Monet's Angels Read online

  ‘So what do you think of my house?’ he asked.

  ‘I have never seen anything like it before, it is beautiful, wonderful.’

  He laughed. ‘And what is it you like best?’

  This was her moment of opportunity. She paused as if in contemplation before letting out a long sigh. ‘Oh the Japanese prints, of course.’

  ‘Really?’ He seemed surprised. ‘I expected you to say the colours or maybe the furnishings. The prints, eh? You are a discerning young lady.’

  She recalled what Blanche had just told her.’ I like them because they seem to speak to me of all those little moments in life, not the great big ones but small pleasures, the fleeting seasons, women surprised in their daily life. I love the women’s kimonos and how they wear them, they’re so elegant, so sure of themselves.’

  ‘Well well, you certainly have an eye. I would never have thought it in a young woman like you. Are you an artist?’

  ‘I do paint,’ she said, hoping she gave the impression of being modest about her gift.

  ‘Then you will understand why they’re very dear to me. I have been greatly influenced by the techniques of some of those painters, particularly Hokusi, Hiroshige and Utamaro. You’ll recognise Utamaro because he painted some of those geishas and courtesans you have just admired.’ He chuckled. ‘He also seems to have had an eye for women. It will amuse you how I came by them in the first place.’

  Judith was all attention. If this were his passion then she would show him how interested she was, coax every detail from him. ‘Oh, do tell.’

  ‘I had the good fortune to discover a batch of prints at a Dutch merchant’s, it was in Amsterdam in a shop of Delft porcelain – I am also fond of Delft – where I was haggling over an object without any success. Suddenly I saw a dish on a lower shelf, filled with images. I stepped forward. Japanese woodblocks! I couldn’t believe my eyes. The merchant appeared unaware of the value of those prints. He let me have them with the china jar. There! What do you think of that?’

  She joined in his laughter. ‘Oh my golly, my golly!’

  His eyes were twinkling, he suddenly looked youthful, mischievous.

  ‘I suppose it was naughty of me but his ignorance was really to blame. This must have been in the seventies. Of course you are too young to remember, but back then, there was a craze for Japanese art and design. There was even an opera about a Dutch girl who becomes jealous of her artist friend’s fixation on woodblock prints. The Yellow Princess I seem to remember it was called.’

  But why, then, she wanted to know.

  ‘Trade with Japan had been closed since about the fifteenth century. Suddenly it was opened up again to the West. It swept France and someone came up with the name Japonisme. I saw an exhibition in Paris and was carried away by it. I appreciated the focus on simplicity but, at the same time, how such a simple print reveals new details the more you observe it. I love their use of vibrant colour and light, the off centre arrangement and snapshot quality, as my old friend Nadar would have called it. They freed me from the old conventions. Those prints set up a resonance for me and I became impassioned, so Judith – I may call you Judith mayn’t I? You are young enough to be my grand daughter – I continued to collect them.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Excuse me, I’m probably boring you.’

  ‘Not at all,’ she smiled at him. ‘I find it fascinating.’

  While she listened, she had been looking at the display of paintings arranged in three rows on the walls, formulating further questions to include them.

  ‘How many do you have now?’

  ‘At the last count it must have been over two hundred. It’s a kind of addiction, you see. You just can’t stop.’

  ‘Why should you?’ Judith shrugged.

  He caught her eye and laughed. ‘Exactly, why should I? You understand me, little one.’

  Oh yes, she thought, I can understand the pressure, the determination to have something. Again, she felt the sense of involvement between them.

  ‘There is something else,’ he was saying, ‘If you will pardon me, your appearance… well… it is extraordinary. That hair, those eyes, the way you wear your clothes, you could be a French woman.’

  She met his gaze, wondering how clearly he could really see.

  ‘Well I do believe there may be some Gallic blood on my mother’s side.’

  ‘There you are, you see.’ After a pause he added. ‘As you know, I remarked on this the other day when we first met. You remind me so much of Camille.’

