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

  Michel lifts a finger weakly to his lips, requesting me to be calm and then, eyes closing, his head flops lightly forwards.

  The policeman joins me at Michel’s side. ‘He’s not dead, is he? My husband, he isn’t dead, tell me he isn’t!’

  The policeman gazes on helplessly – he looks no more than a boy, he won’t have a clue – then uncertainly brushes his fingers against Michel’s freezing hand. ‘I’m afraid I think he is, madame.’

  Words cannot express the chaos spewing out of the pit of my stomach. ‘Where the fuck is the ambulance?’ I bawl, deranged, like a lunatic losing control of any faculties still operative. I stomp off several paces along the grass verge, hitting my fist against a boulder, attempting to get a grip on my emotions and the cold, cold terror that has me in its vice.

  I run back. I wait. There is no visible change in Michel. I wheel about, looking up and down the hill. The world remains dead and indifferent. ‘Why is the ambulance taking so long?’ The young cadet has no idea. The other, more senior perhaps, is on a walkie-talkie.

  A while later, it seems like for ever, a fire-brigade truck screeches up the hill. Out jump the emergency services. A stretcher is being organised. It seems that we, or rather, Michel is the priority. Thank God. A uniformed man in his twenties is at Michel’s side. I rush to be there, nagging and skipping, getting in the way, sizzling like a rocket waiting to launch. ‘Is he alive?’ Shooting questions, leaving no space for the paramedic to do his job. ‘Is he alive?’ I beg repeatedly. I am ignored. The stretcher is delivered and laid out on the tarmac. Beacons have been positioned in both directions to prevent the approach and destruction of further vehicles. Michel is unclipped from his seat and lifted out. Soundless and floppy, like a puppet. His body is gently spread out on to the stretcher and a dark grey blanket unfurled over his lower half. A tube from some portable life-giving apparatus has been attached to him. The rear of the fire engine is open and in he goes, like a dish into the oven. I am instructed by the police cadet to follow.

  ‘What about the car? Where shall I park it?’ I ask moronically. It is a write-off and as if it matters.

  ‘We’ll deal with it. We’ll see you at the hospital. Here, don’t forget your handbag.’

  I climb in and crouch at Michel’s side. His eyes are closed. The blood still pouring from his forehead is drying in jewelled crusts on his face. I take his hand. Now I begin to weep. I feel as though we have been locked in a cave. The young stretcher-bearer who accompanies us confirms that Michel ‘vit encore’, is still living, but he has lost consciousness and a rather distressing amount of blood. The journey back into town to the hospital is bizarrely short. Certainly after all that climbing and waiting. A gurney arrives. Michel is wheeled into emergency and I am skittering along behind. Within the building’s casualty wing he is rolled sharply to the right. Someone runs off in search of a doctor. I am trailing the cortège when a night sister steps forward, dyed-black hair scraped tight beneath a triangular cap, severe features, and blocks my path. ‘I’m sorry, but you must wait here,’ she informs me.

  No way, is my response. I barge past her and as the swing door is about to close on a spacious, white isolation room where a handful of night staff are preparing to examine Michel, I slide in.

  One of this team, a young nurse, hurries to my side. She attempts to harry me away but I won’t move.

  ‘Please wait outside, you will be seen shortly.’

  ‘I am not concerned about me. I want to stay with him, my husband please.’ She looks tired, uncertain.

  ‘I won’t leave,’ I press.

  She is about to protest when a shocking noise draws our attention to the table where Michel has been settled. His body has begun to rock and clatter. It is clacking like the music of castanets; gypsy castanets in a frenzied dance. His entire being is jumping inches into mid-air, nerves going haywire. A fish caught on a line, wriggling for freedom. The nurse rushes back to the bed. She and two other members of the emergency team attempt to calm or quieten him; they are holding him down by the ankles and wrists. His eyes are closed and I don’t know what this threatens. I have been forgotten and so I draw close, watching from a vantage point by his lower end, at a few metres’ distance.

  One white figure inserts a needle into his arm. No easy feat given the violence of these spasms. The solution seems to act almost instantaneously. His body sinks like a released air cushion back into repose. One of the crew is speaking on an internal telephone attached to the far wall.

