Soon the weather will begin to break. Already, the crush of holidaymakers with children have packed up and left, and with them has gone that distinctly pungent tang of suntan lotion which has dominated the Riviera coastline for the past two months. Michel and I are lunching on the beach. Early autumnal winds, driving off that heavy summer lethargy and previewing the shift of season, have blown in, bringing with them fragrant whiffs of late-summer flowers. Light gusts lift and settle the paper napkins on the table in front of us. Dragging a stray wisp of hair from off my face, I glance about me. On the shore, at water’s edge, two wiry setters are barking incessantly at a retired couple in matching swimming caps splashing lazily on their backs in the warm sea. Cries of distant voices drift toward us on the welcome breeze. Closer by, well-fed bronzed bodies—Nords, Dutch, Germans, Brits—chatter and prattle, ordering drinks, lighting cigarettes, oiling one another, while tame waves spume and curl just a few yards from our feet. We have barely seen each other for weeks. Our eyes shaded by Raybans; we gaze across the table but do not smile. Michel looks shot to hell, in need of a haircut and a break, while I am shell-shocked by the news he has just imparted. Behind me, the steady thwack-thwack of ball hitting bat acts like a salty metronome. Time to make a decision.
“What are we going to do?” I ask eventually.
An entire film crew is on its way. Shooting will finish in Hamburg in a week, which means that the full caravan of actors, makeup and costume, camera, lights, electrics is about to converge on this resort by road and air. In the meantime, the advance team of designers, carpenters, buyers, et cetera, has already been installed in a small hotel three streets back from the main coastal drag. The film material in the can—the rushes—has been well received by all the various international networks involved, and the young girl playing the leading role has been described as “magic” onscreen. We should be delighted. And so we were, I thought in a worn-out sort of way, until this morning.
In short, the French company who stepped in to cover the deficit incurred by the loss of the British network has gone bankrupt. They are not alone. During these past few months in Paris, somewhere in the region of twenty independent production companies have gone to the wall, and we are likely to join them if we cannot find a solution to this crisis. Michel learned this news three days ago. He said nothing to me but went immediately to his bankers in Paris, who have, after much wrangling, telephoned this morning to say that they agree to advance the monies and keep the production running—which right now means to get a host of salaries paid before the middle of next week—on one condition.
“And that is?” I ask as a plate of freshly grilled sizzling sardines seasoned with curls of fresh parsley is set in front of me and the waitress, a pretty, darkly tanned, middle-aged blonde in shorts, refills my glass of rosé.
“That we give them the farm as a guarantee.”
“Give them Appassionata? No!”
Sleek heads at nearby tables turn at the sound of my raised voice. I sigh. We are both exhausted.
Since collecting Michel from the airport, while driving along the busy stretch of coast road, negotiating corkscrew curves in the old fortressed port of Antibes, swinging by the palm-fringed, art deco villas along the cap, I have chattered without pause about various horticultural difficulties I have been experiencing, as well as my preparations for the arrival of the girls, who are flying in later today. This was to have been our first home-based family weekend in months. I was excited. Having completed the rewrites on my scripts weeks ago, I have spent my late-August days immersed in affairs of the garden and wanted to share my news.
“Cicadelles. They are small white flies, smaller than moths. They’re everywhere and lethal. According to René, there’s a local epidemic. They’ve laid their eggs on our orange trees. The underside of the foliage has been invaded, robbing the leaves of their color; all viridescence sucked out. I treated them twice. Quashia has, too, but it’s made no difference. They just fly off and settle somewhere else. Watching them move is like seeing a soft pale gray blanket fluttering across the terraces. Now they are on the roses and the bougainvillea. When you touch the plants, they are all sticky. I was scared they’d attack the olive trees, but they haven’t gone near them. And just when I was beginning to feel safe about that, I discovered paon—you remember René showed us when we went to visit that farm near Castellane? Remember he told us to watch out for it—leaves turning yellow, round brown spots? Well, I have found the fungus on nine of our olive trees. You’re very quiet, Michel. I’m talking too much. I’m so pleased to see you. Are you all right?” And that was when he broached the subject. By then we had parked my little car and were crossing the street, heading beachward for this café.
“We can’t give them Appassionata,” I repeat. My voice is quieter now, almost strangled but emphatic. Behind my dark glasses, tears prick my eyes. Michel picks up his wine and takes a sip. He smiles at the waitress as she places Parma ham and a mesclun salad in front of him. “Merci.”
We begin to eat, but the delicious fish tastes like cardboard in my mouth.
