A Bordeaux Dynasty: A Novel (63 page)

The twins nodded silently. Dominique got up and gestured at her sons, who followed her to the kitchen. Louis-Marie was sitting on one of the long benches, Esther next to him and a big plate of chocolate mousse in front of them.

“We want some!” the twins shouted, and Fernande smiled as she gave them servings.

Louis-Marie smiled at Dominique. He gave Esther a kiss and got up.

Crossing the hall, he told his sister-in-law, in a mournful tone, “Pauline lets her do whatever she wants.”

“Well,” Dominique said to make him feel better, “the dining room bores them and our meals are too long. It’s no big deal.”

They took their seats at the table as though nothing had happened, everything forgotten. Though Pauline did whisper in Louis-Marie’s ear, “You guys are so old-fashioned it’s ridiculous. …”

She followed the comment with a sigh. She’d always assumed that after Aurélien was gone, meals would be less formal. She turned to Jules, who was talking about the laborers hired for the harvest.

“There are no more foreign workers,” he told Robert. “Besides, with the mechanization I started a few years ago, we don’t need nearly as many hands as we used to. I mostly just hire students now.”

“No unemployed people?”

“No. It’s odd, but they don’t apply. Maybe the work is too hard.”

“It is,” Robert said, laughing. “I still remember those days in the fields …”

“Funny …” said Jules with a laugh. “What I remember is you coming up with silly excuses like college and medical school to get out of doing some real work.”

Jules and Robert smiled at each other. Then Robert wondered if the price to pay, if he was back with Pauline, would be to never again be welcome at this table, in his home, relaxing and joking around with his brothers. When the phone rang in the next room, Jules looked up at the ceiling. He turned to Dominique, who pretended she didn’t hear anything. Jules got up and walked out of the room. They could all hear his angry voice, but he was back in the dining room in no time at all.

“It was Alex,” he said to Dominique. “I told him to go to hell.”

And then he sat back down and began chatting with Robert again.

“Your wife is coughing. Tell her to see a doctor.”

Jules spoke those words without looking back, Lucas on his heels. They were working their way down a row of vines, examining everything.

“Twelve hundred gallons,” Lucas said.

Jules stopped in his tracks and turned around.

“Yes,” he said. “That sounds just about right to me. It’s going to be a great year. But I was talking to you about Fernande. Don’t take this lightly.”

The comment made Lucas smile. That Jules could talk about anything else except his vineyards these days showed the depth of his affection for Fernande.

“Just tell her to talk to Auber when he comes to see Laurène,” Jules continued. “This way she won’t have to drive anywhere, and I won’t worry about her anymore. …”

Jules started walking again.

“Maybe you should think about taking care of yourself, too,” Lucas said, behind him. “You do way too much. …”

He looked at Jules and saw that he’d lost some weight, that his clothes were hanging off him.

“When things get better financially,” he continued, “make sure you hire someone else. You insist on doing everything—owner, manager, head of cultivation … If I let you, you’d want to do my job, too!”

He heard Jules’s short and light laughter.

“You just can’t help yourself,” Lucas said with a sigh.

It was true that Jules would’ve liked to oversee wine production, bottling, and even shipping if Lucas hadn’t insisted that he was the cellar master.

“With both Alex and your father no longer here, that’s one heck of a hole to fill. I told you that the other day.”

As he walked, Jules skimmed his fingertips over the vine leaves.

“You’re not listening to me,” Lucas said with resignation.

“I’d love for all this to already be in the fermentation vats,” Jules suddenly said. “I wish …”

“You wish you could already drink it,” Lucas said, chuckling.

They arrived at the end of the vineyard, and Jules stopped to light a Gitane.

“Tell that protégé of yours, Bernard, to stop gawking at my wife and that I wrote up a job offer for him. We really need his help.”

“That’s great,” Lucas said.

He looked around him, perfectly happy to be in this field with his young boss.

“Isn’t it all beautiful?” he asked, gesturing at the vineyards and at Fonteyne, whose slate roofs shined in the distance.

Jules took a deep breath. He had nothing to add to Lucas’s simple and yet perfect words. Then he spotted an automobile down below, on the road leading to the castle. He shaded his eyes with his hand.

