Michel pays a visit to la mairie, the local town hall, requesting plans of Appassionata’s water system. But it is August, and there is nobody to search through the files. Everyone is en vacances, and even if they were not, he learns, it is unlikely that the information has been registered. The house is too old, the land has been divided, it is a private residence. Water systems, septic tanks, do not have to be listed. We must continue our search unaided. In desperation, he stops at a local phone booth and puts in a call to Brussels, to Madame B.
“I’ve found a bassin at the top of the hill, but the pipes that lead to it disappear into the undergrowth and I can’t trace or get at them. Where is the water coming from to feed that basin?”
Madame has no idea. The property was bought as a gift for one of her two daughters who loved horses, but the inclines and terraces made it impossible for her to breed there. She never lived on the property.
“Hélas, I cannot remember, Monsieur, it was almost fifteen years ago.”
“And the woman who rented it from you, who bred dogs?”
“I have no idea where she is. She left owing us thousands, including the water bills.”
“Ah, so you do have water bills?”
“Mais, bien sûr! At least I think so. She never paid whatever bills were outstanding. Of that I am very certain.”
“It’s just that… you’d mentioned a well?”
“Ah, la source! Yes, yes, I think there is a well. Perhaps my daughter has kept everything, but she is away until mid-September. We will try to supply all these details when the sale goes through. Pierre and I are off on holiday tomorrow, so bonne chance.”
IT IS EARLY EVENING. The sun is glinting through the olive trees and laying shadows across the weedy terraces. We are sitting alone in an expansive dust patch—once a lawn—alongside the top terrace, in two supermarket deck chairs, sharing a bottle of local vin de Provence rosé. Our conversation is about water, of course, and I am discovering how Michel hates to be defeated.
“If squatters lived here and grew vegetables, there has to be a water main. They wouldn’t have known about the well. I am going to Lyonnaise des eaux, the local water board, in the morning, and pray to God they haven’t also shut down for the month of August.”
“They might have done what we are doing,” I suggest, pouring us both another glass of wine.
“What’s that?”
“Taken advantage of French hospitality. Collected their daily water supply from the village.”
While he considers this possibility, I tell him that I have driven the girls back to the hotel and that I have promised we would take them into Cannes later for a pizza. Money shortage or not, they are ready for an evening out. I sense they are growing bored and impatient with our lack of facilities and the slim choice of meals we and our temporary cooking arrangements can provide—a couple of old saucepans from London, a two-hundred-franc barbecue, a plastic salad dish, servers, knives and forks bought locally along with paper plates and some form of camping thing belonging to Michel which looks like a Bunsen burner but succeeds in boiling water for potatoes and coffee.
“The girls are fine. It’s you who wants to get out,” he teases. It is about now that I am recognizing a fundamental difference between us. If I, in my old life, my real life, am faced with something that does not work, I leave it, move on, buy another. “No kitchen, fine, let’s eat out” is my idea of the perfect solution. Michel, on the other hand, has patience and an ability to knock up something practical out of what looks to me like nothing more than a useless piece of wire or wood. I concede, “Perhaps you are right,” and he hoots with laughter when I confess sheepishly that this is the closest I have ever come to camping.
“Still, you’re right. The girls will be happier once I get that pool filled.”
He continues to reassure them that once we have discovered the water source and how to pump it to our water basin, a circular cement tank at the very summit of the hill, and ensured its freefall passage back downhill to the house unimpeded by clogged pipes, the very first thing we will do is fill the swimming pool. I turn my head and look back across two terraces to its empty, bleached-out blueness and fantasize about cool, crystalline swimming water. Yes, the days will be more languid then.
“What about the neighbors?” I ask him. “Have you talked to them?”
“Everyone is away. Or at the beach.”
The beach! We haven’t visited the beach yet. “Hang the water problem. Let’s go to the beach tomorrow!”
“Too many tourists,” Michel says, as though we had lived on this hill for a hundred years.
