‘Asbestos!’ she cried triumphantly. ‘How could I not have spotted it? Right there, under my nose. What are those two box rooms used for, stables?’
‘Exactly. The dogs sleep in one and there’s our washing machine and junk for the party …’
She was not listening. Swiftly, out came a tape measure, pocket digital camera and a small serrated knife. From her handbag she withdrew a white mask. This she tugged over her head to cover her nose and mouth, suddenly resembling a dentist or surgeon.
‘Do you have a ladder?’ she drawled from behind the mask.
‘Sorry?’
‘Ladder!’
‘Oh, it’s right beside the stable doors. There, see it?’ I responded, ‘but I don’t think that roof is asbestos. Those are corrugated sheets …’
She pulled on the elastic of her mask and lifted it clear of her features so that she could be understood. ‘And they are made from asbestos. Amiante, right here in front of me.’ She was up on the ladder, digging furiously at a small section of the roof’s overhang. Her manner had become evangelical, demoniac. ‘I know I’m right. Nonetheless, it will have to be sent away to a laboratory for testing and confirmation. Oh, this is bad news. Very bad.’
She sounded positively joyful.
‘Well, how bad? We can remove it. My husband and the gardener, if necessary with my assistance, we can have those sheets off there in three-quarters of an hour and we can retile it as we have done the hangar. It’s no problem.’
‘But it is. Don’t you dare to touch it! If you do, you will be committing an offence. And then you will never sell this property. I must speak to the notary and inform him.’
The triangle of flecks that she had by now carved off the front of the roof were being wrapped in plastic and then sealed in a tin and packed once more in an outer wall of plastic. This was then placed in the boot of her Clio.
‘I am afraid you will be hearing from me. I am also sorry to say that this is going to be very much more expensive than I had originally anticipated, costed, because there will be extra notes to write up as well as the laboratory fees and their report. Good afternoon.’ And with that she revved up the engine and gunned off down the drive, a Valkyrie on a mission.
Of the five houses occupying our hill, two skirted its hem, one other stood guard at the entrance to the lane, the fourth had been built behind us on the darker, inland-facing slope, while we occupied the south-facing, sea-view side. We barely, if ever, encountered the proprietors at the rear. In fact, they could have knocked their house down and we would have been none the wiser. The neighbours at the entrance to the lane, we ran across very occasionally. I knew when they were in residence because I saw their dustbins. That was about the extent of our intimacy. The property that lay to the west of ours had suffered a series of unlikely tragedies. Each of the proprietors, three in reasonably quick succession, had died, having fallen foul to a fatal heart attack in their sleep. It struck me as most bizarre. Three in a row, victims of the same fate. What was more, they were all Italians. That house now stood empty. The remaining pair of properties were, to a lesser or greater degree, a part of our lives here. Both of these had been sold during my absence and we had yet to meet the new occupiers.
It is etiquette in France that when someone moves into the street you send a little note, to introduce yourself and invite the new arrivals for an aperitif. Due to all my absences and to Michel’s own overcharged programme, we had never fulfilled this duty and regretfully the last of the Italians had died before we ever set eyes on him. Michel and I agreed that the weekend bash was the perfect moment to redress our oversight and invite the neighbours all along for a drink.
I dug out some cards in my den and wrote a little note to each of them. ‘Please enjoy a drink with us during our upcoming festivities, any time that suits you over the weekend’ and apologising in advance, forewarning them of the extra activity in the lane, cars parked across on the grassy bank next to our cottage, the music. General excuses for all inconveniences.
The following day, Friday, I was walking the lane, delivering the envelopes, when the Moroccan lady who occupied the most modest of the properties, right alongside our cottage where Quashia resided, drew her car up alongside me and wound down her window.
‘Good morning,’ I smiled. ‘We haven’t met yet. I’m the lady from the house on the hill, the olive farm. I have just left a note in your box. We’ll be having a party and I wanted to apologise for any—’
‘If you don’t keep your dogs under control, we’ll call the police and have them put down.’
‘What have they done?’ I stammered.
‘Breach of the peace,’ she snapped and shot away.
It was now Saturday and the skies had stayed clear. The van that had delivered the folding chairs had returned with nine, circular fold-up wooden tables. I signed for them, wished the driver ‘bon weekend’ and glowered at him as he ground another cigarette underfoot on to recently swept tiles. The washing machines were churning, the dishwashers whirring. We had been thirty-eight beneath a starlit sky for dinner the previous evening and the latest calculation for the big evening was that we would be eighty-seven. As Michel had forecast, there had been several cancellations but there had also been an addition or two. Marie-Gabrielle had telephoned to say that she and François would make an appearance at some point. How could they miss out on such a welcome home party? Six had appeared from Malta, olive farmers Nat and Julia, a firm friendship that had been bonded while I had been on the island during my travels. With them came journalists, friends of theirs who had also become friends of mine. They came bearing gifts in abundance: perfume, candles, fish, squid and copious amounts of wine plus a bottle, of course, of their olive oil. Nat was proposing to prepare a cuttlefish risotto for eighty! With his characteristic energy, as soon as they had arrived and offloaded bags, shawls, pashminas, he had set himself up a chopping board at a table beneath our jacaranda tree and set to work. The others were socialising, chattering in their native tongues or in Italian, a little French and lyrical English. A young olive farmer drove in from Sicily. He had departed his south-western spot some two weeks earlier and had taken his time, moseying north with his wife whom I had never met before. I did not know then, only months and months later, that he had been diagnosed with a terminal cancer.