“Shit,” he said. “It’s Antoine. …”

Jules walked into the library, where Laurène had taken her father. Dominique was also there, looking tense.

“It’s always a pleasure to see you, Antoine,” Jules said, no trace of a smile on his face.

He was angry at his father-in-law for not coming to his wedding, but he managed to look calm.

“Can you guess why I came?” Antoine asked.

Tact had never been one of Antoine’s virtues. Jules turned to Laurène and asked her to get some white wine.

“I’m not here to drink,” Antoine said. “I’m here to talk.”

“We can do both,” Jules said, with a smile.

He was still standing, and Antoine had to crane his neck to look at him. And so he turned to Dominique.

“Why do you refuse to speak to your husband on the phone?” he asked. “You’re driving the poor guy insane.”

There was a moment of silence. Jules observed Dominique, waiting for her to say something.

“I just want some peace and quiet,” she finally said. “I have nothing to say to him.”

“He’s not a bad guy,” Antoine said.

“He was horrible to me!”

Laurène was back, carrying a tray filled with glasses and a bottle of white. Out of consideration, she’d picked a bottle produced by her father. She poured the wine and handed out the glasses. The atmosphere in the room was very tense, on the verge of hostile.

“Maybe I should talk one-on-one with Dominique,” Antoine said.

“Nothing prevents you from doing that,” Jules said, “but this concerns me, too.”

“Too much so! You think that everything that concerns Alex has to do with you.”

“He’s suing me; he thought it was a good idea to tell Laurène things that were extremely unpleasant and that she’s still struggling to overcome; he’s a boozer; and he came over here on my wedding day to try to disrupt everything. And then he beat up his wife. That’s something that can’t be forgiven. At least not by me.”

“Yeah, well … You, Jules, are so …”

Antoine fumbled for the right word but couldn’t come up with it. He’d always felt out of place at Fonteyne. The place was too big for him, too cold, too austere. This environment wasn’t his, though it had become his daughter’s.

“I don’t know what you think of me,” Jules said, “but what I do know is that Alex is worthless.”

Antoine glared at Jules. For a fleeting moment, he had the feeling of standing before Aurélien again—the same arrogance, the same authority. The illusion soon vanished, Jules being a young, thin man, with curly brown hair and a tan complexion that had nothing in common with his adoptive father.

“Don’t get angry,” Antoine said. “You
always
get angry!”

Jules took a sip of white wine, then set the glass down.

“You’re welcome here,” he said, “but don’t try to fix a situation that’s beyond you and me. Dominique is the one who’s going to decide what to do concerning her husband, in her own time. Meanwhile, she’s at home at Fonteyne. You no doubt think that this is also Alex’s home, and that’s true. But it’s best for him not to set foot in here for now, and he knows that very well. After all, the justice system will decide between us.”

“What do you mean, between you? Even if Alex is wrong concerning your father’s will, he still owns a quarter of the estate.”

Jules glared at Antoine and said, “You want me to cut the castle in four? Same with the fields? Why not the bottles, while we’re at it? Fonteyne is indivisible. It’s one and only one entity.”

“And your three brothers have just as much right to it as you do!” screamed Antoine.

He couldn’t control himself, infuriated by Jules’s arrogance.

“I’m not contesting anybody’s rights,” Jules responded in a flat tone. “Alexandre had his place here, but he’s the one who decided to leave. Making a big stink out of it, too. And since he’s been in Mazion, he hasn’t stopped doing stupid things. He’s petty and narrow-minded. He calls here all the time, being a pain. Dammit, Antoine, he actually beat up Dominique. Your own daughter! And you tolerate him under your roof?”

Bewildered, Antoine turned to his daughters for help. But Laurène and Dominique kept quiet, both in agreement with Jules.

“What can I do?” Antoine ended up asking, his voice plaintive.

“Make him stop drinking. And when he’s sobered up, send him here. He needs to be courageous enough to come over to tell me what he wants face-to-face. If that’s being in charge of Fonteyne, he can forget about it. Let that be absolutely clear. As for the rest, we’ll see. …”

Antoine realized that Alexandre could never stand up to his brother. Even he, at this very moment, feared Jules’s rage. He turned to Dominique.

“Give him a call, why don’t you?” he said. “You two are still married.”

