‘Shall I make a pot of tea, Dad?’
‘Yes. Thank you very much. I’ll wash the cups.’
• • •
In order to escape Mrs Greene and Frieda’s ecstatic wedding preparations, Juliet took Leonard to see the end of year show at the Royal College. Artists telephoned Wednesday’s every day, trying to arrange a meeting in the hope Juliet would agree to represent them, or else they arrived at the gallery without an appointment and clutching portfolios. She examined everything with careful interest, new artists and established alike. What Juliet liked most was to find new talent among the students and then track them for a year or two – to ensure they had the necessary tenacity – and then try a few pieces in an exhibition. The only ones she politely and immediately rejected were the ones she took to calling the ‘bottom-patters’. These were usually older and privileged chaps who, intrigued to find a woman running a gallery, were quite unable to resist the odd indulgent pat of her behind.
The brief spell of summer sunshine had retreated into English drizzle; the sky was a faded grey. The whole city reeked of damp, like socks that wouldn’t dry out. Leonard was quiet on the train into town, scarcely speaking and barely responding to Juliet. She’d made no comment, hoping that this wasn’t a sudden surge of adolescent irritability. Usually Leonard was so even tempered. She decided it was probably just the weather.
The students’ private view had been the night before but Juliet always preferred the stillness the day after the opening. She liked to look around as the cleaners swept up the stray peanuts and paper napkins and debris of other trash. She paused for a moment in the hush of the hall, listening to the scratch and scuffle of the mops, and then with a practised eye glanced around the room before making her selection. She wondered which of the artists would be lucky and which ones would be nibbling vol-au-vents at drinks parties in twenty years’ time saying, ‘Actually I went to art school.’ Then she thought of Tom and his letter and forced herself to look at a mediocre landscape. She mustn’t think of it; she mustn’t.
‘Come and tell me what you make of this one,’ she called to Leonard, poised before a self-portrait of a young woman emerging from the shower, face thin and pale in the steam of the bathroom mirror.
Leonard hunched in a corner, hands in his pockets, hardly looking at the pictures. He shuffled over, standing obediently in front of the painting.
‘How do you feel?’ asked Juliet. ‘Do you get that tingle? Or nothing. You have to sense it in your kishkies.’
Leonard sighed, wondering why the only time his mother ever used her smattering of Yiddish was when talking about art. He didn’t care about this picture or any of them. Charlie had promised him that she’d understand, or at the very least be sympathetic. Leonard wasn’t so sure. But in the end the words toppled out.
‘I’m leaving school. I’m not doing my A-levels, I’m going to art college.’
Juliet turned to face her son, exhibition quite forgotten.
‘You can’t.’
Leonard frowned, anger pinking his cheeks in two round dabs. ‘What do you mean, “I can’t”?’
Juliet swallowed, forced herself to smile. ‘I mean you should wait. There’s plenty of time for art school. But you need A-levels too. Things don’t always work out quite as you hope.’
Leonard shook his head and moved away from her. Hurt prickled inside him.
‘You don’t believe I can do it. You don’t think I’m any good. You’ll schlep up here and spend hours gazing at these frankly ordinary pictures and no, I don’t like this stupid portrait, the colours are far too blue and that brush work is careless and the skinny girl has nothing behind her eyes. It’s self-indulgent trash. But you ask me to stand here and study it when you don’t even notice my stuff.’
To his disgust, he realised he was crying. Juliet stepped forward, ready to comfort him, but he shook her away.
‘No. Leave me alone. I want to paint. You understand that in other people but not in me.’
He wiped his tears on his sleeve but to his humiliation they would not stop, and the more they fell, the angrier he grew.
Juliet stared at this furious young man who was her son and knew he was lost. She’d always hoped that he’d learn to want something else, but it was no good. She wanted to tell him that she was frightened and that for every Hockney or Warhol or Jim Brownwick there was a Max Langford or a Tom Hopkins. In the end it was more luck than talent. Talent hadn’t helped Max. Or Tom. She wanted to explain to Leonard that indifference and failure can drive a man to write a letter to his oldest friend as he sits in the sunshine and pops tablets and waits.
