been hitting the red and was spoiling for a
fight was too busy arguing with Jupiter about earlier looting of art.
'Elgin stole those marbles,' he growled.
'Elgin took the marbles because the Greeks weren't remotely
interested and considered them worthless,' replied Jupiter coolly.
'Elgin claimed rightly that it was his divine calling to preserve such
treasures for posterity.'
'Ought to be returned to the Greeks, they belong to the Greeks.'
'Not if one believes art is of primary importance,' said Jupiter
disdainfully. 'The British Museum cherishes the marbles, and this
way more people see them.'
Alizarin's huge hands gripped the table. Then he roared, 'So if
( I make your wife happier, look after her better and allow more
| people to admire her, I'm entitled to steal her, am I?'
I 'Touche,' hiccuped a delighted Lily, who was not a fan of
| Jupiter.
'I said Si should have brought guards,' murmured back an even
more delighted Somerford, as both brothers jumped furiously to
their feet.
'You keep your hands off my wife,' said Jupiter in a low, furious
voice.
'Where did you say your family lived in Vienna?' Hanna turned
desperately to Zac.
'My great-uncle had a gallery and an apartment in a beautiful
old building on the corner of Singer Strasse and Kartner Strasse,
overlooking St Stephen's Cathedral,' drawled Zac, who was highly
amused by the turn of events and who could see Hanna's
imploring hand on Alizarin's quivering thigh. 'The Allies bombed
it to bits,' he went on. 'There are shops and offices there now. My
great-grandfather also had a fabulous house in the fourth district
in Schwindgasse overlooking the Schwarzenberg Palace.'
'A gorgeous area,' mumbled Hanna. Oh God, don't let Jupiter
and Alizarin kill each other.
As Jonathan surreptitiously scribbled both Zac's addresses on
"ie inside of his wrist, Dora was left to defuse the situation.
Wriggling out of her chair between Alizarin and Jupiter, who were
sail glowering and clenching their fists, she said tartly, 'Chill out,
you two yobbos, I do not wish to be used as the Centre Court tennis
net.

Everyone burst out laughing except Jupiter and Alizarin, who,

303
after a lot more scowling, sat down. Dora flounced off down
table to talk to Patience.
'Mrs Cartwright, Emerald said you rode at the Horse of the Show.'
'Well, I came second in the Working Hunter, and third in
Foxhunter one year,' admitted Patience.
'Could you come and meet my pony Loofah?' begged Dor
'He's brilliant at cross-country because I can't stop him, but 1
always ploughs the dressage, because he won't canter on the rigl
leg and he sits down if I scold him.'
Next moment, Rosemary had cried out, 'Why, it's "V
Cameron! I've just twigged.'
Discovering they'd been at school together. Rosemary
Patience, with screams of laughter, started swapping stories aboi
the dorm and the lax pitch. An utterly fascinated Dora sat on a
equally entranced Raymond's knee to listen to them.
'Did you really put a drawing pin on the vicar's chair?' she asked
in awe.
'I'm afraid we did.' Patience wiped her eyes.
'He was so fat, he didn't feel it!' Rosemary went off into gales
mirth. 'And remember the time we undressed Miss Hinton?'
'Yes, yes,' cried Patience, 'the poor woman's legs wriggled Uke^
bluebottle's, we were awful, and what about putting your rabbit:'"
Miss Murdoch's desk.'
'It was your hamster, Virty.'
'Why d'you call Mum "Virty"?' enquired a thrilled Sophy.
'Patience is a Virtue, of course,' said Rosemary.
Everyone laughed.
'What was your nickname?' asked Dora.
'Rosebud or something inappropriate.'
'Mildew more likely. Extraordinary that one school
produce two such ugly women,' Anthea whispered to Si,
didn't react. Too busy gazing at them in horror, thought Anth«
Smugly she rose to supervise her piece de resistance. Gre
chartreuse waterlilies, decorated with Es of angelica, should eli<
more admiration and excitement than the fireworks.
'Some enchanted evening', played the string quartet.
Anthea smiled at Zac. Seeing his chance as Raymond also
to organize the pudding wine, Si abandoned Geraldine on his h
who was bending the ear of an oblivious, still enraged Jupiter, a
shot down the table. David, avid to make his number with
had already set off round the table to take Anthea's place, only
find Si moved on and himself reduced to squandering "*
networking time on his own mistress.

304
Si meanwhile had pinched Raymond's seat and was producing
photographs of horses out of his wallet to show Rosemary, Patience
md Dora.
'Much nicer than soppy wives.' Dora pored over them. 'He's
n-eat. What's his name?'
'Intensive,' said Si.
'Didn't he win the Arc last year?' gasped Patience.
'That's my boy.'
'I had a monkey on Intensive,' called out Lily, who was
rill getting on like a house on fire with lan. 'Thank you, Mr
Sreenbridge.'

305
'I never see my mother these days,' Dora was soulfully telling;!
Patience, 'she's so besotted with Emerald.' I
'I'm sorry,' said Patience humbly. 'They've got a lot of years t<y|
catch up.'
Rosemary, taking delight in doing a number on the Cartwright
knowing it would enrage Anthea, loudly suggested she a
Patience should go to an Old Girls' Reunion in London
October.
'Oh do let's,' squeaked Patience in excitement.
'We could have lunch at the Reform first, I've just become
member.'
'I'll be back at school,' said Dora wistfully.
To everyone's astonishment, Si then promised to fly her dov
to see his horses in one of the Greenbridge jets in the Christ
holidays.
'And if you two ladies would care to join us?'
'We would indeed,' said Rosemary. 'Whatever happened to Bif
Miles?'
Anthea was seething. All these upper-middle-class rituals a
talk of people she didn't know. Itwas as though they were speaki
Chinese. Ah, here was her wonderful dessert.
'My God,' said Jonathan, looking down at his plate. 'Are
eating more Belvedon emeralds?'
Drunks being evicted from the Goat in Boots were having di
culty making their protests heard over rumbling thunder.
'I wish you were our sister, not Emerald,' Dicky was telling
Sophy.
'We all do,' murmured Jonathan, Sienna and Dora in unison.
Patience wanted to shout that Emerald wasn't really horrible

306
that she just got defensive and aggressive when she was insecure
and frightened. Emo could be so lovely. Patience took another
huee gulp of delicious pudding wine; next moment her glass was
filled up.
She had so hoped Emo and Jonathan would get on. Alizarin, the
one whose name kept tripping off Sophy's lips, seemed rather an
austere chap, watching everyone with those sombre screwed-up
eyes, and not addressing a word to poor Sophy. Jonathan's sister
looked as though she wanted to knife everyone too. Such a shame
when she was so beautiful, despite all those rings and studs.
All through dinner Sienna had been conscious of her beloved
Tonathan's preoccupation with Emerald, but images of naked Zac
kept flickering before her eyes, upsetting her terribly. From time
to time he caught her eye across the table, and his mouth lifted
at one corner. Occasionally his eyes travelled lazily downwards.
Sienna had never had any inhibitions about stripping off in public
but suddenly she felt embarrassed to be wearing such a see-
through top, and kept folding her arms aggressively over her
breasts like a rugger player in a group photograph. She loathed
the idea of Zac in bed with Anthea and even more that he and Si
could be after their beloved Raphael.
'Which is the least deadly of the sins?' she asked Jonathan.
'Lust,' replied Jonathan dropping a kiss on the skylark tattooed
on her shoulder.
Irked by the ecstasy on Sienna's face, Emerald felt utterly bewildered. Shewas the birthday girl. Why did so many of the Belvedons
seem to prefer fat Sophy and her plain, shiny-faced mother? Dora
had just dragged Patience off to meet the appalling Loofah.
'Don't be long,' Anthea called after them. 'Daddah wants to
make a speech, and we've got the birthday cake to come, and
Charlene, I'm sorry I can't get out of calling her that, has got to
open her gifts before the fireworks.'

Anthea grabbed the spotlight again when Emerald's cake arrived
and everyone said how pretty it was. But no-one said what a caring
mother she had been to have made it. I should have asked Neville
and Green Jean as a support group, thought Anthea darkly.
'What are you going to wish for?' asked Jonathan, as Emerald
Plunged a knife into the white icing.
'That you were at the bottom of the river with Chigi'sgold plate,'
spat Emerald. & 6 ^ '
Raymond tried to smooth things over by making an eloquent,
charming speech welcoming all the Cartwrights and particularly

307
'Let us all drink to my lovely new daughter.'
'To the green-eyed monster,' said Jonathan draining his glass.
Ignoring him, Emerald rose to her feet: 'I'd like to thank
Raymond and Anthea, my marvellous new parents, for being so
wonderful to me.'
'Mention Mum and Dad,' hissed Sophy.
'And it's lovely to have Mummy and Daddy and Sofa here and
all my family around me,' added Emerald.
Guiltily aware that he had deeply embarrassed Hanna by
winding up Jupiter, Alizarin looked across at Sophy in that
dreadful green sack dress, whose pattern his eyes were too bad to
distinguish and thought how adorable she was and how anxious
about everyone when she should be enjoying herself. He had
relived so often that strange peace he had experienced after
collapsing beside her in Jonathan's studio. He had longed to ring
her, but had nothing to offer but poverty and a guide dog's role.
A blind artist was as much use ...
Another rumble of thunder made them all jump, but it was only
Robens trundling Emerald's presents down in a wheelbarrow.
'It looks like rain. You'd better open those after the fireworks,'
called out Anthea. 'Robens can wheel them back up again.'
'Just let her open mine,' begged Raymond.
'Seesaw, Margery Daw, Emerald shall have an Old Master,' sang
Jonathan.
Everyone held their breath. But Raymond's present turned out
to be a beautiful Augustus John pastel of one of his mistresses, '
which nevertheless caused gasps of admiration.
'Oh how fabulous,' cried Emerald, hugging Raymond in delight ;
'You are kind.'
'Ha, ha, ha,' whispered Raymond gleefully to Sienna and ;
Jonathan. 'You avaricious lot thought it was something else.' <
'Now I want Emerald to open my present.'Jonathan handed her | another oblong parcel. 1
But this time when Emerald had ripped off the red paper |
wishing her congratulations on her retirement, there were gasps |
of horror, for inside was an exquisite copy of the Raphael. |
'What is it?' demanded Lily, putting on her spectacles. |
'Pandora's Box,' announced Jonathan happily, 'and most of you |
are in it. Remember Botticelli painted all the important members j
of the Medici family into his Adoration of the Magi? Well, this is the ^
Unholy Family.' 1
Taking the picture from a bewildered Emerald, he held it up for /|
everyone to see. |
'Look, Emerald is Pandora, opening the box by turning up here.

308
7ac is Epimetheus, I'm Sloth of course, Visitor is Greed, Big Al is
Pride our kid sister natch' - he ran a finger down Sienna's furiously'mouthing
face - 'is Wrath, Jupiter is Avarice' -Jonathan
started to laugh - 'our dear stepmother is Envy, but she and Jupiter
could easily swap sins!'
'Ay am not envious or avaricious,' squawked Anthea.
'How dare you?' thundered Raymond.
'Very easily,' said Jonathan, who hadn't really needed to provide
a key his drawings were so lifelike. 'Here is David with his monocle
as Lust, and can you see yourself peering through the window in
your tin hat, Dad, Mercury the voyeur?'
'Shut up,' roared Raymond going crimson.
'It's kinda neat,' volunteered Si, raising an eyebrow at Zac, who
had gone very still.
'I recognize that picture from somewhere,' mused Somerford.
'What the hell are you playing at?' hissed Jupiter. 'Put the
fucking thing away.'
'It's mine.' Emerald grabbed the picture. 'Thank you,
Jonathan.'
'I see you left out Hope,' said Sienna bleakly.
I don't understand what's going on, thought lan Cartwright, but
I don't like it one bit. I don't want these pirates stealing my darling
Emerald.
Everyone jumped as a mobile rang. Anthea answered it.
'Righty ho, we'll be up in a mo. Will everyone please converge
on the terrace for fireworks?'
'Must have a pee,' said Sienna, wheeling off into the darkness.
'You are so drunk,' she loudly chided herself.
As they all trooped up to the house, Anthea surreptitiously slid
her hand into Zac's.
'Shall we nip upstairs for a quickie during the fireworks?'
'Sure,' whispered Zac.
'I've left the door to the tower open,' whispered back Anthea.
^Great. For safety you'd better switch the alarm off downstairs.'
'I'll just have to check everything is all right in the kitchen and
that my guests are OK.'
The perfect hostess,' murmured Zac, raising her hand to his
"ps. "Don't hurry. I'll wait for you.'
Anthea felt giddy with longing, but as she swayed away from
^ac she started like a terrified hare when David grabbed her arm,
"^ggmg her into the shadows of an ivied ruin.
^We must talk about Emerald.'
^Not now,' hissed Anthea.
^ell, first thing in the morning then.'

309
'Righty ho. We'll be up in a mo,' chanted Jonathan, who'djust
had another line, as he noticed Anthea and David emerging fromii
the shadows. ^

I
'Where's Mummy?' asked Sophy, her heels plunging into the dewya
lawn as she panted up the hill after Emerald.
It was very dark in the yew corridors. A thick cloak of indigc
clouds had smothered the stars. Hearing shrieks, the two sistel
broke into a run.
On the big lawn, illuminated by lights from the house, the
found their mother. She was cantering figures of eight, he
burgundy taffeta tucked into her knickers, Hanna's sling-back
kicked off, screaming with joy, pissed as a newt, with Dora cheerinj
her on.
'You've got him on the right leg again, Mrs Cartwright, brilliant
one more time,' and Patience cantered a most biddable Loofa
into the centre of the lawn again, and executed a perfect flyil
change, before setting off again towards Anthea's latest splash i
colour - a clump of red begonias. Despite her plump mottik
thighs, big feet and crimson face, on a pony. Patience looked
goddess. Jonathan, Rosemary, Si, Lily, Dora and Sophy were yellii;
in approval. Emerald, however, was quivering with rage.
'Mummy,' she screamed, 'for Christ's sake get off.'
Patience immediately stopped. Loofah, who'd been behavil
too well for too long, rolled his eyes and sat down. Slowly Patien<
slid down his back onto the grass. '
'So very sorry, got carried away, so long shince I've been on;
horsh.'
'Don't listen to her, you were brilliant,' hissed Dora as I
grabbed Loofah. 'You can borrow him to ride out any time.'
As a jumping Jack went off, Loofah took off too, towing his yoi
mistress towards the stables. Next moment, Jonathan's mean gr<
cocktail, mixed with three different wines and Anthea's ht
cuisine, took their toll. Heaving to the right, Patience was sick;
over Anthea's begonias.
'Righty ho! We'll throw up in a mo,' cried Jonathan in ecst

310
As the church clock struck midnight, the house went dark, the
floodlighting was switched off, the flambeaux and candles doused
and the first rocket soared into the ebony night, shaking gold and
purple stars into the valley. Both guests and villagers lining the
river bank cried out in wonder as this was followed by silver fountains,
jade and rose-pink Roman candles and Catherine wheels,
r jerkily pirouetting like Van Gogh's golden suns.
But between bursts of colour the garden was in darkness, making
it impossible to keep track of comings and goings. Jonathan and
Sienna had agreed he would trail Si while she followed Zac; but
returning from the house. Sienna couldn't find the bastard
anywhere. She shouldn't have drunk so bloody much at dinner.
Racing in panic round the garden, stumbling down steps, tripping
over paving stones, she found nymphs, unicorns, and cherubs,
suddenly lit up, but no Zac. Running back to the house, in a blaze
of royal blue light from yet another rocket, she found her father
on the terrace trying to force a tranquillizer down a shuddering
Grenville.
'Come and help me, darling.'
'Can't stop,' panted Sienna, hurtling through the french
windows, the drawing room and up the stairs.
Galloping down the dark first-floor landing, she heard stealthy
rootsteps behind her and quickened her pace; they were getting
closer, she stumbled up the next flight of stairs, then gave a scream
as she collided with a solid wedge of muscle hurtling in the other
direction. Winded for a second, she breathed in Raymond's
xtract of Lime, and as her tears were unleashed by alcohol and
relief, she collapsed sobbing into the wedge's arms.

311
'Ohjohno, I'm so frightened, Zac's given me the slip, I can't
find him anywhere.'
Drink and drugs had clearly robbed her brother of control. Next
moment he was kissing her more passionately than ever before,
one warm hand seeking out her bare breasts, the other diving
under her leather mini straight between her trembling legs. And
she was melting against him, drowning in ecstasy, as he pulled her
into a nearby bedroom and slammed the door. They didn't bother
to strip off. Desire flickered between them like summer lightning,
all the more thrilling because what they were doing was utterly
forbidden. Dropping his trousers, tugging off her knickers, he .|
threw her onto the bed, and was on top of her, kissing her face all
over, whispering such tender endearments. Then she gave a gasp
of joy, he was inside her, the rocketwith the joyfully exploding stars
invading her. She only wanted to surrender. It was all over in a
couple of minutes.
But as the shuddering in her loins subsided, she realized in 3
horror what she'd done. Once you let a deadly sin out of Pandora's "is
Box, you enjoyed it so much, you could never put it back again. <|
'Oh Christ, Johno, we shouldn't have.' I
'Yes, we should.' Lovingly, slowly, he kissed her ringed eyelids,;!
her studded nose and her lips. ^
'I can't help loving you,' she said helplessly. 'I've fought it so||
long.'
She'd always known he'd be an infinitely better lover th;
anyone else. But she hadn't realized he was so lean and fit, nor!
wonderfully constructed. Then she felt something metallic agains
her breast bone, and jumped at a deafening crash outside. As six|
of the biggest bangers exploded in a drum roll, a flicker of ligh<H
crept through the curtains falling on a silver Star of David. ^|
As though she'd swallowed a scorpion, Sienna gave a howl o||
pain. ^|
'You bastard, bastard, bastard, you took advantage of my bein^
drunk.' She was pounding Zac with her fists, slapping his face,|
then, giving a sob, she leapt to her feet. Falling over a chair and a|
pair of shoes, she fumbled for the door, and fled. "|

,1
Jupiter, meanwhile, was on the terrace considering his next move^i
Fireworks bouncing off the low, dark clouds and the stream mad^
the water and the gardens swim with colour. Deciding to check thC|
house, suspicious like Sienna and Jonathan of Zac's motives^
he flicked on the light in Raymond's study and found Emerald o0^
the sofa crying with rage and despair over Patience's appallingly
embarrassing behaviour and Zac's defection.

312
'He doesn't love me any more.'
Tupiter halted, his cold haughty face enigmatic.
'You poor child.'
Closing the door quietly, he dimmed the overhead light and
joined her on the sofa. Taking out a grey handkerchief (Hannawas
better at flower painting than washing) he wiped away the mascara
blackening her blanched cheeks.
'Zac's not worth it, he's a shit.'
'I'm in such a muddle, Jupiter.'
'You don't have to be.'
The comforting arm round her shoulders drew her closer, then
tightened like a steel manacle. A moment later Jupiter's lips
crashed against hers, his tongue forcing open her mouth, then
jabbing deeper and harder until she almost gagged, but was unable
to cry out. Now he was ripping her beautiful dress from her
shoulders, his free hand clawing at her breasts. Jupiter the beast,
beneath the icy facade. Wriggling frantically, Emerald tried to
scream and knee him in the groin, but her hobble skirt was too
tight.
'Shut up, you bloody tease,' he snarled. 'You've led me on for
weeks. Don't pretend you're my sister, we all know you're not.'
Still kissing her speechless, with terrifying madman's strength he
forced her back on the sofa. His hand had just burrowed up under
her skirt, rigid fingers stabbing viciously between her legs, when
the room was flooded with light and a head ofpiled-up blonde hair
decked with a merry blue butterfly came round the door. There
was a long and dreadful pause, only interrupted by the hiss and
mighty crackling of a giant squib.
'Jupiter, oh Christ, oh no,' moaned Hanna in horror and, slamming
the door, she stumbled off into the night.

Poor Sophy, meanwhile, was trying to get a plastered Patience to
bed: 'I feel so sick,' lurch, 'I feel so sick.'
Dora came along to help.
Tm quite used to putting my brothers to bed,' she said, taking
Patience's other arm. 'Once we get her lying down, I'll get a bowl.'
there's Dicky?' asked Sophy.
'He thought Mummy wouldn't notice him watching Basic
Instinct.'

What a disastrous evening, thought Sophy as Patience finally
passed out. Tiptoeing out of the room, she and Dora heard
"esperate sobbing. Racing along the landing, they discovered
Hanna in Alizarin's arms.

313
'Jupiter's in love with Emerald,' she was howling. 'I've just
caught them at it.'
Hanna was so desolate, Alizarin so clearly trying to control his
fury. It was as if a raincloud were seeking refuge against a great I
dark, brooding volcano. Alizarin was stroking Hanna's hair so^
tenderly. "s-
'You naughty man and woman,' thundered Dora.
Alizarin glanced up. His sight was so bad . . . had he mere!
imagined the agony and horror on Sophy's face?
I must escape from this evil place, thought Sophy as she st
bled past them down the stairs.

Geraldine and Somerford, who because of their immens
powerful positions in the art world were accustomed to deferenc
were furious to be abandoned in the garden to the untend
mercies of one another. Both, however, had a fondness for rou|
trade. -M
'Have you heard of a young Welsh artist called Trafford?' asked
Geraldine. 'There's a gritty realism about his oeuvre. One ofn
clients has not only just acquired his installation, Cunterpane On
but also his latest video. Oh Nan, which features a masturbadB
grandmother, as pivotal as it is challenging.'
'I'd like to meet Trafford,' said Somerford.
'I'm not sure he's entirely safe in restaurants or private hot
mused Geraldine.
'Better meet in a pub then.'

As a swarm of gold tadpoles lit up the sky like anti-aircr
fire, Raymond recognized his son Jonathan emerging from t
shrubbery.
'For God's sake go and break up Geraldine and Somerford,'
begged, 'we can't afford to antagonize either of them.'
'I'm taking Lily home,' called out Jonathan virtuously, 'sh<
even more hammered than Old Mother Cartwright. Break
those silly old tossers yourself. Dad.'

The fireworks were even more thrilling inside than out, thoug<|J
Anthea as she quivered with anticipation up in the Blue Tower. Shj
had been maddeningly delayed by Si, who'd wanted such |
prolonged look at Raymond's Cotman of Duncombe Park in tfa
morning room, that she'd thought he might be about to jump oi
her. Instead, he finally grabbed a bottle ofKrug and shot back int
the garden. So now after a quick wash, Anthea awaited her los

314
How many times in England was it hot enough to wear just a pettiroat
after midnight? Not wanting to dirty it, she had left her lovely
new dress downstairs in her bedroom.

As David had done a bunk as usual, Si had asked Rosemary to wait
for him in a little rose arbour while he collected a bottle of Krug
from the house. Then they could watch the fireworks together.
Rosemary was not the sort of woman who leapt into men's arms
when bats divebombed or bangs got too loud, so they talked about
their lives.

Having nipped back to the Old Rectory, ostensibly to get some
transparencies to show Si, David on his return lured Raymond into
the library. The royal-blue curtains had not been drawn. The
leather-bound battalions in the shelves always reminded him of
his dreary, repressive youth, growing up in Surley without a
book and hardly a picture. As Raymond handed him a glass of
Armagnac, he thought how tired his old boss looked. At seventy-
five, it must be wearing to cope with seven kids, plus Anthea who
was the most childish of them all.
'I don't want to worry you,' he lied. 'But I'm hearing disturbing
rumours that you've got a looted Raphael hidden away. People are
onto it.'
The red glow as Raymond pulled slightly faster on his cigar was
upstaged by a huge scarlet and silver rocket lighting up the dark
room.
'Used to have one - sold it years ago.'
'Well, that's up to you. Know someone who'd take it off you for
half a million.'
The green flare of the next Roman candle in no way toned down
the carmine flush suffusing Raymond's face.
'Preposterous,' he spluttered. 'It's worth-- I mean any
Raphael's worth at least twenty times that. Insulting to think I'd
harbour anything looted.'
David shrugged and helped himself to one of Raymond's cigars.
'Just warning you as a friend,' he said blandly. 'Once it's on the
internet or the Art Loss Register, picture's dead in the water.'
The Raphael I once had was given to me,' said Raymond huffily.
That cuts no ice if it was stolen from someone else in the first
Place. I'd get rid of it at once.'
^What's the subject?' asked Raymond hoarsely.
Pandora's Box. Hope, appearing out of an oak chest, is
^gedly the most beautiful woman ever painted. Rainbow dress,

315
rubies in her hair. Rumour has it that it was originally a panel
painting with a motto in Latin, meaning: "Trouble lies below".'
David was enjoying himself. ;
If Raymond hadn't been so flustered, he might have wonderedl
how David knew so much detail, i
'I'm not interested,' he snapped. |
'I'm just telling you the on dit,' said David soothingly. 'If you hear|
of anyone who's got a Raphael, let me know. I've got a buyell
seriously interested. At least you would get some money back.' ;|
Bleating with terror, desperate to find Jupiter, Raymonl|
stumbled through the house. The prospective buyer must be Si oi|
perhaps that dreadful hood Minsky Kraskov, or even Kevin Cole^
As the church clock struck half past twelve, the splendour of a blazll
of fireworks proclaiming 'Happy Birthday, Emerald' in huge gre.ei(§
letters was totally lost on him. Oh, where the hell was Jupiter? 4lj

316
ithea, still awaiting Zac in the Blue Tower, heard Raymond's
mtic cries of 'Hopey, Hopey, where are you?' from the bedroom
low and dived under the bed. Fortunately he didn't come up the
irfirs.
,.When she was sure he'd gone, Anthea, who had lost another
" ad of hope, crept downstairs. Zac was obviously not going to turn
. Perhaps he couldn't help the delay, but she'd been so sure this
emoon. Wriggling into her cerulean dress, which was so tight-
ing she had trouble with the zip, she was just repairing her face
len she realized she'd lost an earring. Grabbing the torch they
led for powercuts, she ran back upstairs to the Blue Tower.
I She daren't draw attention to her presence by putting on a light.
"er eyes went first to the floor, but the torch's beam was wide
ough to show up the cruellest gap in the world. Anthea gave a
>an of terror, her heart plummeted, then started crashing
linst her ribs. The Raphael was gone. The beam flashed like a
l-'o'-the-wisp into every corner. Nothing.
Could Zac have stolen it before she arrived? She hadn't checked
|rf it was in place when she was hiding up here earlier. Would he
jAop her, that she had let him into the room? How else would
|«ehave known the Raphael was there? Had he left any evidence?
. ^^vmg the door containing the two-way mirror ajar, racing
down the stairs, she collapsed onto her bed, wondering what to do.
we felt terribly frightened. Raymond would never forgive her if
"e found out, and she wouldn't be Lady Belvedon any more. She'd
tter pretend she'd come upstairs to freshen up, found the door
g ^?' ^one f^tairs and discovered the Raphael was missing.
Ill P' "^P' cried Anthea, rushing onto the landing, slap into

317
'Whatever's the matter?'
'The Raphael's gone.'
'What the fuck?' Jupiter barged into their bedroom aj
bounded up the stairs. 'How the hell did this happen? When d
you last see it?'
'About ten days or a fortnight ago. I found the door ajar whei
popped upstairs to freshen up just now.'
Being Jupiter, he had time to take in other pictures around ti
walls. His father had certainly been squirrelling. Outside, the flai
beaux had sprung to life again; there was chattering on the terrac
'Why didn't the alarm go off?' he demanded.
'I've no idea.'
Together they raced downstairs. Inside the cellar door, Jupit
found the alarm switched off and, swearing, switched on I
mobile.
'What are you doing?' cried Anthea in horror.
'Calling the police.'
'Oh don't do that, please, Jupiter!' Her voice rose to a shriek.
might be a joke, Sienna could have taken it or Jonathan after th
stupid drawing, or Alizarin, you know how cross they were abo
Emerald getting the necklace and the Augustus John earlie
Anthea was trembling violently.
'Let's ask the family first,' she begged, 'they all know the co<
to the turret room, we don't want a scandal!'
But Jupiter was already through. '
'I want to report the loss of an extremely valuable picture.'
At that moment Jonathan wandered in. He was drenched ai
there was mud on his trousers and shoes.
'Lily was so pissed she fell in the pond. I'm not mixing that coc
tail again.'
Anthea didn't even notice Diggory lifting his leg on her n<
curtains. ;
'The Raphael's been stolen,' she whispered. '
All the laughter drained out of Jonathan's face.
'I don't believe it, or, Christ, rather I do.' s
'Go and round everyone up,' ordered Jupiter. 'The police'Hl
here in a few minutes.'
Gradually people in states of disarray were shepherded into d
library.
'An Old Master has gone missing from an upstairs room,'Jupit
told them. 'I'd like you all to stay in here.'
Raymond appeared utterly demented.
'How could anyone have taken my lovely Raphael?'
Sienna was equally distraught.

318
'It can't have gone,' she sobbed hysterically, 'the Raphael was
the last link with my mother.'
'I was just telling your father earlier, Jupiter,' said David smugly,
'that the word on the street is that you had a looted Raphael here.
Perhaps the owner's taken matters into his own hands?'
'You could have taken it!' Raymond turned on him furiously.
'You seem to know the picture bloody well. How did you know
Hope had rubies in her hair?'
'Dad,' warned Jupiter.
Next moment Zac had erupted through the french windows.
Suave and laid back no longer, he had turned into a snarling,
maddened tiger, teeth bared, yellow eyes blazing.
'Where's the Raphael? Who's taken it, for fuck's sake?'
'What's it to do with you?' asked Jupiter coldly.
'It's my picture, you asshole.'
'Don't be ridiculous.'
"That picture was on my great-grandfather's wall in 1938. It was
confiscated by the Nazis.'
'So?'
'I've got the documentation,' yelled Zac. 'Look, here's a stat of
the invoice dated the tenth of May 1931' - he brandished it under
| Jupiter's nose - 'showing my great-grandfather bought the
painting from an Austrian count, and the name of the Viennese
gallery who brokered the deal. And here's also the stat of the
certificate showing the Nazis confiscated it in 1938.'
'You have been a busy boy,' drawled Jonathan. 'Those could be
faked, how do we know it's the same picture?'
'Like this.' Zac slapped a copy of a faded black and white photograph
on the table.
'Can't tell from that,' snapped Jupiter.
'How about this then?' Zac brandished the photographs of the
Raphael he'd had developed in Searston that afternoon, which
were in full colour, and showed the Boucher on the right.
Anthea looked as though she was going to faint.
^How did you get hold of those?' gasped an appalled Raymond.
I had a tip-off. It's in the room above your bedroom.'
^Why didn't you say anything?' spat Jonathan.
^1 didn't want you lot to spirit it away.'
^Who tipped you off?' asked a quivering, white-faced Jupiter.
„, ."Journalist never reveals his sources,' said Zac sarcastically.
Ihen he went berserk, grabbing Jupiter by his lapels, shaking him
He a rat. 'What have you done with it, you bastard? My great-grand-
^ was clubbed to deaA for that picture.'
My daughter, o my ducats!' said Jonathan mockingly.

319
'Shut up,' howled Zac. Throwing Jupiter against the wall, ]
leapt on Jonathan.
Emerald, who'd been huddled, frozen with horror, on ti
window seat, the rips in her beautiful dress concealed und
Sophy's purple pashmina, suddenly remembering Zac was a bla
belt, heard herself screaming, 'Don't hurt him!'
Zac, who was about to smash Jonathan's face in, lowered his fi
'One ofyou's nicked it,' he snarled. 'It'll be an inside job to g
the insurance.'
'Rubbish!' screamed Sienna. 'You took it yourself.'
A sulphuric smell of fireworks was drifting in through tl
windows. Had the devil passed by?

Fortunately, a natural break occurred when Knightie banged (
the door and excitedly announced the police were here.
'They've sent that Detective Inspector Gablecross,' she wh
pered to Anthea, 'the hunky one that cracked Rannaldin
murder in 1996. He catches everyone.' Then, as Anthea tum<
even greener: 'You'll get your picture back. Lady B.'
The arrival of the police created a diversion, enabling Alizar
to feel his way in through a side door. Sophy noticed grass mowin;
on his shoes and mud down the back of his trousers; perhaps 1
had fallen over? He had also taken off his smoking jacket and p
on a sweater. A moment later Si and Rosemary came in from t3
garden, followed by Somerford and Geraldine, who'd all endedi
having a jolly party down at the boathouse.
'Have we missed anything?' asked Geraldine in excitement.
As Jupiter explained about the Raphael going missing, Sieni
was watching Si. For a second he had looked elated, then, glancH
across the library, he had clocked Zac's demented, twitchin
ashen face and his own for a second blackened terrifyingly. Th<
he pulled himself together.
Geraldine and Somerford meanwhile were going into rapturi
comparing Zac's black and white photograph with his recea
colour ones.
'This is definitely the same picture, Inspector,' purrt
Somerford. 'It's a historic painting: the Raphael Pandora. Bet
missing for centuries. If I'm not mistaken an American museitt
the Abraham Lincoln, has the other half.'
'What are you going on about?' asked Jonathan crossly. 'Ch
picture's complete in itself.'
'Pictures painted on panel in Raphael's day were sometilDB
constructed in a similar way to pencil boxes,' continued Somerfoi
reprovingly. 'Raphael would have painted the myth of Pandora C
the lid along with the jokey caption: "Malum infra latet", or
"Trouble lies below". As indeed it did. Slotted into place this
lid would have concealed the painting on the bottom of the
box which was a portrait of a lady who gave Raphael a lot of
trouble.'
'If my memory serves me right,' chipped in Geraldine, not to be
outdone, 'the young woman in question was called Caterina and
nicknamed La Smorfiosa - the Proud One. I've seen it at the
Abraham Lincoln - a lovely portrait. La Smorfiosa was rumoured
to be a beauty--'
'Like yourself,' chipped in David gallantly.
'--who resisted Raphael's advances.' Geraldine smiled at him
warmly.
'At some time,' suggested Somerford, 'Pandora must have
become separated from Caterina, her other half. Fascinating.'
'Collectors and museums would give the world to get their
hands on this picture, Inspector.' Geraldine waved the colour
photographs. 'You must get it back.'
'Well, he won't if you both waste any more of his time rabbiting
on about pencil boxes,' exploded Sienna. 'For Christ's sake, let the
Inspector do some detecting.'
'Be quiet. Sienna,' rapped out Jupiter, and proceeded to whisk
Gablecross off on a tour of the house.
Jonathan meanwhile was counting heads.
Dora and Dicky had disappeared. There was no sign of Patience,
lan or Hanna. Apart from that, everyone else was present.
Raymond had aged a thousand years. Anthea was shaking so
violently Sophy ran upstairs and found her a cardigan. But as she
came back into the library, Anthea was saying, 'The Cartwrights
have probably taken it, we know how poor they are. Patience
could have pretended to be drunk, to give herself an excuse to be
upstairs in bed while the fireworks were going off.'
'We have not taken your rotten picture.' Sophy hurled the
cardigan in Anthea's direction. 'My mother, I'm afraid, has passed
out, and my father's been reading Wisden in the loo, he often disappears
in there for hours on end. He has now gone to bed.
Anyway, he wouldn't know a Raphael from a rhinoceros. My family
have never stolen anything in their lives,' she added furiously.
Emerald, remembering the shoplifting of the Joseph dress, went
^arlet as her eyes met Zac's.

Jupiter, meanwhile, was showing Inspector Gablecross the alarm
111 the cellar which had been switched off. They also looked at-the
^et passage running from the upstairs landing down two flights

321
of steps into the garden on the church side, both doors of which
were discovered to be unlocked. The two-way mirror door leading
to the Blue Tower was also swinging.
While they were up in the Blue Tower, Jupiter slid his foot over
a gingham toggle beside the bed. His stepmother had been
wearing it that morning - but he had no wish at this stage to shop |
her. ,|f
'It's a small painting,' he explained, 'cut out of its frame and;!
rolled up, anyone could have slipped it under a dinner jacket.' 3J
Footprints, he went on, had been found under an open dining-»|
room window, making it possibly a burglary.
'Could have come in that way, while the fireworks were goini
off,' pondered Inspector Gablecross. 'Thief could have turned off
the alarm system. Who knows where it turns off?'
'Practically everyone in the household,' said Jupiter.
'Who are?'
'My father and stepmother, all the staff, my brothers Alizaril||
and Jonathan, my wife Hanna.' Where was Hanna, he wondere<t|
'My sister, Sienna. Our new sister Emerald Cartwright might no^j
have done.'Jupiter explained about the adoption. 'She came int
our lives about six weeks ago, along with her boyfriend, Zach
Ansteig, who I might as well tell you, Inspector, is claiming
Raphael's his, looted from his great-grandfather's house in Vier
in 1938.'
'Ha!' said Gablecross. 'So you think he might have been mox
interested in tracking down the Raphael than his girlfriend^
natural parents?'
'I'm not saying anything,' said Jupiter. 'But he was in the hoi
all day. No, he went to pick up my brother Dicky from school, a
he went out this afternoon.'
'Could be an inside job,' said Gablecross. 'How much d')
reckon it's worth?'
'Must be insured for at least four million, but could be wor
double or treble that.'
Gablecross whistled.
'Who would have known the password into the secret tower?'
'The immediate family did. Probably my sister Sienna, Jonatha
would have forgotten it, Alizarin possibly.'
Alizarin had spent three hours with Zac yesterday, thought
Jupiter darkly. Could he have tipped him off?
'Who else might have known of the painting?'
'My mother had lovers up there twenty-five years ago,' sight
Jupiter,' Rupert Campbell-Black, Colin Casey Andrews, Etienne <
Montigny, Joan Bideford.' Then pulling a face, 'My mother K

322
catholic tastes, but I doubt any of them noticed the paintings
i »
'I suppose someone could have come over the roof and dropped
in through that skylight' - Gablecross stood on the double bed to
look - 'but the cobwebs don't seem to have been broken. We'd
better print everyone.'
Going downstairs, they found Jonathan filling up people's
drinks.
'The insurance company'll recover it for you,' Si Greenbridge
was telling Raymond. 'They know which Mafia's got everything.'
'The police certainly don't.'Jonathan drained the dregs of the
brandy bottle himself. 'They are absolutely useless at finding anything.
The Yard have cut down their art and antiques squad to two
piddling detective constables. The Italians have got thirty.'
'Shut up, Jonathan,' snapped Jupiter, flicking off the overhead

light.
And I won't turn a blind eye, young man, next time I catch you
speeding through Limesbridge at four o'clock in the morning,
thought Gablecross grimly.
'Please find my picture,' beseeched an almost weeping
Raymond.
'Someone wanted your painting, sir,' Gablecross told him. 'With
such a valuable work, the thief possibly already had a buyer in
mind. It could be at the coast by now, and smuggled out of the
country by tomorrow, possibly to be sold on the black market, or
used as a down payment for drugs or an arms deal.'
'Say no more.'Jonathan bowed in Si Greenbridge's direction.
'Detective Inspector Gablecross believes the thief,' said Jupiter
hastily, 'came over the roof or through the house, turned off the
alarm and knew the password to get into the Blue Tower.'
'Unless Anthea or Dad left it open,' said Jonathan.
'Ay haven't been there for weeks,' squeaked Anthea.
'Of course not,' said Jupiter. Surreptitiously, so only she could
see it, he opened his hand to reveal the gingham toggle.
Anthea gave a gasp of horror. Her world would collapse like a
house of cards if anyone knew she and Zac had been making love
in the Tower, or worse she had given him access to the Raphael.
The beast, she thought furiously. And on the pretext of snapping
me in the nuddy, he photographed our lovely picture.
Jonathan's mind was working in the same direction.
'It's a set-up,' he said to Zac. 'You planned the whole thing from
"ie start, so you could nick the Raphael. There's a gun in his top
"rawer. Inspector, and loads of illegal currency, not to mention
fbree passports. And I don't believe Emerald's a Belvedon at all.'

323
'That's garbage,' shouted Zac. 'Why bother to steal my
picture? I was trying to recover it,' he said to Gablecross. 'Search
my room if you like.'
While Gablecross's minions belted off to have a look, Anthea,
who'd been doing some rapid thinking, asked if she could have a <
private word. ^
Facing her across the study table, Gablecross thought how prettyil
she was. Her slender shoulders begged for a man's jacket to warm'
them. The violet of her eyes was enhanced by the shadows beneath;
he longed to comfort her. ;
Anthea in turn saw a tough, square, reddish farmer's face, softened
by curly brown hair and very green, long-lashed eyes,
wanted to put her trust in Inspector Gablecross utterly.
'Ay could have left the door open some weeks ago,'
confided. 'Sir Raymond and Ay occasionally nip upstairs f
quickie. He's very vigorous for his age.'
'So would I be in his position,' said Gablecross admiringly.
can't remember the last occasion? We're just establishing the
of theft.'
Anthea gave a squeak of amazement.
'Now I remember. I did nip upstairs to peak out of the windc
just before Emerald's replacement parents arrived. You can't i
the front of the house from our bedroom, but the Blue Tow<
looks straight down on to it. I was very nervous, Inspector, after;
they had cared for my Emerald for twenty-six years.'
'Quite understandable,' said Gablecross sympathetically.
you used the code to get into the Tower?'
'Yes, definitely, but I may not have shut the door, I was so anxiol
to run downstairs and welcome them.'
'What time was that?'
'Around half past six.'
'That's very valuable evidence.'

David Pulborough was hopping. As someone who regarded paint
ings as expensive commodities and who fought for his commissio;
as fiercely as any Bond Street crone selling Zandra Rhodes, he ha
never understood the Belvedons' obsession with the Raphael. Bli
had he overplayed his hand? Had he galvanized Raymond int
taking his own painting, knowing it was looted and he could pas
it on to Si who would probably pay him the full whack without
bothering about provenance? Or could the old fool really not bea
to part with it? And what the hell was Anthea rabbiting
Gablecross about?
Raymond wandered distractedly up and down. Jupiter

324
making lists of people to ring first thing, Jonathan was sketching
ervone. Alizarin gazed moodily into space. Geraldine was
lr»nkine through the Art Newspaper for references to herself.
Snmerford was discussing Raphaels with Si, who'd put his dinner
jacket over Rosemary Pulborough, asleep on the window seat
"fcside him. Visitor, impossibly rotund from finishing up other
neoole's dinners, but aware of tension and distress, laid his fat paw
Im as many knees as possible. Diggory had gone hunting. Grenville
the greyhound, tranked up to the eyeballs, lay cross-eyed in the
corner. Sophy wished she had a tranquillizer for Emerald, who was
shuddering convulsively.
The only person in a worse state was Sienna. How could she have
rieptwith Zac? To wind people up, she and Jonathan had snogged
endlessly in public. In private, unwilling to risk her getting pregant,
they had done everything, except go the whole hog. This had
hnly occurred in her darkest dreams and she always woke up dying
Ebf shame. But now the citadel had fallen in a couple of minutes to
Ithe fiendishly manipulative Zac, who was now aware of her illicit
passion. God knew what use he would make of it. Not to mention
those moments when she'd believed him to be Jonathan, which
.had been the most wonderful of her life. She started to cry again.
t 'It was my last link with my mother.'
: , 'I know, darling.'Jonathan ruffled her hair. 'But just stop going
"(Ml about it.'
'Art theft is still dismissed as a gentleman's crime by the police,'
Staid David pompously.
> 'Which means they certainly won't suspect you,' snapped
Jonathan.
To his disappointment the police found nothing in Zac's room.
"There was a gun earlier, I swear it,' protested Sienna.
'And what were you doing in my room?' asked Zac bleakly.
Emerald was suddenly jolted out of her torpor. Running across
the room, she viciously slapped Zac's face.
'You bastard,' she screamed, 'you bastard! No wonder you found
Anthea so quickly. I told you my birth name was Rookhope, you'd
probably looked at the cuttings, and knew it was Anthea's maiden
name almost from the start. All you were after was your bloody
picture. Well, you're too late, I'm glad someone's stolen it from
under your nose.'
I m sorry.' For a second, a flicker of pity joined the finger marks
reddening Zac's ashen face. 'Anyone who has leamt to hate as
much as we have, can never love again.'
Gerald gazed at him aghast, gave a sob and fled from the room.
"e d like a word with you, Mr Ansteig,' said Gablecross.

325
So it seemed would Anthea, when an hour and a half later shei
found Zac packing. |
'You traitor,' she hissed. 'How dare you lead me on? How d'yoiyl
think this makes me feel?' I
'Well and truly fucked,' said Zac brutally. 'What have you done|
with my picture?'
'Ay haven't touched it.'
'I went up to the Blue Tower fifteen minutes after the firework
started, and it was gone.' ij

326
Raymond's ability as a host was sorely taxed on Thursday morning.
He was touched that Anthea had sobbed all night over the loss of
the Raphael, but irked she had proved too inconsolable to get up
in the morning. Neither Emerald nor Sienna emerged to help
him. Mrs Robens, deeply huffy because Anthea had implied she,
Robens and Knightie might have stolen the Raphael, had not come
in to work. Somerford and Geraldine, who'd been anticipating
Finnan haddock and kidneys sizzling in entree dishes, had to make
do with burnt croissants and instant coffee.
But nothing could dim their euphoria that they had been
present at the theft of the decade, about which they could regale
the art world for years to come. They were also flattered that the
notoriously brusque and impatient Si Greenbridge, grateful no
doubt to be relieved from that dreary Rosemary, had spent so
much time with them - such a powerful contact and with such a
murky reputation, probably also grateful they could provide him
with an alibi.
Raymond, huddled over a cup of black coffee, was distraught.
'It's ironic how I had planned to give Pandora to the National
Gallery.'
'Doubt if they'd have accepted it with such a dubious provenance,'
said Somerford nastily. 'How did you say you'd acquired

lan Cartwright joined them and, out of habit, forced down a
"owl of cornflakes. After the very humiliating press he'd received
when he'd been sacked and when Emerald had sought outAnthea,
he was appalled to be gathered up into a further maelstrom of
Publicity. Now he was sober, he'd decided he didn't like the
"elvedons one bit. He hated the way they'd sniped at Emerald, and

327
although Raymond seemed a nice chap, one couldn't trust a fellow
with so many books.
They had been invited to meet the natural parents of their
adopted daughter, he told Gablecross tersely. He had never heard;
of the picture, and had no idea it was in the house, nor had hisi
wife. He was furious with Patience for being sick and pleased she!
was being punished by a brain-crushing hangover.
A knock on her bedroom door made Patience moan
louder.
'C-c-ome in.'
It was Dora bearing fizzing Resolve.
'Try and keep it down, Mrs Cartwright.'
'Oh, dear child, thank you. Is it true a valuable picture's beei
stolen?'
'It's so annoying.' Dora collapsed on Patience's bed. 'I fell asle(
in Loofah's shed waiting until the fireworks ended in case he w
frightened. I didn'twake up till this morning and my parents nevi
came looking for me. I can't decide whether to ring Children il
Need or the press. Can I come and stay with you in London? Sopi
and I caught Hanna and my brother Alizarin snogging, whic
won't please my brother Jupiter.'
Nor can it have pleased poor darling Sophy, thought Patienct
Sophy had spent most of the night trying to comfort a dementc
Emerald, who had wept that she felt completely isolated.
'Mummy's passed out. Daddy's completely spooked. Raymond'1
out to lunch, Anthea's bawling her head off. I'm sure somethin
went on between her and Zac. Four useless parents. Zac was inert
of a father than any of them. I love him so much, Soph, and befot
we came to this house, he was mine, and now he's gone.'
I love Alizarin so much, thought Sophy as she wearily patt
Emerald's shoulders, and he was never mine and now he's go;
too.
lan was champing to escape from this hell-hole, so Emerald h
to get up and drive him and the rest of the family back to Londc
Raymond, practically in tears, was the only person to wave them <
in the pouring rain.
'So sorry it turned out like this. I'm afraid Anthea's too upset t
say goodbye. You will come back this evening, won't you, Emeral
darling, Anthea's going to need you,' which didn't please Patienc
and lan very much.
'Could I possibly say goodbye to Alizarin?' asked a blushu

^P"7- , .a
'I'm afraid he's working, so's Sienna. I'll give them your love. y
* * *

328
Onna sobbing with rage, was painting horses who'd been
mnrisoned for forty-eight hours without food or water in airless
wiring lorries, portraying them as a tangle of broken limbs.
Alizarin was painting a so-called 'Free Zone' in Kosovo: thousands
of people, their white faces in stark contrast to their colourful
clothes peering hopelessly through the wire netting of a refugee

camp- Hearing a car storming so furiously through the puddles
the spray splashed his window, Alizarin looked out. Catching the
briefest blurred glimpse of blonde hair and a doleful pink face, he
wondered if he was seeing tears or raindrops.

Inspector Gablecross had murderers, rapists and paedophiles to
catch. Realizing regretfully that he would be able to spare little
fc time looking for the Raphael, he dropped in on his wise old friend,
I Lily Hamilton, with whom he shared a passion for racing.
I Approaching River Cottage, Gablecross admired the dark red
Hroses, pale yellow hollyhocks, and first pink phlox fighting for
Iroace in her front garden. He also smiled at the teddy bears
pmassed on the back ledge of her ancient Triumph and the large
| Stuffed badger called Douglas secured by a safety belt in the
^passenger seat.
S - A hazardous driver - 'Lily never misses a truck,' her nephew
^Jonathan was fond of saying - she had only retained her licence
I because of her popularity with the local constabulary. It also drove
lAnthea crackers that Knightie and the Robenses were always doing
; extra hours for nothing because Lily gave them cake and sympathy
| and insisted they sat down and watched racing or exciting bits of
Kilroy or Richard and Judy with her. Lily had inherited from her
mother oodles of Irish charm, which the English often dismiss as
calculation, but which actually stems from an intensely kind and
enquiring heart.
Having been married to a diplomat for nearly thirty years, she
had furnished the cottage from all over the world. Watercolours of
the Bosporus and the Italian Lakes, African masks and Indian ivory
nibbed shoulders with paintings by her nieces and nephews. It was
such a relaxed household that all the books had taken off their
jackets. On the window ledge were binoculars for bird-watching. A
^se of wild flowers, another passion, were dropping their petals
°n a side table.
Despite getting 'high as a coot' last night and falling in the pond
°n the way home, Lily had been up since six and didn't feel eleven
0 clock was too early to open a half-bottle of champagne which she
was sharing with her nephew Dicky, who was averting his eyes

329
from one of Sienna's nudes of Lily, proudly displayed above a red-
lacquered upright piano.
'Police are bound to think I took the Raphael,' Dicky was saying
gloomily, 'because of my debts. It's going to take me a hundred
years to pay the fete committee back for Alizarin's painting. And I
got such a lousy report, I'll never get a job when I grow up.' He
turned pale when he saw Gablecross. 'I'd better go. Mum might be
worried about me.'
'Some hope,' snorted Lily as he scuttled out.
Gablecross refused a glass of champagne but, when she returned
from the kitchen, having made him toast with black cherry jam,
Lily emptied a miniature brandy into his cup of coffee.
'Ta very much.' Gablecross couldn't get up from the sofa
because Lily's vast white cat, Brigadier, was sprawled across his lap,
purring thunderously.
'What d'you reckon on last night?' he asked Lily, who poured
the remains of the half-bottle into her glass, and lit a cheroot.
'I don't know,' she sighed. 'Rosemary Pulborough rang me first
thing. Evidently it was her busybodying little husband who told
Raymond all London was saying the Raphael was stolen.
'I cannot understand this fuss about looted art.' She shook her
head. 'Raymond rescued the Raphael from a burning chateau.
When I rescued Brigadier' - she smiled fondly at her cat who was
covering Gablecross's dark blue trousers with white fur - 'he was as
thin as a rake and terrified of everything. There's no way I'd ever
give him back. People make such a fuss about the SS too, but it was rather
like being in the Guards.
'Oh well, I'm old,' she grumbled as Gablecross raised an
eyebrow, 'I'm allowed to be unpolitically correct.'
'Any idea who might have taken it?'
'None,' said Lily firmly. 'Gypsies were camped on the wildflower^
meadow last night. Million pounds' worth of art in their
possession.' ^
'This looks like an inside job, made to look like a burglary.' Gablecross bit into a folded piece of toast. 'Footsteps under
windows, doors to secret passages left open.'
'Would you still prosecute?' Lily took a thoughtful sip of
champagne, j
'Probably not, if the thief could be persuaded to return it. On
the other hand,' he went on, licking jam off his fingers, 'that
American, Zachary Ansteig, who claims it's his, will probably press
charges. In America, the fine for that could be half a million
dollars, or five years inside. We're not so hot on looted art in the
UK, but it could be nasty.'

330
'Could be an act of defiance,' Lily mused. 'Whole family been
upended by Emerald's arrival - such a confused child.'
'Si Greenbridge and Somerford Keynes can provide alibis for
each other,' said Gablecross.
'Both could have paid someone else to steal it,' suggested Lily.
'Somerford's boyfriend's a burglar; I should think Mr Greenbridge
is dripping with unsavoury friends. Rosemary wouldn't bother to
steal it, she's got her own money. David could easily have taken it.
As Jonathan walked me home, I remember seeing the little weasel
creeping back from the direction of the Old Rectory.' Then, as
Gablecross made a note: 'He could be in league with Anthea, very
keen on each other over the years. She's also keen on Zachary
Ansteig; I saw her slipping her cradle-snatching hand into his as
they walked up from the boathouse.'
'Pretty woman,' sighed Gablecross.
'I thought you had better taste,' said Lily tartly. 'Pretty frightful
mother, and if anything happened to Raymond, she'd have me out
of here in a trice.
'Jupiter could have taken it for the insurance, he's very greedy,
and hot on his rights,' she continued. 'Jonathan and Alizarin are
chronically short of money. Jonathan spends it as fast as he makes
it. It's just the sort of prank he'd enjoy, never dreaming Jupiter'd
call the police.'
'What about the punk one? She was hysterical.'
'Sienna's a darling, just mixed up. As the rumour was circulating
that the picture was looted, any of the family might have taken it
to stop it going back to its original owner, such is their affection.'
'And Jupiter's wife?'
'Terribly unhappy, Jupiter keeps her very short, marriage is very
rocky. Jupiter's bats about Emerald. He can't sleep, prowls around
his cottage at three in the morning.'
Bird-watching isn't the only thing you use those binoculars for,
thought Gablecross, then he said, 'The popular view is that Ansteig
and Emerald are in it together.'
'I'm sure not. He was using her. Deeply humiliating for someone
that beautiful to be used.'
'What about the Cartwrights?'
'Certainly not. Utterly straight and couldn't have known about
the Raphael unless Zac had tipped them off, and there is clearly
no love lost between them and Zac. lan Cartwright detests him.
Terrified he's going to marry Emerald.'
'Ansteig'savery tough customer,' said Gablecross. 'Admitted he
was poised to nick it himself, then someone pre-empted him.
Wouldn't tell me how he took those photographs of the picture.'

331
'More coffee?' Lily heaved herself out of her chair. 'No, don
get up. House rule: if you've got a cat on your lap, you stay put.'
For someone who was supposed to have been so plastered sh
fell in the pond. Lily had picked up an awful lot, though
Gablecross. Her eyes and skin were clear. She showed no evidenc
of a hangover. Perhaps she and Jonathan were in cahoots.
'D'you know how to get into the Blue Tower?' he asked.
'I should do,' Lily laughed, 'I lost my virginity up there.'
'What about the servants?' enquired a rather pink Gablecross
'Mr Robens was sent to get more wine from the cellar durin
dinner. Could he have flicked off the alarm?'
'Wouldn't blame him, Anthea pays them such piddling wage;
But I think Knightie and the Robenses are far too scared c
Galena's ghost, particularly at midnight, to risk going up to th
Blue Tower.'
Lily picked up her binoculars. Now the sun had come out, th
glare from the river was blinding.
'I saw a kingfisher last week. Oh good, here's Rosemary, I toll
her to drop in.'
The wind had whipped up the colour in Rosemary's pale cheeta
her eyes sparkled and a beautiful Art Nouveau silver daffod
gleamed on the lapel of her rather dreary brown suit.
'What excitement,' she cried, putting a bottle of Sancerre and
box of cheese straws down on the table. 'I've just seen Green Jeal
in the village shop, so outraged she missed the fun last night, sb
couldn't look me in the eye. Green Jean's our Vicar's wif<
Inspector, always raiding people's dustbins and inveighing agaiiu
disposable nappies and unrecycled envelopes. She's worse thai
Visitor. Talk of the devil,' she giggled as Visitor waddled in. 'Helk
darling. Just in time for these cheese straws.' She tore at the cellc
phane with her teeth.
'Have you been drinking?' asked Lily.
Rosemary shook her head, then, to the amazement of he
listeners: 'I think Si Greenbridge is the nicest man I've ever md
He's just sent me an e-mail asking me and Virty Cartwright to L
Manoir.'
'Did he give you that brooch? I'm sure I've seen it before.'
'No, Geraldine did.' Rosemary went off into peals of laughtel
'Before my husband tackled your brother on the subject oflooto
Raphaels, Lily, he obviously whisked Geraldine home for a quick!
and the silly old bat left her lovely brooch on my bedside table a
a dp.'
* * *

332
ffor the rest of Thursday, police interviewed suspects and sifted
through the evidence. The theft had been too late for the
nationals, but they had moved in in force by Thursday lunchtime,
whereupon a devastated Raymond plied them with tea and Mrs
Robens's fudge cake, and begged them to help him find his
Raphael.
On Friday morning Jupiter had a terrible shock. Convinced the
police would take little further action beyond placing the Raphael
on the Art Loss Register, he was looking forward to a massive
oayoutfrom the insurance company. He was therefore insane with
rage to discover that Raymond, perhaps nervous of setting off
alarm bells, hadn't raised the valuation on the Raphael since the
early sixties when he had insured it for only eighty thousand
-pounds. This meant that the insurance company, who only
bothered with pictures worth more than a hundred thousand, would now make no attempt to trace it. Jupiter could have throttled
Raymond, but for the moment his priority was to find Pandora
and prove she wasn't Zac's.
Suspicion was in fact hardening on Zac, when the frame of the
Raphael, covered in his fingerprints, was found in the rushes by
the pond. Zac, however, had vanished. So had Sienna, Emerald
and Jonathan. Ignoring police requests to stay put, they had
all dispersed north, south, east and west like Lars Porsena's
messengers.
To escape Jupiter's icy rage, Raymond fled to London. Anthea,
having lied that she had left the Blue Tower door open at six-thirty
on Wednesday night was panicking that the police might pick up
clues that she'd been in bed earlier with Zac. Longing for someone
to blame, she turned her fury on Alizarin.
T'm sure he's involved,' she spluttered to Jupiter. 'He told the
police that during the fireworks he fetched a tranquillizer for
Visitor from the Lodge. He could easily have borrowed one of
Grenville's tablets and everyone knows Visitor hasn't a nerve in his
podgy body.'
Alizarin, in fact, had been with Hanna, whom he'd spent most
of the fireworks comforting. Alas, Jupiter had been informed by an
indignant Dora that she'd found Hanna and Alizarin in a steamy
clinch. '
'We'd better tackle him before Dad gets home,' he said grimly.
^nvy and Avarice, red in tooth and claw, he and Anthea belted
"own to the Lodge. They found Alizarin working on his Free Zone
Picture, laboriously painting in each despairing face with the aid
01 a vast magnifying glass.

