The Sons of Adam (52 page)

‘Will it be difficult?’

‘Perhaps, no, I don’t know. I’ll have to look into it. I’ll say this for the Germans, they do love a bureaucracy.’

‘It’s just you seemed a little anxious.’

‘Yes …’

They had reached their restaurant and they ordered before returning to the conversation. Here on the Ku’damm, the country’s difficulties were more evident than they had been in the park. There were groups of unemployed men loafing on street corners. Election posters hung on walls and trees, many of them already ripped up or defaced. There was something brittle in the atmosphere, something hostile. Alan felt almost as though Tom was still there, still in Germany, caught up in the dangerous currents that eddied around.

Hartwell spoke of the elections. The National Socialists were set to make heavy gains, as were the Communists.

‘The reds are something of a known quantity, at least, but it’s these movements of the right which are causing us to tear our hair out in the embassy.’

‘They’re dangerous?’

Hartwell sighed. ‘They don’t hold power, not at the moment, and their Herr Hitler is a comical little fellow, really, like a bad cabaret turn … But it’s a nasty situation. You don’t meet a single German out here – not one – who thinks that Germany’s eastern frontier was fairly determined at Versailles. You don’t meet a single German who’s happy about paying reparations, when the country has nearly five million men unemployed. You don’t meet a single German who thinks it’s right that a great nation at the heart of Europe should be forbidden to arm itself. I don’t know that
I
think it’s fair, as a matter of fact, not that I’m allowed to say so … That’s why I don’t know how far I’ll get finding out about Tom Creeley in prison camp. There’s a lot of hatred in this country – some of it focused, some of it just swirling in the air. Questions about British prisoners of war may fall on sympathetic ears or they may not … There, look there.’

Alan looked. Two young men in brown shirts with red and black armbands were walking along the pavement just outside the café window. They were chatting and smoking. A little further ahead there was a middle-aged lady struggling with some awkwardly packaged shopping. She was dark-haired, dark-skinned, probably Jewish. Hartwell’s face was grave and his attention fixed rigidly on the two young men.

He was right to worry.

By the time the two men were level with the woman, she had more or less got her shopping under control. One of the young men deliberately jogged the lady’s arm, spilling her packages. The other man kicked the packages into the gutter with his toe. Alan leaped up with a flash of anger, but Hartwell’s hand restrained him from doing anything further. The two young men jostled the woman off the road and went on their way. Alan thought, but wasn’t sure, that one of the men spat on her as he left.

The cowpokes hauled on the tackle like they planned to do it all day every day for the rest of their lives. Their rhythm hypnotised Tom. Just as they did, he raised pipes without urgency, stacking them in ninety-foot sections inside the derrick, counting them off as though life was just a question of pipes.

Harrelson shambled about on the ground below, lonely and unhappy. He’d started the morning, saying, ‘Any smells up there, boys? You getting any smells? I’m pretty sure I got something down here just now.’

But there had been no smells, no excitement, no suck of oil, just the steady rising of pipes. Harrelson had a suitcase in the back of his Ford. Tom guessed that was the last of his relationship with Mrs Holling, and now it was back to the wife and kids abandoned back in Dallas. Around lunchtime, Harrelson produced a parcel wrapped in a white linen cloth.

‘You boys hungry? Mrs Holling made me something to eat.’ He hefted the parcel in his hand. It was heavy. ‘I reckon I’m gonna need a little help here.’

Tom and the cowpokes clattered down from the rig. Harrelson unwrapped the parcel. It was a huge ham and chicken pie, eighteen inches in diameter and five or six thick. ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Harrelson mildly. He cut into it. The pie crust was far too thick. Below the evenly browned surface, it was virtually dough. The meat inside was completely raw, and the juices ran pink and bloody from the cut made by the knife. Harrelson finished cutting the slice, but laid it on top of the crust, like something from a funeral.

‘I don’t reckon that pie’ll be too good to eat,’ said one of the cowpokes, observantly. ‘It needs more cooking, I’d say.’

