‘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.
120
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.’
121
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, drink
ing 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?
The more he thought about it, the stronger the old anger burned. Tom would not – would not – permit himself to be outdone. The resolution was like a flame in his heart, strong, blue, focused, intensely hot. It was a flame that would find its target or incinerate its owner. Maybe both.
When he met up with Rebecca later that night, she was shocked to see him.
‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ she said.
And she was right. He had.
PART SIX
There’s ‘Gull ’em & Skinner’
And ‘Gammon & Sinner’
‘R. Askal & Oily & Son’
With ‘Sponge ’em & Fleece ’em’
And ‘Strip ’em & Grease ’em’
And ‘Take ’em in Brothers & Run’.
from ‘Famous Oil Firms’
by E. Pluribus Oilum
122
June 1932. The Great Crash has ushered in the Great Depression. Hemlines are lower. Prices are weak. Dictators are powerful, and democrats fearful.
In the meantime, the oil business is proving tough. That’s nothing new. It always has been. Always will be. That’s why it’s fun.
‘Hello, George? What d’you have for me today?’
‘Morning, laddie … hey, hey, my Lord, I’m not as young as I was.’ George Reynolds walked in and sank gratefully into one of Alan’s chairs. At sixty-three, he was almost ready to quit the deserts and mountains and settle back full time in England. The shares he’d owned in Alanto Oil had turned him into a rich man. He cared little enough for money, but Alan was pleased to see him comfortably off.
‘Lord, is there such a thing as a cup of tea in this wretched country?’ he asked.
Alan grinned and ordered tea for them both from his desk intercom. ‘It’ll be in cup and saucer, though,’ he apologised, ‘No samovars. No hubble-bubble. No iced sherbets.’
‘Uncivilised brute. Any minute now, you’ll be telling me you haven’t slaughtered a sheep in my honour.’
Alan’s smile continued, but the warmth of Reynolds’ entry made him think of his dinner last night. He and Lottie had kept a long-standing engagement with Guy and Dorothy. The conversation had been awkward and cold. Guy had drunk too much and, for most of the evening, Lottie and Alan had been forced to talk to each other, as though their hosts had been absent. When finally the last awful mouthful had been forced down, and Alan and Lottie were in a position to leave, Guy accompanied his brother to the door.
‘I suppose I ought to tell you, Dorothy is leaving me. We’ll be getting a divorce, then she’ll go back to America. Most bloody stupid thing. Marrying her, I mean. Sorry about this evening. You must have hated it. I did.’
In the car on the way home, Alan and Lottie had discussed, in quiet voices, whether a bad marriage was better than no marriage at all. Now, in Reynolds’ presence, Alan realised the married state wasn’t the important thing: the person was. A good man like Reynolds would find his peace in any circumstances. A flawed one like Guy … well, peace seemed to be beyond him in any situation.
‘Now look, said Reynolds, extracting a lengthy telegram from his pocket. ‘Good news, I think. Mussolini’s torn up his oil contract with Shell, and wants to negotiate a new one with an “entity working for the consolidation of the fascistic reconstruction of the Italian nationhood”, whatever on earth that means. Apparently, it means Mussolini was getting fed up being pushed around by Shell and he wants to deal with someone small enough to be pushed around.’
Alan stopped. For a moment it seemed like the world stopped too. There was a second or two of total silence.
‘The Italian government has cancelled its deal with Shell?’ He spoke like a man in a trance.
‘Yes.’
‘They’re looking for a new supplier?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re asking us?’
‘Among others. Yes.’
Alan breathed; not because he quite dared to, but because he’d been holding his breath since Reynolds had mentioned the telegram. The breath came out jagged, as though his lungs were still suffering from the war.
He was intensely excited, and little wonder. Alanto Oil produced crude oil on a massive scale, mostly from Persia, but now increasingly from Iraq as well. It refined as much of its crude as it was able to, but even so, its refineries were hard-pressed to cope. But refining wasn’t the weak spot. Marketing was. Anglo-Persian, Shell, Standard – all had massive chains of petrol stations stretching right across the globe. Alanto Oil struggled to shift its oil and ended up selling at a discount. A huge contract with the Italians would be a vast breakthrough in the company’s short history.
