A Bordeaux Dynasty: A Novel

by Françoise Bourdin

  Jules listened to Laurène’s regular breathing. She’d fallen asleep like a rock, in a ball as usual. Delicately, he pulled the blankets over her before slipping out of bed, quickly putting on his sweater and jeans, and tiptoeing his way out of the bedroom. He crossed the hallway and went down the steps without turning on the lights. Every inch of Fonteyne was familiar to him. Once in his office, he lit a fire. He wasn’t sleepy at all, so he set two large logs in the fireplace, knowing he’d have time to see them burn down.

  For a very long time, he remained on his feet, watching the flames. He’d received the news enthusiastically, without asking unpleasant questions, like why Laurène had stopped taking the pill without telling him. In fact, she’d told him about her pregnancy with such a combination of pride and fear that he’d understood before she even finished the sentence.

  And so he was going to be a father. The very idea seemed strange to him right now. But he was an uncle to Alex’s twin boys and little Esther. He loved children and they adored him. So there was nothing to be worried about. And yet he sighed, vaguely upset by something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

  Even if Laurène is still a bit of a kid herself, he thought, she could still be a great mother. … And there’s always going to be Fernande to look after things. …

  He sat in the large leather armchair. He’d thrilled Laurène by saying yes to everything. The date she wanted for the wedding, whatever name she chose for the baby. Then he’d made tender love to her, taking her to the brink of climax, and then making her wait, listening to her moan against his shoulder. He was everything to her and he knew it, accepting the responsibility that came with it. And yet something wasn’t right.

  He shut his eyes for a moment, stricken by one thought: Laurène would never make him completely happy.

  “Is it Alex who’s keeping you up?” Robert asked, cheerfully.

  Jules turned around and gave his brother a large smile.

  “And you?”

  Robert walked over to the fireplace.

  “This house is so freaking drafty. But you start fires all the time, even right in the middle of summer. … In Paris, when I think about you, I picture you in front of a fireplace.”

  He sat on the floor, his back to the heat of the flames, and he had to raise his head to look at Jules.

  “I’m surprised you’re up,” he said. “You’re such an early riser. Me, I rarely fall asleep before two or three a.m.”

  “And your surgeries the following morning?”

  “I’m in the OR at ten in the morning, no matter what.”

  He had a bitter expression that worried Jules.

  “Bob … is something wrong?”

  “No. Professionally, there’s nothing for me to complain about. I have more work than I can handle and … I like to think I’m a damn good surgeon. That makes me feel good. …”

  Jules examined his brother’s tired face. Robert was thirty-seven, the prime of his life, and every day he excelled in his hospital’s OR.

  “Pauline?” Jules asked simply.

  Robert nodded slowly.

  “It’s probably unimaginable for you, but I still love her. Just like two, even five years ago! The passage of time has no bearing on this obsession. There’s nothing I can do about it. …”

  “Unimaginable for me?” Jules said. “Why do you say that?”

  Robert gave him a smile.

  “Because women don’t affect you that way,” he said.

  “But … How can you think that?”

  “I know that the real love, the only passion you can muster is for Fonteyne, right? You don’t complicate things for yourself. I can’t imagine a woman ruining your life.”

  “That’s good to know,” Jules said, dryly.

  A bit surprised, Robert stared at his brother.

  “Don’t be mad. … I didn’t say anything mean. … You’re good at protecting yourself, that’s all I’m saying. You should ask yourself, one of these days, why all your girlfriends, all your lovers were always the same type of woman. …”

  Sincerely taken aback, Jules gave Robert a questioning look.

  “The quiet, submissive type. … You’re like Dad, you like women as long as they cower to you. …”

  Leaving his armchair, Jules crossed the office. He opened the heavy drapes, but it was still nighttime.

  “Laurène is pregnant,” he suddenly said. “We’re going to get married soon. I’d like you to be my best man.”

  Robert remained silent for a moment. Jules had his back to him, so he couldn’t see his expression, but something in his voice had sounded odd.

