第 22 页

'Eclampsia?'

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

William drew a shuddering breath and placed his head in his hands.

Matthew Lester guided his friend gently along the corridor. The doctor followed them. When they reached the door, he looked at William.

'Her blood pressure went up so suddenly. It's very unusual, and she didn't put up a real fight, almost as if she didn't care. Strange, had something been troubling her lately?'

William raised his tear-streaked face. 'Not something,' he said with hatred. 'Someone.'

Alan Lloyd was sitting in a comer 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 allowing the loan.'

William stared at him, not taking in what he was saying.

Matthew Lester stepped into the silence. 'I don't think that's important any longer., sir,' he said quietly. 'William's mother has just died in childbirth.'

Alan Lloyd turned ashen, steadied himself by grasping the mantelpiece, and turned away. It was the first time that 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 certainly was not your fault, Alan,' he said firmly. 'You did everything you could, I know that, and now it's I who am 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 investment. He left his office soon after ten this morning, and he hasn't been seen since!

'He'll turn up here sooner or later,' said William grimly.

After Alan Lloyd left, William and Matthew sat alone in the front room most of the night, dozing off and on. At four o'clock in the morning, William counted the chimes of the grandfather clock and thought that he heard a noise in the street. Matthew was staring out of the window down the drive.

William walked stiffly over to join him. They both watched Henry Osborne stagger across Louisburg Square with a half-full bottle in his hand. He fumbled with some keys for some time and finally appeared in the doorway, 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, trying to push William aside. 'Where't Anne?'

'My mother is dead,' said William quietly.

Henry Osborne looked at him stupidly for a few seconds. The incomprehension of his gaze snapped William's selfcontrol.

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

Still Osborne stood, swaying slightly. 'What about the baby?'

'Stillborn, a little girt.'

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

William was nearly incoherent with rage and grief. 'Your baby? Stop thinking about yourself for once,' he shouted. 'You know Doctor MacKenzie advised her against becoming pregnant again.'

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

'And her money, it seems.'

'Money. You tight-fisted little bastard, I bet losing that hurts you more than anything else.'

'Get up,' William said between his teeth.

Henry Osborne pushed himself up, and smashed the bottle across the corner of the chair. Whisky splashed all over the carpet. He swayed towards William with the broken bottle in his raised hand. William stood his ground while 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 Henry Osbome's.

'Now, you listen to me and listen carefully. I want you out of this house in one hour. If I ever hear from you again in my life, I shall instigate a full legal investigation into what has happened to my mother's half million dollar investment in your firm, and I shall re-open my research into who you really are and your past life in Chicago. If, on the other hand, I do not hear from you again, ever, I shall consider the ledger balanced and the matter closed. Now get out before I kill you.'

The two boys watched him leave, sobbing, incoherent and furious.

The next morning William paid a visit to the bank. He was diately shown into the chairman's office. Alan Lloyd was packing some documents into a briefcase.

He looked up, and 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 come in?' said William quietly.

'As you wish.'

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

'Good morning, Mr. Kane,' she said when she saw William. 'I was so sorry to learn 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 type them, and please forget that this draft ever existed. Never mention its existence to anyone, do you understand?' She stared into those blue eyes of the sixteen-year-old boy. So like his father, she thought. 'Yes, Mr. Kane.' She left quietly closing the door.

Alan Lloyd looked up.

'Kane and Cabot doesn't need a new chairman at the moment, Alan. You did nothing my father would not have done in the same circumstances.'

'It's not as easy as that,' Alan said.

vs as easy as that,' said William. 'We can discuss this again when I am twenty-one and not before. Until then I would be obliged if you would run my bank in your usual diplomatic and conservative manner. 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 of paper into the fire. He put his arm around Alan's shoulders.

'I have no family now, Alan, only you. For Gods sake don't desert me.'

William wag driven back to Beacon Hill. On his arrival the butler informed him that Mrs. Kane and Mrs. Cabot were waiting for him in the drawing room. They both rose as he entered the room. It was the first time that William realised that he was now the head of the Kane family.

The funeral took place quietly two days later at the Old North Church on Beacon Hill. None but the family and close friends were invited, and the only notable absentee was Henry Osborne. As the mourners departed, they paid their respects to William. The grandmothers stood one 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 one request of him.

'As you know, Alan, my mother had always intended to build a children's wing to the new hospital, in memory of my father I would like her wishes camed one.'

11

Wladek stayed at the Polish Delegation in Constantinople for eighteen months, working day and night for Pawel Zaleski, becoming an indispensable aide and close friend. Nothing was too much trouble for him and Zaleski soon began to wonder how he managed before Wladek arrived. He visited the British embassy once a week to cat in the kitchen with Mrs. Henderson, the Scottish cook, and, on one occasion, with His Britannic Majesty's second consul himself.

