by Loretta Hill
He knew, after the accident, that Bronwyn had wanted to help him. The irony of it all. She hadn’t even realised she was the reason Chris hated him so much. That’s how innocent she was. When she’d left to go back to Perth to quit law, he’d tried to get into the hospital again to see Chris. This time, he had been successful by circumventing reception and stealthily peeking into every room in the hospital until he’d located the right one.
When he walked in, Chris was lying in a bed that was adjusted upright so that he could look out the window. His skin was an awful, pasty white. Jack would never forget that. There were scratches on his face and a deep cut on his arm, where Jack could make out the neat black stitches. Chris looked worse than terrible, he looked almost like a vampire who hadn’t found prey in several days.
Chris had turned his head, sensing the extra presence in the room, and his expression had darkened.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Chris, I had to see you.’
‘Now you have, so leave.’
‘Why are you doing this? Why are you blaming me? How can you honestly believe that this is what I wanted for you?’
‘You weren’t thinking about me,’ Chris snarled. ‘You were thinking about Bronwyn and how I was finally going to make headway with her and you couldn’t stand it. So when you heard me call out to her …’
Jack’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. ‘Chris, I saw a kangaroo. I was dumb. I swerved. It wasn’t about showing you up, it was –’
‘Don’t lie to me. You forget how well I know you, Jack. How far I’ve seen you go. You’ve never had any respect for anyone else. All’s fair in love and war, right?’
Jack had felt the blood drain from his face.
Chris’s observation of his character at the time was true enough. He’d never been very discriminate in his dealings with women. He figured they knew what they were getting themselves into. If they got hurt, it was their fault, not his. Don’t buy what you don’t need, in his book.
‘But you’re my brother –’ he began.
‘That’s what makes this even worse,’ Chris threw at him. ‘Maybe you didn’t mean for me to get this hurt. Perhaps it was a miscalculation on your part. It doesn’t matter. The intention was still there. Dad is always going on about how reckless you are and he’s right.’
‘Chris, I promise you –’
‘There is no promise that you can make that will give me my legs back.’ Chris gasped. ‘I’ll never walk again, thanks to your ego.’
‘Chris –’
‘I’ll never walk again!’ Chris repeated and his eyes had begun to glisten as the gravity of what he was saying dawned on him again, like a recurring nightmare. Jack had felt himself reacting in the same way. He’d immediately stepped forward, wanting to take his brother’s hand.
‘Mate –’
He’d been so overwhelmed he hadn’t realised that sometime during their conversation, Chris had pushed the red button on the side of his bed. A nurse popped into the room just before he reached Chris’s side.
‘Is everything all right?’
‘I asked for this man not to be admitted,’ Chris said to her. ‘Will you please show him out?’
‘Of course,’ she agreed.
‘Chris,’ Jack had begged, ‘don’t do this. Let me help you.’
‘How can you? When I don’t ever want to see you again. Right now it would be better for me if you just dropped off the face of the earth.’ His brother had turned his head away and the nurse had gently pulled Jack from the room.
That was their last conversation before he’d seen him again yesterday, five years later, in the winery.
He should have fought longer and harder for Chris’s forgiveness. Or tried to explain to him again what had happened that night. He probably would have if that letter hadn’t arrived from his dad the next day.
It had been in a non-descript white business envelope without a stamp. Someone had clearly dropped it off personally. The staff from the motel had left it on his bed after they’d cleaned the room while he was out. This was no mean feat given the mess he’d left it in. If he hadn’t been a local boy, no doubt the owners, Mike and Louise, probably would have kicked him out sooner. Depression did not make him a very good tenant. Depression didn’t make him a very good anything.
The note from his father was unsigned, short and to the point.
After all you’ve done, don’t you think it would be better for everyone if you just left? Please take advantage of this opportunity and the ticket I have bought for you and allow your family time to heal. Especially Chris.
Attached to this note was a plane ticket booking and an offer of work from an extremely reputable winery in Bordeaux. It was an area that his father had worked in when he was in his early twenties, still sowing his wild oats. He must have obtained the job through his various connections there. It was a startling opportunity. The kind that people waited years for and that rarely came their way. Yet Jack felt none of the excitement he should have as he’d held the letter in his hand. The plane ticket alone said it all. He glanced at the date, a week from today. It was one-way only. His father wanted him gone that badly and didn’t care when he came back.
If at all.
It was like a knife slash across the chest.
Kicking him off the property hadn’t been enough – his father had to kick him out of the country as well. He must have gone to the hospital and spoken to Chris. His brother’s words rang in his ears.
At this point, it would be better for me if you just dropped off the face of the earth.
Perhaps they’d even hatched this plan together.
He sat on the note for a couple of days, waiting for someone to call him – either to take it back or tell him it was untrue. Perhaps his mother, asking him to ignore his father’s order. Or his sister, wanting him to stay and work things out. Finally, he’d bitten the bullet and gone to see his dad at Oak Hills in a one last-ditch effort to make amends.
He’d found his father in the tearoom next to the lab. He was staring at the blackboard nailed to the far wall, hands clasped behind his back, rocking on his heels. The board was old and really should have been replaced years ago, perhaps with one of those electronic white ones that could do display dumps on a mini printer attached to its base.
