‘So it was a blessing in disguise,’ she remarks.
‘You might say that. My aunt was very kind and bought me out. My father was not so delighted. He said he would cut me off without a franc if I did not go seriously to work.’ He laughed. ‘But I always went my own way.’
Judith makes a show of clapping her hands. ‘Bravo, bravo!’
He inclines his head to her then changes the subject. ‘Judith, would you look at something, please?’
He shows her one of his latest canvasses. ‘I want you to tell me honestly, honestly please, how do the colours appear to you. Is there, for example, any dominant hue?’
She gazes. He can see her wondering what she is gazing at.
‘Would you say there is a lot of red?’
She nods. ‘Yes, there sure is.’
He sighs. ‘The truth is I no longer see colours with the same intensity. The reds seem muddy to me, the pinks are insipid and the lower tones escape me completely.’
‘You can’t go on like this, can you? You must have these cataracts removed.’
‘I am afraid.’
Judith shakes her head. ‘Aren’t you more afraid of going blind?’
‘Blanche says it is risky.’
‘If you’ll pardon me for saying this, I don’t think your stepdaughter is very good for you. She always seems to look on the gloomy side.’
‘I suppose she thinks she’s protecting me.’
The young woman rises from her seat and comes over to him. She takes his hands in hers.
‘Protecting! Hey, that’s the last thing either of us want, don’t you think?’
They laugh and he feels the morning’s melancholy drift away.
– THIRTY-THREE –
BLANCHE
B
lanche, seated at her dressing table, gazed and gazed into the mirror until it seemed the face of a stranger looked back. As a child she had sometimes done this, frightening herself with the altered expression in her eyes until a maid servant had scolded her, saying she was inviting a devil in. Mirrors played tricks, she thought, they presented a mysterious other world, a sleight of hand which vanished the moment you turned round. Annette once told her she wouldn’t sleep facing a mirror for fear of what she might see in it at night. Today these thoughts compounded her feelings of the house pervaded by something unspoken and secret and so she gazed, not seeing the bed and part of the wardrobe reflected behind her but only her watchful face.
She felt as if her mooring ropes had been cut and she was adrift, no longer her father’s chief confidante but neither could she return to her painting. Yesterday, she had stood before her canvas, analysing the effect of the colours, noting how her reworking had gone too far; the roses looked too solid, she had not achieved the smudgy shades of pink, lilac, blue and deep magenta, the smoky effect she had chased. In exasperation she had snatched it up, almost ready to throw it on the floor and trample on it. Now it was stowed away together with her paints and heaven knew when she would get them out again. What was there left? Her life seemed without meaning; she was aware of getting older but still searching for who she was. Maybe she was wrong; the truth lay in the mirror, shown without emotion, an oval all-seeing eye. She was angry: all these years she had tried to please other people, gain their love. She had been the obedient daughter, then caring wife to Jean, while this mirror had reflected back a young girl then, inexorably with the passing of time, an elderly woman. All the while her true self, the artist, longed to emerge. Why had she not allowed this, even now sacrificing herself to a selfish, domineering old man?
The feeling had hung over her for days, ever since she had glimpsed Michel and Judith standing together outside La Musardiere. That scene preyed on her mind, their apparent ease in each other’s company as if they were at very least friends, the girl’s gesture of going, the boy putting his hand on her arm to detain her.
At the time, it had been just a fleeting impression. Now she returned to it, concentrating on the details, trying to find the meaning behind her sense they were equals, that there was an intimacy between them, something shared. Her mind turned to Judith’s visits to Le Pressoir and of how they had been engineered. Why, one might almost imagine the motive of that birthday picnic had been to achieve this. She saw again the first meeting of her father and Judith, the girl moving heaven and earth to enchant him; she remembered her flattering remarks. No, she was letting her imagination run away with her and yet, when she came to think about it, was she? She recalled the low voices she had strained to hear as she closed the door on Papa’s studio, the burst of laughter as if she were the object of their amusement, the sense of complicity. Judith. Now as she continued to stare into the mirror she saw the young woman’s face, pale skin, huge eyes and that knowing smile. She seemed to pervade the house, a subtle presence, and Blanche was sure of one thing: she did not want her coming here any more.
There came a light tap then the door opened and Lilli stood there, her arms full of clean linen. She looked startled to see Blanche.
‘Oh beg pardon, madame. I didn’t realise you were here. I’ll come back when you’re finished.’
‘No,’ said Blanche, ‘no need, come in.’
‘I’ll just make the bed then, it won’t take a moment.’
In the mirror, Blanche watched the accustomed movements of the girl as she stripped the bed and smoothed over the undersheet, neatly tucking in the corners. Then came the top sheet and the coverlet, all done, as she said, in a moment. Lilli straightened, sighed and then, drawn to the window it seemed, she went to stand there with folded arms, gazing out.
After another minute or so, Blanche turned from the mirror. ‘What is it, Lilli?’
The other started out of her reverie. ‘Oh beg pardon, madame.’
‘You looked so thoughtful.’
