There was a silence while he digested that—I guess he wasn’t used to waiting on other people. Finally, he said, ‘Okay, make it quick. Have a good trip?’
‘Moderately so,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you about it when I come up. I’ll pack in a nutshell what you want to know—there’s no sound geological reason for any mining operations in the Kinoxi Valley. I’ll fill in the details later.’
‘Ah! That’s what I wanted to know.’ He rang off.
I dressed leisurely, then went up to his office. I was kept waiting even longer this time—forty minutes. Maybe Howard figured I rated a wait for the way I answered telephones. But he was pleasant enough when I finally got past his secretary. ‘Glad to see you,’ he said. ‘Have any trouble?’
I lifted an eyebrow. ‘Was I expected to have any trouble?’
The smile hovered on his face as though uncertain whether to depart or not, but it finally settled back into place again. ‘Not at all,’ he said heartily. ‘I knew I’d picked a competent man.’
‘Thanks,’ I said drily. ‘I had to put a crimp in someone’s style, though. You’d better know about it because you might be getting a complaint. Know a man called Jimmy Waystrand?’
Matterson busied himself in lighting a cigar. ‘At the north end?’ he asked, not looking at me.
‘That’s right. It came to fisticuffs, but I managed all right,’ I said modestly.
Matterson looked pleased. ‘Then you did the whole survey.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
He tried to look stern. ‘Oh! Why not?’
‘Because I don’t slug women,’ I said urgently. ‘Miss Trinavant was most insistent that I did not survey her land on behalf of the Matterson Corporation.’ I leaned forward. ‘I believe you told Mr Donner that you would straighten out that little matter with Miss Trinavant. Apparently you didn’t.’
‘I tried to get hold of her, but she must have been away,’ he said. He drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘A pity about that, but it can’t be helped, I suppose.’
I thought he was lying, but it wouldn’t help to say so. I said, ‘As far as the rest of the area goes, there’s nothing worth digging up as far as I can see.’
‘No trace of oil or gas?’
‘Nothing like that. I’ll give you a full report. Maybe I can borrow a girl from your typing pool; you’ll get it quicker that way.’ And I’d get out of town quicker, too.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll arrange that. Let me have it as soon as you can.’
‘Right,’ I said, and got up to go. At the door I paused. ‘Oh, there’s just one thing. By the lake in the valley I found traces of quick clay—it’s not uncommon in sedimentary deposits in these parts. It’s worth doing a further check; it could cause you trouble.’
‘Sure, sure,’ he said. ‘Put it in your report.’
As I went down to the street I wondered if Matterson knew what I was talking about. Still, he’d get a full explanation in the report.
I walked down to Trinavant Park and saw that Lieutenant Farrell was still on guard duty policing the pigeons, then I went into the Greek joint and ordered a cup of coffee substitute and sat at a table. If McDougall was half the newspaperman he said he was, I could expect him any moment. Sure enough, he walked in stiffly within fifteen minutes and sat down next to me wordlessly.
I watched him stir his coffee. ‘What’s the matter, Mac? Lost your tongue?’
He smiled. ‘I was waiting for you to tell me something. I’m a good listener.’
I said deliberately, ‘There’s nothing to stop Matterson building his dam—except Clare Trinavant. Why didn’t you tell me she was up there?’
‘I thought you’d do better making the discovery for yourself. Did you run into trouble, son?’
‘Not much! Who is this character, Jimmy Waystrand?’
McDougall laughed. ‘Son of the caretaker at Clare’s place—a spunky young pup.’
‘He’s seen too many Hollywood westerns,’ I said, and described what had happened.
McDougall looked grave. ‘The boy wants talking to. He had no right trailing people on Matterson land—and as for the rifle…’ He shook his head. ‘His father ought to rip the hide off him.’
‘I think I put him on the right way.’ I glanced at him. ‘When did you last see Clare Trinavant?’
‘When she came through town, about a month ago.’
‘And she’s been up at the cabin ever since?’
