‘Would you like a drink?’
‘All right.’
He wandered into the kitchen, returning a moment later with a bottle of sloe gin and another glass. Even though she did not drink spirits, she accepted the glass, and padded around the room in bare feet, free at last to inspect the assorted pictures. ‘I’ve not seen these before.’
Max laughed. ‘Charlie hates them. He stomachs the oils but these – the woodcuts and such. These he can’t stand.’
‘Why? I like them.’
‘Too nostalgic. Too English. I’m a tremendous disappointment to Charlie. I survived the war only to retreat into the cowardice of nostalgia.’
He folded himself into an armchair. ‘But I’m afraid that’s what happens. One gets sick of England. The dampness. The littleness of everything. And then one goes away and pines for it. I sat and sweated in Luxor, painting planes and temples and dreaming of drizzle and strawberries.’
Juliet glanced around the room; the oil-lamps had stuttered into darkness and it was now lit by a handful of candles, the walls flushed from the embers’ glow. In the half-light the caravan of stencilled camels commenced their slow march around the desert mouldings. The framed woodcuts and linocuts were mainly glimpses of the landscape, standing stones crouched on the back of a hill, the humped ridge of a fort, but Juliet sensed that in all these pictures something watched from the dark.
‘They’re not nostalgic. They’re uncanny.’
‘The thing is you long for home but once you get here all you can think of is where you’ve been. The coombs and rivers aren’t quite as real as they used to be. Or they’re not when I paint them.’
She studied them again. ‘It’s always autumn or winter. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single picture of yours where it’s summer.’
Max smiled. ‘Spring and summer bore me. All that endless green. I like the colours of autumn and the texture of winter. When the leaves are gone you can get into the heart of the wood.’
At the thought of the walk back to the cottage through the midnight trees, Juliet shivered. Silently she cajoled herself for her silliness – she was a modern woman who told her children not to be frightened by stories. It didn’t work; Max’s pictures unnerved her. The printed ash tree peeped at her between thin fingers, far too human. She took a small sip of sloe gin, sweet and strong.
‘May I see some more?’ She hesitated. ‘The pictures from when you were a war artist?’
‘I’m afraid you can’t.’
‘I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘It’s all right. The War Office owns everything. They took the lot at the end of the war. I expect it’s mouldering in some archive somewhere. Otherwise I’d gladly show you.’
Juliet settled back onto the settee, drawing up her bare feet like a roosting bird. She wanted to hurl questions at him. He sat facing her, suppressing the twitch of a smile, perhaps sensing the onslaught.
‘How long have you lived in this house?’
‘Since the war.’ He glanced at her over the top of his glass. ‘Paintings and painters go in and out of style. If all else fails I shall become a woodsman.’
‘Don’t you get lonely?’
‘No.’
She supposed that the house itself with its painted butterflies and dragons and camels was company. He waited, unblinking as one of his pictures.
‘It’s getting late. Won’t your husband wonder where you’ve got to?’
Juliet shifted in her seat, unsure what Charlie had told him. ‘No. He won’t wonder at all.’
‘But you are married?’
‘Yes. In a way. But if you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about it.’
‘All right. But you do realise by putting it like that, you’ve roused my curiosity.’
Juliet made no reply and, after waiting for a moment, Max continued. ‘I remember now, quite clearly, Charlie saying “She’s married.” Trying to warn me off, I suppose.’
He refilled his glass and proffered the bottle to Juliet. She shook her head and he continued to drink and talk on, half to himself. She wondered whether if she left he would simply continue the conversation without her.
‘I wanted to know a bit about you,’ he said. ‘This person who was suddenly frightfully keen on selling my paintings. Dealers from London call round from time to time and unless I’m really short of cash, I slip out and ignore them.’
‘You ignored me—’
‘But you didn’t sound like one of them,’ he continued, pretending not to hear. ‘And you didn’t seem a likely sort to go along with Charlie and his cronies in some scheme.’
‘It isn’t some scheme.’
