The Gallery of Vanished Husbands

by Natasha Solomons

  ‘No, it has to be an English painter. Only an Englishman can understand the muted light. This is a quiet beauty all about texture and shadows and clouds. Constable was quite obsessed with clouds, you know. He kept journals talking about nothing at all but the day’s clouds.’

  ‘It can’t have made for terribly exciting reading,’ said Juliet. ‘I thought the purpose of journals was to boast about love affairs or to say rude things about your friends.’

  ‘Is that what you write in yours? Lists of your lovers?’

  ‘No,’ said Juliet, thinking it would be a disappointingly short list. ‘I don’t keep one at all. But if I did, I should be awful about everyone just in case, as it would serve them right if they read it.’

  Max laughed. ‘I had no idea you were so cruel. Listen.’

  Juliet could hear no noise except for the birds and the creak of the trees. Daylight was fading into twittering dark and the air cracked with cold. Max glanced up at the sky.

  ‘It’s going to snow. Any meteorologist or landscape painter could tell you that from those clouds. You can hear it.’

  Juliet looked up at the darkening sky, the belly of the clouds brushed with purple from the sinking sun.

  ‘Will you stay inside tonight then?’

  Max laughed. ‘No, no. Tonight will be best of all.’

  But that night after supper, Max did not turn to Juliet and ask, ‘Will you come?’

  At first, she thought he had. The question was as familiar as the wolf’s line in a fairy story. But he had not asked. He merely stood, drew on his coat and left.

  After he had gone she glanced at the window where the ledge was coated with snow, flakes clinging to the glass. Later as she played cards with the children by the fire, Juliet could not concentrate and Leonard and Frieda delighted in cheating even more than usual.

  A bluebird popped out of a remade cuckoo clock whistling midnight and she hustled the children into bed, giving them their nightly dose of cherry brandy. Before going upstairs, she slipped into the kitchen for a glass of water. A sketch book rested on the table beside a bundle of spare watercolour brushes. It might have been something to go out into the dark and watch him paint with snow. She lingered beside the window, her reflection in the glass catching her eye, and then she realised it wasn’t her face. It was Max.

  She grabbed her coat and a bundle of scarves and laced her boots with trembling fingers, worried that by the time she went out he would have disappeared. She closed the door softly, trying not to disturb the children, trying not to think of them waking in the night and finding her gone. Max stood in the shadow of a hulking oak, both of them dusted with frost. He smiled when he saw her.

  ‘You waited for me,’ said Juliet.

  He shrugged. ‘I knew you’d come tonight.’ He kicked snow from his boots. ‘We’ll meet the others on the marshes.’

  ‘What others?’

  ‘The guns. I don’t shoot. I paint.’ He shrugged out of a second coat, slung round his shoulders. ‘I brought you this. That flimsy thing’s no good.’

  He passed her an ancient RAF flying jacket, the leather worn and cracked but the sheepskin lining warm from his body. He set off at a march through the wood, Juliet trotting beside him to keep up. It had stopped snowing and only a thin layer coated the woodland floor, but as the trees gave way to open heath, the land stretched away white under the sky. The brightness of the snow gave the night a weird daylight glow. The ground was frozen and rang out under the nails of Juliet’s boots. Shivering, she wished she’d thought to grab a hat, but seeing her discomfort, Max placed his own worn deerstalker on her head. It smelled gently of sweat and damp wool.

  ‘Keep up. We’ve a way to go.’

  They walked for hours, or so it seemed to Juliet. The heath sloped down and they edged closer to the black expanse of sea, silent at a distance. As they clambered lower, the earth thawed in patches and became softer underfoot. Coarse blades of marram grass poked through the snow, black on white. Growing tired, Juliet started to slide, Max reaching out to steady her elbow.

  ‘We’re nearly there. See that stream? In the curve of the bend there are four guns.’

  Juliet peered into the darkness and, as they came closer, saw the metallic shine of a gun barrel against the snow. Four men swaddled in overcoats and hats huddled in the bow of the stream, their backs concealed by a thick sprouting of grass. One of them raised a hand in greeting as Max and Juliet moved in to crouch beside them.

