Over the weekend we find a note left in our mailbox, handwritten in a spidery calligraphy. ‘Pedro et Maria’, it announces, ‘touts mains’. They are offering themselves for tree-cutting, housework, pool-cleaning, gardiennage, dog-sitting, painting, decorating, rewiring and car maintenance, among other things. There is a telephone number at the foot of the list of their advertised accomplishments. Michel is impressed, not only by the diversity of the tasks to which they seem willing to put their energies, but because he always admires anyone who goes out to find work, who shows signs of ambition. ‘We should call them,’ he says.
I agree that they might be capable of executing these chores – though secretly I am always rather on my guard with those who claim the ability to turn their hand to whatever you will – but, I point out, we are not planning on any painting, decorating or wiring, not at any time in the near future; not until we decide whether to convert the stables into bedrooms. ‘And we don’t need a pool-cleaner, we have Thierry. We have Quashia to look after the land, and the car is way beyond the help of any form of maintenance.’
‘Perhaps I’ll ask him to prune back those overhanging cedars in the driveway. They really are dangerously close to those electricity cables.’
I am less than enthusiastic about this suggestion. ‘Let’s wait till Quashia returns, or ask René. It’s a risky business, Michel, and we don’t know the extent of this man’s skills. One slipshod cut and we could end up with lop-eared branches that bring the cables down.’
Michel reminds me that we have a pair of towering pines leaning precariously over two of the lower front terraces and stealing much-needed sunlight from four of our olive trees; they really should be pruned back.
I cannot argue this point.
‘If he’s reliable, we’ll keep him on to water and tend the garden till Quashia returns.’
And so, at Michel’s behest, Pedro drops by: a gaunt, wiry middle-aged Portuguese with a face as lined as a latticed gate and a voice as hoarse as a damaged squeezebox. He smokes like a chimney and infuriatingly chucks the butts in the flowerbeds, which does not endear him to me, but Michel seems set on giving the man a chance. I sigh. It is true that he is friendly and certainly eager for the few days’ employment; he is equally eager for his wife, Maria, to be engaged as our femme de menage on a more permanent basis, which Michel agrees to. After Pedro has left I protest, but to no avail. Michel insists. He rarely puts his foot down but, on this occasion, he is adamant. ‘I have been watching you scooting here and there and it is time for you to take it easy. We are having a baby, chérie. I don’t want to see you lifting or carrying anything, not even shopping, and certainly not cleaning this big old house. I won’t discuss it.’ And with that he returns to Paris, and Pedro and Maria are taken on as our temporary workforce.
On the morning Pedro is due to begin the pruning of the trees, four Portuguese cronies come barrelling up the drive. They park up and descend from the oldest, most shambolic Peugeot I have ever set eyes on, armed with chainsaws, manual saws, wicker baskets, hammers and an arsenal of useless, ageing tools in their kit, plus a stack of rather heavy lunchboxes which they ask me to store somewhere cool. I am reminded of the mechanicals in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
‘Bom dia,’ I say. ‘Where’s Pedro?’
‘Pedro arrives last,’ they inform me, as though it were an acknowledged rule.
‘Show us the trees, as arvores, to be cut down, madame, and we will get to work,’ one says in a French injected with Portuguese where Js are pronounced as heaving Hs.
‘Not cut down, monsieur, pruned.’
‘Sim, sim, madame, bom,’ he nods vigorously.
‘Down there, towards the foot of the land.’
The men stare at the trees and then at one another with stupefied expressions. This is followed by an explosion of the foulest of Portuguese swearwords, silenced by the arrival of Pedro. He parks his equally rusty banger – thank the Lord we didn’t decide to take him on for car maintenance – on the lower terrace by the trees in question and climbs out, cigarette between his fingers, hacking and spitting. The men rush as one, hats waving, tools like sabres, down the drive and lunge at him. I am puzzled as to what is going on but when Pedro yells, literally yells at them, before dissolving into a fit of coughing, they hang their heads shamefacedly, gather up their assorted tools and say no more, and I go inside.
Oh dear, I am thinking, this is not Bottom and his merry men, it’s the Marx Brothers. But no doubt they will settle their differences and attack the job. I am at my desk, lost in a world of my own. A wasp is catapulting itself at the glass of the closed French windows, trying to find a way out. I rise and unlock the door and the insect flies free. It sets me thinking about our beekeeping ambitions. I must telephone Lord Harry.
Outside, the day is hot and still. The cicadas crack on, but little else stirs. It is that, the silence from the grounds, that nudges my attention. I haven’t heard the whirr of a chainsaw since the Portuguese arrived. On the pretext of going to collect the mail, I make my way into the garden and descend the track towards the gate. There I discover the quintet at the foot of the sprawling pine trees, shirts on heads like turbans, rowing furiously about os troncos de arvores, pushing and punching and shoving one another, throwing tools to the ground, stamping feet, fists at the ready, without so much as a single pine cone trimmed.
‘Is everything all right?’ I call out.
They turn, waving and smiling as though at a picnic.
I decide, while I am outside, to scale the hill and reconnoître the disused water basin. It is in a desperately sorry state. The main weight of it appears to be resting on an anterior drystone wall, which has sunk into a pile of rubbled stones. I fear that, due to the force of rain or hungry boars stamping about, the earth could shift and that section of the hill could slide, taking the foundation of the basin with it and cracking it wide open. It needs urgent structural repairs.
I try to look inside to gauge the condition of the interior but the walls are too high. I shall have to leave this to Michel, or Quashia, when he returns.
I descend as far as the house, needing to rest in the shade for a bit. There is still little sign of activity around the pine trees. I am feeling less than sure that this pruning will ever be achieved and conclude that these Portuguese are a disorganised, hotheaded bunch. Thank the Lord we are paying them by the contract and not by the hour.
Throughout the day, they continue to fight and seem to agree only when they down tools for lunch and uncork several bottles of wine, though these merely serve to exacerbate their tempers.
I stroll in and out of my den at regular intervals, more to keep an eye on them than anything else, and to caress poor, tormented Lucky, who is barking and howling incessantly. She has been chained up since this morning and must remain so. I dare not let her loose. I fear that an animal as nervous as she, the victim of early violence, a skin-and-bones vagrant when we found her, will be unsettled by the constant yammering and shouting and swearing.
The gist of the men’s argument, it appears, is not about how best to attack these gigantic trees but who should be the one to shimmy up os troncos, the trunks, and how come they are being paid such a pittance for a trabalho of such monumental danger. They are hardly a hive of industry, but I leave them to it. The heat of the sun makes me dizzy and, each time they catch sight of me, one or other of them attempts to drag me into the dispute.
Finally, in the late afternoon, I hear the dulcet zirring of the chainsaws.
It is amber evening, shadows lengthening, the cicadas silenced, when Pedro comes banging at the door, fag in mouth, sawdust stuck to his sweating face, to announce that they are quitting work for the day but will be back bright and early in the morning. As is my habit, I offer the team a beer, which they accept without a second’s hesitation – one of the few decisions they have agreed on since their arrival. I direct them to the garden table and make my way along the covered terrace to dig five chilled bottles out of the fridge in the garage. Unbeknown to me, Pedro follows and, deep in the crepuscular space, pungent with the aroma of dried herbs left uncleaned on the strimming machines, saucers filled with lethal pink flakes of poison intended for the rats, and trickles of mazout, oil, leaking from the ancient central heating system, he creeps up behind me and presses himself against me, breathing tobacco and alcohol fumes into my ear.
Shocked, I spin round. ‘Take your hands off me!’
Instantly he backs off, making a gesture which I have come across before. Arms in the air like a surrendering soldier, it reads: hey, cool it, lady.