“If you don’t mind going back to the airport later and picking up the girls, I’ll begin to make some calls to see what else I can come up with.”
“Such as?”
“I have plenty of contacts in Germany. I’ll try to pick up a cable sale. I’ll talk to the Swiss. A children’s channel in Italy. I don’t know yet, I’ll think of something.”
THE GIRLS ARE CLEARING the table after dinner when the row begins. I do not know from where it explodes. I’m feeling fraught and deeply upset because we have decided to go ahead and sign Appassionata to the bank as a guarantee. Frankly, we have no choice. Salaries have to paid, hotel bills met. Whatever solutions Michel can cobble together, they will not solve our immediate dilemma. We agreed at the beginning of the evening and then promised ourselves to leave it until Sunday, when we will put aside part of our afternoon to arrange the paperwork.
Now, suddenly, here we are, standing around the table shouting at one another. I am quick-tempered by nature, volatile, but Michel is more steady in his emotions. Vanessa lunges forward and screams unkind words at me which send me reeling. “No,” I stammer. “No, you don’t understand.”
Have I been unkind to Michel, did I speak too sharply to him? Do I act as though I blame him for what has happened even though I know that the difficulties are not of his making? The girls must think me culpable. They side with their father. Naturally. And yet, in so many ways, I had thought us a family. I wanted to believe it. I am more sensitive to cutting words, accusations, because I am not their mother. Were we family, flesh and blood, I could dismiss the unkindnesses more easily. As it is, dishcloth in hand, greasy plates clutched before me, I turn and flee to the kitchen.
Glancing back, hazy with tears, I see a sight which curdles my heart. Michel standing at the head of the table staring at the floor, lips puckered, frozen in speech, one daughter on either side of him clutching him fast, their heads pressed against his chest. I settle the dishes in the sink and, without washing them, creep off to bury myself beneath a cave of sheets and pillows.
EVERYONE IS SLEEPING. The dew on the early-morning grass glints in the sun like crystal stones. The soles of my feet are damp from walking in it. A cock crows in the far distance. The blue of the sky is as smooth as velvet. It caresses my fractured senses.
“They will hold all deeds of the farm until the film has been completed and sufficient profits have been made to pay them back, plus their interest, of course.” Michel’s words of yesterday echo in my mind.
This must be hurting him as much as it is me.
Seated on one of our many drystone walls, I scan the misty morning hillsides, drinking in our ravishing land and seascape, and my heart swims sickly. Even without a cent to renovate, even crumbling alongside its romantic ruin, this place is magnificent, magical. To lose it all—myriad moments of crazy happiness—does not bear contemplation. Our lives had seemed golden until this summer.
Ella, our little puppy, is nudging her cold nose against my naked arms, begging for attention. I stroke her soft russet-auburn head absentmindedly. We never found No Name. We advertised everywhere. She just walked away, disappeared out of our lives. We cannot fathom even how she got loose. She must have made a hole in a fence somewhere. I looked for it, spent hours scouting the terraces in search of a point of exit, a clue, but without luck. I still blame myself, even though, in place of her, the most extraordinary incident occurred. I might almost claim it a petit miracle.
It was my father’s birthday, two weeks ago now. I was aching from the loss of him. A hot sultry lunchtime; I sauntered down the drive, taking heart from the birdsong, to collect the mail from our mailbox. I unlocked the great iron gates, which Michel has painted that Matisse blue of our house shutters, and there, curled up like a snake in a shaded corner among the irises and beneath the bird’s-egg-blue plumbago which festoon the cedar trees, was another shepherd. For one glad second I thought it was No Name returned, blackened with mud or tar, and then I saw that the shivering, skeletal creature was darker and smaller, a German rather than a Belgian shepherd; her fur is not as long. I put my hand out, but she growled ferociously. I was reminded of that first encounter with No Name, a damaged fawny mess who feared to trust. What is this dog doing here, settled right outside our gate, miles from anywhere? I could not contain the thought that she had been brought to us by the spirit of my father, on his birthday, to keep our little Ella company.
I bent low and she bared her teeth, so I decided to leave her be and turned to retrieve our mail. As I locked the gates, she staggered to her feet. She was unsteady and limping, in pain, but she trod the length of the hilly driveway, a shadow stalking me, keeping her distance. What a scrawny sight. I hurried to the stables and dug out No Name’s bowl, which I loaded with chunks of meat, biscuits and water. I offered her this, but she backed off mistrustfully. I placed the food on the ground and returned to my writing room, where I could survey her discreetly through the window. She did not touch the meal but slumped on the ground about three yards away from it and glowered at it, as though waiting for the aluminum dish to approach or challenge her. It made me smile. I noticed then for the first time that her left side and haunch were completely bald. I wondered if she belonged to anyone and telephoned the vet. She wasn’t wearing a collar.
