The Gallery of Vanished Husbands

by Natasha Solomons

  When Frieda was born he was wonderful. For the first months of her pregnancy Juliet said nothing, smiling to herself in the queue at the greengrocer as she remembered the little fish inside her. When at last she confessed, George cried. Not a few sentimental tears but inelegant sneezing sobs where the tears mingled with snot on his chin. For nearly a year nothing disappeared. He changed nappies, never saying that it was a mother’s job, and slid out of bed during the night to give the baby her bottle. In the dark, Juliet could hear him singing to Frieda in Hungarian, soothing her with words Juliet did not understand. And yet, there was something else she did not confide to her friends. She told George lies.

  ‘The housekeeping money is all in the custard tin.’

  ‘No, my father didn’t give me anything this week.’

  ‘No, darling, the picture is worth nothing. It was painted by a nobody when I was very small. My father didn’t even want to pay him a pair of spectacles for it.’

  The artist had found a modest degree of success at last and wanted to borrow his painting of Juliet Greene for an exhibition in Edinburgh, but Juliet Montague had politely and regretfully declined. She spent an entire afternoon and half a packet of cigarettes puzzling over what excuse to send to her old friend John Milne, but she knew with cool certainty that if the picture went off to Edinburgh it would not return to the living room for long. When Milne died a year or two later, she hid the obituary and interrupted her mother when she started to tell them all about it over the Friday night dinner table. She chattered loudly over Mrs Greene, telling her about how Betty’s Edgar had run off with a flame-haired dancer from a London show until Mr Greene had waved his napkin for quiet and reminded them both of lashon hora and Juliet blushed for shame while hoping that the light in her husband’s eye was inspired only by the thought of the red-headed dancer.

  But the picture did not vanish and Juliet relaxed. George had been so good since Frieda was born. He must have changed. Still, she kept valuables hidden, partly out of habit and partly to keep George out of the path of temptation. When she was pregnant with Leonard, Mr Greene presented her with some premium bond certificates for both children which, after casting about for a suitable hiding place, she stashed behind the picture frame. Her marriage ketubah, a ten pound note and the deeds to the house – she slipped them all into a large envelope and taped it to the back of the painting.

  The arrival of his son triggered another spate of disappearances. George was overwhelmed with love for this small, red creature who would bear his name all his life, and in time pass it on to sons of his own. George went out to celebrate with some friends and returned three days later without his coat or his shoes or the watch with his name engraved on the back Juliet had given him for his birthday. She said nothing but understood that the housekeeping money must once again be stashed in different pots around the house, a little always for show in the custard tin to put him off hunting further but more in craftier places – under the floorboard in the hall, inside the Hoover bag, and taped behind the picture frame.

  The day George vanished was ordinary. Juliet could trace his morning in the puddles of mess he left around the house. At half past seven he made tea, dribbling milk along the counter and leaving the used leaves congealing inside the pot for Juliet to clear away. He walked Frieda to school on his way to work and kissed his daughter goodbye without tears or sentimental speeches. He spent the day writing prescriptions and running eye tests for white-haired, rose-water steeped ladies, popping on his hat and coat and leaving at the usual hour of a quarter to six (later Mrs Greene insisted that Juliet telephone Mr Ziegler to check, even though Juliet knew by then it was hopeless). George did not seem preoccupied or worried and remembered to enquire after the delicate health of Mr Ziegler’s wife. The only difference between this day and any other was that George never came home. When Juliet returned from her mother’s at half past six George was not there. She didn’t pay much attention, busy with Leonard who had eaten too many of his grandmother’s potato latkes and was grizzling, and with Frieda who had eaten too few and was now hungry. At seven o’clock she bathed the children and put them to bed. It was not until she came downstairs again at half past that she noticed the picture was gone.

  For an hour she sat and stared at the empty space on the wall. The frame remained, only the canvas had been neatly prised away and the gilt now encircled the wallpaper roses. Spying one of Frieda’s crayons, she traced inside the picture-shaped hole in blue and then again in purple and green. Once she had finished, she sat back down and wondered what she ought to do. She supposed she ought to cry. It was expected. She had better cry before she stepped out to telephone her mother but Juliet did not feel like crying. She looked up again at the empty wall. The picture had vanished and so had George. Juliet knew he was never coming back. The missing picture told her. It was the only object she valued and he knew, he knew.

