The evening before his dawn departure, our loyal farm manager strolls up to say his au revoirs. This involves walking the garden with Michel – a male ritual they always play out before one or other leaves for any length of time – and then sitting at the table beneath the spreading magnolia tree to partake of a pot of mint tea with us, sweetened with spoonfuls of coppery Provençal honey. As we watch it plop into the cups, we promise ourselves that this time next year it will be from our own hives. On this occasion, Quashia has also come to collect a salary advance because ‘weddings are such expensive affairs’. I am rather taken aback by the sum he has calculated the whole business is going to cost him. Until he explains that, in Algeria, the preparations are the responsibility of the groom’s father, as is ‘footing the bill for every darn thing’, and that involves more than just the protracted wedding festivities.
‘What else could there possibly be, Monsieur Quashia?’ It amuses me that, considering the length of time Quashia has been working for us, I still address him as ‘monsieur’ and use the formal vous, rather than tu, when speaking to him. I never call him by his given name. I have no idea why this is. We are family, in our way. Certainly he has become more precious to us than any run-of-the-mill member of staff, and infinitely more than a hired hand. Still, unlike René, Quashia maintains a professional distance. ‘Are you expected to build them a home as well?’ He has mentioned in the past that he singlehandedly constructed each of the dwellings his other sons and daughters and their offspring inhabit. I had presumed he had chosen to do this out of his profound sense of duty and generosity, but now we learn from him that, yes, he will build his son a house but first, over the coming days, his entire village will be invited to his home and fed at several feastings that take place over a period of days. But, above all else, the bride has to be purchased. ‘And this young lady is not cheap!’
‘You must buy her, I see.’ Again, I had taken it for granted that, if there was a dowry to be paid, it would be the bride’s parents who would be shelling out, but in this part of Algeria, north of the Sahara, apparently not. I had also assumed that such customs as the buying and selling of marriage partners had died out altogether. Evidently not, in dear Quashia’s case.
‘I am still in the middle of complicated negotiations with her family,’ he tells us. According to him, they hail from a distant part of the country where the customs are marginally different. It has been agreed that the ten days of feasting for both partners’ families, friends and fellow villagers and the building of the marital home are all to be paid for by Quashia. ‘On top of which, they’re demanding three dozen sheep and a certain amount of cash.’
‘Seems a bit tough on you,’ I venture.
‘My lad wants her, and they know it.’
His son, the very last of his children, is twenty-two. Both Quashia and his second wife (not the boy’s mother) have been deeply troubled by the fact that he remains single.
‘But he’s still young, Monsieur Quashia, give him time,’ I have advised on several occasions in the past.
‘I was married at sixteen, and it’s better that way. He has to get on with building us a family.’ Quashia, who is the proud grandfather of close to thirty, is adamant. Whatever the cost, he will purchase this bride. ‘If only,’ he tells us plaintively, ‘to keep my wife quiet. She’s such a worrier.’
I am up with the rabbits the next morning to drive him to Cannes to catch the dawn TGV to Marseille. Even before I have downed my coffee, I see him trudging our hill loaded down with presents trussed up in cardboard boxes and squeezed tight into tartan nylon bags.
‘Pour les gosses,’ he grins, as he swings his load of gifts for his grandchildren into the boot.
We say our farewells at the station and off he goes in his checked orange shirt and moth-eaten Panama on his leave of absence which, he has assured us, will last no longer than six weeks.
‘If you need anything, I have left the number of a good friend of mine, a Monsieur Halaz, in the pocket of my work clothes in the garage. Give him a ring. He’s a decent sort.’
Brandishing fistfuls of cash, he bids me a fond au revoir. I wave him off, picturing the stages of his journey with all those bags – the train to Marseille, from there a boat to Algiers on the northern coast of Africa, and then on by country bus to the small village south of Constantin where his wife and extended family reside and await him excitedly – and, as always, I feel sadness at his departure.
Back at the farm, summer is approaching at a galloping pace. Every living plant is showing early signs of wilting in the heat and for the next two months most will need to be watered on a daily basis. And I am alone here, well, without Quashia and now Michel, who has returned to Paris to resume work on his animation film, but with three newly installed house guests. An actress pal of mine from way back, who I haven’t seen since we were in our twenties because she has been working in Hollywood on one of those glamorous, highly remunerative soaps, tracked me down and arrived with two teenage daughters, proclaiming a need for ‘peace and retreat, darling’ and declaring that our ‘sweet home’ is the ‘dreamed-of haven’. She is in the process of a bordering-on-bankruptcy, highly publicised divorce. The ‘ex’, many years her junior, is apparently ‘poor as a church mouse but mean as a skunk’. So here I am, pregnant, with a house full of hysteria, and no one to lend a hand.
I telephone M. Di Luzio to see what arrangements might be made for a watering system of sorts and to ask if he knows of a water diviner, but his answer machine is on, and he is away on holiday. I leave a message and then call René, because the disease Cyclocodium Oleaginum, known as paon and caused by the fungus Spilocea oleginea, is spreading at a virulent pace and is visibly jaundicing the leaves of the olive trees.
‘This malady must be treated with a fungicide as soon as possible,’ he tells me when he drops by to take a look.
‘Is there no way round it?’ I beg, because spraying the olive groves does not fit in with my desire to run this place organically.
He shakes his head solemnly. ‘You should have done it at the beginning of the year when you were pruning the trees. I warned you, Carol.’
‘Yes, I know you did, but … are you absolutely certain that there is no natural antidote we can come up with?’
Again he shakes his head, and I sense a hint of impatience at what he perceives as my romantic approach to farming.
I now learn that our tender young olive drupes must also be protected against, la mouche de l’olive Bactrocera olae. This is a fly they are prey to during this approaching season of extreme heat.
‘It’s rife everywhere this year.’
I stare at them in dismay. Now, more than ever, it is essential the trees remain healthy; we could be visited at any moment by heaven knows what organisation, and infected trees could prejudice for ever our status as olive farmers. But I have dreamed of, and maintained, up until now, whenever possible, an insecticide-free policy, and I am loath to change course at this critical juncture.
‘I read of another system being tried out, to combat these flies. Traps attached to the branches that attract them …’
‘It is not efficient, and far too expensive. Any farmer will back me up on this. Ninety per cent of the olives are attacked anyway, fall too soon and rot. Still, it’s up to you. They’re your trees. But you’ll have to count me out if that’s to be your approach,’ declares René with an edge I have rarely heard before. ‘Trust my expertise. I’ll mix the products together, un seul traitement. It will lower your costs – the hire of the machine, for example – to spray them together, but I can’t manage it without assistance,’ he tells me squarely.
Fair enough. He is seventy-six. The fittest seventy-six-year-old I have ever encountered, but still there are almost seventy trees to treat over many terraces and Quashia would have done the lion’s share of the work.
‘Can it wait until Michel is back?’
But when we calculate the days between now and Michel’s next scheduled return we both realise that to tarry would put both this year’s harvest and the viability of the trees in jeopardy. René suggests bringing someone with him, one of his chums who would accept a reasonable daily rate – in cash, bien sûr – but no one is available: they have all committed themselves elsewhere. I am deeply relieved because, as is so frequently the situation for us here, money is scarce and we are struggling.
