Pandora (46 page)

‘We’ll be with you in a minute,’ Raymond told her reassuringly as he topped up Emerald’s glass with Moët.

He was as reluctant as she was to get down to the fête, 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 fête 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 Ian 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 honestly 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 up the arses of tigers and leopards, so they 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 fête and pop music began pouring out of the speakers, Dicky intended branching out and charging people £2 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 fiver 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, handing Jean a fistful of tenners.

There was great excitement because Alizarin’s abstract, which Jean had hung upside down, had been bought by a shortsighted General Anaesthetic, who thought he was acquiring a painting of camels in the desert.

‘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
dare
you 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 fête.’

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.

‘“Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,”’ breathed an ecstatic Raymond.

‘And I now declare this fête . . . Zac, oh Zac!’ screamed Emerald.

Dropping her microphone and her notes, ignoring the curtsying little girl with the bunch of salmon-pink gladioli, kicking off her black sandals so her painted toenails flashed like corals in the damp grass, Emerald hurtled across the meadow straight into Zac’s arms, whereupon he gathered her up, twirling her round, kissing her on and on, watched with varying degrees of emotion by the Belvedon family.

‘Cut,’ yelled Jonathan. ‘This is a church fête, 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?’

Joyfully 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 the gaping stall-holders, followed by henna-haired Harriet, ex of
Oo-ah!
, now an eager young reporter on the
Independent
.

‘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?’ Anthea was 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.’

‘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.’