  • • •

  ‘I thought you said that George had gone. Not that daft picture.’

  Mrs Greene arrived in a flurry of anxiety and sufficient tears for both of them, and fixed onto what Juliet considered trivialities.

  ‘He wouldn’t leave on your birthday.’

  ‘If he’s leaving, one day’s as good as another.’

  ‘But there’s no note.’

  ‘He took my picture. He didn’t need to write a note. There’s nothing more to say.’

  ‘Maybe someone broke in and stole it. I’m sure George will be along shortly.’

  Juliet found herself in the odd position of having to persuade her mother that her husband had really left her. Mrs Greene remained inconsolable that he had not left a note – although at first she insisted that this meant he couldn’t intend to be gone for long, as though he had merely popped out for a pound of cod or a packet of humbugs and been unavoidably delayed. Eventually it was the matter of the missing bond certificates and a ten pound note that convinced her.

  ‘Well then! He’s a thief. My son-in-law, the thief.’ Mrs Greene paced and sighed. ‘I never liked him. Never trusted him, not one grotty little inch.’

  She burrowed in her cavernous handbag for a clean handkerchief. ‘He had a look I never cared for. I wish you’d married one of those nice boys.’

  Juliet recalled her mother dancing round and round the small living room polkaing in George’s arms, face sweaty and red as she accepted a snifter of schnapps. Even now, at this awful minute, Juliet couldn’t bring herself to wish that she’d settled for a nice boy.

  That night she lay alone in the bedroom staring at the empty bed beside hers, the sheets unruffled, pillow undented. The house was quiet in the dark. She strained for some miracle of sound. A key in the lock. The shuffle of footsteps in the hall. There was nothing. Only the tick of the radiator downstairs, the scratch of apple leaves on glass where the branches leaned in close to the house. She glanced again at the empty bed and realised she was very cold, so cold that if it was any other night she would slip out of her bed and into George’s and he would turn to her without waking, opening his arms for her to wriggle inside them.

  • • •

  It would have been easier if Leonard could remember that his father had left, but he kept forgetting and Juliet was forced to tell him again and again that Daddy had gone away.

  ‘On a holiday?’

  ‘A very long holiday.’

  ‘When will he be back? For Hanukkah? For my birthday?’

  ‘No, darling, I don’t think so.’

  ‘He’s at the seaside.’

  In Leonard’s eyes people only ever went on holiday to the seaside. Juliet wondered if Leonard pictured his father walking up and down the sand in striped trunks, bucket in one hand, lolly in another, buying picture postcards that he wrote and never sent.

  Unlike her brother, Frieda never said a word. She perched on the edge of the couch, her short legs dangling, feet not quite touching the brown rug and watched Juliet with greenish eyes.

  ‘You understand, my love, that Dadd
y’s gone.’

  Frieda sat very still and then nodded once. Juliet shifted on her seat, uneasy at the girl’s silence. She felt the space where the picture used to hang empty behind her. Frieda watched her without blinking and Juliet toyed with the fabric of her skirt, reading accusation in her daughter’s gaze.

  ‘I don’t know why he went. But I’m here, my darling. I’ll never go anywhere.’

  Still Frieda said nothing, she only sat with hands folded primly in her lap and stared.

  Juliet knew other women whose husbands had left them, but none whose husbands had disappeared. George simply walked out of Harry’s Specs that day and vanished. Mr Ziegler said he would hold the position open for a month but after that he would be forced to advertise. Juliet wanted to tell him to advertise right away. She knew even if the others didn’t. After a week, her father insisted she telephone the police.

  ‘He’s not been murdered, Pa.’

  ‘No, but we must prepare for the worst.’

  Two policemen came and sat in the living room, setting down their helmets on the coffee table like huge boiled eggs. They scribbled details down in spiral notebooks and drank cups of tea and Juliet realised that for the first time in her life she was being pitied. The older policeman, a large man whose buttons strained to contain his belly, asked the questions and his boyish companion shot Juliet sympathetic glances and wrote down her answers. As they stood up to leave, Juliet caught the older man’s arm.

  ‘Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m not daft. I know he’s not lying in a ditch somewhere. I know he isn’t coming back.’

  ‘They do sometimes, madam.’

  Juliet smiled. ‘Not George.’

