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

  In comparison with the galloping growth in the garden, the interior of the house feels pleasingly calm and surprisingly neat, aside from legions of mummified insect husks decomposing on the bookshelves and chairs. The house needs airing, of course, and there are cobwebs hanging like miniature hammocks from the corners of a couple of ceilings, but the plants have been watered and much has been cared for. Serenity.

  Peering through the open glass doors, beyond an outdoor living area with its begrimed teak furniture, I am faced with a bank of bougainvillaea so tall and perpendicular it looks as though it has been electrified; punky pink shoots screening the sea from view. So much pruning and tidying up to do!

  Back inside, our pine dining table, which we purchased at an auction on the Left Bank in Paris, is strewn with books and files. Mine. I was the last at the farm and departed in a mad dash for the airport, leaving myself no time to return my papers to the shelves in my den. Amongst the piles, I discover a stack of letters curled with heat, awaiting our return, and I decide to get stuck into them. Circulars, journals, fortnightly notifications of upcoming diary dates from the olive farmers’ union and a depressingly thick wad of bills.

  I find a communication from the local council informing us that if our land is not cleared ‘sous quinzaine’, within fourteen days, and maintained ‘in accordance with the Code Forestier articles L322–3 and 14, and the prefectoral numéro 96–00261’, we will be liable to a considerable fine. The letter goes on to point out that the condition of our land does not meet with any of these requirements. I am crestfallen. There is no other holding in the neighbourhood that keeps their terrain as pristine and fire-risk free as we do, but, for once, we have no grounds for debate. Quashia has left the terraces to their own devices. I glance at the date at the top of the correspondence. It is already more than a month old. You can bet your life as I dig deeper through the envelopes there will be a follow-up letter with an order to pay. And there it is, stipulating settlement within seven days. A staggering 1,500 francs is the demanded penalty. Michel will have to attend to this one. He handles the bureaucracy. He is a past master at sweet-talking all those fonctionnaires. I washed my hands of all that a while ago. I lack the patience for it.

  I toss the final demand aside and make for the kitchen, deciding to mention it later. Through the window I see Michel coming down the slopes. He is deep in thought, head bowed. He looks tired, strained, in need of a haircut and city-pale. I noticed it last night when I arrived in Paris from London and he met me off the Eurostar. We haven’t seen each other in over six weeks and I thought he would be upbeat, overjoyed by our reunion, but he was distant and preoccupied and has remained so since. I hear him enter the house through the wide-open French windows in our bedroom. ‘We are soon to become the proprietors of a thirty-eight-metre, curving garden shed,’ he calls, pulling off his linen jacket and tossing it on to our bed. He turns the corner – there are few doors in this open-plan space – and bumps into me, a little awkwardly, in the spacious salon with its original brick fireplace, on my way through to the dining room, where I am returning to the letters.

  ‘I am brewing coffee. Want a cup?’

  ‘It’s not straight.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘The wall. He hasn’t aligned it accurately. I will have to keep an eye on it. I can’t think what possessed him to begin it.’

  ‘Well, he did warn you on the phone that we have very few olives this year, so he obviously decided to get on with something else.’

  ‘Barely a crateload on the lower slopes.’ This is Michel’s gloomy but accurate appraisal of our olive situation on this sunny morning back at the farm. ‘I asked him about the swimming pool and he said the chap hasn’t been by to clean it for several weeks.’

  ‘I’ll call the company.’

  ‘The wild boar have broken two more walls below the old vineyard. Quashia’s repaired the fence twice.’

  ‘I hope he didn’t request a gun again?’

  ‘Yes, he did, and he mentioned the bees, reiterating just how much he had been looking forward to our own honey.’

  Quashia loves honey and frequently asks one or other of us to bring home a few jars from our travels. He hates the choices on sale in the supermarkets, claiming they are ‘boiled’.

  ‘Well, as the hives never arrived, let alone the bees, it was pretty obvious there wasn’t going to be honey. Did you stress that we want no guns here?’

