He was by now giving us a tour of the ‘bungalow’ constructed for the new manager.
‘What a pad, eh, what a life! I’d have brought Cécile and our boy. We could have moved in here, if only I’d known. I’d have run this place for him while he made his fortune with the agricultural equipment. He wants for nothing, does Raymond. Do you have any idea what he is worth?’ René rubbed his cracked fingers and thumb together, dry as an old scouring sponge. ‘Millions,’ he muttered. ‘Millions. But I’m the one who knows the trade. He needs me. I know olives like no one does. And Raymond’s got the itch for them. He itches with it. Like you do, Carol, and that can’t be bad for me.’
Later, when I complimented Raymond on the new house, he offered to put us in touch with the architect and his team of Portuguese masons. ‘They are excellent, as you can see, and they are very reasonable.’
We sat drinking champagne in the shade, looking out towards a distant hillside church set upon mauve mountains while the meat grilled by Raymond, aided by Michel, sat on plates on the table getting cold. Finally, exasperated, he called into the kitchen to his housekeeper.
‘Charlotte, what is going on? Where are those splendid potatoes and the stupendous broccoli all grown by our good friend here, René? Get a move on, please. We are waiting.’
A croaked voice from the kitchen returned, ‘They’re not cooked yet, sir, there’s an airlock in the pipes and I’ve no water for boiling.’
To repair the leaks, to restore the subsiding garage involved shoring up its interior with pillars beneath a new ceiling. Above this, on the exterior, a damp course was required beneath a bed of cement. Michel suggested we lay terracotta tiles on the cement and create a patio. It would begin beyond the French windows of our bedroom and reach across the stables and measure approximately eighty square metres. Too expansive for our needs, at some later date, after planning permission, when we could raise the necessary funds, I imagined we might knock through the far wall in my den and build on to the tiles an extension that would supply us with one if not two extra bedrooms for Michel’s daughters and grandchildren. However, first things first. The preparatory work entailed the removal of the corrugated asbestos sheets covering the stables.
We telephoned the architect who had been responsible for Raymond’s staff house. A young fellow on a motorbike in his early thirties, he spent an hour with Michel, confirmed the urgent nature of the structural repairs and then informed us that, as projects went, ours was not sufficiently important for his firm. ‘We usually build houses or renovate chateaux. You don’t need an architect. I’ll give you the names of the masons who carried out the work up at Raymond’s place. They’re a good team and can handle this without me.’
We called the recommended outfit, a family business that comprised a quartet of Portuguese. Coincidentally, they had tiled another portion of terrace for us, completing a job left incomplete, quite some years back while they were under contract to another société, fronted by one Bolmusso. Our memory of this previous experience was that they were reliable. Michel asked them to pay us a visit and take some measurements. One of the four turned up, rough at the edges, crinkle-haired and rather good looking. He took one look at the works, shook his head and said they would not touch the site until the asbestos had been removed.
We perfectly understood that, but could they not organise the removal for us?
He shook his head again. It required expert handling.
‘But by whom?’
‘There are companies who specialise in the removal and disposal of amiante, but it will not be cheap.’
He scribbled down the phone number of one such firm and said to use his name. ‘Tell them José recommended you.’
I took the card and we thanked him. In the meantime, would they consider giving us a quote for the work?
‘When the sheeting has gone.’
We left it like that and promised to be in touch.
As he was settling at the driving wheel of his white Kangoo, I asked, ‘Don’t you work with Bolmusso?’
‘Once upon a time, but not any more. We’re an independent outfit now.’
I telephoned the number José had given us and learned from a recorded voice that the company was closed until after the summer.
When not in my den, I whiled away the hours logging the changing seasons. I watched second-brood magpies learning to fly, their back feathers standing upwards like fans as they skittered about, took off and tumbled, dropping on to the trampoline-soft, pine-needled earth high up the hillside, rolling carelessly like dusty tennis balls. I watched water endlessly, gazing into puddles where the morning irrigation had spilled, mirroring drops, or I gazed upon the surface of the swimming pool. Like a sailor on deck, I studied the sky’s reflections, a lone cirrus cloud passing, or the swirl of movement when a fly, a bluebottle, a bee landed and circled for its life until I waded in to save the unfortunate insect. Then I lay dripping in the garden, having abandoned my weeding or reading, and stared at the sky itself, considering its ineluctability, its lack of seams, wondering at how it never got torn, its ability to span space, to knit so perfectly with the horizon. I talked to lizards, too fearful of me to converse. Still, I pursued them, peered with a giant’s perspective into the schisms, hairline fissures within the rocks or tiled surfaces, the cool, dark shadowy places beneath terracotta pots that had become their homes. Umbras I could never penetrate.
My mind was forever busy, but it was also a hollow, troubled space. The olives were growing fat, though still hard and green as peas. Quashia was chuffed by the quantity weighing down the trees and constantly reminded me that, had he and Michel followed my guidance, there would be few that had not been tainted by flies. I did not want to leave here but the poisoning taking place on the hillside had become untenable for me and I had to do something about it. Either find us another home without trees requiring chemical control or get busy and dig up alternatives. Somewhere, there had to be a natural enemy of our fly, but where? If no one else had succeeded in finding a solution, how was I to?
