“Either you slap me in the face or you come with me.”
He didn’t give her time to respond as he threw his arms around her. He was frantic and clumsy. Pauline got away from him and went to pick up her skirt and blouse.
“Where do you want to go?” she asked.
Stunned for a second, Robert then grabbed Pauline’s hand and led her to the garage. He opened the car door for her, got into the Porsche himself, and took off. She glanced at him, delighted. She’d managed to push him to the limit without even trying. She derived great satisfaction from knowing that the power she’d held over him remained intact. She couldn’t wait to make love to him. She remembered the softness of Robert’s hands, and his desperate anger thrilled her.
In a mocking tone she said, “I wonder if you’re always going to be, for women, a one-afternoon affai. r…”
He stopped the car and turned to her.
Sarcastically she added, “We don’t have a whole lot of time, Doctor…”
Robert stared at the road up ahead and hesitated only a second before driving off. She could say whatever she wanted; his desire for her dispelled everything else.
“Louis-Marie never wonders where you are?” he asked in a low voice.
“He asks me. Sometimes.”
“You’re going to tell him about this?”
Robert feared the answer, but Pauline said, “Of course not!”
Once in Bordeaux, they stopped at the first hotel they spotted. They went up to an impersonal room. Both excited, they joked and giggled while getting undressed. Forgetting all about foreplay, they made wild and passionate love. Louis-Marie could be a good lover, but Robert had a special affinity with Pauline. He managed to control himself enough to completely satisfy her.
“You’re something else,” Pauline said, laughing. “I’d almost forgotten.”
Spent, Robert buried his head in the crook of Pauline’s arm. He didn’t feel the muted contentment he usually experienced after sex. With Pauline, in that instant, he felt on edge.
“Please,” he muttered, “just stop it for a second. That tone of yours. …”
“Why? To give you the illusion of what?”
He tightened, knowing that he was going to say what she didn’t want to hear.
“I love you,” he said, hopeless.
Pauline picked up Robert’s pants from the floor and rummaged through the pockets looking for his cigarettes. She lit one.
“I don’t want to hear your declarations, Bob. I know that you love me. I love you, too, in a way. … But I’m happy with Louis-Marie. My life is set. Don’t make everything a big drama. … You knew that we’d wind up in a hotel room together at some point this summer. That’s why you came to Fonteyne.”
He stared right at her and said, “No need to lecture me. I’m crazy about you and it’s a bit hard to reconcile with … the sordidness of the hotel. The family dinner we’re going to have tonight at Fonteyne …” He turned away from her before adding, “I’d like to scream at the top of my lungs that I love you, rob flower shops, howl at the moon, do all kinds of insane stuff … but I know that it would all be for nothing, dear sister-in-law. So let me gather myself for five minutes, and then I’ll use that jokey tone that you enjoy so much. …”
Pauline, much more troubled than she would’ve liked, got out of bed and began to get dressed.
“Okay,” she said. “But you do need to calm down a bit, by yourself. Let me go downstairs and wait for you in the car.”
She couldn’t wait to leave the room and get away from Robert’s charms. She ran to the Porsche and sat down, out of breath and annoyed. She thought she’d have to be very careful to avoid going too far with Robert, to not fall into his trap. But apart from this vague anguish, she felt nothing, no guilt.
Jules had finally agreed to play chess with Louis-Marie. Since their skill sets were just about the same, the game was dragging on.
“You’re going to lose, little bro,” Louis-Marie had said early on.
They’d settled in the main living room and were lulled by the sound of the grandfather clock. As Louis-Marie was concocting a very complicated move, Jules got up to light the fireplace.
“Can’t you stay put for a second?” Louis-Marie said. “You’re cold?”
“Yes, and I’m going upstairs to get a sweater, and I’ll be right back.”
“Get one for me, too. It’s in the bathroom.”
Once upstairs, Jules fetched a sweater for himself and then went over to the bathroom that Louis-Marie and Pauline shared with Laurène. Absentminded and still preoccupied by what had happened the day before, he went inside without knocking and was stunned to find Laurène taking a bath.
Startled, she sunk lower in the tub, wrapping her arms around her knees. She was about to ask him what he was doing there, but her eyes caught his and she kept quiet. He was watching with icy amusement.
“You have no one to share the bathtub with?” he asked, mockingly.
He reached for his brother’s sweater on the stool. He stared at Laurène in a particularly insolent manner and then left. He didn’t bother shutting the door and ran down the stairs. He had to stop on the landing to catch his breath. His ribs were hurting.
An hour later, Aurélien found Jules and Louis-Marie still absorbed in their game. Jules was hunched over the chessboard, his chin resting on his hand, his sweater resting on his shoulders. Through the fabric of Jules’s shirt, Aurélien made out the heavy bandage.
Pointing at Jules’s back, he asked, “Hurt yourself, son?”
This was followed by a moment of silence, and then Jules turned to his father and glared at him.
“You’re not going to answer?” Aurélien insisted.
He was sitting in an armchair behind Jules, who was still and silent.
“Checkmate!” Louis-Marie said.
Jules looked at the chessboard, then turned to his father.
