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

  ‘Come on, boy,’ I pat my hands against my knees in encouragement. His tail begins to wag, he yawns and then deigns to join us at large. ‘That’s where stealing gets you, mate. A night in the clink,’ I josh, bending to cuddle and reassure him. He rises on to his hind legs, yodelling with happiness, licks my face and bounds off down the garden in search of his chums. ‘He thinks it’s his private chambers, with room service thrown in.’

  *

  The boars begin to enter the cage. They successfully access the bait but somehow manage to sidestep the metal trap. I report the situation to Alexandre. He and his compatriots are baffled and I am losing patience. The beasts are laying waste to the grounds. The land looks as if meteorites have cratered it; walls are being dislodged on a nightly basis. There are not enough hours in the day to repair the disorder let alone keep abreast of the regular chores. I am worried for the bees but, above all, I hate having the pen on the land. I am about ready to insist that it is removed when, one evening, alone in the house, I go through to the kitchen to prepare supper and almost suffer a heart attack. There, beyond the window, is a massive peat-brown mammal, a sow, surely, weighing probably 90 kilos. I run to the phone, and reach Alexandre, who is fluey and cannot come out. ‘I’ll be there tomorrow,’ he promises.

  Tomorrow!

  The following evening he and a colleague arrive before dusk, rifles at the ready. We discover how the hogs are managing to raid the larder without triggering the tripwire. A large chunk of bread has rolled under the metal plate and jammed it so that, no matter how forcefully an animal treads on it, it will not release the contraption that slams shut the cage door. Are these swine so intelligent, so savvy about deathtraps that they have disabled the mechanism on purpose, or is it a fortuitous accident? The hunters lie in ambush until eight in the evening, by which time they are cold and hungry. Still not a sniff of game.

  The next night the dogs are in the yard, woofing and barking and yawping like a pack of chained dingos. I dutifully go out to check the premises and catch the desiccated whisper of turning leaves not fifty yards from the villa. I creep towards the distant plot of land and hear snufflings and hissings and the rustle of winter underfoot. I clap my hands, imitating gunshots, but no beast budges. They are not fooled. I return inside, worn down by the battle.

  In the morning, the latest bulletin is that an Arab companion of Quashia’s, dining with him in the cottage, spotted eight boars walking in file at the extreme reach of our fenced enclosure. I report this back to hunting base. The men promise to return, which they do. By this time, I am growing used to white vans pulling up in our parking, discharging male strangers unloading firearms and boxes of cartridges. Always they are accompanied by Alexandre and occasionally by soft-hearted Jacques, who never fails to remind me that he doesn’t hunt – ‘Je chasse pas, moi’ – but shows up anyway to abet his friends. This evening they are two, and without Jacques. Again they bury themselves in foliage up by the vine-keeper’s cabano until long after dusk has fallen and, yet again, Alexandre comes knocking at the door to say they are going home. ‘They were here. We saw them over by the fence beyond your disused vineyard but at the very last minute the wind turned and they caught our scent and fled the scene. Vamoosed.’

  I nod wearily. These beasts are outsmarting everyone.

  ‘I’ll be back next week,’ he assures me. ‘Have a good weekend.’

  Again I nod, offer my cheek for the customary bisous and lock the door. I just want this to be finished with. If the only solution to driving the swine off our property is to shoot one of these animals, I want the bloody deed done. I want the cage gone and the caravan of armed men away from here.

  I work late and fall into bed exhausted, reading for a short while before turning out the light. At a quarter to eleven, the dogs take up their chorus. I throw my book aside. The cloven-hoofed enemy has returned. I switch off the bedside lamp, burying my head beneath the duvet, hoping for sleep, but the barking goes on, intermittently, until dawn, by which time I am dead to the world.

  A thumping at the front door drags me from my troubled slumber and I crawl from bed, bleary-eyed and disgruntled, ill-prepared for the morning that lies ahead. Quashia is shouting excitedly.

  ‘What?’ I yell, throwing open the door to reveal myself wrapped in a creased towelling robe, my hair bird’s-nest fashion, teeth uncleaned; ideally cast as either of Cinderella’s Ugly Sisters.

