The Olive Harvest (The Olive Series Book 3) Read online

  ‘Now, how many parcels of land do you own in total? And how many of these parcels have olive trees growing on them? And how many parcels had olive trees growing on them when you purchased the farm? And how many of these parcels of land do not have olive trees? And how many parcels not yet exploited do you intend at some point in the future to exploit for oléiculture? How many of the trees have been planted within the last five years?’

  I see Michel’s eyes glaze over. His face is ashen. He looks as though he might collapse from his seat and crash to the ground. Lucky, who has been chained up for the best part of an hour over by the garage, is yapping dementedly.

  ‘Monsieur, sorry if I am … erm, I haven’t quite understood what precisely is the point of this meeting?’ I brave.

  Le Monsieur lifts his head, drains his glass, leaving it available for a top-up, and replies. ‘Olive trees.’

  ‘Yes, but what about them?’ I press.

  Michel empties the remainder of the bottle into Monsieur’s glass. Monsieur is beginning to look as shiny and florid as a scoop of raspberry ice cream. A Canadair plane zooms across the rooftop. We all raise our heads. A fire in the vicinity. They are drawing closer.

  ‘I am here to count the trees.’

  ‘You are here to count our olive trees?’ I repeat.

  He nods.

  ‘You have driven from Marseille, a two-hour drive …’

  ‘One hour forty-five minutes,’ he counters.

  ‘…to count our olive trees. We have two hundred and seventy.’

  ‘That is the figure that has been declared, madame, but it is my job to verify it. A false declaration could lead to … You’d be surprised just how frequently there are errors.’ He suppresses a hiccup and swiftly reaches for his tumbler of water.

  My patience is fast declining. It is past one o’clock – lunchtime; I have an injured and worried husband; the sun is at its zenith; the heat is torrid, deathly still yet buzzing; the cicadas are screeching like overwrought children; Lucky is going nuts, and now Bassett has joined the chorus.

  ‘Well, let’s count them, and—’ Upstairs the phone begins to ring. I rise. ‘We have declared two hundred and seventy trees. In fact, because the gardener and myself have stuck a few striplings in the ground, scions, shoots from old trees that we are experimenting with as transplants, there are in total two hundred and seventy-five oliviers on our land. We decided, though, that the scions were too insignificant to include. I hope that does not count as a false declaration.’

  The man stares at me from across the table. He looks a little the worse for wine.

  ‘Have you lunched, monsieur?’ He shakes his head blearily. ‘Why don’t I prepare a snack for you and my husband while you wander off and count the trees?’

  Michel stands up beside me. His movement is slow, weary. He touches his head. ‘I’ll lend you a hand, chérie.’

  ‘Apologies, sir, but I’ll need you to accompany me,’ declares Monsieur to Michel. ‘In that case, I will accompany you and my husband can make us all a sandwich.’ I insist, growing concerned for Michel, who I fear should be lying down, not traipsing about the garden in this temperature counting trees.

  ‘Monsieur is the principal signatory on the declaration forms. It would make life very much simpler if he accompanies me.’

  I am on the point of arguing but I can see that Michel does not wish me to. Our visitor continues, ‘Madame, if you accompany me and if there were a discrepancy in the figures, we would need to go through the entire process again, from the beginning, with Monsieur.’

  ‘Why would there be a discrepancy? There are two hundred and seventy trees!’ I am at my wits’ end. The phone has started up again. I am beginning to understand why Michel insists that he handles the bureaucracy. I smile tightly and assure them that I will be back to add my signature when the trees have been counted and the forms filled in. The men disappear off along the terrace towards the farthest of the olive groves. I clear away the empty wine bottle and hurry inside.

  It is three o’clock. The plates of nibbles I have laid out are beginning to dry and curl. I carry them in from the wooden table and leave them in the cool, shuttered light of the summer kitchen. I cannot think where the men have got to. I have been up behind the house twice already, calling to them, but there has been no reply. Now I am concerned. Not least because when I brought down the plates of food I found a cork and the dregs of a second bottle of rosé. I call again. Still no response. Might an incident have occurred? Eventually I see them, hiking towards me from the farthest extremes of the estate, close to the wilderness area, the garrigue, owned by the Hunter on the Hill. Both men look shiny with exhaustion. I hurry to greet Michel. ‘Are you all right?’ He nods, puffing as he climbs.