“I fell off my horse,” he said.
Aurélien smirked.
“You patch yourself up or did you ask that doctor brother of yours? He’s very serviceable, you know. … I hope it won’t prevent you from working?”
Jules kept his stubborn silence, and Louis-Marie thought he should intervene.
“It’s no big deal,” he said.
“You,” Aurélien said in a low voice, “keep quiet.”
Jules decided to speak up.
“When we were kids,” he said, “you never wanted to hear what we were up to, remember? You always said we should deal with our conflicts ourselves, and may the strongest win. …”
Gracefully Aurélien smiled and said, “And you won, son?”
Jules held his father’s gaze. The way Aurélien could see right through him always amazed him.
“I do hope that you won,” Aurélien said, with a sort of tenderness.
Jules got up and carefully stretched.
“How about something to drink?” asked Louis-Marie as he was putting away the chessboard.
Robert had come into the room silently and was now smoking a cigarette by a window. Jules was the only one to discern his nervousness.
“Anyone seen Pauline?” Louis-Marie asked.
“Yes. She went upstairs to get changed for dinner.”
Robert had answered casually, but Jules glared at him. Then he turned to Louis-Marie, who was opening a bottle and hadn’t noticed anything.
“Do you have a cigarette?”
Laurène’s voice, though barely audible, made Jules cringe. He lowered his eyes to her and seemed surprised to see her next to him. She’d found nothing better to say to him than this insignificant little sentence and now she waited tensely for a response. She was as afraid of him right now as when she’d first come to Fonteyne two years ago. Jules pointed at the box of cigars on the sideboard.
“There,” he said, “those ought to suit you.”
He was being so terribly distant that she didn’t dare insist. She took a seat on the other side of the room, again on th
e verge of tears.
“I’m not going to eat at the house tomorrow night,” Jules reminded his father.
With a crooked smile, Aurélien said, “That’s right. You have your candlelight dinner with Camille.”
Laurène downed the glass that Louis-Marie had just poured her. Taken aback, he hesitated for a second before filling her glass again.
Pauline was last to join the family. She was spectacular in her turquoise satin outfit. Louis-Marie watched her waltz into the room beaming with pride. She loved to get made up, and he figured she’d spent a lot of time in the bathroom. She went over and sat by him, and he took in her perfume with a smile. He whispered something tender in her ear and she snuggled against him. Robert stopped looking at them and struck up a conversation with Alexandre. It didn’t matter what he said, and he barely listened to his brother; he was trying to regain his calm, desperate not to let his emotions overwhelm him.
Laurène dropped her cigarette and, with a look of dismay, tried to pick up the ashes from her blouse. Jules walked by her at that very moment and whispered, “Gee, being in love sure makes you clumsy.”
She didn’t turn to him and lowered her head.
He regretted having said it immediately. He was about to add something, but Fernande announced that dinner was ready, and everyone filed out of the room. Jules hesitated and found himself alone with Laurène for a few seconds. She got to her feet, gathering her courage.
“I wanted to tell you …” she began, “what happened yesterday …”
“Spare me the explanation, will you? I saw everything!”
Again he regretted his aggressive tone. More sincerely, he added, “I’m ashamed I was so violent yesterday. And so … ridiculous.”
Laurène fumbled for something to say, but he spoke first, “It’s okay. Bob is a great guy. And you even have my blessing, if you want it.”
He headed for the dining room, but she grabbed him by the arm.
“Would you rather I leave, Jules? Does it bother you that I live here?”
Surprised by the question, he said, “At Fonteyne, you’re Aurélien’s guest. It’s got nothing to do with me.”
He gestured toward the dining room, but she didn’t move, looking straight at him. As he felt himself weakening, he conjured up the image that had been haunting him since the day before, and he got angry again.
“You told me the other day …” Laurène whispered.
“I know! But it’s not as though I asked you to marry me. Besides, I didn’t know you had a soft spot for hay at that point.”
Laurène straightened. Gone was her sheepish look.
“Next you’re going to say I’m a bitch because of what happened with Bob? But if I’d made love to you instead, it would’ve been more acceptable? In better taste? What’s the difference? Tell me.”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and said, “You can sleep with the entire family for all I care. You’re free to do whatever you damn well please!”
“You’re the biggest bastard I know,” she said, freeing herself from his grip.
She threw a quick glance at the dining room door and lowered her voice.
“You Laverzac men, you’re all a bunch of pretentious sons of bitches!”
Jules took a step back and asked, “Is that how you talk to my brother? Does he get a thrill out of it?”
Laurène burst into tears and crossed the main living room toward the hallway.
“Are you guys coming or not?” Aurélien called out from the dining room.
Jules started to walk slowly, wondering how he would justify Laurène’s absence.
Carefully, Jules took a grape between his fingers. He detached it from the bunch and, pensive, studied the small crimson sphere for a long time in the palm of his hand, then crushed the fruit, opened its skin, and examined the pulp. He couldn’t come up with a definitive opinion, so he picked up another grape. He tasted it, suppressed a grimace, and walked back to the Jeep.
It’s still going to be good, he thought.
