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

  I haven’t the breath to reply. All I know is that a quartet of strapping men are staring at me expectantly.

  ‘Fine,’ I manage eventually.

  ‘The beginning is the toughest part. It gets easier. Let’s keep going,’ he concludes, and on we march and I have missed my opportunity to admit that perhaps I am not sufficiently fit for such an expedition.

  Why am I here? I moan silently. It was Michel who persuaded me after I recounted the episode of Bassett and the wild sow and acknowledged my sense of failure at resolving the dilemma.

  ‘Accept Alexandre’s offer,’ he advised. ‘Experience the hunt first-hand and then make a decision.’ So here I am, labouring up a mountain face with four hulking men, two of whom I am scarcely acquainted with, the others complete strangers – and three of them are carrying weapons.

  Ten minutes later, the going is no easier. In fact, from my point of view, it is considerably worse and the distance between me and the two men in front has lengthened. My heart and head are rattling. My saliva has a metallic, sanguineous taste to it and I am now convinced that I am going to die here on this mountain in the middle of the night, in the company of Provençal hunters. Eventually I reason that I must speak up. Pretending that I am going to achieve this hike is ludicrous. It will serve no one and is probably going to cause an accident – leaving me stranded on high with a yellow bracelet tagged around my wrist. I open my mouth to air my concerns and out spills a dislocated stream of semi-formed words, ‘Can’t … don’t think … not managing to …’

  The men draw to a halt again. I can tell from Alexandre’s body language – his facial expressions are not clear in these wee hours – that he is growing impatient. They must keep moving if they are to be in position before the game comes out to feed.

  ‘I think I will have to turn back. I am not up to this.’ I finally admit.

  Alexandre bends his entire body forwards as though I have just taken a shot at him. I feel guilty and humiliated.

  ‘You all go on,’ I continue, attempting a lighter, less desperate note. ‘I’ll turn back and wait for you by the van. I can read a book, I’ll be fine.’

  The quartet group together and an intense debate begins.

  ‘Madam won’t make it,’ I hear from the huddle of dimly lit bodies and I feel myself blush with shame. Finally it is decided that Alexandre, Jacques and Didier will continue on up to the post and Jacky, the seventy-two-year-old stepfather, who does not begin to look his years, will accompany me. This will not be the retreat to the vehicle I have suggested and had hoped for. We are to press on and continue the ascent together, but at an achievable, less breakneck pace.

  ‘Is that agreed?’ Alexandre asks me.

  I nod, head bent like a scolded child. Frankly, I would prefer to throw in the towel but I dare not argue the point and disrupt the schedule any further.

  ‘If you still cannot make it, Jacky will see you back down.’

  ‘That’s fine with me, Madam,’ the old man confirms agreeably. ‘I have been hunting for sixty years. What do I care about one shot more or less? We’ll take it slowly and struggle up at your rhythm.’

  I hand back the torch to Alexandre. He accepts it and the younger men regroup. Alexandre still leads, Didier goes second and then comes Jacques, who is more solid than his companions but a muscular, fit man all the same. Within seconds the nimble trio is out of sight and well beyond earshot.

  I turn to Jacky. ‘This is very kind of you.’

  ‘Listen, we have all day, till nightfall if needs be. Let’s take it nice and steady. In any case, feel the weight of this.’ Jacky hands me his rifle, which is surprisingly heavy. ‘And my backpack weighs forty-five kilos. All in all, I am carrying more than sixty-five kilos, and at my age, I am more than happy to stroll.’

  Stroll!

  Jacky now takes the lead and I stagger along behind him, mortified, still not convinced that I will ever see the plateau.

  We rise for the better part of another hour and a half. Jacky halts regularly to point out beavers’ lairs at the pathside and to bemoan the fact that there is so much less fauna these days. I learn that the water gushing from these mountain rocks feeds a river known as the Vésubie, which is an eastern tributary of the famous Var; that there are two rivers in the vicinity; and that the tall wild flowers all around us are chardons, or thistles, and are gathered and dried for bouquets.

  And this small plant, what is that? I ask, desirous of a few to send to Michel. How I wish he were here. As far as I can make out it is a stunted version of the chardon, although none of these flowers resemble any thistles I would recognise from England. They have round, saucer-flat flower heads, rather like sunflowers except that they are white, furry and cupped by spiky bracts.

  ‘Chardons bas,’ Jacky confirms.

  Later, when I search for the name of the dead blossoms I have collected, I identify them as milk thistle.

  Jacky rests the butt of his rifle on the ground and leans into it and I find myself hoping it is not loaded. He looks about, sighing contentedly. He points to a distant peak. ‘See the mountain beyond those two closer ones, beyond that widest aperture? That’s Cime du Gelas. It’s the highest summit in these southern Alps. There, to the west is Cime du Diable.’ Devil’s Peak. ‘I have climbed and hunted every one of these cimes.’ He patently knows this ancient terrain like the back of his hand. He was born in Andorra, I learn, and has been climbing mountains since he was a toddler.

