The Sons of Adam (74 page)

Tom looked across at her, but it was Alan who spoke.

‘Heavy fighting … Lots of shooting, shells … Bloody awful.’ Everything now made sense. He should have known it. ‘Of course, he shot him. Only thing to do.’

‘Please? I don’t understand.’

It was Lottie again. Although she knew that Alan loved her utterly, she also saw that the bond between him and Tom was something unique, something extraordinary. She tried to catch up with their telepathic exchange.

‘It was a day of heavy combat,’ said Tom. ‘The field telephones were shot to shreds and the battalion’s runners had been mostly killed or wounded. Guy had been sent up to find out what was going on and to pass the information back to brigade staff … I don’t believe he’d ever been in the front line before. Not on a day when there was real fighting.’

There was a tiny gesture of assent from Alan and Tom continued.

‘He was terrified. He was a good staff officer, but as for physical courage … well, he never had any. Never. None at all. He was tearing down the line like a frightened rabbit. A British major in full flight from the enemy. I’d just come up the trench in the other direction. Just round the corner, there was a group of top brass including Colonel Jimmy, the brigadier, a few others. Colonel Jimmy was a soldier of the old school. He shot men for desertion as a matter of course. Guy was about to run right into him. Anyone could have seen Guy was running. He was out of his mind, virtually pissing himself … I yelled at Guy, trying to make him understand the situation. I pushed him. I probably hit him. I know I waved my gun in his face. It made no difference.’

‘So you shot him?’ said Lottie, in awe of the man on the other side of the car.

‘There was nothing else to do. He couldn’t very well be accused of desertion if he had a bullet hole in him. So I shot him. Maximum appearance for minimum effect. That was my intention anyway. I don’t know how well I succeeded. That was that. I ran back up the line. I left Guy to make his own way back.’

‘You
shot
him!’

Lottie’s awe increased with every ripple of implication. Tom had coolly put himself into a situation where a court martial would have sentenced him to death by shooting squad, and all to protect a man he detested. Lottie didn’t know which to admire more: his decisiveness, his courage or his selflessness. It was the remarkable action of a remarkable man.

‘Bloody fool,’ whispered Alan. ‘I’m a bloody fool.’

And he too saw it. Saw that he should never once have doubted his brother. Of course, Tom was impulsive, quarrelsome, reckless and a thousand other things. But plunge him into a moment of crisis, and his great-hearted side was always bigger than his petty one. Alan’s failure to see that had condemned him to a dozen years of struggle and absence. He should have trusted himself. He should have trusted Tom. He sighed deeply.

‘Make that a pair of fools,’ said Tom. ‘A pair of bloody fools.’

The wind gathered in the trees. There was a long silence. Down in the village, there were shouts and movements of lights.

‘Why won’t they come?’ said Tom to himself.

He looked up to see Lottie looking down towards the lights as well. ‘If we could only get him out …’ she said.

Tom nodded. Perhaps the rescue party had the cutting equipment, but was waiting for an ambulance. If so, they were making a desperate error. Everything depended on stopping the bleeding. He looked across at Lottie, who was thinking the same thing: one of them should go down to the village to check what was going on.

‘We ought to –’

‘It’d be a good idea –’

They both spoke together, then stopped. Tom was about to speak again, but Lottie raised her hand.

‘You stay,’ she said. ‘I’ll go.’

Tom desperately wanted to stay, but he hesitated. This was Alan’s wife, after all. ‘No. You stay. I’ll –’

‘Stop it!’ Lottie spoke so sharply that Tom actually jumped. ‘Sorry,’ she added, ‘but I won’t have it. I’ve had Alan to myself for twenty-two years. It’s your turn now. I think you have some catching up to do.’

Tom swallowed and held her gaze.

‘Thank you.’

She took the flashlight that Tom handed her and shot off into the night. The two brothers, reunited, were quiet for a long while.

Then, after a long pause, Alan spoke again. ‘Guy.’

‘Guy?’ Tom queried, but Alan only nodded. Tom frowned for a moment, then the old spark of understanding jumped between them, as it had so often done before. ‘Guy,’ said Tom. ‘He’s OK, is he? Not dead, surely?’

‘Dead, yes. Died hero.’

‘Guy died the hero, did he?’ Tom couldn’t help but smile. It was ironic in a way that of the three of them it should have been Guy who ended up being killed in action. He tried to find the place in his heart where the flame of his anger with Guy had been kept burning all these years, but it was gone. Tom felt he had no anger left; not towards Alan, not towards Guy, not towards Sir Adam, not towards anyone. ‘Well, I’m pleased he found his courage in the end.’

‘He wanted to mend things. Wanted me to tell Father you were alive.’

‘Guy? Guy wanted you to?’

Alan nodded. ‘I didn’t, though. Silly sod. Too late now.’

‘Too late? Uncle … is he?’

‘He died. Very peaceful. Happy.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

Alan tried to say something further, but his strength was ebbing away. Tom bent his head, closer and closer, until he heard.

‘Whitcombe,’ said Alan. ‘Whitcombe. Look after it.’

And then Tom did hear. Or rather, he understood. With Sir Adam dead and Guy dead and Alan possibly dying, then Alan was asking him to take care of Whitcombe House, at least until the next generation, Alan’s children, were old enough to take charge themselves. Nearly fifty-one years after Tom had struggled into the world, the motherless son of an English under-gardener, he was being entrusted with the care of one of the great country houses of Hampshire. He was suddenly and intensely moved. He shook his head.

‘Lazy sod, you bloody well look after it.’

