Olive Farm

by Carol Drinkwater

  Clarisse’s arm presses up against me as she plops down beside me. It takes me by surprise.

  “Tu es très pensive, Carol. Are you and Papa going to have a baby?” she inquires without preamble.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Why, would that trouble you?”

  She thinks hard for a minute and then shakes her head. “No, it’s just that Vanessa and I have been talking about it.”

  “Have you? What have you been saying?”

  She thinks again. I await her response with trepidation.

  “It would be better if it were a girl.”

  “Why?”

  “You both have such a lot of curly hair. It might look silly on a boy.”

  Innocent as this comment might be, by God, it heartens me.

  Later, as we undress for bed, I ask Michel, “Were the girls talking to you about us having a baby?” He looks at me, amused. “No, why ever would you think that? They were wanting to know about the pool. They think we need advice on how to maintain it.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait till we have water in it?” I suggest a mite testily.

  “I promised them that one treat. I want to keep my promise, if I possibly can, and give them something to look forward to.”

  “So that’s what you were so deeply engaged in conversation about, the swimming pool?”

  He stares in surprise, a tired smile on his nut-brown face, placing his shirt on the cardboard box acting as dressing table. “What’s the matter?”

  I scramble into bed, and a spring needles me in the back, at which I curse profanely and drag the sheet over my head.

  Michel approaches and lifts the bedding from my face. “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Nothing. I just hate this mattress and I want a bath.”

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, even without my daily swim, promising amounts of my good humor have returned, and I kiss Michel lovingly as he sets off down the hill for the hot cramped office set alongside the motorway and occupied by the rather grandly named Piscines Azurèenes - Construction et filtration - Produits - Accessoires - Contrats d’entretien - Dépannage - Robots de nettoyage to buy a bucket of chlorine tablets and pick up a useful leaflet or two. The woman recommends that, because our pool has been empty for some time, we have an expert pay us a visit.

  Within the hour, a swimming pool–blue van trundles up the drive, honking frequently. I run to take a look.

  “Tie up that blasted dog or I’m not staying!” is our introduction to its driver. Poor dear Pamela, who was snoring happily and quietly enjoying her day, is dragged to one of the stables, where I attach her with a piece of string to one of the iron rings. It is only now she begins to bark.

  Satisfied, out of the van comes l’expert. He is a burly fellow in very baggy trousers, with bloodshot eyes and a big dark drooping mustache, and he reeks of alcohol. (It is a little after eleven A.M.) He takes one look at the pool, throws his arms in the air and scoffs loudly. “This pool was constructed in the late twenties.”

  “Is that a problem?” I snap crossly.

  He screws up his face, eyeing me beadily, then sets off on a slow plod around the pool’s perimeter, bending and lifting like an ostrich, appraising it theatrically. “It is a capacious and sturdy piece of workmanship, but it has no filtering system.”

  Fortunately, both girls are elsewhere, because I know that bad news is about to be imparted. And it is. Within three days of its being filled, même pas three days, the water—if we ever locate any—will breed galloping algae and turn a brilliant green which, in this heat, would be a serious health hazard. I reluctantly admit to myself that he knows what he’s talking about. The long and the short of it is that we cannot simply fill it as we had envisaged; we must construct a cleaning system. His estimate nearly sends me tumbling backward over the terraces.

  The girls’ disappointment when Michel breaks the news over lunch is heartbreaking, to say nothing of my own. We return to our land clearing in a despondent mood.

  In an attempt to cheer us all up, Michel calls us, beckoning us down the hill. “J’ai une bonne idée!” he cries.

  “No more stupid ideas, please, Papa!” returns Vanessa, refusing to even glance in his direction. “This whole place is a stupid idea,” she mutters to her sister. I feel sinewy knots tighten in my stomach.

  “A stroke of genius, mes chéries,” he coaxes. “To put the empty pool to use.”

