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'I have never been married before,' said William.

'I shall have to telephone the bishop.' Clutching Williamls cheque, the Reverend disappeared into the next room.

Mrs. Tukesbury invited them to sit down and offered them the plate of cucumber sandwiches. She chatted on, but William and Kate did not hear her words as they sat gazing at each other.

The vicar returned three cucumber sandwiches later.

'It's highly irregular, highly irregular, but the bishop has agreed, on the condition, Mr. Kane, that you will confirm everything at the American Embassy tomorrow morning and then with your own bishop at St. Paul's in Boston ... Massachusetts immediately you return home.'

He was still clutching the five-hundred-pound cheque.

'All we need now is two witnesses,' he continued. 'My wife can act as one, and we must hope that the verger is still around, so that he can be the other!

'He is still around, I assure you,' said William.

'How can you be so certain, Mr. Kane?'

'He cost me one per cent.'

'One per cent?' said the Reverend Tukesbury, baffled.

'One per cent of your church roof,' said William.

The vicar ushered William, Kate and his wife down the little path back to the church and blinked at the waiting verger.

'Indeed, I perceive that Mr. Sprogget has remained on duty ... He has never done so for me; you obviously have a way with you, Mr. Kane.'

Simon Tukesbury put on his vestments and a surplice while the verger stared at the scene in disbelief.

William turned to Kate and kissed her gently. 'I know it's a damn silly question in the circumstances, but will you marry me?'

'Good God,' said the Reverend Tukesbury, who had never blasphemed in the fifty-seven years of his mortal existence. 'You mean you haven't even asked her?'

Fifteen minutes later, Mr. and Mrs. William Kane left the parish church of Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. Mrs. Tukesbury had had to supply the ring at the last moment, which she twitched from a curtain in the vestry. It was a perfect fit. The Reverend Tukesbury had a new roof, and Mr. Sprogget a yam to tell them down at The Green Man where he spent most of his five pounds.

Outside the church the vicar handed William a piece of paper. 'Two shillings and sixpence, please!'

'What for?' asked William.

'Your marriage certificate, Mr. Kane.'

'You should have taken up banking, sir,' said William, handing Mr. Tukesbury half a crown.

He walked his bride in blissful silence back down the High Street to the Bell Inn. They had a quiet dinner in the fifteenth-century oak-beamed dining room, and went to bed at a few minutes past nine. As they disappeared up the old wooden staircase to their room, the chief receptionist turned to the hall porter and winked. 'If they're married, I'm the King of England!'

William started to hum 'God Save the King!'

The next morning Mr. and Mrs. Kane had a leisurely breakfast while the car was fixed. (His father would have told him all it needed was a new fan belt.) A young waiter poured them both a coffee.

'Do you like it black or shall I add some milk?' asked William innocently.

An elderly couple smiled benignly at them.

'With milk, please,' said Kate as she reached across and touched William's hand gently.

He smiled back at her, suddenly aware the whole room was now staring at them. They returned to London in the cool early spring air, travelling through Henley, over the Thames, and then on up through Berkshire and Middlesex into London.

'Did you notice the look the porter gave you this morning, darling?' asked William.

'Yes, I think perhaps we should have shown him our marriage certificate.'

'No, no, you'd have spoilt his whole image of the wanton American woman. The last thing he wants to tell his wife when he returns home tonight is that we were really married!'

When they arrived back at the Ritz in time for lunch, the desk manager was surprised to find William cancelling Kate's room. He was heard to comment later: 'Young Mr. Kane appeared to be such a gentleman. His late and distinguished father would never have behaved in such a way.'

William and Kate took the Aquitania back to New York having first called at the American embassy in Grosvenor Gardens to inform a consul of their new marital status. The consul gave them a long official form to fill out, charged them one pound, and kept them waiting for well over an hour. The American embassy, it seemed, was not in need of a new roof. William wanted to go to Carder's in Bond Street and buy a gold wedding ring, but Kate would not hear of it - nothing was going to part her from the precious curtain ring.

