Kane and Abel Page 17

  ‘Don’t be silly, Anne. Our friendship has lasted for far too many years for a little thing like that to be of any importance.’

  The kindness of his words triggered off a fresh bout of weeping. Anne staggered to her feet.

  ‘I must go, Alan. I can hear someone at the front door - it may be Henry.’

  ‘Take care, Anne, and don’t worry. As long as I’m chairman, the bank will always support you. Don’t hesitate to call if there’s anything I can do.’

  Anne put the telephone down. The effort of breathing became overwhelming, and the vigorous contractions made her feel sick. She sank to the floor.

  A few moments later the maid knocked quietly on the door. She looked in to see her mistress lying on the floor. She rushed in, William by her side. It was the first time he had entered his mother’s bedroom since her marriage to Henry Osborne. Anne was shaking uncontrollably, unaware of their presence. Little flecks of foam spattered her lips. In a few seconds the attack passed, and she lay moaning quietly.

  ‘Mother,’ William said urgently, ‘what’s the matter?’

  Anne opened her eyes and stared wildly at her son. ‘Richard,’ she said, ‘thank God you’ve come.’

  ‘It’s William, Mother.’

  Her gaze faltered. ‘I have no more strength left, Richard. I must pay for my mistake. Forgive …’

  Her voice trailed off to a groan as another spasm overcame her.

  ‘What’s happening?’ said William helplessly.

  ‘I think it must be the baby,’ the maid said, ‘though it isn’t due for two months.’

  ‘Get Dr MacKenzie on the phone immediately,’ said William as he ran to the bedroom door. ‘Matthew!’ he shouted. ‘Come up quickly.’

  Matthew bounded up the stairs and joined William in the bedroom.

  ‘Help me get my mother down to the car.’

  The two boys picked Anne up and carried her gently downstairs and out to the car. She was panting and groaning, clearly in considerable pain. William ran back into the house and grabbed the phone from the maid while Matthew waited in the car.

  ‘Dr MacKenzie.’

  ‘Yes, who’s this?’

  ‘My name is William Kane - you won’t know me, sir.’

  ‘Don’t know you, young man? I delivered you. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I think my mother is in labour. I’m driving her to the hospital immediately. We should be there in a few minutes.’

  Dr MacKenzie’s tone changed. ‘All right, William, don’t worry. I’ll be waiting for you, and everything will be prepared and ready by the time you arrive.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ William hesitated. ‘She seemed to have had some sort of a fit. Is that normal?’

  William’s words chilled the doctor. He too hesitated.

  ‘Well, not quite normal. But your mother will be just fine once she’s had the baby. Get her here as quickly as you can.’

  William put down the phone, ran out of the house and jumped into the Rolls-Royce. Matthew, having only had one lesson on his father’s Rolls, drove the car in fits and starts, never once getting out of first gear. He didn’t stop for anything until they reached the hospital entrance. The two boys lifted Anne gently out of the car and placed her on a waiting stretcher. A nurse quickly guided them through to the maternity unit, where Dr MacKenzie was standing in the doorway of one of the delivery rooms. He took over, and asked them to remain outside.

  William and Matthew sat in silence on a small bench in the corridor and waited. Frightening cries and screams, unlike any sound they had ever heard before, came from the delivery room - to be succeeded by an even more frightening silence. For the first time in his life William felt totally helpless. The two boys sat on the bench for over an hour, not a word passing between them. Eventually a tired Dr MacKenzie emerged. When they rose the doctor looked at Matthew. ‘William?’ he asked.

  ‘No, sir, I’m Matthew Lester. This is William.’ The doctor turned and put a hand on William’s shoulder. ‘William, I’m so sorry. Your mother died a few minutes ago … and the child, a little girl, was stillborn.’

  William’s legs gave way and he sank back onto the bench.

  ‘We did everything in our power to save them, but it was too late.’ He shook his head wearily.

  William sat in silence. At last he whispered, ‘How could she die? How could you let her die?’