I return to the group, followed by Pedro, and graciously pour out the offered beers. But I am shaking with anger and aware of flashes of pain at the base of my stomach. Silently, I berate myself for having allowed this man to rile me so. As the gang prepares to leave, I beckon Pedro aside, sounding out the sum we owe him.
‘But the work is not finished,’ he splutters. ‘You haven’t seen how well we’re doing.’
‘Yes, Pedro, it is.’
He smiles, and nudges closer. ‘The way you say my name, your accent. Pedro. Pedro. It makes me hot.’
I walk away, seething at his impudence.
‘You can’t fire me now,’ he calls after me. ‘There’s the second tree to prune.’ Given the stress and delicacy of Michel’s situation with Serge, I make the decision not to bother him with this matter on the phone; we can deal with it when he returns from Paris. As I walk down the hill later, flanked by the dogs, to lock the gate, I see butterflies everywhere – rich, golden wings tinged with buttery yellow, others pure lime like a watered summer juice. Such pleasure. And then I notice the olive tree.
One of the branches Pedro and his crew have lopped has plummeted to the terrace below and torn away several of the fruiting boughs on the left side of one of our olive trees. I walk over to take a closer look. Ripped from the main trunk, fresh creamy-white wood exposed, the limbs are hanging in the evening light like severed silver wings.
I hurry back inside and telephone René. He is not there. I leave a message, asking him to do what he can to lessen the damage. This careless destruction of our tree and of even a small percentage of our olive yield has upset me. The shooting pains abate as unexpectedly as they arrived, but I recognise the warning sign. I must rest. I decide on an early night, lie in bed perusing my Guide to Mediterranean Butterflies and find that the specimens I saw this evening were Clouded Yellows and the lime ones Green Hairstreak. Such a splendidly punk name.
Until this evening, the tiny being inside me has been only that; an energy force, albeit desperately desired, that has been unbalancing my system, changing my eating patterns, tiring me out. Tonight, though, there is a change. I picture a child walking the hills with me, its hand in mine. Scuffed espadrilles, a floppy sunhat, curls, a voice, many questions, a burrowing curiosity. Podgy arms pointing, requesting names of flowers and butterflies … My mood is appeased. I am carried into sleep dreaming dreams of a small, emerging person.
A couple of days later, I am attempting to reroute an army of large, black ants that I refuse to treat with pesticides. I don’t want to kill them. I want them to get on with their busy lives cleaning up in the garden but to keep out of the kitchen. Barbaric to massacre an entire colony simply because I fear them near our food. My difficulty is that my ploy of leaving bread and jam at strategic distances from the house has not worked: the dogs have eaten the crusts and the ants are back, marching, more resolutely than ever, like a black conveyor belt down a wall from the roof, along a balustraded edge of terrace, and heading in the general direction of the main door of the house. While I am leaning over them, staring at them in dismay, wondering what, apart from insecticide, I can do to make sure they stay out of the house, Pedro’s wife, Maria, comes battling up the drive in another rattletrap of a car. I had not been expecting her but I cannot hold her responsible for her husband’s out-of-order behaviour, so I put her to work and go about my own.
L’olivier. In my earliest studies, I had assumed that the olive tree, because it is regularly cited in the Old Testament, was possibly the earliest tree known to man. This is erroneous. Think of Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden: figs, apples. I have recently learned of another tree, the bristlecone pine, that does not grow in the Mediterranean basin and so does not concern me here, but what does interest me about it is that there are examples of this species surviving today that are far older than any existing ancient olive trees.
One particular example of this pine, nicknamed ‘Methuselah’, is believed to be 4,768 years old. It outdates, by a thousand years, the earthen beehives found by archaeologists at the Cretan sites of Phaistos and Knossos.
I hear weeping. I lay down my pen. It is coming from the bathroom; it must be Maria. I deliberate and then choose to ignore her tears, deciding that I should not intrude.
Mimosas and olive trees are not visited by bees. Pollen is not reaped from them; they are not used in the production of honey.
The weeping is unremitting. Maria has shut herself in the lavatory and is now wailing. I close my notepad, feeling I should offer help or consolation, but it’s awkward. I rise from my desk and knock gently on the door. ‘Maria?’
‘Sim,’ she hiccups.
‘Are you all right?’
The door opens and I find her sitting on the loo seat, stripes of mascara running down a face wretched with misery.
‘What is it, Maria? Can I help?’
‘It’s my Pedro,’ she sobs. ‘He has another woman.’ And off she goes again, wailing like a siren.
The news does not surprise me but evidently it has knocked her for six. In fact, she is so devastated I don’t know how to comfort her and eventually murmur something inane like, ‘Perhaps you are mistaken.’ Trite and inadequate, I know, but I cannot think of anything better.
She shakes her dark head and begins to howl again. ‘No, I’m not. He talks of her in his sleep. “Esto apaixonado por te,” he says. “I love you, your curvacious breasts, your curly blonde hair, your accent when you speak my name. Esto apaixonado por te.” And look at me, madame!’ She is gesticulating angrily now, pulling at her hair. ‘Dark, dark, dark!’ and, beating at her breast, ‘Nothing, nada here!’
I step back from the lavatory door, feeling decidedly ill at ease, offering to make tea so that I can slip swiftly away. Infuriatingly, to add to my mood, the ants have made it to the kitchen. As soon as I have a few minutes’ peace and quiet, I telephone Michel in Paris, insisting that we put an end to our relationship with Pedro and Maria immediately. I promise to explain when he gets home. Bemused, he agrees.
On Friday, when Pedro drops by to collect his money – I make sure that I am not present – he enquires of Michel: ‘What’s up, chief? The work we’ve done is good, non?’ Michel tells him that the work is not good. He was asked to prune the trees, not hack them. ‘And look at the olive tree on the terrace beneath.’
‘We haven’t hacked the pine, monsieur. We’ve pruned it real hard so it’ll grow faster. That olive’s nothing to do with us. It must have been damaged already,’ he counters with a shrug, and a drag on his fag.
Michel does not bother to engage in the nonsense of these arguments. ‘There are other reasons we cannot continue to employ you,’ he says and hands the man his envelope.
Still Pedro does not understand, or chooses not to.
‘But what reasons?’ he insists.
Finally, Michel, who hates to be forced into any form of confrontation, is obliged to spell out the incident in the garage, at which Pedro stares at him in blank amazement. ‘But you can’t be upset about that, monsieur! I was paying your wife a compliment!’
We are left for months with one over-pruned pine tree and its neighbour listing dangerously. We still have no one to water and, as to the olive, it breaks my heart to see its leaves and tender green fruits withdrawing from life, shrivelling and dying. I cannot reach René.
Later in the afternoon, as I step out of the car, having just returned from the garden centre, where Frédéric has advised me that there is nothing for it but mass destruction of the ants, ‘before they wreak havoc in the house and take to biting everyone’, Michel comes hurrying out on to the terrace. ‘It’s your agent,’ he calls.
‘I bought the dog food,’ I yell. ‘But I have nothing for the ants. Frédéric suggested some lethal blue powder, but—’
‘Telephone,’ he shouts again. ‘Leave all that. I’ll unpack the car.’
I make my way indoors.
‘Hello?’
It seems that I have been offered a rather good role in a TV drama for the BBC. In the circumstances my first reaction is to refuse, and then I reconsider. Why not accept? The shooting will only take three weeks, we could most certainly do with the money and, as I need to see my gynaecologist in London, the timing is rather convenient. What is more, the dates coincide almost exactly with Michel’s trip to Australia. The only snag is that we have guests, a family of four, arriving any day now and no one to look after the place, no one that is until I finally manage to track down Halaz, Quashia’s fellow countryman, who agrees to come up and take on a few daily chores for us until Quashia’s long-awaited return. Basically, all that we need is someone to water the plants and sweep the numerous tiled terraces and, during the period when we are both away, to feed and care for our dogs. Normally I would manage these chores myself but the heat and my pregnancy leave me flagging and manual work has become too taxing.
