Claude & Camille

by Stephanie Cowell

  A priest in a long dark cassock and cloak emerged from the church, nodding to both of them. Alice bent her head and turned back to Claude. She said hesitantly, “I wanted to have this chance to say how kind you are to keep us all. What I have lost is nothing; what my children have lost is everything. My husband means well. But he tries. He can’t face me.”

  Claude shook his head. “I know that, Alice; I know how he feels. I said this once before. We are such fallible creatures, we men, and you women put your lives into our weak hands. But you are strong, strong. He’ll come for all of you soon, and I’ll miss you very much.”

  “I’ll miss you and your wife; she is like a bright little candle. I’m happy to do what I can when I’m here. I love your children too. Will you all come to see us in Paris sometime? Be our dinner guests?”

  He replied, “Yes, of course, and I’ll manage the lot of you lovely ones until then.”

  “Of course we will have a terrible time leaving you! My Suzanne was learning embroidery from Camille yesterday; the girls love her. And our sons are inseparable! Do you know they were playing pirates by the river yesterday and fell in? They climbed back to the house soaking! And the clean laundry had not come back. I put them in blankets. Oh, the mischief they get into every day while you’re off painting!”

  “It was the same with me and my friends when we were young, but still, I will speak to them sternly.”

  Alice laughed. A wind came, stirring the bare trees, and she hugged her chest. She said very softly then, “Claude, I want you to know that I haven’t forgotten our time together. No one will ever know, but perhaps the memory of it will somehow come into your canvases? In all seasons as the years come, you will be here painting the church and village. I will be in Paris, and you’ll be here. You’ll have daughters of your own. As you paint you will, as you do, forget everything. And your dear feet will be so cold, so cold from standing at your easel, and your dear fingers so cold too.”

  The coach came around the bend, the horse’s hooves stirring the dirt. She kissed his cheek and he looked after her as the coach bore him away and she walked back to the house in her long skirts and dark coat.

  THAT WINTER, THE neighbors said, was one of the worst they could remember. Snow and cold blanketed everything, but it could not keep him inside. He had to paint; he was utterly possessed by the beauty of this place. That February morning he had set up his easel in Lavacourt, where he had an excellent view across the Seine of his village of Vétheuil with the church tower rising against the sky. He painted the cold and the church, using cool blues, grays, and violets. When he saw the light was leaving this short day he reluctantly packed his things and ran swiftly down the wet wood dock to wave for the ferryman.

  “Last trip tonight, likely,” the man said as Claude climbed on carefully. “River may freeze. Ice floes all down the river and still you’re out painting, monsieur.” Claude watched the oars cut the gray water, pushing aside the ice. It was only four o’clock, but darkness was falling early. Now, returning to Vétheuil, he slowly felt the passion of his work leaving him, replaced by thoughts of what he would find at home.

  Hoschedé had found work with a Paris newspaper, though he still lived only in a rented room, and delayed bringing his family until he could assure them an apartment. Now it seemed only a matter of time until he would do that, likely by early spring. Claude would miss them all; sometimes he felt it impossible they would not be there to greet him each night.

  He walked up to his house, which rose white and dusky above him, a few lamps burning in windows. As he opened his garden gate, Alice hurried down the steps, wearing only a shawl over her dress. “Go back inside; it’s cold,” he scolded. “How is everyone? I painted until the last minute and almost couldn’t cross the river to come back!”

  “The woodman was just here,” she said. “We waited too late to ask him to come. We’re only lighting the stove now. Camille’s sick and hasn’t been downstairs since the morning. Everyone’s been with her. I could bring her some broth once the stove is going.”

  “What’s the matter with her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Claude bit his lip. Camille had had no dark moods since her pregnancy with Michel. Could she be pregnant again? She hoped for a daughter, but he knew she still had not regained her old strength. And now they had no wood most of the day. In the name of all that was reasonable, why did they not? He thought, I left them all day without heat in this cold.

