Harry Bingham - The Sons of Adam

‘As a matter of fact, I came to see if you were sorry yet. Obviously not.’

Alan was still sitting on the ledge of the window and he swung his legs out of it again onto the wisteria branch. But he didn’t drop away out of sight. He hung there, half in, half out of the room, waiting for Tom to say something that would let him come back in. But he was disappointed.

‘No,’ said Tom. ‘Obviously not.’

Alan shrugged. The shrug was meant to be a defiant, couldn’t-care-less affair, but the candle’s light was enough to show that his mouth and eyes obviously cared very much indeed.

‘Well then,’ said Alan, still hanging in the window.

‘Well then.’

The two boys stared at each other a few seconds longer. Eventually Tom looked away, back at his magazine. Alan found a lower hold for his feet, wriggled once, then dropped away out of sight.

Alan went straight home, but not to bed.

He climbed up onto the kitchen roof and lay there on his back, looking up at the starlight overhead. He was angry with Tom. As angry as he’d ever been. The two boys quarrelled often enough, but always made up quickly. When they fought, as they often did, their rules were simple.

Never submit.

Never give up.

While Tom was a little stronger, Alan had a longer reach. While Tom could be surprisingly fierce, Alan’s pride and determination always kept him in the fight to the very end. And then, when the fight was over, it was over. The two boys were the best of friends. They could be at each other’s throats one minute and walk away, calmly chatting, the next.

But this was different and Alan knew it. For two and a half hours, he lay on his back watching the stars wheel and turn. He went over everything in his mind. On the one hand, there was Tom’s temper and recklessness, and his stubborn refusal to compromise. On the other hand, there was Guy’s unkindness and Sir Adam’s unfairness. By the end of his long vigil, he’d made up his mind. It was he, Alan, who was going to have to do the impossible. It was he who was going to have to make things right.

Having made up his mind, he went to bed.

In the morning, after breakfast he spoke to Sir Adam.

‘Father, I want to ask you something.’

‘Yes?’

‘I think you should give Tom the concession. Properly. You did give it to him before, you know. I know you didn’t exactly say so, but everyone knew what you meant.’

Sir Adam sighed and bent down so that his face was on a level with his son’s.

‘But see here, Alan,’ Sir Adam said, ‘just suppose the thing turns out to be worth a fortune. It could be worth as much as Whitcombe House and all its land. It’s not that I don’t think that Tommy’s worth that. Of course he is. But there’s you and Guy to consider. How would you feel if Tommy was as rich as Mr D’Arcy and you were stuck with your very little patch in Marlborough?’

‘I shouldn’t care.’

‘Not now, maybe, but perhaps you would. These things do matter more as you grow, you know.’

‘Then give it to us.’ It was an idea of genius – the idea that had come to him last night on the tiles of the kitchen roof.

‘What?’

‘If that’s what you’re so worried about, then give the concession to me and Tom. Both of us. Only then you have to share the Marlborough place between us too. Then we’d be exactly the same, whatever happens.’

‘But …’

Sir Adam swallowed his protests. In the much more likely event that the concession was worthless, he’d be halving the property he’d set aside for his own blood-son. But, however much he felt this, he knew better than to argue the point with a passionate Alan.

‘Because we are the same, aren’t we, Father? Exactly the same.’

Of course you are, only –’

‘Well, there you go. Simple! Can I go and tell him now?’

‘It isn’t that simple. Your mother and I –’

‘Oh, don’t worry about her. I’ll go and talk to her.’

Alan ran off to his mother and argued the case with her. Although she said little, Alan quite correctly sensed that she was on his side.

‘I’ll talk it over with your papa,’ she promised.

She was as good as her word. That morning she spent an hour or two in patient argument with her husband. Sir Adam’s sticking point remained the likelihood that he’d be disinheriting Alan. Sir Adam was prosperous enough, but he certainly wasn’t vastly well off. Alan’s portion was never going to have been large and Sir Adam was anxious not to cut it in half. But Pamela was determined. She had some money of her own that had lain dormant with a City bank for many years. When she looked again at how much she had, it was much more than she’d believed. She insisted on adding her own money to Alan’s portion, but on condition that Sir Adam did as his son wanted.

And in the end he agreed.

By the end of that day, when lessons were finished, Sir Adam called Alan into his library.

‘Well, my boy, I’ve news for you.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve made certain arrangements, the upshot of which is that you and Tommy can share the farm and share the concession. Because of your mother’s generosity, there may even be a little money to go along with it as well.’

Alan stood open-mouthed, hardly daring to believe that he’d won. ‘Really, Father?’

‘Really.’

‘With all the legals and everything?’

Sir Adam smiled. ‘You’re ten and a half, my boy. So is Tommy. There’ll be time enough for the legal side when you’re of age. But if you mean, is my decision final, then yes it is.’

Alan breathed out a sigh of relief. It seemed an eternity since Tom had gone.

‘Thank you!’

‘Now, it’s up to you, young man, but there may be somebody you want to go and tell about this.’

Though it was still only spring, Sir Adam’s window was set half open. Alan paused an instant longer, as though to check that what he’d heard was real, not an illusion. Then he moved. He ran across the room, jumped through the open window, and went streaking across the lawns to find his twin.

He wasn’t disappointed.

Tom wasn’t simply pleased, he was ecstatic. And (from Alan’s point of view) what mattered most was that although Tom was delighted to have won his concession, his joy over the reunion with Alan was greater still. The twins were together again – stronger after the break, it appeared, than before it. With joint ownership of the concession, they became oil fanatics together. Oil was their obsession, the sign of what united them as twins. Whitcombe House welcomed Tom back.

Life resumed its normal course, only better.

That should have been it. Argument over. Done and dusted. Forgotten and forgiven.

And so it was. Almost. But when emotions run so high and for so long, they leave their mark.

Alan had learned a lesson – an almost unconscious one, perhaps, but one so deeply etched that he never forgot it. When Tom’s passions were aroused, he could be dangerous, irresponsible, uncompromising.

And Tom too had learned his lesson. When the chips were down, Alan had proved unreliable. Given the choice between Tom and family, Alan was a compromiser, an evader, an ally of divided loyalties.

The lessons had been learned and would never be forgotten.

And the oil?

Knox D’Arcy’s glorious news looked feebler and less glorious by the week. By the end of May, and despite all the efforts of the drilling team in Persia, the flow of oil dwindled and died. D’Arcy’s expenses continued to mount. The chances of finding oil anywhere – let alone in the twins’ stony stretch of mountains – seemed ever more remote. D’Arcy searched for new investors to share the strain.