Kane & Abel (1979) (7 page)

As the years passed, Leon grew even taller, Wladek grew stronger, and both boys became wiser. But then, in July 1914, without warning or explanation, the German tutor left the castle without even bidding them farewell. They never thought to connect his departure with the recent assassination in Sarajevo of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a student anarchist, an event described to them by their other tutor in solemn tones. The Baron became withdrawn, but no explanation was forthcoming. The younger servants, the children’s favourites, began to disappear one by one; and still neither boy could work out why.

One morning in August 1915, a time of warm, hazy days, the Baron set off on the long journey to Warsaw to put, as he described it, his affairs in order. He was absent for three and a half weeks, twenty-five days that Wladek marked off on a calendar in his bedroom each evening. On the day he was due to return, the two boys travelled to the Slonim railway station to await the weekly train with its three carriages, so they could greet him on his arrival. Wladek was surprised and alarmed to see that the Baron looked weary and broken, and although he wanted to ask him many questions, the three of them returned to the castle in silence.

During the following week the Baron was to be found conducting long, intense conversations with the head servant that were broken off whenever Leon or Wladek entered the room, making them uneasy, in case they were somehow the unwitting cause of his distress. Wladek even feared that the Baron might send him back to the trapper’s cottage - always aware he was a guest in the Baron’s home.

One evening the Baron called for the two boys to join him in the great hall. They crept in, fearful of this break in his usual routine. The brief conversation would remain in Wladek’s memory for the rest of his life.

‘My dear children,’ began the Baron in a low, faltering tone, ‘the warmongers of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire are at the throat of Warsaw once again, and will soon be at our gates.’

Wladek recalled a phrase spat out by the Polish tutor after his German colleague had left without explanation. ‘Does that mean that the hour of the submerged peoples of Europe is at last upon us?’ he asked.

The Baron regarded Wladek’s innocent face tenderly. ‘Our national spirit has not been broken in one hundred and fifty years of oppression,’ he replied. ‘It may be that the fate of Poland is in the balance, but we are powerless to influence history. We are at the mercy of the three mighty empires that surround us, and therefore must await our fate.’

‘We are both strong, so we will fight,’ said Leon.

‘We have swords and shields,’ added Wladek. ‘We are not afraid of Germans or Russians.’

‘My boys, your weapons are made of wood, and you have only played at war. This battle will not be between children. We must find a more quiet place to live until history has decided our fate. We must leave as soon as possible. I only pray that this is not the end of your childhood.’

Leon and Wladek were mystified by the Baron’s words. War sounded to them like another exciting adventure, which they would be sure to miss if they left the castle.

The servants took several days to pack the Baron’s possessions, and Wladek and Leon were informed that they would be departing for the family’s small summer house to the north of Grodno the following Monday. The two boys continued, often unsupervised, with their work and play, because no one in the castle seemed willing to answer their myriad questions.

On Saturdays, lessons only took place in the morning. They were translating Adam Mickiewicz’s
Pan Tadeusz
into Latin when they heard the guns. At first they thought the familiar sound was no more than a trapper out shooting on the estate, so they returned to the Bard of Czarnotas. A second volley of shots, much closer, made them look up, and then they heard screams coming from downstairs. The two boys stared at each other in bewilderment, but still they were not afraid, because they had never experienced anything in their short lives to make them fearful. The tutor fled, leaving them alone, and as he closed the door, there followed another shot, this time in the corridor outside their classroom. Now terrified, the two boys hid under their desks, not knowing what to do.

Suddenly the door crashed open, and a man no older than their tutor, in a grey uniform and steel helmet, holding a rifle, stood towering over them. Leon clung to Wladek, while Wladek stared at the intruder. The soldier shouted at them in German, demanding to know who they were, but neither boy replied, even though both had mastered the language as well as their mother tongue. Another soldier appeared, grabbed the two boys by the necks like chickens and pulled them out into the corridor. They were dragged past the dead body of their tutor, down the stone steps at the front of the castle and into the garden, where they found Florentyna screaming hysterically. Row upon row of dead bodies, mostly servants, were being laid on the grass. Leon could not bear to look, and buried his head in Wladek’s shoulder. Wladek was mesmerized by the sight of one of the bodies, a large man with a luxuriant moustache. It was the trapper. Wladek felt nothing. Florentyna continued to scream.

‘Is Papa there?’ asked Leon. ‘Is Papa there?’

Wladek scanned the line of bodies once again. He thanked God that there was no sign of the Baron, and was about to tell Leon the good news when a soldier appeared by their side.

‘Wer hat gesprochen?’
he demanded fiercely.