333
'What a mess!' Anthea gazed round the studio in horror. 'And
when are you going to cut down those netdes?'
'They provide sanctuary for the peacock butterfly. I'm surprised
Emerald isn't seeking refuge there.'
'Don't be cheeky.' Anthea's mood was not improved by a hauntingly
beautiful portrait of Zac propped against the wall. A
forgotten beef sandwich was gathering flies on the window ledge.
Anthea shuddered.
'What d'you want?' demanded Alizarin. 'I haven't got any drink.'
'You spent a long time with Zac on Tuesday night,' snapped
Jupiter, 'did he ask you about the Raphael?'
'He said he was looking for it.'
'Why didn't you warn us?' screeched Anthea.
'It was the guy's picture, for God's sake.'
'It bloody isn't,' exploded Jupiter. 'I suppose you tipped hinN
off.' 'I
'I told him he was getting warm. We've got all this.' Alizarin.!
waved his paintbrush in the direction of Foxes Court. 'His family!
lost everything.' |
'How dare you! If he's got nothing, how can he afford all thos<s|
designer clothes and the jetting around?' exploded Anthea. 'Andll
what right have you to talk about what we 'we got? Who pays for yoiHC§|
Health Service, your dole money, your libraries? Your father doe»|
with his taxes. You don't contribute a thing. How dare you take thi»|
moralizing tone. I know Raymond slips you a bit. You're thirty-five,^
for God's sake, not fifteen. Just get out, you disgusting bum.' f
At last she could get her hands on the Lodge for holiday lets. l|
'You lost us the Raphael,' said Jupiter. 'Have you no idea havtj.
tough things are at the gallery? Anthea's right. If you had an^
integrity, you'd pack your bags and get out.' '
Alizarin was too proud to protest. But after they'd gone h«j
hugged Visitor in terror. He looked round at his pictures whidBj
he'd painted with such love but still the world hadn't liked theiB&i
He watched the moon slowly turn from gold to silver, and though<|
how lovely it would have been to grow old with Sophy and see hex|
blonde hair go grey, then found that he was crying, i:
;.!,t|

In the morning he was gone, taking only Galena's palette, tb<j
Etienne de Montigny drawing of her, half a dozen canvasses, ant*
Visitor. He left enough money to pay the milkman, Visitor's vet'i
bills, and for Knightie to put flowers on Galena's grave.
Raymond was horrified to hear when he got back from LondoaJj
that Alizarin had moved out. Why had the Raphael and all his ^^H
dren deserted him? Anthea replied that Alizarin had confessed i

334
tipping off Zac about the picture. She then lied that, after a row,
Alizarin had gone of his own accord.
lust the sort of kick up the backside an artist needs,' she kept
saying as she despatched all Alizarin's pictures and Galena's furniture
to damp and draughty outbuildings. 'Ridiculous living at
home at thirty-five, he'll be grateful one day.'
One of the first tasks of the workmen renovating the Lodge for
holiday lets was to paint the walls Alizarin had used as canvasses.
Dora and Dicky were devastated by his departure and they particularly
missed Visitor. Who would finish up the food they didn't like?
Who would there be for Diggory to boss or to comfort poor
nervous Grenville?
Dora retaliated by scrawling in lipstick all over the hall wallpaper,
and being pronounced as 'thoroughly disturbed' and 'in
need of a psychiatrist' by Anthea.
'I'm going to divorce my mother,' raged Dora to Harriet of the
Independent. 'I'll give you all the dirt if you pay for some new hall
wallpaper.'
'We can't afford that.'
'I'll go to the Sun.'
'Oh, all right then.'

Jupiter would have felt more guilty about evicting Alizarin ifHanna
hadn't flipped when she heard the news. Packing her bags, she had
gone off to stay with her mother in Norway.
An enraged Jupiter had visions of Alizarin joining her there. But
first things first. Feeling it more important to retrieve the Raphael
than his wife, Jupiter flew to Geneva. Here he headed for the Free
Port, a VAT-exempt zone, full of safe deposits stuffed with cash,
valuables and pictures. He prayed one of the family might have
thrust Pandora into the Belvedon vault, but when he arrived, he
found nothing but David Pulborough and one of his clients, a
Russian Mafia thug called Minsky Kraskov, sniffing around on their
way to the Hermitage.

335
Jonathan, convinced that Zac and Si were in league, rang Mercury,
the New York art magazine for which Zac was allegedly working,
and discovered that although he had never written for them, the
group was owned by Si.
Determined to find out more about Zac and the fate of the
Raphael before 1944 when it fell into Raymond's hands, Jonathan I
flew to Vienna in early August. At Emerald's birthday dinner, Zac
had let slip that his great-grandfather had owned a house in a street
called Schwindgasse. Hoping for a slum, Jonathan was irritated to
find the street lined with beautiful faded ochre houses with
balconies and large gardens in one of the oldest, most charming
parts of Vienna. At the end of the street was the Schwarzenberg
Palace, a splendid baroque pile in its own park, flanking lovely
public gardens.
Jonathan got no joy either from the old house or Zac's family.
The present owner, a sleek blonde, initially charmed by Jonathan's ;
helpless smile and melting dark eyes, admitted that a Jewish family
had lived there before the war, but clearly didn't wish to enlarge
on the speed with which they'd been turfed out. As if weeping for ;
their plight, huge drops of rain suddenly poured out of the dark
grey clouds above. As Vienna was in the grip of a punishing heatwave,
Jonathan revelled in the impromptu cold shower.
Splashing happily up streets named after Goethe, Mahler and ]
Schubert, past theatres, a sculpture by Henry Moore, and the ice- ^
green dome of the great Charles Cathedral, he paused to listen to
the joyful din of the Vienna Philharmonic rehearsing for tonight's
concert. On all sides were museums and galleries, many of them
showing one of Jonathan's favourite artists, Gustav Klimt, whose
ornate gilded portraits of femmes f stales had outraged turn-of-the-

336
century Vienna. The whole area, in fact, was the perfect setting for
an enlightened bourgeois Jewish family steeped in the arts.
Tomorrow, vowed Jonathan, he'd go on a Klimt crawl. Today he
had more urgent plans and splashed on until he reached the spot
on the corner of Singer Strasse and Kartner Strasse where Zac's Great-uncle Jacob's gallery had stood in the shadow of Vienna's
other great cathedral, St Stephen's. Bombed to rubble by the
Allies, the splendid old building had been replaced by shops and
a block of flats.
Jonathan was about to seek out the porter, when his heart turned
a double somersault. For there, drenched, dressed entirely in
black, blown against the front door like a poplar leaf was his own
femmefatale.
Fortunately, he had plenty of time to regain his cool. So great
was Emerald's self-absorption, she didn't even seem surprised to
see him.
'I hoped I'd find Zac here, not you,' she sobbed. 'Maybe he
never loved me, but I can't stop loving him. I know I'm going to
end up an old maid. Sophy's bound to marry early, she's always had
low standards. Anthea married at twenty. Even Mummy, who looks
like a horse, got a husband by the time she was twenty-four. I always
vowed I'd be married by the time I was twenty-seven - and that's
less than a year to go. I know I'm going to be left on the shelf.'
'Can I break into this explosion of shelf-pity?' interrupted
Jonathan, who was having difficulty keeping a straight face. 'By
telling you the word "Raphael" means "God heals" in Hebrew, so
you're going to be OK. And you don't want to be a bride anyway,
white truly isn't your colour.'
'Oh shut up, you've just rolled up to be objectionable.'
She had reddened eyes and a red nose, like a Vick's advertisement;
her scraped-back hair had crinkled in the downpour. She
looked quite plain, which cheered Jonathan immensely. He felt
much more able to carry out his game plan.
'What are you doing here?' she demanded.
'Working - and hoping to find out more about the Raphael.' He
held out his hand. 'Let's start again. Brother and sister. Did you
know that "yes" and "no" mean the same in Vienna? No wonder
Zac was dodgy.'
'Don't take the piss,' grumbled Emerald, but she stopped crying.
'I haven't got anywhere to stay.'
To win her confidence, convinced, like Jupiter, she wasn't his
sister, Jonathan booked her into the room next to his at his hotel,
which was in a quiet street, and overlooked an ivy-clad courtyard
at the back, 'So you can't grumble about traffic keeping you awake.

337
I expect you'd like to unpack and get out of those sopping clothes,
then we'll explore the city.'

And what a breathtaking city it was. Each building seemed to celebrate
the rampant hedonism of the Viennese. On every ledge
pomegranates spilt, leaves sprouted, cherubs gambled, muscular
giants wrestled, horses reared up, heraldic lions raised paws.
'You feel a worship of the Imperial past almost amounting to
necrophilia,' said Jonathan as they dined that evening in a stunning
restaurant housed in the Schwarzenberg Palace overlooking
the park and floodlit fountains. Emerald for once was starving and
was soon tucking into lobster cooked in Chablis sauce to be
followed by pigeon cassoulet. Jonathan, who'd seemed awash with
cash, had ordered Dom Perignon, followed by a matchless bottle
of red, and was clearly pulling the stops out in preparation for the
great pass later, Emerald decided. But his behaviour puzzled her;
usually so tactile, he hadn't laid a finger on her, except grabbing
her to prevent her being mowed down by a lorry when she forgot
that Austrians drove on the right. The Dom Perignon was also his
first drink of the day. There was colour in his normally pale cheeks,
his eyes were clear and the bags beneath them as well as his gut had
nearly disappeared.
Looking gorgeous on purpose, just to tempt me, she thought
crossly.
'Why did you paint me as Pandora?'
'Because Pandora means "all gifted" and because, according to
Hesiod, she was the most beautiful woman the Gods could invent.'
Then, as Emerald smirked, he added, 'But she was also a silly trivial
Nosy Parker, who couldn't resist opening a box she shouldn't and
wrecking everyone's lives.'
'Did I really screw things up for your family?' asked Emerald,
appalled.
'Totally, but in the end it may shake down for the good.'
'I couldn't help it.' Defiantly she clashed her knife and fork
together, telling Jonathan he had ruined her appetite. 'They say it
takes a major crisis to force adopted people to seek out their real
parents. We lost our wonderful house in Yorkshire, all my stability
and roots gone in a trice.' Her green eyes welled with tears.
'Sophy told me you loathed the house in Yorkshire and never
went there. Now eat up your lobster and don't be silly.'
'The bitch, how dare Sophy?'
Jonathan put his head on one side.
'EmeraZri,' he said gently.
For a second she glared at him, then, to his amazement, she

338
laughed. 'Well, perhaps I did loathe it, but I liked it as a status
symbol.'
'Good girl.' Delighted at such a concession.Jonathan patted her
shoulders. But when she arched against him, provocative as a cat,
he steeled himself to whip his hand away.

By the time he'd settled the massive bill it was approaching
midnight, but Jonathan suddenly seemed in a hurry to get home.
'He's going to pounce,' thought Emerald, churning in terror
and excitement as she pounded the pavements after him.
Her fears were confirmed when he collected both their hotel
keys and bundled her into the creaking Art Deco lift. Feeling his
wine-flavoured breath lifting her hair and warming her forehead,
she rammed herself against her side of the lift. But having
opened her bedroom door for her, Jonathan bid her a swift
goodnight.
'I'm off to watch the porn channel. You get five free minutes a
night, and if you run them together at midnight, you can get ten
minutes on the trot. See you in the morning.' And to Emerald's
chagrin, he merely pecked her on the cheek and shot into his
room.

As the days passed he continued to behave in the same kind,
sober but utterly brotherly fashion. Together they explored the
cathedrals, the galleries, bought oysters in the market, ate far too
much rich chocolate cake with apricot jam, wandered through
the Vienna woods and went to the Vienna Phil in the evenings.
They also sketched each other incessantly. Jonathan disappeared
a lot to delve around in dusty archives, not letting on to
Emerald he was investigating Zac's past as much as that of the
Raphael.
At the end of the second week, Emerald started panicking she
hadn't got her period.
T know I'm pregnant, and Zac's the father,' she stormed. 'I'm
not going to be a single parent like Anthea, it'd ruin my life. Where
can I get an abortion? You're bound to know a good doctor,' she
added nastily.
Jonathan looked at her meditatively.
Dear, dear, dear, how can you be so dismissive of Anthea giving
you up as a baby, when you're not prepared to give yours even a
chance?'
Emerald flushed.
'Look what an awful life I've had. It would have been better if I
hadn't been born.'

339
'It would have saved everyone a lot of earache. See you this
evening.'

It irritated the hell out of Emerald that Jonathan's friends were
always ringing or texting him. Jonathan, in turn, was ashamed how
jealous he felt when he learnt that David Pulborough was giving
Trafford a big show next year and Trafford had also been shortlisted
for a big prize for his video of a masturbating granny entitled
Oh Nan. Jonathan vowed to stop squandering his talents, but all he
wanted to do was to paint Emerald as they sat for hours in cafes or
wine bars trying out bottles of the new vintage.
'According to Giacometti,' he told her, 'who spent weeks
painting members of his family, "The adventure, the great adventure,
is to see something unknown appear each day in the same
face."'
And as the days passed, and yellow leaves began to cover the
parks, and cold clear air could be felt again coming off the mountains,
Jonathan noticed the little brackets on either side of
Emerald's mouth when she smiled, and the red patch in the left
hollow of her nose, which she tried to cover with concealer, and the yearning melancholy in her eyes, which softened to sage green
when she was caught off guard.

Bored with his curls one day, Jonathan had them cut off.
'Trying to look more like Zac,' Emerald was horrified to hear
herself snapping, but only because she was so jolted by the beauty
of his forehead and temples and the strength and grace of his
newly revealed jaw and neck.
'Sorry, that was bitchy,' she moaned, 'I'm only frantic about not
coming on. I need some Prozac.'
'You need some anti-Zac,' drawled Jonathan, 'you're just
suffering from PMT.'
Predictably, when her period arrived the next day, Emerald
made a fearful fuss about having desperately wanted Zac's child.
'At least I'd have something to remember him by.'
'Don't be fatuous,' snapped Jonathan, 'you've got what you
wanted.'
'You've no idea how important it is for adopted children to have
their first blood relation. And I'm so late I've run out ofTampax.
Jonathan, Jonathan,' but he had walked out, slamming the door.
Returning twenty minutes later, he found her in tears and
chucked a packet ofTampax on the bed.
'Here you are. A long stop between two short legs.'

340
'My legs are not short and I've got the most terrible cramps.'
Tonathan flicked on the kettle and filled a hot-water bottle, then
he got a little bottle of gin out of the mini-bar. Having emptied it
into a glass, he added tonic.
'Don't need lemon, you're quite sour enough.'
'Why are you so vile to me?' moaned Emerald as he tucked her
up in bed and gently began to rub her rigid tummy. 'Aaah, that's
so nice. How d'you know so much about women?'
'I had to try and be a mother to Sienna. Poor darling had her
first period at ten. Anthea hadn't bothered to tell her about them.
Jupiter, Al and I were all away at school when it happened. Sienna
came screaming out of the loo convinced she was bleeding to
death. Mrs Robbie had to cope. I know Sienna can be difficult, and
it's debatable whether she or Anthea have given each other the
harder time,' he added, his hands kneading and caressing away
the pain, 'but her life's been pretty good hell.'
The gin was kicking in. Jonathan noticed Emerald's eyelashes,
lying on her blanched cheek like ragged rooks' wings.
Oh, please make his hands creep downwards or upwards,
Emerald was shocked to find herself praying, as sleep rolled over
her. When she woke, Jonathan was gone and it was dark outside.
Under her door he'd shoved a drawing of her on her deathbed
and underneath had written, Period Peace.
When Jonathan returned long after midnight to his room, a
page of Emerald's sketchpad had been shoved under his door. On
it was an exquisite drawing of Christ with Jonathan's features,
complete with halo and Diggory under his arm, instead of a lamb.
Underneath, Emerald had written, Self Portrait by Jonathan Belvedon.
Jonathan could hear her television on next door, and instead of
watching the porn channel, he poured himself a large whisky, and
lay on his bed smoking and gazing into space. He wished Diggory
were here to cheer him up. Who the hell could have taken the
Raphael?
He left the hotel in the morning without making contact, but
when he returned he found all his clothes had been beautifully
washed and ironed with a note on top: 'Sorry I've been a complete
cow. At least I've learnt the Austrian for launderette.'

Emerald felt herself in more and more of a muddle.
'Do you find me attractive?' she demanded.
Quite,' said Jonathan, then, when she looked bootfaced, he
smiled and added: 'Quite exceptionally attractive.'
But he made no pass. It was like living with a vegetarian wolf.

341
And as August moved into September, she found herself increasingly
drawn to him, and when he vanished to his archives, she
missed him dreadfully.
One warm afternoon, he took her to the Central Cemetery,
another splendid park where two and a half million people are
buried, and where the Viennese come to walk, chat, and feed the
squirrels and sparrows.
'Only when you're dead in Vienna have you really made it,'
explained Jonathan, who was watching the exquisite shadows
dappling the tawny leaves scattered on the grass as the tree ceiling
grew thinner.
In the musicians' graveyard, they found buried many of the great I
composers: Johann Strauss, father and son, Beethoven and',
Brahms. Jonathan drew Emerald's attention to a lichened monument,
which showed a bespectacled Schubert arriving in heaven, I
bewildered that a smiling angel was laying a laurel wreath on his
dishevelled curls.
'Needs a haircut like yours,' mocked Emerald. :
'Schubert never got any recognition during his lifetime,' saidi
Jonathan, 'he had to wait till he got to Heaven, like Alizarin probably
will.' |
Glancing round, he saw tears, for once not of frustration nor self-|
pity, filling Emerald's eyes.
'That is so sad. Is Alizarin that good?'
'One day he'll be regarded as one of the greats of all time.'
'So could you be,' protested Emerald, suddenly serious.
The?' said Jonathan in amazement.
'You just squander your talent and fool around.'
She looked so sweet and fierce, he had to clench his fists not toll
take her in his arms. |
Instead, gazing at the miles of graves, he said, 'Terrifying how^i
many people are alleged to be buried alive. It's rumoured the|
Viennese used to have a rope inside the coffin attached to a belli
so they could alert the outside world.' |
Then, when Emerald shivered, he added, 'Tomorrow we'r^l
going to visit the Von Trapps' house.'
'How fabulous,' squealed Emerald, 'The Sound of Music's easit
my favourite film.'
'I know it is.'
'How?'
'Because it's Anthea's too.'

Sometimes they discussed what had happened to the Raphael.
'What were you doing during the fireworks?'

342
'Taking Lily home, she fell in the pond.'
'Are you sure it wasn't you that fell in the pond? You were
drenched when you got back to the house.'
'I've always been wet.'
'Don't be silly. The frame of the Raphael was found in the
rushes. Are you sure you didn't nick it as a practical joke? And how
come you're so cash rich now?'
'I had a good win at the casino,' said Jonathan blithely. 'Actually,
I've almost run out.' He glanced at her sideways. 'I've got to go
back to London to finish Dame Hermione in time for the
Commotion Exhibition.'
'When are you leaving?' gasped Emerald.
'Tomorrow. The next day.'
She really minds, he thought in ecstasy as the colour drained
from Emerald's face. His backing-off had worked.
'Bloody Jupiter,' she stormed, 'if he'd paid me for that head, we
could have stayed another week.'

On the last night, they went to their favourite restaurant in the
Schwarzenberg Palace overlooking the park. Watched by everyone,
they were oblivious of everything except each other.
'I don't want to go back to London,' moaned Emerald.
'D'you remember the first time we danced, I kissed you and you
slapped my face?' asked Jonathan.
'You were so drunk, I nearly knocked you over.'
'What did you think of me?'
'That you were an irrelevance, all I could think about was
confronting Anthea.'
Jonathan couldn't prevent his hand reaching out to stroke her
face, but just managed to turn it into a summons for the bill.
As they wandered home guided by a huge gold moon floating
above the green domes, the rearing horses and the floodlit
Goddesses, Emerald asked, 'Why were you so gratuitously bloody
to me at my birthday party?'
'I thought Dad had given you the Raphael to make up for being
adopted and not brought up by him and Anthea. It was the sort of
stupid, quixotic thing . . .'
'You were panic stricken about losing your inheritance.'
Jonathan's head was bowed, his face in darkness.
'Well?'
'I was panicking that if you became that rich, Zac the fortune-
hunter wouldn't be able to resist marrying you.'
What a bloody horrible thing to say.'
I was so terrified of losing you,' muttered Jonathan.

343
'W-what?'
Emerald was so busy gazing at him in disbelief that she tripped
over a paving stone. Jonathan caught her and she melted into his
arms, pleading: 'Please, please kiss me,' then, when he didn't,
trying to make ajoke of it: 'I t-t-thought sisters were your speciality.'
Jonathan shoved her roughly away, throwing back his head,
banging his clenched fists against his chest.
'I am not laying a ringer on you until you have that DNA test.'
'Why are you so sure I'm not a Belvedon?'
'Because I can't bear you to be,' he said despairingly.
He took her face between his hands, caressing her cheekbones
with his thumbs, watching the silvery light playing on her adorably
bewildered face.
'I've loved you since the moment you walked into the marquee
at Dad and Anthea's silver wedding party,' he whispered, 'but I
know too how important it is for adopted children to have their
own kids. I've also screwed up one sister by getting too close to her;
The moment you've had that test and proved you're not my sister1
- his voice broke - 'I'll never let you go again.'
Full of hope, they returned to England.

344
Senna, meanwhile, had been in Rome and Florence, gazing at
Raphaels, wrestling with her demons. In mid-September she
returned to the East End to work and in early October flew to New
York where the Commotion Exhibition, which had earlier in the
year outraged and excited the British public, was about to go on
show.
Three huge rooms of the highly prestigious Greychurch
Museum off Madison Avenue had been given over to eighty-four
exhibits by forty young British artists. Among the most outrageous
| Were not only Sienna's installations, Tampax Tower and Aunt Hill,
I but also Millennium Buggers, in which, as promised, Jonathan had
I included Casey Andrews, Somerford Keynes, his brother Jupiter,
j and a number of Tory grandees whom Jupiter was wooing. A
| large alcove had been set aside for Jonathan's installation of
Dame Hermione Harefield, which was due to be flown in at any
minute.
There was great excitement about Trafford's gay rights statement,
which showed a gigantic puckered anus surrounded by a
halo, entitled Assholier Than Thou. At the last moment, Sienna, on
her animal rights soapbox, had also contributed Slaughterhouse, an
incredibly powerful painting of an abattoir, showing fat businessmen
hanging upside down from a conveyor belt, having their
throats cut and slowly bleeding to death. Sienna would have
preferred to tackle the subject as a moving installation, but time
"ad been too short.
Arriving at the Greychurch, she found the usual eve-of-preview
^raps going on: artists grumbling that their work was in the wrong
P ce, badly lit or improperly installed and querying whether secu"ty
was tight enough. 4 ^ s

345
'Who'd want to steal this shit anyway?' grumbled the guards, who
were anticipating riots at the preview.
Having supervised the hanging of Slaughterhouse, Sienna,
dropped in on the ultra-cool Manhattan Gallery, owned by Adrian ^
Campbell-Black, Rupert's younger brother, who was also an old|
friend of Raymond. Adrian's features were gentler than Rupert's,;
his hair light brown, his eyes pale grey, but he had the same Greek!
nose and olive skin without a trace of red, and the ability to turn al
suit into a poem. Inside the gallery, arctic-white like an igloo, he
was easily the prettiest thing, although the competition wasn'tl
great, the only other occupant being a vast dung beetle cast in|
resin. ,|
'No-one else but museums will buy that,' complained Sienna as|
she accepted a glass of wine. |
'That's where you're wrong, darling.' Adrian had the samcj
light, clipped voice as Rupert. 'I've sold three of those this weeksl
Installations are so hot. In order to accommodate these massr
excrescences, the rich are competing to build houses bigger tha
Buckingham Palace.'
'My brother Jonathan has done a twenty-foot nude sculpture i
Dame Hermione with a door in front, so we can all climb inside,'||
'That should do brilliantly.' Adrian ran a duster over the duns
beetle's shoulder. 'They adore Dame Hermione here, sh
singing Arabella at the Met tonight, first time back after the bil
of her baby. Even though she's ten years too old for the part a
about a hundred pounds too heavy, you can't get tickets for k
nor money.' He shook with laughter, then confided: 'I'm rath<
into opera. The love of my life, a tenor called Baby Spinosissino
is in the same production, he's gorgeous looking. His ex, 1
Lovell, is now working with Rupert and used to be married
Tabitha - our family is so incestuous.'
'Any news of the Raphael?' asked Sienna idly.
'Not a lot, despite massive publicity. I talked to Jupiter on 1
telephone last week, he says the police are no wiser and the ent
family seem to have buggered off abroad.'
As Sienna paced restlessly round the room, Adrian noticed h<
tired and ill she looked, her face set and sullen, so marred by the
rings and studs. She could be ravishing.
'You OK, duckie? You've lost a lot of weight.'
'I'm fine. Oh my goodness!' Flipping through the transpc
cies and polaroids on the desk, she was amazed to find they wei
of Alizarin's pictures.
'They're awesome,' admitted Adrian, 'like Galena's in thei
intense vitality and genius with light, but they're more intensel

346
felt. I'm desperate to contact Alizarin about a show next year.
Raymond says he's shoved off somewhere. Any idea where he
might be?'
Sienna's joy at such recognition for Alizarin was short lived.
'Who set this up?'
'ZacharyAnsteig.'
Zac's name was like a brand on her shoulders.
'He's crazy about them,' went on Adrian. 'Good thing the poor
boy's got something to take his mind off the Raphael.'
'I must go.' Sienna leapt to her feet.
'Good luck with Commotion,' said Adrian. 'It's going to be
huge. The moral majority are already sharpening their knives.'
'Nothing to Peking,' said Sienna as he opened the glass door for
her. 'Some artist there has put a corpse on display.'
'We could always show Geraldine Paxton instead. Look after
yourself, darling.'
Returning to the Cameron Hotel on Central Park South, into
which all the Commotion artists had been booked, and which
remarkably was still standing and had liquor left in the bar. Sienna
was bitterly disappointed to find that Jonathan hadn't checked in.
Instead, in her pigeon-hole, was a note from Slaney Watts, the
Commotion publicity officer. The media were interested in
Sienna's work. Could she make herself available for back-to-back
interviews and photocalls tomorrow.
Sienna drooped. Having spent the last seven days and nights
finishing Slaughterhouse, and having flown out early that morning,
the last thing she felt up to was a media assault. In the bar she could
see Trafford and other YBAs getting hammered. She'd better ring
Alizarin before she joined them. But as she took out her mobile,
everything was forgotten, for with the relentless prowl of the big
cat ever on the hunt, Zac padded into the lobby. He was wearing
a dark grey overcoat with the collar turned up and had lost his
suntan, but his yellow eyes roved just as speculatively round the
foyer.
Sienna had forgotten how fatally glamorous he was. She wanted
to bolt into the lift. Then Zac saw her and smiled, and she was quite
unable to stop herself stumbling towards him, and thanking him
for helping Alizarin.
'No problem, guy's a genius.'
Oh, that deep, husky, caressing voice.
^How'sjonathan?' he added mockingly.
Haven't a clue,' snapped a blushing Sienna. 'How's Emerald?'
'Haven't a clue.'
^or a moment, they gazed at each other, assessing, wondering.

347
'My office is round the corner, come and have a drink.'
She had expected black leather sofas, pale grey walls and
carpets, state-of-the-art computers, purring, ravishing PAs, the
light raindrop patter of laptops, Jackson Pollocks on the walls.
She found one small, scruffy office, with internet access and fax
machine. Tables, shelves and every surface groaned with books on
Old Masters, art magazines and catalogues. On the peeling walls,
blown up, were his photographs of Pandora and the other looted
family paintings Zac was trying to trace. Under the desk, all over
the floor were boxes and boxes of bound legal briefs and xeroxed
documents from archives all over the world.
Itwas like a huntsman's tack room, and it smelt of dust and dedication.
The only note of tenderness were faded photographs of a
beautiful sad-eyed woman and a very dark, vividly handsome man.
'Mom and my Great-uncle Jacob,' said Zac, getting a bottle of
red out of a filing cabinet.
Having poured her a drink, he listened to his messages in several
languages and flipped through his faxes.
'Have you found the Raphael yet?' Sienna asked.
Zac shook his head. '
'Trail's gone cold.'
'Not through want of trying.' She looked round the room. ,
'I guess not. I gather your brother's digging around in Vienna.' <
'With Emerald,' said Sienna flatly. '
'They deserve each other. What d'you want to do this evening?' I
'I've been up since five, English time.' i
'Can't go to bed till bedtime. Only way to get a decent night's *
sleep. Would you like to go to the Met?' -:,
'You'll never get tickets. Adrian says it's a sell-out.' I
'Want to bet?' Not taking his eyes off her face, Zac picked up the
telephone.
Having secured two tickets in the stalls, he asked her if she
wanted to nip back to the hotel and change, then, looking at hisN
watch: 'You've got forty-five minutes.' "'I
'Why should I?' she asked truculently. I
'No reason at all,' grinned Zac. 'All eyes will be upon you.' ^

They were indeed, as, laughing his handsome head off, Zac led her ^
into the lionhunting den of a diamond-encrusted black-tie audiy
ence. Sienna, who'd been temporarily distracted by the hugea
ravishing Chagalls on either side of the entrance, nearly died of ^
embarrassment. She couldn't believe there could be so many
variations on the little black dress. Scents swirled like the garden
at Foxes Court in a heatwave. .';

348
'Why didn't you tell me it was a first night?' she hissed.
'You didn't ask,' murmured Zac. Because he was so spectacularly
handsome, everyone looked to see who he was with, amazed that
it should be someone quite so scruffy, with two spots, and rings and
studs on her unpainted face, and an inch of dark root to her piled-
up straw-blonde hair, which had taken on a green tinge since
Emerald's birthday party. Jonathan's pink shirt with the collar
sawn off and ripped jeans completed the lack of picture.
Sienna tried to bolt, but Zac had her wrist in a vice. The bastard
was still grinning as they settled into their seats.
'There's Adrian Campbell-Black waving from that box.' Zac
waved back. 'Baby Spinosissimo's got a minor role as Matteo. An
amazing Russian piss artist, Mikhail Bulgakov, is singing Mandryka.
He and Baby detest Dame Hermione so it should be a riot.'
Then, conscious of Sienna's humiliation, he ran a finger down
her gritted cheek.
'New York's obsessed with celebs,' he said gently. 'Once the
Commotion opens, this entire audience will be at your feet. I know
Strauss is a terrible old Nazi,' he added, almost apologetically, as he handed her a programme, 'but his music is to die for, and the
story's set in Vienna.'
How strong his Viennese roots are, thought Sienna.
Thank God the huge chandeliers were dimming and retreating
into the ceiling, and people wouldn't be able to see her any more.
Emerald would have known how to dress, she thought savagely.
All her life. Sienna had heard opera, mostly Wagner, pouring
out of her father's study, and treated it with indifference. She was
amazed how much she enjoyed Arabella.
Dame Hermione, smug and resplendent, had only to raise
an eyebrow to send the audience off into rapturous applause.
Her voice was exquisite, her stage manners appalling, masking
everyone, and singing so far to the front of the stage that the handsome
Russian had practically to climb into the pit to sing back to
her. In one duet, Sienna saw Hermione kicking him sharply on the
ankle and in the half darkness found herself laughing as her eyes
metZac's.
That's Adrian's boyfriend,' whispered Zac, pointing out the
dashing, slightly decadent-looking Lieutenant, who was keen on
Arabella's sister, and who'd just stamped deliberately on Dame
Hermione's toes.
Finding too little room for his long thighs, Zac swung them
owards Sienna. In panic she swung hers away. Even with jet lag, it
was impossible to nod off next to a tiger, but she was soon en- aptured by the swooningly beautiful music and the story in which,

349
after a string of misunderstandings, true love triumphs, anc
Arabella ends up with her solid country squire.
As the bravos rang out, and pink carnations rained down, Za<
caught one and handed it to Sienna.
'Hermione's going to be milking the applause for the next half
hour, let's go.'
In the taxi, Sienna asked why at the end Arabella had giver
Mandryka a glass of water.
'When a woman accepts a marriage proposal in Austria, insteac
of saying "yes", they traditionally present the guy with a glas)
of water from the well,' said Zac, adding drily, 'Must remind you oi
that boiling water you lured me into drinking at Foxes Court.'
'Hot water's your metier,' snapped Sienna. 'Where are w<
going?'
'To dinner, you've got to eat.' Then, when she protested: 'In the
last act, your stomach was rumbling loud enough to drowa
the timps.'

350
Zac took her to the Four Seasons. Sienna was in despair. She'd
always so longed to go there, and now she was rolling up like a
tramp. The Four Seasons felt the same and refused to let her in
because she was wearing jeans, so Sienna calmly unzipped and
stepped out of them. Pulling Jonathan's pink shirt to halfway
down her thighs, she handed the jeans to the gaping hatcheck
girl.
'Is diat better?'
'Much,' said Zac approvingly.
The waiters were all over him. Many of the diners, including
some very expensive-looking, pretty women, stopped to say 'Hi',
no doubt wondering what he was doing with such a dog.
He obviously isn't short of money, decided Sienna as a bottle of
spectacular Zinfandel arrived. Maybe she'd misjudged him and
he really wanted to recover the Raphael for emotional rather
than financial reasons. But she mustn't go soft. After the way he'd
behaved, she had no reason to trust him. Unnerved, she took a
huge gulp of wine.
'Drink it slowly,' chided Zac, then, as she tossed her head at
the reproof: 'I'm Viennese of course, I believe wine, women and
song should be enjoyed at a leisurely pace, particularly women.'
Mockingly he looked into her eyes and then at her mouth.
That wasn't leisurely, that lightning-bolt coupling on the night
of the fireworks, thought Sienna going scarlet. She felt a butterfly
of desire flickering between her legs.
Drink on no food soon loosened her tongue, and she found
herself telling Zac why she loved the Raphael so passionately.
I was the only one of Mum's children who didn't lie in her arms
snd watch the sun rise on it. Somehow I had this fantasy about

351
showing my own child ...' Her voice trailed off. 'But it's not going
to happen.'
She closed up when Zac pressed her on how Raymond had
acquired the picture, countering by asking him how his greatgrandfather
had lost it. All the chattering happy diners around
them faded to nothing as the terrible story unfolded.
'Why didn't they get out before Hitler moved in?' asked Sienna
in horror.
'If you emigrated they only allowed you to take ten per cent of
your belongings, kind of like Zimbabwe today. I guess they hoped
things would improve.'
'What d'you think happened to the Raphael after the Nazis
grabbed it?'
Zac examined his untouched glass of white.
'I figure it was seized by Goering, the fat fucker had eight huge
houses crammed with treasures.'
'Rather like Si Greenbridge,' said Sienna slyly. 'What's your
connection with him?'
'Tracking down pictures when he's too busy to do his own
hunting,' said Zac, picking up the menu. 'What d'you want to eat?
I'm going to have foie gras and Wiener schnitzel, because I'm
Viennese,' he added slyly.
Relieved to be able to hate him again, furious with herself for being won over. Sienna weighed in. How could he touch such
food? Had he no idea how much the poor geese and calves
suffered? Her voice was rising. People were looking round.
'Oh per-lease.' Zac stifled a yawn.
'I bet you approve of experiments on live animals,' stormed
Sienna, leaping to her feet.
'Of course I don't.' Once again Zac grabbed her wrist, applying
pressure until she winced and sat down again. 'But when Mom was|
dying of cancer, I'd have OKed any experiment on any living thing|
in the world to make her pain less terrible.' |
Sienna scowled at him, then flushed and apologized. There was;
a long silence. Zac filled her glass. |
'At first Mom didn't mind dying too much. She said life hadn'tg
been much cop.'
'Not very flattering to you.'
'It wasn't that. She felt guilty surviving the death camps. And we
were so poor. I didn't care. To keep warm I stayed in bed all day,
and read a lot. My Great-aunt Leah took me to museums.'
'What was your father like?'
'A university professor. He survived Auschwitz, so in a way he was
a link with my mom's mother, but he was so much older, and in

352
lousy health and couldn't work. He died when I was about two.
Morn married a goy second time around - more for someone to
support her, me and Aunt Leah, I guess. She paid for it. He was a
sadistic son of a bitch.'
Zac was ashen now, his hand shaking as he knocked back a most
uncharacteristically huge gulp of wine. 'I guess he couldn't hack
Leah living with us. Couldn't beat Mom and me up as he wanted
to. After Leah died . . .'
Zac stopped suddenly. He'd told no-one these things.
'What happened?' asked Sienna.
'He finally walked out,' said Zac wearily. 'Then a year before she
died, Mom met my second stepfather. He married her knowing
she'd got cancer. Willing her to fight it. He loved her so much.'
Sienna longed to put her hand over his.
'I'm so sorry,' she mumbled.
Zac raised his glass.
'To both our moms,' he said softly. 'Yours was such a terrific
painter.'
Summoning back the waiter, Zac ordered Sienna tagliatelle with
wild mushroom sauce, followed by ratatouille, and then, with a
slight smile, chose swordfish and Caesar salad for himself.
'And don't tell me they stab Caesars in a particularly vicious way,'
he drawled.
Sienna burst out laughing. She kind of liked him teasing her and
was horrified how increasingly she liked him.
After the second bottle, as they were having coffee, she blurted
out, 'Why were you sauntering bollock naked along the landing
the afternoon of Emerald's birthday party?'
Zac looked at her meditatively: 'I'd been fucking your
stepmom.'
'Oh my God.' Black coffee splashed all over the white tablecloth.
'For Christ's sake, why?'
'The Blue Tower was the only room I hadn't checked out. I
guessed the Raphael must be there. I should have grabbed it then.'
'How could you have abused my father's hospitality? He really
loves An thea.'
'I know. He's got such impeccable taste in every other direction.'
'Stop being so fucking flip,' exploded Sienna. 'Did you know
your prints are on the frame found by the pond?'
'Is that a fact? I tried to take the Raphael to the window when I
wis up there. An thea screamed that it was wired up.'
Hasn't it entered your thick greying head,' snarled Sienna, 'that
Anthea could have lured you upstairs to get your prints on the
picture? That she might have nicked it herself?'

353
'Could be in league with David,' mused Zac. 'I saw him belting
towards the Old Rectory after the fireworks started, and just after
we left the boathouse, he drew Anthea aside. I wonder if he is
Emerald's father?'
'Don't change the subject. How could you have shagged Anthea
when you were having a relationship with Emerald? Poor Emerald,
don't you feel guilty?'
Zac looked totally unrepentant.
'Emerald was suffocating me,' he said. 'Her voice was always
filled with longing for something or someone I couldn't give her.
She's so fucking needy, just like her mom.' Very gently he tugged
the ring in Sienna's eyebrow. 'Neither of them was a millionth as
good a lay as you.'
'How dare you?' spat Sienna. 'I want to go back to the Cameron.'
Ramming herself against the side of the taxi, clutching her jeans
as a shield, she refused to speak on the drive back. So Zac ignored
her, singing Mandryka's part in the love duet.

'If you were a girl from one of my villages,
you would go to the well behind your father's house,
and draw a cupful of clear water
and offer it to me at the door, so that I should be your
betrothed before God
and all men! 0 beautiful one!'

'Oh fuck off,' sobbed Sienna, falling out of the taxi and rushing
into the Cameron.
As she raced across the lobby, she could see Trafford and the
rest of the YBAs in the bar still getting legless.
'Sienna,' they yelled, as she dived into the lift.
Once again, like a driven robot, she was appalled when she
reached her own floor to find her own bitten finger jabbing
the ground-floor button. But as the lift reached its destination, the
doors parted like stage curtains on two villains in some dark
Jacobean tragedy: Zac and Si Greenbridge standing laughing
together, teeth gleaming satanically against their dark stubble. As
Sienna cringed against the side of the lift, Si slapped a big gold-
ringed hand on Zac's shoulder and shepherded him out through
the front door into a hovering limo.
Sienna was terrified. Had Zac lured her out to the opera and to
dinner so Si's guards could frisk her room, or leave some terrible
booby trap? What secrets had she betrayed about the Raphael?
Upstairs she frantically tugged open every drawer, checked every
cupboard. Her case lay open on the bed. She couldn't remember

354
opening it; someone must have picked the lock. Thank God there
was no balcony outside for someone to climb along Just the trees
of Central Park, ghostly in the moonlight.
The only other evidence of invaders was a condom and a chocolate
on the pillow of her turned-down bed. Visitor loved chocolate,
she thought wistfully. But drawing back the sheet, she half
expected to find his severed bloody head. Having chained the
door, she rammed every chair against it, but, despite her exhaustion,
she was far too scared to sleep.

355
Fortunately the next few days were taken up by endless interviews
for the Commotion Exhibition. This caused a world-wide scandal,
denounced as so obscene by senators and high churchmen and
such a negation of art by incensed critics that the Greychurch
Museum's grant was under threat. Hugh Grant on the other hand,
along with other celebs and the general public, poured in to see
what the fuss was about.
Other critics, including Somerford Keynes, who'd stirred his fat
stumps and arrived on Concorde in time for the opening party, in
turn praised the show for courageously confronting all our fears.
Sienna's work was particularly well received. Feminists admired
Tampax Tower and thought Aunt Hill witty and significant.
Alongside Trafford's video Oh Nan, it was regarded as a significant
step for Grey Power.
But it was Slaughterhouse that turned Sienna into an animal rights
icon. Critics stood on their heads to examine the terrified faces of
the hanging businessmen on their grisly conveyor belt.
Almost as much of a talking point was Assholier Than Thou.
'Stonewall are thinking of using it on their writing paper,'
boasted Trafford, who hadn't been sober since he arrived.
David Pulborough, tieless and clad in too-tightjeans and trainers
to identify with youth, was much in evidence telling everyone he'd
be showing Trafford next spring. He had to smile a great deal to
hide his outrage that neither Jonathan nor Expectant Madonna had
made the opening party. Commotion without YBA's superbratwas
a bit like Hamlet without the Prince. This was because back in
England, Jonathan couldn't tear himself away from Emerald,
insisting on taking her to Harley Street and staying in the room
while she had a DNA test so she couldn't cheat.

356
'Now all we've got to do is to give Dad a nose bleed.'
'But I love your father,' protested Emerald as she drove him to
Heathrow. 'And if he isn't my father, I won't be a Belvedon.'
'He'll make an even nicer father-in-law. The moment we get the
results, I'll put a ring on your finger, and turn you back into a
Belvedon.'
It was anguish for him to leave her behind but their desire for
one another was so white hot, it would be risky to subject it to a
media circus. With Trafford in New York, Jonathan also felt safe
leaving Emerald in his studio in Hoxton, so she could work on the
sculptures she'd been drawing up and, less enthusiastically, look
after Diggory.
Thanks to Concorde, Jonathan reached his hotel room by ten
a.m. American time. Ignoring a thousand fax messages, he went
up to his room, unzipped his suitcase and nearly wept. Emerald
had insisted on packing for him, wrapping his newly pressed
clothes in tissue paper, stocking up his sponge bag with toothpaste
for sensitive teeth, English Fern aftershave and orange razors.
Attached to a flat parcel was a postcard ofGustav Klimt's Judith. On
the back she had written:

Darling Jonathan,
I so long to be loved, but I lack the inner security that
accepts such a thing. Please bear with me while I learn to
trust. Thank you for putting up with me over the last three
months, which contrary to my crap behaviour have been
the happiest of my life. Good luck with Commotion.
Enclosed is something to make you even handsomer.
Please come home soon, I love you,
Emerald

Blushing with delight, clutching himself in ecstasy, Jonathan
danced round the room, reading the card over and over again.
Inside the parcel was a Harvie & Hudson silk shirt in Antwerp blue.
'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.'

357
fl
'Will you stop pissing about,' David's language became very|
unbefitting a future High Sheriff, 'and get your ass down here and i|
show us how the fucking thing works.' |

To avoid a ravening press and the moral majority brandishing plao|
ards saying 'Filth!' and 'Go Home, Blaspheming Brits', Jonathan!
was smuggled in through a back door. By the time he and a packlj
of electricians and carpenters had got Expectant Madonna up an<l|
thrumming behind closed blue curtains and a shield of securityl
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 increasaJ
ingly 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, asjonathan looked likely to bolt, 'Com^j
on, the media want a good hour before Dame Hermione arrives.^|
So much excitement and mystique had been generated b<i
Jonathan's delay that everyone expected him to erupt into th<|
press room plastered and stoned, launch into a stream of ex|
pletives, get his dick out, smash a window, punch all the critic
who'd slagged him off (who'd all arrived in bullet-proof vests) an<
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 noli
prepared to make outrageous statements on the scandal caused b^
Commotion, nor about the whereabouts of the Raphael. t
The YBAs, who'd been caning it for three days, waiting fol|
Jonathan to lead them into laddish pranks, were bitterly dis
appointed.
'I've never known anyone come offConcorde sober,' grumble
Trafford. 'The Zeitgeist today,' he was now telling a bewildere
reporter from CBS, 'is the body and its foundations. As noon
believes in an afterlife' - Trafford reached for his quadruple
brandy and Benedictine - 'one's body and everything that emerge!
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 Paxtol
admiringly.
'Thank you, Mr Trafford,' said the reporter from CBS faindyj
'Can you tell Jonathan Belvedon we're ready for him?'

358
On his way to a Channel 4 interview, Trafford paused to speak
to Tonathan, who'djust 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,
Tonathan 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.
TM 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
"ave a lovely birthday. See you soon, I hope. Love, Patience
(Cartwright).'

359
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 turtleneck.'
'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?'

360
'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'cnn-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
ringed 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 three hundred thousand 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
^"ging the title role.
That's cool,' mumbled Sienna, 'really kind and thank you for
dinner the other night.'

361
'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 oeuvriS' asked Geraldine
Paxton, who'djust walked in and who thought Dame Hermione a
self-regarding cow. 'Or will you receive her beside Expectant
Madonna'1'
'When's Jonathan going to do a moony?' chorused the visiting
curators. 'We're all dying to see that cute ass.'

9RO
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.
'Good people, good people!' Dame Hermione clapped her
hands, accepted a glass of champagne, took a hefty slug, then
waited until as many people as possible had crowded into the
room.
' It is with the greatest pleasure that I unveil this important work.'
Slowly the blue curtains slid back to reveal first a massive pink
belly like the globe in the days when everything seemed to belong
to England. Then the rest of Hermione appeared, naked except
tor her gold halo, her hands clasped together in prayer, each arm
supporting a massive blue-veined breast. There was a gasp of
amazement, a stifling of laughter, then everyone leapt out of their
SKlns a^ the smiling red lips parted and Hermione's voice launched
tortissimo into: 'Once in Royal David's City'.

363
Finally, as the fibreglass Hermione sang: 'Mary was that Mother
mild, Jesus Christ her little Child,' a mighty whirring followed, as
if a giant cuckoo clock were about to strike. Then an invisible
door in her vast belly shot open and out popped Baby Jesus,
complete with halo, and, having smiled and waved, popped in
again.
There was a stunned silence. Then Hermione clapped her
hands.
'Bravo, Jonathan. Bravo!'
So everyone clapped and cheered too and the press went
berserk. Even Jonathan, who'd been looking apprehensive, smiled
and posed with Hermione. Baby Jesus popped out over and over
again. A beaming David kept getting into shot beside Hermione,
which irritated the hell out of Geraldine.
'Why didn't Jonathan do an installation called Cuckoo Cocky
grumbled an upstaged Trafford. 'It pops in and out of his trousers
enough.'
Having witnessed her brother's triumph, Sienna went in search
of more champagne. On the way, she was unnerved to see Zac
studying Slaughterhouse.
'You lot kill animals just as cruelly,' she snapped.
'Oh, come on, honey, give us a break.' Taking her arm, Zac
walked her back to the press room, where the YBAs were getting
hammered again.
The indefatigable Slaney was already on her mobile revving up
a high churchman.
'You really disapprove, Your Eminence. That's terrific. Could
you bear to fax The New York Times? .. . Yes, the Virgin Mary in the
buff and the Christ child shooting out of Dame Hermione's belly,
deplorable, isn't it?'
At that moment, Geraldine rushed into the press room.
'Sienna, where's Sienna, come quickly,' she cried excitedly.
'Some religious maniac's slashing your painting.'
'What!' whispered Sienna in horror. I
'Looks like some Arab, clearly upset by your attacking the way
they kill animals.'
'What a fantastic story,' yelled Slaney, hanging up on the
Cardinal.
But Sienna had gone, Wrath in the Seven Deadly Sins, hurtling
into the hall; seeing a man in white robes with a long, curved knife,
she leapt on him, screaming, wrestling, trying to knock the weapon
out of his hands.
'Pack it in,' yelled Zac, who'd raced after her, attempting both
to grab the knife and pull Sienna off the man.

364
Next moment, Jonathan came running in followed by the
world's press and Dame Hermione, screeching with horror at such
a loss of limelight. Still grappling on the floor, Sienna felt the
sinewy power of the Arab's body, the stench of his breath, the mad
loathing in his rolling brown eyes.
'Leave my picture alone, you sadistic fucker,' she howled, 'I'll
kill you, kill you.' As she kicked him with her steel-tipped boots,
the Arab howled with pain. Only when Zac, Jonathan, Trafford,
Slaney and several security guards had dragged them apart and
slapped handcuffs on them, and David had crept out from behind
Tampax Tower and Somerford Keynes from behind Assholier
and Hermione had stopped screaming, did Micky Blake the
curator sidle nervously forward to assess the damage.
'Leave it,' sobbed Sienna, tugging frantically at her handcuffs, 'I
can do a copy, I've got drawings. Please leave it.'
Slaughterhouse was in ribbons. Underneath the picture, a grey
protective layer had been scraped like the underside of a child's
new shoe. To the right at the top it had been sliced open. Sienna
gave a moan of despair and collapsed briefly against Zac. Then his
hand clenched on her shoulder. For as the protective layer was
peeled back, there, out of its frame and in all its shining beauty, lay
the Raphael.
'My God!' Startled out of his slug-like languor, Somerford
waddled forward. 'It's Pandora. How divine she is.' The press also
surged forward, frenziedly photographing both picture and
combatants.
'Get back,' yelled Jonathan, then, cool as an Arctic January, he
turned to Micky Blake. 'That picture belongs to my father. It was
stolen last summer. Some joker, knowing my sister was part of
Commotion, obviously decided to smuggle it into America behind
one of her pictures.'
Zac seemed to wake up.
'I guess your sister did the smuggling,' he snarled. 'She was so
worried about not being able to show Pandora to her children.'
As Sienna winced and leapt away from him, there was a wail of
sirens and the police roared in. But as Micky Blake began to
explain the situation, Zac, still quivering with rage, took over.
That is my picture, stolen from my great-grandfather in Vienna
ui 1938,' he told the police and, from his inside pocket, neatly
folded, he produced copies of photographs, stats of the documents
^d even a neatly folded 'Buyers' Beware' page from the Art
Newspaper, which showed a photograph of Pandora.
It s the Raphael,' the policemen told each other in wonder.
Si was so well known in America and looted art such a hot subject

365
here that the theft of the Raphael had been huge news. What;
coup it had come to light in New York.
'It's my father's picture,' sobbed Sienna.
The police, however, had been pulling in YBAs for disordert
behaviour all week. Taking one look at Sienna's unhealthily gre
face with its rings and studs, her black grunge clothes, and he:
steel-tipped boots, Sergeant Rubin decided she looked infinitet
dodgier than the Arab, and arrested them both.
'And I'll take the painting,' said Zac.
'Oh no you don't.'Jonathan leapt forward.
'Neither of you is taking it,' said Sergeant Rubin firmly. 'It'll g<
to the District Attorney to be authenticated, and then the asset wil
be frozen.'
'Cold Master,' sighed Jonathan.
'I had to take it,' muttered a despairing Sienna. 'I was so terri
fied Zac or Si were going to get there first.'
Her worst moment, as the picture was put in a box, was seeini
the reproachful look in Hope's blue eyes as an oilskin was laid ovei
her.
'Don't take her away,' she howled, 'I'll never see her again.'
For a second, a grim, shell-shocked Zac dropped a hand on hei
shoulder.
'Stay cool, babe, it's OK.'
'It's bloody not,' snarled Jonathan. 'You screwed up Emerald
don't start on my sister. Now fuck off.'
Dame Hermione, meanwhile, had been out of the limelight to<
long. Seeing the knives had been put away and that Zac was even
better looking than Jonathan, she rushed into the fray.
'May I help, officer?'
'Why, Dame Hermione,' Sergeant Rubin blushed, 'we've goj
everything under control.'
'They're arresting my sister,' protested Jonathan.
'Surely not, officer.' Hermione's deep voice deepened as sbt
beamed round at the frantically snapping media, then, putting h<S
arm round Sienna's heaving shoulders: 'This young woman is th<
daughter of my old friend Sir Raymond Belvedon, a most disrial
guished art-dealer and television personality. I am convinced d
her innocence.'
'That's for us to find out, Dame Hermione.'

Even though it was midnight in England, David took huge deligN
in waking Raymond.
'Would you like the good news or the bad news? The Raphael's
been found.'

366
'Oh thank God,' Raymond sounded weak with relief. 'Is it OK?
Any serious damage?'
'Not that can't be mended.'
'Where was it found?'
'Hidden behind one of Sienna's canvasses. She's as clever at
smuggling as her old dad.'
'Oh my God, poor child, what's become of her?'
'Been arrested. Picture's been impounded. Zac's brandishing
his documentation. You'll have a fight on your hands if you want
it back.'
The moment a distraught Raymond put down the telephone,
the Sun rang.
'The Raphael's been found in your daughter's possession, Sir
Raymond. Are you going to press charges, or was it an inside job
to claim the insurance?'

At first when she reached the police station. Sienna tried to bluff
it out. Someone was trying to frame her - not the picture. But she
was so tired and shivery from getting soaked at lunchtime, and the
cops were too clever for her and she'd kept her secret for so long.
It was almost a relief to talk. Conscious of her extreme distress,
Sergeant Rubin held one hand, Officer Smithfield the other. Plied
with scalding mugs of sweet black coffee and endless cigarettes,
Sienna explained about getting drunk at Emerald's birthday party
and suddenly feeling brave.
'I pretended I needed a pee, then I raced through the garden,
switched off the alarm, belted upstairs to the Blue Tower -1 knew
the combination on the key-pad but I found the door already ajar,
so I took the Raphael off the wall and left the door open behind
me. Back in my room, I cut it out of its frame, rolled it up, played
the Stars and Stripes on it...' Perhaps she was still pissed from her
birthday champagne?
Then I shoved it under the floorboards,' she went on, 'and,
racing downstairs, I switched on the alarm, chucked the frame in
the rushes, and joined the party. One of the guests was throwing
up in the begonias, so fortunately all eyes were on her.'
Sienna gave a ghost of a smile. Hot now, she tugged off her polo neck, and reached for another of Sergeant Rubin's cigarettes.
^Sounds like a wild party,' said Officer Smithfield.
It was. Later in the evening, my stepmother discovered the
picture was missing.' Remembering what Anthea and Zac had
"een up to earlier in the day. Sienna felt suddenly shot through
^th misery. 'And my brother called the police. Everyone was
unuer suspicion. Zac whipped out his documentation much too

367
pat. I don't think it's his picture at all. He's after the money. It;;
could be worth ten million.'
Sergeant Rubin whistled.
'So where did you take your ten-million-pound note?'
'Rolled up in a magazine, it went with me to Italy. Then I started^
painting this picture that the Arab slashed. It was such a gruesome!
subject I couldn't imagine anyone wanting to steal it, so I slotted!
the Raphael in behind. Customs didn't bat an eyelid anywhere.' |
'You may well go to prison,' said Sergeant Rubin sternly. 'You'veJ
wasted a lot of police time.'
'Not that much, they were only with us a day.'
'And a huge amount of paperwork. The Brits were convinced h
was an inside job to claim the insurance.'
'Oh God, that'll have to be paid back,' groaned Sienna, then she
brightened: 'Thank God it was wildly underinsured. My step*
mother would have spent the ten million on clothes by now.' ^
Under her tank top and combats, both policemen could now se4
the beauty of Sienna's slumped body. Sexy as hell, yet vulnerabi
beneath the hard, defiant exterior, they decided.
'Why did you really take the Raphael?' asked Officer Smithfield
'Because it's ours. You've seen how beautiful it is, I couldn't bea
anyone else to have it.'
'Would you like something to eat?' said Sergeant Rubia
switching off the tape recorder.
'Probably. I've always like loathed the police, but you've been s
kind.'
'D'you think Dame Hermione's had a boob job?' asked Office
Smithfield.

368
Next morning Dame Hermione the merciful dominated every
paper.
Sienna appeared briefly in court and was bailed for a hefty sum
by Jonathan and Adrian Campbell-Black. Her passport, however,
was taken away, and she was ordered to stay in the States while the
American and British police argued over whether she would be
tried in England (if at all) or America. Later there would inevitably
be a civil case to decide the ownership of the Raphael.
Back at the hotel, Jonathan poured Sienna a large vodka and
announced he was going back to England.
'You can't leave me.'
'Adrian'11 look after you. The museum says you can stay here as
long as you like. You've boosted their turnover enough. And you're
being offered shows all over the world.'
'I don't care.'
'Yes you do, babe. You and Al are the serious ones. You'll get
your passport back in a week or so. You're so lucky to have a record.
There won't be a party you're not asked to - like O.J. Simpson.'
there's Zac?' asked Sienna dully.
Opening the champagne, I guess. If he comes anywhere near
you, Trafford's promised to bury him. And try not to talk to the
press, darling, the case is subjudice.'
Jonathan felt a shit, but he had to get back to Emerald. Before
leaving England, he had written to Raymond, apologizing for
spending so long in Vienna, but saying it had enabled him to get
o know and adore Emerald. He was convinced her insecurity
stemmed from not being certain she was a Belvedon.
I have persuaded her to have a DNA test. Could you bear to have
°ne as well? There's a sweet man called Bredin in Harley Street.'