  This was another opportunity and Judith seized it. ‘Camille?’

  ‘My first wife, Camille Doncieux. Let me tell you a little about her.’

  It was all going wonderfully to plan. Judith leant back against the cushions of the sofa and prepared herself to be patient.

  * * *

  It is one of those indefinable days in Paris: a little warmer and it might hold the beginnings of summer, but a nagging wind reminds him it is still only April. He walks through the Luxembourg Gardens where couples stroll arm in arm. An elderly man sits on a bench in muffler and overcoat, reading a newspaper. He admires the carefully tended flowerbeds, the new Medici fountain, and lake where children sail their boats. He walks on through rue de l’Odeon where books are stacked from floor to ceiling in the little shops. He can smell the horse manure on the road, daffodils as he passes a flower stall; he notices the flaking bark on the trunks of plane trees, the sun coming through their leaves to lay dappled shadow on the pavements. He is twenty-three and feels he is seeing the world for the first time and in a way he is: this view of the city where he has only recently arrived. He is making his way to Batignolles where he will buy some artists’ supplies. Afterwards, he will sit in the Café Guerbois where he always goes on Fridays to what has become something of a salon. He loves these meetings with the other artists, and the stock of enthusiasm it generates, the urge to paint and keep on painting to achieve his dream. What he does not know on this particular Friday is that he will catch his first glimpse of the slender, dark-haired Camille. She will pass by on an errand and catch his eye. On this day, their future together will begin to be mapped out. He will ask her to model for him when he decides to break away from his predecessors, reject the studio settings, references to the past or mythology, and paint in the open air. He will capture a moment, create a picture of young people enjoying a picnic in the countryside just as he would like to imagine himself. He will believe this painting will attract the critic’s eye and be put on view for all Paris to see. Because Camille has quickly become very important in his life, he wants to keep her to himself. He is an impoverished painter, uncertain whether his father will continue to send an allowance. He cannot afford to employ many models, so out of the five women in the picture, Camille poses for the three brunettes. He paints two of them with their backs to the viewer and the third with her arms raised to adjust her hat, therefore concealing her face, the face he doesn’t want to share with anyone. Camille brings a sense of style and elegance to his work. She introduces him to fashion plates and tells him of her devotion to Le Printemps. This recently opened department store allows every woman to aspire to an upper class look; it is something that hasn’t happened before. She uses it like a museum, coming and going, admiring the displays and dreaming. He remembers a white dress she wore for that painting, fashioned in a modern design with a magnificent trailing skirt at the back. This exploit of painting out of doors dictated a new palette. He used mostly grey pigment for that dress so that she seemed to be standing in the shadow cast by the tree above. He concentrated on the idea of being modern and thought to make his reputation with this painting, but the Paris Salon turned him down.

  He remembers her wonderful eyes, her excitement at embarking on this new life. She was eighteen years old. He remembers the rented green dress, the beauty she brought to his chilly little studio, her warmth and love. The idea of depicting her as the woman seen in the latest fashion magazines, a window display
of Le Printemps appealed to them both. This time he did not entirely hide her face.

  She was his jewel with magical properties, his muse and he was ready to declare his adoration to the world when he entitled the picture Camille. The public loved her.

  Then there is the painting of Camille in a sparsely furnished London flat after their flight from the Prussian war. He shows her face for the first time, eyes downcast, lips tightly clasped, all her spirit and elegance gone. She looks vulnerable, wears a dark dress with long sleeves and white cuffs; in her lap is a closed book with a red cover. The transparent curtain conceals her view of the street, a place she found lonely and uninviting.

  He remembers the happy summer days of their return to France. He paints Camille and Jean in the garden at Argenteuil. Now she is a woman in her own right, his wife, not just a model for his imagined world. For her their wedding day was one of intense joy. The season’s bounty of flowers surrounds her; she wears not a chic Parisian gown but a simple figure-hugging country dress. She raises both arms high to adjust the red ribbon in her hair and looks back at him, her expression straightforward, direct and open. What is she saying? ‘You adore your son but do you love me? No matter, we are your family, you have no other. You may come and go but now we are bound together, you will not abandon us.’