  ‘Is he going to be all right?’ I beg. Michel’s clothes are being removed. His jacket, his tie, which one of the paramedics had already loosened, his shirt congealed with blood against his chest. I hear pale strands of his chest pelt being peeled from his skin as the white cotton is stripped away, but he is oblivious of all of this. Where are his shoes? I had not noticed that he is in blue-socked feet. I see a tiny hole at the apex of one of his toes and the outline of shoeprints on the soles of the socks. Something about his feet breaks my heart. The vulnerability of this. Unshod. And now naked from the waist up. He begins to tremble again. It grows more violent. The door opens. Two men have arrived. A gurney waits beyond. Michel is being taken elsewhere. Where? The first nurse, the stern sister who greeted me in Reception, is at the door again, instructing me to ‘remove myself’. Michel’s gyrations are growing more forceful and now he begins to moan. Deep chthonic or subaqueous groans. A lumbering beast trapped, wailing from an underground lair.

  Is he conscious? I ask anyone. No, I am told. Another syringe is being inserted into his arm. He begins to drift into stillness, silence. Oblivion. A masked man is swabbing the open wound, frowning. It reminds me of a hole that Quashia might drill, irregular, not quite circular, but this hole has been bored into the curved dome of my husband’s head.

  The two men at the door hover expectantly. Where is he going? The word is given, a discreet nod, and they step forward, negotiating their trolley with habitual skill. Both swing doors are flung open and the patient is wheeled away. All activity within the room dies down. The emergency team exit. There are blood clouds where Michel was lying. One man is left cleaning up. He lifts his head, seeing me for the first time, puzzled by my presence, and then returns to the business of metal kidney dishes, dressings, needles, medicaments and Lord knows what else. I return outside to Reception, at a loss.

  A nurse carrying a file, marching purposefully by, stops and asks ‘Yes?’

  I am confused. ‘Yes what?’

  ‘Have you registered at the desk?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  Patently not. She grips me by the sleeve of my cardigan and leads me to a desk where a curly-haired, bespectacled woman in civvy wear, eyes cast desk-wards, asks the same question, ‘Yes?’ without lifting her head. My guide has moved off, marching on through the medical night.

  ‘Please be seated and someone will be with you shortly.’

  ‘It’s not me. It’s my husband. I don’t know where they have taken him or what will happen.’

  ‘Sit over there, please, and you will be attended to before too long.’ I shift in the general direction of the bench but in spite of an overwhelming fatigue that descends upon me I cannot be still. I am a ball threaded with elastic and attached to a bat. I whack back and forth, never in repose. The receptionist insists that I sit down. I have a raging headache. My eye has closed over and I cannot imagine what is happening to Michel. Is he being admitted, operated on? Will I ever see him alive again? Why, why have they taken him away? I glance at my watch. It is half-past four. Break of day. I ought to be doing something constructive. Instead, I allow myself to give in to the weight of tiredness and settle heavily on to the bench. I close my eyes. My head falls forward. A voice is saying my name. I open my good eye. The left one is glued shut.

  ‘Are you Mme Drinkwater?’

  I nod wearily. How has the woman standing before me acquired this information?

  ‘The doctor is waiting to see you now.’

 
‘Later,’ I insist. ‘When my husband comes back.’

  ‘Please follow me.’

  I shake my head. The logic, if any exists in my resistance, is telling me that if I leave this spot I may never find Michel again. I must stand sentry, as it were, and await his safe return.

  ‘You will require a scan.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  This messenger, a nurse, raises her eyebrows, sighs heavily and disappears. Moments later the doctor is in front of me. I am staring at the arrival of his shoes. This is not the footwear of an English doctor or an employee of a British National Health hospital. This man is sporting elegant brown suede casuals and beige silk socks. I lift my head and see a ruggedly handsome individual, fifty-something with iron-grey wavy hair, a tanned complexion, gold-rimmed Cartier reading spectacles.

