A Bordeaux Dynasty: A Novel (34 page)

“Very nice jewelry,” he said to Frédérique, almost in spite of himself. “Christmas present?”

She gave him an amused and direct look, ignoring the two guests sitting between them.

Jules leaned forward before adding, “Some sort of antique, isn’t it?”

“No doubt. …”

She was mocking him and he was exasperated.

“Aurélien always treated his lovers very well,” he said. “A very generous man, he is. I wonder where he found that wonderful necklace.”

Frédérique was no longer smiling.

“No idea,” she said. “I didn’t ask for the name of the jeweler or to see the bill.”

They glared at each other, but then Jules got ahold of himself.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It looks very nice on you.”

He marveled once more at her superb gray eyes and wondered what he would have done if he’d been meeting her for the first time this evening. But the woman sitting to his left was talking to him, and he had to turn to her.

“How does it make you feel knowing that you’ll soon be married, Jules? That’s all people talk about. You, the region’s idol, the number one catch, the region’s most independent bachelor …”

He mumbled some platitude, while vaguely smiling. He was suddenly very hot, and he leaned back in his chair.

“Are you okay?”

Robert looked his way and found that he was very pale.

“To your health,” Jules said, raising his glass in his brother’s direction.

But alcohol was doing him no good. He drank because he was thirsty and felt annoyed. He finally got to his feet, muttered an apology, and left the dining room. He made his way to the kitchen, where Fernande looked at him in amazement.

“Are you crazy? What are you doing here?”

“I came to ask you a question,” Jules said in a muffled voice. “Answer me frankly: Have you ever seen the necklace Frédérique is wearing tonight?”

Embarrassed, Fernande turned around.

“You left your guests to ask me that question?” she said.

He went over to her, took her by the arm.

“Fernande …”

She had never been able to resist him.

“Yes, maybe … I think I might have seen it, yes …”

“Where? Who was wearing it?”

“Don’t start anything on Christmas Eve, Jules. I don’t approve of your father’s behavior, but leave him alone. He’s watching you, you know. … You’re like cats and dogs.”

He was still holding the old woman’s arm, and he squeezed it.

“That necklace belonged to Lucie, right?”

“Yes. … It belonged to her when she was a girl. Nothing special. …”

Jules’s expression left no doubt that he was furious. It was now Fernande’s turn to clutch his arm.

“Go back to the table and don’t make a scene, I beg you! That’s all he’s hoping for. And don’t tell your brothers, Jules. …”

He gave her a gentle hug.

“Go back to the table,” she repeated in a soft voice.

Back in the dining room, he sat back down and looked at his father. Then he started to drink again, without eating. After the foie gras had come, the oysters arrived, and then the turkey with chestnut stuffing. Robert was eyeing Jules, a bit worried. He thought he looked grim, not well at all. And he noticed the glares that Jules kept shooting at Aurélien.

He looks like he hates him tonight,
he thought.
This doesn’t bode well. …

“You’re drinking too much,” Frédérique told Jules.

He burst out laughing, interrupting the conversations around him.

“Stepmom! You’re keeping an eye on me?”

At the other end of the table, Aurélien straightened in his chair. There was a moment of awkward silence, and then Louis-Marie began chatting with Robert as though nothing had happened. Fernande brought the yule log, which distracted everyone. Pauline was giving Jules amused looks, knowing that he really shouldn’t be provoking his father this way.

Aurélien rushed through dessert, and he and the guests headed for the main living room, where coffee was being served. At midnight, everyone kissed and wished each other a merry Christmas. Aurélien and Jules gave each other a cold embrace, purely formal. When he got to Frédérique, Jules gave her a light kiss on the right cheek, but then took her by the waist and kissed her on the mouth. He’d done it quickly, but not so quickly that Aurélien, who was standing next to them, didn’t notice. Taking advantage of the overall brouhaha, Aurélien pushed Jules to the entrance hall.

“Something wrong tonight, son?” he asked.

Face-to-face, both of them furious, they stood at equal height.

“You’re giving away the family jewels, Aurélien?” Jules asked. “Do my brothers know that this necklace belonged to their mother?”

“Their mother? You don’t consider her your mother as well?”

Aurélien’s surprise was sincere, but Jules responded harshly.

