Monet's Angels Read online

  He recalled the day of the painting outing, his annoyance when Judith picked the dandelions only to tear them apart; how he had attempted to point out she was not financially independent. It gave her no choice but to do what her parents had mapped out for her.

  ‘Everyone has the right to decide their own destiny. I’m sorry Robert but I’m determined to stay here. If my parents won’t support me I have other ideas.’ she had said.

  And what were they? To make capital out of the old man’s admiration of her, to ride roughshod over poor Blanche? The arrogance of the girl, imagining she could transplant New World behaviour to this Normandy village, likening herself to Camille. How pointless it had been to suggest she should be responsible for her actions and their repercussions on others when it was obvious she thought her goal justified any means to achieve it.

  Nevertheless, he continued to be fascinated by her, her will to achieve her aim; she seemed to him like some blind force of nature that cannot be tamed. He was fearful for her as he had been fearful for Florence.

  ‘I wonder how she is getting on with Monet,’ he had remarked to Harry, that morning at breakfast when Madame Baudy told them the young lady had already departed for Le Pressoir.

  Harry lit a cigarette. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Robert busied himself with spreading cherry jam on his bread. ‘I only wondered.’

  ‘You’re always wondering, Robert,’ the other’s tone was sharp. ‘Where is she? What is she doing? Is she eating enough? Does she drink too much? You give far too much thought to that girl.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘It’s becoming rather a bore, I have to say.’

  Detecting a warning note in his friend’s voice, Robert met his gaze and sighed. ‘I’m sorry if you think that. The thing is, I can’t help myself. I feel drawn to her almost like a moth to a flame.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘Not like that, you idiot, but there is a quality about her, surely you must have noticed? An intensity of purpose that is absorbing.’

  Harry rose and moved to the buffet, willowy and graceful in his movement as he was on the tennis courts. He considered the oeufs bénédictine then settled for another rasher of bacon and sausage. ‘I’ll grant you there is something about her that catches the eye. She’s very stylish and quite pretty but it doesn’t impress me. I just think she is selfish and self absorbed, only ever thinking about how she looks or the effect she is having on other people.’

  Robert, watching his friend’s pose by the buffet, smiled to himself. Wasn’t this a case of the pot calling the kettle black? He would not pursue the subject, would not remark that perhaps the metaphor he had used of the moth more likely applied to Judith and his interest in her was a sense of trying to save her from the flame. How far had she gone already? How had she been received? He had seen the closed expression on her face when she returned from Le Pressoir and needed to know.

  Two days later he had the opportunity of asking her when she appeared in the dining room just as they were finishing their breakfast.

  At the sight of her, Harry rose from the table and left, calling over his shoulder: ‘I’m going to the studio, are you coming?’

  ‘I won’t be a moment.’

  He was pouring coffee and asked her if she wanted some. She replied that she would. He remarked on how lovely the day was and she agreed.

  ‘If you would like more pastries I can ring for them.’

  ‘Swell.’

  He sighed. ‘Oh Judith, please…’

  She gave him a questioning glance. ‘I thought you didn’t want to talk to me any more. You seemed so disapproving.’

  ‘Not so much disapproving, more anxious that you don’t seem to understand what you are doing.’

  Judith laughed. ‘Oh, I understand very well, Robert. There is no need to worry about me.’

  He sat opposite her and dunked a brioche in his coffee. ‘You’re engaged to be married, you know that. You are here for a vacation but you are expected home afterwards. Your life is in America, not here.’

  ‘You’re like all the others, you think you know what’s best for me. But you don’t.’ She dabbed her mouth with her napkin then flung it down. She drained her coffee cup and banged it onto its saucer.

  Robert saw this was no way forward. He waited until the girl had brought more pastries then tried another tack. ‘Judith, I don’t want to argue with you, you’re young, you’re pretty, you’ve got so much going for you. Come on, can’t you see that?’

  She had smiled when he said she was pretty, patted her shoulders: ‘What do you think of this outfit?’