Nobody, it seemed, had wanted the upgrade. The board was a piece of Franklin history, prized almost as much as a good vintage. The wooden framing was scratched and discoloured and the duster looked like it would put more chalk on the board than take off.
To an outsider the blackboard seemed to display a table of unrelated numbers, acronyms and dates. But Jack knew that it was the pulse of the winery. It told the winemaker where his grapes were, what they were mixed with, which fermentation tank had them and how long they had been there. It was both recipe and schedule, status and timeline. It was Horace’s lifeblood and until a week ago it had been Jack’s as well.
Horace did not turn when Jack entered the room. His eyes remained fixed upon the board, but he did speak.
‘If you’re here to demand your job back, think again. I have made up my mind. I don’t want you here.’
Jack gritted his teeth. ‘I’m sorry for what I did.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’
‘I shouldn’t have taken the ute. I shouldn’t have been doing donuts with it and I shouldn’t have allowed my brother to get on the back when I did so.’
‘No, you shouldn’t have.’
‘I don’t understand. How many more times do I have to say it before you believe me?’
At last Horace had turned around. ‘I believe you, Jack. But this time, I need more than just words from you.’ He stabbed his finger at him. ‘You’ve gone too far this time. I’m too angry, too deeply disappointed. You have irrevocably changed Chris’s life and now I want to irrevocably change yours!’
‘I realise …’ Jack licked his lips.
Horace waved aside what he was about to say. ‘I know yo
u will say whatever necessary to placate me, but the truth is, you need space from this place. I am not giving you your job back. Not yet.’
‘Dad –’
Horace Franklin’s face was set. ‘I want you to learn from this, Jack, and this is the only way I can see you doing that.’
Jack stared at him in shock. Did he really think that he was that far gone that he hadn’t already learned his lesson the second his brother had hit the ground?
‘So this is where we’re at?’ he said tightly.
‘This is where we’re at. This family needs time to heal.’
He flinched. ‘So you’re all in agreement about this?’
‘Your mother is too upset.’ Horace had shrugged. ‘And I don’t want to bring her down further by hashing this out, but I have spoken to Chris. We had both hoped you would have got the message by now.’
‘Oh, I got your message,’ Jack returned bitterly. ‘And if that’s what you really want, then fine.’ He backed away. ‘Tell the others I said goodbye.’ He spun on his heel and left.
A few days later he’d flown out to France. No one had turned up at the airport to send him off. No one had rung him to say goodbye. Perhaps his father was waiting until the date and time of the flight had passed to tell the rest of the family about his plan. If they could all disown him so completely, he wasn’t going to ring up and thank them for it.
As for Chris, he prayed he didn’t mess up his chances with Bronwyn over this. The girl was going to quit law, move to Oak Hills and make everything perfect again. Fingers crossed Chris let her. From this perspective, it was better that he was out of the picture. He didn’t know that he could honestly watch their happily ever after. The least he could do after taking away Chris’s ability to walk was let him be with the woman they both loved.
And so he’d gone.
France had taken a long time to get used to. It was colder there and there was the language barrier as well, but he’d made it work. Hell, he’d more than made it work. If he was completely honest, there had been a point when he’d started to get caught up in the atmosphere of the place. Bordeaux was the wine capital of the world, steeped in history and tradition. They’d been making wine there since the eighth century, and Jack couldn’t help being overrun by a desire to inhale everything around him … if he couldn’t actually taste-test it, that is.
He managed to make friends with a few locals, which had certainly made life a lot easier.
Antoine, in particular, would never let him feel sorry for himself. The Frenchman was as outrageous as he was ambitious and he’d pulled Jack right out of his apathy and into ambition. The job his father had found for him was with Antoine’s family – Beauchene Wines. Over a barrel of Bordeaux Sauternes, he and Antoine had bonded. Both were winemakers, both searching for something more. It seemed fitting to discuss their dissatisfaction with the world over the infamous sweet wine that was made with partially rotted grapes.
Nonetheless, at the end of the day, Jack hated living someone else’s life in France. Oak Hills was his home, his birthright. It was where all the people he loved were. Even if they didn’t love him back.
Antoine had wanted a break from tradition. He’d also wanted Australian women, sun, surf and chardonnay to die for. Unlike Jack’s family, Antoine could trace his back generations, twelve to be precise. Family feuds and rivalries were a way of life for him and he was unimpressed with Jack’s stories from home. He regaled him with more outrageous tales of his own ancestors, who, as far as Jack could see, loved as much as they betrayed, in true French style.
‘Zis gripe you have with your father, to me, it is so insignificant, I do not know why you are here, unless to assault my ears further with your dull complaints.’ Antoine’s long fingers had flicked at him in dismissal. ‘Go back to Australia, teach him a lesson. Reconcile with your brother and kiss ze woman you love adieu. There are more fish in ze sea, let me assure you.’
For Jack, this was not the insult it was meant to be but the kick up the bum he desperately needed. He had stopped and taken real stock of his life. Did he really want to be the irresponsible disappointment who spent a life of exile working on someone else’s winery just because his father said so?