  The doctor sat down on the bench beside him. ‘She wouldn’t listen,’ he said. ‘I warned her repeatedly after her miscarriage not to have another child, but after she married again, she and your stepfather never took my warnings seriously. When you brought her in today, for no apparent reason her blood pressure had soared to the level where eclampsia ensues.’

  ‘Eclampsia?’

  ‘Convulsions. Sometimes patients can survive several attacks. Sometimes they simply - stop breathing.’

  William began to cry and let his head fall into his hands. No one spoke for several minutes. William eventually stood up and Matthew guided him gently along the corridor. The doctor followed them. When they reached the entrance, he looked at William.

  ‘Her blood pressure went up so suddenly. That’s most unusual, and she didn’t put up a real fight, almost as if she no longer cared. Strange - had something been troubling her lately?’

  William raised his tear-streaked face. ‘Not something,’ he said with passion. ‘Someone.’

  Alan Lloyd was sitting in a corner of the drawing room when the two boys arrived back at the Red House. He rose as they entered.

  ‘William,’ he said immediately. ‘I blame myself for authorizing the loan.’

  William stared at him, not taking in his words.

  Matthew stepped into the silence. ‘I don’t think that’s important any longer, sir,’ he said quietly. ‘William’s mother has just died giving birth to a stillborn child.’

  Alan Lloyd turned ashen, steadied himself by grasping the mantelpiece and turned away. It was the first time either of them had seen a grown man weep.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ said the banker. ‘I’ll never forgive myself. I didn’t tell her everything I knew. I loved her so much that I never wanted her to be distressed.’

  His anguish enabled William to be calm.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, Alan,’ he said firmly. ‘You did everything in your power, I know that, and now it’s me who’s going to need your help.’

  Alan Lloyd braced himself. ‘Has Osborne been informed about your mother’s death?’

  ‘I neither know nor care.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to reach him all day about the hospital contract. He left his office soon after ten this morning and he hasn’t been seen since.’

  ‘He’ll turn up sooner or later,’ William said grimly.

  After Alan Lloyd had left, William and Matthew sat together in the drawing room for most of the night, dozing off and on, rarely speaking. At four o’clock in the morning, as William counted the chimes of the grandfather clock, he thought he heard a noise in the street. He looked up to see Matthew staring out of the window, and walked stiffly across to join him. They both watched Henry Osborne stagger across Louisburg Square, a bottle in one hand, a bunch of keys in the other. He fumbled with his keys for some time and finally stepped into the hallway, blinking dazedly at the two boys.

  ‘I want Anne, not you. Why aren’t you at school? I don’t want you,’ he said, his voice thick and slurred, as he pushed past William and walked into the drawing room. Where’s Anne?’

  ‘My mother is dead,’ said William quietly.

  Osborne looked at him, disbelief etched on his face. He walked across to the sideboard and poured himself a whiskey, which caused William to lose his self-control.

  ‘Where were you when she needed a husband?’ he shouted.

  Osborne didn’t let go of the bottle. ‘What about the baby?’

  ‘Stillborn, a little girl.’

  Osborne slumped into a chair, drunken tears starting to run down his face. ‘She lost
my little baby?’

  William was nearly incoherent with rage. ‘Your baby? Stop thinking about yourself for a change!’ he shouted. ‘You know Dr MacKenzie advised her against becoming pregnant again.’

  ‘Expert in that as well, are we, like everything else? If you’d minded your own fucking business, I could have taken care of my own wife without your interference.’

  ‘And her money, it seems.’

  ‘Money. You tightfisted little bastard. I bet losing that hurts you more than losing your mother.’

  ‘Get up!’ William shouted at him.

  Osborne dragged himself up and smashed the bottle on the edge of a table, splashing whiskey onto the carpet. He swayed towards William, the broken bottle in his raised hand. William stood his ground. Matthew came between them and easily removed the bottle from the drunken man’s grasp.

  ‘William pushed his friend aside and advanced until his face was only inches away from Osborne’s.

