by Jo Thomas
‘Si, si,’ Marco agrees.
‘We want to bring the estate back together. Pool all the land and the olives and make one single olive oil again.’
Anna-Maria is beaming broadly, as is Sophia’s son.
Marco looks shocked for a moment, then his face breaks into a huge smile, like a child who’s been given the best Christmas present ever.
‘There is much we could do to put our stamp on the market,’ he starts, jabbering like the words are falling over themselves to get out.
‘But Marco, the thing is, it won’t run itself, this estate.’ Anna-Maria finally speaks, and Marco stops, like the rug has been pulled from under him.
‘We all work away. How will we manage it? It will be a full-time job if we can bring all the land back together, and who knows, even bring back our own press,’ Sophia’s son joins in.
Marco says nothing. He looks like all his dreams have come at once and then been snatched away again. He puts one hand to his mouth and his other arm across his body, and I want to reach out to him but I know I can’t.
‘Marco,’ says Sophia quietly. ‘You are the only one who has the skills and the knowledge to do this. Will you run the estate?’
The two women fall silent and I feel I shouldn’t be here. There is a huge elephant standing between them, but it’s not me. They have been joined now by Filippo and the rest of the family. The fire crackles and spits behind them.
Marco finally speaks. ‘After what my father – our father – did, how can you ever trust me not to do the same? He was greedy. He ruined this estate and this family. My own father. I feel responsible.’ His voice is dry and quiet. He has spent so many years not talking about how he felt; now the words are trying to come out but still it’s hard for him. Sophia pats his shoulder.
‘You are not your father, Marco. Remember the mural today. That is history. It’s just part of the past.’
Marco looks at Sophia and Anna-Maria standing side by side, sisters-in-laws coming together finally.
‘I don’t know. I would be worried about letting everyone down. I would have to give up my job. It’s a big risk. I’m not sure we should try and go back.’ He shakes his head.
‘Let’s talk about it,’ says Sophia’s son.
Marco looks at me.
‘Go,’ I tell him encouragingly and turn to leave.
‘Wait!’ he says. ‘There was talk in town today and I have heard the weather forecast. There is a big frost coming in. You must start to pick. Get your contractor to come as soon as possible. You must get your olives in.’
I tell him I will and say good night.
And so my time here is coming to an end. I have to get my harvest in and then I can put the house on the market and leave. Marco, on the other hand, looks to be on the verge of a new beginning.
Ryan, I need to start the harvest. Please come as soon as you can, I type into my phone. Then, using the torch, I climb up the tiny stone steps to the trullo roof and turn to look out over the olive trees. The mist is rolling through the branches like gymnastics ribbons and the party next door is in full swing. I take a deep breath and press send.
The following morning, despite the early hour, I text the olive press to book a slot. They work practically twenty-four hours a day at this time of year. And I text Ryan again to tell him.
It’s a cold, dark November morning, but the fire in the dining room erupts into life when I open the door on it. I throw on another log and then pull on my fleece and a cream hat with a bobble in each corner and a black heart on the front. You’d never believe we were sitting outside last night. Like a season passing, it all seems to be a faint memory.
I open the back doors on to the grove. It’s six o’clock and pitch black. The mist has thickened. Daphne is there to greet me as always. I feel my throat tighten, like there’s a ball stuck in there. I hope her new owners will be kind to her and know that she likes to be tickled on the head and that she doesn’t like carrots. I’ll also have to return Kirsty and Phil to Luigi when I leave.
Outside the back door is a tiny olive branch Marco planted up in a pot from when we were strimming, telling me that one day it would grow into a tree. I look over and his car is gone. He’s up earlier than me!
I lay up the table outside with water and coffee cups and little biscotti for the workers. I put paninis in a basket and set them on a tray with butter and jam for later. I want Ryan and his team to work hard; this army is going to march on its stomach.
As it begins to get light outside, I’m still waiting. I look at my watch. I take the steps up the trullo to the roof and look at my phone. It pings into life. A text from the press confirms my slot. Time is crucial now. I have to make the press. If I lose my slot, the olives will be ruined.
