‘And how do we do that?’ called someone behind me.
Hang traps from the trees to catch the flies. This was to give an indication as to the density of the infestation. Once the farmer was sure that the flies were present and propagating, soon to be injecting their eggs into the maturing olives, then they were at liberty to spray.
The traps, though, were not specific; they trapped whatever wandered into their zone, they killed other insects including honeybees.
I sat in my chair in the front row next to Michel, fuming. Michel glanced my way and winked. He knew me too well. But I was not going to take up the sword. Not here, or not yet.
I glanced behind me at the rows of faces, a gathering of some seventy or eighty of us in total; worn-down, drink-sodden were some; rusted by the elements were others while a few wore skins as wrinkled and runkled as old geese. Typical land folk, but what surprised me was the expressions they wore. Fed up, bored. Evidently we were not the only pair who had hoped to hear more inspiring news, guidance towards a greener future.
A man in the row behind us to the right with apple-pink cheeks and a fraying straw hat, a figure of bucolic bliss, raised his hand. ‘Aren’t we supposed to be trying to move away from all these chemicals? They’re downright toxic,’ he called out. ‘What organic routes are being studied?’
Good fellow!
‘Yes’ was bellowed from a big-bosomed woman to the left, shuffling and scuffling her brown clods of feet. ‘We know all this.’
‘We are coming right up to that,’ replied one of the female technicians.
Then, before she could inhale and continue, someone called out from the back row. His words were distorted by an echo within the tinny space, but I clearly caught the gist of the question: what are the latest developments on Psyttalia lounsburyi? So, the exotic fly with his long and rather attractive antennae was a well-known player within the olive community, a highly anticipated star turn.
Our hostess sighed as though this was a question that weighed heavily upon her. ‘Nothing’ was her response. ‘He is a failure.’
‘What?!’
‘Not possible!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I cannot believe that!’
She lifted her hands to hush the rising clamour of contentions. ‘As many of you will know, this exotic, this African fly, has been imported and is being studied at government funded science laboratories in Sophia Antipolis. It is a five-year project. Well, Psyttalia survived into its second year and before Christmas was taken out into a pre-selected list of groves for a trial run.’
‘And the results, what were the results?’ Impatience from a heavy woman in thick-laced shoes.
‘The result was nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
I had proposed parcels of our farm, a selection of both young and elderly groves, for these experiments, but my tender was received too late. The five olive locations from this region had been selected while I was far away on my travels and I had failed to stake the opportunity for us. When I learned about it, I was disappointed. I had been keen to observe the experiments at first hand, though at that stage I had not known what the experiments were to be. It would have been a gamble.
The previous November, batches of the African flies had been transported to the pre-selected olive fields, we learned now, hung within unsuspecting branches and left to their own devices. The flies were to make their own way, to find their own place within the groves’ ecosystems, but, according to this technician, the insects had refused to leave their boxes. A few ventured out a yard or two but no further. Three weeks before this day’s meeting, as the first signs of winter were receding and creeping out from beneath the earth came the tips of the wings of spring, a group of scientists had returned to see how the little foreigners were coming along. However, every site had registered the same disappointing message. All flies had disappeared. There was not a trace of any of them.
Voices were calling. What had happened?
These particular colonies had been reared in incubators under highly cosseted conditions, their origins were hotter climates …
And it had been an unnaturally damp winter along this coast of the South of France. Rains had veiled the views, had reduced the crumbly red soil to a streaming burgundy soup. Leaves had dripped, boughs had hung heavily, some had broken beneath the onslaught of water.
‘And the flies?’
‘Yes, what of the flies?’
‘They just perished, were washed away. Consequently, the Psyttalia lounsburyi exotic has been deemed unsuitable for our more northerly temperatures. As a biological control agent against the olive mouche, it appears that the propagation of this species lacks efficacy.’
