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

  ‘Stay as long as you need to. Look after yourself. Best regards to your family.’ We hug forcefully and I wait, watching him, head bent, disappear.

  When I return to the empty house, I box up long stems of the mimosa, carefully sealed in cellophane, and post them to Michel. ‘Enclosed, a golden perfume from Provence. I visited Tanneron today,’ I write. ‘Gazing from the sill of the clifftop out towards the distant sea, the hills in every direction beneath me were a curtain of yellow. I could have believed I was sitting on the sun. Je t’aime.’

  I refrain from mentioning Quashia’s tragedy or his departure.

  I am alone with the farm’s responsibilities.

  A day or so later I receive a call from Alexandre. His tone is mysterious. ‘Are you home?’

  ‘Of course, you rang the house.’

  ‘I mean, are you staying in? I’d like to drop by.’

  ‘I’m here,’ I confirm.

  Within the hour he pulls up in his van. He is carrying a large fortified paper sack. It reminds me of the ones they used years ago on my grandparents’ farm in Ireland to transport the potatoes. He carries it over his shoulder, swag-style. ‘Here,’ he says, swinging it to rest on his feet. ‘This is for you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Your share of the spoils. Two très bons gigots.’ He is offering me the two hindquarters of one of the young boars. ‘These are from the girl because hers will be the most tender meat. The carcass has been hanging since the beasts were shot and skinned and now these legs need to be refrigerated for a minimum of fifteen days before you eat them. Roasting is the best method and simplest. Make sure the oven is exceptionally hot—’

  ‘Please, Alexandre I cannot take these. I didn’t hunt them and—’

  ‘Carol, we have divided up the meat as is our custom, and this is your share. Now let’s get them to a fridge.’

  I unlock the summer kitchen and our hunter begins to rearrange the few morsels already stored in the deep-freeze. He lifts the two haunches out of the sack causing blood to fall in droplets to the floor. He doesn’t notice the stain and I don’t say anything. The cuts are so considerable he is having difficulty packing them into the compartment drawer. The cloven hooves and ankle hide are still attached to both lower legs. I close my eyes. He catches me.

  ‘Of course, you must saw off the hooves before you cook the meat. I left them to assure you I was delivering you your own beast.’

  ‘I trust you,’ I manage.

  Eventually the butchered produce is stowed away and the freezer closed. Alexandre requests a sponge and kneels to clean the floor.

  ‘Please, don’t bother, I can …’

  ‘You’re not going to cry again, are you?’

  ‘Cry?’

  ‘As you did the other day, when the beasts were shot.’ He rises from the floor grinning and walks over to the sink to rinse the sponge.

  ‘When we went hunting I was fine. What upset me the other morning was the mate waiting outside the cage.’

  ‘You think it waited because it was grieving for its loved ones?’

  I shrug. Well, yes.

  ‘You know why it was there?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘The girl,’ he points to the fridge, ‘was on heat. One male went in after her and they got trapped. The other lad would have followed too if he could have. He hung around – animal instinct, Carol – hoping for a sniff. You know how it is when a man is attracted to a woman’s scent.’ We remain within the cool crepuscular half-light of the summer kitchen. The hunter is at the sink again, running the tap on the sponge. He lets it fall into the basin. He is smiling at me audaciously, amused.

  ‘Where’s your Arab?’

  I wince; I hate it when anyone refers to Quashia as the Arab. ‘Erm, he had something to deal with. He’ll be back shortly. Let me get you a towel to dry your hands.’ I make for the door.

  ‘It’s fine. I’ve got to get to work. Instruct the Arab to reset the trap and call me when anything happens, OK?’

  I nod.

  ‘No more tears. They are beasts with beasts’ impulses. They know nothing of love or feelings.’ He leans in, kisses my cheek lingeringly and swaggers off with a wave. I decide against preparing the trap. In any case, alone, I cannot hitch it up. Its iron door is too heavy for me.

  Later, to cheer myself, I take a stroll to the hives in the afternoon sunlight to find the bees out and about, in swarms. I stand up close behind the boxes, not in front where I may alarm them and they, in defence, might sting me. What I notice is a great deal of activity around some of the flight paths and none at all in others. I walk the two rows and hear loud buzzing within the boxes. Twenty thousand bees in each hive in communication. I run to fetch my mobile to ring Michel. His answer machine kicks in. Still, I hold the handset over the hives, transmitting a message, a bees’ song from the south of France.

