The Gallery of Vanished Husbands: A Novel

by Solomons, Natasha

  Years later, when Charlie Fussell is an old man, he sees his painting hanging in a gallery. He makes a beeline for her, eager to make her acquaintance once again, but when he reaches her, he’s struck by his own shabbiness. Back then she’d been older than him but now they’ve swapped places and time has run away from him and stopped for her. In age, he examines youth, hers and his, up there on the canvas. He’s filled with sadness (which he expects) and irritation (which he does not) and realises it’s quite clear that in a career spanning many decades he painted his best picture one spring in 1958 when he was not yet twenty-one. Nothing he has done since is as good as this dark-haired woman with her bowl of apples.

  The summer was drawing to a close. The plum tree in the back garden had discarded its fruit onto the browning lawn faster than Leonard and Frieda could gather it up, so the small yard now smelled sweetly of rotting plums. It was a Friday and the children drifted around mournfully, conscious that Monday was the start of a new school year and that this last, precious weekend had an air of sorrowful finality, like the last penny sweet in a paper twist. They remembered all the things they had planned to do with the endless weeks that were now ending, and regretted the bike they had not learned to ride (Leonard) and the pocket money that they had not saved for the fancy new school bag (Frieda). Leonard perched on the swing his grandfather had fixed to the tree. It was wonky and he slid down to one end of the crooked seat, swinging half-heartedly and lopsidedly. Frieda lazed on the grass, sighing and sucking on sugar-cubes filched from the pantry. Leonard wondered whether if he hid in the abandoned privy / tool shed at the end of the garden, they would find him and force him to go to school. He concluded with regret that they probably would. He slithered off the swing and slipped out of the side gate. As he crossed the scrap of lawn with its pair of flowerpots that passed for a front garden, he noticed with interest that a large van was attempting to steer down the narrow suburban street, collecting snatches of twigs and leaves in its wing mirror like a jaunty buttonhole. His melancholy forgotten, Leonard scrambled onto the low wall between the garden and the pavement. To his intense excitement, the van shuddered to a halt right in front of him. The Montagues never had deliveries. The neighbours did, almost every week, it seemed to Leonard, who always came out to watch from his spot on the garden wall. He had observed with palm-tingling envy when next-door had their new television set delivered. It was so big and so heavy that it had taken three men to carry it up the front path. Leonard closed his eyes and, turning his face heavenwards, muttered one of his grandfather’s grace-before-meals prayers, willing his own prayer to become a grace-before-television. His supplication was disturbed by a loud honk of the horn, and his mother emerged from the front door, wearing lipstick in a glossy post-box red. Leonard understood this. If he had known that a television was arriving, he would have combed his hair and put on his Saturday trousers in its honour.

  Juliet hurried along the path, calling, ‘Darlings, come and see my birthday present.’

  She reached for Leonard’s hand and drew him round to the rear of the van, where two stout men bundled a rectangular wooden pallet onto their broad shoulders. Leonard eyed them with suspicion. Televisions should be handled with more reverence. Frieda joined them in the garden in her socks, also intrigued by the commotion.

  Juliet hustled the children into the house, following in the wake of the deliverymen. Vibrating with excitement, Leonard padded into the living room as the men began to lever open the pallet. Frieda lingered in the doorway, hands thrust deep in her pockets.

  ‘I thought your birthday present was going to be a fridge.’

  Juliet flushed. ‘Yes. It was. But then, well, I decided that was really rather a horrid present for a birthday.’

  Neither Frieda nor Leonard spoke. They had always thought that refrigerators were horribly dull but believed them to be one of those things grown-ups term ‘an acquired taste’. They were surprised but intrigued to discover they had been right all along. As the deliverymen finished prying open the packing pallet Juliet, Frieda and Leonard stepped closer.

  ‘Oh,’ said Frieda. ‘It’s much better than a fridge.’

  Leonard felt a sharp pang when he saw the object inside the pallet was not, in fact, a television and then a ripple of wonder. He knew somehow that his mother had done something unexpected, something marvellous and something that Grandma would not approve of. He looked at the woman in the crate who was his mother but transformed into some familiar stranger. He turned back to Juliet who stood behind him, head to one side as she surveyed her other self, and at that moment she was a stranger too.

