‘Is there anything we can do to change his mind?’ I begged.
‘You mean aside from returning to our old ways of farming, because that is what it will probably take.’
I shook my head. ‘I cannot,’ I whispered. ‘I love him dearly, but I cannot.’
I tossed and turned most of that night. How to retain our man yet honour our decision? Quashia was not a person to quit. To leave us might be as painful for him as it certainly was going to be for us, and I suspected that he needed the money he earned from the farm. He collected two reasonable pensions, but he was the paterfamilias back in Algeria and the only full-time earner. One son of his had died a few years back in a tragic accident and his widow was bringing up four if not five children alone. Quashia was their breadwinner. On top of that, his youngest son, now married with a child or even two, was not the most responsible by all accounts. He ventured into situations without counting the cost. One moment he wanted a farm in the hills with sheep and goats. Quashia had purchased the stock for him and helped with the construction of the farmhouse, and, soon after, the offspring was investing, with his father’s unearned money, in an épicerie, a grocery store. I knew those commitments weighed heavily on our friend and I did not want to be the one to deprive him of the wherewithal to feed his family, most especially the partially orphaned grandchildren. Women in Algeria, particularly widows with a gaggle of youngsters, were rarely given a second chance. Quashia’s daughter-in-law, who had married the son before she was twenty, had never worked, never earned a living, never been trained for anything other than housework. Her roles had been cast: wife, mother and now widow.
A parting of the ways was not what Quashia desired any more than we did. Beyond our bedroom, beyond the semi-completed terrace, an early thrush was singing in the Judas tree. Aside from all of that, Quashia was my friend. Our friend, an ally to us both but perhaps more particularly to me. Losing him was tantamount to losing a beloved relative.
On the other hand, I had to be true to my own heart.
The following morning, Michel was on the dawn flight to Paris. After I returned from the airport, Quashia plodded up the drive, eyes sunk to the ground, and I knew that his decision had been made.
‘I won’t have time to finish the wall, but I’ll cut the land back, then I’ll be on my way. I’m intending to take the train on Friday evening.’
I nodded. We might have waited another week, perhaps two, before felling the grasses, but I accepted his decision. Vegetation maintenance was a legal requirement in our corner of the Midi. It reduced fire risk and Michel and I knew all too well the horrors of un incendie, a wild fire on the rampage. La lutte contre l’incendie, the fight against fire, was the responsibility of every citizen. We had left it to the very last moment, but now the job would be done.
It was Quashia’s final chore, to pull out the strimming machines and fell the wild flowers, the herbs, the ‘weeds’. Everything, more or less, had broken into seed and the seeds were departing in readiness for future springs. It took him several days and during that time we worked alongside one another in an amicable fashion, talking intermittently, and, when the grounds had been flattened, Q cleaned up the machines and returned them to the hangar because the garage was still not finished – Francisco was occasionally present but there was no sign of his former comrades. It had begun to rain. The first drops in a couple of months. Soft rain. Rain to swim beneath, rain to suckle the soil, rain to breathe the bittersweet scent of flayed green earth.
I knew he felt that I had let him down, betrayed our working ethic, and I forced myself not to doubt the choices we were making because this transition – this period that we were living through now – was proving to be far more painful than I had anticipated.
Before our Berber friend set off to pack his bags, I offered to drive him to the station in Cannes. From there to Marseille and then a flight to Constantine. I knew this might be the very last journey we ever took together and my heart was breaking over the loss of him.
His leave-taking was a sad and unsettling moment. His valedictory words: ‘I’ll get these wretched teeth out, see about dentures. Should you ever have a healthy harvest again, call me, tell me. Now I’m in retirement, I’m going to get myself some bees.’
I had no idea how we were going to manage without him, or if we would ever set eyes on him again. I put my arms around him and hugged him as though he were my father.
‘Thank you for everything,’ I whispered. ‘Je vous aime.’
He nodded and set off with his carrier bags, without a backward glance.
