Olive Farm

by Carol Drinkwater

  Everywhere is warm and still and calm; calme in the French sense, meaning untroubled and at peace. Without a word, we reach for each other, and I feel the warmth of the sun on Michel’s skin.

  “Je t’aime.”

  Rarely have I felt so in harmony with life, so humbled by its magnificence. I pace out the distance between the farthest visible reaches of the trunk extensions and measure fifteen meters. Here we are, some nine hundred feet above sea level, in the presence of a growing organism that has stood sentry over this landscape for ten centuries. I can comprehend the millennia of reverence given to the olive tree, to its wisdom and unmatched nobility.

  For a heartbeat, all seems clear. The world is pure, and the miracle of life washes through me.

  We return to the village, deciding to continue our ascent to the castle, moving closer to the sun, passing open windows which overlook one of the most breathtaking coastal views I have ever laid eyes on. I pause and catch snippets of language, barely audible radios transmitting in both French and Italian. We are on the border of both cultures, yet so much about this village was born of times when France and Italy were not divided as they are today.

  The climb is winding, the lanes cobbled and tiled and pristine. From the keep, the views are yet again stupendous. Several hang gliders are drifting on slipstreams and silence out over the water. What a spot for hang gliding; to take off from here like a bird!

  We walk on. I read aloud from a booklet given to us by the friendly lady at the ticket booth that we are about to discover the oldest castle in France, the sole example of the Carolingian style. It was built by a count from Ventimiglia, Conrad I, to keep those dratted Saracens at bay. Later, it was remodeled by the Grimaldi family, who, of course, still reigns over Monte Carlo.

  What a coup for one small village to be in possession of the oldest castle in France and a tree claimed to be the oldest living olive in the world!

  The leaflet also informs us that the inhabitants of Roquebrune believe that the creation of the world is a “thought from God,” and that while he was creating this village, his mind was particularly well disposed to man. For that reason, they value their good fortune and make it their business to honor their environment. Too right! With such a philosophy, they deserve their daily sightings of this seascape and their miraculous olive tree.

  RENÉ TELEPHONES TO inform us that the moulin of my choice is to be closed down. Founded close to three hundred years ago, the very winter we choose to take our custom there, it is closing!

  “But how can that be?” I cry.

  “Because it does not meet the European Union health standards.”

  His advice is that we take our olives to the mill he frequents, which is what we do. Frankly, aside from driving around the countryside in search of another mill, we have little choice. Half a dozen crates of olives are sitting in the dark at the back of our garage, waiting to be pressed. If we delay, they will oxidize. Though stung by an initial bout of mistrust and suspicion, I have no reason to be disappointed. The proprietor—the chap we did not meet the first time around—is a splendid fellow with cheeks as red as his checkered shirts and a paunch which flops over his sinking jeans. He welcomes us extravagantly, takes care of us admirably. And I warm to him all over again when that long-awaited first trickle of oil from our own pressed olives drizzles from the onyx tap.

  “Venez vite, mes amis!” he bellows. “Venez vite!”

  By now, it is spluttering and gushing green-gold gallons in fits and starts.

  Nervously, excitedly, we pick our way across the mill floor—skidding and skating because the surface is an ice rink from the dregs of a season’s oil and paste—to taste, please God, our ambrosial liquid. It is a tense moment.

  Michel, Monsieur le Propriétaire, known to us now as Christophe, and I lean in close over one single dessert spoon and inhale its aroma.

  Will we like it? Will we be satisfied? We sip in turns. I go first. Six eyes meet apprehensively, but there is not a shadow of doubt. The texture is velvet-smooth with a flavor of lightly peppered lemons.

  “Oh God, it’s delicious!” I croon.

  Oh, we are mightily proud. Christophe, after filling a wooden spoon with another precious few drops, dunks a chunk of the local rough bread into the cloudy liquid and chews pensively. Save for the thundersome turning and clunking of machines, there is a gripping silence. His fils, the young miller we met the first time around, watches on while a motley clutter of farmers who are awaiting the results of their own pression flock around us eagerly. How they love these petit dramas. And then, in a thick Provençal accent, Christophe declares our produce “Beurre du soleil.” Butter of the sun, he cries loudly, followed by the all-important quality distinction, “Extra!”