‘So far as I know. She never moves far from it.’
I thought it wouldn’t be too much trouble for Howard Matterson to climb into that helicopter of his for the fifty-mile flight from Fort Farrell. Then why hadn’t he done so? Perhaps it was as Clare had said, that he was a sloppy businessman. I said, ‘What’s between Clare and Howard Matterson?’
McDougall smiled grimly. ‘He wants to marry her.’
I gaped, then burst out laughing. ‘He hasn’t a snowball’s hope. You ought to hear the things she says about the Mattersons—father and son.’
‘Howard has a pretty thick skin,’ said McDougall. ‘He hopes to wear her down.’
‘He won’t do that by keeping away from her,’ I said. ‘Or by flooding her land. By the way, what’s her legal position on that?’
‘Tricky. You know that most of the hydro-electric resources of British Columbia are government-controlled through B.C. Electric. There are exceptions—the Aluminium Company of Canada built its own plant at Kitimat and that’s the precedent that governs Matterson’s project here. He’s been lobbying the Government and has things pretty well lined up. If a land resources tribunal decides this is in the public interest, then Clare loses out.’
He smiled sadly, ‘Jimson and the Fort Farrell Recorder are working on that angle right now, but he knows better than to ask me to write any of that crap, so he keeps me on nice safe topics like weddings and funerals. According to the editorial he was writing when I left the office, the Matterson Corporation is the pure knight guarding the public interest.’
‘He must have got the word from Howard,’ I said. ‘I gave him the results not long ago. I’m sorry about that, Mac.’
‘It isn’t your fault; you were just doing your job.’ He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. ‘Have you decided what you are going to do?’
‘About what?’
‘About this whole stinking set-up. I thought you’d taken time off to decide when you were out in the woods.’
‘Mac, I’m no shining knight, either. There isn’t anything I could do that would be any use, and I don’t know anything that could help.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ McDougall said bluntly.
‘You can believe what you damn’ well like,’ I said. I was getting tired of his prodding and pushing, and maybe I was feeling a mite guilty—although why I should feel guilty I wouldn’t know. ‘I’m going to write a report, collect my pay and climb on to a bus heading out of here. Any mess you have in Fort Farrell is none of my business.’
He stood up. ‘I should have known,’ he said wearily. ‘I thought you were the man. I thought you’d have had the guts to put the Mattersons back where they belong, but I guess I was wrong.’ He pointed a shaky finger at me. ‘You know something. I know you know something. Whatever your lousy reasons for keeping it to yourself, I hope you choke on them. You’re a gutless, spineless imitation of a man and I’m glad you’re leaving Fort Farrell because I’d hate to vomit in the street every time I saw you.’
He turned and walked into the street shakily and I watched him aim blindly across the square. I felt very sorry for him but I could do nothing for him. The man who had the information he needed was not Bob Boyd but Robert Grant, and Robert Grant was ten years dead.
I had one last brush with Howard Matterson when I turned in the report. He took the papers and maps and tossed them on to his desk. ‘I hear you had a cosy chat with Clare Trinavant.’
‘I stood her a dinner,’ I said. ‘Who wouldn’t?’
‘And you went up
to her cabin.’
‘That’s right,’ I said easily. ‘I thought it was in your interest. I thought that perhaps I could talk her round to a more reasonable frame of mind.’
His voice was like ice. ‘And was it in my interest that you stayed all night?’
That gave me pause. By God, the man was jealous! But where could he have got his information? Clare certainly wouldn’t have told him, so I was pretty certain it must have been young Jimmy Waystrand. The young punk was hitting back at me by tattling to Matterson. It must have been pretty common knowledge in Fort Farrell that Howard was hot for Clare and getting nowhere.
I smiled pleasantly at Matterson. ‘No, that was in my interest.’
