Olive Farm

by Carol Drinkwater

  “Do you have your water bill?”

  I tug it from my shoulder bag along with the wine and hand it over to him. “Sorry about the trash cans,” I murmur. Jean-Claude, not registering the proffered bottle, takes the bill, studies it with a frown and disappears to ponder it in solitary silence. Odile takes over the displaying of the kitchen. Lights switch on in the most unlikely places, drawers open, vegetable racks swivel, canned food cupboards unfold, bits whirr, every gadget is exposed, does its party piece and slides back automatically to its resting place. We ooh and aah appropriately. Then, from somewhere deep in the belly of the house, we are summoned by Jean-Claude’s roar. Odile starts like a nervous squirrel before leading us up a few steps into a very dark winding corridor and through to the salon, which, after the kitchen, rather takes us aback. It is an enormous, high-ceilinged room which stretches the entire length of what we are to discover is an eight bedroomed, three-story mas. Even though it is a warm late-summer evening, a two-bar electric fire is aglow in the center of a rather magnificent stone chimney hearth. A glance around shows us the room is furnished sparsely, to say the least. It contains four white plastic garden chairs, a matching table—beneath which the rottweiler cowers—and, over in a distant corner, a grand piano.

  The telephone rings in a neighboring room. Jean-Claude, barefoot, strides off to answer it. “Zurich!” he bellows, and Odile scoots to the phone, closing folding doors behind her.

  “She never stops working. Asseyez-vous.” Jean-Claude waves after her, using our water bill as baton. I am beginning to cast him in the role of a rather off-beat wizard, with his crazy hair and no clothing at all except the flimsy poplin shorts. All he lacks is a cloak. We pull out two of the plastic chairs and sit down. No one has so far acknowledged the wine, which I have tried on a couple of occasions to hand over, so I place it on the table where a plastic-wrapped sliced loaf of white bread—the first I have encountered in France—waits with a bottle of port, another of whiskey, an empty ice bucket, four water tumblers and a large pot of paté. Three knives have also been left there.

  “Marcel,” Jean-Claude yells to his son. From above us, rock music which I had barely registered is switched off. Footsteps on the landing and then the stairs bring Marcel to join us, clearly against his will. He and Jean-Claude take the other two chairs, though Jean-Claude rises the instant he has sat down, seeming incapable of stillness.

  “What do you make of that?” he asks Michel, referring to our bill. He opens the bottle of port and pours each of us a more than generous shot. Before Michel has been given the opportunity to comment, Marcel is ordered to take us on a tour of the house. Jean-Claude returns to the water bill, while Odile remains locked beyond the room. The sound of her voice drifts through to us. Whoever has telephoned cannot have spoken a word, for Odile is chattering breathlessly.

  Curiosity is bubbling within me. Who, or what, are these quirky, exuberant people? Trailing Marcel, we trek from room to room, each is as sparsely furnished as the last.

  “Have you just moved in as well?” I inquire.

  “No. Why?”

  There are sleeping bags on the floors of each of the eight bedrooms, except in the master room which is decked out with yellow-and-blue-striped curtains, fitted cupboards, swivel lamps, several floor-to-ceiling mirrors and an ornately gilded dressing table. Has to be the firm who built the kitchen.

  “Your parents’ room,” I say, stating the obvious, more to make conversation than anything else.

  “Yes, but they don’t sleep here.”

  “Why not?”

  “They sleep in the camper with the dogs” is his simple explanation.

  Even I am silenced by this response. Having trawled the length and breadth of the house, we are returned to the salon just as Odile reappears. She is followed by a second dog, a rottweiler puppy who threatens to grow up looking as mean as his pal.

  “Whiskey,” she begs. Jean-Claude pours her an exceedingly generous shot and refills our tumblers of port. Given that they were barely touched, we are each cradling about a third of a liter of ruby port. Marcel unwraps the loaf and begins spreading butter on the anemic-looking slices. “Santé!’” We lift our glasses to the toast and sip the alcohol. The telephone rings. Marcel goes.

  “Amsterdam,” he calls to his mother. Odile lights a cigarette, sighs wearily, grabs the Camel packet and, scotch in hand, disappears.

