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

  ‘For example?’

  ‘They thought it hilarious when I referred to their commanding officer as Big Vegetable. To us, that means a VIP. And we describe a man who is drunk as being round as a shovel. The Yankees would call him oiled. I loved that! Oiled!’ Everyone at the table – including Claude’s two daughters, who have joined us – giggles at the image. ‘Ah yes, even today, I swear they were the best days of my life. Only my family has given me such a sense of purpose and fulfilment. And now my olive farm, of course, is seeing me through these days of loss.’

  I smile and shyly offer my olive-picking fingers. The response is overwhelming. I will join them here whenever I am able and lunch will always be part of the deal. We raise our glasses and drink to it. So I will be a participant in this year’s harvest after all, even if it is only on loan.

  ‘Carol, I am so delighted that you will assist us. René, please, serve our chère guest more champagne. Carol, please, get yourself well and truly oiled and go home round as a shovel.’

  The days are sunny and warm. I dedicate Saturday to catching up with the profusion of boring housework I haven’t attended to. The barking of the dogs does not alarm me – they can be set off by the passing of any stranger in the lane below us, so I take no notice unless it becomes insistent, which is why it is only an hour or so later, when I am carrying a load of sheets down the stone steps alongside the stable, that I see anything amiss. There is a rabbit sitting in the parking. Rabbits never venture this close to the house: the dogs would nab them in a second. I hurry to the little creature, who doesn’t hop away. Something is wrong. Or might it be one of our fostered hares returned? Quashia swears one comes by the cottage regularly to see him. The dastardly hounds, led by Bassett, are skulking by the swimming pool, fifteen metres away.

  ‘Shoo!’ I order, but they don’t budge. I approach the rabbit. It hops off, but there is something odd about its gait. It smacks into the stone wall that surrounds the shallow end of the pool. I hasten to retrieve it before Bassett beats me to it. The stunned creature attempts another feeble escape, but struggles as though drunk. With minimal agility I trap it between my hands. It bucks a little but not too much. It is then that I realise the rabbit is blind. Worse, it has an open, jaggedy wound in its neck, which looks recent but is not bleeding.

  I throw a glance at Bassett, who lurks and gloats with mean eyes. I love Bass. As dogs go he is a softy, in some ways more girly than the two bitches, but his nature is that of a hunting dog and I have captured his prey. He stalks towards me and I fear for a second that he might make a snatch for the blind animal squirming in my grip. It’s Monsieur Q.’s day off. If he were around he would know what to do – wring the rabbit’s neck, most likely, and put it out of its misery, but I am incapable of that. I determine to protect it from further harm though I doubt that I can save its life. We have no hutch. Quashia broke it up when we released the hares.

  I run around, Bassett shadowing my heels, searching for a solution. Eventually, I choose the wooden cabin in Michel’s palm grove. It is spacious and it locks; the place is used only for storing the tiles and balustrades left over after the restoration of the upper terrace, and there are precious few of those. I settle the rabbit on the floor and the second it hits the wooden deck it hops to the glass wall and – bang! – stuns itself again. In spite of all my efforts to shift it, it remains pressed up against the glass, straining for what? Sunlight? Bizarre, when it has no sight. Heat, perhaps. I have the dickens of a job sliding the door to. I don’t think the cabin has been closed in years. I go back to my work, quiet in the knowledge that the maimed thing will die peacefully and not at the teeth of my black and white hound.

  When I return later, I find its blind and wounded corpse. The ants, even in this short space of time, have already set to work. Seeing it there, in its helplessness, reduces me to tears and I sit on the cabin floor howling, or perhaps it’s myself I am crying for. I cannot leave the rabbit for carrion so I rummage about in the garage for Quashia’s shovel, dig a hole and bury it beneath a lush palm. What astounds me as I carry it to its resting place is how much heavier it is in death than in those last minutes of life. It is a warm, furry lead weight that I, still sobbing, lay in the ground and cover with red soil. Preoccupied by the dead animal, I cannot decide whether Bassett blinded it or simply bit its throat, or whether this little mammal was a victim of the myxomatosis virus, which, according to Jacques, is on the increase down here. If the latter is the case, should I have burned its carcass? Are the dogs in danger of contracting the disease?