  ‘Look up at the enclosure!’

  ‘What?’ I repeat, squinting uphill, unsure of what I am looking for.

  ‘Two,’ explains Quashia.

  I step towards the rear of the house. ‘Don’t go up there – the sow’ll charge you.’

  Yes, two. I make out a large brown silhouette ensnared within the pound and outside, crouched alongside it, much more visible, the captive’s loved one. It senses or smells our presence and rises cautiously, paces, moving a few metres towards its escape route – its draille – and turns back, fixing a woeful gaze on the pound. It is unable to quit the scene, to leave its distressed mate.

  It is this, this alliance, this beast’s act of love, of sacrifice in the face of danger; its vigil by the cage throughout the dark hours of night, its pacing in anguish and confusion over the misfortune of its mate, mother or offspring, that sears my heart. I instantly burst into tears. ‘Set the imprisoned one free, Monsieur Quashia, please.’

  He roars with laughter – ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ – and then sees my tears, hears my shocked sobs.

  ‘I want them to go free; I want them to be together. I can’t separate them. I hadn’t counted on this.’

  ‘That’s not possible, Carol. First, if I go up there, the liberated bête will charge me, so I am not going anywhere near that pen. Secondly, how many months have we been waiting for this? Call Alexandre, Carol, we are not setting it free.’

  Alexandre is at work; he cannot get away. He sends his beau-père, his wife’s father, who is with us within the half-hour. With his rifle on his shoulder, his close-set blue eyes fixed straight ahead, in brown calf-length boots he marches directly to the spot; he has been here on several occasions before and knows the lie of the land. Quashia and I wait two terraces below. The sanglier at large has spotted the human with his gun and bolted into the dastardly neighbour’s jungle. The huntsman raises his gun directly at the cage – he is no more than a few feet from it – and pulls the trigger. I hear a thud; the fall of the beast.

  ‘It’s over,’ I whisper. But, no. He raises his rifle and fires again. ‘He can’t have missed, not at that range!’

  The hunter turns from the scene of bloodshed and begins to descend. But I stop him in his tracks, calling out to him, ‘Is it over? Can I come up?’ I have a need to confirm. He waves and beckons me excitedly. Quashia and I take the well-trodden path to the cage and there, to my horror, we find two animals in the pen, both lying on their sides. They are junior chaps, swimming in a ruby carpet of blood.

  ‘A couple of brothers, I’d say,’ remarks the huntsman.

  ‘And the one who waited, was she their mother?’ I ask, staring down at brown hairy lifelessness. But then I look closer, puzzled. Alarmed.

  He shakes his head. ‘A brother or sister, from the same litter. They’re all about eighteen months old.’

  ‘This one’s not dead,’ I state coolly.

  ‘Yes, he’s a goner. Death throes, that’s all. The nerves. Don’t you worry, he’s dead. I got him right in the jugular.’

  It is true that I have just observed its jittering body, thrusting in spasms like Michel on the hospital trolley, but I am not convinced.

  ‘He’s not,’ I insist. I look from one victim to the next. The first beast to have been shot, the one deepest into the cell, is nothing more than a carpeted hillock of flesh while the other, whose snout is pressed up against the closed iron door, is inhaling through its mouth, lifting its upper lip as though snarling. Perhaps it is snarling. I hear the draw of its breath, like an old man whose lungs are packed with tobacco.r />
  Quashia and the marksman are in jubilant spirits.

  ‘It’ll be very tender meat,’ says the hunter. ‘Have you got a wheelbarrow? Shall I strip them and carve up the meat here, in your garage, or shall I take them to my place and Alexandre can deliver some of the cuts back to you?’

  ‘I’ll get the wheelbarrow,’ says Quashia. ‘Yes, very tender meat.’

  ‘Shut up, Monsieur Quashia – you don’t even eat pork!’ I am leaning in close, peering through the wire-latticed roof of the death coop, studying, hawk-like, the expiring pig. Blood is gurgling, popping bubbles out of its neck. Its tiny tail is wagging like that of a contented dog. The one slate-grey eye I can see – the other is out of vision – seems to be trained on me. I glance at my watch. It is almost fifteen minutes since the second bullet was fired. ‘Wait! Please shoot this fellow again.’