Sighs and groans of disappointment from the audience. I threw a swift glance about the room. Clearly, we had not been alone in putting our aspirations into this little fellow who was no more than half the size of his combatant, Dacus, who himself was half the size of a fingernail.
‘Any questions?’
I raised my hand. ‘I have read about a plant that might have originated along the Dalmatian coast. I believe it was, is, related to the chrysanthemum, contained insecticidal properties and was used as a natural insect repellant in the Middle East and possibly the ancient world, too. Unfortunately, I have not been able to track down its name. I wonder if anyone here is acquainted with it and knows whether or not it might still be available.’
Bemused faces greeted me. I turned to our seated colleagues. Perhaps one or two of those who leaned towards organic had Googled the same results as I had, but the room remained silent.
‘Sorry, Madame, désolé. However, we have some good news to report: a relatively new pest control, developed in the United States. Insect management is its key function. It has been created out of the fermented residue of a plant and it carries an organic certificate.’
Several members of this farming fraternity brightened up. ‘That’s more like it!’ ‘Let’s hear the good news instead of all this doom and gloom.’
In some detail, Maude’s colleague, Irène, described the product, and I recognised its name. I had read about it during my late-night internet trawlings. It had been patented and was being sold by a major American pesticide company, a company with a dubious history, and this pesticide was highly toxic to bees. When the young woman had finished and asked if there were any questions, I raised my hand again.
‘It is true,’ Maude’s colleague admitted, ‘that there is a minimum risk for bees but as honeybees do not pollinate olive flowers, they are not attracted to the groves. Honeybees rarely frequent olive groves, therefore the dangers for them are slight.’
Now I was ready to leap from my seat. Michel slid a hand over my left thigh to temper my reaction. It was unnecessary. The man in the straw hat with the ripe cheeks was on his feet, dancing with anger, defending the world’s most vital pollinator, the honeybee, Apis mellifera.
‘All bees are endangered! It has been publicly acknowledged the dire predicament they are in. You, as representatives for the Chambre d’Agriculture, have no business condoning any chemical that eliminates even a tiny percentage of the world’s remaining arthropods,’ he was calling, his cheeks rouging up, shinier than before. Mumbles of agreement hummed in the cavernous space.
How, I asked myself, had this product received an organic ticket when bees, no matter how few, were endangered?
Our afternoon passed in less contentious circumstances and in a far more agreeable environment. After a picnic lunch in lukewarm sunshine at a long wooden table outside the tin edifice, the two girls walked us up the hillside to the higher ridges of a low mountain. It was quite a hike. We were now in the company of an ample, middle-aged man with cheerfully blue, piggy eyes who hummed contentedly, like a distant diesel engine, throughout the climb. We entered what until recently had been a vast swathe of mimosa forest that descended sharply towards flatlands. The golden mimosas had been dug up, the hillside replanted, converted into extensive groves
of young cailletiers, olives. These junior silvers had been arranged in rows, but somehow they were not regimented, more welcoming, and they were of an astonishing height, thrusting themselves upwards out of this steep incline. Their bushy crowns overlooked the industrialised plain of St Laurent du Var and beyond to the sparkling Mediterranean. The holding’s aspect was full sun. This afternoon it beamed out of a soft, liquid azure sky that seemed to rise upwards from the horizon’s rim, arching above us and then curving backwards until its blueness slipped discreetly into the depths of the beyond. Looking about me, it seemed that the whole world was a blessing, a globular expanse of sky and silver vegetation, a vegetal viaticum.
On this beautiful Saturday afternoon, beneath such a compelling heaven, the trees were swaying gracefully, touched by a whisper of wind beckoning spring. It was hard to believe these saplings were just five years old as our expert – square fingers, big square nails – who spoke with a thick Provençal accent, informed us. Our youngsters, six when we purchased them, had been in the earth for more or less the same length of time, perhaps even a tad longer, but they had not bolted, had not grown so lofty or bushy as these examples, even though we also had never pruned ours.
