The Gallery of Vanished Husbands

by Natasha Solomons

  ‘Can you stop talking for a few minutes while I paint your mouth?’

  Juliet considered this for a moment. ‘I can try. But it’s doubtful.’

  Milne laughed, a deep smoker’s chuckle emanating from his chest, and started to blend coral and white on his palette.

  ‘I suppose that’s why you paint mostly landscapes, because they keep still and don’t talk.’

  ‘Landscapes don’t keep still. Not for a second. The light is always changing and the shadows moving. There’s wind in the trees and a shiver in the grass. Now shush.’

  Juliet held her breath. She tried to imagine she was one of the brown-red squirrels in the park sitting quietly poised over a nut. She didn’t even dare blink. She was so still, so silent, she might even have been dead and then her mother would be oh so sad and this picture would be of poor, tragic Juliet who died much too young and her uncles and aunts and cousins would traipse round to the house during the shiva and drop off beef brisket and gaze on her portrait and weep. Juliet let go of her breath like letting the air out of a balloon and toppled off her cushions.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Milne.’

  The painter set down his brush and pulled out a cigarette. He blew smoke out from between his teeth. ‘You’re not a child at all. You’re a fidget.’

  Juliet and Mr Greene eased past the snake of women queuing in front of the grocer’s. She considered that a few miles away Mrs Greene would be standing in a similar line, waiting for meat, sugar, bread, maybe a little bit of fish. This was post-war marriage: men worked and women queued.

  After the blitz the warehouse containing Greene & Son was the only building remaining on the street. It perched alone like the last ship in harbour moored in a dock of rubble. Everywhere people picked their way across the wreckage, carrying shopping baskets, briefcases and satchels. A flurry of schoolboys paused to play tag around an old bomb crater. Juliet thought it had once been a Woolworth’s but she couldn’t quite remember.

  By the time she was seventeen, the novelty of going to work with her father had waned. Juliet and Mr Greene were the last to arrive at the factory and the din of the grinding machines echoed down the stairs. Juliet sighed, rubbing her forehead, the familiar headache starting early. Mr Greene turned to her, his face full of concern.

  ‘I want you to have your eyes tested. Go and see Harry Zeigler beside Boots. Just tell—’

  ‘—him who I am. Yes, Dad, all right; I’ll go.’

  Juliet was sure that there was nothing wrong with her eyes but agreed in order to escape for an hour. It was the noise of the factory and the boredom of it all that made her head hurt. She knew her father would be thankful if she could develop a mild short-sightedness. He would have loved nothing more than to fit her with a nice pair of spectacles – such a blessing, such a talisman against harm. Even though he never voiced it, she understood that her father believed it was the presence of the blessed spectacles that kept his factory safe during all the air raids on Penge.

  ‘I’ll pop down during my lunch,’ said Juliet, kissing him.

  Comforted, Mr Greene disappeared to find his brothers while Juliet joined the ladies in the back office where Mrs Harris still reigned. The hair tidied into the hairnet at her nape was now entirely grey, but she seemed as timeless as a schoolmistress. If she stayed on at the factory, Juliet supposed this would be her own fate. Not to age but to fade like a picture left too long in direct sunlight. Juliet was determined that was never going to happen to her. She shook her melancholy away with a flick of her head, and listened to the ladies as they imagined their ideal lunch.

  ‘I want cream buns. None of that artificial rubbish but a proper old-fashioned cream bun with icing on the top and a red cherry. Oh, and I want six of them.’

  ‘You’d be sick, Ellen.’

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  ‘I want roast beef with roast potatoes cooked in goose fat so that they’re good ’n’ crunchy and peas and carrots and sprouts – fresh not tinned.’

  ‘I want an orange. I used to love an orange.’

  ‘You can keep your oranges and your roast potatoes. What I want is a proper drink. I’d like a gin and ginger and enough of ’em to topple a lush.’

  Mrs Harris turned to Juliet. ‘What about you, dear? What do you miss?’

  Juliet chewed on her shorthand pencil, but the truth was she didn’t remember food ever having been like this. She was young when the war started and it seemed to her that she’d lived her entire life on rations. Each year had been measured out in stamps.

