Campbell's Kingdom (11 page)

‘Well, actually,' I said, ‘I came here to see Miss Lucas.'

‘There's plenty of time.' She gave me a tight-lipped, primly coquettish smile. ‘That is one thing about Come Lucky; there is always plenty of time. Right now Jean's in her room; reading I expect. She reads a great deal, you know. She's very well educated. But I do think she should get out more in the winter, don't you, Pauline? I'm always telling her education is all very well, but what's the use of it here in Come Lucky. Just put your coat over there, Mr Wetheral. No, not on that chair—on the stool. Sarah. Mr Wetheral has come to see Jean.'

The other old lady darted me another quick glance and then got up. ‘I'll go and fetch her, Ruth.' She escaped to the door with a quick patter of feet. In appearance she was the image of her sister. But her face was softer, plumper and there was no lorgnette. I gazed round the room. It was fantastic. I was in a little copy of a Victorian drawing-room. An upright piano stood against the wall, the chairs had cross-stitch seats and the backs of the armchairs were covered with lace antimacassars. There was even an aspidistra. The whole place, including the occupants with their over-refined speech, was a little period piece in the Canadian wilds.

‘Now, Mr Wetheral, will you sit over there. And you, Pauline—you come and sit by me.' She had placed me so that she could sit and watch me. ‘So you are Mr Campbell's grandson.'

‘Yes,' I said.

She raised her lorgnette and stared at me. ‘You don't look very strong, Mr Wetheral. Have you been ill?'

‘I'm convalescing.'

‘Oh, and your doctors have said the high mountain air will do you good.' She nodded as though agreeing with their verdict. ‘I'm so glad to hear that you are not allowing this little backwater of ours to become an industrial centre again. Do you know, Mr Wetheral, they even had the Japanese working up here during the war when they were building the dam. I am sure if you were to permit them to complete it they would now have Chinese labour. It is quite terrible to think what might happen. Opium, you know, and now that they are all communists—'

‘But wouldn't it be a good thing for Come Lucky?' I said. ‘It would mean new homes here and a road.'

‘That is what Peter Trevedian says. But my sister and I remember what it was like here at the beginning of the war. The homes are all very much in the future. Meanwhile we have to put up with the labour gangs. You have no idea what it was like here when they began working on the dam. We hardly dared to go outside the house. They had cabins built for the men up the valley of course, but the old King Harry saloon was converted into a hospital for them and some of the Japanese were actually billeted in the town. Such horrible little men! They shouldn't have been allowed outside their camp, but then Peter Trevedian owns most of Come Lucky and he was collecting rent as well as making money out of the sale of the land and the operation of the cable hoist. I am so glad, Mr Wetheral, you are not a mercenary man. Everybody here—'

‘I'm surprised my grandfather agreed to the building of a dam,' I said.

‘Oh, it wasn't Mr Campbell. It was Peter Trevedian. It's on his property, you know. I'm sure Luke wouldn't have done it, not when it meant making a lake of Mr Campbell's property.' She gave a little sigh. ‘I'm afraid Peter is a much harder man than his father.' She leaned forward and tapped me playfully on the arm with her lorgnette. ‘But you are a civilised person, Mr Wetheral, I can see that. You will stand between us and the factories and things they are planning. My sister and I remember when the mines were working here. You have no idea the sort of men who are attracted by gold. They were most uncouth, weren't they?' She had turned to Pauline. ‘Oh, of course, you don't remember, child. Do you know, Mr Wetheral, I remember the days when the street outside was a seething mass of brawling miners. Every other building was a saloon in those days. Really, a girl wasn't safe. We were never allowed out at night and even in the seclusion of our room we were kept awake by the noise they made.'

Footsteps sounded in the hall and then Jean Lucas entered the room. ‘Mr Wetheral?' She held out her hand. ‘I've been expecting you for some time.'

Her manner was direct, her grip firm. She had the assurance of good breeding. In her well-cut tweed suit she brought a breath of the English countryside into the room. I stared down at her, wondering what on earth she was doing buried up here in this Godforsaken town. Her eyes met mine—grey, intelligent eyes. I think she must have guessed what I was thinking for they had an expression of defiance in them.

