The Final Programme

By Angus Kennedy

In this final novel of the Out of Solitude tetralogy, Australian wine writer Andrew Johnston is comatose in hospital in Sydney, Australia, after being shot in Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His Croatian lover, Niki Mencetic, believes he is dead, the victim of a cruel deception by Andrew's brother, Adrian, and has returned to Dubrovnik.

Following his emergence back to life, Andrew has to recover his health and his life as well as he is able. His two quandaries are what to do with his life and, even more importantly, how to reconnect with Niki, with whom he is still in love. Because of the time lapse since the incident and his uncertainty as to what her state of mind now is, he needs to find a way to contact Niki and explain his still being alive and, hopefully, to re-establish their relationship. To do this, he will need to visit Europe again, with a plan to make contact with Niki in as delicate and as painless a way for her as possible.

Even if he is able to work through a way to get in touch with her, he is quite unaware of how she now feels towards him, believing him dead, and how she may react to the knowledge that he is, in fact, alive. Nevertheless, he has to try.

Following Andrew on his crusade to reconnect with Niki takes the reader back through the history of their relationship and its many twists and turns, as well as the events that led to his being shot. Although Andrew has help in his quest, temporal, physical and cultural obstacles stand in the way of any smooth progress. The eventual outcome of this quest will define the rest of his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Apr 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514494974

Angus Kennedy

Angus Kennedy is the world’s leading expert on chocolate and has been dubbed by the media as the “real life Willy Wonka.” Kennedy is the owner of Kennedy’s Confection, a chocolate review magazine his family has owned for forty years, and the founder of the World Chocolate Forum, the world’s largest chocolate industry conference. He’s been a guest on a variety of TV and radio programs, including BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Talk to Aljazeera (USA), and Bloomberg TV, and featured in a wealth of print and digital media, such as Huffington Post, the Telegraph, NBC News.com, and the Daily Mail. His most recent video about chocolate, on Business Insider, received 2.4 million views in twenty-four hours, setting a record high. Kennedy’s provocative assertion in 2011 that the world might be running out of chocolate received international media coverage and was a source of much concern by chocolate lovers around the world. He is a father of five and lives with his family in Kent, England. ALSO AVAILABLE FROM ANGUS KENNEDY The Kitchen Baby: Angus Kennedy, 9780957532908, Black Mansion, 01/23/2013.

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Copyright © 2016 by Angus Kennedy.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016906314

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5144-9499-8

   Softcover   978-1-5144-9498-1

   eBook   978-1-5144-9497-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 04/20/2016

Xlibris

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

DEDICATED to my nephew, Michael,

my wife, my family and my friends.

PROLOGUE

I had been feeling my years in recent times. It was nothing specific, merely that those parts of me that had been most affected by my problems all those years ago seemed to wish to remember them and remind me of the troubles that they had been through. Nor was it that I was particularly old, especially these days when the three score years and ten that were supposedly allotted to us were almost invariably, and certainly on average, exceeded by a good margin, but, nevertheless, I was definitely past my best years.

That I was past my prime did not in itself worry me, but it seemed to worry Michael, the younger of my nephews. He seemed concerned that I look after myself and take what care I could to ensure that I optimised what remained of my life. He often expressed his pleasure that I was now married and could now share my life with someone close. He was also now married and approaching forty, but we had kept in close touch throughout much of the past quarter of a century. I saw his elder brother, Peter, occasionally and had largely patched up my differences with his father, my own brother Adrian, but it was Michael with whom I had formed the strongest bond. That it was he with whom I was the closest among my immediate family was somewhat surprising and had certainly not been initiated by me. He was the one who had chosen to spend the most time with me while I convalesced at his parents' home, he was the one who listened most to my questions and monologues, and he was the one who had maintained our relationship after my recovery and had helped me re-establish my life, to the extent that he was now my close confidante, and had been for well over two decades. In spite of his marriage, our friendship had not waned, but although he was quite self-dependent and in many ways quite like me in my younger years, marriage had suited him well.

He had seemed to have an insatiable interest in my doings over the years and, in the aftermath of my being shot and the months of my recovery, had sat with me for long periods of time and listened to what I could tell him about what I had considered to be an ordinary life. And yet it had seemed not to be so for him.

During that time, I had told him everything that had happened to me over the years. I told him of my itinerant life as a wine-writer for an English magazine, Bacchanalia, about Roger Calshaw, its proprietor, and his cramped little office above the wine merchant in London, not far from the Stafford Hotel, and about his assistant, Elaine, who had run the office so efficiently and cheerily. Perhaps it was my own career in writing and his interest in what Roger was doing that had affected so significantly his own path in life.