  ‘I’ll be missing lunch anyhow. I’m going to Zeigler’s to get my eyes checked.’

  ‘Ooh, you lucky thing. He’s got a new assistant.’

  ‘Yes, didn’t you see him, Juliet? He was in last week seeing about Mr Zeigler’s order.’

  ‘Lovely-looking young man, he was.’

  Juliet shook her head. ‘I must have missed him.’

  Instantly the others offered up eager recollections.

  ‘I remember him. German.’

  ‘No. He was French.’

  ‘Definitely Hungarian.’

  ‘Definitely a dish. He looked like Clark Gable with a schnoz. Such a pity you missed him.’

  Juliet felt that indeed it was a pity. Nothing much happened at Greene & Son and now it had she’d missed it. She was quite determined that old Harry Z wouldn’t be the one to test her eyes.

  • • •

  At half past twelve, Juliet slipped on her coat and hat and hurried along the high street to Harry Zeigler’s Penge Opticians thinking about the optician’s assistant. The young men she knew were all the same. The kind her mother referred to collectively as ‘nice boys’. She glimpsed them each Saturday at the shul as she sat at the front of the women’s gallery with her mother and aunts and their collected friends. Bored and hot, Juliet would lean over the rail, studying the men in the hall below. The rabbis sang and the men bobbed and itched, adjusting yarmulkes, muttering prayers and swallowing yawns. The women gossiped above, their chatter falling like rain, the men hissing when it grew too loud. Juliet stared down at the young men, supposing that someday she would marry one of them. It didn’t seem to matter much which one. Their families were all like hers: second- and third-generation immigrants from Lublin, Gombine and Boleslaw. They’d swapped shtetl life for bus timetables and pinstriped suits and games of bridge. Their grandparents had stepped off boats in London or Glasgow to the echo of fiddle music, wailing song and stamping feet, nothing like the sophisticated refugees who now arrived with their doctorates and certification from the Bar, their violas and Danube waltzes. The nice boys at the shul traced their roots back to the bagel makers of Gombine, not to psychoanalysts from Vienna. Juliet tried to picture the German / French / Hungarian optician’s assistant. He was tall. Much taller than the nice boys. And he had brown eyes. Very dark, and sad from all he had seen. He’d play the piano with long, delicate fingers and he’d be able to dance – a regular Fred Astaire with a Jimmy Stewart smile.

  She halted outside Harry Zeigler’s shop but did not enter, slipping into the alley at the side. Reaching into her handbag she pulled out a packet of cigarettes, struggling to light one in the breeze. After a few minutes the door to the shop opened and out stepped old Mr Zeigler. Once he had toddled off along the high street to the deli for his sandwich, she slid out of the alley and round to the front door of the shop. Workman had fixed a sprauncy new sign declaring Harry’s Specs. The sign caught in the wind and creaked like a gallows.

  ‘Is this your first eye test, Miss?’

  ‘No, no. It’s just, I’ve been getting these headaches—’

  ‘Best to be safe.’

  ‘And my father . . . Mr Greene . . . from Greene & Son . . .’

  ‘No charge of course, Miss Greene.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s very kind.’

  ‘Come this way. I wish Mr Zeigler was here himself to see to you, but he’s just stepped out this minute. Such a pity. Never mind, Mr Montague will take excellent
care of you, I’m sure.’

  The woman behind the counter directed these last words at the young man emerging from the darkness of the optician’s studio. His back was to Juliet but as he turned, she realised that she was holding her breath. She felt almost dizzy. She smiled and almost had to clap her glove in front of her mouth to stop herself from laughing out loud with happiness. It was true what the girls had said. He was handsome. And tall. And she liked his schnoz; it wasn’t too big at all, it gave him character. Realising she was staring at him, she flushed.

  George Montague reached out to shake her hand.

  ‘Miss Greene. A very great pleasure.’

