Pandora (90 page)

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.

‘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.’

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 tip: 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 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 for the wedding.

Bugger! Her spot was bigger than ever, shining through each added layer of base. At least it matches my dress, she thought sulkily.

‘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, so that I should be your betrothed before God and all men! O beautiful one!’

And I offered Zac boiling water out of a tap at Foxes Court, thought Sienna dully.

Henry Wyndham, the Chairman of Sotheby’s, slipped home on the 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 the increments: ‘Ten million, ten million five hundred, eleven million, eleven million five hundred . . . Fifteen million [God willing], sixteen million, seventeen million . . . twenty million [God even more willing].’

He hadn’t been so excited since June 1998, when he’d sold the Monet of Giverny for £19.8 million – which had been a record for a Monet. If only he could steady his nerves with a large whisky, but you couldn’t drink before a sale. You had to keep your wits about you, to smile and be charming when your brain was going round 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 Zachary Ansteig coming after him with a baseball bat.

Thank God any worries about no-one bidding on the Raphael had been dispelled. The National Gallery weren’t bidding because they already had enough beautiful Raphaels. But at least they hadn’t made a preemptive strike, which gave the other museums 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 than 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, with invariably a long-limbed, golden-haired beauty sandwiched between them.

The women tended to be even more spectacular than the men. Not just the celebs: Jerry Hall, Joan Collins and Joanna Lumley, but the wives and girlfriends with their clean shining hair, their pashminas sliding down suntanned arms and their faces as zit-free and glowingly polished as the 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.

‘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 dit
’ – 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 on his jet at the penultimate bid. There would also be kudos if he 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 hell 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 of her 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, 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.

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 railroad the people of Larkshire into accepting Casey’s finished sculpture. And he was not sure he wanted to. At lunch after the awards, bloody Casey had presented him with his portrait in High Sheriff’s uniform. Not only had Casey given his subject puffed-out cheeks and paunch, he had also drastically slimmed down the Old Rectory and not included a single blade of grass nor flowers nor splendid trees. David could have been posing in front of any suburban semi.