The Arabs have said their farewells. Utensils and materials have been transported up the hill, their work achieved. Now it is down to Quashia to begin the construction repairs. M. Di Luzio finally returns my call. He is pleased to hear from me, enquires after my escalating success in films – have I been offered a role in Hollywood yet? – and then announces that he has retired.
Ah. I ask him if he can recommend another plumber.
‘Well, I don’t usually make a habit of suggesting anyone else, but it can’t hurt me any longer so try Sordello. You’ll find them in the Yellow Pages and they’re in the village beneath you.’
‘Thank you,’ I tell him. ‘Et bonne retraite.’
‘Retirement? Bah! I’d rather be working. My wife stalks me, watching every mouthful that passes my lips. No more beer. Oh, well, that’s life. I might drop by to borrow some of your garden tools, if you have no objections; I’ve got myself an allotment. Well, it passes the time. Greetings to Michel.’
‘Indeed,’ I smile, replacing the phone.
Michel is not at home. He has driven the girls and Serge to Cannes. During their absence René drops by. As is his habit, he arrives with a gift. Today he comes bearing a bottle of eau de vie distilled from our plums. With a twinkle in his eye, he confides that it is illegal to brew home-made alcohol. Only one location in each village – ‘and this is not the case in every village, mind you’ – has the right to distil alcohol. Naturally, he has figured out a way to circumvent the system.
I thank him for the precious bottle and ask after news of the water dowser. ‘We are cleaning up the bassin,’ I explain, ‘and we’ll be needing to feed it some time soon, so if there’s underground water here …’
‘Malheureusement, he’s not here. After the eclipse he decided to spend a few days in the Champagne district to buy some wines. He only drinks champagne, you see.’
I am beginning to doubt the existence of this fellow and am on the brink of saying so when a rattling screech breaks out above us in the parking area. We both lift our heads to see four magpies pecking brutally at one another, staking their territorial rights over a few figs shrivelling on the tree.
‘Bloody magpies,’ I curse.
‘Did I ever tell you about the pet magpie we had when I was a kid? Margot was her name.’
‘No.’
‘Good Lord, Carol, those branches have grown!’ cries our olive master, now pointing up at the cedars overhead. ‘They’re damned dangerous. You must cut them back. Otherwise you’ll have the electricity board on your backs. It’s illegal, you know, for your trees to brush the cables, and it could cause a fire. And I don’t have to tell you about bush fires.’
‘Yes, we’ve been intending to cut them back all summer, but what with one thing and another …’
‘No excuse. I’ll cut them back for you right now and, as I told you last time, I’ll keep the wood. Where’s Quashia?’
‘He’s working up at the second basin. Do you want me to fetch him?’
‘No, I’ll manage, but I’ll need to use his chainsaw. I haven’t got mine with me. I lent it to my son. Has Quashia taken the ladders with him? No, there they are. Good.’
And before I can say another word, René is setting about in a purposeful way. It is unusual for him to be in such a hurry. Usually, he prefers a glass of something and a natter first.
‘I tell you what,’ he calls out to me as I make my way back into the house. ‘Why don’t you pour us both un petit verre while I get the chainsaw warmed up? And then I’ll go to work.’
I smile, and then call back to him. ‘You don’t think we should have the glass of wine later, after you’ve finished with the ladder?’
‘Not at all. It’s almost lunchtime.’
Seated on the terrace, a bottle of Beaujolais to hand, I ask him to recount the tale of Margot, the magpie he spoke of.
‘Ah, notre agace,’ he grins.
Agace actually means an irritation – agacer is to jar, grate, set one’s teeth on edge, and it is used in Provence as a name for magpies because their wretched screeching can drive you to distraction. As does their habit of filching.
‘Margot lived with us for eight years and she drove our neighbours and guests crazy. Us as well, sometimes. She was jealous, you see. She couldn’t bear it if the cat got more attention than she did. You know, Carol, we were rather poor and my mother used to feed the cat with leftovers from our meals. Usually we ate pasta, pâtes, and the cat seemed perfectly content with her scraps of that, but Margot would go mad. She wanted the same, you see. So, when the cat was dozing or not paying attention, Margot would sneak to the cat’s bowl, steal the squares of pasta and … you know that magpies hide things they have stolen, don’t you?’
I nod.
‘Do you know where she hid the pasta?’
I shake my head.
