‘Where did those come from?’ I am slipping the insect off my shoe. It prances on to the table and freezes. The shells are from an island in one of the Fijian archipelagos. We collected them from a beach there, Sunset Beach, before we were married. When we returned to Europe we spread them out on a wall in the garden; the winds and rains have since driven them into the flowerbed where they have lain buried until this morning when Michel retrieved and washed them.
‘I shall do something with them.’
‘It’ll be fun to use them. What will you do?’
‘Not sure yet.’
‘I had forgotten about them. Look, here’s a living mantis. The partner, perhaps, of the drowned one.’ The entire length of the insect’s twig-like body has begun vibrating. He is alert to us, his forward-facing eyes transfixed by us, weighing up the danger factor. ‘His eyes look magnified, don’t they, like a pair of binoculars?’ I murmur. And while the mantis takes stock of us, I observe Michel’s interest, his rapt attention. ‘See how green he is,’ he says. ‘Green as lime soda.’
Later in the day, while I am on a shopping expedition in Mougins, hurtling from one errand to the next, queuing to park, charging into shops, paying bills, ordering building materials, anxious to complete the tasks and hurry home, my head begins to swim. My cut eye is throbbing and I am dizzy with heat. Instead of dashing back, I decide to pause awhile and drink a citron pressé at one of the cafés in the heart of the old village. Here, beneath the shade of a full-leafed plane tree, I settle with my dog-eared notebook to watch the world go by and chill out by the gently babbling fountain. Here, where the local town hall is housed in an ancient chapel that once gave refuge to the Order of the White Penitents, I remind myself how long it has been since I have visited this pretty place, and since I have nothing in particular to do, on a whim I decide to pop into the Musée de la Photographie.
The gallery of the photography museum is deserted. Grateful for the hushed stone rooms, I drift from space to space, peering at black and white aerial pictures taken of this renowned canton at the turn of the last century, back when they were building our villa, wending my way up winding stone staircases, ignoring the rather splendid collection of antique cameras – might those interest Michel? – searching out photographs in the permanent exhibition: Picasso and his life on the Côte d’Azur as seen through the eyes of several highly esteemed twentieth-century photographers. Much of Picasso’s life was a love affair with Mougins. He first came here with his dark-haired Dora Maar and, after many years of living and painting in a number of neighbouring locations around the coast, died nearby in a house that he and his last partner, Jacqueline Roque, shared together. When we bought our farm, before we planted our young olive trees and when I had more time on my hands, I used to while away hours in the Château Grimaldi in Viel Antibes. At the end of the Second World War, when Pablo was living in the holiday resort of Golfe-Juan with Françoise Gilot, he occupied a section of that spectacularly sited castle as his atelier. Today, it is the old town’s Musée Picasso.
I find the permanent collection on the top floor and drift from photo to photo, gazing hard into the artist’s life – solitary moments, others in the company of friends and lovers – as if I might find the answer to a question I haven’t even formulated, until I find myself standing in front of a portrait, signed by Robert Doisneau, one I have never seen before. Its subject, of course, is the painter. Eyes blazing, direct to the camera, he is playfully displaying a praying mantis perched on his fingertips.
My thoughts inevitably settle on Michel, on how I might awaken in him a passage to health, recalling his response to the insects this morning. Might his affinity with colour and form be his lifeline? I hurry off home with my bags of shopping, feeling upbeat and encouraged.
*
It begins with a single wing; a strikingly marked, brilliantly coloured butterfly wing that I almost disintegrate underfoot in my den. It is the size of two of my fingernails and distinctly triangular in shape. I pick it up and look at it through my magnifying glass. Oranges, browns, white, a fine strip of red; each colour outlined in black, like eyes decorated with kohl; almost arabesque in the intricacy of its design. I place the fragile appendage on my desk and look it up in one of my books of Med Wildlife but, unable to trace it, I give up and deliver it directly to Michel, who is reading in a chair in the garden. Or rather, not reading. He has a script open on his lap but he is dozing, eyes narrowed, then wide awake, staring into the middle distance. I drop down on to my haunches at the deckchair’s edge.
‘How are you feeling?’ I whisper.
