During these hot, languid days, while the sun punishes and where nothing but a jet trail disturbs the blueness of the sky, I have been observing Clarisse and how she tends Serge. Her attentions are discreet, unlike mine. Now I find myself studying them both. Pressed against windows, leaning from terraces, always observant of her, my stepdaughter, of how she asks to see his work, talks to him at length about the characters he is sketching, the world he is creating. She is prising him out of himself; she listens attentively, chooses subjects that fire his imagination. She is the image of her father. She knows intuitively when to draw near, when to gently intrude and when to hold herself at a distance. Her approaches are graceful. She is graceful, never hasty. Tiny, geisha-like steps she takes, and never falters. Yet she has no experience in this – how could she have? – she is playing it by instinct. Still, what I see is her regard for this man so many – how many? Fourteen? – years her senior, and for who he is. I am amazed that one so young, a slip of a girl who has passed her previous summers here collecting wild flowers, a girl I judged as passive, can operate from such depths of compassion and human understanding.
Both Clarisse and Serge are fired by a passion for art and their ability to express themselves through colours and forms. They have that in common. It is their language, as it is a mother tongue to Michel, who lives his own life so richly through colours and forms. He, too, I watch, as he works with Serge at the long wooden table in the garden, pages and pages of artwork for their storyboards spread out before them, fluttering in a ghost of a breeze, pinned down with stones and pens and used cups. I cannot see their eyes, shielded by dark glasses, or hear their words from this distance, but I can read their enthusiasm for their film, their creation. And all the while Clarisse is there, fetching and carrying glasses of wine, bottles of water, or sitting a little apart, chin resting in her hands, elbows on the table, listening attentively, idly studying the sketches, drinking in the process of work.
She has been seduced by the business of filmmaking, that is evident. But there’s more. She loves this bereaved man. No doubt about it. Her eyes, flowing over with the vernal joys and palpitations of first love, linger on him and tell their story. And what of him? What he does feel? A shy, physically gauche man at the best of times, he probably has no idea what he feels about any damn thing. I know I don’t. Still, he responds to her. Fragile emotions. Unspoken words, tender glances, drawings exchanged – messages only they can read – long walks side by side or, more frequently, one trailing the other until they reach a resting place within the harbour of the fruiting trees. Sometimes they are gone for hours on end, lost among the butterflies and wasps and vintage heat. Love in the olive groves. It certainly is a love affair of sorts. With Clarisse at his side, his unthreatening companion, Serge is healing. I clock the changes taking place within him. He is picking up the pieces. And what do I feel? Bittersweet emotions engulf me. Those youngsters have time. Together, or individually, they have their futures. But what of me?
Vanessa, too, is absent most days. She takes the scooter and goes to the beach, returning late, flushed with sea wind (and kisses, I am sure of it), brown as chocolate licked shiny in the melting heat. She, too, has met someone, and she has flowered overnight. She has become radiant. I mention it to Michel. He frowns. ‘I don’t think so,’ he says. ‘Why would you think that?’
Because I am a woman.
Even if these girls are not my daughters, I am alert to them. To the treasures of their enchantments. And if they were my daughters I would enfold them in my arms and hug them with such force and josh with them, begging them to share their secrets with me. ‘Recount your happinesses, your discoveries, whisper them to me.’ But they aren’t, and there’s the rub.
The water bill arrives, and sends us reeling. Nine thousand francs for three months’ supply. Even when we discovered a leak in the swimming pool a while ago, it was nowhere near as much as this. We have been charged for approximately 1,500 cubic metres of water. It cannot be possible! And then we remember M. Halaz and his remarkable results in the garden. Delighted as we were, they have come at a price. They have left us with a sum to pay three times higher than we have ever shelled out before.
‘Think how much more expensive it would be if we were to plant the new trees,’ I say to Michel.
‘We haven’t decided not to,’ he returns.
I do not respond. I gather up our coffee cups from the terrace and carry them inside.
He follows with jams and yoghurts. ‘What do you say?’
‘I don’t want to plant trees. I can’t take on anything else.’
I may have given up on the olives but I am still struggling with the elusive beemasters, who have all retreated inland and refuse in this escalating heat to visit us here. One woman I have been talking to on the telephone scoffs at the idea of bringing her hives so close to the coast. ‘Too many tourists, too much traffic and the area is overconstructed.’
‘Not where we are.’
‘Desolée. Non. It’s far too polluted where you are,’ she says. I sigh, because from her point of view, this is probably not unreasonable, and we may never find our hivemaster.
