Return to the Olive Farm (The Olive Series Book 4)

by Carol Drinkwater

  ‘When a foraging bee discovers a rich store of pollen, she communicates her find to the hive by performing a waggle dance. Her companions are given a sniff of the hoard she has returned with and then she begins to vibrate, shaking her abdomen, transmitting complex instructions. The direction the bee faces while dancing indicates the direction of the food source in relation to the sun. The length and intensity of the movement communicates the plants’ distance and quality of food.’

  When both Michel and the beating, sultry heat had returned, we sat out like picnickers on the evening grass with Marley with tray, lemonade and beakers, observing the bees return to the hives after a day’s feeding. Beyond were the setting sun and the evensong of the birds. Marley and I had spent part of the afternoon creating a watering hole for the bees and then observed them alighting to drink.

  He was transfixed. It was a battle now to prevent him from pulling the lids off the hives to look inside. An impulse I have frequently fought with myself!

  ‘When will the man be back to take the lids off?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘In three weeks.’

  His face dropped. He was returning to Paris.

  Before he left, we took him to Nice and bought him illustrated books and reading material. Everything we could lay our hands on to immerse him in the worlds of what he described as ‘bees and beasties’.

  The boars (our beasties) had stolen the greater part of the apple crop and had cracked branches into the bargain, but the figs were ripening fast. Many had fallen, blotching the approach to the house with their squashed, bleeding seeds, but plenty remained from which to make jams and liqueur. The prospect for our olive harvest was looking promising and I was finally allowing myself the thrill of excitement, expectation. There was a percentage that had now been blighted but not the majority. I could not explain why we had not been plagued because the word on the olive network was that they had been out in force during summer. It seemed that we were blessed. The organic way looked as though it would pay off. I tried again to put calls through to Quashia but, on every occasion, the same message. We badly needed his industrious hands and without him we would have to seek assistance elsewhere. Together Michel and I wrote out the digits I had scribbled down and we tried every permutation, but still no luck.

  *

  It was the end of September, glorious golden days. I was in the garden collecting what remained of the apples when I heard the phone ringing and scooted into the house.

  ‘Allo?’

  ‘Quashia!’ he bawled into the receiver.

  ‘Mr Q!’

  Even before a greeting, ‘What’s happened to the olives?’

  And I was able to announce with pride and in all honesty: ‘We have a crop. They are fattening nicely. Will you be back to pick with us?’

  His brain was ticking over. The idea of missing a harvest, our harvest, his oil, too, the trees he had pruned, I felt sure was more than he could bear.

  ‘I have no teeth.’

  ‘The roof on the cottage has been replaced. No more leaks.’

  ‘You only had to fix the broken tiles. I could have done it myself. Have you sprayed the olives?’

  I could not lie to him. ‘We’ve been keeping a vigilant eye and they are free of infestation. And, Mr Q, we have bees. Sixty thousand honeybees await you.’

  His wheels were turning. ‘I’ll chase the dentist and find out how soon the dentures can be built. I’ll be in touch’, and with that he was gone. Neither a firm commitment nor a refusal. I sincerely hoped that I had hooked him.

  ‘Give him time,’ counselled Michel.

  In the meantime, we commenced our annual preparations – laying of nets, cleaning crates. I telephoned the bio mill we had chosen in Saint-Cézaire-sur-Siagne, a medieval village rich in history, perched three hundred metres above sea level and one of the oldest olive communities in this corner of France. They confirmed that they would be open.

  No more news from Q. I drove to the settlement and asked a couple of old codgers in long shirts and caps.

  ‘He’ll be back the day before yesterday,’ cackled one.

  ‘If not the day before yesterday,’ his companion chipped in, ‘it’ll be the week after next.’

  ‘If you speak to him, tell him, please, that we are waiting for him.’

  And on another occasion, from a fellow sitting on a big boulder in the lane, all gums and tortoiseshell glasses: ‘No, he’s never coming back. He’s gone to Mecca.’

