Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune Page 13

  “Good morning, Koskiewicz.”

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Did you enjoy your breakfast?”

  “I no had breakfast, sir.”

  “Why not?” said the Second Consul, looking toward the corporal.

  “Overslept, I’m afraid, sir. He would have been late for you.”

  “Well, we must see what we can do about that. Corporal, will you ask Mrs. Henderson to rustle up an apple or something?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Wladek and the Second Consul walked slowly along the corridor toward the front door of the embassy and across the pebbled courtyard to a waiting car, an Austin, one of the few engine-driven vehicles in Turkey and Wladek’s first journey in a private car. He was sorry to be leaving the British embassy. It was the first place in which he had felt safe for years. He wondered if he was ever going to sleep more than one night in the same bed for the rest of his life. The corporal ran down the steps and took the driver’s seat. He passed Wladek an apple and some warm fresh bread.

  “See there are no crumbs left in the car, lad. The cook sends her compliments.”

  The drive through the hot, busy streets was conducted at walking pace as the Turks did not believe anything could go faster than a camel and made no attempt to clear a path for the little Austin. Even with all the windows open Wladek was sweating from the oppressive heat while Mr. Prendergast remained quite cool and unperturbed. Wladek tried to hide himself in the back of the car for fear that someone who had witnessed the previous day’s events might recognize him and stir the mob to anger again. When the little black Austin came to a halt outside a small, decaying building marked KONSULAT POLSKI, Wladek felt a twinge of excitement mingled with disappointment.

  The three of them climbed out.

  “Where’s the apple core, boy?” demanded the corporal.

  “I eat him.”

  The corporal laughed and knocked on the door. A friendly-looking little man, with dark hair and a firm jaw, opened it. He was in shirt sleeves and deeply tanned, obviously by the Turkish sun. He addressed them in Polish. His words were the first Wladek had heard in his native tongue since leaving the labor camp. Wladek answered quickly, explaining his presence. His fellow countryman turned to the British Second Consul.

  “This way, Mr. Prendergast,” he said in perfect English. “It was good of you to bring the boy over personally.”

  A few diplomatic niceties were exchanged before Prendergast and the corporal took their leave. Wladek gazed at them, fumbling for an English expression more adequate than “Thank you.”

  Prendergast patted Wladek on the head as he might a cocker spaniel. And as the corporal closed the door, he winked at Wladek. “Good luck, my lad. God knows you deserve it.”

  The Polish Consul introduced himself to Wladek as Pawel Zaleski. Again Wladek was required to recount the story of his life, finding it easier in Polish than he had in English. Pawel Zaleski heard him out in silence, shaking his head sorrowfully.

  “My poor child,” he said heavily. “You have borne more than your share of our country’s suffering for one so young. And now what are we to do with you?”

  “I must return to Poland and reclaim my castle,” said Wladek.

  “Poland,” said Pawel Zaleski. “Where’s that? The area of land where you lived remains in dispute and there is still heavy fighting going on between the Poles and the Russians. General Pilsudski is doing all he can to protect the territorial integrity of our fatherland. But it would be foolish for any of us to be optimistic. There is little left for you now in Poland. No, your best plan would be to start a new life in England or America.”

  “But I don’t want to go to England or America. I am Polish.”

  “You will always be Polish, Wladek—no one can take that away from you wherever you decide to settle. But you must be realistic about your life—which has hardly even begun.”

  Wladek lowered his head in despair. Had he gone through all this only to be told he could never return to his native land? He fought back the tears.

  Pawel Zaleski put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Never forget that you are one of the lucky ones who escaped, who came out alive. You only have to remember your friend Dr. Dubien to be aware of what life might have been like.”

  Wladek didn’t speak.

  “Now you must put all thoughts of the past behind you and think only of the future, Wladek, and perhaps in your lifetime you will see Poland rise again, which is more than I dare hope for.”

  Wladek remained silent.

  “Well, there’s no need to make an immediate decision,” the Consul said kindly. “You can stay here for as long as it takes to decide on your future.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The future was something that was worrying Anne. The first few months of her marriage were happy, marred only by her anxiety over William’s increasing dislike of Henry, and her new husband’s seeming inability to start working. Henry was a little touchy on the point, explaining to Anne that he was still disoriented by the war and that he wasn’t willing to rush into something he might well be stuck with for the rest of his life. She found this hard to swallow and finally the matter brought on their first row.

  “I don’t understand why you haven’t opened that real estate business you used to be so keen on, Henry.”

  “I can’t. The time isn’t quite right. The realty market doesn’t look that promising at the moment.”

  “You’ve been saying that now for nearly a year. I wonder if it will ever be promising enough for you.”

  “Sure it will. Truth is, I need a little more capital to get myself started. Now, if you would let me have some of your money, I could get cracking tomorrow.”

  “That’s impossible, Henry. You know the terms of Richard’s will. My allowance was stopped the day we were married and now I have only the capital left.”

  “A little of that would help me to get going, and don’t forget that precious boy of yours has well over twenty million in the family trust.”