  “Drink up!” yells a hearty Jean-Claude, which is precisely what I am trying to avoid. We have already been there the better part of an hour—it is our last evening of summer, we want to leave—but it is now announced that we will eat when Odile has finished her call. Michel, charm to the rescue, informs father and son that we have food waiting at home. Jean-Claude will not hear of it. Certainly we can return to our meal later, but first we must share in the paté, which he has shot and prepared himself. Sanglier. I enquire where around these parts he might have come across a wild boar to shoot. This little hill may be the last undiscovered corner of rural paradise on the coast of the Alpes-Maritimes, but we are, after all, only ten minutes from Cannes. “There are no wild boar prancing about our garden,” I joke.

  “Mais, si, si, on the far side of your hill,” he tells me. “Families of them.”

  Jean-Claude does not strike me as a joker, though what he does strike me as, I really cannot work out. I peer into his face to see if he is kidding. No hint of humor registers.

  “Are there really wild boar here?” I squeak.

  “Of course not, chérie,” Michel says.

  “Yes, and snakes and scorpions,” Jean-Claude avers.

  I slug the port, downing half the glass in one mouthful. During the time it takes Odile to talk at length to Marseille, Paris and finally Geneva, Jean-Claude has forced Marcel to the piano and dragged us to its side as well. We are now engaged in the most squawkingly embarrassing sing-a-long, which eventually includes a radiantly happy Odile. She loves music (music!) she informs us, helping herself to another tumbler of whiskey and another packet of cigarettes. “Le boulot est fini!” she ululates. Her work is over for the evening.

  The white bread and wild-boar paté are being enjoyed by the dogs, who are up on the chairs, front paws and mouths on the table, licking, slurping and dribbling at a chaotic mess of food. (And these people complained about the antics of poor, gentle—if greedy—Pamela!) No one seems to care. Michel and I are completely plastered. From my point of view, there are six Jean-Claudes in the room, all of them bellowing and trumpeting like a herd of elephants in heat. And when a song is finished, he roars good-heartedly, slapping the piano, filling the capacious space with his monstrous happiness. In my present state, I find myself entirely uplifted by his infectious energy.

  And so we stay on.

  By the time we stagger back up our driveway, pitching about without a flashlight, the sky is a blanket of midnight navy and the moon and brilliant stars look like a child’s cut-outs within it. Too late to eat, too drunk to cook, we linger outside for a while, swimming to clear our heads then spreading out beside each other on a sun lounger, listening to the night which spins and spins before us.

  “What was Odile talking so earnestly to you about? Was it the water bill?” I slur but choose not to turn my head from star-gazing. The movement will send my brain reeling.

  “No, neither of them explained that. No, she was describing her work,” Michel replies.

  “Which is?”

  “She’s a clairvoyant. Clients telephone from all over Europe, pay her by credit card and she gives them a half-hour ‘reading.’ Curious.”

  “So, my picture of Jean-Claude as a wizard was not so far off the mark,” I drawl.

  “Jean-Claude? Oh no! He’s an estate agent!”

  HUNGOVER, NURSING A raging headache, Michel departs on the early-morning plane for Paris. A strange emptiness descends upon me. The changing of seasons. The first whiffs of autumn in the air. The swallows swooping low, gathering close to the house, anticipating their journey to Africa
. Colors are turning, resetting. Tinctures of yellows and russet are appearing. A chunk of time that has been exquisitely winding down is drawing to its inevitable close. All my life I have been ill equipped to cope with such moments of loss, but I remind myelf that this is a temporary shift. We have our lives ahead of us, and the house is barely ours. Challenges await us, and Michel will be back on Friday. My mood rallies.

  I work off some of the loneliness by stripping the wallpaper in my workroom. The noise is still there. It has begun to squeak from time to time as well. Has a small unidentified creature just been born? My imagination leaps to trailers I have seen of Hollywood horror movies where small plastic beings begin to move silently in the celler of some unsuspecting, all-American home. They are cute, they squeak, then they grow bigger and by reel six they are threatening world domination! I am tempted to rip the pelmet away from the wall but fear what I might discover. Best to leave well enough alone. It is probably a gecko who has been disturbed by our arrival here. They are timid little chaps and do seem happiest buried in corners away from the harsh sunlight. Once I think it through sanely, I convince myself that it is a gecko and I stop fretting about it.