  We had to wait it out and trust, put our faith in Allah, as his companions advised me.

  Towards the end of the month, our able-bodied man responded to my messages.

  ‘How are the olives?’ he yelled down the receiver. ‘And the bees?’

  ‘All is fine here, Mr Quashia. Are you coming?’

  ‘The dentist has run off with my money and I have no teeth.’

  ‘Oh. Could you harvest without teeth? I could introduce you to someone here. Remember, I mentioned a dentist—’

  There was a crackle and then silence at the other end of the line. I thought we’d been cut off, until I heard him hollering as though into a bucket. His tinny response was ‘I’ll be there next month. I’ll let you know when.’

  ‘Looking forward to it, Mr Q,’ I returned, but he had already gone. I was shouting into the watchful silence of the Algerian desert.

  A few days before our staunch assistant was due to arrive, it began to rain. During this season, this was not unwelcome news. Olive farmers are gladdened by it. It fattened up the drupes and, when it had stopped, a kind bout of late autumn sunshine to dry out the fruits and branches, to prepare the ground, was all that was required. However, when the rains did not stop, that was when the farmers began to worry.

  And so was the pattern for this late October. It began to rain, it continued to rain. It did not cease. When fruits were healthy, they withstood climatic changes, except hail. Severe wet and windy storms and they would usually survive but hail was the enemy at this time of year. Hail, on our farm, was a very rare sight and I was praying that this year would not prove the exception. A message came through from a friend to say that there were storms inland and they were travelling south. I watched from the windows blotched by raindrops. Miraculously, those storms did not come our way. They made a right turn and veered off, whining and screeching, into the higher reaches of the Var, but the rain did not follow the hail. It stayed with us. Relentlessly falling, soddening all.

  And then it stopped.

  I made a tour of the groves. The majority of the olives were hanging on to the branches, mottled and fat.

  ‘We’re getting there!’ I yelled into the damp air. Puzzled expressions from the dogs.

  Then I received the call from Marseille – ‘Quashia! I’ll be on the five o’clock train.’ I drove down to Cannes to the station to collect him. He had arrived with two of his fellow countrymen, shuffling, scruffy Berbers from the same village. He had gained weight, his paunch fattened by the cooking hands of his wife and a clutch of loving daughters and daughters-in-law. His navy jacket lay untidily open. Strutting like a pigeon, his black lambswool hat crowned his balding head. When he smiled I saw that he had a full mouth of teeth.

  He shook his head. ‘They’re giving me gip. I wish I’d kept the rotten ones. Might we give my pals here a lift, save them a taxi? They travelled over on the same flight.’ He spoke with confidence, the leader of the group.

  ‘Of course,’ I smiled, heartily embracing Q and handshaking the others. The luggage for these three men, all returning after months in Algeria, consisted of four stuffed-to-bursting plastic carriers, one carton-shaped tartan bag and two cardboard boxes tied with string. One of the carriers, torn, contained a generous swag of fresh dates. These were a gift for us, for Michel, who adores them. Usually, they are picked from Q’s backyard moments before he sets off, but on this occasion they had been purchased at Constantine airport and bore a little tag with the price still on them.

  ‘I didn’t have tim
e,’ he apologised, ‘and I didn’t want to arrive empty-handed.’ His habitual generosity had not abandoned him.

  In the car, he sat alongside me with his compatriots in the rear; shyer men, less at ease in my company, a Western woman. He was ebullient, full of high spirits at being back. He was calling over his shoulder to the others – they might have been passengers in another vehicle, he shouted so loudly – that he had a great patron, boss. ‘Who else would come to the station to meet us?’ he laughed.

  I was pleased to see him looking rested and in such a breezy frame of mind. There was no trace of his previous upsets, no mention of the long months since we had seen one another. Perhaps he had missed us as we had him?

  As we climbed, winding up the hills, the men remarked on the dark red earth, the rich colours of the foliage. All fed by rain. I admitted that we had suffered several days of storms, heavy downpours, but it had cleared now and the sun was shining, fattening the fruits, encouraging the oil within them.

