Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune Read online

  The Kane family always stayed at the Ritz in Piccadilly when they were in London, which was convenient to Richard’s office in the City. Anne used the time while Richard was occupied at the bank to show William the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace and the Changing of the Guard. William thought everything was “great” except the English accent, which he had difficulty in understanding.

  “Why don’t they talk like us, Mommy?” he demanded, and was surprised to be told that the question was more often put the other way around, as “they” came first. William’s favorite pastime was watching the soldiers in their bright red uniforms with large, shiny brass buttons who kept guard duty outside Buckingham Palace. He tried to talk to them, but they stared past him into space and never even blinked.

  “Can we take one home?” he asked his mother.

  “No, darling, they have to stay here and guard the King.”

  “But he’s got so many of them, can’t I have just one?”

  As a “special treat”—Anne’s words—Richard allowed himself an afternoon off to take William and Anne to the West End to see a traditional English pantomime called “Jack and the Beanstalk” playing at the London Hippodrome. William loved Jack and immediately wanted to cut down every tree he laid his eyes on, imagining them all to be sheltering a monster. They had tea after the show at Fortnum and Mason in Piccadilly, and Anne let William have two cream buns and a thing called a doughnut. Daily thereafter William had to be escorted back to the tea room at Fortnum’s to consume another “doughbun,” as he called them.

  The holiday passed by all too quickly for William and his mother, but Richard, satisfied with his progress in Lombard Street and pleased with his newly appointed chairman, began to look forward to the day of their departure. Cables were arriving daily from Boston, which made him anxious to be back in his own boardroom. Finally, when one such missive informed him that 2,500 workers at a cotton mill with which his bank had a heavy investment in Lawrence, Massachusetts, had gone out on strike, he was glad that his planned date of sailing was only three days away.

  William was looking forward to returning and telling Mr. Munro all the exciting things he had done in England and to being reunited with his two grandmothers. They had never done anything so exciting as visiting a real live theater with the general public. Anne was also not unhappy to be going 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 for William the day before they were due to sail, Anne took him to a tea party in Eaton Square given by the wife of the newly appointed chairman of Richard’s London branch. She, too, had a son, Stuart, who was eight—and William had, in the two weeks in which they had been playing together, grown to regard him as an indispensable grown-up friend. The party, however, was rather subdued because Stuart felt unwell and William, in sympathy with his new chum, announced to his mother that he was going to be ill too. Anne and William returned to the Ritz Hotel earlier than they had planned. She was not greatly put out, as this gave her a little more time to supervise the repacking of the large steamer trunks, although she was convinced William was only putting on an act to please Stuart. When she put William to bed that night, she found that he had been as good as his word and was running a slight fever. She remarked on it to Richard over dinner.

  “Probably all the excitement at the thought of going home,” he offered, sounding unconcerned.

  “I hope so,” replied Anne. “I don’t want him to be sick on a six-day sea voyage.”

  “He’ll be just fine by tomorrow,” said Richard, issuing a directive that would go unheeded, 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 William on no account be sent on a sea journey, not only for his own good but for the sake of the other passengers. There was nothing for it but to leave him in bed with his stone hotwater bottle and wait until he was fully recovered. Richard was unable to countenance the two-week delay and decided to sail as planned. Reluctantly, Anne allowed the hurried changes of booking to be made. William begged his father to let him accompany him: the fourteen days before the ship was due back in Southampton seemed like an eternity to the child. Richard was adamant and hired a nurse to attend William and convince him of his poor state of health.

  Anne traveled down to Southampton with Richard in the new Rolls-Royce.

  “I shall be lonely in London without you, Richard,” she ventured diffidently in their parting moment, risking his disapproval of emotional women.

  “Well, my dear, I dare say I shall be somewhat lonely in Boston without you,” he said, his mind on the striking millworkers.

  Anne returned to London on the train, wondering how she would occupy herself for the next two weeks. William had a better night and in the morning the spots looked less ferocious. Doctor and nurse were unanimous however in their insistence that he remain in bed. Anne used the extra time to write long letters to the family, while William remained in bed, protesting, but on Tuesday morning he got himself up early and went into his mother’s room, very much back to his normal self. He climbed into bed next to her and immediately his cold hands woke her up. Anne was relieved to see him so obviously fully recovered. She rang to order breakfast in bed for both of them, an indulgence William’s father would never have countenanced.

  There was a quiet knock on the door and a man in gold-and-red livery entered with a large silver breakfast tray. Eggs, bacon, tomato, toast and marmalade—a veritable feast. William looked at the food ravenously as if he could not remember when he had last eaten a full meal. Anne casually glanced at the morning paper. Richard always read The Times when he stayed in London, so the management assumed she would require it as well.

  “Oh, look,” said William, staring at the photograph on an inside page, “a picture of Daddy’s ship. What’s a ca-la-mity, Mommy?”

  All across the width of the newspaper was a picture of the Titanic.

  Anne, unmindful of behaving as should a Cabot or a Kane, burst into frenzied tears, clinging to her only son. They sat in bed for several minutes, holding on to each other, William wasn’t sure why. Anne realized that they had both lost the one person whom they had loved most in the world.

  Sir Piers Campbell, young Stuart’s father, arrived at Suite 107 of the Ritz. He waited in the lounge while the widow put on a suit, the only dark piece of clothing she possessed. William dressed himself, still not certain what a calamity was. Anne asked Sir Piers to explain the full implications of the news to her son, who only said, “I wanted to be on the ship with him, but they wouldn’t let me go.” He didn’t cry, because he refused to believe anything could kill his father. He would be among the survivors.

  In all Sir Piers’s 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 given to very few, he was heard to remark some years later. It had been given to Richard Kane and had been passed on to his only son. On Thursday of that week William was six, but he didn’t open any of his gifts.

  The lists of survivors, arriving spasmodically from America, were checked and double-checked by Anne. Each confirmed that Richard Lowell Kane was still missing at sea, presumed drowned. After a further week even William had almost abandoned hope of his father’s survival.

  Anne found it painful to board the Aquitania, but William was strangely eager to put to sea. Hour after hour, he would sit on the observation deck, scanning the featureless water.

  “Tomorrow I will find him,” he promised his mother again and again, at first confidently and then 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 returned to Boston, both grandmothers were waiting