  Some days the heat is so thick, so extreme, that the early-morning dew sops the plants and leaves them drooping. Moistness is everywhere; nature’s way of making sure they do not go thirsty, I suppose, which is why I choose to water our recently potted geraniums in the evening.

  It is sunset. My first evening alone. I am in the garden with the hose. Circling above me are two buzzards. I tilt my head (still rather the worse for port) and watch them wheel and spin, wondering what they are stalking. I hear one of them screech. It is a haunting echoey cry, reverberating on the still air. Then suddenly there is another sound: heavy footsteps. Someone is moving behind me. I freeze. There is the distinct exhalation of heavy breathing. I go cold. How can I, in this deserted spot, grapple with a burglar? I consider the hose in my hand. I could spray the intruder, drench and confuse him for a few seconds, while I make a getaway. I take a deep breath and turn slowly. There, standing on the terrace a few feet behind me, is a monstrous sanglier.

  No doubt it is a female, the most lethal of the species. She must be here on a scavenge for food for her young, or she would never have approached habitation. I know by reputation how dangerous wild boars can be if angered or distressed. She might charge me if I move or frighten her. The sheer weight of her could kill or maim me. I stand frozen to the spot, almost wishing that it had been a burglar. With an intruder there is the possibility of prevailing on reason, but not with this great hairy beast. I don’t dare to move, but I have no wish to dally. Slowly, imperceptibly, I twist the nozzle of the hose to shut off the water and lower it, half crouching, to the ground. I take my first steps toward the house.

  The giant boar holds her ground, watching me. What is she thinking? Jean-Claude with his shotgun may be a match for her, but I am not. I scan the thicket of pine forest to see if I can spot a mate. I see no others. So there is only this female to contend with. I make it to the house, close the door fast and lean against it, listening to the palpitations of my heart. Even dear old Pamela would have scared her off. I have to admit that I am missing that fat dog. I convince myself that I need my own. A guardian, and company, too, for lonesome evenings.

  MICHEL ARRIVES. WE drive directly to the local dog pound and choose a lively, wiry fellow named Henri. He looks rather like an overgrown red setter, except that his coat is jet black. I wonder why he has been abandoned. His fur is as glossy as a well-polished limousine; he appears in every way to have been cared for. According to his record sheet, he is only three years old, and the note on the vet’s card confirms that he is in excellent health. When I inquire, the lady who looks after the refuge begrudgingly admits that he is uncontrollable. In what way, I ask. He runs off. Constantly.

  Oh.

  “Yes, but you have plenty of land, you say,” she reassures us. “He can work off all that excess energy. He is ideally suited to your needs, and you to him.”

  Michel is not convinced. “Let’s think about it, chérie. We have no fence yet,” he murmurs.

  But Henri’s expression breaks my heart, that please-don’t-leave-­me-here look in his eyes, and he’s panting with such eager anticipation. I cannot bear to walk away, to condemn the poor brute to that cage again.

  “Could we take him out, just for five minutes… to be sure?”

  She shakes her head. It is against the rules. It raises the animal’s hopes, often in vain.

  The woman, a true salesperson, plays on my softheartedness. “You have a month. If it does not work out, and you return him within the month, we will accept him back. But I am sure that won’t be necessary. He’ll settle with you.”

  Henri pants his eager accord.

  We pay, sign the authorization document, buy him a collar and escort him to the car. Or rather, he drags us from the shelter. I can barely hold him. He has the strength of a grizzly bear.

  That first evening, Michel insists that we chain Henri, on a generously long lead, to the trunk of the magnolia tree. He can sit with us while we prepare and eat our barbecue dinner, but he will also learn the habit of staying quietly at our side. He must learn a little discipline, explains Michel. That way he will know not to go wandering off. Henri puts his head on his paws and goes into a sulk.

  He remains in that position all day Saturday.

  “I don’t think he’s very happy,” I say.

  “He’s adjusting.”