I suggest to Halaz that he comes up before dusk, feeding time for the hounds, and then Michel or I can give him a brief tour of the place and show him what to do.
The man who arrives is a short, bald-pated fellow, partially deaf and totally toothless, wearing a brightly coloured Hawaiian beach shirt, a broad grin and speaking a version of French which surely qualifies as an unidentified language. He shakes my hand enthusiastically and then, clapping his hands as he goes, scampers over to introduce himself to the dogs before I have given the signal. Lucky, interrupted in her evening biscuit and meat slurpings, snarls and lurches at him which sends our prospective help skittering off behind the trunk of the elephantine fig tree, trembling in terror of his life.
‘There’s nothing to be afraid of,’ I shout, running to coax the cowering Arab out of hiding while calling for support from Michel, who is engaged in detaching a small wasps’ nest he has found beneath the rear mudguard of the car. ‘She’s as friendly and faithful as a newborn puppy when she gets to know you.’
‘I’m afraid of dogs,’ he croaks.
‘Then why …?’ But I don’t bother to finish. Lucky comes loping towards me expecting a congratulatory pat for frightening off the nasty intruder. ‘Well, it was kind of you to come. I’ll walk you to the gate so that you’re not troubled again. Thank you for …’
But the man has edged nervously out from behind the tree. ‘No, no, it’s fine. I’ll get used to them. I like animals. It’s only that the German Shepherd, well, he’s rather big. But I promised Quashia that if you called I’d lend a hand, and I will.’
Fruitless to point out that Lucky is a female.
‘Truly, it’s fine,’ he insists, shooting wary glances in the general direction of the stables, where our canine trio are watching on, panting gleefully. Fortunately, Michel arrives about then, wasps’ nest dealt with. He calms and charms Halaz, and the two men go off on a tour of the land, which allows Michel to explain the basic workings of our convoluted water system.
Providing our villa and acreage with water involves switching on an electric pump which has been installed in a tiny stone hut in the valley in front of and abutting our land; land that in times gone by was owned by this estate. From there, the water is pumped across the narrow access lane into our grounds and, by means of hundreds of metres of visible black piping, interspersed with the unreplaced lengths of old, rusty, metal piping up to the very summit of our hill and into a gigantic stone basin, from which it freefalls down the hill to the main house, the swimming pool and on to the foot of the land, crossing the narrow strip of lane again, where our entrance gate is situated, to feed our caretaker’s cottage. It is a labyrinthine and archaic system but the four neighbouring houses in our forgotten corner of this rather unknown quarter all have exactly the same type of water supply and Lyonnaise des Eaux have no intention of changing it any time in the near future, so we have learned to live with it.
When Michel and Halaz return from their sally round the land, the poor man, who must be at least sixty, is sweating and puffing and looking vaguely puzzled.
‘How about we all sit in the shade and cool off with a lemonade?’ I offer. I know he won’t touch alcohol.
He shakes his bald head, too breathless to speak, chewing pensively, on his gums I think.
‘It’s a lot to take in, but once you get the hang of it and know what’s what, the work will only require a couple of hours a day.’ I am trying my damnedest to be encouraging because without him, Quashia’s return seems a distant promise and I will be obliged not only to refuse the television offer but, more importantly, to postpone my gynaecological appointment or find another specialist, one I don’t know and who does not know me, here in France. Given my unlucky history, I would dearly prefer to be examined by my own doctor. In any case, even if I cancel the trip, I cannot handle this work alone.
‘No problem,’ he grins, bucking up in the most unexpected manner.
‘And the dogs?’
‘No problem.’
I shoot Michel a glance and say to him in English: ‘What do you think?’
Michel replies in French with a pat on Halaz’s back. ‘Monsieur Halaz will have it taped in no time, won’t you, monsieur? We have the utmost confidence in you.’
‘No problem,’ the man repeats. ‘How much will you pay me?’
‘What do you think is fair?’ parries Michel.
Halaz stares at his sandals with a frown which seems to carry the weight of the world and then lifts his head and requests a sum which is rather insignificant, tantamount to slave labour, and I think he must have miscalculated. I repeat the figure and he nods nervously.
‘I think that’s too little,’ I answer. ‘We will offer you double that, on condition that the tasks are carried out on time and as we have asked.’
He stares at me in amazement and then grins from ear to ear and shakes our hands as though we were long-lost friends. ‘No problem,’ he says again and again. ‘I’ll start in the morning, and then you can see how I am doing. I’ll be here at quarter to six.’
‘Oh, it’s not necessary to come quite so early.’
‘Yes, yes, it’s fine. Quarter to six. No problem.’
At that moment, as matters seem to be reaching a happy conclusion, Lucky comes haring down the hill with Bassett at her heels. They have been off on their early-evening hunt, a recce for rabbits or snakes or stale baguettes raided from some disgruntled neighbour’s dustbin, from which they usually return bristling with an excess of triumphant energy. I call her sharply to heel but she heads straight at Halaz, who begins dancing backwards in his sandals while emitting groans of terror. The German shepherd rises on her hind legs, waltzing towards him, and I think the poor man is about to have a heart attack. But she rests her paws against his chest and pants contentedly. His terror turns to an outburst of joy. He attempts to caress her but his contact with her is rather abrupt, the pats almost slaps, and, fearing she will misunderstand, I rush forward. But she seems appeased and remains where she is, front legs now wrapped around his torso.
‘See, no problem!’ he cries like an ecstatic child. He shakes our hands again and shuffles off down the hill.
‘I’m glad that’s settled. Did you manage to take a look at that second water basin while you were up there?’ I ask Michel as I slip into the summer kitchen and draw out a bottle of Sancerre.
‘Yes, it will need shoring up and then some serious plumbing work.’ Michel sits down at the table, where I join him, both of us about ready, as the evening draws gently in, leaving the soporific heat of the day elsewhere to chill out with a glass of wine.
The early-morning sun is rising beyond the rear of the house, beyond the summit of our hill, climbing up behind the tall, narrow pines, framing and transforming their treetops into burnished halos and sending rods of golden light into our bedroom and on to our sleeping faces. I open my eyes to the caress of heat and to the unexpected sound of sloshing water. At first I am confused, and then, glancing at the clock, which reads a little after six, I remember M. Halaz. Michel is still sleeping, which is unlike him. He is usually up with the lark and preparing coffee and fresh fruit for breakfast about now, or already at his computer. Since the conception of our baby I have grown lazier in the mornings and am beginning to revel in idleness. Still, I roll over on to my left flank and clamber out of bed.
Once I have our coffee brewing, I step outside, slip my feet into espadrilles, stretch to scratch the sky and stroll to the terrace’s edge to take in the view. The light hitting the distant Esterel is delicate, soft-hued; a purled mist that, later, the sun will burn off. Beneath me, a dusting of dew has alighted on the plants and the grass, which is beginning to turn brown from lack of water, and I am delighted to observe that there are no ants anywhere in the vicinity of the house. I seem somehow to have disenchanted them without needing to resort to killing them. I lean over the balustraded railing and am mystified to see a slender stream of water running down the driveway. To the left of the house, in the parking, is Halaz, in a cherry-red shirt, hosepipe in hand, wrestling with its orange plastic nozzle. Suddenly, the nozzle flies off the pipe and a powerful jet of water explodes in his face. He drops the hose fast and the pipe spirals away, seesawing water everywhere. He looks desperate and I see from his lips that he is muttering under his breath. I decide to go and lend a hand. Passing the garage, I notice that the tap alongside the stables has been left running, which would explain why we have a miniature rivulet in the drive. I close off the tap and go to help our man. Drenched, he has taken up the hose again and is attempting to dry himself off with a bright green handkerchief.
