The Sons of Adam (62 page)

Pride.

Whatever had happened to Tom between August 1916 and the date in 1919 when he’d landed in America, Alan couldn’t believe he’d have lost his pride. If Tom was alive, Alan was certain that his given name would still be Tom. Maybe, at a pinch Timothy or Trevor or Terence, but most likely just plain old Tom. It was true of the surname too. Creeley was Tom’s name. It was his father’s name. Alan couldn’t imagine Tom becoming a Jones or Smith or Robinson: it would have been too much like running away.

So Alan turned to the Cs.
Cabot, Caffyn, Cahill, Cairns, Cairns, Calloway, Campbell …
One of the names leaped out at him. ‘
CALLOWAY
– Thomas – 93 – 6.12.19 – New Haven, Ct – Calloway.’

Alan stared. There, near the top of the list, was a man, born 1893, first name Thomas, and the surname starting with a C.

After a long amazed pause, Alan checked the rest of the list. There were twelve names with the intials TC. Of those, five had the first name Thomas. Of those, only Tom Calloway had a birth date in 1893.

Hope began to grow sharp and alive. He turned back to Galston’s hurried notes on Calloway – then noticed it. Galston had accidentally copied down the surname twice, once as the surname, the second time as the vessel of disembarkation. Alan’s first reaction was disappointment. If Galston had got that wrong, he could have got the surname wrong. Or the birth date. Perhaps Alan would have to check all the TCs, just to be absolutely sure.

Then it clicked.

The ship!
Galston hadn’t made a mistake. Whoever Thomas Calloway might be, it was an assumed name, borrowed from the vessel that had brought him. The coincidence was too much. Alan had found a Thomas, born in 1893, and boasting a newly invented surname that started with C. Alan stared and stared and stared.

Sixteen years on from the day he’d lost him, Alan had finally found his twin.

It was thirteen years since Tom had first entered the United States of America and eight since he had become a citizen of his adopted country. He had honoured the flag (gladly). He had paid his taxes (grudgingly). And with the exception of the Eighteenth Amendment (the one that had outlawed the import, manufacture and sale of alcohol), he had respected the Constitution. He was, in every sense, a loyal American. An American and a republican.

Kings and monarchs revolted him. An English king had sent him to die. A German kaiser had tried to starve him. Tom would be happy if all the kings of the earth had been turned overnight into ordinary people: shoe-shine boys, oil-riggers, commercial travellers, bums.

And yet.

There’s something about a king that can’t help but touch a man. A king can make a man light-headed, make his heart run a little faster, make him feel hot and heavy in his own body.

Tom felt it as well. He felt it now. Because he too stood in the presence of a king.

It would have been the simplest thing in the world to get Pinkerton’s to look for Tom Calloway. To look for and find. Only Alan hadn’t done it. Just as he hadn’t mentioned his discovery to Lottie. Not yet.

There was something he had to do first.

The station shrilled with the whistle of engines. White steam and black smoke eddied around the roof. Pigeons screamed and swooped.

Alan made his way up the platform towards a railway porter. He was a stocky weather-beaten man, smelling of tobacco and coal-smoke, but with a kind of rough geniality to him. Alan instantly recognised a type that had served the British Army well in France.

‘George Hemplethwaite?’ said Alan. ‘I’m looking for a –’

‘That’s me. Hemplethwaite.’

The porter gave his answer with some reserve, as though people usually expected to pay for the privilege of knowing. Alan felt a sudden jab of nerves. He’d gone to the War Office with the names that Guy had given him. The War Office had been able to confirm Guy’s records of regiment and company. Carragher, unfortunately, had been killed in the great German offensive of 1918, but Hemplethwaite and Jones were alive and well, and Alan had been able to trace them without much difficulty. He was seeing Hemplethwaite today and would see Jones the following day.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Good morning, Hemplethwaite. My name’s Alan Montague, and I have come to ask you a question concerning an incident that took place in the trenches during 1916. You may answer in strictest confidence. This matter has nothing to do with any official investigation or inquiry. It’s a purely personal matter and all I ask is that you answer my questions truthfully.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Hemplethwaite’s tone became instantly bland and uninformative – the way any private spoke when asked anything sensitive by any officer. Alan recognised the familiar infantryman’s stonewall straight away, but continued.

‘The incident took place in August 1916. It involved two men. Major Montague and Mr Creeley. Do you know who I mean?’

Hemplethwaite looked sideways at the ground and wrinkled his mouth.

‘Let me, once again, give you my word of honour that nothing you say is for any official purpose whatsoever. As I say, it’s a personal matter, nothing more.’

Behind eyes that disclosed nothing, Hemplethwaite weighed the odds.

‘And there’s five pounds for you if your answers are helpful.’

Hemplethwaite grinned. ‘Mr Creeley,’ he said. ‘Lieutenant in the Hampshire Fusiliers? Wasn’t he the poor bugger that got done over with Shorty Hardwick and Bobby Stimson? Stupid bloody raid on the Boche machine guns.’

‘Exactly –’ Alan felt a violent jerk of emotion at hearing Tom’s name spoken in that context – ‘and Major Montague, as he was then, is my brother. Now what I want to know is whether you saw anything … anything unusual involving the two of them.’

‘Maybe I did, sir, that would depend on what you was meaning.’

‘Hemplethwaite, I understand that there may have been an argument. There may have been a shot fired. I want to stress that this is not a court-martial affair. Anything you say to me will go no further.’