  ‘Mme Drinkwater.’ He has a kindly, composed manner; highly practised. A Latin man confident of his own lean masculinity. ‘Your face has been quite severely cut. For your own sake and insurance purposes, I will need to examine you before I can sign you out of the hospital. I would like to recommend that we submit you for a scan. It is quite painless.’ Although this tiny horn of land has its own dialect, everyone communicates in French or English here. This specialist, speaking to me with his thick Italian accent in my mother tongue, is no exception.

  ‘Do you know what has happened to Michel?’ I ask, visualising the hole in his sock.

  ‘He is undergoing the same scan I have scheduled for you – just to confirm that there is no internal damage – and then we will stitch him up. It is a rather deep incision he has suffered to the skull.’ The man smiles impassively. ‘Now, madame, how about you?’

  It must be the madness of the night, but even with one eye sealed shut, encrusted with blood, and a skull that feels as though there is an ear-splitting drum solo playing within it, I adamantly refuse to be examined. The doctor barely restrains visible impatience, grimaces tightly and moves on to other more accommodating cases.

  Once I am left alone in the corridor, sleep takes hold.

  The rattle of trolley wheels rumbling loosely over the tiles stirs me. It is Michel, embalmed in a starched gown. He looks like an elongated fish, en croûte, brought to the table on a dish. His head rolls sideways. I see drugged blue eyes. He is conscious. Michel! Michel! I leap to my feet. My knees collapse and I stagger, almost sinking to the ground. He lifts a limp hand. I put out mine and we brush fingers as the gurney rolls by, disappearing again into the same white room – or is it a neighbouring one? ‘Are you all right?’ I call, but the doors have swung shut. This time they are closed from within and, try as I might, I am barred entry.

  I request ‘the ladies’ room’. In the glass I look like nothing more than an alley cat who has been in a scrap or a pirate returned from the high seas. I wash my face in cold water to alleviate the swimming tiredness – I am punch-drunk with it – and to clean off the blood smeared all over my cheek, neck and collar. With warm water, I prise apart the viscid seal, releasing the sight in my left eye.

  Back in the corridor once more I become obsessed with the notion that I must inform someone of what has happened. But who? I wouldn’t want to alarm les filles, Michel’s twin daughters, and I certainly won’t disturb my mother in her bed in England at this hour but, in my aberrant state of mind, it has become essential to inform someone. Eventually, I decide upon Bob, Michel’s Australian business associate and dinner companion. I root about for the number in a local directory and wake the man from deep sleep. He is groggy, barely lucid and clearly completely baffled by the sound of my voice.

  ‘It’s Carol.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Michel’s wife. We are here in Monte Carlo at the Princess Grace Hospital,’ I am yammering. ‘Accident. Hole in his sock. Looks like a fish. Jumped like a fish. But he’s not dead. He’s going to live.’

  ‘Yes, well, thank you for contacting me,’ he growls sleepily. ‘What time is it, for Christ’s sake?’

  The day is alive and kicking in the Principality of Monaco when we step outside the hospital into a blindingly bright summer afternoon. The warmth of the sun against my damaged face, which feels as though it has been twisted out of all recognition, is salving. Hand in hand, awaiting the taxi that has been ordered at Reception for us, we stand. We are going home. Michel has no internal injuries, we have been assured. The lower corner of the rearview mirror breached his flesh and sunk deep, skewering him. All traces of glass have been removed. The wound has required fourteen stitches. He has been given prescriptions for painkillers, tranquillisers and has been injected against the risk of infection. He has been instructed to rest. The impact shock will take time to heal. The specialist recommended a night or two in the hospital but was willing to release him on condition that he returns for a check-up, that our own doctor oversees his recovery and that Michel stays put for the foreseeable future. ‘No air travel.’

  I, on the other hand, have not been given any form of once-over but I have been urged to make an appointment to return in the immediate days to come for the obligatory scan. My pigheadedness has been treated with varying degrees of civilised compassion, but I have been warned that insurance companies, police reports etc., etc. will require the examination. The offending driver, who has smashed both kneecaps and inflicted various other leg injuries upon himself, is to be charged with dangerous driving while under the influence of alcohol, or so I have been informed by a police inspector who stopped by to interview me. Facts have floated over me. I have very little grasp on linear reality. The only reality I can latch on to is the fact that we are both safe and being released.