‘We were poor, as I told you. We ran around in our bare feet and, while we were at dinner, the bird would sneak under the table and slip the pasta squares in between our toes.’
I stare at him incredulously and then burst out laughing. René is encouraged by my response. He nods, pours himself a second glass of wine and then continues.
‘Our neighbour smoked a pipe. Margot stole the pipe and threw it in his pond. Eventually, a week or so later, he found it, dried it out, cleaned it up and put it back on the mantelpiece, and then, diable! it was gone again. Of course, at that stage, the neighbour hadn’t realised that it was our blasted bird who was responsible, but we kids guessed. The neighbour searched in the pond, but it wasn’t there because the bird was smart. She never hid anything in the same place twice. He couldn’t find that pipe anywhere and gave it up for lost.’
René reaches for the bottle and proffers it. I shake my head. He serves himself a top-up.
‘But I knew it must be Margot, so I went round to the neighbour, knocked on his door and said to him: “Monsieur Braccio, is there a reward for finding your pipe?” He laughed, ruffled my hair and promised me two francs if I found it. It was a fortune to me then. I told not a soul but I kept a watchful eye on our bird. And one morning, weeks later, bingo! I found it. The magpie was sitting in the neighbour’s mimosa tree with the pipe in her beak. She liked to copy, you see. She had understood that the neighbour held the pipe in his mouth and sucked on it, so Margot mimicked him. There she was, happy as Larry, sitting in a fully blossoming golden mimosa smoking a pipe. Diable. I got my two francs.’ He laughs triumphantly, downing his wine and refilling his glass. I am beginning to wonder if I should remind him about the tree-cutting, but before I can he has launched into another anecdote about the bird.
‘She learned to whistle like my father, repeated our names like a parrot and called and whistled for the dog.’ Here René imitates the magpie by whistling and calling in a high-pitched voice: ‘Flora! Flora! That was the dog’s name,’ he explains. The sound has alerted two of our own dogs, who come running in our direction.
‘My father used to keep his work boots in the garage alongside a box of nails. Margot stole the nails and hid them in my father’s boots, and he cut his feet when he put his boots on and stood on the nails. How we children giggled! Ah, yes, we loved her. She had fallen from a nest. My father found her and we raised her. Eight years she lived with us. She was so crafty. She taught me a few tricks.’ He chuckles mischievously and downs the remainder of his Beaujolais – the bottle is almost empty – then sets to work on pruning back the cedar trees while I return to my den, both amused and amazed by our little Provençal olive guru. Just like Margot, he never misses a trick.
I am answering e-mail when I hear the cries, and because my computer is a laptop and works on both battery and electricity I do not immediately notice that our electricity has been cut off.
‘Mon Dieu! Diable! Putain! Qu’est-ce que …?’
I run to the window and throw it open.
There I behold René, at the foot of the ladder, chainsaw hanging from his hand, pouring with sweat, red as a beetroot, covered in bits of cedar foliage, and sticks and twigs and branches everywhere on the ground. But what is most shocking is the firework display of flying sparks.
‘Oh my God!’ I cry. ‘What’s happened?’
But it is quite clear what has happened. The tree has been felled in the wrong direction (or ‘it turned on its own in the wind’, as René tries to convince me later) and has landed on the four electricity cables running via the pylon close by the swimming pool to the house. While stretching from the ladder to the tip of a branch, René has lost his footing and with it his control of the chainsaw, which has struck the central trunk of the tree, still zirring. The upper portion of the tree, partially sawn through, has cracked and barrelled earthwards, slapping against the overhead electricity cables as it spun. The weight has pushed the highest cable against the one beneath it, and so on, in a domino effect, soldering all four cables as one. Naturally, this has caused a short circuit in the system and our power has gone.
I stare down at the cables. They resemble giant lengths of liquorice, looping towards the ground sending massive streaks of sparks sissing skywards.
I am open-eyed, thunderstruck, by the pyrotechnics taking place before me. ‘I’m calling the fire brigade!’ I yell. ‘Those sparks will set fire to the trees!’
They are indeed ominously close. And what of the summer-dry herbage everywhere on our land?
I hear a female neighbour’s cry and then, from down the lane, the roar of another neighbour, Jean-Claude. René, in the parking below me stares up at me like a guilty child. ‘I think the electricity may have been cut off at the entrance to your property,’ he announces sheepishly.