  ‘Now, you listen to me, and listen carefully. I want you out of this house immediately. If I ever hear from you again I shall instigate a full legal inquiry into what has happened to my mother’s half-million dollar investment in your firm, and I shall reopen my enquiries about who you really are and your past activities in Chicago. If, on the other hand, I do not hear from you again, ever, I shall consider the matter closed. Now get out before I do something I’ll regret.’

  Osborne staggered out of the room. Neither of them heard his threat as the door slammed.

  The next morning William visited the bank. He was immediately shown into the chairman’s office. Alan Lloyd was placing some documents into a briefcase. He handed a piece of paper to William without speaking. It was a short letter to all board members tendering his resignation as chairman of the bank.

  ‘Could you ask your secretary to join us?’ asked William quietly.

  ‘As you wish.’

  Alan pressed a button on the side of his desk, and a middle-aged, conservatively dressed woman entered the room.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Kane,’ she said when she saw William. ‘I was so sorry to hear about your mother.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said William. ‘Has anyone else seen this letter?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said the secretary. ‘I was about to type twelve copies for Mr Lloyd to sign.’

  ‘Well, don’t,’ said William, ‘and please forget that it ever existed.’

  She stared into the blue eyes of the sixteen-year-old boy. So like his father, she thought. ‘Yes, Mr Kane.’ She left, closing the door. Alan Lloyd looked puzzled.

  ‘Kane and Cabot does not need a new chairman at the moment, Alan,’ said William. ‘You did nothing my father would not have done in the same circumstances.’

  ‘It’s not as easy as that,’ Alan said.

  ‘It is as easy as that,’ said William. We can discuss this again when I’m twenty-one, and not before. Until then I would be obliged if you would run my bank with your usual prudence and wisdom. I want nothing of what has happened to be discussed outside this office. You will destroy any information you have on Henry Osborne, and consider the matter closed.’

  William tore up the letter of resignation and dropped the pieces into the fire. He put his arm around Alan’s shoulders.

  ‘I have no family now, Alan, only you. For God’s sake, don’t desert me.’

  When William returned to Beacon Hill, Grandmother Kane and Grandmother Cabot were sitting in silence in the drawing room. They rose as he entered the room. It was the first time William realized he was now the head of the Kane family.

  The funeral took place quietly four days later at St Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral. No one but family and close friends was invited; the only notable absentee was Henry Osborne. As the mourners departed, they paid their respects to William. The grandmothers stood a pace behind him, like sentinels, watching, approving the calm and dignified way in which he conducted himself. When everyone had left, William accompanied Alan Lloyd to his car.

  The chairman was delighted by William’s request.

  ‘As you know, Alan, my mother always intended to build a children’s wing for Massachusetts General, in memory of my father. I would like her wish to be carried out.’

  21

  WLADEK REMAINED at the Polish consulate in Constantinople for over a year, rather than the few days he had originally anticipated. He worked day and night with Pawel Zaleski, becoming an indispensable aide, colleague and close friend. Nothing was too much trouble for him, and Zaleski soon began to wonder how he would manage when Wladek left. The young man visited the British Consulate once a week to eat in the kitchen with Mrs Henderson, the Scottish cook, and on one occasion with His Britannic Majesty’s Second Consul, in the dining room.

  Around them the old Islamic traditions were being swept away, and the Ottoman Empire was beginning to totter. Mustafa Kemal was the name on everyone’s lips. The sense of impending change only made Wladek more restless. His mind returned continually to the Baron and those he had loved at the castle. The necessity of surviving from day to day in Russia had kept them from his mind, but in Turkey they rose up before him, a silent procession: the Baron, Leon, Florentyna … Sometimes he could see them laughing and happy - Leon swimming in the river, Florentyna playing cat’s cradle in her bedroom, the Baron’s face strong and proud in the evening candlelight - but always the well-remembered, well-loved faces would melt away, and try as he might to hold them firm, it was always the last time he’d seen them that came back again and again: Leon lying dead in the castle grounds, Florentyna bleeding in agony, the Baron blind and broken.