  The other fellow, whose hair is sticking up in wispy clumps, looks as though he has been living like a savage in one of the neighbour’s hideouts. He is tomato-red, his eyes are bloodshot and he is panting like a dog. ‘Not good news,’ is his opening gambit.

  ‘Why not? Is everything all right?’ My attention is on Michel. Might something have happened to him? ‘How’s your head?’ I ask in English. His dressing has come unstuck in the sweltering heat, where he has been perspiring. ‘Why don’t you lie down? I’ll handle this.’

  ‘Unfortunately, madame, the news is very bad. I am afraid that you and your farm are no longer eligible for the ticketing which would allow you to put your produce forward for AOC consideration.’

  ‘Why not?’ I bark.

  ‘You lack the requisite number of trees. The minimum for eligibility is two hundred and fifty, and—’

  ‘We know that!’

  He lowers his eyes, painstakingly. ‘And you possess two hundred and forty-nine trees, hence you are one tree short of eligibility.’

  I stare at the man open-mouthed and then turn to Michel. ‘How much wine have you both drunk? Or, more to the point, how much has he consumed?’ I am speaking in English again.

  ‘The fact of the matter is that you have submitted a false declaration, which is a very grave affair. These matters go all the way to Brussels. It is my unfortunate duty to cross your farm off our lists. You cannot be granted AOC status.’ He hands me our land plans, now creased and wilting from the blistering noontide. I take them from him, racking my brains to save the day.

  ‘Quashia’s plot! I bet you haven’t included the tree in the cottage garden?’ I cry like a madwoman. ‘Look, see, here, this small parcel of land across the lane where our gardener lives. One tree! You can stop your car on your way out and count it. One!’ Monsieur glances at Michel and peers over at the plan, where I am rapping my finger.

  ‘Er, no, we didn’t think of that one.’

  ‘That makes up our quota of two hundred and fifty for starters! Now, how about the four reclaimed trees at the summit of the hill? The very last of the land to have been cleared. Just above the highest of the recently planted saplings. Did you count those?’

  The accountant is now looking sheepish and very rocky on his feet. ‘Erm, non.’ ‘Two hundred and fifty-four! We’re getting somewhere! I am surprised our total wasn’t two hundred and seventy times two!’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Seeing double, sir! At least then your vision would have gone in our favour.’

  ‘Chérie …’ Michel warns me cautiously.

  An aircraft sweeps in from the coast and disappears into the elevated woodlands. ‘When we bought the property it was registered, cadastre, as possessing sixty-four olive trees. Many of your colleagues have visited here and inspected those trees, which have stood on this hillside for centuries. I mistakenly stuck in six of the tanche variety. Then we purchased, from one of your registered nurseries, another two hundred youngsters. Those trees have also been inspected and a copy of the receipt of purchase was filed with the plantation office in Marseille. Need I continue? Would you like your sandwich now, or would you prefer another glass of wine?’

  ‘Chérie, Monsieur here is responsible for the ins
pection of the quantities of oil we produce. He will be dropping by to see us on an annual basis. I think it would be wise if …’

  ‘I tell you what,’ says Monsieur with exerted bonhomie, sweat dripping in runnels down his face. ‘Let’s pop over there out of the sun and we’ll get the papers signed. I’ll register the figure as two hundred and sixty-four – the originals plus the newly purchased saplings. The rest I’ll mark down as a miscalculation.’

  ‘Miscalculation? No!’

  ‘Please, don’t worry. I’ll count them all again next time I’m here and I’ll add the others to your list then.’

  Another aircraft stripes the heavens and our tree-tops shiver. Could this be the first sign of an approaching mistral? Fanned by searing winds in the Var the fires would bolt in this direction.

  Exhausted, stressed, I am like a dog with a bone. ‘There are two hundred and seventy trees declared because that is the number we possess, aside from the weeny transplants. Why can you not register the accurate figure?’

