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

  ‘Good solid walking shoes and socks are essential.’ The hunt involves tracking at high altitudes and, on occasion, six or seven hours of marching before any game is located. Although the shooting season opens in mid-September, I would not be invited on the first Sunday; it is for experts only and will be oversubscribed. The week following l’ouverture, I can accompany him. ‘Will you come?’

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t think so, but thank you for the invitation.’ I purchase the dogs’ tick-and-insect-repellent collars as well as a spray he recommends. Preparing to leave, I broach the true reason for my visit, ‘Alexandre, would you consider trapping the boars for me and setting them free without slaughtering them?’

  He shakes his head. ‘What would be the point?’

  On my way home, I park the car a short walk from the common parkland. Although the boulders and fire engines remain, the grounds have been reopened. Two local council gardeners are planting dozens of small pines in a deep trench that has been hollowed out round the perimeter. I decide to take a stroll to the lake. I am missing Michel and Quashia is frustrated with me. If Michel were here, what would he advise? Should I call him, burden him with this? I pass a family group conversing in English. They have three pointers in tow, gambolling at the water’s edge. A sign states: ‘No Feeding the Wildfowl’. In spite of it, the tourists are chucking bread to the ducks. Unfortunately, the chunks are so substantial that the birds are choking on the lumpy offerings. The holidaymakers laugh and throw in more. One bird in particular seems to be in trouble, hooting and flapping. The elder of the men orders his dog into the lake. ‘Fetch! Fetch supper!’ he cries. The lean, muscular hound, not dissimilar to Bassett, splashes into the pond, crashing through the reedy water, chasing after the frightened incapacitated fowl. The tourists howl with delight, hailing the dog’s success until eventually the bird flutters from the water’s oily surface and makes its clumsy escape, honking as it goes. The tourists saunter away, satisfied by the amusement they have created. This random example of man’s frequent cruelty to beast decides me to adhere firmly to my anti-hunting principles.

  As the days drift on, I watch the figs softly rotting, disintegrating in the liquid blue of the pool water, leaving deep mauve smudges on its floor. Michel loves these seedy fruits but I eat them infrequently. I would package them up and send them to him but they are too fragile. Each morning, when I go downstairs to feed the dogs and have a swim, I find clusters of them on the tiled surround and in the pool itself. I raise them up with my toes, playing footsie, as they bob and sink weightlessly beneath the liquid surface. When I fish them out, I toss them into the garden for the wasps to feast upon, but I hate to see them go to waste. I need company.

  The stray, who definitely bears no collar, has reappeared. I think he’s starving; he looks thinner than when he was last here. I encourage him with food and he edges nervously closer but as he trots up the drive, our resident trio warn him off with a vicious outburst of growlings and barkings. Most malevolent of all is Ella who, though in her dotage, asserts an aggressive display of territorial dominance. A furious energy, a hyped vitality, surges through her decrepit bones. It is rather unsightly to behold, but I feel confident my gang will eventually make peace with the intruder if we can trap him. Our postman offers another opinion. I have not seen the portly fellow in some time when out of the blue he pootles up the drive on his Noddy-yellow scooter and hands me the mail with a bearded scowl.

  ‘As if these weren’t enough!’ he snaps. I frown, staring at the delivery. There are only two letters, neither from Michel.

  ‘What are you, a refuge centre? That filthy, furry beige thing nearly took my leg off yesterday, snapping and swiping at me. I’ll have you in court,’ he swears, swinging the bike about and skidding off down the drive.

  I sigh, all too aware of how vehemently he detests our hounds and with good reason. There has been a history at our farm of dogs and strays playing Terrify the Miserable Postman, and I haven’t forgotten how he set the authorities on us, threatening us with court cases galore if we didn’t keep our mutts under control. Should I refrain from encouraging this newcomer who haunts the olive groves?