  Wladek began to feel that he could never return to a land peopled by such ghosts until he had made something of his own life. With that single thought in mind he set his heart on emigrating to America, as his countryman Tadeusz Kosciuszko, of whom the Baron had told so many enthralling tales, had done long before him. The United States, described by Pawel Zaleski as the ‘New World’. The name inspired Wladek with hope for the future, and perhaps even a chance to return one day to Poland in triumph.

  It was Pawel who supplied the money for an immigrant passage to the United States. They were difficult to come by, and had to be arranged at least a year in advance. It seemed to Wladek as though the whole of Eastern Europe was trying to escape and start afresh in the New World.

  In the spring of 1921, Wladek Koskiewicz boarded the SS Black Arrow, bound for Ellis Island, New York. He took with him one suitcase, containing all his belongings, and a set of papers issued by Pawel Zaleski.

  The Polish Consul accompanied him to the wharf embraced him affectionately and bade him farewell. ‘Go with God, my child.’

  The traditional Polish response came naturally from the recesses ofWladek’s memory. ‘Remain with God,’ he replied.

  As he reached the top of the gangplank, Wladek recalled his terrifying journey from Odessa to Constantinople a year before. This time there wasn’t a lump of coal in sight, only emigrants wherever he looked - Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians, Ukrainians, Slavs, and others whose racial background he hadn’t come across. He clutched his suitcase and waited in line, the first of many long waits he would have to endure before being allowed to enter the United States.

  His papers were carefully scrutinized by an official checking for Turks trying to avoid military service, but Pawel Zaleski’s documents were impeccable. Wladek invoked a silent blessing on his fellow countryman, as he watched others being turned back.

  Next came a vaccination, followed by a cursory medical examination which, had he not been well fed for the past year, Wladek might have failed. At last, with all the checks completed, he was allowed to go below to the steerage quarters where there were separate compartments allocated for males, females and married couples. Wladek made his way to the male quarters, where he found a group of Poles occupying a large block of iron berths, each containing four two-tiered bunk beds. Each bunk had a thin straw mattress, a light blanket and no pillow. Having no pillow didn’t concern Wladek,
who had never been able to sleep on one since leaving Camp 201.

  He selected a bunk below a boy who looked roughly his own age.

  ‘I’m Wladek Koskiewicz.’

  ‘I’m Jerzy Nowak from Warsaw,’ volunteered the boy in Polish, ‘and I’m going to make my fortune in America.’ The boy thrust out his hand.

  Wladek and Jerzy spent the time before the ship sailed telling each other of their experiences, both pleased to have someone to share their loneliness with, neither willing to admit his total ignorance of what to expect when they reached the shores of America. Jerzy, it turned out, had lost both his parents in the war but had few other claims of interest. He became entranced by Wladek’s stories: the son of a baron, brought up in a trapper’s cottage, imprisoned by the Germans and the Russians, escaped from Siberia and then from a Turkish executioner thanks to the silver band left to him by his father. It seemed to Jerzy that Wladek had packed more into his fifteen years than he could hope to manage in a lifetime.

  The following morning the Black Arrow sailed. Wladek and Jerzy leaned over the rail and watched Constantinople slip away in the blue distance of the Bosphorus. After the calm of the Sea of Marmara, the choppiness of the Aegean afflicted most of the passengers with a horrible abruptness. The two washrooms for the steerage passengers, with ten basins apiece, six toilets and cold saltwater taps, caused queues during waking hours and a continual disruption at night. After a couple of days the stench of their quarters reminded Wladek of the dungeons in Slonim castle.

  Food was served on long wooden tables in a large, filthy dining hall: warm soup, potatoes, fish, boiled beef and cabbage, brown or black bread. Wladek had tasted worse food, but not since leaving Siberia, and he was glad of the provisions Mrs Henderson had packed for him: sausages, nuts and even a little brandy. He and Jerzy shared their feast huddled in the corner of their berth. They ate together, explored the ship together and, at night, slept one above the other.