‘Did you know any of the Campbells, Mr Wetheral?’
‘Only my grandfather; I met him once.’
‘Do you remember his names?’
‘No, I don’t think I ever knew them. He called my mother Ella, if that’s any help.’
‘Where did you meet him?’
‘Coming out of prison.’
He stared at me, an expression of faint distaste on his face as though I had been guilty of some shocking joke.
‘He did five years in Brixton,’ I explained quickly. ‘He was a thief and a swindler. My mother and I met him when he came out. I was about nine at the time. We drove in a taxi straight from the prison to a boat-train.’ After all these years I could not keep the bitterness out of my voice. I stubbed out my cigarette. Damn it, why did he have to come asking questions on this day of all days. ‘Why do you want to know all this?’ I demanded irritably.
‘Just one more question.’ He seemed quite unperturbed by my impatience. ‘You were in the Army during the war. In France?’
‘No, the desert and then Sicily and Italy. I was in the R.A.C.’
‘Were you wounded at all?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘By God!’ I cried, jumping to my feet. ‘This is too much.’ My fingers had gone automatically to the scar above my heart. ‘You come here poking and prying into my affairs, asking me a lot of damn-fool questions, without even having the courtesy—’
‘Please.’ He, too, had risen to his feet and he looked quite scared. ‘Calm yourself, Mr Wetheral. I am only carrying out my instructions. I am quite satisfied now. I was instructed to locate a Bruce Campbell Wetheral and I was given certain information, including the fact that he was a Captain in the Royal Armoured Corps during the war and that he was wounded shortly after Alamein. I am now quite satisfied that you are the man I have been looking for.’
‘Well, now you’ve found me, what do you want?’
‘If you’ll just be seated again for a moment—’
I dropped back into my chair and lit a cigarette from the stub of the one I had half crushed out. ‘Well?’
He picked up his brief case and fumbled nervously at the straps as he perched himself on the edge of the chair opposite me. ‘We are acting for the firm of Donald McCrae and Acheson of Calgary in this matter. They are the solicitors appointed under your grandfather’s will. Since you only met him once it will possibly be of no great concern to you that he is dead. What does concern you, however, is that you are the sole legatee under his will.’ He placed a document on the table between us. ‘That is a copy of the will, together with a sealed letter written by your grandfather and addressed to you. The original of the will is held by the solicitors in Calgary. They also hold all the documents, share certificates and so on relating to the Campbell Oil Exploration Company, together with contracts, leases, agreements, etcetera, and all the books of the company. You now control this company, but it is virtually moribund. However, it owns territory in the Rocky Mountains and Donald McCrae and Acheson advise disposal of this asset and the winding up of the company.’ He burrowed in his brief case again and came up with another document. ‘Now, here is a deed of sale for the territory referred to . . .’
I stared at him, hearing his voice droning on and remembering only how I had hated my grandfather, how all my childhood had been made miserable by that big, raw-boned Scot with the violent blue eyes and close-cropped grey hair who had sat beside my mother in that taxi and whom I had only seen that once.
‘You’re sure my grandfather went back to Canada?’ I asked incredulously.
‘Yes, yes, quite sure. He formed this company there in 1926.’
That was the year after he came out of prison. ‘This company,’ I said. ‘Was a man called Paul Morton involved in it with him?’
The solicitor paused in what he was saying, an expression of mild irritation on his face. He glanced through the sheaf of documents on the table. ‘No,’ he said. ‘The other two directors were Roger Fergus and Luke Trevedian. Fergus was one of the big men in the Turner Valley field and Trevedian owned a gold mine. Now, as I was saying, the shares in this company are worthless. The only working capital it seems to have had was advanced by Fergus and the only work it has carried out appears to have been financed by him, the money being advanced on mortgage. This included a survey—’
‘Do you mean my grandfather was broke when he returned to Canada?’
‘It would seem so.’ Fothergill peered at the documents and then nodded. ‘Yes, I should say that was definitely the case.’
I leaned back, staring at the lamp, trying to adjust myself to a sudden and entirely new conception of my grandfather. ‘How did he die?’ I asked.