  Jacques says he’s a sheepdog from the Pyrénées mountains of south-west France and would be an excellent catch. His tangled, matted coat creates the illusion of a heftier beast but when he finally makes a hit-and-run grab for the food on offer, I see his skinniness. Although ravenous, it is unlikely he would have found the strength to break into the vegetable garden. I find this uncombed scallywag complex and comical and have made the decision that, if we ever snare him, he can hang out with us here. Ella is going deaf, her back legs are giving way and, though her appetite remains robust, she is skeletal. I had been planning to acquire another puppy or two to keep the others company when she eventually departs, to inject new life into the troupe, so why not give board to this ragamuffin, whom I christen Intruder? However, Lucky is not one bit pleased. She is threatened by this camp follower and begins to display signs of her former nature, the beaten brute I discovered shivering in the grass at the foot of the hill: she is becoming highly strung, insecure again, damaged and demanding. She speaks to me with urgent, pleading eyes, moves in close to my calf and nudges her bristly frame against me, begging me not to allow the stranger usurp her. ‘You’re secure here,’ I whisper, but she is not mollified.

  Slowly, Intruder mingles with the gang, but the integration is more fraught than I might have expected. The faithfuls circle my feet at feeding time, growling disgruntledly like a coven of witches. ‘I can’t let him starve!’ I reason, but they will have none of my excuses and while I attempt to appease them, Intruder snaps for my attention, yapping to be fed first, nipping at my heels and calves until he draws blood. Returning upstairs for a much-needed glass of wine, I find a severed rabbit’s head on the grass by the magnolia tree. I pick it up and its marble-cold eyes stare up at me in an accusatory fashion. Midgy insects swarm about it, buzzing and whirring as I collect up the decomposing flesh to deposit it in the dustbin. This has to be Bassett’s doing.

  These days, I go to bed exhausted, reading for a short while before falling into a heavy slumber or tossing restlessly for three-quarters of the night and waking too early. My hair is growing long and wild, blonded by the sun. I am becoming rustic and too solitary, but while Michel is elsewhere, I have decided to battle on here, continue the restoration of our farm, build it up, care for it, for the animals and Quashia, and await my husband’s return. I don’t want to abandon what matters here, what we have been creating together. The train of our dual journey … our draille, our dream.

  And Quashia’s shed seems to be taking vague shape. When the evening sun hits the big stones, coloured a rich honey by the red earth from which he has pulled and hewn them, it is a miracle to behold. He escorts me up the stoned path to admire what he has achieved and I begin to warm to this spot again. Late summer flies buzz in the air around us; flies following this high season and its delicious offerings. The fruits on the young trees are splitting, oozing, bursting with wasps. They need to be gathered but Quashia won’t take them and there is only so many I can consume alone. The terrace needs major tidying up, of course, but not yet, and the shed, unwieldy and unaligned as it is, lends a crude, rough-cut nobility to the corner. ‘We ought to create something special here,’ I tell my loyal assistant. ‘When your work is eventually completed.’

  He roars with laughter, happy that his ‘wretched shed’ is making its mark. I snap photographs of him standing in front of it, posing like a soldier: stiff, obedient and unsmiling. The dogs fall over one another to be alongside him and he kicks them out of the way, but not cruelly. In his peasant way.

  ‘You can send the pictures to your family,’ I tell him. ‘I could make you a little album. A gift for the Quashias of Constantine. Others, I’ll send to Paris.’

  He smiles proudly, loving the idea. ‘It’ll shut my wife up. Always moaning about why I’m not home. Why I stay so long here in between
visits.’ As soon as he has uttered this, he wants to bite his tongue off. ‘But she’s fine. She doesn’t need me there; she can cope,’ he adds, desperate to make amends.

  ‘Monsieur Quashia, if your family need you, you must go. I can manage for a while.’ Of course, I have no idea how I’d continue without him. We can barely operate as it is.

  ‘They don’t need me. She’s surrounded by family; sons, daughters and more grandchildren than we can count.’ Again I see the faux pas register in his rheumy eyes.

  ‘Hey!’ I cry, ‘I have a great idea. When the work on your shed is finished, let’s move the vegetable garden up here! You said yourself that the fence we’ve built is only temporary. We could plant it up together. And how about we buy an old greenhouse and reconstruct it here so that we have fruit and vegetables all year round? That’ll keep all trespassers out. Or I’ll ask Jacques if he can find us someone who might build the frame. There’s a Mr Pear, I could try to contact him. I’ll order glass panes and you can fit them.’

  ‘Couscous,’ he mumbles, dreaming of the vegetables he walks to the Arab market in Cannes once a week to buy for his meals.

  ‘All-year-round couscous, yes!’ I smile, happy that he’s enthused, ‘and tropical fruits!’ Relieved that he is not angered by my refusal to purchase a weapon.