We have a baby on the way, a watering system to plan for, a water diviner to unearth and bees to track down. My head is beginning to spin.
‘Carol, are you listening?’ René is reiterating the fact that he cannot accomplish this job alone, and so I suggest myself for the role of assistant.
His immediate response is to guffaw and then, to cover this rather impolite reaction, he sighs, coughs and mutters incomprehensible misgivings which I fear amount to nothing more than the fact that I am a woman.
‘I’d like to,’ I encourage.
He is mulling it over, harrumphing and breathing at my side. ‘C’est vrai, Carol, that you are always willing to learn, and the truth of the matter is that I have no alternative. All right, I’ll hire the machine and see you at half past seven on Saturday morning. Or is that too early for you?’ He asks this with just a hint of sarcasm, the insinuation being that showbusiness folk, les artistes, such as myself don’t get out of bed till noon.
‘René, you know me better—’
‘Yes, yes,’ he mutters. ‘A Samedi.’
Artiste or no artiste, nothing alters biology and I am a woman and, to René’s way of thinking, this is no job for a female. I shall have my work cut out to prove to him otherwise. What I have avoided disclosing to him is my condition. If he were wise to the fact that I am pregnant, he would never agree. But I have telephoned my local GP and confirmed that there are no risks involved. In any case, my share of the workload will not be taxing, and I will take care.
Saturday rises warm and bright; it threatens to be baking. I am awake and out of bed before six. Dogs fed, coffee made, e-mails answered, I head off down the drive to wait for him. I fear that the noise of René’s diesel-powered Renault, plus the petrol-generated machine for the tree-treating, might wake my house guests, who demand their beauty sleep, so I ring my silver-haired olive guru to warn him and we decide to begin at the bottom of the hill and work our way up.
As soon as he arrives I see that he is in a business frame of mind. I am no longer Carol, but the lowly assistant. The first task, he orders, almost the moment he arrives, is to mix the products in with the water. It is unusual for him not to greet me with the customary double French kiss on both my cheeks and I am aware that he has not got his head round doing this job with a female.
‘Fill this with water, please.’
The plastic container he is referring to, which fuels the machine, holds 150 litres of water. Machine and water container, along with hundreds of metres of piping, are in a trailer – la remorque – hooked up to the back of his Renault. The length of hosepipe in the cottage garden will not extend to his car but we have plenty more rolls up at the house. I offer to run up and fetch one.
‘No, no,’ he dismisses, and I sense the early signs of his ill humour. ‘I have a plastic bucket in the car. You can use that.’ And so here I am, in the lane at the foot of our land and alongside our caretaker’s cottage, empty because Quashia is away, sloshing and carting buckets back and forth, filling them from an outside tap.
The cottage garden has one olive tree, an ancient one and fairly laden with ripening fruit. René decides that we’ll begin with that. He barely needs my help because he can reach it easily from where his car is parked. I stand back and watch, paying careful attention. There appears to be little to this tree-treating business and I cannot think that, as assistants go, I will prove to be a disaster. What could possibly go wrong?
Once inside our grounds at the foot of the hill, his car and its trailer strategically parked off the driveway on the grass, he begins to instruct me in earnest. ‘Your job is to keep the hosepipe supplied. It needs to remain flexible at all times, do you understand?’ I nod. ‘Don’t let it get snarled up on any of the drystone walls, and don’t let it curl back on itself or the flow will be restricted.’
Yes, I nod again. It sounds simple enough. He trots off along the lowest terrace to the farthest trees, holding the spraygun from which trails the hosepipe, or part of the hosepipe, which in turn is attached to the giant water container. The rest of the piping remains unfurled in the trailer. Five hundred metres of it. To me it looks like any other garden hose, but René has told me that he drives kilometres into the hills to borrow this specific one for us.
‘Couldn’t we just buy our own? Then it would be here whenever we needed it,’ I have asked on several occasions.
‘No, it is special.’
‘Really? In what way?’
‘It is lined and protected, so that it won’t easily wear. It needs to resist the force of the product flowing through it, and it costs a pretty price. The amount you need for here would make it prohibitively expensive because you can’t get near the trees with a tractor. There are too many terraces and no accessible routes up and down the hill, nothing but mule tracks on this property. No, you must walk it and haul the piping by hand, which is time-consuming. On top of which, you need hundreds of metres of piping.’
All this sounds a touch fantastical to me but I acquiesce, silently plotting that the next time I am at the Co-operative Agricole I’ll acquire a few hundred yards of the stuff, and we’ll hear no more about it.
‘Switch on the machine,’ he shouts to me bossily, ‘and hold the hosepipe the way I’ve shown you. And make sure it doesn’t rub against the trailer, or the piping will get damaged and spring a leak and then we’ll be in serious trouble.’
I signal my assent and loop a few metres of the pipe loosely over my shoulder, creating some slack. I am watching René at the far end of this lower section of our land; he is staring up into the branches of a gnarled old olive tree. Beneath it, he stands no taller than a matchstick and resembles a small sentinel insect. I switch on the machine, which starts to make a rather disgusting slurping sound, like an old man drinking soup, and then the solution starts to feed through. This sends the hosepipe into dancing gyrations.
René is circling the distant tree, spraying up into it, and I am trying to keep an eye on him as well as concentrating on the line of pipe which is skittering through the dry summer grass. It weighs heavily against my shoulder, twisting and turning against me like a snake in pain, or in love. Still, I have it under control and I own up to actually rather enjoying myself. It is a beautiful morning. The sun is shining through the trees and the water mixed with the blue fungicide powder – which I am assured is the next best thing to organic but which looks worryingly lethal to me – is rising and falling through the branches and creating streaming rainbows. It is quite lovely. Our silvery trees are streaked with cold, sharp colours.
There is a very light wind, indiscernible really, but it is sending the spray whorling downwards. René signals to me to switch off the machine, which I do as he strides bow-leggedly back in my direction. ‘I need my mask.’ And into the boot of his Renault he disappears.
‘It’s like a factory in there, René,’ I tease.
‘What is?’
‘Your car. No matter what is needed, you have it to hand.’
‘It’s not a factory. I am an artisan; it is my atelier.’
‘Yes, well, that’s what I meant.’
He reappears now from the trunk of the car with what looks indisputably like a Second World War gas mask and a floppy desert hat. He pulls the mask over his flushed face and plonks the hat on his head.
I stare at him, amazed. ‘I’d love to take a photo later,’ I grin.
He says something in reply, but I don’t understand a word through the mask. The sight of him on this hot morning, a little man standing with a spraygun in his hand and this outmoded military equipment covering his whole head, is quite ridiculous and I burst out laughing.
He pulls off the hat and then the mask. ‘Start up the machine. I told you once, why aren’t you listening?’ And off he trots. ‘And I will need more pipe.’
‘Yes, René.’
