The Gallery of Vanished Husbands

by Natasha Solomons

  After a while Juliet slipped away from the bustle and crossed over to watch Leonard work. He’d rolled up his sleeves and his pale skin was freckled with paint. Juliet observed the scene expand across his wall – a stag with colossal branched antlers paused at the top of the hill, birds and leaves perched on them. The sun hovered above the ridge, still orange but holding the thought of dusk. His painting lacked the finish of the older artists, and here and there the perspective had gone askew, but it buzzed with energy. Oh, thought Juliet, oh, I hadn’t noticed how good you’ve become. But worry tinged her pride. Leonard was gifted, she realised, but would it bring him happiness? She considered her artists at Wednesday’s – success was as much down to luck as skill. She thought of Max hiding from the world in his dark wood. She closed her eyes. ‘Please let Leonard go to university,’ she murmured. ‘Let him want something else – to be a doctor, a lawyer.’ My God, she thought with a rueful smile, I’ve turned into a Jewish mother in spite of myself. She glanced back at Leonard’s slight figure – I wish upon my son an ordinary life of fatness and fatherhood and simple joys.

  Evening slid into night-time and the moon sailed high and full above the ridgeway, illuminating the chalk paths snaking up the hillside and casting a weird snow-light on the garden, the ash trees throwing thin moon shadows on the gravel. In the corner of the room, people began to dance to unheard music. Then trays of cakes and biscuits from the kitchen appeared and were passed around the gathering. Realising they were hungry, Juliet and Frieda helped themselves to poppy-seed rugelach. A group of girls lying on beanbags beside the door began to croon in wavering harmonies, and Juliet and Frieda found themselves swaying in time. Laughing, Juliet grabbed her daughter’s hand and to her delight Frieda did not pull away. Instead she tugged Juliet to her feet and started to dance. They shuffled in a makeshift waggle on the stairs, toppling into one another. Someone produced a guitar and started to play, the music shifting and weaving amid the sound of another instrument – a zither perhaps or a harp, Juliet decided. Zither was a funny word. Zither. Zither. She tried it again and started to giggle. The word caught on her tongue, she tried to explain to Frieda what was funny but her mouth was fat and wouldn’t make the words and that was funnier still. Frieda’s cheeks were flushed and she looked so pretty and Juliet wanted to tell her but her mouth still wouldn’t work and that made her terribly, terribly sad. And the music was louder now, the windows rattling, or maybe it was her teeth and then Frieda was letting go of her hand and running away up the stairs, her face no longer rosy but greenish as she retched in her hand, her long hair hanging in sweaty strings. Juliet wanted to rush after her but her legs were marshmallows and as she tried to follow, she found herself sitting back down on the stairs with a thud. A little too late, she wondered what had been in the rugelach besides poppy-seed.

  ‘Hash,’ said Allan. ‘Just a touch.’

  Juliet looked at him in surprise, not realising she’d spoken aloud, not realising he was even there.

  ‘Oh,’ said Juliet. ‘Oh dear.’ She tried to tell Allan that she wasn’t interested in drugs, not at all, and he really ought to have warned her and she would like to find Frieda now and take the children home and she was actually very cross but all that came out was ‘Bother.’ She looked down and saw Leonard having an earnest conversation with a tall man with scruffy hair, who reminded Juliet a little of a chap on the cover of one of Frieda’s LPs.

  ‘Yes, that’s Matt Rigby, all right,’ said Allan.

  Juliet frowned. Was she simply beaming her thoughts direct into Allan’s mind? The hash must be very powerful indeed.

  Leonard and Charlie and the man who was Matt Rigby were building a fire in the grate, chucking onto it the wormier of the floorboards and dousing it in booze so that flames shot up the chimney, the roar briefly heard over the music like a cry from the Serengeti.

  Allan squeezed in beside Juliet on the stair, placing an arm loosely around her shoulders.

  ‘You see, you had to come. There wouldn’t have been a happening without you. Look at us. You and me. A couple of Yidden. But they all want to be here. They all want to be part of it.’ He laughed, but his face was sad. ‘A queer and a divorcée in the midst of it all.’

  Juliet was sweating. She felt it trickle between her shoulder blades and coat her eyelids. Somewhere was the thud thud of a drum, vaguely she realised it was the beat of her own heart. She leaned forward, suddenly overcome with the need to tell Allan the truth.

