The Sons of Adam

by Harry Bingham

  In an effort to catch the evening breeze, Rebecca had had the table placed outdoors on the veranda, where the last of the sun was dying away across the level lawns and towering cottonwoods. A couple of round-backed armadillos were tussling over something in the grass. Bard was in the middle of a story.

  ‘They were bringing pipes up, so one of the roughnecks had run up eighty foot to rack ’em as they came. But he musta lost a hold of the ladder or something, because the next thing I hear is a yell. Guy comes tumbling down from eighty feet up, hits a beam in the derrick, spins over and lands on the pump shed, new tin roof, nice and springy. He looks at me. I look at him. He says, “Gotta cigarette?” I only had my chew-tobacco, so I says, “No.” He looks at me real sad, and says, “Well, don’t just stand there, go get a smoke for this dumb, broken-assed son-of-a-bitch.” Pardon me, Rebecca. Damn true, though, I swear it.’

  Tom laughed because he believed it. Rebecca laughed because she didn’t. Bard laughed out of embarrassment at using coarse language in front of his boss’s sophisticated European wife – and despite the fact that Bard knew damn well how she’d made a living back in the days they were all working the oilfields of Wyoming.

  ‘Lyman,’ she said, breaking into the flow of oil talk, ‘can you answer me something?’

  ‘Why sure,’ he said, wiping his mouth.

  ‘How is it that my husband has got one of the best oil companies in the southern United States, and yet he hasn’t made one bent nickel out of the thing for the last six years?’

  ‘Aw, come on now, you need to ask your husband that.’

  ‘I do, but he tells me nothing.’

  Bard and Tom exchanged glances. Since that first year or two of whirlwind deal-making following Tom’s oil strike, Rebecca had become ever less involved in the details of his business. For one thing, the accounting challenge was simply too vast now to be handled by her working at home. For another thing, the thrill had gone out of it. Professional accountants had taken over. Rebecca had other outlets for her energy now.

  ‘You see, I’m running a foundation called the American-Jewish Resettlement Society,’ she continued. ‘So far we’ve brought seven thousand refugees across from Germany. We’ve found them houses, schools for their children, and jobs. The work we do is wonderful and Norgaard Petroleum is our biggest contributor. By far our biggest. The trouble is, there are still hundreds of thousands of Jews in Germany, not to mention millions more in Poland, Lithuania and in all the countries that Hitler threatens. These are Jews who need us, Jews who may yet die without us. The more we can get out, the more we can save. Tom would be happy to give us money, only Norgaard doesn’t have it. That’s why I’m asking.’ Rebecca controlled her voice closely, careful to keep her emotion out of it.

  Bard glanced at Tom again, but Tom’s face didn’t tell him what to do. He was on his own.

  ‘It’s been tough times, I guess,’ he said.

  ‘Well now, that’s what Tom says when I ask him. But it’s not what Standard Oil says when it announces its results to stockholders. It’s not what Union Oil says. It’s not what Texaco says.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s kind of a more local thing.’

  ‘Now that’d be a fine answer, except whenever you say it – you or Tom, that is – you never quite look at me straight. That’s what makes me wonder.’

  A moth flickered inside one of the glass candle-shades. Rebecca lifted the glass with her napkin and released the moth. She was wearing a sleek black evening dress imported from Paris. Bard thought she was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen.

  He looked challengingly at Tom. ‘Maybe you ought to ask Tom again and have him look at you straight.’

  Bard and Rebecca both stared at Tom. He tweaked his plate of meatballs and mashed potato closer to him and curled his arm round it in his old gesture of defensiveness. He felt ganged up on.

  ‘Darling?’ said Rebecca.

  ‘Aw … We’ve been having a bit of a ruckus with one of our competitors. Outfit name of Blackwater.’

  ‘And what would happen if you stopped your ruckus?’

  Tom was silent.

  ‘Lyman, what would happen if you stopped your ruckus?’