We have a good rhythm going. René does occasionally wave a frantic arm at me, signalling me to clear out of the way, but before I can run for cover, my hair, face and sunglasses are rained upon and I am speckled in blue liquid. To protect against fumes, I have tied one of Michel’s handkerchiefs over my nose and mouth. My shorts and T-shirt are filthy. Dog turds decomposing in the grass, dust and bits of straw-like weed have fouled the pipe and are now stuck to me, too, but otherwise I am performing my role without too many hitches and we are making good progress. It is hot and tiresome work. The further we go, the more piping I am obliged to lift, negotiate and release. I must look like Houdini, or a snake-charmer, with coils of the whirligigging stuff wrapped around my waist and hanging from both shoulders. I am sticky with perspiration from the effort, and covered in bits of twig, but I don’t really care. It’s farm work, and I enjoy mucking in and learning and I feel sure that René must be just a little impressed with his female sidekick. Until, all of a sudden, when my silver-haired friend is at the farthest point in the garden, I am caught off guard by a cry coming from above me at the swimming-pool terrace level. ‘Darling! Darling!’
Ali, my actress friend, is out of bed. She descends a step or two, clumping in stiletto-style mules. I turn my head to acknowledge her. ‘Sleep well?’ I shout through the handkerchief, aware that I must not be distracted.
‘The girls fancy hamburgers for supper,’ she cries. ‘Shall we have that, or would you prefer to do a barbecue, darling?’
The pipe in my now gloved hand – the speedy movement of the rubber had been burning my palms – is being tugged, unbalancing me, and I need to release some slack. ‘Whichever.’
‘Do decide, darling. The girls and I want to go shopping. We can pick something up on our way back.’
I don’t want to deal with meals and menus now. ‘You can’t get out,’ I shout up to her.
‘Why not?’
Can’t she look? I am thinking. Can’t she see that there is a car and trailer blocking the driveway? I gesture with my head and turn my attention back to my task. I am now being dragged across the new stone path Quashia has laid on our Italian staircase, beneath the rose bower which shades a part of it, my arms being scratched by thorns, heading generally, and inelegantly, in René’s direction. He must be getting impatient, wondering what I am doing.
‘How long?’ I hear from on high.
‘An hour, maybe two.’
‘Oh, that’s all right, darling. We’ll have a swim and make a pot of café-o-lay. Oh, that looks like fun! You’re like the baddie in a Western. How are you getting on?’ But she wanders away without waiting for my response.
René is approaching, trotting towards me, bowlegged but still agile, tearing off his ridiculous mask to reveal a flushed, rather cross, stiff-lipped face. ‘What are you doing? I can’t reach the farthest trees.’
‘Sorry.’
‘I want to have this finished before the sun gets too hot. Please give your attention to the job in hand!’
I nod, and he stomps away.
‘Actually, Carol? Darling!’ It is Ali again.
I untie the hankie and sigh. ‘What?’
‘I think we’d like to go out now. The girls fancy a cappuccino in the village.’
‘You can’t!’
‘Surely someone can move that little van?’
‘Carol!’ Now it’s René calling.
Wouldn’t I rather be somewhere else? Wouldn’t I rather be back sitting in a make-up trailer on location somewhere divine, being pampered, running through lines in my head, concentrating on the scenes to come while chatting amicably with the likes of drop-dead gorgeous Hugh Grant, or in London drinking champagne with pals at the celebrated Ivy restaurant?
‘Carol, please ask the little man to move his car.’
I pull the handkerchief away from my face. ‘I think that might be difficult.’
‘Well, the girls are getting restless.’
‘Carol! Carol!’ René is marching towards me again. Now what? ‘I have no pressure. What’s happened to the pressure?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t got a clue,’ I squeak. As far as I can tell there still seems to be liquid running through the Michelin suit I have wrapped around me. I can still feel it agitating against me, as though I am dancing a rumba with an invisible partner.
‘There must be a leak somewhere. We’ll have to turn off the machine and then look for it.’
René is shaking his unmasked head from side to side. Chastened, I follow him back to the car and we discover that where the pipe is resting on the back of his trailer, due to the fact that it has not been properly protected – my fault, undoubtedly – and to the hours of vibration it has endured, it has worn through and sprung a leak. The water container is empty. Our carefully mixed (and rather expensive) blue, foamy liquid is gushing like a special-effects river down the hill. René sighs loudly and begins rummaging in various toolboxes in the boot of his car. ‘We’ll have to cut it and rejoin it.’ He glances up towards the sun, which has risen high above the tallest of the towering pines. My head is swimming with heat and exhaustion and, although I haven’t suffered from morning sickness for more than a week, I am beginning to feel woozy.
‘Ah, good, is he moving?’ Ali has arrived, dressed to the nines. She introduces herself to René with a beaming and slightly pert ‘bonjour’. He is instantly entranced. All the irritability written across his face disappears in an instant.
‘Quels beaux yeux,’ he croons. ‘Beaux yeux bleus. Tell her, please.’
‘René, this is Ali. Ali, René has asked me to tell you that you have lovely blue eyes.’
Ali simpers and then asks if I could persuade ‘the nice man’ to move his car. This I do and René agrees in a flash. Seconds later, the trailer is temporarily disconnected and all vehicles are being shunted and moved as the girls file by.
‘Diable, what a family! Please compliment the mother on the breathtaking beauty of her daughters.’
I do as requested and the trio of bronzed females swans off down the drive, waving and giggling at our olive guru. I have rarely felt less feminine as we trudge back to work.
An hour later we are sitting on the terrace enjoying a well-earned refreshment when my house guests return with cartons of ice cream and suntan lotions and glossy magazines and disappear into their rooms. Within seconds they reappear, three lean, creamed bodies in skimpy bikinis, and begin splashing and frolicking in the pool. René swigs at his beer, watching them.
‘Wait a minute! That’s not …?’ He gazes at me pop-eyed, as though he has just been visited by the Virgin Mary. ‘From the series …?’
I nod and smile. He slugs his beer.
‘Mon Dieu,’ he mutters. ‘Fancied her ever since I first saw her on the box. She’s smaller in real life. Even so … Man, I love women. You know, I haven’t changed. I’m still …’ he pauses, looking wistful. ‘It’s the years that have changed.’
I smile. He may be seventy-six, but those sharp blue eyes of his are burning with desire.
‘What’s she doing here?’
I shrug. ‘A friend of mine.’
‘Diable,’ he mumbles, still transfixed by the dripping-wet vision of Ali. ‘By the way,’ he continues, finally turning his attention to me, ‘you worked well this morning.’
‘Merci.’
‘You know, you work like a man.’
I roar with laughter, a long throaty outburst. ‘Is that a compliment, René?’ I ask.
‘Mais, diable, of course it is.’
Our tomato vines are producing fruit that is ripening so quickly and in such abundance that this particular section of our vegetable garden looks vaguely like an advertisement for Red Nose Day.
‘Why on earth did Quashia plant so many vines?’ I ask Michel when he returns for the weekend and we are occupied with watering, traipsing buckets, feeding hoses back and forth.
‘I think that, aside from the dozen plants you picked up at the garden centre, he must have taken seeds from the garage and thrown them into the soil. Don’t forget he can’t read French. He may have confused the labels on the packets and mistaken them for another vegetable. We will have to find ways of using them or they’ll go to waste. Have you ever made chutney?’
I shake my head and suggest instead that, as we already have plenty of zucchini – marrow-sized – I should invest in an eggplant plant. ‘Then I can try out a recipe for home-cooked ratatouille, prepared with fresh, garden herbs and our very own olive oil.’
‘Great idea,’ says Michel.
