A Good Year

I looked at the colour, sniffed the aroma and sipped a small amount. He was right, it was still too young and under-developed, but it showed excellent potential for a wine that should improve with cellar age for at least fifteen years, it had staying power. "You are right, it will be a very good wine. I wouldn't release it until it's at least five years old and I'd also make sure that most of it is retained and released in small quantities each year. The true wine connoisseurs will appreciate its development as it ages."

"Why do you suggest this?" M'sieur Rombault asked.

"It's a marketing strategy. The first release will tempt the palate, the second will wet the appetite even more, and each time it is released it will be anticipated. What has to happen is, as each new wine is released, it must build on the reputation of the previous vintage, this way the demand for the new product is already there, even before it is released."

"Is this what you have done with your wine?"

"Yes, but unfortunately my first vintage was only a small volume, and we are fast running out. The fortunate part is that the second vintage was even better than the first, and there is more of it. At this time we do not anticipate increasing our production, preferring instead to have demand exceed supply, not by much mind you, we don't want the consumers to walk away from it. If they know that, by shopping around they may be able to find supplies as further wine is released, they will wait for the new release rather than trying someone else's wines."

One of my early morning flashes of inspiration kcked in. This story was drifting, there was no drama, no pizzazz, I needed a conflict and couldn't even remember if the original storyline had one, but if it did, it wasn't this one. I needed something that would create a conflict, and I needed a twist to explain why Jenny behaved so irrationally.

I worked in the cellars and, when we were not overly busy, I helped Pierre's mother in the kitchen, learning about the regional cuisine that they took for granted. In the evenings Pierre and I went to bed early and made love for some time before going to sleep. It was fast approaching time for me to leave and I wasn't looking forward to it one bit.

Two days before I was to leave my life was dealt a sickening blow. I had come from the house to the cellars to find Pierre deep in conversation with a girl. Neither of them noticed me as I slipped between rows of barrels, but I sure as hell noticed them and what they were doing. She was very beautiful, but that wasn't what concerned me most, she was also very obviously pregnant. They chatted for some time, and it looked as if they were the best of friends, he even placed his hands on her belly, not something that a boy normally does to someone he doesn't know well. When the conversation finished she threw her arms around his neck and they kissed, not the kiss of a couple who were merely friends, but the kiss of very good friends, lovers even. My heart dropped and I ran back to the house, dashing through the kitchen to my room, our room, and began throwing my stuff into my case. I was not going to stay here one moment longer than I had to.

I heard Pierre come into the kitchen. "What is the matter with Jenny? She came rushing through here and down to your room." His mother asked.

"I don't know, I haven't seen her for at least an hour."

"Well something is wrong, you had better go and speak with her."

I heard the door open and he came into the room. "Don't touch me, leave me alone!" I screamed at him.

"Cherie, what has happened?"

"Don't you Cherie me you pig, now leave me alone while I pack the rest of my things, and then I'm leaving never to return."

"I do not understand, what has happened?"

"You made a promise that you would not have sex with any girl but me. . . . ."

"But Cherie, I have kept my promise."

"Listen Frogshit, I know that you have not kept your promise. Here I was, prepared to spend the rest of my life with you, marry you and have your kids, not necessarilly in that order, and you go and do this to me. Now get out and leave me alone!"

"This is not true, I have kept my promise."

"Not another word! Get out!" I pushed him out the door and slammed it shut.

As soon as I had finished packing I dragged my case out the door and began to walk up the drive to the road. A car stopped beside me, I expected it to be Pierre, but it was his mother. "Jenny, what is happening, why are you angry and why are you leaving?" She asked through the wound down window.

"You had better ask your son that. He promised me that he would not make love to any girl but me, and now I find that he has not kept his promise."

"Where are you going?"

"I am walking into town to catch a bus to Paris, and then I'm going home."

"Don't you think that you should come back and talk this over with us, not just Pierre, his father and I love you as a daughter, and we do not want you to leave like this."

"If you want to help you can drive me into town and drop me at the bus station."

"Very well, but you are making a big mistake, if Pierre told you that he has kept his promise then I believe him, not just because he is my son, but I know him not to lie." She pushed the door open and I climbed in. We drove in silence to the bus station. She carried my bag for me and kissed me a sad good-bye. I was sad to be leaving her, it wasn't her fault that her son couldn't keep it in his pants, but I was not going to hang around and allow him the opportunity to try and talk me around.