The sky is getting lighter; like a big ball of peach and red flame, the sun is starting to rise. Then my phone pings again, letting me know the message I’m waiting for has arrived. Only it’s not the one I wanted.
Sorry Ruthie, called away on another job. It was too big to turn down. Back in about a week. Will come then. Rx
He’s not coming! Oh my God! After all this, he’s not coming!
I hold the phone to my chest. My cheeks are red and flushed and my eyes prickle but no tears come. I’m furious. Furious with myself for relying on him. Furious that I made the wrong decision. There’s only one thing I can do.
I go as quickly and carefully as I can down the steps, determination and humiliation driving me. In the barn I find big plastic buckets and the long poles I first saw when mamma cat scared me in there. They’re leaning against the back wall, behind the old stone press, along with the old wooden ladder. I get the orange nets that were wrapped up in the corner and tuck them under my arm.
I take everything round to the back of the house and put it down under the nearest tree. I look over at Marco’s trullo. There’s still no sign of him, and I realise my heart is twisting thinking about where he might be. Perhaps he has decided to return to his job in Naples, finding it too difficult to come back here and take up where his father left off after all.
With a heart as heavy as a medicine ball, I take the short cut over the wall to Anna-Maria’s. The dogs wake up and come and greet me, but they barely bark. I bend to touch their heads, giving an extra pat to Marco’s little dog, Lucia. I stop and take a deep breath and remind myself that this is no time for cold feet. I’ve come too far. Anna-Maria can think what she likes of me. In a week, one way or another, I’ll be gone and all this will be a mad, distant memory.
I take the steps two at a time. There’s a light on, thankfully, despite the ridiculously early hour. I take a deep breath, hoping it will bring courage, and knock on the door. I wait a while, then knock again, and eventually it opens.
It’s Nonna. She smiles at me and gestures for me to come in.
‘Prego,’ she says, and still I get a tiny thrill, despite my desperation, that I can understand her.
‘I’m looking for Marco,’ I tell her, and she nods in understanding. ‘It’s really important I get in touch with him,’ I add. She nods again. And then Anna-Maria is by her side in a fleecy zebra-print dressing gown and pink rollers. She’s not wearing make-up, which is a little startling, but she is wearing all her gold jewellery.
‘How can we help you?’ she says in English, refusing to switch to Italian, keeping me a tourist. I shouldn’t have come, I realise. She’s like a firewall between me and her son.
‘Anna-Maria, I know you are keen for me to leave, and the sooner I get my harvest in and bottled, the sooner I’ll be gone.’ I feel like someone’s suddenly kicked me in the stomach and my words catch infuriatingly in my throat. ‘I really need to get in touch with Marco. Please. Can you contact him for me?’
She looks at me for a moment, and Nonna looks at her and then pulls out her own mobile phone from her dressin
g gown pocket. My heart lifts a little and I smile. Thank God. Finally she’s going to help me.
‘No. Marco is busy. Busy sorting out his future. I can’t get hold of him, sorry,’ she says sharply, and tells Nonna to put her phone away. Nonna scowls and calls her a rude name, I think, throwing her hands up in disgust and shuffling away.
Now I know the tears are in danger of falling, and I turn and run down the steps. I don’t stop running until I am back at the masseria, where I pull my hat down over my ears, run my sleeve across my dribbling nose and pick up a long stick and a bucket. I have to get these olives to the press one way or another. I can’t let the doubters win. I’m not going down without a bloody good fight!
By midday my fingers are red and sore from stripping the olives from the branches like Marco showed me when we were strimming. The sun is out but it’s cold. At least it isn’t raining. Rain would slow things up even more. I wonder how many days I’ve got before the frost comes.
I stop to drink water, lots of water, and eat a panini, even though I don’t really have time to. I can’t afford for my body to give up on me now. It’s just me, like it’s always been. Only this time, if I don’t make the olive press, I’ll be left with practically nothing after I’ve paid back my olive oil customers.