‘
Ich
,’ said Wladek defiantly.

The soldier raised his rifle and brought the butt crashing down into Wladek’s stomach. His legs buckled, and he dropped to his knees. Where was the Baron? What was happening? Why were they being treated like this in their own home?

Leon quickly jumped on top of Wladek, trying to protect him from the second blow that the soldier was aiming at Wladek’s head, but as the butt of the rifle came crashing down, its full force caught the back of Leon’s neck.

Both boys lay motionless, Wladek because he was dazed by the blow and the weight of Leon’s body on top of him, and Leon because he was dead.

Wladek could hear another soldier berating their tormentor for striking them. They tried to pick Leon up, but Wladek clung to him. It took both of the soldiers to prise his friend’s body away and dump it unceremoniously alongside the others, face down on the grass. Wladek’s eyes did not leave the motionless body of his only friend until he was marched back inside the castle and, with a handful of dazed survivors, led to the dungeons.

Nobody spoke, for fear of joining the line of bodies on the grass, until the dungeon doors were bolted and the last words of the soldiers had faded into the distance. Then Wladek murmured, ‘Holy God,’ for there in a corner, slumped against the wall, was the Baron, staring into space, alive and uninjured only because the Germans needed him to take charge of the prisoners.

Wladek crawled across to him, while the servants sat as far away from their master as possible. The two gazed at each other as they had on the first day they met. Wladek put his hand out once again, and the Baron took it. He told him what had happened to Leon. Tears coursed down the Baron’s proud face. Neither spoke. Both of them had lost the person they had loved most in the world.

W
HEN
A
NNE
K
ANE
first read the report of the sinking of the
Titanic
in
The Times,
she simply refused to believe it. Her husband must still be alive.

After she’d read the article a third time, she burst into uncontrollable tears, something William had never witnessed in the past, and wasn’t quite sure how to handle.

Before he could ask what had caused this uncharacteristic outburst, his mother smothered him in her arms and clung tightly to him. How could she tell him that they had both lost the person they most loved in the world?

Sir David Seymour arrived at the Savoy a few minutes later, accompanied by his wife. They waited in the lounge while the widow put on the only dark clothes she had with her. William dressed himself, still not certain what a calamity was. Anne asked Sir David to explain the full implications of the tragedy to her son.

When he was told that the great liner had hit an iceberg and sunk, all William said was, ‘I wanted to be on the ship with Daddy, but they wouldn’t let me go.’ He didn’t cry, because he refused to believe that anything could kill his father. He would surely be among the survivors.

In Sir David’s long 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 bestowed on very few,’ he was heard to remark some years later. ‘It was bestowed on Richard Kane, and was passed on to his only son.’

On Thursday of that week William turned six, but he didn’t open any of his presents.

The names of the survivors, listed in
The Times
every morning, were checked and double-checked by Anne. Richard Lowell Kane was still missing at sea, presumed drowned. But it was to be another week before William abandoned hope of his father’s survival. On the fifteenth day, William cried.

Anne found it painful to board the
Aquitania,
but William seemed strangely eager to put to sea. Hour after hour he would sit on the observation deck, scanning the dark grey water of the ocean.

‘Tomorrow I will find him,’ he promised his mother again and again, at first confidently but later in a voice that barely disguised his own disbelief.

‘William, no one can survive for three weeks in the North Atlantic’

‘Not even my father?’

‘Not even your father.’

When Anne and William arrived back in Boston, both grandmothers were awaiting them at the Red House, mindful of the duty that had been thrust upon them. Anne passively accepted their proprietary role. Life had little purpose left for her other than William, whose destiny his grandmothers now seemed determined to control. William was polite but uncooperative. During the day he sat silently through his lessons with Mr Munro, and at night he held his mother’s hand, but neither spoke.

‘What he needs is to be with other children,’ declared Grandmother Cabot. Grandmother Kane agreed. The following day they dismissed Mr Munro and the nurse and sent William 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 trust until his twenty-first birthday. There was a codicil attached to the will. Richard expected his son to become president and chairman of Kane and Cabot on merit. It was the only part of his father’s testament that inspired William, for the rest was no more than his birthright. Anne received a capital sum of $500,000 and an income for life of $100,000 a year after taxes, which would cease only if she remarried. She also inherited the house on Beacon Hill, the summer mansion on the North Shore, a summer house in the Hamptons and a small island off Cape Cod, all of which were to pass to William on her death. Both grandmothers received $250,000, and letters leaving them in no doubt about their responsibilities should Richard die before them. The trust was to be administered by the bank, with William’s godparents acting as co-trustees. The income was to be reinvested each year in conservative enterprises.