  Rebecca looked straight at Bard. He couldn’t hold her gaze, but he couldn’t lie to her either. Hell, he was on her side in this, anyways. Looking fiercely down at his plate, he said, ‘If we stopped the ruckus, then we’d begin to make a little money and the other fellows would begin to make a little money and we’d all make a little money.’

  Rebecca smiled brilliantly. She dropped her napkin on the table.

  ‘Well, now, how about we stop the ruckus?’

  Rebecca was staring straight at Bard when she said this, but both men knew she was talking directly to Tom.

  ‘It’s not so simple,’ he said. ‘The other guys are in this too.’

  ‘Lyman?’ said Rebecca.

  Lyman had a desperate urge to spit, but couldn’t do so with Rebecca there. Instead, he scratched the back of his head furiously and reddened. He said, ‘He’s right. The other guys are in this too. But if we stopped – hell, Rebecca, they’d have to stop. They’re a stock market outfit, see? Board of directors. Regular accounts. Management would have to stop. If they didn’t they’d be out on their as – – out on their backsides.’

  Rebecca nodded. ‘I see. That sounds fairly simple. Tomek?’

  And Tom knew that Lyman was right. That Rebecca was right. He could choose. He could continue to punish Alanto. Or he could give up his ancient grudge. But he’d never cried surrender as a child. He was determined not to now. He sat motionless and silent.

  Bard was about to say something, in an attempt to argue him round, but Rebecca held up a finger.

  ‘Let him answer.’

  It was Tom’s choice. He’d have to make it for himself.

  Tom sat and tried to find the ancient heart of his grudge: the images of prison camp that had caused his anger to burn strong and steady through two decades and more. He tried to call to mind his more recent causes for bitterness, the endless painful wounds his precious Norgaard had sustained in recent years.

  But he failed.

  Instead, an entirely unexpected image sprang to his mind, a memory he hadn’t had for years. He remembered a cold spring in Hetterscheidt. He remembered a stomach jammed full of wind and emptiness. He remembered a guard shouting to him across the frozen yard. He remembered walking slowly over and the miraculous gift placed in his astounded hands: goose fat, jam, a bag of sugar. He remembered the moment as if it had been yesterday. And the guard had been Jewish. Silver-haired, elderly, and Jewish.

  For almost two minutes, Tom tried to speak. If he had spoken, he didn’t even know what he’d have said. There was a lump in his throat and the honest-to-God truth of it was that, just like that time twenty-two years before, he was once again close to tears.

  Eventually Rebecca broke the silence. ‘We’re not saying you have to go all the way. Maybe just ease up a little.’

  The silence continued, but Tom knew what he wanted to say. The past was the past. Anger and compassion faced each other and for the first time compassion stood the taller.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Ease up a little. Why not?’

  It was 28 July 1939.

  151

  Alan blinked himself awake. Jackson, the butler, was twitching back the curtains. Lottie, who always looked at her most peaceful and serene when sleeping, burrowed her face into her pillow and muttered something inaudible.

  ‘Jackson?’ said Alan in surprise.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Is Adderley not well?’

  Adderley was Alan’s valet and it was always he who woke Alan, not Jackson.

  ‘He’s perfectly well, sir … There’s news today, I thought you would wish to have. I thought it better to bring it myself.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Not good news, I’m afraid.’

  Alan sat up. A sudden foreboding seized his heart. ‘Just a moment.’
Alan jumped out of bed and pulled on the dressing gown that Jackson held ready. ‘We’ll go next door.’ They moved through to Alan’s dressing room, where a cup of tea was already steaming on the bedside table along with a couple of slices of brown bread, cut very thin. Alan noted his servant’s tactful forethought with approval. He sat down heavily on the bed. ‘It’s Hitler, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir. In the small hours of this morning, German troops crossed into Poland. The news on the radio is still a little confused, but it appears to be a full-scale invasion. I believe the Poles have little chance of resistance.’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘Should I prepare you a bath, sir?’

  ‘To hell with baths, Jackson.’

  ‘Yes, sir … If I may ask, do you believe that Chamberlain will feel obliged to declare war?’