11
Francisco was packing up for the day as I returned from the station. He waved me over. I was not really in the mood for conversation.
‘Your Arab told me he’d quit. Said he was unhappy about the choices you were making.’
It rather hurt me at this vulnerable moment to learn that Quashia had been talking the matter over with Francisco, had criticised me, even though I was aware how he had felt.
Francisco wanted to encourage me in our agricultural decision, he said, and cited his grandfather in Portugal. ‘There were a few flies, but my grandfather paid little attention to them, never sprayed. He harvested and pressed the drupes without concern. The oil,’ as Francisco recalled, ‘was excellent.’
The old man’s principal activity had been pastèque, watermelon. This was the sacred fruit, the red-fleshed fruit, sweet and juicy, which the grandchildren were forbidden to go near. Acres and acres of expanding green bubbles on the undulating landscape. When they were ripe, Francisco and his pals used to steal into the fields and dribble the melons gently like footballs across the sloping land to the hedgerows where they hid them until after the récolte had been completed and the old folk had disappeared with the bulk, transporting it like a mighty green balloon rising sky-high. Donkey and cart, to a market town twenty kilometres’ distance from their nearest village. Then, arms waving victoriously, the yelling children hurtled back to the bushes and claimed their stash, splitting the cumbersome fruits open with bread knives filched from the kitchens and gorged themselves until their mouths and faces bled with the candy-pink flesh. The big black seeds they dried in the sun and used as counters for their games.
‘We were very, very poor. Portugal, like Spain, had been crushed beneath a dictatorship.’
Had I known, this decorator asked me, that the watermelon had originally been cultivated in Egypt along the banks of the Nile? I had not.
‘A wise choice you are making,’ he smiled.
I thanked him for his story, bid him goodnight and went inside.
Still, Quashia had gone. There was an emptiness about the place. His laughter, his temperaments.
And how the workload increased! As the heat intensified, the watering commitments escalated. I began at daybreak and worked for two to three hours. I took delight in each patch, in the vine-like pastèque and its swift transit across the soil. I counted eight green balls, some the size of magnified eggs, others as large as pommels and the largest, rugby balls. They reminded me of our desert friend, as did the transplanted avocado tree, pushing up like a buster. Having discarded its yellowed leaves, it was producing growth shoots of a tender amber. The hand of Quashia was everywhere while mine were growing callused, my nails broken and seamed with soil, and no matter how thoroughly I scrubbed, the traces of earth never disappeared, but I didn’t mind. In fact, I perceived it as a badge of honour, an accomplicity between myself and the land. I could use gloves if I chose. Indeed, I sported a sturdy leather pair (one of those Quashia had hidden from me!), but I always ended up chucking them in the wheelbarrow. They got in the way. I preferred clawing with my fingers down beneath the crumbly dry clods when I was planting, turning the soil over, feeling its textures, listening to it. Any weeding that took place, which was precious little these days, was achieved by hand, my hand, and I was far more relaxed about it, seeing little as opposition.
Every evening, after hours of labour (the irrigation of t
he junior olives at the apex of the hill took Michel three days every three weeks), Michel and I relaxed on the terrace side by side, enjoying a well-earned glass of chilled wine. While the frogs down at the stream in the valley crooned, we attended sunset and it was usually a spectacular display. Some evenings a pair of buzzards, ‘our buzzards’, circled in the sky overhead. I liked their call, the clean, distant whistle they emitted. Our two pairs of eagles were once more in evidence. I was still hunting for their nests but I knew they were not far off, breeding within our pine forest. At night the tawny hooted from the big old pine beyond our bedroom. It was second-brood time. Another owl had also set up home on our hillside. His call sounded as though he had a penny whistle caught in his throat and made us giggle. So much to relish, but the farm needed managing and, when Michel was away, I was hard put to achieve everything. We required another pair of hands. Occasionally, we employed casual labour, but I kept hoping …
Michel was growing frustrated by his attempts to contact the Josés. Francisco had completed his contributions, he declared, and everything now depended on the damp course and the chape de béton, the concrete foundation for the tiles. Eventually, after a dozen or more calls, the gravel-voiced member of the quartet arrived, petit José.
