We haven’t a centime left to plow into the leaking roof, or the kitchen or the replastering, not any of the rest of the projets that await us. On top of which, the house still has to be purchased—I wake nightly, soaked in perspiration, haunted by Madame B.’s proviso: if anything should go wrong, you lose everything. We have certainly invested more than we had bargained for at this stage. However, our first major hurdle—the water—has finally been resolved, so in the company of the girls, Michel and I decide to ignore the rest and take it easy. We allow ourselves to be en vacances.
We sleep with the French doors open, ready to greet the next dawn. Our room looks out onto a scruffy rear terrace, partially shaded by two fragrant eucalyptus trees and a Portuguese oak, an evergreen whose silvery-hued leaves rather resemble those of the olive tree. This terrace is where we spend time alone. We breakfast here while the girls sleep late: toast, fresh fruit, coffee. Although it is the only terrace that doesn’t look out over the Mediterranean, I love it; tucked away at the back of the house, it feels like ours. The rising sun filtering through the treetops embraces us, promising another warm day.
While I put the coffee on, Michel drives down the hill, a kilometer or so, to the village baker who has been up baking since three A.M. There he purchases fresh warm baguettes and pain au chocolat so light they practically melt at the touch and, usually, a sablé, a large round biscuit flavoured with almonds, which, in spite of my perennial weight-watching, I devour with a greed that would put Pamela to shame.
By now, my morning trips to the beach have been abandoned. Instead, I head for the pool, entering by the steps because there is still insufficient water to dive in. The level in the shallow end has now reached my thighs. I tumble in and doggy-paddle to the deeper end, where I can swim a decent width or two. I try not to splash noisily, so as not to wake the girls, who sleep till noon, then throw open their shutters to blinding, hot light.
After the frenzy of the past two weeks, a more languorous pace is taking hold, and we give ourselves up to it readily. I am beginning work on a novel, my first—having already completed its storyline and treatment—which Michel has found the financing to produce as a television series in Australia at the end of the year. Michel is never without his camera now. Photography is his passion. There are the obvious “before and after” house snapshots for future albums, but mostly he shoots plants, usually flowers. He spends hours gazing through a lens into the stamen of this yellow flower, that wild rose. It is quite staggering how many varieties of flowers have survived among the brambled chaos of this garden and manage somehow or other to find the light, to hold their heads up toward the sun and blossom richly.
I begin to notice the similarities between Clarisse and Michel as I watch them discussing the intricacies of a bud, the feather-thin line drawings on a leaf, the shape of a frond, even a blade of grass. Together, they disappear down unseen tracks for hours on end in their search for ever more layers of nature. They are true children of the earth. In our different ways, we all are. All four of us are Taureans!
In the quietness of a heat-infested afternoon, while they explore and Vanessa, munching one crispy apple after another, sunbathes or studies or washes her long hair and myriad bees busy themselves collecting honey, I decide to take an inventory. For starters, I count fifty-four olive trees growing along the front terraces and to either side of the house. There may be others farther up the hill, but at this stage, it is impossible to reach them. I try to recall tales and myths I have read or heard about the olive tree. Surely the most ancient of all trees? The Greeks brought it to Provence, I believe, two or more thousand years ago while trading in the Mediterranean.
I intend to farm ours. The olive is a bitter fruit and cannot be eaten directly from the tree. The four ways I know to serve it are pressed for oil; bottled or marinated in salted water to be offered with aperitifs or tossed in with salad; cooked; or as a paste known as tapénade, created by a Monsieur Meynier in Marseilles toward the end of the nineteenth century. It is made by pulping the fruit and mixing it with anchovies (best fresh, particularly those from the Camargue) and capers. It can be spread on warm toast and served with crisply chilled wine, and is delicious. The name comes from tapéno, which is the Provençal word for capers.
But perhaps these ancient trees have other offerings that I have yet to discover. Since being here, I have learned that the timber burns on an open fire better than almost any other wood, and we will find ourselves with plenty of spare timber; every tree needs pruning. They are far too bushy and tall. A perfectly pruned olive tree is one through which a swallow can fly without its wings brushing the branches.
Slowly, I am gleaning such snippets of information. As I stroll the land, making a list, I promise myself that the next time I am in Cannes, I will find a manual on olive farming. No matter how much I study, we will need to find a hands-on person who can perform this highly specialized task; down here, it is a much respected occupation. I have no idea how to go about this, but I feel confident that, in the fullness of time, the right individual for the job will come along.
We have four almond trees, the largest of which is at swimming-pool level to the right of the house, beyond the frostbitten orange grove. It leans forward at a rather precarious angle and will need cutting back and shoring up before a mistral rips it from the ground, taking roots and a drystone wall with it. I should hate to lose it. Its position is perfect for its powderpink blossoms to be in full view from all sea-facing terraces. Almonds flower earlier than most fruit trees, so I expect that we will see the first of the blossoms sometime in February, and later, the nuts, removed from green shells that resemble soft furry caterpillars, can be roasted on our open fire.
Our tiny orange grove is a sorry spectacle. All six trees are dead. Before we close up the house, I will cut them down.
Over to the left, facing the sea, I can make out two cherry trees in need of pruning. They will probably be fruiting around the time of the Cannes Film Festival—we could munch them instead of popcorn during the screenings!
On the opposite side, there is a tall bay tree which, due to the growth, I cannot get near, but I can almost taste the many soups and roasts to come, all seasoned with rosemary, olive oil from our own pressed crop and freshly picked bay leaves.
So far I have counted eight fig trees, one of which must be the largest fruit tree I have ever set eyes on. It reminds me of a prehistoric beast, its trunk thick and gnarled. It shades a segment of our steep driveway and hides a very ugly EDF (Électricité de France) cement pylon which, as soon as funds allow, we will do away with by cabling the electricity underground from lane to house.
Several of the fig’s branches reach across the drive and hang down over the pool: temptation itself. I imagine relaxing in between laps, stretching for a ripe fruit and devouring it while idling in the water. In the past, I have never been particularly fond of fresh figs, and I wonder if living with them will reeducate my tastes. Gorging on freshly picked figs strikes me as hedonistic. It conjures up images of Roman baths with slaves serving bowls laden with overripe fruit. Even without such a picture, it is a sexual fruit—luscious, rich in seeds with a sticky juice. As I stand in the driveway with my head tilted upward and my fingers pressed against my Panama hat, gazing into its green vastness, it occurs to me that the fig tree has no flowers. I wonder why. And how it pollinates. So much syrupy fodder and the poor bees have no reason to visit.