She bore no tattoo. Lucky is her name. Or so I have christened her. She is still with the vet. She was suffering from internal bleeding, a perforation, stomach problems from where she had been kicked repeatedly. Two broken ribs, worms and a highly strung, nervy disposition which Dr. Marschang suggests is the result of repeated maltreatment. It is why she is still with him. He wants to be sure before we take her in and foster her alongside a small puppy that she will not turn nasty.
I was intending to collect her later. I had been looking forward to introducing her to the girls.
Wordsworth said “the past, present and future are strung together, as it were, on the thread of the wish that runs through them.” Running through my mind this morning is everything we have achieved, the contentment I feel here and the happiness Michel has brought me, but the future now looms large with hurdles and fears. And this morning, reasonable or not, I blame myself.
Ella at my side begins to wag her tail as arms reach around me and hug me tight, drawing me back to the present, to this “spot in time,” from my memories and misery and from an uncertain future. It is Vanessa. She says nothing; neither do I. We only hold each other tight, and the sun, flooding through the treetops beyond the flat roof of the house, begins to heat our backs, invigorating us, healing us with the promise of a whole new day.
THE WEATHER IS BREAKING. Pale rain falls across the hills and turns the sea bluish and opalescent. Michel has gone traveling, to sell our now-completed series. He is working all the hours God sends, traveling as though he is trying to squeeze in a second day elsewhere, catching the sunrise on both sides of the world. He never rests, never takes a day off. He behaves as though he could keep it up forever, as though he were invincible. I want to tell him that he’ll wear himself down, make himself ill, but I know that such negatives will only incapacitate him. I want to believe that he is as powerful and capable as he is forcing himself to be. I want to believe in his strength because I dare not consider the alternatives. But most of all, I think we should relinquish the farm, sell it, hand it over to the bank. Throw it at them, release us, but Michel won’t hear of it. We’ll get there, he keeps saying to me as though it were a secret mantra which, the more he repeats, the truer he begs it to become. It is a heavy burden to carry. I am anxious and depressed for him, and I see our dreams turning to dust.
Quashia leaves for Algeria. He is preparing for his retirement early next year. His departure all but finishes me. I have no idea how I will manage without him, but I lie to him, tell him I’ve found someone, because he has his own life and family in Africa and it is not for me to hold him back.
“If you need me,” he says when he comes to say good-bye, “call the village café, comme d’habitude. I’ll come back.” I nod and wish him well, knowing that I will not call.
“Remember, we are family, you and I. I will never let you down.” I nod again and kiss him on both cheeks, twice, fighting back great blubbing tears.
This is beginning to feel like the Year of Loss.
Loss. The fear that has haunted me. It is why every farewell, every parting, no matter how trivial or short-lived, seems to tear at me. It’s why I never found the courage to love until I met Michel.
“Say hello to your wife and children,” I manage. I have never met them, but he talks of them so frequently that I feel as though we are old friends.
“You tell Michel from me to stop working so hard. He’s needed here.”
I smile bravely and nod again, wondering if he has any idea of the deep trouble we are in. I suspect so. He has a wise man’s instinct. I watch while he descends the drive, fur hat on his balding head, waving as he goes and smiling that warm, toothless grin of his.
I stay alone at the farm, thinking out devices for the salvation of Appassionata, living from hand to mouth. The bank is growing impatient with us. They are threatening us. They muscle us regularly with registered letters, promising to snatch the farm and put it up for auction. Worry haunts me. I pace the tiled, sun-slanted rooms and windy terraces like a lost spirit who has a code to decipher but cannot find the root clue. The fears and responsibilities churn in my mind like souring milk. Some nights, before the first cock crows, sleepless with concern, I press my face against the glass, staring out at the moon while, down in the farthest valley, the Arabs are at their prayer, their muezzin. Their cry to God.
“Count me in,” I whisper.
I write from dawn till dead of night, alone in the ancient creaking house, candles burning, logs crackling, staring into Bible-black darkness. Stories, children’s books, script synopses, beavering away, wearing myself out in an attempt to change the tide of our fortunes.