  But they will not even turn their heads. I watch him walk away, saddened for his defeat. Then curiously, he gathers up our old radio/cassette player, takes it to the swimming pool and descends the steps with it. I am intrigued. “Look at your father,” I encourage, but the girls will not relent. When he has satisfied himself that he is standing in the center of the empty space, he places the machine, a rather clapped-out ghetto blaster, on the ground and slips a cassette into it. The voice of Sting bounces off the walls, reverberating bass and acoustic guitar, and reaches up the hill to the terraces where we three girls are at hot, sticky work. Their cross expressions break in delight. We drop our tools and race toward the music. There we are, covered in earth and bits of scythed weeds, alongside Michel, who is clapping to the beat. “Every problem has a good side,” he says, laughing and winking blue eyes in my direction, while Pamela growls uncomprehendingly as we dance and hoot like crazed Indian squaws.

  Into this bizarre scene arrives a small white Renault van. It is the electrician, Mr. Dolfo. He looks at us askance, trying not to notice the radio sitting in the center of a huge empty pool and the fat German shepherd going bananas barking at us, not at him.

  He takes Michel aside as though there is no sense to be had anywhere near three such hysterical females and begins a conversation that appears to be serious and highly secret.

  The evening before, over a glass, Mr. Dolfo tells Michel, he was in conversation with a fellow workman, a plumber and chimney sweep. By chance, he was relating the woes of the new waterless house owners on the hill. Quelle surprise! His colleague, who was born and bred in the village and used to hunt on our land as a lad, knows the exact whereabouts of our water house. Mr. Dolfo offers to drop by at the end of the day with Mr. Di Fazio. There is great excitement. I dash to the village to buy beer, cases and cases of it, to chill in our new little fridge and offer our rescuers, though the prospect of water at long last has become almost too improbable to count on, so I try very hard not to allow excitement to get the better of me. When did I ever think that water running from a tap would send me into paroxysms of joy!

  THE VISCOSITY IN THE light caused by the day’s heat is evaporating. Dolfo arrives up the hilly driveway late in the afternoon in his Renault van—which I later discover he cannot reverse!—followed by the chugging of what looks like an old bus. This is Mr. Di Fazio. The fellow emerges from his van in filthy blue overalls, and in this brilliant clear sunshine, we meet a man covered from head to toe in soot. Cleaning chimneys, he explains with a roar of laughter. I immediately take to him and his thick Provençal accent which twangs like country music and offer him a cold beer. This he accepts like a naughty boy, looking this way and that in pantomimic fashion as though he were about to be chased with a rolling pin. He pats his robust stomach, downs the beer in several thirsty gulps and mutters mischievously about disobeying his wife and the strict diet she administers.

  Michel and the two men set off on foot. As he tells me later, they cross the lane bordering our land and disappear into the valley that sits between us and a narrow track winding to the village and on to the sea. There in that valley, they come upon a small stone house about the size of a cote.

  “Your water shed!” declares Di Fazio.

  Unbeknownst to us, this petit cabin was built by our splendid Italian ancestor, Signor Spinotti, in the same year as Appassionata and remains a part of the estate. When Appassionata was first constructed, its domain included this valley and the hills beyond. Nowadays, this particular parcel of land is owned by a syndicate in Marseille. Still, the small stone house, which has electricity, a w
ater meter and an electric pump, remains the property of the villa owners, and they have water rights as well as rights of passage. Because its thick wooden door is jammed closed, Di Fazio wastes no time in breaking in; to reassure Michel, he points out the main pipe, situated aboveground outside and running alongside a small stream back toward the town.

  First the three men switch on the water. It gushes forth instantly and splashes into the water house, filling up a cement dugout about a meter deep.

  “Now we switch on the electric pump,” continues Di Fazio, who makes a gesture toward Mr. Dolfo to do the honors. The pump begins to shimmy like a plump belly dancer.

  “From here the water will be pumped to the bassin at the top of the hill, and from there it will flow back down to the main house.” Michel and the two artisans watch on, satisfied, then they pull fast the door and make their way back up to the villa for a second, much deserved cold beer.