He turns his head towards me as though he has never seen me before, furrowing his brow. ‘Fine.’
‘Look what I found.’
He takes the bodiless matter and presses it like an exotic stamp into the palm of his left hand. I watch him hard as he scrutinises it. ‘Can I hold on to this or do you want it back?’
‘No, I brought it for you. It’s beautiful, non? I wonder what happened to the butterfly, though. She couldn’t fly, could she, so disabled?’
‘So disabled,’ he repeats distantly. He shakes his head and I leave him alone with our find.
Before evening falls, while I am in the vegetable garden gathering courgettes for our supper, the telephone bell interrupts my dusty work. Keen to reach it before it disturbs Michel – the portable handset doesn’t work this far from the house – I drop my basket, struggle out through a web of olive netting Quashia has suspended over the caned framework to protect the lettuces from rabbits, muttering that we must organise ourselves a less convoluted barrier, and charge to the phone.
The monsieur asking to speak to me is a complete stranger. He has been given our name by the beekeeper who was to have become our beemaster. Quite some time back, he and we had struck a deal whereby he would winter a dozen hives on our land and in return we would receive a very modest share of the honey gathered. Alas, due to the unexpected poor health of his wife, he was unable to honour the arrangement. Although the distance from his apiary to our farm was a mere forty kilometres, in his troubled eyes our property had grown too remote; the travelling would have involved time he needed to allocate to his spouse’s failing condition. At that stage, after almost a year of hunting for a suitable candidate, we decided to relinquish the dream of beehives on our land. So this present caller takes me quite by surprise.
‘But it has been an age, monsieur,’ I cry, ‘since we heard from your colleague! I thought he had forgotten us.’
‘Ah, we apiculteurs are always so busy with our bees. Desolé.’ His voice is high-pitched yet soft.
‘It doesn’t matter at all. My husband and I would be delighted to house your hives here.’
‘Madame, we will need to inspect your grounds first, and decide whether they are suitable for our little girls.’
‘Yes, of course, excuse me. Please come and scout about all you want.’
We arrange a rendezvous for a Sunday towards the end of July. He will be motoring down from high in the Alps, where he and his wife are building a chalet, and so cannot be precise about his time of arrival. ‘It’s tricky to organise anything when there are so many tourists about,’ he sighs. ‘Fortunately, we won’t be transporting the bees.’
When I express my concern that his village is a long distance from us he assures me that he traverses north to south and east to west of the Alpes-Maritimes in search of the ideal placements for his bees. ‘In summer, I like them within range of the best lavender sites. So, see you in two weeks, then.’
‘I didn’t catch your name, monsieur.’ I reach for my pen and open up my diary.
‘Mr Huilier,’ he says.
‘Excuse me?’ I feel certain I must have misheard.
‘Mr Huilier,’ he repeats.
‘Are you joking?’
‘Joking?’ He sounds affronted. ‘Madame, that is my name as well as that of my chère wife.’
I fear I have put my foot in it and damaged our oh-so-slim beekeeping o
pportunities.
‘Well, Monsieur Huilier,’ I rush on breathlessly, ‘We look forward to meeting you. It’s been a pleasure. Please telephone us when you reach the motorway exit and my husband’ – I throw a glance in Michel’s direction but he is not paying attention – ‘and we’ll give you directions. The farm’s not easy to find, but don’t worry, if necessary, I’ll come and meet you.’
He seems reassured and we hang up.
Monsieur Huilier translates as Mr Oilcan or, possibly Mr Oil and Vinegar Cruet or Mr Oil Manufacturer or Mr Oil Dealer.
‘That was a call from Mr Oilcan, the beekeeper,’ I shout to Michel, still wondering if this is a hoax. ‘Perhaps we will have bees after all.’
Almost as soon as I replace the receiver the phone rings again. It is feedback from Guillaume Laplaige.
‘I have been expecting to hear from you,’ his raspy voice accuses. The truth is I had temporarily dismissed the vineyard, lost his phone number, misplaced the magazine. It is somewhere, but what with one thing and another … I apologise profusely.
‘I am five minutes from your holding and thought I’d drop by.’
I dither, considering the intrusion.
‘I have identified your vines.’