William found it difficult to settle down in Boston under his new chairman. The precepts of the New Deal were passing into law with unprecedented rapidity, and William and Tony Simmons found it impossible to agree on whether the implications for investment would be good or bad.

Expansion - on one front at least - became unstoppable when Kate announced soon after their return from England that she was pregnant, news which gave her parents and husband great joy. William tried to modify his working hours to suit his new role as a married man but found himself at his desk increasingly often throughout the hot summer evenings. Kate, cool and happy in her flowered matemity smock, methodically supervised the decoration of the nursery of the Red House. William found for the first time in his life that he could leave his work desk and look forward to going home. If he had work left over he just picked up the papers and took them back to the Red House, a pattern to wl-dch he adhered throughout their married life.

While Kate and the baby that was due about Christmas time brought William great happiness at home, Matthew was making him increasingly uneasy at work. He had taken to drinking and coming to the office late with no explanations. As the months passed, William found he could no longer rely on his friend's judgment. At first, he said nothing, hoping it was little more than an odd out-of-character reaction - which might quickly pass - to the repeal of Prohibition. But it wasn't, and the problem went from bad to worse. The last straw came one November morning when Matthew arrived two hours late, obviously suffering from a hangover, and made a simple, unnecessary mistake, selling off an important investment which resulted in a small loss for a client who should have made a handsome profit. William knew the time had come for an unpleasant but necessary head-on confrontation. Matthew admitted his error and apologised regretfully. William was thankful to have the row out of the way and was about to suggest they go to lunch together when his secretary uncharacteristically rushed into his office.

'It's your wife, sir, she"s been taken to the hospital!'

'Why?' asked William, puzzled.

'The baby,' said his secretary.

'But it's not due for at least another six weeks,' said WilHam incredulously.

'I know, sir, but Doctor MacKenzie sounded rather anxious, and wanted you to come to the hospital as quickly as possible!'

Matthew, who a moment before had seemed a broken reed, took over and drove William to the hospital. Memories of William's mother's death and her still-born daughter came flooding back to both of them 'Pray God not Kate,' said Matthew as he drew into the hospital car park.

William did not need to be guided to the Anne Kane Maternity Wing which Kate had officially opened only six months before. He found a nurse standing outside the delivery room who informed him that Doctor MacKenzie was with his wife, and that she had lost a lot of blood.

William paced up and down the corridor helplessly, numbly waiting, exactly as he had done years before. The scene was all too familiar. How unimportant being chairman of the bank was compared with losing Kate. When had he last said to her 'I love you'? Matthew sat with William, paced with William, stood with William, but said nothing. There was nothing to be said. William checked his watch each time a nurse ran in or out of the delivery room.

Seconds turned into minutes and minutes into hours. Finally Doctor MacKenzie appeared, his forehead shining with little beads of sweat, a surgical mask covering his nose and mouth. William could see no expression on the doctor's face until he removed the white mask, revealing a large smile.

'Congratulations, William, you have a boy, and Kate is just fine!'

'Thank God,' breathed William, clinging on to Matthew.

'Much as I respect the Almighty,' said Doctor MacKenzie, 'I feel I had a little to do with this birth myself.'

William laughed. 'Can I see Kate?'

'No, not right now. I've given her a sedative and she's fallen asleep. She lost rather more blood than was good for her, but she'll be fine by morning. A little weak, perhaps, but well ready to see you. But there's nothing to stop you seeing your son. But don't be surprised by his size; remember he's quite premature.'

The doctor guided William and Matthew down the corridor to a room in which they stared through a pane of glass at a row of six little pink heads in cribs.

'That one,' said Doctor MacKenzie, pointing to the infant that had just arrived.

William stared dubiously at the ugly little face, his vision of a fine, upstanding son receding rapidly.