‘Petrol?’ he asked.
‘Yes, but not only.’
‘What else?’
‘Everything. For instance, “petroleum fractions of high-octane composition as might be suitable for flight of aircraft not of passenger denomination”,’ Reynolds quoted from the telegram once again before handing it over to his boss. ‘I assume that means they want us to fuel their filthy warplanes.’
‘We’ll tell him to get his aircraft fuel from elsewhere. He’s welcome to petrol, but I’m not going to help him fly his bombers.’
But Alan’s hands were shaking with eagerness as he reached for the telegram. He read and reread it with mounting excitement, then looked up. Fire glinted in his pale eyes. Quite unconsciously, his hand had formed itself into a fist, crumpling the telegram into a ball. He beat his hand softly against the table.
‘We have to win this deal, George,’ he said.
123
Tom stood in thick leather boots and a pair of goggles. They were outside beneath the sweet gums, because the refinery’s tiny office was sweltering and oppressive. A greasy breeze moved between the trees.
‘See now?’ said the young chemist. ‘This here’s being sold as gasoline. It shouldn’t ignite, not until we’ve got the temperature up another forty, fifty degrees.’
There was a dishful of fuel brewing over a burner, with an industrial steel thermometer recording the temperature. In the background, the pipes and cooling towers of the rinky-dink little refinery reached upwards towards an unblemished sky.
‘You might want to stand back there, Mr Calloway. I wouldn’t want –’
Too late.
The dish of fuel caught alight, and flames and smoke leaped upwards. The young chemist had known what was coming but, even so, he was startled. He jumped back, caught his foot on a table leg, and fell over, bringing the table and fuel dish afte
r him. The blazing gasoline spilled over his leg and puddled right over the dirt and pine needles all around. The flames began to scorch upwards. There was shouting and screaming, though in the confusion you could hardly tell who was yelling, let alone what they were saying. A couple of acne-scarred lab assistants began swatting feebly at the flaming leg.
Tom was faster, and not just faster, he was better.
He ripped off his jacket and leaped towards the screaming chemist. One of the pimply youths was in the way and Tom threw him aside, the way a rodeo horse tosses a novice. Tom wrapped the leg in his coat and hugged it tight, until the flames were smothered. The chemist, ashamed of his clumsiness in front of his boss, began to pull his leg away, muttering thanks.
Tom ignored the thanks and the tugging leg. Gasoline flames have a nasty habit of leaping back into life as soon as oxygen returns. Tom carried the chemist to a butt of water and dunked him in. The man tried to climb out, but Tom held him back. ‘You stay there till we can get a doctor here. Got that?’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Sorry, sir.’
‘Can you get your pants off?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then get your pants off.’
The man complied. His leg was burnt, but nothing too bad. He’d be fine.
Tom turned away to find himself watched by the company’s Chief Operating Officer, who was doubled up with laughter.
‘Testing out fuel quality, huh? We should use that in the ads, maybe. “Bites the pants, but spares the man.” What d’you reckon?’
Tom spat. ‘What you got for me, Lyman?’
Lyman Bard, the Chief Operating Officer, waved a telegram. ‘I got good news, pal – least it’s good news if I got this damn thing figured out straight.’
Keen to honour the memory of his friend from prison camp, Tom had named his company Norgaard Petroleum. It was quite an honour.
Norgaard Petroleum had grown fast and grown big.
There are big strikes and little strikes, and Tom’s was about to prove one of the richest in history. The Black Giant oilfield – there was no other name for it – turned out to stretch from Upshur County in the north to the north-east tip of Cherokee County in the south. The field was forty-five miles long and between five to twelve miles wide: more than one hundred and forty thousand acres of liquid gold. The twenty-one thousand acres that Tom had leases on didn’t all lie on the field, of course. Much of his land lay too far east, and no matter how many wells were drilled there, every single one came up dusters. But an even larger chunk of his land proved to be as sweet and rich as a Rockefeller daydream – fifteen thousand acres stretching all the way to Overton and beyond, with oil, beautiful oil, beneath every inch.
The Sons of Adam Page 37