WE RISE EARLY. I am delighted to have found a man who loves the early mornings as much as I do. Our days begin when the sun peeps through the towering pines and shines down upon us and our dreadful mattress on the floor to light our bronzed faces.
“I’m off to the sea,” I whisper sleepily, throwing on old clothes. I drive to the coast, falling into combat on the way with great orange dust carts and the first of the day’s horn addicts. Down in the town, the air is rich with traffic fumes and freshly baked bread. A solitary hour spent swimming followed by a fresh cold-water shower on the beach and I am perky and raring to go. Back at the house I grab a coffee before we drive over to collect the girls from the hotel. This is so much better. I can no longer face beginning each day with the patron’s glower. Michel laughs and tells me I am too sensitive. But judging by the look on the patron’s face every time we mount the stairs to the girls’ room, I feel sure his nights are spent plotting our deaths.
Over breakfast, I relate the delights of the beach at seven A.M., eulogizing about the tranquility, the lack of tourists who are all still slumbering, not a footprint written on the golden sand and the sunrise. Ah, the sunrise! It lifts in majestic silence from a secret heaven beyond the hills, bringing warmth and a honey-ripe light which spreads across the water to meet the horizon, coloring the limpid Med a shimmering gold. At the center of this miracle is me, rippling through the salty stillness.
Having shared my moments of bliss, Vanessa expresses a fervent desire to come with me. Tomorrow, she begs, s’il te plaît, Carol, chère Carol?
I don’t answer. She and her sister would sleep till noon if we left them to it.
S’il te plaît, Carol. She is so solicitous, requesting with pouting and passion. How can I possibly refuse? It is agreed.
After breakfast, back at the villa, the view is a heat haze. It gives an opium-smoked softness to the contours of the surrounding hills. Michel sets off on a visit to the water board while Vanessa and I clear the last of the ivy still clinging like death to the pool’s walls and base. When this backbreaking chore has finally been accomplished, we stand back to admire the results of our labors.
“It’s so cracked and old,” she pronounces.
“It needs water,” I encourage, but it does look strangely desolate.
In blistering heat, we hike the mountains of dead vegetation across the terraces and pile it all up as a bonfire, ready for burning at some later stage in the year. We dare not put a match to it for many months to come. In the south of France, it is against the law to light fires during the summer months. There is a high risk of bush incidents here. With our wild acres of growth and acute lack of water, in this temperature, we risk igniting the entire coastline and turning it to charcoal.
I look about for Clarisse. She is nowhere to be seen.
Baguettes for lunch under arm, Michel returns from the town looking fried and frazzled. It was noisy, dusty, packed with tourists and cars, he says, and he encountered a deeply unhelpful female fonctionnaire who informed him that they are unable to disclose the whereabouts of our water source without a legal document showing proof of purchase of the property or a recent bill, neither of which we have. Nor would the water board be willing to trace any location details without the name of the last account holder. The most likely person is the dog lady who ran off without paying any bills. He offered Madame B.’s name, but t
he assistant merely shook her head and then, with furrowed brow, informed him that the board had received a letter some eighteen months earlier from Madame B., requesting the water be cut off.
“Why would she have done that?” I ask.
“In France, if the electricity and water are officially switched off, the proprietors are not responsible for paying the land and habitation taxes,” Michel says.
“So now what?”
“I am going back tomorrow with our passports and our promesse de vente. It is signed by Monsieur and Madame B. With those to hand I’ll insist that they revert the instruction.”
“Coo-coo, Papa!”
“Ah, you finished the pool. Well done.” And with that Michel hurries inside for his camera to takes photos of Vanessa, waving and calling, alongside Pamela. They are investigating the deserted pool. At its deepest point, it measures three meters and makes even fat Pamela seem minute. I ponder the rushing gallons of water it will require, as well as Michel’s tenacity through all of this.
