The Sons of Adam

by Harry Bingham

  But then her expression changed. Alan stopped in his tracks. He must have been mistaken. Lottie’s face wore nothing but the bright, sociable smile she usually wore. He stood in the street, his mouth hanging slightly open.

  ‘Oh Lord, it’s Alan Montague! Alan dar-ling, how are you? Look, everybody, this is my favourite oilman, Alan Montague. Going to be fright-fully rich, digging for oil in the middle of the Persian deserts. Darling, I hope you’ve found absolutely buckets of the stuff.’

  There was nothing, absolutely nothing, in Lottie’s voice to make Alan think that she held any tenderness for him any more. Worse than that, it was as though she’d almost forgotten that they had ever been deeply in love. ‘Oh Lord, it’s Alan Montague!’ What on earth was that by way of greeting? She had called him darling, admittedly, but she called everybody darling. There was nothing at all in her words or her voice to justify all that he had felt for her.

  Alan recoiled, shocked.

  This wasn’t the Lottie he’d written all those letters to from his tent in Persia. His Lottie was the grave, committed, inspiring nurse of the Very Seriously Wounded. His Lottie was the one who’d preferred the long, green Hampshire walks to any amount of dances and parties. There was something else to disturb him as well. There was a man by her side, not touching her exactly, but proprietorial none the less. He looked intelligent, superficial and rich.

  ‘Do join us, darling Alan, won’t you? We’re going on to the Medusa Club for a last drink and dance. The Blaine-Raffertys are going to be there. You remember them, surely? Ned’s become awfully big in mining and I’m sure you’ll have heaps to talk about. Do come!’

  Alan shook his head and began muttering excuses – up early tomorrow, feeling tired, spot of flu. The man at Lottie’s side moved slightly away from her, as though sensing that Alan wasn’t a potential threat.

  Alan apologised again, promised to get in touch, and ran away.

  64

  On 20 January 1920, the United States of America, in accordance with its Constitution and the duly expressed wishes of its people, embarked upon the noblest experiment in the history of the world. Up and down the land, from the snows of Montana to the dusts of Texas, from the blue Pacific to the grey Atlantic, bars closed their doors, liquor sellers ceased their trade, the old devil-in-a-bottle, John Barleycorn, breathed his last.

  In theory.

  The only itsy-bitsy problem with the theory was that up and down the land, from dusty Texas to snowy Montana and from one bluish-grey ocean to the next, there were folk like Tom keen to sell alcohol and other folk equally anxious to buy it.

  Having sold his hooch at two hundred and ninety dollars, a fifty per cent mark-up over the price he’d paid, Tom paused to restock. He jumped freight trains and rode north of the border, where an astonished Canadian economy found that whisky selling had just become the fastest growing, most profitable business in existence. Tom called around and found a wholesaler who understood his new market.

  ‘How d’you want it packed?’

  ‘Huh? You’ll box it, I guess,’ said Tom.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the wholesaler, as if he was talking to an imbecile. ‘I could leave it in the original Haig & Haig boxes, if you like. Show folks your stuff is for real.’

  Tom saw the problem. The alcohol would have to ride straight back through customs, and nowadays there were times when it certainly didn’t pay to advertise.

  ‘I got boot polish,’ said the wholesaler. ‘Or ham. I’m getting in a load of condensed milk tomorrow.’

  He kicked a stack of empty wooden boxes. Each box had neatly stencilled on the side ‘Jo Brearley’s Finest – the Boot Black’s Secret!’. Next to these, there was a stack marked ‘Alberta Hams & Meats, Inc. Our Taste is Our Advertisement’.

  Tom grinned. ‘I fancy the hams,’ he said.

  ‘Hams it is.’

  The choice was almost fatal.

  Thirty-six hours later, a goods train steamed slowly to a halt in a forested valley, where soot and snowflakes petalled the air. Outside a wooden cabin, the Stars and Stripes hung unmoving from a flagpole. Painted across the front of the cabin was a sign: ‘UNITED STATES CUSTOMS’. Beyond the customs post, a small settlement clustered round the railroad stop, like chickens frightened of the night.