  ‘It might be our last resort.’

  ‘Michel, we agreed. No guns.’ I sigh. ‘You promised.’

  My mind is also on the olive yield, or rather the unexpected lack of one. This will be the first year since we bought our farm, a little over a dozen years ago, that the mature trees have not produced fruit. It is not a question of a poor-quality crop: the groves are practically bare. Why? I decide that I must call René, our olive guru, later. He may be able to furnish us with an answer even though he is no longer directly responsible for our olive production and doesn’t oversee our harvests any more. Because he was so rarely available to lend us a hand during the season of gathering and pressing yet continued to insist upon two-thirds of the rewards for himself, I made the decision a while back to ease us out of that rather too costly financial relationship. I allocated the lighter manual tasks to Quashia and myself. We heave and ho with them while Michel deals with bureaucracy and business affairs and, when he’s home, Michel and Quashia attack the more gruelling labour together.

  We could manage without René, I reasoned, but now, in spite of several years of truckloads of fruit and first-class oil, I fear I have made a hash of it. Might I, out of ignorance, have caused long-term damage to the trees by pruning them incorrectly or neglecting to feed them sufficient quantities of organic horse manure at a crucial moment? I have no answers to these nagging doubts. I am baffled by this year’s shortfall. Yet I know these trees to be hardy; they are survivors par excellence. When we acquired the farm they were entombed beneath a jungle of creepers, snaking ivy and overgrown maquis. We hadn’t the slightest notion of what was there – or that we were purchasing not only a house but an ancestral way of life – but, in spite of countless years of neglect and a stranglehold of gorse and climbers, when we cleared back the land and discovered the craggy trees they were bursting with health, growing vigorously, and lacked only drastic pruning and tender care; sixty-four gnarled and weathered, silver-grey oliviers, each one close to 400 years old. So, what has gone wrong?

  I can usually hope to find René at home in the evenings for no matter how elusive he proves to be during the day, he always returns to eat a late dinner with his octogenarian and, sadly, housebound wife. René, our canny seventy-nine-year-old Provençal olive expert who generally arrives bearing bountiful gifts and leaves having attempted to fleece me over some deal or other. Just the same, I am extremely fond of him, particularly now that I am honing my own brand of Provençal cunning. These days, he makes me an offer, I counter it with another, we raise our glasses, settle on terms that suit us both and then toast one another appreciatively. When I reach him on the phone later and he learns that we are back he is delighted and suggests dropping by ‘bright and early’ the very next day. ‘And I will bring you some exceptional tomatoes,’ he offers enthusiastically.

  ‘No, thank you. We have plenty.’

  ‘Oh, you have some?’

  ‘Plenty!’

  ‘But mine are splendid, you’ll see.’

  ‘So are ours. Please, René, don’t bring tomatoes.’

  He giggles. ‘Ah, I thought I could offload some of them on you. See you tomorrow, then.’

  The following morning, after a hurried breakfast and a struggle to get Michel’s decades-old blue Mercedes running – the batteries in both our cars were flat and the windows on his were caulked with dried, crumbly moss – Michel sets off for the mairie. He is determined to persuade the forestry department at the town hall to cancel the fine or at least minimise the penalty with assurances that the herbage will be do
cked before the week is out. From there he is intending to pay a visit to the builders’ yard to establish the precise sum Quashia has run up on our account. Afterwards, he’ll make a swift stop at the garden centre, pick up a roll of nylon thread to feed the strimming machines, be back for lunch and then begin the cropping.

  I have spent my morning washing suitcase-loads of clothes and hanging them out to dry on the line running between one of the cherry trees and a eucalyptus. Already they are bleached by the sun and fading to limp rags in the noonday heat. I am in the garden folding the laundry into a basket, puzzling over what might be troubling Michel, when I hear René’s silver Renault chugging up our drive.

