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

  I frown. Monsieur is clearly frustrated with me.

  ‘Madame, you don’t expect us to deposit fifty hives alongside the car park and leave them there, do you? In any case, it is surrounded by tall cedar trees. There is no passage to the area beyond and it’s too close to your house. No, your parking will not do at all.’

  ‘What about up behind the house?’ suggests Michel. I nod my agreement, heartened by his positive approach, even as my aspirations for beekeeping begin to wane in the face of Monsieur’s negativity.

  Monsieur shakes his head. ‘Behind the house is most unpromising. Although the bees spend the greater part of the winter inside the hives, if the weather is particularly sunny, as well it might be here, they will come out and fly around for a while. Imagine, if you were enjoying a little al fresco lunch right here where we are sitting now and along come – well, each hive houses twenty thousand bees and we are considering placing fifty hives here, work it out for yourselves. That would be far too many uninvited lunch guests. No, the hives cannot be deposited close to a residence.’

  ‘One million bees to lunch, I see.’

  Michel and I scan the land, hoping to offer an alternative. One last attempt before our beekeeping dreams finally hit the dust. Unfortunately, wherever we propose, Mr Huilier solemnly shakes his head. ‘Hélas, I fear that won’t work either. The fact of the matter is there is no available approach on your land.’ This is Monsieur’s résumé. He is ready to give up the ghost until his generous and ample wife chips in with a bright smile, optimistic and determined. ‘Why don’t we take a stroll, all of us together, and see what is within reach of the crane?’

  This is what we do and although we find many areas that they judge ideal for the housing of the hives, l’emplacement des ruches, we find no site sufficiently accessible. By this stage, as we arrive at the foot of our grounds by the gate, we are all ready to shake hands amicably and forget the idea, when Michel offers, ‘What about right here?’

  Once it has been tendered, it seems as plain as day.

  Madame is delighted and claps her hands, ‘Perfect!’

  Monsieur, less enterprising, less open to the bright side, needs to confirm the good news. He struts to and fro, bending like a pecking bird, counting, methodically orchestrating the delivery of imaginary hives, and then comes to a halt, shaking his head woefully. ‘We’d never fit fifty hives here. They would be squashed up together like peas in a pod.’

  ‘Oh, chérie, why don’t we place thirty hives here and take the other twenty to Tanneron?’ She spins round, eyes beaming. ‘We already have an arrangement there for fifty and there is still a little extra space. Well, sufficient for another twenty hives, I am sure. One delivery here will see thirty safely housed. Très bon, that’s settled then.’

  Monsieur nods half-heartedly. His wife has a point which he is unable to refute, and so it is agreed. Our farm will winter thirty hives and in return they will offer us a few kilos of honey and allow me to accompany them occasionally as apprentice beekeeper. We shake hands on the deal, but Monsieur wants to dot the ‘i’s. ‘Now, so that it is entirely understood: we will not be leaving a million bees in your care, but a mere six hundred thousand, are we agreed?’

  Everyone nods, relieved that the matter has been finalised.

  ‘My word, it’s hot,’ puffs Madame, waving her hands. ‘We mountain people are not used to this sweltering heat. Thank heavens for the shade of trees, eh?’

  The implication of this innocent remark hits me instantly. No one, including myself, has cottoned on to the fact that we are grouped together beneath the protective shade of two senior olive trees. We are on the lowest terrace at the base of a four-century grove. Winter, the period when the hives would be in situ, is harvest-time, and new year is the pruning season. How would we net the trees with hives all over the place? How could we lop branches when so many bees are directly beneath the chainsaws? I hesitate to bring up these very real drawbacks, to be the one to throw a spanner into the works, but they have to be addressed and, just as matters are concluding positively, I tentatively voice my doubts.

  Monsieur grabs at the obstacle and confirms that it cannot work. Madame glances at her husband. I see her grappling for a way forward but try as she might she cannot hatch a counter-proposal. I, who have fed in the objection, now offer a solution.

  ‘But wait, we have no olives this year! There will be no need to net the trees this autumn. And as you well know, it is better to prune olive trees every other year. We pruned all these last February, so next year we could leave this tiny corner alone.’

