The Sons of Adam (43 page)

The interview this time could hardly have been more different.

‘Montague, my dear fellow! Splendid! Splendid news! Many congratulations!’

‘Thank you, sir. I may take it then that you give your approval?’

‘My approval? I hardly think you need my approval.’

‘It’s just that last time, sir, you were … a little less enthusiastic.’

‘I don’t follow you. Oil comes out of the ground whether I approve of it or not. Probably just as well, eh?’

‘I see. Oil … Yes, I was actually speaking about another topic even more precious to me. Your daughter, sir, and I have loved each other for some time, and –’

‘Good golly, man, of course, of course. Couldn’t ask for a better husband. Of course you must marry her. Sooner the better.’ Egham Dunlop turned to some papers on his desk. The map of the world was still there on the wall behind him, though with slightly fewer pins in it than before. Dunlop was still a powerful man, but Alan noticed that he had aged a little since their last interview. They all had, even Lottie …

‘As a matter of fact,’ the banker interrupted Alan’s reverie, ‘I’ve been looking over some figures. How much d’you think you’ll need?’

‘Excuse me, sir?’

‘How much money? Will a million be enough or d’you need more?’

Alan flushed. ‘I hadn’t thought … I didn’t intend to ask for a penny, sir. Though I may be a little short of funds at present, I have no doubt that, following my recent good fortune, I shall be able to keep your daughter in a manner –’

‘No, no, no! God’s sakes! You’ll damn well keep Lottie like a princess, but she’s hardly going to cost a million, is she? How much for the company, man, the company? Oil stocks are burning hot at the moment. If you want to raise money, now’s the time to strike. As I say, I can see you getting a million without much trouble. Two million might be pushing it, but I wouldn’t declare the thing impossible …’

Back with Lottie immediately afterwards, Alan gave her the good news. By this stage, Alan was happy beyond happy. He’d arrived at the house not knowing if Lottie still remembered him, and he would leave it engaged and with her father’s blessing. He was in a kind of blissful delirium, as though the air was champagne. But even amidst the champagne, there was a question he needed to ask.

‘Lottie, darling, how did you know everything? I mean, I didn’t tell anyone about finding oil. I didn’t tell anyone I’d be coming here. Yet, you knew about the oil and everything seemed so … well, expected.’

Lottie threw back her head and laughed. ‘“He bringeth forth grass for the cattle: and green herb for the service of man.”’

‘What?’

‘Don’t interrupt. I haven’t got there yet. He bringeth forth grass and all that, so that “man may bring out of the earth oil to give him a cheerful countenance”. Psalm a hundred and four, verse fifteen. And you’re an atheistical old goat for not knowing.’

‘Psalm one-oh-four … Reynolds! Reynolds sent you … You and he … The pair of you have been in league all along. I don’t believe it!’

‘Well, I was hardly going to let you stride off into the Persian desert with no way of knowing what was happening to you, was I? I asked Charlie Greenaway if he knew anyone who could keep an eye on you for me and he said that one of his best chaps had just gone off to work with you. He was rather cross about it, actually. So I met up with George. I thought he looked terribly ferocious to begin with, but he turned out to be a perfect sweetie. He sent letters to me every month, addressing them to a friend of mine so you wouldn’t suspect. He told me all about how you were getting on and all about how you – dear, dear man – wrote infinite letters to me that you never sent. Obviously I wanted to know the very first minute you’d struck oil, hence the telegram. Personally I don’t know why he didn’t choose psalm one hundred and fourteen, verses seven and eight: “Tremble, earth at the God of Jacob; who changeth the flint stone into a springing well.” Not that you’d have known either way, Mr Goat.’

‘He didn’t mention, I suppose … he didn’t say anything about …’

‘About your cholera? Yes he jolly well did. And your malaria. I told Charlie Greenaway that if his blasted doctors had let you keel over from some horrid little mosquito, I’d’ve come along and shot the lot of them. The doctors, I mean. I shouldn’t think I could hit the mosquitoes.’

‘Oh dear, my love! He shouldn’t have told you.’

‘No!’ Lottie’s tone changed abruptly. Her voice was suddenly forceful, even steely. ‘If we’re to be married, then we’re going to be damn well married. That means knowing everything, even the bad things. Especially the bad things.’ Her voice softened again and she put a hand on his arm. ‘I’m not very easily shocked, you know.’

‘No.’ Alan’s heart slid a little further in love. ‘You are a remarkable lady. I’m very lucky.’

He kissed her.

And on that evening of blissful delirium, there remained just one last important ritual. Lottie pointed out to Alan that, technically speaking, he had completely forgotten to ask her if she wanted to marry him and, ‘For all you know, I might say no. I do like to be consulted, you know.’