  ‘Very nice.’

  ‘Only nice?’

  ‘Chic then… yes, very chic.’

  She poured herself another cup of coffee and sipped it, looking dreamily ahead.

  After another pause, Robert tried again. ‘So how did it go?’

  ‘How did what go?’

  ‘You know what I’m talking about, your visit to Le Pressoir.’

  She shrugged as if to say what a foolish question. ‘Very well, of course, Madame Blanche likes me. Monet does too. I spent a long time with him. We had a conversation about his Japanese prints.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘I’m not a complete nincompoop.’

  ‘I never said you were.’

  ‘Then he took me round the gardens and showed me the flowers, told me about his lily pond.’ She paused.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She rose and helped herself to another pain au chocolat. She appeared to have forgotten her regime this morning. With her back to him she said. ‘I’m invited there again.’

  ‘You are?’

  ‘Oh Robert!’ She whirled round on him. ‘Is it all so surprising that people might actually like me? It certainly isn’t to me. Why shouldn’t they invite me back? You are just so… so conservative.’

  He smiled to himself. Conservative, he? If only she knew.

  There was a pause.

  ‘I am not a child, Robert.’

  No, he thought, in spite of your youth you have been brought up in an atmosphere of sophistication, taught from a young age how to dress and behave; you have been groomed for the role of wealthy matriarch. And what you haven’t been told, you have made it your business to find out. He had an image of a small creature opening letters, listening at doors, attentive to any change of nuance in her parents’ conversation. He remembered that first impression he had had of her, young yet knowing, paradox of new woman and atavistic wiles.

  He felt he couldn’t deal with this any more and anyway he dared not keep Harry waiting any longer. He rose from the table. ‘I just don’t want you to get hurt,’ he said.

  Her scornful laughter followed him out of the room.

  – EIGHTEEN –

  JUDITH

  A

  s the door closed behind Robert, Judith sprang up from the table. Damn him and his anxious face, poking his nose into her business. She knew exactly what she was doing and needed none of his middle-aged caution. He had made her so angry she couldn’t finish her breakfast nor stay in the hotel a moment longer; she would go for a walk by the river, sit and gaze at the landscape, Monet’s landscape, and calm down. But as she stepped outside, she realised it was already scorching hot and chose instead a seat on the terrace, under the trees.

  A woman sitting nearby caught her eye and smiled. Judith gave a quick nod and turned her attention to the tennis players already darting about the courts. She wondered whether one of them was Harry, then remembered he was tucked away in the studio with Robert. She disliked Harry as much as, she suspected, he did her. Everything about him was neat; he reminded her of a tailor’s dummy. At the thought of him, she tugged out her compact and inspected her face.

  ‘Do you mind if I join you?’ the woman had left her table and come over. ‘I’m waiting for my husband,’ she explained, taking a seat without waiting to b
e invited. ‘I never know when he will turn up. He goes off to do something or other and forgets all about the time. The artistic temperament they call it,’ she laughed.

  She was somewhat older than Judith with a pleasant freckled face and merry eyes. She wore a simple tucked blouse and blue cotton skirt, her hair in a rather untidy knot.

  ‘He is a painter, you see.’

  At that moment, the serving girl arrived and the woman ordered citron pressé, insisting Judith should join her.

  ‘It’s good to meet you. I’ve seen you about in the village and thought, I’d really like to talk to that person.’ She spoke with a drawling Southern accent, which Judith found soothing. ‘You always look so fresh and pretty.’

  ‘I can’t remember seeing you,’ Judith smiled, pleased with the compliment.

  ‘Well, I’m often busy round the house and garden. These cottages may not be very big but they sure take some looking after. I’m quite a gardener, too, and there is always so much to do.’

  ‘Do you live here?’ Judith was interested now. ‘Oh, how wonderful, to live in Giverny.’