AS EACH DAY PASSES, the land around the house grows more like a dustbowl. When the wind is up, it settles everywhere—in our clothes, on kitchenware, on our skin, as grit around our teeth. Whatever we attempt, it is hot, dusty work, but the girls remain cheerful most of the time, and in their different ways, they offer their assistance with the task we have taken on. Although they are twins—fraternal—I am enjoying the discovery of their separate natures. Clarisse, possibly the less practical of the pair, spends hours picking wildflowers—her tiny frame is lost among the jungle growth—which she delivers in discarded wine bottles or jam jars to our rigged-up dining table, a wooden plank supported by bricks, broken tiles and other debris dug out of the garden. Vanessa, on the other hand, takes pleasure in the discovery of language and information. She has now owned up to a knowledge of English but adamantly refuses to speak a syllable of it with me. Why, I inquire, but she merely shakes her head and goes away. Is it some deep-rooted resistance to me, I ask myself, or is it that we are in her country and so, in her exacting mind, must speak her language?
Returning from the boulangerie, she and I drive by a house named Mas de Soleil. Back at the villa, she comes searching for me to borrow my dictionary to look up the meaning of mas. I wonder that she is French and hasn’t come across the noun before, but then we learn that it is particular to this region, meaning a farmhouse or traditional Provençal house. She suggests we might like to rechristen our villa Mas des Oliviers.
“Do you like this house?” I probe, but she merely stares at me, shrugs and goes off about her own affairs. I’d like to detain her, engage her in conversation, ask her about her life in Paris, but only when we are at work together do I feel a bond. Still, whatever their opinions on the purchase of our dilapidated property—and perhaps they have none; after all, they are only thirteen—they appear neutral. I love them for not judging their father’s choices. I have no children of my own; I have never married before. This will be my first go at it, and I suppose I am as nervous and inept as anyone in my position. I wrongfoot on a daily basis, but so far, nothing that cannot be redeemed. We are living in combustible conditions in broiling heat, but we make allowances for that, and for one another. In spite of the frustrations, I believe we are a happy band.
WHILE MICHEL BATTLES on with the water crisis, Vanessa, Clarisse and I attack the grounds, cutting them back to take stock of what is there. It is a time of discoveries: empty bottles, slabs of thick ancient floor tiles painted Tuscan earth colors. Were they transported here by the original owner of the house, whose name, I have learned from the reams of history documented in our promesse de vente, was Signor Spinotti? Signor Spinotti, a merchant from Milan, the creator of Appassionata. Yes, I like the sound of it and close my eyes to picture him: portly, exuberant, generous.
And Clarisse has unearthed a pond. “Carol! Papa! Come and look!” Who would have thought it? In this arid paradise, a kidney-shaped pond is revealed, about two meters long. It has survived, buried beneath jungles of streaky iris and wild lilies and heaven knows what other thick-stemmed weeds and, astoundingly, has not dried up, but the water is so dank and muddy that we cannot tell how deep it goes.
“Could it be fed from our elusive well?”
Michel kneels and considers its silty blackness. “It’s very still; I doubt it, but who can know?” He rises, reminded of our lack of water, and turns around in the hot cloudless day, trying to figure out the puzzle.
I stare at the murky bath, longing to trickle my fingers through, to feel its liquidy velvet sensation and watch the drops dribble and drip back into the pond, but I am hesitant. I don’t know what might lurk beneath its surface. Something sinister might rise up and bite me.
“Oh my God, look!” The water shivers and stills again.
Michel bends to survey what I am staring at but can see nothing. Neither can I.
“Something moved. I definitely saw it. I think it was a fish.”
He laughs. “A frog, perhaps, but not a fish, chérie. The house has been empty for years.”
“Well, when we have water, I’ll clean it up, and then we really can have fish.”
“Mmm. When we have water…” He glances at his watch. “I must get going.”
HE TRACKS DOWN Monsieur Charpy, the estate agent, and persuades him to write an accompanying letter of attestation which, along with photocopies of our passports and a copy of the promesse de vente, the water board agrees to accept as proof that we are entitled to receive water. Late in the afternoon, Michel motors up the driveway honking, triumphant with his news. He rushes to the garage, and we switch on the main tap one more time, but there is still no water.