I keep picking. Daphne stays with me every step of the way. As I work, I replay everything that Ed and Mum said to me when I left. I replay Marco’s incredulity when he learnt that I planned to live here, his and Anna-Maria’s. I replay that damn kiss, when something in me woke up, when I felt something I had never felt before and will now never feel again. I’m so angry that I let myself fall in love with Marco, I realise.
I bang at the trees with the long stick. My shoulders ache like I’ve never known before. Then I pull down the branches, sliding my fingers along them, and more little black olives hit the orange nets laid out on the ground. I climb up into the higher boughs and strip those branches too, and when I really can’t reach the topmost ones, I get the ladder and disappear into the leafy loft of the tree. Finally I climb down, pick up the net and pour my pickings into the plastic bucket. I turn to look at my work.
‘Three down. One hundred and twenty to go!’ I say to absolutely no one with a hint of hysteria in my voice. I move on to the next tree.
By six in the evening it’s got much colder. Like a marathon runner, I’m eating and drinking water at regular intervals, and I try to swing my arms to loosen the stiffness in them as often as I can. I experiment with picking in gloves but can’t get the fruit off the trees. I’m exhausted and just want to collapse into bed, but I have to keep going. I put my headphones in and get Dolly Parton pumping out ‘9 to 5’ to get me going again.
By midnight, I’ve found my head torch, but I’ve slowed down considerably. More than once I trip over the net while I’m taking it to the plastic barrel, causing me to lose the olives all over the ground. Daphne has chosen to lie under one of the trees. Thankfully one of the ones I’ve already done. She’s keeping an eye on me and I’m so grateful that she’s there.
There’s a screech from a fox and then the bark of the dogs next door, and I jump. My hands shake and my heart thunders, so I turn the iPod up louder and sing along tunelessly.
By three in the morning, silent tears are running down my cheeks and I am rocking backwards and forwards to stop myself falling asleep next to Daphne on the nets. I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus, and my hands are so cold it’s as though they’ve been cut with razor blades. Robbie Williams is playing, pumping through me, and I’m trying to jump up and down and shimmy my backside to ‘Let Me Entertain You’ when suddenly there’s a tap on my shoulder. The first scream catches in my throat, but the second comes out at full volume as I swing round, hitting my attacker with my olive stick, my earphones flying out of my ears.
‘Che cazzo? What the hell!’ He holds up his hand to the bright light shining into his eyes from my head torch.
‘Marco?’ I take a sharp intake of breath and put my swollen, stinging hand to my mouth.
‘You hit me!’ he says, clutching his head.
‘I’m so sorry!’ I say. ‘It was Robbie’s fault.’
‘Robbie? Who is Robbie? I thought it was Ryan.’
‘Ryan? No, Robbie. Robbie Williams.’ I shake an earphone, realising that I’m sounding drunk.
‘Where’s Ryan?’ He holds his hand up against the light, then says, ‘Scusi,’ and reaches towards me. For a moment I wonder if he’s going to scoop me up and kiss me like in An Officer and a Gentleman. I lean slightly forward and then it all goes dark as he switches off my head torch. I feel disappointed and crushed, like the olives under my feet.
‘Where’s the contractor?’ he asks again, impatiently.
‘Ummm . . .’ My brain isn’t really functioning as it should. ‘He, um . . .’ It’s not easy to find the words to say, ‘You were right.’
‘He couldn’t come,’ I manage eventually in a small voice, and the fox screeches again. ‘He was a pillock and completely let me down!’ Marco takes hold of my shoulders.
‘Don’t tell me you are attempting this on your own?’ Marco says crossly. ‘I told you! I know his type.’
‘He said he’d be here!’ I’m now scratchier than I’ve ever felt, and this is no time for ‘I told you so’.
‘He’s been selling the Bellanuovo oil, watering it down with cheaper oil and selling it on,’ Marco says.
I clear my throat.
‘Like the stuff he left here. The lamp oil?’ I ask.