Quashia has completed the repair work to the bassin. Today, he and Michel will go to work on the interior, which resembles a jungle. We all traipse up the hill to take a look. When I stand on piled stones and peer inside the old stone chamber, I see it is a breeding ground for plants. There are tiger lilies shooting up and wild, willowy canes growing within and Lord knows what else has seeded. The cane of Provence, I tell them, is one of the earliest plants to have been found on this Mediterranean coast. Cannes takes its name from the canes that used to grow along its saline littoral. They are known to survive best in hot, humid environments.
‘Here, look at this!’ calls Michel. ‘The wall bears a mason’s name, inscribed into the stone. No date though, which is a pity.’
The terraces up here are bare, save for a few self-seeded baby pines, thin as pencils, swaying gently in the altitude heat. It is ideal land for planting olives, or for the hives. L’emplacement des ruches. Yes, I can picture a row of beehives up here, out of reach of the dogs. No one could claim this patch is polluted. I breathe in deeply and the resiny air sings through my lungs.
‘What’s that noise?’ I ask the two men, who are deciding how best to approach the basin cleaning.
‘Sounds like chainsaws,’ replies Michel.
I look about, wondering where the distraction could be coming from, but the forest is too dense to gauge the direction.
‘They are cutting trees over on the other side of the valley,’ says Quashia without concern.
‘But we’re in a green belt. Une zone verte. Nobody has the right to cut down trees!’ I cry. ‘It’s illegal!’
‘No, it’s fine, don’t worry. They are only pruning them, tidying up the land.’
When I return to the house to make coffee I hear screams and shouts from the bassin and rush out to see what is happening. Quashia hares down the hill with the step of a teenager. A family of deep russet-red squirrels are inhabiting the basin and sticks are needed to encourage them out. ‘We don’t want to hurt them,’ he shouts as he passes. ‘Come back up and see.’
But halfway up the hill, I am interrupted by the arrival of the new plumber, M. Sordello. He seems a very excitable fellow, hooting incessantly and bawling from his van, door open, cigarette in hand.
‘Anyone home? Hello, hello! Anyone home?’
‘I’m coming,’ I scream from the hill, puffing and panting back down the track.
‘Jesus! How many dogs have you got? Call them off!’
‘Three. I have already chained up the German Shepherd. The other two are reasonably harmless.’
I outline our requirements and he takes one look up the hill and shouts – I learn later that he always shouts – ‘I’m not climbing up there! Not in this bloody heat! It’ll have to wait until autumn.’
‘Couldn’t we take a gentle stroll up so that you can give us an approximate costing?’
He huffs and sighs dramatically, scratching his balding head, twitching his beaked nose. ‘Any chance of a cup of coffee first? I’m bloody exhausted. I hate this weather. Roll on winter.’
I go inside to pour the freshly made coffee. He follows me in, still smoking. ‘How do you take it, Monsieur Sordello?’
‘Black, five sugars.’
Five sugars? No wonder he is jumping like a jack-in-the-box. We go out on to the terrace, and I am pointing up the hill, explaining what we need, when I see Clarisse and Serge up ahead. Michel is waving to me. There is much excitement, but I cannot make out what is going on. Sordello seizes his chance to be on his way, promising to return another day, in the evening, when the sun is less fierce.
‘I’ll give you a bell later,’ he shouts, zipping back out of our lives.
The squirrels have successfully escaped. They have levered themselves on to the olive stick Quashia has lowered into the basin, scurried up it and then leaped to freedom. All except one, a baby that lost its footing on the cane. When Quashia attempted to assist, the little creature freaked and drew blood from our gardener’s wrist.
I spend the remainder of the morning treating his wound, which is worryingly deep. I want to drive him to the hospital or to our doctor for a tetanus jab, but he won’t hear of it. The little squirrel is frightened but not harmed. We decide to let her go. How she leaps! She flies through the air, landing in a cedar tree, and from there scoots from tree to tree until she is lost in the verdant wild.
Serge left for Paris this morning, loaded down with work for his project with Michel. We said our farewells, with hugs and embraces, and then Michel drove him to the airport. All day long Clarisse has looked downhearted, tramping the hill in search of her father.
I have never felt jealous of Michel’s family, never felt any desire to intrude upon or despoil that past life of his, the years he spent with the girls’ mother and all that they built together. On the contrary, I have always heartily welcomed that past; it is a vital and significant fraction of the man I love, the man Michel is today, even though I know precious little about that time. Michel is inscrutable and he is discreet. That first marriage and those early years belong to him and those who shared it. Not to me. I have no rights there. The girls rarely speak to me about Maman, even though she and I have met on several occasions. I like her. She makes me laugh; she is neat, witty and pretty. Still, it is their world, their universe, and it does not include me. Only on rare occasions do I skirt its periphery. Michel and I, we, came later, when so much was already in place, but I have never perceived myself as an outsider. My relationship with him, his generous love for me, has given me a secure foundation, one I never knew before. It gathers me up, cocoons and protects me. But my misery is eating into it, breeding fears and doubt. Worries nag me. How will I heal? How can I move beyond this failure? What if Michel should leave me? What witness to our love would remain? He and his first wife have the girls; they are the witnesses to that young love. Without children of our own, there will be nothing. Our love will have been a fleeting instant in time; a memory.