  Myxomatosis was deliberately circulated by man to curtail the rapid escalation of wild rabbit populations that destroy farmers’ crops. Rabbits breed fast and can be pests. I cannot argue against that, I have seen the damage perpetrated here. It was the Australians who originally imported the flea, Spilopsyllus cuniculi, that transmits myxomatosis, purchasing it from Brazil, where it was first identified. They used it to devastating effect in the outback, where more than half the rabbit population was decimated by the virus. From there a French physician brought it to the environs of Paris. He wanted to control rabbit increase on his private estate, but the flea spread and is now at large everywhere in France. In 1953 it reached England. It is not known whether its channel crossing occurred by chance or was contrived.

  The rabbit’s blindness puts me in mind of Ghost and the Camarguais landowner who deliberately extinguished the dog’s sight because he feared for his geese.

  ‘The law of the jungle,’ Michel might argue if he were here, but Michel is not here to listen to my thoughts on this or any other variation of man’s inhumanity to man or beast. He is elsewhere, hacking his way through his own jungle, a dark place, it seems, where my love is futile.

  To cheer myself later, I telephone our beekeepers to establish the arrival date of the hives.

  ‘Oh, madame,’ cries Madame, ‘how splendid to hear from you!’ Her effusiveness continually amazes and delights me, particularly down here where, as a foreigner, it is not uncommon to be greeted by surliness, suspicion or financial trickery. ‘Everything is on track. We have begun our transhumance. Yours will be the last delivery of the season and we expect to be with you by the end of next week or Monday of the following. But we’ll phone to confirm the date.’

  I thank her for this consideration.

  ‘We had counted on delivering by six in the morning’ – six in the morning! – ‘but works have closed off our mountain road during darkness hours so we can’t set off till six.’

  I have to say that I am mighty grateful for these nocturnal roadworks. The prospect of crawling out of bed to greet the dawn approach of 600,000 bees might have panicked me.

  ‘Our estimated time of arrival is nine, but the late hour won’t agitate the bees because the bache will protect them. We are so looking forward to seeing you and your husband again and, if by chance you are not home, we’ll install the girls and return later to greet you, bringing honey, of course.’ And on she trills and I find no opportunity to enquire what the bache, the plastic sheeting, guards the bees against or to tell her that my husband is absent.

  I telephone Michel to pass on this news to him; an excuse to be in touch.

  ‘Bees are usually transported by night because they never leave their hives after dark. Hence the bache.’

  I still don’t follow. He explains that as soon as the sun goes down and the last of the foragers have returned to their queen, Monsieur and Madame lift the hives on to the trailer. They must be on the road and have the hives installed at their new address before sunrise. When day breaks and the bees see light, they set out from the hives in search of nectar. If there were no plastic sheeting to cover them and the sun rose while the van was in motion, the bees would fly off and return to the same location, expecting to find their home which, of course, would not be there, and they would have no means of locating their new address. The sheeting creates darkness and fools them into believing that it is still night. It keeps them indoors, as
it were, and even if a clever little girl exited the hive, she could fly no farther than the plastic.

  ‘So, finally, beehives. Congratulations. You have worked hard to put this arrangement in place and the honey will be all the sweeter for it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I whisper. Several years it has taken us to welcome hives to our estate. I am sad that Michel will not be here to participate in this propitious olive farm moment, but he does not offer to fly down.

  After the weekend, searching everywhere for Quashia to assist with cleaning up the lower terraces in preparation for the arrival of our bee stock, I discover him on hands and knees rooting out potatoes and leeks within our recently re-rigged enclosure, beneath the cradles of olive netting haltered there to protect the vegetables against rabbits.

  ‘We have work to do.’

  ‘But I’m collecting my supper.’ He emerges grinning, carrying a small swag of onions. ‘I’ll have my marmite to begin with, followed by these onions in salad, olives and a chunk of bread.’ The marmite he is referring to is actually the pot used to cook his stew. It is bound to be already bubbling on the gas stove in the cottage. Ramadan has just commenced and food is uppermost in his thoughts. He last ate at half-past four this morning. It is getting chilly and he has worked all day without sustenance.