  The following Friday when Jacques comes to work I pop down to say hello. The air is tangy with wood-smoke from a bonfire in a neighbour’s garden. ‘Would you like a coffee? It’s ready.’

  He shakes his head while unreeling metres of swimming-pool hose.

  ‘Got yourself a boar, then.’

  ‘You heard? There were two, well, three with the fellow outside.’

  ‘Yes,’ he smiles. ‘Alexandre regaled us with the account. How I laughed!’

  ‘What at?’

  ‘You.’ The memory of his amusement tickles him again and he begins to chortle.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘We nearly bust our guts. Alexandre, me and his father-in-law. Every time we thought of it or mentioned it.’ He is laughing again now and shaking his head in disbelief.

  ‘Blubbering about a beast that didn’t get trapped.’

  ‘Well, no, it wasn’t exact—’

  ‘I haven’t been that cracked up in a long time. Oh, Carol.’ He is crying with mirth, hand pressed against his stomach.

  He wipes his eyes while I lower mine, hurt. This is the man who doesn’t hunt. How often has he reiterated that fact. Somehow, inaccurately, I had judged him to be the finer, the more tender-hearted and sensitive of the group.

  ‘Well, that’s me, I suppose,’ I whisper. ‘I had better get on.’ And I return inside, to the security of my library, where seated amongst my books, I bury my head in my hands, feeling defenceless.

  *

  The almond twigs I brought into the house, now on my work table, are sprouting scrumptious delicate leaflets and I discover that deep in the water, peeping out from the severed end of one cut limb, is a tiny pinkish stub: the eye of a root, with the appearance of a shy earthworm. I decide that I will keep the twig in water and when the shoot is ready to pot, it will be for Michel, for his studio in Paris.

  When evening falls, I call him. I chatter on for a while, a little nervously, till, delighted, he tells me he has news to relay. He has an idea for a film and a director to work with, very early days but … The mimosa arrived safely. It brightened his day. His little studio is redolent with the scent from the south.

  I recount the hunting episodes. ‘You are worse than I am,’ he teases. There was a mouse in his Paris kitchenette. ‘I spent two weeks shopping for a trap that wouldn’t kill it.’ When eventually he found what he was looking for and caught his prey he carried it in a jar to the cemetery at Montparnasse where he set the little rodent free. I smile at his tender heart, wishing that we were together, wishing that all was well. I want to tell him that I love him, I am waiting for him, that all will turn round again; I believe he’ll win through, we’ll win through, but I refrain from mentioning us at all. Instead, I ask after the girls, his twin daughters. Vanessa has just learned that she is pregnant. It will be an autumn baby. Clarisse already has a child, a little girl. She and Serge married two years back and have a small house in the countryside east of Paris. Vanessa is married too, and lives in Manhattan, where she travelled to finish her degree.

  ‘Send them both my love.’

  And then he rings off.
No further mention of divorce has been made.

  The following morning I am out sweeping the terraces when the postman buzzes up the drive on his scooter, which is most unusual. While he is rummaging in his satchel for our letters, I hasten to restrain Lucky. ‘The beige one went to the refuge and the others are fine,’ I assure him, noticing that he has lost weight, shaved off his beard and looks ten years younger. Of course, it would be impudent to remark upon it.

  ‘You’ve got bees,’ he says, as he hands me the envelopes.

  ‘Yes, but they’re harmless, I swear. Hardly ever sting. Not at all, in fact. Please, don’t concern yourself.’

  ‘I love bees,’ he states blandly. ‘Could I have a look at the hives?’

  I am completely bowled over. ‘Well, I can’t open them up, I’m afraid, but you are welcome to … are you sure you want to? I mean, they might sting.’

  He nods intently and, bemused, I lead the way to the makeshift apiary. He watches with a child’s glee as the bees enter and exit by their flight holes and circle in the sparkling morning air. Disarming himself of bike and leather satchels in the drive, ignoring the two mutts, who have joined us and are yapping manically at him, he shuffles to the silvery grove, a man entranced.

  ‘I wouldn’t go too close if I were you, best to stay behind the hives!’ I am picturing the full force of La Poste at our door when this man returns to the sorting office, swollen-faced, cursing us and our livestock, but he removes his postman’s cap and stands in the morning sun, head tilted heavenwards, glorying in the circular poetry of the bees. I move in to join him, more taken by him than by our furry arthropods.

  ‘I always said that when I retired, I’d keep bees. It’s been my life’s dream.’

  ‘Well, the owners of this lot have done exactly that,’ I smile encouragingly, puzzled by the extraordinary transformation in this man. ‘Happiest couple I know. Follow your dreams, I say.’