France ranks third in the world for its agricultural exports and is number one in Europe. Approximately one half of its entire landmass, which is to say twenty-eight million hectares, is dedicated to agricultural production. This had been achieved by three and more decades of intensive farming and a far greater use of chemicals. Chemical-control products have become easier to obtain than ever before. Today, France ranks third in the world for its pesticide consumption and is the leading user in Europe. But the France I had returned to was in change. It was considering its ecological responsibilities, reassessing the negative impacts of such farming.
My adopted home was under the leadership of a new head of state, M. Nicolas Sarkozy. On the evening after his election, he launched Le Grenelle de l’Environnement, an Environmental Round Table, an open forum for debate, consultation and action plans for the future of agriculture and its effects on the environment. The themes under discussion numbered six: climate change, biodiversity and natural resources, environment and health, sustainable production and consumption, ecologically responsible democracy, green development employment and competitiveness.
I was not a fan of Sarko, but, when I had learned about this from Michel during my travels, I hoped it would bring the issues out into the open, create dialogue, admission of responsibilities and enable shifts towards positive changes and a greener, safer world.
September now, beyond my return. The second of our ancient cherry trees, the widow of a pair, was showing signs of ill health. Its leaves were turning their habitual golden apricot. Against its chocolate-dark bark, it was a glorious sight, but there was so little foliage. The tree had delivered no cherries this last spring, Quashia and Michel confirmed. I hated the prospect of losing it as we had its partner so we lopped off its sparsely furnished canopy and left it, with a trio of thick, naked branches rising out of a mammoth trunk, hoping that, when spring came round again, it would reshoot.
The men were not
ching up our third spray of the season, and the fruits were looking rotund. I turned my attentions to the challenges of asbestos removal. Now that August was behind us, la rentrée was beckoning and the hordes of tourists were driving back up north. The roads were clogged in every direction and businesses were back at work. Schools were opening their doors and I was at last able to get responses to my calls. Someone from the asbestos-disposal unit of the société recommended by José finally picked up the phone. Yes, the woman confirmed, they specialised in asbestos removal.
I requested that they drop by and give us a quote.
The section of cover in question measured five metres by three and a half. In the old days, before we lived here, these boxes, stables, housed four horses, I had learned from Quashia. This was an insignificant day’s work, or so I estimated, but the first quote we received came in at a whisker under seven thousand euros.
Seven thousand euros!
Michel shook his head in disbelief. ‘They have made a mistake,’ he said. ‘Or they are crooks.’
I called the gentleman who had visited us and queried the figure.
‘Surely you have muddled us with another job?’ I said.
‘No, the treating of asbestos is a costly business. It needs to be removed, laid out on a wooden palette and wrapped in protective sheeting, the thickness of which is crucial. Then it is taken away by lorry, registered with the toxic material office, deconstructed, disposed of and you are given a certificate of clearance that must be filed with your property papers at the notary’s office. The imperative in all of this is the certificate. Without it you are forever responsible for those few sheets of asbestos.’
‘Why does it have to be so complicated?’ I sighed.
‘It’s a toxic material. However, off the record I can probably find you someone who’ll do it cheaper. A cash arrangement.’
‘Do we still receive the required certificate?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then please, Monsieur, send us whoever you recommend around and ask him for a cheaper quote.’
‘It’ll be done tomorrow morning, Madame. Count on me.’
I never heard back. I telephoned this gentleman twice more and each time he made the same promise. I scoured the Yellow Pages and found one company advertising such a trade and I phoned a number I saw advertised on the side of a van parked in the street. Both acknowledged that they were in the business of asbestos treatment but they would not work with private individuals. The contract had to be drawn up through a registered company.
I telephoned the local town hall and was connected to the planning office who furnished me with two numbers, warning me that there were only three companies still in existence which offered this service. The third was the one I had already had dealings with. The other two I contacted. The first no longer handled dangerous materials but recommended the firm which had given us the quote for seven thousand euros and the second passed me on to someone else who promised to call me back and who, in spite of several reminders, never did.
We were back to square one and we had little confidence in the garage roof seeing us through the winter.
Michel was more upbeat, more determined. He suggested we track down Bolmusso, the original boss of the Portuguese artisans. That same evening, Bolmusso crept stealthily up the drive in a spanking new, state-of-the-art four-wheel-drive. He was older than I remembered, of course, and rounder, but, yes, I recollected him now; less hotheaded than his erstwhile Latin employees and craftier. He had tricked me over a delivery of bathroom tiles, charged us twice. Still, Bolmusso, heaving as though suffering from emphysema, prepared us a quotation and added on to it every conceivable and inconceivable extra. To repair the garage roof, the devis, the estimate, he sent through was a snip under seventy thousand euros.
Seventy thousand euros!!
And the corrugated sheets?
He shrugged. He could not help us with asbestos.
