The Gallery of Vanished Husbands: A Novel (13 page)

Juliet was about to object to his rudeness when she realised he was laughing at her. He turned and walked away. The two rather large ladies sharing the sofa shuffled along to make space for her, and she unpacked Leonard’s easel from her bag, wishing that it wasn’t also covered with cartoon transfers. Standing beside the fireplace, arm resting on the scaled jaw of the dragon, Max cleared his throat.

‘I mightn’t do portraits any more but that shouldn’t stop any of you from having a go. Watercolours, oils, pencil, pastel, I don’t care. I don’t care whether it’s a likeness or not. That’s not what a portrait is. You want a perfect likeness take a damn photo.’

A tentative voice called from the back. ‘Who shall we paint?’

‘Me,’ replied Max.

 • • • 

Juliet’s portrait was not going well. Knowing how poor an artist she was herself, she disliked painting and had avoided it since school. It was a relief that Max had said the likeness was not important since hers looked nothing like him, in fact it didn’t look much like anyone. She was, however, grateful for the opportunity it gave her of studying him without embarrassment. He looked to be in his late thirties and was rather too thin, his hair was light brown, here and there fading to grey and yet he seemed oddly boyish, his movements impulsive and restless. He sat in an armchair beside the fire reading a newspaper and sipping whisky and soda, ignoring the strangers filling his sitting room. He certainly wasn’t allowing the class to inconvenience his evening. Juliet wondered why he’d invited them here since he guarded his privacy so tenaciously. Perhaps the whole thing was a joke to him – an artist who found it amusing to allow in his curious neighbours and then dupe them into painting him. The room was growing hot with all the bodies and Max roused himself from his paper, ambling to the windows and throwing them wide. The sound of the woods trickled into the room. The creak and crack of the trees. The scream of a fox.

‘I don’t think you have much of a future as an artist,’ said Max, pausing beside Juliet and examining her picture.

‘No,’ she agreed.

‘It really doesn’t look like me in the slightest.’

‘You said that likeness wasn’t important.’

‘So I did.’

The matrons squeezed beside her on the sofa scrutinised their own pictures, wondering if the great man was about to pass judgement on them too. From around the room there were audible sighs and huffs that their model had wandered away but no one dared to complain. Without glancing at another picture he left the room. Juliet looked about, wondering if that was the end of the lesson, but none of the other students appeared perturbed and continued to dab away. Sure enough, in a few minutes he returned with a pipe and a refreshed glass and settled back into his chair. He’d removed his jacket and the ladies beside Juliet began to mutter in exasperation. Sensing mutiny, Max spat out his pipe.

‘Not all subjects are easy. They fidget. Lose the clothes you’ve been painting them in. It’s a useful lesson.’

Max proceeded to ignore them again, devoting himself to his paper and his pipe. The other students picked up brushes, some starting with fresh sheets of paper, others resolutely continuing their portraits. Juliet abandoned hers, aware that Leonard could have done much better. At the end of an hour Max rose, drained his glass and moved around the room steady as a minute hand, stopping at each easel to offer in confidential tones thoughts and criticism. He was patient and kind, finding something to like in even the rudest attempt. He crouched by Juliet’s sofa again, suggesting to her neighbour a different technique to achieve a rougher texture. The woman was buttoned parson-like into a high-collared blouse and she thanked him, eyes watery with gratitude. Juliet was intrigued by the women’s apparent adoration – he was generous without stooping to flattery but she couldn’t see what merited such devotion. He reached her side again.

‘You’re much nicer to them,’ she said.

‘They want to learn. You don’t.’

Juliet shrugged. ‘I don’t see the point of aspiring to mediocrity. I’ll never be any good.’

‘Then why try at all?’

Max tore Juliet’s picture from the front of her watercolour pad and, screwing it up into a ball, lobbed it onto the fire where it blazed for a minute before crumbling into flakes of ash.

‘There. Now it’s doing some good.’

The class watched Juliet in silence. She felt the warmth of their looks, suddenly self-conscious, a child singled out by the teacher for poor behaviour. Through the open windows the sound of church bells tolling ten drifted in amid the whisper of leaves. Max clapped his hands.

‘Thank you all for coming. We’ll meet again in a fortnight.’

As the others rose, packing away brushes and easels and stuffing papers into shopping bags and satchels, Juliet didn’t move. The two lone gentlemen shuffled past, nodding thanks to Max, raising their hats to Juliet in unison. In five minutes the room was empty. The only sign that it had been busy with people were the dents in the sofa cushions, the abandoned chairs. Max showed no surprise that Juliet remained and for a moment she wondered if he hadn’t noticed. He prodded the fire with a toasting fork and spoke with his back turned.

‘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 belly, 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.