  ‘Diable, you won’t have easy access to your oliviers with all this growth. I have never seen the farm so untidy,’ is his greeting to me as he clambers from his car and circles to open up the rear, which is cluttered with chainsaws, cans of oil, corked bottles brimming with an assortment of home-made wines transported for safekeeping in plastic milk crates, a store of pesticides, rubber tubing and baskets crammed with allotment-grown produce, all of prize-winning proportions.

  ‘I know you said you have one or two but they won’t be as fine as these so I brought you some tomatoes just the same,’ he calls. His words are muffled because his head is buried in the boot.

  ‘Tomatoes, did you say, René? We don’t need them! By the look of things, they’ll be the only harvest we reap this year.’ I point to the vegetable garden, two terraces beneath me as I descend to the parking, laundry basket clutched against my hip. All the lettuces have bolted – some stand more than a foot high – but our criss-cross caned tomatoes are plentiful and lustrous. ‘I think we’ll be facing our perennial glut. I wish I could say the same for the olives.’

  We greet one another with the customary bisous on the cheeks.

  ‘Is it hot enough for you?’ he puffs. His cheeks are shiny and red as beetroots, but his face is drawn and he has lost weight. There is a rheuminess and strain in what were always fiercely blue, calibrating eyes. Sometimes, because he has always looked so much younger than his years, I forget that this remarkably active man will soon be celebrating his eightieth birthday.

  ‘So, you have no olive crop?’ he quizzes, barely disguising his triumph, which I choose to ignore.

  ‘Could it be the persistence of this warm, dry weather that has killed off all the drupes?’

  ‘No moisture in the soil for the roots, you mean?’ He shakes his head. ‘No, their root systems are far too well established; they’ve been burrowing for centuries. All my other farms are flourishing.’ He is frowning, glancing here and there, and toddles off to the edge of one of the terraces to peer closer. ‘You haven’t treated these trees, have you?’ René’s answer to every farming crisis or difficulty is to spray every hectare with gallons of pesticides. It is an ongoing argument between us and one that I believe can never be resolved.

  ‘Why would we treat the trees if there’s no fruit? The problem is not that the olives have been attacked by a fly or worm and rotted. Quashia assures us the trees flowered but the blossoms didn’t produce any olives.’

  ‘You must treat the trees whether they bear fruit or not. It’s just the same. All your young ones, too. You should be treating those as well. I tell you what, I still have a litre or two of insecticide left. You pay for the hire of the machinery and I’ll throw in the product for nothing. Alas, I’ll have to charge for my hours because I can’t work for nothing. I won’t include the time spent collecting and returning the spraying machine, only the stretch it’ll take to treat the trees for you. It’ll be une demi-journée.’

  I smile silently. René is cunningly opening up negotiations.

  In the early days, I would have read this offer as my silver-haired colleague doing us a huge favour, helping out the novice olive farmers. Today, I can better interpret what is behind his words and I would lay bets that, any day now, René is due to treat the olive trees on one or other of the farms where he serves as olive master. It is also possible that the absent proprietor will have already paid him for the insecticide he is offering to ‘throw in’. All he needs is a spraying machine to treat someone else’s trees. Instead of forking out for it himself (a cost of approximately £100 a day), he is cleverly attempting to organise us to pay for it. Our requirement will be a demi-journée, half a day. The other half, he’ll drive the machine elsewhere and make use of it there. Because he no longer rakes off any profit from selling our oil, he finds other ways to earn from me.

  ‘What do you say, Carol?’ He is walking back towards me.

  René augments his two pensions by petit cash arrangements. From each farm he claims his two-thirds of the virgin olive oil produced by that estate. This he sells on and pockets the revenue. In return for this rather substantial personal allocation he oversees the pruning, treating and harvesting of the olive trees, which does involve him in hard work as well as certain expenses, I do not dispute that, but he usually manages to wangle a deal whereby someone else foots every bill.

  ‘I can telephone the depot right now from my mobile – see, I got myself one! But what a darned nuisance they are when you’re up a tree! I can order the machine for the day after tomorrow, if that suits you. What do you think? Here, if you don’t need tomatoes, have some marrows and a couple of cucumbers.’

