The Gallery of Vanished Husbands

by Natasha Solomons

  ‘Caroline won’t come. We’re not smart enough for her.’

  ‘Of course she will. Philip’s terribly fond of you.’

  Begrudgingly, Caroline was added to the list.

  ‘Must I have Charlie? He’s Leonard’s friend, not mine.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Juliet. ‘And Marjorie too.’

  ‘I don’t like her,’ said Frieda.

  Juliet sighed. Few people did. Charlie had surprised everyone by marrying Marjorie, the nude model. She’d been an extremely pretty girl, but the roses had faded fast. She’d not lived up to the promise of youthful beauty, and instead of transforming into a lovely woman had become an ordinary and rather unhappy one. Whenever Juliet caught Charlie looking at his wife, he always seemed to wear an expression of surprise and disappointment. Juliet felt sorry for her. Charlie’s family were not kind to Marjorie – the daughter of a painter-

  decorator was not their sort. The jokes that Marjorie’s father liked to make about himself and his son-in-law being part of the same profession (‘Paint’s just paint in the end, however you slap it on!’) were not appreciated. That wedding had been an absolute disaster, Juliet remembered. Valerie had got frightfully drunk before the ceremony and Juliet had had to take her for a lie down during the speeches. En route, Valerie had grabbed her arm and confided in a gin-scented whisper, ‘I’d rather he’d married you – even a divorced Jewess would be better than this.’ Unfortunately Valerie turned out to be quite right – once Charlie lost interest in painting Marjorie, they had nothing left in common. Marjorie liked being in pictures, not talking about them. They’d not had any children and in disappointment Charlie continued to pour his affection onto Leonard. Marjorie tried to befriend him too and to Juliet’s relief at least Leonard was kind to her.

  ‘Marjorie comes,’ said Juliet. ‘And Jim.’

  Frieda huffed. ‘But, suppose, you know.’ She squirmed. ‘He might bring someone with him.’

  Juliet laughed. ‘He will not bring a gentleman friend to your wedding, Frieda, and I’m quite certain that he won’t flirt with the rabbi. Jim isn’t partial to beards.’

  Frieda scowled, hating being teased. ‘I don’t think Dov’s family would like it. It is against the law.’

  Juliet looked up sharply. ‘Then I strongly suggest you don’t tell them things that are none of their business. Don’t pick up the Cohens’ nastier habits, Frieda.’

  Frieda said nothing and added his name to the list in tiny writing, as though if she wrote it very small, no one would notice him on the day itself.

  ‘And you missed off Max. No need to post his invitation, I’ll give it to him when I see him at the weekend.’

  Frieda studied her mother with steady green eyes for a moment before declaring softly, ‘I won’t have that man at my wedding.’

  Frieda’s childish dislike had hardened like old varnish into hatred. Over the years Juliet had done her best to ignore it but now she recoiled, jolted by the revulsion in her daughter’s voice.

  ‘He’s your friend,’ Frieda continued. ‘I won’t have him. I won’t have Dov and his family look at that man and at you and say things. He is not coming.’

  At that, Frieda actually stamped her bare foot on the carpet and Juliet watched her open-mouthed, unsure whether to laugh or shake her.

  • • •

  Later in the week the boys offered little sympathy. When Juliet arrived at the gallery, Charlie was in a foul mood. He’d spent the last month labouring on an abstract triptych far from his usual style and, observing Juliet’s indifferent shrug, concluded that it wasn’t working, wasn’t going to work. He started to paint over the canvas in thick, furious strokes of white, experiencing a masochistic delight as weeks of work vanished in a snowstorm.

  ‘What did you expect? She’s never liked Max.’

  ‘It’s Freudian. Girls never like the chap who’s diddling their mother. Unless it’s their father of course,’ added Jim helpfully.

  ‘I know she avoided him, but she seems to actually hate him,’ said Juliet.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so upset. It’s not like Max would even go with you to the wedding,’ said Charlie. ‘I mean can you see him coming to Chislehurst and staying in your little house and putting on a morning suit as you fasten a pair of pearlescent cufflinks and dab cologne behind his ears?’

