Authors: Jilly Cooper
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Contemporary, #Contemporary Fiction, #Literary
Pandora (2 page)
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 OF CHARACTERS
| G ENERAL A LDRIDGE | Lord-Lieutenant of Larkshire – so boring he’s known locally as ‘General Anaesthetic’. |
| C OLIN C ASEY A NDREWS | 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. |
| Z ACHARY A NSTEIG | Zac the Wanderer. An American journalist of Austro-Jewish extraction, whose tigerish beauty and air of suppressed violence in no way conjure up cheery images of The Sound of Music . |
| N EVILLE B AINES | Vicar of St James, Limesbridge, predictably known as ‘Neville-on-Sundays’. |
| J EAN B AINES | His very tiresome, ecologically correct wife, known as ‘Green Jean’. |
| R AYMOND B ELVEDON | An extremely successful art-dealer, owner of the Belvedon Gallery in Cork Street. |
| J UPITER B ELVEDON | Raymond’s machiavellian eldest son, who, after Cambridge, joins him in the gallery. |
| H ANNA B ELVEDON | Jupiter’s blonde Junoesque wife, a very gifted painter of flowers. |
| A LIZARIN B ELVEDON | Raymond’s second son, a genius tormented by a social conscience. Produces vast tortured canvasses no-one wants to buy. |
| J ONATHAN B ELVEDON | Raymond’s colossally glamorous younger son. A genius as yet unhampered by any conscience at all. |
| S IENNA B ELVEDON | Raymond’s elder daughter. A truculent, talented wild child. |
| D ICKY B ELVEDON | Raymond’s youngest son – an artful dodger. |
| D ORA B ELVEDON | Raymond’s younger daughter and Dicky’s horse-mad twin sister. |
| J OAN B IDEFORD | A Belvedon Gallery artist and splendid bruiser with a fondness for her own sex. Unenthusiastically married to Colin Casey Andrews. |
| M ICKY B LAKE | The Curator of the Commotion Exhibition at the Greychurch Museum in New York. |
| G ALENA B OROCHOVA | An inspired and extremely volatile Czech painter with a fondness for sex. |
| S AMPSON B RUNNING | A brilliant QC, famous for keeping the Belvedon family out of gaol. |
| R UPERT C AMPBELL -B LACK | Enfant terrible of British showjumping, as beautiful as he is bloody-minded, later leading owner-trainer who dabbles idly in paintings. |
| T AGGIE C AMPBELL -B LACK | His adored second wife – an angel. |
| A DRIAN C AMPBELL -B LACK | Rupert’s younger brother – a cool and successful gallery owner in New York. |
| X AVIER C AMPBELL -B LACK | Rupert and Taggie’s adopted Colombian son. |
| C OLONEL I AN C ARTWRIGHT | Former commanding officer of a tank regiment, managing director of a small but very profitable engineering company in West Yorkshire. |
| P ATIENCE C ARTWRIGHT | His loyal wife – a trooper. |
| E MERALD C ARTWRIGHT | Their elder adopted daughter, a sculptor as ravishingly pretty as she is hopelessly overindulged. |
| S OPHY C ARTWRIGHT | Patience and Ian’s younger adopted daughter, a teacher of splendid proportions and great charm. |
| N AOMI C OHEN | Zachary Ansteig’s lawyer, as ambitious as she is bright and beautiful. |
| K EVIN C OLEY | A perfectly awful petfood billionaire, Chairman Doggie Dins. A collector of art as an investment and sponsor of the British Portrait Awards. |
| E NID C OLEY | His overweight, overbearing wife. |
| E DDIE | Raymond Belvedon’s packer. |
M W | A high court judge. |
| F IONA | Raymond Belvedon’s gallery assistant, a glamorous well-bred half-wit. |
D G | A super sleuth. |
| S I G REENBRIDGE | A mega-rich American arms-dealer and a serious collector of pictures. |