We requested bids from four construction firms to give us a more global picture. Bolmusso’s was the highest by more than twelve thousand. He was, though, the only one of the companies that had been employed by us before and, bathroom tiles or not, we had been pleased with the masonry work. However, as Michel pointed out, it had been the Portuguese family who had actually executed the work and who had also delivered such excellent craftsmanship chez Raymond. Michel telephoned Bolmusso and requested that he ‘fait un effort’, make an effort, to drop the price, which he did. The result was sixty-eight thousand euros.
It was out of the question and we left him a message telling him, non. Regretfully so.
October. Was it possible that the government and I were in step, I joked to Michel over breakfast. An ambitious action plan, seeded by the results of Sarkozy’s Round Table, had been presented by the French minister of agriculture, M. Michel Barnier. The goal was to reduce the use of pesticides by 50 per cent before the year 2018, increase the surfaces dedicated to organic farming by up to 20 per cent before 2020 while commercial production of pesticide-resistant GMOs, genetically modified organisms, specifically food crops, was to be suspended altogether pending new investigations beyond the creation of an investigative body. This was a major coup for all those who had demonstrated (numbers had gone to prison for their convictions) against genetically modified crop plantations here in France.
‘This is very optimistic,’ I said to Michel.
The investigative enquiries were to be achieved by the setting up of research programmes and motivating institutions dedicated to seeking out more ecologically responsible alternatives, relying less on the pesticide industry while encouraging farmers to change their approaches, to learn, to understand the sweep of their personal responsibilities.
‘It sounds optimistic,’ agreed Michel. ‘However, it is all open to further lobbying. Nothing has actually been implemented yet.’
I, meanwhile, had read about a variety of chrysanthemum that was a natural insect repellant. Might it work on the olive fly? I had yet to find out. I could not track down its name. I began to scour ancient pest-control methods, classical texts, Latin for the most part, agricultural tomes written during the heyday of the Roman Empire. Page after page I printed off the internet. My Latin was hopeless. I had left behind even its basic vocabulary more years ago than I cared to admit. Trying to make sense of it was frustrating. Then, into this haze of concentration came a call.
‘Madame?’ a voice rasped like the low, slow slice of a chainsaw. ‘Let us come and see you. We will make an effort.’
‘And you are?’
‘José.’
‘José? From the Portuguese team?’
‘Si, Madame.’
This did not sound like José.
‘Tell your husband that I and my brothers – it’s a family business – will come and talk to him.’ His was the voice of a gangster from a Hollywood Mafia film.
However, they arrived. Four of them, José, José José and Francisco, the family team of Portuguese masons. Francisco was the brother of one of the Josés, though of which we were never quite sure. The other two, José and José, were associates, perhaps cousins.
‘There are no bosses among us. We operate as a team. All four of us are masons par excellence. As you know, Madame, Monsieur. We’ll better whatever quotes you have received.’
‘And the asbestos?’
‘We’ll find you someone to remove it.’
‘A legitimate certificate is an imperative.’
‘We’ll make sure you are provided with whatever is required.’
They drank wine, shook our hands and left. We never heard back from them in spite of several reminders on my part.
‘José?’
‘No, Madame, this is Francisco.’
‘What about our asbestos?’
‘José is dealing with that. Call him.’
I’d dial one of the other six numbers on their card. ‘José?’
‘Yes, Madame?’
‘The removal of the asbestos, what is
happening?’
‘José is dealing with that.’
‘But which José?’
‘Big José.’ I could not for the life of me remember which was the ‘big’ one nor which of the phone numbers would put me through to him. In any case, I never reached him. If I did, he must have passed me on to one of the others. The fact of the matter was that winter was approaching and we were getting nowhere.
If we could not legally remove these sheets of asbestos we would be unable to extend the terrace and that would mean no groundwork for the bedrooms I had been dreaming of, no child-friendly facilities for Michel’s family. We were snarled up between the toxic materials departments and masons who saw this as a money-making opportunity and no one could point us in a direction that led anywhere. Should we shell out the seven thousand euros and get matters moving?
In those weeks preceding the harvest, when the Latin research grew too painstaking and while we awaited feedback from the Portuguese, I haunted the garage, sponging up its ever-worsening leaks, mopping away the occasional puddles, slinging out the broken tiles, plaster dropping from a ceiling that had deteriorated to the point of baldness, spent hours among its increasingly fragrant mildews, where gardening tools, land equipment and spraying machine were stored. I packed and repacked material in attempts to protect everything during the upcoming wet season.
There I came across the residue in a ten-litre plastic container of the insecticide we had been pumping into the silvery branches throughout the summer months. I lifted this substantial bidon out of its cool-storage home into the late autumn sunlight and took a long, hard look at the neutrally toned liquid and its directions for use.
The product that we were annually spraying on to our trees as recommended by the olive bodies, including the Chambre d’Agriculture, stated on its label that, after a period of four to six weeks, no residues remained in the soil. This implied that none of its poisonous properties would sink beneath the earth’s surface and find their way into the groundwater. Groundwater, underground mountain springs in our case, that feed local reservoirs and are eventually piped into the taps of every modern home. These were not at risk, the label claimed.
Return to the Olive Farm (The Olive Series Book 4) Page 6
