The Sons of Adam (66 page)

Profits had been tough to come by, but finding a profit had always been tough. For oilmen, the thirties had been not great, but OK.

But there were exceptions.

Two, in particular.

In Britain, Alanto Oil had stumbled from catastrophe to crisis. Bad luck sat over the company like a storm cloud. Alanto still hauled oil from the ground. It still explored, drilled, struck, pumped, piped, refined, shipped and marketed the valuable liquid. But all for nothing. The company had huge revenues and zero profits. There were literally years in which Mr and Mrs Havelock, the elderly couple who ran the one-roomed village grocery on Whitcombe High Street, were able to report bigger profits than Alanto Oil, the third biggest oil company in Europe.

The second exception was Norgaard.

In Tom Calloway, the company was blessed with one of the finest chief executives in the oil industry. When misfortune struck the company in one area of its operations, he flung the company hard in a different direction. He dodged, twisted, rolled and spun. To no avail. Bad luck pursued him like a swarm of bees. Profits disappeared. Losses spread. There were literally years in which Jim and Minnie Singer, the elderly couple who ran the hardware store on Kilgore Main Street, were able to report bigger profits than Norgaard Petroleum, the third biggest oil company in the American South.

The war between Alan and Tom had intensified and grown bitter. As kids they’d fought in play. As adults they fought for real. But though some things had changed, other things hadn’t.

Never submit.

Never give up.

The old rules were still the same. Unless things changed, not one but both companies would be destroyed.

And, despite many losses, there was one in particular that had affected Tom to the bone.

One fine autumn day in 1936, there was a death in the family: a sad one. Pipsqueak, seventeen years old, and the loyalest little heart Tom had ever known, had died peacefully in her sleep, snoozing in the sun at Rebecca’s feet. Tom had been inspecting one of his oilfields on the Gulf Coast when he heard the news, and he’d dropped everything to return straight home. He, Mitch and Rebecca had stood beneath a Cottonwood tree and buried the little mongrel in its shade, with a roll of cooked bacon between her paws. When Tom shovelled the earth over the little white body, he turned his eyes so nobody could see them.

And so the thirties had passed away. They had begun badly and were ending worse.

Guy rubbed his hand over his face. He looked tired. And more than tired: he looked old.

‘Drink?’ he asked.

He didn’t wait for an answer. He poured whisky like it was water and added water as though the stuff cost twenty guineas the sip.

‘There’ll be war soon,’ he said bluntly. ‘I suppose you know.’

‘It seems possible.’

Guy shook his head, handing his brother a glass. ‘Certain. It’s certain. And d’you want to know if we’re prepared for it?’

‘I imagine you’ll say not.’

‘Not remotely. Nowhere close. Our navy is fine, but won’t cope with submarines. Our army is ridiculous. Decent men and all that, but their equipment is a joke, a bad one. Our air force is splendid, but it needs ten times the number of aircraft. I’m talking only about defence, you understand. I’m not talking about taking the war to the enemy.’

‘You seem despairing.’

Guy laughed. For the first time, Alan thought that his elder brother had lost his looks. Even when he’d put on weight in middle age, Guy had been able to carry it. He’d had a charm that deflected attention from his physical decline. But no longer. For the first time in his life, Guy looked older than his years, not younger.

‘Despairing? Me? Hardly. I’ve no marriage. No money. Not much of a career, even. I’ve a lot less to lose than most. And I’ll say this for the English: we fight best when our position is impossible.’

Alan paused, weighing up not just Guy’s words, but the way he said them.

‘Money,’ he said. ‘You said you had none. Did you mean –’

‘Mean that I have none? Yes. Pretty much.’ Guy jerked his chin upwards a little: a pale reflection of his old arrogance. ‘What I had I spent, if you have to know. Wasted it, I suppose you would say. Dorothy had some money. It’s why I married her, as I don’t doubt you knew.’ He shrugged, as though no longer able to shock himself. ‘Her money’s largely gone now, in any case.’

‘I once asked you if you wanted me to –’

‘Yes. Yes, please. I’d be grateful for whatever you can spare. I’m not very good at living within my means, I’m afraid.’

Alan nodded. Guy still had his official salary, of course, but an official salary was hardly likely to keep pace with Guy’s expenses. ‘If you let my banker know how much you’d like, I’ll see that you get it.’ He gave his brother a name and address, hoping the amount was not too large. Alan had an excellent salary, but in the past it had been dwarfed by the millions of pounds he’d received in dividends from his Alanto shareholding. Those days were gone. Alanto had thrown all its resources into its war with Norgaard, and exhausted itself in so doing. Alan’s only consolation was that Norgaard was in precisely the same predicament. None of this did he mention, though, simply adding, ‘Please don’t think anything of it. And I see no need to mention the arrangement to Father or Mother, if you don’t.’

‘Thank you.’

Alan shrugged. ‘We’re family, Guy.’

‘Family, eh?’

Guy spoke savagely, and Alan noticed that he had already drained his whisky glass and was standing up to get more. Looking around Guy’s drawing room, Alan could see the creeping shabbiness that was a sign of his brother’s bachelor status and shortage of money.

‘The money,’ said Guy. ‘Thank you.’

