The Forgotten Summer

by Carol Drinkwater

  ‘She’s riled and restless. I’ve given her one of the tranquillizers Beauchene prescribed. I’m off to buy cheese. I’ll see you shortly. Where’s Annie?’ Jane patted Matty’s back and skipped out of the door.

  ‘Claude took her off to the groves to join the pickers,’ Matty called after her. ‘See you later.’

  Once the hordes of children were settled, drinking and slurping outside in the autumn sunshine, Matty set to preparing a prodigious pot of pumpkin and mushroom soup for the labourers. She’d take a bowl up to the obstreperous Clarisse too.

  Jane reversed and gunned the accelerator on her way inland to a herder’s highland farm to buy crottins of dried cheese and a fresh round wheel of Tomme, made from goat’s milk, ripening in chestnut leaves. As she wrestled with the corkscrew bends in the estate’s almost clapped-out van, fretting about how she was ever going to manage the loaded truck, she was climbing through forests of evergreens or deep-red and orange deciduous trees. This startling beauty brought her back to the present, overriding her petty concerns and duties.

  Columns of blue smoke rose skywards and hung, like a celestial carpet, across the hillsides and over the valleys. The bonfires were fuelled with vegetation pruned back during the summer months, when lighting fires was illegal along this coast, and end-of-season vine and olive clippings. The rural homes she drove past were stone rectangles perched precariously on cliffsides. The perfumed smoke gave off scents of thyme and rosemary, cindered oak and olive stumps.

  Jane wound down the window, a manual operation in the old banger, and put her head out to inhale the perfumed hinterland air, crisp at that altitude. Even though she was anxious to be back with the cheeses for the lunchtime spread, she slackened her pace to savour the moment and the alpine view that swept all the way to the sea. Her deceleration was a blessing. A black saloon, as yet out of sight, was hurtling down the mountainside. It took the bend at a ferocious speed. By a hair’s breadth the driver, who was spinning close to the edge of the rocky ascent, swerved to avoid her van but clipped her wing mirror. Glass splintered, while the offending vehicle slewed and zigzagged, roaring and skidding, millimetres from the precipice. Jane slammed on her brakes as the Audi fired off down the winding road, disappearing out of sight, leaving her shaken.

  She found a spot scooped out of the rock for overtaking and pulled over, stepped out and crossed unsteadily to the edge of the scarp. It was a leafy drop of some four hundred metres. If there had been a collision and the van had been thrust over the side, she would have been killed. She recalled Luc and his last minutes of life. After having wrestled with so many earlier thoughts of suicide and surmounting them, she might so easily have joined him today. She found herself laughing, a little insanely, and realized how glad she was to be alive.

  2

  Annie was assisting with the olive-picking, an occupation she had never been allowed to participate in before due to the froideur between Clarisse and herself. This year, for the first time, she was heading up the women’s team and revelling in every minute of it. She was acquainted with these country ladies: they had been a part of her family life since her childhood. It felt empowering to be back in their company, out in the cold fresh air, breathing in the pungent scent of freshly picked olives, fingers blackened. Without Clarisse’s oppressive presence, Annie was growing less wary about showing her face, about joining in with the estate’s enterprises. She was more confident, careless, perhaps. She had a rightful role on the land, but she was not intending openly to flout Clarisse’s written demands. The women sang as they collected the olives, French songs, country ditties, all the while watching the mountains of fruit swell impressively. Each day, while the workers were surpassing the previous day’s loads, Jane, aided by the two fellows who were responsible for the sorting and sifting, cranked up the Citroën truck and set forth soon after dawn into the misty hills. It was a first for her too, to captain the pressing.

  Backwards and forwards on a daily basis she commuted, scaling the heights expertly, even if her recent lucky escape had caused her to be extra cautious. She was a little jittery but she also believed that the arm of Luc had protected her. Still, those expeditions were hazardous. The old truck belched clouds of black smoke from its rusty exhaust, screeched at her gear shifts and balked at the winding ascents with the will of an overburdened stubborn donkey. At every swing, at every bend, the hundreds of kilos of olives rolled and rumbled, transiting their red plastic crates. It was her responsibility to make sure that the results of the team’s labours arrived at the mill in the same impeccable condition they had left the estate. There was to be no damage caused by any jerky movements, no bruised fruits to oxidize the oil, Claude had instructed.