  Riding legitimately this time, Tom got out to stretch his legs and watch his boxes clear the border. When the United States Congress had decided to prohibit alcohol, it had been so confident of the law-abiding nature of its citizens that it hadn’t bothered to take any serious action on enforcement. Customs posts had hardly been strengthened. Federal agents were scarcely thought necessary.

  Tom wasn’t worried.

  He stamped up and down the platform to bring warmth into his feet. He thought of Rebecca. The two of them had patched up their quarrel and were friends again.

  She bothered him, though. He didn’t find her attractive – at least he thought he didn’t – and half the time he found her conversation maddening. All the same, no sooner was he gone from her, than he began to think about her again. He couldn’t explain his fascination with her and was annoyed at himself for it.

  He headed out of the station, and bought himself a candy bar and some coffee from the ‘Missionary Milk Bar’. The man serving the drink said, ‘Praise the Lord, sir. Ten cents, please.’

  Tom handed over his dime but didn’t bother to praise the Lord.

  ‘Leaflet?’ said the man, shoving a leaflet over the counter. ‘The One True Path to Salvation. There’s no charge.’

  Tom leaned over the counter. ‘You want to know the one true path to salvation?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Oil,’ said Tom. ‘Oil and alcohol.’

  The man snatched his leaflets back in annoyance. ‘The Lord loveth the sinner who repenteth. The Lord –’

  ‘Good for the Lord. Only the sinner prefereth the hooch.’ Tom tossed back his coffee, took his candy and left.

  Inside the train, the customs men were still busy with their paperwork. So far as Tom had been able to see, they hadn’t once bothered to open any of the crates or boxes on the train.

  A scrawny dog loped up and down, cocking his leg over a pile of wooden crates marked ‘Saskatchewan Furs and Hides, Inc.’ The urine steamed yellow and began to freeze. Tom paced the platform, fast enough to keep warm. The customs men didn’t hurry. The dog snuffled a pile of boxes containing smoked fish from Vancouver. The fish sat right next to Tom’s boxes full of whisky.

  Further up the platform, a customs man looked curiously at the dog. Tom looked at the customs man. The dog didn’t look at anything except its fish. The customs man looked on a while longer, then strolled over to his fur-coated boss and muttered something in a low voice.

  Tom turned away for another fast walk up and down the platform, when his stomach suddenly took a dive.

  The dog!

  The dog was theoretically standing right next to a dozen boxes of prime Canadian ham, but it hadn’t once bothered to sniff them. The dog was a four-legged, flea-ridden lie-detector test, and Tom had already all but failed.

  For a moment, fear left him senseless. If he was caught, his booze would be confiscated, of course, but that hardly mattered. What mattered was this. Tom’s American citizenship depended upon him living in the United States for five years without committing a felony. If Tom’s whisky-smuggling was discovered, he’d be prosecuted and deported home to England. It would be the worst fate in the world and it was now only minutes away.

  The two customs men spoke together, then began to walk over to the dog and the boxes of so-called ham.

  For one second more, Tom was frozen. Then he moved. He hurtled out of the station, back to the Missionary Milk Bar.

  ‘Bless you, bro –’ began the man, before noticing who his customer was. ‘Oh. It’s you.’

  ‘I have seen the light, brother,’ said Tom. ‘Praise the Lord.’

  The man looked stunned. ‘Why, truly? Praise the Lord, indeed, brother. Yea, I say unto yo
u, the Lord hath more joy over one sinner who –’

  ‘Damn right. Any chance of some of those pamphlets of yours?’

  ‘You want one? Really?’

  ‘Praise the Lord!’ said Tom again.

  ‘Praise the Lord!’

  The man shoved the stack of leaflets over the counter. Tom snatched up the whole bundle and dropped a dollar bill in exchange. ‘I go to spread the good news. Truly is there joy in heaven this day.’

  ‘Why, joy indeed, brother. Won’t you –’

  But Tom was gone. Back at the station, the customs men had reached the boxes. The dog had done its job and been tugged aside. A third customs man was walking across the platform with a crowbar and jemmy.

  Tom skidded up to them, breath freezing in the pale air.

  ‘Bless you, brothers,’ he panted. ‘All praise to them that laboureth in the sight of the Lord.’

