Kane and Abel Read online

  ‘Grandmother,’ said William kindly but firmly when she had failed to find the answer to his latest conundrum, ‘you could give me a slide rule, and then I won’t need to bother you again.’

  Grandmother Kane was astonished by her grandson’s precocity, but she bought him a slide rule just the same, wondering if he really knew how to use it.

  Meanwhile, Richard’s problems began to gravitate further eastward. When the chairman of the London branch died of a heart attack at his desk, Richard found himself required in Lombard Street. He suggested to Anne that she and William accompany him, feeling that the journey would add to the child’s education. After all, he could visit all the places Mr Munro had taught him about. Anne, who had never been to Europe, was excited by the prospect, and filled three steamer trunks with elegant and expensive new clothes in which to confront the Old World. William considered it unfair that she would not allow him to take that equally essential aid to travel, his bicycle.

  The Kanes travelled to New York by train to join the Aquitania on her voyage to Southampton. Anne was appalled by the sight of the immigrant street traders hawking their wares on the sidewalks. William, on the other hand, was struck by the size of New York; he had, until that moment, imagined that his father’s bank was the biggest building in America, if not the world. He wanted to buy a pink-and-yellow ice cream from a man with a little cart on wheels, but his father would not hear of it; in any case, he never carried small change.

  William adored the great liner the moment he saw it, and quickly made friends with the white-bearded captain, who shared with him all the secrets of the Cunard Line’s prima donna. Not long after the ship had left America, Richard and Anne, who had been placed at the captain’s table, felt it necessary to apologize for the amount of the crew’s time their son was occupying.

  ‘Not at all,’ replied the skipper. ‘William and I are already good friends. I only wish I could answer all his questions about time, speed and distance. I have to be coached every night by the first engineer in the hope of first anticipating and then surviving the following day.’

  When the Aquitania sailed into Southampton after a ten-day crossing, William was reluctant to leave her, and tears would have been unavoidable had it not been for the magnificent sight of a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost parked at the quayside, complete with chauffeur, ready to whisk them off to London. Richard decided on the spur of the moment that he would have the car transported back to New York at the end of the trip, a decision more out of character than any he would make during the rest of his life. He informed Anne that he wanted to show it to Henry Ford. Henry Ford never saw it.

  The family always stayed at the Savoy Hotel in the Strand when they were in London, which was conveniently situated for Richard’s office in the City. During a dinner overlooking the River Thames, Richard learned first-hand from his new chairman, Sir David Seymour, a former diplomat, how the London branch was faring. Not that he would ever have described London as a ‘branch’ of Kane and Cabot while he was on this side of the Atlantic.

  Richard was able to conduct a discreet conversation with Sir David, while his wife was preoccupied with learning from Lavinia Seymour how they should best occupy their time while in town. Anne was delighted to learn that Lavinia also had a son, who couldn’t wait to meet his first American.

  The following morning Lavinia reappeared at the Savoy, accompanied by Stuart Seymour. After they had shaken hands, Stuart asked William, ‘Are you a cowboy?’

  ‘Only if you’re a redcoat,’ William immediately replied. The two six-year-old boys shook hands a second time.

  That day, William, Stuart, Anne and Lady Seymour visited the Tower of London, and watched the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. William told Stuart that he thought everything was ‘swell’, except for Stuart’s accent, which he found difficult to understand.

  ‘Why don’t you talk like us?’ he demanded, and was surprised to be informed by his mother that the question should more properly be put the other way around, as ‘they’ had come first.

  William enjoyed watching the soldiers in their bright red uniforms with large, shiny brass buttons who stood guard outside Buckingham Palace. He tried to talk to them, but they just stared past him into space and never seemed to blink.

  ‘Can we take one home?’ he asked his mother.

  ‘No, darling, they have to stay in London and guard the King.’

  ‘But he’s got so many of them. Can’t I have just one? He’d look just swell outside our house in Louisburg Square.’

  As a ‘special treat’ - Anne’s words - Richard allowed himself an afternoon off to take William, Stuart and Anne to the West End to see a traditional English pantomime called Jack and the Beanstalk, which was playing at the Hippodrome. William loved Jack, although he was puzzled that he had long legs and wore stockings. Despite this he wanted to cut down every tree he laid his eyes on, imagining them all to be sheltering a wicked giant. After the curtain had come down they had tea at Fortnum and Mason in Piccadilly, and Anne allowed William two cream buns and something Stuart called a doughnut. After that, William had to be escorted to the tea room at Fortnum’s daily to consume another ‘dough bun’, as he described them.

  The time in London passed by all too quickly for William and his mother, but Richard, satisfied that all was well in Lombard Street, and pleased with his newly appointed chairman, was already making plans to return to America. Cables were arriving daily from Boston, which made him anxious to be back in his own boardroom. When one such missive informed him that 2,500 workers at a cotton mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in which his bank had a heavy investment, had gone out on strike, he changed his booking for the return voyage.

  William was also looking forward to getting back to Boston so that he could tell Mr Munro all the amazing experiences he’d had in England, as well as being reunited with his two grandmothers. He felt sure that they could never have done anything as exciting as visiting a real live theatre with members of the general public. Anne was also happy to be returning home, although she had enjoyed the trip almost as much as William, for her clothes and beauty had been much admired by the normally undemonstrative English.

  As a final treat the day before they were due to sail, Lavinia Seymour invited William and Anne to a tea party at her home in Eaton Square. While Anne and Lavinia discussed the latest London fashions, William learned about cricket from Stuart, and tried to explain baseball to his new best friend. The party, however, broke up early when Stuart began to feel sick. William, in sympathy, announced that he too was feeling ill so he and Anne returned to the Savoy earlier than they had planned. Anne was not greatly put out, as this gave her a little more time to supervise the packing of the large steamer trunks filled with all her new acquisitions, although she was convinced William was only putting on an act to please Stuart. But when she put him to bed that night, Anne found that he was running a slight temperature. She remarked on it to Richard over dinner.

  ‘Probably just the excitement at the thought of returning home,’ he offered, sounding unconcerned.

  ‘I hope so,’ replied Anne. ‘I don’t want him to be sick on the voyage.’

  ‘He’ll be fine by tomorrow,’ Richard tried to reassure her.

  But when Anne went to wake William the next morning, she found him covered in little red spots and running a temperature of 103. The hotel doctor diagnosed measles, and was politely insistent that the boy was on no account to undertake a sea voyage, not only for his own sake, but for that of the other passengers.

  Richard was unable to countenance any further delay, and decided to sail as planned. Reluctantly, Anne agreed that she and William would remain in London until the ship returned in three weeks’ time. William begged his father to let him accompany him, but Richard was adamant, and hired a nurse to look after William until he was fully recovered. Anne travelled down to Southampton with Richard in the new Rolls-Royce to see him off.

  ‘I shall be lonely in London without yo