The Sons of Adam

by Harry Bingham

  And so the quarrel persisted. Tom stayed at his father’s cottage. Alan stayed in the big house. For the first time since they’d been able to talk, they spent an entire day without speaking to each other. For the first time since they’d been able to walk, they spent an entire day without each other’s company.

  On the evening of the following day, Alan slipped away early to bed.

  To bed, but not to sleep. He opened his bedroom window, climbed quickly across the kitchen roofs, slid down a drainpipe and ran across the lawns and fields to Jack Creeley’s cottage. Once there, he tossed a pebble up at Tom’s window, saw it open, then scrambled quickly up the branching wisteria and tumbled in over the sill.

  The room was lit by a single paraffin-wax candle. Tom was sitting on the bed with a boy’s magazine open in front of him. He nodded hello. Alan grinned back: the smile of a would-be peacemaker.

  ‘Well?’ said Tom.

  Alan was momentarily confused. He didn’t know what Tom meant by his ‘Well?’ and he was taken aback by the loss of their normal invisible communication.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said stupidly. ‘Well, what?’

  ‘You know. I mean I s’pose you’ve come to say sorry.’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘You heard.’

  Alan was temporarily blank with astonishment. He knew perfectly well how remorseless his twin could be: remorseless and even cruel. But he’d never expected to feel the edge of it himself. Alan’s head jerked back.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I came to see if you were sorry yet. Obviously not.’

  Alan was still sitting on the ledge of the window and he swung his legs out of it again onto the wisteria branch. But he didn’t drop away out of sight. He hung there, half in, half out of the room, waiting for Tom to say something that would let him come back in. But he was disappointed.

  ‘No,’ said Tom. ‘Obviously not.’

  Alan shrugged. The shrug was meant to be a defiant, couldn’t-care-less affair, but the candle’s light was enough to show that his mouth and eyes obviously cared very much indeed.

  ‘Well then,’ said Alan, still hanging in the window.

  ‘Well then.’

  The two boys stared at each other a few seconds longer. Eventually Tom looked away, back at his magazine. Alan found a lower hold for his feet, wriggled once, then dropped away out of sight.

  Alan went straight home, but not to bed.

  He climbed up onto the kitchen roof and lay there on his back, looking up at the starlight overhead. He was angry with Tom. As angry as he’d ever been. The two boys quarrelled often enough, but always made up quickly. When they fought, as they often did, their rules were simple.

  Never submit.

  Never give up.

  While Tom was a little stronger, Alan had a longer reach. While Tom could be surprisingly fierce, Alan’s pride and determination always kept him in the fight to the very end. And then, when the fight was over, it was over. The two boys were the best of friends. They could be at each other’s throats one minute and walk away, calmly chatting, the next.

  But this was different and Alan knew it. For two and a half hours, he lay on his back watching the stars wheel and turn. He went over everything in his mind. On the one hand, there was Tom’s temper and recklessness, and his stubborn refusal to compromise. On the other hand, there was Guy’s unkindness and Sir Adam’s unfairness. By the end of his long vigil, he’d made up his mind. It was he, Alan, who was going to have to do the impossible. It was he who was going to have to make things right.

  Having made up his mind, he went to bed.

  In the morning, after breakfast he spoke to Sir Adam.

  ‘Father, I want to ask you something.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think you should give Tom the concession. Properly. You did give it to him before, you know. I know you didn’t exactly say so, but everyone knew what you meant.’

  Sir Adam sighed and bent down so that his face was on a level with his son’s.

  ‘But see here, Alan,’ Sir Adam said, ‘just suppose the thing turns out to be worth a fortune. It could be worth as much as Whitcombe House and all its land. It’s not that I don’t think that Tommy’s worth that. Of course he is. But there’s you and Guy to consider. How would you feel if Tommy was as rich as Mr D’Arcy and you were stuck with your very little patch in Marlborough?’

  ‘I shouldn’t care.’