Lilli sighed again and turned to face her.
‘There is something troubling you, isn’t there?’ Blanche persisted.
‘It’s just all such a mystery and if there’s one thing I hate it’s a mystery.’
‘You feel like that, too? As if there are things being kept secret?’
‘Why yes, madame, that’s it.’
Blanche patted the bedroom chair. ‘Come and sit down for a moment.’
‘Oh, but I’ve all the beds to do.’
‘They can wait. Sit down and tell me what is on your mind.’
Lilli hesitated then did as she was told. ‘It is Michel, madame. I met him by chance on my day off and I asked him what was wrong, why he had changed so and… oh, madame, I believe there might be someone else.’
The image of Judith and Michel returned, laughing and talking as if no-one else existed. ‘Really?’ was all Blanche could say.
‘I can’t understand it. Who can it be? I haven’t seen him walking out with anyone and it could only be another domestic, couldn’t it, madame?’
‘One would suppose so,’ agreed Blanche. ‘I can’t imagine who else it might be.’ She remembered the sense she had had of two young people revelling in each other’s company.
‘There is something,’ Lilli began and then hesitated. ‘It’s best I don’t say anything.’
Blanche felt impatient, unable to take any more of these mists and mysteries.
‘Out with it, Lilli, please,’ she snapped, ‘speak your mind.’
The laundry maid’s eyes widened.
‘Pardon, but I would hope that you, at least, might speak out and tell me what is happening.’
‘Very well, it is like this: one day, a few weeks ago, Annette told me she had seen the young American lady talking to Michel in the garden. Annette said she thought they seemed intimate. I told her she must be mistaken, I mean, the young lady is of a different class.’
‘That is true,’ Blanche said. She was aware of Lilli hesitating again. ‘And so?’
It’s just it must have been after that he started to become so distant. Oh, madame, suppose it is she he
loves, what shall I do?’
The pieces fell into place with an almost satisfying click; this was part of the secret. But how to answer Lilli? The girl was eyeing her anxiously.
Blanche rose from the stool. ‘You do nothing, do and say nothing. You must just be patient.’
‘But…’
Blanche held up her hand. ‘If, and I am not convinced, but if it were the young American lady then there is certainly no future in that. She will be returning home shortly and I believe there is a fiancé.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
For the first time, Lilli smiled. ‘She’s been here rather a long time, hasn’t she?’
‘Too long,’ said Blanche.
After the laundry maid had gone, she turned back to her dressing table, intending to tidy her hair but grew impatient of it. It seemed much less easy to manage these days, thinning somewhat and now she noticed a sprinkling of grey. She thought of how once it had been so thick and lustrous, let down and spread round her shoulders as she eyed herself in this same mirror after an evening with John Leslie. Young, she had been, attractive and desired, as she never would be again. Blanche laid down her brush and, covering her eyes with her hands, wept.
1890
As they entered another decade, life appeared to be settling back into its old ways. She and Monet ate breakfast together then loaded their gear into a wheelbarrow and made their way through the dewy countryside to watch the sunrise. They set up their easels side by side. The pattern of the days was restored; and yet not quite. It wasn’t possible to eradicate the effect the Americans had had on Giverny, it was an altogether busier, noisier place.
‘And there’ll be more,’ said Monet. ‘Word is getting around and mark my words there’ll be even more. The place will be inundated with them.’
* * *
The year progressed, punctuated by visits from friends, outings in the motorcar and painting, always painting. He had never mentioned John Leslie again, since that evening when she had told him it was over. But all the time, she tried to suppress the voice inside her that cried out for him.
Monet’s earlier enthusiasm for the haystacks intensified and he began to talk of a more ambitious project.
‘I feel it wouldn’t be trivial to study a single image at different times of the day and of the year for that matter. To examine the effects of the light that form from moment to moment, the envelope of the atmosphere and the light shining through it.’
At first he tells her he believes he can accomplish this with two canvasses, one for sunny and one for overcast weather. Soon he comes to realise the transitory quality of the light how, in passing moments of the day and in various seasons, the haystacks absorb it from diverse parts of the colour spectrum. As a result, the residue is reflected off the haystacks and seen as ever changing, manifested in distinctive colouring.
He sighs and turns to Blanche: ‘Go to the house, if you don’t mind, and bring me another canvas.’ This continues, ‘And another canvas! Another!’
She sees what he means: how with mist the light is so diffused that hardly anything in the distance remains visible, or how the crisp transparency on a clear winter’s day lets the light shine brilliantly on the side of a haystack. From one hour to the next, these effects of light modify so noticeably the appearance and colouring of the stacks. In Grain Stack at Sunset he used intense brick reds to give the shadowed side of the stack an incandescent core, vermilion and yellow for the light of the sunset that haloed the stack, the lit parts of the field scattered with particles of pink, orange, and mauve. Thus he painted canvas after canvas after canvas. He had employed this method before, of variations on a single theme, but there was something new here, a difference of emphasis. He was pursuing the very transience of light. Together they noted the elusiveness of certain effects. Monet attended to those canvasses no more than a few minutes a day. Further complicating matters, they realised that the light of successive sunrises could alter substantially, and required separate canvasses within the series. Sometimes they wrote the time of day on the back in order to return to the painting at the correct moment. Always beside him, ready to hand the required canvas at a nod or murmured ‘four’ or ‘ten’, Blanche understood he had so much to say about light and colour and atmosphere it would be impossible in one painting.