  ‘Next year’s honey,’ I tempt. ‘It’s on your way home.’

  ‘Honey?’ His eyes light up.

  I lead him to the lower terraces and point out the placing for the thirty hives. Due to the hot dry summer, there is no new growth in the grass so no scything or strimming is necessary, but the ground is scattered with big stones forgotten since last year’s olive harvest. We use them to pin the nets in place at the foot of the trees and Quashia never gets round to tidying them up.

  ‘Plenty of room,’ he walks to and fro, considering the layout and the distances between the young and old olive trees. ‘When I worked in the mountains, years back, erecting electricity poles, there were hives everywhere, all standing in straight lines. One row here. Another there. That’s how they’ll do them.’ Then he stops and spins round. ‘Why down here? Why not up behind the house where it’s warmer and lighter? It’s a bit damp here, not enough sun.’

  ‘Because the beekeepers use a small crane to convey the hives to their winter grounds and we have no access for it elsewhere. It’s the same problem we came across when we wanted to drill for water and, later, we’ll have to face it when we begin to fertilise the olive striplings up the hill. We lack wide tracks. There are only footpaths.’

  ‘I’ll carry the hives myself,’ he exclaims. ‘They can’t be that heavy. Tell the beekeepers to leave the boxes here and, when they’ve gone, I’ll transport the whole lot up in the wheelbarrow.’

  ‘No!’ I cry. ‘You are not to touch them, not in any circumstances. They are full of bees, Monsieur Q. Six hundred thousand honey bees.’ Quashia raises his eyebrows, impressed. ‘And the owners will be back and forth to keep an eye on them. In any case, it could be risky having them too close to the house. Sometimes, even in winter, they come out and, as I said, there are six hundred thousand of them.’

  Quashia looks at me in amazement. His rheumy old eyes wrinkle. ‘Mmm, pots and pots of honey.’

  ‘You are just like Pooh,’ I tease.

  His face creases into a frown. ‘What’s Pooh?’

  ‘Never mind. The bees will be safe here and out of harm’s way and, if they do fly out, there is no one to be troubled by the swarm.’

  ‘Except the postman,’ retorts Quashia with a kindly but mischievous nudge.

  I turn with a look of horror. So keen have we been to nail down this arrangement, it has entirely escaped our attention that over the laurel hedge, no more than a dozen metres from this spot, is our letterbox.

  The calendar shifts to November and, after a week of capricious storms, delivers a heartening rise in the barometer. It is early Saturday when Michel calls, informing me that he is on his way home. ‘You’ll be here for the arrival of the bees!’ In high spirits I rush to the airport but I am shaken by his overtired and unshaven appearance.

  I prepare him lunch and once our al fresco meal on the terrace has been cleared away, I hose down one of the sunbeds and drag one of the mattresses out of storage, encouraging him to get some air, sleep the afternoon away while I work. I am glad to see him relax, but I am worried.

  Later, he confides that he is here to give me news. He is closing his business. The time lost in the summer broke the back of what was already a tough operation to keep afloat. I am devastated for him. I know how hard he has worked and what his modest production company means to him, but the fact is that few independent producers make any kind of living in France these days. The market is too restricted. Even if one project succeeds, the next may not, and the investments, financial and emotional, are heavy.

  ‘Can I help? What are you going to do?’

  ‘Return to Paris and begin again.’

  ‘What can I do?’

  He stares hard at the table. ‘I don’t want to put you through this any more.’

  I rest my hand on his. ‘We’re a team,’ I assure him.

  On the Monday morning after our brief weekend together, the beekeepers telephone during breakfast to announce their imminent arrival. They will be at our gate in five minutes, an hour early. We bolt our coffee and scuttle down the drive, dogs leaping and playing at our heels, to find les apiculteurs. Their truck and trailer with hives aboard are already parked on our grassy lower terrace. Madame is at work with an enfumoir, a cylindrical metal jug attached to a small pair of bellows. It is fuelled by pine needles or the dried paste left over after all oils have been extracted from olive drupes. Madame is burning pine needles. The function of the enfumoir is to release smoke clouds that calm the colonies after their journey. I have never seen one in action but our bee-mistress explains that since the time of the ancient Greeks such appliances have served to counter any risk of aggression or stings. Once the plastic sheeting has been removed the bees will start to emerge; it is a tricky moment for the keepers. Their girls could become disoriented, panic and start stinging. The resin-scented smoke relaxes them, and it certainly perfumes the morning air.

