By seven o’ clock that evening, she had recovered herself and was filled with stern resolve she was going to have it out with her stepfather. When she came into the dining room he did not even glance up, seeming deep in thought. She took her place and the soup was brought, they took up their spoons and ate in silence. Duck came next in the usual peppercorn spiked sauce. To her surprise, he did not seem to eat with his usual appetite.
After a while, she asked: ‘Is there anything wrong with the meal tonight, Papa?’
He stirred himself, seeming to come out of a reverie. ‘It is quite good.’
For some reason this annoyed Blanche, not so much for herself she realised, but for Marie who had taken such pains to please.
‘You think so? I find this well done.’
‘Marie will never cook like Marguerite.’
Blanche sniffed and set down her knife and fork. ‘You know what you must do? Stop this constant mourning for Marguerite. That time is over, Papa, gone and will never return. You will have to learn to accept, as we all have to accept, that the world is not arranged for our benefit.’
He gazed at her. ‘You’re angry.’
‘No, I am not.’
‘As you wish.’
He finished what was on his plate but did not help himself to more. Annette brought in the dessert; this evening, Marie had produced an authentic Poire belle Hélène down to the crispy almond biscuits stuck into ice cream.
‘Oh, my goodness,’ Blanche exclaimed. ‘That does look so good. Please Annette, say thank you to Marie.’
‘I helped with the biscuits, madame.’
‘Well done.’
The girl grinned and clumped out of the room.
Blanche cleared her throat, ‘and don’t you dare say that this isn’t a patch on Marguerite’s.’
He shrugged.
‘It is, in fact, excellent,’ she persisted.
He ate the pear and some of the melted chocolate, and then pushed his plate away. He poured some wine. ‘I am sorry but I have been feeling depressed today. I need cheering up. I’d like Judith to pay another visit, I so much enjoy her company.’
Blanche was spooning up the ice cream, a subtle taste of vanilla, and Marie had kept a light hand with the sugar; she was certainly coming on.
‘I think we should discourage this Mademoiselle Judith,’ she muttered.
‘Whatever for?’
‘She is an unsettling influence.’
‘I don’t see it like that.’
She took up an almond biscuit. ‘Because you are an old fool.’
‘Don’t you speak to me like that. You are my stepdaughter and my daughter in law.’
‘Yes and so I am doubly under your thumb and always have been, right from the time…’
‘Don’t bring all that up again. The past is the past.’
The pot calling the kettle black, she thought, what had he just said about Marguerite?
‘So you are dissatisfied with your life?’
Blanche fetched the plum brandy and poured them both a glass. ‘I didn’t say that. What I am saying is that we had settled into a pleasant existence, quiet perhaps, but pleasant until this… this American arrived.’
‘Ah well, I don’t see it like that. She brings life and light to this place.’
‘The trouble with you is you can’t see what is in front of your eyes.’
There was a pause.
‘That is true,’ he said quietly.
‘Pardon, but really it is I who sees what is going on in this household. All you are concerned with is your painting, nothing must disturb that but this young woman has created such disorder, you have no idea.’
He lit a cigarette. ‘Maybe it is because she is young that you don’t like her, Blanche.’
The remark echoed her earlier thoughts and it stung.
‘That has nothing to do with it. She is not what you believe her to be, I have my reasons for saying that. I am telling you, Papa, I will not allow her to set foot in this house again. In fact, you can choose between her or me.’
He lifted his glass and finished the plum brandy. ‘So be it, but you have become a very bitter woman.’
Five minutes later he had gone, back to his studio and she was left, gazing round the room. Yet again, she counted the chairs round the table and thought back to the time when there were voices and laughter. The Japanese prints gazed down, those young, lovely women in their kimonos seemed to taunt her. No wonder if she was bitter, any woman in her position surely had the right to be.
1891
That summer Le Pressoir bustled with activity as Monet set about his dream of creating the water garden. It was to be the ultimate source of his inspiration, he explained to Georges, when the politician joined the family for lunch.
‘I visualise it as a cup garden, in the parlance of Japanese garden design, to inspire introspection. A mirror of water will form the bottom of the cup and the plantings, wisteria, willows, bamboo, irises and so on will be its sides and cast their reflections. In the pond, I shall plant thousands of water lilies, all the colours that genius Latour-Marliac can offer me.’
‘Sounds delightful,’ Georges looked up from the coq au vin. ‘The kind of place where we middle aged men can ponder our destinies.’
Monet wagged a finger. ‘More than that, my friend, much more than that, I have plans. My water garden will provide the setting for a series on the theme of the pond and its lilies. I have an idea this will be my subject for a long time to come. However, the water lilies are far from being the whole scene. The essence of the motif should be the glass-like water, altering every moment, thanks to patches of reflected sky, which will give it light and movement.’
‘Remarkable,’ Georges refilled his glass. ‘You must carry this out, Claude. Rely on me if you need any help.’
At the end of the existing garden and beyond the railway track, there was a marshy grazing area. His idea was to buy a piece of this land and then to divert a tributary of the River Epte, which served some mills downstream. Here he met with opposition. Local people, including a farmer called Louis Duval, held that the strange and exotic plants Monet grew would poison the water. Georges who was by now as enthusiastic of the project as his friend, used his influence to help push the permission through.