I TOOK OFF MY WATCH a fortnight ago and have not worn it since. The sun has become my timekeeper. It rises behind us and greets us in the bedroom, breakfasting with us. From there it passes around the cherry-tree side of the house and then, noon-high in the sky, makes its arc around the front, over the glinting sea, until it hovers in the west, where it sinks slowly and graciously behind the hills and leaves a sky of bleeding colors.
Now it is high above the Fréjus promontory. Four o’clock. Time for tea.
I begin a slow meander back up toward the house to face the dratted water heater in our primitive kitchen, still cogitating on my list and wondering where everyone else has gone.
Apples, mandarins, lemons; cut down the dead orange trunks and plant new trees, pears… No, there is a pear. I caught sight of it on the level below the pool, next to where we are constructing the pool-cleaning system. A smattering of fruits on it, all misshapen and worm-eaten. It needs treating. I have always fancied an orchard. My parents bought a home with an orchard when I was small, but we never lived in it. Visits there were the few occasions I ever saw my father pottering in the garden. And what about a modest vineyard? Where did Spinotti order his vines to be planted?
So many dreams. But the stuff of dreams are the food of life, and I marvel at what we have achieved this summer on a shoestring and a bit of graft.
Appassionata is slowly, very slowly, coming back to life. After neglect, the house is waking up. Its essence is reemerging. Shapes, colors, aspects of light are speaking to us.
Michel and I met on a film in Australia, a mass of land we both love profoundly. Its colors, its light, its vast expanses speak to us. Had our lives not been so locked into our careers here in Europe, this house might have been another somewhere on the Australian continent.
It is widely known that the Australian aboriginals go walkabout, but what I did not know until I crossed the world to work there was that one of the purposes of their walkabouts is to sing nature back into existence. I find that such an enchanting image. To walk a land every so often and sing the mountains, the rivers, streams, caves, animals, insects, nature in all its diverse magnificence, back into existence. I equate that image with what we are attempting to achieve here. Appassionata has been abandoned. It—sorry, but I see the house as she, perhaps because the French word, maison, is feminine—she, Appassionata, was rented out for many years. Bills were unpaid, the fabric of the building has been left to ruin, its fruits have dropped from the trees and lie rotting. The plants, every bush and shrub, are being strangled. The house has lost its voice. Or rather, its voice has gone unheard.
In my understanding of the aboriginal walkabout—and I am not saying that this is the meaning of the image, it is merely my interpretation of it—nature and its every mountain, hill, waterfall, ant nest and pathway have a voice. To stand at any moment in front of the miracle of any particle of nature and to listen, truly listen, is to hear its song. To hear its song is to allow it to sing. That is how I understand “singing a place back into existence.”
Michel and I are rediscovering Appassionata. We are attempting to sing this small holding in the south of France back into blooming existence. We will try to listen to what it has to offer and to celebrate its uniqueness. Of course, all this is subjective, and anyone eavesdropping on my train of thought might very well accuse me of being loco, suffering from a touch of the midday sun.
THE OTHERS ARE nowhere to be found. I abandon the idea of tea, which I am not fond of anyway, and hike a gaudily striped deck chair to the top terrace. There I settle in to gaze upon the sea. It is a very pleasing sensation to spend hour after hour sitting still, simply watching the plays of light on sea and sky. I have not done it for a very long time. Too long. Time passes and I unwind, looking and listening. Even in its silence, it is furiously busy. Ants, lizards, ghekkos, cicadas, they are all going about their day, searching for food, fending off the enemy, screeching their mating calls, thriving on or surviving the heat. They are not on holiday.
But then neither am I, I suddenly remember. In the short term, for a few weeks with Michel and his daughters, but not the long term. I am moving the rudder, shifting the course of my existence. I had not thought of it in those terms before, but that is what I am doing. And there is nothing more sacred or precious in life than that. Choosing a direction, but how often do we miss the signposts?
“What have you been up to all afternoon?”
“Oh, hi there! Counting trees.”
Clarisse and Michel are returning. They are dusty and shiny from walking. Clarisse shows me a tiny crayon drawing she has done during the course of the afternoon. It is very impressive, and I tell her so. She beams contentedly. “C’est la lumière,” she replies modestly, and Michel ruffles her tousled hair.
Yes, there is a quality about the light here—it has seduced so many great painters. It enhances all photos and frames of footage each moment of the day. As I live with it on a daily basis, its subtleties begin to draw me in. On certain days, its purity is blinding; then its colors alter as clouds, winds, hours of heat seep in. Here, light is a living experience. I have known it thus only once before, in Australia. As with Michel and the reproducing of his flowers on film, its contemplation becomes a spiritual experience.
THE CONTEMPLATION OF Pamela, however, is another matter altogether. I watch her with dismay as she heaves herself from one shady spot to the next, continuously hunting out respite from the broiling sun. She has lived all her life on the outskirts of Paris, and I fear that this relentless Riviera heat is going to kill her. “Her heart will give out,” I predict. The others tease me and my sense of the dramatic, but I pay no attention to them and announce one morning at breakfast that I am putting the corpulent creature on a strict diet.
“Carol, why must you be so strict? Drink your coffee and leave la pauvre Pamela in peace!” chides Vanessa.
“Is it a foolish interference?” I ask Michel, who is not listening. He is kneeling on the ground, like a mutt himself, staring concentratedly at a wall.
“You will live to regret it,” Clarisse warns me.
“Come and look at these little chaps!”
A procession of brown furry caterpillars linked to one another causes us all great delight. United, the length of them measures more than a meter.
“They look as though they are bound for somewhere.”
They are certainly moving with purpose and visible speed. Are they being led to a conducive hideaway where in tranquility and privacy they can transform themselves into butterflies? All four of us are completely taken with observing them, mesmerized by their single-mindedness. A family of four on all fours, staring at a wall. Must be a curious sight.