  ‘But why doesn’t Michel find us a blacksmith? When is he coming back?’

  To temper poor Monsieur Q.’s frustrations and ease his fatigue, I suggest he takes the weekend off. It will be beneficial to him to spend some time in male company. Delighted, he zips off on the train early on Friday with companions to Marseille, leaving me alone. Alone and acutely aware of my aloneness.

  I pass the tapering hours of the scorchingly hot Friday watering the wilting shrubs and flowerbeds. Hand saluted against my forehead to shield against the sun’s rays, I stare skywards, beyond the biscuit-baked, stubbly-textured terraces, at the serrated-edged wings and lovely mottled markings on the underparts of two honey buzzards gliding in ever-decreasing circles. They could be scouting for rabbits, squirrels or shrews, though their principal food sources are wasps and bumblebees. This pair are nesting in our conifers, I am fairly convinced of it. I spot them quite regularly.

  ‘Occasionally buzzards migrate all the way from South Africa to Siberia to breed, a phenomenal distance of thirteen thousand kilometres,’ I might tell Michel if he were here to listen.

  Water overflow soaks my feet. I shuffle back, lowering my gaze, and notice clumps of golden flowers in the dustbowl of our scarp. I would have sworn that nothing flourished here in this season of aridity save for our irrigated strips of trees and vines. The shrub that has drawn my attention has bright yellow flowers. I close the hose nozzle and pluck a stem which is sticky and perfumed like resin. I take it inside to my den, place it in water and search for it in my encyclopaedia of wild flowers. It is an aromatic inula, a member of the daisy family. In spite of the heat I shove on shoes and start touring the land. It takes me no distance to discover that the hillside is not barren at all. It abounds in blossoming flowers and shrubs, predominately yellows and blues. I gather an example from each and continue, scouting to the hill’s vertex, where our grounds have no picketed demarcation. Here I come across fresh saucer-shaped tracks, indented circles of dried earth. I cannot be sure if these indicate boars or another predator. A curled, silver leaf on one of the tender olive trees takes flight as I approach. It puzzles me. A more thorough examination reveals a battery of tiny moths grazing on the stripling. I move along the plantation rows but do not detect these winged insects elsewhere. Lucky and Bassett are following at my heels. Intruder straggles behind, yapping and nagging, tormenting his companions until they snap and snarl and he slinks off to sulk behind a pine trunk. Suddenly Bassett streaks away, huzza-ing like a hunting horn, and disappears into the Hunter’s land abutting our unfenced acres.

  ‘Bassie!’ I yell, but he pays no heed. I charge to the summit and hear a shot ring out. I ditch my bouquet and rush towards the jungle of growth. Another shot. I hold back; it is too dangerous to venture further. Bassett is howling. ‘Bass!’ I hear the whip and rustle of breaking branches as a creature, a wild pig, too heavy for Bassett’s tread, recedes into the dense foliage.

  I am about to enter when Monsieur le Chasseur appears from out of the brush, stony-faced. ‘You are trespassing,’ he snaps, hitching his rifle over his shoulder.

  ‘My dog is in there.’

  ‘Yes, and if he comes this way again, he’ll be mincemeat.’

  At that moment Bassett resurfaces, strutting on to home territory, tail erect, delighted with his foray, and I retreat, red-faced and furious. I glance skywards; the buzzards have disappeared. The shots would have scared them away. They are heavily hunted. Alone in the house, heart thumping, I arrange my flowers in a vase with the inula and then set about with trembling hands to locate the names of each. I have a field marigold, which flourishes abundantly in habitats such as ours and blooms from March to October. I pull out the flower – its stem is slightly hairy – and examine its petals, which are a lovely, rich golden orange. Tears are streaming down my face. What else have I retrieved? Bell heather. Silver ragwort. Chamomile. Yarrow. Verbascum sinuatum. Cupidone: this is delicate and gorgeous, a rich blue. Another with soft blue heads is chicory, a wild flower here. Love-in-a-mist and winged sea lavender heighten the poetry in the bouquet. Although sea lavender grows throughout the Mediterranean its preferred habitat is dry, sandy ground, usually near to the sea, but sometimes inland. It is cultivated for use as dried flowers.