Leonard shook his head, eyes big with disappointment. ‘You’ve really nothing to say?’
He gave a shrug and shoving his hands back into his pockets slouched towards the door. Juliet hurried after him, only now conscious that she had not spoken aloud.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please.’
But Leonard turned to face her. ‘What, Mum?’
Juliet swallowed. Found she had no words. Leonard sighed, turned and stepped out onto the street. She watched him go, a slim figure bent against the rain, soon lost among the colourful splurges of other people’s umbrellas. Retreating into the hall, she glanced around the exhibition and saw that Leonard was right – the paintings were ordinary. The girl in the shower drab and blue.
Unable to face going home, Juliet found herself walking towards Wednesday’s. In a few minutes she was wet through, the leather of her shoes squelching on the pavement. There is nobody left, she thought. She might not have lived with Max in the usual way, but while they were apart she stored up the things she wanted to say. A fight with Leonard could be picked through, the knots teased away with Max at the weekend. He’d listen quietly, hands folded beneath his chin, offering advice or solace only when she was quite finished. Even the prospect of talking to him had stopped her feeling alone. I could bear the business with Leonard, thought Juliet, when I still had Max.
Juliet realised it had stopped raining and her face was wet with tears. The sun slid out from behind the clouds as she reached the Bayswater Road. She hurried along beside the railings, glinting wet. A blackbird bathed in a puddle on the grass but in the park beyond an optimistic deckchair attendant was setting out chairs during the sudden spell of sunshine, brushing raindrops from the striped canvas. Juliet experienced a twist in her guts as she remembered Tom’s portrait of her sleeping in the deckchair. At the end of that weekend she’d left a little piece of herself snoozing in the hallway at Ashcombe House. For her birthday last year, Tom had given her a framed photograph of it. The wind picked up and filled the canvas seats making them billow like sails. She thought of Tom. You were so unhappy and we didn’t know.
She turned off the Bayswater Road and threaded her way to Wednesday’s, letting herself inside the gallery. It was closed to the public while she prepared for the summer exhibition. A dozen of Tom’s pictures were stacked against the wall. She couldn’t decide whether to include them in the exhibition or save them for a proper retrospective the following year. Turning round one of the frames and seeing two small figures against the glow of a late autumn afternoon, she observed how much Tom’s style had influenced Leonard. She was surprised that she’d never noticed before.
‘Is that you, Juliet?’ called Charlie from the studio.
Juliet sighed, wishing he wasn’t there, and waited a moment before answering, ‘Yes, it’s me.’
‘Oh, good. I’ve some things I want to show you.’
Juliet removed her coat and wandered into the studio. Charlie sat at an easel, tubes of discarded paints and snatches of fraying fabric littering the floor around him. He clearly hadn’t been home for several days and was sporting an inadvertent beard, the stubble studded with grey. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. Amid the debris on the floor, Juliet spied several empty wine bottles.
‘You’re s
oaked,’ said Charlie, gesturing to the trail of puddles and Juliet’s wet hair.
‘What do you want to show me?’ asked Juliet.
Charlie pointed to an array of canvases on which thick swirls of paint were imbedded with pieces of floral fabric and scraps of newspaper. ‘What do you think?’ he said.
Juliet looked at the collages and felt nothing. There was only weariness. She reached for some placating remark, something muted and yet not unkind.
‘I hate it. It’s just awful.’
They both jumped, equally surprised at her remark. As Juliet heard herself, she realised it was true.
‘It’s decorative trash but worse than that it’s ugly. It’s ugly without an idea. It’s mute.’
Now she’d started she couldn’t stop.