  Kneeling, Juliet eased the portrait out of the box and then, slipping out of her shoes, climbed onto the sideboard and hung it on the wall.

  ‘Is it straight?’

  ‘No,’ said Frieda. ‘That side is lower. The left. No the other left.’

  Juliet jumped down and stood between her children. ‘Do you remember when another picture used to hang here?’

  Leonard shook his head.

  ‘I think so,’ said Frieda. ‘It was a girl.’

  ‘It was me.’

  It was me, thought Juliet, and he stole me when he vanished.

  Whenever the opportunity arose, Leonard liked to describe his father’s death. He bestowed on him a different one every time, each more wretched than the last. But he knew his father wasn’t really dead only gone and never-coming-back-into-this-house-so-help-me-God. He heard the things the grown-ups said when they thought he couldn’t hear – ‘George Montague was a swine’ and ‘a good for nothing’ and a ‘coward and a wretch’. Leonard couldn’t even remember what he looked like. Sometimes as he fell asleep he saw a picture of a very tall man and he wondered if this was him but there were no photographs to check; not any more.

  A week after the portrait arrived he snuck into his mother’s bedroom and pulled out her shoebox of pictures from its hiding place at the back of her cupboard. He emptied the contents all over the floor, searching for photos of his father. He’d rummaged through it many times before but only ever found snaps of his mother standing beside a scissored hole. ‘Honeymoon, Margate, George and Juliet, 1947’, it said in pencil on the back, but there was no George, only Juliet and a gap through which Leonard could see the swirl of the carpet. Tonight was no different and he sighed and started to shove the photos back in the box, wondering why his mother bothered to keep them and why he kept on looking, and then for the first time he noticed something else. A scrap of paper was tucked into the lip of the box. He glanced over his shoulder. The door was safely closed. From downstairs he could hear voices on the wireless crooning softly.

  He drew out the sheet of paper:

  Certificate of Naturalisation:

  George Montague formerly Molnár, György

  Leonard understood what this flimsy piece of paper meant. His father was a spy. George Montague wasn’t his real name, it was just one of his identities. This paper was proof that George Montague – aka Molnár György – had to leave them. He must have put up a fight – Leonard pictured the tall man from his dream declaring to his commander, ‘I won’t do it. I won’t. I will not leave my son . . . or,’ Leonard made him add, ‘my women.’ The argument went on and on in Leonard’s head, but in the end he saw his father go quiet, saying in a whisper as he wiped away a single tear, ‘This is the worst sacrifice a man can make. In all my years of service, I never thought I’d be forced to do this. Only for Queen and Country and for my son, Leonard.’

  Leonard slid the paper back into the box and replaced it in the wardrobe. When he came downstairs his mother had abandoned the ironing and was now folding shirts into jumbled piles. She looked much happier in the painting, he decided. In the painting her mouth twitched with a smile, the one when she knew a really good secret, one she wasn’t going to tell you, not yet.

  Juliet wondered that her parents’ house could contain so many people. She understood h
ow they had once folded into the shtetls, sleeping ten to a room. The garden was even busier. Uncles Jacob and Sollie Greene attempted to prop up the left side of the sukkah, which was threatening to collapse, and the three Uncles Lipshitz herded more children than she could possibly count, filing in and out of the sukkah, in and out, as though practising for Noah’s ark. It made an odd sight, the tottering shack of leaves in the middle of the square lawn of Number Twenty-Six Victoria Drive. The sukkah was a mass of wild things, twisting stems of willow, hazel and snatches of creeper and the frenzied play of the children. They caught the whiff of the wild and careered and yelped.

  ‘Goodness what a racket,’ complained Mrs Greene. ‘Here, take these trays. Perhaps if we feed them, they’ll lose a bit of their savagery.’