  “You seem to know a lot about William’s trust,” Anne said suspiciously.

  “Oh, come on, Anne, give me a chance to be your husband. Don’t make me feel like a guest in my own home.”

  “What’s happened to your money, Henry? You always led me to believe you had enough to start your own business.”

  “You’ve always known I was not in Richard’s class financially, and there was a time, Anne, when you claimed it didn’t matter. ‘I’d marry you, Henry, if you were penniless,’” he mocked.

  Anne burst into tears, and Henry tried to console her. She spent the rest of the evening in his arms talking the problem over. Anne managed to convince herself she was being unwifely and ungenerous. She had more money than she could possibly need; couldn’t she entrust a little of it to the man to whom she was so willing to entrust the rest of her life?

  Acting upon these thoughts, she agreed to let Henry have $100,000 to set up his own real estate firm in Boston. Within a month Henry had found a smart new office in a fashionable part of town, appointed a staff and started work. Soon he was mixing with the important city politicians and real estate men in Boston. They talked of the boom in farmland and they flattered Henry. Anne didn’t care very much for them as social company, but Henry was happy and appeared to be successful at his work.

  When William was fifteen he was in his third year at St. Paul’s, sixth in his class overall and first in mathematics. He had also become a rising figure in the Debating Society. He wrote to his mother once a week, reporting his progress, always addressing his letters to Mrs. Richard Kane, refusing to acknowledge that Henry Osborne even existed. Anne wasn’t sure whether she should talk to him about it, and each Monday she would carefully extract William’s letter from the box to be certain that Henry never saw the envelope. She continued to hope that in time William would come around to liking Henry, but it became clear that that hope was unrealistic when, in one particular letter to his mother, William sought her
permission to spend the summer holidays with his friend Matthew Lester, first at a summer camp in Vermont, then with the Lester family in New York. The request came as a painful blow to Anne, but she took the easy way out and fell in with William’s plans, which Henry also seemed to favor.

  William hated Henry Osborne and nursed the hatred passionately, not sure what he could actually do about it. He was grateful that Henry never visited him at school; he could not have tolerated having the other boys see his mother with that man. It was bad enough that he had to live with Henry in Boston.

  For the first time since his mother’s marriage, William was anxious for the holidays to come.

  The Lesters’ Packard chauffeured William and Matthew noiselessly to the camp in Vermont. On the journey Matthew casually asked William what he intended to do when the time came for him to leave St. Paul’s.

  “When I leave I will be top of the class, class president, and I will have won the Hamilton Memorial Mathematics Scholarship to Harvard,” replied William without hesitation.

  “Why is all that so important?” Matthew asked innocently.

  “My father did all three.”

  “When you’ve finished beating your father, I will introduce you to mine.”

  William smiled.

  The two boys had an energetic and enjoyable six weeks in Vermont, playing every game from chess to football. When the time came to an end, they traveled to New York to spend the last month of the holiday with the Lester family.

  They were greeted at the door by a butler, who addressed Matthew as “Sir,” and a twelve-year-old girl covered in freckles who called him “Fatty.” It made William laugh, because his friend was so thin, and it was she who was fat. The girl smiled and revealed teeth almost totally hidden behind braces.

  “You would never believe Susan was my sister, would you?” said Matthew disdainfully.

  “No, I suppose not,” said William, smiling at Susan. “She is so much better-looking than you.”

  She adored William from that moment on.

  William adored Matthew’s father the moment they met; he reminded him in so many ways of his own father and he begged Charles Lester to let him see the great bank of which he was chairman. Charles Lester thought carefully about the request. No child had been allowed to enter the orderly precincts of 17 Broad Street before, not even his own son. He compromised, as bankers often do, and showed the boy around the Wall Street building on a Sunday afternoon.

  William was fascinated by the different offices, the vaults, the foreign exchange dealing room, the boardroom and the chairman’s office. The Lester bank’s activities were considerably more extensive than were Kane and Cabot’s, and William knew from his own small personal investment account, which provided him with a copy of the annual general report, that Lester’s had a far larger capital base than Kane and Cabot. William was silent, pensive, as they were driven home in the car.

  “Well, William, did you enjoy seeing the bank?” Charles Lester asked genially.

  “Oh yes, sir,” replied William. “I certainly did.” William paused for a moment and then added: “I intend to be chairman of your bank one day, Mr. Lester.”

  Charles Lester laughed. He would tell his dinner guests that night about young William Kane’s reaction to Lester and Company, which would make them laugh, too.

  Only William had not meant the remark as a joke.

  Anne was shocked when Henry came back to her for more money.

  “It’s as safe as a house,” he assured her. “Ask Alan Lloyd. As chairman of the bank he can only have your best interests at heart.”

  “But two hundred and fifty thousand?” Anne queried.

  “A superb opportunity, my dear. Look upon it as an investment that will be worth double that amount within two years.”

