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.
It seemed that he had gambled vastly and lost utterly.
The two boys continued to learn their Persian and their geology. They continued to follow D’Arcy’s fortunes at the new drilling site of Masjid-i-Suleiman. Their fascination with the business continued unabated. In fact, if anything, with the oil concession now fairly and squarely shared between the two of them, their determination to explore for oil together was stronger than ever before. But, aged only ten, they’d already learned the most important lesson the oil business had to teach.
You could drill hard. You could drill well. You could drill in a place where oil was literally seeping from the ground.
And you could still fail.
Lose money.
Go broke.
Do you know, brother, that you are a prince?
A son of Adam?
Jalal al-din Rumi (1207–1273)
It’s late June 1914.
The summer is a warm one, golden even. The international scene is peaceful. The tensions that have bubbled away in Europe for the last dozen or more years are certainly no worse than they have been and quite probably a good deal better.
Seven British warships have joined the German Imperial High Seas fleet for the Elbe Regatta: a week of racing, dancing, music and fireworks. When finally the British fleet steams away, the British admiral signals to his hosts: ‘Friends in the past and friends for ever.’
In Serbia, an archduke has been killed by an anarchist, but who cares? Serbia is Serbia, and in that part of the world, archdukes are two a penny.
Alan and Tom are grown men now, twenty-one years of age. Their future lies ahead of them, a sparkling ocean on which anything could happen.
Alan has grown into a tall man, pale blond hair, eyes of pale blue, eyebrows so fair you can hardly see them. He has his father’s lean hawkishness, though softened by hints of his mother: her smile, her appearance of mild worry.
Alan is at Oxford, finishing his final examinations. The exams have been gruelling and exhausting, but they’ll soon be over. His degree will be in Natural Science, a subject he has little time for, except that it allows him to specialise in his chosen field of geology.
Because D’Arcy’s adventures in oil hadn’t ended. He’d found his investors, he’d continued to drill. And in 1907, six years from first beginning, he struck oil.
Oil on a huge scale. No trickle this time, but a gush so vast that one of the world’s great companies was in the process of being built upon it. The company, now named Anglo-Persian, has a use for resourceful young geologists, and, as soon as September comes around, Alan will start work on the Persian-Mesopotamian border, scouting for oil. But that’s September. In between now and then, he has two clear months for riding, shooting and fishing in the country, and for balls and parties in London.
Tom, too, is doing well.
He’s shorter than Alan, but stronger, broad in the shoulder, glossy dark hair with a hint of curl. His face is almost picture-book handsome: wide, strong and with a dazzling smile that comes quickly and fades slowly. Unlike Alan, Tom is already highly experienced with the girls. It seems he’s never without them. Alan laughs about it, but also finds it embarrassing. Where Tom is a veteran, Alan is wholly inexperienced.
And there’s another way in which Tom is running ahead of Alan: in business.
Once his schooling