‘Bonjour, monsieur, would you like a towel?’ I ask.
He peers round awkwardly, surprised to find me there. ‘No, it’s fine,’ he answers brusquely.
‘May I show you how the nozzle works?’ I hold out my hand to take the pipe from him but he pulls away, shrugging me off like a child with a prized toy.
‘Jeleconnay, jeleconnay,’ he answers petulantly, in his toothlessly incomprehensible French. ‘Cet cazzi.’
We establish, gently, patiently, that the nozzle is not broken and that it is essential, when one corner of the garden has been completed, before moving on to the next tap, that the other should be shut off tightly so as not to overconsume water, which is mightily expensive. He nods, drags and heaves at the hose and scurries off as though in a race, returning to what he was attempting to do before my appearance on the scene.
Over a delicious breakfast, prepared and served by Michel on the upper terrace – poached free-range eggs and a succulent portion of grilled tomatoes from our endlessly abundant vegetable garden, accompanied by a fresh baguette which he has driven to the village to collect – I express my concerns about Halaz. Michel’s opinion is that we need to give the man time to get to grips with the work. As he says this, we spot the very fellow two terraces beneath us, puffing and panting, his red shirt so sodden it clings to his torso as though it had been painted on him, haring from one lilac bush to the next, spraying water everywhere as he trips in his sandals and then heaves and tugs at snake-like whorls of yellow piping.
The next time he appears, hosepipe at the ready and held aloft like an ancient flag of war, he is charging back in the opposite direction, springing from one terrace to the next, as though hell-bent on extinguishing a fire.
‘Why is he rushing like that? He’ll give himself a heart attack.’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Lord, I hope it’s not because I told him the job should only take two hours!’
The fact is, Halaz explains to me the following day, that he prefers to work quickly so that he has no time to forget what he is doing.
While Michel is at the supermarket stocking up with a mountain of food for my Irish family, who eat like horses and are due any day now, though we have no idea of the precise date because they have not yet let us know, the telephone rings. My cousin’s Irish accent greets me warmly. He is phoning to say that they have not managed to get flights and would it be all right with us both if they came later in the year? In fact, the change of plan suits us, but I am surprised by the news about the airline tickets. ‘Why not?’ I ask.
‘Ah, Jeez, I haven’t had the time to look,’ is the response.
I have to smile.
Through one of the tall French windows, as I put down the phone, I spy Halaz engaged in what looks like a one-man Aborginal corroboree or a Dutch clog dance. The hose in his left hand is swinging to and fro and irrigating most of the antique terracotta tiles as well as our teak dining table, not to mention feeding the fountain of water rushing down the stone staircase in front of him. Meanwhile, his right hand is flopping backwards and forwards and turning in bizarre circles; all this as he hops excitedly from leg to leg. The sight of these insane gymnastics makes me burst out laughing. What is he up to? I ask myself, and I creep out to take a closer look, but I can find no rational explanation for his performance. What I do observe, though, is that the garden is swimming in ponds of gurgling, bubbling water. We’ll be waterlogged before the week is out and I shall be forced into a desperate search for René’s elusive water diviner. Where is René? I am thinking. Why hasn’t he returned my calls? At this rate, Lyonnaise des Eaux will have a shortage if not a crisis on their hands.
Michel returns, laden with shopping, and I greet him with the news that the Irish have postponed their visit. We stock most of the perishable foods in the deep freeze and stack the bottles of wine in the shuttered cool of the summer kitchen. The whites and rosés are left to chill in the garage fridge, and then we begin to address our own departures.
The fly in the ointment could prove to be leaving Halaz here in charge and this does not make my confidence sail. ‘I caught him flapping about in the garden like a demented bird.’
Michel tells me not to worry so much. ‘He’s getting the hang of it, chérie.’
But at what cost? I dread to think of the water bill. We will definitely be needing a diviner.
‘Do you think we should get a quote from Di Luzio for plumbing that second basin?’ I ask.
‘Did he call back?’
‘No,’ I sigh. Summers in Provence.
‘Let’s wait until Quashia returns. It may be beyond repair.’
I drive Michel to the airport. He is taking a plane to Paris, and from there will be departing in a few days’ time for Sydney. We say our heartfelt goodbyes and I weep like a child.
‘Please don’t be sad, chérie. It’s only for three weeks, and then we’ll be back at the farm and together again. August will be upon us and I shall stop travelling for at least a month. We’ll invite the girls down to spend a week with us, and Serge, too, if I can persuade him to accept. I am concerned for him. Think how lucky we are. Nous avons la chance; we have a baby on the way and everything to look forward to. Je t’aime.’ He kisses me tenderly, hugs me tight and then speeds off to his departure gate. I wave him goodbye with a smile but I cannot deny a presentiment that my sadness is not entirely misplaced.
Driving back to the farm I determine to shrug off my downbeat mood. When I arrive Halaz has gone off for the day and I come across two taps at different points in the garden pouring forth. Sun-reflected puddles have collected everywhere and, to keep their coats cool in the increasing heat, the dogs are dozing in them and then transporting the mud and wet all over the place. I rush inside, ruby with rage, intent on calling the man back here right this minute. I intend to give him a damn good trouncing and have the matter settled once and for all but, at that very moment, at the peak of my rage, the telephone bursts into sound.
‘Allo?’ I shout. ‘Who? Who?’
It is Jacob, the journalist Michel and I bumped into a couple of months back at the Cannes Film Festival.
‘What is it?’ I bark at the receiver.
Jacob is calling from the coast. He and his girlfriend, Barbara, have just arrived there, on their way back from another film festival somewhere in Lausanne, I think he is telling me, and are travelling south by car, returning to their apartment in Rome.
‘I would love you to meet Barbara.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t this time …’
‘She’s dying to meet you. She’s a great fan. She’s read your books, she’s seen your films. Would you like to come down and have an apéro with us later?’
‘Well, I’m awfully tied up today, Jacob …’
‘Then let us invite you to dinner. Get your work done and then drive down here. “As late as you like,” Barbara is shouting to me. But do come.’
My temper has begun to subside and I recall how frequently and warmly he spoke about his girlfriend when he and I were in Madras together.
‘Hello, Carol, this is Barbara. Please say yes.’
I have shelfloads to get done before my own departure, which is looming, and I am feeling consumed by misgivings about Halaz but, rather than refuse and be unnecessarily impolite, I suggest to Jacob, who is back on the line, that they come up to the farm instead. I give detailed directions and we agree the hour.
‘We look forward to it, Carol. A plus tard.’
But my mind is not on this unanticipated rendezvous at all. I am stewing with Halaz’s incompetence and determine that when he returns in the early evening to feed the dogs I will speak very sternly to him and threaten to sack him if he doesn’t pull his socks up. This I cannot do, of course. At least, not without jeopardising my own trip and my appointment with the specialist, but he does not know that.
Jacob and Barbara arrive earlier than we had agreed, which does not please me, but as it turns out this new acquaintance is utterly enchanting. A late thirty-something, husky-voiced woman with a mane of wild, blonde hair. From her accent it is clear that she hails from one of those upper-middle-class English families who hold themselves in high esteem. The refreshing difference is that Barbara has an air of the gypsy about her. She has healthy, tanned skin and a face as brown as a nut from out of which shine the most mesmerising, soulful green eyes.
I open a bottle of chilled Bourgogne Aligoté, serve two dishes, one of local olives, the other a mix of almonds with pistachio nuts, settle them in the garden, and then apologise for the fact that I must dash back upstairs and finish the correspondence I was called away from.