Dominique kept her head low. Antoine felt betrayed to see that his daughters had so easily gone over to Jules’s camp. Why did that bastard decide everything for everybody?

Sharing Alex’s resentment, he told Dominique, “You are going to have to talk things over with Alex eventually, you know. You’re the one who needs to set him straight, not me. If you still love your husband, don’t let this guy influence you. …”

The insult jarred Jules.

“Antoine,” he said slowly, “you should go home now.”

Antoine got to his feet and said, “On top of it all, you’re kicking me out?”

Laurène looked at her father, dismayed. For her sake, Jules controlled himself.

“Of course not,” he said. “But you’re going to have to excuse me. I have work to do.”

He stormed out of the room, resisting the temptation to slam the library door behind him.

Pauline was crying, and for once she wasn’t shedding crocodile tears. Louis-Marie seemed detached from her, out of reach. Sure, he hadn’t resisted her and he’d made love to her, but with a clumsiness that was unlike him. It was as though, knowing that she’d slept with Robert, he didn’t derive the same pleasure from touching her as before.

A few years earlier, Pauline had adored Louis-Marie, put herself under his protection, and for a long time played the role of woman-child. She’d learned a lot from him, but never really bothered to truly get to know him. Too self-centered to really take an interest in others, she’d lived alongside him as she did with Esther, without much interest.

But now she was scandalized, even terrified, at the thought of no longer being with him. He was abandoning his old life without regret, tired of Paris, Pauline’s demands, his colleagues’ meanness, and his financial advisor’s sermons. With the passing years, he’d lost his bearings. He freely admitted that he no longer had goals or ambition.

“I have to find myself again,” he told Pauline. “And I’m going to be able to do that by staying here, at home.”

She tried to convince him that his home was the apartment in Paris he’d never liked, that she’d decorated again and again to the point where it had no soul. What he liked was Fonteyne’s sober woodwork, the castle’s austere elegance, the large fireplaces, and his father’s library. And, above all, he needed Jules’s strong, soothing presence.

Incredulous, Pauline shook her head, saying he was crazy. She now regretted having left him at Fonteyne. She went on to say that she and Esther were his family. But Louis-Marie wasn’t convinced, smiling sadly and responding that his family was here, at Fonteyne.

He didn’t want to make her feel guilty by saying that he’d waited for her most of the summer, telling her about his insomnia, his jealousy, his sadness. He remembered all too well that at one point in time, Pauline couldn’t stand being without him. She’d gone everywhere with him, clinging to his arm. She’d always wanted to make love to him, undressing as soon as they walked into the apartment. Now, she was able to ignore him for two months, calling only once in a blue moon to talk about the new paint on the living room walls. And Louis-Marie was too proud to accept the decline of the marriage they’d built.

For many nights he’d brooded over his life’s great failure. Should he have kept a constant watch on Pauline? Would a frank talk with Robert amount to anything? He’d let things go on without doing anything because he was tired, he felt old, and because his wife was too young and too superficial for him. Keeping her was a constant battle, an exhausting and futile undertaking. He didn’t want to struggle anymore—she had to choose once and for all between her husband and her lover.

Pauline was still crying, and he didn’t try to console her. All self-pity aside, he felt worse for himself than for her.

“I don’t want to leave you,” she kept saying.

She was now sobbing out of exasperation, suddenly extremely afraid of what the future might bring her. Robert wouldn’t be as paternal and indulgent with her as Louis-Marie had been. Robert’s passion was razor-sharp and would accept no concessions after having been frustrated for so long. Pauline was overwhelmed thinking about what lay ahead: a move, a change of school for Esther, the impact of a new life on her daughter, a painful divorce, a second marriage, endless bureaucratic red tape. Not to mention the inevitable disapproval that would come with her switching from one brother to another. Finally, she realized that if she left Louis-Marie, she’d be losing her biggest supporter, her best friend.

“We can’t continue this way, Pauline,” Louis-Marie said to her, coldly.

He felt like asking her direct questions but decided to stifle his jealousy. At the beginning of their marriage, Pauline had admitted that Robert was a wonderful lover and then laughed. Louis-Marie had refused to even try to imagine what that meant exactly, even though it had haunted him for a long time. Now he was thinking about it again, resentful.