Читать книгу The Sons of Adam - Harry Bingham - Страница 13

For two long years, the drillers drilled.

1902 and 1903 passed away. Knox D’Arcy, by now a family friend, kept Sir Adam closely informed about his progress out in Persia. Sir Adam told Alan and Tom. Conditions were almost intolerable. Heat, dust, insects, equipment failures and disease were turning the search for oil into a nightmare. Costs spiralled wildly upwards. Even a man as rich as D’Arcy began to worry about the impact on his purse.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

The worst was simply this: so far, two years and hundreds of thousands of pounds into the search, no oil had been found.

Tom somehow managed to maintain his enthusiasm, though each new disappointment was like a personal setback. The two boys stuck to their Persian studies, but when Sir Adam suggested that their lessons be reduced from three a week to just one, neither boy objected. Their geological studies continued for a while, then lapsed when their teacher moved abroad. Sir Adam didn’t seek a new teacher. The children didn’t ask that he did.

And then it changed.

One marvellous day, in January 1904, when the two boys were ten years old, a telegram came from Knox D’Arcy in London. ‘GLORIOUS NEWS,’ he cabled, ‘OIL AT LAST.’

Tom went wild.

When he saw the telegram, he let out a yelp of excitement so loud that the dogs were set barking as far away as the stable yard. Together with Alan, he set off on a dance of delight that sent him tearing right through the house, right through the grounds, down to his father’s cottage and then back again. Tom’s joyous energy lasted all that day.

At dinner that night, when Guy happened to admire the new gunroom that Sir Adam had installed, Tom nodded his young head and commented, ‘Yes, Uncle, you’ve done it very well. I shall do it like that in my country house, when I get it.’