‘Have a swim,’ I suggest. ‘There are towels in the spare room. I’ll join you later.’
Later arrives all too soon, while I am still buried beneath a mountain of unfinished paperwork, or rather as I am giving up for the moment and leaving it all to go in search of Halaz. Halaz, who, unbeknown to me, has plodded up the drive and paused for breath beneath the spreading fig tree where, in this leafy, shaded corner at the shallow end of the swimming pool, he claps eyes on Barbara, blithely ascending the chlorine-bleached steps, wet, oily as an otter and stark naked. This sighting sends Halaz, whose notion of women is that they should be covered from head to foot, into a state of cardiovascular shock.
Having exited through one of the back doors of the house, I am entirely ignorant of this collision and have no idea, when I find Halaz, what has come over him. All I see is that here he is in the stables, arms outstretched, collapsed against the crumbling ancient wall, fighting for breath with the desperation of an asthmatic, the three dogs’ dishes, fortunately metal, having fallen from his grip to the ground and rolled off out of sight. A twenty-kilo sack of biscuits has split open and the contents are pouring all over the floor. In addition to this, three lidless tins of meat chunks swimming in thick gravy have been discovered by the dogs and dragged out on to the forecourt where, heedless of Halaz’s state, they are gobbling and slurping with a gluttony which exceeds even their habitual zest. I find them, usually such a harmonious trio, growling deep-throated threats at one another, warning their comrades away from their portion of the stolen provisions.
‘What is going on?’ I demand of Halaz.
‘Where’s Michel, where’s your husband?’ he stammers and pants.
‘He left this morning. Why?’
Try as he might, he simply cannot spit out the words. Only the direction of his eyes tells me what has driven him to this state of apoplexy. I turn and observe Barbara, smoking a cigarette, wine glass in hand, spreading her bronzed and naked body out on a towel, luxuriating in the warm early-evening sunshine.
I have to admit that the sight of her does come as a bit of a surprise. I say surprise and not shock, because we have no problem with nudity here at our olive farm, but even so, it is unusual for a guest visiting us for the first time to disrobe themselves so entirely quite so soon after arrival. My first impression of Barbara was that she is a hippy, a free-spirited creature, with a gentle but powerful sensuality. This has been borne out. I only wish that Halaz, an Arab male and a Muslim, had not been the one to discover her, because it leaves me rather on the defensive when I had intended to be stern with him.
‘Mr Halaz, you left the taps running again …’
He walks away, shaking his head in disgust, deaf to my words.
‘Mr Halaz!’ I call after him, but he has disappeared. My remonstrations must wait till the morning.
Back in the house, I leave yet another message – a rather bad-tempered one, due to my frame of mind – for Lord Harry’s sister, who has not returned my last call. In fact, I have not yet managed to have a conversation with her. I am discovering that these apiarists are an irritatingly cranky and elusive breed, and singularly particular about where their blasted hives will or won’t be placed, l’emplacement des ruchers. But I shan’t be detracted and I say so in my message.
Jacob and Barbara stay for supper. We decide to have a barbecue, but my mood is agitated. Jacob is getting on my nerves, fussing over what he will or will not eat, continuously requesting the use of the telephone, and I am worried about my impending departure. I bury myself in the kitchen, slicing potatoes, chopping parsley and garlic, preparing a recipe of my own composition which I bake with strips of freshly cut sprigs of rosemary in a locally fired faience dish. I am not feeling sociable; I would have preferred to have been alone this evening.
Barbara finds me there.
‘I opened another bottle of wine,’ she says. ‘I hope that’s OK.’
‘Of course,’ I reply, continuing with my culinary distractions.
‘And I brought you up a glass. You seem tense. I hope we are not intruding?’ Before I can respond, she continues. ‘You mustn’t let Jacob’s neuroses get to you. He can be a pain in the arse, but if you ignore him, he’ll stop.’ She giggles.
This makes me smile, and I pause to acknowledge her.
‘I never take any notice of him and then he shuts up.’
‘How long have you been together?’
She sighs. ‘Since I was eighteen. I’m forty tomorrow.’
‘Children?’ I ask.
She shakes her head. ‘You?’
‘Two stepdaughters from Michel’s first marriage and’ – I glance down at my delicately protruding, tumescent belly, ‘we’re expecting one of our own at Christmas.’
She takes a long drag on her cigarette. I have observed that she has been smoking incessantly since she arrived. ‘I’d really love a kid.’
‘Then why …?’
‘Jacob hates children, just as he hates all noise, most music, too much sun, the majority of human beings, red meat, alcohol, smoking – particularly when it’s me doing the smoking or drinking …’ her voice drifts into silence.
I want to ask her why she stays with him, but for once in my life I keep my interrogations to myself. Instead I place my potato dish in the oven pick up the glass of wine Barbara has brought me and lead the way back out on to the upper terrace. One level below us, over at the remotest corner, flanked by a quartet of stately cypress trees (cyprès Florentin), Jacob is fanning the flames and the narrow column of smoke rising out of our barbecue, and coughing. The air is scented with evening pine and charred herbs. Barbara perches on the balustrade to admire the view out over the sea. To the right of us the sun is moving towards the mountains. Soon it will begin to set, sinking deep beneath the mauve hills, leaving a vermilion sky to decorate the late evening.
‘This place is fabulous. You’re very lucky.’
‘Yes, we are. It needs a load of work and we never have a bean, but in the fullness of time we’ll get to it all, no doubt.’
Over supper, aromatically spiced daurade lightly marinated in white wine, fresh herbs and slices of lemon from the garden – not forgetting the olive oil, of course – and baked in tinfoil on the open coals, Jacob and Barbara prise out of me the concern I am harbouring about leaving. Almost before I have finished, Jacob suggests that they stay and take care of the place during my absence. The haste with which he has offered, and a fleeting memory of our meeting with him on the Croisette during the film festival, make me dubious. I thank him but assure him that it won’t be necessary. Barbara lights up another cigarette, saying nothing. After another bottle of wine, most of which she consumes, they prepare to wend their way back to their hotel on the coast. Before leaving she embraces me like a sister. ‘Thank you. I really enjoyed meeting you.’
I notice my watch. It’s gone midnight. ‘Happy birthday,’ I trill, returning her hug. I wait in the drive beneath the clear, starlit sky to wave them off.
My heart is a complex knot of emotions. For Michel and I and our awaited child I carry profound joy and a recognition of our good fortune; for Jacob and his inability to let life in I feel pity, while those green, soul-stirring eyes of Barbara’s haunt me, so full are they with fragility and yearning.
The following morning Halaz greets me with the restrained, mistrusting gaze of one who believes he is in the presence of iniquity. My anger towards him, on the other hand, has dissipated. I take him aside and patiently go through all the tasks to be achieved, walking to each and every tap, turning it on, turning it off and then squeezing it tightly shut. I reassure him that he can take his time, that he doesn’t have to achieve the work in two hours, that too much water can be as damaging to some plants as none at all, and confide in him that we are counting on him.
He nods gravely. ‘In that case, please can I have a new brush?’ he asks. ‘So that I can sweep to the best of my ability. I’m good at sweeping,’ he adds.
‘There’s an unused one in the garage.’
‘No, I don’t like those. I prefer the softer ones. The ones you use inside the house.’
Incongruous as I find this, I take the time to go to the hardware store and buy him not one but two new brooms, both of slightly different lengths so that he can have his pick.
When I return our Arab has finished for the morning and left everything in perfect order; not an itinerant splash to be found anywhere. Satisfied, I go inside the house to find two messages, one from Lord Harry, inviting me over later and the second from Barbara, thanking me for the previous evening and leaving a number where I can contact her.