369
Jonathan's guilt about abandoning Sienna evaporated
Emerald ran into his arms at Heathrow. Silken violet-scented S
ringlets snaked over her shoulders, her pale face was flushed with .
colour like sunset on the snow. New high-heeled black boots meant I
her luscious scarlet lips were four inches nearer his. Jonathan justi
managed to stop himself kissing the life out of her. |
All the way home she bubbled over with excitement - how she'dl
spring- or autumn-cleaned his studio, taken Diggory for walks,!
completed two heads, and made him a monkfish and scallop pie I
for tonight. As they passed the Lucozade building, with the bottle I
tipping gold liquid into a glass, she demanded a debriefingjJ
Jonathan was all praise for Sienna's courage in keeping the|
Raphael secret for so long. ^|
Two further revelations irked Emerald, that that 'bastard Zac'
had been taking Sienna out and that 'darling Patience' had sen®
Sienna a birthday card. Suddenly all her old jealousies re- ignited. Did Jonathan still lust after Sienna? Did Zac whfls
dumped Emerald lust after her too? Did Patience like Siennal
better! Emerald couldn't bear to share, j
It was a grey, glaring day. Leaves gathered in the gutters. FlowenI
in window boxes had been pinched by the first frost. Reaching hu|
studio, not sure why the temperature had plummeted, Jonathan!
received a delirious welcome from Diggory, praised the heads --i
one rather wooden of himself - and the unnatural tidiness. Woul(^
he ever find anything? ; i
For a minute Emerald pressed a biro in and out then she|
erupted. . |f
'How could Sienna be so irresponsible, waltzing off with th«e|
Raphael, bringing shame on the family? Everyone was under sus
picion. You all thought Zac and I were in it together. Zac near!
got arrested. Sienna never thinks of anything but herself and h<
precious work.'
'D'you blame her?' said Jonathan icily. 'None of us remembered
her birthday,' then, as Emerald started to play on an imagina
violin: 'Just stop it.'
Guilt at abandoning Sienna and frustration at not being able 1
screw all the bitchiness out of Emerald fuelled Jonathan's rage.
Just remember,' he shouted, 'Sienna never had a mother, ju
bloody Anthea, who's given you more affection in six months tha
she's ever given Sienna. And you've got Patience, well name<
she needed to be called that, putting up with you. She's one oftht
nicest women I've ever met, she adores you, so does lan, an
they're proud of everything you do. When did Patience ever mi
a carol service, or a lacrosse match, or a school play? Think of r

370
those plusses: boarding and art schools, trips to Florence, lovely
clothes, houses in Fulham, fast cars. The whole family's jumped to
your whining tune. When your father went broke, all they worried
about was how it would affect you.'
'Stop it, stop it.' Collapsing on the sofa, Emerald clamped her
hands to her ears.
'Quite frankly,' went on Jonathan brutally, 'you settle once and
for all those arguments about nature and nurture. None of lan
and Patience's niceness and attempt at bringing you up to be a
decent human being rubbed off. You've remained a bitch just like
Anthea. And you were bloody lucky to be adopted too. IfAnthea
had brought you up in a one-bedroomed flat in Purley, she' d never
have coped and you'd have ended up in a children's home, being
abused insensible by some bearded goat.'
Emerald was so shattered, she ran out of the studio. Out in the
street, two small boys stopped playing football and gazed at her in
horror as she began to cry. Jonathan was right. How could she have
bitched about Sienna, whose brother she had stolen?
Jonathan wandered round distractedly, noticing the fish pie, the
table laid with candles, mint lying on top of the new potatoes,
flowers everywhere. There were clean sheets on the bed; Emerald
had even cleaned the windows. In the waste-paper basket, he
noticed the remains of a green leather belt Diggory must have
chewed up, which Emerald hadn't even made a fuss about. Rushing
outside, he bumped into her rushing back in again, sobbing
her heart out, gibbering apologies.
Taking her in his arms, he calmed her, saying how sorry he was,
that he worshipped her, that they were both uptight because any
moment they'd get the result of her and Raymond's DNA test.

Raymond, who could never deny his favourite son anything, had
dutifully trotted off to Harley Street, but, unable to face hysterics
about the lack of trust, he hadn't told Anthea.
And if he wasn't Emerald's father, who was? And what did it
matter compared with losing his beloved Pandora? He kept
thinking of her imprisoned in some New York warehouse like a
shuddering Grenville in kennels.
The Belvedons' attitudes to the discovery of the Raphael were
sharply divided. Jupiter was furious with Sienna for stealing his
birthright but, ever practical, set about marshalling funds to pay
"ack the insurance and for the civil case next spring. Aunt Lily,
^ora and Dicky all felt Sienna had been very brave and resource- ttu- Anthea was wildly disapproving. How could Sienna have
''einained silent when everyone was accusing everyone, including

371
her stepmother, of nicking the Raphael? It was also typical that
lucky Sienna should be bailed and now housed in New York by a
glamorous single chap like Adrian Campbell-Black.
Second wives tend to be snoopers. In search of slights and to
discover what was going on, Anthea had always read her stepchildren's
diaries. Now they were grown up, she read their letters
marked 'private' which had been sent to Raymond. Longing to be
outraged, she was disappointed Alizarin had not yet begged for
money.
She was also dying to find a recent letter from Jonathan marked
'strictly private'. After days of scrabbling, she tracked it down
under the green paisley lining paper in the top drawer of
Raymond's desk in the London flat, and nearly died.
On the back Raymond had scribbled 'Mr Bredin, 28 Harley
Street, 3.30 October 15'. That was eight days ago.
Whimpering, Anthea snatched up her mobile.
'We've got to talk, I can't discuss it over the phone.'

They met in a dark corner of the Cavendish, St James Hotel, at
midday. In the belief that one gained more from people if one;
looked pretty, Anthea was enchantingly dressed in a little Parma:;
violet suit. She smelled deliciously of Shalimar; her soft crimson;
nails matched the Kir Royale she was delicately sipping. |
'Sugar,' she cried, as her shaking hand spilled a few drops on
her skirt. ''.
Whipping out a red silk handkerchief, David's habitually^
wandering hand caressed her thighs as he mopped her up. ^
'Well, what is it?' he asked. 'I've got a crucial lunch in half an i
hour.' ;
'Jonathan's persuaded Raymond to have a DNA test to discovery
if he's Emerald's father,' she said. (
'So?' David drained his dry Martini and waved to the barman to ;
fix him another. '
'They'll find out he isn't,' bleated Anthea. I
'Ah, but they won't find out who is.' ^
'But Raymond will be furious I've lied to him and he will want,
to know who it is. I'm going to say that you and I had a night of
passion, when I was traumatized at being fired over Galena. I'tt^
explain that you comforted me, we got tiddly, and little Enao^
was the result. I've got to tell him it's you, or he'll start suspecting^
Eddie the packer.'
She's got it all worked out, thought David bleakly.
'I stood by you twenty-seven years ago,' he snapped, 'I risked my '
marriage and my job. Raymond will forgive you, he always does.'
'But his vile children won't. Please, David.'
Apply cocktail onion to eye, thought David as the barman placed
another dry Martini in front of him. He was now feeling too sick
to drink it.
'Raymond must have fucked you enough to believe he was
Emerald's father,' he said sulkily.
'We only did it once, he hardly came inside me. I thought it was
safe. I never dreamt for a moment Emerald wasn'tyours. I only told
Raymond he was the father to get you off the hook.' Her voice was
rising in hysteria.
The barman looked up and sighed. Mr Pulborough up to no
good again. David forced himself to pat Anthea's hand.
'Stay cool, don't confess to anything until Raymond gets the
results and you've talked to me. I've got to go. I'll call you later.'

David had booked a private room for another secret assignment,
but when he reached Prince Igor's in Bury Street, Casey was
already seated at the bar, noisily ordering a bottle ofPouilly-Fume
and a first course of foie gras because he and Galena had always
had the same in here. His booming voice was so distinctive that
everyone in every nearby gallery must know David was busy
poaching the Belvedon's star artist.
'I forgive you for being late, and have ordered double portions,'
announced Casey, shovelling up nuts like a bingeing squirrel.
As befitting the great artist only to be mentioned in the same
breath as Bacon and Freud, Casey wore a navy blue smock suit
which covered his paunch. A black beret perched on his shaggy
pepper-and-salt hair, like a slug on winter grass. The parts of his
face not covered by beard and moustache were wrinkled and red
from excess, yet he still felt he had a divine right to every woman
in the world as he crinkled his eyes at the comely barmaid.
David felt so sick he could only sip still water, but was able to
show Casey a photograph of Millennium Buggers, in which Jonathan
had portrayed Casey as a vast penis.
'The little shit,' roared Casey, rattling every bottle along the bar.
'That's going straight to my lawyer. Think of the fortune I've made
for that family.'
'Shall we go through?' urged David, who'd just seen Tim
"athurst and Johnny Van Haeften, two dealers who were friends
01 Raymond, coming through the front door.
Raymond's completely out of touch, of course,' went on David
as he ushered Casey into the best chair and poured him a third
glass ofPouilly-Fume. 'Only interested in himself and his television
Programme. A star' - David massaged Casey's musclebound arm

373
- 'should never be handled by another star, only by a back-roor
boy.'
Casey's demands were endless. He wanted major prizes, ei
hibitions worldwide including a Tate retrospective, the price ofhi»|
pictures quadrupled, a slot on television bigger than Raymond'^
and Emerald Belvedon (maybe Pulborough: David felt swea
trickling down his ribs) on a gold plate.
'How would you like to paint Dame Hermione?' he asked
'There's no way the NPG are going to accept Expectant Madonr
but they'd jump at a portrait by you. Dame Hermione is keen.'
'Lovely breasts.' Casey's mouth doubly watered as a huj
helping of foie gras was placed before him. What a good thil
Pulborough wasn't drinking. There was a wonderful bottle
Mouton Cadet Rothschild to come with his venison.
'How about a quiet supper next week with Emerald Belvedon?
asked Casey, his voice thickening. 'And with Dame Hermione ai
perhaps Nick Serota. Or if Dame Hermione can't make it, thenjl
Emerald, you and myself. I am compelled to paint that yoi
woman.'
The thin toast disintegrated beneath the weight of the foie g
Casey was piling on it. David had a vision of frail Emerald simik
crushed beneath Casey's gross body. Casey was now swilling dc
his vast mouthful with a great gulp of Pouilly-Fume, smeal
butter and pate all over his beard. Could he really put up with
disgusting satyr for the next twenty years? wondered David.
On the other hand, two Hockneys David had paid t
hundred thousand pounds for last week had turned out to be i
and Barney, who was supposed to rally the punters, produc
nothing but restaurant bills. If Rosemary threw him out, he wol
need Casey.
'I'm sure Emerald would regard it as a great honour,' he
smoothly.
'I am also anxious to have access to Galena's memoirs,' went'
Casey. 'I know they're still in the hands of that stubborn old bit
Lily Hamilton. Your Rowena's a close friend of Lily's, isn't she? T<
her to put in a good word.'

The Belvedon was in trouble. The rumours spread by David
been deadly. Worried about stock valued too high, Raymond
bank was calling in its huge loan, ordering the disposal of evel
thing that had passed its sell-by date. But punters, unnerved I
newspaper reports about the Raphael being looted, had lost fs '
in the gallery and were not coming forward to buy. Had of
pictures been stolen?

374
Raymond had also been preoccupied with a programme on
Botticelli, Jupiter distracted by Hanna leaving him. Neither man's
eve had been on the ball. They must keep their nerve, Jupiter told
his father, and concentrate on Casey's exhibition in February
which would bring in a lot of revenue.
At the end of October, however, Casey rocked the art world by
announcing he was leaving the Belvedon after nearly fifty years and
taking his entire exhibition, lock stock and double barrel, across
the road. Summoning a press conference, he praised the marketing
skills of the Pulborough. David P. already had a long waiting
list for his pictures. The Belvedon had lost its grip and as an act of
solidarity to his Jewish friends, he didn't like working with galleries
who dealt in looted art.
The catalogue for Casey's show at the Belvedon had already
been printed, invitations to the private view were in proof.
'We've got to sue,' fumed Jupiter.
He broke the news of Casey's defection to his father as he was
walking Grenville in Kensington Gardens. A distraught Raymond
had immediately rung Casey and been subjected to such a long
aggressive monologue that a bored Grenville had escaped into the
bushes after a rabbit. Poor Raymond had ended up deaf in one ear,
and wound up in Grenville's long fishing-rod lead like a maypole.

Dropping in at the Belvedon on the off chance the DNA results
might have come through, Jonathan was horrified how much his
father had aged and lost weight. The veins stood out on the back
of Raymond's beautiful hands as he laboriously tried to answer the
fan mail and begging letters which always poured in after a
programme.

Dear Ray, [read Jonathan over his father's hunched
shoulders]
Can we have a signed drawing for our auction? To be
honest I have never watched your programme. Match of the
Day is more my bag. Can I be a tad cheeky and also ask you
to ask other famous friends to donate a signed item, and if
you or they would be free to mastermind the auction?

Raymond sighed, and put the letter to one side.
Dear Sir Raymond, My parents have gone bankrupt and can no
longer pay my fees at art school.'
Dear Sir Raymond, Tick the appropriate box: I would be happy
to donate £1,000, £5,000, £20,000.'
The figures swam before Raymond's eyes.

375
'Dear Sir Raymond, On behalf of Greyhound Rescue . . .'
Raymond got out his cheque book. As an economy, Jupiter ha
turned down the central heating. The only way to keep warm we
to write cheques.
'Those letters are carnivorous,' said Jonathan disapproving!^
'Why have you both got such long faces?'
'Casey's left us,' moaned Raymond.
'Well, good riddance.'
Jonathan looked so carefree and handsome in his Antwerpblu
shirt, Jupiter lost his temper.
'It's all your bloody fault. Casey was pissed off you told him t
fuck off the day of Emerald's party. He was livid we put Joa]
Bideford on the front of next year's calendar.'
'There was room for her on next year's calendar,' said Jonathan
in amazement.
'Don't be fatuous! And as for Millennium Buggers--'
'You and Somerford were in that too. I thought Casey wouli
regard it as rather an elitist bunch.'
'Shut up,'roared Jupiter.
'We didn't cherish him enough.' Raymond shook his hea<i
'That's the second major artist we've lost this year, who was th>
other one?'
'Jonathan,' said Jupiter bleakly.
'Emerald's been blitzing my studio,' said Jonathan hastily, '
thought you'd like this.' He handed Raymond an exquisite watci
colour of Grenville stretched out on the study sofa.
'My dear boy!' Raymond took it to the light. 'Worthy of Ced
Aldin, Degas or even Stubbs. I saw a photograph of Expectw
Madonna, frightfully funny, but I wish you'd do more of this stuff
As Jupiter stormed furiously off into the back room, pointed!
slamming the door, Raymond added, 'So lovely to have you back,
then, lowering his voice: 'Should have the results of my test any da
now. Tell Emerald I'll still adore her, whatever the outcome. Wit
don't you both come and dine at the flat tomorrow night
Anthea'll be in London, we'll get something nice in froB
Fortnum's.'

376
A warm west wind was blowing up from Limesbridge to wish them
luck. Leaves were falling seriously now, huge pale gold cornflakes,
blanketing parks and pavements, as though the trees were determined
to strip off before November. It had been raining and their
trunks glistened in the street light. People turned to stare as
Jonathan and Emerald crossed St James's Square, hand in hand,
eyes only for each other. Every so often, Emerald pulled off strands
of jade-green feather boa which clung to her scarlet mouth.
Jonathan was so certain of the outcome that in his pocket was a
black leather box containing an exquisite ring, four emeralds in
the shape of a four leaf clover. He'd checked with Dr Bredin. The
results had gone first-class post to Raymond yesterday. Emerald
was the one panicking. If Raymond were her father, she'd lose
Jonathan for ever.
As they went up in the lift, Jonathan took her tiny cold face in
his hands.
'It's been worth every moment of the waiting,' he said softly.
'Tonight I will make love to you until the dawn rises. The stars
won't dare to set in case they miss something and the sun will hang
back knowing he's been knocked off the number one spot for ever.
I love you.' He dropped a kiss on her trembling mouth as the lift
doors opened into Raymond's flat.
Normally when she entered a new place. Emerald's first move
was to look at the pictures. But having quickly kissed Raymond and
Anthea, she ran to the sitting-room window gabbling, to disguise
her nerves, about the wonderful view of the Houses of Parliament
^d the tawny towering trees of St James's Park. Then she swung
round, wide-eyed, flushed and about to be all mine, thought
Jonathan in ecstasy.

377
As memorial services were an increasing chore of the much
younger wife, Anthea had felt justified in spending a bomb at
David Shilling on a ravishing midnight-blue feather hat for such
occasions, which she had left on the hall table. Jonathan couldn't
resist putting it on and wrapping Emerald's feather boa round his
neck to make her laugh. Then he noticed Anthea looking
extremely smug, and felt an icy hand clutching his heart.
'Glad you've both had a nice long holiday in Vienna,' she said.
' Lucky for some.'
'And there is some good news in the world,' said Raymond. 'I;
think we can manage this between us, don'tyou?' Then, as the cork j
burst out of a magnum: 'Let Raphaels and Casey Andrewses fall'!
about our ears.' S
'What are you talking about?' asked Jonathan numbly. |
'I've just got the results of my DNA test' - Raymond brandished!
a chart of waving black lines which could have been painted by|
Moholy-Nagy - 'and Emerald is definitely my daughter. So there|
are no more doubts,' he went on happily as he filled up four glasses.1
'I feel a little hurt you doubted my word, Emerald and Jonathan'1
- Anthea smiled at them graciously - 'but I do understand yoil|
wanting to be a thousand per cent sure.' 1
'This is definitely one to file under "Oh Fuck",' said Jonathan^
slowly, s
There was a thud as Emerald fainted, sending a vase of scarlets
and purple anemones flying.
'Overwhelmed by relief and happiness,' said Anthea i
placently.
Still wearing Anthea's frivolous feather hat like Picasso't(|
weeping woman, Jonathan gathered up his sister, carried her nex|
door and laid her on the bed. For a second he gazed down at her|
running his hand slowly over her death-mask face to memorize fi"
for ever. Then he kissed her briefly on the lips, returned to th<
drawing room and went berserk.
'All your seventies crap about love and peace!' he yelled. 'A
your bloody permissive society!' Then, turning on Anthea. 'Ifyc
hadn't shagged my father when he was married to Mum, none <
this would have happened. By your bloody adultery, you've total
destroyed my and Emerald's lives.'
'Get out,' yelled back Raymond, 'don'tyou dareto talk to Antht
like that, you spoiled brat.'
'It was you two who spoiled life for us.'
'Bring back my hat,' screeched Anthea as he stumbled into
lift, groping for the ground-floor button and the descent into heU.j
Tears pouring down his face, walking distractedly into thej

378
Piccadilly traffic, he lost Anthea's hat and watched it disappearing
under the wheels of a 22 bus. With the satisfaction of the serpent
after a good afternoon's mischief, Emerald's green boa slithered
off into the gutter.
Tempted to give up his life in Savile Row police station, two
leaves for happy days nestling in his curls, Jonathan ended up at
the Pulborough.
'Vine leaves in his hair,' murmured David, who was reading
Private Eye's account ofCasey's defection: 'King Rat leaves sinking
ship', and waiting for a call from New York before going out to
dinner.
Jonathan was so unhinged by unhappiness, he told David everything.

'I love Emerald, and she's my sister.'
David, who hadn't yet heard from Anthea, felt like Christian at
the wicket gate.
'Never deterred you in the past,' he said bitchily.
'Bloody does now. Sienna and I were just a wind-up, I never
believed in a million years Emerald was Dad's daughter.'
Nor had David. Raymond had clearly done a good deal more
than fiddle with Anthea. Since Emerald had rolled up in May,
David had been in a continual panic he'd be outed as her father.
The last three days since his meeting with Anthea had been a nightmare,
in which he had bidden farewell to Rosemary's millions and
the post of High Sheriff.
Being stingy, he was also incensed at having had to fork out
unfairly, twenty-six years ago, for all those hotel bills in Yorkshire,
train fares, gynaecologists, supporting Anthea after the birth,
giving her a holiday in Spain, not to mention all the people he'd
had to buy to keep quiet so Rosemary didn't twig, particularly when
he'd been using her money. There had been no need for it; he had
been fleeced and conned. Thank God he had always refused to
sign the birth certificate. Just wait till he saw Anthea.
Irrationally, a tiny part of him had wanted to be Emerald's
father, and now 'Shrimp Villy' would be strutting round like an old
buck. And so David vented his rage on Jonathan.
'I can't think why you're making such a fuss,' he said nastily. 'As
your well-read father is always quoting: "Never morning wore to
evening, but some heart did break." It just hasn't happened to you
before. Should give your work more depth. Anyway, you'd be
useless for Emerald.' David put Casey's cuttings back in a blue
cellophane folder. 'You're too libertine, too lightweight. Emerald
needs someone stable, responsible, possibly much older.' David
licked his smirking lips.

379
'Like you,' whispered Jonathan in horror. 'Don't you dare lay a
finger on her, you bastard.'
'Don't be ridiculous,' said David smoothly, 'I must call her first
thing - although she'll need a bodyguard - Casey is determined to
immortalize her on canvas.'
'I've already done that,' snarledjonathan. 'Tell the fucker to stay
away from her.'
'I doubt if you have "immortalized her". You've blown your
career: fooling around, drinking, shagging, hell raising.' David
picked up his purple cummerbund, which he only just managed
to tie round his waist. He must take more exercise; he and Emerald
could jog in the park to get her in training for running away from
Casey.
'No-one's asking for your stuff any more,' he went on, shrugging
on his dinner jacket. 'I've had no orders for Expectant Madonna;
nor Millennium Buggers. The world was at your feet, but today's taste
is fickle. Everyone's clamouring for the latest thing, but it's not you
any more.'
'Thanks a bunch,' said Jonathan, who hadn't registered a word,
'I've just got to leave Emerald alone.'
'She's gotAnthea and Raymond now,' said David sourly. Then,.
seeing Jonathan looked near to death, and not wanting to lose him
as an artist, only to shock him into working harder, he added more
gently, 'Vogueare planning to make Kate Moss an artist's muse. Thel
Chapman brothers, Tracey, Gary Hume and Sam Taylor-Wood are-
all doing her, they want you as well.' "
'I'm not interested.'
'Not in Kate Moss? You must be in a bad way.' :
'I need to talk to Alizarin,' muttered Jonathan. 'He went^
through the same thing over Hanna. I'm going abroad.' "
'Well, don't forget to leave a forwarding address - look afteri
yourself, dear boy.' '
But Jonathan had staggered off into the night. <

Back in Duke Street, St James's, Anthea was flabbergasted when a ^
revived but distraught Emerald confessed she was hopelessly in|
love with Jonathan, i
'I thought you loved Zac.' ft
'Zac's just a feckless opportunist. Jonathan's the warmest, |
sweetest, most loving man I've ever met.' "a
'I agree about Zac, but I don't think Jonathan's any more
capable of being faithful--' '
'Than his father was, humping you when he was supposed to be'
Galena's besotted husband,' said Emerald hysterically. 'Was I'

380
conceived right here? Did Galena ever find out you were shagging
her husband in the marital bed?'
'How dare you!' An enraged Anthea slapped her daughter very
hard across the face. 'High time someone taught you some
manners, young lady.'
'Well, it won't be you.'
As she hadn't brought any money with her, Emerald ran most
of the way back to Shepherd's Bush, losing her bag and her shoes
on the way.
Hearing the outside doorbell ring just as Peak Practice ended,
Patience picked up the receiver by the front door.
'Hello,' she called out.
There was no reply. It was spooky round here at night when lan
was out minicabbing. Goodness knows what wickedness was luring
her to open the downstairs door. Then Patience heard desperate
sobbing, her big heart prevailed and she pressed the intercom
button. The pattering up the three flights of stairs could have been
made by the paws of a little lurcher. The next moment Emerald
had collapsed into her arms.
'Oh Mummy, oh Mummy, I'm sorry I've been such a bitch,
please help me.'

The Belvedons did not enjoy the Millennium. No matter how many
times Anthea expressed relief at a step-free Christmas, Raymond,
still fretting over the Raphael and the gallery's fate, couldn't get
used to such a depleted family gathering. Only Lily, Dicky and
Dora, who ought to have been in bed, saw the New Year in with
them. Grenville, without the support of his friends, Visitor and
Diggory, was having a nervous breakdown over the fireworks,
which had been banging away for days. Every time Raymond
coaxed him into the garden, another rocket would go off and
Grenville would bolt back into the house. Dicky and Dora were
equally miserable about the dearth of their elder brothers and
sisters.
T even miss Emerald,' said Dora in amazement.
'So do I,' sighed Dicky.
Nor could Anthea and Raymond invite their old friends, the
Pulboroughs, over, even for a drink. David was still punishing
Anthea for conning him and Raymond had not forgiven David for
annexing Casey Andrews.

Jonathan, meanwhile, unhinged by unhappiness, wandered the
Greets of Vienna mocked by the manic jollity of the singing
Gluhwein-swigging revellers, as he relived all the happy times he'd

381
spent with Emerald. He was trapped in his Viennese coffin of^i
despair, with no bell to ring ever to free him. |

Back in England, on New Year's Eve, a landscape by Cezanne was^
stolen from the Ashmolean, triggering off much talk of a crack-j
down on art theft, which didn't bode well for Sienna. Still in New|
York, she refused to join Adrian Campbell-Black, his boyfriend
Baby and their pals in Connecticut for a party. Instead she worke
feverishly trying to amass enough pictures for an exhibition to ]
money for the court case.

Dora and Dicky were further lowered by the continued absence i
Alizarin and Visitor.
'I want to ring them up and wish them a Happy New Year,' wej
Dora. 'Visitor always recognized my voice on the telephone.'

Nor were there any lights in Jupiter's cottage. Since word had i
round that there was a glamorous new spare man in London,
eldest son, who would inherit Foxes Court and who had a dazzlii
political career in front of him, Jupiter had been bombarded wit
invitations.
On Millennium night, a stunning divorcee had asked him to i
party in her flat overlooking the Thames to watch the River of Fir
But gazing down at the leaping blaze of fireworks as herjeweBc
hand crept into his, Jupiter realized his heart had already turnt
to ashes. How utterly meaningless life was without Hanna!
Feeling an utter shit - again - he left the party, like Cinderel
and now, alone in the gallery, was drinking himself insensible a
trying to hang pictures for a sale starting on 2 January, in the h(
of raising some quick cash.
He had already smashed the glass on a watercolour and I
insufficient strength to lift a vast Landseer into position. Or
Alizarin could have done that. Jupiter took another slug from
Armagnac bottle.
'Unhappy New Year, Jupiter,' he told himself.
If it weren't for his stupid pride, he'd have begged Hanna
come back. But he was convinced she was with Alizarin. I
groaned in despair as he imagined them laughing over Visitor
antics, making love, throwing snowballs in a bridal-whin
Norwegian landscape.
Going into the back room to collect two Dutch still lives offru
that would look lovely in a group with the Boucher bottom, whic
he'd hijacked from the Blue Tower, he heard the doorbell ring|
Glancing in the monitor, he gasped with joy. For outside the gl;

382
door, her sweet face and exuberant gold hair framed by a black
velvet hood, stood Hanna. Jupiter rushed out into the main gallery,
then groaned with disappointment. Not Hanna - too young, but
familiar. Then he realized it was Emerald's plump sister, Sophy,
swaying, with a bottle of chardonnay in each hand.
'I'm really sorry,' she stammered. 'I was just passing and I
wondered if you had any news of Alizarin.'
'Come in,' said Jupiter. 'It's a bit of a mess.'
'I was at a party.' Sophy, clearly drunk, hung her head.
'So was I,' said Jupiter.
'It was such an important time, I suddenly couldn't bear not to
be with someone important,' mumbled Sophy.
'I've been putting up pictures,' explained Jupiter, 'but I'm not
seeing them, or anything, very straight. How's Emerald?' he asked,
as he handed her a glass ofArmagnac.
'Ghastly. I've never seen such unhappiness.' Sophy explained
about Jonathan and the DNA test.
'He was so wonderful for Emo. She's never been properly loved
or in love before. It's made her really appreciate Mum and Dad.
We'd be such a happy family, if. . .' Sophy's voice trailed off: 'she
wasn't so in love with Jonathan and we weren't so poor.'
'Poor Jonathan,' murmured an appalled Jupiter, who'd been so
wrapped up in his own misery, he'd not realized what was going
on. 'I just heard there'd been a row, not unusual, and that
Jonathan had pushed off abroad.' He shook his head. 'I didn't
think she was Dad's daughter either, or I'd never have jumped on
her.'
'You mustn't feel guilty, everyone falls in love with Emo.'
'I just wish Hanna hadn't caught us.'
Jupiter put a frightful nude up on the wall and took it down
again. Who the hell had bought that?
'What's happened to Alizarin?' Sophy's elbow shot off the table.
She heaved it back.
'Anthea and I chucked him out,' Jupiter was amazed to find
himself admitting it. 'I've always been jealous of him. He inherited
all Mum's talents. Only thing she handed on to me was a passion
for caviare.'
'You're a terrific organizer,' said Sophy comfortingly, noticing
that Jupiter's dinner jacket, which he'd hung over a chair, had an
unexpectedly dashing cherry-red lining.
I'm fed up with running a gallery,' he went on. 'Dad loves saving
pictures for the nation; I just want to save the nation.'
f, '_ «J
roll could save the Tones. My father would certainly vote for
you.' Sophy couldn't resist asking: 'How's Hanna?'

383
Collapsing into a chair, putting his head in his hands, Jupiter
said despairingly, 'She must be with Alizarin, no-one's heard a
squeak out of either of them.'
Ask a silly question, thought Sophy.
'Alizarin's got more integrity than I have,' said Jupiter bleakly.
'She married you,' said Sophy stoutly. 'You're extremely attractive.'
And terribly like Alizarin, she thought wistfully, as Jupiter
squinted up at her with narrowed eyes and his hair all ruffled. It
must have been very confusing for Hanna.
'Extremely attractive,' she repeated owlishly.
And so are you, decided Jupiter in surprise. Very Dawn French,
or rather Dawn English Rose with that exquisite colouring.
'Our assistant, Tamzin, has failed to return from Gstaad,
claiming to have fallen in love with a ski instructor,' he told Sophy.
'Would you like a job for the rest of the week? We've got a sale on.'
'Oh please, how gorgeous, thank you.' Itwould bring her nearer
to Alizarin.
'Look!' She leapt to her feet. 'There's a man in the doorway,
slumped like a great black wounded crow. Shall I offer the poor
thing a drink?'
'Christ no, he's asleep. Don't encourage him,' snapped Jupiter.
When he was running the country, he'd get all those homeless
scroungers off the streets.

384
Little did Jupiter realize, as the bitter winter kicked in, that his own
brother was sleeping rough less than a mile away around Centre
Point. After he had been evicted from the Lodge, Alizarin had
eked out a living painting portraits in Leicester Square. But with
his sallow skin, black hair, and slanting dark eyes above high cheekbones,
he looked too like the asylum-seekers flooding in from the
Balkans, allegedly up to every con trick. Too many drug-dealers
and criminals were also posing as pavement artists, threatening
to beat up customers if they didn't pay outlandish prices.
Consequently the police kept fining Alizarin and seizing his
painting equipment. Just before Christmas, his landlady had
chucked him out because he couldn't pay the rent.
He had now been sleeping rough for three weeks. All his dole
money went on food for Visitor and in bunging other tramps to
pose for him. Too proud to beg, he was stockpiling drawings he hoped he would sell.
Matters were not helped by his last pair of spectacles being
smashed in a punch-up and his sight having deteriorated so badly
that he could only see faint shapes. He was in addition plagued by
murderous headaches. He had suffered terrible humiliations,
wandering by mistake into the Ladies near Tottenham Court
Road, falling down the escalator with Visitor in his arms. Scared to nsk the tube any more he walked everywhere and rationed himself
to one shower in the public baths a week.
On the second Wednesday evening in January the temperature
dropped to seven degrees below zero. Overhead Alizarin could just
distinguish a fuzzy little crescent moon, lounging on an eiderdown
of fluffy black cloud. He could have used that eiderdown, his hand
was t00 frozen to hold a pencil. He had wrapped Visitor, whose fur

385
had grown so thick he looked like a yellow husky, in his ancient
greatcoat and taken temporary refuge in a doorway at the bottom
of Charlotte Street.
Just up the road were the head offices of Saatchi and Saatchi,
whose founder had never bought any of his pictures, and Channel
4, who had often employed his father. Tantalizing smells of wine,
garlic and herbs kept drifting towards him from the Charlotte
Street Hotel and from one of Raymond's favourite haunts, the fish
restaurant Pescatori.
It was like looking out of a basement window, as a blurred tangle
of black fishnet legs, velvet cloaks, silver sequinned skirts, pinstripe
creases, shining brogues, jeans and trainers passed before his
eyes. Alizarin breathed in sweet wafts of scent, newly applied to
encourage kisses on the way home.
'Tax-aaaaay,' bellowed the Hoorays.
Alizarin had already seen three people he was at school with and
two ex-girlfriends of Jupiter. But none of them noticed him as, with
a stream of merry chat, they stepped over and round him. Don't
ruin our lovely evening with your embarrassing poverty.
It was gone midnight. Coughing racked his body as the rumble
of the last tube shook the pavement. Alizarin eased onto his other
hip. He was so thin, a bomber jacket and an old sweater were no
protection against the vicious cold.
Before the soup vans went home, he had wangled a bowl of
turkey broth for Visitor. Later, as they lurked in a McDonald's
doorway for warmth, a departing customer had chucked a half-
eaten hamburger into the gutter. For a second Visitor held back,
wagging his tail in case Alizarin's need was greater, then, at a nod,
gobbled it up. Alizarin could never sleep if Visitor hadn't eaten.
When he'd applied for a bed in a hostel, the counsellors had |
advised him to take his old friend to Battersea.
'You don't stand a chance of accommodation with a dog.'
And Alizarin had shouted that it was the only thing he did stand
a chance with. He'd have walked into the Thames if it hadn't been
for Visitor, j,
Taking refuge in a side alley near the Middlesex Hospital, |
Alizarin crept into his sleeping bag. It was getting colder. He'd|
pawned his watch but he could read the hours of the night likfrj
Braille. People were still coming out of clubs, being sick in the a
gutter, swearing because taxis very sensibly refused to take them. I
Alizarin could hear the dull thump of Visitor's tail as other tramps
put their sleeping bags beside his, particularly if there were dusty
mince pies on offer. ;
Because Alizarin was large, the rest of the homeless community

386
hadn't messed with him. He also had a dignity, a kindness and an
ability to listen which had inspired a similar love in his students.
He had made friends since he had been on the streets, not with
work-shy scroungers, but quietly desperate people who, like
himself, had lost their way in life.
Alizarin adjusted the greatcoat around Visitor, always so
cheerful and uncomplaining, and, drawing together the strings of
his own sleeping bag, waited to be warmed by his own breath. His
thoughts strayed wistfully to Foxes Court and the dry leaves flying
out of the hedgerows laying a warm blanket over the tender green
shoots of the winter barley. Then he dreamed of Sophy, and falling
asleep beside her sweet softness.
He was woken by a din. Tramps were always getting drunk or
stoned, and picking fights. Best not to get involved. But the
screaming was getting louder. Alizarin shoved his head out, gasping
at the cold. In the street light, he could see shadowy forms in
frenzied movement and just make out a woman bent back over a
dustbin, her skirt up over her breasts. A man was fucking her. She
must have been having a period; blood, black in the moonlight,
was streaming down her white legs, awakening some terrible
distant memory. Alizarin found himself screaming, yelling, sobbing
for them to stop. Visitor staggered onto his arthritic legs,
barking. The man swore, pulled out of the woman, lurched over
and viciously began kicking Alizarin.
He must have passed out. He woke to even more excruciating
pain in his head and Visitor licking his face - sweet Visitor always
there for him. A drunk was kicking a tin in the distance; Alizarin
could hear the hiss of the dustman's lorry, banging bins, a clatter
of bottles like the emptying of a fisherman's net.
Then, gradually, as consciousness reasserted itself, he groped
round in panic. Not only had the case containing his dole book,
his sketchpad, Etienne's drawing of Galena and her palette been
stolen from inside his sleeping bag, but he couldn't see a thing.
Perhaps it was still dark, but there was the first tube shaking the
pavements. He could hear the whirring bristles of the cleaning
machine sucking dirt up from the gutter, the thud of newspapers
being sorted: it must be nearly morning.
Every so often as the hours passed, last night's horror returned
&nd he trembled with terror. It must be the kick on the head. Oh
dear God, bring back my sight. If he were blind how could he feed
Visitor? He could hear cars going in and out of the Middlesex
"ospital and footsteps approaching. As an ultimate humiliation
wcause he couldn't find his cap to lay upside down in front of him,
he w£ui forced to thrust out shaking hands.

387
'Please help me, I'm blind,' he stammered.
'Another of those scroungers from Kosovo,' said a voice disapprovingly.
'Why don't you stay in your own country?'
'I'm fucking English,' Alizarin heard himself shouting.
He was drenched in icy sweat which made him even colder.
The next couple, women, judging from the click of their heels,
also clicked their tongues, muttering how disgusting it was for
work-shy folk to use poor old doggies for begging, then spend the
money on themselves.
'It's my dog I'm trying to feed,' yelled Alizarin. Then, as their
heels clicked hastily away, remembering other tramps telling him
people sometimes came back if you were polite, he added: 'Have
a good day.'
Tubes rumbled, the pavement was filling up with footsteps,
buses roared, ambulances jangled into the Middlesex. Alizarin
breathed in cigarette smoke as the next passer-by quickened his
pace, not wanting to be caught. The next approached tentatively,
pausing, smelling faintly of eau-de-Cologne like an aunt.
'Please, please, help me feed my dog,' begged Alizarin.
There was a long silence. Then a desperately embarrassed
female voice with a soft Scottish accent murmured, 'I think your
wee doggie's passed away.'
How could he have forgotten to check Visitor? He had been so
distraught about not being able to see. Frantically Alizarin reached
out, hugging Visitor's shaggy body, calling his name, waiting for
the familiar thud of his tail, realizing how cold and stiff he was.
'Don't be dead, please don't, Visitor.'
Crouched over him, parting his matted hair, Alizarin listened
desperately for the faintest heartbeat - nothing. 'Oh, please, God.'
His howl of desolation must have wakened the dead in
Limesbridge churchyard.
The kind Scottish lady burst into tears and was joined by the two
secretaries, who, feeling guilty at muttering about 'work-shy folk',
had returned with a tin of Pedigree Chum. One tried to comfort
Alizarin, the other fetched a policeman.
Gordon Pritchard, a heart specialist so revered that God was
rumoured to walk six paces behind him when he toured the wards,
was on his way to hospital when his Rolls was halted by the traffic.
Seeing a crowd gathered round some kind of accident, he lowered
the window.
'Can I help?'
For a second, the man slumped over a shaggy yellow dog looked
up. Tears streamed down his grey face. Like Munch's Scream, his
wide-open mouth was a hollow of agonized outrage.

388
'Alizarin?' called out Gordon Pritchard in horror. 'Alizarin
Belvedon?'
Pritchard had often stayed at Foxes Court and bought Old
Masters from Raymond, who in turn he'd looked after when
Raymond had had a heart murmur, five years ago.
'Alizarin, it's me.' Pritchard jumped out of the Rolls.
Only when Alizarin totally failed to recognize him did Pritchard
realize he was blind. When he tried to get him admitted to
Casualty, the main stumbling block was that Alizarin wouldn't part
with Visitor. Such was his colossal strength, no-one could prise his
dog away from him. Racked by coughing and tears, he kept crying
out for Sophy.
Getting no answer from the flat in Duke Street, St James's,
Pritchard grimly rang the gallery. Sophy, who was opening the
post, handed the receiver to Jupiter.
'I see, I see, I'm terribly sorry. We'll be over at once.'
As he put down the receiver, Jupiter was trembling violently.
'Hanna?' whispered Sophy.
'No, Alizarin, he's been sleeping rough' -Jupiter's voice broke
- 'and he seems to be blind, and Visitor's just died. Oh my God,
how could we have done this to him?'
Then, pulling himself together: 'I must go to him.'
'Can I come too?'
Forgetting to lock up, forgetting the stock sale, they ran up Cork
Street, up Regent Street, across Oxford Street.
It was rush hour, the sales were on, but not an orange 'For Hire'
sign appeared anywhere. Shoving shoppers and commuters out of
the way, they passed All Souls and the BBC on their left and raced
along Mortimer Street. Jupiter was ten times fitter. Sophy thought
her lungs would burst as she pounded after him.
There was still a crowd around Alizarin. Two policemen, a
couple of nurses, an ambulance man and Gordon Pritchard were
trying to reason with him. Seeing him sitting like a child clinging
to a giant teddy bear, Visitor in his arms, the picture of despair,
Sophy fought back the tears. She mustn't add to his misery.
'Alizarin, it's me.'Jupiter patted his brother's shoulder.
Sophy fell to her knees. 'Alizarin, it's Sophy,' she panted. Putting
a hand round his agonizingly aching head, she pressed it to her
heaving breast. 'I'm so terribly sorry. Thank God we've found you.'
'Sophy?' Alizarin looked round in bewilderment. 'It is really you.
Oh Sophy.'
Really me. There, darling, it's going to be OK. You must come
inside and get something warm inside you.'
I can't leave Visitor. He took care of me. If they take him away,

389
I'll never see him again.' Helplessly Alizarin ran his hand over
Visitor's face, smoothing his fur, stroking his velvet ears.
'He looks really peaceful.' Sophy's voice was choked with tears.
'His eyes are closed, and his tail looks as though it's about to wag
as he arrives in Heaven.'
'Promise he's dead, it's not just a trick to take him to Battersea?'
'I promise. We'll take care of his body. Feel.' She took a blanket
from the ambulance man and rubbed the rough wool against
Alizarin's hollowed cheek. 'We've got this to wrap him in.'
'I'll take him straight down to Limesbridge' -Jupiter's voice was
choked too - 'and bury him beside Maud.'
Only then did Sophy manage to remove Visitor from Alizarin's |
clutches.
He was admitted to hospital with pleurisy and pneumonia.
There was no flesh on his body to protect him from the cold. Only
his colossal strength had saved him. Clutching onto Sophy's hand,
he raved on and on about Galena pouring with blood.
'I couldn't save her and I couldn't save Visitor. He froze to death
because I couldn't afford to feed him. Oh Sophy.'
'He was fifteen, he died of old age, darling.'
As the morphine kicked in, Alizarin lost consciousness.

Jupiter was in shock, wondering how on earth to get Visitor home,|
when his mobile rang. fi,
'What the fuck's going on?' demanded Rupert Campbell-Black. j
'I've just rolled up at your gallery after a cheap bargain for Ricky's
France-Lynch's birthday, place deserted, door open, pictures on|
the walls. Tempted to help myself.' [i
When Jupiter told him, Rupert was very sympathetic, and^;
offered his helicopter. Visitor had been, after all, the great-great-1
grandson of Rupert's revered black Labrador, Badger. |
Gordon Pritchard, however, hadn't finished with the Belvedons.1
Having handed Alizarin over to the top eye specialist, who'dj
promptly admitted him to Intensive Care, he proceeded to givej
Jupiter a very nasty five minutes. |
'What the fuck happened?' |
'There was a row over the Raphael.' Jupiter flushed slightly. 'N.
thought Al was having an affair with Hanna. Anthea wanted the'j
Lodge for holiday lets. Together we chucked him out.' |
'Anthea was always a bitch,' said Pritchard. 'He knew in June he'j
was going blind. Told no-one.'
'Oh my God.'
'We'll run some tests, but it doesn't look good.'
'I'd better ring Dad,' said Jupiter.

390
* * *
Raymond, in bed with flu and a persistent cough, was devastated
not least by the death of Visitor, whom he, Grenville and all the
family had loved so much.
'Tupiter's bringing his body down later,' Raymond told Anthea.
'Pritchard found Alizarin sleeping rough in Mortimer Street, in
seven degrees below. Pritchard claims you and Jupiter slung him
out. It can't be true.'
'Course it wasn't. You know how paranoid and shirty Alizarin is.
Tupiter and I reproached him mildly for tipping Zac off about
Pandora. Al went into a sulk and stormed out.'
Raymond's eyes fell first.
'Poor old boy, poor darling Visitor. I must go to him.'
'You can't, you've got a temperature. I'll go' -Anthea sighed to
indicate huge sacrifice - 'and bring him back. We'll get a nurse in,
he can sleep in Dicky's room till half-term.'
Anthea caught the next train. Alizarin must be made to come
home before such a damaging story reached the press. She and
Jupiter must also get their stories straight - but Jupiter wasn't
answering his mobile. After all, she kept telling herself as the train
rumbled past grey frozen fields. Alizarin had been the one to walk
out.
Arriving at the Middlesex, having redone her face and drenched
herself in Shalimar in the taxi (she had always thought Gordon
Pritchard most attractive), Anthea was horrified to find Emerald's
fat sister in situ, looking quite awful. Sophy's eyes were swollen, her
hair unbrushed, and she was bound to sneak to the Cartwrights.
'Where's Jupiter?' demanded Anthea.
'Taking Visitor's body back to Foxes Court. He should be home
by now. Rupert Campbell-Black gave them a lift in his helicopter.'
Anthea was hopping. No opportunity to get her story straight,
and to miss a chance of receiving Rupert Campbell-Black! Alizarin
seemed to have tubes coming out of everywhere. He had the
dreadful pallor and sunken features of Christ just down from
the cross, and Sophy that sanctimonious stricken bustle of all those
Marys who hung round him.
'How is he?' demanded Anthea.
Asleep.' Sophy put her finger to her lips. 'He's had a massive
dose of morphine.'
'I've come to take him home.'
'Well, you can't.' Sophy lost her temper. 'You chucked him out,
and as a result he's got pneumonia, and isn't going anywhere. Why
don't you bugger off?'
Anthea would have stood her ground if Gordon Pritchard

391
hadn't rolled up, whisked her into a side room, and subjected her
to an even more unpleasant five minutes than he'd given Jupiter.
After all I've done for that family, thought Anthea as she
flounced out. And she couldn't even ring David for sympathy.

Jupiter was back at the Middlesex by evening. He looked utterly
exhausted, his face drained of colour except for huge purply
crimson shadows beneath his eyes, but he was calmer. They had
buried Visitor in the orchard beside Maud. Raymond had insisted
on staggering out in his dressing gown.
'I didn't tell him Al was blind. He couldn't handle it at the
moment. Have you had anything to eat?'
'I'm not hungry.'
'Nor am I, but I could murder a large whisky. Let's go and have
dinner.' Then, when Sophy looked doubtfully at a sleeping
Alizarin: 'He won't wake for ages.'
Jupiter took her to his local: Mulligans in Cork Street. They sat
side by side on a banquette, which made conversation easier.
Sophy chose leek soup because it was the cheapest thing on the
menu and she'd heard from Emerald that the Belvedons were ^
broke. Jupiter told her not to be silly, so they both had Irish stew ;
and pickled red cabbage and a lot of red wine.
Sophy kept crying; Jupiter held her hand.
'I know I should ring Sienna and Jonathan, but I just feel it's
better if the old boy's kept quiet at the moment,' he said, then,
taking a deep breath: 'Look, I've had an idea. Casey Andrews's
exhibition was scheduled for the second half of February. But he's
walked out, so I'm going to show Alizarin instead.'
'That's wonderful!' squeaked Sophy, flinging her arms round
Jupiter, then recoiling in horror. She hadn't washed since six that
morning and she'd sweated so much with worry and pounding
across London, she must pong worse than a skunk on a fun run.
But as she wriggled away, Jupiter clung to her.
'Tamzin, Dad's dimbo assistant, is showing no signs of comings
back from Gstaad.' He begged: 'I can only do Al justice if you help
me.' I
'Oh God, I'd love that. It's half-term on the sixteenth ofFeb so'I
I'll be free.'
Jupiter ordered a couple of large brandies.
'You've got school tomorrow, I ought to take you home.'
'The hospital says I can stay the night.' Sophy's voice trembled:
'It'd be so awful if he woke up and there was no Visitor, and he
didn't know where he was.'
'I'm so ashamed,' muttered Jupiter. 'Because he wasn't with

392
Hanna, I feel as though a great poisoned thorn has been tugged
out of my side and I can love him again.'

He and Sophy were less euphoric a few days later when tests proved
that Alizarin had a dangerous and very rare tumour, known as
Norfolk's Disease, which was pressing increasingly on his brain and
the optic nerve. Doctors knew very little about the condition.
'His best hope,' Gordon Pritchard admitted privately to Jupiter,
'would be an operation in the States, which would cost a fortune.'
The truth could probably be kept from Raymond, reflected
Tupiter, but Alizarin was too intelligent and tuned into people's
voices ever to be fobbed off with lies. This made it even more
important to make his exhibition a success.

393
With the private view scheduled for 15 February, Jupiter had just;
over a month to get things organized. Tipped off by Mrs RobensI
when Anthea and Raymond would be away, he drove Sophy and|
the gallery van down to Limesbridge. Crossing the bridge, he could |
see Foxes Court behind its prison bars of leafless trees - a frequent*!
subject of his mother's paintings. Had Hanna felt as trapped? Thei
house would be his once Raymond died, but what would be the|
point without Hanna to share it? ;
His desolation increased as they passed the Lodge. In the fronti
garden, the nettles had been replaced by neatly edged beds and a|
wheelbarrow planted with mauve and yellow pansies. Net curtains!
twitched behind a Tory poster. Alizarin would have gone ballistic.!
Jupiter felt even more guilty at chucking him out.
With renewed determination he and Sophy were soon dragging];
canvasses, often mildewed and escaping from their stretchers,!
from packing chests, barns, potting sheds, and outside lavatories.1
Having loaded these, they raided the attic, finding earlier pictures^
not just of out-of-work miners and shipbuilders, but of dogs and |
children, even tennis parties, which had somehow escaped^
Anthea's skips. I
'Thank God she's frightened of spiders and seldom comes up|
here,' said Jupiter. |
'Who's this? She's beautiful,' sighed Sophy, as from behind a|
headless rocking horse she dragged a ravishing nude with her4
blonde pubes cut in the shape of a heart. Then she blushed furi1
ously, realizing it was Hanna.
Jupiter's face was expressionless as he examined the picture.
'When did you get married?' stammered Sophy.
'Ninety-four.' Then, after a long pause: 'You can date it by

394
Alizarin's paintings. They get steadily darker, no more industrial
landscapes, just an obsessive catalogue of disaster, atrocity piled on
atrocity.'
Hearing a step on the stairs, Jupiter glanced at his watch. He
didn't want to bump into Anthea. But it was Dora, full of plans for
a Labrador puppy, which she could look after until Alizarin
needed it as a guide dog.
'What I really came to say,' she went on, 'is that Dicky's seriously
broke, so why don't you put Upside-Down Camels into the
exhibition?'
The next few weeks, when Sophy wasn't teaching, were spent
shooting out invitations and press releases, proofreading a makeshift
catalogue, framing, hanging, lighting and visiting Alizarin
who, because he refused to let the family pay for a private room,
was now in a public ward full of eye diseases and the aftermath of
dreadful operations. Locked away in darkness, the noise must have
been driving him crazy.
Nor did he seem remotely roused out of his despair by the
prospect of an exhibition, which would not sell enough pictures to
pay for the operation. Aware that he had lowered his guard,
clinging to Sophy the morning she and Jupiter found him, he was
dauntingly offhand when she rolled up to read him the Guardian,
bearing quiches rather badly baked by Patience and freesias he
could smell if not see. She would have stopped coming if Alizarin's
favourite nurse, black Molly Malone, hadn't confided how much
he looked forward to her visits.
'"Where is Sophy?" he demand all day.'

The story of Alizarin's sleeping rough had reached the papers. His
homeless friends around Charlotte Street did extremely well giving
interviews about the Tender Toff. Dora also cleaned up. The Sun,
much beguiled by her stories of Visitor's body being flown home
'just like Princess Diana's' in Rupert Campbell-Black's helicopter,
promised to give her a chocolate Labrador puppy the moment
Anthea's back was turned.
Although Alizarin's story was rather overshadowed by a by-
election and the coming out of a rock star, it had not been good
ror the Belvedons' image. Not only did they harbour suspect
Raphaels, but neglected their own.

Meanwhile, there was an exciting development in Hoxton.
Jonathan's seedy friend, Trafford, who was now the protege of
^raldine Paxton, had just landed himself the £20,000 Whistler
rize for Shagpile. This was an eight-foot tower of male nudes

395
engaged in the sex act, plugged into each other like Lego, which
those 'in the loop' thought both 'pivotal' and 'challenging'. There
was even talk of a board game.
Although Trafford, according to Jonathan, would be willing to
service a musk ox, he didn't like Geraldine - old Needy in Toyboy
Land - and yearned for the long, ringed and studded white body
of Sienna Belvedon. Even more, he missed the high jinks he had
enjoyed with her brother Jonathan, who was far too devastated he
couldn't marry Emerald to come home from Vienna.
One morning in late November, Trafford had taken a call for
Jonathan from Abdul Karamagi. The Saudi was still so enraptured
with the nude which he believed Jonathan had painted of Sophy
that he wanted to fly Jonathan out to the Middle East on his private
jet to paint his favourite stallion for a seven-figure sum.
Having cosily explained that Jonathan had gone permanently ,
abroad, Trafford accepted the commission. He was also convinced
that he had earned his fee. Abdul's stallion was even rattier than '
Jonathan before he left for Vienna. Trafford, nevertheless, felt
guilty enough to persuade Abdul, who longed for recognition as a '
discerning collector, to enter Sophy of Shepherd's Bush, as the nude ^
was now known, for the British Portrait Awards. |
At the beginning of January, Trafford and a troupe of Jonathan's I
cronies (none of whom had any idea Alizarin was the artist) I
collected the nude from Abdul's house and delivered it to thei|
British Portrait Museum in Gower Street. The winner of.-l
if,
the £25,000 prize would be announced at a big dinner at the i|
Dorchester on Valentine's Day. j
'No-one's to tell Jonathan,' ordered Trafford, 'then he won't be |
choked if he doesn't win.' |
Also among the seven hundred entries was one of Alizarin's!
portraits of Visitor, which Dicky and Dora had submitted as ajoke.1
The Awards themselves were sponsored by Doggie Dinah;
Petfoods, whose Chairman, Kevin Coley, had recently become a,j
Labour peer. Having failed to grapple his way up the social sealer
through showjumping or polo sponsorship, Lord Coley hao|
turned in the eighties to art and, with the help of Raymond's eye»|
had built up a fine collection of pictures. <
David Pulborough and Geraldine Paxton, both avid to snatch;
Lord Coley's custom from Raymond, were on his judges' panel.»
They spent their time manipulating the other judges, on the |
premise that they were 'the experts', and enjoying several excel^
lent lunches together on expenses. Naturally they wanted
Jonathan to win because he was a Pulborough gallery artist, but

396
after the bollocking he'd received in October, Jonathan was
refusing to answer David's calls.
David was also furious when he saw the magnificent nude of
Sophy. Jonathan had yet again failed to pass on the commission on
the fat fee that Abdul must have paid him. This, however, could be
rectified once Jonathan had been lured home to receive the first
prize.
The other judges had already spent two days in the museum
boardroom, drinking coffee, eating ridged fawn biscuits, getting
on each other's nerves, and sulkily being bullied into shortlisting
four of David's artists, including Jonathan and Casey, when yet
another judge rolled up. This was Casey Andrews's ex-wife, Joan
Bideford, who'd been delayed by a freak snowstorm in Peru.
Wearing a charcoal-grey suit and a Guards' tie, roaring like a
sergeant major that the entire panel was in need of a decent
optician to have selected such junk, Joan chucked out three of the
Pulborough artists, including her ex's oil of Margaret Jay.
'Gather you've taken on the old bugger,' she bellowed at David.
'You'll regret it.'
The only entries that were worth a toffee, she went on, were
Daisy France-Lynch's portrait of Tabitha Rannaldini, Jonathan's
nude of Sophy and Alizarin's painting of Visitor.
Kevin Coleywas enchanted. Like Joan Bideford, he loved pretty
women, and had bought many of Joan's erotic nudes in the past
which had rocketed in value. He trusted her opinion and longed
for a wonderful dog portrait to win. He could then put Visitor's
beaming face on every tin of Doggie Dins. The rest of the judges
agreed, except for David and Geraldine - the experts - who said
Visitor wouldn't dignify the competition.
'And the dog has just passed away in rather tragic circumstances,'
said Geraldine quietly. 'It wouldn't be available for
publicity.'
'Nor will his master,' insisted David, 'chap's unlikely to paint
again.'
'All the more reason to give it him,' snorted Joan.
How much more on message would be a beautiful plump young
woman, with glorious flesh tones,' urged stick-thin Geraldine. 'Fat
is after all a feminist issue. Jonathan's nude has greater artistic
merit than his brother's Labrador.'
Joan lit a cigar and took another look at Sophy's sleepy smile and
sand dune curves.
Sorry, Kev, Lab's wonderfully painted but this does have the
e ge, bursting with energy, staggeringly confident. Never thought

397
Jonathan was capable of such innocent unguarded lyricism.'
Joan mopped her brow. Sophy of Shepherd's Bushy/as declared the
winner, Visitor the runner-up, with Daisy France-Lynch, who had
won last year, in third place. Joan even allowed Casey to be fourth!
'Then I can watch the vain old tosser's face when he doesn'twin.1!
David was shocked to find himself agreeing with Joan. Casey wai
getting far too above himself. Geraldine belted off to ringjonatha^
in Vienna. Trafford, as a lover, although vigorous, didn't bath<|
enough and Jonathan had looked so handsome when he'd roller
up at the Commotion in New York.

In his dingy digs in Vienna, Jonathan had reached rock bottoi
The room, which was the size of a whelping kennel, was on
furnished with a narrow bed, a wireless, and a hundred canvass*
on which wistful variations of Emerald's wan, white face gazed
him from different landscapes. He had failed to dig up any di
which might jeopardize Zac's claim on the Raphael. Having n<a
sold a thing since the summer, he was flat broke. He was shocke
by his jealousy that Trafford had won the Whistler and becomes
media star.
Deciding not to buy a litre of whisky and get plastered becau
his rent was due tomorrow, Jonathan switched on the radio. T
Vienna Phil were about to play Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony.
'The irony,' the announcer was saying, 'is that befon
Tchaikovsky wrote perhaps his greatest work, he had lost all co|
fidence in himself as a composer. "What I need", he wrote to ' "
brother Modest, "is to believe in myself again".'
'Tchaikovsky et moi,' sighed Jonathan.
The ascending scale of the opening bassoon solo coincided wit
the telephone ringing.
'Jonathan, it's Geraldine.'
'Oh, go away.'
'Don't be silly. You've just won the British Portrait Award,
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
wanted a shirt like the purple and white striped crocuses being fl
tened by the rain.
'Doggie Dins will pay for your flight home,' insisted Geraldin<
And I'll be eight hundred miles nearer Emerald, thougt
Jonathan.
'OK. I'll come.'

398
'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.