I take a quick peek in the garage to check where all the seed packets are stored. It is difficult to find anything in there amid the chaotic clutter: chainsaws still spattered with wood shavings, strimmers covered in tufts of dried grass, petrol canisters, flagons of oil, brushes and hoovers and tablets for the swimming pool, a zillion tools and contrivances of every conceivable shape and size, chunks of old rusty iron that Quashia is saving for a rainy day, boxes of Lord knows what that came with us from London or Paris and have never been opened or used. I sigh. It is a miracle Quashia planted tomatoes and that nothing more lethal has ended up in the ground. This space should be put to better use, I am thinking, as I move next door to the stables to feed the dogs. Only then does it occur to me. We will be needing quarters for our baby. Not in the early days, but once he or she has been weaned. This is the perfect place.
‘The garage and the two stables could be converted into a two-bedroom extension. I know we don’t have the money to do it now, but what do you think?’
Michel laughs. ‘It’s exactly what I had planned to suggest to you. I will make up some rough sketches and we can get some estimates.’
A day or so later, I make a trip to our hand-made tiles man in Mouans Sartoux to begin the approximate costings.
‘’My word, you look well!’ he exclaims.
I smile shyly and then regale him with our olive and bee tales.
‘I know a bloke, bit of a toff, but he’s a farmer and his sister keeps bees. I’ll give him your number. They might help you out.’
I nod gratefully, choose the tiles I fancy for our proposed extension, give him the measurements I have drawn up, and he promises to post us a devis.
On my way home, I spot a sign I haven’t noticed before. It is advertising a nursery, right off the roundabout, a short drive towards the old Grasse road. I pull over, turn off the main intersection and there, to my utter delight, I discover a splendidly equipped garden centre. I make directly for the vegetable plants, which are outside in a spacious yard that vaguely resembles a miniature rainforest. Fully grown tropical trees shade me where the air is damp and cool. Water is falling in crystal sprays from strategically placed pipes and there is that vibe here which I adore, of silent, lusty growth. I stare skywards through the cupola of fronds, trawling the alleyways, smelling and touching, intoxicated by the scents of the damp roots, earth and leaves, until I come across the eggplant plants. I choose two, both of which look robust and have several small, pendulous fruits hanging from them. As soon as I get back to the house, I plant them.
Although my pregnancy brings serenity, it also rules my every waking and sleeping hour. Few physiological changes have taken place yet and the morning sickness has finally abated, but cravings and dietary predilections are taking an uncontrollable hold over me. I am developing an aversion to meat, I cannot sit within a mile of anyone who is smoking a cigarette and I have developed an obsessive craving for tomatoes, preferably raw and straight from the plant, though I fear this is because I do not have the patience to wait until they are cooked. Given that our garden is chock-a-block with the red beauties, if a craving must take hold, this is a rather convenient one. Still, I find myself at whatever hour of the day or night clambering through vegetable beds protected by green netting – Quashia has pulled out some of the roll stored for the olive-gathering, attached it to bamboo canes and hung it in sweeping swathes to protect against scavengers, though not against me – searching out the ripe tomatoes; the riper the better. This is unusual. In normal circumstances my preference would be for fruit a tad underripe, green even. Not now. The redder and the mushier the better. As soon as I have picked them, I stuff them into my mouth, gorging on them. Juice and seeds run down my chin and along my arms. I feel sure that I am a disgusting sight, but I simply don’t care; I know no shame. The need is beyond my control. I devour until the craving has been sated.
One night I wake, in the grip of a craving. I sigh, knowing that I will not sleep unless it is satisfied, so I steal from our bed. Michel does not stir. I slip on some sandals, grab a sarong and trek off to the vegetable garden. It is a lovely clear night with sufficient light from the moon to guide me. I roll away the stones used to pin the green netting against the earth, lift up the cloth, clip it to the bamboo structure, climb in among the caned plants, sit on the stone surround and begin to feed. Ah, such exquisite joy!
Although I appreciate good food, I would never have described myself as a glutton, not until this evening. Now I am well cast for the role. It is brought home to me when I hear a shuffling in among the cedar trees and I turn to see two of our dogs, Lucky and Bassett, staring at me in the starlit darkness. I try to picture what they must be seeing. Their mistress, a sarong tied about her waist, slip-on sandals, seated in the centre of the vegetable patch, hands full of tomatoes, munching greedily, sticky with dripping and spilling seeds and fruits. Even the presence of these two bemused and silent mutts is enough to mortify me, and I decide that as soon as the eggplants are ripe, I will find a more elegant way to calm my feeding frenzy. Over the following few days, the eggplant plants fruit half a dozen shiny mauve-black gifts, lovely as dark African breasts. With these I make our first dishes of home-cooked ratatouille. Everything required for this recipe has been grown in our own garden, the herbs and garlic as well as the crateloads of tomatoes and the oil. It is the first season we have grown garlic and I am thrilled with the results. I love the piquant sap it leaves on my fingers when it has been freshly picked.
This homespun dish is a huge success, hot or cold. The plates are emptied and cleaned up with soft, freshly baked, hand-torn chunks of baguette. Even Ali and her two teenage daughters who, aside from consuming generous helpings of ice cream, spend their poolside hours counting calories and preening their skinny-as-maypole figures, lift their plates for seconds. I am delighted and picture lengthy summer days ahead with groaning dishes of ratatouille, as well as an end to our tomato surplus. But not with our trio of English beauties. Ali’s divorce calls for attention. The following evening I wave them goodbye at Nice airport and return to a sky shot through with coral.
Beekeeping. Archaeologists have discovered in certain regions of the western Mediterranean representations of hives that date back to 2500BC. Might some have been found here in France?
An Egyptian mural from around 1450BC shows a man carrying a tray full of honeycombs.
During archaeological excavations at Phaistos and Knossos, on the island of Crete, hives made of earth dating from 3400BC were discovered. At that time, the husbandry of bees was already practised there. The mythology of Crete contains many references to bees, honey and wax.
In Greek mythology, Aristée, son of Apollo and Cyrene, was kidnapped by Nymos, who taught him the fundamentals of beekeeping. Legend has it that Aristée later introduced the art to the inhabitants of certain regions of Greece as well as to the islands of Sardinia and Sicily.
After an hour or two of reading through notes in my den, I make my way to the vegetable garden to pick two eggplants for supper and find, to my amazement, that the twin plants are now sprouting tomatoes. But how can this be? I track the length of the plot, convinced I am going mad. Has someone dug them up and relocated them without saying a word? No, these are definitely the eggplant plants. I glare at them. They are green and healthy and growing precisely where I planted them, except they are bearing tomatoes. And not just any tomatoes, but the Tom Thumb variety, with a soft hue of pale ochre-orange. I am stumped, stupefied. I return to the house to recount this bizarre episode to Michel and discover him at his desk in his office, his head in his hands, holding a sheet of flimsy paper. ‘Michel? Are you all right?’ He appears not to have heard me, which sends a cold chill through me. Some tragedy has struck. Or rather, one of life’s truly extraordinary twists of fate, which will take several years to unfold in its entirety, begins today with devastating news. Michel was due to return to Paris tomorrow to continue work with Serge, a colleague of many years and director of the animation film Michel has been developing since last year. Not only is it a project dear to both their hearts, it has created a bond of deep friendship between them.