When I return her call, her voice sounds rusty, just-woken-up and unused, and cheerless.
‘Have you got something fun planned for today?’
Two Italian friends of theirs have turned up in Cannes and they will get together for a birthday celebration, I learn. ‘Sorry about Jacob,’ she says, interrupting herself.
‘What about him?’
‘I don’t know, everything.’ The line goes silent. I hear a heavy exhalation.
‘Why don’t you come up here, bring your friends and we’ll have a little party in the garden – just something simple?’ I suggest. It’s a spontaneous offer which I have not thought through. Her sadness troubles me, and for a reason that I cannot quite explain I feel impelled to lift her out of her dejection. In any case, the larder and fridges are bursting with provisions, some of which will not keep beyond my departure, so better to share it all. The idea thrills her.
Just as I am about to shoot off for Lord Harry’s, René turns up to rescue the ailing olive tree. ‘It’s not fatal, but it’s a good thing you called.’
‘Will the damage affect the tree’s performance?’ I ask. ‘I mean, are we going to lose all this season’s fruit from it?’
‘Hopefully not, but it will have to be dramatically pruned at the end of the year, and that will affect its yield for several harvests to come.’
I sigh.
He cheers me with the news that he has spoken with the ‘finest dowser in the region’, who has agreed to visit us. Nick someone.
‘It’s a drug to him. He has to do it, search for water. He can’t stop looking.’
This strikes me as a rather comical claim, but I assure René that we look forward to meeting this gentleman and ask if, given that the man is so hooked, we could please get on with it as soon as possible so that we can settle matters with the Lyonnaise des Eaux who are, in response to Michel’s numerous letters, still adamantly refusing to accept our newly endorsed status as local olive-growers.
‘We may have to wait until his partner can be here with him.’
‘Partner? Oh, I see, I hadn’t realised that he might need a partner.’
‘Oh, yes. But when you meet him, the partner, that is, you are not to say a word.’
‘About what?’
‘His identity.’
I suppress a grin. ‘Am I going to recognise him?’
‘Oh, no doubt about it. Well, you may not, of course, but he is very famous in the community. A highly regarded and very wealthy Provençal figure.’
‘My goodness.’ There are times when I suspect that René is pulling my leg. ‘And he does this for pleasure, or …?’ I am indisputably his best audience and I cannot help feeling that my keen interest for local learning nudges him towards embellishments that any great storyteller would be proud to have come up with. This might just be one of those occasions. I scan his robin-red face, those piercing blue eyes, for a clue, but his earnest expression reveals no joshing.
‘After he retired he discovered he had the talent for finding water. The pair are old friends; they work well together. One uses a baguette – a rod, which is actually shaped like an extended catapult – while the other works with a pendulum. Monsieur— (I’d better not mention his name just yet) is frequently the one to pinpoint the precise spot while young Nick can read to the metre how deep the source is and the quantity of litres flowing there. It’s a vrai talent. But you will see for yourself. I have no flair for it, hélas.’
We have strolled inside now and I see René hovering, hoping for a glass of something refreshing.
‘Have you given it a try then, René?’
‘Oh, yes, mais bien sûr. I hoped it might have become another string to my bow, but it was hopeless. Nothing happened until the gentleman you are soon to meet touched my arm. I kid you not. He literally touched my arm as we were standing over a water source and the baguette I was clutching shot upwards, quivering.’
I listen on with respectful interest and mixed feelings. I am in two minds about what René is recounting. I want to believe that such a talent exists. I am drawn to the mystical element of it; it fits with my vision of the olde-worlde Provençal temperament. But I must admit to a sneaking scepticism. ‘Well, I really look forward to it. Can we set a date now, René, please?’
It is essential, with our lovable olive guru, to nail him down, pin him to days and hours. Even so, he frequently doesn’t show, but at least then he knows he has let us down. If we leave an arrangement as vague or loose as ‘tomorrow’, or ‘the beginning of next week’, it can be weeks before we hear another word from him.
‘How about Friday?’ he suggests.
‘The day after tomorrow? Perfect.’
He takes a sliver of carrot from the dish of crudités in front of him and washes it down with the last mouthful from the glass of Pomerol I have produced, then rises to go. ‘Good Bordeaux that, thank you. Expensive?’
I shrug.
‘Do you know where the Provençal tradition of serving little dishes of vegetables as appetisers came from?’
I frown, working it out, considering the history of the Greek custom of meze dishes, but he is impatient to impart his local knowledge.
‘The Spanish Moors. They would originally have been Arab dishes.’
‘Yes, meze. Turkish and Eastern.’
I have been skipping back through Lawrence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons and I recall the lovely phrase: ‘We sat beside the road in the thin spring sunshine and shared a stirrup cup and a meze,’ which I do not trouble to repeat to René. In any case, I wouldn’t know how to translate ‘stirrup cup’. A welcoming glass, perhaps?
‘No, Carol, the habit arrived with the Spanish Moors. Definitely. Ah, oui,’ he insists, nodding triumphantly. I say no more on the subject. I cannot dawdle; I am late for Lord Harry. We have reached the door. ‘You do realise, Carol, that you’ll have to declare any water we find, don’t you?’ I shake my head. But I don’t foresee any difficulty with registering our find. We have no reason to hide the discovery, should there be one. ‘And acquire planning permission to install a drill and pump before you begin excavating. But there shouldn’t be any unnecessary delays. Water is the only subterranean product here in France that the state don’t lay claim to, did you know that?’
I shake my head again.
‘Now, if it were oil, they’d come and take it and you wouldn’t get a centime out of it, apart from compensation for the damage to your land while they tear it up to siphon out the juice. But there’s still no law against you keeping for your exclusive use any water found, as long as it is declared and written into the cadastre plans. A source must be registered.’
‘Please God we don’t find oil then,’ I laugh. ‘Or gold!’ I see him to the door and as we peck cheeks I ask, ‘What time on Friday, René?’
‘Afternoon.’
‘Two o’clock, then?’
‘No, later. Three or half-past. I’ll call you tomorrow and confirm it.’
I realise that I will get no firmer commitment out of him today, so I wave him goodbye and return indoors to collect my car keys. The main thing is that he has contacted the dowsers, and even if they find not a single drop here it won’t be serious because, with luck, the water board will be obliged to readjust our price plan. As requested, we will have made the search.
I am running very late when I arrive at Lord Harry’s, but I don’t want to postpone my visit and miss out on the opportunity to meet his sister and finalise bees with her. I drive through a wide gate, up a winding dust track and into the sweet, tangy scent of freshly picked apricots. There are crateloads of them everywhere, mostly in an open barn. These, the most recently harvested, are to be dried for use in preserves and sirops. Elsewhere, all around, there are fresh, succulent fruits, the main bulk of his crop, which are being harvested now and which will be sold to a supermarket chain. Lord Harry greets me with a robust handshake and then takes me on a tour of the estate, which has been inherited from Baron —, his father, who made his fortune when he came up with the apparently inspired idea to breed prime Angus beef in the Camargue district and sell the meat to the French.
‘He made a fortune,’ Harry tells me. ‘And then retired here to farm fruit, a passionate hobby of his.’
The main house is impressive but needs a fortune spending on it and has a bedraggled air about it. The interior is dark, the curtains left undrawn, and old-fashioned. Empty glasses, used cups forgotten on side tables and dressers. Out of doors, in the dusty yards, it is more animated. There are labourers all over the place, moving to and fro on tractors or on foot, shouting out to one another, up ladders, stacking crates in the barns. Certainly the farm is operating at full tilt, but I cannot help thinking that it has seen happier days.
He drives me to a valley, peaceful and green, with leafy rows of well-pruned trees gravid with ripe fruit, and I am trying to recall what I have found out about the history of the apricot tree.
