Read Online Pandora by Jilly Cooper - Free Book Online

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.
    ‘I can’t imagine a more w-w-w-wonderful place.’ David often emphasized a slight stammer to sound more vulnerable and 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 Observer review 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 Discs had familiarized him with his new boss’s taste in music. Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites would stand him in good 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