I had also spoken with Michael about my first trip to Dubrovnik. That had taken a lot of faith on my part, but Michael had seemed so insistent and interested that I had decided to trust him and, that done, the rest of the story had been progressively easier to tell. He was quite struck during my recounting something of the history of Dubrovnik and the Ragusan Empire but became really interested when I mentioned my meeting with my old French acquaintance, Lucien Delasalles, and my first encounter with his step-sister, Niki Menčetić. He seemed entranced as I recounted the events of my stay in Dubrovnik with Božena Gradić and her young daughter, Filipa, of Niki's and my visit to the nearby island of Lokrum and swimming in the Mrtvo More or Dead Sea, and of Niki's abrupt departure for Cavtat. His interest was further aroused when I told him of my following Niki to Cavtat and of all the mysterious stories swirling around Niki's brother, Jakov, and the shadowy 'documents figure', Stjepan Dobrečević. At the end of that part of my life, he became quite serious and thoughtful when I told him of how Niki and I had fallen out and I had left Dubrovnik with the rift unhealed. I can recall him, sitting, looking at the floor introspectively and then up at me for a minute or two before he thanked me and told me to take a break and get some rest. He left me then, and I did not see him again for several days. I thought I might have done or said something to upset him, but no, he simply had things he had to do and, as he had explained later, he had wanted to think over what I had told him and to try to understand the effect that it had all had on my life. As you can see, he was, even then, quite a thoughtful young man.

§

As time and my convalescence progressed, Michael continued to visit and sit with me and question me further about what had led to my being shot. He enjoyed very much and smiled knowingly as I recounted the discussions that his father, Adrian, and I had had at Saint-Thibéry, commenting on the ideological chasm that existed between us but appreciating that we had continued, during these discussions, to remain close siblings. When Niki re-entered the scene in Saint-Émilion and again became part of my life, he became animated and inquisitive, asking all sorts of questions about what she was like, was I pleased to connect with her again, what had it been like driving to Burgos in Spain and so forth. His interest in and knowledge of the wine industry was very limited, and he was less attentive to my travels around Bordeaux and up the Rhône and Saône valleys to Burgundy, but he did have some intriguing questions about Bernard Listeau. He also enjoyed hearing of my unexpectedly brief visit to see Niki in Dubrovnik -- the end of that part of my life, when I had had to rush back from to Australia to help Adrian when his wife and Michael's mother, Susan, had been so ill, brought his thoughtfulness back again. He had been in his late teens at the time, still at school, but recalled quite clearly my staying with them to help Adrian while he attended to Susan in hospital. When he suggested that he and his brother must have been difficult to manage, I had said 'yes and no' -- but that we had seemed to have struck an arrangement that was manageable to all of us.

Again, my subsequent travels through the wine regions of California left him a little cold but, when I returned to my last stay in Croatia and started to recount Niki's tracing of her ancestors, Jakov Andro and Jozo Stjepan Menčetić, and their travels on the Chemins de Saint-Jacques, the Way of St James, to Santiago de Compostela, he became very attentive. He was enthralled by the investigative work that Niki and Jakov had conducted and by the twists and turns of the story. It was as though he had an innate aptitude for genealogical study, although he had never indicated any interest in the background of his own family. He queried me mercilessly and incessantly about various aspects of the research, about the sources of information, and about the conclusions that Niki had reached. At the end of it all, when I had moved quickly over the last part of Niki's and my driving trip through Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, my being shot and my near-death shipment back to Australia, he sat back for some minutes and then started pacing the room, considering my story. Eventually, he came close to my bed and sat down again beside it. Hesitatingly, he stated that I must write the story of my life. He said that it was a fascinating account and should be read.

§

After Michael had left for the day, I sat back and considered what he had suggested. While I had written many articles on wine and could string phrases and ideas on wine together reasonably well, I was highly doubtful whether I could make an even vaguely interesting story about my life. True, I had travelled all over the world in my profession and had met a huge number of varied and interesting people, but stories were just that, they were not accounts of lives -- the latter were autobiographies, and usually rather dull, to my mind. Stories, or fiction to be accurate, required a plot and a thread, a beginning, a development and a suitable ending. I just could not envisage an account of my life having any of these ingredients, and certainly none that would produce something fascinating to the reader. I felt that I had just lived an independent life, spread around the world, and was coming to the end of it. True, there had been moments of interest and intrigue, with the activities of Niki's forbears and those of her relations, but my life had been mainly a quiet one, at least until I had been shot in Međjugorje. But one swallow did not a summer and so on, and I had great doubts whether my story could interest anyone but those very close to me, and then only a little. I also had many things yet to do and so shelved the idea.

It was not till some years later that Michael, on one of his visits, mentioned the matter to me again, and this time in the presence of my wife. To my surprise, she reacted very positively to the idea and asked me whether I would consider the suggestion. I said that I had but had decided against it. She looked disappointed with my response and asked me why. She said that the story would be interesting and would serve a useful purpose to me personally; it could well give me the final closure that had eluded me for several years. She looked at me with her clear, artless eyes and I suddenly realised that I must have been something of a trial for her over the years, periodically musing and brooding over the past and never quite coming to terms with the present. At that moment, I decided to try.

