The Gallery of Vanished Husbands: A Novel

by Solomons, Natasha

  Juliet tried to ignore the whispers as best she could. She knew the tittle-tattle upset her parents and for that she was sorry, but she refused to believe that it wounded Frieda or it was she who brought out Dov’s bullfrog gulping and glistening brow. Juliet found it impossible to imagine how this damp young man, who seemed to wilt like a heat-addled tulip in her presence, could be engaging when she wasn’t there. She asked Leonard who, though not a fan of Dov, prevaricated out of loyalty to his sister, declaring that he could be ‘rather funny now and again’ – though the only instance he could think of was when once before dinner Dov had forgotten he’d put his hat on his chair and sat on it, squashing it quite flat. It was funny. It was also an accident. In truth there was nothing poor Dov could do to make Juliet like him or approve of the match – she simply thought that at nineteen Frieda was far too young to marry.

  ‘Are you marrying him to punish me?’ Juliet asked her, more than once.

  Frieda rearranged the long material of her skirt and fixed Juliet with the disapproving look she couldn’t bear.

  ‘Mum, I know you find it hard to fathom but my marrying Dov isn’t actually about you.’

  Juliet licked her lips and wished she could find the right words. There had never been that ease between them that she enjoyed with Leonard. It wasn’t that she loved him more, she just never fretted about what to say to him. She took a breath.

  ‘Well, darling, if it’s about sex, you don’t have to get married. It’s not like it was. We can go and get you some pills from the doctor and you can sleep with Dov, if that’s what you want. Maybe even other men.’

  ‘I don’t want to sleep with other men. I only want to sleep with Dov.’

  Two angry points of colour appeared on Frieda’s cheeks, but for once Juliet ignored the warning sign and carried on.

  ‘Take the pill then and only sleep with Dov. But go to university. Get a degree. If you still want him, marry him when you graduate.’

  Frieda narrowed her eyes. ‘I don’t want to go university. I want to be a wife and a mother. That’s the most important thing in the world.’

  Juliet felt the full sting of her criticism and it stuck in her throat like a fishbone. She looked away so that Frieda wouldn’t see the tears that threatened. Try as she might, she couldn’t face the thought of organising the wedding. All those religious types with their marauding happiness, pleased at the wedding, pleased that they’d saved another soul. She blinked and smiled. The best she could hope for was sufficient time for Frieda to change her mind.

  ‘When were you thinking? Perhaps next January, I’ve always liked winter weddings. All that red.’

  ‘June,’ said Frieda, daring Juliet to contradict her.

  ‘Oh, but darling, I can’t organise it in time for June. There’s the summer show at the gallery.’

  Frieda sighed and pouted, giving an excellent impression of being hurt. ‘That’s all right. Granny will take care of everything.’

  Juliet swallowed, understanding that this was what Frieda had really wanted. Juliet could not be trusted. She must be kept far away from delicate social arrangements and Jewish events. There was nothing more to be done. She retreated.

  Granddaughter and grandmother delighted in colluding. A June wedding. The flowers would be marvellous and they’d have English strawberries for dessert. Mrs Greene was determined to arrange everything properly, as if the trouble with Juliet’s marriage could be put down to an inadequate wedding with substandard floral arrangements. If every detail in Frieda’s was correct then, like a shrub planted carefully in the right soil, everything else would follow just as it should.

  Juliet tried to take an interest and study guest lists and seating plans but seeing how few of her friends Mrs Greene and Frieda had allowed, she only felt more miserable. She pleaded for the inclusion of the gallery boys – though they weren’t boys any longer, but men over thirty with families of their own.

  ‘Darling, it’s nice that you’ve invited Philip, but really you must ask his wife. And what about Charlie and Marjorie? And Jim simply has to come. He’ll be terribly hurt if he’s not invited.’

  Frieda scowled and bit her lip. Her crush on Philip had not receded even as his hairline started to thin, and she’d never quite forgiven him for marrying the gleaming Caroline five years before.

  ‘Caroline won’t come. We’re not smart enough for her.’

  ‘Of course she will. Philip’s terribly fond of you.’

  Begrudgingly, Caroline was added to the list.

  ‘Must I have Charlie? He’s Leonard’s friend, not mine.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Juliet. ‘And Marjorie too.’

  ‘I don’t like her,’ said Frieda.

  Juliet sighed. Few people did. Charlie had surprised everyone by marrying Marjorie, the nude model. She’d been an extremely pretty girl, but the roses had faded fast. She’d not lived up to the promise of youthful beauty, and instead of transforming into a lovely woman had become an ordinary and rather unhappy one. Whenever Juliet caught Charlie looking at his wife, he always seemed to wear an expression of surprise and disappointment. Juliet felt sorry for her. Charlie’s family were not kind to Marjorie – the daughter of a painter-

  decorator was not their sort. The jokes that Marjorie’s father liked to make about himself and his son-in-law being part of the same profession (‘Paint’s just paint in the end, however you slap it on!’) were not appreciated. That wedding had been an absolute disaster, Juliet remembered. Valerie had got frightfully drunk before the ceremony and Juliet had had to take her for a lie down during the speeches. En route, Valerie had grabbed her arm and confided in a gin-scented whisper, ‘I’d rather he’d married you – even a divorced Jewess would be better than this.’ Unfortunately Valerie turned out to be quite right – once Charlie lost interest in painting Marjorie, they had nothing left in common. Marjorie liked being in pictures, not talking about them. They’d not had any children and in disappointment Charlie continued to pour his affection onto Leonard. Marjorie tried to befriend him too and to Juliet’s relief at least Leonard was kind to her.