  He turns his head, looks gravely at me and gives a half-hearted nod. ‘Yes, well, I best get on. Letters to deliver. See you tomorrow.’ And with that he retrieves his yellow scooter and putts off on his way, leaving me utterly astounded.

  Alone, I struggle on with the tasks demanded by the farm, determined to manage, to find a way through, convinced that if I can hang on in, life will turn around. It begins to rain. At first it is a soft mizzling fall, invisible to the eye. I watch it pocket in translucent drops on the trees’ limbs made shiny by it, but little by little the heavier winter downpours set in: overnight soakers; eddying and swirling in the pool and the gutters; thunderclaps splitting the distant pewter horizon, while inside the house flames roar in the fireplace. The hunting season draws to a close, save for foxes and migrating birds. I leave a message for Alexandre: please remove the cage from the land. Without Quashia, I am obliged to chop and lug wood from the shed alongside his hangar to bank the blazing fires. I keep candles burning so that when the storms cut off the electricity, which they do regularly, I am not staggering around in the dark, in the garage, grappling for the trip switch. And then, late one afternoon, the electricity shuts down and no amount of flicking or smacking at the mains makes the difference. There is a fault. Four calls to our electrician remain unanswered. My work is at a standstill; no computers. And no music to accompany my solitary evenings. Candles illumine the house; I bath in cold water – fortunately, my daily swims have prepared me for such a situation – and, even more fortunately, our stove has three gas rings so I can still heat food. Into this rainy state of affairs, I hear the chugging of Jacques’ truck. I hurry down to explain that though the pool is turning green it cannot be cleaned because I have no electricity.

  He eyes me with incredulity. ‘Where’s Monsieur Quashia?’

  I hesitate. ‘Had to go off, a family crisis. Obviously, I’ll pay you for the visit. Please don’t worry.’

  ‘How long since you had power? The last storm was three days ago.’ He strides to the garage and begins to ferret about, unplugging oblong thises and thats, testing wires, opening boxes until he discovers whatever it is that he has been searching for. Then he nods. ‘Where are the toolboxes?’ Whatever he requires I manage to furnish and I am secretly chuffed at how well equipped we are here. The problem is solved in a jiffy. A question of blown fuses. Jacques turns to me. ‘If ever you are in trouble like this again, I want you to telephone immediately. Promise me.’

  ‘How much do I owe you?’

  He walks away in disgust, play-acting insulted. ‘Hey, I know what!’ he cries. ‘If you have the latest ’arry Potterr in English you can lend it to me. I am brushing up on my rusty vocabulary.’ I do; I run upstairs to fetch it and he sets about cleaning the pool in the light rainfall while I make us both steaming mugs of coffee, grateful for the presence of this gentle Provençal man whose philosophies I have not quite got to grips with.

  No matter what the weather, I must check the water level in our basin. So, after the weekend, I make a visit to the hill’s summit, head covered by my flapping raincoat, where I find the sad remains of a trapped bird floating, bloated and decomposing, on the water’s skimmy surface. How to extract it? I could telephone Jacques but I decide I will save his kind offer for emergencies and deal with this myself. I hurry down to the pool house, slipping and sliding in the mud, feet swashing in puddles of gunge, Lucky and Bassett keeping me company, and pull out the net used for extracting fallen leaves and flies from the pool. This I secure to a long metal pole that normally holds the pool brush, cart it back up the incline and set about fishing out the carcass. But I am not tall enough, and no amount of arm-stretching delivers the net to the basin’s centre. I trudge back down for a garden chair and hike the hill with that. Eventually, the bird is salvaged. It stinks to high heaven so I decide not to throw it in the dustbin. Instead, I dash with it in the escalating rain to ditch it into the hunter’s grounds. I bid the dogs stay at my side which, for once, they do. I hurl the dead bird. It flies high through the wet air. I await the soft thud of its landing in the brush but instead I hear a rifle shot, muted by the noise of the rain. It shocks me. I hadn’t expected anyone to be there. The season is over. What’s he up to? Of course, rabbits and small birds are not protected. Warned of the trapper’s presence I retreat at a lick down the hill but I am halted by his cry. He is calling my Christian name, which confounds me. I turn. Covered from head to Wellington tops in a soaking black oilskin, and resembling a gigantic seal, he strides my way, gun swinging loosely at his side. He is on our land and I am on the point of rebuking him when he shouts, ‘Heard you’ve taken up hunting!’ The rain is falling fast over my face, running in driblets from my hairline, making me squint. I am panicked, threatened.