  Taking the plates of chopped fried fish, pickled herring and baskets of golden challah, Juliet approached the shack, squeezing past Uncle Ed who held a pair of hazel switches to his head like antlers, and chased the children around the flowerbed, his bad leg forgotten in the carnival. For most of the year these were indoor folk who might venture into the park if it was particularly fine, but who were infinitely more comfortable in a neat front room with a nice cup of something hot. Good weather could be conveniently admired through a window and a pot of geraniums was usually considered plenty of nature. But on this night everything changed. Juliet stepped back to avoid being skewered by Ed’s makeshift antlers or trampled by a pink and puffing Leonard.

  ‘How are you managing, my dear?’

  Juliet turned to see Mrs Ezekiel arranging a line of marrows stuffed so full that the meat dripped onto the plate.

  ‘Very well, and yourself?’

  ‘Can’t complain. Can’t complain. But you, always so brave. We all think it’s wonderful how you manage.’

  Juliet said nothing, long resigned to being a popular topic of conversation among the women, along with the price of lamb chops and the length of Rabbi Weiner’s sermons.

  ‘Ah, Brenda. I was just telling Juliet how much we admire her,’ called Mrs Ezekiel to a woman who was piped like a sausage into her winter coat.

  ‘Oh yes. An inspiration,’ said Mrs Brenda Segal, hurrying over and setting down a dish. ‘I was telling my Helen. Don’t you complain that it’s hard with little ’uns. You’ve got Harold, whatever his faults. Think of poor Juliet Montague.’ Mrs Segal started to carve at the fat grey tongue roosting on her dish, making it wobble. ‘Those daughters of ours, always complaining. And they’ve got no right. No right at all.’

  ‘Spoiled. That’s what my Sarah is. Doesn’t realise how good she’s got it.’

  ‘It’s terrible,’ agreed Mrs Segal, happily.

  The two women smiled at Juliet, their heads cocked to one side like a pair of chaffinches. Juliet was exhausted by their pity, sickly sweet as marzipan. She’d found herself longing for a helping of old-fashioned condemnation.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Juliet, escaping across the lawn. ‘Frieda!’

  A reluctant Frieda appeared, cheeks shining.

  ‘What? I’m busy.’

  ‘Put on your coat, love. You’ll be cold when you stop. No, I won’t have that face. Go on.’

  As Frieda tore into the house, Juliet leaned against the fence, savouring a moment alone. Perhaps she could remain in the shadows for the rest of the night. The children were happy. That was enough. If she kept very still and quiet and didn’t glance at anyone, then maybe, just maybe she might be left alone. She muttered a prayer through her teeth.

  ‘Hello, doll-face. Looking fine as ever.’

  ‘Thank you, John.’

  John Nature had once been the catch of the community – blue eyes, a handsome face, a smile that made girls smile back. Ten years ago he’d placed third in the Bromley Amateur Wrestling Championship, a feat that caused assorted knees to tremble. Since then the strong jaw line had been blurred by a decade of schmaltz on toast and lokshen puddings, and now he only wrestled with the straining buckle on his belt. But the eyes remained as blue as ever and he twinkled them at Juliet.

  ‘Lovely kiddies you’ve got there. But that’s no shocker. They’re yours after all.’

  Before she’d met George, John had tried to take her out on several occasions and she’d always turned him down. She knew he believed that she regretted him. Men like him always believed themselves to be regretted by the women they didn’t marry. Now he looked thoughtful and bestowed on her his famous smile, accessorising it with a wink.

  ‘What a wonderful night. Surrounded by family. Friends. Pretty women.’

  Juliet was quite accustomed to the charitable flirtations of the husbands of Chislehurst. She knew that they liked to believe themselves to be doing her a mitzvah but they always remained slightly anxious, as though, starved of sex as she was, she might leap on them at any moment. Even John, for all his smiles, kept a careful distance between them in case sheer physical proximity to him might overwhelm her self-control.

  ‘I understand your wife’s made her celebrated cinnamon slice.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Quite a cook, my girl. Alas, my downfall,’ he said patting his belly with benign affection. ‘And you? What delight did you bring? I’m sure you’re a beautiful cook.’

  ‘I’m afraid not. That’s my downfall.’