Without a word Michel hands me the crumpled fax clutched between his fingers. Sent from Paris, it is handwritten by Serge, whose wife was due to give birth to a child any day now.
It reads: ‘Please don’t contact me. Give me a few days. Lost Melissa and the baby. Don’t call; I cannot work.’
I am silenced. ‘What can we do?’ I manage eventually.
‘I’ll leave him be for a few days and then I’ll invite him here. I think he might appreciate that. What do you think?’
I met his wife only once, a few months ago – she was already pregnant – and I, as a pregnant woman, am speechless.
‘What happened?’ is all I can ask.
‘I have no idea.’
The notion of losing both mother and child in this day and age in a city such as Paris, with medical facilities second to none, is too incredible to entertain. I am numb with shock for them all.
‘Shall I fetch you a drink?’ I ask.
Michel shakes his head. With a brush of his shoulder, I leave him alone and continue on to the upper part of the house to lie down.
Later, while I am dozing, Michel comes to tell me that, due to this devastating turn of events, he has changed his plans and will stay home for a while longer. I am grateful for his company because I cannot deny that I am shaken by what has happened.
We are invited to a party at a villa on the outskirts of an inland village, pitted with homes owned by English expats. Neither of us is really in the mood, but we accept. Perhaps it is simply to seek diversion, to get out and be among people, albeit strangers – our next round of house guests are not due for a bit.
Although it is early summer, it rains. A short, swift downpour that lets up as we arrive. We park in the grounds and approach through a wooded garden where cyclamen-pink strobe lighting sweeps in arcs that make me giddy and paints the faces of the guests fuchsia. Heavy-metal music pounds out an unrelenting bass. Young women in skimpy frocks with exceptionally tanned flesh are gyrating awkwardly. Brits in denim shirts, clutching cans of lager, are hollering at one another. The music thumps on. Lumps of cheddar cheese attacked by everything but a trowel are resting on paper doilies, soggy from the downpour. Rows of empty wine bottles litter the sodden grass.
Michel and I falter. I suggest we leave, or perhaps he does. We turn on our heels and shove our way back through the swell of smokers and revellers as the strobe illuminates and darkens our path by turns.
Somewhere in a nearby clump of trees, I hear a deep and menacing growl.
‘What was that?’
Then we notice the dogs: green eyes set in thick heads. Three Rottweilers, tightly leashed, panting and growling. Behind them are two security men dressed from head to toe in black uniforms with knee-high, black leather boots. Their presence is disquieting. We continue on round a corner and come face to face with four more dogs accompanied by a quartet of uniformed men. I am wondering if we haven’t stumbled upon something kinky when a woman I was once introduced to in an adjacent upland village comes running breathlessly towards us. She is followed by a very young woman whose mascara is staining her face and who is exceedingly drunk. She is staggering all over the grass.
‘I know you. You’re on telly,’ slurs the drunken girl loudly.
‘Where are you going?’ enquires the other. She seems unnecessarily overwrought at the prospect of our impending departure.
When Michel explains charmingly that we are going home, she wails, ‘You can’t leave!’ And, assisted by the inebriated girl, she begins, quite literally, to drag us back. The young girl is now shouting and squawking.
My desire to get away has both heightened and lessened. I am curious to know why there are so many dogs here and what the villa might contain that requires such heavy-duty protection. I discover, as we are pulled back towards the heaving mass of desperate celebration, that the drunken girl is the hostess and is hell-bent on acquainting us with her partner, the host. She then proceeds to confide that he beats her. She lifts what little skirt she is wearing and displays a shocking bruise on her sunburned thigh.
‘He did this,’ she mewls.
My curiosity has waned and, like Michel, whose impatience I feel beating at my side, I simply want to go. Unfortunately, at that moment, the host, who bears the look of a fifty-year-old trying to pass for thirty-something – bouffant hair, gold chain nestling against hirsute chest, pink shirt slit to the waist, tight trousers – comes searching for his sweetheart. She folds herself against him as though he were Prince Charming, and then points at me. He claims in a thick Cockney accent to have recognised me and attempts to lure us back. We shake our heads. He offers to escort us to our car. ‘You can never be too careful,’ he reasons. The girl hangs from him like a bell, humming to herself; he completely ignores her.
I have taken such a dislike to this man that I can feel my flesh horripilate. Evil is the adjective which springs to mind. We pass kennels of dogs, German Shepherds this time, and two more men: uniformed, shaved heads, built like bouncers, dandling rifles. John, that is the host’s name, pronounced ‘Djo’, as he speaks it, informs us that he is ‘in security’. He whisks a card from his shirt pocket and passes it to me.
‘We ’eard you’d moved to the neighbour’ood’ – in fact Michel and I live a fair distance from John’s neighbourhood – ‘an’ knowing your line o’ work, you’ll be needin’ someone like me. Givvus a ring.’ And with that he winks at me, shakes our hands and heads back to the party, shrugging the poor dozing doxy from his arm as he retreats.
Sporting a large, floppy hat, white streaks of suncream on my shoulders and nose, I am well armoured against the rays of the sun, but what of the plant life struggling beneath this unrelenting sky? The earth is showing signs of cracking. Every shrub, every blade of grass, is wilting, gasping for water. What impression will this give to any official bods, should they arrive here unannounced and find nothing cared for?
I haven’t the time, or the stamina, and Michel won’t hear of me carting buckets and hoses across acres of ascendant terraces, so he takes on the task for a day or two, but we must find help from somewhere. Michel is also attempting to locate a particular woman working in the urbanisme department at the local town hall. He is having little success. We have received notification from an officer at the Chambre d’Agriculture to say that we are obliged to file our intention to plant new olive trees with the local council and gain their seal of approval.
‘Why? We still haven’t even received the list of approved nurseries.’
‘Because we are living in a green belt. Didn’t Quashia leave the name of one of his comrades in case we needed help? Why don’t we ask him to come and water the grounds for us?’
‘Yes, you’re right. The number must be in the garage. But surely by planting trees we are enhancing the green belt? I don’t understand their logic.’
‘I wouldn’t try,’ says Michel, and I trundle off in search of the phone number for Quashia’s friend M. Halaz.
I have just learned that ‘John’, the Brit whose party we looked in on, is an ex-convict who served a six-year sentence at Pentonville for armed robbery. When he was released from prison he changed his name and relocated to the Côte d’Azur. Now he is making a lucrative living keeping a watchful eye on clients’ villas while they are away visiting family in dear old Blighty. I have no idea how well circulated this information is, but the fact that he beats his elfin girlfriend appears to be common knowledge, which I suppose, given her frankness on the subject, is hardly surprising. I have also been told that a certain number of the Englishwomen who move in that particular expat circle find him ‘masculine and sexy’, and several claim to have had an extramarital affair with him while their husbands were away on business.