‘We are a little tucked away, and my husband—’
‘I’ll find you.’ The phone goes down and within a quarter of an hour, a royal blue car comes flying up the drive. A lovely old Peugeot in mint condition. I am no specialist but it must date from the 1950s.
Mr Laplaige, the wine-variety expert, hauls himself out. Bent as a question-mark, he shuffles across the parking supported by a gnarled cherrywood cane, smiling broadly between pixie ears, greeting me with his thick, scratchy accent.
‘Splendid car, monsieur.’
‘Old cars are my weakness. You might want a few chickens before I leave,’ is his opening gambit, followed by a request for a glass of port as a petit apéro. He wears a tomato-red checked shirt with sleeves rolled to the upper arms and blue dungaree pants, the quintessential uniform of the French land worker, with olive-green braces bearing embroidered hunting motifs: rabbits, hares, eagles in flight. There are green Wellingtons on his feet and a navy beret sits flat atop his crown. He is eighty-one years old, he informs Michel proudly, and works his vineyard, his domaine, single-handed. He has never married. In earlier days he ran the place with his brother, who is dead now. His fingernails are ridged and tobacco-stained; they remind me of miniature tortoiseshells. He downs his port in one and then suggests we ‘get on with it’ because he has a long journey home. We cross the land slowly in the shadowing light to the stone ruin at the extremity of our estate. He talks as he walks, aided by his cherry walking stick.
‘I am fairly certain that the vineyard on this terrain was established in the 1930s, could be the forties, but I doubt it, what with the war and the restrictions during that period. Pre-war is my verdict. The fact of the matter is that what you have here, well, the pieds, the vine plants, could never be used for wine-making now. They are far too old.’ He bends to finger several of the stalks.
‘But we could use the same variety of stock, couldn’t we? If it produced excellent wine?’
‘Please let me finish, madame. I was about to say that what has been produced on your estate was rubbish.’
‘Rubbish? But the quality of the olive trees …’
‘It bears no relation. My guess is that it was drinking wine.’
This confuses me.
‘These days wine production has become something of an art. In the last century, when your vineyard was established, many landowners planted to produce anything that was vaguely buvable, drinkable. I suspect that it was doled out to the land labourers to quench their thirst and to accompany the meals supplied to them by the patron. In fact, the varieties of vines you posted to me are rarely if ever used today. I would have a job tracking them down. However, I can supply you with first-class stock that would produce wine suited to this district and that you would be very proud of.’
‘I see.’ A little disappointed, I thank him for his trouble. He refuses any form of payment and I assure him that when we are ready to plough and plant these parcels of land we will be back in touch.
‘It’s a good location, the soil is fine; you’d do well here with a hearty grenache.’
Returning to his car, he pauses to shake hands with Michel on the grand terrace that leads from the original flight of stone steps.
‘That’s a mighty fine ascent,’ he remarks.
‘Yes,’ agrees Michel, ‘we discovered that stairway when we first cleared the grounds.’
‘They rarely construct them like that any more. You know, you could return it to its former glory by mounting a climbing iron pergola and planting it up with vines. Full southerly sun, excellent exposure. I know someone, Pascal Pear, you won’t find a finer blacksmith in the whole of France. I’ll tell him to get in touch.’
I escort our wine expert back to his snazzy blue automobile, after one more swift port for the road, giggling to myself. We have found a beekeeper called Oilcan and now it’s pear-shaped ironmongery. Before settling in the driving seat, Mr Laplaige indicates the rear, which is packed with straw and, on closer observation, a battery of half-a-dozen, exquisitely marked red and turquoise chickens brooding atop the stacks.
‘Rare birds,’ he declares. ‘Excellent layers. I can leave a couple with you for a very fair price.’
I am relieved that Monsieur Q. is not about because he is regularly requesting the addition of chickens to the estate, but with our hounds it would be a catastrophe.
‘I have dogs and a hunter amongst them. Otherwise, we would love some.’
Laplaige shrugs. ‘Wine, chickens, olive oil and cars, what more can life offer? Think about the pieds for the late autumn or spring. I can supply two thousand at a fortnight’s notice.’ He shakes my hand with the force of a soldier, bids me au revoir and steams off down the drive, exhaust roaring.