‘What Tom said was true. You’ve turned into a knick-knacker. You ran out of things to say years ago so you churn out echoes – sometimes of other better artists and sometimes of the painter you used to be. But the echo got too thin. I can barely even hear it any more. There’s just,’ she paused, reaching and then gave up with a shrug. ‘There’s nothing at all.’
Charlie stared at her, his face grey. But Juliet was angry now, her weariness driven away by pleasant fury, warming as a dose of whisky.
‘You drove Max out. And for what? For these?’ She gestured at the stack of collages. She swallowed, reeling her anger back in, then spoke slowly, her voice no more than a whisper. ‘I want you out. I won’t have you as part of Wednesday’s any more. I’ve enough saved to buy you out.’
Charlie looked at her without saying a word. He picked up his coat and a half-full bottle of wine and left. After he had gone, Juliet sat down on the cold concrete floor and sobbed. When she had finished crying, she walked to the mirror and saw that her eyelids were bruised.
The day of the wedding was fine. The rain had continued all week and Frieda and Mrs Greene had been glued to the wireless listening to every forecast, long range, shipping, local. In the end, despite the universally gloomy prognosis, the sun slunk out on Sunday morning and, like a petulant teenager who’d finally given in and agreed to tidy up, shone out across the suburbs, drying all the puddles and wet grass. Juliet feigned cheerfulness, telling herself sternly that everything might work out for the best and perhaps Frieda would be happy. The house was sickly with the scent of lilies which Juliet had never liked; they made her think of funerals rather than weddings and the perfume was too strong, reeking like a great-aunt who’d dabbed too much eau de toilette behind her ears. Yet Frieda’s excitement seeped from room to room, making even Juliet smile. Her wedding dress was cream with little nylon roses stitched around the high Victorian collar and the net veil was sturdy enough for catching fish, according to Leonard. He was also moving out after the wedding. Charlie had found him a place – an act of kindness Juliet could not forgive. She had to acknowledge that the prospect of independence agreed with Leonard; his spots were drying up, and he wore his powder-blue suit and shiny tie with renewed confidence. He spoke to her with civility and coolness, answering a request to lay the table or a question about the arrival of the carnation buttonholes with the formal politeness one would afford a stranger until, unable to bear it any longer, Juliet was forced to retreat upstairs to her bedroom.
She brushed her hair and put on her wedding outfit, a simple cream suit with naval trim. There were little buttons to fasten along the spine of the dress, which in the shop the assistant had helpfully secured. Now, standing alone in her bedroom with the back of the dress flapping open, Juliet sighed and wished she’d purchased an outfit intended for the husbandless and loverless. Perhaps she ought to design garments with no tricky inaccessible zips or buttons. She had bought a hat which she knew didn’t go with the outfit and didn’t suit her. It was an awful thing, all garish frills and flounces, but Mrs Greene had reminded her only the day before that married women must wear hats in shul, and it had been far too late to find anything else.
Nearly eleven and the wedding car would soon be here. Juliet wished she could summon a spoonful of excitement and feel like a real mother-of-the-bride instead of this dreadful unease. Padding across the landing past portraits of assorted Juliets, she opened Frieda’s door. She was sitting in front of the mirror, her hair pinned up in elaborate curls. Mrs Greene barked at a cowering hairdresser who wielded her tongs in fear, poking nervously at the billowing pile of hair. Juliet hovered in the doorway feeling like an intruder until Frieda glanced up and gave a worried smile.
‘Do you think this do is a bit over the top?’ she asked.
‘No, darling, it’s wonderful,’ lied Juliet. She turned to her mother. ‘Button me up?’
Mrs Greene abandoned her assault on the hairdresser and moved to Juliet. ‘What is this? Such flimsy fabric. You should have gone to Minnie’s in the high street and mentioned my name. She’d have given you a good thick skirt for the money. And you’ve got much too skinny. Did you even eat that strudel and the schnitzel I put in the fridge?’
Mrs Greene finished fastening the buttons and the tirade fizzled out. Juliet kissed her on the cheek.