  ‘Not now, maybe, but perhaps you would. These things do matter more as you grow, you know.’

  ‘Then give it to us.’ It was an idea of genius – the idea that had come to him last night on the tiles of the kitchen roof.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If that’s what you’re so worried about, then give the concession to me and Tom. Both of us. Only then you have to share the Marlborough place between us too. Then we’d be exactly the same, whatever happens.’

  ‘But …’

  Sir Adam swallowed his protests. In the much more likely event that the concession was worthless, he’d be halving the property he’d set aside for his own blood-son. But, however much he felt this, he knew better than to argue the point with a passionate Alan.

  ‘Because we are the same, aren’t we, Father? Exactly the same.’

  Of course you are, only –’

  ‘Well, there you go. Simple! Can I go and tell him now?’

  ‘It isn’t that simple. Your mother and I –’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about her. I’ll go and talk to her.’

  Alan ran off to his mother and argued the case with her. Although she said little, Alan quite correctly sensed that she was on his side.

  ‘I’ll talk it over with your papa,’ she promised.

  She was as good as her word. That morning she spent an hour or two in patient argument with her husband. Sir Adam’s sticking point remained the likelihood that he’d be disinheriting Alan. Sir Adam was prosperous enough, but he certainly wasn’t vastly well off. Alan’s portion was never going to have been large and Sir Adam was anxious not to cut it in half. But Pamela was determined. She had some money of her own that had lain dormant with a City bank for many years. When she looked again at how much she had, it was much more than she’d believed. She insisted on adding her own money to Alan’s portion, but on condition that Sir Adam did as his son wanted.

  And in the end he agreed.

  By the end of that day, when lessons were finished, Sir Adam called Alan into his library.

  ‘Well, my boy, I’ve news for you.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve made certain arrangements, the upshot of which is that you and Tommy can share the farm and share the concession. Because of your mother’s generosity, there may even be a little money to go along with it as well.’

  Alan stood open-mouthed, hardly daring to believe that he’d won. ‘Really, Father?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘With all the legals and everything?’

  Sir Adam smiled. ‘You’re ten and a half, my boy. So is Tommy. There’ll be time enough for the legal side when you’re of age. But if you mean, is my decision final, then yes it is.’

  Alan breathed out a sigh of relief. It seemed an eternity since Tom had gone.

  ‘Thank you!’

  ‘Now, it’s up to you, young man, but there may be somebody you want to go and tell about this.’

  Though it was still only spring, Sir Adam’s window was set half open. Alan paused an instant longer, as though to check that what he’d heard was real, not an illusion. Then he moved. He ran across the room, jumped through the open window, and went streaking across the lawns to find his twin.

  He wasn’t disappointed.

  Tom wasn’t simply pleased, he was ecstatic. And (from Alan’s point of view) what mattered most was that although Tom was delighted to have won his concession, his joy over the reunion with Alan was greater still. The twins were together again – stronger after the break, it appeared, th
an before it. With joint ownership of the concession, they became oil fanatics together. Oil was their obsession, the sign of what united them as twins. Whitcombe House welcomed Tom back.

  Life resumed its normal course, only better.

  That should have been it. Argument over. Done and dusted. Forgotten and forgiven.

  And so it was. Almost. But when emotions run so high and for so long, they leave their mark.

  Alan had learned a lesson – an almost unconscious one, perhaps, but one so deeply etched that he never forgot it. When Tom’s passions were aroused, he could be dangerous, irresponsible, uncompromising.

  And Tom too had learned his lesson. When the chips were down, Alan had proved unreliable. Given the choice between Tom and family, Alan was a compromiser, an evader, an ally of divided loyalties.

  The lessons had been learned and would never be forgotten.

  And the oil?

