Kane & Abel (1979) (13 page)

He wrote to his mother once a week, reporting his progress, always addressing his letters to Mrs Richard Kane, refusing to acknowledge that Henry Osborne even existed. Anne wasn’t sure whether she should talk to him about it, and she was careful to hide the envelopes from Henry. She continued to hope that in time William would come around to liking her husband, but as the months passed it became clear that such a hope was unrealistic. William hated Henry Osborne, and nursed his hatred passionately, although he wasn’t sure what he could actually do about it. He was grateful that Osborne never accompanied her when his mother visited him at school; he could not have tolerated having the other boys see his mother with that man. It was bad enough that he had to live with him in Boston.

In one letter William asked if he could spend the summer holidays with his friend Matthew Lester, first at a summer camp in Vermont, then with the Lester family in New York. The request came as a painful blow to Anne, but she took the easy way out and gave her permission. Henry seemed quite happy to go along with her decision.

For the first time since his mother’s marriage, William was looking forward to the holidays.

The Lesters’ Packard chauffeured William and Matthew noiselessly to the summer camp in Vermont. On the journey, Matthew casually asked William what he intended to do when the time came for him to leave St Paul’s.

‘When I leave, I will be the top student of our year, class president, and will have won the Hamilton Memorial Mathematics Scholarship to Harvard,’ replied William without hesitation.

‘Why is all that so important?’ Matthew asked innocently.

‘My father achieved all three.’

‘When you’ve finished battling with your father, I’ll introduce you to mine.’

William smiled.

The two boys had a lively and enjoyable six weeks in Vermont, playing every game, from chess to football. When camp finally broke up, they packed and boarded a train for New York to spend the last month of the holiday with the Lester family.

They were greeted at the door by a butler, who addressed Matthew as ‘Sir’, and by a twelve-year-old girl covered in freckles who called him ‘Fatty’. It made William laugh, because his friend was so slim, while it was she who was overweight. The girl smiled, revealing teeth almost totally hidden behind braces.

You’d never believe Susan was my sister, would you?’ said Matthew disdainfully.

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ said William, smiling at Susan. ‘She’s so much better looking than you.’

Susan adored William from that moment on.

William adored Matthew’s father the moment they met; he reminded him in so many ways of his own father, and he begged Mr Lester to let him visit the great bank of which he was chairman. Charles Lester thought carefully about the request. No child had ever entered the orderly precincts of 17 Broad Street before, not even his own son. He compromised, as bankers often do, and showed the boy around the Wall Street building on a Sunday afternoon.

William was fascinated by the large offices on so many floors, the vaults, the foreign exchange dealing room, the boardroom, but most of all the chairman’s office. The Lester bank’s activities were considerably more wide-ranging than Kane and Cabot’s, and William knew from his own small personal investment account, which provided him with a copy of the annual general report, that Lester’s had a far larger capital base than Kane and Cabot. He remained silent as they were driven back to the Lesters’ home.

‘Well, William, did you enjoy looking around?’ Charles Lester asked eventually.

‘Oh yes, sir,’ replied William. ‘I certainly did.’ He paused for a moment before adding, ‘But I feel I should warn you, sir, that it’s my intention to be chairman of your bank one day.’

Charles Lester smiled. He told his dinner guests that night about young William Kane’s visit to Lester and Company, and the fact that he was after his job. His guests laughed. But William had not meant the remark as a joke.

Anne was shocked when Henry asked her for another loan.

‘It’s as safe as houses,’ he assured her. ‘Ask Alan Lloyd. As chairman of the bank, he can only have your best interests at heart.’

‘But two hundred and fifty thousand?’ Anne queried.

‘A once in a lifetime opportunity, my darling. Look upon it as an investment that will double within a couple of years.’

After another, prolonged row, with several mentions of Richard and William thrown in, Anne gave in once again, and life returned to normal. When she next checked her investment portfolio with the bank, she found her capital was now only $150,000. However, Henry seemed to be seeing all the right people, and kept repeating that he was about to sign an ‘impossible to lose’ deal. She considered discussing the situation with Alan Lloyd at Kane and Cabot, but decided against it; after all, it would have meant questioning her husband’s judgement. And surely Henry would never have made the suggestion in the first place if he hadn’t been sure the loan would meet with Alan’s approval.

Anne had started seeing Dr MacKenzie again to find out if there was any possibility of her having another baby, but he still advised against it. After the high blood pressure that had caused her earlier miscarriage, he did not consider thirty-six a sensible age for Anne to start thinking about being a mother again. Anne raised the idea with the grandmothers, but they agreed wholeheartedly with the views of the good doctor. Neither of them cared for Henry much, and they cared even less for the thought of an Osborne offspring making claims on the Kane family estate after they departed this world. Anne resigned herself to being the mother of only one child, but Henry became very vocal about what he described as her betrayal, telling her that if Richard were still alive, she would have tried again. How different the two men were, she thought, and she was unable to explain why she loved them both. She tried to soothe Henry, praying that his business projects would work out and keep him fully occupied, while at the same time replenishing her dwindling coffers. He had certainly taken to working very late at the office.