Others hailed from Manchester, also new friends I had met elsewhere on my travels. The sight of chums from drama school whose faces remained glamorous, elegant, but now lined and matured, reduced me to tears. Michel was acquainting himself with men and women I had never even spoken of because they represented a past that belonged to another era, to Carol, the actress and single woman. When the beekeepers appeared I greeted them with hugs but was profoundly shocked to see the frail man, led by his wife, who had once been François. Publishing colleagues, two doctors, olive farmers, filmmakers, actors, beekeepers, sound technicians – who would have thought they would have found any worlds in common, but they did. How had Michel put all this together? A few children accompanied their parents. Our trio of canines were sporting brightly coloured kerchiefs, variations of red, and paid not the blindest bit of attention to most of the comings and goings. Bridget, who was supposed to have been organising the ice, phoned in sick at the last moment and there was a post-midday panic when we realised that there was nothing with which to keep the gallons of wine and beer cool because every fridge was clogged with food. Eventually, it was dealt with along with every other minor hiccup by one guest or another. Everyone lent a hand. The boules tournament was an even greater success than I had dared to hope. Throughout the long hot afternoon, a punctuation to the relentless cicadas, the popping of corks, was that soft click of metal ball against metal ball, followed by the floating cheers and cries, ‘Bien joué’, ‘Well played, mon ami’. When I paused, took a moment from the serving of drinks, the unwrapping of gifts, the hugs and the introductions, I tuned in to voices coming from everywhere across the land and I lost count of the number of langu
ages being spoken. Two Chinese brothers were boiling rice in the kitchen, a friend from South Africa, Bill, along with Michel, Hans and others struck the matches to ignite the barbecues. Meats, grilled fishes and vegetables were sizzling …
Marion, my agent’s wife, took it upon herself as evening drew in and the pool was emptying, sky-blue reflected in the puddles of splashed footprints everywhere, while folk were showering and donning their glad rags, to gather together my host of candles and exotic lamps from lands afar – Moroccan lanterns, a tall Lebanese hand-beaten copper one, others transported from Tunisia, to decorate the garden, to hang Vietnamese paper lanterns from the trees.
‘Go and dress for your own party,’ Marion whispered to me. ‘You are the one who has come home.’
When I returned outside, she had created a wonderland. I had never seen the terraces so enchanted.
The highlight came after the meal, which in itself was an occasion never to be forgotten. Bridget, now alongside her beloved Luigi, had finally arrived bearing the cake moments before dinner and had secreted it somewhere cool and safe. It was wheeled out with champagne as a waxing moon was riding high in the sky. And what a cry of joy when I set eyes on it; it had been fashioned in the shape of an olive tree.
After a speech that had brought a tear to almost every eye, Michel led the toasts, ‘Welcome home to my wife. I am very glad that she has returned safely.’
Someone, I cannot remember who, put an arm across my shoulder and whispered: ‘You really have created something special here. What could possibly destroy such a paradise?’
2
Appassionata was a very modest domain set in a magical location, furnished with stones and walls and ancient trees, haunted by birds, squirrels, wild boar, lizards, geckos, dogs … life. A great percentage of its lands had been sold off after the Second War World and today its grounds measured a mere 29,000 square metres or, approximately, three hectares. These were made up of a wild, self-seeding pine forest that climbed at an angle up behind the house to the apex of its soft-underfoot hill, while the remainder was dominated by both venerable and young olive groves – the juniors planted by us – and a few terraces of adolescent fruit trees, also planted by us. The farmhouse, an Italianate cream villa wrapped about with verandahs and balustrades, was built in 1904 by a rich merchant family from Milan. Constructed halfway up its hillside on a base of limestone, its surrounding grounds had been modelled with drystone walled terraces: en restanque, in Provençal, a quintessential Mediterranean image and, as far as I was aware, the oldest form of manmade irrigation around this tideless sea.
When my lover, now my husband, Michel, and I found Appassionata and its lands, this lovely dominion had been abandoned. Its grounds had become a jungled ruin, forgotten and uncared for, but we both fell instantly in love with it and its breathtaking views overlooking the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean. To describe its purchase as rash would be an understatement. Few in their sane mind would have taken such a risk and certainly not a couple living separate lives in different European countries, recently acquainted and lacking the necessary financial resources, never mind the expertise required for such house restoration. We did not possess even the deposit, let alone the asking price, and we had no real notion of what lay beneath the unruly jungle that greeted us on our earliest visits. It was impossible to estimate the sums that would be required to make the once elegant house even basically habitable, while to reinstate its natural grace and beauty was beyond our wildest financial ambitions.