  Everybody cheers. There is much shaking of hands, slapping of backs, kissing and hugging and, of course, pouring of wine while Michel and I, grinning from ear to ear with the pride and happiness of a birth, are also doing our damnedest not to fall about laughing.

  OUTSIDE, AT OUR TABLE in the garden, lashings of our very own burnished oil are being decanted by Vanessa and Michel from the five-liter plastic containers supplied by Christophe into numerous elegant or uniquely shaped wine bottles. All year we have been merrily quaffing their contents, cleaning them, collecting them and storing them away, for this most auspicious day. Christmas is upon us once more, and this one is to be celebrated. Clarisse is designing the delicate, exquisite labels, and while the others pour, we are spending our hours in front of a roaring fire ticketing the full bottles and dating them before Vanessa’s friend Jerôme carts them off and stows them away in the cool of the summer kitchen downstairs. Over the coming weeks, the olive fruit sediment will settle and the clear oil will become a glorious primrose gold.

  Mellifluous music, carols broadcast live from Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, is playing on the radio. A blue fir tree perfumes our home with a spicy happiness. Michel purchased it from a bankrupt antique dealer in the square opposite the old port in Cannes where, aside from this festive season, retired gentlemen with dubious histories pass their afternoons playing boules. To honor this, our very first harvest, he has decorated it entirely in swathes of golden trimmings and glass.

  The girls are spending their holidays with us this year, and along with them has arrived Jerôme, who is eighteen and disturbingly gorgeous. Twice I have invited him to come and help me in the kitchen, and on both occasions Vanessa has lovingly whispered in my ear, “Please, chère Carol, resist flirting with my friend.” In a day or two, Anni and Robert, Michel’s parents, will arrive, followed by my mother for St. Sylvestre, New Year’s Eve. My father and sister, both being in the entertainment business, are employed and staying in England. Still, Appassionata is stocked for a full house, and the holidays are set to be a joyous affair. Our turkey, for now we are in possession of an oven which stands alone in our empty, still-to-be-constructed kitchen, is being lubricated with oil from our own reserve. It is a moving and significant moment which we honor appropriately with flutes of champagne. To accompany our apéritif, as a prelunch appetizer, I prepare bruschetta, toasting thick slices of six-grain bread which I top with sliced tomatoes straight from my thriving vines and season with dried herbs and salt and then grill. While the toasts are still warm, I decorate them with strips of fresh basil leaves picked from our herb garden and generously oil them as a topping—Appassionata oil, naturally—adding only black pepper.

  We gather at the table in the garden and eat in the end-of-year sunshine, chattering noisily in French—French language, French manners; we are knitting together as a French family—knowing that when the winter sun has begun to sink behind the cypress tops, slipping out of sight beyond the mountains, we can curl up indoors with books and music and doze in front of the fire. While the others clear the table and stack the washing, I disappear to my den for a few hours, to print out my scripts for Michel to take back to Paris after Christmas. He has clients waiting to read them. After, I intend to close the door on
my work and forget about it for a few days. I need to rest, relax and partake of the holiday season with our loved ones.

  As evening falls, the wintry sunset patterns the sky a pale, streaky rose. My work is done. I run my fingers across the stacks of freshly printed pages standing on my table in thirteen neat piles and turn to gaze out of the window. The Mediterranean coast is growing dark and still. I cannot see the fortress and dungeons where the Man in the Iron Mask was imprisoned, cannot even detect the silhouettes of the islands, but the images live on in my memory and have fed my story; thirteen episodes, partially set on that isle of Ste. Marguerite.

