The Gallery of Vanished Husbands

by Natasha Solomons

  The children said nothing when they saw the rectangular package wrapped up in a beach towel in the luggage rack on the bus, but they seemed pleased and more pleased still when instead of hanging it in her bedroom, Juliet displayed the portrait at the top of the stairs – braving Mrs Greene’s tongue-clicking and sighs.

  Juliet guessed that Tibor never reported the theft, but imagined the story became one of his favourites. Over dinner or schnapps he’d declare to his fellow guests that he never sold a painting but would admit with great delight that once upon a time a woman stole one.

  Juliet wasn’t the only thief that night. When she reached inside her pocket and pulled out the scrap of newspaper, the photograph of George was gone. He’d been carefully cut free so that a square hole took the place of his face. Her husband had vanished even from this gallery. She suspected that Leonard had taken him, but somehow it was easier not to ask.

  • • •

  Leonard kept the photo carefully sandwiched in his new sketchpad. For the first weeks they were home he only looked at his father, scrutinising his face for any likeness with his own. Then, one rainy October afternoon about a month after their return from America, he took out his pencils, sat on his bed and started to draw him. The first attempt wasn’t bad, he decided, but he thought it best to try another. He added in a dash of Jerry, then gave George his specs. Holding out the finished sketch, he gave a snort. This one wasn’t right at all. He flicked over the page, took up his pencil and began another.

  CATALOGUE ITEM 31

  Lazing on a Sunny Afternoon,

  Tom Hopkins, Photograph of Mural at Ashcombe House, 1964

  IT WAS NEARLY half past six and Juliet was late. She knew that three streets away her mother was fretting over the fate of a roast chicken. Every Friday they were late for dinner, and every Friday Juliet promised Mrs Greene that the next week they would be on time and the chicken wouldn’t be spoiled. There was always so much to finish at the gallery before the weekend, and she realised it would be easier to dispense with the ritual of Shabbos dinner and stay until eight or nine to work. She told Charlie that leaving early on Friday was something she did to placate her mother – but the truth was that Juliet valued the rhythm of those nights. However busy and harassed she had been during the week, no matter how frantic before an exhibition or frustrated when a rival poached one of her newly discovered artists, she knew that come the evening she would be sitting around the highly polished dining table set with the good placemats brought back from the Canaries by Uncle Ed in 1955. Frieda and Leonard made a token show of reluctance but Juliet understood that it was her job to stand firm so that they could kvetch in safety, knowing that Friday chicken was an immovable event. There was a pleasure in the ordinariness of it, as reassuring as a nursery lullaby.

  Frieda stood beside the door in her coat, waiting for Juliet as she came downstairs. She wore thick woollen tights even though it was June and warm. Her dress came well below her knees and was a stiff, dull brown. Juliet had given up leaving her Chanel lipsticks in the bathroom since Frieda never touched them. It had started slowly, Juliet couldn’t quite remember when she’d first noticed, but some time after their return from America Frieda started declining the Saturday trips up to the gallery with Juliet and Leonard, instead going to shul with her grandfather. Juliet wasn’t worried; certainly not at first. Lots of teenagers turned to God for a year or two. As Juliet’s hemlines grew more daring and the parties she was invited to a little louder, the cocktails stronger, Frieda proclaimed that she didn’t approve of bare legs or ladies drinking champagne or schnitzel fried in butter. Or her mother. That, at least, was what Juliet concluded, but she said nothing and dismissed it as religious affectation and hoped she’d grow out of it. She suspected that Frieda’s faith had bloomed to irritate her – the more Juliet withdrew from religion, declining even to fast on Yom Kippur, the more frequent Frieda’s visits to the brick synagogue in Cedar Avenue became. Yet her bedroom was divided neatly into two halves: the bookshelves filled with sombre religious texts and tomes on morality, but the desk remained crowded with singles and LPs. The Kinks jostled beside The Complete Kosher Kitchen and ‘Can’t Buy me Love’ sat on top of A Girl’s Guide to Jewish Ethics. As long as Frieda still spent all her pocket money on tickets for The Shadows and hitched up her skirt at the end of the street when she believed her mother wasn’t looking, Juliet decided not to worry.