  Each of these pauses is a punctuation, intended to instruct me, to show me that beyond a certain distant cleft lies Italy, that close to where we are going to hunt there are five mountaintop lakes, that juniper grows well here, ravens breed in solitary pairs or even that the shining light to the east of us is not a star or planet but a television satellite – ‘See how it turns!’ These carefully calculated breaks are also respite, to allow me to catch my breath and diminish my heartbeat. This old hunter is a gentleman. I have no reason to feel ashamed. He seems perfectly content to lead me up the Alp face at my own speed and to share with me what is clearly the greatest passion of his life.

  ‘Wait till the day breaks,’ he repeats regularly. ‘Wait till you see the beauty of all this. And these late dog days, les jours caniculaires, are the most splendid of all.’

  ‘It is already beautiful,’ I tell him honestly. My panic is subsiding. I am calmer, savouring all that is laid out before me, fusing with my environment. We have risen above the alpine forests now and the vegetation consists of little more than heathland, dried, spindly grasses and the tall thistles. This summer, I overheard the men say in the van, has been hardest on the big game, whose sources of food have withered to nothing in the sweltering temperatures.

  Navy blue peaks, grooved like Pan’s pipes, tower heavenwards to a dense lilac-aubergine sky. The stars shimmer like spilled handfuls of glitter. The day is beginning to rise with a faint mist. As I turn my head, ghostly halos, auras of light, appear and disappear and I cannot tell if they are caused by my light-headedness or are a freak of nature. The silence, aside from Jacky’s chattering and the trickle of descending water, is truly awesome. Not a bird, not a whisper of wind, not a breath of life. Only the two of us, a most implausible pair, standing shoulder to shoulder, a rifle at one side, momentarily moored in the palm of these mountains, gazing upon the miracle of morning.

  ‘Wait till we reach the summit, Madam, and you behold the valley of the Madone de Fenestre, in the Parc de la Mercantour. You cannot be closer to nature; you will never know such beauty.’

  A tiny circular light flashes from on high, from the direction we are headed.

  ‘See there, that’s Alexandre! They’ve arrived at their look-out post and are signalling their position to us.’

  ‘How much further?’ I venture at this stage.

  ‘About a thousand metres. Another hour or so of climbing.’

  My heart sinks.

  On we trudge, passing along the way two substantial wooden shacks.

  �
��They belong to the shepherd,’ I am told. There are no signs of grazing beasts and the cabanos appear abandoned. In winter this must be a solitary and fearsome place to reside. Open to the winds of the world and prey to wolves, with only sheepskins and fires for warmth and comfort, these rough-stoned cots conjure up pictures of an earlier age when peasants wore wooden clogs and shepherds drank milk warm from their sheep.

  Red ribbons of light hail the break of day. In the distance, I see a pinkish-grey blanket of pollution hanging above the sleeping metropolis of Nice while here the dawn is unfolding crisply, pure as the babbling brooks. A plane, then another, their underbellies shot with rouged sunlight, are approaching their seaside landing base.

  It is a quarter to seven. Our marathon ascent is drawing to a close as, finally, I stagger, panting, up the last stretch of scree slope towards the lofty plateau, where there is a breeze and where the others, somewhere beyond view, are stationed, enjoying, no doubt, a well-earned breakfast. Within seconds of our arrival, as I rotate to imbibe the fawn and damson-dark colours, the velvet textures of nature, relishing the prospect of refreshment and rest, Jacky begins flapping his arms about. It takes me a moment to understand that he is frantically signalling to me to get down. I hover, confused, too tired to decide what to do, fearing that if I acquiesce my legs, trembling with the effort, will never find the strength to lift my aching body up again, but he is insistent and sets off at a run, gun at the ready, towards an abutting elevation, and then disappears. I cannot make out any sign of life or animal activity and confess that I dismiss his pantomime as macho posturing. Still, I am now obediently on my haunches, engaged in admiring the sweeping, khaki-coloured hills embosoming me, and I see why Alexandre suggested combat clothes. This, my first sighting of the national park, is stupendous, a patchwork tableland. Suddenly, a shot is discharged, sharply followed by another. The reverberations slicing through the peace and silence are utterly shocking. I half-rise to peek and hear the thud of agile hooves. In the distance, I spot three smallish brown animals bolting. They are climbing at a lick, making for a neighbouring crest while, at the same time, closer to us, a fourth beast has been projected skywards and is now tumbling down the upper slopes. The clattering bump and roll of its body echoing emptily round this mountainous amphitheatre sends a shiver through me. Clearly, the creature has been hit.

  Jacky comes trotting back, full of beans and smiles. It is a chamois, a mountain antelope. They are the only species of antelope existing in the wild in Europe and survive happily in these elevated chains. One of the reasons Alexandre was so insistent that I did not wear perfume is because their sense of smell is very keen and even at this remove they would have picked up my scent.