  “You’re happy about all this?” he finally asked.

  “Happy to have a child? Yes. … As for the rest, I’m not sure. I don’t really want to think about it. I’ve loved Laurène for a very long time. I wanted her. Aurélien was in favor of the wedding. … Everything is in order.”

  Robert went over to his brother. He put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure I can do anything else, now. There’s no backing down. I would have preferred to settle the situation with Alex first … but I probably would’ve found other reasons after that not to get married. So Laurène decided to force my hand, it’s her right. In any case, I’m thirty. It’s time. …”

  Robert squeezed Jules’s shoulder and let it go. The two brothers had always been close, in spite of their age difference and the fact that they lived far away from each ohter. Jules disapproved of Robert’s passion for Pauline, but he’d saved him from getting into trouble many times. Robert didn’t fully understand Jules’s visceral attachment to Fonteyne, but he bowed to his young brother’s savoir-faire and authority. Though they shared virtually nothing, there was genuine affection between them. Moreover, Robert was the only one who realized that their father’s death had wounded Jules in an irreversible way.

  “I just hope you don’t change,” Robert said.

  “I won’t,” Jules replied. “Why do you keep saying that?”

  Robert shivered and walked back to the fireplace. He poked at the logs for a second, sat in front of the fire, and looked all around the room.

  “Because you’re all that’s left,” he said. “Here, among the furniture, the woodwork, in this huge, freezing castle, you’re all that’s left of ten generations of tradition. You’re the entire family!”

  Both brothers burst out laughing.

  “Should we go up to bed or have something to drink?” Robert asked.

  “A drink. … Let me get a nice bottle. …”

  Robert heard Jules walking away from the office. Pauline was upstairs, sleeping in her husband’s arms. And Robert was going to be the only bachelor left. With the despairing certainty that he’d ruined his life. Without Pauline, no professional success was rewarding, no car had any charm, no academic honor was satisfying. Only at Fonteyne could he find some peace of mind, though it was only at Fonteyne that, ironically, he saw Pauline. In Paris, he could avoid her. Not here.

  Hopefully we can deal with this Alex situation quickly so I can get out of here, he thought.

  Okay, so it’s hell to know that she’s so close to me right now, and there’s nothing I can do, but tomorrow morning she’s going to have coffee with me. … Half asleep, her beautiful face …

  Whispers made him raise his head. Jules was back with Louis-Marie.

  “His ears prick right up at the sound of a bottle opener!” Jules said with a chuckle.

  He was holding a bottle of Bel Air-Marquis d’Aligre.

  In a moment of silence, they tasted the wine.

  “Always that hint of licorice,” Louis-Marie said. “This is absolutely stunning. And you bastards wanted to drink it all by yourselves. … So what were you talking about like this, in the middle of the night? Poor Alex? Frédérique?”

  Robert produced a smile. “Nope,” he said. “We were talking about ourselves. The fact that I’m an insomnia
c and that Jules is going to be a dad. …”

  Louis-Marie remained slack-jawed for a second, then he threw himself at Jules and shook him.

  “It’s true? You’re going to be a father? Wow, of course we have to drink to that!”

  He was so obviously thrilled at the news that Jules felt touched. Perhaps he’d neglected his relationship with his brothers all these years, absorbed as he was by his exceptional relationship with Aurélien. Maybe he was less alone than he thought. Louis-Marie and Robert had come over without hesitation, and both had taken his side before even hearing Varin’s explanations. And they’d been respectful enough not to ask him anything about his origins, about what he’d learned a few months ago.

  “As far as brothers go,” he said, “you guys aren’t too bad.”

  “You’d realize that more often if you came off you’re pedestal once in a blue moon,” Robert said. “Everyone knows your worth, you don’t have to prove yourself from morning to night.”

  “But …”

  “Bob is right,” Louis-Marie said.

  Jules looked at them both.

  “It’s not that I’m trying to prove anything,” he said. “I have this estate to run, and that means I can’t be slacking off. As for the rest, I have just as many flaws as you guys, which is saying a lot!”