  Juliet ignored him and turned away to look through a selection of canvases Jim had brought by. While the studio still formed part of the gallery, Charlie was the only one to use it regularly. For the first years of his marriage he’d worked mainly at his and Marjorie’s home in Dorset but slowly he’d crept back to London a night and then a week at a time. Sometimes she suspected that he slept at the gallery. Jim and Philip no longer worked in the studio, and while Juliet tried to encourage new painters to use the space if they needed it, Charlie usually frightened them away within a month or two – accusing them of using his brushes or leaving doors unlocked or talking too much.

  She studied the first of Jim’s paintings, a silkscreen print of a Devon swimming pool, the water cool in the sunlight, ripples like fish scales, and smiled. Unhurried, she spread out the rest, already hanging them in her mind. As well as mounting the gallery shows, Juliet sold Charlie, Jim and a dozen others around the world. She didn’t sell Philip’s paintings. She’d never cared for his racehorse portraits and they had proved too lucrative for him to spend time on other work (Juliet suspected that Caroline, like most thoroughbreds, was expensive to keep). While Philip remained a friend, he had little need of her services.

  Juliet’s favourite part of the year was the summer exhibition where she displayed now-established artists like Jim alongside new discoveries.

  ‘Who’ve you found for this year’s show?’ asked Jim, surveying the canvases stacked in piles against the studio walls.

  She sighed. ‘No one yet. But I’m going to take Leonard to the art school shows and dowse for talent there.’

  ‘Leonard’s getting pretty good himself,’ said Charlie. ‘Did you see the finished collage?’

  Juliet shook her head, still transfixed by the blue ripples in Jim’s pool and only half listening.

  ‘You should think about including one of his pictures. Give the kid some confidence,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Juliet. ‘Oh, I like this one.’

  She pointed to one of Jim’s canvases, a large screen-print of a snub-nose adolescent boy fast asleep beside green lido waters.

  ‘We’ll show this here, but I’m going to put on a frightfully high reserve. I think we should send it to New York and see what they could do.’

  Jim shrugged, smiling at her frank enthusiasm. Charlie sped up his whitewashing, irritated that Juliet hadn’t shown any great zeal for his latest pieces, more irritated that he didn’t like them either.

  ‘Tom Hopkins has some great new work,’ said Juliet. ‘I’m going to include at least three. I’d like them all in the show but there simply isn’t room.’

  She fumbled through a series of unframed canvases stacked against a wall and then brought out a painting of a naked boy bathing beside a millpond, blue evening light shading him, above a purple sky scattered with dandelion-clock stars. It was a blend of English pastoral idyll and Picasso colour games. Jim and Charlie came closer to look. Charlie laughed.

  ‘I like your bather, Jim, but the old boy’s got there first.’

  ‘Youth doesn’t have the patent on innovation,’ said Juliet. ‘And besides, the two of you aren’t so young any more. In a year or two you’ll both be considered part of the establishment and you’ll have to start smoking cigars and playing bridge.’

  ‘Show me the others,’ said Jim.

  Juliet rooted through the stack of canvases, producing a series of Tom Hopkins’ paintings, most of them portraits of young men sleeping, eating, daydreaming, swimming – never smiling, never looking at the viewer, always waiting to be watched.

  ‘I like Tom,’ said Jim, half to himself. ‘Sometimes I think we�
�re the only two figurative painters left in bloody England.’

  ‘There’s always Max,’ said Juliet.

  Jim and Charlie did not reply.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Juliet laid out canvases around the gallery, experimenting with various possible hanging orders and then rejecting them with a huff. She barely noticed the light fading to yellow, and rain starting to rattle on the flat roof.

  ‘Put out everything you’re considering for the exhibition so far,’ said Charlie. ‘Put it all over the floor, against the walls, everywhere.’

  ‘I’m getting on just fine,’ said Juliet.

  Charlie shook his head. ‘Do it. I want to show you something.’

  She didn’t move.

  ‘Please.’

  Juliet sighed and with Charlie’s help propped the remaining pictures all over the gallery. In an hour, everything was laid out and the floor entirely hidden. It looked like a garish, giant patchwork quilt.

  ‘Now,’ said Charlie. ‘Do you see?’

  Juliet looked at him and frowned, shook her head.

