第 6 页

The holiday passed by all too quickly for William and his mother, whereas Richard, satisfied with his progress in Lombard Street and pleased with his newly appointed chairman, began to look forward to the day of their departure. Cables were daily arriving from Boston that made him anxious to be back in his own boardroom. Finally, when one such missive informed him that twenty-five thousand workers at a cotton mill with which his bank had a heavy investment in Lawrence, Massachusetts, had gone out on strike, he was relieved that his planned date of sailing was now only three days away.

William was looking forward to returning and telling Mr. Munro all the exciting things he had done in England and to being reunited with his two grandmothers again. He felt sure they had never done anything so exciting as visiting a real live theatre with the general public. Anne was also happy to be going home, although she had enjoyed the trip almost as much as William, for her clothes and beauty had been much admired by the normally undemonstrative North Sea Islanders. As a final treat for William the day before they were due to sail, Anne took him to a tea party in Eaton Square given by the wife of the newly appointed chairman of Richard's London branch. She, too, had a son, Stuart, who was eight - and William had, in the two weeks in which they had been playing together, grown to regard him as an indispensable grown-up friend. The party, however, was rather subdued because Stuart felt unwell and William, in sympathy with his new chum, announced to his mother that he was going to be ill too. Anne and William returned to the Ritz Hotel earlier than they had planned,

She was not greatly put out as it gave her a little more time to supervise the packing of the large steamer trunks, although she was convinced William was only putting on an act to please Stuart. When she tucked William up in bed that night, she found that he had been as good as his word and was running a slight fever. She remarked on it to Richard over dinner.

'Probably all the excitement at the thought of going home,' he offered, sounding unconcerned.

'I hope so,' replied Anne. 'I don't want him to be sick on a six-day sea voyage.'

'He'll be just fine by tomorrow,' said Richard, issuing an unheeded directive, but when Anne went to wake William the next morning, she found him covered in little red spots and running a temperature of one hundred and three. The hotel doctor diagnosed measles and was politely insistent that William should on no account be sent on a sea journey, not only for his own good but for the sake of the other passengers. There was nothing for it but to leave him in bed with his stone hot water bottle and wait for the departure of the next ship. Richard was unable to countenance the three-week delay and decided to sail as planned. Reluctantly, Anne allowed the hurried changes of booking to be made. William begged his father to let him accompany him: the twenty-one days before the Aquitania was due back in Southampton seemed like an eternity to the child. Richard was adamant,,and hired a nurse to attend William and convince him of his poor state of health.

Anne travelled down to Southampton with Richard in the new Rolls-Royce.

'I shall be lonely in London without you, Richard,' she ventured diffidently in their parting moment, risking his disapproval of emotional women.

'Well, my dear, I dare say that I shall be somewhat lonely in Boston without you,' he said, his mind on the striking cotton workers.

Anne returned to London on the train, wondering how she would occupy herself for the next three weeks. William had a better night and in the morning the spots lookcd less ferocious.

Doctor and nurse were unanimous however in their insistence that he should remain in bed. Anne used the extra time to write long letters to the family, while William remained in bed, protesting, but on Thursday morning he got himself up early and went into his mother's room, very much back to his normal self. He climbed into bed next to her and his cold hands immediately woke her up. Anne was relieved to see him so obviously fully recovered. She rang to order breakfast in bed for both of them, an indulgence William's father would never have countenanced.

There was a quiet knock on the door and a man in gold and red livery entered with a large, silver breakfast tray. Eggs, bacon, tomato, toast and marmalade - a veritable feast. William looked at the food ravenously as if he could not remember when he had last eaten a full meal. Anne casually glanced at the morning paper. Richard always read The Times when he stayed in London so the management assumed she would require it as well.

'Oh, look,' said William, staring at the photograph on an inside page,'a picture of Daddy's ship. What's a CA-LA-M=, Mommy?, All across the width of the newspaper was a picture of the Titanic.

Anne, unmindful of behaving as should a Lowell or a Cabot, burst into frenzied tears, clinging on to her only son. They sat in bed for several minutes, holding on to each other, William wasn't sure why. Anne realised that they had both lost the one person whom they had loved most in the world.