  A decade later he is in desperate need of a big sale. He thinks back to his first success Camille. It is the height of the craze for things Japanese in Paris. He borrows a fantastic red Japanese kimono and sets up the scene in a friend’s studio. Camille tries one pose after another and eventually they decide her body shall be in profile, her face turned towards her husband. He doesn’t remember how it came about but they go out and buy her a blonde wig. He chuckles to himself even now as he recalls the Japanese fans stuck on the wall behind his wife. On one of them is painted the head and shoulders of an elegant geisha who looks apparently astonished by this strange French rival.

  He seems suddenly aware of the American girl who has sat quietly on the sofa and listened to all this reminiscence.

  ‘La Japonaise, I called that picture. It dazzled the Parisian art world when I exhibited it at the second impressionist exhibition in 1876. I painted it for money, it wasn’t a genre I liked but it fetched two thousand francs.

  ‘Ah Judith, I wish you could have met her, such a marvellous woman. We loved working together. Camille delighted in choosing costumes, trying out poses, acting out the roles I chose for her. I took enormous pleasure in her gifts. That picture was full of laughter and allure. I’d never seen her look more stunning.’

  His voice died away. Judith’s first reaction had been to envy Camille, beautiful, elegant Camille admired by Monet, the fashionable Parisian public. The way had opened up for her when she was only eighteen years old to change her destiny. She had lived the bohemian life Judith dreamt of with no parents trying to control her.

  ‘How lucky she was,’ she said.

  ‘Lucky?’

  ‘Of course, to have met you and become a model, to have worn those wonderful clothes. I’d love to have been Camille.’

  His laugh was rueful. ‘I wonder if you would, really. It wasn’t always fun and laughter, you know. We had difficult times, especially at the beginning when the money wasn’t coming in.’

  ‘But you were able to live as you wanted.’

  ‘With certain constraints.’

  Judith didn’t want to hear him qualify the strength of the fairy tale he had told her. ‘Did you always want to live like that?’ she asked.

  ‘I wanted to be free, yes. As a boy at school I didn’t want to study. I drew cartoons all over my lesson books. I rebelled against my father who wanted me to have a safe job. If you have a dream, Judith, you have to go all out to realise it.’

  ‘Even if you tread on people along the way?’

  ‘Well yes, even that.’

  ‘That was what she wanted to hear. ‘I’d like…’ she began.

  There was a tap on the door and Blanche came into the room. ‘I thought perhaps it was time for Mademoiselle Judith to leave, Papa.’

  He frowned at her. ‘Not yet, Blanche, first we are going to take a turn round the garden.’

  ‘Oh, very well, it’s just…’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll see her out when we’re finished.’

  As they stepped outside and he led her to stand in front of the house, she felt another thrill of excitement. She was here, actually here in Monet’s garden. He was telling her about his choice of pink on the walls, how shutters in this area were traditionally painted grey but he had changed these to green.

  ‘Then I added the gallery and pergola to create a canopy of roses. I wanted the house to blend with the garden.’

  She nodded and smiled while the voice in her head continued: you have won!

  They walked down the main path, flanked by a series of small oblong beds, she saw a mass of oranges and reds.

  ‘Day lilies,’ he said. ‘And these are phlox.’

  He was listing so many flowers: stock, alliums, salvia, geraniums, petunias, foxgloves, hollyhocks, and Canterbury bells. Her eye caught flashes of pink, white and yellow while other voices came into her mind of those who would foil her attempts to escape, to forge a new existence.

  There was Mother’s, ‘Why not forget the whole idea? It is outlandish, anyway, to travel all that way just because of a caprice! All this delay over setting the wedding date! If we’re not careful the family will call the whole thing off and there’s far more at stake than just love.’

