The Olive Season Read online

  By the same author

  Non-fiction

  CROSSING THE LINE: YOUNG WOMEN AND THE LAW

  THE OLIVE FARM

  Fiction

  AN ABUNDANCE OF RAIN

  AKIN TO LOVE

  MAPPING THE HEART

  BECAUSE YOU’RE MINE

  Children’s fiction

  THE HAUNTED SCHOOL

  MOLLY

  MOLLY ON THE RUN

  THE HUNGER: IRELAND 1845–1847

  TWENTIETH-CENTURY GIRL, LONDON 1899–1900

  Copyright

  First published in the United States in 2003 by

  The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

  New York, NY

  141 Wooster Street

  New York, NY 10012

  www.overlookpress.com

  For bulk and special sales, contact [email protected], or write us at the above address.

  Copyright © 2003 by Carol Drinkwater

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  ISBN 978-1-46830-871-6

  For Michel,

  I was born in love with you.

  And for my mother. Our friendship has been a long time in the budding. But now that I have understood what she was fighting for, I want her to know how much I love her.

  CONTENTS

  ALSO BY CAROL DRINKWATER

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ONE: GETTING SPLICED, POLYNESIAN-STYLE

  TWO: FRUITS OF SPRING

  THREE: SILVER SIDE OF THE COAST

  FOUR: OUR SUNNY SURROUNDINGS

  FIVE: TREATING THE TREES

  SIX: HIVES OF INACTIVITY

  SEVEN: A DARKER CLIMATE

  EIGHT: THE SILENCE OF THE SEA

  NINE: LOVE REDISCOVERED

  TEN: SUMMER ECLIPSED

  ELEVEN: RENÉ’S BÊTISE

  TWELVE: ALTERNATIVES

  THIRTEEN: THE DIVINITY OF NATURE

  FOURTEEN: OLIVE

  FIFTEEN: 200 NEW POSSIBILITIES

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The Ancients sang their way all over the world. They sang the rivers and ranges, salt-pans and sand dunes. They hunted, ate, made love, danced, killed: wherever their tracks led they left a trail of music.

  They wrapped the whole world in a web of song; and, at last, when the Earth was sung, they felt tired.

  Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This is a true story. A fragment of my own and, because it is my own, I have taken certain liberties: bent time, changed names, rejigged the script here and there. ‘To protect the innocent,’ as they say in the movies. As well as a few of the guilty lurking within these pages.

  CHAPTER ONE

  GETTING SPLICED, POLYNESIAN-STYLE

  The car draws to a halt in the leafy lane that not so many years ago was barely a mule track. In front of us is a set of tall, Matisse-blue gates. Ours.

  ‘C’est bon, we’ll walk the rest of the way,’ Michel informs our driver.

  Our man at the wheel is puzzled, and so am I.

  Michel smiles, and insists. ‘Vraiment, there’s no need to take us further.’

  In the trunk of this Mercedes taxi is an extremely heavy suitcase, an aluminium briefcase containing Michel’s video-camera equipment, two laptops and one hand-painted didgeridoo measuring close to four feet in length, as well as sundry pieces of rather battered hand luggage. It is evident to anyone that carrying all this will be no easy exercise. It is also obvious that beyond the locked gates there is a drive which snakes up a steep hillside, and we are both exhausted and jet-lagged. We have been travelling for more than twenty-four hours. Yes, the prospect of carting our luggage by hand and tramping the hill on foot feels like more than I am able to face, but now I see what Michel has seen.

  Our three dogs, led by Lucky, the German Shepherd, are bounding down the drive. Lucky, who had been abandoned, and who I found curled up like a moth-eaten mat at the foot of our property, bone-thin and nervy. We decided to adopt her, and here she is now, airborne at the gates, barking and growling at the innocent driver.

  He stares fearfully at her. ‘Ah, vous avez raison, monsieur.’

  Our bags are swiftly unloaded, the fare is settled and, once the car has safely rounded the corner, Michel unlocks the iron gates. They creak like a mummy’s tomb as I pull them open and three sets of canine paws land firmly on my stomach, tails wagging.

  We are home.

