The Sons of Adam (64 page)

A letter, postmarked from Germany, lay on the table. In the cool high-ceilinged rooms beyond, Tom could hear the maids and servants moving around as quietly as they could, knowing that their mistress was upset. Out in the garden, Mitch and Pipsqueak were playing together, but even they seemed to be observing a kind of tactful silence.

‘Hon?’

Rebecca said nothing, just let herself melt into her husband’s arms. Tear channels had already flowed and dried on her cheeks, and new ones were opening up to accommodate the new rush of tears. Tom stroked her dark hair and high forehead. She seldom wore perfumes or scented lotions, but she always smelled good, something like warm skin and hair that’s been dried in the sun.

‘Hon?’

Rebecca’s voice began – broke – then began again.

‘My parents … They’re OK, they’re fine … But their rabbi, a good man, from Lithuania like them … A mob broke into his house. Tore up his holy books. Began to set the house on fire … He came home. Found them. Protested, I don’t know what. They set upon him. Kicked him. Beat him. Left him unconscious. Then … then … they left. The house was on fire. It wasn’t possible to pull him out. He died … The newspapers afterwards accused him of murdering Christian babies. It was a matter of justice, they said. The people who did it received nothing. No punishment. No blame.’

Rebecca poured out her speech in broken bursts. Tom petted and soothed her. Eventually, it was possible to speak more normally, and he said, ‘They must leave. There’ve been too many stories like this lately. We can pay for everything. They can come here and live with us. Or we’ll buy them an apartment in one of the Jewish parts of New York. They can eat chicken soup and kneidlach and not even notice they’ve left.’

‘I’ve asked them, I’ve asked a hundred times. They’re getting old. They don’t want to move again. They say … they say … they say it’ll pass. They say it’s just while Herr Hitler needs to prove himself a strong man.’

Tom was silent for a moment. The thought of Europe’s ancient hatreds appalled him. They had ruined one generation. It seemed that they were darkening the air for a second time in the space of twenty years. He felt the old anger that he associated with his time in prison. He never wanted to leave the United States again. He’d be perfectly happy never to leave Texas. His trip to Persia already seemed like half a lifetime away.

He reached for something to smoke, wanted a cigar, remembered Rebecca’s distaste for them, and moved instead for a cigarette. He lit up. His thoughts of oil passed. There were more important things in life, after all.

‘Your parents. Isn’t there anything we can do for them?’

Rebecca shook her head.

‘We could send money?’

She shook her head again. ‘It would only draw attention. That’s the last thing they need.’

The two of them fell silent. Across the globe, in a different continent, the fate of Rebecca’s parents and millions like them was falling into the hands of dictators. There was nothing to do now. Nothing but pray.

Alan enjoyed his annual trip to Persia – or Iran, as the country had now begun to call itself. His visit to the oilfields up in the mountains was still to come, but he always began with an inspection of the refinery and shipping facilities down on the coast.

Now he was in a hotel built right on the shore of the Gulf, where Kharg Island bobbed blue on the horizon. He was shaving on the balcony with the help of a tiny wall mirror and a bowlful of soapy water, enjoying the sea air and the sparkling light. His war-damaged lung preferred the clean air of Iran to the soots and smokes of London. He breathed easily. It was a time of day that Alan relished. The rift with Lottie had been healed. His family was well. The only cloud on the horizon was the whole ugly matter of Tom Creeley-Calloway and the shooting incident with Guy. Alan didn’t want to think about it. Not yet. He shoved the thought successfully to the back of his mind. He was at peace.

Then a frenzied little Iranian boy burst in on him.

‘
Aqa, aqa,
the Shah is starting a war against us!’ The boy went on to describe the atrocity in highly coloured language. The Shah had sent soldiers. No oil was flowing. The whole company was being closed. Shortly, there would be shooting and massacres and tribes from the north would swoop down, destroying everything in their path, with explosions, famine and plague following in their wake.

Alan finished shaving the right-hand side of his face and began slowly on the left. His face was getting its first real lines of age. In places he had to stretch out the skin to make a smooth surface for the razor. He told the boy to help himself to a couple of figs from the bowl on the table indoors and then to go and fetch him a cup of tea. The boy disappeared. Alan finished shaving and patted his face dry with a small square of towel. He wasn’t too concerned about the boy’s news. In Persia, minor incidents had a habit of being blown up out of all proportion. He ate some fruit and the boy returned carrying tea and a warm flatbread straight from the oven.

Alan drank the first and ate the second. The boy stood in a corner gazing at him in wonder. In an effort to reduce the staring, Alan asked the boy if he went to school. He did, and quite soon was absorbed in reciting his times table, before going on to show off his English.

‘My name is Sadegh. I am ten years old. The weather is fine today. Thank you. Please. How do you do? I am overjoyed to hear it …’

Alan finished his breakfast and let the boy escort him down to the waterfront. The smell of salt and seaweed mixed with the smell of diesel engines and oil. Little blue waves ruffled the water, where white gulls swooped in search of food.

But the boy had been right.

At Alan’s back, there was a line of Alanto storage tanks chock-full with oil. To his right there was a pumping station, a coil of thick rubber hose and a team of white-robed Alanto Oil workers. In front of him, there was an Alanto tanker, riding high in the water, waiting to take on oil.

But it couldn’t.

And wouldn’t.

Because in between the storage tanks and the tanker, there stood a double line of twenty-four soldiers, rifles held across their bodies. An officer stood motionless in front of them. Alan noticed that the soldiers were from a northern regiment, the Cossack Brigade, the Shah’s own men. Alan wasn’t scared by the rifles, but he was petrified by the piece of paper in the hands of the officer.

