The Gallery of Vanished Husbands

by Natasha Solomons

  ‘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 soaked,’ 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 flower 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.

  Juliet trod up the front path, her shoes nipping at her heels like a Jack Russell, and hoped that whatever happened next, Frieda was happy at this minute. Somehow, as the years passed, the troubles with George faded enough that, like wallpaper smeared with a layer of paint, the roses began to show through once again. As she turned the key in the lock and entered the kitchen, she shuddered. It had stayed exactly as it was left. The milk curdled on the table from the last family breakfast. The drip-drip of the tap she’d never had fixed. Leonard’s muddy shoes discarded beside the door. At the sight of his shoes, Juliet felt a hiccup of sadness rise in her throat. Both children gone. It was too soon – they were both much too young. And now for the first time in her life at thirty-eight years and – she glanced at the calendar – two months, she was quite alone.

  • • •

  The following morning an invitation arrived embossed on yellow card:

  The Hambledon Gallery Summer Party,

  including new works by Dorset painter, Max Langford.

  Kitty West requests the pleasure of your company

  on the 31st July, 7.30 p.m. Salisbury Street.

  Blandford Forum.

  RSVP.

  At the bottom, a looping female hand had added: ‘Max and I do hope you’ll come, KW.’

  Juliet deposited the invitation straight into the kitchen bin. Half an hour later she retrieved it with a curl of mouldering apple peel stuck to the envelope. Irritation and hurt prickled her skin. She definitely would not go to the exhibition. No question at all.

  • • •

  The exhibition was held upstairs in a small brick building in the market town of Blandford. The summer was cleaner in Dorset than in London. Juliet was nervous and tugged at her skirt, unsure whether she was over- or underdressed. One could never tell at these country events. The gallery building had a bowed Georgian shop front in which were propped several canvases of hot Mediterranean landscapes – an odd contrast with the old-fashioned prettiness of the sloping houses and shops trundling down the hill outside. A rural county town was a strange place for an art gallery but perhaps that was why it appealed to Max. At the prospect of seeing him again, Juliet felt slightly dizzy, as she did after too much of Mr Greene’s awful plum schnapps. It had been a mistake to come but somehow she’d couldn’t turn and leave. It wasn’t even eight, but as she entered the low shop door, the bell tinkling into the street, she supposed that she must be the last to arrive. The limewashed room heaved with people smelling sweetly of sweat seeping through country tweed. Juliet was swept up in the warm press of bodies and funnelled up the stairs and handed a glass of champagne – good stuff, not the yellow acidic wine passed out at most gatherings. Glancing around the paintings she realised she’d been guilty of prejudice – she’d been expecting dreary but competent watercolours of amiable country scenes with perhaps the odd awkward oil or portrait which held charm only for the sitter’s pals. Instead, she took in modern and skilful paintings by some of the country’s best artists. As she studied a gouache of Stonehenge, the vast stone slabs metamorphosed into Mondrian rectangles of grey and blue against the expanse of Salisbury Plain, she decided that there was nothing provincial about the pieces or the prices. There was no work here for under a hundred guineas. She felt a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘I’m so glad you came.’

  Juliet turned and found herself face to face with a woman of about fifty with curling grey hair, thin un-rouged lips and bluish eyes. Around her neck she wore a pair of large metal-framed specs. She took in Juliet for a minute without smiling, and Juliet felt herself shift under her scrutiny like a first-former caught by the head girl wearing non-regulation socks. At last the woman gave a tiny nod and stretched out her hand saying, ‘I’m Katherine West. Everyone calls me K
itty.’

  Her voice was clipped and smart, and Juliet decided at once that Kitty was the way lady gallery owners were supposed to be – she was the type who knew instinctively when to serve Pimm’s, how to nibble a cucumber sandwich and whether fish forks were in vogue. She was quite certain that Kitty managed to send out invitations to exhibitions without resorting to Debrett’s before addressing every other envelope.

  ‘Max will be so pleased you came.’

  Juliet glanced about, trying to glimpse Max amid the throng, wondering whether or not he was even here. He’d never made it to London and he might well have decided that even Blandford was too far away. Kitty was still speaking but Juliet hadn’t taken in a word. Kitty frowned and repeated herself with the patient and exasperated air of someone speaking to the slow or foreign.

  ‘I was saying that Max has told me all about your portrait collection. I think one day that I shall paint you. Do you have many portraits by women?’

  Juliet tried to look grateful while privately deciding that being painted by Kitty was a frightful prospect – voluntarily laying herself open to such scrutiny and disapproval.

  ‘I must admit I don’t have many.’

  Kitty slid her spectacles onto her nose and peered at Juliet, inspecting the angles of her face.

  ‘Well, I think I ought to paint you. Next time you’re visiting Max, I’ll pop by.’

  Juliet drained her champagne, wondering why Max hadn’t told Kitty that things between them were finished. At least it meant she wouldn’t have to pose under that gaze. As Kitty moved away to greet other guests, Juliet allowed herself to be topped up with more champagne. She considered whether she dreaded seeing Max more than not seeing him. Seeing would be worse, she decided. Definitely.

  ‘Hello, you.’

  She turned to face him and instantly felt a sob rise up in her throat which she battled to swallow like a piece of bread. He was so familiar and yet when he held out his hand she could not take it. She’d been away from him long enough to notice that he had aged, his hair was now more white than blond and his leanness stretched into thinness. He leaned in and kissed her, brushing her hairline with his lips. With a pang, she realised he no longer smelled of linseed. He’d stopped painting again.