  The phone rang in the hall but Juliet made no move to answer it, perfectly confident that it would be Mrs Greene. She hadn’t wanted to install the phone at all but as the gallery became busier and clients or artists wanted to talk on evenings and at weekends it had become impossible to resist. The phone continued to ring and Juliet continued to ignore it. Frieda picked up the receiver, her face falling when she realised it was for Juliet.

  ‘I’m out,’ mouthed Juliet, thinking of Mrs Greene’s wrath and the soon-to-be-incinerated chicken.

  ‘She’s right here,’ said Frieda. ‘May I ask who’s calling?’

  Juliet shook her head and sighed.

  ‘It’s a Mr Gold for you,’ said Frieda.

  Juliet took the receiver and frowned. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Gold, but I can’t do it. Please stop calling. I don’t wish to be rude, but you don’t want art, you want wallpaper.’

  There was a chuckle on the other end of the line. Then a voice with a soft northern accent spoke: ‘At least come and see the house. How about next weekend? You have kids, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bring them along. I’m having a bit of a party. One of the lads might even come. It’ll be fun.’

  ‘It’s very kind, Mr Gold. I really must go.’

  Juliet replaced the receiver and started to call for Leonard but Frieda was eyeing her with an odd look.

  ‘Who was that?’

  Juliet frowned. ‘An old school friend of Charlie’s. He’s made quite a success of himself and has bought a rather splendid country house. He wants me to find art for it.’

  Frieda looked puzzled. ‘Isn’t that what you do?’

  ‘Now you sound like Charlie. I find the right piece for the right person. Paintings should be loved, not fixed to a wall because someone thinks that they’re hip this month. Mr Gold’s never even been to the gallery. He doesn’t know what he likes. He just believes that Wednesday’s is the place to be seen buying art.’

  Juliet noticed a box lying beside the front door, and bent to open it.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Frieda.

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  Frieda lolled against the door, plunged her hands into her pockets and eyed her mother carefully.

  ‘They’re plates.’

  ‘Plates? Whatever for?’

  ‘I told Rabbi Plotsky that you don’t keep kosher at home so Mrs Plotsky sent round some clean plates. I don’t want to eat treif any more.’

  Juliet recoiled. The rustling of disapproval from the neighbours she had grown quite used to, it was a background buzz that one learned to ignore like a traffic hum, but Frieda’s disdain was different. Juliet’s cooking had never been splendid, but they always ate together – even if it was wieners from a jar and slightly stale toast. The sharing of a meal joined them, but now Frieda was insisting that she wanted to be set apart. Juliet looked at her daughter and felt the space between them open and settle, cool as snowfall. She wished that she could snatch Frieda away from all the well-meaning busybodies in Chislehurst, take her to London. But she knew with quiet unease that if she moved, Frieda would not come.

  Juliet stopped buttoning her coat and glanced at her daughter. She had seen an opportunity to prise Frieda away from her religious fervour.

  ‘Mr Gold might interest you. He manages that pop band. The Rigbys.’

  Frieda started to laugh. ‘Allan Gold wants you to find paintings for his house and you said no? You really are crazy. If he asked you to scrub his floors you should have said yes.’

  ‘You want to meet him? Because he’s invited us for a w
eekend.’

  The change in Frieda was instant. The stiff and disapproving girl softened like chocolate in the sun, and her eyes suddenly brightened as she grabbed her mother’s arm.

  ‘We have to go. We have to. Call him back this instant and say yes. Will the Rigbys be there? I’m going to marry Matt Rigby. Or Ringo Starr.’

  Frieda squeezed her arm and Juliet realised that it had been a long time since her daughter had spontaneously touched her. She refrained from saying that she’d thought Frieda was planning to marry a rabbi rather than Ringo.

  ‘We’d have to drive there on a Friday night. You couldn’t go to shul with your grandfather.’

  Frieda hesitated only for a moment. ‘Please. Mum, please. I have to meet the Rigbys.’

  For the first time in many years, she gazed at her mother with something close to awe.

  ‘All right. I’ll call Mr Gold in the morning,’ said Juliet. She was quite willing to accept an invitation if it meant reminding Frieda that art and music were more tempting than God.