Since breakfast on our hidden terrace, which is where Michel first spotted them descending one of the dry stone walls, making their way across the terrace and into the house, they have preoccupied us. They have exited the house now, having crossed the main living room—leaving a clean trail in the dust of untouched rooms—traveled the length of the top terrace down one of the pillars, and are now tramping, at swimming pool level, toward the uncut bracken. Intrepid travelers! Will they get lost in the thicket? Or will they see it for the wilderness that it is, turn around and return to us? The distance they have traveled since this morning—it is now siesta time, baking hot, and I am alone because the others have disappeared to nap—is considerable. They put me in mind of a small train puffing away, heading for the great unknown. A tractor crossing Russia en route for Siberia. I see they have reached the uncut terrain and, without a moment’s hesitation, have disappeared into it. Bonne chance!
I am very taken with the butterflies here. They are numerous and of many different colors and species. In a few weeks’ time, I will look closely into the eye of each circling butterfly and inquire of it: were you one of the visiting caterpillars who left an autograph in our dust?
I HAVE WOUND DOWN to a pace that is almost slow motion. I am watching time elapse. It is a delicious exercise which allows me to focus on details that in my ordinary life, my real life, I would not give seconds to.
The bucket that was used to flush the toilets when we had no water is now in the upstairs kitchen. Well, barely a kitchen; it comprises an aluminum sink which is part of a unit containing probably the first dishwasher ever built (now nonfunctional), an electric kettle which must predate the LEB, and a musty, woodworm-riddled cupboard. I have positioned the bucket beneath those three dratted holes which stare at me every time I go in there, the three Cyclops who made thunderbolts. We have been forced to accept that, for this summer at least, this is the most effective solution for the leaking roof. Fortunately, since that monumental downpour, not one drop of rain has fallen. Still, it is amazing to me how much time I can fritter away beneath three minuscule holes, watching them with a malevolent gaze.
Wandering through the dilapidated rooms, basking in the cool generated by the meter-deep stone walls which comprise the husk of the house, I step out onto the upper front terrace and am hit by a blanket of heat and sunshine. I subside into a chair and listen. There are small birds here that flit in and out of the bushes. Occasionally, when they start to sing, I charge indoors, mistakenly thinking the phone is ringing—it’s my agent!—and then remind myself we have no phone.
There is so much I should be doing: attacking my novel, washing down walls, scraping encrusted dirt out of wooden window frames, worrying about Madame B. and whether this deal will ever go through or whether I—we—are living a summer’s fantasy leading us right into the mouth of financial disaster. Instead I do nothing except sit, listen and contemplate.
Evening comes and I rise to feed Pamela her food. The bowl is kept alongside the garage near the stone-walled stables, well away from our kitchen or food supplies. She woofs down the offering in two gulps, then glowers at me. I have underestimated the force of Pamela’s attachment to food—it is her raison d’être—but I hearten myself with the fact that she is looking slimmer. Until yesterday evening, she has spent every day lying slumped and panting in the shade as though gasping her last. When Michel descended the drive to put the dustbins out, she actually trudged along after him. Thank heavens, she is growing active.
OUR HOUSE IS NAMED Appassionata, yet there are no passion flowers anywhere to be found. None that we have unearthed, that is. Perhaps we will discover a plant or two languishing beneath all the unruly growth. I drive to a local nursery to purchase one, as well as a twenty-kilo sack of terreau universel. My eye is tempted by a small pomegranate tree, meters of curly tumbling geraniums and dozens of richly colored roses, not to mention bananas and lemons and palms. Oh, the list is endless, but I must exercise restraint. I love nurseries, les pépinières—which coincidentally is the same noun used to describe a school for young actors—I love the lushness and the damp tropical scents, the splash of sharply colored, exotic blossoms, the regulated coolness. I love, now more than ever, that steady drizzle of hoses discreetly orchestrating the silent, lusty growth. I happily pass the hours I should be spending hacking back the sinuous streams of weeds playing truant at the nursery.
On my way home, I stop in the village to pick up fresh salad. I park, cross the street alongside the square, where half a dozen old men wearing hats and shades and looking like rejects from the mafia are playing boules, and make for the crémerie fromagerie. Here I buy two crottins of goat cheese, two spit-roasted organic chickens seasoned with herbs and creamy toasted garlic cloves for our supper on the terrace.
As I am leaving, a farmer arrives. He has aroused my curiosity on several previous occasions, because, in the rear of his Citroen van, which looks as though it is held together by elastic bands, is a motley collection of farmyard animals. The animals honk and screech, but even though he leaves the van’s rear door swinging open, they never attempt an escape. I hang back to observe him. Always the same routine. He unloads three wooden boxes of small plastic pots brimming with golden olive oil, seasoned with Provençal herbs. Swimming in the center of each pot are generous nuggets of goat cheese. Then come the hams, usually ten, substantial cuts, wrapped in light muslin cloth. Each is carefully weighed as it passes over the counter. The bearded, keen-eyed owner of this modern-day dairy and this farmer do their business in front of waiting customers, including whoever was in the process of being served. Thick wads of cash pass from the till into the pocket of the farmer, and off he goes with his jaunty gait, Wellingtons slapping against the pavement even in this heat. He resembles a living scarecrow.
Why does he travel with his animals? I saw him the first time, with two white goats, four ducks, chickens and honking geese, all wedged tightly together, the fowl shuffling in and around goat legs. I assumed they were on their way to be slaughtered or sold, but obviously not. They are his road companions and seem perfectly content to travel with him squashed up against one another. If the pigs have not become hams, would he be traveling with them? The owner of the crémerie is his regular customer, so there must be more pigs back at home, or how would he continue to supply the jambon? Later, I learn that the hams are not his. He transports and sells them for a neighboring farmer. The favor covers the cost of his gas. His own lean income is earned from the goat cheese and his traveling circus of fowl.
Back at the house, I deposit the food on the makeshift table in the downstairs kitchen. Alas, in my excitement to get back to the car and unsack the thick dark earth for the planting of my tender climber, I forget to shut the door. When I pass by a mere ten minutes later, I find the two bags which had contained the chickens in tatters on the floor. Even the cheese has disappeared. A brief scout around the garden leads me to Pamela, snoring beneath the cypress trees, surrounded by crunched bones and an army of ants who have already begun to pick dry the skeletal remains. Preferring not to whack an animal, particularly one that is not mine, I take myself back down to the village to buy another pair of chickens and two more of the goat cheese “droppings.” The young couple who own the crémerie stare at me in wonder as I request precisely what I bought a mere half an hour earlier. “Unexpected guests,” I mutter, feeling too foolish to admit that the dog ate our dinner.