399
The ballroom at the Dorchester was packed. The Doggie Dins logt
of a jaunty mongrel adorned every menu, and flashed orange an(
green, like the Cheshire cat, above the platform. The shortlistet
portraits would be later shown on a huge monitor. The future Higt
Sheriff hopped from table to table, massaging dinner-jacketet
shoulders, caressing bare backs, charming, networking, David th<
player.
T wouldn't be giving away secrets if I told you the Pulborough'i
got the winner.'
News that Jonathan had been shortlisted had been just the tonu
Raymond needed. He hadn't seen his darling boy since October
The Belvedons had therefore taken a front-row table and sod th<
cost. Anthea, on the other hand, was feeling paranoid. David wai
still livid she'd let him think he was Emerald's father. Jupiter
who'd always been so affectionate and supportive, appeared t<
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, anc
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 ha<i
annexed most of the Belvedon's big clients. The newly ennoblec
Lord Coley, looking like a thatched pig with his brick-red face and
brushed-forward grey hair, who'd always made passes at Anthea it
the past, was now chatting animatedly to Si Greenbridge and
Rosemary Pulborough, who looked irritadngly better than usual iH
dove-grey chiffon. On Si's right was frightful Geraldine with evell
more frightful Trafford next to her. Hopefully Trafford would gej
drunk and embarrass them all. Anthea had never seen anything sc
disgusting as Shagpile. And next to Trafford, like a fuchsia barrel
was Kevin's ghastly wife Enid, who was ecstatic about becoming

400
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.
111 remember that remark next time you want me to buy a
Picture, young man.'

401
'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; I
'What about Art Nouveau Riche?' murmured Trafford.i
scooping up all the table's allocation ofpetits fours and washing |
them down with a glass of Barsac. j
As a roll of drums sent people racing back to their seats, Caseyl
Andrews could be seen combing his beard in anticipation ofi
accepting the award. As the lights dimmed, Rosemary was amazedl
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 twig&S
Anthea used to paint at Christmas, thought Jonathan - mounted;
the rostrum to give away the prizes, i
'My lords' - big flashing smile at Lord Coley - 'ladies, and|
gentlemen, welcome to the tenth British Portrait Awards spon*i
sored so generously by Doggie Dins.' 1
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, Lore
Coley, whose huge enthusiasm for art brought this competition
into being, blah, blah . . .'
Jonathan, who was busy drawing Kevin Coley's fourth chu
didn't look up at the monitor as the winning names were flashe
up to loud cheers.
'I have to confess that this was Lord Coley's favourite,' shout
Geraldine over the din, as a beaming yellow face appeared on f
screen.
'Visitor!' gasped Raymond in delight and anguish.
'But on balance, we were unanimous about the winner, who ha
long been regarded as the wild man of the art world,' contim
Geraldine to more cheers and catcalls.
Casey smirked and recombed his beard.
'But over the years,' called out Geraldine triumphantly, 'he 1
matured astonishingly and produced on this occasion a work
towering genius.'
Next moment, Sophy of Shepherd's Bush flashed up on the screet
A few seconds of silence was followed by tumultuous whoops an<
wolf whistles.

402
'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 chamP^ne,
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
"lerry bitchy chat about nothing except whose pictures were unjustifiably
selling better than others, the contrast was hideous. 403
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 All 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 hii|
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. *
'Oh no you don't.' A nurse who'd been redressing the eye ofak
patient opposite grabbed the bottle. 'Alizarin's on extreme^
strong medication at the moment. Time you pushed off anyway
We're about to turn out the lights.' I
They were already turned out for Alizarin. 1

404
By nine o'clock on the morning of Alizarin's private view, a large
sign saying: 'Winner and runner-up of the British Portrait Award
2000' had been plastered across the front window of the Belvedon.
At midday, Raymond's assistant, Tamzin the dimbo, who could
sniff out a party all the way from Gstaad, returned from her six-
week sabbatical with a Mars-brown tan. Having arranged white
daffodils still tightly in bud in large glass vases round the gallery,
she proceeded to drive Jupiter crackers ringing her friends and
describing the sexual prowess of Heinz her ski instructor.
'It didn't matter one bit that there was hardly any snow.'
Later, as Sophy charged round polishing parquet, buffing
frames with black boot polish, touching up the walls with white
paint, Tamzin painted her nails.
'I wanted to go to art school, Sophy, but Mummy and Daddy
thought I'd get into drugs so they made me take a sekky course.'
'Not so's you'd notice,' muttered Jupiter, who'djust bought six
more light bulbs and was busy adjusting their beam onto different
pictures. 'For Christ's sake, start ringing round the press, Tamzin.'
Just nipping out for a sandwich. D'you want anything, Sophy?'
Sophy shook her head, for once too nervous to eat.
An increasingly edgy Jupiter had brought in a ghetto blaster and
Was playing tapes of battle sounds to create atmosphere. Guns
"ooming and shells exploding seemed to sum up his mood and
that of Alizarin's thundery dark pictures, which, properly lit for
the first time, looked spectacular. Pride of place on the ground
tloor had been given to Upside-Down Camels, which glowed like
"nber and citrine. Heatwave, loaned by Dicky Belvedon, said the
oescription.
It all looks wonderful,' Sophy told Jupiter soothingly.

405
But outside a vicious north wind whipped down Cork Street, and
the sky had turned a sickly yellow presaging the snow which
Tamzin had been denied in Gstaad. Bad forecasts would certainly
deter the country punters, thought Sophy in anguish as she set
off in a taxi to collect two crates each of red and white, and a
huge chunk of mature Cheddar from which guests would hack
pieces.
When she returned, Tamzin was waving the Standard.
'You're in the paper.'
'"My brother painted my winning portrait," admits YBA's bad
boy', said a large headline.
Oh Christ! Sophy winced at her even larger naked body sprawled
across the centre pages, with a caption: 'Sophy's extremely choice'.
If she didn't get sacked for bunking off, the head would boot heri
out for this. No wonder education was in a parlous state in,
England. ''I:
'At least they've plugged the private view,' said Tamzin, waving'
a sponge bag. 'It's nearly five-thirty, I'm off to change.' I
Outside the icy pavements glittered under the street lamps^
Jupiter had just returned from righting a blown-over bay tree whefl?
Anthea rang in. She and Raymond had reached the London flatil
but Raymond had developed a raging temperature, was dearie
going down with flu and wouldn't be able to make it. "
'I really can't leave the old boy.'Anthea lowered her voice: 'Ay'iBt|
so disappointed.' ^
'Bloody liar,' said Jupiter as he hung up. 'But it'll be easier
without Dad, he gets more uptight than the artists.' '
Thank God Alizarin wasn't here either: he was always so rude Us,
the press. Nor would he have been happy, if he weren't blind^
to see how much of his earlier, carefree work, before he lost
Hanna, was on display. Oh Hanna, sighed Jupiter. '
Seeing he was shivering worse than Grenville at the prospect of"
fireworks, Sophy made him have a hot shower upstairs. Inside shfr|
was even more apprehensive than Jupiter. If they didn't sell
pictures tonight, Alizarin would be condemned to an eternity of
darkness. But she killed her nerves by keeping busy, opening;
bottles, putting out blue glass ashtrays and polishing Jupiter's
shoes. When he came down with his hair slicked back, she gave him |
a good-luck tie: red silk covered with black cats. 'That
is fabulous.' Jupiter put it on. 'God, we're going to need
it.'
>

David Pulborough was absolutely furious. He and Geraldine had;
been made to look complete idiots at the Awards last night. They

406

both detested Alizarin, and now he'd been proved the winning
artist, David wouldn't be owed a fat cut any more.
In revenge, he had decided to hold a spoiler party across the
road at the Pulborough and give selected press a preview of one or
two of Casey Andrews's latest pictures, before his exhibition
opened next week. By six-thirty, therefore, David, Geraldine, Casey
and Somerford Keynes were peering out like a witches' coven,
furious to see despite the falling snow so many people going into
the Belvedon.
'Tupiter and Raymond's faces will be alizarin crimson by the end
of this evening,' bitched Somerford. 'They will not sell a single
picture. Talk about the flop of the Millennium.'
David kept popping out into the street, diverting critics and
diary writers he knew.
Bastard, thought Jupiter.
All three floors of the Belvedon were soon packed with clients,
artists, other dealers, press and beautiful people, looking at each
other rather than the pictures. Abdul Karamagi was among the first
arrivals, ecstatic at the publicity. Sophy's Bush, he kept telling everyone,
would shortly be as famous as the Botticelli Venus.
Sophy herself, now falling out of the black lace dress which
Emerald had vetoed for the twenty-sixth birthday party, was to her
embarrassment much photographed. Jonathan, who had turned
up merely to support Alizarin, received his usual share of hysterical
media attention, particularly after last night's misunderstanding.
'When did Alizarin paint that portrait?' 'Where is he?' 'Where's
Raymond, and what's happening about Pandora?' clamoured the
journalists.
'The civil case, which we will win,' said Jonathan firmly, 'is
scheduled for late April. Sienna's case - she'll be totally exonerated
too -- comes up at the beginning of March.'
T told you not to distract the press,' hissed Jupiter.
'Why does everyone keep murmuring "Interesting"?' Sophy
whispered to Jonathan.
'Because,' he whispered back, 'if you slag a picture off, you're
bound to be talking to the artist's mother, who'll thump you. If you
say it's wonderful, you're bound to be talking to the artist's best
friend, who'll be so jealous, he'll thump you even harder. Much
easier to be neutral and murmur: "Interesting."'
'Interesting,' murmured Sophy.
'How's Emerald?' asked Jonathan ultra casually.
'Trying to work.'
'Why wasn't she at the Awards yesterday?'
T think she was jealous you'd painted me, not her.'

407

Jonathan felt the faintest lift of the heart. He could just handle
things if Emerald still loved him.
Many of the major players had now arrived: Lord Coley, very
pleased with himself: 'We chose the artist last night, Al Belvedon's
going places'; Minsky Kraskov, the terrifying Mafia thug alleged to
like paintings of tortures. There was a rumble of excitement as Sa
Greenbridge walked in, watchful as ever, flanked by guards so h®
needn't make small talk. .
Jupiter was in a quandary. He'd learnt from Sienna that she'd;!
seen Si and Zac plotting in New York. He was tempted to showM
Si the door, but he needed him to buy a picture to egg on the I
other rich apes, so with gritted smile he moved forward to welcome
him. ;]
'I'll ask if I need help,' snapped Si. He seemed tired andl
distracted. |
It was also sadly obvious that both collectors and press ha<t|
turned up expecting more voluptuous nudes, with or without ^|
bikini line, like Sophy of Shepherd's Bush. People were yakking;
the top of their voices to be heard over the booming guns and t
explosions, but no-one was buying. The gallery's reputation h
been more damaged than even Jupiter had thought.
Everyone nudged as Somerford and his claque of queens coi
be seen mincing through the snow from the Pulborough, c;
ful not to slip, pens poised to annihilate Alizarin. On the ^
in, Somerford met Judy Collins, head of Twentieth-Cent
Acquisitions at the Tate.
'You won't find anything in here,' he told her bitchily, 'I'd ]
across to the Pulborough and look at a real artist.'
'I like that,' said Judy Collins, walking over to examine Up
Down Camels.
A diversion was created by a group of Alizarin's students, i
had raised two thousand pounds, and wanted to buy a picture!
their common room to go towards Alizarin's air fare. They we
clearly devastated he wasn't at the party.
'What a photo opportunity missed,' sighed Tamzin.
This show is going to bomb more spectacularly than anythil
we've ever done, thought Jupiter, but that isn't enough to distra
me from the agony ofHanna not being here, to hold my hand,
laugh it off with me over supper later, to soothe my wounds in bi
Lady Coley, who looked like a Windsor violet barrel this evenis
had been admiring the charming watercolour entitled Dog Sti
which showed Visitor gazing up at a night sky dominated by Ca
Major, and which Sophy had retrieved from Jonathan's wast
paper basket the night she met Alizarin.

408

Tracey's thirty next month,' Lady Coley reminded her
husband, who promptly asked the price.
'I'm afraid it's sold,' gasped Sophy, hastily stocking a red spot on
the description. Although Jupiter would murder her, she couldn't
bear the Coleys to have Visitor.
Tupiter, however, had been distracted by the arrival of a tall
blonde. Tears spilled down her anguished features, like a waterfall
over grey rocks. Snow had whitened her hair; she had lost so
much weight around the face, she looked like a Victorian waif
seeking refuge from a storm. Jupiter, jaw gritted to stop himself
breaking down, fought his way through the crowd, seized the
blonde's hand, pulling her into the back office and locking
the door.
'I was worried no-one would turn up,' sobbed Hanna.
'For Alizarin?' asked Jupiter bitterly.
'No, for you. It was so brave of you to give him this show.' Then,
as he gazed down at the bulge: 'I'm nearly seven months pregnant,
and it's yours, you idiot.'
'Oh my darling.' Jupiter's hand went down, his trembling
fingers splayed out over her tummy, then travelled slowly up
over her left breast, curling itself round the back of her neck,
drawing her lips towards his.
'You can't leave people in the middle of a private view.'
'Wanna bet? I have so much apologizing to do,' muttered
Jupiter.

Tamzin had disappeared upstairs with Abdul. Jonathan, hackles
up, teeth bared like an angry cur, was pursuing Somerford. Sophy
was left as chief salesman. To whom?
Si had been poised to buy one of the big oils of Macedonia, and
all the other major players, spurred on, were reaching for their
cheque books, when he had suddenly glanced across the street
and clocked David and Geraldine through the window of the
Pulborough. Next moment he had shot out of the gallery, with his
guards pelting after him, and disappeared into his limo and the
night. All the other major players promptly put back their cheque
books and the party began to disperse.
The battalions of red and white had been depleted by the
onslaught, the chunk of mature Cheddar looked like a desert ant
heap. Beautiful people were on their mobiles checking the whereabouts
of the next party and ringing for cabs. The press were
^c "S "P t^elr cameras and putting away their notebooks.
Nothing had sold, an empty spike waited wistfully for yellow
wvoices. Somerford was still badmouthing Alizarin, Jonathan was

fe 409

moving in to thump him, when Sophy hissed in excitement: 'Look
at that!'
For a tall man in a dinner jacket, oblivious of the cold, was loping
down Cork Street, his gold hair silver in the moonlight. The gallery
fell silent as Rupert Campbell-Black stalked in. All the things Sophy
had ever heard about his utter self-confidence and dazzling, unnerving beauty were true, but she loved him already because he
had two children he adored who were adopted like she was.
Ignoring the visitors' book, refusing a drink, Rupert picked up
a catalogue. The crowd divided, still in silence, as he circled the
rooms, looking quickly and intently at each picture as though he
were examining yearlings at a spring sale. Just in time, Sophy
managed to peel the red spot off Visitor's portrait.
Pausing in front of it, Rupert smiled slightly.
'How much is that?'
Sophy took a deep breath.
'Five thousand pounds,' she gasped. Jupiter, who'd priced it at
five hundred, would murder her a second time.
'OK-' Rupert moved on.
I've blown it, thought Sophy wretchedly.
As Rupert went round the rooms again, the chat began to soar.
This time he put crosses in his catalogue against a few landscapes
and the worst torture paintings, but sadly not beside Visitor.
'I said those were the most challenging,' said a man in a beetle
cap, who'd been slagging the torture paintings off as grotesque
earlier.
Rupert handed the marked catalogue to Sophy.
'Thanks.'
He's going, thought Sophy in despair.
'Oh, please buy something just to encourage the others,' she
pleaded.
For a second, Rupert's face betrayed no emotion, then he said:
'I've marked the ones I don't want, I'll take the rest,' and, seeing
Sophy's look of joyful incredulity, he smiled.
'Are you ss-sure?'
'Quite,' said Rupert, who'd had a tip-off from his brother
Adrian, who was going to take most of the pictures for his New York
gallery.
'D'you think Jupiter'11 give me something on them?' he asked.
'I can give you ten per cent,' said Sophy grandly.
'Fifteen,' suggested Rupert.
'Twelve and a half,' said Sophy. Heavens, she'd soon be haggling
away like a carpet salesman.
'Done.' Rupert got out his cheque book. 'I'll give you a deposit

410

and pay for Dog Star. I'd like to take that with me now to show my
son Xav, who's got a black Lab. I'll get the rest collected at the end
of the exhibition.'
Pandemonium followed, red spots going up like an attack of
scarlet fever, yellow invoices falling on the spike like Roman
soldiers at Philippi. Lord Coley, who'd had a vicious run-in
with Rupert years ago, when he'd had an affaire with the wife of
Rupert's best friend, still admired him as a businessman, and
immediately bought three landscapes. Abdul bought two. Minsky Kraskov snapped up the torture paintings, leaving nothing for the
head of Twentieth-Century Acquisitions at the Tate.
Tamzin came belting downstairs.
'I've just been chatted up by the Chapman brothers - where's
Rupert Campbell-Black? Oh look, the daffodils have all come out.'
Hanna and Jupiter, who'd just emerged dazed but starry-eyed
from the back room to learn the incredible news, were soon
pulling Alizarin's other paintings out of the stock room. They all
went. Even the mature Cheddar in its sculptured form was sold for
eight hundred pounds.
Sophy started giggling and found she couldn't stop. Somerford, who'd harboured an unrequited crush on Rupert since the days of
Galena, decided to give Alizarin a rave review.
'Alizarin Belvedon's work appears gloomy and harsh, but the
more one looks, the more visual and emotional strength one
finds,' he wrote on the back of his cheque book.
Suddenly everyone was talking about the dynamic use of colour,
the unique complexity, originality and energy of the paintings.
Judy Collins put a reserve on Upside-Down Camels.
'Could you ask Dicky Belvedon if he'd be prepared to sell? The
colour is wonderful.'
'Dicky'11 be able to pay back the fete committee ten times over
and buy an Aston Martin,' said Jonathan gleefully. 'And General
Anaesthetic's going to be furious.'
Crossing the room, he thanked Rupert for buying Alizarin's
paintings.
'I've got a lot of your mother's stuff at home,' admitted Rupert.
'You're not Alizarin's father, by any chance?' murmured
Jonathan.
Rupert shook his sleek golden head.
'Alizarin was born long before I - er - knew your mother. My
money would be on Etienne de Montigny.'
'Look,'Jonathan blushed, 'your brother Adrian's been fantastically
kind to my sister Sienna. She's the one who nicked the
Raphael. Could I ask you a colossal favour?'

411

'Almost certainly not,' said Rupert, looking wary.
'Sienna never knew our mother,' pleaded Jonathan, 'I was only
two when she died. Alizarin is so traumatized, he can't talk about
her at all. Jupiter never liked her much. Dad's blocked her out
and won't speak about her in case he upsets Anthea. Aunt Lily and
Rosemary only knew her socially. Sienna's so desperate for info.'
'Not sure my recollections would be entirely suitable.'
'Perhaps not, but there must have been inter-intercourse bits.
With the court case coming up, she's terribly low.'
And you too, my poor boy, thought Rupert, looking at
Jonathan's gaunt, shadowed face and big haunted eyes.
'I'll try and take her out to lunch, next time I'm in America,' he
conceded. 'But I don't promise anything.'
Everyone was dying to talk to Rupert but he had Zac's ability to
freeze people out, thought Sophy as she handed him the wrapped-
up Dog Star.
'Thank you,' said Rupert gravely. 'You're much prettier than
your gatefold, and those are sensational tits.'

'There's that bastard Campbell-Black,' stormed Casey Andrews,
buckling his big red bulbous nose against the Pulborough front
window. 'Little shit was always hanging round Galena in the old
days.'
Highly unamused to see such evidence of transaction, David
drew Casey and Geraldine into the back room for another bottle
of Veuve Clicquot. Now that Somerford had waddled over to the
Belvedon, they could discuss the real purpose of the evening:
the erection of a Borochova Memorial in Limesbridge.
Anthea was still stalling, explained David. She'd always had such
a hang-up about Galena, but public feeling was so strong, she'd be
overruled. Sucking up to his new gallery artist, he then said that he
and Geraldine felt Casey was the ideal artist to do the Memorial.
'You knew Galena intimately. Like Picasso, you're as mighty a
sculptor as a painter.'
Casey stopped smirking over his entry in Who's Who in Art, which
was almost as long as his beard.
'Of course I'll do the Memorial. Better order in some Portland
stone, there's been a run on it recently. As you know' - he flashed
green teeth at Geraldine - 'I'm at work on my memoirs, which will
be, I may add, sensational.' Then, pursing his lips pompously: 'The
world should know I was the great love of Galena's life.'
'Hardly surprising. You're so dynamic,' murmured Geraldine.
'Were you the only one?' asked David innocently.
Casey held out his glass for a refill.

412

'The only serious one - Raymond of course is a pansy.'
'You're not worried about upsetting the family?' queried
Geraldine.
'Not in the least,' boomed Casey, 'Raymond's lost his marbles,
and I don't owe anything to those malevolent scallywags.' Wandering
out into the main gallery, he caught sight of Rupert laughing
with the scallywag who had told Casey to bugger off the night of
Emerald's birthday party. 'The Belvedons deserve everything
coming to them. When are you proposing unveiling this
Memorial?'
'Early 2002,' said Geraldine, which would give her plenty of time
to work on the Arts Council and the Lottery Committee and ensure
a huge fee for Casey and a nice cut for David and herself.
'But as a formality,' went on David smoothly, 'to placate the
committee and the people ofLimesbridge and Larkshire, who will
put up half the money, we'd better throw the competition open.'
'People love competitions,' urged Geraldine, seeing Casey's
look of disapproval.
'I'm sure the Western Daily Press will run a piece,' added David
soothingly, 'and Nigel Reynolds might put something in his
Telegraph diary, so we can say we've given people a chance to enter.
Your ex-wife would probably like a crack. Christ, she was a pest at
the British Portrait Awards. The best twenty can bring in their portfolios.
We'll pick out the three best of those besides you to provide
maquettes. Then in July we'll announce the winner, which of
course will be you.
'Better if we go through the formalities.' He filled up Casey's
glass. 'Show you've despatched the competition, give you splendid
publicity as a multi-faceted artist.'
Anything to distract Casey from the pandemonium across the
road as the press slid all over the ice to photograph a departing
Rupert.
'Mind you, the Belvedons will be dead in the water after the
court case in April.' Geraldine picked up her bag. 'Just going to
spend a penny, then shall we go and dine?'
As soon as she'd disappeared, David let slip he was going to
become High Sheriff in April: 'Total surprise, must have been
lobbied by my friends. Just wondering if I could ask you to paint
me in my regalia outside the Old Rectory?'
'Only if you arrange for me to do that nude of Emerald
Belvedon,' said Casey roguishly.

413

With the return of his beloved wife, a baby on the way, and a
colossally successful private view under his belt, Jupiter was
ashamed that he still had time to be secretly miffed that Alizarin
wasn't more grateful.
'A sodding great cheque will be shortly on its way to pay for his
operation in America,' he grumbled to Sophy as they washed up
glasses the following morning. 'But Al will hardly acknowledge it.
I've run a gallery for fifteen years. I've sold art all over the world,
worked from dawn to dusk. The only words I've never heard are
"Thank you".'
Thank you,' said Sophy, kissing him on the cheek. 'It was a
gorgeous party, and thank you for giving Alizarin the chance to
see again and for my lovely bottle of Joy. It smells like a garden in
June.'
Alizarin had, meanwhile, prevailed upon his favourite nurse,
Molly Malone, to collect his sickness benefit. Jupiter was therefore
staggered the following morning to receive a large jar of his
favourite caviare and a startlingly colourful 'thank you' card
chosen by Molly.
When Sophy, drenched in Joy, with her hands smothered in
hand cream in case Alizarin wanted to hold one of them, went to
see him the following week after school, she found him very
cantankerous. Perhaps he was sad about Hanna going back to
Jupiter.
His post, he grumbled, contained nothing but requests for
money from impoverished artists and charities.
'I've even had a begging letter from Limesbridge Conservatives.'
When Sophy read him his press cuttings, he said nothing, even

414

when Somerford Keynes wrote: 'I once described Alizarin
Belvedon as a rotten painter. I was wrong. I retract every word. It
was the tenderness of his latest exhibition that moved me, as
though even in the most horrific war scenes, he'd dipped his brush
in the milk of human kindness.'
Glancing up, Sophy saw tears trickling out from Alizarin's poor
blind eyes and seized his hands.
'They're wonderful reviews.'
'I know. A successful exhibition fires you up to start again but I
can't. . .' His voice broke. '. . . do that now.'
'You will again, after the operation.'
'There's only a ten per cent chance of success.'
'I'm coming with you.'
'You've got ajob. You can't let those children down.'
'I can. They'll understand. You're what matters to me.'
'I'm fine on my own,' snapped Alizarin. 'Adrian Campbell-
Black's promised to find me a minder in New York. Sienna's
coming to the airport to meet me.'
'I'd still like to come,' pleaded Sophy, but she let go of his hands.
'You can't. Just bugger off,' said Alizarin roughly. 'Thanks
for everything, but I'm leaving tomorrow, and I've got masses to
organize.'
Sophy managed not to cry until the door to the ward shut behind
her. Then she howled. Sweet Molly Malone, however, came racing
after her, waving the most hideous bunch of mauve, yellow and red
asters.
'They're from Alizarin,' she said. 'He made me take him down
to the hospital shop, he was determined to choose them himself.'
Sophy still went home in utter despair.
Next morning. Alizarin gravely thanked the nurses and doctors
who'd been so kind to him. Then, the picture of desolation, he
was led shuffling out of the hospital and for a moment enjoyed
the soft rain on his sweating face and was transported to the
wet walks of Limesbridge, feeling the green silken caress of
the wild garlic, which would be soon sweeping over the woodland
floor.
'Taxi's waiting, Mr Belvedon.'
From then onwards it was all under cover. He was overwhelmed
with panic as, trapped in his own tunnel of darkness, he was led by
a kind hostess down another tunnel onto the plane. It was like
being engulfed for ever in the belly of a whale.
They put him by the window, so he could 'enjoy the view'. The
moment the plane was aloft, he was again transported back to

415

Limesbridge on a warm June evening as a heavenly scent of flowers
overwhelmed him.
'What would you like to drink, Mr Belvedon?' asked a steward.
'We'd like two glasses of champagne,' said Sophy's sweet,
trembling voice from the seat beside him.

416

Despite the beauty of the March morning. Rosemary Pulborough
was in low spirits. Not only had Forbes, her gardener, pruned all
the buds off the viburnum intended to smell sweetly under the
kitchen window, but he had also mowed away the pink and black
fritillaries she'd been nurturing on the edge of the lawn.
To add to her misery, David was catting around more than ever,
and, even more lowering, the froideur between him and Anthea
had clearly melted. Anthea was once more imparting advance
information to Rosemary about Melanie's second baby,
which was due any minute, and more painfully this morning
about Si Greenbridge, who was evidently in London and had
popped into the Pulborough yesterday.
'The busiest people always find time,' had said Anthea smugly.
David had been so incensed by his public humiliation when
Alizarin had won the British Portrait Award last month that he had
whisked Rosemary away from the Dorchester before she had
had time to say goodbye to Si. As Si hadn't been in touch since
then, she became more and more convinced she had imagined the
pressure of his leg and the warmth of his huge hand closing over
hers. She had clipped out of Hello a photograph of David, herself
and Si, with his arm proudly round her shoulders, at the
Awards, and tucked it into her notecase, behind her credit cards
and snapshots of the cats and Melanie's first baby. Her sole act of
defiance had been to cut David out of the picture.
David was forced to be nice to her at the moment because
from April as High Sheriff he would need a wife. The prospect of
Juggling into coats and skirts and little black dresses for an eternity
of engagements depressed her even more.
She must pull herself together. It was past eleven and she was

417

still in her dressing gown. Rubbing in moisturizer in front of the
bathroom mirror, she wished the hand running down over her
face and neck was Si's instead of her own, stroking her as tenderly
as outside the first acid-green criss-cross leaves of the weeping
willows were caressing the white sweep of daffodils.
' "Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the milky
way",' murmured Rosemary, so lost in sad thought she didn't at
first hear the telephone.
'Rose-wary?' Only one voice emphasized the second syllable. 'This is Si.' Then, when she couldn't speak for joy: 'Si
Greenbridge.'
'How lovely!'
There was an indignant squawk as Rosemary's knees buckled,
and she collapsed on Abednego, who'd been stretched out on the
window seat enjoying the sunshine.
'Sorry, darling.'
'Is someone with you?'
'Only one of my cats.'
'Are you free for lunch?'
'Golly, yes.'
'I'll pick you up.'
'No,' squeaked Rosemary, catching sight of Lady Belvedon
gathering narcissi next door, 'Anthea's home.'
She kicked herself. How presumptuous to tfiink Si was planning
anything clandestine. Then her spirits soared as he said, 'Christ,
we don't want to give that bitch any ammunition. Where's somewhere
safe and quiet for lunch near you?'
Rosemary's mind went as blank as the untroubled blue sky
outside. Finally she stammered, 'There's the Grasshopper and
Sixpence on the Limesbridge-Rutminster road.'
'See you there, a quarter after one. If I'm a few seconds late,
order a bottle ofKrug.'
Switching off the telephone. Rosemary threw her head back,
breathing deeply, clutching herself in ecstasy.
After that, everything went wrong. She had just showered and
washed her hair, and sent Abednego scurrying out of the bathroom
by spraying on deodorant, when Green Jean, that enemy of
aerosols, arrived lobbying for jumble and gasping for herbal tea.
Green Jean was followed by the doctor's wife collecting for the
Lifeboats, accompanied by her fox terrier, who promptly treed
Shadrach. By the time Rosemary had coaxed Shadrach down, her
un-blow-dried hair was sticking out wildly like a greying sunflower.
A sassy new bra gave her a good shape, but if one rammed one's
breasts together over a certain age, one's cleavage wrinkled like an

418
Australian drought area. Her body hadn't seen the sun since last
September but gardening in all weathers had left a satsuma net of
red veins on her pale cheeks.
You're a very unattractive property, she told herself despairingly,
an old wreck coming out of an old rectory.
At least she had a terribly pretty frilly cream silk shirt to wear with
her brown velvet suit. But her hands were shaking so much that
she pricked her finger while pinning on her cornelian brooch, and
bled all over the cream silk, so she had to wear her dreary grey
poplin instead. By the time she'd picked a bunch of daffodils and
polyanthus for Si, it was twelve-forty-five.
Rushing outside, she found her car battery flat. She was being
punished for sinful intent. The only answer was to take David's vast
new Range Rover. She felt so plain she couldn't bear to glance in
the driving mirror. But as she gingerly manoeuvred the great
double-decker tank along the twisted Larkshire lanes, it was impossible
not to feel optimistic. The cottages were wearing plumes
of yellow forsythia in their hats. Flocks of gulls, like outsize snowflakes,
followed the tractors over the rich brown earth. Primroses,
anemones and celandines shining like little suns crowded the
banks on either side of the road. St George's horse was off to
the races.
'Going to see Si, going to see Si, going to see Si,' sang Rosemary
to the last movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
But drawing up outside the Grasshopper and Sixpence, she gave
a moan of horror as she realized she'd picked a motel. What would
Si think? Inside, presumably because everyone was busy humping
away in the surrounding bungalows, the self-service dining room
was deserted. A bored-looking waitress, who occasionally lifted a
silver lid and gave some sickly yellow chicken marengo a stir, had
clearly never heard of Krug.
There was no sign of Si. Catching sight of General Anaesthetic
and his wife driving decorously past in their ancient Rover,
followed by a furiously hooting convoy of motorists, Rosemary
collapsed into a chair in the foyer, taking refuge behind the
Financial Times.
Then she jumped out of her skin as on page three she found a
belligerent Si glaring out at her, looking far too busy to take
anyone out to lunch. 'King Midas', said the headline.
'So sorry I'm late.'
Through the swing doors came a grim-faced Si, navy-blue coat
collar turned up against a jaw already blackened with stubble.
'I'm so sorry,' began Rosemary, then, lowering her voice in case
she hurt the feelings of the staff, 'that I chose such a sleaze hole.'

419

She was so nervous as she leapt to her feet, she overturned her
bag, which spewed out its contents. Next moment Si was on the
floor beside her. As he retrieved a little paperback of Matthew
Arnold's poems and her notecase from under the table, the photograph
of them both at the British Portrait Awards fluttered out. A
smile of such delight softened Si's heavy features.
'I clipped the same picture. I cut out David too,' he said.
As they were both on their hands and knees, and her mouth,
open in amazement, was so near his, he kissed it very gently, then,
edging nearer, extremely hard.
'Just adore your new hair-do,' he added, ruffling her hair.
'It's a hair-don't, actually. Oh Si, I've only driven past and never
noticed it was a motel... I don't want you to think . . .'
'Best idea you ever had.' Si squeezed her hands. 'How hungry
are you?'
'Not very.'
'Nor am I. I'll get a room, and we'll have a bottle and some
sandwiches.' Then, seeing the terror in her eyes: 'It's OK, we can
just talk and smooch. No big deal.'

Si was overjoyed with his bunch of flowers, unwrapping them from
their silver foil and putting them in a tooth mug beside the vast
bed. This had a headboard like the console of some touring opera,
complete with telephone, lights to dim, air conditioner, music
controls, levitating television set, electric window blinds and a
button to make the bed do the humping if you were feeling tired.
An ice bucket holding a chilled bottle of Moet came up through a
trap door.
Rosemary got the giggles and wanted to try everything as they
talked about Tiger Woods's swing, Si's new horses and his airline
company, and, best of all, in between lingering kisses, how they had
missed each other. Si was so huge and hunky, he made her feel by
comparison as fragile as Anthea.
By the second glass, he had most of her clothes off and in the
rose-coloured lighting, her flesh didn't seem nearly so pleated,
particularly when they snuggled under the sheets, and he stroked
her and told her how pretty her body was until she stopped
trembling.
'The first time I saw you, I thought what afritefly attractive man.
What did you think?' asked Rosemary.
'That's the woman I'd like to spend the rest of my life with.'
'Oh Si.' Rosemary buried her blushing face in the pillow. 'I'm
so plain.'
'You're beautiful,' snapped Si.

420
Then, rolling her towards him so he could look into her face: 'I
had a pretty rough childhood, my mom drank and knocked me
about, there wasn't any money, but my dad promised me a puppy,
and after a lot of nagging he took me to the Dogs' Home. There,
amid all the din and barking, I saw a brown crossbreed, about nine
or ten I guess, whom no-one wanted. She'd been there for months,
her despair and loneliness was palpable' - smiling down at
Rosemary, Si caressed her cheek with the back of his hand - 'I said,
I'll have that one".'
'I called her Sunny, and she lived for another eight years. She
was the sweetest, best, most loving dog I ever had, and never
stopped wagging her tail. She made my adolescence bearable.' Si
couldn't speak for the moment. 'The day she died was the blackest
of my life. I've been looking for another Sunny ever since.'
'Woof, woof,' muttered Rosemary, to hide how touched she was,
turning her head to kiss his fingers.
'And once she was loved,' added Si softly, 'she became
beautiful.'
Rosemary couldn't believe that a man normally in such a hurry
seemed to have all the time in the world to kiss her breasts, her
tummy button, even her chilblained toes, and all the way up
her thighs.
'Sorry it's taking so long,' she muttered, rigid with tension.
'Hush, honey, relax.'
Wearing her dark forest of pubic hair as a moustache, Si looked
more like a bandit than ever.
His chunky gold rings grazed her breasts as he caressed her.
I mustn't fake, she kept telling herself. This is the really real
thing, I mustn't.
'Oh! Oh! Oooooh! Oh Si!' she cried as suddenly she toppled
over the cliff into the lovely warm ocean, shuddering in wonder
and amazement.
But soon she was panicking again. It was clearly her turn to give
Si pleasure. Feeling dreadfully amateurish and out of practice, she
began licking him, as nervously and surreptitiously as a child
warned not to accept lollipops from strangers. But soon nerves
gave way to joy at his obvious delight.
'That is so good, honey, but I want to come inside you.'
'I don't think you'll be able to get inside,' confessed Rosemary.
'My gynae says, after a certain age, women close up if they aren't
used, like rusty old gates, padlocked and entwined with goose
grass.'
'That's bullshit. I'm so fired up, I'll probably shoot before I get
inside anyway.'

421

They were both wrong.
Afterwards, Si ordered another bottle.
'What are you doing?' he asked, as Rosemary examined herself
in the mirror.
'Seeing if I've turned to gold, Mr Midas. I could use my clitoris
as a torch on dark nights.'
'You are not to take the piss.' Pulling her back into bed and into
the crook of his arm, Si asked idly, 'What's happening to all those
mad Belvedons?'
'Oh, masses. Jonathan's still trying to dig up dirt for the court
case in Paris, Berlin and Vienna I think. Jupiter's frightfully excited
about his new baby and is treating Hanna like a discovered
Leonardo.'
'What about the blind one?'
'Alizarin? He's had his op. Jonathan, Sienna and Sophy were all
with him. They've got the tumour out. Now he's got to bite his nails
to see if his sight comes back.' Rosemary sighed. 'Such a tragedy.
Evidently that snake Zachary Ansteig had the temerity to send
Alizarin a basket of fruit. Jonathan chucked it out of the hospital
window. Poor little Sophy was rather cross. She's trying to diet and
could have lived on it for days. Jonathan said it was probably
poisoned like in Snow White.'
'What about the deranged daughter?'
'Sienna? She got off with a six-month suspended. The prosecution
tried to prove she took the Raphael because she knew it
was looted. But she clearly had no idea and stood up to cross-
questioning extremely well.'
'Lucky she was tried in the UK.' Si filled up Rosemary's glass.
'They really hammer you in the States for smuggling art. How's the
old boy?'
'Desperately missing his picture.'
Leaning on his elbow, Si ran a finger down Rosemary's flat
tummy. 'How did he acquire it in the first place?'
'Found it in some burning chateau during the war. He was in
the Larkshire Light Infantry. My cousin Nicky was in the same regiment
before they amalgamated with the Rutshire Yeomanry. Leo
Cooper published an awfully good regimental history. Anyway,
Raymond and his platoon took a village and found the nearby
chateau ablaze from a direct hit.'
'Where was it?'
'Somewhere in Normandy. It was called the Chateau des
Rossignols, because the nightingales sang so sweetly there. After
die war it was rebuilt and turned into a hotel called the Coq d'Or,
radier like yours.' Rosemary put a fond hand on Si's penis.

422
'We stayed there as a foursome,' she went on, 'after Anthea
married Raymond. The village was called Bonfleuve. Actually, it
wasn't very bon.' Rosemary shivered. 'I caught David kissing
Anthea behind a fig tree, which rather spoilt things. Raymond
never found out, thank God. I anaesthetized myself with lots of
calvados.'
'Poor baby.' Si's hand was creeping upwards, finger circling a
tawny nipple. 'And Raymond told you about discovering the
Raphael?'
'Evidently, he burst into the chateau, discovered some dying
Nazi, gave him a glass of water and a last glimpse of the Raphael,
and was given it in return as a keepsake. Awfully romantic,
Raymond would have carried the Nazi out of the chateau if he
hadn't died. He never dreamed the picture belonged to Zac's
family; such a ghastly coincidence. It's all so long ago. If the Nazi
gave it to Raymond, surely it's his?'
'I wouldn't know. It's certainly going to cost them a fortune in
legal fees. I love you,' said Si jubilantly. 'How about a replay?'

Rosemary adored the way Si refused to let her drive home, following
in the Mere which he was also too drunk to drive. Goodness
knows what his poor chauffeur, who had to drive Rosemary and
the Range Rover up to the gates of the Old Rectory, thought to
have this giggling, garrulous granny beside him.
The rush hour had come and gone. The yellow houses of
Limesbridge looked appropriately flushed and post-coital in the
last red rays of the sun. Thrushes, robins and blackbirds were
giving thanks for such a lovely day.
Once home, reality reasserted itself. There were eight messages
on Rosemary's machine. Before she had time to listen to any of
them, the telephone rang.
'We've been trying to trace you all afternoon.' It was a smug,
delighted Anthea. 'You forgot the Limesbridge Improvement
meeting. I had to take the chair. David and Geraldine turned up.
We thrashed out details of the Borochova Competition' - Anthea
was clearly so pleased to have David back, she was actually now pro
the idea - 'and David's going to be so busy with his extra High
Sheriff functions, they want me to take over as Treasurer. "Because
you're a treasure," David said, which made General Anaesthetic
awfully jealous.'
Which means a lot of lunches for Anthea and David, reflected
Rosemary, and for the first time in twenty-six years she didn't mind.
'Gerry's such a poppet,' continued Anthea, 'she wants to throw
the competition wide open.'

423

Like my legs, thought Rosemary and, putting the receiver carefully
on the window seat, swayed off to feed the frantically mewing
and complaining cats. When she picked up the telephone five
minutes later Anthea was still chattering.
'We've scrapped your idea of a Galena Museum. David wants to
move his mother into the barn.'
' 'To keep herself warm and hide her head under her wing, poor
thing,"' sang Rosemary and rang off.
All the same, she was sweating. How could she have gone missing
for nearly six hours, pinching David's car when he and Geraldine
were in the area? Had he noticed it was missing? She didn't care.
She was just knocking back a glass of Sancerre when a spluttering
David rang.
'How could you forget a Limesbridge Improvement meeting?
Geraldine came down specially. And I've just had a furious call
from Larkshire Life, they were supposed to be interviewing you
about being a High Sheriff's wife at two o'clock and found no-one
at home.'
'Sorry, I forgot.'
'How can you be so self-centred? Ring them at once and grovel.
And I suppose you've forgotten Casey's coming to stay on Friday
to paint my portrait.'
Rosemary was defiantly pouring herself a second glass when the
telephone rang yet again. It was Emerald.
'Can I ask you a colossal favour, Mrs Pulborough? David's just
told me about the Borochova Memorial Competition. I'd so like to
enter and do something to please the Belvedons to make up a
little for wrecking their lives, particularly Jonathan's.' Her voice
trembled. 'I want to do a sculpture of Galena and try to capture
some other charisma.'
'What a good idea.'
'I'd ask Anthea, but I don't think she'd be too keen, and I know
how much Galena liked you. Could I come and pick your brains?'
'Of course,' said a blushing Rosemary. 'I've got loads of photos,
so has Lily, I'm coming up to London next week. Just let me look.'
Reaching for her bag, tugging at the crimson satin book mark,
she opened her diary and nearly dropped the telephone, for across
a whole week, Si had scrawled, 'I adore you, don't ever change.'
'Actually, I could make it this Friday,' she told Emerald. To hell
with Casey, he and David could fend for themselves. 'Let's treat
ourselves and see if we can get into the Ivy.'

As she drew the landing curtains, Anthea glanced into the Old
Rectory garden and saw Rosemary waltzing round the lawn with a

large ginger cat in her arms. The silly old thing must be going
potty.

' "And then my heart with pleasure fills,'" sang Rosemary, '"And
dances with the daffodils."'

General Anaesthetic, still angry that David had hi-jacked the
Borochova Memorial meeting, popped into the Goat in Boots for
a glass of beer and to admire the nude of Sienna on the wall. He
found the locals chuntering over the fact that David Pulborough's
new Range Rover had been parked outside the Grasshopper and
Sixpence throughout the lunch hour.
'Talk about shittin' on your own doorstep.'
'Man's a bounder,' agreed the General happily.

425

As neither Zac nor the Belvedons were prepared to settle, the case
deciding Pandora's fate was listed for just after Easter on the fourth Tuesday in April with the Mr Justice Caradoc Willoughby Evans
presiding. Several judges had regretfully refused the case, feeling
they had enjoyed too many evenings carousing in the Garrick with
Raymond to provide impartial judgement.
Heartened that Sienna had not been sent to prison, that
Alizarin, albeit still blind, had survived his horrific operation and
that Hanna in early April had given birth to a beautiful son,
Viridian Edmund, with whom the entire family was besotted, the
Belvedons perhaps didn't take quite enough trouble amassing
evidence for their case.
They were also relying on their smooth-tongued QC Sampson
Brunning. The only rival to the revered and renowned George
Carman at whipping rabbits out of hats, Sampson had grown
famous getting Belvedons off everything from hitting fat critics
through glass doors to, more recently, smuggling Raphaels. They
were in no doubt Sampson would triumph again. Sampson was in
no doubt either - if Sienna didn't shoot them all in the foot.
Goodness knows, he stormed to Jupiter, how he had kept that
opinionated, slovenly, ungrateful little tramp out of gaol. In the
middle of her trial, Sienna had even given the judge a lecture on
the rights of animals, comparing their fate to far worse than the
Holocaust. Mr Justice Willoughby Evans was known to have a fondness
for pretty, feminine, agreeable women. Sienna must bloody
well learn to be polite.
Sienna had already produced a written statement for the civil
case giving her version of events and hoped the matter would end
there. Sampson wasn't remotely surprised when Zac's side didn't

426

accept this version and expressed a desire to cross-examine her in
court.
'What are they doing this for?' demanded Jupiter.
'They clearly don't believe the story Sienna told last time, that
she had no idea Pandora was looted. Looking like she does, they
probably think she nicked it for drug money.'
'Oh come off it, Sampson. Will Sienna have to show up?'
'Course she will, or it'll look ten times worse. She'll just have to
keep a civil if studded tongue in her head.'

Despite her air of truculent indifference, Sienna had been terrified
that she might go to prison last time and was panic-stricken at
the prospect of being grilled in court again.
On the Tuesday before Easter, she had sulkily agreed to lunch
with Rupert Campbell-Black at the Ritz, and rolled up twenty
minutes late, looking deliberately awful. Her paint-stained hair
hung in rats' tails, a shapeless sleeveless black top showed off her
tattooed arms, black baggy combats wrinkled over dusty trainers.
Out of the big dining-room windows could be seen the first pale
olive green leaves of the plane trees in the park. Their innocent
freshness was an unhappy contrast to Sienna's sickly grey face and
the indigo shadows beneath eyes reddened as much by tears as by
working all night. A drastic weight loss made her face armour of
rings and studs the more obtrusive.
Rupert, equally fed up at having to come up from Penscombe
on such a lovely day, was only there because his brother Adrian as
well as Jonathan had begged him.
'She's a really good kid, Rupert, she needs help.'
Needs a bath for a start, thought Rupert sourly.
All round the room, people who'd recognized him were
nudging each other, speculating whether this was another illegit
come out of the woodwork.
'What d'you want to drink?'
'Water, I can't stay long.'
'Don't be fatuous.' Rupert ordered another whisky for himself
and a glass of champagne for Sienna, who shook her shaggy head
when the waiter offered her first a menu and then a basket of
bread.
'I'm not hungry. What are you staring at?' She scowled at Rupert.
'You. I thought Alizarin was the one sleeping rough.'
Sienna glared up at the ceiling, on which were painted garlands,
musical instruments and happy little pink clouds floating across a
turquoise sky.
After a long pause, Rupert said, 'The more I look at your

427

brother's pictures, the more I like them. I'm supposed to be selling
them on to Adrian, but I'm tempted to hang on to the lot.'
'In case his sight conies back, and his pictures soar in value.'
'You really are a bitch, aren't you? I never dreamt I'd feel sorry
for Anthea, having you as a stepdaughter.'
But as he waved for the bill, Rupert heard a sob, and saw a tear
was glittering beside the diamond in the hollow of Sienna's nose.
'You shouldn't cry,' he said, not unkindly, 'saltwater rusts metal,
like wrecks at the bottom of the sea.'
'I'm s-s-s-o-orry. I don't like know what gets into me.'
'It's OK,' then, as the waiter arrived: 'You'd better make that a
bottle rather than a glass.'
Waiters, used over the years to Mr Campbell-Black lunching
with tearful women, obligingly rearranged the seating so he and
Sienna had their backs to the room, which was transfixed with
interest.
'D'you think he's got her pregnant?' hissed the editor of the
Taller to the Chilean Ambassador's wife.
In between sobs. Sienna told Rupert of her terrors at appearing
in court again.
'I know Zac will produce some barrister who'll tie me in knots.
I acted up so much last time, Sampson's convinced I'm a liability.'
Rupert was being so kind that after the third glass and some
delectable Provencal vegetables in a tomato coulis, she was telling.
him everything.
'How on earth did Zac manage to photograph the Raphael in
the Blue Tower?' asked Rupert.
Sienna's eyes darted round the trees of Green Park for lip- reading squirrels.
'He shagged Anthea.'
'Christ! He must have wanted the Raphael back. Tell Zac's
lawyer that if he gives you a hard time.'
'I can't, it would crucify Dad. He's awfully frail at the moment.'
Rupert looked at her meditatively.
'Can I give you several words of advice? If you want to win that
case for your father, get that hardware off your face. Frankly, you
look like a scrap yard.'
'I'm like making a statement,' snarled Sienna. 'You're just out
of touch.'
'I'm sure.' Rupert was unmoved. 'But people my age and older,
which includes Mr Justice Willoughby Evans, find it absolute hell.'
'Why should I conform to please some old judge?'
'Because you want the Raphael back, and because your father's
been hurt enough.'

428

'That's rich coming from you. You and Mum hurt him enough
in the old days.'
There was a pause. He will walk out now, thought Sienna in
despair. Longing overcame her.
'Did you really like Mum?'
'I adored her. She was irresistible, uncompromising, outrageous,
sensational in bed - because she didn't give a damn. Painting
always mattered more. I was making it in showjumping, everything
came second to winning and the horses. We were well matched, the
eiehteen-year age gap didn't seem to matter at all. We enjoyed each
other without clinging.'
Lucky Mum, thought Sienna.
As the waiter put two plates of fettucini with sliced truffles in
front of them, Rupert wished he could tell her some of the pranks
he and Galena had got up to.
Sienna picked up a fork. 'Goodness, I am hungry after all. You
gave Mum a Jack Russell called Shrimpy.'
'So I did.' He certainly couldn't tell her who Shrimpy had been
named after.
'Why did you and she break up?'
'I married, and tried to behave myself for about a week. In a way
we were too alike, both damaged by our childhoods. Hers under
the Communists was far worse.'
'Like Zac's,' murmured Sienna, thinking aloud, and then
flushing. 'He's too damaged by his past to commit himself.'
'Is he attractive?'
'Kind of, not my type really, but he's sexy and dangerous.' Her
sudden smile lifted her sullen face, showing off wonderful teeth.
'A bit like you.'
Rupert smirked and filled up her glass.
'This is so divine,' sighed Sienna, 'I'm sure I shouldn't be eating
truffles.'
'It's a fungus.'
'Think of poor pigs having to hunt for it.'
'They enjoy it, like foxhounds,' added Rupert slyly.
'Oh, shut up.' Colour flooded Sienna's face. 'When you made
love to my mother, did you notice the Raphael on the wall?'
'Frankly, I didn't notice anything except your mother. Although
she once said I had the same Greek nose as Pride.'
'I wonder if any other other lovers clocked it and tipped offZac.
Oh God . . .' At the thought of seeing him, Sienna put her face in
her hands. Rupert found the paint-stained bitten nails oddly
touching.
If you took that chainmail off your face,' he said gently, 'you'd

429

be much prettier than Galena - and much more likely to bring the
Raphael home.'
'D'you think we'll win?'
'Yeah. Everyone loves your father so much, he can do no wrong
in a jury's eyes, and Sampson Brunning, however much you dislike
him, is ace at springing surprises.'

Rupert's optimism, however, was misplaced. The conduct of civil
cases had changed due to reforms brought in recently. The whole
procedure had been speeded up. Witnesses had to produce several
weeks before the trial - written statements along with any
relevant documents, birth certificates, photographs, invoices,
authentications, for the other side to pick over.
After this, if neither claimant nor defendant were prepared to
settle, as Zac and the Belvedons were not, the case would go to
court in front not of a jury, but a single judge, who would have been
given every statement and document to peruse, so he was clued up
on all the material on which each side intended to rely.
Once in court, apart from calling the occasional witness to
provide background, each side would be allowed only to cross- examine and try and blow huge holes in each other's witness
statements. This meant that immediately the case was under way,
the producing of dramatic new evidence, Sampson's whisking
rabbits out of hats, to unnerve the opposition, was forbidden. It
would only be permitted if the side in question could prove that
this evidence had only just come to light, for example, a hitherto
untraceable witness emerging from the woodwork.
This was supposed to be a fairer system. But for the Belvedons,
it meant that Raymond could no longer wow an already well-
disposed jury, nor Sampson spring surprises. It also favoured the
side with the larger financial resources. Zac together with Si's army
of lawyers had spent months producing watertight evidence. In
retaliation, a desperately impoverished Jonathan had been single-
handedly ferreting round in dusty foreign archives, certain that
Zac's evidence didn't stack up, promising but failing to provide a
breakthrough.
This had resulted in a terrible row over the telephone on the eve
of the trial, with a maddened Jupiter accusing Jonathan, who was
now in Paris, of living up to his nickname of Sloth.
'You've just wasted everyone's time getting stoned in the capitals
of Europe.'
'Everything's shut for Easter,' yelled back Jonathan, 'I can't get
into the public record office until tomorrow.'

430

'It's too fucking late, the case starts tomorrow. You've failed us
yet again.'
Hearing Jupiter crashing down the receiver, Raymond
retreated trembling to the church next door, taking refuge in the
family pew. Despite his arthritis, he had no truck with perching
on the edge of the seat. Kneeling on the pale blue hassock Anthea
had embroidered with the Belvedon crest, he prayed for the
return of Alizarin's sight, for Baby Viridian to allow Jupiter and
Hanna a little sleep, for Dicky and Dora who were spitting to be
missing the court case, and for Sienna, Emerald and most of all
Jonathan to find people to love rather than each other. Almost
worse than the loss of the Raphael had been the absence over the
last six months of his favourite son, whose life he knew he had
ruined.
Raymond also asked God not very optimistically to curb his wife's
spending. Aware she might not be able to afford clothes afterwards,
Anthea had bought new outfits from Lindka Cierach for the
expected duration of the trial; she was now upstairs trying on hats.
Raymond sighed. He dreaded being cross-examined. He was
getting so vague. He loathed leaving his burgeoning garden at its
loveliest and particularly Grenville. It had been different in the
days when Visitor's reassuring presence had kept Grenville calm.
Visitor had so looked forward to Easter - all that chocolate.
Great vases of wild cherry were already scattering their white
petals on the church floor. Bluebells picked by Lily were shrivelling
and fading. Like me, thought Raymond. Perhaps the case
would only last a few days.
'"Oh God of battles!, Steel my soldiers' hearts,"' prayed
Raymond. 'Bring my Raphael home and Hope back into my life.'
He smiled slightly as he noticed the word 'Tits', which Jonathan
had carved on the pew with a compass during a boring sermon.
Creakily rising to his feet, he heard a rhythmic thudding. Grenville,
having tracked his master down, was banging his bony tail against the church door. Raymond was less able to identify the sound of
clanking from the Old Rectory. Had he peered over the wall, he
would have seen David Pulborough marching up and down practising
walking with a High Sheriffs sword.
The sun setting behind the wood had left an apricot flush along
the horizon: an exquisite backdrop for all the differing greens
of the young leaves. Admiring the sky-blue blur of forget-menots
round the water trough, hearing a robin singing in the poplars,
Raymond breathed in a heady smell of balsam. He longed to seek
solace in his garden, but wearily remembered the hundreds of

431

letters from fans, wishing him luck for tomorrow, that needed
answering.

Up in London, having restlessly roamed the streets all day, Zac
watched the same sunset as Raymond. Guiltily aware that he only
turned to God in times of fear or anguish, he pulled a rumpled
black velvet capel out of his suitcase and set out for the synagogue
in Great Portland Street. He was exhausted because he and Si's
lawyers had been closeted for weeks closing every loophole in his
evidence. He was sulking because he'd wanted to spend the
weekend skiing high up in the Alps to clear his head and work off
his aggression, but his barrister, Naomi Cohen, had put her Gucci-
clad foot down.
'A tan'll make you look too rich.'
For the same reason, she'd ordered him to put aside his expensive
clothes for his court appearance tomorrow, and buy a tacky
off-the-peg suit in polyester pinstripe to wear with a cheap white
nylon shirt and sickly yellow tie, like some middle-management
geek. He must also leave off his Rolex and arrive in a hired
Vauxhall, rather than Si's helicopter, or even Si's Mere. Si,
although closely overseeing events, had meekly caved in when
Naomi had suggested he stay away from court in the early stages.
'IfSi rocks up, you won't appear destitute, for Christ's sake,' she
told Zac.
Sienna would laugh her head off, thought Zac furiously. Why did
she keep drifting back into his thoughts like bonfire smoke?
Evening prayers were drawing to a close as he entered the synagogue,
which was filled with men, heads bowed, murmuring in
accompaniment to the strong voice of the Rabbi. Women seldom
attended evening prayers, and, at all times, had to sit up in the
gallery or behind a screen so as not to distract the men. Sienna
would never agree to being sidelined like that.
The Rabbi had launched into the Kaddish: the beautiful mem- i
orial prayer for the dead, intoned at the end of all services. So many
dead to remember, Zac felt weighed down by their expectation -
Reuben; Benjamin and Ruth; Leah and Jacob; his grandparents,
Tobias and Sarah, his father and all his family and above all
Rebecca, his hollow-eyed mother, as utterly emaciated as any
death-camp victim before she died. Tomorrow, like a ghost army,
they'd be willing him on as he rode into battle.
I will avenge you, he promised. Please God, let me bring home
the Raphael.
He must harden his heart, knowing it would break Sienna's. Her
howl of anguish when they dragged Pandora away in New York had

432

haunted him like his mom's imagined scream when her own
mother was dragged off to Auschwitz. In his wallet was a London
Times clipping of Sienna's trial with a photograph of the defiant
defendant in torn jeans, flashing her tattoos. He was so relieved
she'd not gone to prison. He couldn't bear to think of that free
spirit in chains.
Why did she get under his skin?
Dear God, bring me to my senses, prayed Zac.
The Rabbi was nearing the end of the Kaddish. 'God is our
hope,'joined in the deep voices of the congregation in Hebrew,
'Let us put our trust in him and strive for the coming of the day,
when his sovereignty will be acknowledged and his will obeyed
throughout the world.'
They were still chanting as he left. He had promised to take
Naomi, his barrister, out to dinner. Her parents had fled from
Germany during the war. She had been born and called to the Bar
in England, but half her family, like his, had been murdered by
the Nazis; her legacy, a burning desire to right hideous wrongs.
Although she was an expert on restituted art, and had already
clawed back several Old Masters from museums for Jewish clients,
she had never before handled anything so huge or so public. Zac
appreciated that if barristers were any good they got impossibly
strung up before a case.
All that was left of the sunset was a dark red glow in the west
anticipating the blood that would be shed when they joined battle
there tomorrow. Naomi was very good looking, but he hoped she
wouldn't expect him to make love to her tonight to ease her
tension.