‘How?’ Again the solicitor glanced through the papers on the table. ‘It says here that he died of cold.’
‘Of cold?’
‘Yes. He was living alone high up in the Rockies. Now, as regards the company; it does not seem likely that the shares are marketable and—’
‘He must have been a very old man.’ I was thinking that my mother had been thirty-two when she had died in 1927.
‘He was seventy-nine. Now this land that is owned by the company. Your representatives in Calgary inform me that they have been fortunate enough to find a purchaser. In fact, they have an offer—’ He stopped and the polished skin of his forehead puckered in an impatient frown. ‘You’re not listening to me, Mr Wehteral.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I was just wondering what an old man of seventy-nine was doing living alone in the Rocky Mountains.’
‘Yes, yes, of course. Very natural. Let me see now. It’s all in Mr Acheson’s letter. Ah, here we are—apparently he became a little queer as he grew old. His belief that there was oil up in this territory in the mountains had become an obsession with him. From 1930 onwards he lived up there in a log cabin by himself, hardly ever coming down into the towns. It was there that he was found by a late hunting party. That was on the 22nd of November, last year.’ He placed the letter on the table beside me. ‘I will leave that with you and you can read it at your leisure. There is also a cutting from a local paper. Now, about this land. There is apparently some scheme for damming the valley and utilising the waters for a hydro-electric project. One of the mining companies . . .’
I sat back and closed my eyes. So he had gone back. That was the thing that stuck in my mind. He had really believed there was oil there.
‘Please, Mr Wetheral. I must ask for your attention. This is important, most important.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I murmured. I was trying to remember every detail of that one meeting, but it was blurred. I could remember the prison gates, the battered leather suitcase he had carried, the brass headlamps of the taxi—but not a word of the conversation between him and my mother. I looked across at the little lawyer. ‘You were saying something about a hydro-electric scheme.’
‘We must have your signature to this document at once. The matter is most urgent. The company concerned apparently has alternative sources of power which if we delay much longer may render your property valueless. As I say, your solicitors in Calgary regard the terms as generous and advise immediate acceptance. When all debts have been paid and the company wound up they estimate that the estate will be worth some nine or ten thousand dollars.’
‘How long will all this take?’ I asked.
‘Donald McCrae and Acheson are very business-like people. We have had dealings with them on several occasions.’ He pursed his lips. ‘I think we can expect to prove probate in say about six months’ time if this deal goes through as smoothly as they anticipate.’
‘Six months!’ I laughed. ‘That’s just six months too long, Mr Fothergill.’
‘How do you mean? I assure you we will do everything possible to expedite proceedings and you can rest assured—’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said, ‘but in six months—’ I stopped. Why should I bother to explain?
I leaned back an
d closed my eyes, trying to think it out clearly. The money wasn’t any use to me. I’d nobody to leave it to. ‘I’m not sure that I want to sell,’ I said, almost unconsciously voicing my thoughts.
I opened my eyes and saw that he was looking at me with astonishment. ‘I don’t think you quite understand, Mr Wetheral. The executors inform us that the land itself is quite worthless. As I’ve already told you, it lies at over 7,000 feet in a most inaccessible area of the Rockies. The greater part of the year it is buried in snow . . .’
‘Can I see that newspaper cutting?’ I asked him.
He handed it across to me. It was from the Calgary Tribune and datelined—Jasper, 4th December:
All those who made the pilgrimage up Thunder Creek to Campbell’s Kingdom will mourn the loss of a friend. Stuart Campbell, one of the old-timers of Turner Valley and the man who coined the phrase ‘There’s oil in the Rocky Mountains,’ is dead. His body was found by a late hunting party headed by the Jasper packer, Johnnie Carstairs. It was lying stretched out on the floor of his log cabin, the eyrie he built for himself 7,000 feet up in the Rockies just east of the famous Cariboo area.