Sir Piers Campbell, young Stuares father, arrived almost immediately at Suite 107 of the Ritz Hotel. He waited in the lounge while the widow put on a suit, the only dark piece of clothing she possessed. William dressed himself, still not certain what a 'calamity' was. Anne asked Sir Piers to explain the full implications of the news to her son, who only said, 'I wanted to be on the ship with him, but they wouldn't let me go.' He didn't cry because he refused to believe anything could kill his father. He would be aniong the survivors.

In all Sir Piers' career as a politician, diplomat and now chairman of Kane and Cabot, London, he had never seen such self-containment in one so young. Presence is given to very few, he was heard to remark some years later. It had been given to Richard Kane and had been passed on to his only son.

The lists of survivors, arriving spasmodically from America, were checked and double-checked by Anne. Each confirmed that Richard Lowell Kane was still missing at sea, presumed drowned. After a further week even William almost abandoned hope of his father's survival.

Anne found it hard to board the Aquitania, but William was strangely eager to put to sea. Hour after hour, he would sit on the observation deck, scanning the featureless water.

'Tomorrow I will find him,' he promised his mother, at first confidently, and then in a voice that barely disclaimed his own disbelief.

'William, no one can survive for three weeks in the Atlantic.'

'Not even my father?'

'Not even your father!'

When Anne returned to Boston, both grandmothers were waiting for her at the Red House, mindful of the duty that had been thrust upon them.

The responsibility had been passed back to the grandmothers. Anne passively accepted their proprietory role. Life for her now had little purpose left other than William, whose destiny they now seemed determined to control. William was polite but uncooperative. During the day he sat silently in his lesson with Mr. Munro and at night wept into the lap of his mother.

'What he needs is the company of other children,' declared the grandmothers briskly, and they dismissed Mr. Munro and the nurse and sent William off to Sayre Academy in the hope that an introduction to the real world and -the constant company of other children might bring him back to his old self.

Richard had left the bulk of his estate to William, to remain in the family trust until his twenty-first birthday. There was a codicil added to the will. Richard expected his son to become chairman of Kane and Cabot on merit. It was the only part of his father's testament that inspired William, for the rest was his by birthright. Anne received a capital sum of five hundred thousand dollars and an income for life of one hundred thousand dollars a year after taxes which would cease, if she remarried. She also received the house on Beacon Hill, the summer mansion on the North Shore, the home in Maine, and a small island off Cape Cod, all of which were to pass to William on his mother's death. Both grandmothers received two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and letters leaving them in no doubt about their responsibility if Richard died before them. The family trust was to be handled by the bank, with William's godparents acting as co-trustees. The income from the trust was to be reinvested each year in conservative enterprises.

It was a full year before the grandmothers came out of mourning, and although Anne was still only twenty-eight, she looked her age for, the first time in her life.

The grandmothers, unlike Anne, concealed their grief from William until he finally reproached them for it.

'Don't you miss my father?' he asked, gazing at Grandmother Kane with the blue eyes that brought back memories of her own son.

'Yes, my child, but he would not have wished us to sit around and feel sorry for ourselves.'

'But I want us to always remember him - always,' said William, his voice cracking.

'William, I am going to speak to you for the first time as though you were quite grown up. We will always keep his memory hallowed between us, and you shall play your own part by living up to what your father would have expected of you. You are the head of the family now and the heir to a large fortune. You must, therefore, prepare yourself through woi k to be fit for that inheritance in the same spirit in which your father worked to increase the inheritance for you.'

William made no reply. He was thus provided with the motive for life which he had lacked before, and he acted upon his grandmother's advice. He learned to live with his sorrow without complaining and from that moment on he threw himself steadfastly into his work at school, satisfied only if Grandmother Kane seemed impressed. At no subject did he fail to excel, and in mathematics he was not only top of his class but far ahead of his years. Anything his father had achieved, he was determined to better. He grew even closer to his mother and became suspicious of anyone who was not family, so that he was often thought of as a solitary child, a loner and, unfairly, as a snob.