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Not yet. We’ve heard them out on the marshes.’

  Taking Juliet’s hand, Max drew her down to lie in the hide alongside the others. ‘Try not to get shot,’ he muttered.

  Four faces peered at her and four hats were lifted. Juliet wriggled uncomfortably, the mud frozen hard and cold beneath her. Within her boots her toes were numb and when she tried to wiggle them, she couldn’t tell whether they moved or not. It was so cold and bright that the light itself seemed frozen solid, but inside her flying jacket she was snug. Squeezed between the men were three Labradors, squashed together like brown sausages in a pan, steam rising from panting mouths. There was no wind and the stillness solidified and lengthened. Beside her, she felt the others listening, listening. The dogs sniffed at the air, tails thumping in ragged time. Time passed; how much Juliet did not know. She wasn’t wearing her watch and couldn’t read the drift of the stars. She was awake but her thoughts followed the roaming of the clouds, smooth and dark. Licking her lips, she tasted pine and salt.

  ‘The geese like the calm,’ whispered Max. ‘Soon. Soon.’

  • • •

  Then the night is full of wings. The hills echo with cries, and above the shrill of the curlews and the hard shriek of the mallards comes the melancholy call of the barnacle geese. The men raise their guns in a single movement, and Juliet slaps her hand to her mouth to stop from screaming out. Why shoot? Why shoot? In the ditch beside her, Max pulls his pad and brush from his pocket and dipping it in the stream he starts to paint. The cries go on and on, calling. Calling. Strange and unearthly they raise the hackles along the back of Juliet’s neck. They sound more like the baying of hounds than birds. It’s hours still until dawn but the light reflected from the snow catches the white of their bellies and for a moment Juliet wonders if they are geese at all but ice with wings. They rush closer, away from the distant tide edge, seeming to graze the gorse and scrub as they swoop low. Then they are here. The sky overhead is a hurry of wings and Juliet reaches up with cool fingertips. The bang and crack of guns. Pellets fly heavenwards and rain back to earth, dimpling the snow. A goose falls, broken, her throat pierced and silent. Then another. Goose after goose falls from the sky and Juliet stops trying not to shout out but it is too late or else the geese have no need of her. The pack turns for the shore, flying back to the sea and the safety of the wash, leaving their fallen littering the snow. The guns clamber to their feet and, whistling low for the dogs, start to gather up the carcasses. Max and Juliet remain, Max’s brush flashes across the paper, dipped here in the stream and here in snow. She’s never seen anyone paint so fast and realises that she’s watching a war painter recording the aftermath of cold siege and battle. His cheeks are ruddy and his forehead slick with sweat and he looks sloppy with joy.

  • • •

  Leonard was not asleep. He heard Juliet leave, heard the whisper of voices in the wood. The house creaked in the dark. All houses did this. Grandma and Grandpa’s house was particularly loud and it used to frighten him when he was small and woke in the night, but Granny had soothed him, saying that the house had old bones like her and deserved sympathy. But no house made as much noise as this one. It groaned and cracked like Kenneth Ibbotson snapping his knuckles in maths lessons. On windy nights Leonard didn’t mind as much, as it made sense, but in the stillness the snaps and creaks seemed louder. It’s because of all the wood, he told himself. He’d done that in science. Something to do with heat and expansion and contraction but he wondered in the d
ark if that was just something we told ourselves. He looked to Frieda who was fast asleep and considered waking her, but decided that Frieda rudely awoken was more terrifying than the wakeful house. He slid out of bed and padded towards the kitchen. That’s what I’ll do, he decided. I’ll have another sleeping draught. Standing up on a chair, he reached down the bottle of cherry brandy and measured himself out a good-sized spoonful. Afterwards he still wasn’t sleepy enough so he climbed the stairs, taking the brandy bottle just in case. He and Frieda hadn’t been allowed into Max’s room and a thrill buzzed through Leonard, though it might have been the brandy starting to take effect. The room was perfectly ordinary. It smelled odd. There was his mother’s Yardley perfume mingling with something less familiar, but overall the room was like any other and Leonard couldn’t think why he and Frieda had been barred from exploring. On the wall was a painting of an ugly woman with dark eyes. Leonard felt a little dizzy from the brandy and decided he hated the portrait. He hated all portraits. They were nothing but trouble. He grinned – he had the perfect solution, he’d slosh brandy on it and light a match and set fire to it like the flaming Christmas puddings that the regular kids had been drawing in art class. Unscrewing the cap, he chucked liquid up at the picture. Some hit; most dribbled down the wall. He had another go but there wasn’t much left in the bottle. He knocked the painting off the wall and dropped it in the grate. There was a box of matches on the dresser and Leonard lit one and watched it trickle blue brandy flames across the surface of the picture. He waited for a moment and then chucked in the rest of the box for good measure and the flames turned from blue to orange. He settled on the floor to watch and realised his head felt very woozy. The woman in the grate stared back at him, her face aglow from the matches, her hair starting to burn red.