When I got to Paris I found that the first available flight out to Australia was not until the next morning, and I wasn't about to hang around Paris and give Pierre the opportunity to be waiting at the airport to accost me as I was leaving, so I caught a train to London. I went to the airline and spun them a story about being in London and getting a call from my mother telling me that my father had been injured in an accident and I was looking for the first flight home. They got me a seat (cattle class, but beggars can't be choosers) leaving in the morning. The connection at Kuala Lumpar was overnight so it would be almost two days before I arrived back in Adelaide.

The flight was long, somehow in first class it doesn't seem so long, boring, not overly comfortable, the fat dude in the next seat kept slumping over on to me and snoring, so I spent much of my time walking around in the confines of the Jumbo.

We arrived early in the morning and I rang home. "Hi, it's me, I'm at the airport, can someone come and pick me up?"

"How come you're home early, has something happened?"

"Not now, later I'll tell you all, I just want to get home and curl up and die. I'll wait in the coffee shop at the international arrivals call me when you're close and I'll wait outside for you. 'Bye." It would be at least an hour before someone got here, so I made myself comfortable with a coffee and bruschetta for breakfast.

My phone beeped telling me that I had a message. I switched on my Inbox. '5 Minutes'.

I grabbed my bags and went outside. Soon a familiar car slid to a stop in front of me and the boot (trunk) popped up. I threw by bag in and scrambled in just as a parking Nazi was heading in our direction, they don't give you much time for greetings.

"Okay, spill, what has happened, have you had a fight with Pierre?"

"Everything was fine until the other morning when I saw him and this girl. It was obvious that they were more than friends, and it was also obvious that she was pregnant, and that he was comfortable with that fact. We had words and I left, end of story."

"What happened might have been obvious to you, but if there is one thing that I have hoped you would do was to consider the alternative reason for what you saw."

"Mum, when you're in love as much as I am, I was, seeing something like that is a major shock and not something that can be taken lightly. I had to get out of there." I was beginning to get angry with her for suggesting that I could be wrong, how can I misunderstand the evidence of my own eyes, what I saw?

"We'll get you home and sit down and talk this through, okay?"

"Whatever." I sulked.

"I know that you've been hurt, but try to forget all about it until we've had a chance to discuss it."

Back home and a cup of coffee later (I was thinking that something a little stronger might be more appropriate, but then I remembered that I had drunk something stronger in London and it didn't help).

"Now, tell me exactly what happened." Mum said.

"The other day I was going to the cellars to tell Pierre and his father that lunch was ready and I saw him, and her."

"Her?"

"Yes, her. A girl that it was obvious he knew very well indeed. She was beautiful, better looking than me, and she was also obviously pregnant. They talked for a while and he rubbed her stomach, and when they finished they kissed, not a just friend type kiss, more a lovers kiss."

"And so you ran off, packed your bags and left, is that it?"

"Yes." I was beginning to think that this was not going all my way.

"Did you give Pierre a chance to explain?"

"What was there to explain? I saw what I saw, isn't that enough?"

"Look, darling, we have been having long conversations with Pierre's parents, and while at first he would say nothing, the story eventually came out. The girl was his cousin Chantelle. . ."

"So he's been fucking his cousin, it gets worse."

"Just be quiet and listen. Yes she's his cousin, who it turns out he hasn't seen for almost a year, you do the Matth. She has been in Paris, at the Sorbonne, and she has found herself in a spot of bother with one of her professors. They were lovers and he has told her that he would marry her. When she told him that she was expecting his child, the story changed. He was married and said that he would not leave his wife. Pierre and she had been close and she went to see him as someone her own age, for advice. He promised to go with her when she broke the news to her parents about the baby, and he even offered to convince his parents to let her stay with him and his parents, if her parents reacted badly to the news."

"Oh." I hadn't thought there could be any other explanation.

"So you see, it was simply him offering her support and she thanking him for that support."

"Shit, what have I done? Will he ever forgive me?"

"Look, there's not a lot that you can do right now, why don't you go to your room and have a sleep and we'll arrange for you to speak to him and his parents tonight. Then we can see what needs to happen, that's if you want it to happen. By the way, his mother gave me a message for you, I don't understand it, but it seemed important that you hear it. She said to tell you that when Pierre got home from his visit here he burnt the mattress."