THE PALE RAYS OF the late-afternoon sun are lengthening. The hysteric chirring of the cicadas’ song grows less strident. The day is slipping into dusky stillness. Evening is falling. Vanessa is lighting anti-mosquito candles as well as my oil lamp. Spaced out on the balustraded terrace, they create golden balls of light. With glasses of chilled Bandol rosé in hand, Michel and I ceremoniously plant the climber on a mezzanine terrace close to the front door. A tender young passionflower; our first purchase for the garden; the perfect offering. Clarisse waters it abundantly. Vanessa takes the shot with Michel’s camera.
Our first summer will be at an end soon, but these are the moments that will live on perpetually. I will return to them again and again in the safe harbor of memory. Consummate happiness. I stand back, absorbing the image of Michel with his adolescent girls, and I wonder silently what the unknown future holds for us.
I WAS NOT PREPARED for this. When it comes to the refueling of Pamela’s stomach, a revitalized and cunning beast has been awakened. Docile Pamela, who identifies me as the enemy, the appropriator of her food, has declared war. The following morning, I find that the trash cans, ours as well as those belonging to the other two houses situated on the easterly quarter of our hill, have been raided. Half-chewed sticks of stale baguette, empty food packages, and the rest of the mishmash found in any family’s trash trail along the lane. I spend twenty minutes gathering up the garbage and chucking it all back into our trash cans. A note from one of the neighbors attached to one of our lids politely requests that we keep the animal chained if it cannot keep its head out of les poubelles. Mortified, I admit defeat and write a note of apology to the unknown neighbors, which I slip into their mailbox. It will not happen again, I assure them.
Indeed, the problem will not arise again, for the girls are departing, and with them goes fat Pamela. What a hullabaloo of semi-packed bags, broken zippers, lost combs, whirring hair dryers, newly acquired swimwear, presents for Maman which are très fragile, as well as the calming of a most unsettled dog who, poor unsuspecting beast, will be obliged to travel in a miserable airline cage. The frenzied activity keeps my sadness at bay. And when everything is finally arranged, albeit in a chaotic sort of way, Michel and I drive them to the airport and see them off. This journey to the Nice airport is to be the first of many. From here on, my life will be governed by trips to and from, welcome kisses and aching au revoirs. Today is the first wrench.
Vanessa and Clarisse. I have grown to love them, and I so long for them to feel the same. I hope that these weeks, this glorious summer, have brought us closer. I want them to care for me not as a surrogate mother but as a friend, as kin. Nothing is said, no parting emotion declared, but they step forward shyly to hug me, then stagger off with their numerous bags, trailing towels and sneakers through passport control, waving back and blowing kisses at their beloved papa and maybe one to his new lady.
This departure is the first nudge that the summer holidays are drawing to a close. In another week, Michel will also return to Paris. I have no acting job awaiting me, so I have decided to stay on, to get to grips with my novel and because I cannot bear to tear myself away. Michel will fly down to spend the weekends with me.
We pass our final week together at our desks, slowly preparing ourselves, for what the French call la rentrée—the return after the summer break. Michel’s desk is a wobbly wooden table picked up at one of the many brocantes off the route national 7, near Antibes. He has placed it in the shade beneath the magnolia grandiflora. I have learned that these trees were originally from the southern states of America. They were discovered by the French botanist Plumier, who had been commanded by Louis XIV to seek out exotic plants for the royal gardens. The earliest examples were brought to France in the first half of the eighteenth century. They were named after Pierre Magnol, who was director of the botanical gardens in Montpellier.
Unlike Michel, I cannot concentrate in a blanket of heat and prefer to bury myself indoors. I choose one of the rooms that we have not yet touched save for washing the floors and airing. I have secretly bagged it for my workspace—I hate the word office—because it is bright but not too sunny. It has windows to the front which overlook the driveway and the angle of cypress trees. If I lean to my left, I can even glimpse the shallow end of the pool, now brimming with clear water. And to the rear, its French doors open onto the terrace where we breakfast. Beyond, I see roughly hewn stone steps ascend the pine forest to the brow of the hill and our famous water bassin. Here, in this room, I set up a trestle table and store my laptop, reference books, scribbled notes for my story, maps, research literature and all my other papers. After each working bout, to keep dust and falling plaster at bay, I wrap everything in a sheet. When Michel has left, I will strip the walls and whitewash them, rid the room of its hideous pink flowery paper. There is a good feeling about this space; I can lose myself in my own world here. And because it has views in both directions, I don’t feel claustrophobic. The only disturbance is an occasional rustling sound which I cannot trace or identify. It seems to be coming from a boxed-in pelmet, which probably once stored a rolling blind above the front windows, but whenever I call Michel in to listen, the noise mysteriously ceases.
DURING AN AFTERNOON break from work, I take a stroll in the valley beyond our land, where I encounter a most extraordinary person who puts me in mind of a minotaur or Goliath. He introduces himself as our neighbor Jean-Claude. Oh, dear. He is the one who wrote the note complaining about Pamela. I smile sweetly. We wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of this fellow. He is built like an ox. He has a wiry black beard and hair tied back in a ponytail which falls to his nonexistent waist. He is wearing nothing except bizarrely cut red poplin shorts and calf-length black Wellingtons, and he carries two empty buckets, one in each hand like a milkmaid. I have barely given our names when he booms at me: “Which water plan are you on?” I have absolutely no idea and refrain from admitting that I was not even aware there was a choice.
“Inquire of your husband, please, and let me know.”
This I dutifully promise to do, and content with my reply, he suggests that Michel and I walk over to have an apéro with him and his wife, Odile, at seven o’clock. I agree. I am curious.
“Bring your water bill with you,” he yells after me as I set off along the honeysuckle-scented track.
Buried away for another hour or two with my work before our apéro, I take time out to look up olive in the Oxford English Dictionary and am amazed to learn how many different varieties of olive trees exist. An evergreen tree, Olea Europaea, especially the cultivated variety O. Sativa, with narrow entire leaves, green above and hoary beneath, and auxillary clusters of small whitish four-cleft flowers; cultivated in the Mediterranean countries and other warm regions for its fruit and the oil thence obtained.