The estate agent and Belgian proprietors assured us that we were purchasing a viable farm with mature olive groves and two acres of vineyards. One of its other selling points was that it had its own private, registered water source. It was not marked on the cadastre, and to this day we have never uncovered that well, though Michel has scoured every square centimetre of the grounds.
Somehow we became the proprietors of the place, purchasing it in two parcels over a period of six years because we could not scratch together or borrow all that was required at the outset. Even today, we refer to half the land – the half without the house but with its own rather romantic stone ruin, that must during the first half of the last century have been a cottage, a bothy for the gardener, vine-tender or possibly goatherd – as the ‘Second Plot’. Because of our penury, it took two years before we could afford to hire a gardening firm to cut back our treasured jungle, including the Second Plot – all rights to it were signed over to us at the same time as the purchase of the house even though we did not yet legally own that parcel of land – and when the weedbeaters and tractors had packed up and lumbered away from this hillside, having bared earth that had not seen the light of the sun for at least a decade, there, revealed in all their knarred and statuesque, almost metallic beauty, were sixty-eight four-hundred-year-old olive trees growing along the hill’s lower terraces. There were many other marvellous discoveries, too, but none as awe-inspiring or as far-reaching for my destiny as those olive trees.
I and the man I had fallen in love with had not been looking for a farm. I am an Anglo-Irish lass, more Irish than English, and spent a great deal of my childhood on the family farm in Ireland, but that life bore no similarity to producing olive crops.
With impeccable timing, serendipity stepped in and blessed us with a retired Provençal, René, who niftily assumed the role of Appassionata’s olive guru. He taught us, me in particular, how to tend olives, how to gather and press them, and by the end of that first olive-harvesting season we had produced our very own, premier-class, deliciously peppery olive oil that later went on to gain us the coveted AOC ticket, an Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée, which here, in France, is the benchmark of top-quality produce. What a bonus! Not only my dreamed-of House by the Sea and the man to share it with, but a most unexpected gift from Nature to accompany it.
Olive farming was not my trade. It still is not, but it very soon became a passion. However, alongside the physical activities of farming the fruits and pressing them into oil, I am equally if not more passionate about the tree itself and its role within Mediterranean cultures. The olive is a sacred tree and civilisations since the beginning of time have honoured it as such. It is also a very gifted and accomplished organism and one that might very well have a role to play in our planet’s precarious future …
These revelations came as treasures, surprise investitures secluded within the jungled heart of the property. They did not reveal themselves all at once – of course not – but little by little, one delight after another bestowed upon us. I loved this House by the Sea (as I had christened it long before I had ever found it), and was profoundly happy with my lot. I was excited, passionate about its fruits of the earth and I shared this idyll with another whom I also loved profoundly, my husband, Michel.
As the marvels, the discoveries – I am referring in particular to the fruits and, most importantly, the olives and oil production from the estate – were harvested, we celebrated them joyously. Encouraged by René, we sought better, bigger harvests, but in order to produce this exceptional oil of ours we had first to combat a very resilient predator: the olive fly. René had taught us that spraying the trees against this indomitable enemy was the only course possible and within five or six years of taking ownership of Appassionata, a wooded tract of land that had been left to its own devices for a decade, we were covering the grounds with pesticides. I objected, but there was no alternative, I was told. My own role in the future of such farming practices had not yet become clear to me.
*
During the days and then the soporific, heat-ridden weeks beyond my return, beyond a forever-memorable homecoming bash, while the men, my husband and Quashia, laboured and sweated, attempting unsuccessfully to repair the impoverished condition of the garage ceiling falling like hailstones around them, or were reconstructing the drystone walls destroyed by trespassing wild boar, I was netting the trunks of the apple trees. These were the principal target of the pigs’ infernal nocturnal raids, when th
ey were not nosing in the walls for snails. It was not uncommon to wake and find broken branches scattered on the grass, others snapped and hanging like damaged wings. One slender tree had been severed at its base and lay expiring on the ground. Its fruit, hard, round as golf balls, had been snaffled.
Letters arrived. The first was a detailed laboratory report stating that the corrugated roof straddling our two stables was 100 per cent asbestos. The second was from l’Expert herself informing us that these facts had now been registered with our notary and would be added to our house files. She suggested that we speak with the notaire directly; as well she requested that her bill be settled within the week. The invoice was included. A call to the notary confirmed that he had forwarded the results from the laboratory to the municipal offices in Juan-les-Pins which held the classified records belonging to this property.
‘When you have organised the removal of the offending corrugated sheets, please make sure that you send me the original certificate of disposal, signed, dated and stamped by the firm who carry out the work.’
‘Could you, please, give me the contact details of any firm who—’
‘Madame, I am a notaire. I am not allowed to hand out recommendations. You must find someone yourself.’
‘What about l’Expert, might she be allow—?’
‘Her situation is the same as mine. I look forward to receiving the relevant certificate in due course. Bonne journée.’
The second round of insecticide spraying was upon us. I was upstairs still unpacking belongings when I heard the men unlocking the garage and I hurtled down the stairs to raise my well-played vociferous objections. I found them within the crepuscular light, gazing into air that was dank.
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