The Sons of Adam (55 page)

One night, Harrelson and Tom were eating cheese and crackers in a hotel room in Henderson. All evening Harrelson had been plucking at his lip and looking old and tired.

‘You going to be OK?’ asked Tom.

‘Yeah, I guess.’

‘What does your guy Manninger say?’ Manninger was Harrelson’s lawyer.

‘Ed? Hell, Ed says … Ed says they’s gonna eat me alive.’

‘Are you talking about everything?’

‘Could be. Could even be I lose everything.’

Tom shook his head. ‘It was you who found the oil, Titch. No one’ll forget who found the oil.’

‘No, sir! That’s right!’

For a moment Harrelson straightened and looked boldly ahead of him, but the moment was short. He plucked his lips and crumbled crackers on his plate. In some ways he’d been happier chasing oil than he’d ever been since finding it.

‘I could take you out, Titch.’

‘Huh?’

‘Buy you out of everything. Give you cash, take over your debts, let you just walk away.’

‘You would?’ Harrelson lit up at the idea.

‘We’d have to agree a price.’

‘Yeah, sure, we’d have to agree something.’

Harrelson’s desperation to leave his legal tangles behind him was hopelessly evident.

‘You want to suggest a number?’ said Tom.

‘Huh? Sure … I mean, I’d want something to live on. Maybe do a little more wildcatting. Maybe … maybe …’ He had no idea what amount to name. He just wanted to return to his old life as soon as possible.

‘Would you settle for a million bucks?’

‘A million? Sweet Jesus, pal! A million? You don’t have –’

‘You’d have to wait for most of it. Some of it I could get within a few days.’

And so they shook on it. Tom bought everything, all the leases, all the debts, for one million American dollars.

Which left only Rebecca.

Tom drew up outside Rebecca’s little cottage in a long black limousine. The noise alerted her and she came to the door, with a half-smile on her face and a touch of worry in her eyes.

‘Hey, girl,’ he said.

‘Hey there.’

‘Mitchell’s OK?’

‘Mitch is –’

Mitch answered for her. He came tearing round the house from the garden, followed by a disgracefully muddy little white dog. Except for a ragged pair of shorts and a coating of mud, Mitch was as naked as a peeled banana. He saw Tom, gave a shriek of delight and leaped into his father’s open arms, as Pipsqueak hollered her approval to Tom’s shin-bones. Father and son kissed and cuddled for a while, until Mitch was ready to wriggle off. Tom took something from his pocket and gave it to Mitch. ‘Give this to your mom, would you?’

It was a cheque, payable to Rebecca, for an amount exactly equal to the money that had been in their account before Tom had emptied it.

‘I said I’d repay you.’

‘Thanks.’

She and Tom were still standing five yards apart from each other and hadn’t yet touched. Tom couldn’t tell from Rebecca’s face how she felt about him. He’d sent her a telegram as soon as he was sure of his strike, but he’d had no answer. Even in the midst of his glorious success, he was desperately uncertain over the one thing that mattered most to him.

‘And I got you something else.’

He tossed her over a small jeweller’s box, which she caught neatly. She opened it. The box contained a fine diamond ring, with a single solitaire, large and exquisitely cut. She put the ring on and it was a perfect fit, glittering and glinting in the sunlight. Her smile broadened.

‘I never had the money to buy you something nice before. I do now.’

‘It’s beautiful.’

‘Really? You like it? It’s not too … ?’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. You like it?’ For the first time since leaving Rebecca in such appalling style, Tom began to believe he might not have screwed up his life yet again.

Rebecca teased him with her eyes. She was enjoying his uncertainty, though only briefly. She flashed the ring at him. ‘Have you gotten too big an oilman to give me a kiss?’

‘Oh, Becca! Not if you’re happy to be an oilman’s wife.’

They came together and kissed. Mitch leaped up against them, hollering to be let inside. Tom put an arm down and hoisted him up, so it became a family of three kissing and cuddling. Pipsqueak leaped and hollered too, so then it became a family of four.

As Tom and Rebecca went to bed that night, with Mitch snoring away in a cot at their feet, Rebecca stroked her husband’s cheek with her hand.

‘Tomek?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m proud of you,’ she whispered. ‘It was a strong thing you did.’

He kissed her hand. Yes, he had become proud of himself. Those awful failures of the past, especially Signal Hill and the wasted years that followed, were washed out by this one stunning success. The future would hold many challenges, but he was man enough to meet them. He was proud and deserved to be.

For what felt like the first time in his life, he was Alan’s equal. Alan’s
better.

Bertie Johnson had become more than half blind. He had a kerosene lamp but didn’t use it except with visitors. Feeling for matches with one hand, he tried to adjust the wick with the other.

‘No, leave that,’ said Alan. ‘I’ll do it.’

He screwed the wick clear of the guard, trimmed the sooty end, and set a match to it. The wick caught and burned. The light was hardly dazzling, but at least Alan could see. Bertie’s downstairs room was clean and well stocked with wood. Bread and dripping lay on the table and there was a scent of apples.

‘Merry Christmas, Bertie,’ said Alan, once they were settled.

‘Oh, and a merry Christmas to you, sir. It’ll be a wet one, I believe.’

‘You have everything you need?’

‘Yes, sir, thankee.’

‘You’ll have something hot tomorrow?’

‘Maggie Davis promised me a seat at her table. Pork, she has, I think. A nice bit of pork.’

‘That’s fine. With a bit of apple sauce, perhaps?’

Bertie Johnson chuckled deeply. He liked the thought of it. ‘I’m hoping so.’