Extended to the whole genus Olea; also applied, with qualifying words, to various trees and shrubs allied to common olive, or resembling it in appearance or in furnishing oil.
American Olive, Bastard or Mock Olive, Black Olive, California Olive, Chinese Olive, Holly-leaved Olive, Negro’s Olive, Spurge Olive, Sweet-scented Olive, White Olive, Wild Olive (the wild variety of the common olive).
The fruit or berry of OLEA SATIVA is a small oval drupe and bluish-black when ripe, with a bitter pulp abounding in oil, and hard stone. It is valuable as a source of oil, and also eaten pickled in an unripe state. The dictionary also suggests that the blacker the olive, the more ripe it is. I assume that our trees are of the O. Sativa variety, but I will need to confirm this. Where can one seek out the White Olive or Holly-leaved Olive or, indeed, any of the others listed above? If planted, would they survive on our olive farm? What fruit, if any, would they produce? Personally, I find hoary too cold an adjective to describe that deliciously sensual, mother-of-pearl tone of the underleaf.
AT THE DESIGNATED hour for drinks, Michel and I stroll along the lane hand in hand. Tall cypress trees guard the route like inscrutable centurion soldiers, while husky-toned insects scratch into the evening calm. Michel is leaving for Paris in the morning, and I am feeling blue. Outside the gate of the stately stone house whose sign reads Le Verger, we pull on the bell chain. Inside my bag, I have tucked our best bottle of Bordeaux. It is intended as a peace offering; I feel sure this man will have words about our badly behaved dog. Within seconds, a thickset rottweiler with a head as broad and round as a tire hurls himself against the iron gate. Thud, thud. He growls and barks like a hound at the gates of hell. We retreat a step.
A deep-throated roar sounds from a terrace beyond the swimming pool. Instantly, the dog retreats like a chastised puppy and disappears behind a camper parked in the driveway. The gates open, and we crunch across the graveled parking area, past several rather magnificent agave cacti, one of which has sprouted a gigantic spear with yellow flowers. The camper where the dog is still lurking is equaled in rustiness only by Di Fazio’s old bus. Jean-Claude appears and beckons us to the lower level of the house. The monster dog rises and stalks us terrifyingly. Fearing for our safety, we glance back every few steps.
Jean-Claude, shadowed by a pimply adolescent, hails us inside. The young man introduced to us as their son, Marcel, nods and retreats hurriedly as though even this amount of human contact has all but shriveled him. We are now standing in a somber but spacious kitchen all decked out in dark ivy-green wood with rather elaborate metal fixtures.
“Three hundred thousand francs,” Jean-Claude announces proudly, following this astronomical figure with the name of the firm responsible for what I can only describe as a monstrosity. No doubt it is meant to impress, but the name means nothing to me. A woman scurries into the room, cigarette in hand.
“Ma femme, Odile,” he booms. Odile has hair as long and unkempt as Jean-Claude’s, but unlike her husband she is dressed in a curious outfit made up of floaty bohemian bits of cloth and masses of expensive, if, to my taste, rather ostentatious gold jewelry. She is exceptionally slender and very effusive.
“Ah, les jeunes,” she cries with a throaty laugh and hurries over to kiss us both numerous times. I am surprised by the greeting, because I cannot believe she is a day older than either of us. Jean-Claude tells her that he was showing us the kitchen. She holds up her hands as though profoundly apologetic for having interrupted a scenario of such gravitas.
“Do you have your water bill?”
I tug it from my shoulder bag along with the wine and hand it over to him. “Sorry about the trash cans,” I murmur. Jean-Claude, not registering the proffered bottle, takes the bill, studies it with a frown and disappears to ponder it in solitary silence. Odile takes over the displaying of the kitchen. Lights switch on in the most unlikely places, drawers open, vegetable racks swivel, canned food cupboards unfold, bits whirr, every gadget is exposed, does its party piece and slides back automatically to its resting place. We ooh and aah appropriately. Then, from somewhere deep in the belly of the house, we are summoned by Jean-Claude’s roar. Odile starts like a nervous squirrel before leading us up a few steps into a very dark winding corridor and through to the salon, which, after the kitchen, rather takes us aback. It is an enormous, high-ceilinged room which stretches the entire length of what we are to discover is an eight bedroomed, three-story mas. Even though it is a warm late-summer evening, a two-bar electric fire is aglow in the center of a rather magnificent stone chimney hearth. A glance around shows us the room is furnished sparsely, to say the least. It contains four white plastic garden chairs, a matching table—beneath which the rottweiler cowers—and, over in a distant corner, a grand piano.
The telephone rings in a neighboring room. Jean-Claude, barefoot, strides off to answer it. “Zurich!” he bellows, and Odile scoots to the phone, closing folding doors behind her.
“She never stops working. Asseyez-vous.” Jean-Claude waves after her, using our water bill as baton. I am beginning to cast him in the role of a rather off-beat wizard, with his crazy hair and no clothing at all except the flimsy poplin shorts. All he lacks is a cloak. We pull out two of the plastic chairs and sit down. No one has so far acknowledged the wine, which I have tried on a couple of occasions to hand over, so I place it on the table where a plastic-wrapped sliced loaf of white bread—the first I have encountered in France—waits with a bottle of port, another of whiskey, an empty ice bucket, four water tumblers and a large pot of paté. Three knives have also been left there.
“Marcel,” Jean-Claude yells to his son. From above us, rock music which I had barely registered is switched off. Footsteps on the landing and then the stairs bring Marcel to join us, clearly against his will. He and Jean-Claude take the other two chairs, though Jean-Claude rises the instant he has sat down, seeming incapable of stillness.
“What do you make of that?” he asks Michel, referring to our bill. He opens the bottle of port and pours each of us a more than generous shot. Before Michel has been given the opportunity to comment, Marcel is ordered to take us on a tour of the house. Jean-Claude returns to the water bill, while Odile remains locked beyond the room. The sound of her voice drifts through to us. Whoever has telephoned cannot have spoken a word, for Odile is chattering breathlessly.
Curiosity is bubbling within me. Who, or what, are these quirky, exuberant people? Trailing Marcel, we trek from room to room, each is as sparsely furnished as the last.
“Have you just moved in as well?” I inquire.
“No. Why?”
