Harry Bingham - The Sons of Adam

Then a footman came in with the mail. Normally, the mail would have been taken to Sir Adam’s study to wait for him there, but today Sir Adam was off to town and he couldn’t wait. He read a couple of letters in silence. Tom and Alan fidgeted with their porridge. Guy – who was no longer forced to eat the stuff – made a big show of filling his plate with kippers and scrambled eggs, as a way of annoying Tom. Pamela, who normally breakfasted in bed, came down to take a cup of tea and see her husband off. A little conversation moved in stops and starts. The wind outside creaked a shutter.

Then Sir Adam broke the silence.

‘Hello! Fancy that!’ He flung the letter down. ‘Very handsome of D’Arcy! Very handsome indeed!’

He was begging to be asked the news and Pamela was first to ask it.

‘D’Arcy, dear? What has he … ?’

‘The concession. He’s split off a chunk for us.’ He picked up the letter again. ‘“Delighted with your excellent work … blah, blah … Very happy to make you a small present … Gift … Drilling rights south of a line drawn from Bandar-e Deylam across to Persepolis.” Great heavens!’

But, surprised as Sir Adam might be, his surprise was as nothing compared to Tom’s. Tom was sitting bolt upright, white-lipped, open-eyed.

‘You mean to say we can drill there? By ourselves? We don’t have to ask anyone?’

Sir Adam laughed. ‘Yes, Tom. We have the drilling rights. We don’t have to ask anyone.’

‘Everywhere south of Persepolis? Anywhere we want?’

‘That’s right.’

‘The mountains,’ he said. ‘We’ve got the mountains.’

And he was right. Since his meeting with D’Arcy – and even more so since Sir Adam’s own involvement in Persian oil – Tom had become an oil obsessive and a Persia fanatic. He knew as much about the geography, climate, geology, tribes and politics of Persia as he’d been able to learn from Sir Adam’s library.

‘That’s right. The mountains of the Zagros. The wild country around Shiraz and the Rukna valley. Heavy work to look for oil there, I should think.’

Tom shook his head with an angry little flick. ‘There isn’t much chance of it there. The best places are further north.’

‘Well, you can’t expect the fellow to hand over his crown jewels. After all –’

‘But some.’

‘What?’

‘There is some chance. I didn’t say there wasn’t any chance.’

Sir Adam laughed at the youngster’s intensity. ‘Lord, Tommy! D’Arcy’s pocket is as deep as any, I believe, and I don’t think he’s ready for the expense of drilling there. I shouldn’t think that we –’

‘Can I have it then?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

The silence at the table grew suddenly cavernous. The family of five might as well have been breakfasting alone beneath the dome of St Paul’s.

‘Can I have it? The concession? If you don’t want it.’

Sir Adam smiled. Perhaps he’d been hoping to encourage Tom to drop the directness of his demand. Perhaps he’d been hoping to soothe away the sudden sense of danger that had for some reason arisen. In any case, he smiled.

It was the wrong thing to do. Something flared in Tom’s blue eyes. He pointed at Guy.

‘He gets the house and all the land. Alan gets – I don’t know – money? A farm or something?’

Tom was just about to turn eight and he was piecing together the facts from half-heard servants’ gossip. But he was more right than wrong.

Sir Adam looked stern. ‘Alan will get some money. And yes, there’s a little estate for him outside Marlborough. There’ll be some income from that.’

‘And? What about me? What do I get?’

Sir Adam licked his lips. Tom’s directness often came across as insolence. What was more, it was detestably ill-bred for anyone to talk this bluntly over breakfast – let alone a boy of eight. But, just as he was ready to speak a sharp rebuke, Pamela interrupted.

‘Well?’

She barely whispered the word. She did little more than shape her lips and breathe it. But Sir Adam heard it all right. He exchanged glances with his wife. The issue that Tom had raised was one that the two of them had often enough spoken about in private. Pamela wanted Tom’s share of the estate to be every bit the equal of Alan’s. Sir Adam, on the other hand, knew that his assets weren’t unlimited. Every penny he gave to Tom would have to be cut out of Alan’s or Guy’s inheritance. As he saw it, there was the issue of justice towards his sons. In his heart, he was unable to feel that his adopted son had the same rights as the children of his own flesh and blood.

‘Well?’ said Pamela again. ‘Or are you intending to drill there?’

Tom stared, as though the most important thing in the world had walked into the room and might be lost for ever if his concentration flickered even for a second.

‘Tommy, you wish to be an oilman, do you?’

‘Yes, Uncle.’

‘It’s no easy business.’

‘No, Uncle.’

‘It’s not enough to have a patch of land to drill on, you know. You need money and men and machines and –’

‘I know, Uncle. I know.’

Sir Adam gulped down his tea and stood up. He rumpled Tom’s hair. ‘An oilman, eh?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Well, good for you, Tommy. You’ve a fine piece of land to begin with.’

Tom had his concession.

Not legally, of course – the boy was only eight, after all – but his all the same. For the first time in his life, he felt he had something equivalent to what Guy had, to what Alan had, to what Sir Adam had.

And not just equivalent. Better.

Because, young as he was, Tom had understood something from the very start. He couldn’t have put his understanding into words, but he understood it all the same. And he was right.

Because oil isn’t just oil, the way cabbages are only cabbages, or steel is only steel. Oil is more than a liquid. It’s more than another commodity. Oil isn’t precious, the way gold is, because it sparkles nicely and looks pretty on a lady’s neck.

Oil makes the world go round. Even in the opening decade of the twentieth century, its massive power was becoming visible. Cars ran off it. Ships burned it. Factories needed it. On land and sea, the world went oil-crazy. Navies were converted to burn oil. Armies packed their shells full of high explosive made with oil by-products. And every day chemists found new uses for it; speed records were being shattered with it; men dreamed of powered flight with it.

But even that wasn’t the reason why oil mattered.

The reason was this. Man doesn’t make oil; God does. If you’ve got a big enough field and a big enough bank account, you can build yourself an auto factory. Don’t like cars? Then get a bigger field and build yourself an airplane factory. Or start an airline. Build a store. Open a bank.

Oil isn’t like that. Not anyone can start up in the oil business. To start in oil, you’ve got to have some land that sits over an oilfield. No matter how rich you are, if you don’t own the drilling rights, you don’t have squat. And that’s the reason.

Oil isn’t just fuel, though it’s the best fuel in the world.

Oil isn’t just money, though it’s the closest damn thing to money that exists.

Oil is power, because everyone wants it and there’s only so much to go round.

‘Talibus orabat dictis arasque tenebat,’ said the schoolmaster, ‘cum sic orsa loqui vates.’

He walked around the schoolroom at Whitcombe House tapping out the rhythm of the Latin with his hands. Tom and Alan sat with their schoolbooks lying closed in front of them. They would have looked out of the windows, except that the schoolroom windows were pitched deliberately high, revealing nothing except a wide, bare square of sky. Tom yawned.