Kane and Abel Read online

  ‘We are both strong, so we will fight,’ said Leon.

  ‘We have swords and shields,’ added Wladek. ‘We are not afraid of Germans or Russians.’

  ‘My boys, your weapons are made of wood, and you have only played at war. This battle will not be between children. We must find a more quiet place to live until history has decided our fate. We must leave as soon as possible. I only pray that this is not the end of your childhood.’

  Leon and Wladek were mystified by the Baron’s words. War sounded to them like another exciting adventure, which they would be sure to miss if they left the castle.

  The servants took several days to pack the Baron’s possessions, and Wladek and Leon were informed that they would be departing for the family’s small summer house to the north of Grodno the following Monday. The two boys continued, often unsupervised, with their work and play, because no one in the castle seemed willing to answer their myriad questions.

  On Saturdays, lessons only took place in the morning. They were translating Adam Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz into Latin when they heard the guns. At first they thought the familiar sound was no more than a trapper out shooting on the estate, so they returned to the Bard of Czarnotas. A second volley of shots, much closer, made them look up, and then they heard screams coming from downstairs. The two boys stared at each other in bewilderment, but still they were not afraid, because they had never experienced anything in their short lives to make them fearful. The tutor fled, leaving them alone, and as he closed the door, there followed another shot, this time in the corridor outside their classroom. Now terrified, the two boys hid under their desks, not knowing what to do.

  Suddenly the door crashed open, and a man no older than their tutor, in a grey uniform and steel helmet, holding a rifle, stood towering over them. Leon clung to Wladek, while Wladek stared at the intruder. The soldier shouted at them in German, demanding to know who they were, but neither boy replied, even though both had mastered the language as well as their mother tongue. Another soldier appeared, grabbed the two boys by the necks like chickens and pulled them out into the corridor. They were dragged past the dead body of their tutor, down the stone steps at the front of the castle and into the garden, where they found Florentyna screaming hysterically. Row upon row of dead bodies, mostly servants, were being laid on the grass. Leon could not bear to look, and buried his head in Wladek’s shoulder. Wladek was mesmerized by the sight of one of the bodies, a large man with a luxuriant moustache. It was the trapper. Wladek felt nothing. Florentyna continued to scream.

  ‘Is Papa there?’ asked Leon. ‘Is Papa there?’

  Wladek scanned the line of bodies once again. He thanked God that there was no sign of the Baron, and was about to tell Leon the good news when a soldier appeared by their side.

  ‘Wer hat gesprochen?’ he demanded fiercely.

  ‘Ich,’ said Wladek defiantly.

  The soldier raised his rifle and brought the butt crashing down into Wladek’s stomach. His legs buckled, and he dropped to his knees. Where was the Baron? What was happening? Why were they being treated like this in their own home?

  Leon quickly jumped on top of Wladek, trying to protect him from the second blow that the soldier was aiming at Wladek’s head, but as the butt of the rifle came crashing down, its full force caught the back of Leon’s neck.

  Both boys lay motionless, Wladek because he was dazed by the blow and the weight of Leon’s body on top of him, and Leon because he was dead.

  Wladek could hear another soldier berating their tormentor for striking them. They tried to pick Leon up, but Wladek clung to him. It took both of the soldiers to prise his friend’s body away and dump it unceremoniously alongside the others, face down on the grass. Wladek’s eyes did not leave the motionless body of his only friend until he was marched back inside the castle and, with a handful of dazed survivors, led to the dungeons.

  Nobody spoke, for fear of joining the line of bodies on the grass, until the dungeon doors were bolted and the last words of the soldiers had faded into the distance. Then Wladek murmured, ‘Holy God,’ for there in a corner, slumped against the wall, was the Baron, staring into space, alive and uninjured only because the Germans needed him to take charge of the prisoners.