There are sleeping bags on the floors of each of the eight bedrooms, except in the master room which is decked out with yellow-and-blue-striped curtains, fitted cupboards, swivel lamps, several floor-to-ceiling mirrors and an ornately gilded dressing table. Has to be the firm who built the kitchen.
“Your parents’ room,” I say, stating the obvious, more to make conversation than anything else.
“Yes, but they don’t sleep here.”
“Why not?”
“They sleep in the camper with the dogs” is his simple explanation.
Even I am silenced by this response. Having trawled the length and breadth of the house, we are returned to the salon just as Odile reappears. She is followed by a second dog, a rottweiler puppy who threatens to grow up looking as mean as his pal.
“Whiskey,” she begs. Jean-Claude pours her an exceedingly generous shot and refills our tumblers of port. Given that they were barely touched, we are each cradling about a third of a liter of ruby port. Marcel unwraps the loaf and begins spreading butter on the anemic-looking slices. “Santé!’” We lift our glasses to the toast and sip the alcohol. The telephone rings. Marcel goes.
“Amsterdam,” he calls to his mother. Odile lights a cigarette, sighs wearily, grabs the Camel packet and, scotch in hand, disappears.
“Drink up!” yells a hearty Jean-Claude, which is precisely what I am trying to avoid. We have already been there the better part of an hour—it is our last evening of summer, we want to leave—but it is now announced that we will eat when Odile has finished her call. Michel, charm to the rescue, informs father and son that we have food waiting at home. Jean-Claude will not hear of it. Certainly we can return to our meal later, but first we must share in the paté, which he has shot and prepared himself. Sanglier. I enquire where around these parts he might have come across a wild boar to shoot. This little hill may be the last undiscovered corner of rural paradise on the coast of the Alpes-Maritimes, but we are, after all, only ten minutes from Cannes. “There are no wild boar prancing about our garden,” I joke.
“Mais, si, si, on the far side of your hill,” he tells me. “Families of them.”
Jean-Claude does not strike me as a joker, though what he does strike me as, I really cannot work out. I peer into his face to see if he is kidding. No hint of humor registers.
“Are there really wild boar here?” I squeak.
“Of course not, chérie,” Michel says.
“Yes, and snakes and scorpions,” Jean-Claude avers.
I slug the port, downing half the glass in one mouthful. During the time it takes Odile to talk at length to Marseille, Paris and finally Geneva, Jean-Claude has forced Marcel to the piano and dragged us to its side as well. We are now engaged in the most squawkingly embarrassing sing-a-long, which eventually includes a radiantly happy Odile. She loves music (music!) she informs us, helping herself to another tumbler of whiskey and another packet of cigarettes. “Le boulot est fini!” she ululates. Her work is over for the evening.
The white bread and wild-boar paté are being enjoyed by the dogs, who are up on the chairs, front paws and mouths on the table, licking, slurping and dribbling at a chaotic mess of food. (And these people complained about the antics of poor, gentle—if greedy—Pamela!) No one seems to care. Michel and I are completely plastered. From my point of view, there are six Jean-Claudes in the room, all of them bellowing and trumpeting like a herd of elephants in heat. And when a song is finished, he roars good-heartedly, slapping the piano, filling the capacious space with his monstrous happiness. In my present state, I find myself entirely uplifted by his infectious energy.
And so we stay on.
By the time we stagger back up our driveway, pitching about without a flashlight, the sky is a blanket of midnight navy and the moon and brilliant stars look like a child’s cut-outs within it. Too late to eat, too drunk to cook, we linger outside for a while, swimming to clear our heads then spreading out beside each other on a sun lounger, listening to the night which spins and spins before us.
“What was Odile talking so earnestly to you about? Was it the water bill?” I slur but choose not to turn my head from star-gazing. The movement will send my brain reeling.
“No, neither of them explained that. No, she was describing her work,” Michel replies.
“Which is?”
“She’s a clairvoyant. Clients telephone from all over Europe, pay her by credit card and she gives them a half-hour ‘reading.’ Curious.”
“So, my picture of Jean-Claude as a wizard was not so far off the mark,” I drawl.
“Jean-Claude? Oh no! He’s an estate agent!”
HUNGOVER, NURSING A raging headache, Michel departs on the early-morning plane for Paris. A strange emptiness descends upon me. The changing of seasons. The first whiffs of autumn in the air. The swallows swooping low, gathering close to the house, anticipating their journey to Africa. Colors are turning, resetting. Tinctures of yellows and russet are appearing. A chunk of time that has been exquisitely winding down is drawing to its inevitable close. All my life I have been ill equipped to cope with such moments of loss, but I remind myelf that this is a temporary shift. We have our lives ahead of us, and the house is barely ours. Challenges await us, and Michel will be back on Friday. My mood rallies.
I work off some of the loneliness by stripping the wallpaper in my workroom. The noise is still there. It has begun to squeak from time to time as well. Has a small unidentified creature just been born? My imagination leaps to trailers I have seen of Hollywood horror movies where small plastic beings begin to move silently in the celler of some unsuspecting, all-American home. They are cute, they squeak, then they grow bigger and by reel six they are threatening world domination! I am tempted to rip the pelmet away from the wall but fear what I might discover. Best to leave well enough alone. It is probably a gecko who has been disturbed by our arrival here. They are timid little chaps and do seem happiest buried in corners away from the harsh sunlight. Once I think it through sanely, I convince myself that it is a gecko and I stop fretting about it.
Some days the heat is so thick, so extreme, that the early-morning dew sops the plants and leaves them drooping. Moistness is everywhere; nature’s way of making sure they do not go thirsty, I suppose, which is why I choose to water our recently potted geraniums in the evening.
It is sunset. My first evening alone. I am in the garden with the hose. Circling above me are two buzzards. I tilt my head (still rather the worse for port) and watch them wheel and spin, wondering what they are stalking. I hear one of them screech. It is a haunting echoey cry, reverberating on the still air. Then suddenly there is another sound: heavy footsteps. Someone is moving behind me. I freeze. There is the distinct exhalation of heavy breathing. I go cold. How can I, in this deserted spot, grapple with a burglar? I consider the hose in my hand. I could spray the intruder, drench and confuse him for a few seconds, while I make a getaway. I take a deep breath and turn slowly. There, standing on the terrace a few feet behind me, is a monstrous sanglier.