  She spoke with such seriousness that John’s face fell and Juliet knew he was considering whether this was what had caused the unfortunate business with George. She smiled to signal it was a joke, and he laughed, relieved.

  ‘What does it matter if a lovely woman can’t cook? That’s what restaurants are for.’

  Juliet made no reply. He knew perfectly well that she couldn’t visit a restaurant with a man. A chained woman must stay at home. She imagined the scandal if she were caught sharing a schnitzel with a man not her husband and wanted to smile, but found she could not. She caught herself thinking of Charlie Fussell. He didn’t see the stain. She hadn’t told him, and yet she suspected that even if she did, he wouldn’t see it. He would not speak to her with the wariness of these good men, apprehensive and privately delighted that they, however fat or balding or tedious, had become irresistible to her. Charlie would not study her, wondering what concealed defect had made George Montague disappear.

  At last they sat down to eat. Juliet waited until everyone else was settled, before quietly slipping into the last empty chair. Otherwise she knew that everyone would avoid the seats on either side of her – the women preferring to avoid her, and the husbands afraid of her and even more afraid of what their wives might say. She ate in silence, speaking to no one, bathed in the concert of other people’s noise. Every now and again Uncle Sollie shot a wink of camaraderie and her father smiled and sighed.

  • • •

  After supper the women made their expedition to the kitchen, conveying between them the ruins of the feast in a great gaggle. It occurred to no one that the men should help. They gathered instead at one end of the table in the sukkah around an ancient bottle of schnapps, which Mr Greene measured out into eggcup-sized goblets dusted off especially for their twice-yearly outing.

  The children congregated at the other end of the sukkah, the younger on the ground, the elder seated playing grown-ups.

  Leonard sprawled on the damp grass, staring up at the sky through the lattice of leaves. The weak city stars blinked, faint as torchlight beneath the bedclothes. He licked the slick of grease on the roof of his mouth and closed his eyes, secure in the blanket of the others’ chatter.

  ‘Good sukkah, this.’ A delicate boy sat down beside him, tapping the canvas walls with his finger, an inspector making a survey. His pale skin was peppered with golden freckles, earning him the unfortunate nickname of Cornflake.

  ‘Thanks.’ Leonard hoisted himself onto his elbows. ‘I made it. Well, Grandpa helped. A bit.’

  Kenneth from Number Twenty-Four slid in between them. Leonard did not like him. He was a boy who
believed The Banana Bunch superior to Dan Dare and therefore could not be trusted. Above Kenneth’s lip was the thought of a moustache, no darker than pencil shading, but it gave the boy a swagger.

  ‘Didn’t your dad help?’

  Leonard wound a long strand of grass around his finger. ‘You already know my dad’s dead.’

  Kenneth nodded. ‘Right. Yeah. How did he die again?’

  Leonard might have said, ‘He got sick,’ or ‘It was an accident,’ but he didn’t. He could almost bear Kenneth’s stupid smirk, but not Cornflake’s look of curious sympathy. Leonard Montague, son of George Montague, spy hero deb-on-air, would not be pitied by Erick ‘Cornflake’ Jones.

  ‘My dad was a pilot—’

  ‘What did he fly?’

  ‘Spitfire. Supermarine,’ answered Leonard, quick as a flash. ‘My dad was a great hero during the war. You can look it up if you don’t believe me.’

  He glared and held his breath, daring Kenneth to challenge him. There was a second taut with uncertainty and then Kenneth shrugged and Leonard continued.

  ‘After the war they kept him on as a flying detective. He’s not really dead. He’s running missions. Top Secret ones of National Importance. He’s rescued other agents. Bulgarians. That’s why he’s not here. It’s not safe.’

  ‘That’s bloody Biggles!’ roared Kenneth. ‘Leonard thinks his dad is bloody Biggles!’

  ‘I do not,’ said Leonard, trying to get Kenneth to lower his voice but the children were all looking round and the laughter was spreading like whooping cough.

  ‘I don’t. I don’t. I don’t.’ Leonard kept talking to stop from crying but still the tears tickled the back of his eyeballs like the smell of onions.