Hemplethwaite nodded, turning Alan’s words over to see if he could find any threat in them to himself. He couldn’t. He cleared his throat. ‘Well, sir, it was like this. The Hun was chucking stuff at us that day. I was bringing my Lewis gun up to the line, because George Davis, the poor sod who was there before me, got a bit of shell casing right up his arse – excuse me, sir, but that was where it was, two inches sticking out, four inches sticking in – and he hopped around so much his gun got all bunged up with dirt. Then there was a couple of other lads, Jones and Carragher, I think – it’s been a while, sir, so I couldn’t say for definite, like – shovelling out the trench. Regent Street they were calling it, I think, though it was a Jerry trench really. Anyway, they were shovelling it out, where a whizz-bang had knocked the banks in –’

‘Yes?’ Alan knew he should try to get the narrative in Hemplethwaite’s own words, since he was much more likely to get the truth that way, but he could barely suppress his impatience. At the same time, he was grateful for Hemplethwaite’s apparently perfect memory and stream-of-consciousness recall.

‘Well, sir, anyway, as I was saying, your brother it would be, Major Montague, was coming running down the trench. The phone lines had been all smashed to buggery, sir, if you pardon the expression, and the runners kept on being shot that day. Bloody barrage, that’s why the trench got into such a state. Anyway, top brass would have been all in a stew. That was why the major was up there, most likely.’

‘Yes, yes. I know.’

A train came in beside them, with a hiss of steam and a whine of brakes, followed by the clatter of doors and people. Alan wanted to move somewhere quieter, but Hemplethwaite stood as though rooted to the spot.

‘Exactly, sir, that’s right,’ he said, ignoring the train. ‘Well, your brother, he just about runs into Mr Creeley. I didn’t recognise the lieutenant, myself, but Johnny Jones knew Creeley from way back, a right good ’un, he used to say, extra bloody shame about raid, if you ask me – it was always the good ’uns that went, sir, no disrespect – and he said it was definitely Creeley, swear to God and everything. They have a bloody great row. Your brother and Creeley, I mean. I don’t know what about. There was shells still coming down. And I’d got the bloody Lewis gun caught in the revetting, sir, fucking great nail sticking out, remember it like yesterday, thinking I was going to get a whizz-bang down my backside before I’d got the bleeding gun unstuck.

‘Anyway, there’s me trying to free up the Lewis gun, but partly watching to see if there’s going to be a bit of a dust-up, when, bugger me – pardon me, sir – Creeley whips his gun out and shoots old Major Montague – that’d be your brother, sir, I’m afraid – bang, right in the leg. Looked to me like he wanted to stick the bullet some other place altogether.’ Hemplethwaite tapped the centre of his forehead. ‘That was it. Creeley went scarpering off up to the front and Montague came hollering down screaming blue bloody murder …’

Hemplethwaite finished the story in his own inimitable style. Alan heard him out in a state of increasing shock. He’d seek out John Jones, of course, but he was already certain that the man would simply confirm the basic outline of Hemplethwaite’s account. Tom had shot Guy. In cold blood and without provocation. Guy hadn’t put his hand to Tom. He hadn’t even touched his gun, still less drawn it.

On the train home that evening, Alan thought about Tom Creeley-Calloway, the twin with whom he had once shared his life. The man who now cared so little about his former attachments that he could live fifteen years in the United States and not bother, not once, to send Alan a message saying he was alive and well. The man who was willing to shoot his twin’s brother. The man whose darkness had outshone his light.

Alan felt infinitely sad. He felt as though an ancient friendship had dissolved. In its place, there was nothing but loss.

The summerhouse had no chairs, only carpets and cushions. The Shah, the King of Persia, was sprawled over two dozen cushions of silk and silk-velvet, massively embroidered and glinting with jewels. The cushions left for Tom were ample enough, but he didn’t dare stretch out, and he didn’t have the knack of sitting in a way that was either comfortable or dignified. The Shah looked arrogantly at Tom, saw his discomfort, and didn’t care a straw. He was a big man, strong and military, and fully half a head or even a head taller than most of the men in his entourage.

‘Calloway?’ said the Shah. An interpreter by his side, pointlessly repeated the name.

‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

‘Norgaard Petroleum?’ The Shah spoke the unfamiliar syllables with an accent so thick Tom hardly recognised them.

‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

The Shah grunted and sipped on the iced sherbet that he had and Tom didn’t. Despite his arrogant manner, the Shah had been an ordinary officer in the Persian Cossack Brigade. He’d risen to become colonel, and then, in 1921, led a troop of three thousand men into Tehran. He’d arrested some politicians, appointed his own prime minister and, after a decent delay, had himself crowned Shah of Persia, the oldest monarchy in the world. He was tough, uncompromising and decisive. In another life, Tom thought, he could have been a decent oilman.

‘Well?’ The Shah was blunt. ‘What do you want?’

Tom had heard much about oriental codes of politeness. If you want to tell your adversary that he is the stinking son of an ox-driving dungheap and that you fully intend to cut his tongue out if he doesn’t repay you the two kran and one abassi he owes you – then naturally you have to begin by honouring his ancestors and praising his hospitality. And if you’ve come to flatter a king, then heaven help you …

‘Your Majesty, we in America have heard so much about the beauties of your kingdom and the richness of your land, particularly oil, that …’ Tom’s fine sentence sputtered to a premature close. He wiped his forehead, feeling uncomfortable. His old Persian lessons lay packed away in the back of his brain someplace. He couldn’t find them. Alan had always been the natural linguist, anyway. Tom was just a tongue-tied, English-speaking, all-American oilman.

The Shah grunted again and looked impatient.

Tom tried again: the American version this time. ‘Your Majesty, we would love to be able to drill for oil here. We think there’s lots more to be found. We’d drill it fast. Pipe it fast. Sell it fast. We’d make a huge contribution to your treasury.’