  ‘To do so would involve beginning again, madame. I would need to recount all of them this afternoon,’ he answers. ‘I don’t want to be driving in this …’ his eyes lift skywards. ‘I need to get back to Marseille.’

  And so the forms are adjusted and I grit my teeth as I add my signature alongside Michel’s to a figure that is short of the aggregate on our working plantation. I wonder if this oddball controller of numbers ever stops to ask himself why he so frequently discovers errors. But I hold my tongue as he gobbles down his sandwich, bids us a good afternoon and sets off triumphantly, if mildly hung over, for Marseille, the oldest (or could it be the second-oldest?) of all French cities. No doubt he’ll be miscounting the fire engines along the way.

  Together, Separately

  It is the estivale season; full-blown summer. The coast is clogged, fraught with traffic and trippers; late-night jazz and blues bands are jamming in sultry gardens while the drug-inducing beat of techno booms from discos and clubs all along the beachfronts and up into the arid hills. Diurnal city folk turned holidaymakers are metamorphosed into barflies and nocturnal swingers: partying, boozing, boogying the nights away: les nuits estivales.

  Stifling hot nights. Sleepless nights of nakedness and sticky heat.

  Monsieur Q. begins his work at five in the morning and packs up at half-past ten to avoid the sun’s worst. I am awoken by his machines coughing into life and I climb out of bed to make us all coffee. He returns at four and continues on till seven, when we begin the hosepipe rounds. The rhythm of our days is governed by his hours and he is governed by the climate. The only blessing of these sun-baked, drought-threatening conditions is that the mosquitos are staying away. We are not troubled by the buzz and itch and sting of them during the endlessly long evenings; evenings with sunsets that bleed like broken eggs and spilled jam across the skyline. We sit out in shorts or sarongs, eating our late-night meals, side by side on terraces illumined by oil lamps, sharing the mundane but treasurable rituals of married life; insignificant details, except that I cling fast to them because Michel has gone away in his mind, moved elsewhere.

  During the weeks since the accident, weeks of brain-pulping heat, he has been sitting in corners, beneath trees, seeking out the garden’s purply shade. He gazes about him or stares, frowning, at the ground, his body slightly bent. What is in his thoughts, I crave to know. I have never seen him so inactive. This stillness, this profound reflection, unsettles me. He is growing evermore distant, silent and self-protective. I am losing him.

  From overhead terraces, a wordless, worried observer, I watch him. Every now and again when he lifts his eyes in my direction, I smile encouragingly. He nods in response, in a vague sort of way, as though I have not totally penetrated his consciousness. He is housed within silence. He collects pine cones, turns them over and over in the palms of his hands, contemplating them. Twigs, small branches, leaf formations; lays them out on the walls and chairs. He stares into trees, apparently studying their history, their forms, colours, their tree-ness.

  I approach the Italian cypresses where, head craning skywards, he squints into the bright light of morning.

  ‘How about this?’ I offer, gesturing towards the elevation of slender evergreens, ‘in Iranian mythology, the cypress was the vegetal representation of fire, of flame, and reminded man of the paradise he had lost.’ Michel glares at me as though I am mad and I retreat to my den, leaving him in peace, to listen to the fire engines hee-hawing their way along the coast, closing my eyes in prayer, knowing that they are hurtling towards yet another act of arson. Provence’s natural heritage is being threatened. Under fire. Paradise lost. To date, some 6,000 hectares have been burned.

  For want of distraction and because I know that the sum earned on my last contract is our only income, I galvanise myself into work, attacking my script adaptation with souped-up energy, and when I am worn out I peruse my Provençal dictionaries and local studies – they are a real tonic to me. I become hooked on media reportage. Watching the news one evening on TF1, France’s main television network, I learn of the first casualties in the fires. Fires that are still burning, in which many have lost their homes. Tourists and locals alike are being evacuated as campsites capsize beneath the destruction. Film crews in low-flying planes and helicopters record the charred plains, blackened forests and gutted habitations. One lone piglet, a month-old sanglier, is seen pounding through a desert of ravaged trees and sooted earth. The creature spins about in terror – it has lost its sounder, been deprived of its neck of the woods – then scampers for its life. A sole survivor, ignorant of its role on the national stage as a poignant image of a timeless landscape reduced to featurelessness.