By now, still humming, our good-natured agriculturalist had stepped into his blue serge overalls, pockets bulging with the tools of his trade: secateurs, a small handsaw, an electric branch-cutter attached to a portable battery, a demi-litre of mineral water jutting out of his breast pocket. At his side stood an assistant, his daughter, who resembled him in every way with her porcine features and squat, thickset physique.
‘We are here to learn the unique and essential skills of pruning saplings. Impossible, of course, in one afternoon!’
Standing in a circle round this father and daughter team, who had travelled from their birthplace, a forgotten hamlet within the high, blustery rock of the Massif of Sainte-Baume (baoumo in Provençal means cave), especially for this demonstration, all of us were perched, feet entrenched firmly into the ground, at a most precarious angle. Monsieur le Tree-Cutter began to lift branches, tendrils, to examine them, and then with a magician’s sleight of hand he flicked lengths of bough, of twig or entire towering leafy limbs off the trees, quizzing us, in continuous dialogue with us, our thoughts on which strand to extricate next.
‘From where should the following snip be taken and for what reason?’
I noticed that encircling the foot of each tree was an arid patch of earth, barren, where no herbage grew. I guessed the owner of the estate used a weedkiller around the plants’ trunks to save himself a chore. All the while our woodman was working, he conducted conversational exchanges. He described the structure of the olive tree, its organism, its ability to moderate its perspiration levels, thus making it highly drought-resistant, its process of internal communication, from root to leaves.
‘This living being here at my side,’ he smiled, ‘has, in my humble opinion, a far more efficient central control system than, let us say, a Boeing. It relays messages from its roots to leaf tips, advising the leaf cuticle when to stop perspiring, sending warning signals when the water levels below ground are insufficient and the plant cannot afford to lose moisture, when and to what degree it needs to shift into its protection-against-drought mode. Its water-conduction system is first rate. As is its capacity for survival. We have all heard of computer-sophisticated aircraft alerting pilots to the fact that fuel levels are dangerously low, but are those mechanisms capable of cutting all engines and gliding the machine home? I doubt it, but this tree can regulate its own moisture system … it can hold its liquor,’ he laughed, ‘and it’s never going to nose-dive and kill all relying on it!’
He spoke of the advantages of lifting off canopy height and of leaving the lower, outer branches to tumble and swing. It is said that a healthy olive tree is one that a swallow can fly through without the tips of its wings brushing the foliage. A bird’s width between branches allowed the interior of the tree’s crown to be aired, which in turn lessened the possibility of fungal infections, keeping undesired humidity at bay. A well-pruned tree has the ability to combat disease.
Unfortunately, it does not protect against the olive fly.
‘So, besides chemicals what solutions are on offer to us?’ I asked.
‘Well, to start with, keep the entire farm healthy. A well-maintained grove has a higher level of resistance against infections and a better chance of combatting infestations. At the end of the harvesting season, clean the ground of all residues of olives. They are the winter homes for the flies. Leave no unpicked fruits on the trees. Rake them up, burn them.’
After a little more delicate snipping, our professional paused, raised his head skywards, squinted, studied the tree appraisingly and announced that he would cut nothing more from it.
‘But the work is not finished!’ cried one onlooker.
‘I have trodden gently,’ he replied. ‘I have pared, rather than lopped. These are not my trees,’ he explained, ‘and I have never worked on this hillside before. So, this fellow and I have not yet become fully acquainted. I have not yet had an opportunity to understand the needs of this tree nor has he got to know me. We are strangers,’ he continued, with a shy smile. ‘We have not learned the language of one another, how to communicate our requirements to one another. Next year, if I were here again, it would already be easier between us.’
He spoke as though this was a love story, or at least an intimate, personal relationship, one broad arm held high, moving in curves as though caressing an imaginary outer silhouette of the plant. Our instructor pointed out the new growth and drew his thick stubby fingers, thick as broad beans, nails ingrained with soil, along the slender, curving roddy extensions where fruiting had taken place the previous season and he showed us where not to cut if we wished our juniors to deliver us oil this coming autumn.