  Jackson looked directly at Alan, and Alan looked squarely back again. In that moment, both men knew that another war would bring about a permanent change in the positions of servant and master. Well, and if so, it would be no bad thing, thought Alan.

  With a tiny smile, he replied, ‘Declare war, Jackson? I should bloody well hope so.’

  Jackson picked a speck of fluff from Alan’s dressing table with a tiny frown. ‘Yes, sir. And I should bloody well hope so too.’

  Chamberlain hesitated one day, then acted.

  Speaking on behalf of his country, he told Hitler to cease hostilities or face war. Hitler listened to the warning and ignored it. At midday on 3 September, for the second time in a quarter of a century, Great Britain declared war on Germany.

  The effect on Alan was electric.

  For those two days – from getting the news early on the morning of 1 September to the British declaration of war two days later – he hardly slept. He listened to the wireless whenever there was news, turning the dial down again as soon as the bulletin finished. He bought every edition of every paper. If he ate at all, he ate standing up, pacing around, hardly remembering to chew.

  And why?

  He could hardly say. Of course, the entire country, the entire world, wanted to know if war was coming. But Alan was all but certain that it was. So why? Why couldn’t he eat or sleep? Why the restlessness? Why his addiction to news?

  He had things to worry about, of course. His son, Tommy, was almost fifteen. If the war lasted three years or more, then, almost certainly, the youngster would be heading out to fight. Then there was the risk of bombing, the risk to Alanto, the terrible risk that England might lose. What then for Britain? What then for Alan and his family?

  All this troubled him hugely, of course. But the real reason for his agitation was something deeper, something older, something connected with his own terrible experience of war. He couldn’t have put into words precisely what he felt but, in any case, what was certain was this.

  Upon hearing Chamberlain, in sombre tones, announce that Britain was at war again, Alan’s agitation lifted at once. In a state of complete calm, complete certainty, he did three things.

  The first was to enter the Alanto offices and issue instructions that nothing was to be done in any part of the company that might harm the strategic interests of any British ally or friend. What he meant was: end the conflict with Norgaard. Prices were to be raised. Competing installations were to be closed or moved. The conflict was to end overnight, utterly and for ever.

  The second thing he did was to call on his father-in-law, Egham Dunlop, for the last fifteen years the Chairman of Alanto Oil. The meeting was a short one, but significant. Alan tendered his resignation. ‘And in view of the international situation, Chairman, I must ask that my resignation be accepted with immediate effect.’ Dunlop, not usually the warmest man in the world, grasped his son-in-law’s hand, thanked him for everything, and allowed him to go.

  And the final thing he did that day was to write a letter. It was three pages long and took four drafts. When finally satisfied, Alan summoned a clerk and gave instructions for the letter to be hand-delivered without delay. The address on the envelope read:

  The Prime Minister,

  10 Downing Street,

  London SW1.

  Alan was forty-six years old. Twenty-five years earlier, another European war had devastated his life; snatched the best friend he’d ever had or would ever have; had killed or wounded far, far too many of the men he’d served with. A second war seemed like the very worst nightmare of history, resurrected and magnified.

  But there was a difference.

  Unlike the Great War of Tom and Alan’s youth, this one would be a war of tanks and planes, Jeeps and bombers, baggage trucks and armoured cars. It would be a fast war, a mobile war.

  An oil war.

  152

  Fire burst on the horizon: red, yellow and brilliant titanium white. The air shuddered and crashed. Some of the explosions were so violent, it almost felt as though the ground itself was shaking.

  Tom watched white-faced, white-lipped, as the air caught fire.

  Strange how a man can settle.

  Tom had first set foot in Texas in 1924. He’d been just thirty-one years old, but had already had enough experience to fill a lifetime twice that long. Since joining the British Army in 1914, he’d never been in the same place longer than a couple of years. He’d been with scores of women. He’d fought, been wounded, captured, and nearly starved. He’d never owned a home. He’d worked at so many jobs, he couldn’t even count them.