  ‘I’m not a divorcée. My husband never divorced me. But he never divorced his first wife either so I was never really married at all. I’m an adulteress. Well, I don’t really know what I am.’

  Allan leaned in, his pupils huge. ‘You’re wonderful. You’re Juliet Montague and you’re super.’

  Juliet heard herself giggle without finding anything funny. The sound burst out of her with a pop.

  ‘Juliet Montague,’ she said the name slowly, tasting it. ‘Am I her? I was never actually married to George Montague – it was all pretend, all a lie. Am I really Juliet Montague after all?’

  Allan leaped to his feet, swaying on the stairs. His tie was skew-whiff and his hair had broken free of its Brylcreem and fell into untidy waves. There was a red stain of something dribbled down the front of his shirt.

  ‘You have to start again. Burn the old Juliet. Throw her onto the fire!’

  Through the fog, Juliet experienced a pang of concern. Physically the old Juliet was very much the same as the new, and she didn’t fancy singeing either.

  ‘That sounds sore,’ she said.

  ‘Burn something symbolic!’ Allan roared with laughter.

  ‘Oh,’ said Juliet.

  She glanced down into the hall where the flames swayed in the grate, revellers dancing in front of them, girls and boys stripped to the waist in the heat, the firelight turning their skin a warm orange. One of the boys was Leonard. He danced with his eyes half closed. Charlie dipped his paintbrush into the ash and started to scrawl a sketch on Leonard’s bare back, signing his shoulder with a flourish. In turn, Leonard smeared charcoal on his brush and drew a huge swirling moustache on Charlie. One of the girls shrieked with laughter and waved at Leonard who obliged by drawing her a moustache too. Suddenly, everyone was daubing one another’s bare skin with patterns, taking handfuls of ash from where it had spewed out of the fire and rubbing it on arms and wrists and cheeks and brows.

  ‘Come on,’ said Allan, tugging Juliet to her feet and drawing her into the throng. ‘Burn the old!’

  Still clutching her hand he hauled her through the crowd and to the hearth. He emptied out his pockets, tipping the contents onto the flames – briefly a pad of ten pound notes glowed red and then fluttered into dust.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ cried Juliet.

  Allan only laughed. ‘Your turn.’

  Juliet reached into her pocket, drawing out a piece of hair elastic and her purse. Allan was right; she needed to burn all ties with George. She wouldn’t be trapped any longer. She rummaged in the purse searching for something saying ‘Juliet Montague’. Her fingers touched her library card. She pulled it out and tossed it straight into the flames, watching the cardboard glow briefly, the black letters MRS JULIET MONTAGUE ADULT MEMBER flutter and then vanish. With a tinge of regret she remembered that she had three books due back next week and that she’d have to get another ticket.

  Leonard took her hand. His fingers were slick with sweat, and the patterns on his back smudged. Juliet noticed he was clasping an exercise book. A second later, he tossed it onto the fire.

  ‘What was that, darling?’ she asked.

  ‘My Latin homework,’ said Leonard. ‘And you should know, I’m probably going to fail the test on Monday. And the one after that. The thing is, Latin doesn’t matter. Only painting does.’

  Juliet sighed and squeezed his hand. ‘We shouldn’t have had those biscuits. Rugelach can be very dangerous.’

  Leonard smiled. He didn’t tell Juliet that he hadn’
t eaten any of the rugelach and his mind was perfectly clear. He suspected that she wouldn’t remember anything he’d said, but at least he had tried to warn her.

  • • •

  They drove home in silence. No one wanted to speak. To their collective relief, Charlie turned up the radio and everyone stared out the windows watching the sunny afternoon drift by, the rushing hedgerows buttered with yellow cowslips and daubed with dog roses. The Rigbys came on the radio.

  ‘Turn it off,’ snapped Frieda.

  ‘Why?’ asked Charlie, nonetheless switching it off.

  ‘All of that, and Matt Rigby didn’t even come,’ said Frieda.

  Leonard turned awkwardly in his seat to look at his sister. ‘Yes he did. All of them came.’

  Frieda gawped at him. ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I talked to him. He’s okay. We chatted about music and art and then he drew a penguin on my neck. Look.’