433

At nine-thirty a.m. on a sunny Easter Tuesday, Raphael's Pandora
was packed into an air-conditioned silk-lined box, loaded into a
police van and with an escort of motorbikes and police cars driven
ten miles from a warehouse in Searston through narrow lanes softened
with cow parsley and the first green foliage of spring.
Her destiny was the already overflowing crown court in
Larkminster. Arriving early, Sienna had hidden herself high up in
the public gallery. She had been commissioned to produce daily
sketches of the chief participants by the Telegraph, who she was sure
had only chosen her because Jonathan and Alizarin weren't available.
Her hands were trembling so much at the prospect of seeing
Zac, she could hardly draw.
The court lay below, an intensely theatrical cross between opera
house, chapel and classroom. Dark polished rows descended like
an amphitheatre, divided by crimson carpeted aisles. Directly
opposite, the bench rose like a huge oak counter. Behind it reared
up the judge's imposing red-leather chair, and behind that a
carved snarling lion and a sleekly snorting unicorn hoisted up the
Royal Coat of Arms, their paws and hooves obscuring the motto:
'Honi soit qui mal y pense.' 'Let shame come to him who thinks
evil.'
In front of the bench sat a clerk and ushers in black gowns
reading documents, checking the tape machine which would
record every bitter word. In front of the barristers' rows was a big
table, strewn with more law books, brightly coloured ring binders,
and briefs tied up in cyclamen-pink ribbon. Above, like huge ash
buds, hung microphones. The press had squeezed themselves into
rows to the left. Facing them to the right like a brass play pen 434

which would be needed to contain Zac, thought Sienna sourly
- was the witness box.
Sienna's brooding was interrupted by a great cheer from the
huge crowd, who had assembled in the sunshine to welcome
Raymond and sadly notice how pulled down the dear soul was
looking. Anthea by contrast looked perky and pretty in a fuchsia
pink suit and mauve striped beret from David Shilling.
Once inside, they sat down in the row behind their QC, Sampson
Brunning, and his team. Sampson, who had sleek fair hair, a high
colour and hard roving blue eyes, was wearing a square-collared
black silk gown, and a wig tipped over the beetling blond brows of
a man who means business.
In the barristers' robing room, he had clocked Naomi Cohen's
full scarlet lips and glossy black hair flopping from a side parting
over proud pale gold aquiline features. He had also noticed her
slender ankles and swelling bosom beneath her white-frilled high- necked shirt and black gown.
She had been distinctively frosty, probably nerves at squaring up
to such a QC as himself, thought Sampson smugly. Like himself,
she and Zac were staying at the Black Swan in Searston. He would
probably bed her on night three, reflected Sampson, when her
crush on her moody tormented client had subsided.
Ah, here was Jupiter rushing in at the last moment, the only
sensible Belvedon in Sampson's book. Sienna was a mouthy
urchin, Jonathan, who'd failed to produce any of the promised
evidence, a useless cokehead.
Sliding into the row beside his stepmother, Jupiter, despite his
air of cool, was worried stiff about losing the Raphael, which was
now acting as collateral with the bank, who would probably foreclose
if Zac won the case. Raymond still hadn't paid back the
£85,000 to the insurance company and God knew what the costs
would be. Jupiter was late because he'd been viewing a sale in
the nearby auction rooms, where, in a dark corner, he'd spied a
possible 'sleeper', which in art world jargon meant an undetected
masterpiece. He prayed David Pulborough would be too busy
High SherifiRng to view as well. Surreptitiously he switched on his
mobile to check on Hanna and little Viridian, who was now sleeping
peacefully, after keeping them up all night.
Interest rumbled through the court as Zac and Naomi Cohen
walked down the aisle and, totally ignoring the hissing Belvedons,
turned into the pew on the left. With a shaking hand, Naomi undid
the cyclamen-pink ribbon tying up her brief and, spurning the
water jug provided by the court, produced a bottle ofEvian.

435

Trust Zac to roll up with a designer lawyer, thought Sienna
furiously. Trust ghastly, pompous, sleek, lascivious Sampson
Brunning, who so disapproves of me, to gaze at Naomi with all the
delight of an otter who's just inherited a fish shop.
Savagely Sienna began to sketch them both, but her chalk
seemed to take control of her hand and draw Zac instead. Not even
cheap shiny suits or cadmium-yellow ties could dim his prowling
beauty.
Everyone in the Belvedon row giggled and edged up as Aunt Lily
clattered down the aisle. Ignoring the 'No refreshments in court'
sign, she'd brought a flask of brandy and a two-pound jar of glacier
mints. They must keep a seat for Rosemary who was bringing a
picnic later.
Restlessly, Zac undid the button of his awful shirt and loosened
his even more awful tie.
'Do it up,' hissed Naomi.
'Museums quail at that girl's approach,' murmured Somerford
Keynes, who was taking up at least two seats in the press box, and
who'd been kept very busy, as he was telling David Lee, the editor
of Art Review, authenticating the Raphael with colleagues from the
Frick and the National Gallery.
'Ah, here it is.'
As Pandora was unpacked from her box, releasing God knew
what new evils, Raymond quickly suppressed a sob. Aunt Lily put a
gnarled hand on his knee. Sienna swore as tears fell on her
sketchpad. Even Jupiter had a lump in his throat.
Everyone in court craned their necks to catch a glimpse as two
policemen propped the picture on a red leather bench at the back
of the court, with more policemen guarding it on every door. Even
at a distance the clear glowing colours had a radiance. Like King
Cophetua's beggar maid, thought Jupiter, you could suddenly see
what the fuss was about.
The big hand of the clock edged towards ten o'clock.
'All rise,' cried a pretty blonde usher. Like books crammed too
tightly into their shelves, the court found it hard to struggle to their
feet as Mr Justice Caradoc Willoughby Evans, a long name for a
small, rotund but impressive man in red robes, came through
crimson velvet curtains and was helped into his splendid red
chair. Having breakfasted on bacon and eggs, black pudding,
mushrooms, toast and Oxford marmalade served by a butler in
the judges' lodgings overlooking the park, Willoughby Evans was
delighted by the turnout. A fine profile could always do with
raising.
His wig looks as though a lot of grass has frozen on his head,

436

thought Sienna drawing frantically. And with his plump square
face and twinkling eyes, he looked like Ratty in Wind in the Willows
after thirty years of picnics with Mole. Then she couldn't suppress
a scream of laughter as through the crimson velvet curtains, with
his sword clanking, resplendent in white ruffled shirt, dark blue
tail coat, knee breeches, black hose and with an expression of
great self-importance on his face, came David Pulborough. It was
the High Sheriffs duty to look after visiting High Court judges
and sit in on cases, particularly when they were as fascinating as
this one.
Down below. Lily gave a snort of laughter.
Raymond's shoulders heaved.
'Shut up, both of you,' hissed a grinning Jupiter as David,
smoothing his hair, settled himself into the chair next to
Willoughby Evans, solicitously lowering the judge's microphone
and pouring him a glass of water.
'I'm sure he'll put in a good word for us,' whispered Raymond,
wiping his eyes.
'Like hell he will.' Jupiter tapped Sampson on the shoulder.
'Can't we object? David's bound to drip poison into the judicial
ear, and he'll try and flog him pictures. Willoughby Evans bought
a van de Velde at Christie's six months ago.'
Oblivious of the mirth and bitching around her, Anthea's heart
swelled. Never had David looked so manly. Imagine him whipping
out his sword and challenging Zac to a duel in her defence.
Willoughby Evans immediately asked for the Raphael to be
brought over, then shook his head. No wonder men were prepared
to fight over such beauty. He'd never seen 'so exquisitely fair a face'
as Hope's.
'That must be Sloth and that one Avarice.'
'I've lived next to that picture for thirty years and never known
of its existence,' lied David, leaning forward to have a look. 'Like
the princess in the tower.'

The proceedings kicked off with Naomi opening her case by giving
a short history of the Raphael's journey from Vienna to New
York. The first witness was Detective Inspector Gablecross, who
described briefly how he'd been called to Foxes Court in July, when
the Raphael had been reported stolen, how it had been recovered
at the Commotion Exhibition and was now in possession of
Searston Police who under the Police Property Act would like
guidance on where to dispose of it.
Gablecross was followed by Somerford Keynes. Oozing self- "nportance, only just fitting into the witness box, lecherous little

437

eyes roving in Zac's direction, the great critic dated the picture at
around 1512.
'Painted on panel, the fable of Pandora formed the lid of a box,
on the bottom of which was painted a portrait of Caterina, a proud
beauty whom Raphael was rumoured to have admired unrequitedly.
Hence the lid's caption: "Malum infra latet" or 'Trouble
lies below".' Somerford leered down at Zac.
'In the seventeenth century,' he went on, 'this box consisting of
both pictures belonged to the Roman Cardinal Aldobrandini,
who, during a diplomatic mission to Vienna, presented it to an
Austrian grandee, Count Heinrich von Berthold' - Somerfbrd's
slack lips watered at the thought of such august personages - 'in
whose inventory of 1695 both pictures are listed.'
'Silly Old Master-bator,' grumbled Sienna, who was furiously
sketching Somerford in the witness box as a great pot-bound man-
eating plant.
'The lid,' continued Somerford, 'was probably separated from
its companion picture in the late eighteenth century when both
were transferred from panel to canvas to avoid cracks, woodworm
and susceptibility to temperature changes. Caterina now hangs in
the Abraham Lincoln Museum outside Washington, Pandora
remained in the Berthold family's castle in Hungary for some two
hundred and forty years before being sold to Benjamin Abelman
of Vienna for approximately ten thousand pounds.'
'How much would you now estimate the value of the picture?'
asked Willoughby Evans.
'At auction, it could possibly fetch between eight and ten million
pounds.'
Everyone gasped and craned their necks. The police flanking^
Pandora edged closer. Naomi Cohen adjusted her wig and, havingj
asked permission of Sampson Brunning, gave further background!
to events. ^
'Austria,' she explained, 'was the recipient of Hitler's wors(
hatred, because Linz Academy of Fine Arts had refused him ad*
mission as a student. In 1938, his secret police had therefor!
moved into Vienna, humiliating and arresting Jews and stealing
their treasures. The collection of Benjamin Abelman was one of
the first to go.'
Mr Justice Willoughby Evans, meanwhile, was making notes o
his laptop, proving judges could be computer literate too. What
case! he thought happily. A beautiful picture and some beautift
women to admire if the proceedings got boring. Lady Belvedo;
was a cracker. Being small, Willoughby Evans liked little women,;
and he liked Naomi Cohen's flashing dark eyes. Once she got into

438

her stride, her voice had lost that harsh, high, nervous edge. He
must ask her and Sampson Brunning to dine at the judges'
lodgings later in the week.
Peregrine, Sampson Brunning's junior, also on his laptop and
supposed to be keeping track of the evidence, was playing Solitaire.

Now it was Zac's turn. Naomi smiled up at him reassuringly as he
tugged at his hideous yellow tie before being sworn in on the Old
Testament.
I hate her, thought Sienna, drawing Naomi as a crow in her black
robes.
Zac was so pale that his white knuckles didn't show up as he
gripped the rails of the witness box, but he performed sensationally.
Only rarely, like a bonfire under wet leaves flaring up and
dying down, did he show his aggression and desire for vengeance.
His love for the Raphael, and his desperate need to repossess it,
were obvious to everyone.
With a set face, his deep husky voice quivering with emotion, he
made the court weep as he described how Benjamin was cudgelled
to death because he tried to hide the Raphael, how Benjamin's
seventy-five-year-old wife had been forced to clean pavements with
a toothbrush before her frail body was chucked into a gas oven,
and how heroic Uncle Jacob had sworn he would avenge them by
recovering the Raphael but instead had been murdered by the
Gestapo for smuggling out Jews before he could join his beloved
Leah in the States.
I've heard all this before in the Four Seasons, thought Sienna,
I'm not going to feel sorry for him. Zac, she decided, was not so
much a tiger burning bright, as a narrow-eyed, flaring-nostrilled
unicorn, quite capable of stabbing his horn into anyone's front or
back.
'What d'you think happened to the Raphael after it left your
great-grandfather?' asked Naomi.
'Hitler ordered everything confiscated in Austria to stay in the
same country to stock his new FuhrerMuseum in Linz,' answered
Zac, 'but I figure the Raphael ended up with Goering, an obsessively
avaricious collector, who managed to siphon off many looted
paintings for his own private collection. In the records that
came back from Karinhall, Goering's mansion, after the war, the
^phael was listed as having been taken there. After that, there is
a question mark by its name.
, Goering knew little about painting,' went on Zac disdainfully,
and often handed the most exquisite pictures, not realizing their
e worth, on to his trusted advisors. He had already rejected one

439
Raphael, A Portrait of a Young Man, looted from Cracow, in favour
of a Watteau. Perhaps Hope and Pandora' - Zac pointed across
the rapt court at the picture - 'were not nude or fat enough for the
crude taste of the Reichsmarschall.'
'Have you been back to Vienna?' asked Naomi gently.
'I went back to the family apartment in Singer Strasse and to
Jacob's gallery. They had both been bombed flat and replaced by
modern buildings.' For a moment Zac, white and cavernous-eyed
as an El Greco, couldn't speak. 'All my life, I have had a sense of
loss,' he whispered finally. 'The Raphael is the only part of my past
left.'
A very good morning for Zac.
'Poor boy looks awfully upset,' sighed Raymond.
'Ought to be given a scholarship to RADA,' snorted Aunt Lily.
The judge called an adjournment and bore a clanking David off
to lunch, which made the Belvedons very twitchy.

Outside the court, the photographers and reporters swooped on
Zac.
'Over thirty billion dollars of looted art is still missing,' he was
telling them. 'We are determined to score a moral victory, so our
case will give real support to other Jewish families for their own
claims. Ouch,' he howled as someone kicked him sharply on the
ankle.
'I hope you're going to donate between eight and ten million
pounds to helping their causes,' mocked a voice.
Swinging round in fury, Zac found a ravishingly pretty girl, with ,
a smooth brown face and Marmite-coloured hair drawn back in a
neat French pleat. She was wearing a beautifully cut holly-green
suit. Only the long legs were recognizable. It was Sienna, studless, |
ringless, tattoos concealed, Belvedon diamond hanging from her |
neck, pallor dispatched by three days on the sunbed, posing as a|
cool young Portia for the court, j
'Aren'tyou sorry your side opted to cross-question me?' she said,|
laughing in Zac's face, before scampering off after Raymond for;
vegetable lasagne and a large vodka and tonic in the pub. ;
Zac was totally thrown. For the rest of the afternoon he couldn't!
get his head together at all.
'What on earth's happened to Sienna?' hissed an equally fazeA
Anthea. I
'Rupert Campbell-Black took her to the Ritz and told her to takei
the heavy metal off her face,' said Jupiter in amusement.
'Ay bet it wasn't the only thing he asked her to take off,' said
Anthea furiously.

440

She had also noticed David engagingly crinkling his eyes at that
uppity Naomi Cohen all morning. Life was very hard.

During a long hot afternoon, Sampson Brunning's cross-
examination took Zac apart. Why had he changed his name to
Ansteig? Wasn't it a shame his mother was dead and beyond a DNA
test or Zac could have proved he was really Benjamin's great-
grandson rather than a wide boy on the make.
Naomi leapt to her feet. That's not a proper question,' she cried
reproachfully, then, peeping at Willoughby Evans under her
lashes, 'as my learned friend well knows.'
'I agree. Mr Brunning,' reproved Willoughby Evans, 'you know
how to behave; please do so.'
'Sorry, m'lord,' said an unrepentant Sampson.
Why, he asked, had Zac abused Emerald's trust, using her to
worm his way into the Belvedon household, accepting its generous
hospitality as he snooped around spying?
'I wanted my picture back, for Christ's sake.'
How had he managed to photograph the Raphael?
Zac looked meditatively across at a terrified, tight-lipped Anthea.
He would have been quite happy to drop her in it, but both Si and
Naomi had persuaded him it would make him appear too much of
a cad.
'It was the day of Emerald's birthday,' he drawled. 'Lady
Belvedon must have been fazed because she was meeting
Emerald's mom and dad for the first time, and left the door up to
the Blue Tower open.'
'So you invaded her bedroom.' Sampson must have put his
upper lip in rollers during the lunch hour. You would have
thought Zac had raped a Mother Superior.
'A member of the family had told me I was getting warm. I had
to check everywhere.'
'Of course, ten million would come in very useful.'
'The money was irrelevant.'
'Are you acquainted,' sighed Sampson, 'with the English expression
"pull the other leg ... "? Why didn't you take the painting
at once?'
Everyone jumped as Lily's mobile rang.
Hell-o?' Lily held it like an unexploded bomb.
Lily,' hissed Anthea in horror.
An usher tapped Lily on the shoulder, waving a finger.
Fhat was Rosemary,' announced Lily, switching off. 'She can't
ake it. She's awfully elusive at the moment.'
Everyone except David suppressed smiles.

441

Peregrine went back to playing Solitaire on his laptop.
'That night of the theft,' persisted Sampson, 'you admitted, did
you not, you had never loved Miss Cartwright and had used both
her and her two families.'
'I said,' Zac answered bleakly, 'that anyone who had reason to
hate as much as I had, was incapable of love.'
'And you admit you pressured her into the finding of her birth
parents.'
'I guess so.'
'Shady, and cold as the grave,' observed Lily, taking a swig from
her brandy flask.
By the end of the afternoon, if Sampson had tarred and dropped
him in soot, he couldn't have blackened Zac's character more
effectively.

442

Keeping his laptop free for Solitaire, Peregrine, Sampson's junior,
wrote 'Day two' at the top of a lined foolscap pad. The temperature
had plummeted. The day was grey and overcast, lamps were
being turned on all round the court. Sienna was due first into the
witness box.
'Don't let her near the media,' Sampson had begged Jupiter, 'or
she'll cook all our geese.'
Sienna, however, rolled up at court wearing a little crocheted
suit in the burnt orange of a robin's breast. She was greeted by a
chorus of wolf whistles from the press and a large bunch of flowers
sent by Rupert.
'Saw you on television looking sensational,' he had written on
the card. 'Go and annihilate them.'
'I'll put them in water for you. Sienna,' said Peregrine,
adoringly.
She's got some guy, Zac thought furiously as he passed them on
his way into the courtroom.
Rupert's flowers apart, Sienna was bubbling over. Charles
Moore, the editor of the Daily Telegraph, had just faxed her saying
how much they all liked her drawing which had appeared on page
five next to the report of the case. Judge Willoughby Evans's clerk
had also called her asking if the Judge could buy the original. This
showed him, Sampson and the new High Sheriff ogling Naomi as
she quizzed Zac, or rather an arrogant head-tossing unicorn, in the
witness box.
'I don't have a double chin,' complained Sampson.
I don't have eyes so close together,' fumed Naomi.
'I think it's an excellent likeness,' said Willoughby Evans, who'd
been absurdly flattered.

443

David, who had not, queried whether Sienna should be allowed
to do any more sketches, 'bearing in mind what side she's on,' he
added pointedly.
'Oh, I don't think I could be influenced in anyway by a cartoon,'
said Willoughby Evans, smiling warmly at Sienna as she entered the
witness box.
After she had been sworn in and told Sampson she had nothing
to add to her witness statement, Naomi took over. Clocking Zac's
and everyone else's partiality, she prepared for battle.
'Miss Belvedon, why did you steal the Raphael on the night of
the seventh of July?'
'Pandora's been in our family for nearly sixty years,' began
Sienna gently. 'The court has heard about Emerald being pushed
into finding her natural parents. But taking Pandora away from us
would be like wrenching a child away from adopted parents, who'd
loved and brought her up.
'People in museums walk past pictures. We looked at the
Raphael and lived it every day. It may be part of Zac's past, but it
is also a part of a mother we all lost. It inspired four artists: my two
brothers, myself and my mother. Her pain tings were so full of light,
you can see how she was influenced by the Raphael.'
Sampson Brunning was looking up at her in ecstasy. What a
transformation. Perhaps he should bed her rather than Naomi on
night three.
'My brothers lay in my mother's arms as it grew light,' went on
Sienna. 'First they could see the moon, then Hope in her ivory
dress, then Pandora in pale blue, a colour which emerges first from
the darkness.'
With her back to the picture, Sienna described every detail.
'My mother died when I was two days old, so I had to teach myself
to love the Raphael.' Her hands clenched on the brass rail to stop
herself breaking down.
The windows had gone dark. Outside a deluge was assaulting the
first soft leaves of the horse chestnuts. Willoughby Evans's hands
paused on his laptop.
'Would you like five minutes to compose yourself?' he asked
Sienna fondly.
Sienna shook her head. 'I'm fine.'
Good witness, thought Naomi, we're not out of the woods yet.
Then she felt a tug on her gown and Zac was hissing in her ear,
'She's a hellcat, go bury her.'
'Miss Belvedon,' asked Naomi, 'why did you really steal the
Raphael?'
'Because I was terrified someone else would. Zachary Ansteig

444

had been prowling round the house for days. I kept finding him
in upstairs bedrooms, so I searched his drawers, and found . . .'
Sienna ticked off the items on her fingers.
'Do you usually snoop in the rooms of your guests?'
'Not often, but I don't often find them sauntering naked down
the landing in the middle of the afternoon.' She pulled a face at
Zac, who scowled back.
'You were worried about losing a ten-million-pound picture?'
'No, a picture I loved.'
And so the sniping went on until finally Naomi said, 'I suggest
you stole the Raphael because you realized it was looted.'
'In my father's house,' replied Sienna mockingly, 'are many
pictures. I have no idea how ninety per cent of them were acquired.
I felt Pandora was in danger so I took her.'
At that moment a bright shaft of sunlight came through the
window, falling on her face.
Raymond, who'd nodded off, woke up with a start.
'Galena!' he gasped.
'Mum!' muttered an unnerved Jupiter.
Is there no escape? thought Anthea despairingly.

'Well done. Sienna darling.' Sampson, who decided to forget
about the double chin, hugged her afterwards.

Naomi didn't fare any better that afternoon when she had to cross-
examine Emerald who, also terrified of appearing, had been
sustained only by the hope that Jonathan might be in court.
Emerald had been amazed how much she'd missed Sophy since
she'd been in America. Today - solid, merry, reassuring - Sophy
would have been the ideal companion. Patience, hanging precariously
on to another barmaid's job, hadn't dared take the day off,
so Emerald arrived alone.
Both press and public, having drooled over her photographs,
had expected a raving beauty, and were appalled to see this
stricken little ghost in last year's flowered Joseph dress, now two
sizes too big. The rose-red blusher and lipstick she'd slapped on to
bnghten her blanched face looked as incongruous as make-up on
a corpse. The news that Jonathan hadn't even showed up was the
final straw.
In faltering tones she told the court how she had met Zac.
Onlywhenhe discovered Lady Belvedon was my natural mother
"id he start pushing me to find her.'
Can you speak up?' demanded Naomi, as rain rattling on the
roof and windows made Emerald almost inaudible.

445

'Perhaps you could adjust Miss Cartwright's microphone,'
reproved the judge, smiling at Emerald.
'Sir Raymond and Lady Belvedon immediately admitted they
were my parents and took me and Zac to their hearts,' mumbled
Emerald. 'After that Zac became increasingly distant. The night
the Raphael went missing, he went berserk, admitted he'd never
loved me, and had only used me as a way to get into the household.'

'Boo!' shouted Sienna from the gallery.
'Rotter,' agreed Lily, crunching a glacier mint.
Zac examined his fingernails, a muscle leaping in his cheek.
Was Emerald denying, queried Naomi, that Zac had given her
huge emotional and financial support in finding her affluent
family?
Emerald said she could not.
'Didn't he buy you a beautiful dress for the silver wedding party?'
'Yes.'
'And other beautiful clothes?'
'Yes,' whispered Emerald.
'Wasn't he in fact putting a silver spoon in your mouth? In your
new life, didn't Sir Raymond and Lady Belvedon smother you with
gifts, a studio of your own, your own bedroom, an Augustus John,
a flash car, clothes from Lindka Cierach, the Belvedon emeralds
on the night of your birthday? There was even fear in the family of
Sir Raymond making over the Raphael to you. I suggest you found
yourself in clover and enjoyed it very much indeed.'
'I didn't enjoy it at all, because I knew Zac didn't love me and,
like Pandora, I'd opened up a can of worms, and brought misfortune
on my new family who loved their Raphael so much.'
Suddenly the realization that she wasn't going to see Jonathan
after all, overwhelmed Emerald and she burst into tears, which
echoed heart-rendingly over the microphone and round the
room.
Poor little duck. There was not a man in court who, like
Willoughby Evans, didn'twant to draw David's sword, leap over the
bench and challenge Zac the bounder to a duel.
'I had no idea she was so keen on that promiscuous shit,'
boomed Lily, handing Anthea her hip flask.
'Nor had I,' snapped Anthea thrusting it back in horror. I'm the
one who deserves sympathy, she thought fretfully. Zac wronged me
far more than he did Emerald.
Willoughby Evans called a short adjournment. The press rushed
out to telephone. Sienna raced down from the gallery to get into
the Ladies before a queue built up. She was just having a pee when

446
she heard a sharp distinctive carrying voice. That cow Naomi
Cohen must have walked in.
'So presumptuous of Emerald Belvedon to think Zac would have
ever married her,' continued the sharp, carrying voice. 'Zac would
never marry out. As my father's always grumbling, we lost more
Tews to marrying out than in the entire Holocaust.'
Why should that information make me want to slit my wrists?
wondered Sienna.

After the adjournment, it was Anthea's turn to go into the witness
box.
She looks even prettier today, thought Willoughby Evans, as
Anthea, in David Shilling's little straw Breton trimmed with daisies,
played the disappointed prospective mother-in-law for all it was
worth.
'My long-lost daughter was in a fragile state adjusting to her new
family. She was so in love with Zachary. We all gave him such a
welcome as our son. But her hopes were built on sand. Why did he
have to break my Emerald's heart?'
A murmur of disapproval drifted round the court. A faint waft
ofShalimar floated towards Willoughby Evans as Anthea drew out
a little lace handkerchief and carefully mopped her eyes.
What a poppet, thought Willoughby Evans.
A Daily Mail reporter forced through lack of space to sit in the
gallery was enchanted to find himself rammed next to the
ravishing Sienna. He was also amused that she was drawing a
sobbing crocodile, but was having difficulty balancing a daisy-
trimmed straw Breton on its head. Catching his eye, Sienna giggled
and drew a line through the sketch.
'The whole country and the press are firmly on your side,' he
told her. 'Ladbroke's are offering three to one on a Belvedon
victory. I myself had a hundred-pound bet this morning. Whatever
Zac's right to the Raphael, he's coming across as a crook and a
bastard. We're all looking forward to your dad going into the box
tomorrow. That should nail it for your side.'

Having shaken off the press, Zac drove the hired Vauxhall through
the pouring rain into the Larkshire countryside. On the car radio,
tolling hauntingly, was Mahler's Ninth Symphony, the last piece
the Vienna Philharmonic had played before the Anschluss. Simon
wattle had conducted the same symphony at a concert last week in
memory of the dead at Mauthausen, the terrible death camp from
which Great-uncle Jacob had somehow escaped.
Zac knew he had let down Jacob, his mother and the entire ghost

447

army. He knew he'd behaved appallingly to Emerald and Anthea
and that Naomi was feeling rejected because he hadn't made a
move on her. He was clearly going to lose the Raphael, and never
see Sienna again. Even Si had deserted him, buggering off to
Munich on some deal.
Zac pulled up on the edge of a dripping green wood to watch a
watery sunset. Both billowing clouds and the sheep in the field
ahead appeared to be ringed with fire. He hadn't even heard
the fucking cuckoo this year. But as the Mahler drew to its quiet,
unbearably poignant close, deep in the wood a cuckoo, clearly
inspired, began singing, like a flute practising a perfect third:
'cuckoo, cuckoo,' floating on and on, echoing through the
drenched greenness, as if to apologize for his earlier absence.
Moved to tears, Zac flung back his aching head. He must pull
himself together for the sake of the ghost army. Maybe Raymond
would screw up tomorrow. He was roused by a bleep on his mobile.
Checking the screen, he gave a whoop of delight.
Stop fretting. Boy chic, Si had texted, I've found Trebich in Munich,
who's agreed to testify. Don't tell anyone until I get there tomorrow.

448

Day three brought back the fine weather and twice as many people
to welcome Raymond as he arrived at the court, with Viridian's
copy of Tennyson in his breast pocket to ward off any metaphorical
arrows. After another sleepless night he looked frailer than
ever. You could get two fingers inside the collar of his pale blue
striped shirt and his right hand was painfully swollen from still
trying to keep the increasing flood of fan mail at bay. Anthea had
been very snappy, poor child, because he kept calling Sienna
'Galena'.
All the morning press had insisted that the case was going the
Belvedons' way, but Jupiter, Sampson and Sienna were edgy as
they conferred in the corridor outside the courtroom, a dingy
place of peeling radiators, dejected plants, and a sap-green
carpet, speckled with coffee spilt by trembling witnesses.
'You don't think Dad's too gaga to testify?' asked Jupiter, who
was pulling on a rare cigarette.
'I hope not,' sighed Sienna. 'Naomi Cohen just whisked past
looking as smug as hell.'
'That may be because I caught Zac coming out of her bedroom
at two o'clock this morning,' said Sampson.
Sienna turned to look out of the window. In the block of offices
opposite, she could see people typing, chatting, xeroxing, having
meetings, and envied their peaceful lives, free from the dreadful
pain she was enduring. Zac and Naomi. With his track record, it
was to be expected. Why did it hurt so much? T love, I hate, I know
not why, but it is excruciating', she quoted despairingly to herself.
Out loud she said: 'Ah, a Mere has just drawn up disgorging Si
Greenbridge and several guards.'
Shit, thought Jupiter. I hope he isn't after my sleeper.

449

'I've just got to nip down the road to an auction,' he told
Sampson.
'Raymond won't notice you've gone,' said Sampson reassuringly,
'he'll be in the box most of the morning.'

Willoughby Evans wished he hadn't drunk so much port last night,
and also that he hadn't overheard one of the High Sheriffs
remarks. He'd been commenting idly on Raymond's great charm.
'Used to great effect on customs officers in the old days,' David
had interjected jealously. 'Before political correctness kicked
in, Raymond was the most effective smuggler of pictures in
Europe.'
'I didn't hear that,' Willoughby Evans had snapped, 'and you
didn't say it.'
He didn't like David, he decided, and any man who wore lifts on
his buckled shoes was distinctly suspect.
David was equally unamused to see his wife in court for the first
time, sitting on the Belvedon side to cheer on Raymond, an unwarranted
amount of blusher on her pale cheeks, giggling and
taking nips from Lily's hip flask, and wearing much too snazzy a
peacock-blue suit. He was the one who bought clothes, Rosemary
only spent money on plants.
Rosemary was very happy. Si had been abroad for a few days, but
had promised to be in Larkshire today. David's Range Rover had
become almost a fixture outside the Grasshopper and Sixpence. In
the post, Si had very indiscreetly sent her a bracelet made up
of ten gold squares, on each of which was engraved one of the
ten commandments. Except on the seventh: 'Thou shalt not
commit adultery', he'd had printed on the underside: 'with anyone
but Si Greenbridge.' Rosemary couldn't believe such happiness.
It was ten o'clock. 'All rise,' shouted the usher.
'"Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them . . . Into the
jaws of Death . . .",' murmured Raymond. But as he entered
the court, he veered away from the witness box. Everyone held
their breath as he wandered over to the Raphael. The policemen
guarding it edged closer, but Raymond ignored them, gazing at his
picture.
Had his father finally lost it? wondered Jupiter in horror.
'Sir Raymond,' hissed Anthea, 'his Lordship is waitin'.'
'So sorry.' Raymond returned meekly to the witness box to be
sworn in. 'I just got used to looking at it every day.'
'Sir Raymond,' said Sampson warmly, 'tell the court how you
acquired the Raphael.'
The Belvedons and Sampson held their breath, but Raymond

450

put on a command performance, rich Irish charm and telly
megastar to the fore. By the time he'd raced down wartorn France,
cleared the Falaise Gap of poor dead men and horses, 'the stench
was unbearable, my dear,' stumbled on a Nazi in a burning
chateau, 'whose life-blood was ebbing away,' given him a glass of
water, and lifted down the Raphael for him to have a last look,
there wasn't a dry eye in court.
'In the midst of this dreadful war, two enemies were united as
brothers.' Raymond's beautiful silvery voice vibrated like an oboe.
'He spoke a little English. With his last words, he thanked me, gave
me his blessing and the Raphael.'
'I wish he'd kept the chit,' Jupiter muttered to Aunt Lily. His
father was always too busy gossiping to taxi drivers to get receipts.
Giving a sigh of relief, feeling it was OK to slip out between overs,
Jupiter disappeared off to the auction rooms in Lower Fresh Street.
Naomi began her cross-examination and Raymond was soon
happily relating how he'd cut the Raphael out of its frame and
rolled it up in a shell case.
'I recognized it as a Raphael because my father took me to a loan
exhibition in aid of the Red Cross in 1941. Lady Hampshire had
lent Raphael's working drawing for Pandora.'
'I thought Dad bought it in a flea market,' muttered Sienna to
Archie from the Mail, as she drew her father as a cormorant. 'He
is sweet, isn't he?'
'In your witness statement. Sir Raymond, you have said you
didn't know the Raphael was looted,' confirmed Naomi.
'I had absolutely no idea.'
Hearing a rumble of interest. Rosemary glanced round and
her heart leapt for Si Greenbridge, huge, tanned and looking
uncharacteristically straight and un-Mafiaesque in a blue button-
down shirt, brick-red trousers, a blazer with big gold buttons and
a dark blue pashmina scarf she had given him, had walked in
and was grinning in her direction.
'There's Si,' bristled Anthea, 'with the gall to smile at us.'
Si was followed by one of his sharp legal boys, who sidled into
the row behind Naomi, tugged her gown as she was about to launch
into her next question, and handed her some papers.
Glancing down at them impatiently, she started dramatically.
M'lord!'
Willoughby stopped scrabbling away at his laptop and peered
over his bifocals.
'Yes, Miss Cohen.'
'I am very sorry,' lied a triumphant Naomi, 'to interrupt my
cross-examination of this witness, but I have just had a message that

451

a potentially vital new witness, with evidence that goes to the heart
of this case, has made himself known.
'I have been handed this statement by my solicitor,' she shouted
over the rumble of excitement as she passed copies first to
Willoughby Evans, then to a stunned, stony-faced Sampson. 'May
I please ask for an adjournment?'
Having devoured the document with bloodhound-furrowed
brow, Willoughby Evans turned to Raymond.
'I'm extremely sorry. The claimants have unearthed new
evidence. I need to confer with both sides. As you're under oath
and in the middle of your testimony, Sir Raymond, perhaps
you could have a cup of coffee in one of the witness rooms, and
please do not discuss the case with anyone, while I call a brief
adjournment.'
'Of course.' Raymond smiled happily. He could finish 'Ulysses':
'Some work of noble note, may yet be done,' and the Times crossword.

The moment he left the court, both sides pitched in.
'M'lord,' spluttered an outraged Sampson, conveniently forgetting
he had whipped more rabbits out of hats in his time than Paul
Daniels, 'it's highly irregular to produce new evidence at this late
stage in the proceedings.'
'I appreciate my learned friend's misgivings,' said Naomi
patronizingly, 'but we would like to call Major von Trebich, m'lord, a friend of Colonel Feldstrasse, who was the senior German officer
at Le Chateau des Rossignols in 1944. He has crucial evidence
about the Raphael. We didn't know his whereabouts until last
night when he returned from six weeks in Tunisia. He was anxious
to fly straight here this morning.'
'The timing seems singularly inappropriate, m'lord,' snapped
Sampson, 'just when my client, who's an old man, easily confused,
is in the box and I cannot confer with him.'
'I'm afraid you can't, Mr Brunning. As an even older man . . .'
said Willoughby Evans drily.
'Sorry, m'lord.'
'My job is to find out the truth,' continued Willoughby Evans. 'If
this witness has something important to say, let us hear it.'
'I'd like to call Major von Trebich, immediately after I've
finished cross-examining Sir Raymond,' said Naomi.

Belting out the moment the arguments had started, Rosemary
rushed to the Ladies to have a cigarette to calm her nerves and
powder her shiny face. It was so hot in court.

452
As she applied a very becoming new pinky-brown lipstick appropriately
entitled Lust instead of her usual dash of scarlet, she saw
a disapproving Anthea's reflection beside her own.
'You're not meant to smoke in here, Rosemary, that's what gives
you all those little lines round your mouth, although I read of a
wonderful new lipstick that doesn't creep down wrinkles, called
"No Wander".'
'Pity I can't use it on David,' giggled Rosemary, who'd had too
many nips of Lily's flask on an empty stomach.
Anthea's lips tightened.
'You missed another Borochova Memorial meeting last Friday.'
'Oh hell, did I? Geraldine and David seem to have hijacked the
whole thing.'
'It was your idea to involve them and Lottery money in the first
place.'
'But none of the Belvedons has been consulted.' Rosemary
drenched herself in Tresor given her by Si last week.
'Excuse me, Rosemary, Ay'm a Belvedon. I also saw you wavin'
at Si, I'd watch him if I were you.'
'I find him absolutely charming,' snapped Rosemary.
'Well, he's no friend of ours.'
'Why ever not? He buys enough pictures.'
'Because he's bankrolling Zac with all the dirty money he gets
arms-dealing. You don't think that little Ess Haitch One Tee could
have afforded to bring a case like this on his own? Si'sjust turned
up with some Nazi to rattle Sir Raymond.'
Oh my God. Rosemary felt an icicle being dropped down her
spine. She'd been too overjoyed to make the connection. Si had
never told her he knew Zac. What terrible incriminating details
had she let slip in bed with him? We have ways of making you pillow
talk.

Back in court, Naomi straightened her black gown and flicked her
shiny dark hair behind her ears before replacing her wig.
'Sir Raymond,' she asked gently, 'according to your statement,
your platoon took the village ofBonfleuve on the twenty-fourth of
August and you found an unknown Nazi dying in the burning
Chateau des Rossignols nearby and he gave you the Raphael.'
'That's right.'
'How old was this man?'
'Early forties, hard to tell, war ages people.'
Is this him?' Naomi produced a grainy cracked photograph.
Raymond put on his spectacles.
Again, hard to tell, his face was blackened with smoke.'

453

Naorni took a deep breath: with her beaky nose and fierce eyes,
a sparrowhawk poised to swoop.
'Sir Raymond, ten days before your platoon captured Bonfleuve,
the senior Nazi living in the Chateau and in charge of the area, a
Colonel Feldstrasse, had in fact moved on to a safe house, fleeing
the closing in of the Allies.'
Raymond looked at her in bewilderment.
'No, no, my dear, you've got it wrong. If it wasn't a Colonel -
Feldstrasse, did you say? who gave it me, it must have been some
other Nazi billeted there.'
'All the other Germans billeted at the Chateau had already
fled,' said Naomi triumphandy, 'and were all captured. Colonel
Feldstrasse, the only one who spoke English, had been sent to a
POW camp for high-ranking officers by the time you reached the
Chateau. Far from dying, as you gave him a last glimpse of Pandora,
he was released in 1946 and was killed in a car crash in 1970.'
Peace ages men too. Raymond had gone grey; he seemed to
shrivel. 'This can't be true,' he stammered. 'Another German must
have sought refuge there.'
The witness box had become the loneliest place in the world.
Raymond had told his version so often, he'd almost come to
believe it. Glancing round, Si Greenbridge noted the collective
horror on the faces of press and public.
'Dear God, poor Raymond,' muttered Lily.
'Dear, dear,' sighed Anthea, not totally displeased that chinks
had been found in Raymond's breastplate of righteousness.
Glancing up, Rosemary saw David with his head on one side,
attempting to look shocked and concerned, but having difficulty
hiding his delight.
I loathe him, she thought numbly, and through my shameful'
indiscretions I have felled a dearest friend. I
Trapped in the gallery. Sienna was reminded of occasions when
Grenville and Diggory had torn a rabbit apart before she could drag
them off. Naomi was now ripping her father to pieces. The '
court was in uproar. Press, switching on their mobiles and stampeding
the fire doors, met Jupiter running the other way.
'What the fuck's going on?'
'I'm afraid your dad's been blown out of the water.'

After the adjournment, Naomi called her star witness. Major von
Trebich was tall and willowy with smoothed-back silver hair, a
Tunisian tan, and teal-blue eyes emphasized by a blue silk shirt,
worn with a carefully arranged lilac silk scarf secured by a big pearl
pin. His pale grey suit was exquisitely cut. As languid as Grenville,

454

he moved with natural grace, waiting expensive lemony scent.
'Germans do have style. What an attractive old boy,' sighed
Anthea.
'Heil Hitler,' snorted an outraged Lily.
You could have heard a spider tiptoe across the court.
'Major von Trebich, how long did you know Colonel Heinrich
Feldstrasse?' asked Naomi.
'Nearly thirty years.'
'What was your relationship?'
'Heinrich was my lover.'
The court gasped with collective amazement. Willoughby Evans
hit several wrong keys including the delete button.
They had met, went on Trebich, during the fall of Paris, when
Germans were in a state of euphoria.
'We kept our love secret. The Fuhrer disapproved of homosexuals
almost more than Jews. Perhaps some rumours spread.
Heinrich's career advanced less dramatically than expected, and
he was posted to Le Chateau des Rossignols to oversee the area of
France round Bonfleuve, an increasingly dangerous place after the
Normandy landings. I begged him to leave.'
Naomi then read extracts from Major von Trebich's battered red
leather diary:
'"August 10, Heinrich telephones tonight, he is forced to leave
Les Rossignols. He can hear enemy fire, they are sweeping across
France. Will I ever see him again?"' Naomi's red talons flipped over
several pages: '"August 18, Heinrich has been taken prisoner, and
got word to me today, deliriously happy he is safe."'
Naomi put down the diary.
'So he was captured at least six days before Sir Raymond's
platoon took the village?' she asked Trebich.
'Long, long before.'
'What did he feel when he left the Chateau?'
'Heartbroken that he'd left in such a hurry he couldn't take the
Raphael. "Oh my Pandora," he wrote in a later letter -you have it
there, Fraulein Cohen - "how could I have left her to burn in the
fire?"'
Incredulity rippled round the court. Raymond was turned to
stone. Zac couldn't look at the Belvedons. He felt utterly sick
relying on the evidence of a Nazi.
'When did Colonel Feldstrasse acquire the picture in the first
place?' smiled Naomi.
Trebich seemed to grow inches taller with pride.
'In early 1941. It was a gift from the Reichsmarschall, Hermann
Goenng, at that time a hugely popular and admired figure, as a

455
mark of his affection - and admiration,' said Trebich warmly.
'Heinrich knew a great deal about art and had great charm. He was
so proud to be singled out by the Reichsmarschall.'
'He never thought to search for the picture after the war?'
Trebich shrugged. 'What for? He know the Chateau burn to the
ground.'
'Would he have given it to an English soldier?'
'Nevair.' Trebich's shudder was like Grenville's after a bath.
'Did Colonel Feldstrasse know it was looted from the Abelman
family?'
'Certainly not. He was merely overjoyed to own such an exquisite
picture.'
'Who was his heir?'
'I was. He had a charming wife, who died before he did, but no
children. He left me everything.'
Oh Christ, thought Jupiter.
'How, as a German,' asked Naomi idly, 'do you feel as the owner
of a looted picture?'
'I feel ashamed,' said Trebich quietly, bowing his silver head.
'Even if I have title, there is a moral obligation to return such a
picture to its rightful owner. I couldn't hang a stolen picture on
my wall,' he added sanctimoniously. 'And I know if Colonel
Feldstrasse were alive today and he knew the history of the
painting's confiscation, he would want it returned to Zachary
Ansteig.'
Major von Trebich smiled at Zac, who was gazing at the floor.
'It's only because Zac's so bloody good looking,' hissed Sienna
to Archie from the Mail. 'Si Greenbridge probably bribed that Nazi
woofter and faked all the documents.'
'Thank you, Major von Trebich,' said an overjoyed Naomi.

Sampson did his best. If it were such a treasured possession, why
didn't Feldstrasse take it with him?
'Not being a dealer,' replied Trebich haughtily, 'Heinrich didn't
know you could cut a painting out of its frame and conceal it rolled
up in a shell case.'
'Honi soit qui mal y ponce', wrote Sienna furiously. Where the
hell did this put her poor father?
Raymond was recalled briefly to the witness box, and, capitulating
faster than the French in 1941, broke down and wept,
admitting he had stolen the painting from the deserted Chateau.
'We detested the Nazis. They'd just killed my brother Viridian.
I was twenty. It was the most beautiful painting I'd ever seen.
How could I leave it to burn? I'm sorry I lied,' he added despair456

ingly. 'I'm just a foolish, fond old man who loved his picture.'
'You're just a very greedy old man,' said Willoughby Evans
sternly, 'who wanted to hang on to something that wasn't his.'
'No, he's not,' screamed Sienna, suddenly galvanized in the
gallery. 'Anyone who loved pictures would have done the same
thing.'
A couple of officials frogmarched her outside, and Willoughby
Evans agreed to an adjournment until the following day, so that
everyone could get their breath back.

457

Leaving the court, Zac bumped into Sienna.
'How dare you humiliate my father?' she screamed and, before
Si's guards could stop her, slapped him viciously back and forth
across the face. 'I see you manage to conquer your loathing for
Nazis when you need their help, you fucking hypocrite.'

Back at Foxes Court, the Belvedons spent a dreadful night.
Raymond gazed into space, shuddering with horror.
'How could I have let you all down? I'm so sorry.'
'No good being sorry,' snapped Anthea. 'You've brought shame
on all of us telling porkies at your age. I've just had poor little Dicky
on the phone in floods.'
Guilt that he'd sloped off to the auction made Jupiter crueller
than usual.
'Why the fuck didn't you tell the truth in the first place, Dad?
We might have stood a chance.'
And where the hell was Jonathan? All Jupiter's jealousy spilt
over. The only thing Jonathan was any good at was cheering up
Raymond, and he wasn't even here to do that.
Thank God for Hanna and Baby Viridian, thought Jupiter.
Thank God he had at least bullied Raymond into making Foxes
Court over to him seven years ago, so the bank couldn't take that.
Remembering the sleeper in the back of the car, which might
after all be a Constable, Jupiter decided to escape from the wailing
and teeth-gnashing and drive up to London, so the restorer could
get to work.
No-one slept at Foxes Court that night.
Sienna tried to comfort a sobbing Dora.

458

'Daddy'11 never survive prison, particularly if he can't take
Grenville with him.'

Naomi Cohen, dining at the judges' lodgings with Willoughby
Evans and Sampson Brunning, was having a wonderful time.
Rather like nurses able to switch off at a party after tending dying
cancer patients all day, they managed not to discuss the case.
There was only the final speeches by the two counsels to come
in the morning, after which Willoughby Evans would probably
postpone his judgement till Monday. Sampson was an old enough
hand to congratulate Naomi warmly on the way home.
'We'll make our speeches. Willoughby Evans will give the picture
back to Zac. End of story.'
'I wish Zac was more kind of grateful,' sighed Naomi, 'he's still
furious we had to rely on Trebich's evidence.'

Over at the Old Rectory, Rosemary couldn't stop crying. Thank
God, David was out at some dinner giving prizes to achieving
policemen. Si had utterly betrayed her. But she in turn had
betrayed the Belvedons. Without her account of holidaying in
Bonfleuve at Le Coq d'Or the first time she and Si had slept
together, Si would never have been able to track down Major von
Trebich.
She jumped as the telephone rang. It was Si going against every
rule and calling her on the house telephone.
'You bastard,' yelled Rosemary, 'you've made me break the
ninth commandment and bear false witness against my neighbour.
I never want to see you again.'

Haunted by Sienna's anguished face, Zac paced up and down his
room at the Black Swan. Naomi was fast asleep. She had come
home drunk, euphoric at having smashed the Belvedons and
watched herself walking prettily from court on Sky News. What a
pity one wasn't allowed to talk about ongoing cases to the press.
She did however talk to Zac. Like a champion baseball player
after a game, she took him through every triumphant sentence,
every move. Now she was deservedly luxuriating in the sleep of
achievement.
Zac was in despair. He hadn't really minded upsetting Anthea,
nor Emerald. From what Si had said (who had got it from
Rosemary who was helping Emerald with her maquette) Emerald
was over him and now crazy about Jonathan. But he felt dreadful
about Sienna. As she had led a tottering Raymond towards the car

459

park, yelling expletives at the press, he'd been reminded of
Cordelia and Lear: 'So young, my lord, and true.'
He could still feel her fingers on his cheek and he had to his
surprise detested seeing Raymond so humiliated. The old guy had
been really sweet to him, ordering in bourbon when he came to
stay.
He felt even worse on Friday morning when the papers crucified
Raymond.
'Mr Greedy,' shouted the Sun.
Mac of the Mail had drawn the Raphael on the wall of
Raymond's study, with all the seven Belvedon children asking:
'What did you do in the war, Daddy?'

The telephone rang at Foxes Court as the family were failing to
force down any breakfast. It was Dicky's headmaster.
'Poor Dicky's so terrified of being recognized by the press,'
Anthea reported back to Raymond indignantly, 'that he's shaved
off all his lovely hair.'
'Rubbish,' stormed Dora, 'Dicky just wanted any excuse to look
like David Beckham. Why are they being so horrible to Daddy?
He'd have been a hero in London's Burning.'
As he shuffled down the steps to the Bentley on Robens's arm,
Raymond crumpled and collapsed. Dr Reynolds, despite not being
asked to Anthea and Raymond's silver wedding, arrived in ten
minutes. At the least, Raymond was suffering from shock and
exhaustion, he said. There was no way he could go to court.
'I must,' whispered Raymond, 'people'll think I'm such a sissy.'
'No, they won't,' said Sienna. 'If Willoughby Evans gives his
judgement this afternoon, I'll come and get you.'
'I'll stay home and look after you,' announced Dora, who was
avid to miss maths and scripture, having been far too upset last
night to do any homework, 'then I can walk Grenville.'
'Viridian, Dora and I will look after you,' said Hanna, who'd
come over to the house to wish everyone good luck. 'You must all
go,' she added, kissing Jupiter, who had just arrived back from
London and the restorer.
A worried Sienna knew she should stay behind but couldn't bear
the thought of not seeing Zac one more time.
In a day promising rain and sunshine, the pale acid-green spring
leaves lay trustingly against a brooding purple-lake sky. The
Belvedons found the court in an uproar. Peregrine, Sampson's
junior, had abandoned his Solitaire and was grinning from ear
to ear:

460

'Tonathan'll be here in half an hour, with a sensational new
witness.'
'Who is it?' demanded Sienna. Then, when Peregrine whispered
in her ear: 'Oh my God.'
'As we speak,' went on Peregrine, 'Sampson is arguing in court
that Tonathan didn't get the breakthrough till late last night.
Willoughby Evans can't refuse, having given the fair Naomi free
range yesterday. Thank goodness Sampson hadn't begun his
speech.'
Next moment, Si Greenbridge, who'd been trying to get through
to Rosemary all night and didn't dare storm the Old Rectory
because of David, shoved past them, ran out to the car park and
roared off alone in his Mercedes. Feeling suddenly isolated, Naomi
had just managed to keep down two Alka-Seltzers when Rupert Campbell-Black's dark blue helicopter landed on the greensward.

The pretty archivist at the Public Record Office in Paris the
previous evening had felt so sorry for the handsome young
Englishman. Every morning for the past month he had rolled up
first thing to scour newly declassified documents on the Resistance
and on the Nazis' corrupt dealings in art, rooding frantically
through yellowing documents written on ancient typewriters.
Since Easter he had developed a dry cough not helped by the dust
and grew hourly paler and more desperate. He was always the
last to leave. It was now nearly six. Time to chuck him out. She
longed to invite him for a glass of wine and a walk in the Bois where
she would kiss away all his sadness.
She jumped at the sound of a low whistle. The Englishman was
excitedly smoothing out scrumpled-up papers which had been
stuffed to the back of a buff folder. His dark eyes darted back and
forth. Dropping the folder, he rushed to the counter.
'What's the French for "Bingo"?' demanded Jonathan, then,
over the striking clock, he begged, 'Will you please make six copies
of this letter for me?'
'There are forms to complete.'
'I'll fill them in while you copy. Please.'
As she switched on the copying machine, the pretty archivist
glanced down at the letter stamped with the Nazi eagle and read:
Our valuable agent "Le Tigre" has been murdered in Paris. The
Gestapo is blamed, but suspicion falls on the degenerate artist Le
"run.'
Its my last hope. I'll buy you a drink next time,' promised
Jonathan as he vanished into the warm spring evening.

461

* * *
Even though Raymond had shown Jean-Jacques Le Brun's water-
colours at the Belvedon in the fifties and sixties before the
Frenchman became famous, Jonathan couldn't get in to see him.
The first call had been answered in a strained, cracked, shaky voice
by Le Brun himself. After that the housekeeper answered both the
telephone and the door, explaining in increasing disapproval that
M. Le Brun was ill and couldn't see anyone.
Le Brun's house in Montparnasse, lofty, semi-detached and with
a pale green roof had one more floor, probably a studio, than the
other houses in his street. In the gap between it and the house next
door, Jonathan could see a garden, and then a garden beyond that
belonging to a house in the next street. He might have given up,
if at that moment Sienna hadn't texted him.
Dad's been totally trashed. We've lost the Raphael. If you can't come up
with any evidence, at least come home and comfort him.
Racing up Le Brun's street, Jonathan turned left then left again
into the next street, running down it until, over the roof of Number
20, he could see Le Brun's pale green roof. |
The door, thank God, was answered by a couple of students, whOi
thought it a great lark. M. Le Brun did indeed live in the housel
behind and on warm evenings sat in the garden. They hoisted
Jonathan over the wall, which was covered in spikes more treachery
ous than any unicorn's horn. ?
'Fucking hell,' he muttered as he tore first his combats, and thett'
Emerald's blue shirt, and nearly lost his manhood before landing
on some white irises. ;
He was just unhooking Emerald's shirt when he felt hard coldj
metal rammed into his bare back. :!
'Es-tu un cambrioleur?' demanded the voice that had cracked and|
quavered on the telephone, ti
'No, I'm an artist but I don't want to show you my pictures.' ^
'Thank God for that.' The pressure of the gun eased. '|
Jonathan edged round and found himself looking down on thej
black beret and beneath that the watchful, wizened face of France'*
greatest painter since Etienne de Montigny. There was no time td
waste. |
'I need to ask you about "Le Tigre", or rather Jacob Abelman.'^
To Jonathan, Le Brun's long, sad sigh was like the first munnuri
of cool breeze after an interminable heatwave.
'I knew one day you would come.'
'My father, Raymond Belvedon, has been crucified,' pleaded
Jonathan. 'Pandora is about to be taken away.'
'I have watched the news and followed the case in LeMonde. Your

462

father doesn't deserve this. He had faith in my work before anyone
else and so did Jacob Abelman.'
Le Brun led Jonathan through a painter's garden - intensely
scented, ghostly white with lupins, lilac and tulips, to a veranda
smothered in white montana, where he had been drinking very
black coffee and peeling an apricot. Next moment, the housekeeper
rushed out brandishing a saucepan.
'It's OK.' Le Brun handed her his gun. 'Please bring us more
coffee and a bottle of cognac.'
'You're not allowed to drink, monsieur.'
'Tonight I need the Dutch courage.'
On a record player Karita Mattila was singing Strauss's 'Four Last
Songs'. Inside, the walls glowed with stupendous pictures, but
there was no time to look. Le Brun pointed to a chair:
'Sit down and tell me what you want.'
After ten minutes, he agreed that if Jonathan could dredge up
a lawyer, he would be prepared to sign a statement.
'It would be better if I flew you to Larkminster. I know it's a
hideous imposition, but you'll adore the countryside, it inspired
my mother.'
'I am ninety and beyond inspiration.'

'Now that the day has tired me' sang Karita Mattila,
'my spirits long for
starry night kindly to enfold them.'

Le Brun let Jonathan sweat, gazing on his ghostly garden,
unwilling to invoke the spectres of the past. Then he drained his
little glass and refilled it.
'I will come.'

Out in the street, Jonathan rang Rupert Campbell-Black.
'Can I borrow your helicopter tomorrow?'
'No, you can't. I've got six horses racing in different parts of the
country.'
'Dad's been annihilated.'
T know. I'm extremely sorry. Oh, all right, have it then.'

463

Rupert's helicopter landed outside Searston County Court at half|
past ten. Leaping out, Jonathan lifted down Jean-Jacques Le Brun,;|
settling him on the daisied lawn, straightening his beret, theny|
waving an expansive hand towards the pale gold town, with its river |
sauntering round the castle walls and its cathedral spire pierci
the lowering navy blue cloud as if to unleash a shower of rain.
'I told you it was beautiful.'
'Good God!' Willoughby Evans nearly fell out of the window'
the judges' chamber. 'He really has broughtjean-jacques Le Brun,|
I've got two of his watercolours at home. I wonder if he'd sig
them.'
Sienna raced across the grass into Jonathan's arms.
'Thank God you're here. Sorry I was such a bitch.'
'But you've grown so beautiful,' said Jonathan in amazemen^j
and, aware of scowling Zac taking a breather on the tarmac outsidej
the court, he kissed Sienna lingeringly on the mouth before intiwl
ducing JeanJacques.
'This is my fabulous new best friend, M. Le Brun, you've got t<
look after him while I go into the witness box.'
Knowing he could be relied on to stir things up, the press an(
public gave Jonathan a great cheer as he was sworn in. He was sdl
wearing Emerald's now torn blue shirt and ripped combats. His bigl
laughing mouth was set in a hard line, his dark eyes glittered|
dangerously. Two spots of colour glowed on his blanched cheeky
like red sold stickers. J
Sold to the devil, thought Zac savagely. Jonathan his Nemesis,?
the one Sienna loved, j
Up in the gallery, having portrayed Zac as the sleek long-eyed:
unicorn. Sienna was now drawing Jonathan with his wild mane and

464

furious eyes as the snarling lion. No two men could think more
evilly of one another.
Helped along occasionally by Sampson, Jonathan gave evidence
rather like a one-man show, his conversation confiding, almost
chatty.
'With the high profile of this case,' he explained, 'people have
emerged from the woodwork. ZacharyAnsteig's charismatic Great-
uncle Jacob was certainly deported to Mauthausen but recalled
after a few months. This was because the Nazis had embarked on
the biggest looting spree in history and they needed his expertise
in identifying and valuing the pictures they'd bagged.'
Then, over the rumble of amazement, smiling round at the flabbergasted
faces, Jonathan continued: 'Jacob had such impeccable
contacts in Europe, he was able to lead the Nazis to the best collections.
And when this happened' -Jonathan shook his head ruefully
- 'their Jewish owners were packed off to the death camps.'
'That's a lie!' Zac had leapt up, yelling abuse until two policemen
shoved him back in his seat.
'You'll have to leave the court if you can't restrain yourself, Mr
Ansteig,' reproved Willoughby Evans. 'Let Mr Belvedon have his
say.'
'Later,' went on Jonathan, 'Jacob settled in Paris where the Nazis
allowed him to trade as long as he produced the pictures they
wanted. War in fact was a godsend in France for those dealers who
collaborated.
'Jacob also vowed, as the court has been told, to avenge his
murdered father by hunting down the Raphael. How convenient
that whilst he was working for Hermann Goering, he stumbled on
his beloved Pandora. There are, as you've also been informed,
records of the picture going to Goering's palace, Karinhall, but a
question mark over its whereabouts after that. Great-uncle Jacob
was the question mark. As Pandora belonged to his family, he
naturally felt justified in repossessing it.'
Zac was unable to contain himself.
'Bullshit,' he shouted.
What was less understandable,' said Jonathan in mock sorrow,
was that two years later Jacob sold the Raphael on to another Nazi,
Colonel Feldstrasse, who hung it proudly in his distant chateau,
fantasizing it had been given him by the Reichsmarschall.'
M'lord, this witness has been misinformed,' cried Naomi, terri- w-d Zac was going to leap across the court and strangle Jonathan.
Why the hell had Si shoved off instead of staying here to control
^c? 'This is groundless speculation unbacked by any evidence,'
we added furiously.