  There was a moment of silence, and then Louis-Marie muttered, “Plus one: touchiness.”

  Jules left his armchair and stretched. He was tall, slim, extraordinarily handsome.

  “Are we going to bed or do we keep drinking?” he asked, pointing at the empty glasses.

  The other two just looked at him with the same smile on their faces.

  “Okay,” Jules said. “I’ll get another bottle.”

  Pauline took charge. She picked a wedding date and took Laurène to the Margaux city hall to fill out the paperwork. Then she drove the young woman to Bordeaux to buy a dress. She even took her to a gynecologist. At the end of the day, she went looking for Jules and found him in the cellar, on the second level. He was inspecting the two-year-old wine barrels, with Lucas on his heels. The unexpected arrival of the young woman, dressed in a pleated short skirt and a pink T-shirt, brought a smile to the two men’s faces. Jules took his sister-in-law by the arm, told her she was going to freeze in there, and guided her back to the spiral staircase. Once out of the cellar, they were blinded by the sun. It was a spectacular May afternoon. Pauline sat on a stone bench, set on tackling all the issues relating to the ceremony, including the most important problem: Alex.

  “You understand,” she told Jules, “that it’s unthinkable not to invite Dominique, right? On the other hand, you probably don’t want to hear about Alex these days. …”

  She gave him that charming look of hers. Jules sighed.

  “Antoine and Marie,” he admitted. “And Dominique. … We have to invite them, you’re right.”

  “But what about Alex?”

  “How do you want me to invite Alex to my wedding when he’s dragging me to court?”

  “I know! That’s why I thought … Don’t take what I’m going to say badly, okay?”

  Jules nodded.

  “Why don’t you go over to talk to Alex, Jules?”

  He stared at her, genuinely bewildered.

  “Why? You know, if he were right here in front of me, I’d punch him in the face. Do you realize that?”

  Jules’s dark look and metallic voice were eloquent, but Pauline kept at it.

  “How are you going to explain Alex’s absence to your guests?”

  “But, Pauline, everybody already knows what’s going on! You think that we could keep something that huge a secret? Alex’s legal proceedings against Aurélien’s will, me, and Fonteyne is something everyone in the entire Médoc region knows about. Don’t be so naïve. And as the trial goes on, people are going to have a fun time trying to figure who’s going to win and who’s going to lose, who’s going to get what … And so there are only two solutions, my dear sister-in-law: either a very intimate wedding or an all-out affair that’s going to publicly display our family’s conflict.”

  Pauline’s eyes remained planted on Jules’s.

  “Which one do you want?” she asked.

  He gave Pauline an enigmatic smile and sat beside her.

  “We’re going to need you, Pauline. Laurène won’t be able to handle all this by herself. I’m going to write up a guest list and you take care of the rest, okay?”

  She immediately looked delighted. She knew that Jules would go for provocation.

  “Something really grandiose, then?” she said.

  “You have carte blanche.”

  He seemed very resolute but not cheerful at all.

  “What’s up, Jules?” she asked.

  He vaguely gestured at the castle.

  “Well, I have a bit of a cash flow problem these days. But I don’t want anyone to see that. And, you know, Laurène … She wouldn’t be happy with some quickie wedding. For people around here, pomp and circumstance is still so important. … You have to do what you have to do sometimes, even if it means showing off. … Aurélien isn’t there anymore to maintain his rank, but we can take care of that, can’t we?”

  In a spontaneous gesture, Pauline put her hand on Jules’s.

  “You can count on me,” she said.

  “Oh, I know! If anyone loves society life, it’s you!”

  Alexandre had fled into the vineyards and was sitting in the sun. Dominique’s speech had made him think, but it hadn’t convinced him. He was set on going all out. Even if he wasn’t able to answer his wife when she asked him what his ultimate goal was. Recovering Fonteyne to then kick out Jules was pure fantasy, he realized that much. Alex knew that his brother would never let go of Fonteyne. And he couldn’t imagine himself at the head of the estate anyway. What he wished for, deep down, was much simpler: He wanted Jules to bow to him and recognize that he truly had a place at Fonteyne.