His face went a dull red and he lumbered to his feet. ‘That’s not funny,’ he said in a voice like gravel. ‘We think a lot of Miss Trinavant round here—and a lot about her reputation.’ He started to move around the desk, flexing his shoulders, and I knew he was getting ready to take me. It was unbelievable—the guy hadn’t grown up. He was
behaving like any callow teenager whose brains are still in his fists, or like a deer in the rutting season ready to take on all comers in defence of his harem. A clear case of retarded development.
I said, ‘Matterson, Clare Trinavant is quite capable of taking care of herself and her reputation. And you won’t do her reputation any good by brawling—I happen to know her views on that subject. And she’d certainly get to know about it because if you lay a finger on me I’ll toss you out of the nearest window and it’ll be a matter for public concern.’
He kept on coming, then thought better of it, and stopped. I said, ‘Clare Trinavant offered me a bath and a bed for the night—and it wasn’t her bed. And if that’s what you think of her, no wonder you’re not making the grade. Now, I’d like my pay.’
In a low, suppressed voice he said, ‘There’s an envelope on the desk. Take it and get out.’
I stretched out my hand and took the envelope, ripped it open and took out the slip of paper. It was a cheque drawn on the Matterson Bank for the full and exact amount agreed on. I turned and walked out of his office boiling with rage, but not so blindly that I didn’t go immediately to the Matterson Bank to turn the cheque into money before Howard stopped it.
With a wad of bills in my wallet I felt better. I went to my room, packed my bag and checked out within half an hour. Going down King Street, I paid my last respects to Lieutenant Farrell, the hollow man of Trinavant Park, and walked on past the Greek place towards the bus depot. There was a bus leaving and I was glad to be on it and rid of Fort Farrell.
It wasn’t much of a town.
FOUR
I did another freelance job during the winter down in the Okanagan valley near the U.S. border and before the spring thaw I was all set to go back to the North-West Territories as soon as the snows melted. There’s not a great deal of joy for a geologist in a snow-covered landscape—he has to be able to see what he’s looking for. It was only during the brief summer that I had a chance, and so I had to wait a while.
During this time, in my correspondence with Susskind, I told him of what had happened in Fort Farrell. His answer reassured me that I had done the right thing.
‘I think you were well advised to cut loose from Fort Farrell; that kind of prying would not do you any good at all. If you stay away your bad dreams should tail off in a few weeks providing you don’t deliberately think about the episode.
‘Speaking as a psychiatrist, I find the ambivalent behaviour of Howard Matterson to be an almost classic example of what, to use the only expression conveniently available, is called a “love-hate” relationship. I don’t like this phrase because it has been chewed to death by the littérateurs (why must writers seize on our specialized vocabulary and twist meanings out of all recognition?) but it describes the symptoms, if only inadequately. He wants her, he hates her; he must destroy her and have her simultaneously. In other words, Mr Matterson wants to eat his cake and have it, too. Taken all in all, Matterson seems to be a classic case of emotional immaturity—at least, he has all the symptoms. You’re well away from him; such men are dangerous. You have only to look at Hitler to see what I mean.
‘But I must say that your Trinavant sounds quite a dish!
‘I’ve just remembered something I should have told you about years ago. Just about the time you left Montreal a private enquiry agent was snooping about asking questions about you, or rather, about Robert Grant. I gave him no joy and sent him away with a flea in his ear and my boot up his rump. I didn’t tell you about it at the time because, in my opinion, you were then in no fit state to be the recipient of news of that sort; and subsequently I forgot about it.
‘At the time I wondered what it was about and I still have not come to any firm conclusion. It certainly was nothing to do with the Vancouver police because, as you know, I straightened them out about you, and a hell of a task it was. Most laymen are thick-headed about psychiatry, but police and legal laymen have heads of almost impenetrable oak. They seem to think that the McNaughten Rules are a psychiatric dictum and not a mere legal formalism, and it was no mean feat getting them to see sense and getting Bob Boyd off the hook for what Robert Grant had done. But I did it.
