The Sons of Adam (27 page)

Rebecca had begun walking as fast as she could back up the little alley. In the darkness, she was unable to see where she was going and she came close to falling. Tom slammed the door of his shed closed and locked it again before racing to join her. His head was full of arguments, but she spoke before he could get to them.

‘Thomas, Thomas, why can’t you leave my job out of things? Most of the time you hate what I do. You want to fight people, you are angry at me for working. Now … now you want to use me. You want to use my body to sell your alcohol. You are no better than … No, that isn’t true. You
are
better. But … Sorry, Thomas. Sorry. It is time for me to go home.’

Pushing aside his torch, his arm, his words of apology, she hastened away from him into the night. She didn’t once look back.

It was late at night and raining. Gaslight shone down on the puddled streets. Any motor-taxis that were still cruising for business seemed to move slowly, with a watery hiss of their wheels.

Alan walked slowly. The New Year celebrations that had ushered in the 1920s had just faded into a cold and wet January. Alan had been staying with Guy, whose hospitality he never quite enjoyed but which he was too poor to be able to turn down. Guy lived in a buzz of fast women, rich men, and much more expense and wildness than Alan was happy with.

He longed to escape. He had loved the wild Zagros. The hardships he’d endured there had been trivial compared with anything he’d been through in the war, and the loneliness had suited his mood. With Tom dead and Lottie out of reach, London felt like a wasteland – and Guy’s home felt like its flashy, dead heart. He fled to Hampshire and Whitcombe House whenever he could get away.

Meantime, he trudged on west down Piccadilly, head down, hat tilted to keep the rain off his neck. Ahead of him, a hotel porter held open a door, spilling bright electric light out onto the wet pavement. A flock of young people, Alan’s age, tumbled out, laughing, joking, and singing the dance tunes that reverberated dimly from inside. Alan stepped aside, when one of the women, not seeing him, stumbled into him and almost fell.

He caught her and held her upright, until she’d recovered her footing. She had a slender figure, and her hair was cut very short in the ultrafashionable ‘bob’ that Alan so disliked.

‘How silly of me. Thank you, whoever you –’

The woman turned. The light fell on her face. It was Lottie.

Alan didn’t know what his face must have looked like, but Lottie’s face registered something like shock, perhaps longing, perhaps even love. He stepped towards her.

But then her expression changed. Alan stopped in his tracks. He must have been mistaken. Lottie’s face wore nothing but the bright, sociable smile she usually wore. He stood in the street, his mouth hanging slightly open.

‘Oh Lord, it’s Alan Montague! Alan
dar
-ling, how are you? Look, everybody, this is my favourite oilman, Alan Montague. Going to be
fright
-fully rich, digging for oil in the middle of the Persian deserts. Darling, I hope you’ve found absolutely buckets of the stuff.’

There was nothing, absolutely nothing, in Lottie’s voice to make Alan think that she held any tenderness for him any more. Worse than that, it was as though she’d almost forgotten that they had ever been deeply in love.
‘Oh Lord, it’s Alan Montague!’
What on earth was that by way of greeting? She had called him darling, admittedly, but she called everybody darling. There was nothing at all in her words or her voice to justify all that he had felt for her.

Alan recoiled, shocked.

This wasn’t the Lottie he’d written all those letters to from his tent in Persia. His Lottie was the grave, committed, inspiring nurse of the Very Seriously Wounded. His Lottie was the one who’d preferred the long, green Hampshire walks to any amount of dances and parties. There was something else to disturb him as well. There was a man by her side, not touching her exactly, but proprietorial none the less. He looked intelligent, superficial and rich.

‘Do join us, darling Alan, won’t you? We’re going on to the Medusa Club for a last drink and dance. The Blaine-Raffertys are going to be there. You remember them, surely? Ned’s become awfully big in mining and I’m sure you’ll have heaps to talk about. Do come!’

Alan shook his head and began muttering excuses – up early tomorrow, feeling tired, spot of flu. The man at Lottie’s side moved slightly away from her, as though sensing that Alan wasn’t a potential threat.

Alan apologised again, promised to get in touch, and ran away.

On 20 January 1920, the United States of America, in accordance with its Constitution and the duly expressed wishes of its people, embarked upon the noblest experiment in the history of the world. Up and down the land, from the snows of Montana to the dusts of Texas, from the blue Pacific to the grey Atlantic, bars closed their doors, liquor sellers ceased their trade, the old devil-in-a-bottle, John Barleycorn, breathed his last.

In theory.

The only itsy-bitsy problem with the theory was that up and down the land, from dusty Texas to snowy Montana and from one bluish-grey ocean to the next, there were folk like Tom keen to sell alcohol and other folk equally anxious to buy it.

Having sold his hooch at two hundred and ninety dollars, a fifty per cent mark-up over the price he’d paid, Tom paused to restock. He jumped freight trains and rode north of the border, where an astonished Canadian economy found that whisky selling had just become the fastest growing, most profitable business in existence. Tom called around and found a wholesaler who understood his new market.

‘How d’you want it packed?’

‘Huh? You’ll box it, I guess,’ said Tom.

‘Yeah,’ said the wholesaler, as if he was talking to an imbecile. ‘I could leave it in the original Haig & Haig boxes, if you like. Show folks your stuff is for real.’

Tom saw the problem. The alcohol would have to ride straight back through customs, and nowadays there were times when it certainly
didn’t
pay to advertise.

‘I got boot polish,’ said the wholesaler. ‘Or ham. I’m getting in a load of condensed milk tomorrow.’