Harrelson took the pie to the edge of the clearing and dropped it. It thumped heavily down. A trail of ants diverted course and began to run up the cut side of the pie and over its surface. Meantime, lunch was lunch and the riggers unwrapped their lunches, sharing with Harrelson. They ate in silence.

Tom watched in silent astonishment.

The rig stood idle.

At midday, with only a little more than a thousand foot of pipe to lift before the core came up, the rig stood idle. Tom couldn’t believe it. He’d never seen a rig idle, not at midday, not unless there was a problem somewhere with the apparatus. And they were taking a
core
– and a core close to the level of the hypothetical oil sands. It was unbelievable, just unbelievable.

Nobody spoke.

After lunch, it was back to the pipes. The boiler had lost pressure during the break and it took twenty minutes of stoking to get a head of steam back. Then one by one the pipes rose. Big fat flies buzzed on the air. The warmth made Tom sleepy. He counted the pipes up, to know how close they were getting to the core.

Nine hundred and ninety feet. Eight ten. Six hundred. Three ninety.

Harrelson was sitting down with his back against the side of the Ford. He was pretending to watch the core come up, but he’d fallen asleep. His head had tipped sideways and his hat had caught on the door handle. The noise of the rig drowned out other sounds, but from Harrelson’s juddering chest, Tom guessed that the snoring was pretty bad. At least Mrs Holling could look forward to quiet nights.

Two hundred and ten feet now. Just seven lengths of pipe underground.

Tom could do his thirty times table in his head, upside down, blind drunk, in the dark. It sometimes seemed he’d been rigging all his life. He enjoyed the work. In a year or two, he was pretty sure he’d make it to head driller at Texaco. He knew he was good enough, it was just a question of seniority. He’d get a raise too. He’d buy Rebecca something good, something nice.

Thirty feet.

Tom had got to thirty feet of pipe without excitement. It was just unbelievable. He nudged one of the cowpokes.

‘Go give Titch a kick, would you? It’s his damn core. He ought to see it.’

The cowpoke clambered down the steel ladder. Tom smiled to himself and shook his head. He’d spoken to the stupidest of the cowpokes, the one who’d been so swift to identify the problem with the pie. Harrelson would be lucky not to get a boot in the ribs.

The last pipe rose.

Sure enough, Harrelson got a kick, though not a hard one. He woke up blinking and for a few seconds snatched around on the dirt searching for his hat. He found it on the car door.

The core came up.

The coring-barrel is designed so that flaps close as the tube rises, thus protecting the soil sample from contamination by soil from higher levels. The flaps were jammed and Tom gave them a kick. He was still half looking down at Harrelson, who was adjusting his hat and putting on his dignity like it was a suit.

Tom looked down at the core. It was sand, greyish and coarse, compacted by the weight of rock above it to something that you could crumble with a thumb, but only just. It was sand of the sort that Tom had seen a hundred times, on a hundred rigs, in a hundred places.

Except that this time, the sand was blotched with thick black gobbets of something that looked like caked blood.

The blotches weren’t blood, but oil.

The factory was derelict, high-ceilinged and spacious. Tall windows blinked out on to the glittering Thames. A scrap of an old notice gummed to the wall proclaimed the building’s former use: ‘Jones & Palmer Bearings Co. Ltd’. Alan glanced at the notice – then stared. He tore the peeling old paper from the wall and stuffed it in his pocket. For twenty minutes or so, he mooched around, gazing at the traffic on the river, feeling disconsolate at his wife’s new occupation, but irritated at himself for minding. When eventually Lottie was done with her architect, he walked over to her, brandishing the paper.

‘Hello, darling!’ she said, with a kiss. ‘Sorry to be so long. My architect is a sweet man, but he can be a dreadful ninny. Not that I care. Our hospital is going to be simply wonderful.’

‘Look,’ said Alan, after greeting her. ‘Jones & Palmer Bearings. That’s what this factory used to make.’