  They shook. His fingers were long and cool and his eyes were indeed brown, the rich colour of polished wood. He beckoned her into the darkness of the examination room and closed the door. It was small and windowless, hastily partitioned or else promoted from a store cupboard, but the gloom separated it from the rest of the shop so entirely that Juliet felt the two of them had entered another tiny suburb, distinct from daytime London. She had never been alone with a young man before and certainly not in a darkened room. Going to the pictures was different. Even if a particular young man took you there for a date, you shared the darkness with another hundred courting couples. The air buzzed with kisses but you were not alone. She wished for a little more light, longing to look at him again. The last time she’d wanted to see a man this much was when she’d waited for three hours in the pouring rain hoping for a glimpse of Clark Gable.

  ‘If you would please be sitting.’

  She sat.

  ‘I am placing this in front of first the right eye.’

  With gentle hands he wrapped a blindfold across Juliet’s eye, using her fingers to hold it in place while he fastened it. Her hair caught in the knot and he brushed it away from her neck. Juliet felt a shudder of gooseflesh and hoped he had not noticed. All the boys were the same. This man was not.

  ‘Are you from Germany, Mr Montague?’

  ‘Hungary. The blindfold is comfortable all right?’

  ‘Yes, perfectly, thank you.’

  Juliet found herself speaking when she had willed herself to be silent. ‘How do you find England, Mr Montague?’

  ‘Damp. Safe. Empty.’

  ‘Empty?’

  ‘I leave behind big family. Now England is empty. You read the letters on chart, please.’

  Juliet read aloud, forcing herself not to glance at him. When she finished he retied the blindfold over her left eye. She said nothing, sitting quite still as his fingers once again smoothed her hair away from the knot. He had to prompt her to read the letters. Once she reached the end he made a satisfied click with his tongue and, pulling his chair close, removed the blindfold, tucking it away in a drawer.

  ‘You have headaches?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Yes my head hurts with boredom because nothing ever changes and one day I shall be so bored that I shall marry a nice boy.

  He turned on the light. It was warm inside the room and Juliet felt a tickle of sweat in the small of her back. She noticed the cheapness of his suit, the cut too loose and fabric shiny, and yet he looked elegant, as if it was a costume he’d been forced to wear for a play and any moment he’d shrug into his dinner-

  jacket. Most people were thin nowadays but he was thinner than most. He brought out a little torch and leaned so close his knees bumped hers. He took her face in his hand. His fingers were cool on her cheek. She wanted to ask if he played the piano.

  ‘Please to open your eyes.’

  Juliet did not realise that she had closed them. She looked up into the torch, seeing nothing but white light. She blinked and he was looking back at her, looking into her.

  Mrs Greene would have preferred Juliet to pick one of the pleasant boys from shul, but no one could deny that George was a very handsome young man with the most delightful manners. Mrs Ezekiel had muttered that very little was known about his family but Mrs Greene had objected that one really couldn’t ask under the circumstances and it was very tactless of Mrs Ezekiel to bring it up at all, at which Mrs Ezekiel had scowled and said, ‘No offence intended, I’m sure,’ and the two women had ignored one another until Passover. Mrs Greene tried to believe Juliet when she said that George’s lack of history was romantic and made him enigmatic. Mrs Greene wasn’t sure that enigma was the most important quality in a husband, but she didn’t like to upset Juliet, and the girl was drunk on happiness.

  The first time Juliet brought him to the house was the day after he’d proposed. He had not asked Mr Greene’s permission beforehand, which Mrs Greene tried very hard not to consider as a slight. Juliet, however, viewed it as dashing and romantic. George went down on both knees (he was not a man to do things by halves) and declared, ‘We do not need the blessing of the old people, we are young and passionate and we shall elope if we musts.’ Juliet did not think that her parents would appreciate being called ‘the old people’ but she applauded the general sentiment.