  Di Fazio takes a deep slug from his bottle, squinting at the hill’s brow. Behind him, we stand like extras in a film, following his gaze, waiting expectantly. A remarkably large black and white butterfly flutters by me.

  “Deux heures,” our new plumber pronounces with the expertise and wisdom of God.

  Two hours. The words are repeated like a Chinese whisper as though the miracle is too incredible to articulate out loud. In two hours we will have water!

  “Quelle heure est-il?” demands Vanessa, needing as always to be precise. Clarisse shrugs. She has lost her watch somewhere between wildflower picking and selecting branches for flower arrangements from the scythed broome Vanessa and I have decimated.

  “Half past six.”

  “So, half past eight, then? Yippee!”

  HALF PAST EIGHT comes, and half past eight goes. The water does not arrive. Every thirty minutes, one of us is given the thirst-inducing duty of pounding up the hill in the falling evening light to confirm whether or not the water has begun to arrive. Each one of us returns half dead with a shake of the head. Pas encore. Five hours later, when we prepare for bed, there is still no sign of water.

  The next morning Di Fazio returns. He and Michel, who by now is acquainted with every overgrown square centimeter of this land, set off with shears and a scythe to walk the hills and terraces in search of burst pipes and leaks. They find none. So, en principe, there is no reason why the water should not be arriving up in the basin. Eventually, a return visit to the stone house shows them that the electric pump which burst into life at the flick of a switch has died. Clearly the effort, after so many years of idleness, was simply too much for it. We will need a new pump. After a lunchtime consultation with Mr. Dolfo, we learn that the new pump will cost, including labor, approximately ten thousand francs, or about fifteen hundred dollars. This news is bad. Ten thousand francs is more than we have left, and we have not yet settled our bill with the hotel owner. We thank both Mr. Dolfo and Mr. Di Fazio for their assistance and tell them we will be in touch when we next return to the coast. Shaking hands with us, they slip away discreetly. Their disappointment on our behalf is evident.

  FRIENDS ARRIVE IN A two-car convoy from England, bringing with them bits of furniture and two large terra-cotta pots I purchased in Crete which will look splendid on either side of the pool steps, as well as other offerings of one sort or another, including, most importantly, my mail. We cannot hide our dismay about the water. A lunch salad is made, and Michel recounts our ongoing water saga over an aperitif while I disappear to our bedroom to read through the stack of letters. Most are junk, a few are from long-distant friends who have heard via the grapevine about my new life—sounds divine, darling!—and want to come and visit, and one is from my agent. A letter from my agent usually contains one of two things: the occasional forwarded fan letter or two, in which case the envelope is usually thicker, or a check. This envelope is slender. My hopes are high. I open it with trembling fingers praying that the check will not be for some ridiculous sum, such as 47 pence from the BBC for a foreign program sale to some remote cable channel in the middle of Botswana. The letter is notification of a check which has been paid directly into my London account for a series of sales and repeat fees on All Creatures Great and Small. The check more than covers the price of the water pump. In fact, it will stretch to the first installment on the required cleaning system for the pool. Our day, no, our summer is made.

  I run crazily out onto the upper terrace waving the statement like a flag of victory. Friends and family, seated around the table on the level below me, cheer and raise glasses as I deliver the news.

  Michel hurtles off in the car to telephone Mr. Dolfo while the rest of us lay the table for lunch and change the cassette in the swimming pool. Funky music echoes around the hillside. Our water problem is at an end.

  Ah, how much we take for granted in city life! The simple rituals of brushing our teeth, getting clean, soaping our flesh recklessly, frothing our hair into sudsy turbans of shampoo, make us jubilant. Vanessa discovers a leak on the land in one of the pipes where the water is spraying out as though it were a geiser. She jumps about over it and leaps on the muddied earth, splashing and washing, laughing and whooping. Her exuberant cries cut through the still heat, silencing even the cicadas.