  After another, prolonged row, Anne gave in once again and life returned to the same smooth routine. When she checked her investment portfolio with the bank, Anne found her capital down to $150,000, but Henry seemed to be seeing all the right people and clinching all the right deals. She considered discussing the whole problem with Alan Lloyd at Kane and Cabot but in the end dismissed the idea; it would have meant displaying distrust in the husband whom she wished the world to respect, and surely Henry would not have made the suggestion at all had he not been sure the loan would meet with Alan’s approval.

  Anne also started seeing Dr. MacKenzie again to find out if there was any hope of her having another baby, but he still advised against the idea. With the high blood pressure that had caused her earlier miscarriage, Andrew MacKenzie did not consider thirty-five a good age for Anne to start thinking about being a mother again. Anne raised the idea with the grandmothers, but they agreed wholeheartedly with the views of the good doctor. Neither of them cared for Henry very much, and they cared even less for the thought of an Osborne offspring making claims on the Kane family fortune after they were gone. Anne began to resign herself to being the mother of only one child. Henry became very angry about what he described as her betrayal and told Anne that if Richard were still alive, she would have tried again. How different the two men were, she thought, and couldn’t account for her love of them both. She tried to soothe Henry, praying that his business projects would work out well and keep him fully occupied. He certainly had taken to working very late at the office.

  It was on a Monday in October, the weekend after they had celebrated their second wedding anniversary, that Anne started receiving the letters from an unsigned “friend,” informing her that Henry could be seen escorting other women around Boston, and one lady in particular, whom the writer didn’t care to name. To begin with, Anne burned the letters immediately and although they worried her, she never discussed them with Henry, praying that each letter would be the last. She couldn’t even summon up the courage to raise the matter with Henry when he asked her for her last $150,000.

  “I am going to lose the whole deal if I don’t have that money right now, Anne.”

  “But it’s all I have, Henry. If I give you any more money, I’ll be left with nothing.”

  “This house alone must be worth over two hundred thousand. You could mortgage it tomorrow.”

  “The house belongs to William.”

  “William, William, William. It’s always William who gets in the way of my success,” shouted Henry as he stormed out.

  He returned home after midnight, contrite, and told her he would rather she kept her money and that he went under, for at least they would still love each other. Anne was comforted by his words and later they made love. She signed a check for $150,000 the next morning, trying to forget that it would leave her penniless until Henry pulled off the deal he was pursuing. She couldn’t help wondering if it was more than a coincidence that Henry had asked for the exact amount that remained of her inheritance.

  The next month Anne missed her period.

  Dr. MacKenzie was anxious but tried not to show it; the grandmothers were horrified and did; while Henry was delighted and assured Anne that it was the most wonderful thing that had happened to him in his whole life. He even agreed to build a new children’s wing for the hospital, which Richard had planned before he died.

  When William heard the news by letter from his mother, he sat deep in thought all evening, unable to tell even Matthew what was preoccupying him. The following Saturday morning, having been granted special permission by his housemaster, Grumpy Raglan, he boarded a train to Boston and on arrival withdrew one hundred dollars from his savings account. He then proceeded to the law offices of Cohen, Cohen and Yablons on Jefferson Street. Mr. Thomas Cohen, the senior partner, a tall, angular man with dark jowls, was somewhat surprised when William was ushered into his office.

  “I have never been retained by a sixteen-year-old before,” Mr. Cohen began. “It will be quite a novelty for me”—he hesitated—“Mr. Kane.” He found that “Mr. Kane” did not run off his tongue easily. “Especially as your father was not exactly—how shall I put it?—known for his sympat
hy for my coreligionists.”

  “My father,” replied William, “was a great admirer of the achievements of the Hebrew race and in particular had considerable respect for your firm when you acted on behalf of rivals. I heard him and Mr. Lloyd mention your name on several occasions. That’s why I have chosen you, Mr. Cohen, not you me. That should be reassurance enough.”

  Mr. Cohen quickly put aside the matter of William’s age. “Indeed, indeed. I feel I can make an exception for the son of Richard Kane. Now, what can we do for you?”

  “I wish you to answer three questions for me, Mr. Cohen. One, I want to know whether if my mother, Mrs. Henry Osborne, were to give birth to a child, son or daughter, that child would have any legal rights to the Kane family trust. Two, do I have any legal obligations to Mr. Henry Osborne because he is married to my mother? And three, at what age can I insist that Mr. Henry Osborne leave my house on Louisburg Square in Boston?”

  Thomas Cohen’s pen sped furiously across the paper in front of him, spattering little blue spots on an already inkstained desk top.

  William placed one hundred dollars on the desk. The lawyer was taken aback but picked the bills up and counted them.

  “Use the money prudently, Mr. Cohen. I will need a good lawyer when I leave Harvard.”

  “You have already been accepted at Harvard, Mr. Kane? My congratulations. I am hoping my son will go there, too.”

  “No, I have not, but I shall have done so in two years’ time. I will return to Boston to see you in one week, Mr. Cohen. If I ever hear in my lifetime from anyone other than yourself on this subject, you may consider our relationship at an end. Good day, sir.”

  Thomas Cohen would have also said good day—if he could have spluttered the words out before William closed the door behind him.

  William returned to the offices of Cohen, Cohen and Yablons seven days later.