  Fleshy veggies direct from the earth as well as luscious, round-bellied fruits that beg to be eaten are pressed into my hands and laid across my swan-white laundry while his eyes bore into mine.

  ‘Mmm, what do you say, Carol?’

  Paying for the hours he works for us is one thing; paying another farm’s expenses is quite another matter.

  ‘No, thanks, René,’ I counter. ‘As the trees are not bearing olives this year, I intend to give them a year off. Ourselves, too. As you can see there is more than enough work to keep us occupied throughout the summer so I have made the decision not to treat the trees.’

  He shrugs, but looks grave. He can tell by my tone that this is not up for negotiation. ‘Suit yourself, Carol, but you are making a mistake and you will regret it. Keep those anyway,’ he nods at my armfuls of goodies, glances towards the rich blue sky and squints. Sweat runs in rivulets from his forehead, into his eyes and down his cheeks.

  ‘Diable, it’s hot. Any chance of a little refreshment?’

  ‘Of course. Let’s go into the shade.’ I lead him towards the summer kitchen where a few bottles of rosé are kept chilled in the fridge and he makes himself comfortable at the small table beneath the magnolia tree. Lucky, who is dozing at the foot of the trunk, out of the heat, rises and staggers half-heartedly to greet him.

  When we are settled and René has accepted that there are no deals to be won today, I confess to him as a friend that I am bewildered and not a little disturbed by the dearth of fruit. ‘After we bought this farm, once we had eventually cut back the land and uncovered our Herculean trees, in spite of all the years of neglect they had suffered – years during which they were not treated with any pesticides whatsoever,’ I emphasise, ‘they were still producing first-class fruit, and in abundance too. Is it possible that this lack of productivity has a deeper significance? Might the trees have been, how shall I put it, overgrazed? Or have we messed up the germinating process? Upset the cycle?’

  René swigs his wine and chortles and his round face creases with wrinkles. ‘Are you worrying that your stubbornness and ignorance might have terminally damaged these centuries-old groves?’

  ‘Ignorance! Well, I would not have …’

  ‘You think your inexperience might have weakened the trees’ prospects, is that it? That due to mismanagement on your part, they are exhausted, worn out, or, worse, are dying?’

  I shrug, embarrassed, suddenly aware how illogical my doubts must sound. I am also hurt that he is being so unkind about my farming methods and is laying the blame so roundly at my door.

  ‘Patience and faith, Carol. It will all come round again. Believe me, the trees are more r
esilient than you are. Haven’t I ever told you the story of 1956? A legendary tale.’ He knows full well that he has recounted the saga to me on several occasions. Every aged farmer from the Midi and all along the Mediterranean still recalls it and will relate at the drop of a hat and with pantomimic relish their horror story of the devastating winter of 1956. It has been passed on from one generation to the next and has gained storybook status. And I first heard it from René.

  ‘Yes, you have.’

  ‘Well, you haven’t learned the lesson from it so I shall recount it again.’ He reaches for the bottle, fills up his glass, coughs and prepares his narration. René is never more content than when he finds an opportunity to enjoy un petit verre in the dappled shade with an enraptured audience across the table from him, and I am usually happy to oblige.

  ‘In January of that crippling year of 1956 the days were mild and sunny,’ he begins. ‘A bumper olive harvest had been accomplished and the people of the terroir, the soil, were preparing for their annual olive fêtes. The mood was light-hearted and it was as though spring had arrived early. The olive trees all along the south of France and the northern coast of Spain began to bud early, promising for the following autumn yet another auspicious yield. And then suddenly, without warning, at the beginning of February, catastrophe struck!’ He pauses to sip his wine, enjoying a bon moment of suspense. ‘The temperatures plummeted, bottoming out at below minus seven centigrade. Minus seven. Diable, can you credit it? No man in living memory has seen worse. The ground froze; the olive trees froze and, it is reported, many of their trunks exploded. Baf! Baf!’