  And yet he’d settled. Arriving in Texas had felt like a homecoming. Even before the Nellie Holling oil strike, Tom had known that Texas would always be his home. Since then the feeling had grown. In addition to Norgaard House, his mansion on the outskirts of Houston, he’d bought himself a ten-thousand-acre cattle ranch, with fine mountain trails where he and Mitch could ride and shoot. Meantime, each trip out of state felt like a journey to another country. He and Lyman Bard privately divided their oil operations into ‘Domestic’ and ‘International’, meaning Texan and everything else.

  But if even Louisiana and Florida felt foreign, then Washington DC felt like a whole new continent.

  Another explosion.

  Another brilliant flare-up against the night sky: red and green this time, with a centre of pink stars that hissed and moaned as they fell downwards to the Potomac.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ said Rebecca, floating up alongside him in her long silver gown. ‘I do adore fireworks.’ Her lovely dark hair had been taken prisoner by fashion, and it had been cut short and tightly curled at the back, a style that didn’t really do her justice. Her face shone. The ball had been thrown by the Association of American Jews as a way of thanking America for all it had done for the Jewish people. Now, in October 1939, the importance of saving Jewish refugees could hardly be more obvious. There were many people to thank, but chief amongst them was Rebecca, the undisputed queen of the ball.

  Tom smiled crookedly. ‘They’re pretty, I guess. But I’ve had my fill of explosions for one lifetime.’

  ‘Oh, Tomek, I am sorry. I should have thought.’

  He shrugged. ‘This time no one’s trying to explode me.’

  There was another loud bang, and the side of Rebecca’s face was lit up in green and purple as the sparks fell glittering to the ground. The oil feud with Alan was over. Dead and buried. The price war had ended. At the gas station pump and the refinery door, rates were back to their old levels, or at least close to them. They had stopped interfering with each other’s labour force or harming each other in any of the other ten thousand ways they’d invented over the years.

  Rebecca looked seriously at her husband. He spoke so seldom about the past, she still knew nothing of his former life beyond war and prison camp. ‘Do you want to come inside? I don’t need to watch the rest of the show.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m fine. It’s finishing anyway.’ He gestured over to a couple of men with expensive suits and professional smiles, who were headed their way. ‘And I think there are a couple of senators who haven’t
yet got themselves photographed shaking your hand.’

  Her face radiated smiles once again. She hadn’t done what she’d done to get praised for it, but since the praise came free, she didn’t mind collecting it. Tom bent and whispered in her ear, ‘Not bad for a little Jewish girl from Lithuania.’

  She squeezed his hand. ‘Thank you, Tomek.’

  She advanced on the two senators, who did indeed have a tame photographer in embarrassingly close attendance. Tom watched as his wife won two more hearts that evening. The fireworks blazed their last. He sipped champagne.

  Then: ‘Mr Calloway, I believe?’

  There was a voice at his left elbow. Tom spun round. A tall silver-haired gentleman with something courtly in his manner was standing there.

  ‘Yes, indeed, I –’

  ‘May I introduce myself? My name is Cordell Hull, Secretary of State.’

  ‘Mr Secretary.’ Tom shook hands.

  ‘Allow me to congratulate you and your wife. It’s a fine thing the two of you have done.’

  Tom had grown cynical enough of Washington politics that he virtually looked around for the camera, but there wasn’t one. ‘Thank you. It’s all my wife’s doing. I just loaned her the chequebook.’

  ‘Well, the chequebook’s important too.’

  There was something sincere in Hull’s manner and Tom accepted the praise with a smile. He was proud of himself. Thousands of Jews had had their lives saved by Rebecca’s energy and Tom’s generosity. If they could possibly manage it, they’d continue their charitable efforts right through the war in Europe. Wherever and whenever the Nazis threatened, he and Rebecca would aim to snatch their prey out from under their noses. Their achievement already had been colossal. It was nothing compared with what they still intended. Not bad for a gardener’s boy from Hampshire.

  ‘I introduced myself partly to congratulate you,’ said Hull, ‘but mostly because I wanted to ask you a favour.’