A Bordeaux Dynasty: A Novel (28 page)

Since Jules wasn’t saying anything, Marie insisted.

“Fonteyne must come first, Jules. Laurène will get over it. She understands all about your duties, even though she’s pretending she doesn’t right now. Don’t play her game. It’s nothing more than provocation on her part. Don’t lie to her. Don’t make her believe that she’s the most important thing in your life if she isn’t. It would be a fool’s errand that would do no one any good.”

Jules remained quiet. Marie’s words had a soothing effect on him, but the idea of Laurène’s sudden departure was unbearable.

“She’s driving me crazy, Marie. …”

“Crazy, but not stupid, Jules. Stay home tonight. You can go to her later on.”

Marie waited a few moments and then hung up. Jules heard the phone’s click, then the dial tone. He got up and lit a cigarette. Little by little, he became aware of the noises in the house all around him. He went over to the hallway, where the guests were filing into the dining room. Aurélien came up to him and slapped him on the shoulder.

“Where were you? Something wrong?”

“In a way. …” Jules muttered. “But nothing that has to do with Fonteyne.”

Aurélien looked his son right in the face.

“You’ve got problems?” he asked.

“Troubles … of the heart,” Jules said, trying to smile.

“The heart? You sure that’s the right word?”

Aurélien meant it as a joke, but Jules turned on him.

“Why are you always in my way?”

Aurélien was startled. He glanced around him. He and Jules were now alone in the hallway.

“In your way?” he said. “I’m always in your way?”

Jules tried to lead his father into the dining room, but Aurélien wouldn’t budge.

“Are you missing something, son?” he said. “Or is it someone? You have my blessing to do whatever you need to be happy. Including being with Laurène.”

Jules planted his eyes on his father’s.

“That’s right!” Aurélien said, cheerfully. “You thought you could keep it from me?”

“You always know about everything, don’t you?”

“No. You’re better than me at that game. I’m old. I’ve told you that before. Hurry up and fix things between Antoine and me. I miss him. As for Laurène, you can tell me about your plans after you get back from London. …”

With some apprehension, Jules asked, “Do you think she’ll be okay waiting for me until then?”

Aurélien gave him a huge smile.

“No one ever resists you, son,” he said.

He gave Jules a loving pat on the shoulder. He thought Jules had looked a bit distraught and thought he’d put his mind at ease. They went over to the dining room, where everybody was waiting for them. Aurélien walked around the table, showing each guest to his or her seat. It was his fortieth banquet at Fonteyne and the milestone had a symbolic meaning for him.

As he was guided to his chair, Maurice Caze turned to Aurélien and said, “Your son doesn’t look too happy. Is he worried about the harvest or did you do something to piss him off?”

Caze was the only one laughing. He turned to the person next to him and said, “Having a daughter would’ve done Aurélien some good. He’s a terribly strict father. You know what people were saying about his sons twenty years ago? Poor little Laverzacs!”

His laughter was cut short by Aurélien.

“Oh yeah? What do people say now?”

Caze’s face darkened. He was convinced that Aurélien had something to do with Jules’s standoffish attitude toward Camille. Moreover, Aurélien’s unbearable success with Fonteyne had always been a source of irritation for him.

Jules was standing at one end of the table, while his father occupied the other end. With the arrangement, Aurélien hoped to show to whom he intended to pass the torch. He’d done it intentionally, as a message to his other sons as well as everybody else. When the guests had been assigned their seats, Aurélien gestured toward Dominique so she would be first to sit down.

She’s efficient and she planned this evening very well,
he thought as everyone else around the table was sitting down.
Alex is lucky; she’s a model wife. In a few months, Jules will also be settled, and eventually I’ll own Antoine’s vineyards. … Actually, they’re the ones who’ll own them. Those “poor little Laverzacs,” like that moron Maurice said. It’s going to be Alex’s responsibility, since here he could never surpass Jules. Oh, Jules … I always knew that eventually he’d wind up with Laurène. … True, he had that odd look on his face earlier, when I talked to him in the hallway. He’s that afraid of me? Of course, I did everything I could to keep him away from her, for a while. … He must have thought that. … In any case, they were together the last night Laurène spent at Fonteyne. … Not surprising, the shameful way she provoked him during the picnic. She’s underestimating him. … He’s going to make her bend until he can hold her in the palm of his hand. … She’s so naïve!