‘You knew I'd come?' I asked.

She nodded slowly. ‘I knew your war record. I didn't think you'd let him down.'

The room seemed suddenly silent. I could hear the ticking of the clock in its glass case. There seemed nobody there but the two of us. I didn't say anything more. I stood there, staring down at her face. Her skin was pale and there was a tired droop to her mouth which, because the lips were rather full, gave it a sulky look. There were lines on her forehead and lines of strain at the corners of her eyes. The left cheek and jaw were criss-crossed with scars that showed faintly through the skin. The cast of her features seemed to be a reflection of her real self and as I stared at her I suddenly felt I had to know her.

‘We'll go into my room, shall we?' she said.

I was dimly aware of Miss Ruth Garret's disapproval. Then I was in a room with a log fire blazing on the hearth and bookshelves crowding the walls. It was furnished as a bed-sitting-room and though most of the furniture belonged to the house, it had a friendly air. White narcissi bloomed in the light of the oil lamp and filled the room with their scent and on the table beside them was a large photograph of an elderly man in Army uniform.

‘My father,' she said and by the tone of her voice I knew he was dead. A big brown collie lay like a hearthrug before the fire. He thumped his tail and eyed me without stirring. ‘That's Moses,' she said. ‘He belonged to your grandfather. He found him as a pup in the beaver swamps the other side of the lake. Hence the name.' She glanced at me quickly and then bent to pat the dog. ‘What do you think of my two old ladies?'

‘Are they relatives of yours?' I asked.

‘No.'

‘Then why do you live up here?'

‘That's my business.' Her voice had suddenly become frozen. ‘There are some cigarettes in the box beside you. Will you pass me one please?'

‘Try an English one for a change,' I said, producing a packet from my pocket. ‘I'm sorry,' I said. ‘I shouldn't have tried to—'

‘There's no need to apologise.' Her eyes met mine over the flame of my lighter. ‘It's just that I know it's odd and I'm sensitive about it. I imagine you think it was odd of me to live up in the Kingdom with your grandfather during the summer months?'

‘Now that I've seen you—yes.'

She gave a quick little laugh. ‘What were you expecting? Something out of Dickens?'

‘Perhaps.'

She turned away and poked at the fire. ‘I believe there are still people in the town who are convinced I'm Stuart's illegitimate daughter.' She looked up suddenly and smiled. ‘We call this decrepit bundle of shacks a town, by the way. Would you care for a drink? I've got some Scotch here. Only don't tell my two old dears or I'd get thrown out on to the streets. Naturally they don't approve of liquor—at least Ruth doesn't.'

We sat for a while over our drinks without saying anything. It wasn't an uneasy silence though. It seemed natural at the time as though we both needed a moment to sort out our impressions of each other. At length she looked across at me with a faintly inquiring expression. The firelight was glowing on her right cheek and, with the scars not visible, I realised with surprise that she looked quite pretty. ‘What did you do after the war?' She smiled. ‘That's a very rude question, but you see Stuart was very anxious to know what had happened to you.' She hesitated and then said, ‘You see, after your mother died he lost touch with home. It was only when I came out here—' She looked away into the fire. ‘I wrote to friends of mine and I think they got in touch with the War Office. At any rate, they reported that you'd been working in the City before the war and that you'd been a Captain in the R.A.C. out in the Middle East. They couldn't discover what had happened to you after you were invalided out.'

‘You were very fond of him, weren't you?' I asked.

She nodded. ‘Enough to hear his voice again in yours. You've something of his manner, too, though not his build. He was a very powerful man.' She suddenly looked across at me. ‘Why did you never write to him or come out and see him? Were you ashamed of him—because he had been to prison?'

‘I didn't know his address,' I murmured.

‘You could have found it out.'

‘I—I just didn't think about him,' I said. ‘I only met him once. That was all. When I was nine years old.'

‘When he'd just come out of prison.'

‘Yes.'