"I do still love him." I realised that I did still love him and that I might have been hasty in my judgement of him.

I walked slowly to my room, deep in thought. The blinds had been drawn and it was dark. I didn't need to switch on the light. I kicked off my shoes, stripped to my underwear and fell on the bed.

"Cherie. . . " This voice came from the corner of the room. How the fuck did he get here and what was he doing here? He came closer. I leapt from the bed and engulfed him, forcing him back against the wall. "We need to talk."

"Fuck talking, that can come later, just after you tell me how you managed to be here waiting for me, and what a stupid jealous little idiot I've been, but that can come after I show you how much I love you."

"What was this 'Frogshit' you called me?" He asked after my third orgasm and his second.

"Well," I said as I fondled his flaccid cock trying to will it back into life. "Frog is a derogatory term for a Frenchman, and because I thought that you were a total shit about then, Frogshit it was. It was the best that I could think of at the time."

"So, I am no longer a Frogshit?"

"No, you're not. There is one thing that I need to tell you that might go some way to explain why I did what I did."

"What is that?"

"Before I went over to France, I had decided that, because you and I were in love and we'd spoken of marriage, that I should forget all about birth control, I wanted to fall pregnant, I wanted your baby, And when I saw you and her being very friendly, and she was pregnant, I guess that I lost the plot. I felt betrayed, that you no longer loved me and it hurt, my whole world as I knew it, as I dreamed it would be, came crashing down around my ears. I wasn't thinking straight, I know that now, and I'm sorry. Am I forgiven?"

"Yes Cherie, you are forgiven. When you say that you are no longer on birth control, do you mean that you do not want to wait until we marry to start a family?"

"Before, after, who cares what order we do it in, which brings me to something else. While it's too early to tell, there's a fair chance that I will soon be pregnant. I was ovulating in Paris, and while my period might only just be a couple of days late, I can't be certain that I'm not already pregnant. But just to be sure, we'll just have to keep doing it."

We were still at it when there was a gentle tap on the door. "Okay you two, get yourselves cleaned up, it's dinner time."

"I understand that you two have been playing catch up." Dad said as we sat down to eat. "Are you sure that this is the best move at this time, what happens if you get pregnant?" He looked at me, and then Pierre.

"I want to get pregnant."

"But what about your studies, and if you have a baby, are you going to stay here or in France, have you thought about that?"

"Yes, if necessary I'll continue my studies as an external student. As for where we're going to live, we'll divide our time between here and France, that way the kids will have the influence of both worlds."

"Have you discussed this with Pierre's parents?"

"My parents told me that I was not to come home without Jenny, or at the very least, her promise to come over whenever she can." Pierre said. "When I tell them that we are to marry, they will welcome her with open arms, and when I tell them that we, and our children, will divide our time between here and France they will be very happy. They love Jenny almost as much as I do, and it hurt them very deeply when she ran away. They wll now be very happy."

And that is why my Shiraz is now known as the 'Pierre Rombault' and I sign my back label 'Jennifer Blaylock-Rombault, Winemaker.' It has won the 'Jimmy Watson' trophy for the year's best red wine, and has been consistently scored a very respectable 97 out of 100 by wine judges here in Australia. And that is also why the top Chateau Rombault Shiraz has the appelation 'Vin méthode Australie' on its label and the back label is also signed 'Jennifer Blaylock-Rombault, Vigneron.' Even the traditional Vignerons and wine lovers in France have had to concede that it is an outstanding wine.

Okay, we have a happy ending, not the original one, I know that, because once I had moved away from the original storyline, I found it imposssible to reach the ending that came to me that early morning so long ago.

One thing I have to say is that, in the past, many people have criticised some of my other stories for finishing too soon and demanding another chapter. Someone once said; 'leave them wanting more', and in a lot of ways that is what I do. It is also that I would like the readers to use their imagination and think how they would like it to end. One possible scenario, if you follow this storyline, is that Jennifer and Pierre will live happily ever after in both worlds. Chantelle's parents will, when she tells them of her pregnancy, shrug their shoulders in that peculularly Gallic way, look at each other with a smile that hints of secrets past, say 'Amour, toujours amour' and allow her to stay with them and have the baby, thereby removing the potential of future conflict from the story. Or, the story about Chantelle was a lie, and she and Pierre continued to have an affair, ultimately leading to much heartache and the end of Jenny's romance.