  ‘It is rather. We first came here back in the nineties when Paul had finished studying in Paris. He was doing such good work and we were so happy here then, I can’t remember why, we decided to go back to the States. But this place had got under our skin and we had to return.’ She paused for breath and sipped her pressé.

  Judith gazed at her and felt a stab of envy. ‘How lucky you are, it would be my absolute dream come true.’

  The woman made a little grimace. ‘Nothing’s perfect you know, not even Giverny. It is a beautiful place and I am always telling myself I’m lucky to be here but I tell you, I get lonesome sometimes. Oh, Paul has his work, it takes him up and he doesn’t choose to mix much with the locals. He’s right in a way, one gets so tired of gossip about some relative or other, feuds about inheritance and so on.’

  Judith smiled. ‘I guess so. But it goes on everywhere, doesn’t it, even in New York?’ Especially in New York, she thought. She remembered the conversations at her mother’s tea parties, the marriages that were examined, the husbands put under scrutiny.

  ‘But it’s just so provincial here. I mean look at you,’ her companion turned her gaze onto Judith. ‘Your wonderful clothes, they’re so thoroughly modern and your hair, well! Tell me something, what does it feel like to have such short hair?’

  Judith ran her fingers through the waves. ‘Free and easy, there is none of that boring time it used to take to dry. I’d never grow it again.’

  The woman gazed at her for a moment as if she had finally run out of things to say. A change came over her expression. She seemed to consider before giving a quick glance round as if to check they were alone. When she spoke again, her voice was low. ‘Tell me something, what do you think of French men?’

  ‘Well, they seem very pleasant, I have to say.’

  ‘Pleasant! Pleasant!’ The woman went into peals of laughter, showing large teeth. She leaned forward and spoke even more softly. ‘Let me tell you something, they are far more than pleasant when you’ve got them into bed.’

  It was Judith’s turn to glance round for fear they might be overheard. ‘I thought you said you were married?’ Somehow she was shocked, although she’d heard such things about her mother’s friends.

  The woman laughed again. ‘What has that got to do with it? Oh sorry dear, you are rather young, you may not have come across these things. You see, Paul and I have a very open marriage, we like it that way.’

  The players had come together at the net to shake hands, now they went to sit in the shade. Judith imagined how very hot it must be down there, running about under that sun; she was grateful of the trees’ shade, imagined how cool she must appear. She could feel the woman considering her.

  ‘I wonder you haven’t thought about it,’ she said at last. ‘You’re pretty enough and not married, by the look of things.’

  ‘I do have a fiancé.’

  ‘And where is he?’

  ‘America.’

  ‘Ah well, you know what they say? What the eye doesn’t see. Listen, I’ve had a couple of friends who’ve died of tuberculosis. It makes you realise how short life is and how one has to take advantage of whatever it offers.’ She glanced around furtively. ‘I’ll give you a tip, treat them like Americans, be bold, they like that.’

  ‘Oh here you are.’ A man had arrived at their table, a rather ugly man, Judith noticed, wearing a straw hat. He didn’t sit down.

  ‘Darling, I’ve been having a delightful conversation with this young lady but we never introduced ourselves.’

  ‘Judith Goldstein,’ she supplied.

  ‘Goldstein, eh?’ She thought his tone was sneering.

  ‘That’s right. I’m Maurice Goldstein’s daughter.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard all about you. Staying at Hotel Baudy, eh? Seems you’ve been to Le Pressoir, spent some time with Monet.’

  ‘My, my,’ Judith mimicked their Southern drawl. ‘How news travels round here.’

  ‘Glory me!’ her new acquaintance pouted. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I don’t think we’ve had time to get round to that,’ Judith replied.

  ‘Well that’s a bit of a scoop,’ Paul said. ‘An audience with the Master, I wonder how you managed that. He’s been avoiding us Yanks like the plague. You must tell us your secret.’

  His nose was bulbous and he had a scrappy moustache, his lips were very red. Judith decided she didn’t like him one bit.