A swindler or a conman in French is an escroc, and escroquerie is the act of swindling. The petty crook is a very familiar figure here on the coast. Bloodshot eyes, Gauloise pressed between nicotine-stained fingers trembling from a nervous system shot to hell, voicebox husky from a surfeit of vin de table, he is quick to size up any situation and create his chance. He can smell good cash pickings and is expert at securing those cash-in-hand deals. Once paid, he is not seen for dust, seeming to disappear off the face of the earth, until you hear his name, that Côte cowboy or Midi maverick, mentioned in connection with yet another ruse perpetrated on yet another trusting individual. Foreigners are the crème de la crème in this regard. Those who dream of a home on the Côte d’Azur, but who don’t speak the language and, rather than taking the trouble to learn it and to mix with the ‘natives’, prefer to spend their time drinking gin and tonics alongside the pools of neighbouring residents with whom, back home, they would not pass the time of day. Escroquerie is woven into the fabric of living here. How could it be otherwise when money is the god? It is the yardstick by which worth is judged and valued.
I return to the garden centre, chugging along the pretty country lane that hugs the rear side of our hill. Families of sangliers are breeding in the thick mass of woods here. This is the herd which, when there is a shortage of food, emerges from out of the thicket, ascends the back of the hill and steals on to our land. Perhaps they consider it their territory. Occasionally, I see hunters here, armed with rifles and packed lunches. Quashia wants me to call a hunter in to shoot the boars who destroy his walls, but I can’t bring myself to do it.
Before reaching the main road which will take me inland, I pass through an area of open parkland backdropped by the Alps. Here, I see a discreet sign which reads ‘Chapelle de Notre Dame de Vie’. Picasso spent the final years of his life in a 200-year-old farmhouse right by here. The house, Notre Dame de Vie, named after the chapel, evidently, where the painter died of a heart attack in 1973, has been vacant since the suicide of his second and last wife, Jacqueline.
Once upon a time it nestled among fields and hills; these days there are elegant properties in enclosed estates – domaines – constructed all across the plain and the hillsides. Still, the house remains apart; unsold, abandoned, almost forgotten. A neglected treasure trove on the borders of the commune of Mougins.
I have secret ambitions of passing a moonlit evening there, communing with the ghost of genius. To fulfil that dream, or at least get a gander at the place, I have been trying to find it, but no one I ask seems to know its precise location. Several have never even heard of Pablo Picasso.
Arriving at the nursery, I make my way through salles of fishtanks, perfumed candles and garden furniture, stepping to the rear, where it reeks of damp soil, lavender and murmuring growth. I seek out a salesperson.
Leaning against a pillar in Potted Vegetables, arms crossed, I come upon a frowning, pale-faced adolescent who answers my enquiry with: ‘Don’t speak French.’ She is here from Scotland on a temporary basis, she tells me, revealing too that she is exceedingly lonely, not having a very agreeable time and knows nothing at all about plants.
‘How is your French coming along?’ I ask, attempting to encourage.
She hangs her head, mumbling tearfully. ‘I just wantae go home.’
My instinct is to invite her over for a swim, but I dither. I have a beekeeper to find, a water diviner to hire, ten acres to irrigate, weeding to catch up on; I have almost given up on achieving any writing this summer, and I have a baby to prepare for. Lord.
The girl begins to sniffle. I hesitate, caught in the dilemma. ‘Would you like to lend a hand at our place, water our plants? You’d be out in the sunshine. You could stay on and swim.’ This sounds relatively inviting to me, but she shakes her head, scuffs her shoe against the earth and repeats that she wants nothing except to go home. I leave her with a pat on the shoulder and go off in search of someone who might furnish me with an answer to my puzzle. I find a young man shunting dustbin-sized black pots of ferns from one spot to another. He rises, sweating. I explain my predicament.
‘Bring them back and we’ll change them’ is his solution.
‘But why would eggplant plants fruit tomatoes?’
‘Bring them back,’ he repeats crossly.
‘I can’t. They’re in the ground and have shot up to five or six feet tall.’
‘Well, what do you expect me to do?’ he asks impatiently.
‘I just thought that you might explain why, what we can—?’
‘I haven’t got a clue.’ And he bends back to the pot at his feet and drags it away. I toy with buying more eggplants, decide against it – God forbid, they might also turn into tomatoes – and return to the car park, where I accidentally drive Michel’s dusty-blue Mercedes into a wooden gatepost. No real harm done – the car is built like a tank – but it adds to my growing frustration with it and how it smokes and fumes and splutters like an ageing, ill-tempered dragon.
Back at the house I find a message from a farmer with a Welsh accent: Lord Harry, the brother of the woman who keeps bees. Their estate is situated between our address and the Esterel. He would be happy to meet with me and help in any way he can. I jot down the details, intending to call after a short rest. Michel brings me tea and I learn that Serge, deep in grief, does not feel ready to accept our offer of a sojourn here in the south. Later in the season, perhaps. This means that Michel must return to Paris. If Serge is not able to work, Michel will use the time to hunt out investors for their film. I smile encouragingly. I know that he must go – our work always involves these arrivals, departures and separations – but it never gets easier. I have been enjoying his daily presence around the place. Particularly with our baby on the way.
He strokes my cheek. ‘I’ll be back at the weekend, chérie. And, shortly after, we will be together for leisurely weeks of summer here.’
The next morning I drive him to the airport, or rather he drives, because the old car has no power steering and is such a bloody bus to manoeuvre. We promise ourselves that, with the next contract either of us secures, we will invest in a tuppence-ha’penny runaround, rather like my much-mourned Renault 4, the Quatrelle, which sank in mud when the river that abuts the airport burst its banks, flooded the car park and drowned every stationary car in silt and water.
Towards late afternoon, René drops by, as he is wont to do, for no reason other than to while away an hour or two and drink in the view across the sea. He delights in watching the sun go down, chilled glass of beer in hand, with me at his side, an enraptured audience for his tales. This evening he comes bearing a wine made from walnuts. I have never tasted walnut wine, which tickles him. He is in a jolly frame of mind and I suspect that the bottle is a peace offering but, of course, he makes no mention of his tree-treating humour. I walk him over to my eggplant plants. He nods as though he knows the mysteries of the universe. ‘They have been grafted with tomato plants,’ is his diagnosis.
‘Really? Well, what would cause them to return to their grafted source?’
He merely shrugs.
‘Might it be an act of survival? Rather as a reptile changes colour or sloughs its skin?’
Whether the explanation is too complicated for the likes of me or he doesn’t know I cannot say. What he does tell me is that it is not uncommon to graft one plant with another of a different species. He practises it himself, and has been intending to suggest such a graft to one of our agrumes.
‘You produce so many oranges that I thought you might fancy a yield of pamplemousses.’
‘Grapefruits on an orange tree?’
‘Or tangerines, if you prefer.’
I am amazed and ponder the proposition. One tree, two fruits.
‘C’est pas la peine à se presser le citron, Carol,’ he grins.
‘One mustn’t press the lemons?’ I repeat, bemused.
‘No, no,’ he roars with laughter. ‘Se presser le citron means to rack your brains. But if you don’t fancy grapefruits, leave the tree to its oranges and I will continue to harvest them. I have made a dozen litres of vin d’orange which I will bring you once it’s bottled – the wine needs to ferment – and I have two dozen jars of splendid marmalade. All from your oranges.’
More than sixty kilos he gathered in the spring while Michel and I were far across the seas getting married.
‘Is it your wife who makes the marmalade, René?’
‘Lord, no, it’s me. A secret recipe, all stirred up in an ancient copper pot. You’ll never taste better.’
‘How about harvesting our tomatoes and making us some chutney?’