Campbell was a great character. He will be remembered affectionately by the hunters, miners and loggers, as well as the tourists, who visited him in his mountain kingdom and listened to his stories of the oilfields and heard him make the surrounding peaks ring with the skirl of his pipes. Even those who lost money in his ill-starred Rocky Mountain Oil Exploration Company and declared him a swindler and worse cannot but render the homage of admiration to a man who was so convinced he was right that he dedicated the last twenty-six years of his life to trying to prove it . . .
I started to read the paragraph through again, but the type blurred, merging into a picture of a man standing in the dock at the Old Bailey accused of swindling the public by floating a company to drill for oil that didn’t exist and then absconding with the capital. He had been arrested boarding the Majestic at Southampton. The other director, Paul Morton, had got clean away. The bulk of the company’s funds had vanished. That was the story as I knew it. And then I thought of myself as a kid at that wretched school, jeered at because I had no football boots and my clothes were threadbare and because my grandfather was a thief. I had never thought of sticking up for him. I had accepted his guilt as I had accepted our utter poverty. They were part of the conditions of my life. And now . . . I stared down at the cutting, trying to adjust my mind to a new conception of him. He had gone back. That was the incredible thing. He had gone back as though he were convinced . . . I looked up at the lawyer. ‘He really believed there was oil up there,’ I said.
‘Just a will-o’-the-wisp.’ Fothergill gave me a dry smile. ‘The matter is covered by Mr Acheson in his letter. I think you can be satisfied that Mr Campbell’s beliefs were entirely erroneous and that the executors’ opinion that the property in itself has no value is a true statement of the situation. Now, here is the deed of sale. You will see that at the moment details as to price and date of take-over have not been inserted. These are still matters for negotiation, but if you will sign both copies . . .’
‘I don’t think I’ll sell,’ I said. I needed time to think this out, to adjust myself to this new view of my grandfather.
‘But, Mr Wetheral. Really—in a matter of this sort we must be guided by the people on the spot. If Mr Acheson advises—’
‘I can’t make a decision now,’ I said. ‘You must give me time to consider.’
‘You cannot expect this company to wait indefinitely for your answer. Mr Acheson was most pressing. That is why I undertook to locate you myself. Every day’s delay—’
‘There’s already been a delay of four months,’ I said. ‘Another few days shouldn’t make much difference.’
‘Perhaps not. I must remind you, however,’ he went on in a patient voice, ‘that it is only the fact that the largest creditor was Mr Campbell’s friend that has saved the company from bankruptcy long ago. It is your duty as Mr Campbell’s heir to consider this gentleman.’
‘I won’t be stampeded,’ I said irritably.
He glanced round the room in a bewildered manner. I think he found it difficult to reconcile my reluctance to sell with the drabness of my surroundings. He got to his feet. ‘I will leave these documents with you, Mr Wetheral. I think when you have had time to consider them—’ He snapped the lock of his empty brief case. ‘Here is my card. I shall be in my office between nine and ten in the morning. Perhaps you will telephone me then, or better still come in and see me.’
‘I’ll let you know what I decide,’ I said and took him down to the front door.
Then I hurried eagerly back to my room. I wanted to read the personal letter attached to the will. It was addressed in a bold, upright, rather childish hand. I slit the envelope. Inside was a single sheet: it was very direct and simple. No words were wasted. It was the letter of a man who had lived a lot of his life alone out in the wilds.
For my grandson
‘Campbell’s Kingdom,’
To be attached to my will
Come Lucky, B.C.
15th March, 1947
Dear Bruce,
It is possible you may recall our one meeting, since the circumstances were peculiar. With your mother’s death I became entirely cut off from you, but in the last few weeks I have been able to obtain some information concerning your progress and your military record in the recent conflict. This leads me to believe that there is enough of the Campbell in you for me to hand on to you the aims, hopes and obligations that through age and misfortune I have been unable to fulfil.