Blanche joined the family to watch the excavation. At first only a small pond was dug, which Monet soon pronounced not large enough for the studies he had in mind. It was enlarged and yet again. Then he took off in the car to Le Temple-sur-Lot to visit Latour-Marliac’s nurseries and immersed himself in water lilies. This swiftly became an obsession as he bought and acclimatised many exotic varieties in extraordinary colours.
Alice began to complain. ‘He thinks more of those wretched lilies than anything else, including me,’ she grumbled to Blanche. ‘And now he is going to construct a Japanese bridge. I only hope he doesn’t plan to paint it red.’
‘Of course it won’t be red!’ Monet snapped. ‘What do you take me for? It’s to be green, the same colour as the paintwork of the house.’
He spent hours on the site, consulting with Latour-Marliac, planning and supervising the plantings. Blanche welcomed this distraction. On the day of John Leslie’s arrival, it was easy to slip away and meet him at Vernon station. She was there far too early, standing on the platform until she saw him alight from the train, his figure moving towards her, indistinct in the smoky atmosphere. He exclaimed as he realised it was she, Blanche, waiting for him, dropping his valise to the ground to take her in his arms.
‘It’s just so wonderful to see you.’
Tears ran down her face. ‘I thought you were gone for ever.’
‘But here I am, you see. Large as life and twice as natural.’
She laughed with happiness. ‘Oh yes! Listen, shall we not go straight back to Giverny.’
He shrugged. ‘Okay, let’s go sit in that café.’
They held hands across the
table, smiling at one another. He told her about the exhibition he had mounted in Boston, of the success he had had and she described how the haystacks series was enabling the building of the lily pond. Yes, he said, he had read of their success in the papers, it sounded a swell project. She took in his dark hair, the shape of his face, that remembered gaze and felt a simple joy but she knew she had to be strong.
‘I had to see you again,’ she said. ‘It was too abrupt after all we’d had between us. I felt it wasn’t finished properly.’
He frowned. ‘Blanche, it isn’t finished. I know what you said and since then I’ve realised the tie between you and Monet is more powerful than I understood. But you are a woman, too, and have your life to lead as he has led his.’
She felt the familiar sense of conflict begin all over again.
‘Let’s see,’ he urged. ‘Please Blanche, let’s see.’
They stepped out into the heat of the June day. The sky was pure blue, the air sweet after the grey, smoky station.
On the road to Giverny, John Leslie gazed about him as if seeing the landscape for the first time, the hedgerows, the lines of poplars. ‘You know, I’ve dreamed of how beautiful it is here.’
The trap set them down outside Hotel Baudy, which was noisier than ever with the new influx of Americans. Reluctantly, Blanche told him she would have to return to the house in case she was missed.
‘When shall I see you?’ he asked. ‘Tonight?’
‘We will have to meet in the daytime when Monet is busy.’ She sighed. ‘There has been a new complication while you’ve been away. Last winter, Suzanne went skating and met Theodore Butler. Now they want to get married and my mother and Monet are doing their best to keep them apart. He has hardened even more so in his attitude towards you Americans. If he suspects that you and I are meeting also he will be furious and then heaven knows what will happen.’
‘That’s a blow.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘We’ll find a way,’ he replied.
It was as if they had gone back to the beginning of their courtship. Their meetings were chaste apart from a kiss or touch of hands when they could be alone. However, the separation had sharpened a hunger to talk to one another, a curiosity to satisfy the gaps of knowledge about the other’s life, so that they told each stories of their pasts, their likes and dislikes… all those things their early passion had ignored. Blanche had the acute sense of passing time; she felt she wanted to cram in all the questions raised in her mind during his absence, know this man and his life as intensely as she possibly could. John Leslie persisted with Suzanne’s belief that love always found a way.
Absorbed in his plans for the water garden, it was some time before it came to Monet’s attention that John Leslie had returned.
‘I hear that trouble maker is back,’ he remarked at supper one evening. ‘Painting, so they say.’
Maman met Blanche’s eye. ‘I believe he is,’ she said.
Consideration of Theodore Butler as a possible husband for Suzanne was now underway; it appeared he had the wealth and position John Leslie lacked. Maman had softened towards Blanche and agreed there was no harm in she and John Leslie being painting companions.
Monet had grunted, ‘I suppose I can’t prevent him, as long as he doesn’t come sniffing round here again.’
‘I think you have made that perfectly plain.’ Maman replied and changed the subject. ‘This Japanese bridge you are planning: promise me you will not paint it red.’
‘Of course not, you stupid woman,’ Monet had replied.
* * *
They often painted in the garden of the Pink House, rented by another American artist, setting up their easels close together but seldom alone, thus satisfying Maman that they were chaperoned. Having initiated his water garden, Monet set off for Rouen where he planned another series, this time of the cathedral. But with the advent of Theodore Butler he wrote constantly to Alice asking for reports of what was going on in Giverny.