  • • •

  After the police came the two rabbis. They traipsed into Juliet’s house with their long beards and sweeping black hats and perched side by side on the patterned sofa with the grimness of a pair of crows heralding bad news. Sandwiched between her parents she struggled against an impossible urge to giggle.

  ‘Won’t you have some poppy-seed cake?’ asked Mrs Greene, appealing to the rabbis who exchanged uneasy glances. ‘It’s from Rose’s Deli,’ she reassured them, in case they’d heard the rumours that Juliet did not keep a kosher kitchen.

  ‘In that case, how could we refuse,’ said Rabbi Plotkin as Rabbi Shlonsky beamed his agreement. ‘And perhaps some hot water and lemon?’

  They all waited, poised on the stiff upright chairs carried in from the kitchen while the rabbis ate in silence, spraying crumbs over their beards where they lodged like tiny shrivelled sloes in a hoar frost.

  ‘How long has he been gone, my dear?’ asked Rabbi Plotkin.

  Rabbi Shlonsky smiled, showing the seeds trapped between his teeth.

  ‘Nearly a fortnight,’ said Juliet.

  ‘And any word? A letter? A telephone call?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The most important thing is that if do you hear from him, you must not be angry and you must not scold him.’ He peered sternly at Juliet like a headmaster over the top of a pair of imaginary spectacles. ‘I know it’s hard for you ladies,’ he smiled at Mrs Greene, ‘but you must hold it inside. The only thing that matters is that he comes back and you don’t put him off.’

  ‘And what if he doesn’t come back?’ asked Mr Greene, his voice thin.

  The rabbis exchanged a look.

  ‘Let us not worry about that just now. Let us hope he does return.’

  Juliet sat up straight. ‘If he doesn’t come back, I intend to divorce him.’

  The rabbis leaned forward together and once again Juliet recognised that look of pity. ‘You may divorce him in the civil courts, my dear Mrs Montague, but . . . ’ Rabbi Plotkin hesitated.

  ‘But what?’

  Rabbi Plotkin sighed and Rabbi Shlonsky settled back on the couch looking grey and unhappy. ‘Unless Mr Montague sends you a bill of divorce, you are still married in the eyes of God.’

  The elderly Rabbi Shlonsky cleared his throat and spoke for the first time since he had entered the house. ‘In Jewish law only men can divorce women. Until your husband returns or dies or divorces you, then you are stuck. You are married and not married.’ He stared at her with watery blue eyes and said the word for the first time. ‘You become an aguna.’

  Juliet felt a shiver of unease, like a child on hearing a sexual word for the first time – something at once intriguing and sinister. She wanted to know; she didn’t want to know. The conversation continued around her. She felt, rather than heard, her mother begin to sob beside her, wobbling like a pudding set with gelatine.

  ‘But one day, she’ll want to marry again.’

  ‘That’s why we must find him. But don’t cry, Mrs Greene, he may well yet come back. Husbands often do, you know.’

  Juliet realised that only Rabbi Plotkin spoke. The white-bearded Rabbi Shlonsky merely looked at her with those pale eyes.

  ‘I know he’s not coming back. I know.’

  Mrs Greene coughed in annoyance and, tugging the handkerchief from Juliet’s fingers, noisily blew her nose.

  ‘You don’t know anything of the sort.’ She turned to the rabbis. ‘It’s because he took that silly portrait of Juliet with him. She’s got it into her head it means he’s gone for good.’

  Rabbi Shlonsky frowned. ‘He took your picture?’

  ‘He stole it.’

  Rabbi Shlonsky shifted on the couch, fanning out his black coat. ‘Portraits often make trouble. Especially those of women.’

  The others smiled politely, uncertain of the correct response, but Rabbi Shlonsky had found his subject and his flow could not be staunched. ‘My grandfather was a very famous rabbi in Gombine and like many of the true mystics he wouldn’t have his likeness captured. His shul wanted him to have his portrait painted but Grandfather refused. He wouldn’t even allow a single photograph to be taken in case he left a piece of his soul behind. But the people of his shul were very devoted. They loved the great rabbi of Gombine and he was very old and they wanted something to remember him by, so they had a local artist paint his picture, spying through the window while he slept.’

  Here Rabbi Shlonsky paused and the others all leaned forward, curious.

  ‘Well?’ asked Juliet. ‘Did he die? Did he leave the village, abandoning his congregation because of their betrayal and go into the mountains never to be seen again?’