If I had known at the time what an ordeal it was going to be I could well have not started, even then. However, now, many years later, it is almost done. After some false beginnings and revisions, I decided to write the account of my life in naturally occurring parts. For me, this seemed the easiest way to compartmentalise the story and I could 'put each piece to bed' when it was completed. As a result, I covered my original visit to Dubrovnik in Two Tickets to Dubrovnik. I then went on to A View from the Languedoc and To the East. The final chapter in my life turned out to be the most difficult. I had been hospitalised and in convalescence for many months and had continued in indifferent health for some time; my relations with my brother, Adrian, had proved to be difficult; it had been a continual strain revisiting my earlier life; and, probably most importantly, I was not totally sure that I wanted closure -- I had become so used to being a taciturn brood. However, it is now done and the final piece of the account is what follows. Strangely, at least to me, I started to feel a strengthening sense of relief as I approached the completion of The Final Programme. I had purged myself of all the feelings of regret and remorse that had lain gnawing inside me for years, and, somewhat belatedly, I felt myself becoming increasingly at peace with myself and my world, and more and more able to appreciate and enjoy the life I had and the people around me. It now appeared that I had indeed come out of solitude.

Andrew Johnston

CHAPTER 1

To the extent that one can judge, being comatose is like being asleep, only for a longer period of time.

§

From what I can recall, my eyes suddenly flickered open, revealing a world of dark, grey fuzz. There seemed to be some diffuse light around me; it was not completely dark, but I could discern nothing; everything was blurry and indistinct. Apart from not being able to see anything with any clarity, my other sensations were of a dry mouth that was full of something, various dull aches in my head and around my body, constrictions in my hands, feet and nose, and a sonar pinging nearby. Very gradually, my eyes began to regain their focus, but I could still see nothing more than vague shapes, and all the time the sonar kept pinging. Thinking that it was strange to be playing a submariner part in Hunt for Red October or The Enemy Below, I fell back into sleep.

This was when the dreams that had let me be during the coma commenced, and continued for many months, although with decreasing frequency. It was always the same dream, or a very close variant of it. As is usually the case with such dreams, I was unable to control my part in it. I was surrounded by a milling crowd of noiselessly babbling people, none of whom I recognised, apart from a female figure with whom I seemed to have some connection. At one point, the crowd parted to reveal a man pointing a cigar, his finger, a stick or some other object in his hand at me, although it could well have been at the female. Then I looked at the female and she opened her mouth and howled noiselessly, like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers but with the sound turned off. I fought to move myself in front of the girl and then, amidst a sudden blaze of golden-red light, the cigar, finger or stick exploded into a flash of light and, as I was suddenly transported away into blackness, I heard a word being screamed, 'Andrew', and then I awoke, perspiring and trembling. It was always the same end result and always left me a shivering wreck. That first time, I woke and lay there breathing heavily and listening to the sonar, wondering what on earth was going on.

§

The contemplation of my slowly emerging surroundings was disturbed by a movement to the left of my field of vision. I moved first my eyes and then my head, to the extent that I could, and saw what looked like an opening in the darkness and a shadowy figure or shape moving towards me. Thinking momentarily that I had not, in fact, awoken from my dream, I tried to cry out, managing to make little more than a dull exhalation, but this was sufficient to stop the shape in its tracks, and then a small light suddenly came on and what turned out to be a nurse hastened towards me. She shined the light in my face, highlighting my sweaty brow and face and frightened eyes and then placed her hands on my forehead and cheeks and, with soothing noises, calmed me down. It was my first encounter with Nurse Richards.

When I had settled down again, she took my temperature and my pulse, adjusted some of the many tubes that were attached to my hands, fingers, legs, abdomen and nose, stood observing the sonar for a moment and, with a brief 'Welcome back Mr Johnston', turned on a small night light beside the bed and left the room noiselessly. I missed her immediately, but she had brought some comfort and ease into my life, for which I was deeply grateful.

§

After that brief encounter of a pleasant kind, my life changed so completely and rapidly that I found difficulty keeping up with it. The fact that I had regained consciousness galvanised the hospital staff into all sorts of action. People of all persuasions, doctors, nurses, wards-men, flower ladies, cleaners -- all seemed to spend half their lives in my ward, at least for a few days, after which they settled back to a lower level of frenzy. Word of my re-joining the rest of the world was obviously passed on to my brother, Adrian and, the following day, he and his wife, Susan, came to visit me. Their visit was something of a strain for me, primarily because I felt extremely weak, completely disorientated, and with no recollection of my recent or even not so recent past. I had a dim memory of having travelled to Europe, the United