| G INNY G REENBRIDGE | Si’s trophy wife, a former Miss New Jersey. |
| L ILY H AMILTON | Raymond Belvedon’s older sister. |
D H | World-famous diva, seriously tiresome, brings out the Crippen in all. |
| H ARRIET | A radiant henna-haired reporter from Oo-ah! magazine. |
| A BDUL K ARAMAGI | An amorous Saudi with a penchant for saucy pictures. |
| K EITHIE | Somerford Keynes’s boyfriend, an exquisite piece of rough trade and sometime burglar. |
| S OMERFORD K EYNES | A malevolent gay art critic, known as the ‘Poisoned Pansy’. |
| E STHER K NIGHT | Raymond Belvedon’s comely cleaner. |
| M INSKY K RASKOV | An unnerving Russian Mafia hood, who uses art as collateral to raise money for dodgy deals. |
| J EAN -J ACQUES L E B RUN | A very great French painter. |
| N ATACHA | A glamorous member of Sotheby’s Client Advisory Department. |
| S IR M ERVYN N EWTON | A rather self-regarding dry-cleaning millionaire. |
| L ADY N EWTON | His grander wife, given to gardening and Pekineses. |
| R OSEMARY N EWTON | Their daughter – an absolute brick. |
| P ASCAL | An American interior designer. |
| P ATTI | Another glamorous member of Sotheby’s Client Advisory Department. |
| G ERALDINE P AXTON | A networking nympho, a mover and shaker in the art world. |
| P EREGRINE | Sampson Brunning’s junior. |
| G ORDON P RITCHARD | A very exalted specialist. |
| C HRIS P ROUDLOVE | The genial, indefatigable press officer at Sotheby’s. |
| D AVID P ULBOROUGH | A Cambridge undergraduate employed to coach the Belvedon children in the vac. Later a highly successful art-dealer with his own gallery, the Pulborough. |
| B ARNEY P ULBOROUGH | David’s son – a seriously dodgy slug in a Savile Row suit. |
| R OBENS | Raymond Belvedon’s gardener/chauffeur whose wandering eye is overlooked because of his green fingers. |
| M RS R OBENS | His long-suffering wife. Raymond Belvedon’s cook and housekeeper – a treasure. |
| A NTHEA R OOKHOPE | A very tempting temp, who becomes permanent at the Belvedon Gallery in all senses of the word. |
| T AMZIN | Raymond’s gallery assistant in 1999 – the ‘Dimbo’. |
| T RAFFORD | Jonathan Belvedon’s unspeakably scrofulous best friend and painter-in-crime. A Young British Artist. |
| S LANEY W ATTS | A glamorous New Yorker and PRO of the Greychurch Museum. |
| H ENRY W YNDHAM | The charismatic Chairman of Sotheby’s. |
| Z ELDA | An American art student. |
| Z OE | David Pulborough’s subtly understated assistant. |
THE ANIMALS
| B ADGER | Rupert Campbell-Black’s black Labrador |
| T HE B RIGADIER | Lily Hamilton’s white cat |
| C HOIRBOY | Trafford’s Newfoundland puppy as intent on destruction as his master. |
| D IGGORY | Jonathan Belvedon’s sharp-toothed Jack Russell. |
| G RENVILLE | Raymond Belvedon’s brindle greyhound. |
| L OOFAH | Dora Belvedon’s delinquent skewbald pony. |
| M AUD | Raymond Belvedon’s blue greyhound. |
| S HADRACH , M ESHACH AND A BEDNEGO | Rosemary Pulborough’s marmalade cats |
| S HRIMPY | Galena Borochova’s Jack Russell |
| V ISITOR | Alizarin Belvedon’s yellow Labrador, great-great-grandson of Rupert Campbell-Black’s Badger. Socialite and ballroom dancer. |
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 clichés 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 shivering. It wasn’t just from butterflies over the task ahead. The day before yesterday, during a lull in the fighting, he had been scribbling 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.