The grapes were ripening, in spite of the bad weather. Another ten days. Maybe fifteen. …
He put the Jeep in gear and felt the tires skid a bit before tearing themselves from the rocky soil.
And when harvest begins, Aurélien won’t stop working for a second. Same with me.
He’d personally checked all the material that the laborers were going to need. The dates imposed for the harvest had relieved wine producers from making the crucial decision themselves but, from one vintage to the other, Jules had to carefully organize his planning.
We’re just going to do it the way we always have.
He relied on his instincts just as much as what he saw each day in the fields. Aurélien asked him the same questions a hundred times and picked up the smallest of discrepancies in his answers. Each fall was the same shared hell, but this one had been particularly difficult to go through, thanks to the constant rain. As for the requests for increased quotas, Jules preferred not to think about it now.
He caught sight of the Mercedes behind him at the foot of the hill and waved to Aurélien and Alexandre before stepping on the gas.
“We all had the same idea, it looks like,” Aurélien said.
He watched the Jeep disappear over the crest of the hill.
“Anywhere we go,” Alex said, laughing, “we can be sure that Jules was there or that he’s going to be there in five minutes.”
Aurélien nodded, solemn.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s … reassuring. But because of it, I now live like some gentleman farmer, and I don’t go out in the fields nearly enough. That Jules is evil. … He describes things in the vineyards so well I can see them from my office.”
With no specific intention, Alexandre said, “You can trust him.”
“I trust both of you,” Aurélien said.
But Jules is the one who sulfated the vines at the precise time. He decided when to begin harvesting last year on exactly the right day. … If it were only you taking care of the vineyards, my poor Alex, I’d pitch a tent out there just to keep an eye on them myself. …
Aurélien gave his son a pat on the shoulder, sorry to be thinking this way. Then they saw the Jeep come down the hill and Jules stopped beside the Mercedes, leaving the engine on.
“We don’t see you enough around here,” he said to Aurélien. “I actually wanted to talk to you about those vines. The rain made a mess of the soil, so we’re going to have to fix that.”
“You have enough people?”
“It’s going to be fine.”
Aurélien, relieved, produced a smile.
When did I lose control of all this? he asked himself without bitterness.
He watched his two sons lighting their cigarettes together, and he felt happy being with them. He thought, with pride, that he’d done a good job raising them.
Aurélien’s unique personality and perspective on things, quite different from his contemporaries, had made him feel inclined to give his children an elaborate education. At least that’s the way he saw it back then. He wanted his sons to be able to run a business and to be respected. He worked very hard to ensure they would turn into the types of men he valued. He looked after their schooling from the very beginning, while paying for private lessons and making sure they went on trips. He did everything to prevent his sons from fighting too much with the estate’s employees. His strictness, at times over the top, had only one goal: to put his sons above the others. This attitude—which he didn’t regret—had ended up costing him Louis-Marie’s and Robert’s presences. But both had developed their own ambitions, and Aurélien was pleased about that. Their success was, to him, a result of his own efforts, and it fell under the category of things he’d hoped for. That was because he’d hoped they would turn out as strong as he was. And he had managed to make them so, at least in part. Jules and Robert were made of steel.
Those two don’t see eye to eye these days, but it’ll pass. It always does when it’s about women. …
When they were kids, I would’ve beaten the daylights out of them just to keep them quiet, but today I’d like so much for them to talk to me. …
“We’re a bit late clearing the undergrowth,” Jules said.
Aurélien frowned and asked, “How late?”
“Just a little. Want me to take you back to the house?”
Aurélien smiled at Jules, touched by his son’s kindness.
“In that old clunker of yours?” he said. “Are you kidding me?”
Jules was going to pull away, but Aurélien rapped on the Jeep’s hood.
“Just one second,” he said. “I know you and Alex, and I don’t want any trouble with the laborers this year. No battles, no fighting, no nothing. Understood?”
“Us, fight?” Jules asked with an air of perfect innocence.
“You’re not eighteen anymore,” Aurélien said.
Jules and Alexandre looked at each other, giddy. The approach of the harvest thrilled them, as always.
And for the past hour or so, Jules hadn’t thought about his heartbreak.
Laurène, exasperated, turned away from her computer screen. She couldn’t master the management program that Jules had written. She kept getting lost in the maze of folders, didn’t ask the right questions, and always feared doing something that would wipe out some essential data. Aurélien thought he was too old to mess with computers, and he had no interest in them. He figured that Laurène, being young, would take care of it all easily.
God, she thought, Jules is making things difficult for everybody!
But right away, she recognized how unfair she was being. Jules’s constant willingness to adopt new techniques, no matter what they were, was sometimes a headache for the others, but he didn’t do it out of meanness. Suddenly, Laurène blushed at the thought of the painful episode in the stable. She got up and left her small office, hoping to take her mind off things. Unfortunately, the first person she ran into was Robert. He led her to the terrace and, after making sure they were all alone, he put his hands on her shoulders, looking dead serious.
“I’m so sorry about what happened. …” he began.
He bit his lower lip, not knowing what else to say.
“I know,” Laurène said with a soft voice. “Me too.”
A Bordeaux Dynasty: A Novel Page 14