And I seek out small day-to-day joys to elate me. I jump in the pool to save the life of a drowning bee, twitching his legs every which way, backside down on the surface of the water. I talk at length to a surprisingly large cicada who has pitched up out of season in the bathroom, lonely in a corner like a displaced twig. I chance upon a pair of hornets copulating against one of the flowerbed walls; one behind the other. Embracing her, he is moving rhythmically while she strokes her small black insect face with her front feet until, suddenly, she begins to emit high-pitched noises. A love song delivered with passion on a warm Sunday afternoon. Lucky is a miracle, too. Nervy and snappy, but less so. She requires much tending with creams and potions, but her fur is beginning to grow back, and she is proving herself a loyal and loving guard dog. I tell her how thankful I am for her company, her gratitude and needing of me, and I stroke fluffy little Ella and reassure her that I feel the same way about her, too.
RENÉ DROPS BY TO take a look at the paon, which he won’t treat now because the spray he is suggesting—which I absolutely oppose because we have been running our farm by organic methods—might damage the fruit. He hands me a set of papers given to him by Christophe, the mill owner.
“What are these?” I ask, puzzled and barely interested.
“Forms to fill out and send to Brussels. Christophe mentioned your names specifically.”
I stare at them in a lonely, unmotivated way. They appear as complicated and long-winded as all French bureacracy, so I stuff them in my jeans pocket.
“Don’t ignore tham, Carol. In an attempt to support the olive industry here in France, Brussels is offering every oléiculteur financial assistance.”
“How?”
“For each liter of oil pressed, we will all receive a designated sum.”
My eyes light up, my attention drawn back. I am considering our crisis. Could this, miraculously, be the answer to our problems? “How much?” I ask.
“Well, it is not retroactive, but if this farm produces the same volume of oil this coming season as last, then it would be approximately six hundred francs.” Six hundred francs! That’s about sixty pounds. He must read the disappointment in my face.
“It’s not a great deal, but…” He shrugs his wonderful Provençal shrug, and that canny look of his tells me that anything is better than nothing, which is true, of course.
“I’ll fill it in.” I smile. “I won’t forget.”
Before climbing into his Renault, which is laden with the largest, frizziest lettuces I have ever set eyes on—the size of lavender bushes—he reminds me that before too long we will need to begin netting again; the harvesting season will be upon us once more. A swift tour of the terraces shows us that the trees are laden with bullet-hard green olives. We are in for another bumper crop.
“With that load, you might even make seven hundred francs from Brussels,” he jokes as we return to his car. “Do you want a salad?” He is pointing at the produce cluttering up his trunk. I shake my head, explaining that I bought mesclun and lettuce earlier at the market. Still, I cannot help but remark on the size of them. His eyes glint with pride and that knowledge of a bonne affaire as he explains that he grows his salad on someone else’s terrain where the water is free because the owner has a private source.
“And don’t forget,” he calls as he leaves, “we can’t do this alone.”
It is a fact. Without Quashia, and with Michel away for weeks at a time, René and I will need extra help. We were so blessed in the early days, the way both he and Quashia seemed to turn up out of thin air, that I have no idea how to go about finding anybody. Finally, I decide to scribble a card, a four-line annonce, to pin up at the local épicerie. I drive it over. I have always been rather fond of this particular store because it reminds me of countless village shops my grandparents took me to when I was a country child back home in Ireland. They would sell their great clanking churns of milk, and it seemed to me that every item in the world was on sale for us to choose from, particularly sweets; jar after tall glass jar of rainbow-colored sweets.
The burly wife of the owner of this particular grocery, pregnant again, greets me loudly and, having glanced at my advertisement, tells me that there’s no need to post it. I can take their chappie.
“But what about you?”
“Winter’s coming. There’s nothing for him to do here ’cept rake leaves and burn. Manuel is his name.”
“And you recommend him?”
“Mais, bien sûr, he has worked for us for six years.” She quotes the hourly rate they pay him, which seems affordable—the olive crop will pay it—and I can think of no objection to offering him the job.
“Bon, we’ll tell him to be ready for you tomorrow morning. You can drive him back with you.”
Relieved, I agree and proceed to do a bit of shopping. This includes a dozen small bottles of lager. Madame shakes her head. Désolé, she tells me. “We have run out.”
I am puzzled, for I had requested the same only a few days earlier, at which time she had informed me that she was expecting a delivery the following afternoon. We have long passed the full throes of summer. Tourists with tongues hanging out are no longer raiding the fridges of every corner shop and leaving them bare.
“Your delivery never came, then?” I remark innocently. She glances at me sheepishly and heads off to collect the coffee I need.
“Don’t forget Manuel,” she calls after me as I close the door.
When I return for Manuel the following day, as arranged, I find no one and head into the store to inquire after him. Monsieur, usually a fairly convivial fellow, who is proprietor, boulanger and pâtissier and is right now covered in flour, glowers at his full-bellied wife in an accusatory fashion and disappears in to his backroom bakery without a word.