  The commute from trailer to our lower grove is underway. Wooden pallets are being laid out in two rows as bases for the hives and to stabilise them. We lend a hand carrying the populous boxes. No bees emerge. But there are only fourteen hives.

  ‘Ah yes,’ sighs Monsieur. ‘We found a valley with hundreds of wild roses. Winter rose honey was too tempting to resist.’

  ‘But we did not want to let you down,’ Madame butts in. ‘So we have brought you two hundred and eighty thousand bees. I hope that will suffice.’

  We are grateful for those entrusted to our care.

  Each hive has a coloured spot on it in one of five colours, each signalling the age of the queen residing within. The queen herself has also been daubed, rather like a miniature branding, with her colour. It is an international code recognised by apiarists worldwide. A queen is expected to live a maximum of five years, so a three-year-old is judged a pretty old girl. The hives are lightweight now but in the spring, when they are chock-a-block with honey, each tips in at 60 to 80 kilos.

  They all have a trou de vol, literally a ‘hole of flight’. It is their exit route, their front door. ‘Watch this space,’ laughs Madame, ‘You’ll see bees in profusion.’

  ‘Take heed,’ cautions Monsieur, dawdling alongside his metal and wooden boxes. ‘They are a drug. We’ll miss them, but we’ll pop down once a fortnight to make sure they’re happy.’

  After a swift coffee with us, because they have another rendezvous, Madame nudges her husband with the words, ‘On y va, mon cœur.’ Let’s get going, my heart. Michel has missed this affectionate remark but he has noted the tenderness and professional symmetry at work between Mr Beekeeper, a mincing, slightly desiccated man, and his warm, voluptuous wife. Since his retirement, with their bee farming and the building of th
eir new chalet giving stupendous views south from the high Alps, their lives, they declare, are just beginning.

  Once we have waved the couple off, Michel and I return to the hives. Watching the swarms hovering in clouds above their homes is quite, quite beautiful. We sit together, hand in hand, crouched at the foot of the driveway, observing them. Their movements are circular and graceful and oh so silent in the wintery sunlight. It is a form of poetry to me. I am certainly beginning to understand Monsieur’s caution. These furry hexapods could become addictive.

  ‘It’s not so different to those first dribbles of the new season’s olive oil, is it?’ I say, pressing my head against Michel’s shoulder, squeezing him close, pained that I cannot be his talisman, that I am unable to wave away his defencelessness, his fatigue in the face of misfortune.

  ‘Look at them! I am so tempted to draw closer, to raise the roof off a hive and expose their world within, to sneak a peek at their day-to-day living, their relationship to their queen and perhaps, who knows, catch them dancing.’

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ he mumbles. And, of course, I resist.

  After a brief meeting between Michel and Monsieur Q., during which the final stages of the hangar are discussed, I deliver him back to the airport. From there he departs for Paris giving no promise of a return for the upcoming Christmas holidays. Empty and apprehensive, I throw my energies into olive harvesting at Claude’s, but his fruit is not ripening and he is taken ill. He swears it is nothing serious, ‘just not up to scratch, a flu of some sort’, but a doctor friend advises rest and he retires to his bed. I roll up anyway to help René with the crop.

  The days are cooler than at Appassionata. I pick by hand because that is my preference, scaling ladders and the lower branches. The olives are plentiful but green and way too hard. Because Claude’s plantation is sprawling I toil alone for hours without a sight of my silver-haired friend. Hours passed in amongst the willowy foliage help to sooth my deepening anxieties and the work is satisfying, even if it does not have the same thrill as cramming our own baskets. We make a trip to the mill, just the two of us in Rene’s old Renault. He is depressed by the load and fears the return will be minimal. It all takes me back to our earliest days, to the excitement and gamble of a new pressing, and my heart feels heavy at the thought of what lies ahead for Michel and me.