第 9 页

During his first year, William proved to be well worthy of his scholarship, among the top few boys in almost every subject, and in a class of his own in mathematics. Only his new friend, Matthew Lester, was any real competition for him, and that was almost certainly because they shared the same room. While establishing himself academically William also acquired a reputation as a financier. Although his first investment in the market had proved disastrous, he did not abandon his belief that to make a significant amount of money, sizeable capital gains on the stock market were essential. He kept a wary eye on the Wall Street Journal, company reports and, at the age of twelve, started to experiment with a ghost portfolio of investments. He recorded every one of his ghost purchases and sales, the good and the notso-good in a newly acquired, different coloured ledger book, and compared his performance at the end of each month against the rest of the market. He did not bother with any of the leading listed stocks, concentrating instead on the more obscure companies, some of which traded only over the counter, so that it was impossible to buy more than a few shares in them at any one time. William expected four things from his investments: a low multiple of earnings, a high growth rate, strong asset backing and a favourable trading outlook. He found few shares which fulfilled all these rigorous criteria, but when he did, they almost invariably showed him a profit.

The moment he found that he was regularly beating the Dow-Jones Index with his ghost investment programme, William knew he was ready to invest his own money once again. He started with one hundred dollars and never stopped refining his method. He would always follow profits and cut losses. Once a stock had doubled, he would sell half his holding but keep the remaining half intact, trading the stock he still held as a bonus.

Some of his early finds, such as Eastman Kodak and I.B.M., went on to become national leaders. He also backed the first mail order company, convinced it was a trend that would catch on.

By the end of his first year he was advising half the school staff and some of the parents. William Kane was happy at school.

Anne Kane had been unhappy and lonely at home with William away at St. Paul's and a family circle consisting only of the two grandmothers, now approaching old age. She was miserably conscious that she was past thirty, and that her smooth and youthful prettiness had disappeared without leaving much in its place. She started picking up the threads, severed by Richard's death, with some of her old friends. John and Milly Preston, William's godmother, whom she had known all her life, began inviting her to dinners and the theatre, always including an extra man, trying to make a match for Anne. The Preston's choices were almost always atrocious, and Anne used privately to laugh at Milly's attempts at match-making until one day in January 1919, just after William had returned to school for the winter term, Anne was invited to yet another dinner for four. Milly confessed she had never met her other guest, Henry Osborne, but that they thought he had been at Harvard at the same time as John.

'Actually,' confessed Milly over the phone, 'John doesn't know much about him, darling, except that he is rather good-looking!'

On that score, John's opinion was verified by Anne and Milly. Henry Osborne was warming himself by the fire when Anne arrived and he rose immediately to allow Milly to introduce them. A shade over six feet, with dark eyes, almost black, and straight black hair, he was slim and athletic looking. Anne felt a quick flash of pleasure that she was paired for the evening, with this energetic and youthful man, while Milly had to content herself with a husband, who was showing signs of middle-age by comparison with his dashing college contemporary. Henry Osborne's arm was in a sling, almost completely covering his Harvard tie.

'A war wound?' asked Anne sympathetically.

'No, I fell down the stairs the week after I got back from the Western Front,' he said, laughing.

It was one of those dinners, lately so rare for Anne, at which the time at the table slipped by happily and unaccountably. Henry Osborne answered all Anne's inquisitive questions. After leaving Harvard, he had worked for a real estate management firm in Chicago, his home town, but when the war came he couldn't resist having a go at the Germans. He had a fund of splendid stories about Europe and the life he had led there as a young lieutenant preserving the honour of America on the Marne. Milly and John had not seen Anne laugh so much since Richard's death and sriiiled at one another knowingly when Henry asked if he might drive her home.

'What are you going to do now that you've come back to a land fit for heroes?' asked Anne, as Henry Osborne eased his Stutz out on to Charles Street.

'Haven't really decided,' he replied. 'Luckily, I have a little money of my own, so I don't have to rush into anything. Might even start my own real estate firm right here in Boston. I've always felt at home in the city since my days at Harvard.'