If this predicament weren’t so perilous I might be tempted to laugh, because I have never before seen René cowed by anything. The man who made a financial killing out of the Second World War and everything else that has come his way has now landed himself in a very sticky situation.
‘I’m on my way down,’ I tell him, closing up the window. I tear down the exterior steps to the ground-floor level, bellowing ‘Monsieur Quashia!’ as I charge alongside the pool, where the skimmers have gone dead. There is little hope that Quashia will have heard me, and, as he will be facing uphill as he works, I doubt that he will have seen the sparks flying, either.
I join René in the parking. He looks as though he is about to have a heart attack.
The fireworks are over and the cables have sunk to the tarmac in the parking like deflated balloons. I am hit full on by an appalling smell of burning rubber.
‘Now what?’ I am terrified, but the fact is I have not grasped the magnitude of the accident whereas René has. As I approach, he bursts into action.
‘It’s because they are en alu that they, the cables, are fondu. First thing,’ he is shouting as he scurries into the garage with the chainsaw, burying it beneath some of Quashia’s work clothes, while I follow trying to work out what he is up to, ‘I wasn’t working here, OK?’
‘OK,’ I mouth, because at this stage I don’t know what else to do or say. ‘But what should we do? Call the fire brigade or the EDF?’
‘No! No!’ He is turning in circles like a small trapped rodent, desperately trying to think his way out of this one. ‘I’ve got it. We must play shocked.’
‘I am shocked!’ I retort.
There is a high-pitched voice calling my name. I peer out of the garage. A woman is running up the drive. Who left the gate unlocked? How did she get in?
‘Carol! Carol!’ she is screaming hysterically.
It’s one of our neighbours. ‘Oh, God, not her,’ I moan.
‘Diable, I left your gate unlocked,’ René confides to me under his breath. ‘Quick, run down to meet her. Don’t let her up here, whatever you do.’
I do as I am told. He puffs along behind me. ‘On second thoughts, keep quiet. I’ll handle it.’
‘Handle what?’
‘Er, bonjour, Suzanne,’ I say to the woman, who I am not in the least fond of and try to avoid even on the best of days. ‘What is it?’
‘There’s been a disaster!’
‘Really?’ I play-act.
‘An accident somewhere. We have no electricity, nothing at all. Do you know anything about this?’ Her voice rises and the tone grows shriller and meaner as she grills me.
I shake my head, waiting for René to chip in and ‘handle it’, but he says nothing.
She continues: ‘The whole lane’s cut off, as is the motorway – all the way to Antibes.’
‘WHAT!!’ I scream. ‘All the way to …’ Antibes is close to fifteen kilometres from us.
René steps briskly forward. ‘Yes, I was in the garden sorting out a few plant problems, quelques petits soucis, for Carol and I thought I was going to be killed when the sparks started flying. Did you see them? I hope you weren’t too afraid?’
‘I was,’ Suzanne admits to him in an altogether softer tone.
‘You and Carol must sue the electricity board, as well as the local council, for negligence if the fault is found to be due to an oversight on one of their parts.’ His placatory tone, his charming concern, his brazen lies, have Suzanne eating out of his hand, and I am left gawping at his audacity.
‘Fret not, madame, I will telephone the EDF and get them over here right away.’
‘I think Jean-Claude has already done that.’
‘Oh, has he?’ I hear the edge return to René’s voice. ‘Well, there’s nothing for it but to wait, then. Would you like me to accompany you back to your villa? Although I am sure there will be no further risk.’
‘Mais merci beaucoup. Vous êtes très gentil, monsieur. What about Carol?’
‘Oh, she’s fine.’
And René escorts Suzanne back down the drive, leaving me alone, listening to his sweet concern. ‘Is there anything you need, chère madame?’
Moments later, he climbs back up the path to me and the broiled, perished chaos that is our parking area. He is using the oily rag in his hand to wipe the sweat off his brow, thus blackening his florid face.
‘Well, that’s dealt with her. Now, we’ll have to play this one out,’ he says sternly to me. ‘According to her, your other neighbour—’
‘Jean-Claude.’
‘Yes, Jean-Claude, well, he has called the bloody electricity board and they are on their way as I speak. Let me do the talking.’
I nod. I would not dream of interfering. If there is a day to be won, it’s René’s.