  The customs men grinned at each other. One of them cracked a joke in an undertone and provoked a burst of muffled laughter. The more senior of the officers said, ‘Thank you, son. We need all the praise we can get on a day like this.’

  ‘May I help you, officers?’ said Tom, in a more normal voice.

  ‘Help us?’ The customs man used his gloved hand to flick through the freight manifest and customs forms. ‘You’re Calloway?’

  ‘Thomas Calloway,’ said Tom, hand over his heart. ‘My earthly business is the importation of premium Canadian meat products. My spiritual business is the salvation of human souls. I am at your service in either capacity.’

  The grins on the faces of the customs men grew wider. The man arriving with the crowbar let it drop to his side, saying, ‘How about the importation of prohibited liquor? You able to help a soul out in that capacity?’

  ‘Truly, is Liquor not a devil that it tempts the working man from his fireside? That it brings a man into dens of vice and gambling? That it breaks a family asunder and strikes down the wife and mother?’

  For the first time, doubt appeared on the faces of the customs men. Tom produced his leaflets and handed them out.

  ‘The One True Path,’ intoned Tom, scanning the leaflet as fast as he could, while trying to look as though he’d read it a thousand times before. ‘Which will you choose, brothers: the Angel of Temperance or the Demon of Drink? The Holy Seraphim about your Fireside or the Hosts of Satan at the Gambling Table?’

  The customs men smothered grins, holding hands up to their mouths and looking away. The man with the crowbar looked questioningly at his superior, who shook his head. The man let his crowbar slide to rest against the stack of boxes.

  With as straight a face as he could manage, the senior customs man said, ‘Real nice leaflet. We’ll be sure to study it good.’ He turned away.

  Tom let out a long sigh of relief. ‘Be sure you do that, brother. Praise the Lord.’

  65

  On their sixth birthday, Jack Creeley had given Alan and Tom a litter of three brown and white spaniel puppies. The young pups were healthy, playful and rumbustious. They were also competitive. If you dropped a rag in amongst the three dogs, they would fight over it for hours. They growled. They tugged. They tried winning the rag by guile and they tried with brute force. Then, with victory decided, the winner would drag the rag off to a private corner, sniff it briefly – then ignore it completely.

  It wasn’t the prize that mattered, it was not being beaten.

  It was like that now.

  None of the three big oil majors actually liked the geology of southern Persia. The world was huge and unexplored. Nobody had drilled a well anywhere in the Arabian peninsula. Vast tracts of America were still virgin territory. The riches of Mexico and Venezuela still lay largely beneath the ground. Compared with all of that, Southern Persia would have come low on anyone’s list.

  And yet.

  Anglo-Persian felt threatened. At Shell, Henri Deterding was obsessed by his rivalry with Standard. And at Standard, the idea of stirring things up with Shell was far too tempting to resist.

  They each put in an offer.

  Three dogs. One rag.

  Alan listened to their offers and politely refused them all.

  And went on refusing until the offers had climbed as high as they’d go.

  Shell and Standard made offers so similar that Alan wondered if they each had spies in the other’s inner sanctums. But neither Shell nor Standard was coming out on top. The company with the most to gain – and the most to lose – was Anglo-Persian, a fact that Sir Charles Greenaway, the company’s chairman, knew full well.

  Greenaway reached for some cigarettes, and offered them to Alan. It was their final meeting. Alan knew he had to make a deal and live with the consequences. If Greenaway didn’t offer enough, that would be Alan’s tough luck. There would be no better deal available elsewhere.

  ‘Filthy habit,’ said the oilman. ‘Can’t stop it. Don’t want to. Will you? No. Very well. Now, look here. We have to have your part of the concession. You know it and I know it. Should never have been split up. Damn bad move by D’Arcy. Hand half the country over to another crowd and the Shah won’t stay quiet. There’d be trouble for us. Trouble for everyone. Trouble and expense.’

  Alan nodded. He wasn’t being asked for a reply just yet.

  ‘And then there’s the question of patriotism. Shell Oil, jolly good company, decent bunch, did well for us in the war, but we have to face the fact that they’re sixty per cent Dutch. It’s no good bringing that sort of mix into our part of the world. It’ll only mess things up. And I need hardly tell you what the chaps at the Foreign Office – let alone the India Office – would say if the Yanks got in there. There’d be hell to pay, I’m afraid. Perfect hell.’