'You won't be returning to Chicago, then?'

'No, there's nothing to take me back there. My parents are both dead, and I was an only child, so I can start afresh anywhere I choose. Where do I turn?

'Oh, first on the right,' said Anne.

'You live on Beacon Hill?'

'Yes, about a hundred and fifty yards on the right hand side up Chestnut and it's the red house on the comer of Louisburg Square-'

Henry Osborne parked the car and accompanied Anne to the front door of her home. After saying goodnight, he was gone almost before she had time to thank him. She watched his car glide slowly back down Beacon Hill knowing that she wanted to see him again. She was delighted, though not entirely surprised, when he telephoned her the following morning.

'Boston Symphony Orchestra, Mozart, and that flamboyant new fellow, Mahler, next Monday - can I persuade you?'

Anne was a little taken aback by the extent to which she looked forward to Monday. It seemed so long since a man whom she found attractive had pursued her. Henry Osborne arrived punctually for the outing, they shook hands rather awkwardly, and he, accepted a Scotch bighbalL 'It must be pleasant to live on Louisburg Square. You're a lucky girl.'

'Yes, I suppose so, I've never really given it much thought. I was born and raised on Commonwealth Avenue. If anything, I find this slightly cramped!'

'I think I might buy a house on the Hill myself if I do decide to settle in Boston.'

'They don't come on the market all that often,' said Anne, 'but you may be lucky. Hadn't we better be going? I hate being late for a concert and having to tread on other people's toes to reach my scat.'

Henry glanced at his watch. 'Yes I agree, wouldn't do to miss the conductor's entrance, but you don't have to worry about anyone's feet except mine. We're on the aisle!'

The cascades of sumptuous music made it natural for Henry to take Anne's arm as they walked to the Ritz. The only other person who had done that since Richard's death had been William, and only after considerable persuasion as he considered it sissy. Once again the hours slipped by for Anne: was it the excellent food, or was it Henry's company? This timehe made her laugh with his stories of Harvard and cry with recollections of the war.

Although she was well aware that he looked younger than herself, he had done so much with his life that she always felt deliciously youthful and inexperienced in his company. She told him about her husband's death, and cried a little more- He took her hand and she spoke of her son with glowing pride and affection. He said he had always wanted'a son. Henry scarcely mentioned Chicago or his own home life but Anne felt sure that he must miss his family. When he took her home that night, he stayed for a quick drink and kissed her gently on the cheek as he left. Anne went back over the evening minUte by minute before she fell asleep.

They went to the theatre on Tuesday, visited Anne's cottage on Cape Cod on Wednesday, gyrated to the Grizzly Bear and the Temptation Rag on Thursday, shopped for antiques on Friday, and made love on Saturday. After Sunday, they were rarely apart. Milly and John Preston were 'absolutely delighted' that their match-making had at last proved so successful. Milly went around Boston telling everyone- that she had been responsible for putting the two of them together.

The announcement during that summer of the engagement came as no surprise to anyone except William. He had disliked Henry intensely from the day that Anne, with a well-founded sense of misgiving, introduced them to each other. Their first conversation took the form of long questions from Henry, trying to prove he wanted to be a friend, and monosyllabic answers from William, showing that he didn't. And he never changed his mind. Anne ascribed her son's resentment to an understandable feeling of jealousy; William had been the centre of her life since Richard's death. Moreover, it was perfectly proper that in William's estimation, no one could possibly take the place of his own father. Anne convinced Henry that given time William would get over his sense of outrage.

Anne Kane became Mrs. Henry Osborne in October of that year at the Old North Church just as the golden and red leaves were beginning to fall, a little over ten months after they had met. William feigned illness in order not to attend the wedding and remained firmly ht school. The grandmothers did attend, but were unable to hide their disapproval of Anne's remarriage, particularly to someone who appeared to be so much younger than herself. 'It can only end in disaster,' said Grandmother Kane.