They started in September, rising before dawn to trundle the wheelbarrow filled with half-finished canvasses out into the fields. Throughout winter they worked solidly and by spring, Monet had painted an incomparable quantity of pictures distinguished only by light, weather, atmosphere and perspective.
Working alongside him was always infectious as they shared and discussed ideas. Blanche painted her own version of the haystacks celebrating the autumn sunrise, showing the pink haze of dawn engulfing form so sun and sky, fields and haystack, near and far, were enveloped in a peculiar liquid atmosphere.
Monet was impressed. ‘Excellent brushwork, you have handled colour very well. The landscape seems to be at once bursting into radiant life and dissolving before the eye.’
The following year, Monet showed fifteen of these paintings at a gallery in Paris. Uncertain of how they would be received, he was startled by the public reaction; wonderful reviews, critical acclaim. People were eager to buy the pictures, and it dawned on him that his public might finally have caught up with his vision.
‘I have arrived, Alice, I really believe I have arrived,’ he crowed at the dinner table. ‘It must be downhill from now on.’ He raised his champagne glass. ‘Here’s to the end of grubbing around for money. We can buy the house.’
For Blanche it came as an anti-climax after the intense activity of these past months. She distanced herself from the negotiations, the signing of deeds, Monet’s plan to create a water lily pond. She had her own preoccupations, which had grown, even while apparently attending to Monet. She realised she could not live with her dismissal of the love of her life. Everything began to seem a waste of time, as if she had lived this life too long, seen this house, this garden too many times. She missed John Leslie. His presence haunted her. Once she thought she glimpsed the back of his head as she walked through the streets in Vernon. She quickened her pace to follow him and was bitterly disappointed when she saw the man’s face and realised he was nothing at all like John Leslie. She thought about him as she helped in the house, collected the eggs or walked in Giverny and wondered if he thought of her. She wrote him letters, which she never sent.
Daffodils and blue violets crowded the garden again. She wandered its paths and tried to think back to that happy life she had spent with the family. Her mind moved further back to the chateau and her early childhood and then to how they had come here, Monet and Maman, and helped to create the garden. But however hard she tried she could not escape the feeling that life had only really started when she met John Leslie.
One morning her mother asked her to call on a woman in the village whose husband had recently died.
‘Poor Madame Joubert, they never had any children so she must be feeling quite alone. Take her these flowers, would you dear, and give her my condolences and best wishes.’
The woman who answered the door wore black but her eyes lit up when she saw Blanche and the bouquet and she smiled.
‘How kind, mademoiselle. Come in, won’t you?’
‘I don’t want to intrude, madame.’
‘You’re not intruding at all. It’s good to have some young company.’
Inside, the house was spotless and from the kitchen came the smell of baking cakes.
‘You’ll take coffee, won’t you? And you must try a slice of my special galette.’
While Blanche sat in the little salon waiting, she heard the sound of Madame Joubert humming softly as she made the coffee. She didn’t seem like someone recently bereaved at all.
‘You’re being very courageous, madame,’ she commented as she finished the delicious cake and wiped her fingers.
‘Courageous?’ the other gave a short laugh. ‘It is kind of you to say so but it doesn’t apply in my case. Oh, I’m sorry for him that he died, he was a decent man and kindly but…’ She paused.
Blanche had taken up her coffee cup but hesitated, not bringing it to her mouth. ‘And now you are alone.’
‘Oh yes. It comes to all of us, my dear,’ she leaned forward, lowering her voice as if there were someone who might hear. ‘But you know, he was always second best; I loved another. Oh how I loved him and he loved me.’
‘Then why?’
‘He was an adventurous young man. Didn’t want to spend the rest of his life here. He wanted us to go to Paris, leave everything, families, friends and start a new life and I just wasn’t brave enough.’
Silence in the room as Madame Joubert appeared to gaze along the path she hadn’t dared to take. Then almost as if she understood, she looked across at Blanche and her expression sharpened.
If you were to ask my advice, young lady, I’d tell you not to make my mistake. Follow your heart.’
It was then Blanche sensed the pall of compromise and disappointment that hung over the room, the years of living with a man she did not adore, nostalgia for the one she did, which belied the woman’s smiling face.
As she walked back to the house, his name clamoured in her head: John Leslie, John Leslie. She went to her room and wrote him a letter and this time she posted it. Two weeks later, when she called yet again at the Vernon Post Office, there was a letter waiting for her.
Your letter touched me. I agree, dear Blanche, we should not have parted like that. I was never convinced it should be so but respected your wishes. There are things left to be said. I am coming back to Giverny.
Monet's Angels Page 26