“Try the woodshed,” Madame mutters, pointing toward a section of the grounds I have never visited before.
I am a little taken aback to discover not a Spaniard or a Portuguese as I had been expecting but a scruffy weatherbeaten Arab, no bigger than a sparrow, fast asleep on a pile of logs. At his feet is a small frayed satchel.
I hover a short distance in front of him. “Manuel?”
Startled, he cusses incomprehensible words and drags himself up onto unsteady feet. Staring at me, he has the air of a guilty child. He grabs the satchel and raises one arm in the air as though leading a posse to the charge.
It is only when he is seated beside me in the car, lighting a cigarette without checking that I have no objection, that I notice his bloodshot eyes and inhale the fumes of alcohol on his breath which are so overwhelming I fear the flame from his lighter might blow us and my little car sky-high.
I need this man. I need this to work. We have been shopping in that little corner store ever since we moved here. Madame wouldn’t palm us off with a drunk, would she?
It appears that she would.
When we arrive back at the villa, once Lucky has been chained because Manuel refuses to get out of the car while the dog is at liberty, he asks immediately to be shown to his room.
“Room?” I retort, for it had never been my intention to take him in.
He lifts his beaten satchel in the air and swings it as though he intends to set up residence wherever it lands, or smash a window or two.
“I need a shower and then I’ll go to work,” he says, groaning.
I am uncertain what to do for the best. Should I just shove him in the car again and deliver him back to the corner shop? Should I release Lucky and hope that he runs off in terror, thus relieving me of the problem altogether? Or am I being hasty? I decide to humor him until I can speak to Madame on the phone. “Why not work now and shower later?” I suggest. He humphs, throws the satchel on the ground, kicks it, lights a cigarette and shrugs. “What do you want doing, then?”
I look around in desperation. Nothing that could break or get damaged, certainly not the preparation of the olive nets. “A bit of weeding” is my reply, and I point to the greater of the various flowerbeds. I unchain the dog when Manuel is not looking and leave them to it, making for my workroom where I can discuss the matter in privacy.
Searching for the number, I realize that although we have shopped there since our arrival here, participated in their Christmas raffles, bought numerous tickets for gallon-size chocolate Easter bunnies and generally been neighborly with this couple, I have never noted the name of the shop. It is the only one on a manicured private estate set in the hills to the rear of our home, but that does not help me. I have no way of finding it out. Short of going back there and leaving Manuel here alone, I can think of no other way of settling the situation. I have been careless in this arrangement, and I am grumpy with myself. And I have so much work of my own to be getting on with, I wail silently. Finally, I hurry downstairs intending to explain to him that I will be back in a few minutes, but he is not in the garden and I cannot find him anywhere.
“Manuel!” I call.
Lucky comes loping toward me, barking.
“Manuel!” There is no response. Eventually, I find him hovering like a specter in the darkness of our windowless garage which, with two cars as ancient as ours, never houses vehicles but is packed to the gills with gardening equipment and a beaten-up but useful fridge.
“What are you doing?” I ask rather crossly.
“Looking for a hoe,” he explains. I point out the switch for the electric light and hurtle off down the drive in the car, hastening along lanes to be there before the shop shuts at midday. This épicerie is one of those small family businesses that closes at noon and does not reopen until four in the afternoon. When I arrive it is closed. I bang on the door and call out. No one answers. I wander around back to the area with the woodshed and rap my fist against a glass door. Still no reply. It is only a few minutes after twelve, but the place is as silent as a deserted ship. Infuriated, I pile into the car and hurry back to the farm. Manuel is nowhere to be found. His satchel, which had been ditched on one of the terraces, has also gone. The only sign that tells me he was even here is the hoe, which I find in the flowerbed, slung carelessly across a cluster of now-wilting tiger lilies. No weeding to speak of has been achieved. I call his name several times and peer into the garage but do not find him. He must have disappeared, perhaps driven away by fear of the dog. Lucky is supine on one of the terraces, panting contentedly. Little Ella dozing, her head resting against her companion’s stomach. I return to my writing, mightily relieved. The incident has been settled with far less consequence than I had dreaded.
MICHEL IS IN PARIS, and I have been trying unsuccessfully to reach him by phone. Given the extreme nature of our crisis and my natural propensity to worry, I am concerned that something could be wrong. I telephone his office and ask his assistant where he is. She has no idea.
“When did you last see him?” I beg, eager to keep the alarm out of my voice and not panic his team.
“Yesterday morning” is her response.
