‘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 bedsitting-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 clothing 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.’