The Olive Branch

by Jo Thomas

  ‘My boyfriend?’ Then the penny drops. ‘Oh, you mean Ryan! Ryan’s not my . . .’ then I realise I don’t need to explain anything to Ed any more. ‘Ryan won’t be around . . . not for a long time.’ I think about Franco, and know Ryan has been warned off. ‘In fact, I doubt he’ll be coming back at all.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Ed seems to brighten. ‘So . . .’ He looks around. ‘You’re here on your own?’

  ‘Hardly,’ I reply, listening to the gathering outside as I make the coffee and lay it up on a tray.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I have neighbours.’

  The smell of the coffee fills the kitchen as it begins to bubble and steam.

  ‘It’s just, well, I’ve been thinking. Maybe I was too . . . judgemental. Telling you that you should come home, give it up. Saying you couldn’t do it and shouldn’t try. Everyone I speak to talks about how brave you are to live your dream, to have a go. I wish I was more like you, Ruthie.’

  I can’t believe it. Suddenly Ed thinks I’m brave. I’m taken aback, but right now the only person I want to talk to is Marco. I want Ed to go.

  ‘Well let’s hope they like the oil when they get it. I’ll be bottling tomorrow and then shipping it home.’ The emphasis being on ‘home’, hoping he’ll take the hint.

  ‘Do you think we were too hasty, too rash, Ruthie?’ he suddenly blurts out. ‘I mean, you know, if you wanted to give it another go, I’d give it a try.’ He grabs hold of my hands and turns me towards him, and I hope to God Marco doesn’t walk in now and get the wrong idea. My eyes flit to the door, and then I pull away and stand back. Here is Ed, offering me everything I wanted, everything I dreamed of when I first arrived here: my old life back in London.

  ‘Ed, why did you really come?’

  ‘I told you . . .’ he starts, then his shoulders slump. ‘I miss you, Ruthie. I realise I should’ve been more . . . adventurous. I envy you.’

  ‘Ha! You have a great job; you live in a flat in Canary Wharf with a partner who clearly adores you. Why would you envy me?’

  ‘Because you’re not scared.’

  ‘Yes I am!’ I’m angry now. ‘I was scared the day we agreed to split up. Scared at how clinical you were about dividing everything. Scared about being thirty, single and homeless. And scared shitless that I’d made the biggest mistake of my life by coming here!’

  And now I’m scared of making another rash decision. Do I want my old life back with Ed? Back in London, back home? Or do I, ridiculously, want to stay here with a man I’ve only just got close to? I feel like someone’s put a vice on my skull and is tightening it, and with every turn I’m getting more confused.

  ‘I could stay, Ruthie. I could stay with you and we could do it together.’

  My anger seeps away.

  ‘I’ve done the scary bit, Ed. I’m not frightened any more. I know I can go anywhere and do anything now. But this isn’t all as rosy as it looks. You can’t run away from your problems; they follow you wherever you go. I’ve found that out.’

  He hangs his head.

  ‘Annabel thought I might still want to be with you. I wanted to be sure. I’m getting older and I’m wondering if I’ve made the right choices in life. I need to find out if I’ve got any regrets.’

  ‘And have you?’

  He takes a moment.

  ‘No.’ Then he brightens, ‘We had fun, didn’t we?’

  ‘Yes.’ I smile through the tears that seem to be forming. ‘I suppose we did in the beginning. But that was a long time ago. Before we got brave.’

  ‘Before you did,’ he corrects.

  ‘Before we realised we weren’t meant to be together.’

  Falling in love is the most painful thing you can do. You definitely need to be brave for that, I think.

  ‘Annabel wants us to get married. She proposed.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I said I didn’t know, that I had to come and deliver these things to you.’

  I realise that this is my now-or-never moment. If I want Ed and my old life back, I have to say so now.

  ‘Do you want to marry her?’ I take hold of his wrists. He takes a deep breath and looks up at me.

  ‘Yes, I think I do.’