“What, he hasn’t been at the office since… is everything all right?”
Isobel, a stable and well-balanced woman, cannot see what I am so concerned about. “He’s probably working from his studio,” she offers as an explanation. I have been ringing there; no reply. Michel has never installed an answering machine at the little studio where he sleeps when he is in Paris because he guards it as a private space. Endless hours of his days are spent on phones, and he has always claimed to need this oasis of peace. We speak so frequently during the course of the day that this has never been a problem before. However, I am unsettled and ring Isobel again to ask him to call me when he comes in. By evening, I have heard nothing and try his studio once more. Still no reply, and the office have not seen him all day. He has probably been at meetings elsewhere is Isobel’s latest explanation.
“You don’t think you should go to the studio and break the door down?” I suggest. Clearly, she considers me preposterous. “I work for him,” she replies tartly. “I am not in the habit of beating down my boss’s door.”
“No, no, of course not. Sorry to have troubled you.” I replace the receiver, but I know that if all were well, I would have heard from Michel. Something must have happened. If he had been obliged to go away on short notice, he would definitely have telephoned. So what is the problem, and how am I going to reach him?
I am sitting on the terrace, tormented by worry, trying to take heart from the wintry sunset, when unexpectedly René appears. I am overwhelmingly grateful to see him. As is frequently the case, he has come with a little offering, a jar of fig jam, brown and slippery as a seal, made from our own freshly picked figs. From the eight trees on the property, Quashia and I gathered more than a thousand kilos of fruit during late September and early October before he left.
I thank my silver-haired friend and offer him a glass of beer, trying to disguise my present level of anguish. I am in a fix. Quashia has gone, I have no one to look after the dogs and I am thinking, broke or not, that I must go to Paris.
“Wine or beer, whichever is easiest,” he says, and settles himself contentedly at the garden table on the upper terrace to enjoy a drink. He likes to do this, René. He has a key to the gate and will occasionally drop by to while away an hour, discourse a little, recount a tale or two and take pleasure from the burnt-orange sunset.
I head down to the fridge in the garage to collect us a beer and a bottle of rosé. To my amazement, the fridge is bare but for a bottle or two of wine; certainly, empty of all beer. Puzzled, I pull out the sole remaining bottle of rosé. I know I am stressed, but I definitely remember buying a case of beer at a local supermarket the previous evening after leaving the épicerie, which was out of stock. Given my present stress level, it is possible I have forgotten it somewhere. I try to recollect. The trunk of the car, perhaps? And then my thoughts fall to Manuel, who, with all my concerns about Michel’s unexplained disappearance, had gone completely out of mind. The blighter must have made off with all the Stella Artois! I return apologetically to René with wine and a dish of our own olives.
“You look tired,” he remarks. “Did you remember to send in that form?”
“What form?”
“For the olives.”
Ah, yes, that form. Yes, I reassure him I filled it in, signed it and posted it on to Michel for signing and forwarding to Brussels. It is dealt with.
We raise our glasses and offer the usual French “à la tienne,” and sip our drinks.
I am about to ask for his help, to feed the dogs and hold the fort for a few days while I fly to Paris, when a strident trumpeting interrupts me. Amazed, we both turn toward the second plot from where the sound has emanated. “It’s a wild boar,” I croak.
René shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
“What could it be, then?”
“We better take a look.”
Leaving our drinks on the table, we set off into a wilderness of grass, brambles and weeds. Due to lack of resources, the second plot has, during the autumn and the earlier torrential rains, transformed back into a gentler version of the wilderness it was when we first discovered the place. It is a sad spectacle. Lucky and Ella trot at our heels. Lucky is barking wildly, but the peculiar bleating or calling has stopped, and we cannot trace it. René suggests that it may be a distressed animal, trapped.
“In what?” I ask a mite defensively. I am totally opposed to hunting, and when this portion of land was first cut back, I personally saw to it that every hunting trap still buried beneath herbage was ripped out and burned or, if fabricated out of some lethal metal, slung in the trash cans.
It is not too long before we come upon the source of the bellowing. Manuel, though not a single drop of Latin blood runs through his knavish veins, is spread-eagled on the ground, dead to the world beneath our spreading bay tree. Head pillowed on his satchel, he is snoring contentedly. All around him like a spray of stars are our emptied beer bottles.
“Diable.” René grins. “Who is he?”
“He was meant to be your assistant for the olive harvest.” I laugh and swiftly recount the story of Manuel.
We lift him between us and haul him, dragging him by his heels through the grassy earth, the entire length of the garden to René’s Renault shooting brake, where we dump him in the open trunk. His breath is like dragon’s fire.