‘So who could have employed this private eye? I did a check and I came up with nothing—it is not my field. Anyway, it is many years ago and probably means nothing now, but I thought I might as well tell you that someone, other than your mysterious benefactor, was interested in you.’
That was interesting news but many years out of date. I chewed it over for some time, but, like Susskind, I could come to no conclusion, so I let it lie.
In the spring I headed north to the MacKenzie District where I fossicked about all summer somewhere between the Great Slave Lake and Coronation Gulf. It’s a lonely life—there are not many people up there—but one meets the occasional trapper and there are always the wandering Eskimos in the far north. Again, it was a bad year and I thought briefly of giving it up as a bad job and settling for a salaried existence as a company wage slave. But I knew I wouldn’t do that; I’d tasted too much freedom to be nailed down and I’d make a bad company man. But if I were to continue I’d have to go south again to assemble a stake for the next summer, so I humped my pack for civilization.
I suppose I was all sorts of a fool to go back to British Columbia. I wanted to follow Susskind’s advice and forget all about Fort Farrell, but the mind is not as easily controlled as all that. During the lonely days, and more especially the lonelier nights, I had thought about the odd fate of the Trinavants. I felt a certain responsibility because I had certainly been in that Cadillac when it crashed, and I felt an odd guilt about what might have caused it. I also felt guilty about running away from Fort Farrell—McDougall’s last words still stuck in my craw—even though I had Susskind’s assurance that I had done the right thing.
I thought a lot about Clare Trinavant, too—more than was good for a lone man in the middle of the wilderness.
Anyway, I went back and did a winter job around Kamloops in British Columbia, working for an academic team investigating earth tremors. I say ‘academic’ but the tab was picked up by the United States Government because this work could lead to a better means of detecting underground atomic tests, so perhaps it was not so academic, after all. The pay wasn’t too good and the work and general atmosphere a bit too long-haired for me, but I worked through the winter and saved as much as I could.
As spring approached I began to get restless, but I knew I had not saved up enough to go back north for another summer’s exploration. It really began to look as though this was the end of the line and I would have to settle down to the company grind. As it turned out I got the money in another way, but I would rather have worked twenty years for a company than gain the money the way I did.
I received a letter from Susskind’s partner, a man called Jarvis. He wrote to tell me that Susskind had unexpectedly died of a heart attack and, as executor of the estate,
he informed me that Susskind had left me $5,000.
‘I know that you and Dr Susskind had a very special relationship, deeper than that normal to doctor and patient,’ wrote Jarvis. ‘Please accept my deepest regrets, and you will know, of course, that I stand ready to help you in my professional capacity at any time you may need me.’
I felt a deep sense of loss. Susskind was the only father I ever had or knew; he had been my only anchor in a world that had unexpectedly taken away three-quarters of my life. Even though we met but infrequently, our letters kept us close, and now there would be no more letters, no more gruff, irreverent, shrewd Susskind.
I suppose the news knocked me off my bearings for a while. At any rate, I began to think of the geological structure of the North-East Interior of British Columbia, and to wonder if it was at all necessary to go back to the far north that summer. I decided to go back to Fort Farrell.
Thinking of it in hindsight, I now know the reason. While I had Susskind I had a line back to my beginnings. Without Susskind there was no line and again I had to fight for my personal identity; and the only way to do it was to find my past, harrowing though the experience might be. And the way to the past lay through Fort Farrell, in the death of the Trinavant family and the birth of the Matterson logging empire.
At the time, of course, I didn’t think that way. I just did things without thinking at all. I turned in the job, packed my bags and was on my way to Fort Farrell within the month.
The place hadn’t changed any.
I got off the bus at the depot and there was the same fat little guy who looked me up and down. ‘Welcome back,’ he said.
I grinned at him. ‘I don’t need to know where the Matterson Building is this time. But you can tell me one thing—is McDougall still around?’
‘He was up to last week—I haven’t seen him since.’
‘You’d be good in a witness-box,’ I said. ‘You know how to make a careful statement.’
High Citadel / Landslide Page 39