The Gallery of Vanished Husbands: A Novel (35 page)

Juliet ‘Fidget’ Montague, My Mother,
Leonard Montague, Oil on 34 Canvases, 130 x 384in, 2006

M
AX DIED JUST
before Christmas. Up until the end, Juliet continued to stay with him at the cottage. In over forty years together he never visited the house in Chislehurst. After a while she’d found the journey to Dorset rather tiring, the lack of heating was a bit of a bore and midnight trips to an outside loo at seventy-six lacked romance. Max didn’t notice the petty inconveniences of the cottage. He’d aged slowly – only his thick wheat gold hair was replaced by thistledown – but then suddenly he became frail. A carer was mentioned. Meals on Wheels. He listened patiently and then told Juliet he was going to die – it just seemed less bother all round. He was quite matter-of-fact about it and it took her a moment to realise he wasn’t asking her to bring some more milk or tobacco with her during her next visit. ‘Don’t come next week. I’ll be dead. It’ll be a waste of a trip.’ She’d thought he was joking, but sure enough a nice lady from social services telephoned to say that she was terribly sorry etcetera and Juliet fumbled and replaced the receiver, cutting her off. She cried a little, but most of all she missed him. Suddenly there was no one to save up the stories for. There was nothing particular to tell, only the debris of the week. She’d always supposed that those elderly women who wandered along the high street were muttering to themselves, but now she wondered whether they were, in fact, confiding to their dead lovers. Leonard was terribly kind and brought round hot meals (grief must be fed like a cold, apparently) and reassured her that the pain would lessen in time. Juliet ventured to hope it wouldn’t take too much time, as she was running a little short. Worrying that she might be depressed, Leonard and Frieda colluded and agreed that one or other of them must visit most days.

 • • • 

Frieda knew that something had happened as soon as she called round. She rang the doorbell before letting herself in – Juliet hated it when Frieda simply unlocked the door and wandered into the kitchen.

‘I could be doing anything.
Anything
.’

‘In the kitchen? You’re nearly eighty.’

Juliet had frowned and said nothing more.

Frieda pushed open the door and found her mother dressed in her Jaeger jacket and smart Hermès scarf, seated at the kitchen table drinking a glass of sherry even though it wasn’t quite half past nine in the morning. Frieda could barely recall ever having seen her mother drink, and leaned against the door for a moment, wondering if grief had prompted the foray into the cupboard.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Perfectly, thank you.’

‘Is it Max?’

‘No. It’s another man.’

Frieda pulled out a chair and sat down opposite her, wondering if her mother was starting to go dotty like so many of her friends’ parents. Perhaps she ought to telephone Leonard.

‘Care to join me?’ asked Juliet, gesturing to the bottle. ‘It’s not terribly nice, but I understand that it’s the appropriate response under the circumstances.’

Frieda sighed. She’d been in her mother’s company for less than five minutes and already she was irritated. Despite Juliet’s breeziness, she noticed the hand holding the sherry glass shake. She took a breath and willed herself to be patient.

‘What circumstances?’ she asked, waiting for one of Juliet’s usual cryptic replies.

To her surprise Juliet did not evade the question but slightly wearily pushed back her chair and retrieved a large round cardboard tube from the draining board. She placed it on the table in front of Frieda.

‘It arrived this morning. It’s from your father.’

Now it was Frieda’s turn to sit and reach for the sherry. She poured herself a good measure into a teacup. She stared at her mother, but Juliet said nothing, only sat with her hands folded in her lap waiting for Frieda to look at the parcel.

‘Have you opened it already?’ asked Frieda.

‘Yes.’

Frieda took a swig and eased open the lid of the tube. Inside was a roll of fabric; carefully she eased it out and placed it still coiled on the kitchen table. She stared at it for a full minute, oddly reluctant to unfurl it and look properly. Finally, Frieda stood and uncurled the fabric, feeling it crackle beneath her fingers. It smelled of attics and long journeys.

‘Oh, it’s a painting.’

Juliet nodded, almost smiled. ‘Do you remember it?’

Frieda looked down at the painting and weighted it at one end with a jar of marmalade, with the salt-shaker at the other. She took a step back and saw the face of a young girl with pale brown hair and green eyes. Her legs were folded awkwardly, and she sat on her hands as though to stop them fidgeting. The child glared at the viewer, neither angry nor smiling, merely interested. For a moment Frieda thought the girl in the picture was herself and then she realised.