  • • •

  Sylvia and Charlie had been asked too, and they all arrived together jammed into Sylvia’s ancient Land Rover, Frieda and Leonard squashed irritably onto a single seat. They spilled out onto the gravel driveway, rubbing cramped legs and gulping mouthfuls of warm sunshine. Sylvia was perfectly dressed as always, in a pale linen skirt and blouse, hiding a late night behind a pair of dark sunglasses. Leonard and Frieda lingered beside the car, Leonard clutching a bag with his homework and Frieda for once bare legged, having dispensed with her usual woollen tights. She kept fiddling with her hem, as though unsure whether to hike it up above her knees. Juliet glanced at her, hoping that this visit was a good idea.

  She wished that Max could have come. No matter how tempting the invitation, he hadn’t left the solace of Fippenny Wood since the unfortunate voyage to New York. When she’d returned from America she’d intended not to see him again, or certainly not as a lover, and yet when she’d travelled to the cottage to inform him of this she’d found herself in bed with him. In the morning she’d examined her feelings with candour and concluded that since she was not in general weak-willed she must, in fact, still be in love with him. Over the last few years she’d come to accept that this was permanent and that Max’s limitations as a partner, rather than distressing her, suited her very well. For the most part she enjoyed neither of them being dependent on the other and her life in London being completely her own. The weekends with him in Dorset she savoured. On this occasion, however, she felt a twinge of regret, wishing for once that she could have loved an easier man, one who viewed weekends at country manors as a treat rather than a terror.

  The house was on the edge of Cranborne Chase, nestled snug in the crook of a huddle of low hills. Allan Gold had bought it that February and the driveway teemed with armies of builders, plumbers and electricians, all trying to haul the ancient and tumbledown mansion into the twentieth century. Juliet’s first feeling was one of pity. Beneath the scaffolding and blue tarpaulins was a handsome Georgian house, but like an ageing beauty whose husband won’t let her grow old in peace, carpenters had replaced her windows and roofers patched the broken slates and rebuilt the crumbling chimneys, tugging and pinching her into an approximation of her old charm. The work needed a season or two to soften, for now the paintwork was too bright, the varnish a little orange and the new tiles gleamed black, devoid of lichen. In order to re-point the stone, the wisteria had been stripped away from the front façade and all her creases and cracks were exposed in the glare of the June sunshine. Only the gardens remained wild and as yet untamed. A riot of fierce roses bloomed in yellows, crimson and white – some in tangled shrubs, others climbing the trees and dangling down from the canopies, so that it looked at first glance like the ash and elm bloomed with multicoloured blossom. Half a dozen canvas chairs had been set out on a long and uncut lawn that was already starting to seed, the feathered grass wobbling in the breeze. A young woman snoozed in one of the chairs, sucking her thumb, her cotton skirt riding up to reveal a pair of pink knickers. A pitcher of something that probably wasn’t lemonade sat on a low table in front of her.

  Juliet turned to Charlie. ‘I hope you brought your paints.’

  Charlie smiled and shook his head. ‘No, this is a weekend of pleasure.’

  ‘I brought mine,’ said Leonard, but Juliet had noticed a slight man sailing across the drive towards them and didn’t hear him.

  ‘This is my old pal Allan,’ said Charlie. ‘Allan, meet Juliet.’

  ‘So pleased you decided to come,’ declared Allan, kissing Juliet on the cheek and shaking Charlie’s hand. ‘And you brought the young people. Super.’ He turned to Frieda. ‘We’ll do the tour in a bit and I’ll show you Matt Rigby’s first guitar.’

  Frieda glowed.

  ‘I really am pleased Charlie twisted your arm,’ Allan was saying, smiling at Juliet.

  ‘I haven’t agreed to take the job yet,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, but you will,’ said Allan. ‘No one can resist my charms for long.’

  Juliet laughed, wondering why Charlie had told her Allan was queer, but hadn’t thought to mention he was Jewish.