For many years it was believed to have originated in Armenia, but is now known to have existed long before in ancient China. It reached Armenia via the Silk Route, and from there was transported to Greece and then to Rome. The Romans cultivated it throughout their empire. Today, it is considered a quintessentially Mediterranean tree. It would have been the Romans who brought the apricot to this French coast.
‘Where is your sister?’ I ask, taking in the expanse of his acreage.
‘She’s in Geneva.’
‘When will she back?’
He shakes his head. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
I stop in my tracks. ‘But you still have her hives?’
‘Dozens of them. We can take the car and go and have a look, if you like.’ Which is what we do. Standing in a modest orchard of espaliered apple trees, the hives are a sorry-looking sight. Desolate and in need of a lick of paint, they put me in mind of rows of beach huts at an out-of-season resort.
‘Where are the bees?’
‘There are no bees any more.’
‘No bees?’
‘Well, there are a few,’ he explains. ‘Those that have not died or abandoned the hives.’
The few still pollinate Harry’s apricots, but the swarms are feral now.
‘What happened?’
‘Bit of a scandal, as I understand it. I really don’t know the ins and outs of the affair, except that my sister lost heart with the whole bloody business and took off.’ He offers to let us have a few of the abandoned hives. ‘If you want to take them, you can have them for nothing. Help yourself to as many as you like,’ he says. ‘They are of no further use to me, but you will need to purchase a queen and a swarm of drones of your own.’ I would like to quiz him further, but one of his farmhands, a fresh-faced English lad, comes in search of him and Lord Harry needs to attend to other matters. I thank him for his kind offer, explaining that we are not apiarists; we do not have the skills or the time to tend the bees ourselves; we are looking for a beekeeper who might be interested in using our land. He nods sadly. ‘Sorry I couldn’t be of help. Come and visit me again in any case,’ he says. ‘My wife’s left me, gone back to England, and my sister – well, she’s disappeared to the Swiss mountains. Haven’t seen her in months. I think she’s become a Buddhist. It’s bloody lonely here. Just me and the apricots.’
I am now running very late. Thierry, the young bullet-headed fellow who cleans our pool, is at work in the garden when I arrive home with a cake for Barbara from an excellent boulangerie-cum-pâtisserie on the outskirts of Mougins. He is bursting with some gossip which he cannot wait to share and I am obliged to deposit my bags on the ground while he imparts his news. Because of the spread of residences Thierry works at, he tends to have access to delicious titbits. This one concerns a property belonging to a thirty-something German whose pool he has been looking after for several years. Electric gates, armed and vested bodyguards patrolling the grounds, half a dozen trained dogs, the whole caboodle. Some time ago, while Thierry was at work there, the police arrived in two cars and the German was arrested for drug-smuggling. He has been shoved in jail and the house is now on the market for 36 million francs, about £3.2 million.
‘Goodness,’ I say, politely feigning surprise, gathering up my shopping.
‘No, no, that’s not it!’ he returns excitedly.
Last Saturday, while Thierry was hoovering and treating the pool – his contract has been renegotiated by the firm of estate agents until the place is sold – a young Russian and his wife came to look at the house. According to Thierry, they liked it, said they’d have it and pulled out a suitcase from the trunk of their car containing considerably more than the required 36 million francs in dollars. If French law allowed it, they would have bought the villa right there and then.
‘The Mafia are moving in here like the plague,’ he comments.
I find my attention drawn back to the scandal down on the coast which has been hogging the limelight since the spring.
‘What’s the latest news on the demise of the mayor?’
Thierry seems to revel in the uncloaking of these petit local corruptions, as do I, particularly when they are not so petit.
The latest is that a senior official in the Cannes town hall has followed our Riviera mayor into custody on suspicion of trying to extort money from a gambling firm in London. He has been placed under investigation for alleged corruption.
‘Some chappie working for him was caught redhanded by a British special investigations squad. At the Ritz Hotel. He was receiving a payment of three million francs in cash.’
‘In London?’
‘Yes, the sum was being handed over by a British firm in return for permission to install one-armed bandits at a casino in one of the beachfront hotels. It was the British company who tipped off the police.
The mayor’s son, Gilles Mouillot, has also been placed under investigation, but has been released under supervision. Father, Michel, is in prison and on hunger strike, which is delaying matters. A lawyer acting for the mayor has denounced the arrests and investigations, calling them politically motivated. He claims that they are connected with wrangling and factiousness between members of the centre-right coalition.
Everywhere here there are echoes of Graham Greene’s excellent book, J’accuse, which exposed the nefarious dealings of Jacques Médecin, the infamous mayor of Nice, who swindled his city out of millions and then did a bunk to Uruguay, where the said millions had been stashed away for what he hoped was going to be a very sunny retirement. Our chap, Mouillot, hasn’t been so nifty.
Thierry promises to keep me up to speed when I return from my trip.
Barbara’s birthday is an ebullient yet easygoing affair. She blows out the four candles I have placed on her cake. We sing and talk and play sixties rock music and old Van Morrison records rather too loudly and dance till late on the terrace by the pool. Her only disappointment is that her camera jams and neither she nor Jacob is able to unlock it. They cannot photograph the occasion. It suddenly occurs to me that Michel may not have taken his camera with him for his trip to Sydney. I run up to our bedroom and find it beneath my shoebags on the floor of the wardrobe, which is where he usually hides it.
I have no idea how to operate such a complicated apparatus but I return to the garden with it and suggest a few snaps. I set the zoom and the lens and the flash and everyone gathers round the table, arms linked, glasses raised, and shouts ‘Fromage!’
From the summer kitchen comes the unmistakable voice of Buddy Holly: ‘Maybe Baby’. The quartet burst into laughter and raucous song, jigging as they hold their poses.
‘Hang on! Wait!’ I cry. ‘I don’t seem to be able to—’
‘Fromage! FROMAGE! FORMAGGIO!’ they shout and call like merry parrots, hammering out a recurrent squawk, clapping their hands. I fiddle clumsily, all fingers and thumbs, until, almost without my guidance, the camera clicks, slides, flashes and snaps, and I feel rather pleased with myself. I promise to send copies on to Rome when the negatives are developed. And then I say my goodnights, exchanging bisous with everyone, and leave them all to plunge into the underwater-lit pool, uncork more bottles of bubbly and vino, smoke, chatter loudly and generally behave like Romans at a party, while I disappear off to bed to cries of ‘Ciao, bella!’ ‘Grazie mille, mille grazie!’ They promise to let themselves out and to lock the gate behind them. Lord knows if, by whatever hour that might be, they will remember, but aside from hanging out all night with them, what can I do?
My last image of the party, as I close the front door, is of Jacob: a lone figure sitting at some distance, a terrace above his loved one and their companions, fingers jammed in his ears to block out the noise, looking decidedly fed up.
I wake about five, climb out of bed and wander out on to the terrace, thinking that I should walk down the drive and check the gate. The pre-dawn is sharply lit by an almost full moon which is reflecting circular pools of luminous, citric light right across the Mediterranean; it is a breathtaking sight. I sit for a while in pensive mood, gazing upon it, considering the lot of Barbara and Jacob.
I am not one for matchmaking and never have been, but I find myself wondering whether I shouldn’t introduce her to Lord Harry. Surely they would have more in common. Same background, both lonely …
Lost in these fruitless, not to say busybody, musings, it is some time before I realise that I am not alone. The clinking of a glass is what draws my attention to the terrace beneath me. There I see Barbara, perched barefoot on one of the cream-painted walls by the dining table, wearing nothing but a sarong. Her hair is wet and hangs like lengths of damp seaweed down her back; she must have been swimming. She has a lighted cigarette between her fingers and a three-quarters-empty bottle of wine at her side. The dogs, all three of them, are dozing in a semi-circle around her.