  ‘Marjorie comes,’ said Juliet. ‘And Jim.’

  Frieda huffed. ‘But, suppose, you know.’ She squirmed. ‘He might bring someone with him.’

  Juliet laughed. ‘He will not bring a gentleman friend to your wedding, Frieda, and I’m quite certain that he won’t flirt with the rabbi. Jim isn’t partial to beards.’

  Frieda scowled, hating being teased. ‘I don’t think Dov’s family would like it. It is against the law.’

  Juliet looked up sharply. ‘Then I strongly suggest you don’t tell them things that are none of their business. Don’t pick up the Cohens’ nastier habits, Frieda.’

  Frieda said nothing and added his name to the list in tiny writing, as though if she wrote it very small, no one would notice him on the day itself.

  ‘And you missed off Max. No need to post his invitation, I’ll give it to him when I see him at the weekend.’

  Frieda studied her mother with steady green eyes for a moment before declaring softly, ‘I won’t have that man at my wedding.’

  Frieda’s childish dislike had hardened like old varnish into hatred. Over the years Juliet had done her best to ignore it but now she recoiled, jolted by the revulsion in her daughter’s voice.

  ‘He’s your friend,’ Frieda continued. ‘I won’t have him. I won’t have Dov and his family look at that man and at you and say things. He is not coming.’

  At that, Frieda actually stamped her bare foot on the carpet and Juliet watched her open-mouthed, unsure whether to laugh or shake her.

  • • •

  Later in the week the boys offered little sympathy. When Juliet arrived at the gallery, Charlie was in a foul mood. He’d spent the last month labouring on an abstract triptych far from his usual style and, observing Juliet’s indifferent shrug, concluded that it
wasn’t working, wasn’t going to work. He started to paint over the canvas in thick, furious strokes of white, experiencing a masochistic delight as weeks of work vanished in a snowstorm.

  ‘What did you expect? She’s never liked Max.’

  ‘It’s Freudian. Girls never like the chap who’s diddling their mother. Unless it’s their father of course,’ added Jim helpfully.

  ‘I know she avoided him, but she seems to actually hate him,’ said Juliet.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so upset. It’s not like Max would even go with you to the wedding,’ said Charlie. ‘I mean can you see him coming to Chislehurst and staying in your little house and putting on a morning suit as you fasten a pair of pearlescent cufflinks and dab cologne behind his ears?’

  Juliet ignored him and turned away to look through a selection of canvases Jim had brought by. While the studio still formed part of the gallery, Charlie was the only one to use it regularly. For the first years of his marriage he’d worked mainly at his and Marjorie’s home in Dorset but slowly he’d crept back to London a night and then a week at a time. Sometimes she suspected that he slept at the gallery. Jim and Philip no longer worked in the studio, and while Juliet tried to encourage new painters to use the space if they needed it, Charlie usually frightened them away within a month or two – accusing them of using his brushes or leaving doors unlocked or talking too much.

  She studied the first of Jim’s paintings, a silkscreen print of a Devon swimming pool, the water cool in the sunlight, ripples like fish scales, and smiled. Unhurried, she spread out the rest, already hanging them in her mind. As well as mounting the gallery shows, Juliet sold Charlie, Jim and a dozen others around the world. She didn’t sell Philip’s paintings. She’d never cared for his racehorse portraits and they had proved too lucrative for him to spend time on other work (Juliet suspected that Caroline, like most thoroughbreds, was expensive to keep). While Philip remained a friend, he had little need of her services.

  Juliet’s favourite part of the year was the summer exhibition where she displayed now-established artists like Jim alongside new discoveries.

  ‘Who’ve you found for this year’s show?’ asked Jim, surveying the canvases stacked in piles against the studio walls.

  She sighed. ‘No one yet. But I’m going to take Leonard to the art school shows and dowse for talent there.’

  ‘Leonard’s getting pretty good himself,’ said Charlie. ‘Did you see the finished collage?’

  Juliet shook her head, still transfixed by the blue ripples in Jim’s pool and only half listening.

  ‘You should think about including one of his pictures. Give the kid some confidence,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Juliet. ‘Oh, I like this one.’

  She pointed to one of Jim’s canvases, a large screen-print of a snub-nose adolescent boy fast asleep beside green lido waters.

  ‘We’ll show this here, but I’m going to put on a frightfully high reserve. I think we should send it to New York and see what they could do.’