  My proposal is greeted with many whoops of delight. Even Michel smiles proudly and hugs me tight. ‘An excellent point, chérie, and, next year, we will make sure that there is an access that tracks way up behind the house where the bees can winter in peace and tranquillity.’

  In peace and tranquillity. Mmm. Everybody shakes hands like old buddies and the Huiliers set off for their chalet in the mountains, leaving us to enjoy the rest of our Sunday in peace and tranquillity. But how can my heart feel quiet when any day now will be the day set for Michel’s departure?

  The weather turns cloudy; it threatens a storm. The brittle, sapless sounds are receding and I feel a swish of change coming in. Rain. I never dreamed the word could sound so enticing. The sky is gunmetal grey. Birds are flying fast across the heavens, seeking shelter. The air remains coarse and parched, smoke still rises from distant dying embers and fire engines still echo across the mourning hillsides, but the promise of rain is a blessed relief for everyone, except the tourists roasting themselves on the beaches.

  It begins to spit; several generous fat gobs splatting like bird droppings on to the garden furniture. Such a heady relief, and I know that the plants, the crops, farmers, firemen and residents everywhere are feeling the same rush of madness, of exhilaration. ‘Rain!’ I halloo to the heavens. The dogs are jumpy and rattled, leaping at the doors to enter the house. I charge about, preparing for the tropical downpour, pulling cushions off seats, dragging sunbed mattresses into the summer kitchen, closing down the parasols, shunting away glasses and forgotten coffee cups.

  Dry groans of thunder, spectacular flashes of lightning, and then nothing. Nothing from the empty, louring clouds. The change has petered out. The patinated sky evaporates and we are back to the baking, nerve-racking heat. Life becomes about waiting. Waiting for the heat to abate, waiting for a cloudburst, waiting for rain. Waiting to know what Michel will decide to do.

  I can’t stop eating or pacing and my thoughts are too jangled to settle to my script adaptation. But I am not the only one going quietly mad. Others are irritable, irrational, pixilated. They moan about the fires, the climate, the escalating heat, if they speak at all.

  During one of my Sunday-morning trips to the vegetable market in Cannes, I drive by a man yelling, literally yelling, at his luggage in the open boot of his estate car. I see three girls, Japanese tourists, wearing floppy denim hats, holding hands, descending a steep hill in slow motion as though the sun had leached the life out of them, as though they were sleepwalking. Everywhere people are wearing next to nothing. In the épicerie in our local village, I encounter some of the septuagenarian and octogenarian church-going ladies, always so smartly attired in their Sunday best, guzzling soft drinks and ice creams, clad in shorts and the skimpiest of tank tops.

  Driving along the esplanade early one morning, I am obstructed by a bank of police cars and fire engines parked outside a sea-facing apartment block. Iris-blue lights are flashing; different speeds, alternating rhythms. Against the feverish-yellow coastline, they create a ghostly puce mood.

  I park my car at the kerb near the high-rises and ask a bystander what has happened. An elderly gentleman has fallen from a sixth-floor window. I peer upwards. Sweat runs in dribbles from my hairline, stinging my eyes. Dozens of residents on neighbouring balconies, dressed in boxer shorts or towelling robes, squint at the distant pavement, confused and sober-faced, or wave their arms abo
ut, screaming, locked in irate debate.

  The balcony surrounds are well protected by solid wrought-iron railings, chest-height.

  ‘How could he have fallen?’ I muse.

  ‘He jumped,’ a woman in the crowd states sullenly.

  ‘It’s this accursed heat,’ says another. ‘Who can stand it? I’d jump too, if I were fortunate enough to live on the top floor.’

  The Côte d’Azur has become the setting for a Raymond Carver short story.

  Back at home, the ground is so dry it has been bleached of all colour. Bled of life, bled of nutrients. There is talk of impending drought.

  Watering, watering, watering, to protect what we have. The crystal sprays falling on the plants release their scents. The evening air brings out perfumes stifled in the heat of the day. Invigorating to ingest.