465
'Except this.' Smiling gently, Jonathan brandished some torn
faded sepia papers. 'Here's a letter dated the eighteenth of April,
1942, from Jacob to Feldstrasse arranging for them to meet in
Paris. Here's Jacob's invoice and copy of the receipt for the looted
Pandora: a picture Colonel Feldstrasse bought in good faith, not
perhaps for a mess of pottage, but for five hundred thousand Swiss
francs, which was about thirty thousand pounds in those days. So,'
Jonathan added coolly, 'it is no longer Abelman property.'
The stunned silence was only broken by a car backfiring, which
made everyone jump. The press were poised to bolt for the doors.
Somehow Zac had regained control of himself, but his face had
shrivelled as if struck by lightning. Sienna couldn't bear to look at
him.
As Jonathan leant over, took a pile of photographs from
Sampson and started flipping through them, it was as if SS guards
were systematically kicking Zac to death with their jackboots.
'Here,'Jonathan told the court amiably, 'are pictures of Great-
uncle Jacob showing Pandora to Colonel Feldstrasse, who clearly
liked his own sex, particularly when they were as handsome as
Jacob. And here's Jacob with Goering - make a nice couple, don't
they?'Jonathan waved the photograph. 'Jacob was so charming, so
amusing, no wonder he was one of Goering's pets, and he was as
good at exploiting women as his great-nephew Zachary.'
'My lord, that is totally inappropriate,' interrupted a furious
Naomi.
'I agree,' said Willoughby Evans firmly. 'Please stop making wild
accusations, Mr Belvedon. There is no jury for you to impress.'
'All that guff about Jacob wanting to join his wife Leah in
America was crap too,' went on Jonathan unrepentantly. ;
'Your language, Mr Belvedon,' snapped Willoughby Evans, who '
nevertheless like everyone else was transfixed with interest. |
'Sorry, my lord,' drawled Jonathan. 'Here is a last photograph |
of Goering, Jacob and Jacob's French mistress. Georgette Le I
Brun . . .' With raised eyebrows, Jonathan repeated the name: 'L^l
Brun, at a Nazi party in 1943.' i
'You've been working very hard,' admitted Willoughby Evans, as |
he and David examined with ill-disguised approval the photograph |
of ravishing Georgette, 'but I hope you have other evidence^
substantiating these claims.' |

With so much evidence piled against her, Naomi had an uphill ;
struggle, particularly when Jean-Jacques Le Brun went into the
box.
He had taken off his beret; his bald head freckled with liver spots

466

looked like a robin's egg. He wore a red-and-black silk bow tie and
had combed his neat triangle of moustache and goatee beard. On
the lapel of his frock coat was a red Legion d'honneur. He refused
to sit down.
'Just like darling M. Poirot. Don't these old Froggies keep themselves
nicely?' murmured Anthea.
'I remember Le Brun staying at Foxes Court in the sixties,' Lily
whispered to Jupiter, 'such a sweet, sad man, who used to compare
notes with Raymond about being cuckolded.'
What on earth had happened to Rosemary? she wondered. They
were supposed to be lunching at the George. Lily was looking
forward to beef and ale pie.
In excellent English, Le Brun proceeded to inform the court
that Jacob Abelman had been a highly respected dealer.
'When the Nazis confiscate and burn my pictures, regarding
them as degenerate and obscene, he had the great courage to
show them in his gallery in Vienna.'
'There,' Naomi smiled round as tears of gratitude filled Zac's
eyes.
'In 1942,' went on Le Brun, 'my wife Georgette and I were living
in Paris, and metjacob again. He was staying at the Ritz, a favourite
haunt of the Nazis, and from his beautiful coat with a fur collar and
the open car he was driving around on black-market petrol, he was
doing well. My pictures were banned. I was not prepared to collaborate.
Georgette and I were very poor. Jacob suggested we took
him as a lodger, and was very generous. Georgette was beautiful.
She loved silk stockings, pretty clothes, delicious food. I was out a
lot, painting in an underground studio, working for the
Resistance . . .' Le Brun's voice dropped. 'I didn't realize she was
falling in love with Jacob.'
Poor old boy. Everyone was shaking their heads.
'What a darling,' murmured Anthea.
'How long did Jacob Abelman stay with you?' asked Sampson.
Le Brun took a sip of water and his time.
'Until he was killed by the Resistance.'
A gasp went round the court. Naomi jumped to her feet.
With respect, m'lord, this witness has also been misinformed.
Jacob Abelman was murdered by the Gestapo.'
'Non, the Resistance,' persisted Le Brun.
How d'you know this?' asked Sampson gently, praying the old
^y hadn't lost it.
'Because I killed him,' said Le Brun.
Zac jumped to his feet, then slumped back. Lily dropped her
"andbag. Hip flask and glacier mints crashed to the ground.

467
'He was having an affaire with my wife,' went on Le Brun. 'You
can see them with Hermann Goering in the picture Jonathan show
you.'
'Was that why you killed him?' asked Sampson.
'No, no.' Le Brun smiled wryly. 'I am Frenchman, we accept
these things.'
The killing, he went on, had occurred on 8 March 1943. Love
had made Jacob and Georgette careless.
'She tell me she was going to spend the night with her mother
in Illiers.'
'Proust holidayed there as a child,' murmured Willoughby
Evans, peering over his glasses, 'very built up now.'
'It is, my lord. While she was away. Georgette's mother rang
joyfully to tell Georgette her sister had had a six-pound baby boy.
I summoned three colleagues in the Resistance, one a safe-breaker.
They all suspected Jacob was the notorious "Le Tigre". We raided
his room and found a chest hidden. We broke it open like
Pandora's Box.' ^
'Bloody hell!' Jupiter accepted a slug from Lily's flask.
'We found letters of authority,' went on Le Brun sadly, 'from
Goering, from Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, one of the
first military commanders of occupied France, allowing Jacob to
travel as a purchasing agent throughout Europe. There was even
one from the East Tyrol Resistance. Jacob was clearly playing a
triple game. We suddenly heard the roar of his car . . .' Le Brun
had gone yellow. He clutched the brass rail.
'Would you like a break?' asked Willoughby Evans in concern.
Won/' like a rifle shot. T must finish. We heard the exhaust of ;
Jacob's car, one of the few running in Paris. We shoved everything ^
back and met him in the hall in his beautiful fur coat, smelling of)
Chanel No. 5, my wife's perfume. ;
'We took him to the forest of Fontainebleau,' said Le BninJ
bleakly, 'where we held brief kangaroo trial. He deny everything, |
only as we raised our guns, he ask: "Who betray me?"' Le Brun put 1
a shaking hand to his forehead. 'To my eternal shame, I lied that^j
it was Georgette. "Then I am ready to die," said Jacob, so we killed I
him.' I
Glancing across the aisle, Jonathan noticed tears like snails' |
trails glittering on Zac's face and was enraged that he suddenly felt ?
sorry for him. }
'For the rest,' sighed Le Brun, Jacob's collaboration was total. I |
have records of all his dealings with the Nazis, lists of paintings he
looted and their owners who he betrayed. Being Austrian, he kept
impeccable records: including love notes from Georgette. Already

468
they were making plans to escape to South America if the Nazis
lost the war.'
Sampson Brunning was so fascinated by the story, he had turned
into Michael Parkinson, asking the questions that everyone wanted
answering.
'Why was Jacob nicknamed "Le Tigre"?'
'Because he was a killer and prowled when he walked and was
beau comme un dieu,' added Le Brun almost wistfully, 'like his great-
nephew over there.'
Zac gazed stonily into space.
'How did your wife react when you told her?'
'She shout that she love Jacob and didn't care how many Jews he
kill. They would meet in another life and she would tell him I'd
lied. Then she leave me.' Le Brun closed his eyes in sudden
anguish. 'Today for the first time I tell the truth.'

Naomi couldn't dent Le Brun, even when she tried to prove he had
killed Jacob in a fit of jealousy, because the Austrian was handsomer,
richer, more successful and had stolen Georgette.
'According to official reports,' she went on accusingly,
'Resistance papers were found on Jacob, so he couldn't have been
working for the Gestapo.'
'We put them there,' said Le Brun wearily. 'The Gestapo had
already killed forty-one thousand people in reprisal. "Le Tigre" was
so valuable to the Nazis, they would have butchered scores of us in
retaliation. So we put the letter of authorization from the East
Tyrol Resistance in his inside pocket. Maybe he had worked for
them at some time, but not when we knew him. He was a turncoat
of many colours.'
Then Le Brun squared his little shoulders and with a great effort,
raised his voice.
'I am here today because Raymond Belvedon is a good and
honourable man, whom I have known for fifty years, who, having
saved Pandora from the flames, acted as any art lover would
have done. I am deeply sorry, however' - he turned to Zac to
have destroyed a young man's hero.'
Zac seemed to wake out of a trance, stumbling to his feet,
stunned with horror, beads of sweat mingling with tears on his face,
"is eyes cavernous. 'It can't be true,' he mumbled over and
over again as he lurched out into the aisle, staring round in
"ewilderment.
Next moment a fire-exit door burst open and Sienna hurtled
aown the red carpeted steps. Ignoring Willoughby Evans and the
"issing disapproval of both camps, she flung her arms round Zac,

469

frantically patting his shoulder, holding him close, trying to war
and revive him with her body, gibbering how sorry she was.
'What the fuck are you playing at?' hissed Jupiter andjonath;
in unison as two policemen prised her off.
'That's enough, MissBelvedon,' said Willoughby Evans, who w
privately very taken with Sienna. 'I think this is a good time
adjourn for lunch.'

What a difference from yesterday. Everyone, even Jupiter, w
thumping Jonathan on the back.
'What a shame Rosemary missed it all,' grumbled Lily, linkil
arms with M. Le Brun as the Belvedon contingent swarmed off
the George to celebrate.
After lunch both sides addressed the court. Zac didn't even st
to hear Sampson, after two large gins and tonic, triumphantly tyii
up the loose ends. The Abelmans had sold the picture, forfeitii
any claim, he told the judge. Trebich on oath had also waived ai
right to it.
'Bet he's sorry,' chuckled Lily, who'd also been at the gin, 'eig;
million would have kept him in boyfriends for the rest of his lift

'Thank you, Miss Cohen,' said Willoughby Evans as an uttex
deflated Naomi ended her muted peroration, then he beamt
benignly at the contestants: 'I will give my judgement on Mond;
morning.'
Archie from the Mail lent Sienna his telephone to wire hi
sketch of a snarling shaggy Jonathan and a sleek snorting Za
fighting over an oval-shaped Raphael, which she'd substituted fi
the Royal Coat of Arms, through to the Telegraph.
'Bloody good drawing,' he told her approvingly. 'You deserve i
get your picture back.' i

470

By Monday, Ladbroke's were offering two to one on a victory for
the Belvedons, who consequently set off to court with their tails up.
Jupiter, vastly relieved that the gallery and Foxes Court appeared
to be saved, insisted Hanna accompany them. BabyViridian, who'd
bad a busy weekend trying to cheer up his grandfather, could be
left to sleep in the care of Mrs Robens.
isi Raymond was desperately ashamed of lying and breaking down
In court. All seemed to have been saved, except honour. But
|lespite looking close to death, he put his favourite yellow rose,
|fce early Canary Bird, in his buttonhole and insisted on tottering
|l»to court on Jonathan's arm. Predictably he felt very sorry for
liac.
|f: 'Poor fellow, learning those dreadful things about Jacob.'
I;' Anthea was dressed especially delectably in lemon-yellow with a
pig Antwerp-blue picture hat. Winners, she felt, were entitled to
obscure the views of those behind them.
' Jonathan had put six bottles ofVeuve Clicquot in the fridge for
celebration later. Aunt Lily clattered down the aisle with two hip
flasks and a switch to lemon sherberts. Glacier mints, like toothpaste,
she had decided, made drink taste disgusting.
Lily had promised to call Dora the moment the result was
through, hopefully during break, when the Independent, the
"uardian and the Mail would be ringing in for Dora's reactions.
Having discovered a massive hat bill from David Shilling in her
other's knicker drawer, Dora was planning to auction it to the
ghest bidder. A second pony was definitely on the cards.
Jean-Jacques Le Brun had stayed over, boosting Raymond's
^mts> '^acquainting himself with several of his pictures,
flighted, on balance, he had saved the bacon of the Belvedons,

471

particularly that of Jonathan, such a dear boy, who'd made h
realize how much he'd missed not having a son.
Only Sienna was in turmoil. Even though the Telegraph r
devoted nearly half a page to her Lion and Unicorn drawing, wh
included Willoughby Evans chucking a bucket of water over contestants, itwas too facile an interpretation of Friday's tragedi
The weekend papers had also had an embarrassing field d
speculating on Sienna's transformed appearance and her pul
embracing of Zac. Had Zac notched up another Belvedon sea
they wondered. Was that why Emerald had wept in court? 'Lade
to Lady', and 'The Sloane-ing of Sienna' were among the he
lines. Zac, Emerald and Sienna had all been 'unavailable
comment'.
I'd have been only too available if Zac had picked up a t<
phone, thought Sienna desolately. Holding him fleetingly in 1
arms had brought back all the divine madness of the firewo
evening.
On her right, as she approached the court, had gathered a lai
Jewish contingent waving placards demanding the return of
looted art.
'Give Zac back his Raphael,' shouted a fearsome brunette.
'Oh, fuck off,' snapped Sienna. 'And you can fuck off too,' s
added as a torrent of press surged round her. She was flaming w
going to sit with her family today.
David Pulborough was spitting. On Saturday, Rosemary's
Shadrach had died of old age, and David thought he'd be
especially caring, digging a grave beyond the tennis court*
was only a cat. But Rosemary couldn't stop crying, refusing
accompany him to a regimental dinner in the evening. Even wol
it looked as though his next-door neighbours were poised fa
famous victory. :

Five minutes to blast off. April storms had been forecast. The Ugi
of the court kept flickering on and off. A mean east wind t
thrashing horse-chestnut leaves against the window pane.
A restless Jonathan wandered off to look at the Raphael. Ho
and Pandora must be getting gate fever at the prospect of conri
home. Sloth on his yellow sofa had probably slept through t
whole ordeal. Would Emerald be pleased, wondered Jonaths
that he had been less slothful recently? Or had she wept in con
nagged a nasty little doubt, because she was still carrying a tol
for Zac?
'This judgement will be frightfully boring,' Sampson was telli
the rest of the Belvedons. 'Endless citings of cases and procedt

472

nd we won't get the result till the very end. Oh, here comes the
loyal House of Darkness.'
At least Zac, in Ray-Bans, dark grey polo neck, softest black
pather jacket and black cords was sartorially back to normal. He
uas followed by several guards and a stony-faced Si. The Jewish
ontingent, who'd moved to the gallery, gave them a round of
ipplause.
'To the victor, the trophy,' spat Jonathan, as Zac slipped into the
ow on the left.
Naomi Cohen looked tired and in low spirits. Cases were like
joat races, there was no kudos in coming second.
it Serve her right for turning me down on Friday night, thought
(ampson smugly.
(; 'Be upstanding in court,' called out an usher, as Willoughby
Ivans appeared smiling broadly through the crimson velvet
ittrtains.
pf'Hi, Sheriff!' Taking a slug from Lily's hip flask, Jonathan waved
llppily at a clanking bootfaced David, who did not wave back.
k Villoughby Evans was exhausted but elated. Never had a case
rendered such publicity. With any luck he'd notch up enough
wnie points to be promoted to the Court of Appeal. He liked
idea of the black and gold robes of a Lord Justice. He had
ted very hard on his judgement, which would take around
f-frve minutes to deliver, and had treated himself to a glass of
npagne with his morning kipper.
Tie Raphael Pandora,' he began in his sonorous Welsh barie,
'passed to Benjamin Abelman on the eighth of August 1931,
'was stolen from him in Vienna on the twelfth of April 1938.
' subject is the opening of Pandora's Box. I doubt when
phael painted his exquisite picture, captioning it "Trouble lies
low", he had any idea how prophetic these words would be. In
i last few days, all the deadly sins, Pride, Avarice, Lust, Wrath,
vy. Sloth and' - as Lily crunched a lemon sherbet - 'even
^^ittony, have stalked this court.
^Zachary Ansteig's family,' he went on, 'must have suffered
Imaginable horrors and, in seeking what he believed was his
Proinght, he opened a Pandora's Box releasing all varieties of evil,
»t only shredding the reputation of Sir Raymond Belvedon' Henna
slid her hand over her father's - 'but also of his idol, his
^eat-uncle Jacob.
^ Ut before you judge these men too harshly, remember the
Ite °^L.P. Hartley, 'The past is a foreign country: they do things
trendy there." ' r ° ' 7 8
^ Jacob Abelman' - Willoughby Evans looked at Zac - 'has been

473

described as a turncoat of many colours. But he was once a hig]
respected dealer, courageous enough to show art forbidden by 1
Nazis. He also belonged to the Resistance in Austria. Later he v
seduced by the potentially vast profits gained by throwing in on
lot - as many others did - with the Nazis.
'But remember it was only when the war looked likely to be I
by the Germans that suddenly every man and his dog in the oci
pied countries claimed to have belonged to the Resistance. Cau^
between the crossfires of Nazi and Communist rule through(
Europe, people changed sides as often as their shirts. It was avi
grey area.'
Willoughby Evans beamed at Anthea, far from grey in t
lemon-yellow. He'd love to put her in his buttonhole. Straight
ing his wig, gathering his thoughts, he turned to the stricken gi
ghost, shrivelled with shame, gazing into space on her left.
'Raymond Belvedon was one of the most admired and bekw
figures in the art world until last Friday. But you must rememi
that, after the war, everyone was souvenir crazy. When my fath
among others, liberated Belsen, he remembers soldiers seizi
watches off the guards and even taking home lampshades made
human skin.' Willoughby Evans shuddered.
'Sir Raymond,' he added kindly, 'found the Raphael in a blazi
collapsing building. If he hadn't rescued it, none of us would
in court today. He knew he had looted a painting, but had
admitted this, it would have been taken away from him. And wh
you see the beauty of Pandora, like Helen of Troy amid t
burning towers of Ilium, you understand exactly why men ha
joined battle and suspended moral judgement for her sake. &
repeat, judge neither man too harshly.'
'There, Daddy.' Patting her father's cheek, Sienna's hand f
the wetness of tears.
'I don't know which way this judgement's going,' mutter
Jupiter, as Willoughby Evans launched into a prolonged flurry,
citings, subjections, proprietorial claims, pursuyvants, and Xvera
Ys.
Raymond passed the time by reading 'Ulysses': 'It may be ^
shall touch the Happy Isles.' Jonathan read Viz. Hanna play
battleships with Aunt Lily. Jupiter hoped Willoughby Evans won
wrap it up quickly, he'd just received a text message to ring 1
restorer.
Sienna was drawing Willoughby Evans as a sweet little fie
mouse. Zac, she thought, looked like a bombed-out town. Th'
she realized Willoughby Evans was talking about his beloved unc
'Jacob Abelman appropriated the picture in 1941 frc

474

Hermann Goering. His painting, you might say. He was the
younger son, whose older brother Tobias had killed himself. But
Tobias had a daughter, Rebecca, who survived the horrors of
Theresienstadt and had a son, Zachary Ansteig. You may think
Zachary Ansteig abused both the hospitality and the daughter of
the Belvedons' - Willoughby Evans shot a reproachful look at Zac
'but it was his past and his inheritance for which he was
searching.'
Noticing Sampson shaking his head, so the little tassels at the
back of his wig shook like lambs' tails. Sienna redrew her field
mouse as a vicious-looking rat. She thawed a little as Willoughby
.Evans praised the tenacity and enterprise of Jonathan Belvedon.
'Nor can anyone, having heard his evidence and that of Miss
Sienna Belvedon' - glancing up, a surprised Sienna encountered
a smile of such approval that she promptly softened the vicious
trat's eyes and thickened his whiskers - 'doubt that the Raphael is
as much a part of their past and a link with their dead mother as it
,4s of Zachary Ansteig.'
I 'Two sets all,'muttered Sampson.
I, T realize how deeply they would feel its loss,' went on
iWilloughby Evans.
;y= 'Eight million smackers,' muttered Jonathan. 'You bet we
pwould.'
'Hush,' reproved Anthea, who'd been planning a holiday in St
flaucia. Raymond would be too frail to make the journey, but she
|could perhaps take Green Jean as a bag-carrier, whose plainness
jivould be the perfect foil for her own beauty.
S More cases, more statements, more incomprehensible jargon.
; 'The law is a foreign country,' Jonathan whispered to Hanna,
I'they say things differently there.'
i* The clock had moved round to ten-forty.
' It was getting darker. Outside the rain was hissing on the little
green parasols of the horse chestnuts, spattering reporters' notebooks.
Photographers were putting their coats over their cameras.
Willoughby Evans was now paying tribute to the skill and industry
of all counsel involved, ably supported by their respective teams.
Oh, get on,' groaned Jupiter. 'It was much more exciting on the
other days,' he whispered apologetically to Hanna. 'I really love
you,'he added. ^ ^ 8 ^ V
Like audiences at boring concerts, everyone was craning to see
"ow many pages Willoughby Evans had left to read. Only two now.
"enna took Raymond's hand. Please God make it OK.
for these reasons I have given, I conclude . . .'
Here we go,' muttered Sampson, who was playing with his pink

475

brief ribbon. Peregrine parked his chewing gum and stopped
playing Solitaire.
'The painting was taken from Benjamin Abelman in 1938,'
intoned Willoughby Evans, 'but the Nazis who stole it did not
become full owners. None of the subsequent transfers established
title. Who knows to which son Benjamin would have left his
picture, but in the law of this country, the elder son inherits.'
The pink ribbon snapped in Sampson's hand. Feeling the blood
drumming in his head, Jupiter closed his eyes. They'd lost it.
Involuntarily rising out of her seat, Sienna could see a jubilant
Naomi's hand on Zac's arm. Her pencil broke as she turned
Willoughby Evans back into a vicious rat.
'Although Benjamin's younger son, Jacob Abelman, recovered
the Raphael and sold it to Colonel Feldstrasse,' he was saying
sternly, 'it was not in fact his to sell. Benjamin's elder son already |
had a daughter, whose son Zachary Ansteig is the direct heir.' J
As the ecstasy on the faces of the Jewish supporters was illumi- I
nated by a biblical flash of lightning, Willoughby Evans's voice rang|
out like a chapel bell. ^
'I will therefore recognize Zachary Ansteig's tide to the painting, |
as derived from the law of the twelfth of April 1931.' Then, as ai;||
cannonade of thunder rocked the building: 'Sir Raymond neveE.||
obtained good tide to this painting.' ^
:1
Utter pandemonium followed. Everyone was yelling their head$|
off, except the Belvedons.
'Oh no, no, no, no,' whispered Raymond, s
We're going to need that Veuve Clicquot for a wake, thought
Jonathan numbly.
'Never - hie - trust a Welshman,' muttered Lily. ;
How dare conniving beastly little Willoughby Evans crinkle his|
eyes at me all week, thought Anthea furiously, then take away 01
lovely Raphael.
'We must appeal,' she cried.
'There isn't any fucking money,' snarled Jupiter. 'We'll have t(^|
pay costs now. With all Si's dirt-gathering trips in his jets, they'll be|
massive.' 1
There was no time for tears. Naomi and Sampson were already]
up at the bench, arguing terms. Naomi haughtily demanded coster
and Sampson, wondering if the Belvedons would ever be able to |
pay him, complained this was far too high and he'd like a more;;
detailed assessment, i
'It seems reasonable to me, Mr Brunning. Costs follow the event,

476

do they not?' said Willoughby Evans, trying and failing to make
himself heard over the uproar.
Sienna sat utterly stunned. Her longing for Zac had fooled her
into thinking she didn't mind so much about the Raphael. Now its
loss hit her like an overhanging branch.
Equally stony-faced, having secured a Pyrrhic victory, idol in
smithereens, proud heritage a mockery, Zac stalked out into the
downpour. Such was his suppressed fury, he had no need of guards
to fend off the press, who split open like the ground in an earthquake
as he disappeared through them into Si's Mercedes.
Deprived of their interviews with Zac, the maddened media
stampeded the Belvedons, knocking Raymond's Canary Bird out
of his buttonhole, trampling it in the mud.
'I'm so sorry,' Raymond mumbled in bewilderment as the storm
flashed and crashed overhead, 'I must get back to Grenville, he's
terrified of thunder.'
Desperate to get a shot of Pandora before she was packed away,
photographers raced back into the court.
How could Hope still be smiling? wondered Sienna.
'You lying bitch,' she said slowly.

477

Jonathan was relieved not to go back to Foxes Court. He coi
face Anthea's martyrdom, Raymond's anguish, Jupiter's cold P
Sienna's despair. Le Brun had been coming home for a cele
tion, but felt now he should return to Paris. Jonathan insisted
accompanying him. As Rupert had repossessed his helicopter, 1
caught a late afternoon flight and dined at Chez Andre wl
Jonathan sunk into deeper and deeper gloom. At least hunting
evidence had distracted him a little from Emerald. Now, aliv
his dark coffin without any bell, the bleakness of a future witi
her terrified him.
'Don't try to eat,' said Le Brun, who'd been watching the p
boy pushing exquisite langoustine round his plate. 'Yot
exhausted, which is ninety per cent of depression.'
'I wish,' sighedjonathan. If only a decent night's sleep couldll
him over Emerald. Then, pulling himself together, he apolc
for dragging Le Brun over to England and forcing him to
such painful things.
'And thank you for trying to salvage Dad's reputation.'
'You're not just sad because of the Raphael,' observed Le Bl
'I'm pissed off that shit Zac has finally got it.' Then Jonathan it
Le Brun about Emerald.
'Everyone bangs on about the benefits of finding one's bi
mother,' he said finally. 'No-one warns you of the hell offallin|
love with your real brother.' ;
Despite a very long day, Le Brun insisted on coming bacli.|
Jonathan's dusty little room to look at his pictures, which werejf
of Emerald. Le Brun refused a drink and said nothing because i
suffering they conjured up was so excruciating, it reminded
of losing Georgette.

478

Oh well, thought Jonathan.
'I'm sorry I've been such a bore,' he muttered. 'Do you think the
>ain ever goes away?'
'Non,' said Le Brun tersely.
'Right.' Jonathan took it on the chin. 'I'll get you a taxi.'
'It will never go away, because you have immortalized this
rirl and your unhappiness.' Le Brun put a consoling hand on
bnathan's arm. 'People's hearts break all the time, but only a
landfill have the genius to portray this suffering: Catullus, Sappho,
iousman, Yeats, Mahler, Munch, now these . . .' Le Brun waved
he other hand round at the pictures. 'They are also extraorditerily
beautiful.'
^ 'Thank you.'Jonathan fought back the tears. 'That does help Hot. But I'd still trade Emerald for any immortality.'
(-. 'That's because you are young. I am old and tired.' Le Brun sat
pry suddenly down on the bed. 'We will talk more tomorrow. Now
etme that taxi.'
^Switching on his mobile, Jonathan found a text message from
Ipiter.
| 'Dad's had a massive stroke,' he told Le Brun shakily, 'he's
likely to last the night. Can I drop you off on the way to the
oort?'

lie first British Airways flight left Charles de Gaulle at a quarter
>seven in the morning. Trafford, who metjonathan at Heathrow,
""i somewhat the worse for wear after an all-night preview party
ebrating the opening of Tate Modern.
>ome prudes, he announced proudly, had dismantled Shagpile
|d knocked off all the cocks.
l'*Bloody good publicity. Thinking of replacing the cocks with
rillo pads and renaming it Hagf)ile,' then, just sober enough to
ike in Jonathan's reddened eyes and corpse-like pallor, he added,
Sorry about your dad.'
^Thanks. Sorry to drag you out here, but I wanted to repossess
fcydog.'
1 remaps it was desire to escape from a petrol-stinking car park,
tot any worries that Diggory might have forgotten him were
"P^d when an orange-and-white bullet exploded out of
anord s filthy jeep, screaming, wriggling, covering his master's
ty ace with losses.
"on'tbe too nice to me,' mumbled Jonathan.
teri^?01^ reeked of hash, cigarette smoke and various scents. He
- ^arly been partying as full-bloodedly as Trafford, who,
ecting that both Sienna and Emerald would probably be in situ

479

and in need of comfort, suggested he accompany Jonathan to,|
Foxes Court.
Jonathan shook his head.
'I'll drive myself. Need time to adjust to being an orphan.'
'Nice bloke, your dad. Let's have a drink.'
'Have one on me.' Jonathan shoved a bottle of Bell's intol
Trafford's shaking hand.
'Sure you're OK?'
'Fine.'
All the same it took Jonathan three-quarters of an hour
remember on what floor he'd parked his car.
What would Van Gogh have made of rape fields? wondere
Jonathan, putting on dark glasses to fend off glaring lakes ofyello
beneath a white hot sky. As he stormed into Limesbridge, sea
tering the pink and white petals in the gutter, crossing the finger
of both hands on the steering wheel, he prayed that his fathe
would stay alive long enough for him to say goodbye.
It was therefore an anti-climax to be greeted by a grey-face
exasperated Sienna: Raymond hadn't had a stroke at all.
'It's something much milder called a T. I. A.'
'Sounds like one of those things one should buy before ti
fourth of April to avoid tax.'
'It stands for Transient Ischaemic Attack and evidently simulat
the symptoms of a stroke.'
'Is he OK?'
'He's got to keep quiet for a few days, then they'll do some tests
D'you want some breakfast?'
'I'd like a drink.' Wandering into the kitchen, Jonathan poure<|
them both duty-free brandies. 'Where is everyone?'
Jupiter's belted back to London to sweeten the bank manage
Anthea's sobbing on her bed, rehearsing her role as unmer
widow. In reality she's hopping because she overheard Robbie M Lily discussing how pleased Dad would be to see Mum in Heaves
'I'll go and see him.'
'He might not recognize you. He keeps calling me Galena as
Grenville Maud. Such an insult, no wonder poor Grenville^
refusing to eat. Dad thought Limesbridge had been taken over I
the Russians last night and that Neville-on-Sunday was Boris Yelts
and offered him a huge vodka.'
Jonathan grinned. Out of the window he could see little Diggc
hurtling round the garden in search of Grenville and Visitor.
'Where's Alizarin?'
'He rang, he's in the middle of another op, and can't fly back i
best till later in the month.'

480

'Poor darling/Jonathan put an arm round Sienna's shoulders.
'It's all fallen on you.'
Sienna battled not to cry. It was so shaming that even when she
was convinced her father was dying, she could only long for Zac's
arms round her.

Raymond had retreated to his dressing room. On his way up there,
Jonathan bumped into Anthea, who expressed horror at his
brandy bottle and the two hundred Gauloises.
'You mustn't drink and blow smoke all over your father. He's
been dreadfully ill. He won't recognize you. He asked Lily to bowl
to him this morning.'
Being nice, Jonathan decided, was the easiest way to get rid of
her.
'Poor Anthea, you look whacked.'
'I haven't slept for weeks, months actually, what with the trial.'
'I'm sure. Go and lie down, I'll sit with him.'
One of Anthea's eyelids was turquoise, the other violet, he
noticed; perhaps in her way she did love his father.
Raymond, elegant as always in Turnbull & Asser blue-and-white-
striped pyjamas, was lying diagonally across the bed to
accommodate the long legs of Grenville, who languidly waved his
tail, before jumping down to greet Diggory.
Raymond's face lit up.
"This is my son,"' he quoted in wonder, '"mine own
Telemachus."'
'I told you he wouldn't recognize you,' said Anthea smugly.
'Hi, Dad,' said Jonathan, shutting the door firmly in her face.
As he stooped to kiss his father, he was shocked to be grazed by
stubble. Raymond had never not shaved.
'I expect the Grim Reaper will soon be doing it with his scythe,'
murmured Raymond wryly.
'Don't be morbid, Dad, you're not dying at all. Do you want a
dnnk?' Then, when Raymond didn't, Jonathan refilled his own
glass and, pulling up a chair, took Raymond's hand.
'I've always loved this room.'
Every inch of the wall was covered with favourite pictures:
portraits of the family, past sporting achievements, dogs on the
lawn, sketches of Raymond by friends: Lucian Freud, Francis
"aeon, William Nicholson. In the wardrobes were countless
"eautiful suits, a rainbow of coloured shirts, dashing hats. In
we bookcases, poetry. On the dressing table, silver-backed brushes
nestled with a pottery Cheshire cat Jonathan had modelled at prep

481

A faint smell of Extract of Lime hung over the room. The
Friday Music was on the CD player. Viridian's dilapidated lichen
green leather volume of Tennyson lay on the bedside table besk
a saxe-blue vase of cowslips and kingcups, picked by Lily.
Although putty grey and shrunken in the face, Raymond's smi
was as sweet as ever. 'Good, Larkshire bowled out Rutshire.'
'Do you want the commentary?' Jonathan glanced at his watci
'It'll be on in a minute.'
'No, I want to talk. Jupiter and Alizarin are good fellows but n<
brilliant at cherishing. I worry about Lily. I've left her her hoi
but she may not have enough to live on. Jupiter's awfully tight v
money, and I don't think he'll allow darling Anthea to buy r
clothes. Do encourage her to marry again. So pretty, needs a
young chap to take care of her, someone who'll be kind to r
and Dora.'
'Dad, stop it,' said Jonathan gently.
'And I worry about Sienna, so loving and sweet lately, and
little Emerald, I wish I'd got to know her better, I'm so sorry abol
her and you, all my fault.' A tear trickled down the crow's "
Raymond was having difficulty breathing. 'And don't let
Grenville starve, Anthea's not his greatest fan.'
'Dad, you're not dying.'
'So they tell me, but I don't feel very well.'
'I'll look after everyone. I'll become the Van Dyck of the twenty
first century and make a fortune.' Jonathan felt wiped out '
tiredness.
'No, no, you have too much talent. You must paint what you v
to. If Jupiter sells one or two pictures, that should be enough.
The smell of crab-apple blossom and clematis was drt"
through the window, honey sweet yet sharp, taking Jonathan
to Le Brun's garden. Perhaps he wasn't so lousy an artist - Le I
had liked his stuff.
'See that my post's answered,' begged Raymond. 'Jupiter
to bin everything, but if people are kind enough to write, tell t
I'm so dreadfully sorry I let them down.'
'You didn't. Listen, there's the cuckoo.'
'How good of him to turn up.' Raymond lay back in ecst
'That pastel of my father's awfully good, he was such fun. I
him down too. Oh dear, I worry about you all, particularly li
Viridian. The ozone layer, and now the Arctic Circle melting.
don't want Germans running Europe, or even worse the Chinei
overrunning the world. You will look after Robens and Esther?
don't know if Jupiter will keep them on.'
Raymond was gasping for breath.

482

'Don't talk, I'll read to you/Jonathan pressed the repeat button
on the Good Friday Music, and picked up Tennyson. The gold-
tipped pages fell open at 'The Passing of Arthur', who, like
Raymond, was looking back on a world that was coming to an end.

'I found Him in the shining of the stars,' read Jonathan,
'I marked Him in the flowering of His fields,
But in His ways with men I find Him not.'

You could say that again, he thought, or He wouldn't have made
me and Emerald brother and sister.

All day Diggory slept off his excesses on Jonathan's knee, while
Raymond, watched by a yawning Grenville, drifted in and out of
sleep. Waking, he was delighted Larkshire were 270 for 2.
'Zac liked cricket, you know, can't be entirely bad, all his
relations wiped out, have to feel sorry for the poor boy.'
'I don't,' snapped Jonathan.
'Difficult to underestimate the importance of roots,' sighed
Raymond. 'Look at that lot on the wall. Take them for granted, but
you know where you are. Poor little Emerald's torn between us and
the Cartwrights. I've left her a little money. You will look after her?'
Jonathan smiled crookedly, lit a cigarette and got up to blow the
smoke out of the window. At this time of the evening and the year,
the slanting sun behind the trees revealed ebony branches
beneath the pale mist of green, reminding one of death. Robins
and blackbirds sang to distract him.
'Stjohn Evangelista,' muttered Raymond as his son turned back
from the window. Jonathan had such a lovely face, hollowed
cheeks, sweet, sensitive mouth, curly hair, even curlier eyelashes,
around sloe-dark soulful eyes - so like a Raphael.
'When you're dying--' he whispered.
'You ain't.'
'Truth sits upon the lips of dying men." You were always my
favourite - by miles. Alizarin, Jupiter, Sienna - all awfully tricky and
critical. I dote on Dicky and Dora, but you were such a dear little
boy.'
'I wasn't a very good little boy.'
Maud was my favourite too,' whispered Raymond, spreading his
stroking fingers to block Grenville's ears. 'I shouldn't say it in
ont of him, but Maud was so sweet guarding your playpen. Her
only crime was sticking her long nose through the bars and
electing the occasional toy like a cocktail snack.' Racked by a
ht of coughing, Raymond continued, 'That Gauloise reminds

483

me of your mother. Not sure I feel up to meeting her yet.'
Jonathan stubbed out his cigarette and, sitting on the bed, took
his father's hand.
'Maud and Visitor are up there, they'll guard you. I can just see
you riding through Heaven in the Bentley, with Maud and Visitor;
beside you, reading your own obituary in The Times.'
Raymond smiled faintly. ;
'The Bentley's failed its MOT,' he mumbled. 'Time for us both
to go.' i
Suddenly he gave a stifled cry, shuddered, went rigid and
stopped breathing. ^
'Dad,' yelled Jonathan in panic. 'Dad!'
Leaping up, Grenville nudged his master frantically, whim*|
pered, then threw back his brindled head and howled. As Diggory 1
joined in Anthea burst into the room. ^
'What's going on?' ' 1
'I think he's gone.' A stricken Jonathan was cradling Raymond!
in his arms.
'You should have called us, shutting us all out not giving us ai1
chance to say cheerio . . .' Anthea started to scream.

484

Jonathan was utterly devastated, sobbing his heart out, deranged
with grief.
'Far too distraught,' observed Aunt Lily, 'just for the death of a
father . . .'
Anthea was also shattered. She'd always got more attention than
any of the children, and had tantrums if she didn't get her own
way. Who would indulge her now? There were, however, compensations.
She looked lovely in black. Everyone was fussing over her
and for once her stepchildren, even Sienna, were being nice to
her. Letters also flooded in. Anthea skipped the guff about
Raymond, reading out the bits about herself.
'You were such a wonderful wife to Sir Raymond, Lady Belvedon,
you kept him young.'
'How am I not going to throttle her?' muttered Sienna to
Knightie.
What really upset Anthea, however, was the conspicuous
absence of David. He had been so charming and attentive earlier
in the year, when he'd wanted to muscle in on the Borochova
Memorial Award. Now he and Geraldine had control, he had no
time for her.
You always said if anything happened to Raymond you and Ay
would end up together,' she sobbed.
If you'd managed to hang on to the Raphael, we might have,
"ought David.
A great sadness for the Belvedons was that Margaret Cassidy, MP
or Searston, a jolly backslapping Tory predictably known as
nutch', had died the same day as Raymond and bagged the more
ottering obituaries. Even Raymond's adored Times criticized his
wameful lying and breaking down in court and implied an

k 485

intemperate scattering of seed, as they pointed out he had k
behind a second wife and seven children.
The good news was that Margaret Cassidy had vacated a possibi
safe seat for Jupiter. During his trip to London, he had missed hi
father's death, but as ample compensation, his sleeper had turne<
out to be a lovely little Constable, which, after a clean, should fetcl
the odd million, which would help him and Hanna with dealt
duties.
Margaret Cassidy's funeral in Searston Cathedral was on f
same afternoon as Raymond's, but far less well attended. Not
inch of St James, Limesbridge, was unoccupied. The press, havir
poured down from London in anticipation of high drama, fount
the Belvedons in tears of hysterical laughter. The local flower shot
overwhelmed with orders, had muddled the two funeral!
Raymond as a result had received several wreaths for 'Darlin;
Butch, ever in our thoughts', and even a bunch of lilies for 'ADea
Godmum'.
The Belvedons needed a laugh. They were all so sad.
'Darling Butch,' sighed Aunt Lily, 'would have loathed
weather,' which was bitterly cold with a vicious east wind ont
again stripping off his beloved blossom.
'Why can't families all die on the same day?' sobbed Dora. 'A
why can't Loofah come into church if Diggory and Grenville
allowed?'
'Because Grenville hasn't eaten since Dad died,' said Sienna.:!
David Pulborough was furious - not just at even more me<
than ever concentrating on Foxes Court, but because an equa
heartbroken Robens and Eddie the packer, rather than he, h
been asked to join Jupiter, Jonathan and Dicky in carryi
Raymond's coffin. Anthea had made Dicky hide his shaven he
under his school cap.
'Everyone'll think he's got ringworm,' hissed Dora.
So many of her media contacts were in church, she couldi
decide who to sell the latest dibits too.
The organ played Raymond's favourite hymns and the Go
Friday Music. People read poems and made careful speech*
Jonathan was only aware of a ravening press who had crucified h
father a week ago, who were now scribbling away or muttering int
their tape machines. There was a bleep on his mobile. His hea
lightened briefly as he read: Darlingjonathan, I'm so sorry. Say gwi
to Raymond/or me. Still all my love, Emerald.
Dropping Diggory on Sienna's knee, startling the vicar who ^
poised to launch into the final prayers, black hair curling over hN

486

navy blue overcoat, eyes blazing in a deathly pale face, Jonathan
stalked up the steps of the pulpit.
Oh God, what's he going to do next? wondered the Belvedons,
as he adjusted the mike and waited until the rumble of excitement
had faded.
'Tennyson was my father's favourite poet,' he began quietly, 'but
today an earlier poet, Shelley, seems more appropriate.
' "He has outsoared the shadow of our night..." 'Jonathan spoke
very slowly, emphasizing every word.

'Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure.'

Glaring round, Jonathan gripped the sides of the pulpit.
'Here we go,' muttered Jupiter.
'I'd like to know what you're all doing here,' asked Jonathan
softly. 'Last week you carved up my father in your newspapers and
on your programmes. The rest of you from the art world' - he
scowled particularly at Somerford - 'have been gloating over his
downfall in restaurants, pubs and galleries. In a minute you'll all
pour into his house to guzzle his champagne.'
There was total silence, as Jonathan plucked a yellow rose from
the branch of Canary Bird decorating the pulpit.
'My father worked harder than anyone I know,' he said defiantly.
'Charisma is an impossibly overworked word, used to describe rock
stars and YBAs who turn heads when they roll up drunk at parties.
In fact it comes from the word "Charites" - or rather "the Graces".
It means goodness and whatever bestows the gift of grace.
Predictably my father was born, nearly seventy-six years ago, on a
Tuesday; Tuesday's children are proverbially always full of grace.'
Looking round, Jonathan was amazed to see how many people
were crying openly, and nearly lost it.
'There is no-one in this church' - his voice shook only for a
second - 'who at some time hasn't been touched by my father's grace and, to quote another poet, by "that best portion of a good
"lan s life. His little, nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness
^id of love." So in future bloody well say nice things about him.'
No-one made a sound as Jonathan bounded down the steps. But
as he stopped beside the Belvedon pew to present Anthea with the
yellow rose and gather up Diggory, Dicky stumbled to his feet,

487

shouting that Jonathan was right and clapping wildly. Next
moment everyone had followed suit. An impassive Jonathan;
walked out into the sunlight with the cheers ringing in his ears. '
^
Everyone came back to Foxes Court, as Raymond would havel
expected, except Jonathan, who, having seen Raymond's coffin||
safely into his grave next to Galena, shoved off to London. Sienna);!
fed up with behaving well, decided to get drunk and later to have!
a swim in the pool, which was still full of algae and leaves. On theg|
way, she bumped into David. Why did he always undress her witi^J
those horrible hot eyes? You didn't need a bathing hut with hil
around.
'Heard about the Raphael,' he sneered.
'What?'
'Zac never took it home. Sent it straight to Sotheby's.'
'What!' Sienna clung on to a stone dolphin. 'I don't under-ll
stand.'
'He's flogging it - in an Old Masters' sale in July. Sienna
Sienna.1
But she had plunged fully dressed into the icy water, vanishil
beneath the leaves. For a moment David thought she wasn'l
coming up. Perhaps he'd better leap in and hoick her out - goo^
excuse for a grope. But Sienna had emerged, paler than Ophelisi
algae greening her hair, murder in her eyes.
'Bastard! Traitor! So much for recapturing his past. From th<
start, he and Si were in it for the money.'

488

Rosemary stayed away from the funeral, pretending she'd got flu,
still devastated by the misfortune she'd brought on the Belvedons.
Emerald didn't go, for the same reason. If it hadn't been for her,
i they'd never have lost the Raphael, nor been faced by this vast bill
s for costs, and an utterly stressed-out Raymond would be alive today.
f She felt even guilder when she learnt about the will. Having
; already made over Foxes Court and its contents to Jupiter,
I Raymond had also left him the gallery as well on condition that he
I provided for Anthea, Dicky and Dora. Raymond had also given Lily
I her house, £100,000 each to Sienna and Jonathan, £200,000 to
I Alizarin because of his blindness, £50,000 apiece to Dicky, Dora
| and Emerald and £5,000 each to the Robenses, Knightie and Eddie
I the packer. Far too much, in Jupiter's mind. How the hell would
I he keep Anthea in hats and Dora in ponies?
J Emerald meanwhile was having no success in getting over
I Jonathan. How could she when his doings were constantly in the
papers, particularly his glorious outburst at Raymond's funeral?
As Raymond had left her so much, she was even more determined
to give something back to the Belvedons. She was therefore
delighted and relieved when, having shown her portfolio and ideas
to the Borochova Memorial judges, out of hundreds of entries, she
had been shortlisted. Along with three others, she now had
to produce a suitable maquette - or little model - by late June.
ne winner, to be announced on 6 July, would then complete the
^ulpture.
Seeing Emerald working night and day, Patience was equally
^azed by the change in her daughter. Compared with Sienna,
^o was now so chic and glamorous, Emerald would go for days
^thout bothering with make-up, hardly running a comb through

489

her hair. Apart from the occasional flare of temper, she was also so|
quiet and sad.
Both Rosemary and Lily had been marvellous, helping her witf
photographs and tales about Galena. If the submission day hac
been a few months later, observed Lily, Emerald would have beee
able to read Galena's diaries, which, locked in a drawer at Rive)
Cottage, were ticking away like a timebomb, only to be opened u»|
October 2000.

In early June, Emerald had a particularly bad day. It was muggy c
baking hot in London. On a rickety table in her bedroom, she ^
trying to sculpt Shrimpy, Galena's little Jack Russell, which mad
her cry because it reminded her of Diggory and Jonathan. Nea
door her mother and father were glued to the World Cup. Portug;
was playing and the gorgeous Portuguese players, with then
dishevelled curls, big rolling eyes, mobile features and moci
serious ways of crossing themselves before they bounded onto i
pitch, were so like Jonathan, it made her cry even more.
'Telephone for you, darling,' called her mother.
It was David Pulborough, his voice smooth as white chocolafi
pouring out of a vat.
'My dear, sorry we didn't have time to chat the other day. Th|
Memorial Committee simply adored your portfolio. Thought ;|
could give you a few pointers. How about a bite of sup]:
tomorrow?'
And a chance to hear news of Jonathan, thought Emerald.
'Oh yes, please.'
'Prince Igor's at eight o'clock then.'

The following night was even hotter and stickier. Even though th<
waiters at Prince Igor's had been allowed to take off their sat
embroidered waistcoats, their white muslin shirts already clung 1
their bodies. David had reserved a table in an alcove par
concealed by a large bamboo plant.
At first Emerald was touched by his kindness as he filled her i
with white wine, ordered her a tiny helping of gulls' eggs ai
shredded pigeon salad, to be followed by poached salmon. But 1
sat much too close to her on the red velvet banquette, whic
scratched the bare undersides of her thighs, and talked s
grandiosely about himself, how he was advising Derry, Cherie an
Tony and how last Friday he'd dined next to the Princess Royal: 'a
tireless worker for good causes like myself.'
He would be happy to represent Emerald, he went on, and waftjl
definitely going to put in a good word for her in the competition,:!

490

but she needed proper advice if she were going to fly. To punctuate
this monologue David kept putting hot hands on her bare arms
and thighs, or brushing her breasts with his arm.
'You've broken one heart besides mine,' he teased. 'Casey
Andrews longs to paint you. He's been captivated by your beauty
since he met you at Raymond's party. Will you sit for him?'
'He's a terrible lech,' protested Emerald. 'Jonathan says he puts
girls on a revolving podium and crawls round gazing up their
skirts.'
'But think of the kudos,' urged David. 'It would be a terrific
career move. I've just firmed up a big exhibition for him at the Tate
next year. Imagine if your portrait were included. We could simultaneously
put on a little show of your heads at the gallery. I'll come
to every sitting and chaperone you, how about that?'
David crinkled his eyes engagingly, and was just giving her
bottom an encouraging squeeze, when Emerald said, 'Oh, look,
there's another of the judges. Will she think it unethical we're
having dinner together?'
Geraldine clearly did and shot across the restaurant.
'Hello, David, hello "Rosemary",' she said sourly, 'I hope he's
not giving away secrets,' then flounced off to join her party at
a nearby table. If I mixed purple lake with alizarin crimson I
could just about capture the colour of David's face, thought
Emerald.
'What was that about?' she asked.
'Must have got the wrong end of the stick,' stuttered David, 'and
thought I was dining with Rosemary.'
Emerald took a deep breath which pushed out her enticingly
high round breasts.
'How's Jonathan?'
'Fine, I think.'
'What's he working on?'
'New ideas.'
No need to tell Emerald that the little snake had sent an email
that very morning, saying he no longer wanted to be represented
by a pompous crook. David had been tempted to pass the email
on to his solicitor.
'Like to come back to the gallery and see them?' he asked.
'Oh, please.'
Shoving a fifty-pound note into the hands of the waiter who had
just arrived with two plates of poached salmon, muttering he'd
settle up tomorrow, David whisked Emerald out of the restaurant.
-"lythmg to get away from Geraldine, peering slit-eyed through
"^e bamboo like approaching Vietcong.

491

Emerald was jolted to be in Cork Street. Across the road in dar
ness, except for one of Joan Bideford's outrageous lit-up nuc
sculptures in the window, was the Belvedon. She was so upset, sl- didn't notice David slapping on Paco Rabanne and smoothing h
hair in the underside of an Ella Fitzgerald CD, before slipping
into the CD player.
Pop went a cork, flying out of a very cheap bottle of sparklir
wine.
'"I have dreamt that your arms are lovely,'" sang Ella.
'I've got something to show you,' called David from the ba<
office.
Wandering in. Emerald found a splendid white sofa piled wit
mauve and dark purple cushions. On the desk, beside a vei
nattering silver-framed photograph of David in his High Sheriff
uniform, and a pile of faxes and transparencies, was the mo
charming unframed little watercolour of Shepherd's Bus
meadows.
'Vintage bubbly for a fair lady.' David handed her a glass. 'An
an early Turner for your delectation.'
'It's beautiful.' Emerald bent over the picture.
'Changed a bit, hasn't it? Can you work out where your parent
flat might have been?'
Feeling his hot breath on her neck, and his body pressed again
hers, Emerald asked hastily if she could see Jonathan's stui
hoping it would include some of the portraits of herself in Vienn;
'I'll get it out,' promised David prophetically as he disappeare
through a second door into the stock room.
'Sorry,' he cried unrepentandy a minute later, 'must have Ie
Jonathan's canvasses down at Limesbridge. Got something muc
more exciting to show you.'
Swinging round. Emerald shrieked, for David was wearia
nothing but a rainbow-striped condom.
Remembering Jonathan's professed loathing of condoms: 'It
like washing your feet with your socks on,' she burst out laughinj
Interpreting this as approval, David was on top of her - oh ths
scent of violets, oh that soft white skin. One hand experti
unhooked her bra, the other scutded like a tarantula up her thigh
'I love Jonathan,' screamed Emerald, as David's warm w<
lips came down on hers. Falling backwards, she sent trannie
Polaroids, faxes, watercolours flying.
'You're too good for him.' David whipped off her scarl«
knickers. She's as tiny as her mother, he thought excitedly as h
explored further. 'You need an older man to guide and cheris
you.'

492

Emerald lost her temper.
'Get off, you disgusting creep,' she yelled, shoving him violently

away.
For a moment David's portly body barred her exit, but as she
took a run and hurled herself against him, he gave way like a
warped door and she fled out into Cork Street.

Unable to face another night alone at Foxes Court, Anthea had
been to the theatre and supper with a sympathetic girlfriend,
before returning to the flat in Duke Street, Stjames's. As she always
seemed to be cold these days, she'd just had a hot bath. This part
of town always reminded her of first meeting David and the half-
hours they always managed to snatch together. Now he was
continually busy. Sadly she looked across at Stjames's Park. The
blossom had gone, giving way to the uniform green of summer.
Jupiter'11 be selling this place next, she thought fretfully.
Some drunk was leaning on the doorbell. On and on, now in fits
and starts, growing more frantic. Anthea would have been spooked
if it weren't for Gubbins the porter.
When she finally picked up the telephone, it was several minutes
before she could identify a name from the hysterical sobbing.
When Emerald finally fell into the flat, her lipstick was smeared,
her floral dress ripped. David, she wept, had made the most
ferocious pass. But she seemed far more upset over the loss of her
purple pashmina, given her by Sophy, who could ill afford it, and
a little black sequinned bag, which had been a present from
Jonathan.
'If David starts using my cheques they'll bounce.'
At first Emerald was touched by her mother's fury.
'The beast, the brute, in fact the bastard,' raged Anthea.
Having found desperately shivering Emerald a thick jersey, she
made her a cup of cocoa. Emerald hadn't the heart to ask for a stiff
drink.
Did he - er - did he - put his thingy inside you?'
'No, no.'
The last time she was here, Emerald remembered, was when the
DNA tests proved she was Raymond's daughter and could never
marry Jonathan. A revelation so terrible, nothing afterwards, not
even a pouncing David, could really dent her for long.
Anthea was pacing up and down, her suddenly aged face an ugly
^ntrast to the spring flowers on her cotton dressing gown.
outside large cranes hung over Stjames's Park like malignant
birds. In the distance. Big Ben reared up like a floodlit sugar-sifter.
Now Sir Raymond has passed away,' muttered Anthea, who was

fc 493

shaking worse than her daughter, 'there's something I must
you. Try not to hate me.'
Oh God, what new evils are going to fly out of Pandora's Bi
wondered Emerald. That was such a sweet photograph ofjonati
going off to prep school in a cap and short trousers, she might 1
and nick it before she left. „
'When I first went to work at the Belvedon,' a still pacing Antti
was saying, 'I worshipped Raymond, he was so caring and suet
gentleman. Then David came back from his honeymoon, <
tanned and handsome in his lovely sports car. I fell for him laM
log. I simply couldn't help myself. After Galena made Raymo
sack me, I discovered I was pregnant with you . . .' Automatic!
Anthea ran a finger over a Dresden shepherdess checking for dt(
'I was convinced you were David's baby. David accepted this 4
paid for everything, hospital bills, accommodation, on condi^
no-one found out and I gave you up. I thought he'd relent'
you were born, but he was so petrified of Rosemary and Rayn
finding out, and losing his new wealth and his nice job.
'When I gave you up the pain was so terrible, I thought itw
blot out the agony of David not marryin' me, but it didn't.' Ant
hung her head. 'I married Raymond because he was so safe.'
'And you went on having an affaire with David?'
'Yes, yes,' whispered Anthea.
'Poor Raymond, poor Rosemary,' said Emerald in
ment.
'Rosemary should have made more of herself,' snapped Ant]
As the green flame of jealousy hissed out of the damp log, Erne
couldn't help smiling.
'Raymond wasn't very exciting in bed,' confided Anthea,
David was such a wonderful, imaginative lover . . .' Then, se<
Emerald shudder: 'Well Ay thought so. He always knew the r
buttons.'
Like an ace casting director for Cinderella, thought Ernei
fighting hysterical laughter. She was getting as silly asjonatha
'When you rolled up with Zac' - Anthea was frantically stra
ening coloured paperweights - 'I couldn't bear to be remind*
the terrible unhappiness of giving you up, and I was petrified »|
'David would flip.'
'Yes. I feel so ashamed. At our silver wedding party I thought <
of myself, panicking and fibbing to Raymond that he was
father then biting my nails through the summer. The biggest .r1
was the DNA result.'
To her amazement, Emerald was smiling.
'David must have had kittens.'

494
'He did. He'll never forgive me, and you know' - Anthea looked
up in amazement - 'I suddenly don't care.'
'Hurrah!' cried Emerald. 'I'd have behaved exactly the same. I
only dined with David tonight,' she confessed, 'hoping for news of
Tonathan. What I could never understand was why you hadn't told
Raymond I was his, but if you were convinced I was David's, it all
falls into place.
'Poor Anthea.' She put an arm round her mother's heaving little
shoulders. 'What a nightmare it's been for you.'
'I hated living a lie,' sniffed Anthea.
'Can we have a huge proper drink to celebrate?'
'Do let's, there's some brandy and an untouched bottle ofcreme
de menthe Raymond gave me for Christmas.'
Since it was true confession time, Emerald took a deep breath
and told Anthea about sculpting the maquette of Galena.
'I really need your help, now I've got into the last four.'
Anthea, to her amazement, was thrilled.
'There are some of her clothes in the dressing-up box at Foxes
Court, so we can get her measurements right, and lots of photos.
There might even be some here. She was quite fat, you know.'
After that there was so much to talk about that a pink dawn gatecrashed
the party just as the creme de menthe ran out.
'Let's have some breakfast.' Anthea cannoned off a William and
Mary winged chair as she tottered towards the kitchen. 'The
moment the Pulborough opens, Ay'm going round to sort out that
rotter.'

Anthea found the Pulborough in uproar. Arriving earlier, David
had been unable to find his Turner of Shepherd's Bush and was
furiously accusing his son Barney, his assistant Zoe, his cleaner
Marlene and the office cat of stealing it.
Most of Cork Street, in order to listen, were rubbing nonexistent
smears off the insides of their front windows. Jupiter, Tamzin and
Eddie the packer were all busily dusting Joan Bideford's nude.
You always complain if the bins aren't emptied first thing, Mr
P.,' Marlene the cleaner was now protesting.
'Here comes the US Cavalry,' murmuredjupiter as Anthea came
storming up Cork Street.
How dare you try and rape my daughter, you rotten swayne,' she
breamed, rushing into the Pulborough.
Whereupon most of Cork Street decided their outside windows
needed cleaning.
Ay've come to collect her pashmina.' Anthea snatched it back
"oni a disappointed Zoe. 'And her new handbag' - Anthea

e 495

grabbed that from an even more disappointed Barney - 'and
scarlet panties, which you tore off her, you scoundrel. How o
you abuse a young woman's trust?'
'Is this what you're looking for, Mr P.? Must have fallen int<
waste-paper basket,' interrupted Marlene. From one finger
thumb were suspended Emerald's red knickers; from the oi
marinaded in pot noodles and bilberry yoghurt, hung the To
of Shepherd's Bush.