  Wladek crawled across to him, while the servants sat as far away from their master as possible. The two gazed at each other as they had on the first day they met. Wladek put his hand out once again, and the Baron took it. He told him what had happened to Leon. Tears coursed down the Baron’s proud face. Neither spoke. Both of them had lost the person they had loved most in the world.

  8

  WHEN ANNE KANE first read the report of the sinking of the Titanic in The Times, she simply refused to believe it. Her husband must still be alive.

  After she’d read the article a third time, she burst into uncontrollable tears, something William had never witnessed in the past, and wasn’t quite sure how to handle.

  Before he could ask what had caused this uncharacteristic outburst, his mother smothered him in her arms and clung tightly to him. How could she tell him that they had both lost the person they most loved in the world?

  Sir David Seymour arrived at the Savoy a few minutes later, accompanied by his wife. They waited in the lounge while the widow put on the only dark clothes she had with her. William dressed himself, still not certain what a calamity was. Anne asked Sir David to explain the full implications of the tragedy to her son.

  When he was told that the great liner had hit an iceberg and sunk, all William said was, ‘I wanted to be on the ship with Daddy, but they wouldn’t let me go.’ He didn’t cry, because he refused to believe that anything could kill his father. He would surely be among the survivors.

  In Sir David’s long career as a politician, diplomat and now chairman of Kane and Cabot, London, he had never seen such self-containment in one so young. ‘Presence is bestowed on very few,’ he was heard to remark some years later. ‘It was bestowed on Richard Kane, and was passed on to his only son.’

  On Thursday of that week William turned six, but he didn’t open any of his presents.

  The names of the survivors, listed in The Times every morning, were checked and double-checked by Anne. Richard Lowell Kane was still missing at sea, presumed drowned. But it was to be another week before William abandoned hope of his father’s survival. On the fifteenth day, William cried.

  Anne found it painful to board the Aquitania, but William seemed strangely eager to put to sea. Hour after hour he would sit on the observation deck, scanning the dark grey water of the ocean.

  ‘Tomorrow I will find him,’ he promised his mother again and again, at first confidently but later in a voice that barely disguised his own disbelief.

  ‘William, no one can survive for three weeks in the North Atlantic’

  ‘Not even my father?’

  ‘Not even your father.’

  When Anne and William arrived back in Boston, both grandmothers were awaiting them at the Red House, mindful of the duty that had been thrust upon them. Anne passively accepted their proprietary role. Life had little purpose left for her other than William, whose destiny his grandmothers now seemed determined to control. William was polite but uncooperative. During the day he sat silently through his lessons with Mr Munro, and at night he held his mother’s hand, but neither spoke.

  ‘What he needs is to be with other children,’ declared Grandmother Cabot. Grandmother Kane agreed. The following day they dismissed Mr Munro and the nurse and sent William to Sayre Academy, in the hope that an introduction to the real world, and the constant company of other children, might bring him back to his old self.

  Richard had left the bulk of his estate to William, to remain in trust until his twenty-first birthday. There was a codicil attached to the will. Richard expected his son to become president and chairman of Kane and Cabot on merit. It was the only part of his father’s testament that inspired William, for the rest was no more than his birthright. Anne received a
capital sum of $500,000 and an income for life of $100,000 a year after taxes, which would cease only if she remarried. She also inherited the house on Beacon Hill, the summer mansion on the North Shore, a summer house in the Hamptons and a small island off Cape Cod, all of which were to pass to William on her death. Both grandmothers received $250,000, and letters leaving them in no doubt about their responsibilities should Richard die before them. The trust was to be administered by the bank, with William’s godparents acting as co-trustees. The income was to be reinvested each year in conservative enterprises.

  It was a full year before the grandmothers came out of mourning, and although Anne was still only twenty-eight, she looked older than her years.

  The grandmothers, unlike Anne, concealed their grief from William until he finally reproached them.

  ‘Don’t you miss my father?’ he demanded, gazing at Grandmother Kane, his blue eyes bringing back memories of her son.