  The girls were kneeling by the stove to light it, and he knelt between them to help. When the broth had been heated, Blanche poured some into a blue-patterned cup with little handles and set it on a plate with a bit of fresh bread. He carried it up the stairs and pushed open his bedroom door with his shoulder.

  A lamp showed that the children had been here: the sketchbook and one of the boys’ books on pirates were on the table. Camille sat halfway up in bed with her coat over her shoulders and the warm sleeping baby beside her. She was looking out the window. “There’s such ice in the river,” she said, turning to him. “And you were away on the other side of the Seine all day! Jean was worried you’d be stranded there. Oh, Claude, I’m so cold! I can’t stop shivering.”

  He put the broth down on the table. “Ma chère, if you come down to the kitchen you’ll be warm. I’ll make a fire here, but it’ll take time to warm the corners.”

  “The stairs seem so long today.”

  In the dim light she turned to touch the baby, her hand descending to pull up the covers. The hand moved so slowly. Suddenly his heart began to pound. He sat down next to her on the bed. “Are you really sick?” he asked. “Is it … do you think …”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m pregnant. I’m bloated here in my belly, but it feels different.”

  “But Minou,” he said, taking her hand, “you’ve been so weary; you must be pregnant. Would you mind if our friend Georges de Bellio came to see you? He’s been threatening to visit me in this remote place, and this will give him an excuse. Come downstairs now! It’s lovely in the kitchen. I’ll show you my painting. I hurried home as fast as I could when it was done.”

  THE SNOW WAS even thicker on the ground when Georges de Bellio descended from the cart a few days later. The girls had swept the steps. Their father had brought them a guitar on his last visit, and they were inexpertly studying music from a book in the kitchen and quarreling over whose turn it was. On the floor by the stove Jean and the young Hoschedé boy were struggling over a game of chess, using small stones in place of a missing knight and queen. Blanche was sitting at the table drawing the stove, her mother by her side.

  The middle-aged, balding physician stamped his feet and greeted everyone. “I saw Monsieur Hoschedé yesterday,” he exclaimed buoyantly, “and he tells me he’d be here with all of you if it were less arduous to go back and forth. What a ride from the train! I missed the daily coach and was bumped and shaken in that cart. I tell you frankly, Monet, if you hadn’t wanted me to look in on your wife, I would have deferred coming until spring. Another difficult pregnancy for Madame? I’m so sorry! I remember how she suffered last time.”

  De Bellio kissed the children and said to Alice, “Your husband sends his love. I would much appreciate a coffee! But first let me see our lovely Camille.”

  Claude watched him mount the stairs and sat down in the kitchen. The boys spoke softly over the chess game. He was about to give Blanche a few quick words about shadowing when he saw she sat with pencil raised, looking quietly at him. Alice had taken up her sewing. It was as if sound had withdrawn from the room.

  “Will someone start coffee?” he said suddenly, clumsily.

  The bedroom door had closed upstairs.

  He rose and walked outside and into the garden. Snow had been swept from the swing, and boot marks showed that a few of the children had been out here today. He sat on the swing and looked up at his bedroom window, whose glass winked back a little with the dull sun. His feet were cold now and his chest
, for he wasn’t wearing his coat. What was taking so long?

  He heard the doctor’s voice in the kitchen and ran up the steps.

  De Bellio said, “Come, my friend,” putting his arm around Claude and drawing him into the room where Claude kept his desk and his accounting books.

  The doctor turned to him with a grave face. “It’s bad news,” he said. “It’s not pregnancy. Poor darling, she’s very sick. She has a uterine tumor, and it’s fairly large.”

  Claude stared at him. “A cancer?” he repeated. “Camille has a cancer? But you must be mistaken. No, really.” He walked back and forth, gazing for a moment at one of his son’s school notebooks used for dictation. (Had Jean done his lessons? They ought to have a tutor here.) This was not possible.

  He kicked the edge of the thin rug. “I thought it was … she’s moody sometimes and thinks she’s ill but then she recovers. You don’t think …” He threw his bent arm over his mouth for a moment, trying to look back on the last weeks, the last months.