  I scan the terraces, planted with row upon row of ancient olive trees. It is April, late spring. Here in the hills behind the Côte d’Azur, the olive groves are delicately blossomed with their tiny, white-forked flowers. Beyond them, perched halfway up the slope of the hill, our belle époque villa comes into view. Abounding in balustrade terraces, nestling among cedars and palms, facing out at a south-westerly angle, overlooking the bay of Cannes towards the sun-kissed Mediterranean, there it is, Appassionata, awaiting us.

  ‘Mmm, it’s good to be back,’ I murmur.

  ‘Would you like me to carry you?’ asks Michel.

  ‘Carry me? I know I’m tired, but I’m not that exhausted!’

  ‘Over the threshold, chérie,’ he adds with a grin and a wink.

  Ah, yes. I had momentarily forgotten. We are returning to our olive farm as man and wife. We tied the knot a week ago at the wackiest of wedding ceremonies. Our nuptials took place on the tiny tropical atoll of Aitutaki, one of the Cook Islands in the South Pacific.

  ‘You know, I never thought I’d go through with it,’ I giggle.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Getting married.’

  ‘Well, there you go.’

  I smile, reminding myself of how it all came about.

  The first time Michel proposed to me was in Australia on our very first date. We were sitting side by side at a table in an open-air restaurant in Elizabeth Bay; shy strangers awaiting two plates of Sydney Bay prawns.

  ‘I think we have a problem,’ Michel said to me.

  I looked across at him in surprise.

  ‘I’ve fallen in love with you,’ he muttered softly. ‘Will you marry me?’

  I confess that I was completely blown away and reacted as any amazed woman might, which was to gulp down a huge mouthful of my Brown Brothers Chardonnay and shrug off the proposal with a confused laugh. The fact is, I didn’t take this handsome, blue-eyed man seriously. In any case, I was a career girl, a thirty-something actress, independent, ambitious, in demand and not the type to settle down. Or so I was perpetually reminding myself in those days. Terrified of commitment, scared of losing or being hurt was probably closer to the truth. And although within months of that first dinner in Australia we had scrambled together the rather substantial cash deposit to secure this gloriously dilapidated property, I hedged my bets as far as marriage was concerned. Until one morning, the following autumn, Michel flew in to London from Paris, arrived at my flat, went down on one knee, small, square jewellery box in one hand and the other holding mine, and said: ‘We have known each other a year now. A year to the day, exactly. We have our olive farm. Soon all the papers will be signed and it will officially belong to us. I think we are very happy. Both my daughters adore you, Carol, chérie, and I, je t’aime avec tout mon coeur. So will you, please, accept to be my wife now?’

  My heart was beating like a clapperboard. I love Michel passionately, but was I capable of taking that final step?

  Out popped my answer. ‘Only if the King of Tonga marries us.’

  What did I know of the King of Tonga? No more than anyone else: that he was famous for his massive girth, was the ruling monarch of a small archipelago of Pacific islands and that he was Polynesian. It was a flippant response intended only to buy me more time and keep that final itsy bit of commitment at bay. But even then, after so many months of living with Michel, I was underestimating the measure of his love for me and the tenacity of a film producer’s spirit – or this one’s, certainly – for they can usually be counted upon to provide whatever mise en scène has been requested.

  A few weeks later I was back in Sydney and at work. I was filming a series based on a book written by me and produced by Michel. A fax arrived at the hotel from the kingdom of Tonga, addressed to me. Buried in the make-believe world of the role I had created for myself, I had completely forgotten my careless riposte of weeks earlier and so the fax bemused me at first. It was handwritten by the King’s personal secretary. Standing in the hotel lobby, I read on. The communication sought photocopies of my and my parents’ birth certificates and my current passport, details of criminal record, if any, religious adherences, etc. I flipped to the next page, heart palpitating, beginning to anticipate what was coming. Continuing, His Highness’s secretary explained that the King insisted all betrothed visiting his island be scrupulously investigated before any ‘joining in holy matrimony blessed by His Royal Highness could be approved’.

  I dashed upstairs to my seaview suite, telephoned Paris, woke Michel and immediately began to interrogate him. ‘Is this a practical joke?’ I cried. ‘Is it? I mean, what’s it all about?’

