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

  He remains silent.

  ‘There have been many occasions when I was down or facing difficulties and you offered masses of love and support and I would say “How can I ever thank you for all that you give me?” and you answered, “The day will come, I’m sure, when I will need you.” This could be that day. Please let me be there for you,’ I whisper. ‘Please.’

  ‘This is different,’ he answers flatly.

  ‘What about the olive groves, and your blue tree?’

  ‘You will take care of them and cherish them, I have no doubt of that.’

  And so, after the holidays, Michel leaves me, returning to Paris, packing possessions, clothes, articles that he has never taken away from here before. It is January. I stay on alone.

  A Beast’s Love

  The days have tipped over the winter solstice and are lengthening again. Even so, the nights are endless and black. I do not sleep well. I cannot sleep at all some nights. Winds rage and the trees bend and howl like this bereft farmhouse woman might. Down comes Michel’s blue tree, ruptured at the base. I salvage what segments are salvageable and arrange them like fantastical Pompidou Centre piping beneath the covered porch by the pool. Ella goes missing in one of these terrible storms. She can barely walk but even so she seems to have taken flight. For three days we see no sign of her and I fear the worst. Out in the darkness I tramp the terraces before bedtime, trying to exhaust myself, calling for her beneath the misty stars.

  By day, I traipse the damp lanes in the rain, searching. Quashia suggests that in the past she has headed for the stream. With her weak limbs and her aged bones, if she has slipped in the mud or got herself tangled and trapped in amongst the biomass, she will never lever herself free, and even if she did, she hasn’t the strength to negotiate the hill to home.

  When the storm abates, Wellingtons donned, we descend to the rivulet, thwacking the dripping bushes with sticks as we track, to where Quashia released the hares late last autumn. Each of us takes a bank, calling and beating at the undergrowth, but she is nowhere. In this sodden wintry weather, at her age and with arthritis, I fear she has no hope of surviving the nighttime temperatures and days without nourishment; she must have perished. I return to the house, desolate. The worst is not knowing. Quashia heads off to his cottage for lunch. I begin the ascent to the farm. In the lane I bump into our portly bearded postman. He draws his scooter to a halt, nods a restrained greeting and rummages in his satchel for our letters. A quick glance shows me there is nothing from Michel.

  ‘You look upset.’ His remark takes me by surprise. He is usually sullen and shares nothing bar complaints.

  ‘Ella is missing.’ I doubt that this will raise much sympathy.

  ‘Now, which one is Ella?’

  ‘The golden retriever.’

  ‘Ah, the old girl? The redhead?’

  I nod, puzzled by this cheerful change of heart.

  ‘How long has she been gone?’

  ‘Three days.’

  ‘Well, good news for you. I saw her a couple of mornings back. I was delivering the letters at the foyer and had to brake fast because she came out of the brush and went staggering across the lane in front of me. She looked pretty dirty, I must say, and it did surprise me at the time. I thought she was off hunting in your neighbour’s jungle. Go down and enquire of the Arabs. One of them is bound to have seen her. She’s probably there now, being spoiled and overfed.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Good luck.’ And with that he tips his cap and shoots off on his bike. I stare after him, flabbergasted. What has happened to our grumpy postman? Has he fallen in love? I hurry along the lane to the labour settlement, the foyer, asking everyone I encounter whether they have run across Ella but, to a man, they shake their grizzled Arab heads. Eventually I come across one toothless old geezer, squatting by a mossy boulder, sucking at a twig, sporting a frayed towel wrapped as a turban round his skull. ‘The rickety redhead?’ he mumbles. ‘She was here.’

  ‘When?’

  His menhir features crease with concentration. ‘ ’Bout a week ago.’

  No, that cannot have been her. She hasn’t been missing that long. I trudge back to the house. After lunch I update Quashia. ‘Perhaps you’d visit the settlement and enquire. They may not have understood my French but you speak their language.’

  ‘I was down there an hour before you and I went looking this morning. No one has seen her. I think we must face facts, Carol.’ His words dry in his mouth. Quashia loves the dogs as much as we do and I can see how upset he is.