  The four of them sat in the good front room, teacups poised on saucers as Albert Lipsey laid out a selection of diamonds on the doily in the middle of the coffee table. Juliet – in this, at least, a good Jewish girl – chose the largest and the shiniest. Before George could blanch, his father-in-law-to-be led him quietly aside and suggested a congenial payment plan that would see his daughter with the ring she desired and his son-in-law able to afford it without penury. There was only a minor kerfuffle when Albert became convinced he’d dropped a diamond, and they all had to hunt about for it under the couch and down the back of the cushion covers – George searching most diligently of all. Poor Albert left convinced that he’d either lost a diamond or his marbles. Putting this unpleasantness aside, Juliet gave George a tour of the house as Mrs Greene put on an extra-fat chicken to roast for supper. Her cooking combined the heartiness of traditional Jewish cuisine with traditional English fare and the house began to whiff of boiling semolina and cabbage. Juliet led George into the gloomy dining-room to show him her portrait. Drawing back the curtains as far as they would go and switching on the light, she stood aside.

  ‘It is you, yes?’

  Juliet nodded. ‘Yes. I was nine or ten. It was painted by an old Scotsman in exchange for a pair of specs. I think my father got rather a good deal in the end.’

  George kissed Juliet with glee. ‘Such a beautiful picture. We must have it in our house! One day we will have a baby girl and she will be as beautiful.’

  Juliet flushed, quite breathless from the romance and the talk of babies and the illicit thought that making them with George might be fun, and if a child didn’t appear for a year or two or three that would be perfectly all right.

  Mr and Mrs Greene were delighted to give them the picture as a wedding present. Though, to be on the safe side, Mr Greene also gave them the deposit for the house to put it in. After the wedding, the portrait took pride of place in the Montagues’ small living room, the girl’s orange sweater a note of colour amid the heavy reproduction furniture.

  • • •

  Juliet tried not to mind and to tell herself that George couldn’t help it. At first she had been amazed. On their honeymoon in a damp hotel in Margate, he’d beaten her at chess in half a dozen moves though not long before she’d been in the school chess team. The next day it had poured with rain so, unable to stroll along the front, they’d sat in their room playing rounds of cards – George didn’t seem to mind what the game was as long as there was a game. When she’d run out of pins to pay him, he’d stripped her of her scarf then her amber brooch, next her slippers and skirt and at last, as Juliet willed him to win more quickly, her stockings, brassiere and lace honeymoon knickers.

  The disappointment started the following night when, tired of playing a poor opponent for pins, he slipped out to find a game with higher stakes. Juliet sat on the bed in her new silk nightie, shivering in the dark and wondering when he’d come back. He woke her with kisses and soothed away her hurt with whispers in Hungarian an
d clever fingers.

  Her earrings disappeared first. They were sapphires, a Hanukkah present from Mr and Mrs Greene. George was so solicitous. He made her cups of hot tea and helped to dry her eyes and crawled on his hands and knees under the bed to try to find them and later, when hope was lost, he filled in the insurance claim form. Somehow it was George who cashed the cheque and he never quite remembered to take Juliet to the shop in Hatton Garden to choose a replacement pair. Juliet rarely found as much in the housekeeping tin as she’d thought was there, and on opening her purse at the grocer or the butcher often discovered that it was perfectly empty when she’d been sure there had been a pound in it.

  And yet, George could be generous. When he was on a lucky streak, he’d arrive home with bouquets of crimson roses and perfumed freesias, until Juliet ran out of vases and every room was brimful with flowers stuffed into milk bottles and teapots and tooth mugs. After a lucrative fortnight he had the entire house fitted with top of the range Rosenblum carpet; smart burgundy for the stairs and hall, a rich mustard for the lounge. He won her a gold charm bracelet which she made him return – she couldn’t bear to think of some other wife sobbing over her lost things. He appeared one afternoon with a fabulous mink coat, showing Juliet the receipt so that she knew it was new and not the fruit of another’s misery. He wrapped her in it, naked, and for a precious afternoon she believed that all would be well. She wore it to shul and gloried in the admiring and envious glances. The following month it disappeared from her wardrobe. She told everyone that it had been much too hot and she’d decided to get rid of it.

  At least George wasn’t dull. Her friends measured their troubles by the number of cigarettes it took to smoke while they recited them. They grumbled how Bernie had got fat and Maurice picked his ears at supper and Edgar never climbed into Betty’s bed any more at night – not that she wanted him to, mind, but to be denied the opportunity of denying him like that was awful, just awful. Juliet stayed quiet. George continued to slip into her bed and she found that she was usually willing when he did so.