Monet’s Garden

By Valerie Nichols

I had lost my son. The water reflected this back at me. 

Here I was in the most beautiful, most famous garden in the world. Giverny. Soft, soft, colours, edges made round, sunlight above, trees filtering blue sky. 

It was autumn, the last day of the garden’s opening. I had expected death and decay, leading of course to a renewal of life. But it wasn’t like that at all. It was huge blossoming dahlias, brilliant yellow, orange, and red zinnias closer to the ground, in abundance.  Everywhere. Even in this season, there was brilliance, colour, and outbursting of life. 

It almost convinced me. And then I looked at the water, deep, dark green-black reflected  shadow.  I was an art historian. Masters from the University of Blackheath in the UK. Teaching at University, now on a year’s sabbatical. At this moment, vacillating between believing in life’s renewal from the flowers, and disbelieving from the dark shadows in the water.

I heard noise. Oh, God, noise. In this beautiful garden. And not only noise. Electronic noise. High pitched, repetitive “beep-beep” followed by a man’s voice saying “Please don’t step on Claude Monet’s nasturtiums.” Oh no, I thought, no. Not another tour group.

At any time I would have been irritated. In my present mood, just on the edge of deep contemplation, near to a breakthrough insight of a ten-year-old trauma, I felt explosive. Luckily less explosive than usual, thanks to the anti-depressants. 

Taking deep breaths and counting to ten as my psychologist had taught me, I hurried to another part of the garden.  Even Monet’s house, with its copies of all those glorious original paintings, was preferable. But as I strode through the rows of magnificent blooms, the voice of the group’s guide, mixed with further electronic noise, came through. His words froze me to the ground where I stood. 

“In 1885, the by then famous artist, Claude Monet, purchased this house at Giverny.  The garden was already sculpted, but in the French Style. Monet then changed the landscaping with the help of his gardener friend Gustave Caillebotte, to make it a more English-style garden.”

I had done my master’s thesis on Monet. I knew every moment of his life, his thoughts, as though Monet were… my son, the very child wrenched away from me.  This spiel was completely inaccurate. Monet had moved his family to Giverny in 1883, renting initially.   His paintings had not brought him enough wealth to purchase the house until 1890. The garden was initially large but neglected, and had needed a huge amount of work. Wrong, wrong, wrong. 

I peeked through the two meter high dahlias and some very tall daisies. The group all had headphones and small black boxes attached to their persons. The guide spoke into a microphone and his flock heard him wirelessly, as though by magic. They were two couples in their thirties, whose children had first alerted me to their presence, and assorted seniors. Americans, I thought.  The polyester pant suits of the women and loud checked shirts and peaked caps of the men were a dead give away. As the guide talked, his listeners dutifully nodded. 

I wasn’t far from where the green benches lay, leading to steps of the same shade at the entrance of the house. I moved in that direction to be out of earshot.  

But perhaps the dosage of anti-depressants wasn’t high enough. Perhaps it was the sunshine. Perhaps it was the flowers. Perhaps it was the dark-green reflection in the water, pulling me down to the underworld where my son had gone, painted on a canvas, in a cataract-induced splodge by Monet himself.  Whatever it was, I did not continue into the sanctuary of the house, but spun on my heel and tramped up the next row of flowers to where the group stood.  

I paused behind the guide, pretending to examine some fuchsia-pink Cosmos. Gorgeous, no smell. 

“Monet did all the work himself, and with ‘help from his friends.'”  The tourists smiled and the guide continued. “No professionals allowed.” The guide paused and turned to direct the tourists’ gaze towards the house. “Apparently the idea to paint the house such a light pink with green shutters and doors came from Monet’s wife.” 

Everyone smiled.   The guide said, “You men will all know how hard it is to go against the wishes of your Missus! Monet was the same. There’s really no other explanation for an artist of such great renown using such a dreadful colour combination as pink and green.”

That did it. Words rose quickly to my mouth, like bile, like vomit coming up. Forceful and involuntary. 

 The guide glanced at me, before continuing into the microphone, “Stroll around the gardens on your own. It’s such a beautiful day! We’ll meet at the entrance to Monet’s house in ten minutes.” The group moved away.

I sidled up to him. “I’m sorry,” I said, just keeping politeness in my voice.

He clicked the microphone off and turned towards me, inclining his head “Yes?

I ignored his politeness and plowed ahead. “I want to know what in the world you think you’re doing. I have never heard such inaccurate clap-trap in my life. Pink and green were specifically chosen by Monet himself, nothing whatsoever do to with his wife.” I didn’t pause for breath before saying,  “And he didn’t redo these gardens ‘with his friends’.  Monet hired two professional gardeners.” I stopped to take a breath, feeling my cheeks getting red. “Why in the world are you imparting such fallacious rubbish to these poor, innocent tourists?

I saw he was not all that good-looking. Prize fighter’s nose squished to one side, balding, scraggy blond hair, red blotchy skin. But tall. And he did not have the middle-aged belly that went with the general going-downhill appearance of the rest of him.  Early fifties? My age? 

He smiled ingratiatingly and touched my shoulder. I wanted to take a hatchet to him.

“I am a local licensed tour guide for the Giverny gardens,” he said. 