John Leslie appeared fascinated by the subject of the haystacks, urging Blanche for more details of Monet’s technique, his expression of atmosphere and altering light.
‘It is such a simple idea but what a breakthrough, to paint the same darn thing over and over. I wish I’d been in Paris to see the exhibition. The questions I would have asked.’
‘I don’t think you’ll have the opportunity of asking them now,’ Blanche said.
‘Can’t you show me how he did it? You were with him all the time.’
‘I don’t know if I can.’
‘Why not?’
She shrugged. Love him as she did, she felt reluctant to share the work of those months, the vision that belonged to her and Monet. But there was more to it than that. She was afraid of what might happen if she showed him her painting of haystacks and explained how she had achieved it.
‘I agree with you,’ Suzanne said when she confided these thoughts to her sister. ‘It’s a subject best left alone. I have to say John Leslie is too curious for his own good. You’ll never persuade Monet to accept him.’
Blanche clenched her fists. ‘Why should it be any different for me than you? Just because you’ve always known how to get round him.’
Suzanne sniffed. ‘Don’t be so unkind, Blanche. You know it is difficult for me, too.’
At least I don’t criticise Theodore.’
They stared at one another in silence for a moment.
‘Oh Blanche, isn’t it awful? I don’t think it’s fair the way he plays the stern father when he isn’t even related to us. He did exactly what he wanted when he was young.’
‘Yes and then he cheated on Camille.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘No, Suzanne, I don’t, but I always felt there was something between Maman and he when we were all living in the chateau. You must remember how the atmosphere changed when Papa was away, those picnics, walking in the forest and singing?’
Suzanne smiled. ‘He was a lot more fun then.’
They were calm now, they could never argue for long. They sat on the balcony to drink lemonade and discuss the situation.
‘It’s all this business over Papa dying,’ Blanche said. ‘Now the way is clear for Maman to marry Monet.’ She refilled her glass. ‘Make an honest woman of her. You know how she has always hoped for that. What with that and all this fuss over the lily pond no wonder he is so short tempered. I don’t know what we can do.’
Suzanne was adamant. ‘We shall go on seeing them, that’s all. I refuse to allow him to destroy my happiness.’
If only it were as simple as that, Blanche thought, but perhaps it is where she is concerned. Whereas for me, this battle to capture a will o’ the wisp, the goal to reach the essence of light that led one on but often seemed impossible to achieve, bound her to Monet in a way her sister could never fathom. There was always this conflict between art and life.
Nevertheless the knowledge that John Leslie was in Giverny, even if she could not always be with him, sweetened her mood.
‘I don’t know what I’d do without you,’ her mother remarked. ‘First it was all he was going through in painting the cathedral, those constant letters full of agony and despair. Now this water garden seems to have gone to Monet’s head.’
It was true, mealtimes were dominated by his conversations with Latour-Marliac; how he had tried to prise the secret of hybridisation out of him but that it remained mysterious. He wondered at the nurseryman’s palette that ranged from pale yellow to fuchsia and deep red.
‘My God!’ Alice exclaimed one day. ‘Can you not speak of something else?’
He gazed at her in surprise. ‘What else would you like to talk about, my dear? How the hens are laying? The price of a new hat?’
She threw up her arms in despair. ‘Anything, Monet, anything else but those wretched water lilies.’
All the same, everyone had to agree, the new project was coming on splendidly; s
oon guests were arriving to be taken on a tour by the ecstatic creator.
Away from the house, Blanche continued to sit in the garden of the Pink House and paint alongside John Leslie, trying to live from day to day because she dare not think of the future.
‘Don’t be such a pessimist, Blanche,’ he would tease her. ‘You should take a leaf out of your sister’s book. She’s convinced of a happy outcome.’
In this way, the summer passed until at the beginning of October, John Leslie announced he was starting on a new project. He refused to tell her what it was and for three days she didn’t see him.
‘I have scarcely seen him myself,’ Madame Baudy told her. ‘Only for dinner when he devours a great deal and goes straight to bed.’
Blanche waited with a developing prescience that something was not right. A week later when she met him, this was confirmed.
‘Ten of them,’ John Leslie told her. ‘Every day I set up my easel so as to paint exactly the same view in each of the series. Haystacks,’ he smiled at her. ‘My homage to the master.’
She saw a collection of small canvasses, each depicting three haystacks in an open field with farm buildings and the mass of a gentle ridge. They registered the passing of the hours as if of a single day: a fleeting moment of dawn, the glow of sun edging over the horizon, effect of blinding light from the newly risen sun. Time appeared to pass before her gaze as it moved from canvas to canvas. The warm light of full morning was replaced by shortening shadows in his sixth painting. In the eighth, the still air of late afternoon was portrayed by flattened clouds in a calm, blue sky.
‘What do you think of them?’
‘They are very well done,’ she replied.
So cleverly had he depicted the sense of passing time, that fleeting moment as the sun drops below the horizon, the moon risen over distant trees until in the last painting it hangs above the horizon at twilight. How short life is, she thought, how brief moments of joy and sun filled days.
‘Very well done,’ she repeated.
‘Thank you, I’m pleased with them myself. They are probably my best work to date.’
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