“Let’s finish that bottle,” suggests René, giggling. “We’ve earned it, and then we’ll return him to his woodshed.” This is exactly what we do. During the entire exercise, Manuel never once so much as stirs.
During our little excursion to the épicerie, René agrees to hold the fort for me as of the morrow, assuring me that I am not to worry. He delivers me back to the gate. I thank him and begin my climb up the hill. As I do, he calls after me, “Do you want me to look for someone to help with the olives?”
“I’ll let you know tomorrow,” I answer, too whacked to think about it now.
Up at the house, the telephone is ringing. It is Isobel to say that Michel has been taken ill. I knew it. The dogs have been fed for this evening. I phone René, who is walking in his door, to let him know that I am leaving for the airport and intend to catch the last plane to Paris. I promise to be back as soon as I can.
PARIS IS DAMP AND WINTRY. Streetlights refract and rainbow in the rain. By the time I arrive at the studio, it is after eleven and Michel is in bed, doubled up in pain.
I am shocked by the sight of him but fight back my desire to quiz him about his sickness. I learn that he was taken ill the morning before, during a meeting with his lawyer. His lawyer called in a doctor, friend and specialist, who has taken some tests, sent him home to rest and promised to call again in a day or two, as soon as he has news.
“Why didn’t you phone me?” I manage.
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
I refrain from mentioning that the silence over the past forty hours has nearly driven me around the bend. Instead, I slip into bed beside him, wrap my arms around him and we try to sleep.
The specialist phones at what seems first light. In fact, it’s the lowering gray skies. He wants Michel at his clinic before the end of the morning. I feel everything within me tighten.
“Did he say why?”
Michel shakes his head. I insist on going with him, which at first he refuses, but I am adamant. Michel is not a man to ease up on his workload. On the few occasions I have seen him ailing with a common cold or minor health problem, he has ignored it. He refuses to accept or even acknowledge any form of physical incapacity. This is not going to be easy for him. Nor is it for me: I hate hospitals, I am the world’s greatest coward when it comes to blood and I can barely stomach the sulphurous and alkaline aromas of unguents, tinctures and disinfectants. Those long, narrow corridors give me the shakes. Supine bodies on trolleys bring nausea and fear to my senses. But I want to be there. I refuse to sit around at the studio all day, chewing my nails.
Even though Michel is insisting on taking the Métro because a taxi is beyond our means, we take a taxi because I insist more vociferously and he is too weak to argue.
The doctor is a youngish, handsome man with a warm reassuring manner. He leads us through to his office and informs Michel that he wants to begin a series of tests right away. Michel is in so much pain—stomach cramps—that he can barely speak. There are many French words, medical terms, that pass me by. I have a dozen questions I want answered but say almost nothing. Michel is led away, and I am left alone in the office.
It is not even six months since I sat at my father’s bedside. The images return and I try to drive them away, for they are too terrifying. I stand up and begin to pace, incapable of staying still. I open the door and peer out along a narrow corridor where figures in white flit in and out of opening and closing doors. Many are wearing face masks, carrying clipboards. I have no idea where Michel has been taken. Suddenly, the foreignness of everything hits me, and I begin to shake.
I love this man with every fiber of my being. I could not bear to lose him. Suddenly, I am tormented by pictures of my father, his deathbed and the funeral service. My fear is getting a grip. I must hold this together, I am thinking. And then the doctor returns. To give me an update, put me in the picture.
“I am zo zorree zat I kennot zpeek Engleesh.” He smiles. I nod without regarding him because I am ashamed of my desire to weep, because I am terribly afraid and because I feel I am about the most useless partner. If this were a film, if I were playing a role, I would be bearing up: a mountain of controlled energy, stalwart, docile; the rock upon which our relationship is built. Or at the other extreme, roles I am frequently offered these days, the alcoholic who can’t hold anything together. As it is, I am neither. Just ordinary and insignificant, lost in the labyrinthine world of another language and a situation over which I have no control and can see no signposts to guide me forward.
The doctor begins to explain to me what they are testing Michel for, but the words are long and incomprehensible and I cannot follow until I recognize one and lock on to it as though I have been slugged—cancer.
Have I understood correctly? These days, most of the time, I move between French and English almost as easily as changing my clothes, but there are occasions like now when I panic and the language becomes scrambled. It is as though I am on the outside looking in, a moth fluttering beyond glass intent on reaching the light. Desperate to be sure, I repeat the word once, and then again.
“This is difficult for you, n’est-ce pas?”
I nod.