‘No. I suppose it isn’t and you’re the engine, I see. I did wonder. Charlie collects people like old socks collect holes. But they’re not usually the type who do much of anything.’
As he set his glass down on a patterned table and rose to his feet, Juliet saw him wobble for a second before steadying himself on the mantelpiece and she realised he was smashed. It was the only symptom; he spoke with absolute clarity, rolling his words around behind his teeth like ice cubes. Knowing he was drunk, she felt bold. She looked up at him as he leaned against the fireplace. He was tall. As tall as George had been. She supposed she was being terribly irresponsible. She envisioned the disapproval of the rabbis, a communal shaking of beards, the wounded sighs of her mother but found she didn’t care. Closing her eyes, she took a breath and, opening them again, looked directly at Max.
‘I want you to paint me.’
‘Paint you?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s not some modern euphemism?’
‘It is not.’
‘I’ve not done a portrait since the war.’
‘I know. But I thought—’
‘You thought I’d make an exception.’
Juliet felt her cheeks grow hot. She met his eye, resolute. ‘I hoped.’
Max drained his glass and set it on the hearth with enough violence that the edge chipped.
‘No paintings of people. Not even for you.’
• • •
The following morning Juliet was busy burning toast when there was a heavy rap on the cottage door. Leonard scrambled to answer it, voice sagging in disappointment when he realised it wasn’t Charlie.
‘Oh. I suppose you want my mother.’
Max followed Leonard into the kitchen and settled down at the table, perfectly unselfconscious, picking at a bowl of slightly mouldy raspberries.
‘Well, what’s the fee?’ he asked.
‘The fee?’
‘Since you sell me, you must know what I’m worth. What would a portrait by me cost?’
Juliet sat down opposite him and reached for her toast. ‘I don’t have enough. Not for one of your paintings.’
Now he turned and looked at her with that painter’s stare, greedy and curious, as if she was a sum to be solved.
‘I spent the night thinking about your picture. And perhaps there is a way it could be done. I have to be careful with portraits. Fate must be tricked.’
Juliet frowned, wondering what on earth he could mean.
He paused and licked his lips, then nodded once, resolved. ‘Yes. All right. I’ll paint you. But it’s bad business to work for free. It will cost you something. Ah, I know the price. It’ll cost you a secret, Juliet Montague.’
• • •
When Max had gone, Juliet walked over to where Leonard was sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor. She crouched down beside him on the not too clean linoleum.
Leonard studied her in the murk of the kitchen. Her cheeks were rosy and she smiled at him. It was very quiet, the tick-tick of the wall clock, the merest rustle of roses outside, their scent seeping in through the open window. She brushed his cheek with her fingertips.
‘Isn’t it exciting that I’m going to have my portrait painted again? ’
Leonard frowned and scrutinised his toes, unsure why he felt a pang in his b
elly, like when Mrs Stanton selected Kenneth Ibbotson to help her make the props for the school play when Leonard had wanted to so very, very much.
‘Charlie did your picture already. I like his. I don’t want you to get another one.’
Juliet laughed, hauling him up with her as she stood, pressing kisses into his hair.
‘You’ll like Max’s too. That’s the thing about pictures – you don’t have to have just one.’
‘This is our holiday. Just us. You promised.’
‘Oh darling, it is. But Max used to live in the big house we drove past. He’s promised to show us. Wouldn’t you like to see that? A house as big as a castle?’
Leonard nodded but he wasn’t listening any more. He was learning that paintings were the best way of attracting Juliet’s notice. She sent him to school with mismatched socks and leftovers instead of sandwiches, permission slips for class trips were always late (unless it was for the National Gallery) and he had to tell her when his uniform was outgrown – she never noticed those things as other mothers did. But when he presented her with a picture he had done at school or a drawing doodled on a Saturday afternoon, Leonard knew he had her full attention. She examined his composition with genuine interest and the same seriousness she gave to the young men whom Charlie brought to the house on Sundays, sweaty from the train, leather portfolios clasped under their arms, eager to hear Juliet’s verdict. On those occasions everyone except Leonard was banished from the kitchen as she spread the pictures across the kitchen table. They examined the work together in silence, while Leonard heard the prowl of anxious footsteps from the hall outside and smelled drifting smoke from a nerve-steeling cigarette.