  I nod. ‘Well, thanks for trying, Monsieur Quashia. I’m going into that plot next door. If I can wade my way through it.’

  ‘Carol, I’ve looked, and called and called her. In any case, it’s dangerous. If the bossman is hunting, he can’t see through the thickets. One bullet and you’d be a goner. It’s the season, he’s been in there every day this week.’

  ‘And Ella?’

  Quashia lowers his eyes.

  *

  We have eagles on the land, I’m sure of it. Sometimes I hear them in the wee small hours, or rather, I hear extraordinary cries echoing from the summit of the hill. Similar to the calls we heard last summer, the night the she-boar flew at Bassett. These calls travel down the slopes in long notes, as pure and resonant as a soprano or the Arabs’ muezzin. A creature from on high. I know it’s not Ella. It must be a bird. I close my eyes and imagine a mighty eagle standing atop its lofty nest, its alpine minaret, conversing with the wind. I lie awake, tossing, listening to other noises of the night, wondering where our retriever has got to. Beyond the shutters I hear the paws of a smallish creature padding through the dead, damp leaves, thumping its tail over the dark-soiled, well-trodden passages. Could it be Ella, cold and hungry, resurfacing out of the earth’s bleak winter? Just in case, I am up and out of bed. I draw a dressing gown about me, slip on shoes and go outside into the black but starry night.

  Snufflings. Please God, don’t let it be the wild boar, not this close to the house.

  ‘Ella?’ I call softly.

  The noises of the night retreat into watchful silence. I circuit the house by the back garden and make for the stables, where the other two hounds are bemused by my arrival, bleary-eyed as I switch on the light. ‘Where is she?’ They stare at me, yawning, huddled against one another, curled up like a pair of furry snakes. Outside, I hear an owl hooting from the high hillside. These calls I recognise, though it is rare to sight owls. I stare upwards for so long my head goes dizzy and the blackness seems to dissolve into light. The night is busy and mysterious, but I am cold and bereft. I pull the dressing gown tighter about me and trudge back into the house.

  The next morning, very early, I am at work in my den when I hear Quashia rummaging about in the garage beneath me. I open the window, lean over the casement and shout good morning. He appears with a grin from one side of his face to the other. Ella has returned.

  ‘I can’t believe it. I thought she had died on the Hunter’s ground.’

  Her fur is snarled, tangled and tousled. Twigs are caught up in the hairier, coarser patches of coat around her buttocks and she has a bad cut on her left hind leg, but she is home more or less in one piece and I couldn’t be more glad or astonished to see her.

  ‘Between you and me, Carol, I was sure she’d died in there. It was one of the reasons I didn’t want you going in.’

  I call in Gérard, who gives her vitamins, injections, a dressing and caresses. ‘She is suffering from shock and muscular exhaustion. Looks as though she’s been caught in a trap, judging by this incision. Remarkable how she’s freed herself, remarkable how she’s battled her way back. An exceptional tenacity, this retriever possesses.’

  I hug her tightly and wonder what she has fought her way back from. Her eyes gaze at me wearily. I see a haunting there.

  ‘I hope your bees prove equally robust,’ our vet says, packing away his medicine bag.

  Worrying about Ella, I have ignored them for a coupl
e of days. He reads my question. ‘Walk down and see for yourself. Something has been feeding around the hives.’

  Try as I might to deny the facts, I cannot. The earth in every direction round the fourteen hives has been thoroughly ploughed, and within inches of the bees’ flight path. ‘It’s the boars.’ Quashia shakes his head sadly. ‘It was still dark when I came up this morning so I didn’t notice this mayhem, but at the top of the land five olive trees have been broken. We’ll save them. Even so. There must have been an army of the blighters here last night.’

  I gaze upon the destruction and, as I do so, a cloud of bees rises and circles in the New Year sun.

  ‘Monsieur Huilier told me that only cows dare to approach the nests. The sangliers won’t touch them.’