“What I am trying to tell you is that we do not think there is a cancer but we must test, non? Come with me.”
He leads me down one corridor after another to a vending machine where coffees, teas and various other beverages are on offer. Pulling out a five-franc coin, he asks me how I take my coffee. I cannot remember! So he orders me an express. At that very same moment, an aluminum trolley rolling on big black wheels appears from behind a swing door followed by a young, bleached-blonde girl, thin as a wisp, who offers me a choice of croissants, chocolat au pain or baguette sandwiches: jambon or fromage. The doctor sits with me, and we eat breakfast together. And then he leads me to a quiet corner, rests a kind hand on my shoulder and hurries off to work.
The day passes long and slow.
When I am too drained to pray any more, I cheer myself with lists of heavenly moments to keep me company:
Late warm evenings, returning home in evening dress, after film and dinner at the Cannes Festival, to the song of nightingales lyrical beneath a blanket of stars. Dancing to their music on the terrace, arms wrapped tightly around each other, my head on Michel’s white silk jacket.
Summer Sundays on our own, floating together naked in the pool, in the world’s largest azure-blue rubber ring—a birthday present from me to Michel—water trickling through our fingers and toes. Heat baking our backs, circling on a cushion of bliss. The taste of chlorine on our lips. White flesh where watches and rings have hidden it from the sun.
Cool white linen sheets bearing the weight of sunburned flesh.
The notes we have secreted in each other’s luggage when we were separating, if only for a few days.
Lines from songs we have sung to each other:
“You taste so sweet, I could drink a case of you.”
and
“… when you need someone to love
Don’t go to strangers
Lover come to me.”
Airport good-byes and then crushing kisses at the week’s end which say how much we missed each other.
How Michel paints every mundane article in striking colors, even the hose rollers—all of them inspired contrasts. Picasso, when he lived close by our farm, was unhappy about an electricity pylon that blighted the view. (We have one, too!) The EDF refused to remove it, so he painted it a rainbow of colors.
A DOOR OPENS. BY NOW it is early evening. The doctor returns. I leap to my feet, piercing his expression in the hope of gleaning news. He does not speak directly, and I fear the worst. My stomach is churning.
“How is he? Where is he?”
“He’s five minutes behind me, getting dressed.”
All has been discovered. Michel is suffering from a mild form, early stages of, diverticulitis, probably caused and certainly aggravated by stress. The doctor is confident that it can be treated with plenty of rest, no work, an extremely strict diet, no wine and nothing that will aggravate Michel’s nervous system. If, after all that has been tried, the condition has not been resolved, then an operation may be required. The best of the news is that Michel does not have to be kept; he can come home now.
During our return journey to the studio, he does not even question the choice of a taxi. He is silent, exhausted by tubes and machines.
Over dinner—a chicken bouillon and Evian—we discuss our predicament. With his usual brand of tenacity, which in this particular situation I would describe as stubbornness, Michel suggests that he will rest over the weekend and go back to work on Monday. I will not hear of it, and we begin to bicker until a stomach cramp reminds us both that he must be kept calm.
The positive news, he tells me, is that the series is out on offer all over the world. With a few healthy sales, we can release the farm. I smile encouragingly, but the battle to keep hold of Appassionata has paled for me now. After all, magical as the place is, we could always find another farm, another property, and begin again. It’s the journey together that counts, not the points of departure.
Once upon a time, oh, it seems a long while ago now, I dreamed of a natural haven, of paradise winking down upon a tranquil blue sea. I had pictured friends and family at ease in my Garden of Eden, sharing and at peace, a place where artists worked and lovers loved. But it had been a vague sketch, a dream without lines between the dots, until I met Michel. Then it began to gain wattage, to take on a shape, develop light and shade, rhythm, sinew. Together we have breathed life into those blurred images. Together we have discovered how to live a new life.
Even more, what has blossomed out of those dreams surpasses any bricks or mortar, or even the loveliest of pearly terraced olive groves. Our paradise lies in the depth of our love. What geographical points our traveling takes us no longer matter.
You see, whatever Michel and his dogged determination believe, I suspect that our chances of hanging on to Appassionata are slim. Painful as it is, I am ready for the loss now. Prepared to watch our quirkily dilapidated farm be seized by bankers who cannot begin to calculate the wealth in every silvery leaf, each golden orange, the glittering of early-morning dew drooping in clusters from foliage and richly colored petals. We began this enterprise on a shoestring. Love and tenacity have held it together. We can do it again if we have to. And in the discovery of all this, I have shed skins—driving ambition, materialism, a need to control my life. I am learning to let go and am empowered. My heart has found heart.