A Bordeaux Dynasty: A Novel

by Françoise Bourdin

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 temptati
on 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.

  “Would you want to keep Esther with you?” Pauline asked, in a very small voice.

  Louis-Marie was shocked by the question. As much as he knew about Pauline’s lack of maternal instinct, he found the question indecent. He adored his daughter and knew he was capable of raising her, but the choice wasn’t his. Thinking that Esther would no doubt be unhappy with Robert, his heart tightened. And then he was devastated by another thought, menacing and unavoidable: Pauline and Robert could very well decide to have a child of their own. Imagining Pauline pregnant, as he remembered her—adorable and youthful—was unbearable. He got up, quickly put on his robe, and left the bedroom.

  Alexandre gestured at the waiter.

  “This round is on me,” he told Marc.

  They were sitting comfortably at the back of their favorite bistro. Alex leaned over the table and waved a finger under Marc’s nose.

  “The bastard treated Antoine, my father-in-law, like dirt. The horrible things he said to him! And, you know, we’re talking about his wife’s father. My wife’s father. Antoine never should’ve been disrespected like that.”

  Marc was only half-listening, but he gauged Alex. The moment now seemed right. Alex’s hatred for his adopted brother had taken on big enough proportions. He was ripe for revenge, Marc was certain of that.

  “If you ask me,” he said, “that brother of yours needs to be taught a good lesson.”

  “Oh yeah! If only I could. …”

  “But you can.”

  Alex shook his head, grimacing.

  “No,” he said. “The guy is a thug. He’d kick my ass.”

  Marc remembered that Jules had sent him to the hospital the year before.

  “I’m not saying you have to go after him physically. There are other ways.”

  Alex downed his cognac. He didn’t know what Marc was getting at.

  “Your brother, there’s got to be something he particularly likes, right?”

  Alex chuckled and said, “Yes. His vineyards.”

  “So there …”

  Alex frowned, intrigued.

  Without waiting, Marc continued.

  “The legal system let you down? Take the law into your own hands. When is harvest?”

  “In a few days.”

  Marc hesitated for a second. After all, Alex belonged to a family of wine producers. He might not appreciate the suggestion.

  “I have an idea, but I’m not sure if it’s any good. I don’t know anything about vineyards. But I’d think that at this point in time, all those grapes must be particularly vulnerable. …”

  “In the last days before the harvest,” Alex said and sighed, “it’s a huge worry for us. We’re terrified of violent storms, last-minute stuff …”

  “I’m not talking about hail or locusts. But, you know … chemicals. …”

  Alex again gestured at the waiter, who quickly refilled his glass. He was beginning to understand, and he was scared. He swallowed his saliva. Jules, as every other producer of great wine, despised the very idea of insecticides, and he had his personal theories on how to care for his crop organically.

  “We spill a few cans of something toxic on a few well-selected parcels,” Marc continued. “The earth is really dry, and so it would spread down the hills. The two of us, we could take care of a pretty good area in no time.”

  “Jules is watching over everything and everyone all the time,” Alex said, looking frustrated.

  But the idea was beginning to appeal to him. Jules’s Achilles heel was the vineyards, no doubt about it.

  “Your brother must sleep once in a while, I imagine?” Marc said. “At three in the morning, far from the castle, we’d be scot-free.”

  Alex downed his cognac in one shot. He never would’ve come up with such terrible payback.

  “And there are only two possible outcomes,” Marc continued. “Either he finds out about it right away and blows his top, or it leaves no trace but his wine is ruined. It’s a win-win situatio
n, man!”

  Marc burst out laughing, but Alex was still reluctant to go along with the idea. He’d grown up respecting the crop, in the strictest of traditions. But Marc’s plan was appealing because, while stabbing Jules’s heart, it also attacked his father’s image. And Aurélien had also ignored and scorned him. If they went ahead with the scheme, Alex would get even with both of them, without taking any risks.

  “I don’t know what kind of pesticide or defoliant we’d want to use,” Marc said, “but I bet you know a thing or two about that stuff.”

  His eyes lit up, Marc waited for Alex’s answer. There was a long silence that was only broken by the waiter bringing them drinks again.

  “Of course,” Marc finally said with a look of disdain, “if you’re scared …”

  Alexandre had been told far too many times that he was a coward. He could no longer stand being considered a loser.

  “I know where we can find exactly what we need,” he said, slowly.

  As soon as he’d uttered that sentence, he felt as though he’d jumped off a cliff. Trying to work up the guts to do it, he thought of his wife and his sons, who Jules kept away from him, of Valérie Samson, to whom he’d given so much money for absolutely nothing. He recalled the night of the wedding he hadn’t been invited to, when Jules held his head under the cold water jet in the barn, and then that pretentious little employee who took him back to Mazion. Finally he thought of the castle where he had grown up and could no longer go to because of his father’s bastard.

  He got up and said, “Let’s go!”

  Jules hated social gatherings, but there was no way he could’ve avoided making an appearance at Maurice Caze’s party. He arrived at ten, set on not spending more than thirty minutes. Caze greeted him cheerfully, with great pats on the back. Jules knew almost all the guests but had to put up with a bunch of unnecessary introductions, as Caze was giddy at having the owner of Fonteyne under his roof.

  In small clusters, people chatted about the approaching harvest or the municipal elections that were going to take place soon. Maurice’s daughter, Camille, was still in awe of Jules. She’d attended his wedding, eyes filled with tears like many other young women, and she was delighted to see that he was already going out without his wife. She took him away from her father and led him to the buffet.