‘What are you worrying about?’
‘We are into the third month, José.’
‘We’re waiting for a quote from the damp-course company. They’re holding us up. This job’ll be finished by the end of the week.’
‘But we’ve approved the quote.’
‘That chap’s no longer available.’ And so it continued until calm-of-demeanour Michel was a hair’s breadth from losing his temper and threatened to cancel all outstanding monies. Then action recommenced, and at double speed. After four days of whacking, belting, radio blaring, concrete-pouring, tile-laying, the contract was finally completed, the site cleaned up and all was impeccable.
While they were charging their lorry, I asked why Francisco had quit and the small fellow went half berserk. ‘Is that what he told you? Well, good riddance to him with his arty-farty ideas. We’re the ones who do the work! He only drinks. Good riddance! We don’t want him! He’s not like us!’
I slipped niftily into the house where Michel was pouring us a glass of wine. ‘The work is excellent,’ he said to me.
I thought it resembled a jumbo-sized cardboard box, but this, everyone assured me, was what gros œuvre was about. The next stage involved an architect, drawings, planning permission. Once that had been achieved, the Portuguese would return to demolish the back wall in my den. Then construction of two upper-floor bedrooms would get underway. But those plans were definitely for another year. Michel and I were down to our last euros. High summer, July, was upon us, the empty cottage (Quashia’s) needed roof repairs and guests would soon be descending. All demanded feeding, entertaining.
Extended days, languid and light, and the first of the oil bodies returned! The mutuality. A letter informed us that they were ready to reinstate us, on the understanding that we a) reimburse them the fees accrued during our exile, and b) sent proof of our new ‘green status’. Michel attended to the matter directly.
I, meanwhile, was keeping a vigilant eye on the olives, plumping out, vibrantly green, flecked with white, but it was early in the ripening season. Still, the fly had not yet penetrated. Into this mood of optimism came an email from the same individual at the American chemicals company head office whose French technicians I had met with earlier in the year.
We were just wondering how you are getting on? Is your harvest looking promising? Are you using our product? Please remember, we want to do whatever we can to assist you in a bumper crop.
I was perplexed by this ongoing interest in our groves and I sent a return note directly. The product is dangerous to insects, particularly honeybees.
My one-liner was intended to put an end to this exchange.
That evening, true to ritual before the sun disappeared behind the hills along this Mediterranean coastline, turning the sky into a palette of scribbled crimsons, we were cradling chilled glasses of rosé – ‘Santé. Here’s to the return of the first oil body’ – when, suddenly, tranquillity was destroyed by the outbreak of barking.
‘Not that Rottweiler, please!’
‘I haven’t seen that drunken neighbour in a while, have you?’
‘No, but someone’s been busy on their land. They have razed every single tree.’
Our dogs were now gathering at the foot of one of our centenarian oliviers down in the lower groves and no amount of whistling would persuade them to come to heel.
‘I’ll go.’ I placed my glass on the table and descended by the stone staircase to find out what the disturbance was about. Something within the boughs, someone’s cat perhaps, was agitating them. Or a red squirrel? I hushed the dogs and squinted into the silvery foliage where necklaces of early season fruits smiled down upon me. There a curious sight. I beheld, hanging from one of the higher, not-so-accessible branches, an old-fashioned string shopping bag. Or was it? About eighteen inches long, it was black, dense and … alive!
I shouted to Michel. ‘Come quick!’
A feral swarm had set up home in our olive tree.
‘Bees, oh, let’s keep them!’
The problem was that we had no hive. I ran inside to telephone François for advice, but was shocked to learn from Marie-Gabrielle that he had undergone a quadruple bypass. It had been a life and death scenario. Although he was now out of hospital, he was too weak to come to the phone.
‘Telephone les pompiers’ was her advice.