  Beyond this private space, I hear the ripple of laughter. I smell that woody smokiness of crackling logs burning briskly. The others await me. Michel and his teenage girls, so staggeringly grown up, so suddenly filled with a confidence I am sure I have never known, and Jerôme, the first of what no doubt will be a long procession of handsome young visitors over the summers and winters to come. Summers to come.…

  I don’t go to join them, not directly. I linger by the window, aware of my reflection, of me looking back at myself. I am in pensive mood, assessing what has been achieved. That’s often the way after a long work stint.

  After so many years of wandering, I have found my base. We have our shabby home. We have produce, too—oil—and found good men to help us. We have a story to sell; with luck, it will be our way forward. With luck, it will settle our affairs with Madame B. Maintaining the house, its upkeep, is a struggle, but we are just about managing. It has been a productive year, and I am grateful for it. Still, something is nagging at me, tugging at my floating balloon. Can life really turn out this well? Can I really be this happy? What if it should all fall apart? I have opened myself up now. Yielded to love. Trusted someone. The loss would be twice as devastating.

  Steeped in these dark evening musings, I am not immediately aware of the diesel van hiking the drive. I stare at it almost without seeing it and then move through to the salon, where the others are gathered.

  Michel jumps to his feet. “Jerôme, s’il te plaît.”

  “Who’s that?” I ask no one in particular. “Are we expecting somebody?”

  The men hurry from the house while the girls, basking on cushions, pay me no attention. I stare at their concentration. Clarisse is sketching; Vanessa, ears plugged to her Walkman, is learning Russian from a tape; Whisky, the last of the puppies and no longer a puppy, is snuggled in her lap, and I hear several male voices shouting.

  “Do we know what’s happening?” I ask again. Neither girl responds. Curious and bewildered by their lack of interest, I stride back to my atelier, to the window which overlooks the driveway, to find out what is happening. Quashia has arrived. He is accompanied by a faithful quartet of Arab colleagues who are all hovering by the rear doors of the van. I frown, puzzled. Michel is climbing into the van while he and Quashia converse. Two of the Arabs are then instructed to cross the driveway and collect a wooden pallet, which they place at the foot of the rear doors on the bitumened ground. Something is being delivered, that is clear, but what?

  “Do either of you girls know what this is all about?” I shout.

  They do not seem to have heard me. I am about to get cross when from out of the van comes a curious-looking plant, sitting in a saucer-shaped terra-cotta pot the size of an early television satellite dish. The plant must be exceptionally heavy, because it is lowered painstakingly onto the work pallet. Then slowly, awkwardly, Jerôme and the Arabs hump it along the walkway beside the pool and mount the outside staircase to our open front door, which is where I am now eagerly awaiting them.

  “What in heaven’s name… ?”

  “Where shall we put it?” begs Michel.

  I turn, swamped in indecision. Half the room is already taken up by the Christmas tree. There are cushions everywhere. Presents, shoes, sweaters, general holiday detritus have all spread across the room. Michel does not wait for me to respond. The men are sweating and staggering.

  “There,” he commands, and the plant is delivered into the house, lifted ever so carefully from the pallet and placed on the tiled floor. Quashia and the men bid us bonsoir, shake hands and retreat. Michel sees them out and returns to survey his gift. Or rather mine, for clearly I am the recipient: the only one who has not been cognizant of the arrival of this wonder.

  “Happy Christmas, chérie,” he whispers and kisses me. “It’s not as ancient as the olivier millénaire, but as close as I could find.”

  I am speechless, gazing at this extraordinary gift which stands six feet tall, has a trunk like a sculpted rhino’s leg and, according to its label, is South American and a hundred and fifty years old. What most puzzles me is that this spectacular exotic is growing in a saucer-deep pot. Doesn’t it have roots?