  ‘Mamma mia! You have brought me luck,’ cries old Jacky. ‘But I’m not convinced she’s dead.’ He has dug into his rucksack and pulled out his binoculars, les jumelles, and is peering through them in the direction of where his game has fallen. ‘She’s scrabbled in beneath that big rock. See her?’ He passes me the glasses. I try to align them but I cannot pinpoint where the antelope has taken refuge. All I know is that the large grey-stoned crag where the chamois is hiding reminds me from my vantage point of a cindered chicken carcass.

  ‘You go on,’ he orders me excitedly, ‘find the others, get them back here. I am going to try and shoot again but I don’t want to frighten her, don’t want her to run off, to escape into the park, because once she has made it there she is protected; it is illegal for me to take another pot at her and she’ll die slowly.’

  I am disturbed by this information. The possibility of the antelope bleeding to death within a hollow in the rock unsettles me and I cannot move. My instinct is towards the animal, not the man.

  ‘Get going, Madam! Hurry, find the others, bring them back. I need back-up.’

  I turn and begin to advance along the soaring path, but to where? I am dithering like a dope. I have no idea where I am supposed to be going, and I cannot stop picturing the injured creature holed up in the rock. The situation is resolved without my help when, within seconds, Alexandre ascends a nearby escarpment and strides fast in my direction.

  ‘A chamois has been shot,’ I call out to him.

  ‘Yes, we saw it from our post.’ He is followed by Jacques but there is no sign of Didier.

  ‘Putain!’ This literally means whore, but is a frequently used expletive in these parts to express surprise – the equivalent of ‘bloody hell!’ or ‘dammit!’

  ‘She’s not dead,’ I announce when the men reach me.

  ‘I know. We must finish her off.’

  Fifty or so metres below us, lying on their bellies behind another, smaller crag, guns cocked, two teenage boys have settled themselves.

  ‘Putain! It is Tomas, the mayor’s son, and that brainless pal of his.’ Jacky and Alexandre hurry to speak with the youths and, it is my guess, to alert them to the fact that the game is ours, not theirs.

  My attention is drawn back towards the valley of Madone de Fenestre in the Mercantour parkland, which stretches to the borders of Italy, my hearing attuned for the first time to the clunking of bells. This is not the pealing of the Madonna’s church tower marking matins; it is a herd of tan cows grazing on the open flatlands, blithely unaware of the antelope stowed in cave-darkness high above them, shedding its life. Now that I train my eye, I can discern other herds of cattle, dotted here and there, ascending the sandy-coloured inclines. The Provençal word for those evocative-sounding cowbells is picorns. Their sedate, tinny rhythm strikes me as so at odds with the danger afoot here.

  ‘Where’s Didier?’ Jacky asks of Jacques. I stare at Jacky, noticing that the Elastoplast on his forehead is curling like a telephone wire because he is perspiring.

  ‘He thought he saw game over that way and took off.’

  Jacky begins to wave frantically into the distance, in the vain hope of attracting Didier’s attention. He grows impatient. This is the man who this morning told me that there are over two thousand species of wild flowers in this Mercantour park and that one shot more or less made no difference to him. ‘We need him,’ he grumbles to anyone who is listening, which is not Alexandre, because he has scooted down the hillside to appraise the situation. Within seconds he is back. ‘Your three antelopes who took flight have returned with another. Four of them! Take a look! See where they are feeding!’

  ‘They are perilously close to the park,’ is Jacky’s résumé of the state of play.

  ‘I’ll get down beneath them and drive them back up. Don’t worry, I won’t take my gun. You and Didier make your way up that escarpment there. Didier can station himself at that lower bend, in the seat of it, while you, Jacky, you position yourself on the extreme left side, there, see the cusp of that high bluff? See where I mean?’ Jacky nods excitedly. ‘Train your rifles right in there.’ Alexandre half-closes his eyes and circles with his extended arm to define with precision the dingle he is referring to. ‘As soon as the game has settled in that basin of grass and I am out of range, you can open fire. But for God’s sake wait until I am well clear of the dip. Don’t jump the gun.’

  ‘What about the wounded one? Where the hell is Didier?’ Jacky is signalling like a madman into empty nature. ‘We need him if we are going to pull this off. We have to get on with it, or the prey’ll wander away.’

  Alexandre swings about and fixes his gaze on me, decides against whatever was in his mind and settles on Jacques. Jacques understands instantly that he is to go and root out their missing soldier and speeds off along the track. ‘Jacques, when you bring him back, you’ll accompany me, won’t you, and help drive the beasts up the incline and into the dip?’

  Jacques nods placidly and continues on his mission.

  All the while these two hunters are lifting their binoculars and peering at the chicken crag. ‘You shot her in the side.’ ‘She’s nearly done.’ ‘She’s going quietly.’ ‘No, wait! Attendez! She’s getting up again. Putain, she’s moving!’ ‘She’s going to attempt the park!’ ‘She�
��ll never make it.’ ‘Where the hell are the other two?’ ‘Her head’s cocked, resting now. She’s fading.’ ‘Christ, Didier, where is he?’