The Gallery of Vanished Husbands: A Novel (29 page)

Leonard shrugged.

‘Ah, well,’ said Tom. ‘I suppose I should find your mother and receive my instructions. Do you know where she is?’

Leonard wandered over to one of the large picture windows overlooking the lawns, and saw on the grass a series of striped deckchairs like half a dozen sweetshop bags. The afternoon was ripening into a rosy evening and the light glowed on the figures in the chairs. Juliet lazed on the first, her feet bare and hair swept back beneath a red scarf that dangled down like the scarlet braids of a Lady Godiva. Charlie sprawled on another, scowling in his sleep. Allan sat perfectly upright on a blue-striped one, his trousers falling into immaculate creases, a copy of
The Times
in one hand, a small cigar in the other, the ash tumbling into an obedient pyramid. Above, darts of wagtails shot across the sky, high enough it seemed to pierce the scraps of cloud.

‘Shall I go and wake her for you?’ asked Leonard.

‘No,’ said Tom with a chuckle. ‘I think we’ve found our subject.’

‘Can I paint some of it?’asked Leonard.

‘Are you any good?’

‘Yes,’ said Leonard.

Tom smiled at his youthful confidence. ‘Let’s see, shall we,’ he said, handing him a brush.

Leonard took it, pushing away all thoughts of Latin verbs.

Tom hesitated, brush aloft. ‘Ought we to go and check that your mother approves the plan?’

Leonard shook his head. ‘I’ve only been here an afternoon and no one will mind. It’s chaos. I say we just get on with it.’

Tom shrugged. ‘And I suppose if Mr Gold doesn’t like it, he can always paint over it.’

Tom and Leonard worked quickly, first preparing the surface with a warm wash of colour and then as it dried, each chose a wall and started to paint. Tom began with the figure of Juliet, her crimson scarf a flame in the afternoon sunlight. On the opposite wall Leonard sketched the broad back of the hill, feeling his shoulders relax and sink as he worked, as though he was soaking in a hot, hot bath. Slowly the grass appeared in a green shadow creeping across the ridgeway, then the darkness of the woods and the cleft of the chalk path, a rib of bone through the middle. The birds circled, eyes yellow.

‘I like it,’ said Charlie’s voice from behind him.

Leonard grunted in thanks, but did not turn around.

‘What are you dilly-dallying for?’ said Tom. ‘Pick up a brush.’

Charlie frowned. ‘Oh no. I can’t do that. Juliet wanted you to do it.’

‘For Christ’s sake, man. Stop whining,’ snapped Tom. ‘Take the wall behind the fireplace.’

Charlie obeyed.

 • • • 

The other guests and revellers arrived in trickles. They wandered through the front door – left open to air the paint fumes – and most of them ventured no further than the hallway. Eventually someone decided it would be useful if the remaining floorboards were replaced and the house was briefly filled with hammering. Next beanbags and blankets were spread across the floor and stairs, and everyone sat and watched and smoked. As evening slid into dusk, candles appeared and the painters worked on, their shadow brushes huge against the walls.

Juliet and Frieda sat together on the stairs. The house was filling with smoke from cigarettes and joints and the fizz of burning tea lights so that the three painters appeared to be working in a mist. Juliet watched the painting unfurl across the walls, the three friezes stretching out towards one another. The moment they met would be something, a joining of the world.

Frieda scrutinised the door, waiting for the moment when the Rigbys would appear. For a while her heart rushed and thudded – every new person who emerged through the gloom might be Matt Rigby – and then it slowed. Disappointment seemed inevitable. They would never come. She had nicked herself shaving her legs with Leonard’s stupid Woolworth’s razor for no reason. She ought to have worn her thick brown tights and frumpy dress to irritate her mother after all. Angrily she wiped the rosy lipstick from her mouth.

 • • • 

Joints slid from reveller to reveller but Juliet and Frieda passed them straight on, never venturing a puff. Vague disquiet tickled at Juliet – this wasn’t a place for kids – but somehow she couldn’t draw herself away from the paintings emerging on the walls. And besides, she told herself, the partygoers now arriving looked no older than Frieda. She swallowed the voice that wondered about the parents of those other kids.

Tom, Charlie and Leonard moved quickly now, their movements quite distinct, like three conductors of a Mozart concerto; same notes on the page, different sound. Tom remained in his shirt and tie, quiet, methodical – his brush gliding across the wall in confident, easy strokes. He was painting Juliet’s face and to her amusement she looked boyish – an Orlando lost in Arden, snoozing in the forest, hand open in sleep, a lily in her palm. In contrast to Tom’s calm precision, Charlie had stripped to the waist and he sweated as he painted, perspiration streaming down his back. On the wall above the fireplace he’d illustrated Ashcombe Manor itself, her seven chimneys smoking, the driveway filled with workmen, builders toppling across scaffolding, every window blazing but empty.

‘Come on,’ he called, turning to the crowd, brush in one hand, beer in the other. ‘Who’s going to be the first to choose a window and paint themselves in?’

Allan leaped to his feet, eyes bright and black. ‘It has to be me,’ he said. ‘I am the pie-maker.’

He snatched a brush from Charlie and started to draw a man peering out from behind the front door. The figure was toppling forward, a mop of dark hair perched on his head, a tray of cakes floating above one hand, the other beckoning the viewer inside.

Charlie laughed. ‘It’s not half bad. Who’s next?’

As people surged forward, eagerly grabbing brushes and daubing crude versions of themselves on the wall, Leonard drew a tiny figure in an attic window. No one realised that rather than a self-portrait he’d painted the face of George Montague. When he’d finished, he resumed working on his own mural on the far side of the hall. The crowd jostled around Charlie, baying with joy.

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.’