‘I certainly will. I’ll gather them at the weekend. But dry some in the sun. Dried tomatoes – delicious!’
I marvel at the capacity this septuagenarian has for life and its earthly pleasures, which puts me in mind of Picasso. I mention to René that I have been looking for the great man’s house. ‘Have you any idea where it is?’
René is surprised that I have had difficulty locating the artist’s home.
‘Some people I’ve asked have never heard of him.’
He shakes his head. ‘The property’s not hard to find. I was there. I paid him a visit. Years ago, of course.’
‘You are kidding me, René! You were at Picasso’s house?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was he there?’
‘Mais oui. Of course, there wasn’t the fanfare about him then that there is now. As I say, it was years ago. I was still young. My sister wanted to meet him, so I agreed to go along. She was interested in his pottery.’
‘You amaze me, René.’
‘Why? He was just a bloke selling paintings from his house. Making a living like the rest of us.’
‘Hardly! He was already world famous by the time he reached that address, exhibited worldwide, hailed as—’
‘That may be, but he still had groups visit him chez lui to see the tableaux, and that was why my sister wanted to go.’
‘Did you actually set eyes on him?’
‘Yes, we shook hands. He welcomed us.’
‘René, you are making this up!’
He stares at me as though I am the one who spins tales.
‘What’s to make up? He lived here and we visited him.’
‘I read that after his death the house went to rack and ruin. His wife committed suicide, tired out by the loss of him and the heritage wranglings. It is still empty, I believe, which is why I’d like to find it.’
‘Just like Maurice Chevalier.’
‘What is?’
‘His house, up behind La Bocca. He left it to the state for the use of impoverished artists. They didn’t look after it, and now it’s overrun with gypsies.’
I prefer not to engage in conversations about gypsies and Arabs with anyone from Provence because it usually leads to a diatribe about how the country is being overrun with foreigners, so I return to Picasso. ‘What was he wearing? You know, in all the photos, he’s in shorts.’
‘Lord, no! He was dressed correctly. He had guests – us. Short bloke. Handsome, though.’
I giggle. René is five feet two. Upstairs, the telephone begins to ring.
‘I’ll let you answer that.’ He kisses me on the cheeks and as he climbs into his shooting-brake he points to several cedar branches extending towards the electricity wires. ‘You should get those cut back. They’re dangerous. You don’t want them brushing those cables. If the EDF see them, they’ll have something to say.’
‘Don’t worry, Michel has already spoken to Quashia. When he returns he’ll prune them.’
‘I’ll take the wood off you; give you a fair price.’
I nod, waving him off without tarrying.
‘By the way,’ he calls as his diesel-powered Renault sputters in the drive. ‘I almost forgot why I dropped by. I’ve found you a water diviner.’
‘No!’
‘Yes. But don’t tell anyone.’
I shake my head in amazement. Why shouldn’t we tell anyone?
The call is from Michel, in Paris. He sounds tired, but he has met up with Serge.
‘How is he?’
‘Silent. I think work is his best antidote. We’ll plot the storylines, then I’ll leave him to make draft sketches while I go to Australia. I’ve found a co-producer there.’
‘Australia!’
I have no time to register my dismay; the instant I put down the phone it rings again. The female voice enquiring after me is British, pukka and unfamiliar. I assume it is the apiarist sister of the Welsh farmer, but no. The woman announces herself as Lady Edwina —.
I have never heard of her, but she is inviting me to dinner. The invitation is for the following evening, a midweek night.
‘We do so hope you can come,’ chirps Lady Edwina. ‘We’re frightfully short of gels. Rather too many single men drifting about these days. We’re a wee distance inland from the village of —, but not difficult to find. Take the Vence road and follow the signs to —.’ And she proceeds to give me rather complicated directions. I accept the invitation, partly out of curiosity, but principally because I am assured that Lord Harry, the Welsh farmer, will be attending.
The address turns out to be more than a ‘wee distance inland’ in a locality quite unknown to me, and not shown on any map we own. But as dusk begins to fall, close to an hour after setting out, driving along a meandering lane cut through Provençal brush, I eventually find the sign directing me left by an impossibly remote petrol station Lady Edwina told me to keep an eye out for. Once I have turned left, I assume that I have arrived, but no. I discover as I crawl through dusty scrubland that I still have another five or six kilometres to go. I begin, ever so slightly, to panic. This can’t be right. Michel’s old Mercedes grinds on, carrying me with it.
Should I turn back?
It is then that I sight a distant twinkling of lights up ahead and, as I approach, an alarmed gate. I dig about in the glove compartment for the code Lady E. has given me. The gate swings open on to another deserted dust track. I look back and see the gate swing shut. I begin to grow anxious, as though I had rolled smack into a David Lynch film or, worse, one of Cronenberg’s. Who would choose to live out here? I ask myself. And why?
On I go until I reach a pocket of recently constructed salmon-pink villas and, beyond, another secured gate. This requires another code, which has also been furnished by my hostess. I roll down the car window but the codebox is not within arm’s reach and I am obliged to get out to punch in the figures. Nothing happens. I try again. Still nothing happens, aside from the arrival of a small dog who growls and yaps beyond the wrought-iron gates, warning me away. Its insistence would alert anyone to the presence of strangers, but there is no one to alert, no sign of habitation. The dog scampers up some steps and then down again. There is a hut up there, presumably for le gardien.
I call. No response. I boom with my actress’s vocal cords. Still no response. I go back to the codebox and hammer in the numbers again, to no avail. By now, I am frustrated, furious and hungry. I have started to turn back when a light finally goes on in the caretaker’s office. The spill reveals a narrow gate alongside the main one, which is ajar. I push my way through, skip round the snappy dog, climb the steps and beat on the door. A sleepy-eyed man opens up. I explain my situation, who I have come to see, repeat the numbers of the code and, before I can finish, he presses a button and the gates glide open.
‘The house you want is the last. You can’t miss it. About three miles up the track.’
‘Three miles!’
When I eventually pull into the pebbled drive of what, from this aspect, looks like a very modest modern house, I park up behind an electric-blue Bentley convertible with its roof open, two Porsche Carreras, an old banger – probably a staff car – and a sports Jaguar. All, except the banger, display Swiss plates.
I pull on the bell. The door is opened by Victor, husband to Lady Edwina, a Russian who speaks English with an impeccable accent. He pours me a glass of champagne and leads me directly to an exterior terrace.
* * *
Behind us icing-pink, mock Palladian colonnades. We are gazing down upon a capacious pool and beyond, across bosky hills and valleys cascading towards a fingernail glimmer of opalescent sea. I must be facing south-ish; I am staring at the Med, but where, in actuality, I am, I haven’t a clue. In some obscure, human fabrication of Wonderland.
Victor has made ‘his pile in realty’. He buys up thousands of hectares of scrubland, le maquis parfumé, for next to nothing – these sylvan acres are designated nonconstructible and therefore deemed worthless. He then proceeds to ‘sort out’ the permits at the local Mairie and, once these are acquired, he builds residential parks, domaines, on the land. These consist of several dozen uniform villas, fenced in with oleander bushes and other local shrubs surrounded by electrified fencing and well-fortified gates. Foreigners are his market. They holiday at these second homes, buried away in the pine-covered hinterlands of the Riviera. Here, the enormously wealthy and overly paranoid can vacation with peace of mind, secure in the knowledge that armed guards and coded gates keep the rest of the south of France out of sight and at bay.