“What?”

The man pulled out a plastic-covered card, written in French. “Guide autorisé, jardins de la Fondation Claude Monet à Giverny”, with a faded photograph that could have been any man of indeterminate age.

I read the name and said to him in rapid French, “Are you Jean-Francois Antier?” 

He looked a bit puzzled and still smiling confidently said, “Can you repeat that in English?” 

“Bloody hell!” I said. 

He still smiled.  “My English parents were Francophiles but in no way linguists. I have a French name, but alas, no linguistic abilities.”

“Huh!” I sniffed.  “Anyway, you haven’t answered my question.”

He looked at his watch and said, “I have to meet my group soon. Could we get together at closing time? About five-thirty?”

I ground my teeth. “Not on your life. You haven’t answered my question as to why you are spouting such dreadful lies to these tourists.” He still held out the guide ID card, and I quickly snapped a photo of the man and the card together with my phone. 

He jumped back and looked thoughtful. “Ah. “

“Yes, ‘Ah.’  Why the hell are you doing this?”

“What’s it to you?”

That was a good question. I had not really cared about anything for a long, long time. 

“Truth,” I said.

“What?”

“I care about truth,” I told him.

He looked at me incredulously. “You some kind of religious zealot?”

“No. Just someone who doesn’t like lies.”

He shook his head. “I still don’t know who you are, and why this matters to you.”

The foot-stamping impulse returned strongly. The pond over the bridge looked tempting, but I wasn’t strong enough to drag him over.  “Rubbish is rubbish,” I told him.  “What you were saying was completely wrong.”

“And how do you know?” a whining, taunting note. He was fighting back. I felt better.

“Because,” I said, “I wrote my masters thesis on Monet. I researched him for two years, in French and in English. “

“Academics can make mistakes,”  he said without conviction.

In spite of my complete certainty of being right, and convincingly winning, I was curious. A good sign. Things stirring in my brain again. Curiosity. Unfolding, unfreezing. 

“So, answer. What the hell are you doing this for anyway?” I asked. 

“I have to meet the group now.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”  For some reason, this man irritated me even more than the phone-game noises, and that said a lot. “If you don’t tell me, I will report your registered-guide card, which is very unlikely to actually be in your name, to the prefecture. I think I speak better French than you do, and I know who they’ll believe.”

He eyed me sharply, but said, still smiling,  into the microphone, “Take an extra ten minutes for a bathroom break.  The restrooms are located to the left of the house, just before the gift shop. We’ll meet at the entrance to Monet’s house at five o’clock.”

I just stared at him, biting my compressed upper lip. 

“Let’s sit down,” he said, wielding. 

“OK.” I wasn’t against sitting.

We sat on one of the green benches. He waited as though gathering his thoughts, as though deciding which story to tell me. “I guess you’ve twigged that I’m not really a guide.”

“I can’t say that. You seem to have the group eating out of your hand. But you don’t know anything about Monet’s life. Or if you do, you are deliberately falsifying it for some reason I cannot imagine.”

“Bloody academics,” he said, irritated. “Considering all possibilities. Can’t we just have a normal conversation?”

“Not unless you’re going to stop lying to me,” I snapped back. Why in the world was I taking this trouble? But yes. Life was returning, in my veins, my sinews. Flowers fractionally winning over shadows. 

He looked at his watch. I could feel his previous interest in me evaporating. Practical indifference now. 

“A. R. D.,” he said. 

“Huh?”

“A. R. D.”

“Uh, sorry I don’t get it. “

“Alcohol-Related-Dementia.”

“Aren’t you a bit….. a bit…. well…. young for that?”

“I drank too much, for too long,” he continued, as though rattling off a catechism.  “Stopped ten years ago,  but my brain still doesn’t remember facts stacked up together, and hold them.”

I couldn’t think of what to say. 

“So I have to make things up.” He smiled. “I was a writer. Always a good imagination. And now I find making up stories on the spur of the moment works rather well.”  

He glanced at his watch again. “The guide pass was borrowed from a friend. Well, he had passed out and I hadn’t, and I sort of took it from his wallet. But I need it more than he does. I’m working my way around Europe for the summer. So far, so good. You wouldn’t believe the tips I get.”

He gave me one last look, deeply in my eyes, when he was really there, present. Then the intensity behind the eyes seemed to vaporize. He strode off towards Monet’s house.   I heard him gaily greet the tourists. 

A symphony swelled up in my ears. It was the wind through the tall trees. It was the flowers emitting beauty and particles into the air. It was the rustling of leaves. All nature was there, strong, forceful, alive. 

I was here too. I could remember things. I could think. My brain worked, it still did. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, I thought. My son, my son. Woven into my sinews, into my brain. Wrenched away  with jagged slashes that tore the flesh from my body, when he had been drunk behind the wheel, smashing into a tree. But the wind. The wind. The wind was here too. 

“We’re now going to visit the studio where Monet painted his famous painting, “The Poppy Field”. The guide’s words floated out to me. More lies, more mis-information. But yes, I was alive.

That was the point. I was still alive. Of course it still hurt, tearing through my substance. But nature cried out. I was alive.  I had to go forward. 

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