‘Bearings? Little steel balls? I can’t say I –’

‘During the war,’ said Alan. ‘They used to fill certain types of shell with little steel balls. The idea was that the balls would cut the enemy barbed wire. They didn’t, of course, but there were plenty of places where the ground was fairly solid with the things.’

‘I’m still not sure I …’

‘Well, it rather closes the circle, doesn’t it? From shell blasts to shell victims. I should think the building’s jolly glad to be turned into a hospital.’

Lottie nodded. ‘I hope so.’ She was dressed in a long brown coat and strong brown walking shoes, suitable for the dilapidated floor. Only her absurd little grey feathered hat dented her business-like appearance. Her face looked suddenly grave. ‘You don’t mind, do you? All this, I mean?’ Her hand swept around the soon-to-be-converted shell.

‘No, my love. I’m pleased to see you so enthused.’

‘Oh!’ Lottie sounded disappointed. ‘So you
do
mind?’

‘I didn’t say that. I said –’

‘You nincompoop, I know what you said. Any old fishwife could have heard what you said. It’s my job to know what you mean.’

‘Well, I do mind, I suppose. But only a bit.’

‘Hmm! I suppose that means quite a lot, really. But I’ll bring you round.’

‘If anybody could, you will.’

‘You said you had news? Was it … ?’

Alan opened his wallet and held out a pink telegram slip. The sender was Aude Hartwell in Berlin. The text of the message read: ‘FOUND HIM EXCLAMATION STOP THOMAS CREELEY HETTERSCHEIDT PRISON CAMP ADMITTANCE SEPT SIXTEEN STOP FULL DETAILS SOONEST BY MAIL STOP’.

It took Lottie a second or two to read and understand the message, then her face lit up in delight. Her smile broadened out, the tip of her nose bent down, the little white scar over her eyebrow tightened as it was pulled back. Alan knew his wife’s face so well. He didn’t want her to be this busy practical-minded woman. He wanted her to remain simply his wife and the mother of his children. He wanted to take her home now, to lie in each other’s arms and kiss, as they had done in Hampshire during the war, as they had done every day since Alan’s proposal of marriage.

Alan shook himself from his trance. Lottie was speaking, asking him questions, eager to know what he was doing next.

‘I’ve spoken with Hartwell by phone,’ said Alan. ‘It appears Tom
was
taken prisoner that day on the Somme. The German prison records indicated that Tom was wounded in the leg, but he obviously recovered reasonably well, since he was well enough to make an escape attempt the following year.’

‘Oh! How like him!’

Lottie half-laughed and Alan did the same. ‘Yes. That was Tom all right. But, you see, the odd thing is this. When the Allies took over the camp, Tom wasn’t there. There was no record of him dying. The camp records continued to have him on their register, but he was gone. Not there. Vanished.’

‘Oh my darling! It’s just like your dreams all over again.’

‘Isn’t it? He just sort of disappears into the gloom.’

‘So what will you do? Golly! I don’t suppose you’ve thought … ?’

And Alan laughed again. He was only able to be so self-possessed with Lottie now because he’d already experienced his own storms of emotion upon reading the telegram and speaking with Hartwell. He’d been amazed – delighted – shocked – disappointed – upset – ecstatic – almost everything, in fact. But no matter how great had been the shock, his brain had been working pretty much perfectly.

‘So what will you do?’ asked Lottie again.

‘What
will
I do? Nothing. Nothing at all.’

‘Nothing? But –’

Alan reached out and and gently squashed Lottie’s nose with his forefinger.

‘Don’t be a clot,’ he said. ‘It’s not what I will do that counts. It’s what I’ve already done.’

Big fat flies buzzed on the air. The cowpoke riggers looked down at the core like they’d looked down at the pie. The silence seemed to go on for ever. Down on the ground, Harrelson was standing like a man frozen.

‘Is that oil?’ asked one of the riggers.

And then Tom did the single cleverest thing of his entire life. It was the sort of thing you’d think of days afterwards but never actually think of doing on the spot. Except that Tom did. Straight away. Without giving away anything in his face or the way he spoke. Without even pausing, he just came out with it.