  I could almost hear the smile in his voice as
he confirmed that, as I had entreated, we were to be married in the royal kingdom by none other than King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, the King of Tonga. To say that I was stunned when I replaced the receiver would be an understatement. Still, after a minor panic attack, my enthusiasm for the idea began to grow. A South Sea-island wedding, warm, spumy waves lapping our naked toes as they sank into golden sands, a portly Polynesian potentate waving a scarlet hibiscus or two over our heads, muttering blessings in an incomprehensible tongue … Mmm, I thought, if I’ve got to go, then this is the way to go.

  Having furnished the necessary mountain of paperwork, I then learned that the wedding ceremony would be a very different function to the one I had been dreaming of. The King was a devout Methodist. There would be no beach celebrations, no champagne. Prayers, countless hymns and a protracted service would be the order of the day, and no alcohol. I have nothing against such weddings for those who select them but it was not what I had envisaged for us, and so I rang Michel again. This time to explain, rather sheepishly, that I didn’t fancy the wedding he was organising.

  ‘Couldn’t we just forget it?’ I muttered, all too aware of the trouble he must have gone to to bring the arrangements thus far.

  He accepted my reservations without complaint. All plans were halted, and not much more was said on the subject of marriage until three years later, which is to say a little more than a month ago.

  We were back in Sydney, the city where we met four years earlier, having dinner with a fellow television producer and longstanding friend of Michel’s, Roger. During the course of the meal he asked, in the rather blunt manner Australians sometimes favour: ‘I thought you folks were getting spliced. What happened? Decided yer don’t like one another? I warned yer she’d be too much for yer, mate!’

  I blushed as Michel recounted my objections to the almost forgotten Tongan escapade. Roger guffawed and laughed. ‘Bloody lucky escape, I’d say, mate. That old bugger’s a religious nut. And they’re all still cannibals at heart. You must have heard the story about his mother, the old Queen, when she travelled on the QE2?’ And before we could reply, Roger proceeded to recount the well-known anecdote about Queen Salote who, when handed the dinner menu at the captain’s table, perused it briefly before passing it back to the waiter, saying, ‘There’s nothing there I fancy. Please bring the passenger list.’

  ‘Listen, why don’t you go to Rarotonga? The — Hotel will put on a good do for yer, and no questions asked. Won’t even check if y’er already married! Get yerselves spliced, Polynesian style.’

  Rarotonga, I learned then, is the capital of the fifteen Cook Islands, which remain, loosely speaking, a protectorate of New Zealand. As it turned out, Michel and Roger had filmed the pilot for a television series on one of the southern islands, Aitutaki, which they claimed was ‘absolutely gorgeous’.

  ‘I’ll send a fax to the manager. He knows me. They’ll do it for yer almost on the spot and it’ll only cost yer thirty dollars. Lot cheaper than the divorce’ll be.’ He grinned at me with a wink. ‘Two days on the island is all you’ll need. Buy the certificate on yer way in; they’ll stamp and date it for two days later and Bob’s yer uncle. Sit on the beach and tank up on a few tinnies while they get all the festivities rolling. I’d come along, be worst man for yer, but I can’t leave, mate, I’m in pre-production.’

  And so we arrive in Rarotonga, where blustering rain greets us, armed with a copy of the telex sent to the hotel by best mate Roger as well as his rather splendid, if a touch cumbersome wedding gift to us: a hand-painted, hand-carved didgeridoo which stands chest-height off the ground and which neither of us can raise a sound out of.

  The rain rattles like gunshots against the corrugated roof as we enter the customs shed.

  ‘Film producer?’ enquires the customs officer.

  Michel nods.

  ‘Are you carrying any unsuitable film material or pornographic magazines with you?’ Michel assures him that we are not while I, waiting alongside them, silently marvel at the proportions of this man. I am reminded that when I visited Fiji for the first time I never ceased to be amazed by the size of everyone’s feet. Great paddles, they were, in sturdy brown leather sandals, creaking and slapping against the dry, dusty earth. The locals here are Maoris, Polynesians, not Melanesians, as the Fijians are. Still, this officer’s feet, his whole physique, are simply stupendous. Michel is over six feet tall but in order to look this man in the eye he is obliged to crane his neck. My husband-to-be explains that the purpose of our visit is to get married. The man smiles jovially and we are, as Roger promised, furnished with a piece of paper – our wedding certificate – dated (but not yet signed by a church minister) for two days hence.