‘We are in the presence of an organism of infinite wisdom,’ he grinned. ‘But don’t let that panic you. If you prune inaccurately, these guys are tenacious. They are not going to allow you to kill them off. A few bursts of energy and they’ll reshoot, but while they are readjusting, finding a new equilibrium for themselves, you are usually deprived of their bumper crops.’
While others threw questions at him – ‘Why not take that bit out?’, ‘Those shoots could go’ – or showed off their own expertise, I pondered this country steward’s words; with his paunch, his fully fleshed face and dense southern accent, he spoke with poetry of his vocation, his relationship to the tree. He spoke as though these trees were human or he was fluent in their language. I was delighted to hear a grown man discoursing with the assumption that such a language existed. But then his ancestors would possibly have spoken such a tongue. His birthplace, the region of Sainte-Baume, constituted massive and quite spectacular forestlands. During the centuries of the Gauls, it was honoured as a sacred forest and remains a protected site even today. He would have been raised on country lore that paid its dues to trees.
How would it be, I wondered, if we could interpret the trees’ concerns? If the earth could talk to us? But then again, I reflected, it is expressing itself and we are not listening.
5
The asbestos was to be removed. Hallelujah!
At a quarter to two, fifteen minutes before the material was booked to be taken away, I received a call from a driver sitting outside in the lane.
‘I can’t get this truck up that drive, not even through those gate-posts,’ he spat down the phone.
I had explicitly requested a van that could pass through our narrower-than-average entrance.
‘Well, no one told me. I work for an independent firm, love. We’re haulage contractors and no one said anything. Hang on a second.’
A few minutes later a portly Arab came huffing up the drive. He was muttering under his breath, curses to Allah. He had left the two blue gates open and I could see that parked beyond was a mammoth carrier used by furniture removal companies.
‘No, you’ll never manoeuvr
e that in here,’ I confirmed.
‘I know that! Have you got any staff?’
‘Our gardener.’
‘Tell him to carry the parcel down and we’ll load it down in the lane.’
‘But it weighs a ton!’ Quite literally. ‘Perhaps more. He cannot possibly carry it single-handedly, nor even with your assistance—’
Hands held up as though in defence. ‘I don’t touch this stuff, Madame. It’s toxic and my contract states—’
‘Yes, yes. Well, it will not go into the rear of the farm car or I’d ferry it down myself.’
‘I’m leaving.’ He turned to go. ‘I should have been forewarned.’
‘No, wait, please. I’m sure we can find a solution.’
Quashia must have heard voices because he came strolling down the hill to greet us.
‘Bonjour, jeune homme,’ he called, as he approached, which is his salutation to all visitors no matter their age or status. As soon as the two men set eyes on one another, they slapped their hands together in greeting and switched languages. They were now conversing in a mixture of Arabic and a Berber dialect.
Whatever spell Quashia weaved I had not understood, but the fellow nodded, turned, set off down the drive and waved.
‘Do you know him, Mr Q?’
‘No. But he’s an Algerian.’
In this country, that was a claim to brotherhood.
‘So, what is going to happen?’
‘He’s bringing up a loading trolley. We’ll wheel it down between us.’
‘But how will you lift such a charge on to it? He said he won’t touch it and, unfortunately, I don’t have the strength to do it. You’ll break your back if—’
‘Hush, Carol, we’ll manage.’
As his fellow countryman reascended our steep incline, I was reminded of those airport luggage carts that simply will not obey. This mechanism was far lower, twelve centimetres off the ground, which meant that perhaps we – they – could probably slide the package on to it, but its wheels were behaving as though each had been given a different instruction. The good news was that this fellow Berber’s humour had been radically revised and he had stopped complaining. Thank heavens. We needed the signed form he was going to hand over when this burden was finally off our property.
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