Aurélien forced himself to emerge from his reverie and turned his attention to his guests. He took a discreet look around the table. People were chatting away.

I’m glad I made the cocktail hour last so long. … Everybody is in a good mood, and they’re hungry. …

Seated between Pauline and Frédérique, Robert was the only one with a morose expression. A few moments earlier, Pauline had whispered to him, with a mischievous smile, that it would be wise for them to leave things where they were going forward.
Where was that?
he’d asked himself.
In the middle of their miserable adulterous affair? In their pitiful Bordeaux hotel?
Robert brooded over the words, and there was nothing he could say. Sickened by his own weakness and his persistence in making the same mistake over and over again, he wondered why Pauline was the only woman who’d really held his interest in all those years. Sooner or later, he would have to accept defeat. He turned to Frédérique and began talking to her, but without conviction. He exchanged a few pleasantries with her, and then Pauline pulled on his sleeve.

“Want to know what’s on the menu?” she asked him.

“You interrupted me.”

“Well, it’s not like you were saying anything worthwhile. …”

She smiled at him, smugly, and he hated her. At that moment, Frédérique leaned against his shoulder so she could address Pauline.

“What is on the menu?” she asked.

“Foie gras and crawfish terrine, duck breast with raspberry sauce, calf’s sweetbread, hen legs with morel mushrooms … That and a plate of cheeses and black currant mousseline with cassis sauce on nougatine. Hopefully we’ll still be able to leave the table come two in the morning. …”

Frédérique leaned back in her chair and muttered, “Fantastic!”

Pauline glared at her.

“What did she do to you?” Robert asked, his voice low.

Pauline made sure that Frédérique wasn’t listening to them before saying, “She bugs me. If she’s here to replace Laurène, fine. But leaving that notary of hers to settle here at Fonteyne must’ve gone to her head. She’s crafty and looks to me like some bourgeois wannabe. And she’s way too pretty. Since she got here, I’ve had my eye on her. You know what she’s after? Aurélien’s trust, so she can wind up in Jules’s bed. With all that in place, if you hit on her, she’d never say no!”

Suddenly cheerful, Robert began to laugh.

“My God,” he said, “you’re jealous of anything in a dress!”

Sitting across the table, Alex gestured for them to keep it down. At the end of the table, Jules was making valiant efforts to have a pleasant conversation with the people near him. But all he could think about was Laurène’s precipitous departure. Since he was completely ignorant of the advice that Pauline had given her in Bordeaux, he couldn’t imagine what had motivated her to flee this way. Was it just some sort of whim, as Marie had suggested, or did she realize that she didn’t want to be tied down? She was only twenty, after all, and hadn’t done much living.

Normally, Jules would’ve gone to get her, no matter where, even if he had to physically drag her back to Fonteyne. If not for the beginning of the harvest tomorrow morning, he’d have already been on the road to Paris. He was humiliated to have learned, through Marie, about what he could only assume was a breakup. In a burst of lucidity, he realized that Laurène knew how to manipulate him. Leave without a word of explanation instead of being treated like some negligible object. Jules had wanted to force patience on her, and she’d countered with a disappearing act. So far she’d won: He was dying to see her and deeply regretted his decision.

Absentmindedly, he looked in Robert’s direction. He was leaning toward Pauline, listening to what she was saying.

“God, he gets on my nerves with that stupid obsession with Pauline! Yet it took nothing for him to get Laurène to sleep with him in the stable. …”

“To Fonteyne!” Aurélien exclaimed, his glass raised at the other end of the table.

Docile, the guests were about to toast Fonteyne. One by one they turned to Jules, as Aurélien seemed to wait for him to chime in.

“To Fonteyne,” he said simply, in a deep voice.

Throughout the long feast, people had to drink to the harvest, the new vintage, the Laverzac forefathers, basically anything that came to mind. They had no choice but to drink and stay up so that the evening could be considered a success. And after two or three hours of heavy sleep, to then get out of bed and pick the first bunch of grapes from the first vine. …

Jules tried to imagine Laurène in Paris, having fun, making friends. He hated the idea. Fernande presented him with a dish, and he said, “You outdid yourself tonight. Nobody has been hungry for a long time, and yet they still keep on eating.”