  His black eyes glower at me with pain and accusation: You have given me freedom only to take me prisoner, he seems to be saying. I cannot bear it. I spend hours stroking him and talking to him, but he will not relent. He refuses to eat. Oh, what a contrast to Pamela!

  WE HAVE GUESTS FOR dinner, an ebullient Italian artist and his elegant Danish wife. They are a very chic couple who love to party. Paulo is short and plump and passionately adores women. He has on occasion, after a bottle or two, embarrassed me, but in spite of that, I am fond of him. He is a warm, generous man.

  I was introduced to them in the early eighties when I was performing in a theater in Copenhagen. Here in the south, they have bought a house in Biot, and we find ourselves relative neighbors. They arrive late, armed with taped copies of the samba music they prefer to listen to during dinner. (Wait till they see our pathetic little cassette player, I am thinking as I accept the tapes with a broad smile.) As always, Paulo is dressed from head to foot in moody black. Olga is tall and slender as a willow and looks sensational. By contrast, her temperament is cool and reserved. This evening she is wearing a floor-length, ice-white linen dress.

  Henri, still on his lead, is alerted by their arrival and stands up to greet them. He is animated, bucked up, for the first time in over twenty-four hours and begins to wag his tail and yodel.

  “Why is he tied up?” our artist friend asks.

  “We only collected him from the refuge yesterday and so he doesn’t run off…” I blather on about the problem of Henri while our handsome suntanned friends pop the bottle of champagne they brought.

  Michel, across the dust patch, is fanning the barbecue to prepare it. Smoke ascends into the night air, giving off aromas of Provençal herbs and charcoaled meat. I uncork a bottle of red wine, a St. Joseph from St. Désirat.

  “He’ll settle only if you leave him free. He has to discover his sense of boundary in a free space.” What Olga says makes sense. In any case, I am dying for an excuse to release him. I run to Michel, who is calling for me; while replenishing his glass and laying the various cuts of grilled lamb on a serving plate, I repeat what Olga has said.

  “If you think so,” he replies, though I sense he doubts his own words.

  In one movement, I charge up the steps and release Henri, who is over the moon with glee. In twenty-four hours he has had four pee breaks and one long walk on a lead when he dragged me up and down the hillside. His tail is wagging like a clock.

  “Come on, boy,” I coax
, expecting him to follow me down onto the terrace beneath, to where are guests are poised, sipping champagne and imbibing the view. But he does not budge. The movement of his tail is gaining speed. I fear it bodes no good, but before I can act upon my instincts, Henri takes a gigantic leap and lands on the backs of both our guests. They find themselves splayed out in the dust around our roughly cut grass. Thankfully, the glasses didn’t break and cut them, but the couple is drenched. Olga’s dress is patched with green stains from the few remaining tufts of grass and champagne.

  “What an excessively friendly fellow,” whispers Paulo to me as he picks himself up from the ground and dusts himself off. “It’s how I encourage my mistresses to greet me!”

  THE FOLLOWING FRIDAY, I receive a telegram from the proprietor of Appassionata, Madame B. There has been a mistake in the price of the property. I go cold. I knew it! All summer I have been dreading news such as this, and then I read on. Due to the fact that the second half of the land, known to us now as the “second plot,” has measured out at a third of an acre larger than the plot with house—the half we are currently purchasing—we are entitled to a reimbursement of several thousand francs. I whoop and shout in the lane as I watch our postman, who has just handed me the telegram, disappear around the bend. I cannot help remarking that he and his scooter are a precarious marriage of large man and modest machine. By the time he reaches us, his load is almost delivered. How does he negotiate the early rounds of the journey from the sorting office, loaded down with the entire morning’s letters and parcels? And how does that little yellow scooter manage to transport his generous frame and his bundles up and down the steep and winding hills?

  I hurtle off to the local phone booth to telephone Michel at his office in Paris. What it boils down to, he says, is that we can buy a bed.

  YES!

  Within the hour I am in Cannes, ordering the largest bed on offer. I leave a deposit; the rest will be paid when the bed arrives in eight weeks. I leave the shop flushed with excitement. We have blown our entire refund on one piece of furniture.