The newlyweds sailed for Greece the following day, and did not return to the Red House on the Hill till the second week of December, just in time to welcome William home for the Christmas holidays. William was shocked to find the house had been redecorated, leaving almost no trace of his father. Over Christmas, William's attitude to his step-father showed no sign of softening despite the present as Henry saw it - bribe as William construed it - of a new bicycle. Henry Osborne accepted this rebuff with surly resignation. It saddened Anne that her splendid new husband made so little effort to win over her son's affection.

William felt ill at ease in his invaded home and would often disappear for long periods during the day. Whenever Anne inquired where he was going, she received little or no response: it certainly was not to the grandmothers. When the Christmas holidays came to an end, William was only too happy to return to school and Henry was not sad to see him go.

Only Anne was uneasy about both the men in her life.

9

'Up, boy. Up, boy.'

One of the soldiers was digging his rifle butt into Wladek's ribs. He sat up with a start and looked at the grave of his sister and those of Leon and of the Baron, and he did not shed a single tear as he turned towards the soldier.

'I will live, you will not kill me,' he said in Polish. 'This is my home, and you are on my land!'

The soldier spat on Wladek and pushed him back to the lawn where the servants were waiting, all dressed in what looked like grey pyjamas with numbers on their backs. Wladek was horrified at the sight of them, realising what was about to happen to him. He was taken by the soldier to the north side of the castle and made to kneel on the ground. He felt a knife scrape across his head as his thick black hair fell on to the grass. With ten bloody strokes, like the shearing of a sheep, the job was completed. Shaven-headed, he was ordered to put on his new uniform, a grey rubaskew shirt and trousers. Wladek managed to keep the silver band well hidden and rejoined his servants at the front of the castle.

While they all stood waiting on the grass - numbers now, not names - Wladek became conscious of a noise in the distance that he had never heard before. His eyes turned towards the menacing sound. Through the great iron gates came a vehicle moving on four wheels, but not drawn by horses or oxen. All the prisoners stared at the moving object in disbelief. When it had come to a halt, the soldiers dragged the reluctant prisoners towards it and made them climb aboard. Then the horseless wagon turned round, moved back down the path and through the iron gates. Nobody dared to speak. Wladek sat at the rear of the truck and stared at his castle until he could no longer see the Gothic turrets.

The horseless wagon somehow drove itself towards Slonim. Wadek would have worried about how the vehicle worked if he had not been even more worried about where it was taking them. He began to recognise the roads from his days at school, but his memory had been dulled by three years in the dungeons, and he could not recall where the road finally led. After only a few miles, the truck came to a stop and they were all pushed out. It was the local railway station. Wladek had only seen it once before in his life, when he and Leon had gone there to welcome the Baron home from his trip to Warsaw. He remembered the guard had saluted them when they first walked on to the platform; this time no guard saluted them. The prisoners were fed on goats' milk, cabbage soup and black bread, Wladek again taking charge, dividing the portions carefully among the remaining fourteen. He sat on a wooden bench, assuming that they were waiting for a train. That night they slept on the ground below the stars, paradise compared with the dungeons. He thanked God for the mild winter.

Morning came and still they waited. Wladek made the servants take some exercise but most collapsed after only a few minutes. He began to make a mental note of the names of those who had survived thus far. Eleven of the men and two of the women, spared from the original twenty-seven in the dungeons. Spared for what? he thought. They spent the rest of the day waiting for a train that never came. Once, a train did arrive, from which more soldiers disembarked, speaking their hateful tongue, but it departed without Wladek's pitiful army. They slept yet another night on the platform.

Wladek lay awake below the stars considering how he might escape, but during the night one of his thirteen made a run for it across the railway track and was shot down by a guard even before he had reached the other side. Wladek gazed at the spot where his compatriot had fallen, frightened to go to his aid for fear he would meet the same fate. The guards left the body on the track in the morning, as a warning to those who might consider a similar course of action.