I imagine that you are fully informed of the circumstances of my imprisonment. However, in case you should have attributed your mother’s belief in my innocence to filial loyalty, here is the testimony of a man who, when you receive this letter, will be dead:
I, Stuart Macaulay Campbell, swear before God and on His Holy Book that everything I did and said in connection with the flotation of an oil company in London known as the Rocky Mountain Oil Exploration Company was done and said in all good faith and that every word of that section of the prospectus dealing with the oil possibilities in the territory now commonly known as ‘Campbell’s Kingdom’ was true to the best of my knowledge and belief, based on more than twelve years in the Turner Valley field and neighbouring territories. And may the Lord condemn me to the everlasting fires of Hell if this testimony be false.
Signed: Stuart Macaulay Campbell.
After my release I returned to Canada to prove what I knew to be true. With the help of kind friends I formed the Campbell Oil Exploration Company. All my shares in this I leave to you, together with the territory in which my bones will rest. If you are the man I hope you are, you will accept this challenge, so that I may rest in peace and my life be justified in the end. May the Good Lord guide you and keep you in this task and may success, denied to me by the frailty of old age, attend your efforts.
Your Humbled and Grateful Grandfather Stuart Macaulay Campbell
P.S. The diary of my efforts to prove the existence of oil up here you will find with my Bible. S.M.C.
I put the letter down and sat staring at the wall, picturing this strange, God-fearing man alone in that log cabin high in the Rocky Mountains, isolated by winter snow, carefully penning this letter to his unknown grandson. I could see him sitting alone at some rudely-made table, his Bible beside him, wrestling with the unaccustomed task of putting thoughts into words.
I read it through again, more slowly. Every word carried weight—and his honesty and simplicity shone through it like a clean wind out of the high mountains.
I had a feeling of guilt at having accepted so readily the verdict of the courts, at never having troubled to discover what he had done on leaving prison. And suddenly I found myself kneeling on the floor, swearing before a God whom I had scarcely troubled to get to know in the whole of my thirty-six years that whatever remained to me of life I would dedicate to the legacy my grandfather had
left me.
As I rose to my feet I realised that I was no longer afraid, no longer alone. I had a purpose and an urgency.
The other papers which Fothergill had left me seemed prosaic and dull after reading what my grandfather had written. There was the will, couched in legal terms and signed ‘this Fifteenth day of March, Nineteen hundred and forty-seven.’ It bequeathed ‘to my grandson, Bruce Campbell Wetheral, sometime Captain in the Royal Armoured Corps, all my property and effects, together with such debts, obligations and hopes as I shall have at the time of my death’ and it appointed Messrs. Donald McCrae and Acheson, solicitors, as executors. There was a letter from them explaining the hydro-electric project and attached to it was a deed of sale for my signature. ‘There is no question of obtaining a better offer. Indeed, you must agree that we have been fortunate in promoting the company’s interest in the particular area included in your legacy and we feel sure that you will appreciate the urgency of your signature to the attached deed of sale if your legacy is to have any value and if the debts and obligations referred to in your grandfather’s will are to be met. Please deliver the signed deed to Mr Fothergill, of Anstey, Fothergill and Anstey, who represent us in London.’
Every line of their letter took it for granted that I should agree to sell. I tossed it back on to the table and as I did so, I caught sight of the newspaper cutting lying on the floor where I had dropped it. I picked it up and continued reading where I had left off:
. . . Only those whose values are entirely material will belittle his efforts because time has proved him wrong. He was a man of boundless energy and he squandered it recklessly in pursuit of the will-o’-the-wisp of black gold. But people who know him best like Johnnie Carstairs, and Jean Lucas, the young Englishwoman who for the last few years has housekept for him during the summer months, declare that it was not the pursuit of riches that drove him in his later years, but the desire to prove himself right and to recover the losses suffered by so many people who invested in his early ventures.
Like so many of the old-timers, he was a God-fearing man and a great character. His phrase—There’s oil in the Rocky Mountains—has become a part of the oil man’s vocabulary, denoting an area not worth surveying: but who knows? When told of the discovery of the Leduc field Campbell is reported to have said: ‘Sure there’s oil down there. And there’s oil up here, too. The Rockies are young mountains, thrust up out of the same area of inland seas.’ The result of a single survey would not have altered his convictions. He always believed that there was only one way to prove an area and that was to drill it.
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