  The huntsman turns back and stares into the cage. It is blatantly clear that beneath us lies the last whispers of a life, but still it is life and it is suffering. ‘I have no more bullets. I only brought two cartridges.’

  I stare at him appalled. ‘Well, we are not leaving him like this.’

  Quashia and Alexandre’s father-in-law struggle to lift up the pen door but the other animal has died on the spring plate and is holding it locked. Eventually they release it a few inches and the man begins to kick the beast’s skull with his boot.

  ‘Stop it!’ I cry. ‘Please, find a swift and dignified way of killing this animal now. Don’t you have a knife?’ The man shakes his head. I don’t bother to enquire how he had been intending to skin his prey here without one.

  Quashia suggests his mallet and that is what is decided upon. The two men hurry away to fetch wheelbarrow and mallet. I remain at the side of the pigling whose death I have condoned. It makes a feeble attempt to lift its head. ‘Please die,’ I say almost inaudibly. ‘Forgive me for this.’ I am aware that anyone witnessing this would judge me ridiculous, even Quashia, who loves all creatures great and small, but I feel an obligation to stay with this adolescent boar until it departs this world.

  The men return. The door is hauled open and the surviving animal extracted and given one solid crack to the centre of its cranium by Quashia. Not instantly, but seconds later, its eyelids close and its life finally drifts away, its soul set free.

  I feel the charge of my own breath.

  The men confirm that it was a young male and weighs nearly 40 kilos. While they drag the second, a female, from the pound, I continue to keep guard over the first, needing to be a thousand per cent certain that there is not a spark remaining. I have an overwhelming desire to faint or throw up, and I am forcing myself not to weep again. I must maintain emotional steadfastness, masculine sensibilities, in the present company. Both beasts are lugged by their haunches and slung into the wheelbarrow. Legs flopping in all directions, bare stomachs exposed, they look like a pair of cuddly toys dumped in a stock room. Quashia carts them away down the track to Monsieur’s car.

  The hunter lingers, waiting for me. ‘You’ll have peace and quiet for a good fifteen days,’ he assures me.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The rest of the pack won’t come near your territory until the scent of blood has dispersed. They can’t stand it.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Back to the business of keeping them at bay. The cage can stay here if you like. The Arab can wash off all the blood and then restock it in a couple of weeks.’

  I am speechless. I had genuinely understood that one death here meant our grounds would be for ever off limits as far as these scavengers are concerned. For what have I admitted such bloodshed on our hill? For what has such a brutal death been perpetrated here? Two weeks’ respite?

  We are walking towards the villa and the pool. The view to the sea is unobstructed. The sun is shining.

  ‘You have a lovely spot, very well maintained but, by George, they’ve done some damage.’

  I nod, numbed. ‘The biggest problem is the walls,’ I murmur.

  ‘Yes, they break into the walls searching for snails. That’s their favourite dish.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it will mean fewer snails all over the plants and vegetables.’ I am determined to maintain a normal conversation though I am trembling with shock.

  ‘That’s nature. That’s the cycle of life. Dog eats dog,’ he replies.

  We have reached his car. He shakes my hand heartily and thanks me profoundly. After the hunter, whose name I did not learn, has driven away with the two dripping, hirsute carcasses wrapped in plastic sheeting in the boot of his car, and Quashia has climbed the hill, quietly delighted to have a tranquil working life for the foreseeable future, to continue weeding around the feet of the olive trees, I go inside, shut the door, draw closed several of the shutters to create a crepuscular light and run a bath. Outside the day is bright and clear. I lie in the bath looking out at the morning. There is an eastern philosophy, Chinese Buddhism, I think, that speculates upon the engagement of responsibility. When a butterfly flutters its wing in China, they say, the impact resounds around the universe.