Alan sank to one knee. He took her hand in his.

‘Dearest Lottie,’ he began, ‘will you make me the happiest man in the world … ?’

Lawyers did what lawyers do.

They fought, they argued, they dragged things out. Tom’s attorney told him he’d win for sure. He babbled about the irregularities in the mortgage documentation, about statutes of limitations, about protection of widow’s rights in the sunshine state, about
ipsis dipsis
and
locus fatuus.
Tom’s attorney promised victory and delivered defeat.

Walt Faries struck a deal with Duster Larzelere and the others, and they all switched round to work for him. The Duster and the rest were sympathetic. They preferred Tom to Faries, but they had to go where the money was. They were apologetic but determined.

Tom tried to recover something. He’d drilled the well, after all. The derrick and rig were his, even if he’d had to buy them with promises and prayers. But he lost. He lost everything. He ended up owing more than he possessed, and would have been declared bankrupt except that his creditors didn’t bother to hound him for money they knew he didn’t have.

On the last stupid day of the last stupid hearing, Tom owned the clothes he wore, a small white loving mongrel with a soft spot for bacon, and two dollars fifty-five cents.

He stumbled out into the sun, a pauper.

There were more than four hundred wells on Signal Hill now, four hundred producing wells. America had seen oil booms before, but never anything like Signal Hill.

Take the cemetery. Everyone had agreed that it would be quite wrong to drill beneath the cemetery: blasphemy and desecration. But there’s blasphemy and then again there’s the crime of unAmerican stupidity in the matter of money, and it didn’t seem like any way to honour the dead to leave them floating over a sea of perfectly saleable oil. So the next-of-kin all clubbed together and built oil wells round the holy yard, whipstocking their drill pipes sideways into the land beneath the graves. Tom had met a guy selling shares in his Auntie Flo. He said it was his auntie that lay dead up there, so it must be his oil, and if anyone wanted a piece of it they’d have to buy shares in Flo. It seemed like everyone in the whole world had made money out of Signal Hill.

Everyone but Tom.

There were tears in his eyes as he sat down on the courthouse steps, trying to figure out what to do next. He felt like he’d lost all his motivation. All through the troubled, difficult years he’d kept himself going. All through war. All through prison. Through all the betrayals and poverty and hard work. And now he’d failed. Spectacularly failed. He felt as though he didn’t have the puff to get up and start all over. He felt worse than he knew a man could feel.

Pipsqueak, a loyal heart in an absurdly small body, gently but insistently forced her head between Tom’s arms, put her face to his, and licked his mouth and eyes. And that was when he heard a voice, a woman’s voice, husky and East European.

‘Tom?’ it said. ‘Is that you?’

Speculation’s all the go,

With rich and poor, both high and low,

And everybody’s in a boil

For some Petroleum Oil:

Love for gold will long increase,

We hear of raids and talk of peace,

But best of all, it’s worth your while

To come where ‘I’ve struck Ile’.

from ‘I’ve struck Ile’
by Frank Wilder

The year is 1929.

The hit record of the year is ‘Happy Days are Here Again’ and the tune seems to capture the spirit of the age. People have never been so free. The economy has never been so strong. The stockmarket is hitting all-time highs. Life is good.

But across the world, there are clouds on the horizon. A communist demonstration in Berlin ends with more than thirty dead. The parties of the German far right are increasingly restless. Further east, in Russia, Stalin has eliminated opposition to his rule as the biggest country in the world is passing into one-man dictatorship. There is terrorism in the Balkans, riots in India, unrest in Europe.

Clouds on the horizon.

Outside a large white stucco house in Chelsea, a man in a new black suit hesitates. He checks the number of the house against a piece of paper he carries in his hand, then moves to the door and knocks loudly. It is eight fifteen in the morning.

The butler’s sick and the under-butler’s busy so a maid comes to the door. The tradesmen’s entrance is round the back, and whoever has the impertinence to knock so loudly while the family is at breakfast is in for an earful. The maid has her mouth open ready to remonstrate, but there, on the step, is a gentleman. His face is the colour of a chestnut, and his moustache would make a bank clerk look like a pirate – but, nevertheless, his class is obvious from his dress and the maid says nothing fiercer than, ‘Good morning, sir, may I help you?’

‘Indeed you may, lassie,’ says the man, ‘if this is the house of Alan Montague and his good lady.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Ha!’

The man makes as though to enter. The maid is flustered.

‘I’m sorry, sir, the family is at breakfast. Perhaps if you’d like to wait in the library? And who should I say … ?’

‘No, lassie, no. It’s quite all right. The breakfast room is downstairs, I take it? I don’t think Mr or Mrs Montague will mind an unexpected call from an old ruffian like myself.’