  He pulled down his collar to reveal a charcoal smear that once might have resembled a penguin. Frieda peered at it and then closed her eyes and sank back into silence. That was it. The final sign. Matt Rigby had come to the party and she had missed him because she had accidently eaten hash and was being sick in the loo. Her head pulsed with distant pain and she remembered the previous night. She’d lain on the ripped linoleum floor, her head wedged beside the toilet bowl, the porcelain cooling her forehead. The sound of music had wafted up between the floorboards, and she’d thought she could see it – the notes were waves of blue and green with speckles of gold and red. They’d caught in the light fitting on the ceiling, and banged against the window before seeping out of the cracks in the glass. She’d lain on the floor for hours, alternately vomiting and watching the music drift through her fingers. There had been an odd-shaped stain on the ceiling, a gathering of mould that looked like a drawing of Moses in the storybook her grandfather had read to her when she was very little. Moses had opened his mouth and swallowed the music notes that had swum up to the ceiling like multicoloured tropical fishes. Never mind that the Rigbys hadn’t showed up, she’d decided at the time. Watching Moses gulp fishes was much better. He had opened his mouth wider than the world and between his teeth she’d seen a galaxy of weaving fish.

  As the lanes gave way to roads and traffic and the grey haze of the city, Frieda realised it had been a sign. She wasn’t supposed to meet the band and she wasn’t destined to marry Matt Rigby. All this time she’d been toying with the trappings of religion to annoy her mother but now for the first time she felt the tingle of faith. Somehow her pantomime had turned real. When she reached home, she’d put on her thick tights and on Friday she’d go to shul with her grandfather.

  After they arrived home Juliet took a long shower. When she came downstairs in her dressing gown, to her dismay she found Frieda unpacking the crate containing Rabbi Plotkin’s kosher plates. She stood in the kitchen doorway and watched as Frieda stacked them neatly into the cupboard. She waited in silence, a pain in her chest.

  ‘You’re not to touch these,’ said Frieda without turning round.

  CATALOGUE ITEM 42

  The Last Time I Saw Her,

  Max Langford, Oil on Wood, 20 x 35in, 1966

  MRS GREENE WAS thrilled about the wedding. In her gloomier moments Juliet believed her mother was more excited than the bride to be. The only advantage of the short engagement was that Mrs Greene couldn’t purchase any more prospective hats – the spare room had metamorphosed into a milliner’s showroom lined with candy-coloured effusions. Frieda was only quietly delighted, flushing a perfect pink when teased about the handsomeness of the groom. Juliet didn’t think he was handsome in the least, deciding that the best one could say of Dov was that he was unobtrusive, like a plain desk lamp or inoffensive curtain fabric. He blinked and gulped a lot as though trying to swallow his Adam’s apple and keep it down. It never occurred to Juliet that she was the cause of his anxiety. Despite all the years, the stigma of her status pursued her like a shadow and Frieda never confided to her mother the anxious discussions between the rabbis and Dov’s conservative family. The Cohens were very fond of Frieda and understood that the boy seemed to like her very much indeed (in fact, it almost amounted to passion, which was only just respectable) but since the arrival of the first Rabbi Cohen in Britain fifty years earlier they had enjoyed a seamless respectability and no one wanted the Montagues besmirching that beige, unblemished record. Everybody liked Mrs Greene and Mr Greene was a solid fellow, a real mensch. But George Montague? No one really remembered him but they told one another that they did, and his weakness for cards bloomed into a seasoned wickedness. The only decent thing that could be said about George was that having taken it upon himself to vanish, he wasn’t present to trouble the decent folk of Chislehurst. Juliet Montague, however, remained a problem. First there was the gallery and the indecent paintings – Mrs Cohen had ventured up to town for a private view, just to see what was what, mind, and discovered that the place was full of nudes – girls and even boys with everything on display like wieners in a hotdog stand. The next problem with Juliet was the boyfriend. Juliet was rumoured to have had a lover for many years, an older man, a lascivious painter (‘Was there any other kind?’ Mrs Cohen asked the good ladies on the luncheon committee) who wasn’t even Jewish. But the last obstacle to decency was Juliet herself. It went beyond what she did (peddle obscene paintings) or that she had a (goy) lover. It was something about Juliet. She was always very polite and even baked the odd strudel for her mother’s summer parties. Still, nearly everyone agreed that there was something about Juliet Montague that couldn’t be trusted. She might make strudel, but Mr Harris had a sore stomach afterwards and she was suspected of using lard instead of margarine. She was polite but there was pertness in her gaze.