  All eyes are upon me, waiting, girls grinning, as I turn to my husband and kiss him. “Merci,” I whisper, for I can barely speak, so overwhelmed am I by the sheer craziness of this man’s love. All niggling fears evaporate. What am I worrying about? It has been a wonderful year.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DARK DAYS

  After the holidays, sometime around late January (the month Matisse described as possessing a “rich and silvered light essential to the spirit of the artist”), when every last straggly olive has been culled from the trees, pruning will begin. Alas, Michel and I cannot stay for it. Quashia, who took the train to Marseille a few days ago, bound for the boat which, by now, will have transported him home to the town of Constantin in northern Algeria—where he is spending the remainder of the season of Ramadan with his wife, seven sons, one daughter and sixteen grand­children—will return to look after No Name and caretake for us. Vanessa and Jerôme have agreed to stay on a day or two to await his return. She is taking Whisky with her when she leaves. Michel and I have work to do. For this year, our very first as olive farmers, our contribution is sadly at an end. Alas, we will even be absent from the celebrations of the fête des oliviers held on the last Saturday in January, in the streets of many of the inland Provençal villages. Strangers and natives alike are all invited to tastings from the various mills and single-estate oils or simply to celebrate. The one near to us is to be held in the streets of the village of Vallauris, and we understand from René that our own mill is represented. As is their tradition, Christophe and his three sons will deck themselves out in local Provençal costumes and offer dégustations of the various oils they have produced. They even display a small working model of the mill, which actually presses olives! We are sorry to miss what promises to be a socially fascinating event, but work calls, and Quashia and René are more than equipped to attack the rigorous buiness of pruning the trees.

  As for Michel and me, we are returning to our separate lives of London and Paris, back to our bachelor-style existences, meeting when and where we can, grabbing a day or a weekend here or there, burying ourselves and our desire for each other in professional energies. Returning to our real lives—but can that other, the cut and thrust of the metropolis, still be thought of as real life? It is confusing. I have often heard friends who hailed from various far-flung corners of the globe and ended up in London complain that they don’t know where they belong. I am beginning to understand that displacement, although I have been a traveler all my adult life. But now I have put down roots. My heart is in France. Here I wake in the mornings, thinking: I am where I want to be. Here I swim, garden, spend hours at the outdoor markets shopping for vegetables and fresh fish, natter with the local stallholders about the quality of this or that homegrown produce, marvel over the range and choice on display and then bury myself away in my studio, writing stories.

  My work and history remain in England. Back there I stare out of rehearsal-room windows, dreaming of what? Shrubs and herbs, the possibility of rearing goats and vines, the man I love so passionately. At the end of the day, I race to the local store, grab some prewashed salads, negotiating a cart around row upon row of shelves and neon lighting, then gratefully close
the door of my little flat, which these days feels as impermanent as a hotel, shutting out the fractious bustle of city life. I prepare a solitary meal, unless I have managed to catch up with a frantically busy friend or two not seen for months, and when I set off again for work, some kind lady plasters my face in makeup while I fret about my figure and ever-increasing wrinkles and the problems of an actress who is fast saying au revoir to forty.

  I am more than fortunate to have both the gregarious life of an actress and the solitary days of a writer, but from time to time, it is confusing and sometimes unsettling. And there is no doubt that, because I am in England less and less, the circles and worlds I have inhabited are slowly plugging up the spaces which I had staked out as mine. Friends call less regularly, unless they happen to be passing through the south of France and decide to drop by for a few days. My agent calls less frequently—actresses who are on the spot are offered the roles I might have played had I been there. Sometimes I feel people think I have emigrated to the moon!

  When I mention my dilemma to Michel, he says, “I don’t know why you feel you have to choose. Why can’t you encompass the whole? A woman who has a multilayered existence.” And perhaps it really is that simple. It’s I who complicates it!

  IT IS VALENTINE’S DAY. Michel is attending a television festival in Monte Carlo, which means that he can spend a week at the farm. I am on location in Wales and cannot get away. I send a dozen red roses and receive a dozen from him. And then the telephone rings in my hotel room. I catch the background bustle of festival activity, the chink of apéritif glasses issuing from the hotel bar, and I hear excitement in Michel’s voice. I miss him so badly it hurts.

  “The English are in!” he says. For a moment I am confused. And then it dawns on me. My thirteen-part series will need several partners, but, given that it is the story of a thirteen-year-old English girl, it would be almost impossible to film without an English network on board. Monte Carlo was to be Michel’s first attempt to finance the production. I am staggered.