  • • •

  Juliet and Max returned to the cottage shortly before dawn. Juliet eased open the kitchen door and snuck through the house in stockinged feet to check on the children. They were fast asleep, Leonard snoring softly, and Juliet smiled, relieved she hadn’t been caught. It filled her with exhilaration. Perhaps she was wrong; perhaps she could do anything and no one was looking. She was so tired she was drunk with it. Max caught her arm and pulled her back into the hallway, gently closing the sitting-room door. He didn’t say a word but led her up the stairs to the bedroom they’d been sharing, though until now not at the same time. He started to undress, quickly and unselfconsciously, then climbed naked into the narrow bed.

  ‘Get in.’

  Juliet stood in the middle of the floor, fully dressed, unable to move.

  ‘Isn’t it why you came?’

  Still she hesitated. Then she laughed.

  ‘I suppose I did.’

  She’d been trying not to think about what made her run away, and now she understood. Max propped himself up onto a thin arm. Dawn was firing through the window and he looked tired in the light. She could make out the bones beneath his skin and could imagine how he’d look when he was an old man.

  ‘Why did you come here?’ he asked again.

  ‘To sleep with you.’

  She started to slide out of her jersey and unbutton her blouse; her fingers were cold and she struggled with the buttons. ‘It’s been a long time since,’ she reached for a euphemism and then decided that they were all quite ridiculous. It was time she said his name aloud. ‘It’s been a long time since George.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Eight years.’

  She searched his face for shock or amusement but found none.

  ‘Come on. You’ve waited long enough. Though, that’s quite a pressure to put on a chap.’

  Juliet tried to smile but it contorted on her face. ‘I’m worried. I’m worried that I’ve grown frigid. It can happen, you know. After years and years.’

  Still Max didn’t laugh. ‘Well, let’s find out. Then at least you’ll know.’

  She stepped out of her trousers and then her knickers until she was standing quite naked on the wooden floor. It was chilly and prickles of gooseflesh rippled up and down her limbs. Max was looking at her with that painter’s look, head to one side, studying the lines of her flesh and then she realised he wasn’t any more. His expression was no longer scientific; instead he had the impatient look of a man who wanted to sleep with her.

  He threw back the eiderdown and she climbed in beside him. She tried to say, ‘I’m afraid I’m rather out of practice,’ but found that he was kissing her and she couldn’t. She tried not to think. Tried not to think that this act took her further away than ever from that other, former life. Tried only to feel the warmth of his hands on her skin, the roughness of those painter’s fingers. She hadn’t been to the mikvah, not for years, and she supposed one didn’t purify one’s body for an illicit lover, but Max’s insistent kisses were moving down her belly and she was finding it hard to think of anything else. I must not cry out, she said, I must not.

  • • •

  Afterwards Max turned to her and grinned, a frank boyish grin.

  ‘So not frigid,’ he said.

  ‘No. Not,’ agreed Juliet.