N
INE DAYS
later, in the half-light of an early Arctic winter night, Wladek and his band reached Camp 201. Wladek would never have believed he could be glad to see such a place: row upon row of wooden huts in the midst of a stark, barren wilderness. The huts, like the prisoners, were numbered. Wladek’s hut was number 33. There was a small black stove in the middle of the room, and along the walls were tiered wooden bunks on which rested hard straw mattresses with one thin blanket each. Few of the prisoners managed to sleep that first night, as they had become accustomed to sleeping in the snow. The groans and cries that came from Hut 33 were often louder than the howls of the wolves outside.

Long before the sun rose the next morning, they were roused by the sound of a hammer against an iron triangle. There was thick frost on the insides of the windows, and Wladek thought he must surely die of the cold. Breakfast in a freezing communal hall lasted for ten minutes, and consisted of a bowl of lukewarm gruel with pieces of rotten fish and the suggestion of a cabbage leaf floating in it. The newcomers spat the fish bones out onto the table, while the more seasoned prisoners devoured the bones and even ate the fishes’ eyes.

After breakfast, the new prisoners’ heads were once again roughly shaved, and then they were allocated tasks. Wladek became a wood chopper. He was taken several miles through the featureless steppes to a forest where he was ordered to cut down ten trees each day. The guard would leave him and his little group of six alone with their food ration, tasteless yellow magara porridge and bread. They had no fear that the prisoners would attempt to escape, as it was more than a thousand miles to the nearest town - even if they knew in which direction to head.

At the end of the day the guard would return and count the number of trees they had felled: if they failed to reach the required number, their food ration would be reduced the following day. But by the time the guard arrived at seven in the evening it was already dark, and he could not always be sure how many new trees they had cut down. Wladek taught the others in his team to spend the last part of the afternoon clearing the snow off two or three trunks they had cut down on the previous day and line them up with those they had chopped that day. The plan always worked, and Wladek’s group never lost a day’s food. Sometimes they managed to return to the camp with a small piece of wood, tied to the inside of a leg, to put in the stove at night. Caution was required, as there was always a risk they would be searched as they entered the camp, often having to remove one or both boots while they stood in the frozen snow. If they were caught with anything on their person, the punishment was three days without food.

As the weeks went by, Wladek’s leg became stiff and painful. He longed for the days when the temperature dropped to 40 below zero, and outside work was called off, even though the lost day would have to be made up on the following Sunday, when they were normally allowed to lie on their bunks all day.

One evening when Wladek had been hauling logs across the waste, his leg began to throb unmercifully. When he looked at the scar he found that it had become red and inflamed. He showed it to a guard, who ordered him to report to the camp doctor before first light in the morning. Wladek sat up all night with his leg almost touching the stove, but the heat was so feeble it didn’t ease the pain.

The next morning Wladek rose an hour earlier than usual. If he didn’t see the doctor before work was due to start, he would have to wait until the next day. Wladek couldn’t face another day of such excruciating pain. He reported to the doctor, giving his name and number. The doctor turned out to be a sympathetic old man, bald-headed, with a pronounced stoop - Wladek thought he looked even older than the Baron had in his final days. He inspected Wladek’s leg without speaking.

‘Will the wound heal, Doctor?’ asked Wladek.

‘You speak Russian?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘No need to call me sir. My name is Dubien. I’m a prisoner just like you.’ Wladek looked surprised. ‘Although you will always limp, young man,’ he continued, ‘your leg will be good again. But good for what? A life of chopping wood in this God forsaken place?’

‘No, Doctor. I intend to escape and get back to Poland,’ said Wladek.

The doctor looked sharply at him. ‘Keep your voice down, stupid boy … You must know by now that escape is impossible. I have been here for fifteen years, and not a day has gone by when I haven’t dreamed of escaping. There is no way; no one has ever escaped and survived, and even to talk of it means ten days in the punishment cell, where they feed you every third day, and there’s no stove. If you come out of that place alive, you wish you were dead.’

‘I will escape. I will, I will,’ said Wladek, staring at the old man.

The doctor looked into Wladek’s eyes. ‘My friend, never mention the word again, or they may kill you. Go back to work, keep your leg well covered, and report to me again tomorrow morning.’

Wladek returned to the forest, but the pain was so intense he could do little work. The next morning, the doctor examined his leg more carefully.

‘Worse, if anything,’ he said. ‘How old are you, boy?’

‘What year is it, Dr Dubien?’ asked Wladek.

‘1919.’

‘Then I’m thirteen. How old are you, Doctor?’

The man seemed surprised by the question. ‘Thirty-eight,’ he said quietly.

‘God help me,’ said Wladek.