  Upon arrival at the mill, François Bonnard, the younger, lame brother of Stefan Bonnard, the miller, was hanging about in the yard waiting to greet her. In the chilly autumn morning, his breath rose like smoke. In a neighbouring garden, a family of butter-yellow caged cockatoos screeched their respects. Farmers tipped their hats and eyed her calibratingly. As a rule, each diehard farmer unloaded his own harvest, but François appeared all too ready to lend her a hand with the shunting and weighing of her cageots. It crossed her mind that he might have taken a shine to her, or perhaps it was simply that Les Cigales, with two thousand oliviers, was a valued client. Whichever, she was grateful for his kindness because it was back-breaking labour. Jane was ferrying on average thirty-five to forty crates a day. Each crate contained twenty-five kilos of olives. So, on a daily basis, Jane carried consignments that approximated a ton of fruit.

  Stefan suggested that she might want to set down her freight and leave it with them, once they had all agreed the weight. The olives could be pressed in her absence. There was no need for her to hang around in the frigid pressing-room temperatures. He suggested she collect her full cans when she delivered the next charge and that she deliver less regularly – perhaps two or three visits throughout the harvesting – but Jane had learned from Luc years earlier that the best oil is produced from yields that are pressed directly after they have been removed from the trees. And theirs was organic fruit so she was keen to oversee the entire process, to be assured that their single-estate pressing was respected, not mixed with others of a poorer quality or tainted with traces of chemicals. In any case, it was a vain hope that Arnaud’s poor old truck would make the ascent with three or even two tons of crop aboard. So, for several reasons, she had no real choice in the matter. Up before dawn, the journey was a daily one, and stressful.

  Clarisse never failed to remind Jane that she had let the wine harvesters down the previous year. Consequently, this time, as temporary châtelaine of the estate, she was determined not to botch her commitments. It meant hours of hanging about while the olives were washed, conveyed on moving belts through to the grinding machines, then crushed, the paste turned and pressed, before the final stage when the oil and water were separated. She spent the time, when not watching the olives, reading through material booked for translation. She was rather chuffed to be receiving more contracts than ever these days. Finally, the joy of the gurgling arrival of the velvety green oil, still warm from its transmutation. And the cautious drive back down the hillsides in the falling late-autumn light, hungry as a horse, chilled and stiff as the sun sank from view, empty crates and sloshing bidons in the back of the truck.

  Each evening when she eventually chugged into the stableyard and pulled on the handbrake, exhausted, but relieved to have made it safely back to base, the pickers were already done for the day. They were relaxing and in a convivial frame of mind. In readiness for Jane’s arrival, Matty had laid out chunks of her dark bread. The steel containers were dragged off the truck in the dusk light and transported directly into cool storage quarters while one – usually the last to have been charged because it was frequently not quite full – was kept back and conveyed by one of the labourers to Matty, who, hair falling loose, was in the kitchen sweating, stirring, muttering commands to scalding pots.

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bsp; Faces flushed from hours in the fresh air and from imbibing rosé by an open fire, each man and woman was swigging the next mouthful of chilled wine. While they hunkered down comfortably with their legs outstretched to ease their aching limbs, booted foot over booted foot, soles steaming in front of the warmth of the open fire, chuckling at the prospect of a hearty meal, Jane jogged into the house for a hasty shower and to throw on some clean clothes.

  Matty decanted a jugful of the freshly pressed, sharp, peppery oil and carried it ceremoniously out of the back door, crunching her way across the pebbled yard to the stable block, where Annie and Patrick had laid the dining-table, and Claude was stoking the open fire with a pair of sturdy seasoned logs.

  Everyone cheered. Tired to their bones, they still couldn’t resist rising and shuffling to the table to press their noses to the porcelain jug, to sniff, to inhale, to eye the miracle liquid, viscous and green. Before any meal began, each of the pickers served themselves a few drops of oil onto their plate and dunked a chunk of bread into it. Sucking, dribbling, munching, they relished, extolled and applauded the oil, born of the fruit of their labours. Oil that by their toil belonged in comradeship to each and every one of them. These were hallowed moments during which many opinions were pronounced, often with a poetic turn of phrase. This was their grace.