“You’ve never said anything to me about my real mother.”

Aurélien figured that Jules must’ve been drunk to bring up the topic. It was the first time in thirty years. He took two steps toward his son, menacingly enough to make him back up against the wall.

“How dare you use that tone with me, Jules?” he said.

Jules was staggering a little—fatigued, angry, feverish.

“You’ve had too much to drink? Well it’s no excuse.”

But Aurélien didn’t seem to notice that Jules was pale and sweating.

“You want war? Is that really what you want? I will not let you judge or question me. You hear me?”

“You must really be in love. …” Jules said softly to his father.

Aurélien couldn’t believe what Jules had just said. He raised his hand and slapped him violently. Jules hit the wall behind him. All the anger poured out of him, but he remained stunned, unable to make a move. Robert suddenly appeared behind them.

“Come on,” he said quietly to his father. “Leave him alone. …”

“I’m not scared of him,” Aurélien said, without looking at Robert. “Fifteen or thirty years old, he’s not going to be the king in my house. I’m not some old fool! I’m in charge around here!”

Robert forced his father to take a step backward. But Aurélien was still beside himself. Hitting Jules hadn’t made him feel better, on the contrary.

“Can’t you see he’s sick?” Robert pleaded.

“It’s a ruse,” Aurélien said. “He’s disrespecting me!”

“No. …” Jules muttered.

Robert stepped between the two of them.

“Leave him alone,” he told Aurélien again. “Go back to the living room. Our guests are waiting for you there.”

Aurélien made an effort to gather himself. He glared at Jules one last time, then decided to leave the entrance hall.

Robert took his brother by the wrist.

“You have a bad fever, you know. …”

They went up the stairs side by side.

“How can you stand that man?” Robert asked him.

The slap in the face that Jules had received reminded Robert of his childhood and adolescence.

“I pushed him to his limit,” Jules said, his voice weary.

“He behaves like a tyrant. He lives in another time, in another world. It’s like you guys are on a different planet here. …”

Jules shrugged, knowing he’d be wasting his time trying to explain things that Robert couldn’t understand. He sat on his bed and sighed. He was completely spent. He knew that Aurélien would have a hard time forgiving him for bringing up his origins, his birth. He’d broken their tacit pact of silence about that taboo subject.

Robert sat next to Jules and said, “It’s the same as before. You always find a way to make him go nuts. … Lie down, I’m going to take a look at you. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had bronchitis. … You’re so much alike, both of you! Why did he get so mad just now? Did it have to do with that girlfriend of his?”

Jules produced a bitter laugh.

“In a way. … The necklace he gave her used to belong to Mom. I think it’s unacceptable to see that pearl necklace on Frédérique.”

“You said that to him? Good for you! Either he wants to piss us off or, contrary to what he thinks, he really is getting senile. Okay, cough. …”

Jules produced something like a grunt, and right away it turned into a terrible coughing fit.

“Oh yeah,” Robert said. “A nice case of bronchitis. I’ll get some antibiotics for you tomorrow. In the meantime, take a couple of aspirins and try to sleep.”

Jules nodded and settled under the covers. Robert turned off the light and left the room. Jules lay there. He was cold and wasn’t thinking about anything, too tired to try to make sense of things.

When he woke up, his bedside lamp was on and Aurélien, sitting next to the bed, was watching him. Jules tried to sit up.

“Take it easy,” his father said. “Want me to call Auber over?”

Jules closed his eyes, feeling dizzy. “No,” he said. “Bob is fine.”

Aurélien nodded. “Okay,” he said. “As you wish.”

Jules dared to look at his father. He hesitated and said, “I’m sorry Aurélien. I really am.”

An awkward silence followed, and Jules had to continue, “I really don’t know what else to say—”

Aurélien interrupted him, but without hostility. “About Lucie’s necklace, let me explain.”

“You do what you want to do,” Jules said, hastily. “I was wrong. It’s no business of mine. I don’t know what possessed me.”

Aurélien shrugged. His son had such a pathetic look about him. “Listen, Jules. Until now, women haven’t really counted, right? Now that you have Laurène and I have …”

He didn’t end his sentence, and there was another moment of silence. After a while, he added, “They’re changing us, looks like. … I just hope they don’t put a wedge between us. …”

His eyes wandered around the room. He didn’t come in here very often.