  Jim shrugged, smiling at her frank enthusiasm. Charlie sped up his whitewashing, irritated that Juliet hadn’t shown any great zeal for his latest pieces, more irritated that he didn’t like them either.

  ‘Tom Hopkins has some great new work,’ said Juliet. ‘I’m going to include at least three. I’d like them all in the show but there simply isn’t room.’

  She fumbled through a series of unframed canvases stacked against a wall and then brought out a painting of a naked boy bathing beside a millpond, blue evening light shading him, above a purple sky scattered with dandelion-clock stars. It was a blend of English pastoral idyll and Picasso colour games. Jim and Charlie came closer to look. Charlie laughed.

  ‘I like your bather, Jim, but the old boy’s got there first.’

  ‘Youth doesn’t have the patent on innovation,’ said Juliet. ‘And besides, the two of you aren’t so young any more. In a year or two you’ll both be considered part of the establishment and you’ll have to start smoking cigars and playing bridge.’

  ‘Show me the others,’ said Jim.

  Juliet rooted through the stack of canvases, producing a series of Tom Hopkins’ paintings, most of them portraits of young men sleeping, eating, daydreaming, swimming – never smiling, never looking at the viewer, always waiting to be watched.

  ‘I like Tom,’ said Jim, half to himself. ‘Sometimes I think we’re the only two figurative painters left in bloody England.’

  ‘There’s always Max,’ said Juliet.

  Jim and Charlie did not reply.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Juliet laid out canvases around the gallery, experimenting with various possible hanging orders and then rejecting them with a huff. She barely noticed the light fading to yellow, and rain starting to rattle on the flat roof.

  ‘Put out everything you’re considering for the exhibition so far,’ said Charlie. ‘Put it all over the floor, against the walls, everywhere.’

  ‘I’m getting on just fine,’ said Juliet.

  Charlie shook his head. ‘Do it. I want to show you something.’

  She didn’t move.

  ‘Please.’

  Juliet sighed and with Charlie’s help propped the remaining pictures all over the gallery. In an hour, everything was laid out and the floor entirely hidden. It looked like a garish, giant patchwork quilt.

  ‘Now,’ said Charlie. ‘Do you see?’

  Juliet looked at him and frowned, shook her head.

  ‘All right. Stand on the chair and then look.’

  She balanced on an old fretwork chair, and peered down at the sea of pictures. Some were abstract – sharp grey lines pierced blue expanses, here and there advertising slogans were daubed in sickly yellow, there were gouaches, collages, watercolours and reliefs. As always, Juliet found herself seeking out Max’s pieces. They weren’t recent works but paintings from several years before. When they hadn’t sold the first year Juliet decided she’d exhibit them again and had done for the last few summers. It was her gallery after all and by now they seemed to her talismans of good fortune – no matter that Max’s pictures didn’t sell; she was sure they brought luck to all the others.

  ‘You can see the problem then,’ said Charlie following her gaze, his voice light with relief. ‘I knew you would.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Juliet still standing on the chair and feeling quite ridiculous.

  Charlie took a breath and spoke slowly, his tone measured and prepared.

  ‘Max’s paintings don’t fit. Everything else is modern. You find painters with ambition who look to the future and try to imagine it in pencil and charcoal and oil and glass. Max has given up. Look, those pictures of his aren’t even new. Or maybe they are but they’re just the same as everything else he’s done for the past twenty years and I can’t tell the bloody difference any more.’

  Juliet climbed off the chair and stared at Charlie and then at Jim who lurked in the corner refusing to catch her eye.

  ‘I like Max’s work,’ she said. ‘It’s voiced. I like that it’s different.’

  ‘No. You like Max. His work is nothing but scraps of nostalgia. It’s titbits of old England with flourishes of over-the-top ornamental design. He’s like a pre-war Liberty catalogue.’

  Charlie’s voice shook as he spoke, whether from fervour or nerves Juliet couldn’t tell. A warm clot of anger settled in her stomach like undigested matzo balls.

  ‘He is a great painter.’

  ‘He had the potential to be a great painter. You see only what he might have been, not what he is. Max Langford is a disappointment. A man who went off to paint the war and came back crippled. Now he works with one hand tied behind his back. He’s surrendered to neo-Romantic shit and I won’t,’ Charlie paused, glancing at Jim, ‘we won’t, exhibit with him any more.’

 
Juliet surveyed them both, conscious that her hands were trembling. ‘You’re both as cruel as Frieda.’

  Charlie shrugged, refusing to rise. ‘You can either show his work or ours.’

  Juliet turned to Jim. ‘You agree?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, studying paint spatters on the floor. ‘It’s a blind spot for you, my love. You just don’t see his stuff any more, not really.’

  ‘Supposing I choose Max?’

  Charlie blinked and said nothing. The rain on the roof swelled into a gallop. They both knew she hadn’t sold a single painting of Max’s in more than a year. Juliet’s mouth was dry and her tongue stuck like Velcro to the roof of her mouth. Even after all these years of friendship and working alongside one another, Charlie could still make her feel like the provincial girl from the shtetl. She’d never quite managed to shake off the littleness of her beginnings.