The Gallery of Vanished Husbands: A Novel (31 page)

‘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.

In the middle of the afternoon Max came inside humming, his trousers spattered with paint. He insisted that they have a picnic lunch – the fact it was after three o’clock didn’t concern him – and he marched her through the wood to the edge of the great house. They sat on a felled oak, eating egg sandwiches and strong cured sausage as they watched tourists meander through the gardens of Max’s ancestral home.

‘We don’t usually come this way,’ said Juliet.

‘No,’ agreed Max, through a mouthful of apple. ‘But I fancied seeing the place again. Sudden attack of nostalgia. I suppose I avoid it in general. I don’t mean to but it is quite odd watching strangers traipse through my mother’s rose garden with their guidebooks in search of cream teas.’

‘I wish I could have met your mother,’ said Juliet.

Max laughed. ‘I’m awfully glad you didn’t. She wouldn’t have liked you – a Jew with a missing husband and worst of all
ambition
. Definitely not her sort.’

Juliet frowned, wondering whether she ought to be hurt, until Max put his arm around her, pulling her close and kissing her.

‘I like you. You’re my sort,’ he said.

Juliet smiled – coming from him this was a Shakespearean declaration of devotion. Above a kestrel circled, his cry echoing into the fading afternoon. She closed her eyes and listened. The conversation about the wedding and the gallery could wait another day.

 • • • 

The letter arrived the following morning, while Juliet was sleeping. When she traipsed downstairs Max was sitting at the table, the letter already in his hands. He held it out to her.

‘Read it. It’s from Tom.’

Something in his voice made her obey. She sat and started to read, ‘
Dearest Max—
’

‘Aloud.’

She began again. ‘
Dearest Max, I’m an anachronism like that monstrous house you grew up in. All those painters, the big ones like Warhol, the tiddlers like Charlie Fussell and the ones in-between like Jim Brownwick, are all searching for something modern, something new. And the truth is: I Just Don’t Get It. Their stuff babbles at me and I put on a jacket and I go to their wretched shows and I sip warm white wine and I look and I look at the pictures and prints and reliefs and try to see what they all see but I can’t. Instead I look at them with their happier lives and see there is no room for me and my work. No one is interested. They don’t think I have anything to say. And perhaps I don’t. I’ve only ever had one idea – the human figure in a landscape. And it’s been enough for me to paint for a lifetime. But I’m done. I’m tired of being an irrelevance. I’m sick again and this time I can’t face it. The pills have been swallowed and now there’s nothing to do but wait.
’

Juliet broke off with a cry. ‘Is this real? We must do something.’

Max shook his head. ‘What can we do? Look at the date – he wrote it two days ago. Finish it. Please.’

‘I can’t. I won’t. You read it.’

She shoved the letter at him but Max gently placed it back in her hand.

‘Please. I can’t face it alone.’

He drew her onto his knee and he wrapped his arms around her middle. She took a breath.

‘
I don’t feel anything yet. Dying feels much like living.
’

She stopped and Max motioned for her to continue.