No doubt it is a female, the most lethal of the species. She must be here on a scavenge for food for her young, or she would never have approached habitation. I know by reputation how dangerous wild boars can be if angered or distressed. She might charge me if I move or frighten her. The sheer weight of her could kill or maim me. I stand frozen to the spot, almost wishing that it had been a burglar. With an intruder there is the possibility of prevailing on reason, but not with this great hairy beast. I don’t dare to move, but I have no wish to dally. Slowly, imperceptibly, I twist the nozzle of the hose to shut off the water and lower it, half crouching, to the ground. I take my first steps toward the house.
The giant boar holds her ground, watching me. What is she thinking? Jean-Claude with his shotgun may be a match for her, but I am not. I scan the thicket of pine forest to see if I can spot a mate. I see no others. So there is only this female to contend with. I make it to the house, close the door fast and lean against it, listening to the palpitations of my heart. Even dear old Pamela would have scared her off. I have to admit that I am missing that fat dog. I convince myself that I need my own. A guardian, and company, too, for lonesome evenings.
MICHEL ARRIVES. WE drive directly to the local dog pound and choose a lively, wiry fellow named Henri. He looks rather like an overgrown red setter, except that his coat is jet black. I wonder why he has been abandoned. His fur is as glossy as a well-polished limousine; he appears in every way to have been cared for. According to his record sheet, he is only three years old, and the note on the vet’s card confirms that he is in excellent health. When I inquire, the lady who looks after the refuge begrudgingly admits that he is uncontrollable. In what way, I ask. He runs off. Constantly.
Oh.
“Yes, but you have plenty of land, you say,” she reassures us. “He can work off all that excess energy. He is ideally suited to your needs, and you to him.”
Michel is not convinced. “Let’s think about it, chérie. We have no fence yet,” he murmurs.
But Henri’s expression breaks my heart, that please-don’t-leave-me-here look in his eyes, and he’s panting with such eager anticipation. I cannot bear to walk away, to condemn the poor brute to that cage again.
“Could we take him out, just for five minutes… to be sure?”
She shakes her head. It is against the rules. It raises the animal’s hopes, often in vain.
The woman, a true salesperson, plays on my softheartedness. “You have a month. If it does not work out, and you return him within the month, we will accept him back. But I am sure that won’t be necessary. He’ll settle with you.”
Henri pants his eager accord.
We pay, sign the authorization document, buy him a collar and escort him to the car. Or rather, he drags us from the shelter. I can barely hold him. He has the strength of a grizzly bear.
That first evening, Michel insists that we chain Henri, on a generously long lead, to the trunk of the magnolia tree. He can sit with us while we prepare and eat our barbecue dinner, but he will also learn the habit of staying quietly at our side. He must learn a little discipline, explains Michel. That way he will know not to go wandering off. Henri puts his head on his paws and goes into a sulk.
He remains in that position all day Saturday.
“I don’t think he’s very happy,” I say.
“He’s adjusting.”
His black eyes glower at me with pain and accusation: You have given me freedom only to take me prisoner, he seems to be saying. I cannot bear it. I spend hours stroking him and talking to him, but he will not relent. He refuses to eat. Oh, what a contrast to Pamela!
WE HAVE GUESTS FOR dinner, an ebullient Italian artist and his elegant Danish wife. They are a very chic couple who love to party. Paulo is short and plump and passionately adores women. He has on occasion, after a bottle or two, embarrassed me, but in spite of that, I am fond of him. He is a warm, generous man.
I was introduced to them in the early eighties when I was performing in a theater in Copenhagen. Here in the south, they have bought a house in Biot, and we find ourselves relative neighbors. They arrive late, armed with taped copies of the samba music they prefer to listen to during dinner. (Wait till they see our pathetic little cassette player, I am thinking as I accept the tapes with a broad smile.) As always, Paulo is dressed from head to foot in moody black. Olga is tall and slender as a willow and looks sensational. By contrast, her temperament is cool and reserved. This evening she is wearing a floor-length, ice-white linen dress.
Henri, still on his lead, is alerted by their arrival and stands up to greet them. He is animated, bucked up, for the first time in over twenty-four hours and begins to wag his tail and yodel.
“Why is he tied up?” our artist friend asks.
“We only collected him from the refuge yesterday and so he doesn’t run off…” I blather on about the problem of Henri while our handsome suntanned friends pop the bottle of champagne they brought.
Michel, across the dust patch, is fanning the barbecue to prepare it. Smoke ascends into the night air, giving off aromas of Provençal herbs and charcoaled meat. I uncork a bottle of red wine, a St. Joseph from St. Désirat.
“He’ll settle only if you leave him free. He has to discover his sense of boundary in a free space.” What Olga says makes sense. In any case, I am dying for an excuse to release him. I run to Michel, who is calling for me; while replenishing his glass and laying the various cuts of grilled lamb on a serving plate, I repeat what Olga has said.
“If you think so,” he replies, though I sense he doubts his own words.
In one movement, I charge up the steps and release Henri, who is over the moon with glee. In twenty-four hours he has had four pee breaks and one long walk on a lead when he dragged me up and down the hillside. His tail is wagging like a clock.
“Come on, boy,” I coax, expecting him to follow me down onto the terrace beneath, to where are guests are poised, sipping champagne and imbibing the view. But he does not budge. The movement of his tail is gaining speed. I fear it bodes no good, but before I can act upon my instincts, Henri takes a gigantic leap and lands on the backs of both our guests. They find themselves splayed out in the dust around our roughly cut grass. Thankfully, the glasses didn’t break and cut them, but the couple is drenched. Olga’s dress is patched with green stains from the few remaining tufts of grass and champagne.
“What an excessively friendly fellow,” whispers Paulo to me as he picks himself up from the ground and dusts himself off. “It’s how I encourage my mistresses to greet me!”
THE FOLLOWING FRIDAY, I receive a telegram from the proprietor of Appassionata, Madame B. There has been a mistake in the price of the property. I go cold. I knew it! All summer I have been dreading news such as this, and then I read on. Due to the fact that the second half of the land, known to us now as the “second plot,” has measured out at a third of an acre larger than the plot with house—the half we are currently purchasing—we are entitled to a reimbursement of several thousand francs. I whoop and shout in the lane as I watch our postman, who has just handed me the telegram, disappear around the bend. I cannot help remarking that he and his scooter are a precarious marriage of large man and modest machine. By the time he reaches us, his load is almost delivered. How does he negotiate the early rounds of the journey from the sorting office, loaded down with the entire morning’s letters and parcels? And how does that little yellow scooter manage to transport his generous frame and his bundles up and down the steep and winding hills?