  ‘Then go for it, Ed. Running back to me isn’t the answer. You can’t stay scared all your life.’

  He lifts his head and nods.

  ‘A man with no future goes back to his past,’ he says.

  ‘Go home, Ed. Go back to Annabel. Life out here isn’t all sunshine and good food, you know.’ I’m quoting Marco again, and now I’m desperate to go and find him. ‘We did the right thing. We are different people, but that’s not to say we can’t be friends.’

  Ed throws his arms around me and hugs me, and I can’t help but hug him back, as friends, as two people who have shared a past but who need to move on. Right now I have to go and find my future. I pat him on the back to let him know we’re fine and good and all done. Still he hugs me, and I realise there are a lot of unspoken words in that hug, like sorry and goodbye.

  ‘I didn’t realise I was interrupting.’ Marco’s voice cuts through the sorrys and goodbyes like a sword. We pull apart, and I watch in horror as he slaps down an envelope on the table, then turns and stalks out.

  ‘Marco!’ I call after him in despair, but he just keeps walking. I go cold.

  ‘What about you, Ruthie? What are you going to do?’ Ed asks, and I really don’t have the strength to tell him that that is the million-dollar question. I look at the envelope on the table and I know exactly what’s in it. It’s the deeds to the land. I could sell up now; I could go home.

  Outside, everyone has moved to the fire pit in the olive grove. People are smoking and chatting and starting up the ongoing debate over pruning. The fire is pumping out little plumes of smoke and the seasoned olive logs, from Marco’s log pile, are glowing. There are jam jars with tea lights hanging from the trees, which seem to be reaching round us like a great big hug. It’s cold, smoky and Marco is nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Once the olives have rested for the winter, we start to prune,’ Nonna is telling Lou’s dad, and Filippo is translating. ‘Everyone thinks they have the best pruning method.’ She raises her hands and laughs. Anna-Maria is talking to Rosa and Young Luigi and touching their cheeks, like she’s basking in the love they’re giving off. She looks at me as I arrive with a large tray of coffee and put it on the table under the tree, the same table Marco used to teach me how to taste olive oil.

  ‘Olive oil is the foundation of good cooking and good cooking is the foundation of family life,’ Nonna is saying.

  Anna-Maria smiles a small smile at me and then, seeing Ed following closely on my heels, turns the smile upside down and scowls. The moon is bright and throws an iridescent light over us. I look around for Marco again.

  ‘Thank God that tall fella’s gone. He gave me the creeps,’ Ed says, helping himself to coffee and giving Anna-Maria a wide berth. I look over to Marco’s trullo, where the lights have gone on and the door is firmly shut.

  That night, once everyone has headed for home, with waves, kisses and good wishes and the last of my jars of piccalilli to say thank you, I make up the spare bed for Ed. Ed, my first house guest. Who’d’ve thought that? Not me, that’s for sure.

  I lie awake listening to him snoring away, sleeping off the Primitivo and the limoncello he’s put away. A shaft of moonlight stretches in through the slats in the shutters. I get out of bed, pull a blanket round my shoulders, pad over to the window and open them. It’s cold; I shut the window but let the light flood into my bedroom. I look out over the olive grove. The fire pit is still glowing and slowly smouldering. There are piles of fallen branches and leaves across the grove. The nets have been rolled up and pushed into the boughs of the trees. If I strain my neck, I
can just see the light on in Marco’s trullo. Looks like he’s not sleeping either. I long to go over there, explain Ed’s appearance and what he saw. I long to be in his arms like I was this morning, when anything and everything seemed possible.

  I look down at the envelope on the wooden crate that is my bedside table. I pick it up and take it to the window. Slowly I open it and pull out the A4 sheets. As I thought, it’s the deeds to the land at the front of the house. He’s kept his word. I’m free to sell up and move home. Then I put my hand in and pull out something else. It’s an olive branch. It’s over, finished.

  I let my head rest against the cold glass of the window. If only he knew, that’s the very last thing I want right now.