  “SEE, THE HOUSE faces southwest. It looks out over the bay of Cannes, the promontory of Fréjus and the sweeping gulf of Napoule and, if we stand on tiptoe or take a ladder and scale the back wall onto our flat, graveled roof, you can clearly see the two islands sleeping off the coast of Cannes, west of Antibes, known as the Îles des Lérins.”

  From our top terrace, after sundown, when the streetlamps light up along the coastal road that snakes around the promontory of Fréjus, it looks as though someone has dropped a priceless diamond necklace, leaving it to glitter across the westerly half of the horizon. Sometimes the Esterel Mountains turn a dusky blue and resemble a Japanese painting. Alongside, the pink sunset puts me in mind of flamingoes flitting across a mirage. Our friends are falling for this ramshackle villa as much as we have. So we are not alone, not so dizzy.

  THANKS TO THE rooms taken by our guests, the patron now has a full hotel. He puts up the sign—Complet—and the small affair of illicit showers is dismissed with a shrug and a glass of wine. We settle our account with him while the girls pack their bags, and then we drive them home to be with us at the villa. And what is more, they seem excited at the prospect.

  “PAPA! PAPA, viens içi!” It is Clarisse calling. Everyone downs tools and runs to the terrace where she is standing and waving. Vanessa is at her side. They are now kneeling and staring into our pond. “Il y a des poissons!”

  I knew it! Ever since that hot midge-biting afternoon when we first discovered the pond, I have been returning there to try to penetrate the living mystery of its smoked-glass surface. Clarisse, with her usual fascination for the minutiae of wildlife, has passed the last hour filling jugs of water from the luxury of our water supply—a running tap!—and pouring them into the pond. The fresh water has stirred the silt and life beneath. There, swimming close to the brimming surface of the diluted, bracken-toned water, are three huge fish. Each is a good foot long.

  “C’est incroyable!”

  The four of us are on all fours like thirsty mogs bent close over the water to examine the fish. They are carp, or monstrous goldfish. Then another appears. And another! In all, we count five or six, possibly even seven, it is difficult to be precise as they dart and dive. But the first three are the largest.

  “How have they lived all this time?” I ask.

  “On the plankton, the natural vegetation. Still, it is rather miraculous,” says Michel.

  Another discovery of Appassionata’s life—its resilience. Each day, we are thrilled by new wonders.

  AND THEN OUT OF the blue, a rather disagreeable guest turns up, an elderly gentleman searching for Michel. He is a writer who has come in the hope of selling a screenplay. How did he find us, we ask ourselves, but can find no satisfactory explanation. Fortunately, our living circum
stances are so manifestly primitive that we have no need to apologize for the lack of a bed, but politeness and Michel’s endless generosity dictate that we invite him to stay for dinner. Our little gathering has now reached eleven. Dinner is prepared on the barbecue. It is a communal affair and great fun. Running water from the tap in the temporary kitchen facilitates the washing of vegetables and salads.

  We dine beneath the magnolia grandiflora. From there we have views to the sea and the mountains. Golden, lambent light from the antique oil lamp I brought from England illuminates our late-evening gathering. Water trickling into the pool threatens to drown out Billie Holiday’s “Easy Living.” We hardly care. The flow itself is music to our ears. Still, at this rate, we calculate it will take three weeks to fill! Chris, one of my oldest friends, offers to purchase us several hoses as a housewarming gift. We drink to that and assure him that he has guaranteed himself a welcome return.

  We recount our search for water to the unexpected new arrival. In response, rather like an embittered old Cassandra, he predicts, “Once a water problem, always a water problem. In my house in Spain…” and tells with relish his woeful story as though he were wishing us an equal measure of ill luck. The table goes silent, nothing more than water spluttering into the pool, distant chirring of sleepless crickets and strains of “Good Morning Heartache” can be heard.

  “But the problem is solved. Now we have water,” I chip in cheerily.