Read Kane & Abel (1979) for Free Online Page B

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