The following morning, after a tormented night, I drag myself to my den, not even bothering to dress. I heave down files and riffle furiously through work notes, casting about for a structure that will gel the pages into some semblance of order, grappling for the logical progression I must have been building, because I have to get beyond this negativity. I must find purpose and the only way I know how is through work. From my window, I rest my tired eyes on the sprawling fig tree. I return to my table and I write:
The perfume of the summer fig is a heavy fragrance. It is musky, milky and dominates the scents of everything growing around it. Gravid … mothers’ milk …
I throw down my pen and, rising from my chair, return to the window. I look again. What do I see? I see lopped-off cedar branches and scarred trunks. Most of the figs have ripened, fallen to the ground and been squashed by the passage of cars. Their crunchy pulp and seeds, carried by tyres, have spread all over the tarmac drive and left a sticky jam. The magpies zap at it with their beaks, devouring it wolfishly. They ignore the fruit’s dark purply skins. Those lie shrivelling like bits of dried leather leached by the heat to the colour of diluted ink.
I return to my table and take a deep breath. Somewhere beyond the room, the telephone is ringing. I barely notice. I am leafing through notes. I find the page.
The fig tree, le figuier. The fig tree appears in many paintings and there are, of course, frequent references to it in the Bible. According to Lawrence Durrell, the fig tree was ‘owned’ by the god Demeter, while Bacchus, the god of wine and good living, carved his sacred phallus from its wood.
Its logs give off an acrid aroma when burned in the grate. It is ill-advised to plant these trees up against stone walls. They require plenty of circulating air or else, in the heat, they smell like cat’s pee.
‘The garage in Cannes has just telephoned. Your car is ready. Would you like me to ask them to deliver it, or shall we drive down together and fetch it?’ I have not heard Michel’s approach, lost as I was in my studies.
‘Oh, hi there.’ I sigh, placing pen on tabletop. ‘No, I’ll walk down myself and collect it later.’
‘Don’t you want me to come with you? To make sure they’ve done a good job?’
I shake my head. ‘No, I’ll be fine.’
He pauses. ‘It’s good that you’re working,’ he smiles encouragingly.
I bow my head. ‘Not really …’
‘Please don’t be so closed off, chérie.’
‘Am I? Sorry, I …’
‘I feel as though you resent me.’
I shake my head again. ‘No, I don’t. There is resentment, but it is not against you.’
‘Who, then?’
I cannot answer. Until we came here, until I found Michel and we took on the challenge of Appassionata, I never put my feet on the ground and felt the earth stay firm beneath me. There is not a corner of this place, this olive farm, that I do not love. Every cobweb shot through with light, glinting silvery as old badgers’ hairs; every arboreal bird singing its song; the geckos, lizards, every creature (well, maybe not the snakes and rats); every storm, even those that crack and fizz, shut off the electricity, send the dogs into a yowling spin and terrify me; every sunbeam that warms Michel’s smooth skin and mellows the shadows I have carried in my heart. I hear and see all of these wonders and more, but I will never hear our child’s cry, see her laughter on a summer’s day, suffer her fears as she enters the pool before learning to swim. I will never know if, when I took her hand in mine, she would have felt safe in the fundamental way I never did.
‘Carol? Are you listening?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Let me come with you to the garage. We can take the car and go off for lunch …’
I shake my head.
Michel nods his acquiescence and turns to leave me. ‘By the way, what happened to that roll of film I gave you?’
‘What film? Oh, I took it to be developed.’
‘And?’
‘I collected the photos.’ He waits expectantly. ‘They must be in my bag or in the car somewhere. I’ll find them. Sorry, I forgot.’
The photographs have been hidden beneath the passenger seat of the car in what is now a raggedy wallet. They must have slipped under there as I took a bend in the road and have lain undiscovered for more than a week. Michel finds them while I am at the garage. When I return they are on the table on the upper terrace, where he has prepared our lunch.
‘Isn’t this the journalist you introduced me to in Cannes?’ he asks.
He holds up four photographs, each one taken by me. Of Jacob and the two Italian guests at Barbara’s birthday bash. In each of the four pictures, where Barbara should have been, there is nothing, nothing but an illuminated smudge, a grey ghost of an outline. I pick them up and scrutinise them. I am no photographer, but even so.