  It is the last week of July. The busiest month of the tourist year approaches, but now the rising morning air has a frisky feel to it, as though it were already September. The seasons are all of a muddle. Let’s hope that today it will be cooler, I sigh, but it never is. Day after day, the sun beats down upon us and there is no deliverance.

  And then at last, early one afternoon, the heavens open. Fling wide the doors! I hasten to and fro, within the house, throwing open all the windows, shutters, doors, every conceivable aperture, to welcome in the fresh, damp air. I listen to the deluge gurgle and bubble. I skid about the terraces gathering up towels and other poolside clutter. My saturated sarong cleaves like clingfilm to my sticky, sweaty flesh. I tie up the mutts, who are plunging from pillar to post, frenzied and afraid, as though the thunderclaps were gunshots bearing down upon them. I inhale the reeking perfumes of field-filthy dogs, sodden vegetation, soaked dust and drenched earth. I polka to the rhythm of stagnant, leaf-jammed drainpipes sluicing loose with rain. Nature is guzzling greedily like a starved suckling child. I lift my face full into the driving needles of water. Like a diver emerging from the ocean’s bottom, I drink deeply the rush of air, licking my lips, savouring every drip. This is a burst of song; my spirits rave like native drums beating.

  Inside, Michel sits impassively at the dining table. ‘I must leave,’ he is telling me once again when I slosh back into the house, feet sopping and squeaking on the tommette tiles, skin and hair dribbling and shining from the delicious cloudburst. ‘I must leave,’ he repeats.

  ‘So soon?’ I quiz cagily. ‘Do you think that’s wise?’

  ‘I have business meetings.’

  ‘Would you like me to come with you? Now the weather has broken we are released from watering chores for a little while. Quashia can look after everything else.’

  He shakes his head. ‘I’ll hire a car and drive to Paris.’

  This stops me in my tracks. A puddle is spreading at my feet. He wants to take his files and personal possessions with him because he will be gone for a while. A sick sensation creeps like a bug into my stomach.

  ‘Are you leaving home, leaving me?’ I manage, sinking into a chair at his side, ignoring the mess I am making.

  ‘I see fear in your eyes and that doesn’t help me,’ is his response. ‘I need time alone.’

  Nothing I say will stay him, no argument strikes a chord; the organisation of his departure unfolds. Two days later he has packed up a hire car and I am the one who cannot fathom what has hit me. Before he leaves he sits me on his knee on a bench in the garden and tells me that it is not that he doesn’t love me, but that he needs to go through this on his own. And then he drives away, winding down the path that curves through our silver-dappled, fruitless groves, waving like a man going on holiday.

  I see no one except Quashia for two days.

  Too Many Strays

  The heat returns. It is as though the downpour never happened, as though it had been a mirage, a brief daydream. The sky is still suffused with droning planes, cruising back and forth, patrolling from on high the parks and forests, always on the alert, ever watchful.

  Jacques pulls up in his truck. He strolls over to say hello.

  ‘Good news,’ he calls, buoyant in his approach while I can barely raise a smile. ‘The recent bout of rain, brief as it was, extinguished the last vestiges of fires in the Var.’ He tells me that in one forest a tortoise walked away from the cinders, unharmed. It was the only creature in the area that escaped with its life. While we are talking three rabbits scamper across one of the grass-bare terraces, searching for sustenance. It is five in the afternoon, still broad daylight. They must feel safe; Bassett is pole-axed by the heat and hasn’t the energy to harass any living being.

  ‘You should speak to Alexandre about those guys. He’ll shoot them for you.’

  ‘I don’t want them shot,’ I protest. ‘We have protected the growth. I prefer to leave them be.’

  ‘Carol, in the nearby parklands and forests the rabbit colonies have contracted myxomatosis and the majority of them have gone blind.’ Jacques warns me to pay attention to those on our land. ‘The disease is very contagious. The ferals in the parks will have to be trapped and slaughtered due to the risk to walkers with their dogs.’