  ‘All right. Stand on the chair and then look.’

  She balanced on an old fretwork chair, and peered down at the sea of pictures. Some were abstract – sharp grey lines pierced blue expanses, here and there advertising slogans were daubed in sickly yellow, there were gouaches, collages, watercolours and reliefs. As always, Juliet found herself seeking out Max’s pieces. They weren’t recent works but paintings from several years before. When they hadn’t sold the first year Juliet decided she’d exhibit them again and had done for the last few summers. It was her gallery after all and by now they seemed to her talismans of good fortune – no matter that Max’s pictures didn’t sell; she was sure they brought luck to all the others.

  ‘You can see the problem then,’ said Charlie following her gaze, his voice light with relief. ‘I knew you would.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Juliet still standing on the chair and feeling quite ridiculous.

  Charlie took a breath and spoke slowly, his tone measured and prepared.

  ‘Max’s paintings don’t fit. Everything else is modern. You find painters with ambition who look to the future and try to imagine it in pencil and charcoal and oil and glass. Max has given up. Look, those pictures of his aren’t even new. Or maybe they are but they’re just the same as everything else he’s done for the past twenty years and I can’t tell the bloody difference any more.’

  Juliet climbed off the chair and stared at Charlie and then at Jim who lurked in the corner refusing to catch her eye.

  ‘I like Max’s work,’ she said. ‘It’s voiced. I like that it’s different.’

  ‘No. You like Max. His work is nothing but scraps of nostalgia. It’s titbits of old England with flourishes of over-the-top ornamental design. He’s like a pre-war Liberty catalogue.’

  Charlie’s voice shook as he spoke, whether from fervour or nerves Juliet couldn’t tell. A warm clot of anger settled in her stomach like undigested matzo balls.

  ‘He is a great painter.’

  ‘He had the potential to be a great painter. You see only what he might have been, not what he is. Max Langford is a disappointment. A man who went off to paint the war and came back crippled. Now he works with one hand tied behind his back. He’s surrendered to neo-Romantic shit and I won’t,’ Charlie paused, glancing at Jim, ‘we won’t, exhibit with him any more.’

  Juliet surveyed them both, conscious that her hands were trembling. ‘You’re both as cruel as Frieda.’

  Charlie shrugged, refusing to rise. ‘You can either show his work or ours.’

  Juliet turned to Jim. ‘You agree?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, studying paint spatters on the floor. ‘It’s a blind spot for you, my love. You just don’t see his stuff any more, not really.’

  ‘Supposing I choose Max?’

  Charlie blinked and said nothing. The rain on the roof swelled into a gallop. They both knew she hadn’t sold a single painting of Max’s in more than a year. Juliet’s mouth was dry and her tongue stuck like Velcro to the roof of her mouth. Even after all these years of friendship and working alongside one another, Charlie could still make her feel like the provincial girl from the shtetl. She’d never quite managed to shake off the littleness of her beginnings.

  ‘Talk to him,’ said Charlie. ‘Soon.’

  • • •

  It was Tom’s advice she sought before speaking to Max. They were both heading to Dorset for the weekend to see him and met on the train. Tom insisted on their sitting for the duration of the journey in the first-class buffet car, ordering champagne as soon as they sat down.

  ‘Really, I wish you wouldn’t,’ said Juliet.

  Tom re-folded his long legs. ‘It’s the done thing in first class, I believe. Anyway, don’t all ladies like champagne?’

  Juliet smiled. ‘Actually, I’d much prefer a cup of tea.’

  Tom threw his head back and laughed, a fulsome sound. ‘That’s why we’re pals, you and me.’

  Tom listened as Juliet spoke, head cocked to one side like a garden blackbird waiting for crumbs. She noticed that he looked tired. The once thick dark hair was combed with white, and his skin was yellow and translucent – like an old painting starting to crack. She broke off mid-sentence to ask, ‘Are you quite all right, Tom? You’re looking a little thin.’

  He smiled. ‘Working too much, eating too little. Nothing a touch of gin and a few hot dinners won’t fix.’

  Juliet shifted on her seat, not quite believing him, but deciding it was rude to ask more questions. Tom rubbed his eyes and gave a sigh of real weariness.