I go down to join her. As I approach she holds out her hand. It turns out that the others left several hours ago but she has lingered, preferring to walk back when she is ready to go. We barely talk; there seems little need. She thanks me for the evening and tells me that I won’t ever know how special it has been and how appreciated she has felt. To me, these words only emphasise the appalling loneliness I feel this woman is trapped in.
As the sun comes up, she helps me clear the debris from the table and stack the myriad empty bottles ready for the local bottle bank, stays for breakfast and then I drive her to Cannes.
She is off to sunbathe on the beach. ‘I’m only really happy when I’m by the sea,’ she says. ‘It calms me, brings me peace.’
‘Me too,’ I laugh.
‘You are lucky to be having a baby,’ she mutters, almost inaudibly, before leaving the car.
We kiss goodbye and agree to stay in touch.
‘And don’t forget to send the photos,’ she calls as our old car chugs away. After dropping Barbara off, I decide to take a stroll along the Croisette. The beaches are humming with activity and the restos and cafés au bord de la mer are buzzing with a new breed of holidaying visitor, many of whom have bleached, backcombed hairdos. They are ordering drinks, fixing extravagantly painted faces and reading Russian newspapers and magazines.
Once I begin to take notice, I see that every beachside bookstall has Russian journals for sale. The newsagent has Vogue on display in Russian for the mafia molls who might enjoy a little light beach reading. Russian restaurants are springing up everywhere, both in and out of town, and the fashions in the women’s stores are being slanted towards the new market. This is not the usual seasonal changes or a pitch at the wealthy Arab consumers, who still exist, though since that ‘blasted Gulf War’ the Arab trade has not been what it was. No, the outfits on sale now have a retro look, but not as in the fashion corridors of Paris. This is fetchingly out of date, late fifties, early sixties, meretricious colour combinations; the dressed-to-kill rocker look that every young Russian might have aspired to during those sealed-off years of communism. Thierry is spot-on: a new Mafia is moving in, but no doubt the town of Cannes is grateful for them.
Three days later, I fly to London. René and his water diviner never made contact, never appeared. On my way through the departure lounge at Nice airport, I notice two posters advertising Russian television stations. My flight is announced, and as I approach the boarding gate I pass a young man dressed in a loud suit. He is shouting into four mobile telephones all at once. The language he’s talking is Russian, with a few English swearwords thrown in for spice.
A new page in Côte d’Azur history.
Before leaving for Birmingham, which is where the shooting of my television film is scheduled to take place, I visit my gynaecologist. I admit to my tirednesses and the occasional shooting pains. He recommends that I undergo an amniocentesis. I am wary but agree. The risks are minimal, he assures me, though marginally higher for a woman such as myself with a history of miscarriage.
On the day, it all goes off without a hitch. I learn that our baby is perfectly normal, followed by the even more joyous news that the child I am carrying is no longer an ‘it’: the life taking form is a she. I leave the Harley Street clinic feeling both nervous and totally exhilarated and make directly for a phone box to telephone Michel in Paris.
‘What will we christen her?’
We decide to both choose a name and, just for fun, to keep them to ourselves; a secret from one another until the next time we are together which will be after my filming. Suppose we choose the same name?
‘Peut-être, qui sait?’ Michel laughs happily.
Think how remarkable that would be.
The reality of the approaching birth of our baby, our tiny little girl, is taking hold. Her arrival is months away yet, but now she has a name, no, two names. Spiritually christened, she exists in my day-to-day life. She has moved in, is already a participating member of the family. I pass my days visiting my hairdresser, lunching with my agent, meeting with my editor; I am city-busy and oscillating between states of excitement and nervousness, which leave me both effervescent and drained. I feel as though my whole being is smiling, glowing from inside.
‘You look great,’ people repeatedly tell me.
Yes. I am past all the enervating bouts of morning sickness and no longer a prisoner to my tomato obsession; I am a woman in her stride.
Some days my mood is vital, powerfully alive and sharp. I and my baby are omnipotent; a single invincible force. I talk to her, ask her advice, offer her mine. She shares my secrets, knows my shortcomings, forgives me because she is too tiny to know otherwise and, for the present, I am all there is. She is my invisible ally, as I am hers. She is my passport to another earth, another stratosphere of happiness, of bondedness. Together our love, this union of mother and daughter, this sorority, girls together, will make my world go round.
And then, at other moments, friends remark that I look tired, or rather pale. It’s true. I feel inadequate. I have sleepless nights worrying that I have left this birth too late, that I am too selfish, too set in my ways, that I won’t be able to meet the challenge, that something will go wrong, that our little girl will not be whole. Fortunately, the negative responses are less frequent and are strongly overridden by my more upbeat moods. The designer calls. ‘Costume fittings, darling,’ she purrs. ‘We must meet and discuss your cozzies.’
I have been postponing this important rendezvous knowing that there will be a drawn-out session involving measurements, sizes and styles of clothes and that I may be obliged to give away my secret. I suggest that she and her assistant come over to my flat, where we can discuss the script.
When she arrives that evening, accompanied by the assistant, she compliments me on how well I am looking, ‘radiant’, she says, tactfully observing that I am perhaps a tad on the plump side. I shrug this off with a comment about my French lifestyle: ‘The wine and good living, you know.’ We settle down to discuss the costumes required for the various scenes when a ring at the doorbell interrupts us. I am not expecting anyone. Excusing myself, I go out into the hall to press the intercom.
‘Yes?’
‘Flowers for Miss Drinkwater,’ a voice announces.
This flat is not in the most salubrious district of north London and though we are well concealed on two floors at the very top of the building I am usually cautious before pressing the lock-release.
‘I am not expecting flowers. Who are they are from?’ I interrogate, but the crackly male voice does not say. Yet because I am not alone I feel less wary, so I press the button that opens the street door, calling out an apology to the two women in the living room, suggesting they help themselves to wine and explaining that I will be with them shortly. I open my front door to await the delivery boy who is climbing the winding stairs. I see the bouquet of eighteen red roses before I see him.
It is Michel!
I cry out and both designer and assistant look up anxiously from the living room. The designer hurries to the door. ‘Is everything all right?’
I nod. ‘It’s my husband,’ and I run down a few steps to greet him and to throw my arms around him. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you were on your way to Sydney.’
‘Changing planes in London. I wanted to surprise you. I can’t stay, I’ll miss my flight. I have a taxi outside,’ and he hands me the flowers, kisses me softly on the mouth, whispers ‘Je t’aime,’ and disappears out of sight with a final blown kiss. ‘Take care of her,’ he calls up softly.
I return to the two women, who look at me curiously. ‘My husband,’ I repeat. ‘He’s just flown in from Paris.’
‘Isn’t he coming in?’ asks the designer ‘I hope that we …’
‘No, no, he’s on his way to Australia and wanted to …’ I consider divulging our news and then decide not to. ‘He just came to give me these.’
‘Shit, that’s too romantic!’ says one of them.
‘He must be French,’ declares the other.
Buried within the bouquet – I find it later – is a gold chain as slender as a strand of hair with one tiny emerald worked into it. It matches my engagement-cum-wedding ring.
It is the Irish in me, my superstitious nature, that has decided against broadcasting news of the baby, as well as the fact that I shall be filming for only three weeks. Had I been contracted for a longer period, out of courtesy to the designer, who would have needed to be prepared for the inevitable costume alterations, I would have discreetly included her. As it is, the entire shoot will be over in no time, so there will be few, if any, physical changes and, as much as I hate to, I have promised myself I will diet rigorously. So I guard our cherished secret, and the following afternoon I set off by train for Birmingham.