  ‘Yes, child. But he would not have wished us to sit around feeling sorry for ourselves.’

  ‘But I want us to always remember him - always,’ said William, his voice cracking.

  ‘William, I am going to speak to you for the first time as though you were quite grown up. We will always keep his memory hallowed between us, and you shall play your own part by living up to what your father would have expected of you. You are now the head of the family and heir to his estate. You must therefore prepare yourself, through diligence and hard work, to be fit for such a responsibility, in the same spirit in which your father carried out his duties.’

  William didn’t respond, but he immediately began acting upon his grandmother’s advice. He learned to live with his sorrow without ever complaining, and from that moment on he threw himself steadfastly into his work at school, satisfied only if Grandmother Kane seemed impressed. At no subject did he fail to excel, and in mathematics he was not only top of his class, but far ahead of his years. Anything his father had achieved, he was determined to better. He grew even closer to his mother, and became suspicious of anyone who was not family, so that he was often thought of by his contemporaries as a solitary child, a loner and, unfairly, a snob.

  The grandmothers decided on William’s eighth birthday that the time had come for the boy to learn the value of money. With this in mind, they allocated him one dollar a week as pocket money, but insisted that he keep an inventory accounting for every cent he spent. Grandmother Kane presented him with a green leather-bound ledger, at a cost of 95 cents, which she deducted from his first week’s allowance. From then on the grandmothers divided the dollar up every Saturday morning. William could invest 50 cents, spend 20 cents, give 10 cents to charity and keep 20 cents in reserve. At the end of each quarter they would inspect the ledger and his written report on any unusual transactions.

  After the first three months had passed, William was well prepared to account for himself. He had given $1.30 to the recently founded Boy Scouts of America, and invested $5.55, which he had asked Grandmother Kane to deposit in a savings account at the bank of his godfather, J. P. Morgan. He had spent $2.60 on a bicycle, and had kept $1.60 in reserve. The ledger was a source of great satisfaction to the grandmothers, even if they weren’t certain about the bicycle: there was no doubt William was the son of Richard Kane.

  At school, William made few friends, partly because he was shy of mixing with anyone other than Cabots, Lowells or children from families wealthier than his own. This restricted his choice somewhat, so he became a rather broody child, which worried his mother. She did not approve of the ledger or the investment programme, and would have preferred William to lead a more normal existence: to have lots of young friends rather than a couple of elderly advisors; to get himself dirty and bruised, not always remaining neat and spotless; to collect toads and turtles rather than stocks and company reports - in short, to be like any other little boy. But she never had the courage to voice her misgivings to the grandmothers, and in any case, they were not interested in any other little boy.

  On his ninth birthday William presented the ledger to his grandmothers for their annual inspection. The green leather book showed a saving during the past year of more than twenty-five dollars. He was particularly proud to point out to the grandmothers an entry marked ‘B6’, showing that he had taken his money out of J. P. Morgan’s bank immediately on hearing of the death of the great financier, because he had noted that stock in his father’s bank had fallen in value after the death had been announced. William had reinvested the same amount three months later, making a healthy profit.

  The grandmothers were suitably impressed, and allowed William to trade in his old bicycle and purchase a new one. At his request Grandmother Kane invested his remaining capital in the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. The price of oil, William asserted, could only rise now that Mr Ford had sold over a million model Ts. He kept the ledger meticulously up to date until his twenty-first birthday. Had the grandmothers still been alive then, they would have been proud of the final entry in the right-hand column marked ASSETS.

  In September 1915, following a relaxed summer holiday at the family house in the Hamptons, William returned to Sayre Academy. Once he was back at school, he began to look for competition among pupils older than himself. Whatever he took up, he was never satisfied until he excelled at it, and beating his contemporaries provided him with few challenges. He began to realize that most people from backgrounds as privileged as his lacked any real incentive to compete, and that fiercer rivalry was to be found from boys who had not been born with his advantages. He even wondered if it was an advantage to be disadvantaged.