For his mother there existed two kinds of people: not painters and painters. And, Leonard realised, she always liked the painters best.
Max took all of them to see the house. Even Charlie came and, to Juliet’s surprise, he appeared in good spirits. He might have resisted her making Max’s acquaintance but now that it had happened he seemed resigned and the two men were soon lost in happy disagreement and Juliet felt a lightness she had not experienced since her arrival in Dorset. Unable to all squash into Charlie’s car, they ambled along the lane. Early morning clouds peeled away to expose a flawless summer’s sky and the grass verge was adorned with wavering pink flowers like a jewelled Renaissance panel. A bus deposited other visitors outside the gates to the estate and Juliet found that they were just one group among herds of August sightseers. Max led the party up a driveway studded with roses, whose blooms had fallen and been crushed underfoot. Leonard dangled a camera around his neck – a loan from Charlie – and snapped at everything: an oak tree with a broken swing, a stump-tailed squirrel, Frieda. At a booth they joined a queue for tickets, which Max insisted on paying for. Juliet waited for the bespectacled National Trust lady to recognise him but she did not. Meticulously he passed tickets around the group.
‘You must choose a husband. Who would you like – Charlie or me?’ he asked, turning to Juliet.
Seeing her expression, he laughed and gave a ticket to Charlie.
‘I’ll choose for you then. Family entrance discount.’
He ushered them around to the front of a great Elizabethan manor built of honeyed stone. A gravel path led between two squares of rolled lawns and up to a vast oak door. Leaded windows faced over the countryside, but even in the morning sunshine the glass appeared clouded and dark. Figures carved in stone clung to niches on the top storey; weathered and ancient they peered down at the visitors below. The house was vast, three storeys high with more windows lurking under the eaves. Several black cedars shadowed the lawns but even these monstrous trees did not reach the level of the roof. Two wings, east and west, jutted at each end of the main house. Juliet felt as if she was staring at a city.
‘Look, a monkey!’ cried Leonard, pointing to the façade.
Juliet looked and saw a carved monkey clinging to a gable leering at her with sandstone eyes.
‘Shall we go in?’ she asked.
Max snorted. ‘You don’t like it, do you?’
‘It’s very grand.’
‘It’s a perfect Elizabethan mansion – if one cares about such things. It’s even built in the shape of an E. My mother was an Elizabeth. I think that’s why my father fancied her. Thought she’d fit in.’
Max fumbled in his pocket for cigarettes. Lighting his own, he offered one to Charlie who shook his head.
‘I can’t believe that you don’t miss it,’ said Charlie.
‘These places aren’t half so much fun without the cash to heat them or fix the roof,’ replied Max.
‘Don’t you get depressed going around it?’
Max smiled. ‘I don’t go very often. But it is rather like visiting a grave.’
They trailed into a great hall panelled with ancient oak, Renaissance stone reliefs running along one side.
‘Sir, your cigarette,’ said a National Trust matron pointing at Max.
‘What?’
‘No smoking. I’ll have to ask you to wait outside until you’re done.’
Max went very still, his skin terribly white in the gloom, and for a moment Juliet was not sure what he would do. Then, he gave a snort.
‘They asked me why the panelling has such a glorious patina. I told them the answer – generations of fag smoke.’ He held up his hands towards the advancing guide who was sailing towards him across the marble floor, wielding a clipboard. ‘It’s all right. I’ll put it out.’
He stubbed it out on the stonework beside the door – Juliet guessed out of habit – and ambled back inside.
‘Shall we?’