Around them the old Islamic way of life was dissolving, and the Ottoman Empire was beginning to totter. Mustafa Kemal was the name on everyone's lips. The sense of impending change made Wladek restless. His mind returned incessantly to the Baron and all whom he had loved in the castle. The necessity to survive from day to day in Russia had kept them from his mind's eye, but in Turkey they rose up before him, a silent and slow procession. Sometimes, he could see these strong and happy, Leon swimming in the river, Florentyna playing caes cradle in his bedroom, the Baron's face strong and proud in the evening candlelight, but always each well-remembered, well-loved face would waver and, try as Wladek did to hold them firm, they would change horribly to that last dreadful aspect~ Leon dead on top of him, Florentyna bleeding in agony, and the Baron almost blind and broken.

Wladek began to face the fact that he could nmrex return to a land peopled by such ghosts, until he had made something worthwhile of his life. With that single thought in nund he set his heart on going to America, as his countryman Tadeusz Kosciuszko, of whom the Baron had told so many.

enthralling tales, had done so long before him. The United States, described by Pawel Zaleski as the 'New World'. The very name inspired Wladek with a hope for the future and a chance to return to Poland in triumph. It was Pawel Zaleski who put up the money to purchase an immigrant passage for him to the United States. They were difficult to come by, for they were always booked 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 finally left Constantinople and boarded the S.S. Black Arrow, bound for Ellis Island, New York. He possessed one suitcase, containing all his belongings, and a set of papers issued by Pawel Zaleski.

The Polish consul accompanied him to the wharf, and embraced him affectionately. 'Go with God, my boy.'

The traditional Polish response came naturally from the depths of Wladek's early childhood. 'Remain with God,' he replied.

As he reached the top of the gangplank, Wladek recalled his terrifying journey from Odessa to Constantinople. This time there was no coal in sight, only people, people everywhere, Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians, Ukrainians and others of many racial types unfamiliar to Wladek. He clutched his few belongings and waited in the line, the first of many long waits with which he later associated his entry into the United States.

His papers were sternly scrutinised by a deck officer who was clearly predisposed to the suspicion that Wladek was trying to avoid military service in Turkey, but Pawel Zaleski's documents were impeccable; Wladek invoked a silent blessing on his fellow countryman's head as he watched others being turned back.

Next came a vaccination and a cursory medical examination which, had he not had eighteen months of good food and the chance to recover his health in Constantinople, Wladek would certainly have failed. At last with all the checks over he was allowed below deck into the steerage quarters.

There were separate compartments for males, females and married couples.

Wladek quickly made his way to the male quarters and found the Polish group 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 did not worry Wladek who had never been able to sleep on one since leaving Russia.

Wladek selected a bunk below a boy of roughly his own age and introduced himself.

'I'm Wladek Koskiewicz.'

'I'm Jerzy Nowak from Warsaw,' volunteered the boy in his native Polish, 'and I'm going to make my fortune in America!

The boy thrust forward 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 their total ignorance of America. Jerzy, it turned out, had lost his parents in the war but had few other claims to attention. He was 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 heavy silver band which Jerzy couldn't take his eyes off. Wladek had packed more in to his fifteen years than Jerzy thought he would manage in a lifetime. Wladek talked all night of the past while Jerzy listened intently, neither wanting to sleep and neither wanting to admit their apprehension of the future.

The following morning the Black Arrow sailed. Wladek and Jerzy stood at 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 them and most of the other passengers with a horrible abruptness. The two washrooms for steerage passengers, with ten basins apiece, six toilets and cold salt water taps were mpidly inundated. After a couple of days the stench of their quarters was nauseating.

Food was served in a large filthy dining hall on long tables; warm soup, potatoes, fish, boiled beef and cabbage, brown or black bread. Wladek had tasted worse food but not since Russia and was glad of the provisions he had brought along with him : sausages, nuts and a little brandy. He and Jerzy shared them huddled in the corner of their berth. It was an unspoken understanding. They ate together, explored the ship together and at night, slept one above the other.

On the third day at sea Jerzy brought a Polish girl to their table for supper. Her name, he informed Wladek casually, was Zaphia. It was the first time in his life that Wladek had ever looked at a woman twice, but he couldn't stop looking at Zaphia. She rekindled memories of Florentyna. The warm grey eyes, the long fair hair that fell on to her shoulders and the soft voice. Wladek found he wanted to touch her. The girl occasionally smiled across at Wladek, who was miserably aware how much better looking Jerzy was than he. He tagged along as Jerzy escorted Zaphia back to the women's quarters.

Jerzy turned to him afterwards, mildly irritated. 'Can't you find a girl of your own? This one's mine.'

Wadek was not prepared to admit that he had no idea how to set about finding a girl of his own.

'There will be enough time for girls when we reach America,' he said scornfully.