  In 1915 a craze for collecting matchbox labels hit Sayre Academy. William observed this frenzy for several days but did not join in. Within a fortnight, common labels were changing hands for a dime, while rarer examples commanded as much as fifty cents. William considered the situation for another week, and although he had no interest in being a collector, he decided this was the moment to become a dealer.

  On the following Saturday he visited Leavitt and Pierce, one of the largest tobacconist’s in Boston, and spent the afternoon taking down the names and addresses of major matchbox manufacturers throughout the world, making a special note of those from nations that were not at war. He invested five dollars in notepaper, envelopes and stamps, and wrote to the chairman or president of every company he had listed. His letter was simple and to the point, despite having been redrafted several times.

  Mr Chairman,

  I am a dedicated collector of matchbox labels, but I cannot afford to buy all the boxes. My pocket money is only one dollar a week, but I enclose a three-cent stamp for postage to prove that I am serious about my hobby. I am sorry to bother you personally, but yours was the only name I could find to write to.

  Your friend,

  William Kane (aged 9)

  P.S. Yours are one of my favourites.

  Within two weeks, William had had a 55 per cent rate of reply, which yielded seventy-eight different labels. Nearly all his correspondents also returned the three-cent stamp, as he had anticipated they would.

  William immediately opened a label market at school, always checking what he could sell on even before he had made a purchase or swoop. He noticed that some boys had no interest in the rarity of the matchbox labels, only in their appearance, and for them he offered several examples in order to obtain rare trophies for the more discerning collectors. After a further two weeks of buying and selling he sensed that the market had reached its peak, and that if he was not careful, with the Christmas holidays fast approaching, he might end up with surplus stock. With much trumpeted advance publicity in the form of a printed handbill which cost him a half-cent a sheet - placed on every boy’s desk - William announced that he would be holding an auction of his matchbox labels, all 211 of them. The auction took place in the school washroom during the lunch hour, and was better attended than most school hockey games.

  After the hammer had come down for the final time, William had
grossed $56.32, a net profit of $51.32 on his original investment. He put $25 on deposit with the bank at 2.5 per cent interest, bought himself a camera for $10, gave $5 to the Young Men’s Christian Association, which had broadened its activities to helping immigrants who were flooding to America from war-torn Europe, bought his mother a bunch of flowers and put the remaining $7 into his cash account. The market in matchbox labels collapsed a few days before term ended. William had got out at the top of the market. The grandmothers nodded sagely when they were informed of the details: it was not dissimilar to the way their husbands had made their fortunes in the panic of 1873.

  During the holidays, William could not resist finding out if it was possible to obtain a better return on his capital than the 2.5 per cent yielded on his savings account. For the next three months he invested - again through Grandmother Kane - in stocks recommended by The Wall Street Journal. During that time he lost more than half the money he had made on the matchbox labels. He never again relied solely on the expertise of The Wall Street Journal. If its correspondents were so well informed, why did they need to work for a newspaper? he concluded.

  Annoyed with his loss of almost $30, William decided that it must be recouped during the summer holidays. After he’d worked out which parties and other functions his mother would expect him to attend, he found he was left with only fourteen free days, just enough time to embark upon a new venture. He sold all his remaining Wall Street Journal recommended shares, which only netted him $12. With this money he bought a flat piece of wood, a set of pram wheels, axles and a piece of rope, at a cost, after some bargaining, of $5. He then put on a flat cloth cap and an old suit he had outgrown and went off to the central railroad station. William stood outside the exit, looking hungry and tired. He informed selected travellers that the main hotels in Boston were near the station, and there was no need for them to waste their money on a taxi or one of the surviving hansom carriages, as he could transport their luggage on his moving board for 20 per cent of what they charged; he added that the walk would also do them good. Working for six hours a day, he found he could pocket roughly $4.