  ‘Now Paul, don’t provoke the girl. It’s easy to see how she does it; she is such a charming young lady, who could resist her? Oh my dear, what is he like? We haven’t seen him for years. Did he show you the gardens? I’m dying to know.’

  ‘But not now,’ her husband interrupted, ‘we are going into Vernon, remember?’

  ‘Oh very well.’ She rose and put up her parasol. She held out her hand. ‘I’m Dorothy, by the way, Dorothy Young. See you again soon, I hope. I’ll look out for you in the village. Now don’t forget what I told you.’

  Judith watched them go: the thin woman with red hair, the short man in a straw hat. She wasn’t surprised Dorothy looked at other men. How could she have married a toad like Paul? And yet off they went, arm in arm, sharing some joke and seeming perfectly happy together. She ordered another pressé and considered their conversation.

  A few hours later, she was loitering near the door that led to the water garden. She had taken into account Normandy habits and supposed the gardeners would be back at work after luncheon.The sun was as hot as ever and a sharp smell rose from the tarmac, pleasing in an odd sort of way. She strolled up and down, trying to find a patch of shade and, although she wore her hat, mused that Dorothy’s parasol was a superior idea. Then there was the scrape of a bolt and the door on the other side of the track swung open. She had no idea what she would say if the older gardener appeared and was relieved to see it was Michel. His eyes widened when he saw her and he glanced around as if looking for a means of escape.

  ‘Michel,’ Judith stepped forward. ‘Judith, the friend of Monet, remember?’

  His gaze darted over her and away. He nodded. ‘Ah, yes.’

  ‘When I was here the other day, I believe I dropped an earring, a pearl one. It is rather precious to me and I wondered if you would help me search for it.’

  ‘I am busy, there is much work to do.’ He made to move away but Judith held up her hand.

  ‘I’m sure there is. Please, this is very important. It belonged to my mother you see.’ She contrived a catch in her voice. ‘Those earrings were the last thing she gave me before she died.’

  ‘Ta mère?’ He seemed to straighten up as if her absent mother were present in the garden.

  ‘Please,’ she urged again.

  In reply he shrugged and beckoned to her: ‘come. ‘They crossed the tarmac and entered through the green door into the water garden. As it closed behi
nd them, she felt a frisson of delight that she was alone with the young French man. There was no sign of Breuil.

  ‘Oh, you are so lucky to be working here in this beautiful place!’ she breathed.

  He had no time for pleasantries. ‘Where do you think it was lost?’ he asked.

  She was amused by the way he kept his distance, almost as if he were afraid she might pounce on him.

  ‘I’m not sure. We walked all the way along that path and then stood on the bridge before returning on the other side.’

  ‘Difficult,’ he grunted, ‘when it is something so small.’

  He started along the path and she followed, noting his broad shoulders under the linen shirt, his powerful stride. Perhaps he was not as tall as Charlie but then Charlie was rather skinny, with the beginnings of a stoop from so much sitting at his desk. This man had such a physical presence about him, like a beautiful creature in his natural habitat.

  He was searching with such deliberation that she began to feel guilty about her lie. She joined in, lifting leaves, peering about. Now and again, she pointed out a plant or a flower and said it was pretty, but he did not respond. He kept on repeating how difficult it was. He grumbled it was like looking for a needle in a haystack; maybe she would have to resign herself to the loss. It was obvious he wanted to be rid of her.

  They had crossed the bridge and were gradually making their way across the other side, moving towards the door again. Judith racked her brains as to what else she could say or do to persuade him to talk to her. He was silent to the point of being morose.

  Suddenly she stopped by a tree covered in a wild clamber of roses and put her hand to her head. ‘Oh, dear.’

  He glanced round, frowning at her.

  ‘It’s this sun, it’s made me feel faint. I really must sit down for a moment.’

  In answer, he led her to a green painted bench where she sank down. From somewhere, he produced a bottle and drew out the stopper.

  ‘I have no water but here is some lemonade.’