‘Thank you, Ma. You look very nice.’
Mr Greene’s voice floated up the stairs, calling that the car was ready. The hiring of a white Rolls-Royce when Mr Greene had an appropriately serviced Ford Anglia in the garage was another quite unnecessary expense in Mrs Greene’s view. She peered out of the window, lip curling as she realised the chauffeur’s whites were grubby and he’d taken the opportunity to sneak a fag by the bins.
Frieda noticed none of this. She was Scarlett O’Hara and Elizabeth Taylor rolled into one. Soon she’d be Mrs Dov Cohen and have her own house. Leonard and her grandfather waited at the bottom of the stairs. Frieda, nervous and thrilled to at last be playing this role, swept down the narrow suburban stairs, meticulously ignoring the descending rows of Juliets. There must be half a dozen of the things on the stairs alone – and only that one stupid picture of Frieda done when she was a little girl. She’d like a portrait of herself now in her wedding dress. Now, that would have been a good present from her mother – not that collection of silver-plate spoons and the dreary picture of the house in the wood.
Mr Greene and Frieda were bundled into the waiting Rolls, Frieda whispering happily to her grandfather that the chauffeur had held open the door and lifted his hat. Mrs Greene, however, observing the spatters on the mudguard and the dent on the driver’s door, retreated into the kitchen in disgust. This was when the mistake arose. Mrs Greene failed to notice that Juliet didn’t get into the wedding car.
However, no one had told Juliet she should be in it, so she’d assumed that the taxi taking Mrs Greene and Leonard would also convey her to the wedding. Thus, when she emerged from the loo at a quarter past eleven it was to find the house empty and silent and that both wedding car and taxi had gone. For one blissful moment, Juliet wondered if she could just remain in the warm hush of the kitchen, but of course she couldn’t, one had to watch as one’s children made the wrong decisions as well as the right ones. Grabbing her purse, she ran out of the door, and managed by a miracle to catch the first bus going past, which by an even greater miracle happened to be travelling in exactly the direction of the synagogue. She sat on the back row in her finery, congratulating herself that she would not, in fact, be very late to her daughter’s wedding. It was only when she hurried into the shul, ten minutes after the bride’s arrival, past the assorted ushers and the sweating rabbi and into the hiss of the assembled congregation, that she realised she’d left the hideous green hat on the kitchen table. There was nothing she could do. The women leaned together in the gallery, the whispers gathering – so Juliet Montague has taken the bus to her own daughter’s wedding, arrived late and, worst of all, with her head quite bare. Is she declaring that divorce or no, she isn’t going to behave like a married woman any more? The scandal was thrilling and far more interesting than the prospect of the shop-bought flo
wer arrangements that had supposedly cost Mr Greene forty pounds.
Juliet slipped through the door into the room at the back of the shul to witness the bedecking of the bride, knowing that Frieda would never believe it was an accident. But, as she listened to the joyful disapproval of the Cohens, Juliet wondered whether it was really a mistake. It was ridiculous after all these years to wear a hat to shul like a good Jewish wife. Better to be bareheaded and brazen. If there was a God, Juliet hoped he’d appreciate her honesty.
• • •
After the reception, Juliet walked home alone. The house was quite empty. She’d never lived by herself before. Until eighteen she’d lived with her parents in the neat detached house in Mulberry Avenue, moving out only on the day of her marriage. She remembered arriving here after the honeymoon in the fading afternoon, fumbling in her handbag for the shiny new key. It had felt terribly adult, to have keys to one’s own home – she’d half expected everything to be in miniature like in a Wendy house but no, it was a real, grown-up-sized house and George had heaved her over the threshold, half dropping her on the kitchen floor. They’d gone to bed, though not to sleep, and tripped back downstairs in their dressing gowns to drink hot chocolate (Juliet) and bourbon (George) at half past two.
The Gallery of Vanished Husbands: A Novel Page 29
