The Watercolour Class – Part 1: Wet on Wet

"It is a tree," said Jacques, apologetically.

Maureen looked at his painting. It was a grey-green blur on a damp wash of sky, with something that might have been a trunk. She looked at the real olive tree, silver and gnarled, standing on a terrace of golden stone in the Provençal sun. Then she looked at him.

"It's very... atmospheric."

"It is terrible."

"It's a lovely wash."

"It is a terrible wash, and you are too kind." He was sixty-six, a retired postman, silver-haired and slightly stooped, in a rumpled linen shirt and a battered straw hat, with large gentle hands and a deeply sad, amused face. He had joined the village art class four years ago, after his wife died, to keep from being alone. He had painted the olive tree every Tuesday since.

Maureen was sixty-two, a retired English teacher, newly arrived from Norfolk, in a floppy hat and borrowed paints. She had come to Provence on an impulse, to start over. "Why the same tree?" she asked.

"Because I do not yet understand it."

She smiled. "Then we're well matched. I don't understand anything."

The instructor, a plump cheerful woman, set them up at a shared easel on the terrace. For the next hour, they painted side by side. Maureen's first wash ran down the page like a river. Jacques's blue sky turned to mud. They laughed, wiping brushes on rags, dabbing at puddles.

"We should use less water," said Jacques.

"We should use none."

"Then it is not watercolour."

"Then it is a very dry joke."

He laughed, a creaky, delighted wheeze. The tree shimmered in the heat. Cicadas thrummed. Below the terrace the village tumbled down the hill in tiers of terracotta.

By noon, they had produced two awful paintings and a great deal of ease.

"Can I ask you something?" said Maureen.

"Yes."

"Will you teach me what you know?"

"I know nothing," said Jacques. "But I will share it gladly."

"Green?" she said, a wash, a leaf.

"Green," said Jacques, smiling. "Very green. Next Tuesday?"

Continue the story: Part 2 – The Tree.