I take a seat over by the pool, wondering whether I should fetch Quashia. I decide that the fewer the people involved at this stage, probably the safer we are. If Michel comes back now … At this very moment, a blue EDF van beetles up the drive and two burly technicians get out. They look like they mean business. I rise and move uncertainly in their direction. Should I leave this to René, or should I come forward, mistress of the house, and say something or other? Offer help, plead ignorance?
René is pointing out the overhead trees, charcoaled by the sparks. They stare heavenwards with sullen expressions.
‘Bonjour, messieurs,’ I call as I approach.
‘There’s over forty thousand francs’ worth of damage,’ one of them states in a matter-of-fact manner which I read as a threat.
‘All the signalling on the autoroute is out. We have one dead system, burned out back at base. It will take three days’ work to repair this lot!’ adds the other. ‘I think forty grand is an understatement. Someone’s going to have to pay.’
I feel my knees buckle. I am not sure if I want to be sick or lie down. What I am sure of is that I don’t want Quashia to wander down the hill now and let the cat out of the bag by commenting on René’s work. I glance across at our olive hero, who looks, at this moment, no bigger than a pea. ‘Any idea what happened?’ he asks manfully, but I hear the croak in his voice.
‘Well, you are the last house to be affected, so my guess is the problem started here.’
René flashes a look my way. I think he is telling me to get lost.
‘Would you gentlemen like a cold drink?’ I offer.
‘No thanks, ma’am.’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Well, when I first saw the sparks …’ begins René, and I am obliged to walk away because I cannot listen to what I know will be a pack of lies. Forty thousand francs is £4,000. I, we, don’t possess such a sum.
The next time I look up, from the other side of the pool, where I am seated, worrying, the three men are talking on a telephone. Then they are shaking hands and slapping one another on the back. René is smiling. He comes hurrying towards me while the electricians wait near the cars.
‘Quick!’ he cries.
‘What?’
‘Give me some freshly bottled olive oil. The last pressing you have. I’ll repay you later.’
I hurry into the summer kitchen, where it is cool and dark and where we store the freshly pressed oil, and pull out two wine bottles filled with our rich, green produce. René grabs them from me, winks and scuttles back to the parking. He hands each man a bottle, each shakes his hand vigorously and then they drive off.
‘What was all that about?’
‘They’ll be back later to begin the repairs but we – well, you, that is – are off the hook.’
‘Us?’ I squeak.
‘You would have been responsible for the entire cost of the works,’ he tells me proudly. ‘But I saved the day.’
‘How?’
‘It turns out that I know their boss. He used to drive lorries with my son. Well, I know a thing or two about him, a bit of business that goes on here and there, and I told them to give him a call. We had a word. Well, you know how these things are …’
I don’t, but I don’t interrupt him.
‘… and we agreed all round to register the fault at the motorway. The fact is, Carol, it shouldn’t have had such an impact back at their base, so it wasn’t really our fault anyway.’
‘So that’s the end of it?’
‘Once they’ve been back to carry out the maintenance work, yes.’
‘Right,’ I mutter, not quite sure whether to congratulate him or berate him.
‘I need a drink. Shall we finish off that bottle we began at lunch? It seems a long while ago.’
I nod and go off to fetch wine. Frankly, I need a drink too, but there’s not much left in that bottle. I dig out another.
Sitting with René on the terrace, I am understandably pensive, anxious even, while he is in high spirits. His mood is triumphant.
‘Once we get the dowser here and sort out your well,’ he says, chewing on an olive, ‘then we’ll make that trip to my friend the beekeeper.’
I listen on silently as he promises yet again to introduce me to the ‘best beekeeper in Provence’, a friend of his since they were lads in the village. Now this gentleman is eighty-three years old but still a professional apiarist.
‘When we were youngsters we were competitors for the girls.’
‘Who won?’ I tease, brightening a little to his mood.
‘Oh,’ he grins, ‘we both did all right. Never touched the local girls, though. Only the foreign ones. Never get into trouble at home, is what I say.’
Well, you can’t claim to have followed that dictum today, eh, René? I am thinking, but choose not to say this out loud.
Later, when Michel and the youngsters return, he asks me what on earth has happened. I suggest that we all settle down with a glass of wine in the candlelight.
‘It will have to be red wine because the white is no longer chilled. We have no electricity.’
‘What’s happened?’ he repeats.
‘Fill your glass with warm wine, Michel, it’s a long story.’