496

Soon after Raymond's funeral, a big piece had appeared in
the Evening Standard saying how delighted Sotheby's were to be
including the Raphael Pandora in their Old Masters sale on 6 July.
This was not entirely true. Having seen glamorous photographs of
Zac all over the papers during the court case, Sotheby's staff were
understandably excited when he asked them to sell his picture.
Alas, they soon discovered Zac was not as other Jewish heirs who
sought their help in selling restituted art. These tended to be
fragile, a little bewildered and touchingly grateful for any advice,
free valuations and help with research. They were only parting with
this infinitely precious part of their past because there was no other
way they could pay the massive legal bills or because a Monet or a
Sisley cannot physically be divided between five grandchildren.
These heirs also spoke of their picture with such pride and
longing, praying, like a single mother giving up a beautiful baby
for adoption, that it would go to a loving, appreciative home.
Zac, by contrast, seemed only interested in making as much
money as quickly as possible and showed no affection for the
Raphael at all. From the start, he insisted on a terrifyingly high
reserve of fifteen million pounds and that the picture must go into
the sale on 6 July.
Sotheby's begged him to wait until their next big Old Masters
^e in December. This would enable them to put the Raphael on
the catalogue cover, produce a CD-Rom and a hardback for
promotional purposes and send the picture on a triumphal tour
°tthe art capitals of the world, so all the major players would be in
town to view it.
To which Zac had replied that if they didn't do all these things
m the eight weeks before 6 July, he would take Pandora straight

497

round to Christie's. The contract hammered out betwe
Sotheby's and Si Greenbridge's sharp-suited lawyers was
absolute brute. Nor did the Old Master experts, who'd be
working on catalogue footnotes eulogizing the Raphael until fc
o'clock in the morning, enjoy having their exquisite prose torn
shreds by Zac.
The press, meanwhile, egged on by David, who intended to I
for the picture and who wanted to bring the price down, w<
spreading rumours that Pandora might only be a school painti
and wasn't anyway in the best condition.
To refute any rumours, Chris Proudlove, Sotheby's kind a
genial press officer, suggested they call a press conference.
'Get along the broadsheets, the big art magazines and ofcoul
television. Our experts Richard Charlton Jones and Luci
Simmons,' he went on, 'will then talk about the picture, its hisfa
and its excellent condition. And for you, Mr Ansteig' - Ch
Proudlove smiled at Zac - 'it will be a unique opportunity to (
the record straight. You had a lot of adverse publicity during t
court case and since - quite unfairly,' he added hastily. 'Now's yc
chance on an open stage to give your side of the story.'
'I have absolutely no desire to justify anything,' snarled Zac.
'What a beast,' sighed a secretary longingly as he stalked out
the building.

Jupiter no longer minded about losing the Raphael. T
Constable had sold extremely well. A valuation of the paintings
the Blue Tower had convinced him that flogging a few would s<
out death dudes and the gallery's money problems. The Gene
Trading Company, thrilled with Hanna's flower paintings, h
placed a big order. Searston Conservatives, having been assut
Jupiter could control his wild family, were poised to adopt him5
candidate and little Viridian was making eyes bluer than a T<
rosette at everyone.
Jupiter was also preparing to move into Foxes Cou
Empathizing with his father's beloved Tennyson: 'That man'j
true Conservative Who lops the mouldered branch away,' he h|
coolly informed the family he'd like them out by ChristnH
Anthea was already looking for a cottage in the area for herself ai
the twins with a paddock for Loofah.
All the Belvedons found it horrible at Foxes Court withe
Raymond to welcome and fuss over them - none more so th
Alizarin who finally came home at the end of June. There was i
reason why he was still blind, but the American doctors felt th
had done all they could.

498

The moment he arrived, Alizarin asked Sophy to take him to
Raymond's grave, which was still covered in flowers. The limes were
in bloom in the churchyard - the scent of his childhood. Seeing
tears once more escaping from under his dark glasses, Sophy tried
to comfort him, but as usual he shrugged her off.
Wretched pride again. Alizarin couldn't tell her of his despair
that he'd never paint again, nor see the pale yellow lime blossom,
nor saddest of all, her sweet trusting face. She was only twenty-
three. What use was a painter without eyes? If only Visitor were still
alive to be hugged and confided in. If only he could have retreated
to the Lodge to bawl his sightless eyes out, but Jupiter had decided
against chucking out the retired bank manager and his wife. They
brought in too good a rent.
It was still impossibly hot. As soon as supper was over, Alizarin,
lying that he was drooping withjetlag, retired to bed, leaving Sophy
I and Jonathan, who happened to be the only other member of the
family at home, to watch television.
t Missing Raymond desperately, Jonathan was huddled in one of
his father's old jerseys and trying not to pump Sophy too much
t about Emerald. Grenville shuddered at their feet panting and
I dribbling, knowing a storm was near and there would be no
; Raymond to comfort him. Diggory sat in his basket under the tele1 vision set convinced his master and Sophy were looking admiringly
; at him rather than watching the late-night Wimbledon roundup.
I- John McEnroe, discussing the day's matches, was being charming,
I intelligent, reasonable and not slagging off a single player.
He used to be an obnoxious, mouthy brat like me, thought
'is- Jonathan. Perhaps I could improve?
?' 'What the hell are we going to do about Alizarin?' he asked.
i 'I think he's about to crack,' sighed Sophy. 'He's like one of
? those stone walls that fills up with rain - or tears - and suddenly
collapses.'
They were roused by terrifying screams.
'Jesus!' said Jonathan as Diggory leapt out of his basket, barking
furiously.
It's Alizarin.' Sophy had gone very white. 'He keeps having
these nightmares.'
Racing upstairs they found Alizarin sitting up in bed drenched
in ^eat, his huge frame racked by frenzied sobs, screaming for
Galena and shouting, 'He said I mustn't tell anyone.'
..."^dually, Sophy calmed him. Jonathan paced up and down.
^izarin had been put in the spare room on whose walls Galena
"ad painted the myth of Daphne turning into a laurel tree. Leering
^tyrs and wild beasts peered out from every tree - none of which

499

Alizarin could see. Perhaps Galena's ghost had returned i
derange him.
Jonathan took his brother's hand.
'What happened the afternoon Mum died?' he asked gently.
At first Alizarin would only mumble about some tramp fuckir
some woman who'd bled all over the pavement the night Visit(
died.
'She was crying out, I couldn't help her.' Alizarin was wild
agitated again. 'I suddenly couldn't see where she was.'
'Go on.' Sophy stroked his sodden hair.
'I couldn't help Mum either.' Alizarin's normally deep voice ha
become a little boy's. 'I wanted to but he locked me in. Mum w
pouring blood like the woman in the street.'
They all jumped as lightning lit up the room, followed by
deafening crack of thunder. Diggory shot into Jonathan's arm
a panic-stricken Grenville disappeared under the bed. But thel
was no time to find him tranquillizers. Alizarin's need was greate
Gradually, a few stumbling words at a time, the story spilt ou
Alizarin had been alone in the house with Galena and baby Sienn;
'Mum told me to watch television. She'd been drinking all da
yelling on the telephone. I heard a car crunch on the gravel . .
Someone ran up the stairs, Mum shouted at me to stay in my roon
Then I heard more arguing ... I can't tell you any more.'
Jonathan, who'd been cuddling Diggory and watching sheets <
water falling out of the sky, swung round, frantic to know the trud
'For Christ's sake, go on.'
'It'll help,' urged Sophy, trying to still his shuddering. Despil
her desperate concern, it was such heaven to hold him in her arm
'Mum's screams grew so loud,' he whispered, 'I took my woods
sword and crept up the stairs to the Blue Tower. She was yelling a
him for shagging Anthea' - for a second Jonathan's eyes iim
Sophy's in amazement - 'then I heard him say: "You never std
grumbling you're not getting it any more, well now you're fuckin
well going to."
'I pushed open the door... Oh Christ...' Alizarin's huge hanc
obscured his stricken, disintegrating face. Sophy clung on to him
terrified he was going to bolt.
'It's all right, Jonathan and I are with you.'
'I thought he was killing her,' said Alizarin, childishly again, 'h was on top of her, fucking her, blood was gushing all over the floor
I rushed at him with my sword. "Get out, you nosy little bugger
he bellowed. Mum screamed: "Go away," over and over again. I ra
back downstairs and along the landing; next thing I knew he'
locked roe in my room, shouting: "Don't you ever dare tell anyon

500

hat you've seen." I tried to call for help . . .' Alizarin went on
nelessly. 'Then I heard the front door bang, Mum screaming
(rain then this terrible crash. Chasing after him, she must have
"ppied over the banisters, falling down the stairwell onto the flag-
tones.'
'Tesus,' said Jonathan, 'the bastard left her to bleed to death.'
As if recognizing a greater need, Grenville emerged shivering
om under the bed, jumped up and pressed his long length
gainst Alizarin.
'I climbed onto the roof,' said Alizarin, exhausted but back in
is normal voice. 'It was dusk, no-one heard me calling. Poor little
ienna was bawling her head off, Shrimpy was whimpering. Finally
tie Old Rectory gardener came over and let me out. They thought
turn had locked me in. Everyone asked me questions. I couldn't
nswer, the words wouldn't come out, even when they arrested
ted.'
Alizarin gazed at them like a skull, his face bone-white, his eyes
,Uge black caverns.
'It was the same with the tramp and the woman.' He shook his
,ead in despair. 'I couldn't save her either. Christ, that must have
een the moment my sight went. I can't tell you anything else.'
As Jonathan opened his mouth to protest, Sophy raised a
aming finger.
'You've done brilliantly,' she told Alizarin, 'Jonathan'11 get you
9me more blankets and a large drink. There, darling, you've been
ach a brave little boy.'
Reluctantly, Jonathan collected a double brandy and a couple
fAnthea's sleeping pills, but by the time he returned, Alizarin
Semed curiously calm, his eyelids drooping. After that one deaf-
ning clap, the thunder had also retreated. Alizarin's hand was
aaoothing Grenville's striped head, reminding Jonathan agoniz»gly
of the dying Raymond.
Who was the man?' he demanded roughly. 'Rupert, Casey,
tienne?'
No, no, no,' protested Alizarin sleepily, 'it was Willy of the
alley.'
Kenst.' Jonathan collapsed on the end of the bed as Alizarin
nfted off. 'I never knew David was Mum's lover. The dirty sod.
gh! Then, becoming thoughtful: 'I wonder when that started.
e was miles younger than Mum. I always thought Dad was the one
"owas keen on him, that's why he forgave the ghasdy creep so

Hour dad forgave everyone,' sighed Sophy.
* * *

501

After sleeping most of the next day. Alizarin woke at dusk and
a bath and a shave, insisted Sophy took him for a walk. Th
had just set. Fluffy vermilion aeroplane trails were drawing
all over a drained blue sky. Pigeons were crooning their you
sleep. Last night's downpour had intensified the scent c
flowers. But Alizarin could only breathe in their swee
occasionally feeling the rough scratch of a yew hedge, hearin
babble of Raymond's brook. Regret overwhelmed him that h
never opened up to his father, always pushing him away, anc
it was too late.
Leading him across the big lawn, Sophy turned right and
left.
'Where are we?' grumbled Alizarin.
'Visitor's grave. It's next to Maud's and Shrimpy's,' expl;
Sophy, reading the inscriptions. 'He's got a lovely headstone,
She placed Alizarin's hand on it. 'Oh, and such beautifulvior
'No-one consulted me,' growled Alizarin. 'What do they si
'"Visitor Belvedon 1985-2000."' Sophy's voice was sudi
choked with tears. '"Be comforted, little dog, thou too a
Resurrection shall have a little golden tail."'
Alizarin couldn't speak, battling not to break down. Sop
turn was terrified. Now they were back in Larkshire, she
Alizarin, too honourable to chain her to his side any longei
about to give her her marching orders.
He had no idea he had pulled out of the drawer an inappi
ately festive scarlet shirt, which she had given him and which
emphasized his desperate pallor. All the buttons were dot
wrong. He had only managed to slot his belt through two 1
He wore a loafer on one foot and a black slip-on with the
hanging off on the other. Glancing round at the ravishing gai
remembering the joyful pictures he had once painted of i<
family and the animals, Sophy thought how viciously cruel wi
punishment. Beethoven at least could compose when he
deaf, Milton still wrote when he was blind, but Alizarin cold
nothing, least of all where to put his paintbrush. Overwhelm!
the pathos of his situation, she could bear it no longer.
'I love you,' she yelled at the top other voice. 'I want you to t
I really love you.'
'No need to shout,' snapped Alizarin, 'I'm blind, not deaf.
'I wanted Visitor to hear me say it,' sobbed Sophy. 'Now thai
no longer alive to look after you, I want to instead - f-f-for atw
please let me.'
Reaching out trembling hands until he found her lovely pi
shoulders, Alizarin drew her towards him. He could feel hei

W2.

lean hair tickling his clenched jaw. He couldn't imprison her for
he rest of her life. Then, looking up for divine guidance, he
tarted violently, blinking then rubbing his eyes, then frantically
razing - it must be a dream. No, it wasn't. Above the trees, slightly
iazy he could make out a tiny gold crescent moon. Hanging below
dark cloud, it looked exactly like Visitor's tail, sticking out from
mderneath the drawing-room sofa.
"The little golden tail." I can see! It's come back!' Alizarin's
oice was hoarse with excitement. 'I can see the trees, the clouds,
i star and the new moon exactly like Visitor's tail. And, oh Sophy,'
lis voice cracked as he pressed his lips against her forehead, 'I
wear I saw it wag. Visitor's giving us his blessing, oh my darling,
lariing Sophy.'

503

'My knees completely gave way when he kissed me,' Sophy gigg
to Jonathan afterwards. 'Only Alizarin would have been str<
enough to hold me up.'
Jonathan was terribly pleased for them. He'd never seen
people so deliriously happy, but it made his own deprivation e
harder to bear. Loving Emerald was like a cancer, a gnawing p
that never went away. Vienna and Paris had been hell, London i
Limesbridge were even worse, all fogged with her ghost, wh
vanished as he reached out to hold her.
The morning after Alizarin's sight returned, after yet anoti
sleepless night, Jonathan took a bottle of champagne fr
Raymond's cellar, which he supposed now belonged to Jupfc
and went to see Lily, who was looking very diminished. She mis
Raymond dreadfully and being the so-called head of the fan
made her feel frightfully old. '
She had, however, been vastly cheered by the barracking ofT<
Blair by the Women's Institute and was now inveighing against?
banning of blood sports. 'And
what are they going to do about twenty thousand i
hounds? I can't see Cherie and Tony keeping a couple at Nuiri
Ten. Oh, lovely!' Lily accepted a glass of champagne. 'I so 1
drinking at nine in the morning.'
As he slumped down on the red rose-patterned sofa bes
Douglas, the stuffed badger, Lily noticed Jonathan was trembt
violently. He looked terrible, grey and shadowed, with new d<
lines etched round his mouth. All his larkiness had gone.
'You look like a painting by Francis Bacon.'
'I'm sure. Can we talk about Mum?'
'I thought you might want to.'

504

'Who's my father?'
Lily ea^ a ^"S s1^1' anc^t00^ a huge gulp of champagne.
'I'm awfully afraid it may be that little shit, David Pulborough.'
To Lily's amazement, Jonathan gave a Tarzan howl and, gathering
up Douglas, waltzed round the room knocking over a little
table and the piano stool.
'You don't seem very upset,' chided Lily.
'If it's true, I am the happiest man alive.' Collapsing back onto
the sofa, Jonathan told her about not being able to marry Emerald.
'Yes I can see that would pose problems,' agreed Lily. 'I
suspected something was up. I couldn't tell you before, Raymond
loved you so much better than any of the others, it would have
broken his heart. And he loved David too, which would have left
his poor heart in smithereens.'
As Jonathan reached for his glass of champagne, Brigadier,
Lily's vast white Persian, eyed by an outraged Diggory, landed like
a little elephant on Jonathan's knee.
'What happened?' he asked, not daring to hope.
'David arrived for the summer holidays,' began Lily, 'to coach
your brothers. Your mother wasn't sleeping with your father,
Ithey'd had some row, which gave her the excuse not to. Raymond
Iras in London a lot. He knew Rupert, Etienne, Casey and Uncle
Tom Cobbleigh were all giving her one, as you so euphemistically
call it, but somehow he trusted David, because David seemed to
jbrefer him, and Raymond felt singled out and special.
k 'It would have destroyed him if he'd known your mother and
|)avid were at it all the time. They had some close shaves. But David
fcas always had the ability to lurk undetected like a dishcloth in a
crashing machine.
, 'After David married Rosemary, it was all downhill. He didn't
"he Galena's exhibition being a flop. Failure terrified him.
Raymond got a silly crush on Anthea. David was after her too,
Aought he was the one that had got her pregnant. Claimed
"e paid for everything - in fact he borrowed vast sums from
Rosemary and Galena. Then told Galena about Anthea's baby to
hurt her, taunting her that he was fed up with her demands. To
urt her even more, he told her Raymond was nuts about Anthea
too.' '
Jesus, what a bastard.'Jonadian, weighed down by a thunderously
purring Brigadier, reached out to fill their glasses.
1 his sent Galena roaring back to your father,' went on Lily, 'but
e truce was fleeting. Galena was too hooked on David; she
°nfided in me a lot. She was also tormented with doubts about
r painting, experimenting with a less figurative approach.

505

Marvellous stuff, but she was frantic for reassurance. David told 1
she'd gone soft.'
Heaving herself to her feet, Lily weaved through the crowd
room to a desk and, creaking to her knees, unlocked the bott<
drawer, which was crammed with blue leather-bound diari
Picking one out, flipping through the pages, she handed it
Jonathan.
'You'd better read this. I'm breaking the embargo, but yc
mother would understand.'
What bold, flamboyant writing, thoughtjonathan, balancing!
diary on Brigadier.
'September 8th, 1970,' he read, 'Raymond and I have had
sex for four months. Thank God for David. At first he was a lil
lapdog, yapping round my feet, now his warmth, energy a
passion have enslaved me. He burrows into my body and my hea
'You were born prematurely at the beginning of April 19'?
observed Lily drily. 'Don't need to be very good at arithmetic
work that one out. They didn't have calculators in those da
Raymond, like Dicky, could never add up.'
'Mum and David, wow!' Jonathan shook his head. 'When I dr
him as Lust, I was spot on.'
'He had a sort of hedonistic life force that gets away with thu
again and again, rather like you.'
'Am I like him?' asked Jonathan, suddenly appalled.
'You're what David should have been. He was clever a
charming, but he came from a very rigid, repressed, lower-midri
class background. Stumbling on all the music, books, pictures a
beauty at Foxes Court, plus Galena's arms and Raymond's.)
censorious understanding, he must have felt he'd found Paradi
and was determined never to lose it again.'
'Dad didn't love me best because I was so like David?'
'No, no, because you were lovable.'
'And you will go on being my aunt?'
'If you go on bringing round champagne like this.' Lily patt
her nephew's cheek fondly, then sighed. 'I don't want to blacfc
David's character, but he has been appallingly treacherous. It!
he who tipped Si Greenbridge off about the Raphael.' i
'He didn't,' said Jonathan in horror.
' He' d seen it enough times when he was poking Galena and fh
Anthea up in the Blue Tower. He described it exactly to Si and si
it was in the house. Si told Zac. Zac didn't trust David and doub
checked with Alizarin.'
'My God, how d'you know all this?'
Lily looked smug.

506

'Si's distraught Rosemary won't speak to him any more, so he
asked me to mediate. Rosemary was desperately worried because
she told Si that Raymond had found the Raphael in a chateau in
Bonfleuve. She thinks that lost you all the picture. She didn't
realize that Dirty Dave had already told Si everything.'
'I don't believe all this.'Jonathan clutched his head. 'Are you
trying to tell me Si and Rosemary . . . ?'
They were' - Lily emptied the bottle into their glasses - 'but
she's blown him up, because she thought he was merely sleeping
with her to get information.'
'Dear, dear, everyone seems to have been shagging their brains
out except me,' grumbled Jonathan.
'Makes a change.'
But Jonathan wasn't really interested in Si and Rosemary.
'I need to be sure,' he said slowly. 'I daren't hope. They've
presumably still got Dad's DNA profile in Harley Street from when
they tested him and Emerald. I'll just have to trot along there and
bung them to speed up the process. Christ, how could David have
done that to Dad?'
'The Judas factor,' observed Lily. 'There's more frisson in
betraying best friends - and they are always the ones we want to
beat.'
'I don't go along with that,' mused Jonathan, 'although I'm seriously
pissed offTrafford's got a room in Tate Modern.'
'A sickroom?' suggested Lily.
Jonathan laughed; then, after a pause: 'Was Dad gay?'
'Slightly,' admitted Lily. 'Didn't do much about it. Like
Tennyson's dog, he hunted in dreams. He was much more hooked
on beauty. That's why he couldn't bear to part with Pandora and
was so mad about David, who was extraordinarily good looking
when he first arrived at Foxes Court. . .'
'And probably why he immediately fell for Emerald,' said
Jonathan.

Over in Shepherd's Bush, Emerald was finding her maquette the
hardest thing she had ever sculpted. Trying to capture Galena's
blazing vitality, which never came across in photographs, she
chucked out one attempt after another. Leaving herself too little
urne, she had to stay up all night before submission day, hardening
the clay with a blow-drier.
She'd also had terrible trouble getting Shrimpy right, taking
every book on Jack Russells out of the library, but Shrimpy still
looked like a pig. She even dogsat for a sculptor friend's Jack
^ussell puppy over the weekend, but the little terror ran about,

507

chewing her brushes and her shoes and only stayed still when ht
fell asleep. So in the maquette, Shrimpy flopped down exhauste<
across Galena's feet.
In return, the fellow sculptor lent Emerald his estate car for ttti
day and with the maquette laid on foam rubber and cocooned u
bubble wrap in the back, she set out to deliver it. The tri
down was anguish. She was so tired, she was terrified she migl
drop off at the wheel - and every deepening green leaf reminde
her of Jonathan and darling Raymond, her loving, welcomui
father. ;;
There was the church ringed by trees so tall and proud the
seemed convinced they were entirely responsible for holding u
the sky. She hadn't visited Limesbridge for nearly a year, andwoul
have delivered the maquette to the village hall and fled, ifAnthe
hadn't begged her to give them a preview at Foxes Court.
Having thrust some red roses into Anthea's hands and nea
dropped the maquette in her nervousness. Emerald unveiled it»
the dining-room table.
Oh help, she thought, as Anthea burst into tears, I've
Galena too glamorous.
T didn't mean it to hurt you.'
'You haven't, it's so beautiful. Everything: the bluebells,
water jar, the little sleeping dog, the cheesecloth dress, her haugl"
Slav face held up to the sun . . .' Anthea skipped excitedly rous
the table. 'The straw hat cast aside - she was so untidy. She coli
be standing there. Raymond would have been so proud.'
'I couldn't have done it if you hadn't dug out all that stuff.'
Mrs Robens bustled in then crossed herself like the Portugut
football players.
'Heavens, it's brought her back from the grave.'
Then Emerald froze as Sienna, her traditional enemy, her
for Jonathan and possibly Zac, wandered in, as usual covered ;
paint. How would she react to such a subjective interpretation?
To her amazement, Sienna fingered the thick, straight hair a
the tilted face in wonder.
'Christ, it's miraculous, I feel like I've met Mum at last. It's j
to win. It'll look fantastic in the High Street. Shrimpy's adorat
You are like so bloody talented.'
Emerald, unbelievably touched and gratified, couldn't spea
She had never known Sienna enthusiastic.
'Galena was so strong and beautiful,' Anthea was now sayings
fully. 'You can see why Raymond worshipped her.'
Sienna, however, had been wised up by Jonathan at
the perfidy of Galena and David. To everyone's amazement,

508

suddenly blurted out: 'Mum was like an absolute cow to Dad. You
made him a million times happier.'
'Why, Sienna.' Anthea blushed a deeper red than Emerald's
roses. 'You can't mean that.'
'I do seriously. He loved you infinitely more than Mum.'
'Oh, thank you.' Anthea, near to tears again, held out a shaking
hand. After what seemed an eternity, Sienna reached out and took
it.
'Let's have a huge drink to wish Emerald good luck,' she said
gruffly.
'I daren't drink,' sighed Emerald, 'it's not my car.'

Aware that Anthea and Sienna were embarrassed yet dying to talk,
Emerald left immediately, only pausing to put six pale pink lilies
on Raymond's very new grave. Then, on impulse, she divided
them, propping three against Galena's mossy headstone. Having
spent so much time agonizing over her rebirth, she had grown very
attached to Raymond's first wife.
Limesbridge was full of tourists taking photographs. After dropping
off the maquette, Emerald drove past the site earmarked for
the memorial, praying she would win, not least because she was
absolutely skint. Probate wouldn't be through for weeks because
of the wrangling. She'd spent so much time on Galena, she must
get down to the other commissions Raymond had found her. At
least her tears would keep the clay wet. I've just got to get over
Jonathan, she told herself hopelessly.
If only she didn't have to return to Larkshire next week for the
announcement of the winner by ghastly David Pulborough. She
hoped their last scuffle wouldn't totally prejudice him against her.
The ceremony was taking place on 6 July, ironically on the eve of
her twenty-seventh birthday. How anxious she'd been to be
married by then.
The sun was gilding the willows along the river bank as she drove
over the bridge. What a bitch she'd been at her last birthday making
sure her parents and Sophy were dressed as she wanted,
taking family heirlooms, beautiful dresses and Augustus Johns for
granted. She'd also still been besotted by Zac, public enemy
number one in the Belvedon household, particularly as the
Raphael was coming up at auction on the evening of the sixth.

As Sophy was now blissfully living off Putney Common with
^izarin, both besotted with their new Labrador puppy, the
^artwrights had turned Sophy's bedroom into a tiny studio for
herald. Here, as midnight approached on 5 July, she was still up,

509

desperately trying to finish the head of a Cuban heiress in time fo
the girl's father's fiftieth birthday next week. Her back ached, am
so did her little hands, which were engrimed with clay as if she'^
been scrabbling down a rabbit hole. It was stiflingly hot. Mott|
crashing against the window made more noise than Patience'3
timid knock as she brought her daughter a cup of chocolate.
'Please go to bed, darling. We must leave by eight-thirty, we got this detour to make on the way. Daddy mustn't be late.'
Patience was trying not to get too excited that tomorrow lan ha
an interview for a bursarship at Bagley Hall, a school in the nea
county to Larkshire. Perhaps by some miracle she might be able (
have a dog and a horse again. But all Patience could really thil
about was the despair and exhaustion to the point of collapse i
her elder daughter.

510

The sixth of July dawned very hot and beautiful, with not a breath
of wind nor a cloud in the sky. After such a rainy summer, the
woods seemed to be boiling over more Prussian blue than olive
green and the farmers were still haymaking. Patience listened to
the clunk of the baling machines as they spewed out vast fawn
cotton reels of hay and gazed longingly at glossy horses grazing in
every other field.
As they crossed over into Rutshire, and lan swung the ancient
Volvo up a little road called Bagley Hall Lane, Patience smiled at a huge notice in the barley saying: 'The Countryside is for Life not
just for Ramblers'.
How had she existed in London so long? she wondered. Please
God, let lan get this job.

Searston Town Hall slept gold and proud as a lioness in the midday
sun. The press, revved up by David and Geraldine, were out in
force. Inside the great hall, a splendid room with Goddesses
gilding the walls and a stage flanked by dark-red velvet curtains,
was already packed in anticipation of an exciting result and drinks
and canapes afterwards.
As Patience changed into black high heels in the car park, an
utterly untogether Emerald noticed for the first time that her
mother was looking unusually smart.
Lovely dress, Mummy. That blue really suits you.'
Can't let you down on your big day.' Patience blushed slightly.
I thought we might have tea in Bath later and buy you something
nice for your birthday. Have a think what you'd like.'
Only Jonathan, thought Emerald.
Inside, she was amazed to find the Belvedons packing the front

511

rows. Alizarin, still in dark glasses although his sight was improvin
all the time, was actually wearing a tie and Sophy looked adorabi
in a sort of flowered nightdress. And there in a suit flaunting a larg
blue rosette and rather self-consciously pressing the flesh, wa
Jupiter. With him was Hanna, suntanned and stunning in crear
silk with her figure back at phenomenal speed, and little Viridiar
adorable in a sailor hat, whom Jupiter liked kissing much mor
than other people's babies.
Anthea, finally out of black, and equally stunning in Schiaparel
pink with a new crimson-and-white-striped halo hat, was actually
giggling with Rosemary Pulborough, whose hair had becom
softer, blonder and longer, and who looked almost glam in a citru
suit and a terracotta straw boater. Aunt Lily wore her standby,
dashing vermilion Stetson. Even Sienna had washed her hair ani
put on a skirt.
How embarrassing they were all tarted up and she was onl
wearing jeans and a purple T-shirt. At least it matched the shadow
under her eyes.
'You're supposed to look arty,' said Patience reassuringly.
Then Emerald realized why they were all so smart, as Davi»
clanked in in his High Sheriffs dark-blue velvet and frills.
'He's only supposed to wear that fancy dress on ceremonia
occasions,' fumed Lily.
'Good luck. Emerald,' called out Mr and Mrs Robens an<
Knightie, who were sitting in an excited row with the landlord 0
the Goat in Boots, and who all agreed the poor lamb was lookin)
dreadfully peaky.
'We're rooting for a Belvedon victory,' boomed Genera
Anaesthetic. Green Jean perched at the end of the row, waiting tl
disapprove.
Biting her lip to hide her disappointment that Jonathan hadn'
shown up, Emerald looked so small and vulnerable as she took he
seat between huge leering Casey and massive Joan Bideford, wh<
both knew they'd won. Beyond Casey, the fourth finalist, a sled
Indian called Ranjit Chitajan, sat with his eyes closed, praying tha
he might.
Casey, who'd dyed his beard a startling orange, prompti
suggested that Emerald and he had lunch afterwards.
'I wouldn't,' hissed Joan Bideford from her other side, 'he'l
make you pay for the honour. Come and have a bottle of fizz an<
a sarnie under the haycock with me.'
On a table on the stage, the four entries of the finalists had beel
covered in green plastic, which two minions had been practisinj
whipping off all morning. Geraldine had organized a big screel

512

and monitors all round the hall, so everyone could see what was
going on.
Rather muted clapping greeted her and David's appearance on
the platform. David was not quite so popular in the county as he
imagined. Smiles weren't even suppressed when he nearly tripped
over his sword. Suavely he introduced Geraldine, with much play
on how privileged Larkshire was to be graced by her presence.
Geraldine, the sort of woman who made even linen too frightened
to crease, was immaculate in a pale grey trouser suit. She told
the audience how happy she and the High Sheriff were to bring
glory to Larkshire by commemorating their greatest painter,
Galena Borochova, thanks to the cooperation of Lady Belvedon -
Geraldine smiled coolly in Anthea's direction - who had urged
them to go ahead.
'We had four outstanding entries,' she went on. 'Galena was a
powerful but very subtle artist, and we wanted something subtle to
illustrate her special qualities. The first is a marvellous contribution
from arguably our greatest painter and sculptor, Colin
Casey Andrews.'
Casey Andrews leapt to his feet, raising clasped hands in the air.
But the storm of clapping died almost instantly as a ghastly upended
palette with huge breasts and pubic hair round the thumb
hole was unveiled and appeared on the big screen.
'What's that supposed to mean?' shouted the landlord of the
Goat in Boots.
'You're not supposed to ask,' hissed Green Jean.
'Great art of course defies explanation,' said David smoothly,
'but in principle, Mr Casey Andrews's palette symbolizes Galena
the artist, the breasts Galena the woman, and the thumbhole the
fecundity of her womb producing so many talented children.' He
nodded sourly at the Belvedons.
'Load of crap,' shouted Robens.
'Be kwy-et,' said David furiously.
Little Viridian started to cry. Sophy and Sienna got the giggles.
'A work of towering genius. Imagine the impact when it is
enlarged to eight or nine feet high,' exhorted Geraldine.
'Jonathan can train Diggory to jump through the hole,' whispered
Hanna.
'It will fit very comfortably into the space,' said David.
Remembering how David had tried to fit his rainbow-condomed
cock into her space, Emerald jumped out of her skin as she felt
Casey Andrews's nicotined fingers stroking her left breast. He
didn't even remove his hand to clap when his wife's entry
was unveiled. A large nude, with no head, feet or hands and

513

riding a bicycle, it was greeted with even more boos and yells of
derision.
'On yer bike,' yelled Robens.
'How does she change gear?' shouted Knightie.
Joan Bideford turned purpler than Emerald's T-shirt.
'Philistines,' she thundered.
Little Viridian bawled even louder.
'He's a discerning critic already,' said Jupiter proudly.
Sienna nudged Emerald from behind.
'You'll walk it,' she hissed.
'Anything's better than hiking it.' Sophy wiped her eyes.
Ranjit's entry, a monkey who was simultaneously eating a banana
and defecating, evidently to symbolize the artistic process, got
given even shorter and noisier shrift.
Here we go, thought Emerald, dear God make the Belvedons
like it.
Back slid the green plastic, catching in Galena's paintbrush,
making the maquette sway alarmingly for a second, before a
minion leapt forward and steadied it. There was a long pause,
as Galena was shown from all angles on the big screen, then an
explosion of cheering.
'That's the one,' yelled the audience.
'We don't want any junk in Limesbridge,' piped up Knightie.
'And Emerald's a Belvedon,' shouted Sienna,
'Other lot are a waste of taxpayers' money,' roared the General
and was shushed again.
Geraldine was unable to make herself heard, so David took over.
'Emerald Belvedon's entry is quite excellent, particularly for a
young woman of only twenty-six,' he said coolly when the din had |
died down. 'All the judges feel she has a promising future.' ;
Emerald put her burning face in her hands. I
'A-a-a-ah,' cooed the audience, as the camera panned in on a I
sleeping Shrimpy. Little Viridian was gurgling with joy. |
'Brilliant,' hissed Jupiter, 'it's exactly like Mum.' ]
Alizarin, who'd taken off his dark glasses, stretched a long arm i
down the row and patted Emerald on the back. '/
'It's extraordinarily beautiful and incredibly like her,' he whis;]
pered, which pleased Emerald most of all. }
'Please let us have silence.' David glared at the Belvedons. 'This
is excellent work, but the judges felt it was too representational,
too predictable, utterly charming admittedly, but lacking the
imagination and vision of the other three entries.'
'Bollocks,' thundered General Anaesthetic to the horror of
Green Jean and his wife.

514
'I worked for Mrs Belvedon,' shouted Mrs Robens, going very
red, 'it's the spitting image of her.'
'Anyway, the judges' decision is final,' cried Geraldine, feeling
her input had so far been insufficient to make the headlines. 'The
winner of the Galena Borochova Memorial Prize is Colin Casey
Andrews and here to present him with a commission to complete
the work, and a cheque for twenty thousand pounds, is your High
Sheriff, David Pulborough.'
'Bloody rigged,' roared Alizarin.
The press were going berserk as Casey Andrews stalked up to
collect his cheque to a chorus of boos and slow hand claps. Not for
nothing had Searston Wl been in the forefront of the Women's
Institute's roasting ofTonyBlair. Emerald, meanwhile, had bolted
out of a side door. Racing after her, Sienna found her sobbing
piteously inside the green curtains of a weeping ash.
'I'm so sorry, I'm not being a lousy loser, I don't mind about not
winning. It's coming here again, and you all being so lovely, which
I don't deserve, and not seeing Jonathan. Everything reminds me
of him and I love him so much.'
Emerald accepted Sienna's proffered piece of loo paper to blow
her nose, then confessed: 'I loved Zac more than anything else in
the world this time last year; I now realize what a bastard he is.'
'He is,' agreed Sienna, thinking darkly of the Raphael on sale in
New Bond Street that very evening. 'What we need is a large drink.'

515

A terrific din was still coming from the town hall as Sienna frogmarched
Emerald out of the municipal gardens down the sunlit
High Street into the gloom of the Bear and Honeypot. Slumped
on a bar stool, Emerald gazed up at a row of teddy bears and tried
not to start crying again.
My life is over, she thought helplessly, I'll never get over
Jonathan.
'Thanks,' she muttered as Sienna gave her a large glass of champagne.
'What the hell's this?' she demanded ungraciously as the
landlord handed her an appallingly wrapped parcel. 'It's not my
birthday till tomorrow.'
There was so much sellotape cocooning the red tissue paper that
it took her ages to unwrap. Inside was an exquisite silver loving cup
with handles in the shape of lions' heads. Inside that was a tiny
envelope addressed to Emerald. As she recognized Jonathan's
black script, she started to tremble. Her eyes were so awash with
tears, it took some time to decipher the note inside.
'Darling Emerald, you wanted to get married before your 27th
birthday. If this is still true, get yourself over to St James',
Limesbridge, by two o'clock, your utterly adoring, no longer
brother, Jonathan.'
'I don't understand,' whispered Emerald, swaying and clutching
the bar.
Sienna put out a hand to steady her.
'Dad wasn't Jonathan's father.'
'Oh my God, how did he find out?'
'He got the DNA results on Monday.'
'Poor Jonathan,' whispered an appalled Emerald, 'he loved
Raymond so much.'

516

'Doesn't matter, he always had Dad as a father, knew he was
more bats about him than anyone else.'
'Who is his father then?'
'Almost certainly David Pulborough.'
'Oh yuck, that disgusting lech!'
'Jonathan wanted it to be Rupert Campbell-Black, but anything
rather than Casey Andrews - or Joan Bideford for that
matter.'
Emerald gave a shaky laugh.
'Is he gutted?'
'No, ecstatic, it means he can marry you, that's the only thing he
cares about.'
Emerald gazed at Sienna, tears spilling down her face.
'But this must hurt you so much,' she stammered, 'I know you
love him too.'
'Not that way any more, and I know how happy you'll make him.'
Then, when Emerald couldn't speak: 'Don't you want to marry
him?'
'Oh, more than anything else in the world.'
Well then?'
'Poor Sienna, you'll have to put up with me as a sister-in-law.'
'I've been such a bitch,' they cried simultaneously, collapsing
laughing helplessly into each other's arms.
Then over Sienna's shoulders Emerald saw the pub clock, which
said five past one, and gave a wail.
'I can't get married in jeans.'
'Of course not.' Grabbing her hand. Sienna led her past a large
stuffed bear and several grinning utterly riveted punters upstairs
to a bedroom with a long mirror, a basin, and an open window
looking out over the High Street.
On the bed - so like doll's clothes that Emerald half expected
them to have cardboard tags attached - lay pale stockings, the
palest pink bra and knickers, little pink shoes and the prettiest
dress in palest pink silk dupion. Just above knee length, it was
edged at the hem and neckline with slightly darker pink feathers.
In a little hat box were matching feathers attached to a comb for
her hair. In the basin, keeping cool, was a bunch of pink freesias.
On the dressing table, a big bottle ofVioletta.
Jonathan did this?' gasped Emerald.
'With a little help over sizes from Anthea and Patience. He really
loves you, no, don't cry any more, and the mums have really
like bonded in an unimaginable way putting this together.
And Rosemary P. and Lily were roped in to do the flowers in
thurch, which are stupendous. Jonathan chose pink because he

517

thought you might be too pale for white, although' - Sienna
opened her make-up case - 'I've bought buckets of blusher.'
Thank God I washed my hair this morning,' gabbled Emerald.
'I nearly had an extra hour's lie-in instead. Oh darling, darling,
Jonathan, I do not believe this.'
'Have another drink then.' Sienna filled up her glass.
'I must have a shower.'
'How's David taking it?' yelled Emerald over the sound of
running water.
'Doesn't know yet. Rosemary does. She's getting out her rolling
pin.'

Emerald's hands were shaking so much. Sienna had to paint out
her dark circles and put on her eye-liner. The pink dress hung so
beautifully, no-one would notice it was now much too big.
'You look absurdly gorgeous,' sighed Sienna as she slotted the
comb, with the pink feathers attached, into Emerald's piled-up
hair, 'like a little squaw.'
'It's twenty-five to two, we must hurry,' begged Emerald.
'I think Jonathan will wait.' Sienna peered out of the window.
'Transport's outside.'
Charging downstairs, hanging onto her feathers, clutching her
flowers, Emerald went slap into lan, who was putting a white rose
into his buttonhole.
'Oh Daddy, so you were in on it too. How on earth did you get"
your morning coat here?'
Jonathan brought it down last night, felt it might have given thej
game away if you'd seen it in the boot. You look absolutely lovely ,|
darling.' lan kissed her on the cheek, i
'Don't make her cry again,' pleaded Sienna, wriggling into al
tight scarlet dress as she ran down the stairs, then turning for Ian|
to do up her zip. "I
'You're not going to like the next bit,' she added to Emerald^
'but Dora insisted. Better have another slurp first.' She handedj
Emerald her glass. 4
Outside, surrounded by punters and photographers, stoodi^
Loofah, chestnut patches gleaming, malevolent eyes rolling, mane|
and tail plaited with pink bows, harnessed to a shiny dark-blue trap.
Dicky was hanging on to him for grim death. I
'Oh no!' Emerald retreated into the pub in terror.
'He'll be as good as gold,' said a grinning Dora who, brandishing
a long-tailed whip, was already ensconced in the trap.
'Theirs but to do or die,' cried Sienna, helping Emerald into the
nearside seat, as lan clambered on the far side into the other.

518

'Dicky and I are going in my car,' Sienna added maliciously, 'let
go of the reins, Dicko.'
'What happens if he sits down?' wailed Emerald.
'He won't, he has a great sense of occasion,' said Dora con-
fidendy, 'and he loves crowds.'
As Loofah broke into a brisk trot, the word, it seemed, had got
around. All down Searston High Street, people stopped to wave
and cheer.
Dora was in an excellent mood. She was in the process of selling
the story to the Telegraph and the Standard and was due to rendezvous
with them in the churchyard.
As they hurtled towards open country, past cottages decked out
in pink and yellow rambler roses, narrowly missing cars and dog-
walkers, a dazed Emerald got out Jonathan's letter, reading it over
and over again.
'Oh Daddy, is it really true, how long have you known?'
'Just over a week. Jonathan was determined it should be a
surprise. Had a bit of good news myself while you were changing
upstairs, got a call on my mobile telephone from Bagley Hall,
offering me this job. Evidently the other bursar's been fiddling the
books. They want me to start as soon as possible. Seems a good
school, Rupert Campbell-Black's children go there.'
'So does my brother Dicky, which lowers the tone,' said Dora,
steering stylishly round a lorry buckling under a load of hay bales.
'Giddy-up, Loofah. The deputy head is a bitch.'
'That's wonderful, Daddy, congratulations,' murmured
Emerald, clutching on to her feathers as dark strands of hair kept
escaping, but all she could think was: If I don't get killed first, I'm
going to marry Jonathan. So there is a God and an end to the
rainbow after all.
At last there was Limesbridge, with its idling river and the tall
chimneys of Foxes Court peering through the billowing trees.
Realizing he was nearly home, Loofah thundered down the High
Street, ignoring posters showing Jupiter's thin, haughty face in
nearly every window, exhorting people to vote Tory in the forthcoming
by-election.
'At least this job means I can make a contribution to the
wedding--Jesus Christ!' lan clapped his hands over his eyes as
Loofah swung off the High Street into Church Road, nearly
mowing down Rosemary and Aunt Lily. No wonder everyone had
dressed so smardy this morning. It was the first bit of happiness,
except for Sophy and Alizarin in a lower-key way, dial the family
could celebrate since Raymond's death. They were determined to
enjoy it.

519

'That hat cost Rosemary five hundred pounds,' confided Dora.
'David will go apeshit.'
There were the dark yews and soaring scented limes. There was
the church with its gold weathercock and its bells ringing out
joyously. Flanked by crowds hanging over the iron gate, as deathly
white as the rose in the buttonhole of his morning coat, his dark
curls for once brushed, was the handsomest bridegroom in the
world. And wearing a red bow and yapping round his master's (for
once) polished shoes, was Diggory. Charging down the slope,
Jonathan lifted Emerald out of the trap.
'Thank Christ, you're alive.'
'Charming,' said Dora.
'You look so beautiful.' Jonathan dragged Emerald behind a
nearby yew tree, covering her face with kisses, taking off all
Sienna's make-up. 'I haven't press-ganged you, I know it was
presumptuous,' he muttered as they paused for breath, 'but I love
you so much. This is going to be the shortest engagement ever. Will
you marry me?'
'Definitely,' gasped Emerald, then she gasped in even more
delight as he slid the emerald four-leaf clover set in tiny seed pearls
onto her finger.
'Oh how lovely, it's beautiful.'
'I bought it to give you the day we got Dad's DNA test.'
'Thank you, I love you so, so much.' Emerald flung her arms
round Jonathan's neck. 'I cannot believe you organized this.'
'Who normally cannot organize a piss-up in a brewery, as Jupiter
keeps telling me,' grinned Jonathan as once more he buried his
lips in hers.
'I must be seeing things,' Sophy muttered to her mother as
Emerald's shiny hair collapsed round her shoulders. 'Emo is actually
allowing her face to be totally mussed up before her own
wedding.'
The extraordinarily happy couple only let go of each other when
lan, getting bossy with the confidence of a new job, tapped his
future son-in-law on the shoulder.
'Can't keep the parson waiting. You push off up to the front pew,
Jonathan.'
'Can't I walk up the aisle with you two?' protested Jonathan.
'No, you can't,' said Neville-on-Sunday, getting his hairbrush out
and smoothing Jonathan's curls. 'Off you go. Emerald will join you
in a minute.'
Grumbling, blowing kisses to Emerald, Jonathan gathered up
Diggory and disappeared into the church, where Green Jean was

we

remonstrating with an unusually tidy Trafford for drinking brandy
out of a bottle.
'It's OK, it's organic,' said Trafford, passing it to Jonathan.
Outside, Anthea descended on a dazed Emerald, tidying her
hair, readjusting the feathers, straightening her dress, reapplying
lipstick and blusher, taking the shine off her nose.
'I chose the dress with Jonathan,' she couldn't resist whispering.
'It's lovely, everything's lovely, I'm in a dream.'
Emerald only had time for a brief word with Patience, who had
lipstick on her teeth, but who was redeemed by a dashing green
hat lent her by Rosemary.
'You look terrific, Mummy.'
'So d'you, divine. I'm so excited, darling. I couldn't tell you
before. Jonathan swore everyone to secrecy, I've always loved him
so much. Daddy and I couldn't have a nicer son-in-law. Not that
Alizarin isn't awfully nice,' Patience added quickly. She was rather
in awe of Alizarin. 'Anthea's been absolutely super too, she made
me up. Such a dear person. Neither of us has any mascara on our
lower lashes in case we cry.'
'It's all fabulous,' said Sophy, pausing to allow Emerald to
arrange her pink beret at a more becoming angle, 'so like Jane
Austen, sisters ending up with brothers. And Jupiter's lovely wife's
been up all night making and icing the cake,' she added as Hanna
paused to peck Emerald on the cheek before scuttling into church.

Up in the front pew, Trafford was saying smugly, 'Shagpile's been
nominated for the Etienne de Montigny Erotic Prize.'
'Well done,' said Jonathan.
I don't mind, he thought truthfully, I've got Emerald, she's the
only prize that matters.
Miss Prattle, the village gossip, resplendent, uninvited, but
taking up most of the fourth pew, sat like a recording angel, fulminating
over misdemeanours.
'The groom and the best man are both smoking,' she hissed,
'and that dog shouldn't be in church.'
'At least the dog's not smoking,' replied Jupiter gravely.
'And I'm sure Alizarin's young lady's expecting.'
'Hard to tell really,' observed Jupiter as plump Sophy bounced
up the aisle.
And who is Jonathan marrying in such a hurry?'
'His sister,' said Sienna with a sweet smile as she plonked herself
down beside Jupiter. 'Oh, look who's arrived from Paris.'
Everyone swung round as a beaming Jean-Jacques Le Brun,

521

blowing kisses in toutes directions, settled happily into the seat upl
the front that Lily had kept for him. |
lan Cartwright admired the banked blue delphiniums and the!
coronets of pale pink roses on the end of every pew. He was unablel
to believe such happiness and change of fortune as he took hi$l
elder daughter's arm. i
'I'm so proud of you, darling, Raymond Belvedon was such ani
awfully nice chap, I feel he ought to be taking your other arm.' |
'I'm sure his ghost is,' whispered Emerald, 'I'm so lucky having!
two families.' |
The organ launched into Bach's Toccata. With a smile as radiant!
as the new moon, the bride floated up the aisle. |
'She can't marry her brother,' hissed Miss Prattle as Jonathan!
sprinted down the aisle to collect her. |
'I've missed you so much,' he whispered, .|
The congregation giggled, particularly when Jonathan during;^
the vows announced, 'With my body, I cannot wait to worship you.'|j
But when they knelt down later, both Emerald and Jonathan?!
shut their eyes, and begged God to help them make each otherf
truly happy. |
'Why are weddings so soppy,' muttered Dicky in disgust as|
Anthea and Patience mopped each other up yet again. ;
After the marriage service, Jonathan kissed his bride throughout
all four verses of 'Dear Lord and Father of Mankind' until Neville
tapped him on the shoulder, then cried, 'Ouch!' because Digger)
had bitten him sharply on the ankle. '
'Diggory's very up himself because Jonathan's got him a dog|
passport to go on the honeymoon,' whispered Sophy, j
'I hope Emerald can cope with his breath,' whispered bad^
Alizarin. '^
Then he stroked Sophy's cheek. 1
'You look so pretty. We could get married, if you wanted to.' |
Sophy beamed up at him. ^
'You and I don't need rings on our fingers.' S
'Turn, turn, ta, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, ta, ta turn, ta, ta, tum,|
turn,' went the Wedding March. I
Never had two such pale people looked so glowingly happy,|
decided Sienna as, chattering nineteen to the dozen, bride and;
groom came down the aisle. ;
I cannot bear it, she thought. I can't behave beautifully any-
longer. She put a hand on poor Grenville who stood shivering in
the side aisle, hoping eternally for his dear master's return.
Outside, Jonathan broke away for a second to kiss Anthea and
Patience.

522

'Now you're my mothers-in-law, I can refer to you both as the
Old Witches.'
'I thought you already had,' said Anthea drily.

After the photographs, Emerald took Jonathan's hand, leading
him over to Raymond's grave, on which she laid her bunch of pink
freesias.
'I just want him to know that he didn't ruin our lives after all.'

'I do like Jonathan,' insisted lan, as he opened the iron gate back
into the garden of Foxes Court, 'so much more congenial than that
absolute bounder ZacharyAnsteig.'
'I agree.' Anthea smiled up at him. 'Congrats on your new job,
by the way, terrific news. I'm very excited too. I'm having a rose
named after me, very pale gold streaked with salmon pink. They're
calling it Lady Belvedon.'
'If it's as pretty as you, I'll buy lots,' said lan happily, realizing
that now he was moving to the country, and had a job again, he
could.
Dora was due to join Dicky at Bagley Hall next year, reflected
Anthea. She was sure lan would be understanding if she were late
with the fees. Although there might be someone to pick up the bills
quite soon. Caradoc Willoughby Evans was phoning every day, and
the rose-grower was a charmer, quiet, but with lovely hands
and piercing blue eyes.

The terrific party under way at Foxes Court was soon deserted by
Sienna. She couldn't bear to hear anyone else slagging offZac, and
the thought that he might be at Sotheby's this evening was too
much for her.
Jonathan, leaving Emerald's side only for a minute, tried to
dissuade her.
'Are you sure it's a good idea seeing the Raphael sold? It's going
to hurt like hell. Stay here and get hammered.'
'Dad insisted we always waved people off until they were out of
sight,' said Sienna. 'Pandora deserves that. Dad would expect it.'
'I'd come and hold your hand,'Jonathan assured her, 'but I'm
off on my honeymoon later. I never dreamt I'd be so excited about
getting my dick out in private.' Then, misreading the desolation in
her eyes: 'You OK, darling, not jealous of me and Emerald?'
Sienna shook her head violently, unable to speak.
'As Jupiter's bidding for Rupert Campbell-Black, who's sending
his helicopter to fetch him in an hour or two, why not get a lift with
him?' suggested Jonathan.

523

'I need to take my car back to London,' said Sienna. 'Go on back'
- she kissed him on the cheek - 'be wildly happy. Don't tell people
I've gone, I don't want to break up the party.'
As she ran out to her car, she passed Dora in the shrubbery
talking confidingly into her mobile.
'I just wanted to tell you, Harriet, that my brother and my sister
Emerald have definitely not committed insects.'
Only Grenville, who'd been chewed and nagged by Sophy and
Alizarin's puppy all afternoon, followed Sienna, begging her with
sad onyx eyes to take him with her.
'I'll fetch you the moment I'm sorted,' she promised. 'You're in
no state to be abandoned for hours in my studio.'

524

Only in the car did Sienna break down, sobbing all the way back
to her studio in the East End, to the sforzando accompaniment of
Arabella - the only present Zac had ever given her. The love duet,
disc two, band five had been played into the ground. Sienna hadn't
eaten properly for days and in the driving mirror noticed a large
spot on her chin, which made her cry even louder.
Her studio was a disgusting dp: dirty mugs and plates everywhere.
She deserved rats - other than Zac. Desperate to pay off the
costs of the court case, too busy to tidy up, she'd been working
twenty-four hours a day.
On her big easel, virtually finished, was the huge canvas of
Sienna's List. Unable to contemplate the many dreadful ways the
animals were being tortured, she had pinned a sheet over the lower
black and grey half of the picture. In the top half, in brilliant
colour, dolphins, tuna, whales and other fish, all restored to
health, swam joyfully up a bright blue river. On the grassy bank
gambolled every kind of animal. Overhead flew the birds - even
battery hens and poor foie gras geese - all sweeping along in a
joyful rainbow riot towards God, waiting with arms outstretched to
welcome them to Heaven.
Only God's face was missing. Sienna had tried every variation:
black, white, old, young, men, women, even children, wearing out
palette knives scraping off the pigment, but none of them seemed
right. God had let such terrible things happen to animals and he
hadn't given her Zac. Once the Raphael was sold, she would buckle
down and find a solution. Idly she picked up her sketchbook of the
court case, dominated by drawings of Zac, which had sold all over
the world.
The love affaire that had never existed was over. Yet why did her

525

fingers keep walking the lonely road of 1471? Why did she check
her mobile every minute and sleep under the fax machine in case,
by some miracle, he'd got in touch? Tonight would be the last she
would see of him or Pandora, who would vanish into a bank vault
or onto some rich man's wall, to be flaunted like the wife of a
captured general.
Wearily she put on disc two again. Feeling she owed it to the
Raphael to look beautiful, she turned on the shower. It was so hot
her hair dried in a trice, and because Zac hadn't seen her in it, she
wriggled back into the clinging red sleeveless dress she'd worn fori
the wedding. I
Bugger! Her spot was bigger than ever, shining through each!
added layer of base. At least it matches my dress, she thought?
sulkily, a
' If you were a girl from one of my villages,' sang Arabella's suitor, |
. Mandryka, 'you would go to the well behind your father's house
and draw a cupful of clear water and offer it to me at the door, sol
that I should be your betrothed before God and all men! Oj
beautiful one!' i
And I offered Zac boiling water out of a tap at Foxes Courts
thought Sienna dully. ;|
i
Henry Wyndham, the Chairman ofSotheby's, slipped home on thcl
afternoon of 6 July. As well as the Raphael, he had to sell eighty"!
eight other pictures, many of great rarity and beauty, that evening
and he needed to clear his head and get focused.
Later, in a deep, English Fern-scented bath, he practised th
increments: 'Ten million, ten million five hundred, eleven millior
eleven million five hundred . . . Fifteen million [God willing!
sixteen million, seventeen million . . . twenty million [God eve
more willing].'
He hadn't been so excited since June 1998, when he'd sold 1
Monet of Giverny for 19.8 million - which had been a record
a Monet. If only he could steady his nerves with a large whisky, 1 you couldn't drink before a sale. You had to keep your wits ab<
you, to smile and be charming when your brain was going rounc
like a hamster on a wheel. If no-one was bidding, it was easy to drop>|
one's shoulders and lose the plot - and he didn't want Zacharyj
Ansteig coming after him with a baseball bat. j
Thank God any worries about no-one bidding on the Raphael!
had been dispelled. The National Gallery weren't bidding because '.j,
they already had enough beautiful Raphaels. But at least they|
hadn't made a pre-emptive strike, which gave the other museums <

526

a chance. He knew the Abraham Lincoln Museum who owned the
companion picture to Pandora, although not hugely rich, were
desperate to buy it.

Arriving at Sotheby's, Sienna was mobbed by the press.
'Looking fantastic, Sienna!' 'What yer going ter shock us with
next?' 'To me, a bit happier. Sienna.' 'How much is Pandora going
to go for?' 'Very sad day for the Belvedons.'
'Very,' snapped Sienna, pummelling them out of the way.
Inside the foyer, towering spires of sapphire and purple
delphiniums in blue Chinese vases reminded her agonizingly of
Raymond, as did the excited glamorous crowd, gabbling away in
every language, which included so many of his friends.
There were the great American curators, whose heads seldom
left the Middle Ages, lean-faced and ascetic-looking in their pale
linen suits. There were strutting charming Italians, heartbroken
their homeland wasn't rich enough to retrieve the Raphael, but
who nevertheless cheerfully embraced cool, bearded, pale-eyed
Danes and genial Germans, whose curls spilled over their ox-like
necks.
A great many Jews, their big hands seldom leaving their wives'
glittery shoulders, were there, less to bid dian to see the financial
outcome of one of the first looted art cases. Jaunty British dealers,
sporting fob watches and ties pretty enough to frame, arrived
gossiping in pairs, widi invariably a long-limbed, golden-haired
beauty sandwiched between them.
The women tended to be even more spectacular dian the men.
Notjust the celebs: Jerry Hall, Joan Collins and Joanna Lumley, but
the wives and girlfriends with their clean shining hair, their pash-
minas sliding down suntanned arms and their faces as zit-free and
glowingly polished as die furniture, already labelled in the next
room for tomorrow's sale.
More formally attired, but just as glamorous, Sotheby's staff in
neat little dresses or pinstriped trouser suits hovered solicitously,
both reassuring and revving up their clients. No wonder Raymond
had nicknamed them 'Sootherby's'.
Prospective bidders were already registering for paddles, flipping
through the catalogue, adding coloured stickers to lots they
coveted, examining Pandora on the cover.
Stop drooling over our painting, Sienna wanted to scream. Not
in the mood for chat, she was accosted as she sidled up the stairs
by Barney Pulborough, his bland sallow face sweating like Cheddar
cheese in a heatwave.

