...madame...

...she stood out in the crowd...

...slender and tall, straight and still...sure of herself...complete in all that she was...in all she thought herself to be...is when they met and fell in love...

...life was lived, unfolded in joys and in sadness as peoples’ lives do...

                                                            

...it wasn’t that she’d not been happy, she had...

...it wasn’t that her life had not been an easy one, it had...

but

...her life began late, very late...

..she was never married ...not really married, but she bore him five children and she did love them all...Henri, the first, named after his Papa to bond and to show how much she loved them, then came Michelle and Claude and Benoit, the blessed one,  and last  came little Aude who was old and wise the moment she looked straight at you, even as a tiny infant...the special one who knew all...no need to speak and she never spoke...

...a woman before her time, is what they said about madame and for the sake of the young ones she was known as madame Matisse, ...she did love him dearly, of course she did but being a mistress was hard ... not so uncommon to be someone’s paramour in the south of France...which was always a comfort...

...it wasn’t that her life wasn’t right, it was...

but

...it didn’t always feel right in spite of les enfants, it often seemed hollow somehow, there was always something missing and although it did not matter to her at the start, it nagged when they were growing up  and she began to seek out solitude,  an oasis of peace when he had gone to meet up with his friends at le Café  Max, drinking vin rouge, reading poetry and playing chess...

and

...that was the time she would get out her paints and her brushes, small bits of paper and card she had saved to paint on...she painted in bits so he would not know it but he did always tell her that he was not unaware...in spite of the lavender she had sprayed to lessen the smell of the turps...

I know it , you show what you did, he would say, triumphant his smile and glittering eyes which were usually so gentle...too much lavender, see? And I can still smell the turps! Let me see what you did and she showed him, caught, guilty before him and he dismissed her scrap of card or the paper still wet with the paint with a wave of his hand...he had writing to do and illustrate the new book for all to look at and perhaps to read...

 Ah, just a scrap, is what it is he said, you paint scrap madame. Why is it you do that still? We had agreed that I was the only painter around here, that was the contract , remember the contract! Your place is with les enfants and in the kitchen and not over scraps! 

‘I do not distinguish between the construction of a book and that of a painting,’ he had told her often enough,’ I always proceed from the complex to the simple,’ is what he said...

...she nodded agreement, it was so irrelevant to her when she needed a hug rather than a lecture again...

 and

...for the sake of his fragile ego she nodded and for the sake of peace...

...she proceeded from the complex to the simple...

But he was not really threatened by her daubs, to him they were quite meaningless, scraps with red squares and green, blue circles and yellow, useless daubing, she just wanted to smell the paint and the turps and remember that she was once of some worth... She became the butt of  many a joke among his circle of friends...madame Matisse,  la peintre du ferraille... the scrap painter...

...she packed the scaps away in an old leather trunk left to her by maman  for her precious things, she laid them one on top of the other with great care when they had dried, like treasures, jewels, hers to look at when the days were long and she needed solace...the comfort of  the order of the colours in her mind and the knowledge of having dared to put them there...

                                                            

...it’s after he died that she began at last to live...

...after he died she packed up her things and his easels and brushes and she moved them to paint in the clear light of the Atlantic in the north of the county of Devon where the land was wild and the sea and the moors called her to paint and to draw. Her stone cottage on the edge of the cliffs was a tiny fortress and the walls kept her safe from the winds and the storms...she began to lose herself in dreamtime and understanding again the sense of time and timelessness...she took the time to BE and she was and she did. She painted and she sang, she worked to recapture all the lost years, she was the wind and the gulls, the deer on the heather...she remembered the life she had had in Nice with her man and her children who had all left to build lives of their own...Aud had left too soon... as angels do...a great sadness for her...

...it’s not that he had not loved her, he had, of course, he had painted her often enough but had delighted in the charms of  Madame la femme,  as age weakened his life and his sight and his breath grew shallow...

...the invitation lay there for all to see and she knew that she would go to the big city, she wanted to be a part of it all, making up for time lost, opportunities gone in her younger days...

...she loved the buzz, she loved the attention and dressed in slate silks and her nipples still pointed high...tres gentile, and she knew it, not bad, she thought, for 85 as she sensed her host losing himself in the shape of her tiny breasts as they talked...

...‘fascinating’, is what he said...

‘what would you call it’? ...

...stands out on its own, never seen any the like, must get the prize, the best piece of all in the show, amazing, original, wonderful, is what they mouthed with Paloma red lips as they passed , armed with bubbles in glasses, trailing chiffon and feathers,  wafts of scent as they floated away, leaning just lightly on black suited arms with black shirts and no collars....smart, oh, so smart, so light and so happy, so her and so, so deserving of it! She loved it, all...but so glad to get home to the wild of the moors and the sea in the end...

...she stood out in the crowd...

...slender and tall, straight  and still...

..she wore a Dior silk turban to match, adorned with a lavender sprig from her garden...

...the biggest painting of them all, a very fine work,  a collage of  colourful scraps, the purest lines, colour in splendour... and they proclaimed her the first woman cubist painter in the land,  without doubt a woman of her day, the woman of the moment and she was magnificent as she stood there, smiling in her slate silks in front of a wall of explosion of colour...her picture of a lady that everyone loved ..    

                                             

                                                             ...madame Matisse...