  ‘I don’t know what you do about this other business,’ he said. ‘I always thought that Charlie was fond of our Max.’

  ‘He used to be.’

  ‘It’s a wonder they don’t chuck me out too. I’m nothing but a mythmaker and landscape painter. I haven’t changed subject in more than thirty years. The world flits by faster and faster but me and mine stay just the same.’

  Juliet reached out and took his hand. ‘Don’t even think it, Tom. Everyone at the gallery loves your work. None of the boys wants you to go. It’s Max they’ve got it in for.’

  The train stuttered through the suburbs, the grey kitchen-sink-school cityscape giving way to green pastoral and hedges strewn with feathered lace. Tom said little and hunched in the corner of his seat, so quiet that Juliet wondered if he’d fallen asleep. Usually this part of the journey relaxed her – as the train carried her further from the city the knot in her stomach would ease, but today it remained, tight as heartburn. If she didn’t include Max’s pictures in the show, would he even notice? In the seven years she’d known him he’d never been to a single exhibition. No, she shook her head, she couldn’t do that, it smelled of cowardice. Perhaps she could hold a solo exhibition of his work next year. Fidgeting on the hard seat, she realised with unease that she couldn’t remember having seen a new painting of Max’s for months – he’d never be able to fill a solo show with new work. The train eased into Salisbury and Tom interrupted her thoughts. He stood abruptly, knocking over her tea and, not pausing to apologise, rummaged in the luggage rack. He heaved down a painting swaddled in brown paper and thrust it into her arms.

  ‘Take this. Give it to Max. I can’t come this weekend.’

  He turned and hurried to the doors, stepping out onto the platform. Juliet dropped the package onto the seat and rushed after him, calling from the doorway.

  ‘Tom! What are you doing? Come back. Give it to him yourself.’

  He was already halfway down the platform, a thin, stooped figure. It started to drizzle. He turned and called back to her. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t. Give him. Give him,’ he paused, swallowed, ‘my best.’

  The guard slammed the door as the train pulled away from the platform. Juliet craned forward, leaning out of the window. ‘Tom! Tom!’

  He waved and vanished into the hurrying crowd.

  •
• •

  Max didn’t notice that Tom wasn’t with Juliet. He was making supper when she arrived, and she suspected that he’d forgotten Tom should have been there too. She meant to give him Tom’s parcel straight away, but somehow she propped it up against the banister in the hall and didn’t remember it at all until the letter arrived a few days later. That evening was the first of spring, and they took their plates outside to perch on the front step and watch the first of the sleep-addled bees emerge from the trees. It was too early for the leaf canopy to be in full umbrella and so the late afternoon light slid through the trees, making green and yellow mosaics flit across their skin. Max was in good spirits, loquacious even, and just as Juliet began to wonder about the source, she noticed the tell-tale stain of paint on his fingers and beneath his nails. Leaning over to kiss him, she inhaled the once familiar smell of linseed. For months she hadn’t smelled it on him. The scent used to be part of him and when it disappeared it had taken her a month or two to place what was different – like biting into a favourite cake and realising it was missing an essential ingredient. She breathed deeply and smiled. Max was painting again. As they ate rabbit stew and sipped badly fermented plum wine, Juliet couldn’t bear to puncture the smooth perfection of the evening. She resolved to tell him about the gallery and the wedding in the morning.

  When she woke, Max was already up and working in the lean-to shed at the side of the kitchen. Alone she made coffee and wandered around the house, savouring the busy stillness of the wood. Early sunshine rushed through the windows, warm and yellow, throwing buttery light on all the paintwork and under its glare Juliet noticed for the first time that some of the ornamentation was starting to look old and worn. The ochre dragon on the fireplace had lost his gleam, his scales chipped like an old tooth, his crimson flames no longer as fierce. The golden camels caravanning around the cornicing had faded into the desert behind, so that only the black beads of their eyes shone against the sand. Here and there Max had tried to patch them up – the butterflies fluttering across the windowpane had re-glossed wings, but although it could have been her imagination or the effect of the light, their fretwork patterning lacked the delicacy of before. Juliet sighed and decided that, much like herself, the house’s inhabitants were simply starting to age.