‘I do remember. It used to hang in the house. In the sitting-room, I think. Then one day, around the time Dad left, it disappeared.’

‘He stole it when he vanished,’ said Juliet, voice tight, still angry after all these years.

‘And now he’s just giving it back?’

Juliet reached out across the table and took Frieda’s hand.

‘He died, darling. The parcel was sent by his lawyer.’

To her own immense surprise, Frieda began to cry. Sobs rose in her chest like a spring tide and she bobbed around on the waves of unexpected grief as Juliet moved round to hold her.

The two women had barely touched in years – fingers brushing across the table when passing the potatoes, a kiss hello and goodbye – but now Juliet clasped her daughter close, feeling the damp of tears and snot on her blouse. She stroked her back and rubbed her head, noticing the grey hair at the base of Frieda’s scalp like unripe corn. Juliet didn’t attempt to hush her. It was perfectly sensible to cry. She had done so for a full half-hour herself before wiping her eyes and rooting in the cupboard for the sherry. It had been more than fifty years since George had disappeared and she’d been long resigned to never seeing him again. And, yet his death startled her. As far as anyone was concerned she was no longer an
aguna
or a living widow, but merely a widow. An unremarkable grey and white old lady who’d lost her husband. No one was interested enough any more to enquire exactly how she’d lost him or to accuse her of carelessness. Only young women in scarlet lipstick misplaced husbands. Elderly ladies like her merely surrendered them to death in his nightshirt. But she supposed that somewhere her poor mother was relieved that her shame was at an end.

Frieda dried her eyes and smiled.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why I made such a fuss.’

‘Don’t be silly. He was still your father.’

‘Yes, but I never knew him.’

‘And now you can’t. It’s the end of a possibility, however unlikely.’

‘Don’t. You’ll make me cry again.’

Juliet shrugged. Frieda pulled a packet of tissues from her handbag and dabbed her eyes, then rooted around for a comb, fussing in front of her compact mirror. Juliet sighed, wishing that Frieda could replace tidiness with sadness for just a little while longer. After divorcing Dov Frieda was supposed to have been liberated from propriety, but she remained far too concerned with what other people thought. Juliet supposed she ought to care a little more and her daughter a little less.

‘What did you say, Mum?’

Juliet looked up, not realising she’d spoken aloud.

‘Nothing, darling. I said nothing.’

‘I suppose he was an awful good-for-nothing and I should be glad I hardly knew him,’ said Frieda.

‘No,’ replied Juliet. ‘He was charming and could be terribly funny. He adored you and Leonard. But then he left and that cancelled out everything good that happened before.’

Frieda laughed. ‘You’re not supposed to say that. You’re supposed to say he was a thief and a drunk and a gambler and a liar. You’re supposed to make it better.’

Juliet frowned. ‘Well, that is what everyone used to say about him. But it’s only partly true. He was a gambler and he did steal my picture, but he wasn’t a drunk.’

About his being a liar, she made no remark.

Frieda leaned back in her chair and watched her mother, remembering the photographs in the bedroom closet with her father’s image cut out.

‘There was nothing else in the parcel?’ she asked.

‘Just the picture,’ said Juliet.

She knew she ought to feel guilty about concealing the letter but it had been addressed to her alone, and even at seventy-six one needed to keep some things secret.

 • • • 

The arrival of the painting marked a change in Juliet. Leonard noticed it first. She caught flu after Christmas, which settled into pneumonia and then progressed into a seeping melancholy like endless spring rain. Frieda put it down to age, ‘Oh, she’s just not as young as she was.’ But Leonard knew it was something else. She seemed indifferent to getting well and while she hadn’t exactly started to forget things, she didn’t care to remember them. Her seventy-seventh birthday passed without remark when usually she was steadfast about celebrating, no matter how inconvenient it might be for the rest of her family. If Leonard or Frieda or one of the grandchildren suggested that perhaps the celebration could be delayed until the weekend, Juliet would sulk. ‘I can’t change my birthday any more than I can change the day of my death.’ Leonard and Frieda would sigh and agree that ‘Mother is getting very difficult, even more difficult’ and purchase (Leonard) or bake (Frieda) the necessary cake. But this year the eighth of April drifted past unremarked and it was only on the ninth that Leonard noticed the birthday had been forgotten and telephoned Juliet.

‘I didn’t forget. I ignored it. I’m too old for birthdays.’