  ‘How’s your dog?’ He continues, unshaven, smirking, moving closer. He has thick-fingered hands.

  I glance quickly to confirm that my two faithfuls are safe, have not been shot. They are. Why aren’t they barking at him? ‘What do you want?’ I snap.

  ‘Your redhead got back all right?’

  I frown.

  ‘She was caught in one of my traps. I delivered her to your gate. Next time I won’t be so generous. I’ll send your beast to Jacky, shall I?’ And with that he is gone. An armed, black-cloaked figure disappearing into his sodden kingdom.

  I stagger back to the house, freezing, soaked. That cut on Ella’s foot was caused by one of his traps. She would have died if he hadn’t released her. I should have thanked him. ‘New cover for basin’, I scribble furiously, gibbering from cold and confusion. Next time, I must.

  Quashia closed over our basin with iron sheets a while back. Unfortunately, a storm-damaged pine blew down and split the corrugated roof asunder and we have never got round to replacing it. I promise myself that when Monsieur Q. returns … when he returns …

  The following evening he calls me from Constantine from the local café, hollering into the handset as though the force of his voice alone will transmit his message to France.

  ‘How are you, Monsieur Q.? Oh, I am so pleased to hea
r from you.’

  ‘I have to delay my return.’

  My heart sinks like a stone.

  ‘It’s La Fête du Mouton. I can’t leave my son’s youngsters with no one to buy their sheep. I must stay on, play father to them.’ La Fête du Mouton, the sheep festival, is the Arab equivalent of Christmas. It is celebrated by the roasting of a whole sheep. Each family prepares and cooks one.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ I force myself not to refer to his return. Selfish to put pressure on him and his bereaved family.

  M. and Mme Huilier drop in. They need to open up the hives, check on how the colonies have fared through the winter and, if any of the hives have grown short of honey, feed in reserves of liquid glucose. They arrive bearing gifts, golden sprays of mimosa and a book. ‘This’ll give you all the information you need concerning Karl von Frisch, who won the Nobel Prize in 1973 for his research on the interpretation of the Dance of the Bees,’ smiles Madame, handing me my presents. ‘I know that you are interested.’

  I confirm my pleasure.

  ‘Of course, not everything that prize-winning Monsieur has deduced is accurate,’ remarks Monsieur Huilier over coffee and cake. ‘Scientists don’t know everything, but it’s worth reading nonetheless.’

  I thank them again. ‘I will enjoy studying it and I am looking forward to playing beekeeper’s apprentice,’ I remind them.

  ‘We’ll arrange an outing for the summer because soon it will be time to take the little ’uns away.’

  ‘Yes, I understand. It is as we agreed.’

  After our snack we set off for the lower terraces. They have brought an extra protection suit and face mask for me. Each of us dons our costume. Madame lights the enfumoir and I am charged with the responsibility of maintaining calm amongst the furry newcomers. Monsieur heaves off the lid of the first box and I stare for the first time in my life at a living hive. Bees are crawling everywhere but I cannot see the queen; she is hidden away in a lower compartment. While Monsieur explains this to me and lifts out the honey sheets to confirm that this brood remains well fed and in good shape, Madame records the information with box number into a dictaphone. After the lid has been replaced, the hive is weighed. This one tips the scales at 20 kilos and our apiarists seem content. We move on to the next. I puff the fumes everywhere around the flight hole but there seems little activity here. The lid is removed to reveal a very different scenario. Within is an ominous stillness. The hive is dead, declares Madame. I am utterly shocked. ‘Occasionally, over the winter period we lose one or two. We calculate for it, particularly when the queen is older.’ She reports the data into her machine. However, in this instance, the queen was a one-year-old, and it was a robust colony when it arrived here. I say nothing, fighting to contain my questions. We continue on down the line and discover that out of the fourteen, five swarms have expired. The cause is not starvation. Monsieur returns to each to confirm that their reserves were sufficient to maintain well-fed colonies. The couple cannot hide their dismay. I fear that our site has let them down. Monsieur shakes his head. ‘All over France apiarists are losing vast quantities of stock. There is an insecticide produced in Germany for use on maize and sunflower farms; it has proved lethal for bees. I fear we have fallen foul of that.’ The couple, so enchanted when they arrived by life in their newly constructed chalet in the mountains, depart taking two empty hives with them. The others will be removed later, along with the living colonies. They did not come with their trailer. I wish them bonne route and return slowly up to the house.