  The next morning I’m up early again, mainly because I didn’t get a wink of sleep. All I could see was Marco’s furious face as he stormed out of the kitchen, like it was on replay on a DVD. And then there were the deeds. The fire is blazing in the woodburner and eating up wood at an unstoppable speed, like it’s found a whole new lease of life. Outside there is a harsh frost. Everything is white. Marco was right, but then he’s right about a lot of things, I’ve come to realise, apart from affairs of the heart. There, he has no idea what I’m thinking or what I want.

  I wash and put on plenty of layers, then as quietly as I can, so as not to wake Ed, I slip out into the yard.

  Daphne is there, and I let out the chickens and check the veg patch. Then I go to the barn, which yesterday was filled with people and laughter and chatter, just like in the picture I painted; just like it should be. Mamma cat and her little ones are snuggled into the box I’ve lined with blankets, but when they see me, they get out and miaow for food, rubbing against my legs.

  After feeding Daphne, the chickens and the cats, I bring out my box of sterilised bottles and begin filling them with the deep green oil from the big steel drums. When I’ve finished, I go to the house to find the labels I’ve made. I pull them out of the envelope and spread them across the table. They’re a copy of the brightly coloured painting I did of the masseria, and in the top left-hand corner is an olive branch. Underneath the painting it just says Masseria Bellanuovo.

  Just then Ed comes bumping down the stairs with his very large overnight bag. He looks at me, and I have a feeling that if I say he could stay, he would. But I know that’s not right.

  ‘You’re going, then?’ I ask. He nods.

  I feel like I’m standing on the top of a very high diving board. Someone behind me is offering me a hand, a way back down, but I’m still wondering whether to jump.

  ‘Ruthie? Will you be all right?’

  ‘I’ll be fine. In fact, I may well be coming back to the UK myself . . . a bit sooner than I was expecting.’

  ‘Really?’ Ed pulls a surprised face. ‘I thought this was the dream, everything you wanted.’ He gestures around him.

  ‘So did I. But I told you, Ed, problems don’t disappear with a bit of good food and sunshine!’ I try and laugh, but it catches in my throat. I know what I’ve got to do and it’s going to hurt like hell. But I can’t stay if Marco really doesn’t want me here. I couldn’t bear to live so close to him, knowing things could have been so different.

  ‘Hey, these are great. Are they the ones for the guys in the office?’

  I nod. ‘Wanna help me put them on before you go?’

  ‘Sure,’ he says, clearly happy to put off his journey for just a little longer.

  He pulls up the zipper on his fleece and follows me to the barn, and we stand side by side over the old press, labelling the bottles. Ed moans about the cold, the quiet, the lack of local shops. I don’t think he realises he’s moaning; he’s just slipped back into his comfortable ways, like an old pair of slippers. This life would never suit him. But I have come to realise I love it . . . Too late I’ve come to realise I love it.

  We finish the first lot of bottling, the ones that need to go to the UK and I haven’t forgotten I still need to find a reliable courier. The masseria has never felt quieter. It came alive over the past couple of days. How it should be, I think, looking round at the empty trullo that I wanted filled with holidaymakers. I look at the courtyard that yesterday was full of olive pickers and neighbours, laughter and talk. The smell of the bonfire still lingers in the air. Who knows when the place will be used like that again. It would be amazing to see this barn working as a press once more, a traditional press like Marco described, pressing Bellanuovo oil. I rub my hand over the stone.

  ‘Penny for them,’ says Ed.

  ‘Oh, I was just thinking about home.’

  ‘Me too!’ Ed smiles. ‘Now if you want, I can give you a lift back. Give us time to talk things over. It’ll be fun!’

  ‘You definitely have a distorted memory about some things, Ed. Remember the last time you and I drove through Europe. You had heat rash and an allergic reaction to the sun cream.’

  ‘And you thought you were Jenson Button!’ he laughs.

  It’s a long way from where Ed and I were when I left. We haven’t shared a joke in . . . I don’t know how long. It feels nice. But I know for sure now that it’s not love.

