“We can’t give them Appassionata,” I repeat. My voice is quieter now, almost strangled but emphatic. Behind my dark glasses, tears prick my eyes. Michel picks up his wine and takes a sip. He smiles at the waitress as she places Parma ham and a mesclun salad in front of him. “Merci.”
We begin to eat, but the delicious fish tastes like cardboard in my mouth.
“If you don’t mind going back to the airport later and picking up the girls, I’ll begin to make some calls to see what else I can come up with.”
“Such as?”
“I have plenty of contacts in Germany. I’ll try to pick up a cable sale. I’ll talk to the Swiss. A children’s channel in Italy. I don’t know yet, I’ll think of something.”
THE GIRLS ARE CLEARING the table after dinner when the row begins. I do not know from where it explodes. I’m feeling fraught and deeply upset because we have decided to go ahead and sign Appassionata to the bank as a guarantee. Frankly, we have no choice. Salaries have to paid, hotel bills met. Whatever solutions Michel can cobble together, they will not solve our immediate dilemma. We agreed at the beginning of the evening and then promised ourselves to leave it until Sunday, when we will put aside part of our afternoon to arrange the paperwork.
Now, suddenly, here we are, standing around the table shouting at one another. I am quick-tempered by nature, volatile, but Michel is more steady in his emotions. Vanessa lunges forward and screams unkind words at me which send me reeling. “No,” I stammer. “No, you don’t understand.”
Have I been unkind to Michel, did I speak too sharply to him? Do I act as though I blame him for what has happened even though I know that the difficulties are not of his making? The girls must think me culpable. They side with their father. Naturally. And yet, in so many ways, I had thought us a family. I wanted to believe it. I am more sensitive to cutting words, accusations, because I am not their mother. Were we family, flesh and blood, I could dismiss the unkindnesses more easily. As it is, dishcloth in hand, greasy plates clutched before me, I turn and flee to the kitchen.
Glancing back, hazy with tears, I see a sight which curdles my heart. Michel standing at the head of the table staring at the floor, lips puckered, frozen in speech, one daughter on either side of him clutching him fast, their heads pressed against his chest. I settle the dishes in the sink and, without washing them, creep off to bury myself beneath a cave of sheets and pillows.
EVERYONE IS SLEEPING. The dew on the early-morning grass glints in the sun like crystal stones. The soles of my feet are damp from walking in it. A cock crows in the far distance. The blue of the sky is as smooth as velvet. It caresses my fractured senses.
“They will hold all deeds of the farm until the film has been completed and sufficient profits have been made to pay them back, plus their interest, of course.” Michel’s words of yesterday echo in my mind.
This must be hurting him as much as it is me.
Seated on one of our many drystone walls, I scan the misty morning hillsides, drinking in our ravishing land and seascape, and my heart swims sickly. Even without a cent to renovate, even crumbling alongside its romantic ruin, this place is magnificent, magical. To lose it all—myriad moments of crazy happiness—does not bear contemplation. Our lives had seemed golden until this summer.
Ella, our little puppy, is nudging her cold nose against my naked arms, begging for attention. I stroke her soft russet-auburn head absentmindedly. We never found No Name. We advertised everywhere. She just walked away, disappeared out of our lives. We cannot fathom even how she got loose. She must have made a hole in a fence somewhere. I looked for it, spent hours scouting the terraces in search of a point of exit, a clue, but without luck. I still blame myself, even though, in place of her, the most extraordinary incident occurred. I might almost claim it a petit miracle.
It was my father’s birthday, two weeks ago now. I was aching from the loss of him. A hot sultry lunchtime; I sauntered down the drive, taking heart from the birdsong, to collect the mail from our mailbox. I unlocked the great iron gates, which Michel has painted that Matisse blue of our house shutters, and there, curled up like a snake in a shaded corner among the irises and beneath the bird’s-egg-blue plumbago which festoon the cedar trees, was another shepherd. For one glad second I thought it was No Name returned, blackened with mud or tar, and then I saw that the shivering, skeletal creature was darker and smaller, a German rather than a Belgian shepherd; her fur is not as long. I put my hand out, but she growled ferociously. I was reminded of that first encounter with No Name, a damaged fawny mess who feared to trust. What is this dog doing here, settled right outside our gate, miles from anywhere? I could not contain the thought that she had been brought to us by the spirit of my father, on his birthday, to keep our little Ella company.
I bent low and she bared her teeth, so I decided to leave her be and turned to retrieve our mail. As I locked the gates, she staggered to her feet. She was unsteady and limping, in pain, but she trod the length of the hilly driveway, a shadow stalking me, keeping her distance. What a scrawny sight. I hurried to the stables and dug out No Name’s bowl, which I loaded with chunks of meat, biscuits and water. I offered her this, but she backed off mistrustfully. I placed the food on the ground and returned to my writing room, where I could survey her discreetly through the window. She did not touch the meal but slumped on the ground about three yards away from it and glowered at it, as though waiting for the aluminum dish to approach or challenge her. It made me smile. I noticed then for the first time that her left side and haunch were completely bald. I wondered if she belonged to anyone and telephoned the vet. She wasn’t wearing a collar.