  Knox D’Arcy’s glorious news looked feebler and less glorious by the week. By the end of May, and despite all the efforts of the drilling team in Persia, the flow of oil dwindled and died. D’Arcy’s expenses continued to mount. The chances of finding oil anywhere – let alone in the twins’ stony stretch of mountains – seemed ever more remote. D’Arcy searched for new investors to share the strain.

  It seemed that he had gambled vastly and lost utterly.

  The two boys continued to learn their Persian and their geology. They continued to follow D’Arcy’s fortunes at the new drilling site of Masjid-i-Suleiman. Their fascination with the business continued unabated. In fact, if anything, with the oil concession now fairly and squarely shared between the two of them, their determination to explore for oil together was stronger than ever before. But, aged only ten, they’d already learned the most important lesson the oil business had to teach.

  You could drill hard. You could drill well. You could drill in a place where oil was literally seeping from the ground.

  And you could still fail.

  Lose money.

  Go broke.

  PART TWO

  Do you know, brother, that you are a prince?

  A son of Adam?

  Jalal al-din Rumi (1207–1273)

  12

  It’s late June 1914.

  The summer is a warm one, golden even. The international scene is peaceful. The tensions that have bubbled away in Europe for the last dozen or more years are certainly no worse than they have been and quite probably a good deal better.

  Seven British warships have joined the German Imperial High Seas fleet for the Elbe Regatta: a week of racing, dancing, music and fireworks. When finally the British fleet steams away, the British admiral signals to his hosts: ‘Friends in the past and friends for ever.’

  In Serbia, an archduke has been killed by an anarchist, but who cares? Serbia is Serbia, and in that part of the world, archdukes are two a penny.

  Alan and Tom are grown men now, twenty-one years of age. Their future lies ahead of them, a sparkling ocean on which anything could happen.

  Alan has grown into a tall man, pale blond hair, eyes of pale blue, eyebrows so fair you can hardly see them. He has his father’s lean hawkishness, though softened by hints of his mother: her smile, her appearance of mild worry.

  Alan is at Oxford, finishing his final examinations. The exams have been gruelling and exhausting, but they’ll soon be over. His degree will be in Natural Science, a subject he has little time for, except that it allows him to specialise in his chosen field of geology.

  Because D’Arcy’s adventures in oil hadn’t ended. He’d found his investors, he’d continued to drill. And in 1907, six years from first beginning, he struck oil.

  Oil on a huge scale. No trickle this time, but a gush so vast that one of the world’s great companies was in the process of being built upon it. The company, now named Anglo-Persian, has a use for resourceful young geologists, and, as soon as September comes around, Alan will start work on the Persian-Mesopotamian border, scouting for oil. But that’s September. In between now and then, he has two clear months for riding, shooting and fishing in the country, and for balls and parties in London.

  Tom, too, is doing well.

  He’s shorter than Alan, but stronger, broad in the shoulder, glossy dark hair with a hint of curl. His face is almost picture-book handsome: wide, strong and with a dazzling smile that comes quickly and fades slowly. Unlike Alan, Tom is already highly experienced with the girls. It seems he’s never without them. Alan laughs about it, but also finds it embarrassing. Where Tom is a veteran, Alan is wholly inexperienced.

  And there’s another way in which Tom is running ahead of Alan: in business.

  Once his schooling was over, Tom rejected a possible scholarship to Oxford and instead won a position with the American giant, Standard Oil, in their London office. He’s doing well. Talented and energetic, he’s already building a name for himself as one of the most able young men in the company. Though Tom works hard, he joins up with Alan every weekend and they spend their time together either dancing and socialising in London, or riding and shooting in the country.

  And Guy?

  These days, Guy seems altogether less significant. The enmities of childhood appear to have faded. If the old hatreds haven’t exactly disappeared, they don’t make a lot of difference now. Tom is in London. Guy seems to be anywhere but. Guy is a soldier, a major, with a particular aptitude for staff work. Tom and Guy don’t see much of each other, aren’t likely to see each other much in the future. When their paths do cross, they are coldly polite.

  But, meantime, summer 1914 is a golden one.