While Jules was serving himself, she whispered in his ear, “You know Colette? The one that works for the Billots?”

He nodded, not knowing what Fernande was getting at.

“Well, she just told me that Laurène left home. … And apparently she cried the entire time she was packing. …”

He put the flatware back on Fernande’s plate, thinking that news traveled fast. The woman sitting to his left touched his forearm and said, “You seem distracted this evening.”

He forced himself to look at her. It was the wife of a big-time wine merchant, about fifty. Jules had to control himself.

“You’re ravishing,” he said, without smiling.

Embarrassed and flattered at the same time, she battered her eyelids in a ridiculous way.

For the first time in his life, Jules found the traditional feast stupid, pretentious, and never-ending.

The meal lasted until two, just as Pauline had predicted. Jules drowned his anguish and boredom in wine, and so he felt less sad, to the point where he could think about the future without clenching his teeth. He was stuck at Fonteyne for many days and wouldn’t be able to get away, and he was slowly resigning himself to the idea.

People gathered in the library, which had been cleaned up by Fernande and Clothilde, for coffee. Before joining the guests there, Jules and his brothers headed to the main living room.

“Should we say goodbye now?” Jules asked. “I’m sure I won’t be seeing you tomorrow morning.”

“It was a nice summer,” Robert said, solemnly.

The others burst out laughing.

“Really? With twenty-seven days of rain?”

“Are we going to see you guys next year?” Alexandre asked.

“Yes,” Louis-Marie said. “Unless something comes up. But, you know, barring a natural disaster, it’s family first.”

Jules playfully pushed him.

“Don’t drive like madmen on the way back,” he said. “Especially you, Bob, with that race car of yours. And call Aurélien once in a while. He loves to hear from you.”

The recommendations were always the same, and Louis-Marie smiled.

Jules then took Robert aside.

“I wanted to ask you something,” he said. He hesitated before adding, “Well, Laurène is in Paris. Apparently she’d like to get a job there.”

Robert looked surprised but didn’t say anything.

“Since she doesn’t know anyone there, she might try to contact you or Louis-Marie …”

“And?” Robert asked, cautiously.

“Well … I’m going to bring her back here very soon, and so it wouldn’t be worth it for you guys to find her any kind of job. …”

Jules gave his brother an irresistible smile and left the living room. Instead of the library, he went to Aurélien’s office. Once again he sat behind his father’s desk. The evening was almost over, and for a moment, he could take a breath. A very short moment, unfortunately.

Not long enough to get that damn girl and bring her back here!

He sighed. No use even thinking about a quick trip, as he knew full well that he’d be in this very room a few hours later, listening to Aurélien’s instructions. And every day after that, until the last basketful of grapes was dropped into the winepress.

He wasn’t unhappy. Not yet. Fonteyne was buzzing around him. He could vaguely hear Fernande and Clothilde come and go, the voices and bursts of laughter coming from the library. He got up, opened the French doors, and took a deep breath of fresh air. Outside, Botty let go of a short bark at the sight of him. Everything was in place. Including all those grapes still clinging to the vines. Summer was over. No matter what Jules was feeling, nothing was to get in the way of the harvest.

The future will be what we make of it, as they say
, Jules thought.
As always. …

Laurène paid her bill and hesitated to get up. As the hours went by, the station’s bistro had turned quiet. When she first came in, early evening, there were so many people she’d almost turned back around. But she’d found a table, way at the back, and she’d sat down with her suitcases at her feet. She’d heard the calls for her soon-to-be-departing train, but she’d let it go without her. And she hadn’t tried to take another. She’d decided not to go to Paris after all. Too bad. Her moment of revolt had passed. Her anger had petered out, and she didn’t have the strength to leave Bordeaux. Pauline and her speeches could do nothing to change that.

Time had gone by and she’d just sat there, not knowing what to do next. She’d imagined Jules, a few miles away, presiding over the preharvest banquet with ease, with pleasure. She’d seen him—as clearly as if she’d been right next to him—smiling at women, complimenting Fernande, talking to Aurélien in his soft and calm voice, the one he reserved for his father. She knew Jules inside out.