There was another pause. Tom spat silently. A light breeze fluttered in the trees. Tom put his hand to the bottom of the car. Blood was still dripping. Alan was still fading.

‘Brother?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m afraid we haven’t got that tourniquet tight enough. You’re still bleeding.’

There was a moment’s silence. The two men looked at each other.

‘I can, if you can,’ said Alan.

‘It’s worth a try.’

Alan nodded. ‘Just pull. Don’t stop whatever. I trust you.’

‘OK, buddy, hold tight.’

He put his arms under Alan’s shoulders and began to heave. Alan’s leg was crushed and trapped by the Bentley’s massive engine. Tom pulled hard. Even in the moonlight, he could see his brother’s face white with pain.

‘Pull. Just pull,’ said Alan in a croak.

For ten seconds, Tom pulled, harder and harder. Alan made no sound. The agony must have been indescribable. Tom stopped to adjust his grip, when something changed. Something inside the car had twisted, something had come free. Alan turned his head.

‘We’ve done it,’ he said. ‘I think we’ve done it.’

Tom pulled again and with sudden, astonishing ease, he lifted Alan through the shattered window and out onto the grass.

They stared at each other, brilliant with joy.

Tom tore his shirt into strips and fastened a tourniquet so tight that the bleeding stopped. Alan’s wound was no longer lethal. Already, it seemed, Alan was stronger, better.

They lay next to each other under the stars, just as they had done as babies, just as they had done as boys, just as they had done as young men and soldiers. And they laughed. For no reason, they laughed. Throwing their heads back into the tangle of buttercups and dandelions on the bank behind them, they laughed and laughed and laughed.

‘Goddamn Bentley,’ said Tom. ‘Your fault for buying English.’

‘Not the Bentley. The tree. Damned stupid place to put a tree. Careless.’

‘You may as well rest. We’ve got all the time in the world now.’

Alan lay back on the grass. ‘Yes. Leg hurts like hell, by the way.’ He grinned once more, and closed his eyes. Tom laid his hand tenderly on his brother’s forehead.

The great chains of the past had lost their hold now. All the years of war, of anger, of mourning, of searching, of fighting – all of it was meaningless now. Down below, from the village, there was a surge of motors. Cars and people began to swarm up the hill.

‘Brother?’ said Tom.

‘Yes?’

‘We’re fools, we two. A pair of bloody fools.’

Alan nodded. ‘Yes. But we struck oil, didn’t we? We’re fools who struck oil.’

And as they lay on the grass, listening to the wind and the sound of the cars racing up the hill towards them, down on the south coast an invasion fleet was setting sail.

The ships contained the troops that would liberate first France, then Germany from Hitler’s grasp. Everything good in the world depended on their success.

And at a distance behind the main fleet, waiting until the beaches were cleared of mines, an ugly-looking coaster would steam south to Normandy. The coaster was an unremarkable little vessel, but her hold had been adapted for a special sort of cargo: more than a hundred thousand yards of coiled black three-inch pipe. From the back of the ship, the pipe ran out silently into the water and disappeared. This was
PLUTO
, the Pipe-Line Under The Ocean, the world’s first ever undersea pipeline and nothing short of a technological master-stroke. In a few hours’ time a pumping station would begin to beat, the pipe would begin to stiffen, and on a sandy beach in Northern France, a couple of soldiers would manage to soak themselves as the first liquid came tumbling out.

This was the oil that would fuel the invasion.

This was the oil that would win the war.

When history and fiction collide, it’s usually history which comes off worse. This book would be the same, except that its subject is oil and, where oil is concerned, fiction may alter history, but is hardly likely to better it.

Time and again, the most improbable facts contained in this book are literally true.

Aside from some minor jiggling of dates, I’ve taken care to be true to history. My description of the oil boom on Signal Hill is drawn from eyewitness accounts. My description of the oil strike in East Texas is so carefully based on fact that it could have been cribbed from the drilling log of Ed Laster, the driller who actually brought the well home.

In Signal Hill, the flow of oil really was as sudden and prolific as described. Barbershops did sprout oil wells. The dead buried in churchyards really did become goldmines for the living. In East Texas, things were, if possible, even crazier. Within months of the first oil strike, local towns had increased in size ten or even fifty times over. Derricks were built so close together that their legs interlaced. The flood of oil was so strong – and the collapse of order so total – that martial law had to be declared and enforced at gunpoint.

In Persia, the account of Anglo-Persian’s beginnings is likewise close to the truth, except that the concession was never divided between two companies. Alan’s experience in the Zagros would have been all too familiar to the pioneers of Persian oil, the only exception being that Alan had a quick and easy time of it by comparison.

Nor is it just the events and settings of the book that are drawn from fact. A number of the minor characters are genuine historical characters (Knox D’Arcy, Sir Charles Greenaway and Cordell Hull, to name a few). Much of the incidental detail is taken straight from actual events. The early Persian pioneers really did use watermelons to cool their trucks. There really was a rigger who dropped eighty foot from a derrick then bummed a cigarette. Even Tom’s scam for making money in Wyoming is based on truth.

But most important of all, there are two major characters in the book loosely based on real individuals. The first of those is Titch Harrelson, who draws inspiration from Columbus Joiner. Like Harrelson, Joiner was a dreamer and a fraudster, an oilman and a conman. Having made the most important strike in American history, he found himself threatened with the courtroom. Like Harrelson, Joiner had vastly oversold his leases – some of them eleven times over. This hadn’t mattered when the leases were worthless, but mattered a lot as soon as oil was struck. Joiner was lucky to escape jail. He ended his life, wild-catting to the last, never striking oil again, virtually penniless.