She bore no tattoo. Lucky is her name. Or so I have christened her. She is still with the vet. She was suffering from internal bleeding, a perforation, stomach problems from where she had been kicked repeatedly. Two broken ribs, worms and a highly strung, nervy disposition which Dr. Marschang suggests is the result of repeated maltreatment. It is why she is still with him. He wants to be sure before we take her in and foster her alongside a small puppy that she will not turn nasty.
I was intending to collect her later. I had been looking forward to introducing her to the girls.
Wordsworth said “the past, present and future are strung together, as it were, on the thread of the wish that runs through them.” Running through my mind this morning is everything we have achieved, the contentment I feel here and the happiness Michel has brought me, but the future now looms large with hurdles and fears. And this morning, reasonable or not, I blame myself.
Ella at my side begins to wag her tail as arms reach around me and hug me tight, drawing me back to the present, to this “spot in time,” from my memories and misery and from an uncertain future. It is Vanessa. She says nothing; neither do I. We only hold each other tight, and the sun, flooding through the treetops beyond the flat roof of the house, begins to heat our backs, invigorating us, healing us with the promise of a whole new day.
THE WEATHER IS BREAKING. Pale rain falls across the hills and turns the sea bluish and opalescent. Michel has gone traveling, to sell our now-completed series. He is working all the hours God sends, traveling as though he is trying to squeeze in a second day elsewhere, catching the sunrise on both sides of the world. He never rests, never takes a day off. He behaves as though he could keep it up forever, as though he were invincible. I want to tell him that he’ll wear himself down, make himself ill, but I know that such negatives will only incapacitate him. I want to believe that he is as powerful and capable as he is forcing himself to be. I want to believe in his strength because I dare not consider the alternatives. But most of all, I think we should relinquish the farm, sell it, hand it over to the bank. Throw it at them, release us, but Michel won’t hear of it. We’ll get there, he keeps saying to me as though it were a secret mantra which, the more he repeats, the truer he begs it to become. It is a heavy burden to carry. I am anxious and depressed for him, and I see our dreams turning to dust.
&nbs
p; Quashia leaves for Algeria. He is preparing for his retirement early next year. His departure all but finishes me. I have no idea how I will manage without him, but I lie to him, tell him I’ve found someone, because he has his own life and family in Africa and it is not for me to hold him back.
“If you need me,” he says when he comes to say good-bye, “call the village café, comme d’habitude. I’ll come back.” I nod and wish him well, knowing that I will not call.
“Remember, we are family, you and I. I will never let you down.” I nod again and kiss him on both cheeks, twice, fighting back great blubbing tears.
This is beginning to feel like the Year of Loss.
Loss. The fear that has haunted me. It is why every farewell, every parting, no matter how trivial or short-lived, seems to tear at me. It’s why I never found the courage to love until I met Michel.
“Say hello to your wife and children,” I manage. I have never met them, but he talks of them so frequently that I feel as though we are old friends.
“You tell Michel from me to stop working so hard. He’s needed here.”
I smile bravely and nod again, wondering if he has any idea of the deep trouble we are in. I suspect so. He has a wise man’s instinct. I watch while he descends the drive, fur hat on his balding head, waving as he goes and smiling that warm, toothless grin of his.
I stay alone at the farm, thinking out devices for the salvation of Appassionata, living from hand to mouth. The bank is growing impatient with us. They are threatening us. They muscle us regularly with registered letters, promising to snatch the farm and put it up for auction. Worry haunts me. I pace the tiled, sun-slanted rooms and windy terraces like a lost spirit who has a code to decipher but cannot find the root clue. The fears and responsibilities churn in my mind like souring milk. Some nights, before the first cock crows, sleepless with concern, I press my face against the glass, staring out at the moon while, down in the farthest valley, the Arabs are at their prayer, their muezzin. Their cry to God.
“Count me in,” I whisper.
I write from dawn till dead of night, alone in the ancient creaking house, candles burning, logs crackling, staring into Bible-black darkness. Stories, children’s books, script synopses, beavering away, wearing myself out in an attempt to change the tide of our fortunes.
And I seek out small day-to-day joys to elate me. I jump in the pool to save the life of a drowning bee, twitching his legs every which way, backside down on the surface of the water. I talk at length to a surprisingly large cicada who has pitched up out of season in the bathroom, lonely in a corner like a displaced twig. I chance upon a pair of hornets copulating against one of the flowerbed walls; one behind the other. Embracing her, he is moving rhythmically while she strokes her small black insect face with her front feet until, suddenly, she begins to emit high-pitched noises. A love song delivered with passion on a warm Sunday afternoon. Lucky is a miracle, too. Nervy and snappy, but less so. She requires much tending with creams and potions, but her fur is beginning to grow back, and she is proving herself a loyal and loving guard dog. I tell her how thankful I am for her company, her gratitude and needing of me, and I stroke fluffy little Ella and reassure her that I feel the same way about her, too.