  ‘Better yesterday.’

  ‘Nonsense, it’s the finest we’ve harvested.’

  ‘Perfectly peppery.’

  ‘Easy on the throat.’

  ‘It’s a fine vintage.’

  ‘Like spun silk.’

  ‘No land produces better.’

  ‘Cher Claude, tu est un maître.’

  The tradition, many millennia old, of the tasting ceremony was played out while stomachs growled in anticipation of the steaming plates of food soon to be devoured. Matty and Annie were carrying through the piping-hot dishes now to rounds of applause and rising cheers.

  Jane could hear their ebullience from upstairs in the house.

  A glance round the door of Clarisse’s room showed that the patient was sound asleep. Jane let out a sigh of relief. On other evenings, she had found Clarisse restless, angry, champing at the bit to be let out of bed, to resume her role as lady of the manor, lording it over the staff. On those occasions, Jane was obliged to take the time to quieten the woman’s tormented mind, to settle her.

  ‘How many are down there? How many are we feeding? I can’t afford it.’

  ‘Go to sleep, Clarisse, please don’t fret. It’s the same gang as always.’

  ‘It sounds like an army. Oh, I’m so weary of it all. How much longer?’

  ‘It will be finished in two days.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Sssh, go to sleep.’

  ‘Don’t fucking patronize me! Are you staying or what?’

  She had meant to care for Luc’s mother. She had promised herself that she would, that she would resolve the rift, for Luc’s sake, but not even Jane had read the depths to which her mother-in-law’s grief, frustration and despair were driving her. Everybody was active, busy, high on the daily results of their labours and delighted to be a member of the team, which at its heart was a family affair.

  And Clarisse should have been its materfamilias.

  But the once-elegant beauty was declining, riddled with pain, and the seeds of the impending tragedy had been sown far too long ago.

  At sunset on those days, Jane was tired. She was longing to skip back downstairs and share in the camaraderie, the laughter and lightheartedness of unwinding with family and neighbours. The olive squad. She was grateful for the distraction.

  Perhaps Clarisse sensed that she was not wanted, was redundant, no longer the centre of attention. The estate was getting back onto its feet, slowly, without her …

  But that evening, when Jane popped her head round the door, Clarisse was lightly snoring. Their evening would be untroubled. It was only as she gathered up a fallen box of paper tissues that Jane noticed, half buried beneath Clarisse’s pillow, her own framed photo of her father. She frowned and crossed to the bed, intending to remove it. Clarisse must have gone into her and Luc’s room. She must have taken it from the dressing-table. Jane stood for a moment, observing the sleeping Clarisse, a bag of angry bones. The wrinkled flesh, the once lustrous skeins of hair brittle and greying, the make-up spotted and uneven. Of all the objects in the room she might have filched, including one of several photographs of Luc, Clarisse had chosen the picture of Peter. I was pretty smitten with your father.

  Was it possible that the old woman, long widowed, had genuinely carried a candle for him through so many years? That there lay a well-concealed core of vulnerability in a marble heart? Jane felt a wave of compassion rise within her. She wouldn’t want to be in Clarisse’s shoes. To have lost so much, a child and a lover. If the adoption of Clarisse’s only daughter had not been ‘the sacrifice’, then, Jane asked herself, what could have been greater? The loss of their life in Algeria? Her husband, Adrien, whom she had described as cruel?

  Jane left the picture where it was and returned downstairs to join the party.

  The following afternoon when she returned from the mill, the photograph had been restored to its rightful place.

  The Indian-summer days smiled on and there was no sign of the weather breaking. The harvesting was blessed, for so many reasons. It was a special joy. Families were bonding, not least Jane’s own. The children were active, making the most of their holiday from school. Patrick was a natural leader and one day, if Luc’s wishes were implemented, he would make a first-rate squire at Les Cigales. Jane and Annie watched him with pride, then smiled silently at one another. No one else, besides Clarisse, was party to their secret, except perhaps Matty. The gift of sisterhood enriched, invigorated Jane and she looked forward to the evenings with a new sense of perspective.