  We deposited the men at their lodgings lying in the valley beyond us, and then I returned Quashia to his gate. Our cottage.

  ‘There’s fresh coffee, a new percolator, a baguette, some cheese and veggies waiting for you,’ I told him. All these save the baguette and veggies I had prepared the previous day when I had looked in on the place, opened up the windows to air it, confirming that the new roof was intact. I would never buy meat for him. Following the edicts of his faith, he ate halal, purchased down in the Arab quarter in Cannes not far from the station, but I left that to him. Once I had deposited in his fridge four delicately pink lamb chops from our butcher. He had not been pleased.

  ‘There’s no meat, of course,’ I grinned as he hauled his luggage from the car.

  ‘I’ll eat with the others in the valley.’

  ‘Want me to take you back there?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I’ll stroll down when I’m ready. I’ll see you in the morning,’ he winked. ‘We’ll get the nets out and give the grass a quick cut to prepare the ground for them. When does Michel get back?’

  ‘Friday. The nets are out, the forecast’s good.’

  The days that immediately followed were ambered with a warm autumn presence that breathed softly through the trees and rested beams of light across the trunks of the great pines up in the forest near the summit of our hill. Quashia and I worked out of doors, each of us in his own world, playing our part towards the ancient rite that lay ahead. When Friday came, I collected Michel from the airport and we settled to an evening together in front of the big open fire, recounting to one another the news of our separate weeks. When either one of us, or both, had been away on a working trip, Friday evenings took on a special meaning. Its mood of settling back into the rhythm of one another, of being at home, shedding the stresses of the city and opening one’s heart once more to the home, the farm with its silences and its familiar perfumes and sounds.

  ‘Marley wants bees and a gecko,’ he laughed. ‘Driving poor Vanessa insane about it.’

  Oak and olive logs crackling on the fire, the deep bass lick of the flames consuming the wood, owls hooting further up the hillside. We stood out on the terrace after dinner gazing at the stars, listening to the night. The dogs were sleeping. Lola, snoring softly. The sky was partially covered and Michel observed that we would probably be seeing a little more rain. ‘Over there,’ he said. ‘See those navy clouds banking up, gathering strength.’

  We did not need rain now. Sunshine was what was required for the harvest. I had booked the first mill appointment for the following Wednesday. A few days of solid labour lay ahead for the three of us. We needed all the good weather we could get.

  Saturday stayed fine. While Quashia took the morning off to go to his Arab market and stock up on provisions for the week ahead, I took yet another stroll, this time in the company of Michel, up and along every one of the olive terraces, both the new groves and the old. We logged the condition of the fruits and, in both our opinions, they were robust, ready. Some showed signs of fly infiltration, a few more than last time I had looked, but more than 50 per cent were turning nicely. They were ripening a little early, but that had been the norm for the past three years so we were not alarmed by their rich, blackening skins.

  This would not be our heaviest load, but it would be an organic harvest.

  ‘Remember,’ said Michel, ‘it’s not bumper crops we are after, but quality food.’

  Sunday, it began. Sombrous weather, louring clouds. In the quiet of late afternoon as darkness was falling on these shorter, smoky days when fires are burning in hearths all along the hills inland of the coast. Mid-November. The sky was as black as spilled ink. Five weeks prior to the solstice, before the sun was spinning to its winter standstill. I was boiling the kettle for tea. Michel was in my den tapping at his computer. I lifted my head, paused, heard a clap, a distant, sonorous warning. Moments later, an illumination lit up the sky beyond the back of the house. Thunder somewhere far removed in the mountains. I continued with the tea-making. Cups on saucers and on to the tray. Steaming water splashing into preheated pot. I carried the tray through to the grand salon and placed it on the low wooden table by the fire and picked up the book I had been reading.

  ‘Tea’s ready,’ I called through to Michel who I noticed then for the first time had abandoned my desk, had unlocked one of the sets of French doors and was on the upper terrace that looks over the sea. Like a retriever picking up the scent on a shiver of wind, Michel was alerted.