RENÉ DROPS BY TO take a look at the paon, which he won’t treat now because the spray he is suggesting—which I absolutely oppose because we have been running our farm by organic methods—might damage the fruit. He hands me a set of papers given to him by Christophe, the mill owner.
“What are these?” I ask, puzzled and barely interested.
“Forms to fill out and send to Brussels. Christophe mentioned your names specifically.”
I stare at them in a lonely, unmotivated way. They appear as complicated and long-winded as all French bureacracy, so I stuff them in my jeans pocket.
“Don’t ignore tham, Carol. In an attempt to support the olive industry here in France, Brussels is offering every oléiculteur financial assistance.”
“How?”
“For each liter of oil pressed, we will all receive a designated sum.”
My eyes light up, my attention drawn back. I am considering our crisis. Could this, miraculously, be the answer to our problems? “How much?” I ask.
“Well, it is not retroactive, but if this farm produces the same volume of oil this coming season as last, then it would be approximately six hundred francs.” Six hundred francs! That’s about sixty pounds. He must read the disappointment in my face.
“It’s not a great deal, but…” He shrugs his wonderful Provençal shrug, and that canny look of his tells me that anything is better than nothing, which is true, of course.
“I’ll fill it in.” I smile. “I won’t forget.”
Before climbing into his Renault, which is laden with the largest, frizziest lettuces I have ever set eyes on—the size of lavender bushes—he reminds me that before too long we will need to begin netting again; the harvesting season will be upon us once more. A swift tour of the terraces shows us that the trees are laden with bullet-hard green olives. We are in for another bumper crop.
“With that load, you might even make seven hundred francs from Brussels,” he jokes as we return to his car. “Do you want a salad?” He is pointing at the produce cluttering up his trunk. I shake my head, explaining that I bought mesclun and lettuce earlier at the market. Still, I cannot help but remark on the size of them. His eyes glint with pride and that knowledge of a bonne affaire as he explains that he grows his salad on someone else’s terrain where the water is free because the owner has a private source.
“And don’t forget,” he calls as he leaves, “we can’t do this alone.”
It is a fact. Without Quashia, and with Michel away for weeks at a time, René and I will need extra help. We were so blessed in the early days, the way both he and Quashia seemed to turn up out of thin air, that I have no idea how to go about finding anybody. Finally, I decide to scribble a card, a four-line annonce, to pin up at the local épicerie. I drive it over. I have always been rather fond of this particular store because it reminds me of countless village shops my grandparents took me to when I was a country child back home in Ireland. They would sell their great clanking churns of milk, and it seemed to me that every item in the world was on sale for us to choose from, particularly sweets; jar after tall glass jar of rainbow-colored sweets.
The burly wife of the owner of this particular grocery, pregnant again, greets me loudly and, having glanced at my advertisement, tells me that there’s no need to post it. I can take their chappie.
“But what about you?”
“Winter’s coming. There’s nothing for him to do here ’cept rake leaves and burn. Manuel is his name.”
“And you recommend him?”
“Mais, bien sûr, he has worked for us for six years.” She quotes the hourly rate they pay him, which seems affordable—the olive crop will pay it—and I can think of no objection to offering him the job.
“Bon, we’ll tell him to be ready for you tomorrow morning. You can drive him back with you.”
Relieved, I agree and proceed to do a bit of shopping. This includes a dozen small bottles of lager. Madame shakes her head. Désolé, she tells me. “We have run out.”
I am puzzled, for I had requested the same only a few days earlier, at which time she had informed me that she was expecting a delivery the following afternoon. We have long passed the full throes of summer. Tourists with tongues hanging out are no longer raiding the fridges of every corner shop and leaving them bare.
“Your delivery never came, then?” I remark innocently. She glances at me sheepishly and heads off to collect the coffee I need.
“Don’t forget Manuel,” she calls after me as I close the door.
When I return for Manuel the following day, as arranged, I find no one and head into the store to inquire after him. Monsieur, usually a fairly convivial fellow, who is proprietor, boulanger and pâtissier and is right now covered in flour, glowers at his
full-bellied wife in an accusatory fashion and disappears in to his backroom bakery without a word.
“Try the woodshed,” Madame mutters, pointing toward a section of the grounds I have never visited before.
I am a little taken aback to discover not a Spaniard or a Portuguese as I had been expecting but a scruffy weatherbeaten Arab, no bigger than a sparrow, fast asleep on a pile of logs. At his feet is a small frayed satchel.
I hover a short distance in front of him. “Manuel?”
Startled, he cusses incomprehensible words and drags himself up onto unsteady feet. Staring at me, he has the air of a guilty child. He grabs the satchel and raises one arm in the air as though leading a posse to the charge.
It is only when he is seated beside me in the car, lighting a cigarette without checking that I have no objection, that I notice his bloodshot eyes and inhale the fumes of alcohol on his breath which are so overwhelming I fear the flame from his lighter might blow us and my little car sky-high.
I need this man. I need this to work. We have been shopping in that little corner store ever since we moved here. Madame wouldn’t palm us off with a drunk, would she?
Olive Farm Page 29