  My unexpected nosegay of discoveries cheers me, gives me a straw to cling to. Nothing is as bleak as it appears; when all about is ebbing, life continues. Growth is unfolding. I will dry and press these flowers and send the arrangement to Michel. ‘Harvests from Appassionata, with love.’ Each week, each season, I will find others. To remind us.

  I spend Saturday alone. Flies hover by the magnolia tree, Michel’s favourite spot. Their drowned bodies pepper the pool’s silky surface. Jacques arrives to clean it, transporting in the rear of his truck the triangular wooden ladder. ‘A gift from Alexandre,’ he winks. ‘I see the pigs have paid another visit. There are two walls on the lower western flank where the stones have fallen away.’

  ‘I think they were here yesterday evening.’

  ‘When the rains come, mudslides will destroy those terraces.’

  ‘Please thank Alexandre. The ladder is a thoughtful gift but when I’m next at the co-opérative I’d prefer to pay for it.’

  ‘Be warned, the fires are going to contribute further to your boar troubles.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Those that escaped with their lives have moved east, travelling out of the Var into the Alpes-Maritimes. You know, Carol, it’s not my business but you are standing up for a principle while the work on your farm is going to rack and ruin. What does your husband say? Where is he? Alexandre can help you.’

  When Quashia returns from his weekend I inform him that we must fence in the summit of the hill. He shakes his head. ‘We are wasting our energies building fences that will be penetrated. Have you seen the lower groves? Wrecked during three days’ absence. The boars have to be killed, Carol. I am going to buy my own shotgun, if you won’t get me one.’

  ‘You need a licence in this country for arms.’ My words silence him temporarily, but I fear I am losing the support of the most essential man in my olive world, dear reliable Monsieur Q.

  Convoys of cars and smiling faces arrive. The Irish first and then the Germans; day after day cries of greetings kick life into this silver-leafed hillside and I welcome the arrivals with open arms, bucked up by the company. Still I continue to work in my den or assist Quashia, while the newly installed guests and their offspring swim and laze or go off sightseeing. But when evening descends we assemble, gathering round the long wooden table in the garden for drinks before sunset and to enjoy dinner together en famille. Life as I cherish it at this old farm.

  This
renewed activity spurs me to call Michel. ‘Your family is here and Irish relatives of mine. We miss you. Won’t you come home?’

  He’s too busy, he says. He has no time. Business needs his attention. I replace the receiver, sending him love, disappointed and sad.

  The children delight in helping me with the rabbits, cleaning out their hutch, picking lettuce leaves and feeding them to the hungry, nervous pair. We grate dishes of carrots but the furry twins turn up their quivering noses at them. They won’t touch milk either, but they do drink copious amounts of water. I watch the Irish youngsters’ eyes as they gaze upon these scruffy, clumsy brown balls of fear.

  ‘How old are they?’ demands my six-year-old niece.

  ‘About two weeks, I’d say.’

  ‘How old is that in human years?’ her brother wants to know.

  One morning I find the freckled little girl in the laundry room, face pressed up against the wire netting of the hutch, whispering to the rabbits, ‘I’m from Dublin. Where are you from?’

  I am grateful for the presence of these gleeful children with their bright, round-faced innocence, their never-ending questions and their imaginations spilling over with mystery and mischief.

  Alas, the single hint of domestic disharmony is Intruder. Each day he grows more neurotic and when the children offer their palms to stroke and quieten him, he snaps at them and scurries into corners while the other dogs look on, moody and disconsolate. The truth is this stranger is not settling in. I christened him appropriately. I take to tying him up in the yard but his whining frays my already jangled nerves.

  The baby rabbits, though, are a constant source of revelation and as they begin to grow, new distinct features cause me to suspect we are rearing hares. Now I understand why there was no burrow when we rescued them. Hares are born above ground and their mothers return at sunset to nourish them. Perhaps they hadn’t been abandoned after all? They afford us great pleasure as we watch them develop and manifest their natures: their black and white bobbed tails, the black markings on the tips of their ears, their powerful hind legs and, when I pick them up, their frantic attempts at kick-boxing. The children are enchanted and so am I. Their enemy is Bassett, who arrives at the crack of dawn one morning outside my bedroom with a wild rabbit carcass, still warm, clutched between his teeth. He drops it at my feet. His message is clear as he lopes away.