We exchange a silent, rather desperate look. Is this why Madame B. accepted such a drastic reduction in the price? Have we bought a farm without a water supply? The pig in a poke my father had warned me against.
“What now?” I ask.
“The EDF are coming to switch on the electricity tomorrow. The water supply shouldn’t be affected, but maybe it is. Let’s wait till then, chérie. If there’s still no water, then… well, we’ll see.”
THE QUIETUDE OF MY morning swims on the beach alongside the Palm Beach Casino have been supplanted by the hectic itinerary of a family outing à la Monsieur Hulot. Even Pamela accompanies us now. Gone are the languorous laps that acted as my physical meditation, necessary to face the hurdles of house renovation on a shoestring. They have been replaced by a car trunk full of soggy towels, wet bathing suits and leaking shampoo bottles. Not to mention Pamela, who carries another twenty kilos of sand in her damp fur. Now, instead of swimming and quitting the beach in rejuvenated isolation, returning to the house to collect Michel by eight, by the time the troops are out of bed and rallied and we are on our way down the Boulevard Carnot, it is rush hour and I am grumpy.
“I don’t want to do this anymore!” I scream. “These were my morning swims!” The erstwhile lunatic energy in the car recedes into awkward silence. Our outing is funereal in mood, and neither of the girls answers when I speak to them. Both have retreated into a serious sulk.
Later, over a cup of reheated coffee, because we have run out of water and didn’t have time to refill one of the plastic canisters since an electrician and a representative from the EDF are arriving at ten-thirty, Michel chides me. Lovingly, he tells me that I am not behaving like a member of a family. “You are not used to it, chérie. The girls understand.” And he brushes my nose with a kiss. But obviously they don’t. They judge me demented, and I am ready to hurl myself in the bracken or the black viscose pond.
While I am elsewhere, feeling inadequate, the electricity is connected. A painless affair, certainly compared to the escalating water saga. In the presence of Mr. Dolfo, the electrician, Michel gives our water tap another try, but the pipes do not respond. Not one throaty gurgle.
“I don’t suppose you know anything about this?” he asks Dolfo, who shakes his head and shrugs.
Still, to keep our spirits up, we celebrate
our first step toward modern living by dashing out to the largest supermarket I have ever visited and purchasing a modest little fridge.
On our way back, Clarisse points out a series of brightly colored posters pasted to the lampposts all around the village. They are advertising a fireworks display to be held on the beach at Cannes. She pleads with Michel to take the girls down to the coast for the evening. He attempts to dissuade her, warning of the thousands who will be there, assuring her that we will see much more from our own terraces, but she, and now Vanessa, are insistent. So, along with Pamela, whom we dare not leave in case she has a heart attack from fright or waddles away in terror never to find her way back, we join the lines of descending traffic and head for the beach, which is teeming with holidaymakers. Every parking lot and garage is bursting; there is nowhere closer to Cannes than our own home to leave my VW.
By this stage, I am more than ready to dump the car and walk away, but Michel suggests we drive on a mile or two out of town and find ourselves a deserted stretch of sand to watch the display. This is what we do. Car parked, I wander over to a small stone jetty and sit. The girls are engaged in a rather earnest converstion with Papa, so I remain at a discreet distance, regarding the sea. In any case, I cannot follow what is being discussed, and since my earlier outburst, I have been feeling rather like an exposed nerve. Before me the waves are glinting silver in the moonlight. The water lapping at my feet is tranquil and soothing, but does not reach the confusions churning about inside me. Way along the coast, the pyrotechnics have begun. Great globes of blue, white and red—the colors of the French flag—explode into sprays that fall away silently. I am a foreigner here, an outsider. I travel frequently and regularly have found myself alone in the most outlandish of situations, but this time there is another nuance. I have given every penny I possess, which, granted, is not a whole heap, and thrown in my lot with a man I barely know; steamed off into the rosy sunset without a clue about where I was heading. Now we have an olive farm which we cannot begin to afford, no water, no prospects for any, two girls who are tolerating me…
Olive Farm Page 4