I hurtle off to the local phone booth to telephone Michel at his office in Paris. What it boils down to, he says, is that we can buy a bed.
YES!
Within the hour I am in Cannes, ordering the largest bed on offer. I leave a deposit; the rest will be paid when the bed arrives in eight weeks. I leave the shop flushed with excitement. We have blown our entire refund on one piece of furniture.
AT THE SOUND OF THE postman’s scooter, Henri bounds down the drive, strategically positioning himself to say good morning. As the postman slows to round the corner, Henri leaps into the air in front of him, paws splayed, barking an expansive welcome. Alas, his effusive greeting frightens the life out of Monsieur le facteur, who tumbles from his scooter.
I hear shouting and barking and run from my desk to find out what is going on. When I arrive, I find the poor man on all fours. He is grappling with letters and parcels, which have flown in every direction, while Henri, still close at hand, is yapping and panting. I jump forward to lend a hand.
“Oh Monsieur, I am so sorry!” I cry.
“J’avais presqu’un crise cardiaque! If he comes near me again, I’ll take action!”
I drag away the great hound to more threats from the postman. Henri, wagging his tail, is triumphant.
I TAKE THE COASTAL road, passing by the old town of Antibes, skirting the Baie des Anges to visit the antique market in the old town of Nice. I find it situated in the ancient Italian quarter, where the buildings are painted ocher and a deep Siena yellow. There I discover stalls laden with antique linen and lace pillowcases. They are so big and square and cheap, and like new. Some are embroidered in white cotton, white on white, with initials. I wonder who they were so caringly embroidered for and what became of the original owners. What prevented these luxurious pieces from being put to use? A jilted heart, a death? In anticipation of our generously sized new bed, I want to buy them all. I dream of smothering it in freshly starched, lavender-scented crisp linen. Crisp and white and inviting. Sunburned afternoons lying together. Winter nights huddled close, listening to the crackling of the fire.
The stallkeeper, a tiny woman, is hidden behind banks of sheets and tablecloths, eating lunch with a man and a child. I notice that their spread includes a hot chicken dish in a thick tomato sauce, several bottles of red wine, fruit, two baguettes and an assortment of various cheeses. It seems remarkable for a market situation, but I remind myself that this is France. Food comes first. We make a deal that seems to delight us both, and she shoves linen sheets, pillowcases and a tablecloth into several plastic bags, collects her modest sum of money and returns hungrily to her meal. While at the market, I begin to scout the various stalls for large glass jars, carafes or demijohns which I will use later to store our olive oil. I find none, but there is always next week.
When I return, I pick flowers from the garden—most are growing so wild—marguerite daisies, eucalyptus leaves, palm fronds taken from six tiny potted plants I found at the nursery (twenty francs a pot), and gather them together. I place them, decoratively arranged in confiture jars, next to our mattress on the floor, and in the hearth.
Michel is coming home tonight. I cannot remember when I last felt this excited by life. In preparation, I am stuffing a chicken. Suddenly, I hear Henri barking like a mad fool. I fear another sanglier. I peer out the kitchen window toward the pine forest and, to my amazement, see troupes of people moving in and around the trees, thrashing at the undergrowth. Curious, I hike the hill, thorny brambles ripping at my flesh, and introduce myself. They are mushroom picking, they explain. I, in return, inform them in a friendly manner that they are on private land. They retaliate by advising me that they have gathered mushrooms on this hill all their lives and do not intend to stop now.
Chastised, confused, I descend the hill and leave them to it. Next year, I will know to get up there first and pick the mushrooms myself, but I run the risk of poisoning us because I don’t know one variety from another.
Later, in the afternoon, when I go to the village to buy freshly baked bread, I see that the local drugstore has large display cards in the windows with colored pictures naming the different varieties of mushrooms. I learn that it is a local service here. Anyone can bring their baskets brimming with harvested mushrooms, and the pharmacien will sift the edible from the inedible or poisonous. So I need not fear. We will be safe to harvest our own funghi. I stare at the colored card. Here, among dozens, are drawings of ceps and chanterelles and boleti, which I read later was originally raised by the Italians. Another, birch boletus, grows on the trees and is a fungus as large as a child’s head. I am not convinced by how delicious that sounds!
OVER DINNER, BY THE fire, I feel obliged to confess to Michel the tales of Henri’s triumphs. He is not pleased. But worse is to come, for the postman is true to his word. On Saturday morning, an official notice arrives warning us that if we do not control our dog we will be taken to court and the animal might well be impounded or, worse, destroyed. I stare in dismay while Henri pants gleefully at my side.
“He’ll have to go, chérie,” says Michel.
“But since Henri, we have had no wild boar prowling the garden, and he keeps me company! Please let’s keep him.”
Michel frowns. “We need to give the matter serious thought,” he replies.
On Saturday afternoon, an officer from the central Cannes police station telephones our neighbor to say that a large black dog known as Henri—the refuge has identified him by the name on his collar and put them in touch with us—is terrorizing the guests sunbathing on the private beach at the Majestic Hotel. Michel thanks Jean-Claude for taking the trouble to walk over to us. He is then obliged to drive to Cannes, collect the dog and pay a hefty fine. Henri has been charged with disturbance of the peace!
I walk over to Jean-Claude with a bottle of wine and apologize profusely for the intrusion. His booming laugh reassures me that everything is perfectly fine. In fact, he invites us to come for another apéro. Having barely recovered from the previous experience, I fix no date but agree to telephone him, adding that on the next occasion, they should come to us. Over dinner, Michel and I discuss the problem of Henri, and I miserably concede that it would be best for everyone, including the dog, if he were returned.
On Monday morning, the woman at the refuge seethes visibly as we sign yet another set of documents, this time relinquishing all responsibility for the poor beast.
I weep copiously as we kiss him good-bye and he, bemused, is led away again to his horrid cage, but I have to admit that I have been hasty. Next year, Henri, I say to myself, when we are better organized, I promise to return for you.