The Affair by Bunty Avieson

father would be. James pictured his father slapping him on the back jovially and saying something like ‘Well done, son.’ The image gave him a warm glow.
    He broached the subject with Frederick at the first opportunity. James was working on cellar door sales and tastings right next to his father’s office at the vineyard but it had taken nearly a week to find his father alone, away from other workers, his brother, his mother, the telephone and the relentless stream of daily problems. Finally, he had his father’s undivided attention.
    James had been all keyed up and excited, the words bubbling out of his mouth. Frederick had gone on reading his wine magazine, grunting about the latest wine ratings, barely bothering to look up. Frederick mistrusted investing in anything he couldn’t plant his feet on. He didn’t see it as the golden opportunity that James did nor was he the least bit impressed by the celebrity of the other investors. He wasn’t interested in being in a syndicate with judges and prime ministers and royals. What for? He didn’t know them. And they could go broke just as easily as anyone else, he had told James. James felt deflated and dismissed.
    He had looked at his father in near despair. Frederick would never understand. He didn’t think big enough. For two days after the Lloyd’s discussion, James had quietly fumed. He resented what he saw as the small-minded way his father ran the business and it started to irritate him how easily his brother and his father worked together. They were like peas in a pod. Apart from being so physically similar, they seemed to know exactly what the other was thinking. Being around them in the vineyard was like hearing only half a conversation as they didn’t seem to need words to communicate. James found it hard to keep up. Dinner times were spent with the two of them talking business, Patty agreeing and James keeping his rebellious thoughts to himself.
    James carried around two images of himself. On the one hand he saw himself as a hard-working, contributing member of a successful wine family, aformer Olympian and a globalist who had seen some of the world and exuded a certain level of sophistication. When his confidence was high and he was happy, that was the person he believed he was. He felt like that around Nina. At other times, when his confidence was low or he was intimidated by people or surroundings, he saw himself as lightweight, a mere adjunct to the family business, a failed Olympian who hadn’t brought home a gold medal and the son of nothing more than a small-time, hokey farmer.
    James’s memories of the summer of 1987 were painful. He didn’t like the way that he had behaved and he couldn’t think about that time with any sort of clarity. There was an overlay of tumultuous emotion that obscured any sense of reason.
    Felix had been surprised to see him standing on the doorstep of his city apartment with his suitcase but had welcomed him anyway. James had told Felix he couldn’t join Lloyd’s because his father was too much of a dullard and country bumpkin. James remembered every self-superior word he had uttered.
    ‘I need to get as far away from that place as I can,’ he had said.
    Felix had been happy for James to stay at his apartment but he was leaving for London in a few days. On the spot James decided to go with him. By the time their plane left, James had decided that it was fate and he was meant to go to the sort of places that Lloyd’s could take him. He shouldn’t allow his father to hold him back.
    Tucked into his backpack when he boarded the plane was a letter of credit from his bank in Phillip St, Sydney, secured against his third share of the family business, which he had inherited when he turned 21. That single sheet of paper showed that James had assets of $250,000. It had been so simple. Now all he needed to do was to give that to a bank in England to secure a letter of credit from them and he would be in – a Lloyd’s name