“There was something else you wanted to know about, correct?”

Jules shuddered. He knew that Aurélien was referring to his birth.

“Please …” he said.

“There are things you want to learn?”

“No. Never. …”

Aurélien got to his feet with a grunt.

“Because of you,” he said, “I feel old tonight.”

Jules grabbed his sleeve, just like he had when he was a child.

“Thanks for coming up,” he said. “I don’t know how I would’ve been able to face you in the morning.”

“I came up to apologize for hitting you. And also to ask you a question.”

Jules let go of his father, instinctively sensing a trap.

“Why did you kiss Frédérique?”

Aurélien was already heading for the door, as though he didn’t care about the answer.

“Because she’s beautiful,” Jules said behind him.

Robert waited for the following day to talk to his brothers. He went over to the Little House with Louis-Marie. Alex was by himself in the house, as the kids were at Fonteyne with their mother, playing with the Christmas presents they’d found under the tree. Robert told them about the previous night’s altercation and Louis-Marie, usually so calm and collected, was first to react.

“Unbelievable!” he said. “He’s really losing it. He gave his girlfriend one of Mom’s necklaces and he slapped Jules! He must think he’s still young and we’re all kids again. How did Jules react?”

“As you would imagine—half rage, half submission. I’m never going to figure out his relationship with Dad.”

Alexandre made a gesture of exasperation that surprised both his brothers.

“Jules and his ‘I’m so grateful’ bit. He made his adoption into some sort of life-long debt. He’s going to feel like he owes Aurélien till the end of time, and he forces himself to be perfect. It’s so damn tiresome!”

Alex slammed the coffee pot down on the table. Robert and Louis-Marie glanced at each other.

“Once in a while he gets in his face, he taunts him a bit, but he’d never really go too far. …”

Alex interrupted himself, suddenly realizing that his brothers were gawking at him. He gave them an apologetic smile.

“Sorry,” he said. “But there are days when Jules wears me out even more than Dad. The necklace story is awful, I agree, and Aurélien could’ve given her anything else. But it doesn’t mean that he’s going to marry her or anything like that. …”

Robert got up and patted Alex’s shoulder in a friendly way.

“I’m sure you’re right,” he said. “I’m going to Bordeaux. See you guys in a bit.”

Louis-Marie followed him outside. They walked in silence to the garage, then Louis-Marie decided to go into town with his brother. They said nothing, but both were thinking more about Alex’s bitterness than their father’s lover.

Christmas Day was uneventful. Jules didn’t come down for breakfast, and Aurélien tried to lighten the atmosphere by playing with the children. He managed to put up with toys being scattered all over the place and the kids’ shouts of joy for a good part of the afternoon, and then he took refuge in the library. In order to avoid Frédérique’s presence, the brothers hung out in Jules’s room. Jules kept coughing under the covers, and Fernande was bringing him a hot drink every half-hour.

On the morning of December 26, it was even colder outside. Laurène was first to wake up and, leaning on her elbow, she watched Jules sleep. She grazed his cheek and his hand, happy to see that his fever was gone. He’d tossed and turned a lot during the night. He was thirsty, and then he said he wanted to make love to her, then he coughed for a long time, then he asked for water again. They ended up turning off the lights, and after that, he fell into a deep and calm slumber.

Laurène looked at Jules’s shoulders, his curly brown hair, a bit too long, his olive skin. She wondered, for the thousandth time since first knowing him, who he was and where he came from, without asking, as she was well aware of Fonteyne’s rules.

She turned to the side and took in her surroundings. This room was much too big for a bedroom. Many times Fernande had told her that when Jules was little, he was afraid to sleep in this room and often ended up in one of his brother’s rooms. Laurène tried to picture Jules when he was a child. She could still see him, following Aurélien around like a pup, silent and serious. She remembered that, as a kid, she’d lost sight of him for a few years when he was in boarding school in Bordeaux. But in Laurène’s world, there had always been, in the background, the Laverzac family. They existed in the envy and admiration with which Antoine talked about Aurélien and his vineyards, about Fonteyne, about his four sons. When she was hired by Aurélien, it was a dream come true for Laurène.