Spring. The weather is delicious. Blossoms have spread like confetti across the garden. Blue-black hornets in the wistaria. Scurrying lizards everywhere, exposing nutmeg stomachs as they flip and slither into stone cracks. The air is dusty with yellow pollen from the fir trees and cedars. When the wind gets up, it carries the powder like a carpet of egg yolk.
Michel and I are out in the garden, occupied with stakes for the planting of the 200 olive saplings that were delivered two days ago.
This planting requires strategic planning: the aspects of the sun, the growth rates of the olive trees, avoidance of the shadows of the towering pines and, in accordance with Michel’s perennial preoccupation, überblick, or the overview – the overall pattern of the groves. Michel rooted around in the garage for paint and found a pot of a lime-green colour which has barely been touched. It had been destined for the kitchen but, after one wall was painted, it was quickly rejected. He handed it, with brush and stirring stick, to me. In order that we do not forget where each tree is to be planted, he decided that we should make a tour of the entire land, place a small mound of stones or a stick at each planting spot and, in case the dogs or wild boars knock them about, mark them. Hence the paint. My job is to paint the stones.
We have been at this work for two days. Today is the last and we are dressed for guests and celebration but shod in wellies. As ever, the dogs are trailing at our heels. In the distance a backdrop of foxglove-mauve mountains, the spring Alps. There are birds everywhere. I spot one I have never seen before. He is large and lime green – the colour of my paint. His head is holly-berry red and he has sooty markings on his face. His beak is hammering powerfully at the grassed earth. I ditch my can and dig into my pockets in search of pen and thick, spiral notebook curled with use and crammed tight with ideas and daily sightings. I begin to scribble: ‘Tree Planting, morning one: I see a hell of a big Green Woodpecker; he is whacking his beak at the ground, foraging for insects. They are known to plunder anthills.’
Michel is calling to me. ‘Chérie, we have a hundred and seventy positions marked, but thirty to go. It will soon be lunchtime. We have dozens of people arriving, and, I don’t know about you, but I am looking forward to a glass of champagne in the sun on the terrace. Depêche-toi!’
I lift my head and laugh. ‘You’re right,’ I call. ‘Friends are coming. Let’s finish our work and crack open that champagne.’
We walk back up to the house, hand in hand, passing on our way the 200 six-year-old trees standing in tight lines at the top of the garden. A lake of silver vitality raring to get going. Trees that, when they reach a hundred years old, will be smiled upon by Provençals and called toddlers. Trees that are the signature tune of Provence. Today we will begin the business of putting these saplings in the earth, where they will stay for centuries, long beyond our fleeting lifetimes, and to celebrate this occasion we have invited friends and colleagues to Come and Plant a Tree, drink champagne, stay for lunch, come for the weekend or just pop by.
Each tree will bear the name of its planter. René is coming; the water diviner and his Corsican wife; Lord Harry, whose wife has returned to him and we have yet to meet; Christophe and Gérard; our vet, who always arrives with flowers for his favourite actress. The gentle beemaster will drop by too to meet Michel and, I hope, finalise the arrangements for our hives; friends are convening from England, Germany and locally.
I want to mark these days of planting. To celebrate them joyously. And when these junior trees, this rip-roaring chorus of olive trees, are in the ground, growing splendidly, we can be classified as genuine farmers by the bodies who count. We are now affiliated to, have been contacted by, been sent information about, among others, the following organisations: ONIOL, La Chambre d’Agriculture, FDGEDA, FOPO, FSPAOC, FNPHP, FCO, SNM, FEDICO, AFIDOL, CEAO, ONIDOL, COPEXO – and the list will not end there. We have been registered as one of 20,000 olive-growers in France. Between us, we produce three and a half million tons of olives over 20,000 hectares. Our handsome young chief from the Chambre d’Agriculture, who will also call in tomorrow, has written a booklet, A Practical Guide to Organic Olive Farming in the Alpes-Maritimes, and has very generously sent us a copy, along with a promise to assist us make this step in earnest.
Our tables are groaning with food. The fridges are crammed with chilled bottles. And the sun is shining. To any farmer, to Lord Harry with his apricots or a longstanding olive or fruit farmer, this step is a humble one, but to us, who started out with a newly discovered love and a crumbling house by the sea, who never in our wildest dreams saw ourselves in the role of farmers, this is an exciting, challenging decision. We are striking root – digging deeper, nurturing our discoveries, expanding and enriching our love affair with the Midi, with the ancient ways of this mythical land known since Roman times as Provincia: Provence.
There is an Arab proverb that Quashia – I hear him digging holes and preparing the soil for the trees up behind the villa – sometimes quotes. ‘When the house is finished, death walks in the door.’ This house, this smallholding, has a long way to go yet before its crumbling walls and unmade kitchens and unconstructed bedrooms and dusty stables are plastered, painted and furnished and, please God, death is and will remain occupied elsewhere.
Quashia spies us approaching and waves us up. Lucky bounds on ahead.
‘Who’s planting the first one?’ he calls.
‘You should,’ returns Michel. ‘Quashia’s tree.’
‘I’ll get your camera.’ I hurry on inside and hike up the hill with the Nikon.
Quashia has sent Michel off to fill two buckets with water. ‘You go first,’ he tells me.
‘No, you.’
But he insists, and begins unpotting one of the half a dozen saplings standing in black plastic pots at his side. I take the baby from him and settle it gently into the earth, straightening it, welcoming it to the farm, as Quashia hands me a shovel. ‘Pack the earth in tightly around it,’ he orders.
I start shovelling. Michel returns with the water, picks up the camera from beside my feet and snaps. ‘Carol’s tree!’ And then another as I pour the water, and another with Quashia at my side, and then another and another. ‘Who’s next?’
Three six-year-old trees are planted and numerous photographs taken to record the occasion. Our new, extended grove is finally underway. I hear a car purring up the drive. The first of our visitors. It’s party time.
The olive tree is a symbol of peace, of wisdom, eternity and continual rebirth. The births that I will know will not be my own children, children seeded by Michel and born of my loins. My children will not take form in the physical sense. They will be born of my passion, of my creativity, such as it is. There will be stories to hear, to narrate and pass on, there will be harvests to gather and the fruits of that labour to share, there will be friends to meet and make films with, there is the love of a man who is remarkable and who stands like an oak at my side, and there is the continuous but nonetheless inspiring discovery that pain and loss recoup life and regeneration.
I am learning, slowly, and not without heartache, to take what there is, to accept it gratefully, to celebrate it, treasure it, to seed it and work with it, before time passes. But as time passes there will always be new damage and renovation to address, the swings and roundabouts, the helterskelters of our lives and our damaged hearts. That’s it, that is the moulding of my life. It’s not a profound philosophy or a secret. It is quite simply the loudly joyous choice of paths at the crossroads. But it has taken me time to see it through the fogs of my own making. Still, as Christophe at the mill so succinctly remarked: ‘Life takes time.’
And I would add to that, healing also takes time.
I never took the time to grieve the loss of my little girl, and to heal myself.
Carrot.
Only when I began to write about her did I unfold fragile memories; memories returning to be cried over and released. Perhaps the most extraordinary miracle has been that, as I wept for her and let her go, she returned. She bounced back smiling and full of life. These days her spirit is here with me everywhere. I see her now. She soars and laughs through the breeze or the still heat in the olive trees; she weeps with the rain at my shortsightedeness and her smile radiates the day no less than the sun. She is this book. My child. My gift to Michel.