  Jane was exhausted in a contented way, and satisfied that the season was winding down towards its successful conclusion. The following Friday she would be flying to Gatwick for a weekend visit with her father. And she was contemplating returning via Paris, spending a few days in the city, a brief sojourn with Annie, a time to consider her future …

  After the end-of-harvest party.

  Annie suggested that the pickers’ closing dinner should be held outside in the courtyard. ‘Let’s make it a sumptuous starlit affair.’

  The late autumn was so mild that there seemed no good reason not to hold the celebrations beneath the stars and there would be less disturbance to Clarisse; the proposition was cheered by all.

  ‘We’ll invite everyone, from the local shepherds to the mayor. Les Cigales is having an end-of-harvest party! They don’t have to be let in on our secret, to know all that we’re celebrating.’ Jane winked at her sister.

  The pickers had completed their gathering in the groves the day before the party – the last of the drupes were off the trees. Two thousand oliviers picked clean.

  ‘We’ve done better than the starlings,’ joshed Claude.

  Nonetheless, the men and women had returned that morning to assist their chief with the lifting of the nets, clogged now with clods of earth and tufts of grass and the odd mountain stone. Before they were rolled up and stored until next year, they needed to be cleaned, washed and left to dry. Then there were the ladders, clippers, secateurs, which were packed away in a natural limestone cave conveniently located not far from the groves. They would be required again within a few weeks for the pruning. The housekeeping chores were time-consuming but eight were at work and in high spirits. Soon, they would be paid and tonight they would be fed and well watered. Every Provençal loves a party and this one promised to be exceptional.

  Back in the yard, Annie and Patrick busied themselves with cleaning the plastic garden tables and chairs stored in the stables. While Patrick arranged the seating, Annie delivered from the laundry room the linen tablecloths and then the cutlery. Matty offered to do it. More prudent, she said, for Annie not to be found wandering about
the house when Clarisse was upstairs, but Annie shrugged, told her mum not to fuss and said everything was fine. Matty knew the old woman’s temper. Annie didn’t, but her adoptive mother kept quiet, not wanting to scotch the mood.

  Annie and her boy set the table placings. From the kitchen could be heard regular thuds. Matty was cracking green olives with a small mallet, to store them in jars for the winter months to come. They were ideal for accompanying a good apéritif. A few jars of olives in brine from last year’s récolte remained in the larder. She was intending to set them out in dishes for tonight’s bash.

  There were the lanterns and coloured lights still to be hung and, oh, a million other tasks waiting to make this crowning party go with a swing. But no one was in a rush. They were taking their time, enjoying the tasks and one another’s company.

  Arnaud was back from the mountains. ‘You timed it well,’ remarked Claude, when he caught sight of his son pulling up in his van, unshaven, at first light. Arnaud was back to rig up the barbecue in the courtyard. He laid his hunting rifle and bags down in the bastide kitchen where Matty, up since before daybreak, was flushed and baking.

  Constructed from disused ironmongery, including the half shell of a heating tank, which performed as its grate, the handmade brazier was a curious marvel to behold. Its purpose for that evening was to barbecue a whole wild boar Arnaud had bagged on a Sunday hunt a few weeks previously, skinned and hung to cure in anticipation of the harvest festivities. It would be ample to feed the gathered assembly, even the large turnout Jane was counting on.

  ‘Let’s cater for a hundred,’ she had warned Matty, who had beamed at the prospect: if the mistress had been up and about, no such extravagance would ever have been sanctioned.

  To keep every child occupied and out of mischief, for this was the last day of their school break and energies were riding high, they had also been allocated assignments. The boys were employed as Arnaud’s assistants. Throughout the warm, sunny morning, substantial quantities of chopped logs and kindling were being transported, cradled in arms or wheelbarrows, from various storehouses and open-air stacks across the land to be piled neatly at the ready alongside the hunter’s great old iron spit, beneath which Arnaud was laying the fire. Meanwhile the small girls were at the dining-table in the stables, kneeling on chairs, elbows on bare wood, designing labels for Matty’s sumptuous dishes with dozens of multi-coloured crayons.