He kicked a stack of empty wooden boxes. Each box had neatly stencilled on the side ‘Jo Brearley’s Finest – the Boot Black’s Secret!’. Next to these, there was a stack marked ‘Alberta Hams & Meats, Inc. Our Taste is Our Advertisement’.

Tom grinned. ‘I fancy the hams,’ he said.

‘Hams it is.’

The choice was almost fatal.

Thirty-six hours later, a goods train steamed slowly to a halt in a forested valley, where soot and snowflakes petalled the air. Outside a wooden cabin, the Stars and Stripes hung unmoving from a flagpole. Painted across the front of the cabin was a sign: ‘
UNITED STATES CUSTOMS
’. Beyond the customs post, a small settlement clustered round the railroad stop, like chickens frightened of the night.

Riding legitimately this time, Tom got out to stretch his legs and watch his boxes clear the border. When the United States Congress had decided to prohibit alcohol, it had been so confident of the law-abiding nature of its citizens that it hadn’t bothered to take any serious action on enforcement. Customs posts had hardly been strengthened. Federal agents were scarcely thought necessary.

Tom wasn’t worried.

He stamped up and down the platform to bring warmth into his feet. He thought of Rebecca. The two of them had patched up their quarrel and were friends again.

She
bothered
him, though. He didn’t find her attractive – at least he thought he didn’t – and half the time he found her conversation maddening. All the same, no sooner was he gone from her, than he began to think about her again. He couldn’t explain his fascination with her and was annoyed at himself for it.

He headed out of the station, and bought himself a candy bar and some coffee from the ‘Missionary Milk Bar’. The man serving the drink said, ‘Praise the Lord, sir. Ten cents, please.’

Tom handed over his dime but didn’t bother to praise the Lord.

‘Leaflet?’ said the man, shoving a leaflet over the counter. ‘The One True Path to Salvation. There’s no charge.’

Tom leaned over the counter. ‘You want to know the one true path to salvation?’

‘Huh?’

‘Oil,’ said Tom. ‘Oil and alcohol.’

The man snatched his leaflets back in annoyance. ‘The Lord loveth the sinner who repenteth. The Lord –’

‘Good for the Lord. Only the sinner prefereth the hooch.’ Tom tossed back his coffee, took his candy and left.

Inside the train, the customs men were still busy with their paperwork. So far as Tom had been able to see, they hadn’t once bothered to open any of the crates or boxes on the train.

A scrawny dog loped up and down, cocking his leg over a pile of wooden crates marked ‘Saskatchewan Furs and Hides, Inc.’ The urine steamed yellow and began to freeze. Tom paced the platform, fast enough to keep warm. The customs men didn’t hurry. The dog snuffled a pile of boxes containing smoked fish from Vancouver. The fish sat right next to Tom’s boxes full of whisky.

Further up the platform, a customs man looked curiously at the dog. Tom looked at the customs man. The dog didn’t look at anything except its fish. The customs man looked on a while longer, then strolled over to his fur-coated boss and muttered something in a low voice.

Tom turned away for another fast walk up and down the platform, when his stomach suddenly took a dive.

The dog!

The dog was theoretically standing right next to a dozen boxes of prime Canadian ham, but it hadn’t once bothered to sniff them. The dog was a four-legged, flea-ridden lie-detector test, and Tom had already all but failed.

For a moment, fear left him senseless. If he was caught, his booze would be confiscated, of course, but that hardly mattered. What mattered was this. Tom’s American citizenship depended upon him living in the United States for five years
without committing a felony.
If Tom’s whisky-smuggling was discovered, he’d be prosecuted and deported home to England. It would be the worst fate in the world and it was now only minutes away.

The two customs men spoke together, then began to walk over to the dog and the boxes of so-called ham.

For one second more, Tom was frozen. Then he moved. He hurtled out of the station, back to the Missionary Milk Bar.

‘Bless you, bro –’ began the man, before noticing who his customer was. ‘Oh. It’s you.’

‘I have seen the light, brother,’ said Tom. ‘Praise the Lord.’

The man looked stunned. ‘Why, truly? Praise the Lord, indeed, brother. Yea, I say unto you, the Lord hath more joy over one sinner who –’

‘Damn right. Any chance of some of those pamphlets of yours?’

‘You want one? Really?’

‘Praise the Lord!’ said Tom again.

‘Praise the Lord!’

The man shoved the stack of leaflets over the counter. Tom snatched up the whole bundle and dropped a dollar bill in exchange. ‘I go to spread the good news. Truly is there joy in heaven this day.’

‘Why, joy indeed, brother. Won’t you –’

But Tom was gone. Back at the station, the customs men had reached the boxes. The dog had done its job and been tugged aside. A third customs man was walking across the platform with a crowbar and jemmy.

Tom skidded up to them, breath freezing in the pale air.

‘Bless you, brothers,’ he panted. ‘All praise to them that laboureth in the sight of the Lord.’

The customs men grinned at each other. One of them cracked a joke in an undertone and provoked a burst of muffled laughter. The more senior of the officers said, ‘Thank you, son. We need all the praise we can get on a day like this.’

‘May I help you, officers?’ said Tom, in a more normal voice.

‘Help us?’ The customs man used his gloved hand to flick through the freight manifest and customs forms. ‘You’re Calloway?’

‘Thomas Calloway,’ said Tom, hand over his heart. ‘My earthly business is the importation of premium Canadian meat products. My spiritual business is the salvation of human souls. I am at your service in either capacity.’

The grins on the faces of the customs men grew wider. The man arriving with the crowbar let it drop to his side, saying, ‘How about the importation of prohibited liquor? You able to help a soul out in that capacity?’