  Rabbi Shlonsky looked puzzled. ‘No. He never found out about the picture. No one ever told – he would have been upset. I told you, everyone loved him. He was a wonderful rabbi. Now I have the portrait in my study. I like it very much.’

  Even Rabbi Plotkin looked rather taken aback and said nothing for a minute. Then, shaking himself, he turned back to Juliet.

  ‘The important thing is not to worry. We pray that Mr Montague does come back. If not, we pray that we find him. If not, well . . . we worry about it then.’

  ‘When precisely do we worry?’ asked Mrs Greene, who liked to be organised about these things.

  ‘If there’s anything to worry about, we worry now,’ said Juliet. ‘I told you, he’s not coming back.’

  Mr Greene rubbed his temples where a headache was starting to pulse.

  ‘In the meantime the synagogue will help, Mrs Montague.’

  It took Juliet a moment to realise that Rabbi Plotkin was offering charity. Mr Greene understood instantly and was already shaking his head. ‘No, no, we don’t take handouts. It’s for us to help her. We’re her family.’

  Juliet squeezed Mr Greene’s hand. ‘I’ll be quite all right, Rabbi. I’ll work.’ She turned to her father. ‘I’ll go back to work at Greene & Son, if you’ll have me.’

  For the first time that afternoon Mr Greene smiled a weak and watery smile. Juliet tried, but found that she could not return it. She’d married George at the age of eighteen in part to escape Greene & Son. Now, at the venerable age of twenty-four, she found herself going back to the factory and this time with no prospect of escape or reprieve.

  • •
•

  Early on Monday morning, Mr Greene called for Juliet and together they walked the children to school before taking the bus to the factory. Perched on the top deck beside his daughter, Mr Greene had to stop himself from humming. The whole business was most unfortunate, but he couldn’t help feeling satisfied that at last his Juliet was coming back to work at Greene & Son. For months after she’d left, he experienced a dull pang every time he peered into the back office and realised she wasn’t there. The bus took the next corner rather too fast and Juliet thumped into his side. He reached out and patted her hand.

  ‘Well, here we are again, like old times.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Juliet. ‘Like old times.’

  She glanced out of the window and saw that it was starting to rain, fat beads drenching the pavement. For the hundredth time she wondered why George had taken the portrait. The cash and the bond certificates she understood. Had he been in such a hurry that he couldn’t wait to remove the money taped to the back of the picture? She imagined the portrait lying discarded in some gutter or thrust into a rubbish bin, the rain seeping into the canvas, the paint starting to crack and flake.

  CATALOGUE ITEM 3

  Look, Look She Flies!

  Max Langford, Watercolour on Paper, 12 x 15in, 1959

  MRS GREENE DIDN’T like it one bit. Mr Greene remained silent on the matter, preferring not to be trapped like a thief between his wife and daughter but succeeding only in irritating both. Philip and Jim thought it was a daft idea but that Juliet should be left to get on with it. Charlie was silently furious, brooding with unhappiness. Only Frieda and Leonard were delighted.

  ‘A holiday? A whole two weeks? Is it by the sea? Just us?’

  Leonard continually questioned his mother for the pleasure of hearing her confirmation. He’d never been on holiday before. There had been day trips but Leonard had never once stayed in a hotel, let alone a cottage. The word conjured all kinds of romance. Straw roofs. Walls made of mud. Cows in the kitchen.

  While Juliet was pleased by the idea of a holiday and gratified by the fervour of the children’s enthusiasm, there was another reason for the trip and this was the source of Charlie and Mrs Greene’s disquiet. She’d rented the cottage in order to be close to Max Langford. His pictures were so familiar to her, like a favourite place – Mulberry Avenue in May when the cherry trees formed a procession of frothy bridesmaids, the Bayswater Road on a Sunday afternoon – and yet she had still not met him. Excitement made her almost as dizzy as Leonard, who had packed for his holiday a full fortnight in advance without being asked. Charlie’s insistence that Max was a recluse and all species of peculiar only increased her determination. She attempted to mollify him. ‘Perhaps I’ll persuade Max to come to our first exhibition at the gallery. It’ll be funny if he’s not there.’ Charlie had not replied. They both knew that somehow, without intending it, Max had caught her in the hairs of his brush, and she was stuck as firmly as a fly in a bead of drying paint.