  I have always been very taken by such a possibility and have most easily been able to comprehend it, relate to it, through the complexity of music. Of course, I have never seen it precisely as an isolated act, not as in one card that sends a pack of cards tumbling or one independent note or chord. No, rather more as woven or accumulated consequence. A wing lifts or a note is emitted, then comes a run of sounds, of movements, of notes; others are brought into play, from a variety of agents or instruments. Many resonate at once and, before we know it, we are listening to a symphony. One single wing flutters and its consequences release symphonies or, equally, a cacophony of cachinnating, barbaric sounds. The music of the universe: mellifluous, elegant, lyrical, or grating, off-key and discordant.

  If the Chinese have hit the nail pretty much on the head then, surely, we are also engaged in that act of composition?

  I lie in the bath, soaking, cleansing, immersed beneath gallons of grief – the departure of my husband, the slaughter of that young beast – until the water grows too cold to remain and I begin to shiver.

  A Cocktail of Toxins

  These early New Year days are bathed in sunshine. In another, more northerly climate, one might dare to call such mild weather spring. Here, it is a special season: a bright velvet warmth spliced in to cheer us after the holidays before the customary rains of February. Already the almond trees are in bud and the very earliest of the migrant birds are winging in. Our self-seeded almond up by Quashia’s construction is growing out of control. Its branches spread forth, monster tendrils overshadowing the more reticent fruit trees, intent upon the shed’s semi-tiled roof. I tease Quashia that the tree is in revolt against all the masonry detritus he has bestowed upon this once fecund corner. We must prune it, before it flowers. Together we go at it, cutting timber in the fresh sharp air. Setting the chainsaw zizzing; splitting, cracking, thudding and rolling its limbs into the birdsong of morning. We argue about this branch or that, whether we should keep it or hack it, like an old married couple, and while we are puffing and sweating he requests a leave of absence for two weeks to visit his family in Algeria. He’s long overdue a break. One of his granddaughters is screaming to get engaged, he moans. Sixteen, she is. He has given strict instructions to his wife that no decisions are to be made until he gives the suitor the once-over. Our dear Quashia remains head of his family and any nuptial bondings involving the grandchildren must be blessed, not by his son, the girl’s father, but by him, the paterfamilias. The lad is a stranger; he hails from a village one hundred and more kilometres away from their village.

  ‘Does it matter that he wasn’t born in the same region?’

  ‘We have no idea how he earns his income and there is no one nearby to fill us in on the matter. Don’t you worry, as soon as I clap eyes on him, I’ll get the picture and make my decision.’

  Poor young girl, that her romantic future should rest in the hands of her
grandfather who hasn’t lived in her natal land let alone her Arab community for more than fifty years. We settle on a date in early February when, due to the rains, little exterior work can be achieved. Satisfied by our efforts, once the tree looks as though it has been at the barber’s, he hurries down the hill to phone his wife while I lop off some extreme twigs from the severed branches and carry them into the house as a bouquet. They might still flower.

  The almond sprigs retrieved from our bout of pruning, splendid in a vase from the Nice market in the dining room, have burst into delicate bud. Elsewhere, the hills are egg-yolk yellow with a perfume from heaven. The mimosa season has sprung early. It is late January. I return from Tanneron, village of the mimosa, where the entire hilly hamlet was swathed in the ferny branches and fluffy, chick-like flowers and where I have invested in armfuls of the tightly balled blossoms. Driving up our lane, I spy Quashia in his black hat and black leather jacket, hands clasped tightly, waiting by the locked garage doors. He must have forgotten his keys. I wave, proffering the sweet-smelling branches, yelling. ‘The pool house looks great, Monsieur Q.’ He has just completed its repairs. ‘Would you like some flowers for the cottage?’ Then I realise he is crying.

  ‘I must leave for Africa immediately. I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ he stammers, as I run to him. His second son has been killed by a lorry in a road accident on the borders of Algeria and Tunisia, leaving a wife and six small children. It is heartbreaking to behold him sobbing like a boy. I drive him to a local travel agent, purchase a plane ticket and deliver him to Nice airport. He is travelling with nothing but his identity papers.

  ‘Are you going to be all right on your own?’ he asks, when we arrive at the terminal.

  ‘Perfectly,’ I lie.

  ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’