  It’s one to be enjoyed, a time when the best thing in the world to be is a young Englishman with the future a sparkling ocean at his feet. Tom and Alan hardly feel the need to signal anything to each other, but if they did, they’d send the same signal as the British admiral in Kiel. ‘Friends in the past and friends for ever.’

  The trouble with archdukes is that if you have one and you lose one, you can’t just say to hell with it, we’ll get another. So Austria, who happened to own the archduke in question, sent an ultimatum to Serbia, who stood accused of supporting the anarchists. Roughly speaking, the ultimatum said, ‘We’re very upset about our archduke and we’d like you to do some serious grovelling.’

  So Serbia grovelled.

  Serbia was little and Austria-Hungary was big, not to mention the fact that the Austrians and the Germans were best of friends and the Germans were well known to fancy a spot of military adventure. So Serbia grovelled. Profusely. Unreservedly. Embarrassingly.

  But, unfortunately, if you fancy a spot of military adventure – if you’re all geared up for it, looking forward to it, been promising Auntie Helga a postcard from Belgrade – then a conciliatory reply isn’t necessarily enough to hold you back. So Austria declared war.

  Now the trouble with starting wars is that your neighbours are apt to get a little nervous. Russia sat right next to strong Austria and mighty Germany, and it seemed that there was about to be a war on her doorstep. This made Russia a little twitchy, so she mobilised her troops, all six million of them.

  Whoops! Here was Austria-Hungary hoping for a nice little war in its back garden, when all of a sudden the biggest country in Europe has mobilised its massive population and placed it on a war footing. Germany called on Russia to demobilise, but, as the Russians looked at it, that was a bit like the fox inviting the chicken to come out of the roost. Russia told the Germans to get lost, and Germany too got ready for war.

  Now the trouble with Germany mobilising its army is that the French feel kind of twitchy. The French are a generous race with a well-deserved reputation for hospitality, but when you’ve had a few thousand uninvited guests marching through your capital city only a few decades before, you can be excused for getting nervous. What’s more, France had an alliance with Russia, and the Germans and Russians weren’t looking too friendly these days. Germany asked France to abandon her alliance with Russia, but France said no.
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  The way Germany saw things, if war was coming then it made a whole lot of sense to stay one step ahead of the game. And, say what you like about the Germans, when they set out to do a thing, by golly they do it thoroughly.

  Looking back on it, neither Tom nor Alan nor anybody else could have explained why one more assassination in the assassination capital of the world should have triggered the largest armed conflict in world history. But, explicable or not, that’s precisely what happened.

  Needing a quick victory in the west to ensure decisive gains in the east, Germany sent its troops into Belgium, destination Paris. The British – deeply reluctant to go to war, but equally reluctant to hand Europe over to the Germans – asked Germany kindly to leave Belgium alone. The Germans said no, and Britain too was at war.

  13

  May 1915.

  The night sky rumbled with a general low thunder and the horizon sparkled with the flashes of shells bursting miles away to the north. The largest French farmhouse seemed to have given up the notion of farming anything and had turned itself into a kind of hotel instead. In the spacious kitchen, three or four wooden trestle tables were crowded with soldiers, each paying half a franc for a vast plateful of fried potatoes together with a scrap of bacon and a glass of watery beer.

  Alan and Tom, only just arrived in France, blinked at the light and the noise, and stretched their legs, cramped after a two-day journey by boat, train and cart. They weren’t left alone for long. A pale-faced man – a corporal, from his uniform – came running up to them.

  ‘Mr Creeley, sir? Mr Montague?’

  The twins nodded. They had signed up shortly after the outbreak of war. After months of training in England, and still longer months of sitting around in a gloomy transit camp outside Manchester, they had finally arrived in France. They were second lieutenants and would each command a platoon of soldiers as new to the game as they were. The two men were uncertain of their soldiering skills, sobered by the strangeness of the fiery horizon.