  Juliet tried to ignore the whispers as best she could. She knew the tittle-tattle upset her parents and for that she was sorry, but she refused to believe that it wounded Frieda or it was she who brought out Dov’s bullfrog gulping and glistening brow. Juliet found it impossible to imagine how this damp young man, who seemed to wilt like a heat-addled tulip in her presence, could be engaging when she wasn’t there. She asked Leonard who, though not a fan of Dov, prevaricated out of loyalty to his sister, declaring that he could be ‘rather funny now and again’ – though the only instance he could think of was when once before dinner Dov had forgotten he’d put his hat on his chair and sat on it, squashing it quite flat. It was funny. It was also an accident. In truth there was nothing poor Dov could do to make Juliet like him or approve of the match – she simply thought that at nineteen Frieda was far too young to marry.

  ‘Are you marrying him to punish me?’ Juliet asked her, more than once.

  Frieda rearranged the long material of her skirt and fixed Juliet with the disapproving look she couldn’t bear.

  ‘Mum, I know you find it hard to fathom but my marrying Dov isn’t actually about you.’

  Juliet licked her lips and wished she could find the right words. There had never been that ease between them that she enjoyed with Leonard. It wasn’t that she loved him more, she just never fretted about what to say to him. She took a breath.

  ‘Well, darling, if it’s about sex, you don’t have to get married. It’s not like it was. We can go and get you some pills from the doctor and you can sleep with Dov, if that’s what you want. Maybe even other men.’

  ‘I don’t want to sleep with other men. I only want to sleep with Dov.’

  Two angry points of colour appeared on Frieda’s cheeks, but for once Juliet ignored the warning sign and carried on.

  ‘Take the pill then and only sleep with Dov. But go to university. Get a degree. If you still want him, marry him when you graduate.’

  Frieda narrowed her eyes. ‘I don’t want to go university. I want to be a wife and a mother. That’s the most important thing in the world.’

  Juliet felt the full sting of her criticism and it stuck in her throat like a fishbone. She looked away so that
Frieda wouldn’t see the tears that threatened. Try as she might, she couldn’t face the thought of organising the wedding. All those religious types with their marauding happiness, pleased at the wedding, pleased that they’d saved another soul. She blinked and smiled. The best she could hope for was sufficient time for Frieda to change her mind.

  ‘When were you thinking? Perhaps next January, I’ve always liked winter weddings. All that red.’

  ‘June,’ said Frieda, daring Juliet to contradict her.

  ‘Oh, but darling, I can’t organise it in time for June. There’s the summer show at the gallery.’

  Frieda sighed and pouted, giving an excellent impression of being hurt. ‘That’s all right. Granny will take care of everything.’

  Juliet swallowed, understanding that this was what Frieda had really wanted. Juliet could not be trusted. She must be kept far away from delicate social arrangements and Jewish events. There was nothing more to be done. She retreated.

  Granddaughter and grandmother delighted in colluding. A June wedding. The flowers would be marvellous and they’d have English strawberries for dessert. Mrs Greene was determined to arrange everything properly, as if the trouble with Juliet’s marriage could be put down to an inadequate wedding with substandard floral arrangements. If every detail in Frieda’s was correct then, like a shrub planted carefully in the right soil, everything else would follow just as it should.

  Juliet tried to take an interest and study guest lists and seating plans but seeing how few of her friends Mrs Greene and Frieda had allowed, she only felt more miserable. She pleaded for the inclusion of the gallery boys – though they weren’t boys any longer, but men over thirty with families of their own.

  ‘Darling, it’s nice that you’ve invited Philip, but really you must ask his wife. And what about Charlie and Marjorie? And Jim simply has to come. He’ll be terribly hurt if he’s not invited.’

  Frieda scowled and bit her lip. Her crush on Philip had not receded even as his hairline started to thin, and she’d never quite forgiven him for marrying the gleaming Caroline five years before.