  During the course of our conversation I learn that the reason the lovely parkland to the rear of our farm has been closed off is to protect the area against not rabbits but gypsies. Earlier in the year, while Michel and I were absent from France, ‘troops of them with their swanky cars and caravans’ apparently invaded the pleasance, setting up home there, ‘monopolising the site and despoiling it.’ It caused an outcry. ‘The local council had the dickens of a job ejecting them. The parkland will be reopened only when a satisfactory barrier to block their re-entry has been erected.’ Jacques turns his attention to the condition of our terraced walls. ‘They’ve got worse since I’ve been coming here. More worrying than rabbits, you have a serious wild boar problem. You should certainly talk to Alexandre about them.’

  ‘Why Alexandre?’

  ‘He is a licensed hunter. He will come and shoot them and that will be the end of your troubles.’

  Gypsies, hunting and Arabs are subjects I prefer not to be drawn on. ‘Thanks, but that won’t be necessary. The sangliers have been invading our territory ever since we moved here. We manage.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid?’

  I shake my head. At the outset I was scared, particularly when I was alone and they explored close to the house, but after a while I grew used to them.

  ‘You ought to be, Carol. They could attack the dogs or, if you encounter an angry sow, she could go for you. I don’t hunt myself – I’m a fisherman – but if you pot one the rest of the troop won’t be back in a hurry.’

  In spite of the destruction they inflict, my stand against hunting remains. Michel disagrees. He thinks I am impractical, but he has never forced the issue.

  And now he is not here.

  ‘Well, you’ve got time to change your mind.’

  I don’t follow.

  ‘You won’t be troubled by sangliers for a month or two. This time of year they head to the mountains where the ground is less dry and the subsoil remains moist.’

  ‘It’s true,’ I mumble. ‘They have been leaving us in peace.’

  I return to my den where I pass the sluggish daytime hours, screening myself from the insufferable heat. I have cast my semi-worked script aside. Instead, I comb my books and dictionaries, feasting on knowledge of this region so dear to my heart. I need to remind myself what holds me here.

  The light and the sea; I grow to know them at every moment of the day. Their ever-evolving displays are like conversations I can partake of whenever I care to. And though it seems echoing and empty to me now, our stone house brings relief. It is cool and ventilated even on the hottest of summer evenings, when I lounge about on cushions, all doors open, reading or listening to the uncluttered violin sonatas of Uccellini, struggling to overcome the blank, soulless, melancholy that aches within me. I rise from the cushions and gaze down upon the lamplights of Cannes. Blueberry clouds, like bruises from my heart, pattern the dusky
sky. I trace the contours of the sea to the necklace of illuminations along the Estérel promontory, gazing upon familiar sights with altered eyes.

  Michel and I have barely spoken since he left. I have lost 6 kilos in ten days. I hardly recognise myself and I cannot stop worrying about him. Without him, my world has grown empty. He has been my pole star.

  A letter arrives from Marseille. I stare at its envelope before opening it. Bureaucracy: Michel’s domain. It confirms that our farm remains eligible for its ticketing in spite of the fact that we have dispatched an erroneous declaration, having claimed ownership of seventeen trees above the total growing on our land! As I read on, the notification informs me that we will not be penalised; our file will be processed. Fortunately, we are in possession of 251 trees and the minimum requirement, as we know only too well, is 250. I am stupefied. How have they arrived at 251? Our estate is blessed with the declared 270. Irrefutably. I have toured the terraces and counted them twice. The error lies not with our calculations but with the dratted inspector who consumed too much rosé during a hot midsummer’s afternoon. However, because I haven’t the slightest inkling how to improve this situation, and because my heart is too heavy to face the battle, I decide to leave well alone and ignore it.

  Early the following morning, while Quashia is watering the salad garden, he discovers that a length of fence has been torn away from its brick-wall base, our gooseberry bushes have been uprooted and our vegetable beds infiltrated. Some creature has laid waste to our crops. He calls me down from the kitchen to take a look. The damage is certainly remarkable.

  ‘This’ll be the wild boars back. The dogs must have scared them off, though, because they haven’t touched the potato beds.’

  ‘It’s the wrong season for them,’ I reply.

  ‘No other animal has a muzzle powerful enough to break through this fence. I fixed it myself, I know how sturdy it was. You have to do something, Carol. Why won’t you buy me a rifle?’