  Everything about Allan was neat. He was trim and immaculately dressed in a beautifully cut suit and perfectly polished shoes. His wavy hair was combed smooth and the knot in his tie absolutely symmetrical. The small matted burrs that clung to Juliet’s trousers and to everyone else’s didn’t dare touch Allan. A crowd of rabbits hopped untidily across the grass and Allan frowned.

  ‘I haven’t got to the garden yet,’ he said, waving vaguely at the matted shrubs and crowded beds studded with ground elder and creeping ivy. ‘I’ll have to hire someone. I want to rebuild the orangery. I’d like to grow oranges. And maybe pineapples. And I’d like some peacocks. Do you know where I can get peacocks, Charlie?’

  Charlie shrugged but Sylvia shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t. Peacocks make an awful racket. Quite horrid.’

  ‘Oh, what a pity,’ said Allan, sounding terribly disappointed. ‘What about ornamental chickens?’

  He jumped back to avoid a pair of workmen struggling under the weight of several enormous planks. He watched them intently, and Juliet suspected that despite his aura of frenzied charm, Allan knew precisely what was happening in every cranny of the house and garden. He turned back to his guests with a warm grin.

  ‘You must be hot after your journey. Let’s go and find you something to drink,’ he said, leading them into the house.

  Juliet noticed that nailed to the magnificent gothic doorway was a small wooden mezuzah. Allan kissed his fingers and brushed it as he passed. ‘A year ago I was still living in my parents’ house in Manchester,’ he muttered, half to himself.

  The house reeked of damp and half the huge floorboards in the great hall had been uprooted like some strange indoor forest. The wallpaper was mostly stripped, and the remaining ribbons were darkened by mould and the ceiling soot-stained, but the light that filtered through the large windows filled the room with sunshine. Juliet sighed with happiness – despite the damage the hall had perfect Georgian proportions, the ideal balance of light and space.

  ‘I’m going to paint it all white,’ said Allan.

  Juliet shook her head. ‘Don’t. Not if you are serious about paintings. The glare will affect the colours. You want a soft green. Or an earthy orange might do.’

  ‘All right. You’re the boss.’

  Juliet raised an eyebrow, knowing she was being played, finding that she didn’t really mind.

  ‘Once it’s been painted the right colour, what would you hang here, above the fireplace?’ asked Allan.

  Juliet took a moment to consider. ‘This is a home, not a museum. You want something that people will notice as they walk in, but not such a statement that it detracts from the elegance of the room. And, you want a piece that you’ll enjoy for many years – not something that makes you smile once at an exhibition but something you’ll be happy to see when com
e downstairs in your dressing gown on a Sunday morning for a boiled egg.’

  ‘I’m a fan of the boiled egg,’ teased Allan.

  Juliet was quiet for a moment, tilting her head from side to side as she considered.

  ‘Not a Warhol. Not one of Jim Brownwick’s swimming-pool paintings.’

  She moved round and surveyed the space from another angle, and then nodded once. ‘I think a mural would be right. You want something painted directly onto the plaster, a painting that will become part of the fabric of the house. Even after you’re long gone it will stay like a Roman fresco. A symbol of house parties past.’

  ‘Oh, I like the sound of that,’ said Allan.

  ‘I like Max Langford—’

  ‘But no one else does,’ interrupted Charlie.

  ‘But he’s too rural, too strange for here,’ added Juliet, ignoring him and looking at Allan. ‘You want someone elegant and a little bit romantic. Tom Hopkins.’

  ‘Wonderful! Will you ask him?’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ sighed Juliet, realising that she would inevitably find the pictures for the rest of the house. She could rarely see a splendid wall without imagining the perfect picture to hang on it. And, some of her newer artists could really do with both the cache and the cash.

  ‘Get Tom Hopkins round this weekend. Call him now,’ said Allan, seeming to bounce on the spot.

  Juliet laughed. ‘There’s no hurry.’

  ‘Why wait?’ said Allan. ‘I’m going to ask him to do it, so why waste a minute?’

  Juliet looked at him and saw that beneath the blue eyes and the smile was a man enjoying the novelty of getting his own way.

  ‘Please,’ he said, more softly this time. ‘I’d like you to be here when he comes. Talk to him about the kind of thing he’ll paint. If it was about music I’d know exactly what to say but pictures isn’t really my thing.’