  They lay side by side not touching and Juliet decided that this intimacy was what she had missed most of all. She was relieved that the anxiety of the first time together was over and now they could fall into the happy discovery of regular lovers. Her thighs were damp and she could feel him leaking out of her – something else she’d forgotten – and she supposed she was being very stupid and taking a terrible risk. But at that moment she was fat with contentment and couldn’t bring herself to worry. If it happened they could come and live in the woods. She laughed at the ridiculousness of the idea. Already as the sweat on her body cooled she was wondering about returning to the city.

  ‘Look,’ said Max, pointing to the fireplace.

  A painting was lodged in the grate, the frame singed and twisted. Juliet slipped out of bed and padded across, shaking it loose. She pulled it free and saw that the woman’s face was burned, her features smeared and blackened, obliterated by smoke.

  ‘How the devil did it get there?’ asked Max.

  • • •

  They sat around the kitchen table eating breakfast at lunchtime.

  ‘Did one of you set fire to the picture in Max’s room?’ asked Juliet, her voice low and serious.

  Leonard looked up stricken, suddenly unable to eat his boiled egg.

  Frieda stared at her brother. ‘Well, I didn’t do anything,’ she snapped.

  ‘It was me,’ said Leonard, miserably. He’d known since he’d woken up that morning that confession was inevitable.

  ‘Why, darling?’ asked Juliet. ‘I can’t understand it.’

  Leonard screwed up his face and prodded his egg. He didn’t know how to explain; wasn’t sure if he wanted to. His hatred for the picture had made sense in the dark.

  ‘It was ugly,’ he said.

  ‘That’s no excuse,’ said Max, drawing his chair close. ‘If you don’t like a picture, you should paint something better. You don’t destroy art, Leonard. Especially portraits. The mystics believed that portraits and photographs contain a piece of the sitter’s soul. They’re dangerous things, portraits, and poorly painted or not, you must be careful with them.’

  ‘Am I going to be punished?’ asked Leonard, gloomily, looking at his mother.

  ‘Are you sorry?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you ever do it again?’ asked Max.

  Leonard shook his head.

  ‘Then, no. No punishment,’ said Max with a glance at Juliet.

  Leonard sat at the table feeling guilt like a little fish nibble at his guts, but he was confident of two things. First, that a portrait that badly painted did not contain even the merest sliver of soul, and second, that one day he was going to paint much, much better pictures.

  • • •

  They took the train back to London three days later. Juliet did not sleep but smiled from Dorchester to Waterloo. Max waved them off on t
he platform, kissing Juliet an awkward goodbye in front of the children. Frieda watched them critically, considering that they looked much less dashing than the couples at the pictures. Juliet didn’t even kick up her heels – although Frieda conceded that that might be because Juliet was holding a heavy suitcase and Max wasn’t a terribly good kisser. He didn’t look like the kind of man who’d be any good. Too old.

  ‘Is Max your boyfriend?’ asked Frieda, later on the train.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Juliet and smiled again. Boyfriend. The word was so much simpler than husband.

  ‘And you don’t want us to tell Grandma,’ said Leonard.

  ‘No,’ agreed Juliet, avoiding his eye. ‘Don’t tell Grandma.’

  • • •

  Juliet was relieved when her period arrived, punctual as the 227 bus, but deciding that it was silly to take more risks she visited the doctor. She intended to sleep with Max again, preferably soon. If only she could persuade him to come up to town. Dorset was a long way to go for – Juliet smiled – for sex. The doctor’s surgery was filled with fretting babies and tired, grey-looking mothers. She’d tried to get an evening appointment but was told by the practice secretary that these were reserved exclusively for ‘the chaps, since they have to go work during the day, poor things’. Juliet attempted to explain that she too had to work but she could hear the indulgent smile through the receiver, ‘Oh, I’m sure your boss will give you time off, tell him it’s a lady problem.’ Sitting in the waiting room among the rows of nursing mothers, Juliet sensed them staring at her. She didn’t care. Let them look. She could hear their silent chatter and understood what they’d murmur to one another the moment she left, ‘Much too old for a career girl and look at that lipstick! No wonder she’s not wearing a wedding ring.’ For the first time in fourteen years, Juliet had taken the ring off, sliding it to the back of her sock drawer.