‘And so you decided you'd forget all about him. Because he'd done five years for—for something he didn't do.'

‘How was I to know he didn't do it?' I cried, jolted by her attitude out of any pretence that he'd meant nothing in my life. ‘If you want to know I hated him.'

Her eyes widened. ‘But why?'

‘Because of what he did to my life.'

‘What he did?'

‘Oh, he didn't mean to hurt us. Listen. My father died when I was only a few months old. After the war my mother got a job as a nurse. She worked at several hospitals in London and then, when I was nine, we moved to Croydon and she became matron at a boarding school. That was for my benefit so that I could get a good education. Then my grandfather came out of prison. I think there was a paragraph in one of the papers about our meeting him. At any rate, the headmaster learned that my mother was his daughter and he fired her. He let me remain on at the school out of charity. My mother's health broke down then. Nursing became too much for her and she went to work in a carpet factory in the East End of London.'

‘And what about you?'

‘I stayed on at the school until—' I lit another cigarette. I'd never told anybody about this before. ‘There was some money missing. The boys didn't like me—I didn't wear the right sort of clothes or have the right sort of background. They believed that I'd taken it and they concocted evidence to fit their beliefs. There was a case. The headmaster produced the information that my grandfather had been to prison. I think he was anxious to get rid of me. I was sent to a reform school. A few months later my mother died. So you see, I hadn't much affection for my grandfather.'

She looked at me sadly. ‘It never occurred to you that he also might have been wrongly convicted?'

‘No, it never occurred to me.'

She sighed. ‘It's strange, because you meant a lot to him. You were his only relative. He was an old man when he died, old and tired. Oh, he kept up a front when Johnnie and people brought visitors. But deep down he was tired. He'd lost heart and he needed help.'

‘Then why didn't he write to me?'

‘Pride, I guess. He wasn't the type to cry for help when he was in a spot.' She stared at me, frowning slightly. ‘Would you have come if he'd written to you, if you'd known he was innocent?'

‘I—I don't know,' I said.

‘But you came when you heard he was dead. Why? Because you thought there might be oil here?'

The trace of bitterness in her voice brought me to my feet. ‘Why I came is my own business,' I said harshly. ‘If you want to know my plan was to live up there.'

‘Live there.' She stared at me. ‘All the year round?'

‘Yes.'

‘Whatever for?'

I turned and stared angrily at her. ‘I'd my own reasons, the same as you have for living in this dump.'

She shifted her gaze to the fire. ‘
Touchée
,' she said softly. ‘I only wanted to know—' She hesitated and then got to her feet. ‘I've some things here that belong to you.' She went over to an ottoman and brought out a cardboard box tied with ribbon. ‘I couldn't bring any more, but these things I know he wanted you to have.' She placed the box on a table near me. As she straightened up she said, ‘There's a question you still haven't answered. What did you do after the war?'

‘Just drifted,' I said.

‘Did you go back to the City?'

‘Yes.' I was thinking of the grimy brick building in Queen Victoria Street, of the long room with the typists and adding machines and the little frosted-glass cubicles that had served as offices. She made it sound so damned important.

She hesitated, her hand still on the box. ‘You said your plan was to live up in the Kingdom?'

I nodded. ‘Yes, but that was before I came to Come Lucky.'

‘You've changed your mind then?'

‘I didn't know there was a half-completed dam up there.'

‘I see. So now you're going to sell out and go back to England?'

I laughed. The sound was harsh in that pleasant little room, but it gave vent to my feelings. ‘It's not as easy as that. I've rather burned my boats. You see, I've emigrated.'

‘You've—' She stared at me, the thin line of her eyebrows arched in surprise. ‘You're a queer person,' she said slowly. ‘There's something about you I don't quite understand.' She spoke more to herself than to me. I watched her as she went back to her seat by the fire and sat there, gazing into the flames. At length her eyes came round to my face. ‘What's made you change your mind?'

‘How do you mean?'

‘When you came here you'd already turned down Henry Fergus's offer for the Kingdom.'

‘How did you know that?' I asked.