More to change the subject than anything else, I ask him about Lord Harry. ‘Both the sister and the brother are a little eccentric, but salt of the earth. Still, if you go to visit them, good luck. He’ll be here later so you can see for yourself.’
Lord Harry is the last of the guests to arrive at what turns out to be a birthday bash for Lady Edwina, a point overlooked on the telephone, which means that I have arrived empty-handed and inappropriately attired. Everyone else is in black velvet evening dress. Thankfully, I thought to pick up a plant at one of the villages I drove through. Edwina accepts it graciously, though my less than soignée appearance does cause a look of horror to cross her face. But it is only a nanosecond before her well-bred smile saves the day and almost camouflages her shock. ‘My dear, you look absolutely charming,’’ is her response to my apology.
I am introduced to Colin, who I recognise instantly. Colin is an attractive, thirty-something thriller-writer who began life in the east end of London and now resides in Geneva. His is the convertible Bentley out front.
We are nine, including our hosts. Lady Edwina places me between Victor and Lord Harry, a convivial, lobster-faced aristocrat who is puffing and perspiring from the word go. As we sit for dinner, he already looks the worse for booze. His rotund stomach is threatening to explode through his shirt as he unbuttons his velvet smoking jacket and pours himself a glass of wine. I watch as he dabs his streaming face with a handkerchief and I cannot help feeling that I am in the company of a steaming kettle.
‘Cotty top-up?’ he bellows at me. I panic, assuming this to be a British expression I don’t understand.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Cotty de Ronnie, dear.’ And he serves me a brimming tumbler of a Côte du Rhone red and pours another for himself. I notice that he has several glasses on the go. A Chardonnay in one hand and a ‘Cotty’ in the other, and he has already polished off the rest of the magnum of bubbly.
By now we have dealt with the foie gras, which, for a reason I have missed, seems to have caused a minor fracas between host and hostess, and we are getting stuck into steak and kidney pie served with peas. I feel as though I have walked on to the set of a Noël Coward play. Three seats away, across the round table, Lady Edwina is lolling tipsily against the breast of the writer, strategically seated to her right. They are engrossed in what appears to be a very intimate conversation about matters of the heart. I catch little more than the general drift because Harry is bellowing and huffing alongside me. I turn my head to my left where hubby Victor, blithely disinterested in his wife’s table manners, is attempting to prise details of my marital status out of me. I confirm that I have a husband who is in Paris on business, but I divulge nothing of my pregnancy.
Copious amounts of ‘Cotty’ are being sloshed into tumblers and poured down throats at a rate that simply amazes me. I am surrounded by the cream of Britain’s élite class. These men, save for the Swiss-resident writer who hails from the back streets of London, claim education at the finest of English public schools. Lord Harry’s accent has now become thick, lilting Welsh. He leans close, swaying, and whispers with the breath of a dragon some furtive secret which I don’t quite catch about his daughter, a svelte English blonde dressed in gold seated opposite, the youngest by far at this Mad Hatter’s dinner party.
I frown, confused. ‘I thought Lydia was Edwina’s daughter?’
‘Yes, with me! I married her first! Lydia’s mine!’ he rages wildly, his eyes bloodshot, but with neither rancour nor venom. His yelling seems to be more of a flailing in the dark.
Next to Lydia is seated a flamboyantly turned-out gentleman in black velvet smoking with yellow silk cuffs, red embroidered slippers and full, if discreet, make-up. He puts me in mind of Somerset Maugham. The poor man looks profoundly bored. Moments later, he leaves the table never to be seen again, but it is of no consequence because his disappearance goes unnoticed.
The fact is, our hosts are plastered, and I fear we might be shifting gear here, moving from Coward to something less frothy: the second act of an Edward Albee, perhaps? It is time to leave, but before doing so I am keen to arrive at an arrangement with my neighbour, Lord Harry, about his sister’s bees.
‘It might be Mummy’s birthday today but I have just had my birthday and Daddy must buy me a Cartier watch!’ wails Lydia.
‘Ah, but which daddy?’ quizzes her stepfather, the Russian, nudging me in the ribs and winking at me as though he’s nobody’s fool.
I smile gamely.
Victor decides that it is time to change the mood with a little music. He staggers to his feet and chooses a smoochy tune by crooner Julio Iglesias. The others seem to find this ‘just the ticket’ while our host, a well-preserved, regularly exercised, bronze-skinned, lizardy fellow of sixty-odd, begins circling the table and gyrating his hips. He is grinning rakishly at me as he embarks on the tale of a past conquest. In lurid detail he describes how he had his way with a nubile ‘thing’ called Julia. Only at the tail end of the monologue do I learn that Julia was Harry’s girl. Before or after Edwina is not clear to me.
‘Are you just remembering this now, old boy?’ asks Harry with a sigh. I turn to him and see not the blustering drunk who has been bellowing in my ear all evening, but a sad and defeated individual. Perhaps he is actually the most interesting soul at the table. Still, it is definitely time to be on my way, but first the question of his sister.
‘About your farm,’ I begin. ‘May I pay you a visit, Harry? I would like your sister to place a few hives on our land.’
‘Of course,’ he sniffs. ‘Any time you like.’
I offer my thanks and wend my way.
Trekking back in the dark is no simple exercise but the time passes and, surprisingly, I find my route with relative ease. All the while I am contemplating the evening – a madcap affair, to say the least. What a crowd I have fallen upon. The new Côte d’Azur. Shoving aside centuries of history, digging up the earth, sectioning it off into profitable plots with no thought for the old business of farming the lands. Except perhaps Harry, whose sister, with luck, will become our long sought-after beekeeper.
The name Côte d’Azur comes from a book published in 1887 by a Burgundian lawyer-poet, Stéphane Liégeard. He settled happily in Cannes and decided to write a guide which covered the coast from Menton on the Italian border to Hyères, near St Tropez. He named it la Côte d’Azur as a celebration of the inky blueness of the Mediterranean waters. The book was an instant smash hit, and the name stuck.
I yawn, changing gear, as my thoughts are requisitioned by what lies ahead. Irrigation systems. How will we ever channel water up to the summit of the hill where there is plenty of good earth for planting new trees? It will require new piping – sections of what is laid and in use are metal, have rusted and sprung leaks – and possibly a second electric pump. Costly.
We will need to clear terraces everywhere ready for the planting and this will involve more than just the strimming away of the brush which Quashia and Michel have achieved so admirably. A myriad mountainside stones will have to be removed, the decomposing remains of ancient roots from fallen trees still clinging in the earth will need to be pickaxed out, holes dug, compost and fresh earth supplies brought in. I must find out what fertilisation, if any, we should use for all those olive saplings. The soil will need analysis. And the treating of the trees? If the traps, les pièges, I suggested to René, used to attract and kill the flies, are not viable, then surely there must be another organic alternative?
I arrive home to noisy greetings from the dogs, who are busy about their starlight guard duty, catch the distant hoot of an owl as I climb the outside steps and fall into bed exhausted, determined to wake early and, albeit singlehandedly, set to work.