  Seated in the back of the taxi, pressed tight against one another, we are zombies gazing incredulously out upon a familiar coastline where folk are at play, indulging in their favourite water sports. The fact that it is an ordinary day like any other seems to be odd. Miraculous, really.

  Warning Skies

  The taxi delivers us to our gate and from there we climb slowly up to the house; a storm-tossed twosome we must make, puffing and resting, winding our way through the argentate olive groves and thick golden heat. The sky is so acutely blue it looks as though it has been freshly painted. I am seeing it all as though for the first time. Between one day and the next, the season has burgeoned, exploded, or that is how it appears to me. This shimmeringly hot early afternoon is as intoxicating as any hallucinatory experience. I drink it in intensely, addictively, through drooping eyes that kept vigil with death, and a nervous system that is so shot it is on overdrive. There is no sign of Monsieur Q. He must be elsewhere on the land, attacking the perennial chores. But no, it’s Sunday, isn’t it? I fold in the shutters in our bedroom, closing out the flaxen shafts of day, sliding us into dies non. Clothes fall to the tiled floor and we fling ourselves into bed, rolling into one another, crashing up against flesh and hair and body perfumes like waves against a windbreak; scuffling for contact; making ourselves our universe; clinging tight to one another as though our salvation, our ability to weather this trauma, lies here, here within this bowery where we have known so much joy; stroking, touching, locating body parts as though to reassure ourselves that we are both still whole and functioning, still capable of normality.

  Here we pass the better part of the day. As evening draws in and I am woken by distant church bells signalling the call to evening mass, I rise, go out, walk barefoot on the warm slabby tiles, absorb the view, sink into the pool, relishing its silky coolness, doggy-paddling to and fro, trying not to get my face wet. I look a perfect sight.

  During our petit séjour in deepest Monte Carlo my rescued bird has perished. I find him lying on his back, stiff, legs extended heavenwards, erect as open scissors with minuscule feet curled at the extremes into arthritic claws. His feathers are dishevelled as though he has been pecking at himself, angry and self-flagellating after aborted attempts to get airborne. His broken wing sweeps the chalk-shitty floor of his makeshift hutch like a torn curtain.

  When Michel wak
es, we bury our silent songster in the garden.

  I wrap his remains in white kitchen roll, shrouding him in a make-believe swan’s down cloak, while Michel digs out a shallow grave down by the lower cherry tree and there we lay him to eternal rest. When the mound is covered over, patted firmly down and surrounded by stones, I place several sprigs and one flower upon it from the star clover plants that I have retrieved from those self-seeded in our flowerbeds. (I choose them for their heart-shaped leaves.) In my state of shock, this feathered creature’s departure upsets me profoundly. We never confirmed whether or not he was a warbler, we never gave him a name, we never heard him sing. Orpheus.

  During the days immediately following the accident, I attempt to screen us from the outside world and the onslaught of telephone calls and affairs to be addressed: the Nice gendarmerie, Monaco Accident Enquiries, my insurance company. Owing to our proposed, now postponed, mini-adventure to the Camargue, the cupboards are almost bare. Both automobiles are in Monte Carlo. We have no means of transport. We have no cash; the taxi that delivered us back from the Princess Grace Hospital emptied our pockets. Quashia, shocked to find us in such a condition, walks to the village to stock up on provisions for us. When he returns he digs up fresh lettuces and radishes, tomatoes, of course, and gathers herbs, washes the lot under one of the cold-water taps in the yard and, in order not to disturb us, leaves everything inside the front door, out of reach of the thieving mutts.

  I receive a call requesting that I pay a visit to a yard close to the border between France and Italy, the garage annexe where my sports car is being stowed, pending a decision on its future, to sign identification papers and remove all possessions. Several police officers motor by to interview us, asking questions and then more questions and requesting signatures on pages of forms. A telephone call from a very fraught Frenchwoman reveals the mother of the young fool in possession of the offending vehicle.