I did as she bid.
The local fire brigade is much in demand in this Provençal climate of hot, arid summers and often uncontrollable forest fires. Still, within the hour two young men, fit as Greek gods, smiling broadly, chic in navy uniforms, appeared on the scene. They donned professional beekeepers’ costumes – masked headdress, gloves and white bodysuits – while assuring us that the evening was the best time to capture wild bees because they were likely to be heavy with honey. This rendered them lethargic, more docile.
The darker haired of the pair, Denis, ascended our wooden harvesting ladder and began snipping with secateurs at the tree. I was horrified, watching on as he trimmed sprigs heavy with burgeoning fruits. Pierre, his companion, explained that this was essential in order that the capture went smoothly. Pierre, with open box in hand, now climbed a step or two and stood beneath his fellow pompier.
They spoke fast in twangy Provençal accents.
‘Tu est prêt?’ (Ready?)
‘On y va.’ (Let’s go.)
Denis shook the branch and the swarm fell heavily in seconds. It reminded me of a stuffed nylon stocking. Wallop, into the box. Quick as a flash, Pierre secured the lid. A few little female bees had escaped and were now flying in circles, disorientated, but the operation had been handled skilfully.
‘Félicitations!’ I cried. ‘How many bees?’ I whispered.
‘Ooh, ’bout ten thousand I’d say.’
The men hurried to their van where, in the rear, was a makeshift hive into which the bees were immediately settled.
Both the firemen refused any refreshment or remuneration. ‘All in a day’s work,’ they grinned.
Denis confided shyly that his father was an apiarist. Alas, his hives had been killed off, and, if it was fine with us, he would offer this swarm to his dad who was suffering from the loss.
But of course. I was disappointed, sad that we were not keeping them but I certainly did not begrudge this man’s father a replacement colony.
They patted the now docile dogs and wheeled off down the hill.
‘Bonsoir! Merci beaucoup,’ we waved. For one fleeting second I was glad that Quashia was not here to see them go.
In southern France, les pompiers are volunteers. They fight fires, they act as an ambulance service, they unburden the chimneys of nests, they rescue cats from treetops and, here again, they had proved themselves our local her
oes. ‘Such a pity not to have kept the bees for ourselves, not to have found a possibility of housing the swarm.’
We were returning to the terrace, to begin cooking. In our absence, while we had been out in the grounds, a message on the machine. Quashia had telephoned. ‘Incredible. He must have known what we were up to!’ I called to Michel excitedly.
He had left an Algerian number, but when I tried to phone it a woman’s voice in Arabic, followed by the same in French, informed me that the number was erroneous. I tried every configuration of the ten digits he had given but none connected me. Telephoning Algeria had never been the easiest of exercises. I knew it from my own travels there. Frequently, it was little more than a game of chance. The fact that I understood this did not alleviate my disappointment. Might he be returning? Would we ever see our loyal friend again? If something were to happen to him, who would inform us?
It was eighty thirty the following Saturday morning when the full pack, a trio of Josés along with Francisco, I was surprised to remark, all laughing, joking, full of high spirits, came to collect their final payment, most of which was in cash, and sign off the contract. Michel offered coffee, which they all accepted save the little fellow who insisted on vin rouge. He said the wine helped him to grow! ‘Never give up hope, santé!’
Michel felt that the work achieved by these crazy, disorganised southerners was not only satisfactory, but extremely fine. So much so that he requested a quote for the repair of the cottage roof. Unfortunately, they were not available. They had moved on to other projects.
‘We could do it for you in October or November.’
We were keen for it to be restored as soon as possible. If Quashia were to return and find that it was still not waterproof, he might turn tail and fly straight back to Africa. We shook hands, compliments once more from Michel on the quality of the work, with plans to reconvene the following spring for the major construction work on the bedroom extension while, in the meantime, we had a dry garage and a spanking new private patio beyond our bedroom. But for the cottage, we were obliged to look elsewhere.
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