No.
He wanted what he’d always wanted.
Oak Hills.
France was no more than a detour on his life journey. He had to go back.
So for the next five years, Jack had worked like a slave. He’d started in Bordeaux, exploring the region completely, getting to know the French obsession with terroir – the set of environmental factors that affected a grape variety’s epigenetic qualities, and the basis for wine regulation in France. He studied everything from the simple but delicious everyday table-wine to some of the most expensive and prestigious drops in the world.
When he was done with this, he’d worked his way through Burgundy as well, in the valleys and slopes to the west of the Saône River, where all the best vineyards were. Gaining experience here with exotic grape varieties he’d never worked with before, such as gamay and aligoté, just to round off his skills.
Antoine had come with him ‘just for laughs’ and had fallen in love with the red varieties made from pinot noir, and a variety of women as well.
He deplored Jack’s lack of interest in the scene after dark. ‘Why do you not come with me zis time?’ he asked. ‘There are plenty to go round.’
‘Because you always take the good ones,’ Jack had lied jovially. He was more interested in reading as many French wine journals as he could lay his hands on. His womanising ways were over and Ant had coined him the ‘Monk of Aquitaine’.
Ha! If only Bronwyn had seen him there.
He had dated a few women but his heart hadn’t been in it. It was still sitting somewhere on the south-west coast of Australia.
Sometimes he and Antoine worked together, sometimes they worked in neighbouring vineyards. Whatever the case, they were a force to be reckoned with. When they returned to Bordeaux they gave a talk together at Vinexpo, regaling other experts with their experiences – comparing and contrasting methods used by the different wineries they had passed through.
At that point Jack had known he was ready to return. His bank account told him the same story. Given his frugal lifestyle, limited social life and his tendency to split accommodation costs with Antoine, he’d amounted quite a sum for himself as well as a good reputation.
The old Jack might have bought himself a flash car, gone on a holiday to Hawaii and worked his way through the female beach population. This Jack, however, got financial planners involved, invested in the stock market, and doubled his earnings. He was ready not only to return to Oak Hills but to take it by force if necessary, and Antoine was his willing partner in crime.
When he’d first arrived in Bordeaux, Jack had sent his family a few impersonal postcards, saying he was doing okay in his new job, hoping to break the silence at least. They had never responded. When he moved on to Burgundy, however, he had given them a call. Luckily, his mother had picked up the phone.
‘Oh, Jack, thank God. Where are you?’
‘I’m in Burgundy now, Mum, on the Côte d’Or. It’s amazing.’
‘Well, you must send me your address this time, otherwise I have no means to contact you.’
He gave her his email instead as he was always on the move. All the same, he couldn’t help but be further incensed by his father’s continued churlish behaviour. He may have still been refusing to speak to him, but that he hadn’t bothered to pass on Jack’s whereabouts to his mother was just cruel. No wonder he’d heard nothing from them when he was in Bordeaux.
He and his mum had spoken for a long time that first phone call. She had apologised for her behaviour after Chris’s accident, wishing that she’d taken more of a stand in what was going on between him and his father than focusing all her thoughts on Chris.
‘You needed me too and I didn’t realise it.’
After that, he’d maintained a fairly regul
ar email relationship with her. Claudia sometimes sent him a picture or two as well, but nothing came in from Chris or his father. He heard about their news indirectly though the female members of his family. He’d seen photos of the property and a lovely Christmas picture of them sitting round the table out on the patio, tucking into his mother’s famous coleslaw, fresh garden salad and the garlic prawns his father always cooked on the barbecue. This was served, of course, with Horace’s semillon sauvignon blanc – a lively, zesty blend that just cried out for the foods of summer. Seeing their glasses raised in toast over the spread made him long desperately for home. Family. Australia.
Several times his mother had tried to entice him back and more often than not he’d been tempted. Yet the last thing he wanted to do was return as a second-class citizen, only to be shunned again.
When his father had retired and the problems at Oak Hills had followed, he knew that his time was approaching. All he had to do was wait a little longer, and they wouldn’t be able to refuse his help.
Antoine not only thought ‘zis plan is genius’, he’d wanted to be a part of it. So with his mother’s help he had sent the Frenchman off to Oak Hills as a spy. When the time came, they would buy Oak Hills together. He didn’t want to wait for an inheritance, not that he counted on still being in the will.
His father was no longer in any position to refuse to sell. And the truth was, deep down, Horace Franklin didn’t really trust anyone else with his estate except for the man he had personally trained. If Jack had to humiliate him to get his way, he’d do so. Especially after everything Horace had put him through the last five years.
Of course, whenever he’d imagined his homecoming, Bronwyn Eddings had never featured.
When Claudia had first written to him, she’d told him that Bronwyn was living it up in the city, working as a lawyer for a prestigious firm and becoming horrendously successful. He could see the thread of envy in her note and knew that his sister wasn’t too pleased about carrying the majority of the family responsibility.
She was angry at him for having left. She could only see his motives as selfish. To escape the drama, to further his own career and to not have to deal with the permanent damage he’d done to his own brother. If only it were that simple.