  De Bellio sat down heavily and half pulled Claude into another chair. “Brandy in the coffee, I think,” he said.

  “Can it be operated upon? Yes, that’s what we’ll do. Get your coffee. I must go up to her.”

  He ran through the kitchen, feeling them all looking after him. Had they somehow known? Not the specific thing, but had they feared something as they were here with her day after day and he was away somewhere lost in the ecstasy of his work? He climbed the stairs, holding on to the banister, and flung open the bedroom door.

  Camille lay in bed, her head turned to the window. He hurried across to her and she looked at him, puzzled. “He told me,” she said, her eyes darkened in her lovely oval face.

  He exclaimed heartily, “You mustn’t worry at all. He’ll arrange everything. We must schedule surgery.”

  She pushed him away, her breathy voice rising. “No, I won’t allow anyone to cut me!” she cried. “I know how it can be made better. I must be happy and get more exercise. I’ll go to church with Alice. She’s always asking me. I’ll burn candles. It’s nothing, really. If we need another doctor, we’ll send for one. It’s the cold. Truly, I’m quite all right, but tired. Hold me until I sleep. I’m a little shocked, but I’m not scared, for it’s not true. You can’t be scared of things that aren’t true.”

  Claude held her tightly until she slept. De Bellio knocked on the door, but Claude whispered that he would be down shortly. By the time he had covered her tenderly and put more wood on the fire, he heard his friend’s footsteps on the path toward the coach stop by the church.

  He knew everyone was waiting for him, and still on each step of the stairs he hesitated. Through the kitchen door he saw them at the table, chairs crowded together. Empty coffee cups, half a loaf of bread, and a pot of jam sat in front of them. The two smallest boys were sitting on the floor on a blanket with their blocks and bits of bread, looking as messy as young children can.

  Claude pressed Jean’s thin shoulder. He tried to smile at everyone, but he sat down suddenly, covering his face with his hands. “He told you, I suppose,” he said. “She’s really sick, and when I look at her I see all the things I couldn’t do for her.” He began to cry wrenchingly and felt the girls gather about him, their arms around his shoulders, their hair falling down his shirtsleeves.

  “Oh, please don’t cry, monsieur!” Blanche said. “She’ll get well. We’ll burn candles, won’t we, Maman?”

  He raised his face and saw Jean’s terrified look as he sat with his napkin crumpled in his hand. “She’ll be fine,” he said to the boy. “Don’t worry, my love.”

  “God will watch over her,” Alice said.

  SPRING CAME, THOUGH for the first time in his life, Claude felt indifferent toward the season. He cared nothing for the wild fields of daffodils and poppies or the flowering apple trees. Letters went unanswered; he submitted paintings to the new independent exhibition and forgot he had done it. He would not go to Paris.

  There was only one thing he wanted, and that was Camille’s health.

  He read eagerly the encouraging stories sent to him by friends of women with the same symptoms who had recovered perfectly. Julie sent a bottle of holy water. Hoschedé came and went, saying they must have heart and he had no faith in doctors. Every moment of the day centered on how Camille felt, how she looked, whether she was happy or sad or frightened.

  Lise wrote weekly and came once, distracted from the long journey, worrying about her rehearsals. “But you must get better quickly and come stay with me in Paris!” she exclaimed. She held Camille’s fingers tenderly. “Don’t you miss the theater? Yes, come soon! Next season I have one very wonderful role.”

  Camille was well enough to sit in a chair by the bedroom fire; she preferred it because she was always cold, and often at least two of the girls came to sit with her. When he carried up some food on a tray on an April day as he did every evening at dinnertime, he saw her at her embroidery frame, stitching with concentration, as he had once painted her under an arbor. Suzanne Hoschedé stood by her shoulder, watching her, and Blanche sat at her feet, reading a novel aloud.