  That bastard is going to have to pull the door wide open for me and apologize to boot!

  Still, he felt anxious. Jules, apologize? That was hard to imagine. Alexandre let go of a heavy sigh. He caught sight of a black sports car driving down the road, heading for Antoine Billot’s house. He was suddenly worried. The only person he knew that would drive such an expensive automobile was his brother. He jumped to his feet and shaded his eyes with his hand. Yes, it was Robert and Louis-Marie who were stepping out of the car in front of the porch. Alexandre wished he could take cover, but he could be seen clearly above the stalks. Robert waved at him.

  Alarmed, he saw his brothers coming his way. Louis-Marie, as the oldest, had always impressed Alexandre. He forced a smile and put out his hand.

  “Hey, the Parisians are here!” he said, with fake enthusiasm.

  Robert shook his hand, but Louis-Marie hugged him.

  “Let’s go inside and have some wine,” Alexandre said, as he desperately needed a drink.

  “No,” Robert said, calmly. “Let’s stay out here to talk. This is between you and us, and Antoine doesn’t need to hear any of it.”

  “He’s part of the family,” Alexandre said, meekly.

  “Yes, but this is very personal.”

  They went over to sit on the half wall that lined the field.

  Nervous, Alexandre decided to speak first.

  “Jules is sending you guys, right? What does he want? What did he tell you about me, exactly? Because when it comes to telling his own side of the story, he does a pretty good job …”

  The other two traded glances, something Alexandre noticed.

  “You’re challenging Dad’s will or did Jules invent that?” Louis-Marie asked, his voice deep.

  “I am. But give me time to explain why, okay?”

  “We have all the time in the world,” Robert said. “That’s why we came to see you. So you can explain to us where you’re coming from.”

  Unable to stay put, Alexandre began to pace.

  His brothers watched him patiently.
/>
  “What do you think I’m doing here, in my father-in-law’s house?” Alex asked.

  “If I remember correctly,” Louis-Marie said, “you’ve wanted to be here for a long time.”

  “Yes,” Alexandre admitted, “but that was before Dad died! It was his tyranny I wanted to get away from, not Fonteyne!”

  Louis-Marie smiled and Alexandre hurried to add, “After Dad’s death, if Jules had asked me to stay, I would’ve.”

  “That’s not true,” Robert said in a low voice.

  “What do you mean? We could’ve run the estate together. Only, you know Jules … He can’t stand anyone contradicting him, he’s always so freaking high and mighty …”

  “We didn’t come here to talk about Jules’s personality,” Louis-Marie said, “but the reasons that made you challenge the will.”

  “Dad favored him so much it’s obscene!”

  “Seems to me,” Robert said, “that the shares were actually divvied up equally.”

  “The company’s shares? Maybe. But we’re never going to get a cent from it. Jules keeps investing the profits, wheeling and dealing however he wants to. He’s manager for life and does what he feels like with no opposition whatsoever.”

  Alexandre was getting worked up, and Louis-Marie raised a hand.

  “I don’t think that Jules is ‘wheeling and dealing,’ and his reports are very clear. He was administering the estate even before Dad died, and you won’t convince anyone that he’s not a good manager.”

  “That’s it! So according to you guys, he’s perfect? Aren’t you sick of him? For years and years it’s been the same tune: Jules is the best. What about us three? What are we, chumps? You can put up with that crap if you want, but I’m not taking it anymore!”

  “Calm down,” Louis-Marie said.

  A strained silence followed. Louis-Marie still had some authority over Alexandre as the oldest brother, but not enough to make him change his mind, he knew that.

  “I don’t understand what you’re trying to gain by taking this to court,” he said, slowly. “It’s going to cost you a lot of money. Same for Jules and us! And all for what, exactly?”