Pandora (21 page)

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.

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 hair. 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 developers slapping houses all over the Silver Valley (which was now designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty), there was a desire in the village to honour her memory with a statue in the 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 through the leaves. Thursdays were dustbin days: all sorts of goodies would be forthcoming inside punctured black bags.

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 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 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
BC
, 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 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 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 thought we’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.