Later, we relax with several glasses of rich, ruby-red vino from Chianti—not for Quashia, who accepts only water citronné with sliced lemon off our own tree. As the sun sets behind distant hills, the view is as clear as shined windows, and dusk falls. All at once, the sky grows gentian with bold, untidy streaks of orange, brilliant as a ripe Jaffa from Seville. It must have been raining somewhere along the coast, for a rainbow appears and straddles the calm sea. This earth made out of chaos is settling back into peace.
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, Manuel turns up. He happened to be passing, he says, though there is no reason on God’s earth to ever pass this way. He staggers the length of the hilly drive, spluttering and perspiring, shakes our hands enthusiastically and asks after a spot of work. “A bit of tidying after the wind?” Our answer is a most emphatic no! to which he shrugs amicably and, as he turns to go, remarks on how very much he enjoyed his time working for us!
THE NEW YEAR COMES and passes tranquilly. The olives are ripening at last; each day we watch the shift in colors as they turn from green toward violet, then a luscious grape purple and onward to deep succulent black. They are plump, fleshed out with oil, and and there is a packet of them, or as the French would say, un vrai pacquet! Christophe greets us at the mill with a dramatically sullen expression. This year is a tragedy, he repeats over and over while shaking his shaggy hangdog head. He peers into one of our brimming baskets, picks up a fruit or two and pulls that Provençal face which could mean one of many things. In this case, Pas mal, pas mal. Michel needs to make some phone calls, so he and I take off for a coffee and leave René to oversee the pressing. When we return, the pair of them are as gleeful as children. René grabs Michel by the arm and asks anxiously, “You did mail that form, didn’t you?”
Michel is confused. “Which form?”
Christophes pushes forward impatiently. “I gave René a form for you to register yourselves as oléiculteurs. Did you or did you not fill it in and send it to Brussels?” He is bawling like a madman while Michel responds with a composed “Mais oui, pourquoi?”
Christophe sighs a dramatic sigh of relief. We are puzzled by the intensity of his concern. “Your farm is the first this year,” he goes on to explain in a more reasonable manner, “to produce oil at less than four kilos a liter. And what is more, the quality is exceptional.” And with that he yells for wine. His young son, the miller, obliges. René is pouring glasses. Their ebullient mood is contagious. The wife is called down to the mill floor, as well as the brawny chap who shovels the olives into the chute and whom I have never seen without a cigarette clued to his lips; also the youngest son, who is responsible for the quality of the tapénade; even a customer or two is roped in to celebrate what they are all but claiming is the future of the local olive industry.
Everyone congregates in a grand circle while, in the background, noisy machines belch and deliver. More glasses are poured, cookies flavored with essence of orange are offered. This is a real fête, and all in our honor, it seems.
“Any week now,” Christophe bellows, “the inspectors from the AOC will be arriving. How could I admit that not a single farm in the vicinity is producing oil at anything less than six kilos a liter? And even that is of average quality. I would be disgraced. All my new equipment, transported from Italy to comply with Brussels, bah, it would count for nothing. Rien! Rien du tout! We, this region, would be a laughingstock. Dismissed! Nul! Zero!” By now he is roaring at the top of his very forceful voice. It must be because he spends his life battling against this thundersome machinery, I am thinking. His red cheeks are shiny with exertion and proclamation while his long-faced audience hangs on his every word. This could be a rally. “Mais, vous, mes chers amis”—Here, wineglass in hand, he points at us, while René, flushed and proud, smiles on benignly as though we were his children—“have proved that this area is worthy of the honor. A la vôtre!” And all glasses are raised to us!
Back at the house, a fax awaits us from Michel’s production office in Paris. It tells us that the Greek money has arrived, and with it details, pages of news of a dozen or more other sales. Dollars are finally en route to the bank.
We should whoop and dance, open bottles of champagne, pour them over ourselves, yell and jump for joy. That is how I have imagined this moment over and over in my mind, and prayed for it. But we don’t. We stand quietly, reams of floppy fax paper in Michel’s hands, and smile at each other.
“Looks as though we’re going to make it,” he whispers.
“Looks like it.” I smile.
And so we can be confident that, in the fullness of time, the debt will be cleared entirely. We will not lose our farm. Not this time. Our crazy little ramshackle farm, which boasts herb and vegetable gardens but still no kitchen, where the walls continue to flake and chunks of plaster still occasionally fall on our heads, which now, thanks to Christophe and René and the work of dear, loyal Quashia, looks set to be awarded an AOC status for the quality of its olive oil. How did this all happen? We never intended to be farmers!
The girls, les belles filles, are arriving later this evening. Tomorrow we will party. We are taking them to Menton, where a street festival in celebration of the lemon is to take place, La fête des citronniers. Menton, the Franco-Italian border town where every garden is gilt with sweetly scented citrus fruit, and where every hot-blooded Latin lover will be ogling our two teenage beauties and not giving a damn for the tons of lemons and oranges adorning the floats—which, by the way, have been imported from Spain!
SPRING IS RETURNING. Baby geckos scuttle out from behind the shutters. A red fox sits in the sun on one of the upper terraces, among the wild irises which deck the dry stone walls. A beetlelike insect trundles over a rose-pink wild garlic flower. Today his carapace is a deep, iridiscent bottle green. In a month or two, he will be bracken brown. The almonds are in palest bloom once more. The lizards who spent the winter holed up in a million fissures in the walls are zipping to and fro, shy as ever. Shiny lime- green leaves are breaking out everywhere. Orange blossom scents the air. I pause and gaze upon our ruin, bathed in flaxen stalks of dappled sunlight. Budding Judas trees, peaches and figs encircle it, and I know I woke up in a poem. Soon, there will be heavenly purple and white lilacs, pear and cherry blossom, and apple blossom on the trees in the little orchard I am creating in memory of my dear much-missed father.
Yet another year is unfolding, flush with romance and exploration. And while I am musing on where to place a sundial, Michel comes running toward me, smiling and healthy. News of another sale has just come in. An important market, rich in dollars, a small percentage of which can go to the bank.
“Yes!” I whoop. “Yes! I was considering a sundial. I have always fancied a garden with an antique stone sundial.”
“You are such a romantic, chérie.”
We chatter on about the projects we might begin when we return from our travels, of the baby olive trees we want to plant. Michel sees beehives and vine on the hillsides. I picture myself atop a tractor trundling up and down the terraces, mounds of fumier de mouton behind me to feed our sapling trees.
Arm in arm, we hike the terraces, three loyal dogs at our heels—including our comical hound who answers to the name Bassett. We are searching out the first spiky tulip shoots when unexpectedly, from the radio on our balustraded balcony, I hear, “I’ll be with you in apple blossom time,” and I am reminded that love is timeless and regenerative. There is no beginning or end. All things are changing; nothing dies. And like the wind, love leaves its imprints everywhere.
Carol Drinkwater is a critically acclaimed actress. Among her numerous stage and screen performances she is probably most widely known for her portrayal of Hekn Herriot in the BBC adaptation of James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small. She divides her time between London and the South of France.
Jacket design by Yellowstone Ltd.
Front jacket photos, clockwise: © The Stock Market, Bryan
F.Peterson; Author; © FPG Internation
al; © Patrick Betrand
Back jacket photo © Jean-Marie del Moral
Authorphoto: Charlie Waite
THE OVERLOOK PRESS
Olive Farm Page 33