  ‘There’s something I have to do,’ I tell him, putting the last of the bottles into the boxes and stacking them just outside the barn door.

  ‘Okay, I’m going to get my stuff into the car. Think about it. You could come with me if you want.’ He gives a hopeful shrug and shoves his hands into his fleece, looking like he’s desperate to get back to London.

  ‘I’ll think about it.’ I close my eyes and breathe in the fresh smell of the late morning. I could be swapping this for smog in the blink of an eye.

  I run into the house and grab the envelope, then take a deep breath and hop over to Marco’s trullo. This isn’t acting on impulse. I’ve had three and a half months to come to this decision, and it’s the right one. I bang on the door.

  Marco throws it open with as much force as I’ve knocked on it.

  ‘Buongiorno.’ He nods brusquely and then looks beyond me to see who else is there.

  ‘I’ve come to give you these.’ I hold out the envelope towards him. He scowls.

  ‘They are the deeds to the land. You won them fair and square.’ He tries to push them back to me and I sigh.

  ‘Marco, I may have made it to the harvest, and I may feel more at home here than I have ever felt anywhere else . . .’

  He nods and goes to say something.

  ‘But I realise the masseria was never mine to own. It’s Masseria Bellanuovo. It’s your family’s. Not mine.’

  For once he doesn’t say anything. He is lost for words.

  ‘So here, have the deeds back. And . . . write that cheque out again. I’ll take what you offered. I’ll sell the masseria back to you.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Don’t argue, Marco. Take it. You belong there.’ I find myself choking.

  ‘You’re leaving, then?’

  ‘I think I should.’ I can’t tell him I can’t bear to stay if he doesn’t want me, and judging by the look on his face last night when he delivered the deeds, he doesn’t. ‘But do something for me.’

  ‘Of course.’ His eyes are sparkling with tears.

  ‘The press, bring it back. Put in the traditional press you talked about. Oh, and I had another idea. Olive-picking holidays, for people who think a little bit of dolce vita can solve all their problems!’ and we both laugh through the tears that are pouring down our cheeks. I turn to leave.

  ‘And one last thing. Courses, residential courses. You could still teach oil-tasting, when you’re not harvesting. You have the space, and you could use Lou and Antonio’s trullo as well once it’s up and running.’

  He’s smiling and brushing away a tear.

  ‘I have never met anyone like you before, Ruthie Collins. You aren’t scared of anything.’<
br />
  Yes I am, I think. Terrified of never falling in love like this again!

  ‘Listen to your heart, Ruthie. You deserve to be happy, more than anyone I know. Do what your heart is telling you to do.’

  I can’t speak. I spin and run back across the field and over the wall to the masseria. I have to get away from Marco, now! Before he hears the sound of my heart ripping in two.

  Ed is loading his big bag into his car.

  ‘Take the records and the player, Ed. I really don’t want them. I don’t have any use for them,’ I tell him, and he shoves the box back into his boot. He turns back to me, almost too nervous to ask.

  ‘So, you decided?’

  I nod. ‘I have.’

  ‘I’ve room in the car.’ He points to the passenger seat with a hopeful smile.

  I could do it. I could just get in the car with Ed and go. Leave all this behind. Return to my life in London. I could come to my senses and listen to my head. Maybe go and stay with Beth for a while and think about what to do next. But my heart knows what it wants. I may be impetuous sometimes but I know I’m doing the right thing. I’ve had time to think about this and consider it. I’m not acting in the moment. I’ve wanted this for a long time, I realise. I take a deep breath,

  ‘I’m not coming, Ed.’

  ‘What?’ He bangs his head as he pulls away from the boot. ‘You’re staying here?’ He looks incredulous.

  ‘Sadly, no. I can’t. But I’m going to find somewhere else to live. Closer to town maybe.’

  ‘What will you do for work?’

  I shrug. ‘I’ll find something. I might even start teaching, art classes, what do you think?’

  At first he looks horrified. And then he smiles.

  ‘You always were the impulsive one, Ruthie.’