The grandmothers decided on William's seventh birthday that the time had come to instruct the boy in the value of money. They therefore allowed him pocket money of one dollar a week, but insisted that he keep an inventory accounting for every cent he had spent. With this in mind, they presented him with a green leather-bound ledger book, at a cost of ninety-five cents, which they deducted from his first week's allowance of one dollar. From the second week the grandmothers divided the dollar every Saturday morning.

William invested fifty cents, spent twenty cents, gave ten cents to any charity of his choice, and kept twenty cents in reserve. At the end of each quarter the grandmothers would inspect the ledger and his written report on any transactions. When the first three months had passed, William was well ready to account for himself. He had given one dollar twenty cents to the newly founded Boy Scouts of America, and saved four dollars, which he had asked Grandmother Kane to invest in a savings account at the bank of his godfather, J. P. Morgan. He had spent a further three dollars eight cents for which he did not have to account and had kept a dollar in reserve. The ledger was a source of great satisfaction to the grandmothers, there was no doubt William was the son of Richard Kane.

At school, William made few friends, partly because he was shy of mixing with anyone other than Cabots, Lowells or children frorn families wealthier than his own. This restricted his choice severely, so he became a somewhat broody child, which worried his mother, who wanted William to lead a more normal existence, and did not in her heart approve of the ledgers or the investment programme. Anne would have preferred William to have a lot of young friends rather than old advisors, to get himself dirty and bruised rather than remain spotless, to collect toads and turtles rather than stocks and company reports; in short to be like any other little boy. But she never had the courage to tell the grandmothers about her misgivings and in any case the grandmothers were not interested in any other little boy.

On his ninth birthday William presented the ledger to his grandmother for the second annual inspection. The green leather book showed a saving during the two years of more than fifty dollars. He was particularly proud to point out an entry marked B6 to the grandmothers, showing that he had taken his money out of J. P. Morgan's Bank immediately on hearing of the death of the great financier, because he had noted that his own father's bank shares had fallen in value after his death had been announced. He had reinvested the same amount three months later before the public realised the company was bigger than any one man.

The grandmothers were suitably impressed and allowed William to trade in his old bicycle and purchase a new one, after which he still had a capital sum of over one hundred dollars, which his grandmother had invested for him with the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. Oil, said William knowingly, can only get more expensive. He kept the ledger meticulously up-to-date until his twenty-first birthday. Had the grandmothers still been alive then, they would have been proud of the final entry in the right hand column marked 'assets'.

7

Wladek was the only one of those left alive who knew the dungeons well.

In his days of hide and seek with Leon he had spent many happy hours in the freedom of the small stone rooms, carefree in the knowledge that he could return to the castle whenever it suited him.

There were in all four dungeons, on two levels. Two of the rooms, a larger and a smaller one, were at ground level. The smaller one was adjacent to the castle wall, which afforded a thin filter of light through a grille set high in the stones. Down five steps there were two more stone roorns in perpetual darkness and with little air. Wladek led the Baron into the small upper dungeon where he remained sitting in a comer, silent and motionless, staring fixedly into space; he then appointed Florentyna to be his personal servant.

As Wladek was the only person who dared to remain in the same room as the Baron, the servants never questioned his authority. Thus, at the age of nine, he took charge of the day-to-day responsibility of his fellow prisoners. And in the dungeon he became their master. He split the remaining twenty-four servants into three groups of eight, trying to keep families together wherever possible. He moved them regularly in a shift system, the first eight hours in the upper dungeons for right, air, food and exercise; the second and most popular shift of eight hours working in the castle for their captors; and the final eight hours given to sleep in one of the lower dungeons. No one except the Baron and Florentyna could be quite sure when Wladek slept, as he was always there at the end of every shift to supervise the servants moving on. Food was distributed every twelve hours. The guards would hand over a skin of goats' milk, black bread, millet and occasionally some nuts which Wladek would divide by twenty-eight, always giving two portions to the Baron without ever letting him, know. The new occupants of the dungeons, their placidity rendered into miserable stupefaction by incarceration, found nothing strange in a situation that had put a nine-year-old in control of their lives.