Twilight falls.
I take a lone stroll back to the stone ruin where the ‘rubbish of a vineyard’ was once in propagation and land labourers drank thirstily of plonk.
One exterior wall, a surprisingly well-preserved tommette-tiled floor, a fireplace with chimney plus two outhouses are all that remains of this dwelling. Wild vines are shooting all along its foreground terraces. I wonder what will become of our plans to restore the vineyard now.
Michel and I believe that this ruin was, once upon a time, a cottage or croft, a cabano in Provençal, occupied by the estate’s gardener or, more specifically, vine-tender: a vine-worker’s bothy. What remains of this stone residence today, without door or windows, is on two levels and, from the upper storey, boasts stupendous views. Framed by towering pines and our Methuselah of a Judas, the vista sweeps all the way down into the valley, beyond our pool, to the sea. The habitation has long since lost its roof, though we frequently unearth its broken tiles buried around the grounds. When I stand within it, I occasionally reflect upon its occupant, about his history and lifestyle. Would he have had a wife or been a solitary vine-keeper? The open fire would have served as a stove, heating capacious iron pots bubbling over with steaming soup or a delicious pot-au-feu awaiting him at suppertime.
Abutting the living quarters are the rubbled husks of two outhouses. To what use would they have been put? Beasts’ sleeping quarters or inclement weather shelters, most likely. The last time Michel and I stood up here on this site together we pondered what livestock was kept on this farm and what occupied these crude stone sheds. We dismissed goats, though they are common in this area and have been for centuries, because their habit is to range freely and eat everything in sight, which would have destroyed the vineyard and damaged the olive groves. In the olden days olive leaves were occasionally doled out as winter fodder for sheep and goats. Dogs would not have been given separate sleeping quarters. All horses on the estate would have been lodged in the stables alongside the main house. This stony hillside is so unsuited to t
he rearing of equine species that we were surprised anyone would have entertained the idea, but there are stables – Madame B. bought the place as a birthday present for one of her daughters who was passionate about riding – and in earlier times, when motor-powered carriages were new-fangled machines, horses were the principal means of transport. So, what else, chicken coops? ‘Possibly, but I believe at least one of them stabled a donkey,’ Michel had argued.
A donkey, yes, to transport materials and the annual harvests up and down these slippery, tortuous slopes.
‘Perhaps we should get a donkey,’ I joked.
‘Chérie, you refuse to entertain the idea of a goat because you say, quite accurately, that it will eat everything in sight. Believe me, a donkey will be worse.’
‘But we have no means of bearing heavy equipment up to the crown of the hill and when the small trees are ready for picking …’
‘We’ll find a solution, Carol, but no donkey.’
I smile now at the memory of this light-hearted exchange. And sigh.
We have given so much of our energy and limited resources to the renovation of the Appassionata farmhouse, to the restoration of the ancient groves, to the afforestation of terraces that were lacking oliviers and to production of our golden oil that we have never really taken time to discover how the rest of the farm operated, how its inhabitants lived and what else we could create on this agricultural canvas.
Michel and I have dreamed that, one day, we will erect in place of this ruin, but built out of its spirit, a space that could be used as a library or workshop, whichever need was greatest. Standing here now in the dappled shade of an overhanging fig tree, self-seeded in what would have been the sleeping quarters of the bothy, watching the sun set beyond the hills, I ask myself what it is going to take to assist Michel’s recovery, aside from time. So far he has expressed little interest in the prospect of beehives arriving; his office in Paris telephones on a daily basis but the calls serve only to deepen his gloom, if gloom is what I am observing. So what else can I promote? He has always enjoyed a lively interest in architecture, he loves the business of design, the overall structure of buildings, and I have been observing flickers of fascination in response to arrangements of objects and their shapes and colours. Would a major project such as this give him a goal? When it was finished, it could become his work base. He could transport his editing suite from Paris and complete his programmes at home. He would be safe here; he could take all the time he needs to heal. I would care for him. Yes, the reclamation of this cottage should become our priority. I determine to find a way to finance it.
The Olive Harvest (The Olive Series Book 3) Page 11