  A taxi takes us through the sloshing, muddied capital of Avarua and delivers us to our beachside hotel, where the native staff greet us in a friendly, if ponderous way. We introduce ourselves to a pretty desk clerk at reception and she plods off in search of Jim, the manager. He is a complete contrast: a harassed New Zealander who bursts from his office as though on the run and greets us anxiously. ‘Welcome,’ he mutters distractedly, not looking us in the eye, while pumping our hands. ‘Yes,’ he says, he has been expecting us and, yes, he received the telex and he has come up with an idea. He will arrange for one of his staff to row us and the minister out to a speck of an islet about forty yards offshore, where the service will take place, and then row us back for a champagne breakfast in the dining room.

  ‘Sounds good,’ we smile uncertainly.

  We are standing at the entrance to the lobby, hemmed in by streaming rain. I glance towards this balding manager – what hair remains is powdered with dandruff; his eyes are bloodshot, bleary-looking with heavy, puffy bags semi-circling them; his nicotine-stained fingers are trembling and it occurs to me that he might have a drink problem – and then I peer out to sea, squinting at where he is pointing, but I see nothing. The sheet of rain coming in off the steel-grey ocean has obscured the islet in question.

  ‘Don’t worry, it will be clear and dry by Saturday. There might even be a nice breeze, if the weather forecast is to be believed.’ But his nasal whine suggests that nothing in life can be counted on. ‘The monsoon season finished a month ago. This shouldn’t be happening,’ he adds, desperately attempting to conceal concern.

  I smile again and stare back towards the dining room. It is remarkably dark. In fact, everywhere in the hotel is dark. The place has a neglected, lost-in-the-middle-of-oblivion feel to it. In all the hotels on all the Pacific islands I have ever visited I have always been thrilled by the beauty of the brilliantly coloured, erotically shaped flowers displayed in vases at reception, the robust succulents growing in the surrounding gardens. Here there are none. None at all. I don’t like it here, I am thinking. We have been flying for five hours, so it is probably my mood and the depressing weather. Tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep and a bit of tropical sunshine, I will be bursting with excitement at the approach of our wedding day. I must buck up. Still, standing in this godforsaken lobby, I find it hard to believe not only Rarotonga’s claims to have one of the densest tourist trades in the South Pacific but that it is a much sought-after and applauded holiday destination.

  Our room is up two flights of darkly varnished wooden stairs. It is a simple space, not dissimilar to a room in a downmarket motel. Simple and damp. It smells musty, of mothballs and well-trodden carpet. The furnishings are worn. There is one chair covered in a threadbare fabric, limp burned-orange curtains, our double bed, with its sickly-white counterpane and sunken centre, a built-in wardrobe and one wooden shelf at knee-height which now holds our suitcase, Michel’s camera equipment and our didgeridoo. Adjacent to this is our en-suite, cupboard-sized bathroom with its slanting tiled floor and a shower nozzle in the ceiling a couple of feet to the left of the electric lightbulb, which is screened by a white plastic, tulip-shaped shade with a crack up one side of it.

  The view from our only window looks out over the car park towards the interior of the island where, in this filthy weather, the volcanic mountains tower, black and threatening.

  Perhaps my desire for these days, this occasion, to be perfect is unrealistic. But however naïve and sentimental I may be, by any standards this is not promising. I feel choked with emotion but unable to communicate any of it. I am thirty-eight years old and have never been married before. Fear of commitment, a violent childhood and an over-acute sense of romanticism have kept me single. I wanted this to be special. I have travelled a fair amount in my adult life and ended up alone in some dead-end dives, yet I have almost always managed to retain a modicum of humour or at least my sense of adventure by assuring myself that at some point in an unforeseen future the situation will make good copy. But this is different. Or so some inner voice keeps repeating.