  ‘Not on purpose, perhaps, but it only takes one great pig to take a clumsy step and these three hives, for example, stacked on top of one another, would go over in a second.’ I close my eyes at the thought of it. ‘You promised me, Carol, gave your word, that if they came back—’

  ‘Let me think about it, Monsieur Quashia.’ I snap because I am tired – not a decent night’s sleep in a week – and because I have been praying it wouldn’t come to this, and I dearly wish Michel were here to make this awful decision for me.

  I return to the house. The elation I was feeling at Ella’s return has deserted me. In my den, I lift the receiver and then replace it. Moments later, Quashia is banging hard at the door. I plod out to open it.

  ‘We’ve got an olive tree down on the lower-right grove. Its net surround and the tree itself have been trampled over. It was a good one too, doing well. There’s no saving it.’

  ‘Olive tree, tree of eternity, it regrows,’ I argue.

  ‘Carol, we can’t begin another year like the last. Buy me a gun. Even if I have to stay up all night, every night, I won’t sleep until I drive them off this property. One way or another, they have to learn that they are not welcome here!’

  I respect Quashia’s passion and I hear his vehement plea but I cannot buy him a rifle and I explain this to him yet again.

  ‘If Michel were here, he’d have them shot.’

  ‘I’m not sure that he would,’ I counter.

  ‘Well, there’s little more I can do here, Carol. You gave me your word.’ He wanders away and I feel as though I have let him down, which I have.

  Back in my den, reluctantly, I pick up the phone.

  ‘I’ll be there before dusk. Tie up the dogs,’ Alexandre warns.

  The rest of my day is about waiting.

  Alexandre arrives as promised, before the fade of day, in the company of a middle-aged hunter. I watch them from the window as they unload their carbines from their van. I signal that I am on my way down. A quick greeting, an introduction to his colleague, and Alexandre lays down the instructions. ‘Keep away, even when you hear gunshots. Keep the dogs inside with you. You are not to venture beyond the house until I return and tell you that it is safe to come out.’

  I nod obediently. Two hunters in the slackening light, on guard by the long wooden dining table on our summer terrace, off they stride into the woods, their gun butts resting on their shoulders. My stomach feels tight at the prospect of bloodshed on our land. I potter about doing nothing. It grows dark. Looking out of the window I see blackness. The world is silent. Until I hear a shot ring out, and then dead quiet. Eventually, after what seems like an age, the men return. Jacques is with them. I hadn’t been aware of his arrival. I expect to see a corpse slung over someone’s shoulder. Blood, at least. But there is nothing. They are despondent; the beasts have stayed away.

  ‘But I heard a shot …?’

  ‘No, that was the spit of a damned exhaust down on the road. It could have alerted the bêtes, of course, warned them of our presence. Like you, they may have mistaken it for gunfire.’

  We are in the hallway, huddled by the front door. I invite the three men in by the fire, offering them warm drinks No, they are hungry. It’s late. They have families to get home to. We’ll be back tomorrow, they promise.

  I nod and wish them all a pleasant evening, thinking of them returning to their families.

  Days pass. The men come and go with their guns but they bag nothing. Yet, the boars are still trespassing. Quashia and I find olive branches lying everywhere on the ground, ripped from the trees by the gang of beasts. Earth is upturned and roots upended. Tracks everywhere. It looks like someone has been in with a tractor. I fear for the bees. Each day there is freshly turned earth down around the hives. I pray our beemasters won’t propose an unscheduled visit.

  Eventually, before the weekend, Alexandre decides to put his trap into action. He arrives with maize, stale bread and pellets of dried dog food.

  ‘Come with me,’ he orders. ‘Look, I am encircling the meal with large, heavy stones and covering it on top with one substantial block. This will keep birds away, should the food still be here at daybreak. The boars have the strength to remove this weight with their muzzles. Most other scavengers do not. If the goodies are taken, set it up again tomorrow night. If it works on the third night, I will come with my rifle. Stay with this spot. Don’t change it, whatever you do. It’s high up on the land and a safe distance from the house. When the bait is taken, make absolutely sure that you replenish it again the following evening, are you clear?’

  I nod. The boars come. They eat the food. I refill the stone circle. They come again. The following week the men return. Each evening after work they drop by, guns at the ready, in the dark, the cold and sometimes in drizzle, but whenever they are present, the boars don’t show up. Eventually, the men give up. They cannot devote their lives to this. ‘But we will install a cage. That will catch the brutes.’