  Walking to the pool the following morning, passing Michel’s old blue bus, I find it covered in a confetti of mauve-grey ash. Quashia mentions the news programme, delighted that the wild boars who frequent our grounds have gone into hiding. ‘Or been destroyed in fires,’ I add. The piglet had appeared so vulnerable, so unrelated to the beasts that rampage our land.

  He asks if I want the car washed. I shake my head. Best to conserve the water. Not that we have a shortage, but who knows if these bone-dry conditions will endure? The latest development in the saga of my own smashed-up machine is that the insurance company have instructed its repair. It is not a write-off, they decree, but the works to make good will take several months. For the time being Michel is still not back at the wheel and my only excursions beyond the gates are for life’s necessities and trips to the local village to pick up the daily newspaper, Le Monde, so I make do with the transport we have. My concerns lie elsewhere.

  As July pushes forward we shift to a more southern European tempo, adopting Spanish habits: long siestas throughout the afternoons, dining towards midnight. Even the dogs won’t take a bite until darkness descends and the heat has diminished. They pass the days like mummies, slumped in corners of the terraces or slinking from shaded wall to shaded wall. The phone rings rarely; folk have accepted that Michel requires solitude.

  Fires are burning across the Var and now the countryside around the lovely old village perché of Eze towards the Italian border is also alight. Clouds shot through with red zig-zags, warning of the destruction raging elsewhere, converge in the sky from two directions at once. Gazing out to sea from the terraces, the Mediterranean has a sludge-brown, oily sheen to it. So far, thank God, our little pocket inland of the coast remains fire-free. Our olive trees are not yet at risk and, for the present, we are safe, but any security I feel has no more substance than the moths and flying insects that appear at sunset.

  While Michel recuperates, Quashia and I do our best to keep the land irrigated. My days are about the back-breaking heat, about keeping at bay the desiccating power of the sun and about my husband’s convalescence.

  One morning, before breakfast, I am watering the junior olive grove adjacent to the orchard, where a few drupes are slowly fattening, speculating upon whether, given Michel’s health, this year’s sca
rcity might not be a blessing in disguise, aside from its effect on our AOC status, when I catch sight of him lower down the land, rummaging about in the rose garden. At first I assume he is weeding, rooting with the trowel, but then I see him retrieve a tiny object from the earth and slip it into the pocket of his shorts. I call to him but he does not hear me. Lucky is trailing after him, back and forth; a loping loyal shadow, and when Michel pauses for a moment, she drops contentedly at his feet. I release the hosepipe in my hand and watch the pair of them. The Alsatian, whose sleek coat gleams in the early-day sunlight, transformed from the battered creature we took in, her black hair tipped with grey now, cuts a fine figure; she is stronger, healthier, more alert than her abused, adolescent self. She is at peace here. But what of Michel? The incision, the wound, the mirror’s stab will heal. It will leave a scar but Michel will not be disfigured. It’s him, the man, I worry for. I barely know him. I haven’t understood what is driving him so far away, and I am struggling to find a handle to guide or partner him through the forest in his mind.

  A little while later, after my morning swim, while our coffee is brewing and Michel is showering, I empty the pool-skimmers. There, in the basket, lies a praying mantis, lifeless amongst the swirl of trapped petals and leaves. I scoop him out and lay him on the tiles. Michel, with coffee pot, comes to look. On our knees by the poolside, we investigate him. His brilliant-green, stiff spindly body against the mauve bougainvillaea petals is arresting. Michel cradles him in his palm and studies him. Upstairs on the seaview terrace, I find another, a living one, crawling along the balustrade. Because I am a little uncertain about whether or not the insect will bite or sting if I handle him, I lift off my shoe, encourage him on to it and then, with one foot bare, hobble to Michel, who is sitting downstairs at the long wooden table arranging a collection of seashells into patterns.