  Was she better or worse? He asked himself that so many times a day, but today he had turned over an idea he felt he must share with her. “I think we should write to your parents,” he said.

  She shook her head. “No,” she said. “There’s no need to alarm them. You know they’d come from Lyon with great fuss, and my father has those heart pains. And they’d write my sister in Rome at once, and you know her new marriage is in difficulties.”

  Claude picked up a spool of blue thread from the carpet and said casually, “De Bellio feels you should be seen by a few doctors.”

  “But why? I feel better! I was just telling the girls I plan to come down to sit in the garden tomorrow. Claude, you look at loose ends! When you’re like that, I’m afraid you’re not painting!”

  “You know I can’t paint when I’m worried about you!” he answered.

  “Promise me you will.”

  “There, I promise,” he said, kissing her forehead. As he tramped down the stairs, he swore he would. He needed the money, anyway; they were borrowing from everyone, including all of his friends but Pissarro, who had nothing. He had sent off every small thing of value to Paris to be pawned.

  Still, we’ll manage, he thought. I’ll sell many things at the private exhibition. Then we’ll move away from here; she loves Paris. When she’s better I’ll move her back in time for the theater season. I’ll encourage her to take her audition. She can write another novel on a desk by a window overlooking a boulevard. Her sister’s coming back from Rome in the autumn and they’ll shop together.

  She did come down to the garden the following morning, holding on to him. After that she came down every day. It’s all right, he told himself. He studied her carefully; she was thin but he could feed her.

  He walked back from painting on an early July morning and hurried to the bedroom, calling, “Come, we’ll have late breakfast outside! The girls have baked. Minou!”

  From under the covers she whispered, “Oh, Claude, the pain’s bad and I feel dreadful.” She began to cry in gasps. “I started to feel it again a few weeks ago and thought it would go away.”

  She turned on the pillow to look at him.

  Her lips were dry, her face and neck very thin, and her hand on the pillow almost translucent. In that moment he knew. He cried, “That’s it. Get up, get dressed. You’re going to have the consultation for surgery. I’m taking you to Paris!”

  She clung to the iron bed, shaking her head; her thinning hair flew about her. When had her hair thinned like that? Why hadn’t he noticed? He tried to pry her hands from the bed and she would not let go. “It’s your fault!” he shouted. “Now you listen to me.” The coach would take her to the train, and somehow within the next few hours she would be at the hospital, drugged with laudanum; a skilled surgeon would remove the tumor from her, and within weeks color would come into her cheeks again.
She would run up and down the steps laughing.

  He got her hand away from the headboard and lifted her in her nightgown. She weighed nothing: her breasts and thighs were so thin. She managed to cover her face with one hand. “I won’t; I’m scared,” she cried. “God’s going to take me.”

  The door opened and Alice came toward them, throwing down the clean sheets she held. “Put her down, Claude!” she shouted, seizing his arm. He had never heard her shout before. Looking directly at him she mouthed, “It’s too late.”

  Camille had collapsed onto the bed, half falling over, and he knelt before her and touched her knees and whispered, “Minou, Minou! The worst thing is for you to overly excite yourself, Minou!”

  HE WATCHED HER body melt away all summer, until it seemed she could not get any thinner and the pains increased, and she would start with wide eyes and a gasp and press her hand against her abdomen. He dreaded those gasps, after which he went to her and held her, and Alice held her too.

  Georges de Bellio came once more from Paris, thoughtful in his long coat, hands behind his back. “There, my dear,” he said, sitting by Camille’s bed and patting her hand. “Years before I met you, Madame Monet, I saw the picture of you in the green dress and fell a little in love. You mustn’t tell your husband; he would be jealous. He was a mere painter and you were divine. I am even now a little in love with you, Madame Monet.”

  “Are you, doctor?” she said, smiling.

  De Bellio came downstairs more heavily, with Claude at his side. “A few weeks more at most, I think,” he said. “Give her laudanum for the pain if she can keep it down. She keeps nothing down now, does she, poor beauty? You must resign yourself, my friend.”