  The cage, an oblong container about the size of a child’s playpen, hand-made by Alexandre out of sturdy metal sheets and wire-mesh netting, is installed. Basic provisions are arranged within it and I am called up to inspect the scene. Alexandre explains to me: ‘Once one of them sets a hoof on that metal plate, there – wham! – the tripwire is triggered and this door here will slam shut.’

  It is indeed a veritable prison.

  ‘The animals have ten acres to feed off, why would they allow themselves to be caught by this snare for the sake of a bit of stale bread and maize?’ is my question.

  ‘They are pigs. Omnivores. They devour everything. They’ll go in after the food, Carol, don’t you worry. Just make sure you keep the tray well stocked and chain up your dogs because we don’t want them sniffing about and getting themselves trapped.’

  I follow the instructions to the letter, but the wild pigs do not touch the fodder. Day after day, morning after morning, Quashia and I unleash our howling, restless curs, who are crazed by incomprehension as to why they are no longer free to roam the hill at night, and climb the path intersecting the terraces to the ruin to see what the night’s fortunes have brought. Nothing but an empty pen and stale, damp rations. These beasts are proving themselves to be smarter than the trappers and I cannot deny that I feel a mounting respect for the thieving creatures who are causing us so much aggravation.

  ‘I think it’s time to admit defeat, Monsieur Quashia. The trap is not working and I don’t want the dogs to be tied up any more.’

  ‘Carol!’

  ‘Sorry, but it’s not fair on them. We have reared them to live outside, to be at liberty, sleeping on their blankets and mattresses in the stables if they prefer on cold nights, or stalking the land. Their freedom is what they know. If the boars are smart enough to avoid the pound then I am perfectly certain neither Bassett nor Lucky will be fooled by it. Ella is no problem because she can’t climb up here.’

  Quashia protests, but I won’t hear another word on the subject. The dogs remain unchained at night, and they stay clear of the pen. Until one evening later in the week, after Quashia has finished work and gone off to shop and I am still at my desk. I toss my biro on to my table and rub my eyes. Beyond the windows the sun has set. I glance at my watch. I
t is after six, later than I’d realised. I go downstairs to the stables to feed the dogs. Ella, as is her habit, is drooling by the food trolley – she may be rickety, arthritic and recovering from shock but her greed never abates. Lucky appears as soon as she hears the tin dishes clang against one another. Bassett, not unusually, is elsewhere and I am obliged to shout for him.

  ‘Bassie!’ I yell into the night as I fill up their bowls with their evening portions of meat and biscuits. The other two are slobbering and whining at my heels. I place their meals down before them. ‘Bassett!’ My voice reverberates around the hill and into the valley but still the little black and white hound does not appear. I take his dish back into the stables, cover it over and store it well out of reach of his thieving companions. I am not unduly concerned. It is his nature to disappear from time to time on one of his exploratory escapades, his forays into the world beyond our farmland, but he generally doubles back to spend the night with his playmates.

  The following morning Quashia calls up to my den, where I am already at work. I lean out of the window. ‘Bonjour, Monsieur Q. Le café est prêt. Would you like a cup now?’

  ‘No coffee for me, thanks. Have you seen Bassie? His dish has disappeared.’

  I shake my head. ‘It’s on top of the black cupboard in the corner. He wasn’t here for dinner last night.’

  ‘No worries, I’ll feed him when he returns. He’s probably had a night on the tiles,’ winks Quashia mischievously.

  ‘I don’t think the little fellow knows what it’s all about,’ I smile. ‘Call me when he checks in.’ I latch the window and return to the farm accounts.

  No time later Quashia comes banging at the door, shouting. ‘Come and look!’ I follow him up the hill to the wild-boar snare where I sight our piebald Bass curled up like a puppy, staring balefully out at us. Between his front paws are the sucked remains of a large chunk of stale bread. He is perfectly quiescent, not the slightest bit traumatised and, when Quashia lifts the iron trap door, almost too lazy or reluctant to move.