  ‘I do see.’

  ‘And we know they’re interested, of course. Had word of it from … well, wholly reliable sources, if I may put it like that.’

  Alan nodded, amused to have guessed right about the amount of spying that went on. ‘Yes. I must say I’ve been pleasantly surprised,’ he murmured.

  ‘Now what I thought was that a young chap like you really needs some adventure. Responsibility. You remind me of myself at your age, as a matter of fact. I’d like to buy the concession off you, naturally, but we should talk about where you’d fit in here, at Anglo-Persian. Maybe with our geology boys, maybe our production team. You’ll do well. Your war record, your geology, terrific stuff. Just the sort of thing we need. Put you in charge of a couple of rigs. See what you could do.’

  ‘That’s a very kind offer.’

  ‘Not a bit, not a bit.’ Greenaway’s cigarette was smoked down to his fingers and he stubbed it out carelessly, getting a bit of still-smoking ash on his fingers. ‘So what do you say? We’ll offer seventy thousand pounds for your concession – sixty-eight thousand more than it’s worth, I might add – and sign you up for our production side right away. The government will be extremely pleased with your decision. Extremely.’

  Alan controlled his expression with care. His next best offer had been sixty thousand from Deterding at Shell and he was quite sure he wouldn’t get them to go higher. His three-dogs-one-rag game was reaching its limit, and it was time to bring it to an end. Alan frowned and asked for a cigarette. Greenaway handed him one with barely suppressed impatience. He lit it and drew on it thoughtfully.

  ‘I understand your concern for British interests,’ he said, ‘but I’d sooner not be too far out of pocket. Perhaps if you said seventy-five thousand … ?’

  Greenaway drummed on the table. ‘Very well, very well, seventy-five.’

  ‘And I’m grateful for your offer of employment, but before I take it up, there’s something I want to try to do.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It relates to the concession I’m selling.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There’s an area twenty miles long by ten wide that I’m interested in. I’d like to sublease the area from you. Any oil I find there is mine. If I don’t find any, then in ten years’ time the land reverts
to you.’

  ‘Damnation!’ Greenaway was shocked by Alan’s gall. ‘By God, Montague, you push hard. Where’s the strip? The map, the map, where in hell’s name is the map?’ He punched a button on his desk and a secretary came running in. ‘Mrs Parker, get me some geologists, will you? Reynolds, Camberley, Keegan, Lewis, any of those chaps. Right now, please, right now.’

  The secretary ran off and Greenaway found the relevant map and unrolled it.

  ‘Here,’ said Alan. Taking a pencil from Greenaway’s desk he drew a mark at the four corners of his precious strip – the Ameri fault, as he thought of it. Greenaway frowned over the map, muttering ‘Damnation, damnation,’ under his breath. In a few moments, three geologists knocked and entered, their skin all bearing the deep tan of their trade.

  ‘Wait outside, would you, Montague?’

  Alan had to wait an hour for his answer. He tried lighting up, but his painful lung (worse always in London smoke) rebelled against the tobacco. Eventually, the door burst open. It was Greenaway.

  ‘Five years. You have five years to find oil. If you fail, the land reverts to us.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘And you’ll sign a contract as soon as we can have it drawn up. Later today or first thing tomorrow. No further communication with those dogs at Shell or Standard.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘And seventy thousand pounds sterling for the concession. Not a penny more. Not if you slice pieces off my territory.’

  ‘I understand. Seventy thousand it is.’

  ‘And even seventy thousand is extortionate, mark you.’

  ‘It’s a generous price, sir. Thank you.’

  ‘And, if you don’t hit oil, I want you working for us, d’you hear? Five years, that’s all. By heaven, you’re plucking us.’

  Alan left the building, and stepped blinking out into the sun. He had five years and seventy thousand pounds to fulfil his promise to Tom. It was too little money and too little time. Alan thought of Tom that day above the ruined cellar, just before their first assault in the Battle of the Somme. Tom had promised to be careful, but what were promises amidst the lunacy of war? Alan had promised to drill for oil, but he wasn’t even sure if he’d have the cash to sink a well before his money ran out. His prospects seemed hopeless …