• • •
Later, as they picked their way back through the woods, Juliet realised that what Max said was true – she did not like the house. She much preferred the brick cottage. Despite the army of guides and the tourists, the mansion smelled of damp disuse. It was a husk of a place and walking around was more like visiting a museum full of relics. She struggled to picture anyone living there, let alone Max.
The men walked in front, Max finding his way with ease, threading among what seemed to Juliet identical trees and criss-crossing paths. Frieda paused beside a cluster of purple flowers with tiny wax stamens like a doll’s candles but as she reached to pick one, Max shook his head. ‘Don’t touch. Bittersweet nightshade. It’s pretty but it’ll give you a nasty rash.’
The brick cottage emerged like an apparition among the tree trunks, and the children rushed forward, as delighted as if it had been made from gingerbread. The bright afternoon did not reach this part of the wood. The trees grew too thickly and the light that did filter through the leaves was mottled and green. Max ushered them inside the house, and the children flitted through it like butterflies, alighting first on the staircase with its coloured treads and then spying the dragon chimneybreast before rushing to inspect the hummingbird stencilled on the window in the hall.
Leonard turned to Juliet. ‘Why isn’t our house like this?’ he asked, his voice accusatory.
Juliet hesitated. Having seen Max’s home, she too wasn’t entirely sure why houses were any other way.
‘Well, it’s a lot of work to make a house like this,’ said Charlie. ‘You have to decorate it all yourself.’
‘Yes, but I’d rather you didn’t,’ added Juliet, unnerved by the gleam in Leonard’s eye. ‘Poor Granny would have a heart attack if she came round for tea.’
Leonard said nothing but his face showed quite clearly that he thought this a very poor argument. Max produced a pot of thick black tea and a packet of biscuits, and filled glasses of water for the children from the tap, the water running peaty red. Leonard surveyed Max thoughtfully.
‘Are you going to paint my mother? Charlie did a picture of her too. We’ve got it in our house instead of a fridge.’
Charlie looked up sharply. He placed his cup on the table, before turning to Max with forced nonchalance.
‘Really? I thought you’d stopped doing portraits?’
>
Max shrugged. ‘I had. Juliet agreed to pay my exorbitant fee.’
‘You did?’
Juliet felt her cheeks grow hot. ‘A secret. He said it would cost a secret. It was a joke.’
She appealed to Max, but he leaned towards Leonard and Frieda.
‘A secret. A big juicy one for a portrait, don’t you think?’
The children nodded, delighted to be included in the game while Juliet watched Leonard with unease, wondering what he would say, but it wasn’t Leonard who spoke but Frieda.
‘I know a secret,’ she said.
‘Darling, it’s all right. It’s a joke. You don’t need to tell Max anything.’
Max smiled. ‘No. You don’t have to. But you can if you like.’
Charlie glared at Max, who gazed back at him with serene indifference.
‘For God’s sake leave them alone. Do the picture. Don’t do the picture. Don’t make such a song and dance out of it.’
Juliet took Frieda’s hand and tried to persuade her to sit back down but Frieda shook her off, dancing around to the other side of the table.
‘My dad isn’t really dead. Even though Granny told me and Leonard to tell everyone that he is. He isn’t. He disappeared when I was five and Leonard was two. And because he’s only pretend dead, Mum isn’t allowed to have another husband. Or a boyfriend,’ she added, looking between the two men.
Nobody spoke. They all stared at Juliet and she wished they wouldn’t. She felt tears gather in the corner of her eyes. The silence grew elastic.
Then Max threw his head back and laughed; a great raucous laugh that came from his chest and sounded like a fist hammering on wood. The children joined in first. Frieda grinned and then giggled, and seeing his sister laugh Leonard had to follow. Then Charlie caught it and finally Juliet. She wasn’t sure what was funny, if anything at all, but the laughter was pleasurable, pulsing from her belly to her throat, and her eyes watered, and because it was laughing now and not crying she didn’t need to blink away the tears. Max stopped first, wiping his mouth with his sleeve and pushing back his chair.
The Gallery of Vanished Husbands Page 12