Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune Read online

  “It’s your wife, sir, she’s been taken to the hospital.”

  “Why?” asked William, puzzled.

  “The baby,” said his secretary.

  “But it’s not due for at least another six weeks,” said William incredulously.

  “I know, sir, but Dr. MacKenzie sounded rather anxious and wanted you to come to the hospital as quickly as possible.”

  Matthew, who a moment before had seemed a broken reed, took over and drove William to the hospital. Memories of William’s mother’s death and her unborn daughter came flooding back to both of them.

  “Pray God, not Kate,” said Matthew as he drew into the hospital parking lot.

  William did not need to be guided to the Richard Kane maternity wing, which Kate had officially opened only six months before. He found a nurse standing outside the delivery room; she informed him that Dr. MacKenzie was with his wife and that Kate had lost a lot of blood. William paced up and down the corridor helplessly, numbly waiting, exactly as he had done years before. The scene was all too familiar. How unimportant being chairman of the bank was compared with losing Kate. When had he last said to her “I love you”? Matthew sat with William, paced with William, stood with William, but said nothing. There was nothing to be said. William checked his watch each time a nurse ran in or out of the delivery room. Seconds turned into minutes and minutes into hours. Finally Dr. MacKenzie appeared, his forehead shining with little beads of sweat, a surgical mask covering his nose and mouth. William could see no expression on the doctor’s face until he removed the white mask, revealing a large smile.

  “Congratulations, William, you have a boy, and Kate is just fine.”

  “Thank God,” breathed William, clinging onto Matthew.

  “Much as I respect the Almighty,” said Dr. MacKenzie, “I feel I had a little to do with this birth myself.”

  William laughed. “Can I see Kate?”

  “No, not right now. I’ve given her a sedative and she’s fallen asleep. She lost rather more blood than was good for her, but she’ll be fine by morning. A little weak, perhaps, but well ready to see you. But there’s nothing to stop your seeing your son. But don’t be surprised by his size; remember, he’s quite premature.”

  The doctor guided William and Matthew down the corridor to a room in which they stared through a pane of glass at a row of six little pink heads in cribs.

  “That one,” said Dr. MacKenzie, pointing to the infant on the end.

  William stared dubiously at the ugly little face, his vision of a fine, upstanding son receding rapidly.

  “Well, I’ll say one thing for the little devil,” said Dr. MacKenzie cheerfully, “he’s better-looking than you were at that age and you haven’t turned out too badly.”

  William laughed out of relief.

  “What are you going to call him?”

  “Richard Higginson Kane.”

  The doctor patted the new father affectionately on the shoulder. “I hope I live long enough to deliver Richard’s firstborn.”

  William immediately wired the rector of St. Paul’s, who put the boy down for a place in 1943, and the new father and Matthew got thoroughly drunk and were both late arriving at the hospital the next morning to see Kate. William took Matthew for another look at young Richard.

  “Ugly little bastard,” said Matthew. “Not at all like his beautiful mother.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said William.

  “Spitting image of you though.”

  William returned to Kate’s flower-filled room.

  “Do you like your son?” Kate asked her husband. “He’s so like you.”

  “I’ll hit the next person who says that,” William said.

  “He’s the ugliest little thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Oh, no,” said Kate in mock indignation, “he’s beautiful.”

  “A face only a mother could love,” said William, and he hugged his wife.

  She clung to him, happy in his happiness.

  “What would Grandmother Kane have said about our firstborn entering the world after less than eight months of marriage? ‘I don’t want to appear uncharitable, but anyone born in under fifteen months must be considered of dubious parentage, under nine months definitely unacceptable,’” William mimicked. “By the way, Kate, I forgot to tell you something before they rushed you into the hospital.”

  “What was that?”

  “I love you.”

  Kate and young Richard had to stay in the hospital for nearly three weeks. Not until after Christmas did Kate fully recover her vitality. Richard, on the other hand, grew like an uncontrollable weed, no one having informed him that he was a Kane, and one was not supposed to do that sort of thing. William became the first male Kane to change a diaper and push a perambulator. Kate was very proud of him, and somewhat surprised. William told Matthew that it was high time he found himself a good woman and settled down.

  Matthew laughed defensively. “You’re getting positively middle-aged. I shall be looking for gray hairs next.”

  One or two had already appeared during the chairmanship battle. Matthew hadn’t noticed.

  William was not able to put a finger on exactly when his relationship with Tony Simmons began to deteriorate badly. Tony would continually veto one policy suggestion after another and his negative attitude made William seriously reconsider resignation. Matthew was not helping matters by returning to his old drinking habits. The period of reform had not lasted more than a few months and if anything he was now drinking more heavily than before and arriving at the bank a few minutes later each morning. William wasn’t quite sure how to handle the new situation and found himself continually covering Matthew’s work. At the end of each day William would double-check Matthew’s mail and return his unanswered calls.

  By the spring of 1936, as investors gained more confidence and depositors returned, William decided the time had come to go tentatively back into the stock market, but Tony vetoed the suggestion in an offhand interoffice memorandum to the Financial Committee. William stormed into Tony’s office to ask if his resignation would be welcome.

  “Certainly not, William. I merely want you to recognize that it has always been my policy to run this bank in a conservative manner and that I am not willing to charge headlong back into the market with our investors’ money.”

  “But we’re losing business hand over fist to other banks while we sit on the sidelines watching them take advantage of the present situation. Banks we wouldn’t even have considered as rivals ten years ago will soon be overtaking us.”

  “Overtaking us in what, William? Not in reputation. Quick profits perhaps, but not reputation.”

  “But I’m interested in profits,” said William. “I consider it a bank’s duty to make good returns for its investors, not to mark time in a gentlemanly fashion.”

  “I would rather stand still than lose the reputation that this bank built up under your grandfather and father over the better part of half a century.”

  “Yes, but both of them were always looking for new opportunities to expand the bank’s activities.”

  “In good times,” said Tony.

  “And in bad,” said William.

  “Why are you so upset, William? You still have a free hand in the running of your own department.”

  “Like hell I do. You block anything that even suggests enterprise.”

  “Let’s start being honest with each other, William. One of the reasons I have had to be particularly cautious lately is that Matthew’s judgment is no longer reliable.”

  “Leave Matthew out of this. It’s me you’re blocking; I am head of the department.”

  “I can’t leave Matthew out of it. I wish I could. The final overall responsibility to the board for anyone’s actions is mine, and he is the number two man in the bank’s most important department.”

  “Yes, and therefore my responsibility because I am the number one man in that department.”

  “No, William, it ca