‘I don’t understand,’ I murmur. ‘There were four people … Is this something to do with the flash?’
‘It shouldn’t be.’
‘Must have been the glare from the candlelight, then, that bleached her out.’ I take the pictures and, later, their negatives too, and slip them into a drawer in my den, disquieted by them.
Some mornings, like this morning, I wake and stretch and feel if I could reach up and tap at the sky, tap, tap, tap with my fingernails, it would reverberate in gentle chimes. And I know that today will be a good day. Then, carrying our coffee out on to the terrace, we find trails of wet weeds everywhere and muddy pawprints. I am bewildered until I trace them and discover that one of the dogs has devoured the water lilies. Every one of them. Nothing is left but a trail of root systems to prove they ever existed. And the carp, too. All are gone. I am peering at the surface of the pond hoping to catch signs of life, just one living fish, when Thierry, the young man who cleans our pool, arrives on his weekly visit. His mood is buoyant. He has gossip to impart and waves exuberantly. Michel Mouillot, the ex-mayor, has been found guilty of corruption.
‘But he is not actually serving his sentence in prison. He has been put under house arrest, en résidence surveillée, in a rather elegant villa in the Var. At our expense!’ cries cropped-haired Thierry, dragging hard on his cigarette. ‘We, who do an honest’s day’s work for a pittance. We, who pay our taxes and without complaint!’
I smile. I love it when the French get très chaud under their collars or, in this trance-inducing climate, their T-shirts, especially when it concerns matters of injustice or workers’ rights and white-collar corruption. They rant and rave but our experience has shown us that, at any given opportunity, most would prefer to do business en noir, in cash, so that the money can remain undeclared. Thierry is not of that breed. His work is by contract and above board. He is intense and honest. He never accepts a beer because he has other pools and other clients to attend to, but he always stops for a natter, to pass on the latest news of local rackets, and then goes contentedly on his way, with a bottle of mineral water to which he has helped himself from the garage fridge. It does not surprise me to learn that he is originally from another, more northerly region of France.
The scandal of the mayor does seem to have run its course and matters are quietening down along our wave-lapped coast. A new mayor has been elected. Cannes is returning to the erstwhile lucrative business of promoting its perfect sun-kissed lifestyle, and most local enterprises appear to be regaining ground. Even the price of real estate is on the increase again. Although I did read recently that the villa of that old trickster – crook, actually – Jacques Médecin was bought by the state for what many considered was a vastly inflated price soon after he legged it to Uruguay, and has just been sold to a local firm of estate agents for less than a tenth of the sum paid for it. Mmm.
Clarisse flew off late this afternoon. She was headed for Paris, but only for a day or two. Soon she will be setting off for her new life in London. Summer is drawing to a close. Michel will be going away in a few days, too, to begin preproduction on his animation film. It will be almost as though I am alone. Vanessa wants to stay on a while longer, she says, though we rarely see her. She rises late, spends hours in the shower, dresses with meticulous care, endlessly brushing her lustrous mane, and then speeds off, a whirlwind of smiles and flying excitation. These days, she converses with me in English, relishing it as though it were the language of love. And for her it is. The object of her attentions is a young American, she confides. ‘He iz verry tall and verry ’andsome.’
‘Will we meet him?’ I ask her.
‘Ça depend,’ she grins secretively.
‘Depends on what?’
‘ ’e iz verry shay. And ’e is verry frightened to meet Papa.’
‘Why?’ I laugh.
‘Because Papa is my ’ero. But I shall invite him to Paris. I want him to meet Maman.’ And she kisses me on both cheeks and hurries away to town, waving as she goes.
She hasn’t meant to hurt me.
When Michel returns from the market, he finds me curled up on the bed, red-faced, sobbing into one of our square linen pillows, blotched now with mascara. He kneels on the bed, caresses my tearstained cheeks, kisses my head and then presents me with a cluster of red chili peppers, still attached to their stalks and held together with a pale blue elastic band.
‘For you,’ he whispers, and lays them out alongside my face.
‘What are these for?’ I mumble, nonplussed, for we rarely cook with chilis.
‘A bouquet for you.’
I sniff and attempt a laugh. ‘Are you teasing me?’ But no, he takes my hand and leads me through the salon, where a bouquet of equally red long-stemmed roses are displayed in a vase, and on to the kitchen, where he places the chilis in the woven basket piled high with raw vegetables.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I thought it was an interesting alternative to flowers,’ he smiles, inching me towards him, hugging me tightly, while tenderly stroking my back.
‘This sadness won’t last for ever, chérie.’
And I see that it is yet more evidence of Michel’s kindliness, his generosity and inventiveness. He will transform anything into a form, a shape, a display of colour, but what I don’t yet see is how he is encouraging me to seek alternatives.