527

'My father,' he informed her happily, 'has been in secret talks
with Zac about flogging the picture to some pharmaceutical
billionaire.'
'Well, that's at least ten million the bastard won't spend experimenting
on live animals.'
'Dad's going to have competition.' Barney peered over the
banister at the ever-increasing crowd. 'Lots of the major players are
here or bidding over the telephone. Sotheby's are hoping for
twenty million. The on di( - Barney lowered his voice - 'is that Zac
is the most bloody-minded client they've ever had to deal with,
although' - Barney licked his fat lips - 'I wouldn't mind taming
him.'
Seeing Barney most unusually waylaying a gorgeous girl, realizing
in amazement it was Raymond's daughter, people moved in
to commiserate.
'Won't be the same without the old boy.' 'Helped me so much
when I was younger.' 'Most influential figure in the art world since
the war.'
'Why didn't you bloody tell him when he was alive?' snarled
Sienna.
Turning, so no-one could see how close she was to tears, she went
slap into Kevin Coley, Lord Ditherer, who'd given Raymond so
many headaches, changing his mind constantly, ratting on deals.
Kevin and Enid Coley had spent 4 July in America, and Kevin
should have stayed over for a big board meeting of Doggie Dins
(US). How macho to have been called out in the middle to bid.
Imagine the publicity in the States, where there was huge interest |
in Pandora, if he were outed as the buyer. Kevin, on the other ^
hand, had lost a lovely Stubbs last year when his mobile had cut out i
on his jet at the penultimate bid. There would also be kudos if he t
were in the sale room, with David Pulborough bidding for him, and
was later photographed accepting the Raphael from Sotheby's^
chairman - so he had flown home. |
Now, like a bull in a very upmarket picture shop, he was trying.^
to claim noisy acquaintance with half the room. Why the heU i
wasn't David here to smooth his path?
'Hi, Sienna,' he said, recognizing a familiar, much improved <
face. 'Looking very tasty. When's the memorial service?' 'You
won't be fucking invited.' ,
'I see that girl's lost none other charm,' exploded Lady Coley
as Sienna pushed past them.
Fortunately everyone was distracted by the arrival of Rupert
Campbell-Black, bronzed from racing at Catterick and Chepstow,

528

and his wife Taggie, stunning as always in sleeveless fuchsia
pink and an orange cashmere shawl.
Rupert was sulking, he'd wanted to go to Wimbledon, but his
brother Adrian had persuaded him the Raphael was an excellent
investment. The bloodstock market was showing alarming fluctuations,
Wall Street was poised to dive, property was too high, but
the top end of the Old Master market was holding up well.
'If I put a foot inside Sotheby's, New Bond Street,' sighed
Adrian, 'it'll just push up the price.'
'Whereas a philistine like me--' snapped Rupert.
'I'll sell it on very quickly,' Adrian reassured him. 'Several
museums are hanging fire to see how much it goes for.'
Taggie and Rupert were shortly joined by Jupiter who'd been
registering for a paddle and who had taken off his tie and
exchanged his morning coat for a blazer. As they all looked around
for Sienna, she leapt behind a bust of Julius Caesar. Rupert and
Taggie'd been so sweet at the funeral, but at the moment she
couldn't handle people being nice to her. Although if the Raphael
went to Rupert, she'd mind less - at least she could go and see it.
There was an explosion of flashbulbs, and shouts of excitement.
Sienna, who'd just emerged from behind Julius Caesar, shot back
again, as Zac walked in alone. Creeping forward, she could see he
was wearing a white shirt and black trousers. His face was darkened
by sunglasses and stubble. He seemed taller, thinner, angrier.
Perhaps the truth about Jacob really had destroyed him. But
edging her non-spot side out further, Sienna's compassion turned
to fury. Zac was being mobbed by beautiful, eager women. If the
Raphael only makes its reserve, she thought savagely, he'll be one
hell of a catch.

529

Over in his flat in Bury Street, David Pulborough was concealing
his receding hairline with engraved silver-backed brushes, given '
him by Geraldine, and brooding on his day. The Borochova
Memorial Award ceremony had not gone well. Casey had probably ;
banked the cheque by now, but David wasn't sure that he could I
railroad the people of Larkshire into accepting Casey's finished j
sculpture. And he was not sure he wanted to. At lunch after the1!
awards, bloody Casey had presented him with his portrait in High |
Sheriff's uniform. Not only had Casey given his subject puffed-outj
cheeks and paunch, he had also drastically slimmed down the 01<t
Rectory and not included a single blade of grass nor flowers norl
splendid trees. David could have been posing in front of any
suburban semi. ^j
When reproved, Casey had announced sententiously that h6|
could only paint as he saw with his inner eye. David was so livids|
he was tempted to see if the prize, due to public pressure, couldj
be awarded instead to Emerald. She'd be so grateful, he still mighty
get his leg over. '|
He and Geraldine had made wonderful love in a field on the way|
back to London, but he wished she wasn't pushing quite so harttj
for marriage. Rosemary's rich aunt was about to croak and leavdj
Rosemary a very great deal of money, which David was dying t»|
spend. I
A dream had been forming in his head for the past few days. H6|
was bidding up to £27 million for Kevin Coley, which would meanlj
a flat fee of £100,000 in his pocket. But if the fat ape had stayed in|
the States, David, who two-timed his clients as blithely as his|
women, had been planning to arrange for Barney to bid for Minskyi

530

Kraskov, who was on a yacht in the Med, and to see which man
packed it in first.
When Kevin dropped out this evening, however, David was
tempted to carry on and buy the Raphael himself. Even if he
'flipped it', art jargon for selling on very quickly, he could make
a nice little killing of two or three million - particularly as he had a
new hugely rich South American client who might easily bite. The
gallery was doing brilliantly, and with Rosemary's aunt's money
and the Old Rectory recently valued at £1.5 million, there was
plenty of dosh floating around.
All this rather left marriage to Geraldine out of the equation.
Even so David was irked that Rosemary, who'd claimed she was
going to some local wedding, had just rolled up. He hoped she
hadn't overheard the telephone conversation in which Geraldine
had been asking him why on earth he'd asked Rosemary to become
his wife in the first place.
'If you marry a rich old dog,' he had quipped, 'you can sleep
with the pretty ones in the afternoon.'
'That's obnoxious,' Geraldine, who still had grass seed in her
linen turn-ups, had been saying furiously. Hearing Rosemary's step
in the hall, David had rung off.
But Rosemary seemed calm enough, smiling as she examined his
ticket for tonight.
'I'd like to come to this. They've just predicted on the wireless
that Pandora could make twenty million pounds. Poor Belvedons.'
Slapping Eau Sauvage on his sunburnt cheeks, David said he
hadn't been able to get her a ticket, and he had to dine with Kevin
Coley later.
'Going to be a hell of a scrum.'
'What time are they selling her?'
David glanced at his watch.
'About eight-twenty. You can watch it later on the news.'
He and Geraldine must remember not to stand together in front
of the television cameras.
Five minutes later, he walked up Old Bond Street, past the
beautiful clothes shops, the galleries and the flags swooning in
the heat above the great jewellers.
England at its most elegant, thought David, his heart swelling.
And there, most elegant of all, emerging as her driver admiringly
opened the car door, smiling at the battalion of cameras, was
Geraldine. She would be a wonderful adornment to his life. He
must try and work something out.
He was gratified when the press surged forward to talk to him.

531

'About Jonathan Belvedon . . .' asked Adam Helliker.
'One of our most exciting gallery artists,' said David smoothly.
'Along with Colin Casey Andrews, who of course today won the
Borochova Memorial Award. Now, if you'll forgive me.'
He and Geraldine had hardly crossed Sotheby's threshold
before an enraged Kevin Coley bore down on him.
'Where the fuck have you been? Thing's nearly over.'

Old Masters other than the Raphael were already selling briskly. A
portrait of a court siren by Cranach the Elder and a little Grimmer
winter scene of people skating, dogs barking and falling snowflakes
mingling with the stars had already gone for vast sums.
Never had so many folding chairs been crammed into the main
gallery. People, particularly the old, were arguing and grumbling,
trying not to be moved out of seats they had wrongfully appropriated,
hoping chivalry would prevail - chivalry did not. Others
were crowded four deep in a great horseshoe round three of the
cranberry-red walls and spilling out of the room's two entrances.
Facing them on the rostrum, Sotheby's charming, outwardly
languid chairman, Henry Wyndham, a shaggier much taller Hugh
Grant, a giraffe crossed with Michelangelo's David, was flipping
through his ring-binder. This gave him the number, name, reserve
of each lot and the commission bids from people who couldn't,
make the sale. The Raphael, the star lot at eighty-nine, would be;
the last to be sold, but there was an El Greco, a speculative
Rembrandt and two stunning Canalettos along the way to keepK
people interested. ^
Against the right wall, a mass of photographers and televisio<l|
cameramen were lined up. Forbidden to film the actual punters,!
who might prefer to remain anonymous, they concentrated on!
Sotheby's team of telephone bidders. Confined like Rupert'^
thoroughbreds to a big mahogany pen with only their shoulden|
and tossing heads of newly washed hair on show, these beauties«
both sexes were busy laughing and speaking in every language ;
they alerted clients in jet, boardroom, Lamborghini or in Abdi^
Karamagi's case on top of his finance director's daughter, that th^
picture they wanted would be coming up for sale in a few lotrfj
time. $
David eyed them with pleasure, hailing the prettiest by name^
and sat down in his favourite place, halfway up the room, on the|
edge of the central aisle, next to bloody Kevin, who kept nudging|
and plucking his sleeve and asking to be introduced to everyone^
Beyond Kevin, Enid Coley, massive as a hippo in grey satin, had|
spread over three-quarters of snake-hipped Geraldine's chair. I
'Did you fly back from the States in the Lear?' asked Geraldine,
who liked to show off her familiarity with jets.
'No, no,' said Enid crushingly. 'The Lear is for the servants.'
At the back of the hall, Rupert Campbell-Black, in an increasingly
bad mood, was watching Wimbledon on a pocket television,
and wondering why the hell he'd allowed himself to be hemmed
in by these popinjays.
'That shit' - he scowled at the back of Kevin Coley's thatched
grey head - 'nearly broke up my best friend's marriage. I've always
wanted to bury him.'
'You'll have the perfect opportunity when he bids against us for
the Raphael,' murmured Jupiter, who believed in firing up his
clients.
The El Greco went for eight million, followed by a somewhat
sugary Fragonard of a girl with a puppy which sold for 1.5 million.
'Puppies always add ten per cent in England,' observed Jupiter.
David was now boasting to Kevin that he was intending to bid for
lot sixty-one, an exquisite van de Velde of sailing ships on a choppy
grey sea.
'A new good friend, Mr Justice Caradoc Willoughby Evans
actually' - David gave a light laugh - 'asked me to keep an eye out.'
Bidding was brisk, hitting the van de Velde's lower estimate right
away and soaring up to £1,200,000 offered by a museum. Was David
going any higher? asked Henry Wyndham.
David shook his head.
Everyone swung round, trying to read the thoughts of the dispassionate
thin-faced man beside Rupert. After a long pause,
Jupiter nodded.
'One million, four hundred thousand at the back.' Henry
Wyndham looked round with polite incredulity. Was no-one going
to bid further?
As the hammer crashed down, Jupiter switched on his mobile.
'Hi, Caradoc,' he murmured. 'I got it. One point four million.
Once it's been cleaned, it'll blow your mind. Talk to you later.'
Smirking slightly, ever machiavellian, Jupiter went back to firing
up Rupert.
'Did you realize that David Pulborough used to be Mum's lover?'
he said softly. 'And almost certainly fathered my brother
Jonathan?'
'What?' roared Rupert, then, lowering his voice, 'When, for
Christ's sake?'
'Summer of 1970.'
Jesus,' exploded Rupert, 'I was in there--' Then, remembering
Taggie on his right: 'And Casey Andrews and Etienne as well. That

533
little toerag screwed Galena? She must have been four-timing the!
lot of us.' ,|
Standing up to glare at David, Rupert nearly bid by mistake for!
Five Wise Virgins by Rubens, who were showing no sign of making |
their three hundred-thousand-pound reserve. 1
'Galena and that self-regarding little tosser. I do not believe it.' I
A still life of strawberries went for fifty thousand pounds, making!
everyone realize how hungry they were. It had gone eight o'clock,!
only a handful of lots before the Raphael. |
Trust that little shit Pulborough to get into cahoots with that|
bastard Kevin Coley,' muttered Rupert furiously. 'Kev probably got!
into Galena's knickers as well. Jesus!' |
'Where's Sienna?' whispered Taggie, unsure of the cause of her!
husband's wrath.
Jupiter glanced round. 'Can't see her anywhere.'
'Got a boyfriend yet?' asked Rupert.
Jupiter shook his head. 'Difficult day for her. Jonathan get
married, she was always a bit too crazy about him.'
'Thank Christ, I never had a sister,' said Rupert. 'If she'd beel
as pretty as my brother Adrian, I'm sure I'd have shagged her.*|
Then, as a frightful picture of a courtier having his head cut or
sold for twenty thousand pounds: 'That should have happened
bloody Pulborough.'

Sienna had taken refuge against the wall between a bulky
cameraman and an even bulkier Somerford Keynes.
To the back of the hall, on the right-hand side, half hidden froi
her by NEC's camera and tripod, stood Zac. He was flanked by tw
of the sharp-suited lawyers who had hammered out the contract
and who now told everyone who tried to approach him to piss of
Zac quivered with the same tension - the tiger poised for the ki
- that she remembered from Foxes Court.
Oh, why wasn't she the white shirt clinging to his divine, har
body, or the cranberry-red wall against which his head had fall®
back with such deceptive languor? Surreptitiously, he seemed to
be searching for someone. Then, like two tiny total eclipses, hii
dark glasses focused on her. Perhaps she was imagining things?
Perhaps he knew the NEC cameraman? Eut he started violently,!
then instantly jerked his head away, his face totally expressionlessi
'What are you working on?' asked Somerford, bringing her bacfcj
to earth.
'A big animal rights project. It's nearly finished, but I can't like
work out how to portray God.'
'Like Rupert Campbell-Elack?' suggested Somerford.

534

Sienna laughed then moaned in despair as to loud cheers a
young porter wearing a blue apron and white gloves, aware that
this was his finest hour, carried in the Raphael and placed it reverently
on the easel by the rostrum.
'A lot to be desired,' wrote Somerfbrd in his notebook. 'Far
more ravishing in the flesh - like yourself,' he murmured. Then
seeing how dishcloth-grey she had gone, he added with rare kindness,
'This must be hell for you.'
'Pandora looks so small and defenceless,' mumbled Sienna.
'Like a gorgeous little filly that's been dragged away from her
mother at Tattersalls. I just want to take her home.'

535

'Lot eighty-nine, Raphael's Pandora.' The Chairman ofSotheby's
smiled down at his excited audience, a conductor on the brink of
a symphony. 'I am starting the bidding at ten million pounds.'
Hope beamed out of the little painting.
'You could all buy me if you tried.'
There was a long pause when all you could hear was a woodland
cheeping of mobiles, and the atmosphere crackling with electricity.
Then two anonymous punters started pushing the bidding
up. These were actually Minsky Kraskov in a yacht off Cannes and Abdul the Amorous, who'd just rolled off his finance director's;!
daughter in Dubai.
Both men were barking instructions in broken English over the?
telephone: Minsky to russet-haired Natacha, Abdul to Patti witN
the ebony bob - two Sotheby's beauties in the mahogany pen. s
'Ten million. Ten million five hundred thousand, elevett|
million, eleven million five hundred thousand,' called out Heniy|
Wyndham, his sleepy come-to-bid eyes scanning the room in cas<|
he missed anyone. 9
'Eleven million, five hundred thousand on the telephone,' he|
repeated. Then, noticing that the man from the Getty hadj
removed his spectacles, indicating a bid, he turned back W
beautiful Natacha in the mahogany pen, who was still gabbling]
away to Minsky on his yacht, saying: 'Twelve million against yoUaj
now, Natacha. At twelve million.' |
Minsky took even longer to make up his mind than Lord|
Ditherer. So Rupert, as a sign to Jupiter, pointedly examined his^
fingernails. Catching Henry Wyndham's eye, Jupiter nodded. ^
'Twelve million, five hundred thousand at the back,' called out^
Henry. |

Ptifi

Everyone swung round, or stood up unashamedly to find out
who had bid.
'Jupiter Belvedon's just bid for Rupert Campbell-Black,' whispered
David.
I hate that bastard, thought Kevin, plucking at David's sleeve.
'Go on,' he hissed.
'Thirteen million on the aisle,' said Henry, as David raised his
eyebrows, then, turning to the telephone bidders, 'Thirteen
million against you now, Natacha.'
Minsky Kraskov was watching the lights of Cannes rippling
orange across the dark-blue waters of the Mediterranean.
'Who is damned opponent heeding against me?' he growled.
'I can't tell you,' said Natacha, 'but it's thirteen million against
you. Do you want to bid?'
'I'd rather hafyou against me. It is a dealer or a museum?'
'Perhaps. You can't keep them waiting.'
'EesittheGetty?'
'D'you want to bid?'
'Oh, OK.'
A gold pen glittered in Natacha's waving white hand.
'Thirteen million, five hundred thousand on the telephone and
against you, sir, I'm sure there's another bid in you.' Henry
Wyndham smiled at Kevin, who again plucked David's sleeve.

There were audible groans from the Americans, the French and
the Danes when, like favourites falling in the National, the big
museums gradually dropped out.
Henry was stepping up the drama now, whipping the bidders to
a frenzy of competition. He knew Kevin and Rupert detested each
other and there was no love lost between David and the Belvedons.
If he could get a dog fight going between the two sides, bidding
could soar beyond the reach of astronauts.
David went up to seventeen million, Jupiter to eighteen, Minsky
to nineteen, and on it went.
A pale intense woman from the Abraham Lincoln Museum, who
owned La Smorfiosa, Pandora's companion picture, had been
waiting to jump in at twenty million, but to her horror the bidding
soared past her limit.
Gazing up at the window in the roof. Sienna was amazed it was
still light. She longed to escape from this venal hell into one of
those untroubled eighteenth-century landscapes and sleep for
ever on a village green or wade into a reed-strewn river until the
waters closed over her head. She was brought back to earth by a
fracas.

537
Minsky's yacht appeared to have gone under a bridge.
'I'm afraid my client's telephone has cut out. . . please wait a
second,' begged Natacha.
'It's twenty-four million against you, Natacha.' There was a slight
edge to the Chairman's voice as the seconds ticked past.
'Who's running this sale?' snapped David.
Seeing the tension was getting to him, Jupiter glanced at Rupert,
who again examined his fingernails. Another million was only after
all a two-bedroomed flat in Chelsea. Jupiter nodded.
'Twenty-five million at the back.'
Behind the Chairman's head, a flickering blackboard turned
Rupert's bid into dollars, euros, marks, lire and Swiss and French
francs. It looked huge in whatever currency.
There goes the new roof, the children's school fees, half the
horses and probably Penscombe as well, thought Taggie in terror.
'It's an awful lot of money,' she whispered.
'Money isn't everything,' snapped Rupert.
David was poised to bid twenty-six million - nearly the top whack |
for Kevin, who was already looking green. Then suddenly David
saw Rosemary fighting her way through the crowded doorway on
his left. She was wearing a new, very becoming, slate-blue suit,
her face lit by stunning diamond earrings. What in hell was she |
doing squandering the housekeeping at a time like this? Thanfcj
God, he and Geraldine were respectably divided by a Berlin Watt
of Coleys.
David was so jolted he forgot to flicker his eyebrows at Henry |
Wyndham, and the Raphael nearly went to a reconnected Minsky,j
who'd actually been ringing his astrologer, who'd advised him it|
was a good day for shopping. Thus encouraged, Minsky had bid^
twenty-six million.
The hammer waits for no man. David nodded hastily.
'Twenty-seven million on the aisle,' said Henry jubilantly.
He was delighted to see an even more major player had just|
appeared at Rosemary Pulborough's side. Such was the force ofSi'S^
personality, as though a big bear had entered the forest, that altl|
the jam-packed lesser animals breathed in, allowing him and!
Rosemary through to join Zac and his lawyers at the back. |
'Bloody monster,' hissed Sienna to Somerford. 'D'youSj
remember him telling us how he longed to own a Raphael, the |
night of Emerald's birthday party? And what's Rosemary doing IJ
fratting with such a fiend?'
Jupiter went to twenty-eight million.
I wouldn't mind living in a council flat, thought Taggie in
despair, but Rupert would hate it, and he couldn't have any dogs.

538

David glanced round at Rupert, and thirty years fell away. He was
back barring the way to Galena's studio and this glittering blond
bastard, as arrogant and glamorous as he was today, was loping up
the stairs towards him, picking him up like a bollard.
'Get out of my way, you little twerp.'
David felt equal rage against Jupiter, who had never made any
secret of his contempt.
I was the one Galena loved, thought David.
A God-like feeling assailed him. Chucking reason aside like an
overcoat in a storm, he lifted his head and gazing straight at Henry,
raised his eyebrows.
'Twenty-nine million on the aisle.'
As a ripple of excitement went through the room, Kevin plucked
at David's sleeve in horror.
'What the fuck,' he hissed, 'you've passed my limit. . .'
'I'm not bidding for you any more,' hissed back David.
All the world would realize he was buying for stock and appreciate
how dazzlingly the Pulborough was doing. He felt as if
he'd scored a try at Twickenham.
This galvanized Abdul the Amorous, who, bored with pleasuring
the finance director's daughter, was chatting again to Patti with the
ebony bob. Suddenly her face lit up as though a restorer had
covered it in white spirit, her scarlet fingernails flashing as she
waved a hand. Abdul would just have to sell a few oil wells.
'Thirty million on the telephone,' said Henry, having difficulty,
like Patti, hiding his elation.
The room was boiling over, chat subsiding to total silence
between bids.
David bid thirty-one and a half, Jupiter thirty-two. David thirty-
three. It was no longer a question of money. Avarice had been
overtaken by Pride, Envy and Wrath, as mutual loathing spurred
on the two sides. They were greyhounds flat out after a hare. David
could no longer hear the figures he was bidding.
'Thirty-three million on the aisle.'
Jupiter glanced enquiringly at Rupert, who glanced across at
Taggie. A drop of blood trickled down her chin, where she'd bitten
her beautiful lip through in terror. Reality kicked in. Rupert shook
his head. Thirty-four was his unlucky number, he'd have to win a
lot of Derbies and put Taggie on the game to recoup it.
'Are you sure, are you absolutely sure?' drawled Henry, as if he
was pressing another dry martini on Rupert rather than a thirty-
four-million-pound bid.
Jupiter smiled and shook his head, just managing to hide his
bitter disappointment. Bang went the generous cut Rupert would

539

have given him. If only Raymond had let him sell the Raphael, in
May '99, long before Emerald's birthday.
Taggie, dizzy with relief, reached across for Rupert's hand. For
a second he glared furiously into space, then he smiled wryly and
lifted her fingers to his lips.
Abdul went to thirty-five million. Campbell-Blacks and
Belvedons should stay out of the kitchen, thought David scornfully,
then clutched himself in ecstasy: the Raphael was going to
be his. He'd sell it on at once, but for a few days, it would hang
in the drawing room at the Old Rectory and he and Rosemary
would throw a grand party to show it off to the county.
As he once more raised his eyebrows at Henry, a great cheer
went up. The entire room was caught up in the drama. David was
very near the record.
'I suppose he won't have to fork out for Barney's wedding,'
bitched Somerford to Sienna, who was reeling with horror that it
was going to David. Patti, after more consultation, had ruefully
shaken her gleaming ebony bob, Natacha her russet mane, which
meant both Abdul and Minsky were out.
David has taken everything, both my father's wives, he left my
mother to die and now he's going to get the Raphael . . . Sienna
wanted to scream, to snatch up the NBC camera and hurl it at him.
Glancing up the room, Zac caught sight of her anguished
despairing face, and turned to Si, talking urgently.
'Any advance on thirty-six million. Fair warning.' As Henry lifted
the hammer, his eyes swivelled intently over the crowd, as if- searching for four-leaf clovers. It was so easy to miss a bid. To the
right at one o'clock, Si Greenbridge lifted a gold-ringed hand.
'Thirty-seven million in a new place,' cried Henry in delighted
surprise.
Another explosion of applause and a collective gasp of anticipation,
as everyone cricked their necks jerking round to look.
That's it, thought Sienna numbly, Si's been hovering. Now he's
got her.
But the latent Guggenheim had been unleashed in David. All
reason suspended, he bid again.
'Thirty-eight million on the aisle.'
'Have you gone raving mad?' hissed Geraldine across the bows
of the Coleys.
The press were going crazy, scribbling frantically, the cameramen
all fretting to break the rule about not photographing
punters. The Chairman looked down at his rostrum. On the right,
where so many right-handed auctioneers had brought down the
hammer, rings ran into each other like a rain shower on a pond.

540

There were only a few rings on the left; he glanced up smiling at Si.
'Thirty-eight million against you, Mr Greenbridge.'
Si went to thirty-nine, David to forty.
'Si's running the little shit up,' muttered Jupiter, 'going to leave
him with ego on his face.'
The longest pause of all followed; not a mobile cheeped.
'I'm selling now for forty million,' said Henry Wyndham softly,
'going for forty million on the aisle.'
I've thrashed the Belvedons and Rupert, thought David in
ecstasy. Oh please, please God, prayed Sienna. Si Greenbridge
glanced at Rosemary, who smiled and nodded.
There's something going on between those two, thought a
momentarily distracted Sienna.
There was another flash of big gold rings as Si lifted his hand.
'Forty-one million at the back.'
A yell of ecstasy went up from the press office, the record had
been smashed. Cheering, clapping and stamping rocked the
room. The din brought David to his senses. With the buyer's
premium, that would be over forty-five million. Reality asserted
itself. Like Portly the baby otter at the Gates of Dawn, the moment
of his glory faded and he felt alone, bewildered and rather cold.
As the hammer came down, Sienna gave such a howl of despair
that, even amid the tumultuous applause, the pandemonium and
euphoria, people turned uneasily in her direction and a Spanish
dealer crossed himself. Zac by contrast was smiling, hugging Si and
kissing Rosemary, then pumping the hands of his lawyers. Sienna
had never seen him look so happy, as well the bastard might. The
Raphael had more than quadrupled its reserve.
The press had erupted, surging through the hall towards Si and
towards the rostrum.
'Must get a shot of the Chairman handing over the picture to Mr
Greenbridge.'
'Give us five minutes,' said Chris Proudlove, the press officer,
totally failing to hide his euphoria. 'We're going to hang Pandora
in a side gallery. There'll be champagne and canapes on offer. You
can get your pictures of the Chairman and Mr Greenbridge then.'
'Should have told me you were going on bidding,' said Kevin
bullyingly, 'nearly gave me a coronary. Who the fuck were you
bidding for?'
'For stock,' said David.
'Made me look a right tit.'
'Again,' snapped David. He was fed up with brown-nosing Kevin.
He was the major player now.
But infuriatingly people were surging forward from all sides to

541

commiserate with Kevin: dealers, buyers, Sotheby's staff, looking
at him with new respect. He must be loaded to underbid a lot
like that.

Jupiter felt wiped out by anti-climax, as though he'd turned up at
his own wedding and found Hanna married to someone else, and
not even a bridesmaid on offer. It was always worse when you came
down after champagne. All the same, seeing Taggie and Rupert
together made him gladder than ever that he and Hanna had
patched it up.
'Shall we go and have dinner at Green's?' said Taggie. 'To cheer |
ourselves up? It's only eight-thirty. It seems like midnight.'
'I've had a brilliant idea,' said Rupert, putting a hand on;
Jupiter's shoulder as they fought their way towards a side door. I
'You're going to be the next Tory leader, and take the party out of
the wilderness.' .

' j
As David and Kevin struggled through the scrum, more and more^
people were commiserating with Kevin. |
'Back luck, Lord Coley, you nearly made it,' called out Johnny fl
Van Haeften. 'How about lunch next week?' ;
'I'm sorry you didn't get it, Lord Coley, come and have a drink
next door,' said Henry Wyndham.
Bloody Kev, thought David furiously.
Ahead he could see Si and Rosemary ringed by press.
'Better not leave together,' he muttered to Geraldine. 'See you |
in Green's in half an hour.'
Battling on alone, he decided he'd better say 'Well done' to Si,'
after all he'd want to sell him more pictures. Si's unusually frivol1
ous tie covered in bright pink roses looked familiar. Hadn't he 3
seen it in Searston High Street that morning? J.
'Congratulations, Si.' |
'Sorry about Pandora.' Si grinned down at him, then, putting his^
father-bear arm proudly around Rosemary: 'And I'm afraid I'm'
taking another little lady off you.' [|
Rupert and Jupiter, following behind, exchanged incredulous^
glances.
'What d'you mean?' spluttered David.
'It means there's life in the rich ugly old dog yet,' giggit
Rosemary. 'I'm afraid you're a high and dry sheriff now, David.'
A stunned silence was broken by the sound of clapping.
'Good on you, Mummy,' cried a delighted Barney, 'as long as
you and Si have care and custody of mm.'
When an apoplectic David tried to frogmarch Rosemary back to

542

Bury Street, two ofSi's guards grabbed him. Next moment he was
bearded by Adam Helliker of the Sunday Telegraph.
'Evening, David, what's this rumour about you being Jonathan
Belvedon's father?'
'Don't be fucking stupid, Jonathan's Raymond son.'
'I hope not or he married his sister this afternoon,' said John
McEntee from the Express, brandishing a copy of the Evening
Standard. 'Just have a look at this.'
'Daddy's first wife mated with David Pulborough', announced
the large caption beneath the charming picture of Dora and
Loofah.
'No comment,' shrieked Larkshire's High Sheriff, as he was
engulfed by a tidal wave of press.

In a side gallery, Sienna discovered another rugger scrum as
photographers fought to take Si and Rosemary's picture as they
gossiped with Henry Wyndham. Around them, celebs and luminaries
of the art world embraced and fell on smoked salmon,
angels on horseback and glasses of champagne, praying that some
Midas gold would rub off on them if they managed to rub
shoulders with Pandora's new owner.
Everyone was so busy chatting forty-one million to the dozen
that, like a bride neglected at her own wedding reception, because
the guests feel she's too special to waste time on them, the Raphael
hung on the wall temporarily unattended.
What a beautiful picture, thought the curator from the Abraham
Lincoln Museum tearfully, I should have ignored the board and
gone higher.
The next moment, a strange, staring-eyed, pitifully thin young
woman had slunk across the room and lifted the picture off the
wall.
'Don't touch it,' cried the curator in horror.
'I only came to say goodbye,' sobbed Sienna, and before anyone
could stop her, put her blanched lips to the pale cheek of Pandora,
and then to the glowing forehead of Hope.
Two kindly Sotheby's porters, who'd been devoted to Raymond,
pulled her away, and smuggled her weeping out of the St George
Street entrance.
Not even the sight of David yelling, 'I've already told you, "no
comment",' as a pack of baying reporters chased him down
Clifford Street, could bring a smile to her face.

543

By the time she came off the motorway. Sienna was beyond tears,
beyond the bitter-sweet comfort of Arabella: disc two, band five.
Moonlight was seeping through the tree tunnels, dappling the
long silver road. Pale ghosts of willow herb brushed her car.
Combines, like dinosaurs, lurked overnight in shorn fields. The
stars were brilliant as though an overjoyed Jonathan had chucked
a handful of confetti against the face of the night, but the moon
was hemmed in by furry sable clouds - like the Raphael guarded
by an escort of Zacs.
As Sienna dropped into the Silver Valley, however, the moon
shook off her dark entourage and, dimming the stars with a switch,
sailed radiant and solitary into a pearly-grey sky. The church clock
was striking midnight as Sienna crossed the bridge. She had no
interest in the helicopter landing on the cricket pitch like a swarm
of fireflies. Perhaps it was Rupert dropping off a disappointed
Jupiter.
Sienna had rung and asked Mrs Robens to leave the front door
unlocked. As she went inside, Grenville pattered lightly down the
stairs in eternal search of Raymond. Hoping for a miracle like me,
thought Sienna, gathering his desperately thin, snaking body into
her arms.
The wedding party had been cleared up except for the odd glass
and plate. On the hall was a note in drunken writing: 'Masses of
food in larder. Great party had by all. Hope you wasn't too sad.
Have a nice hot toddy, see you in the morning, love Knightie.'
In the fridge, she found a half-empty bottle ofMoetwith a silver
spoon in its mouth. Pouring herself a glass, kicking off her high
heels, she took Grenville out for a pee. The garden had been
neglected since her father died. The parched unsprinkled lawn

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scratched her bare feet. Flowers wilted, their leaves cast down,
heads hanging.
The moon was now hidden by the house, which cast its long
ebony shadow across the lawn, its chimneys like pointing fingers
saying: 'Go from this place.'
It would be Jupiter's house soon - a West Country Chequers with
politicians landing in helicopters and intrigue going on all night.
Rupert had been a very successful Tory Minister for Sport. Jupiter
had clearly begun networking.
Despite the heat she shivered. There was no room for her here.
Why had she driven down? She'd forgotten even to bring a toothbrush.
In the hall she noticed another gap on the wall: Jupiter
flogging another family picture.
Tiptoeing upstairs so as not to wake Anthea, she found her
stepmother's bedroom door most unusually ajar. Then she
remembered: Anthea, not wanting to sleep in her lonely marriage
bed after a wedding, had gone to stay with Green Jean.
Peering inside to double check, Sienna noticed the door up to
the Blue Tower was open. Climbing the steps, remembering
how she had made the same journey the night she stole the
Raphael, she found the second door also unlocked.
Then as she pushed it open, her heart failed. For there in the
moonlight to the right of the bed, where it had always hung, was
the Raphael. It had to be a fake. Someone was playing a hideous
joke.
Putting down her glass, she rushed across the room, climbing
onto the bed, throwing aside a pile of old Belvedon catalogues to
get closer. It was the Raphael. There was the little nick in the
moon's chin, which the madman's slashing knife had made in New
York.
In bewilderment, she fingered the winged evils of the world,
touching the normally choleric face of Wrath, now drained of
colour in the moonlight, touching terrified Pandora and
Epimetheus, arms raised to ward off the dazzle of Hope in her
gauzy dress.
As a shadow fell across the bed. Sienna gave a scream and swung
round. A man stood in the doorway, a white shirt emphasizing the
breadth of his shoulders, the black trousers the leanness of hip and
length of leg. His grey-flecked hair gleamed silver; his eyes were
black hollows; his face ghostly and deeply shadowed as though
he'd wandered without sleep for a hundred years.
'I've brought Pandora home,' he said slowly.
'Stop taking the piss,' snarled Sienna. 'Have you bought our
house as well? You've taken everything else that matters, my father,

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our good name, the Raphael. How the hell did you get down here
so quickly anyway?'
'Si lent me his helicopter.'
'After the crooked bastard bought the picture,' spat Sienna.
'Way back at Emerald's birthday party, he was saying he wanted a
Raphael.'
'He was bidding for me. I was so uptight, I figured I'd screw up if Ibid myself.'
Sienna shook her head.
'I don't understand. Why've you bought back your own picture?
What sort of dodgy deal have you and Si been involved in all this
time?'
'Hunting for the Raphael. While I was digging, Si made noises
above ground, to flush it out.'
Zac spoke matter-of-facuy, hardly a tremor in his deep husky
voice.
'So you weren't an art correspondent at all.'
'Not for a year or two. I was too busy searching.'
Little by little he was edging into the room. Huddled on the four-
poster Sienna was in a complete panic, heart thumping, brain
zigzagging like a hunted rabbit.
'So why's the Raphael hanging here like a sodding trophy?'
'It's for you.' Zac's voice broke. 'I saw you across the sale room,
you looked so hurt, I couldn't sell it.'
'But for Christ's sake, you'll be clobbered for the buyer's and the
seller's premium and huge costs for the tour and the CD and
the hardback.'
Zac shrugged. 'It's only money.'
'Still doesn't answer my question.'
'You were the only person who loved Pandora for herself. And I
love you for yourself,' Zac went on despairingly, 'I've loved you
from the moment you caught me coming out of the bathroom
after screwing Anthea. It was the worst moment of my life. I felt the
hangman's noose tightening round my neck. To track down the
Raphael, I'd fucked Anthea and Emerald without a shred of contrition,
only to discover I did have a heart after all, big as an ox's,
thawing slowly and painfully inside.'
'I still don't get it,' whispered Sienna, rearing up on the bed,
clutching the nearest bedpost for support.
'I had to win the court case,' stammered Zac, who was now
shaking so much, he had to grab the same bedpost, his hand above
hers. 'If your side had won, the others would have flogged the
Raphael, and split the money between them: Jupiter on
the fucking Tories, Jonathan on living it up. Alizarin on struggling

546

artists, Anthea on hats, Raymond on a Poussin or a house in
Tuscany.'
Seeing his desolation and totally uncharacteristic uncertainty,
Sienna longed to slide her hand up to meet his, but she was still
numb with disbelief.
'I had no hope at all,' muttered Zac, 'until you crossed the court
and put your arms around me. Even in that bleakest moment when
I realized the extent of Jacob's treachery, I felt safe, as though you
were Mom back from the grave telling me some frightful nightmare
wasn't true. I nearly made a move then, but I had so much
to work through. I accept now I can't change what Jacob did. I
don't want to unravel the past any more, just make a future.'
He was so close, she could smell traces of CK One and the faint
peppermint of his breath. As a lamb bleated down the valley, a ewe
gave a reassuring rumble.
'I might have won the case' - they both jumped violently as,
almost with a mind of its own, Zac's shaking hand closed over hers
- 'but what was the point of having the second most beautiful
woman in the world hanging on my wall, when I wanted easily the
most beautiful one?' With a tentative quivering finger, Zac traced
the contours of Sienna's cheek. 'In my bed all night, sitting by the
fire with me in the evening, raising kids and growing old together.
Don't cry, baby, I can't bear it.
'It's your picture now.' For a moment his voice was too choked
to carry on. 'If by a millionth chance, you'd like to share your life
with me, we can love it together. If not, it's still yours. Without you,
everything's pointless: pictures, money, existence.' His other hand
crept shyly up her arm, then retreated. 'Say the word and I'll quit.'
Then, as Sienna said nothing, unable to speak, Zac turned
towards the door. Seeing utter desolation on his moon-blanched
face. Sienna gave a cry.
'Don't go,' she sobbed. 'Never like go away again.'
Gazing at him for a second, seeing the tears sparkling on his
black lashes, she let go of the bedpost, held out her arms and fell
into his.
'Oh Zac,' she whispered, pulling his trembling mouth to meet
hers, 'it's not just the Raphael that's come home.'

Too tired and happy to go to sleep, Zac and Sienna found another
bottle and, welcoming a delighted Grenville onto the bed, watched
the sky slowly lighten, as they waited for the sun to rise on the
Raphael.
'I've suddenly realized,' murmured Zac, running a finger along
her high cheekbones and long heavy eyelids, 'why I fell in love so

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instantly with Alizarin's Balkan paintings - because they were filled
with people who looked just like you.'
'And I've got to kiss you again,' sighed Sienna happily, 'because
you are so beautiful and because that was the most brilliant fabulous
sex I've ever had.'
'Better than last time,' murmured Zac when they finally paused
for breath.
'I thought you were Jonathan,' cried Sienna in sudden outrage,
'I'd just stolen the Raphael. I was pissed. I was so off the wall, I'd
have let Somerford shag me.' She pummelled his chest furiously.
'That was such a shit's trick.'
'I know. It was diabolical.'
The tiger eyes, still a little bloodshot, were full of laughter. She
was so unused to Zac being happy.
'God I enjoyed it.' Zac ran a hand over her hipbone, dipping
down into her waist. 'You have such a great body, and it locks
into mine so perfectly. What did you do with the Raphael that
night?'
'Shoved it under the floorboards where I used to hide booze and
dope from Anthea. Where were you going when you bumped into
me anyway?'
'On my way to nick the Raphael. Weird if we'd met up in the
Blue Tower. I'd arranged for Anthea to leave everything, including
herself - Zac grinned ruefully, his fingers playing idle tunes on
Sienna's ribs - 'open for me. Then I met you, and here is an indication' he
buried his lips in her shoulder - 'of how passionately,
even then, I wanted you, that I could forget the Raphael - and you
know how passionately I wanted that - for a few minutes.'
Twisting her head to kiss his hard cheekbone, feeling the soft
flutter of his lashes, Sienna asked, 'What did you do after you left
me?'
'Found the Raphael gone - and went apeshit. Si nearly buried
me for screwing up.'
Sienna was still puzzled.
T don't understand why Si's involved.'
'He was bankrolling me.'
'Whatever for? Is he your boss?'
'No,' said Zac, sending ripples of delight through her body as he
gently caressed the underside of her breast. 'You have the cutest
boobs.'
'Don't change the subject,' pleaded Sienna. 'Tell me - how does
Si come into it?'
'He's my father,' said Zac simply. Then, at Sienna's look of
incredulity, 'Well, my stepfather actually. Si really loved Mom,

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married her four years ago knowing she'd got cancer. He and I
fought like pitbulls at first, but whilst she was dying and afterwards,
he carried me. I just love the guy. I was so bent out of shape, he
suggested as therapy we search for the Raphael.'
As Sienna's mouth was still so wide open, Zac had to kiss it, then
he said, 'Si didn't want me to flog the Raphael. He and Rosemary
warned me I'd bitterly regret it, that the hurt over Jacob would
fade. What they didn't realize was the only thing I cared about
was you. I was convinced I hadn't a hope in hell. It made me really
mean.' Zac whistled, and shook his head. 'I've got to send
Sotheby's several crates ofKrug to apologize.'
'Not when they're going to sting you for the buyer's premium
and all those expenses,' said Sienna in outrage.
'I don't give a fuck.' Zac pulled her on top of him, so she gasped
and arched with pleasure. 'I'll pay Si back somehow. Anyway, I'm
the richest guy on the planet now I've got you.'
Unnerved at the prospect of more erotic enterprise, Grenville
shot off the bed. For Sienna, things were still going too fast.
'Am I imagining things or is Rosemary about to become the
fourth Mrs Si Greenbridge?'
'I guess so - but there's only going to be one Mrs Zachary
Ansteig.' Looking up, Zac took her face between his hands. 'You
are so beautiful.'
'Except for this zit,' said Sienna ungraciously, because her mind
was suddenly careering off again. Had Zac really said what he'djust
said?
'It's a cute zit.' Zac squinted up at it. 'Makes you more human if
you've got one imperfection.'
As he kissed her, his tongue roving caressingly around her
mouth, she could feel his glorious cock leap upwards. But instead
of joyfully impaling herself on it, Sienna had to battle not to burst
into tears. Utterly confused she rolled off him. Outwardly unmoved,
Zac filled up their glasses and started singing the love duet
from Arabella.

'If you were a girl from one of my villages,
you could go to the well behind your father's house,
and draw a cupful of clear water . . .'

'I've played that song into the ground,' mumbled Sienna. 'You
have no idea how revoltingly miserable I've been, or how hopelessly
I'm in love with you.'
'Only if you prove it by marrying me.'
'That cow, Naomi, said you'd never marry out.'

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'Ah changed ma mind. I guess I need rescuing just as much as
Grenville. Well?'
Sienna turned towards him, her pale face suddenly radiant.
Then Zac realized it wasn't just happiness making her blush. The
sun had risen, casting a soft pink glow on her face and on the
Raphael.
'Look, look,' he said, pointing towards the picture as the
characters sprang to life.
But Sienna had sprung to her feet too. Wrapping herself in a big
orange towel, chucking the remains of her champagne out of the
window, she ran clutching the glass from the room. A minute later
Zac heard the front door bang. Suddenly terrified - perhaps he
was going to lose her after all - he ran to the north window, and
then smiled. For far below, with Grenville frisking round her, was
Sienna, parting the ferns and filling up her glass with ice-cold water
from the spring. Glancing up, she waved and smiled at him, her
orange towel slipping as, very carefully, she carried the glass back
into the house.

550

EPILOGUE

The ancient warder in charge of the Old Masters Gallery at the
Abraham Lincoln Museum was taking the weight off his legs
during a hot crowded Sunday afternoon. As the sun poured in
through the half-open window, a young girl student joined him on
the bench and introduced herself.
'My name's Zeida. You are just so lucky to work here and see
these pictures every day.'
The ancient warder agreed that he never got tired of them,
adding that the gallery had never been so busy before the Raphael
Pandora arrived.
'It's that little picture over there, Zeida, glows like a jewel even
on the darkest day, always got folk round it. There was a big court
case over it years ago.'
'Isn't that portrait next to it by Raphael too?' asked Zeida.
'Sure is. That's Pandora's companion picture,' explained the
old man enthusiastically. 'Sitter was a feisty young beauty called
Caterina, who evidently gave Raphael the run-around. He nicknamed
her "The Proud One", but at the big ceremony here when
the two pictures were reunited after more than three hundred
years, folk swear there were tears in The Proud One's eyes.
Probably just a trick of the light.'
'That's really cool,' sighed Zeida.
As she climbed onto the bench to have a better look, a family
walked in through a side door and the room fell silent. From the
back, the tall guy, who had thick grey hair, looked oldish. He must
have brought along his daughter, Zeida decided, and her two
teenage kids, a boy and a girl.
But as he glanced round, waving and smiling at the warder,
Zeida said 'Wow!' because he had such an extraordinarily alive,
young face and was probably only in his late forties. The family all
looked so excited and because of their beauty -- like visiting angels

551

- the crowd round the Raphael dispersed to let them through. The
grey-haired guy had his arm round the woman as they both pointed
out aspects of the picture to the kids.
'They come here two or three times a year,' said the old warder,
offering Zeida a toffee. 'Seem such a happy family, and they're
always so pleased to see the picture.'
'She looks kinda familiar,' said Zeida.
'Sure - she's Sienna Belvedon.'
'Oh wow! Isn't she British? I've heard of her.'
'Should have done,' reproved the old warder. 'Stirred up
enough controversy around the Millennium. Churchmen and
public figures in an uproar over some picture she painted, all
threatening to withdraw public money in the UK.'
'I've heard of that picture.' Zeida wrinkled her freckled forehead.
'Wasn't it called Visitor's List?'
'That's the one. Made a helluva difference,' conceded the old
warder. 'Drew attention to terrible things we once did to animals.
What upset folk most was to have all the poor critters arriving in
Heaven and being welcomed by God portrayed as a big yellow dog.
But the fuss died down. Now it's regarded as one of the finest
pictures of the twenty-first century. Always thought Visitor was a
funny name for a dog.'

A furry tail ending.

552

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Life may be brief, but art, and consequently Pandora, my novel
about the art world, is long. Which means a huge number of
people to thank.
Nobody, for a start, could have been more helpful than
Sotheby's and I'm particularly grateful to Diana Keith-Neal, a
senior director, for introducing me not only to the Chairman,
Henry Wyndham, but also to Richard Charltonjones, Lucian
Simmons, Natacha Chiaramonte, Patti Wong, Chris Proudlove and
Tatiana von Waldersee. All experts in their fields, they were
unstinting with both their time and their advice.
I had fantastic help from many art dealers, who allowed me to
infiltrate their private views, took me to auctions, showed me
marvellous pictures and beguiled me with outrageous anecdotes.
They include Johnny and Sarah Van Haeften and their assistant
Camilla Clayton, Tim Bathurst, Christopher Burness, Francis Kyle,
Jay Jopling, William Darby, Peyton Skipwith, Edward Horswell,
James Colman and Maurice Howard.
Excellent technical advice or more outrageous tales were supplied
by ace picture framer Mark Wallington; by Rungwe Kingdon
and Claude Koenig, whose Pangolin Gallery and Foundry is one of
the splendours of Gloucestershire; and on the insurance front by
Aaron Shapiro, Michael St Aubyn, William Marler and Andrew
Colvin.
There are many sculptors and painters in Pandora, so I am deeply
indebted to my dear neighbour Anthony Abrahams, and other fine
artists including David Backhouse, Daniel Chadwick, Paul Day,
Paul Grellier, Christopher Dean, Hamish Mackay, Caroline
Wallace, Tory Lawrence, Charlotte Bathurst, Anna GibbsKennet,
Michael and Sybil Edwards and the mighty Maggie Hambling for
either allowing me to invade their studios or sharing their secrets
with me.

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During my research, my portrait was painted for Yorkshire
Television by Alan Hydes and my head sculpted by Frances
Segelman. Both artists gave me invaluable insight into the creative
process as well as an end product of great beauty.
In earlier books I have been accused of making my young
heroines too attractive, but anyone meeting Emma Sergeant,
Tanya Brett or Georgie Taylor, all three of whom helped me
hugely, will vouch that where the art world is concerned I have not
exaggerated.
Most of all I must thank artist extraordinaire, Sargi Mann, who
heroically continues to paint despite failing sight. His extraordinarily
beautiful oil of a pale blue canal idling through golden
autumn fields, which hangs in our bedroom, constandy revealing
fresh enchantments when viewed from different angles and at
different times of the day, was the initial inspiration for Pandora.
I never fail to be touched and astonished by the magnanimity
of intellectuals prepared to enter into the fun and adventure of
producing popular fiction. The Pandora of the title is an invented
picture by Raphael of the opening of Pandora's Box. In her
creation and historical background I was enormously privileged to
be given advice by Dr Nicholas Penny, Keeper of the National
Gallery and one of the greatest experts on Raphael in the world.
David Jenkins, a brilliant classics master at Monmouth, threw light
on the myths of Pandora and the Seven Deadly Sins. Peter
Clarkson, Associate Lecturer in Art History at the Open University,
specializing in the Renaissance, lent me endless arcane art books
and allowed me to pester him with questions. Denis Napier
corrected my Latin. Caterina Krucker, Lecturer in Modern
Languages, brushed up my French and Italian.
On the art establishment side, I am grateful to Robert and Kate
Gavron, John Cooper, ex-Head of Education at the National
Portrait Gallery, Maggie Guillebaud, formerly of the Arts Council,
Christopher and Angela Dowling of the Imperial War Museum,
and Francis Corner of Cheltenham and Gloucester College of
Higher Education.
As Pandora is also a novel about art that belonged to the Jews
being looted by the Nazis, I was unbelievably lucky just before I
started writing to lunch with the mercurial, perennially innovative
Tom Rosenthal, who was not only illuminating on the contemporary
art scene but also dreamed up the way in which my picture
could be looted. For furdier illumination I must thank Karen
Pollock and Rosie Barton of the Holocaust Trust; Constance
Lowenthal, Commission for Art Recovery, New York, and Eva Kurz,
a solicitor specializing in looted art.
I am especially indebted to Ruth Redmond Cooper, Director of
the Institute of Art and Law, and her team. On my way to their
conference on Art, Law and the Holocaust at the Courtauld
Institute in October 1999, I was involved in the Paddington train
crash. Arriving at the conference, I couldn't have been treated with
more kindness and sympathy; and as the speakers in turn
described how the Nazis had tried to eradicate not only a people
but their art and culture as well, they put any horrors I had experienced
earlier in the day into perspective.
I am extremely grateful too to British Transport Police for later
retrieving early chapters of Pandora from the wreckage of the train.
The law surrounding the restitution of looted art is extremely
complex, often involving the legal systems of several countries. I
would never have been able to tackle a big court case had it not
been for the advice of my dear friends, the Right Hon. Dame
Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, President of the Family Division, and the
Right Hon. the Lord Hoffman, Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, who
also lent me a brilliant and famous judgement on a looted art case
by the Hon. Mr Justice Moses, presiding judge at the Royal Courts
of Justice. Lawyers John Davies, Elizabeth Jupp, Hetty Cleave,
Martyn Daldorph, Graham Ogiivy, Gillian Geddes and Michael
Flint also helped me.
In my travels, I was incredibly lucky to meetjamie Tabor, QC,
who, while wrestling with a long and gruelling case in Norwich,
nobly spent his evenings reading my court case chapters for
howlers. But as in every aspect of Pandora, I took his, or anyone
else's, specialist advice only in so far as it suited my plot. Any
mistakes are mine and in no way reflect on their expertise.
I am also indebted to Stephen Burrows, Chief Security Officer
at the Royal Courts of Justice, to Emma Macdonald, Bob Parry and
the staff at the County and Crown Courts at Gloucester, and to Gil
Martin, ex-Gloucestershire CID, for his encyclopaedic knowledge
of matters criminal.
Writers need geographical locations on which to anchor their
stories. Since moving to Gloucestershire, I have been haunted and
captivated by two beautiful, historic and adjoining houses flanking
our local church. On them I have based Foxes Court and the Old
Rectory in Pandora. I should therefore like to thank Simon and
Mindy Reading and John and Elizabeth Cowan for allowing me to
range freely round their glorious gardens, but would emphasize
that they and their sweet families bear absolutely no resemblance
to the Belvedons and the Pulboroughs in my story.
I must equally thank our former High Sheriff of Gloucestershire,
Major John Eyre, for explaining the duties of and historical

555

background to the appointment, but would again stress that as a
man of great charm and integrity he bears no resemblance to my
frightful High Sheriff in Pandora.
Everyone, in fact, in Pandora, unless they are so eminent, like
Joanna Lumley or Sotheby's Chairman Henry Wyndham, as to
appear as themselves, is made up and in no way based on any living
person.
My characters sometimes fall ill and make miraculous recoveries.
It was invaluable to be able to seek medical information from Joe
Cobbe, Sarah Morris, Pat Pearson, Graham Hall, Tim Crouch and
Martin Joyce.
On a Ritzy front, interior designer Nina Campbell dreamed up
a beautiful bedroom for my heroine's glamorous mother, while
Lindka Cierach, Mariska Kay and David Shilling were a constant
inspiration for lovely clothes and hats. Aspreys, Tiffany's, Alfred
Dunhill and Robert Young the florists in Stroud were also a great
help, and I must especially thank Denise Dean and David Risley of
Zwemmers and Stephen Simpson of Hatchards for so tenaciously
tracking down books I needed.
Writers do not always expect kindness from their own profession. Few, however, could have been more welcoming and helpful than
Lesley Garner, Nigel Reynolds, Will Bennett, David Lee, Bevis
Hillier, Lucinda Bredin, Peter Harclerode, Matthew Collings,
the sublime Brian Sewell, Esther Oxford, John Hawkins of
Gloucestershire News Service, Robert Pearson of UK Law News,
Peter Davis, Philip Jones and Maria Prendergast. I am also grateful
that the Art Newspaper, Art Review and the Jackdaw kept me up to
date with events.
I should like to thank Chris Wood of Decca Records for permission
to quote five lines from his translation of Richard Strauss's
Arabella, and also William Mann for permission to quote four lines
of Hermann Hesse's poem 'Going to Sleep', which form part of
the lyrics for Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs.
The press offices at Middlesex County Cricket Club, the British
Show Jumping Association, the All-England Tennis Club,
Wimbledon, Conservative Central Office, the Lord Chancellor's
Office, and the staff at the Public Records Office at the Angel,
Islington, were wonderful, always stopping whatever they were
doing to provide crucial helpful information.
Another theme in Pandora is an adopted child's quest for her natural parents. I am eternally grateful to Marjorie Dent, who
formerly ran the Phyllis Holman Richards Adoption Society, for
her wisdom and constant support; to social workers Clodagh
Howe, Sue Jacobs and June Sellars, and to Felicity Collier, Chief

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Executive of the British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering, for
their advice and ideas and for providing helpful literature on the
subject.
I am also much beholden to the authors of the following books,
which provided illumination or factual background on looted art,
the art world and adoption. They include The Lost Masters by Peter
Harclerode and Brendan Pittaway, The Faustian Bargain by
Jonathan Petropoulis, Portrait of Doctor Gachetby Cynthia Saltzman,
Raphael by Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny, Blimey by Matthew
Collings, Boogey Woogey by Danny Moynihan, Duchess of Cork Streetby
Lillian Browse, Sotheby's by Robert Lacey, Groovey Bob by Harriet
Vyner, The Sorcerer's Apprentice by John Richardson, Birth Records
Counselling by Pam Hodgkins, Adopters on Adoption by David Howe
and Ithaka by Sarah Saffian.
My friends as usual came up with endless ideas. They include
Dominique Bagley, Pussy Baird-Murray, Francis Burne, Ailsa
Chapman, Sarah Collett, Mike Coffin-Garden, Fran Cook, my
stepdaughter Laura Cooper, Michael Cordy, Susan Daniel, Pam
Dhenin.John Ferguson, Dorry Friesen, Glyn and Vanessa Hendy,
Bill Holland, Ute Howard, Didljefferies, James Johnstone, David
Laurie, Bruce and Janetta Lee, Ava Myers, John Parry, Patrick
Scrivenor and Heather Ross.
On my way home from the courts a couple of years ago I met a
delightful and elated woman who told me about her daughter's
boyfriend who had longed to be married before he was forty and
how the relevant families effected this. Leaping out at Stroud, I
asked her if I could use the story in Pandora but failed to catch her
name. Wherever she is now, I would like to thank her, and anyone
else I may have forgotten.
Transworld, my publishers, have all been marvellous in every
way, but I would particularly like to thank Mark Barty-King, their
Chairman, to whom Pandora is dedicated, and my editor Linda
Evans, who is simply a darling, who has constantly supplied me with
comfort, joy, support and good advice. Richenda Todd has also
been a terrific copy editor. Henry Steadman designed a wonderful
jacket, on the front of which is a beautiful painting of the myth of
Pandora by Chris Brown. Neil Gower also drew a beautiful map.
I am extremely grateful to Steve Rubin, president and publisher
ofDoubleday, Broadway Publishing Group, and Jane Gelfman my
agent in New York, for so kindly reading the chapters set in
America.
I cannot thank my agent in London Vivienne Schuster enough
for her kindness, enthusiasm and sympathetic encouragement in
the many dark days when I thought Pandora would never be

557

finished. Her colleagues at Curtis Brown, Paul Scherer and
Jonathan Lloyd, and Euan Thorneycroft, her trusty lieutenant,
were also always there when I needed them.
On the home front I am singularly blessed. My PA Pippa Birch
is owed a huge debt of gratitude for typing the lion's share of the
synopsis and the penultimate draft, and for checking and seeking
out endless facts and figures. Pippa came up with many ideas, as
did Annette Xuereb-Brennan, Mandy Williams and Caterina
Krucker, who heroically typed the rest of the manuscript and
refused to go crackers over the endless corrections. To them all I
am truly obligated - and also to dear Ann Mills, our housekeeper,
for her sweetness and patience in keeping us all sane and comparatively
tidy. Phil Bradley, of Cornerstones, drove me to endless
places while I was writing the book and always got me there on
time.
Most of all I want to thank my darling family, for putting up
with shameless neglect for months on end. My husband Leo, who
was encyclopaedic on military matters, our son Felix and his wife
Edwina, our daughter Emily, Bessie the Labrador, Hero the
lurcher and our four cats, all provided their essential mix of good
copy and endless cheer.

558