Leonard frowned. This was a logic he might have accepted from someone else but not from his mother. He couldn’t quite see that while seventy-six required a picnic in Hyde Park and a walk along the Bayswater Road inspecting every indifferent painting strung up on the railings, seventy-seven was marked by sudden restraint and indifference. He was confident that something was wrong and pondered what to do. He opened his eyes and smiled. Suddenly, he knew.

Later that evening he brought a birthday cake round to his mother, appearing in Mulberry Avenue uninvited. Like his sister he possessed a key, but unlike her it never occurred to him not to ring the bell. He waited on the doorstep until Juliet answered, observing how her face brightened into a copy of her old self as soon as she saw him.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ agreed Leonard. ‘I brought you birthday cake from the deli. I thought we could eat it together.’

He trailed her into the too clean kitchen. It didn’t look as if a meal had been cooked here for a week and even in the gloom she looked too thin.

‘Is it poppy-seed?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you bring sour cream?’

‘Yes.’

‘The proper stuff from the Yiddishy deli, not the supermarket.’

‘Yes.’

Juliet sighed but it was a sigh of happy anticipation. In the last few years she had started yearning for the Jewish treats of her childhood – the chicken schnitzels and chopped fried fish and cinnamon
rugelach
. She almost wished she’d paid more attention while her mother had been baking. Leonard retrieved plates from the cupboard and cut her a large slice of cake and scooped out a significant dollop of cream.

‘Happy birthday, Mama,’ he said and kissed her softly on the cheek.

He glanced behind her to the dresser and noticed a pile of unopened post.

‘You can’t ignore your mail,’ he said gently, trying not to reprimand.

Juliet shrugged through a forkful of cake. ‘They’re only birthday cards. I pay the bills. I’m not gaga yet.’

Leonard retrieved the cards and placed them on the table. ‘Let’s open them anyway.’

He waited a moment but Juliet made no move to pick up an envelope and so he started to open them.

‘This is from Charlie. I think he drew it himself.’

Juliet peered at it. ‘Yes. It’s a self-portrait. I have one for every year since we met. Well, except for the year we fell out. I was so pleased when he sent a card just the same for my next birthday.’ She frowned. ‘He’s made himself much too slim. He’s become rather fat. I can’t blame him. His latest wife is a wonderful cook.’

‘And here’s one from Philip. It’s postmarked Santa Barbara.’

‘Yes, he spends most of the year there. They’re always telling me to come and visit.’

‘Well, why don’t you? The sunshine would do you good.’

Juliet pushed away her plate, avoiding Leonard’s eye. ‘I’ve been to California. I can’t go back.’

Leonard toyed with his cake, thinking that now he was actually sitting with Juliet, he didn’t know quite how to start the conversation. His mother always did this to him. Earlier he’d been so certain that it was the right thing to do but even in the car on the way over his confidence had evaporated like a puddle in the sunshine. He stood and slipped upstairs pretending he needed to use the toilet. The stairway was crowded with paintings of Juliet – there must have been at least fifty portraits lined up in neat rows like children in the annual school photograph. His mother stared down at him, sometimes smiling, sometimes not. Another twenty Juliets watched from the landing, crammed frame to frame, shoulder to shoulder. A kaleidoscope of women. There were no family photographs – not one of the usual snaps of ice-cream-smeared grandchildren or black and white shots of babies snoozing in Moses baskets. The only photographs were portraits of Juliet – one taken by Cecil Beaton and another by David Bailey. Leonard had never liked either. She looked impossibly beautiful in Beaton’s and in Bailey’s she was just another of his unhappy, cigarette-smoking women. At the top of the stairs was a mirror and Leonard wondered what it was like for Juliet to look in it and see, in addition to her current face, so many decades of herself reflected back at her. Didn’t she lose herself in the collage?

Apart from the portraits, it was such an ordinary suburban house. The brown carpet had been updated from the nasty fifties mustard to an equally dubious eighties green and a dozen years ago the wallpaper had been stripped and changed to a Mulholland blue in order to better display the pictures, but Juliet had shown no interest in either moving or further re-decorating. The London gallery was bright and modern and the exhibition space re-painted every year, sometimes twice. Until her flu last year the colour changes were always overseen by Juliet – she’d insisted that the decorators redo the entire gallery when the shade of red was a single grade too dark. She was the first curator in London to reject the glare of white walls and soon the National and the Tate were asking her to consult. It puzzled him, how this determined woman with all her panache still chose to live in this cramped, indifferent house in a suburb filled with the echoes of old disapproving sighs.