He nods. ‘It was him, wasn’t it, who gave you the oil?’ His voice is quiet but steely.
I nod too. I don’t know if he can see me.
‘You should have told me. Why didn’t you?’ Marco asks.
‘Because I thought that . . . he might not turn up for the harvest and then I wouldn’t get the harvest in and I wouldn’t get to sell up and leave.’ The last word sticks in my mouth. Because that’s what this is all about: me going home.
‘And so he’s gone on a bigger job?’
I nod again.
‘How far have you got?’ Marco juts a chin at the trees.
‘I think I’m nearly at thirteen.’
‘You will never make your slot at the frantoio at this rate! The harvest will perish!’ He throws his hands up and then turns and stalks off to his car, getting in and driving off, his headlights lighting up the trees in the pitch-black night.
I can’t believe it! He didn’t even offer to help! How wrong could I have been? My hands ache and my shoulders are sore, but now my heart feels like it’s ripping in two as well. Now I know I really am on my own.
New determination sets in as I sniff and rub my nose with the corner of my sleeve. I look a mess and feel a mess. No wonder he didn’t want to sweep me off my feet. That kind of love is just for the movies. It’s impulsive, and what I’ve come to realise is that impulsiveness always lets you down.
By five o’clock I am a snivelling, dribbling wreck sitting on the cold November ground. I am crying, great deep sobs, gulping and coughing as I pick the olives from the lower branches of the tree. I’m doing that rocking thing again, back and forwards, and more than anything now I want to go home. I want to go to Starbucks for coffee and buy one for the guy living rough on the corner. I’m beginning to realise what life outside must be like for them. I want to go back to buying my fruit and veg in the market. I’d even put up with Colin walking around in his vest and belching. Belching would be absolutely fine right now.
My eyes can’t stay open and suddenly I stop. This is madness. Marco is right. Ed was right. My mum and Anna-Maria were right. I am never going to get this done in time for my slot. I was a fool to try. I’m beaten. Marco can have the place. It’s just a house. But it’s not the house I’m grieving for, it’s my broken heart. When Ed and I finally split up, we just sort of fizzled o
ut. There was nothing there any more. We’d become a habit. We were different people. We’d never really had each other’s hearts to break in the first place. But Marco, I realise, has mine, and the pain is more excruciating than the aches in my shoulders, my hands and my neck right now. I lie down amongst the olives on the orange netting, curl up and cry myself into a very deep sleep.
The sound of clanking and voices cuts through my dreams. Italian voices and shouts, talk about olives. It’s like I’ve slipped finally into madness, where I’m perpetually harvesting olives. Someone shakes my shoulder.
‘Ruthie.’
I swear it’s Marco’s voice, come back to taunt me. ‘Ruthie,’ I hear again, and a wet tongue licks my face, catapulting me awake. It’s Daphne. But beside Daphne is Marco . . . I think, or am I dreaming it?
‘Ruthie, wake up. Look.’ Marco points. I raise myself on my elbow and squint into the rising sun. I look at the buckets of olives around me. The fallen olives on the ground next to my stick.
‘Look,’ he says again. Against the big ball of red starting to creep up over the horizon are people, lots of people, with ladders, buckets and sticks. I sit up and try and let my eyes adjust.
‘It’s time to get your harvest to the press,’ he says, pulling me to my feet.
I stand and stare in amazement. Maybe it’s a dream or a mirage. Maybe this isn’t happening at all. They’re all here: Luigi and his wife, Rocco and his wife and kids, Lou and her husband, and the vegetable stallholder I bought strawberries from when Sophia and Anna-Maria looked like they were going to fight to the death. More surprisingly, Sophia herself is here; she nods and waves. And so are Marco’s cousins, wrapped up against the cold morning, laughing and joking as though they are revisiting their youth. For me it would’ve been the funfair on Clapham Common with my brother. For the Bellanuovos, it’s coming back here for the olive harvest.
‘They’re here to laugh at me. They didn’t think I could do it, just like Ed didn’t,’ I say to Marco, and turn away.