‘Please. I don’t want –’

Guy rudely waved Alan down. ‘I’m not going to go on thanking you, you needn’t worry about that. As a matter of fact, there was one thing I thought I would do in exchange.’

‘Oh?’

‘I thought I would tell you that you’re a bloody fool.’

Alan gaped in surprise. ‘What?!’

‘You’re a fool. Since no one else seems to be telling you that, I thought I better had.’

‘Any particular kind of fool?’

‘Yes … Tom’s alive, you said.’

Alan stiffened. ‘Yes,’ he said shortly. He had no idea what was coming, and for all his anger with Tom, he never liked it when Guy spoke of him.

‘Do you know how to find him?’

Alan made a gesture with his hand. He meant he didn’t want to say, but Guy interpreted it as Alan not knowing.

‘Well, in any case. Don’t you think you should tell Mother and Father? Tell them he’s alive?’

Alan licked his lips. ‘It would be hard to do that without …’

‘Without telling them about why he ran? About his quarrel with me? You can tell them what you like. I can’t see it matters now.’

Alan was entirely focused now. He had never heard his brother talk like this. He wasn’t quite sure if he was comfortable with Guy’s new truthfulness, but it was certainly a change.

‘Why shouldn’t it matter?’ he said. ‘For better or worse, Tom has chosen to leave us. There’s no reason why –’

Again Guy interrupted.

‘Oh, balderdash! Shall I tell you something?’ He nodded forcefully, as though encouraging himself. ‘Do you want to know why I hated Tom? And I did, by the way. I truly did.’

Alan nodded slowly. ‘Yes. Yes, I would like to know.’

‘You can’t guess? No? I don’t suppose you could.’ Guy’s lips worked silently for a moment or two, before finally releasing the words that lay inside. ‘You and Tom … the pair of you … You were always so … I don’t know … you were always so bloody
splendid.
I was seven years older than you. I was the eldest son and heir. I was meant to be someone the two of you could have looked up to. And instead … well, I don’t think I was so rotten, as a matter of fact, but I wasn’t like you. Either of you. Not splendid. I felt that then. I feel it now. I wish you weren’t so bloody perfect. That’s why it was hard taking money from you. You’re such a damned saint.’

Alan didn’t know what expression to wear. He was half sad, half smiling. ‘Sorry.’

Guy shrugged. ‘I don’t care now. Not so much, anyway.’ He waved his glass of whisky. ‘I’m halfway drunk, in any case. And with a war coming … Well, you know, that’s the one thing in my life I’ve been really good at. I was a damned good staff officer. One of the best. I’ll be a lot of use in the War Office too. I know that.’

‘I’m sure you will.’

‘Tell Father and Mother. Tell them that Tom’s alive. That you don’t know where he is. They ought to know.’

Slowly, seriously, Alan shook his head. For more than six years he had fought Tom from Persia to Texas. He’d done it in anger. Now, perhaps, the anger had left, but the habit was there, and there wasn’t enough of anything else to challenge it.

‘No,’ he said. ‘They’re old. They’ve made their peace. I’ve made mine. You …’ He paused. Guy didn’t precisely look like a man at peace. ‘Well, you’ve got your whisky.’

‘Yes, I’ve got my whisky.’

Alan stood up to go.

‘Tell them,’ said Guy. ‘I shan’t say it again.’

Alan shook his head. ‘I won’t. But thank you.’

It was 12 June 1939.

It’s summer in Texas. The evening is pleasantly warm, not hot. The year is 1939.

Over in Europe, tensions are mounting. German newspapers are full of stories about Polish attacks on German farmhouses. The stories are lies, of course, and dangerous lies at that: lies that may yet lead to war. But out here in Texas on a lovely July night, Europe seems a million miles away.

In an effort to catch the evening breeze, Rebecca had had the table placed outdoors on the veranda, where the last of the sun was dying away across the level lawns and towering cottonwoods. A couple of round-backed armadillos were tussling over something in the grass. Bard was in the middle of a story.

‘They were bringing pipes up, so one of the roughnecks had run up eighty foot to rack ’em as they came. But he musta lost a hold of the ladder or something, because the next thing I hear is a yell. Guy comes tumbling down from eighty feet up, hits a beam in the derrick, spins over and lands on the pump shed, new tin roof, nice and springy. He looks at me. I look at him. He says, “Gotta cigarette?” I only had my chew-tobacco, so I says, “No.” He looks at me real sad, and says, “Well, don’t just stand there, go get a smoke for this dumb, broken-assed son-of-a-bitch.” Pardon me, Rebecca. Damn true, though, I swear it.’

Tom laughed because he believed it. Rebecca laughed because she didn’t. Bard laughed out of embarrassment at using coarse language in front of his boss’s sophisticated European wife – and despite the fact that Bard knew damn well how she’d made a living back in the days they were all working the oilfields of Wyoming.

‘Lyman,’ she said, breaking into the flow of oil talk, ‘can you answer me something?’

‘Why sure,’ he said, wiping his mouth.

‘How is it that my husband has got one of the best oil companies in the southern United States, and yet he hasn’t made one bent nickel out of the thing for the last six years?’

‘Aw, come on now, you need to ask your husband that.’

‘I do, but he tells me nothing.’