  There was Robert’s: ‘Treat it as a long vacation, don’t take everything so seriously. You have a loving family who want the best for you. Look how they are supporting you here, three whole months in Giverny. But I can’t imagine they would go on doing that indefinitely. Then where would you be without money? It is called being accountable for your actions, Judith, of being aware of their repercussion on others. That is why you would never fit in.’

  Finally, there was Charlie at Delmonico: ‘I don’t want you to go. I’m frightened of losing you. Maybe you’ll meet some handsome Frenchman.’

  Judith switched her attention to the elderly man, pointing out this and that with his stick. He was obviously enjoying telling her about his garden, although she had scarcely listened. Monet had taken to her, she had made him laugh. And he had told her that if she wanted something, she had to go all out to get it. She wanted this way of life, she wanted it so much.

  She realised they had reached the bottom of the garden but now he opened a door and they stepped through, crossed a section of rail track and entered through a door on the other side. He led the way round a stretch of greenish water, listing the plants – agapanthus, pampas grass, astilbe and more Canterbury bells – as they strolled. They came to a curved bridge and here he leaned, gazing down at what she at least knew to be water lilies.

  ‘Mark this, Judith, mark this well, for here is the heart of my work. See how the sun passes beneath the bridge and lights up the area where the lilies lie in the shade.’

  She gazed without knowing what it was she was supposed to be seeing.

  ‘See the light and shade effect that creates. I have painted this scene again and again, in many different lights, at different times of the day. I am possessed by them. It began years ago when this water garden became my main source of inspiration. I sat here for hours trying to capture the colours, the reflection and movement of these lilies, waiting for the perfect light, to convey it to the canvas. I used to grow them but never realised I could paint them. It takes time to become immersed into a landscape. And then suddenly, the utter beauty of my pond came as a revelation. I took my palette and since that day, I have hardly ever had another model.’

  Two figures had appeared on the other side of the bridge, one was pointing out something on a stretch of water to the other. Monet called out to them and they turned their heads. Judith saw a man with grey hair but the other was young. His hair glinted blue
black in the sun, he narrowed his eyes against the light. He was staring at her with a startled expression as if he couldn’t believe what he saw.

  ‘My gardeners,’ Monet said. ‘I’ll introduce you.’

  They walked on over the bridge.

  ‘This is M’sieur Breuil and this, Michel.’

  Judith smiled and nodded, murmuring ‘enchanté.’ The young man was very handsome, she thought, definitely more handsome than Charlie. As if he realised her thoughts Michel lowered his gaze.

  – SIXTEEN –

  BLANCHE

  B

  lanche had gone to bed but she couldn’t sleep, the room was stifling, her body burned under the thin sheet. The evening had been oppressive with the sense of a storm brooding but no rain had arrived to freshen the still air. As she lay there, staring through the darkness, her thoughts turned to Suzanne, to a night over twenty years ago sullen with thunder, at first growling from a distance then moving closer. Forked lightning streaked the sky. There had been a tap on the door and her sister came into the room.

  ‘Oh Blanche, can I sit with you for a while?’

  She looked so pretty standing there in her white nightgown, the gaslight haloing her hair.

  Blanche made room for her in the bed. ‘It’s only a storm,’ she said. ‘Just hot air rising quickly and… but I’ve told you all that so many times before.’

  ‘Yes, I know you have, but they still terrify me. I hate the noise and oh!’ White light briefly illuminated the room. ‘The lightning, too, it seems like a wild monster out there and one cannot escape it.’

  Blanche knew her sister too well to laugh at this image. Suzanne’s vivid nightmares had often resulted in the midnight tap on the door. The storm was now raging overhead, the thunder and lightning almost simultaneous. To take her mind off it, Blanche had asked her what she planned to do with her life and Suzanne told her she wished to marry, of course, she wasn’t clever like Blanche and couldn’t paint. Blanche had laughed and replied that that didn’t exclude falling in love.