  ‘Rain’s coming.’ He stepped back inside and turned the lock in the door. ‘It’s promising quite a storm.’

  I sighed. ‘Just what we don’t need. I hope it gets it over with tonight and the sun dries it off again tomorrow.’

  But the rain had other plans and our olives were not a consideration. It reached our skies shortly before dinner. Commencing slowly, big drops that thwacked against the windowpanes, as though they had heard my dismissal of their arrival, my shoving the storm onwards too quickly. It was proving its force. ‘There is no sending me away because it does not suit you’, it seemed to be telling me. And then it swirled and danced. Rising up with a wind, skittering whorls of fallen leaves into the still, deep pool. And this was just the beginning. Thunder came, growling loud and angrily. A voice without reason.

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ I murmured as I served potatoes. ‘Where are the dogs?’ They were not in the house.

  ‘They were in the hangar, sleeping by the wood stock last time I was up there fetching logs.’

  Since they had lost their stables to the Portuguese conversion, the two dogs had not entirely settled, sleeping here and there, rarely in the same place twice though I had made concerted efforts to rehouse them. ‘I’d better go and look for them.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Michel. He crossed through the sitting room and unlocked the front door and the weather-stranger flew in, gusting, causing everything to quake and rattle. A wet tempestuous wind such as we rarely encountered here.

  I was shocked, let fall the serving spoon and hurried after Michel. Out on the terrace, I stared seawards. It was sullen, dark, roaring, while the old olive trees, silhouettes this side of the sea, seemed vast, troubled, grieving phantoms.

  I hope this lets up so that we can get to work, I muttered.

  *

  All day Monday it rained, gnashing its teeth and beating hard against our flat roof. Quashia did not come up to work. There was nothing to be done. I ran through the floods to feed the dogs, to find them and comfort them, to bring them in with us and let them bask and burn, dry their damp, smelly coats. There was nothing for us to do but wait, to stare out beyond the windows and be patient. Nature was the mistress here, brandishing its force.

  Eventually it ceased, the rain. The sky lit up and the afternoon opened like a flower. It was magnificent. Tuesday. We had lost time and the mill rendezvous had been booked for the next morning. It was an impossible challenge, but we would not be the only farmers who had lost out. I strolled in the late-year
sun down towards the lower groves, stretching my limbs, taking stock of the trees, silvered and energised by the rain but lacking their fruits. I looked at the circles around their roots expecting to find puddles of oily olives but there were few. A fleck here and there, nothing more.

  I called to Michel, who came out on the upper terrace.

  ‘Is Quashia with you?’ he shouted.

  ‘No.’ I was descending the slope of land.

  There they were, drifting in swarms, like dead locusts, blotching the property’s perimeter. Hundreds of kilos of olives. I raised my head and stared up into the still sopping branches, rich with leaves but devoid of fruit. I called to Michel who was on his way down. Together we walked the terraces from the bottom of the estate to the very top, zigzagging, up and about. The paths, the grasses, the stairways were deep with fallen, ripening fruits. Every tree told the same story.

  ‘We’d better gather what we can now and hope there are sufficient undamaged to make at least one single-estate pressing.’

  A pressing of our own, a ‘single-estate’, required, these days, a minimum of one hundred and eighty kilos of good-quality fruit.

  Michel was right. We had to try and salvage what we could. But where was Quashia?

  ‘Perhaps he’s sleeping and hasn’t realised the rain has stopped. I’ll get him.’

  I knocked on the cottage door several times and received only silence as a response. It was puzzling. I telephoned Quashia’s mobile from my own but it was switched off. After another try, a final loud rap, I pulled out my key and opened up. One foot inside, I felt the cold as my shoe sank into water. This was not simply a leak. The floor was a lake of fallen rain and floating upon it was the debris of a building and a life: papers, bits and pieces from the kitchen, furnishings, all were bobbing about on its grimy surface. The new roof had given way under the torrent.