Fiction extract from The Painter’s Girl

Mimi surveyed the scene and fixed it in her mind to keep. A balcony looking out onto a milky green sea, muslin curtains fluttering on the veranda, a stone balustrade mellowed by the sun, the steps leading directly down to an endless strand of pale, fine sand. And there, perfectly framed in the centre of it all, a young girl in a yellow dress twirling with the wind like a dandelion clock, spinning for the sheer joy of being alive. She was seven now, a whole year older, a blissful year where Mimi had delighted in every moment, the childish giggles and tantrums, nightmares, lost milk teeth, and enchanted wonder at new discoveries.

‘Maman!’ Her voice carried on the breeze.

‘I’m coming!’

Mimi kicked off her shoes and ran, the sand deliciously cool and soft between her toes, arms flung open. Colette jumped up and hugged her, all rosy cheeks and hot hands, the sea scattering the sun behind her, gulls’ cries carrying on the salty air.

‘Race you to the sea!’

Her cotton dress billowed, revealing skinny brown knees, and her vivid green eyes fixed on the water’s edge, determined to win, perfect little feet making watery prints on the shining sand that glossed over the moment she passed.

‘I beat you!’

‘Not again,’ laughed Mimi, holding her hand as the waves caressed their feet with freezing foam.

Colette found a heart-shaped shell and gave it to her. ‘I love you to infinity.’

Mimi sluiced it in the sea and held it up to the sun, the pearlescent underside a gleam of pastel colours.

‘It’s like a mermaid’s tail,’ said Mimi.

‘I’d rather be a pirate,’ said Colette, fighting her with an imaginary sword.

‘You’re brave enough to be one, but even pirates need lunch. Papa is waiting for us on the balcony and once we’ve had a hearty feast, we can hoist the mainsail and set out for Xanadu. I hear it’s lovely there at this time of year.’

‘Is that far away?’

‘Very.’

‘But I like it here,’ said Colette.

‘Then this is where we’ll drop our anchor for at least a week.’

‘Good. And after that, we can go home, and I can play with Gisèle.’

Gisèle was what Colette called the doll that Mimi had saved for her all those lonely years without her. Mimi had suggested the name, her mother’s. Colette had solemnly agreed that it was just right for her doll, and Mimi had hugged her to hide her tears.

Rafi was waiting at the top of the steps for the two of them, dark curls lightened by the sun, arms folded with his head to one side with a smile as warm as the balmy air.

‘What’s this wild flotsam and jetsam washing up at my villa?’

‘We’re dropping anchor here for the week, but we still need to look out for enemy pirates.’

‘Aye aye, captain! And what about your second in command, you look like you’ve worked her too hard on deck,’ said Rafi, putting a protective hand on her stomach.

‘I’m fine. I’m so happy, Rafi! And all this sea air will help him, or her, grow strong.’

‘We’ll leave you to your easel after lunch; the light is perfect, I think? Colette and I have a very important puppet show to watch on the boardwalk in town, don’t we?’

‘Hooray!’ said Colette, hugging Rafi. ‘Can we get a hot chocolate at Café de Morny?’

‘They are saving your favourite table, Mademoiselle,’ said Rafi, bowing.

After her little family had left, Mimi mixed ultramarine with zinc white, terre verte and phthalo green for the sea, then yellow ochre, titanium white, alizarin crimson and cerulean blue for the sand.

A girl in a blue and white striped dress sat on the sand, hand on her straw bonnet, while her companion stood, grappling with her lacy parasol which had turned inside out in the wind whipping off the sea. They were both laughing, and the waves crashed, the sea rougher than it was this morning, tossing the sailboats that hugged the shore, their white sails swelling.

Mimi chose her brush, a bristle filbert, to begin the scene. She knew the buyer that Durand-Ruel would sell this to. She had several collectors in America, and one, an oil baron with a taste for her seaside landscapes, would be sure to take it. The Americans were taking a real interest in the Impressionists and were pretty much keeping them all in food and clothing thanks to their open minds and taste for the new.

The gang had all begun to marry and have children, and they lived near to each other by the river outside of Paris, painting, mingling, picnicking in each other’s gardens. Feckless Monet was the most successful of them all, and moved his family to a ramshackle place with an enormous garden nearby. With the money he made from his painting, he was obsessed with creating his next masterpiece, a garden full of Japanese bridges and lily ponds, which he painted a million times over with a masterful eye for colour and light. He’d dreamt of them, he said, since the day he rescued Mimi from the drink that summer’s afternoon in Chatou a long time ago.

Renoir was becoming known for his affectionate portrayals of opulent balls, sunlit picnics and idyllic family scenes, and Berthe was nursing her baby, Julia, cossetted by her attentive Eugène, who worshipped the ground she walked on. His life was devoted to her and Julia, and unlike most husbands, he was happy for her to work, making up for her slightly casual attitude to her baby, who she adored, but who came second to her painting.

Mimi slicked a highlight on the girl’s bonnet and tried not to think about Edo. His career had taken off too, but he wasn’t well. No one knew what was wrong, but he found it difficult to stand at his easel for long periods of time, and his eyesight was failing. He was still the handsome, talented, society darling she’d always known, but a nagging feeling inside knew that his light was ebbing, and she couldn’t bear to think of it.

The thought of Edo made the scene in front of her all the more precious. He was the first of them who had valued the ephemeral moment, the fleeting beauty of life captured on canvas. And she intended to rejoice in every last minute of whatever she had left of it. Colette had her own swing, hung under the apple tree, and she spent happy hours watching her in the dappled sunlight. Rafi wrote a regular column for the l’Opinion Nationale, and the two of them still sometimes danced around the rooms in their villa after they put Colette to bed, just to remember how many rooms there were, and to glide on the polished floors in awe of their good fortune. You could fit two of her Montmartre rooms just into the drawing room, and their garden had its own orchard, and flowerbeds and a terrace where they could watch Colette climb as many trees as she liked.

In Paris, the circus would be packing up into her painted wagons and heading south. Pixie would play her matador to new crowds, Juliet and Jules would dare death to snatch them out of the air night after night, and Tif would fly round the ring in his glittering bridle, a supple Romanian beauty turning arabesques on his back.

And Madame Vadoma would be laying out her tarot cards in her starry tent. A girl in a yellow dress, a cat, a river, an artist’s palette, and a man who cultivates the weeds. She would sit back, and close her eyes. ‘All is well,’ she’d whisper, at least until the next shuffle of the cards.