‘Good … Look, Bertie, I came over to ask you a question. About something that happened a long time back, or that maybe didn’t happen at all.’

Bertie sat straighter at his little table. His hands had curved rheumatically with age and they were now almost fixed into position around a pair of invisible reins, just as he must have sat, hour after hour, when he was the village carrier riding his wagon into Winchester and back. There was something evasive in his face.

‘Yes?’

‘No one’s to blame, Bertie. Whatever happened, there’s no blame.’

‘No, sir.’

‘You remember Tom Creeley, of course.’

‘Of course. Jack’s lad. A fine boy.’

‘Well, you’ll remember that he went missing in the war and was presumed dead. I thought so. My mother and father thought so. Jack thought so too.’

Bertie nodded. His blind eyes didn’t seek contact with Alan’s face, but perhaps there was also a little stiffening of embarrassment? It was hard to tell. Alan continued.

‘Now, for some reason, I never quite accepted that. I probably should have done, but I didn’t. Anyhow, I began to look into things. I went to the War Office and the Red Cross. But I also asked a friend of mine who lives in Germany to help me. He looked into the German war records and it turns out that Tom did survive, after all. He was imprisoned in a place called Hetterscheidt and lived there until the end of the war. That’s all I know so far.’

The old man nodded. His hands moved to the bread and the bowl of dripping. He crumbled the bread, but he was only fiddling. His eyes were filmy and white.

‘Now, let me tell you what I think must have happened next. Tom had quarrelled with me shortly before he went missing and I know he’d had an argument with Guy. For a long time, I didn’t think all that much of it. Tom was quick-tempered, and arguments came and went without much fuss. But now I think a little differently. I think, for whatever reason, Tom must have been angrier than I understood. Perhaps he didn’t want to see me. Perhaps he didn’t even want to see my mother and father. But, you know, Bertie, the way I look at it, he’d have done anything to see his old man. I think he’d have come back here shortly after the end of the war, December ‘eighteen or January ‘nineteen. I think he’d have knocked on this very door and I think he’d have come in here and found you.’

Bertie was rigid as a gatepost. His opaque eyes stared straight ahead of him. His hands were still.

‘I only want to heal old wounds,’ said Alan gently. There’s nothing done which can’t be undone. Even now.’

‘There are promises. Once made, they’re not for breaking.’

‘Even if they hurt the man who asked them?’

‘A promise is a promise, sir.’

‘And a man’s life is a man’s life, Bertie.’

There was a moment’s silence. Johnson breathed out heavily and Alan knew he’d won.

‘He came looking for his pa, all right.’

‘And you told him the news?’

Johnson nodded slowly. ‘Dead from the flu, like so many.’

‘And?’

Johnson stared out into silence again, wrestling with his old man’s conscience. ‘He was angry. He went away again.’

‘That same night?’

‘Yes.’

‘Making you promise to say nothing?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you have any idea where he went to?’

‘No. He didn’t say.’

There was a short pause. A fire smouldered in the old man’s hearth, and Alan threw some logs on it, poking it hard to get the flame to rekindle. When he stopped, the cottage filled with silence like a well.

For a moment or two, Alan felt the familiar disappointment. No sooner had he got close to Tom, than Tom seemed to disappear in a blur. Gone, but with no clue as to where …

But the feeling lasted only a moment. Where on earth would Tom go? There was only one possible answer. America! As soon as he thought it, the idea rang with truth. It made so much sense from every angle. Tom, somehow, had always been American. Too classless for Britain, too energetic, too rebellious.

And oil. America was still by far the world’s largest producer of the precious liquid. No place on earth offered so much to the independent oilman. If Tom had wanted to go into oil, where could he succeed like America?

So if Tom was in America, Alan would look for him there. There were ways of tracing people. Part of his brain grappled with questions of cost and practicality and timing. But he pushed such thoughts away. None of that mattered. Not now. Not any more. The world had changed; changed utterly.

Tom was alive and the world was good.

‘Thank you, Bertie,’ he said, ‘and a very merry Christmas.’

Three months later, March 1931, Tom met up with Titch Harrelson in Dallas. Harrelson was already scouting around for investment in a new wildcat venture up near El Dorado over the state line in Arkansas. Much of his money was already gone, but the old wildcatter seemed ten years younger, drinking root beer and trying to get Tom to loan him money.

‘Oil’s getting too easy to find,’ he complained. ‘Prices’ll drop.’

‘Maybe,’ said Tom.

‘Maybe? Nuts! Look at our find. Look at what’s happening in El Dorado – about to happen, I mean. Look at – heck, what’s the name of that limey company? – made a big strike in the Mid-East?’

‘Iraq?’

‘How the hell would I know? The one next to Persia. Company name was Alonzo. Some dumb-ass name like that.’

‘Alanto Oil made a big strike in Iraq?’

‘Right. It’s getting too easy to find. We ain’t gonna see one dollar a barrel no more. Not in Texas. Not no place. Be lucky to get fifty cents, once El Dorado comes on stream.’

The rest of the conversation happened behind glass.

Tom felt numb at the news. Numb, then angry. It wasn’t enough for Tom to make the biggest oil strike since Signal Hill – and maybe the biggest oil strike in American history, period – but Alan had to go and do something similar in Iraq. The old resentments began to burn. Alan had started with birth, money, and a concession to drill in one of the world’s richest oil countries. He’d found oil with his second well. His
second
! Who’d ever heard of a strike as sweet and easy as that? And now, when he wanted to expand production, what did he do? He turned up at another country, half-in, half-out of the British Empire and wangled himself a concession to drill there too. Where was the competition? Where the struggle?