It was an order signed by the Shah himself. The concession was cancelled. With immediate effect. Without compensation.

Behind Alan, the boy had found a new piece of English with which to impress the illustrious visitor. ‘The Shah make great big fight. He kill us all. I die. You die. He, she or it die …’

The great veranda sparkled with light. Silverware glinted on the table. Glassware imported from Venice shone brilliantly amongst the candles. Servants fussed over the place settings, adjusting plates and knives to the accuracy of one sixteenth of an inch.

Tom was throwing a dinner for some of biggest hitters in Texas’s oil establishment. Tom was part of the Texan scene now. He was liked, respected, admired. He strolled over to check the table. The table setting was pretty much perfect, but he found a bunch of flowers beginning to brown in one of the stands. He called a maid over to ask her to change it.

‘Oh sir!’ she said, as if genuinely shocked. She removed the offending blooms and began a strip-search of all the other flower arrangements. Tom looked at her but didn’t recognise her. He and Rebecca had a lot of servants now, but Tom still prided himself on knowing them all.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Sarah Gutman, sir.’ Her accent wasn’t American. It was like Rebecca’s, only much thicker. She had to frown with concentration to understand Tom’s English.

‘From Central Europe?’

‘Germany, sir.’

‘You’re Jewish, of course?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Recently arrived?’

She didn’t immediately understand the word ‘recently’, and struggled to find an answer.

‘Sie sind neulich angekommen?’
said Tom, shocking even himself by how easily the language of prison camp sprang to his lips. Prison must have been a better teacher than he’d remembered.

‘
Ja, ja, neulich.
Three days ago, sir.’

Tom nodded. ‘Thank you for doing the flowers,’ he said. ‘And welcome to Norgaard House.’

That night, as they were undressing for bed, Tom spoke to Rebecca.

‘You hired a new girl, Sarah Gutman.’

‘That’s right. She arrived in New York as a refugee and drifted down here in search of work. I know we don’t really need another maid.’

Tom shook his head. ‘You were thinking of your parents, I guess.’

Rebecca stood in her evening gown removing a coil of pearls. It was rare that her husband could resist touching her when she stood undressing like this, but his mind was in a different place. ‘Yes. My parents. Their friends. Their relatives. Their people. They’re my people too.’

Tom plucked at his bow tie and brought it loose in a single practised movement. Rebecca had observed how easily Tom had taken on a rich man’s role. Even from the first, he’d addressed servants as though he was used to having them. He wore a tuxedo with confidence. He could tie a bow tie without needing a mirror. She had long guessed that his life in England had been one of privilege, but her husband had never let himself speak of anything at all before his capture by the Germans. He was a mystery, a wonderful mystery.

‘Good idea,’ he commented. ‘At least, it’s something we can do.’

She loved her husband. This comment was so typical of him. He voted Republican, he hated unions, he had little time for Roosevelt (aside from liking the way the price of oil had come up off the floor), but injustice to one group at the hands of another got to him every time. The black servants in the house and the black workers in Norgaard Petroleum earned wages exactly equal to the whites. If the whites didn’t like it, they were free to quit. More than once Tom had been threatened. He was a ‘nigger-lover’, a ‘white-faced coon’, he was ‘unAmerican trash’. He’d had rocks thrown at his car and received warnings from the Ku Klux Klan. Tom ignored the rocks and scorned the warnings.

‘Perhaps that’s not all we can do,’ said Rebecca softly.

‘Hmm?’

‘We could do more. Find refugees off the boat. Help them with money. It can be tough here, getting started, especially without good English.’

He glanced sharply at her, guessing that she had in mind her own troubled years after arriving.

‘Sure.’

‘We could hire somebody in New York. A kind of welcome-to-America person. They could handle the details for us.’

‘Ah, honey!’

Tom screwed up his face. He was uncomfortable. Rebecca was puzzled. Tom wasn’t mean with his money – far from it. Nor was he unsympathetic to the plight of the badly off.

‘You don’t want to help?’

‘No, it’s not that … It’s just … I don’t know. We left Europe, Becca. We left it because of everything like this. The hatred. The history. The injustices. I just don’t want to get close to all that again.’

Rebecca had taken off her jewellery now, and had combed her hair out for the night. Now she slipped her gown off her shoulders and stood in her underwear in front of her dressing table. She wasn’t sure what to say. She could simply have argued, but she didn’t want something good to grow out of an argument. Instead, she stood quiet for a few moments, before saying gently, ‘Isn’t that the point, Tomek?’

‘What? Isn’t what the point?’

‘That we left. That we were able to.’

‘Ah, I guess.’

Tom had been slow undressing, but he speeded up now, flinging jacket, shirt and trousers to the bed in quick succession.

‘We could begin slowly. See how it went.’

Rebecca went to hang up her dress, and passed close in front of Tom smelling of perfume and warm skin. He put an arm out to stop her, kissing her on the eyes and mouth. Beneath his shorts he was aroused and she stroked him tenderly.

They pulled apart.

‘Nope,’ said Tom decisively.

‘No?’ Rebecca was shocked at him and her voice showed it.

‘No. If we’re going to do this, let’s do it. Why screw around? We could make a real difference. How about we set up some kind of fund? Help Jews from Germany come over here. Help them with cash, transport, jobs, everything. Heck, we could buy apartment blocks where they can stay until they find their feet. If the whole Hitler thing blows over, we can resell the property at a profit more than likely. Depression’s kicked hell out of the market.’