'Well, I'll say one thing for the little devil,' said Doctor MacKenzie cheerfully, 'he's better looking than you were at that age, and you haven't turned ouf too badly.'

William laughed out of relief.

'What are you going to call him?.'

'Richard fligginson. Kane.'

The doctor patted the new father affectionately on the shoulder. 'I hope I live long enough to deliver Richard's first-born.'

William immediately wired the rector of St. Paul's, who put the boy down for a place in 1943, and then the new father and Matthew got thoroughly drunk and were both late arriving at the hospital the next morning to see Kate. William took Matthew for another look at young Richard.

'Ugly little bastard,' said Matthew, 'not at all like his beautiful mother!

'That's what I thought,' said William.

'Spitting image of you, though!

William returned to Kate's flower-filled room.

'Do you like your son?' Kate asked her husband. 'He's so like you.'

'I'll hit the next person who says that,' William said. 'He's the ugliest little thing I've ever seen.'

'Oh, no,' said Kate in mock indignation, 'he's beautiful!'

'A face only a mother could love,' said William and hugged his wife.

She clung to him, happy in his happiness.

'What would Grandmother Kane have said about our first-born entering the world after less than eight months of marriage? "I don't wish to appear uncharitable, but anyone born in under fifteen months must be considered of dubious parentage; under nine months definitely unacceptable,"'

William mimicked. 'By the way, Kate, I forgot to tell you something before they rushed you into the hospital!

'What was that?'

'I love you,'

Kate and young Richard had to stay in the hospital for nearly three weeks. Not until after Christmas did Kate fully recover her vitality.

Richard, on the other hand, grew like an uncontrolled weed, no one having informed him that he was a Kane, and one was not supposed to do that sort of thing. William became the first male Kane to change a nappy and push a perambulator. Kate was very proud of him, and somewhat surprised.

William told Matthew that it was high time he found himself a good woman and settled down.

Matthew laughed defensively. 'You're getting positively middle-aged. I shall be looking for grey hairs next.'

One or two had already appeared during the chairmanship battle. Matthew hadn't noticed.

William was not able to put a finger on exactly when his relationship with Tony Simmons began to deteriorate badly.

Tony would continually veto one policy suggestion after another, and his negative attitude made William seriously consider resignation again. Matthew was not helping matters by returning to his old drinking habits. The period of reform had not lasted more than a few months, and, if anything, he was now drinking more heavily than before and arriving at the bank a few minutes later each morning. William wasn't quite sure how to handle the new situation and found himself continually covering Matthew's work. At the end of each day, William would double-check Matthew's mail and return his unanswered calls.

By the spring of 1936, as investors gained more confidence and depositors returned, William decided the time had come to go tentatively back into the stock market, but Tony vetoed the suggestion in an off-hand, inter-office memorandum to the financial committee. William stormed into Tony's office to ask if his resignation would be welcome.

'Certainly not, William. I merely want you to recognise that it has always been my policy to run this bank in a conservative manner, and that I am not willing to charge headlong bark into the market with our investors' money!

'But we're losing business hand-over-fist to other banks while we sit on the sidelines watching them take advantage of the present situation. ' Banks which we wouldn't even have considered as rivals ten years ago will soon be overtaking us.'

'Overtaking us in what, William? Not in reputation. Quick profits perhaps, but not reputation.'

'But I'm interested in profits,' said William. 'I consider it a bank's duty to make good returns for its investors, not to mark time in a gentlemanly fashion.'

'I would rather stand still than lose the reputation that this bank built up under your grandfather and father over the better part of half a century!

'Yes, but both of them were always looking for new opportunities to expand the bank's activities.'

'In good times,' said Tony.

'And in bad,' said William.

'Why are you so upset, William? you still have a free hand in the running of your own department!

'Like hell I do. You block anything that even suggests enterprise!

'Let's start being honest with each other, William. One of the reasons I have had to be particularly cautious lately is that Matthew's judgment is no longer reliable.'