A Man Called Cameron

by Margaret Pargeter

  A MAN CALLED CAMERON

  Margaret Pargeter

  It was the perfect solution for them

  Or so it had seemed to Petra. Left penniless, with a young brother to look after, she decided to look up a distant cousin in Canada and make their home with him.

  She had never met Neil Cameron, but she was sure that the lonely old bachelor would be delighted to have some members of the family come to stay with him.

  So it was something of a shock when she discovered that Neil was far from elderly and not at all delighted!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Afterwards Petra realised if she hadn’t been so busy lecturing David, her young brother, their mishap on the way to the Cameron ranch might never have happened. Fortunately she had slowed down considerably when the bullock hit them, otherwise the outcome might have been worse. David, at least, escaped unhurt, and Petra’s own injuries, when she recovered enough to consider them, couldn’t have been better calculated to help her through an extremely difficult situation had she planned it deliberately.

  Nerves, she supposed, must have been partly responsible for the driving compulsion within her to brief David repeatedly since leaving the airport the day before. For an hour she had managed to control her uncharacteristic fussing until they had left the highway. Having to travel miles over dirt roads had seemed to start her worrying all over again as, in places, the winding track had proved far from easy to negotiate. At one spot, where they had been obliged to ford an unbridged river, her panicky doubts had taken over once more and she had resumed her boring monologue of what David must not do or say.

  David, usually the most patient of boys, had borne with her quietly for some time. Then, when his silence had driven her to ask sharply if he’d heard one word of what she’d been talking about, he had retaliated in his childishly precise tones, that had not yet been affected by their changed circumstances. ‘You don’t have to keep telling me to play dumb, Petra, although I simply couldn’t remember even half of what you’ve told me, anyway!’

  ‘Just so long as you don’t forget we’re merely touring Canada and have a great desire to spend a few days on a real ranch. And that we both would like to make the acquaintance of our cousin. There might even be more than one of them!’

  ‘And that we mustn’t mention that we live in one basement room of a mouldy old tenement and that funny-looking men sometimes knock on the door so that next day we move on, if we can,’ David mumbled stolidly.

  ‘David!’ Unhappily Petra hesitated. So he had noticed this, along with other things! He was almost twelve and she was reluctantly aware of his growing astuteness. He was conscious of that which she tried to keep from him, just as she had striven so desperately to protect him from the harsher realities of life since their father died. Since their world, as they had known it, had turned upside down.

  It had only been a year ago, but seemed more like ten. A nightmare of a year it had been, a black period that had not necessarily finished despite the confident assurance of her planning. No, Petra pondered doubtfully, assurance was never the right word to describe the state of mind that lay behind her recent actions. Desperation might be much nearer the mark!

  ‘I still can’t see,’ said David, when Petra did not continue, ‘why, if we really are Neil Cameron’s relations, we can’t tell him everything right away.’

  ‘No, darling!’ Petra’s clear voice rose, on what she hoped was a note of firmness. ‘You see, we don’t know—that is we can’t be sure how he’ll react.’ She paused with a quick glance at David’s puzzled face. ‘I do intend explaining eventually, so don’t worry, but even you must agree it could be better to get to know him first so we can choose the best way. He might be very easy to approach, but then again he might not. First impressions can be deceiving and it’s not as if we have any real hold over him, you know. He might not be prepared to acknowledge a debt of honour. If confronted immediately with it he might conceivably show us the door!’

  ‘What’s to stop him doing that, even after a week?’ David shrugged his thin shoulders without much apparent interest. ‘Besides, Petra, I don’t know that I really care. I’m not sure I’m going to like Canada. It’s so big. I wish...’

  He trailed off, biting his lip, but not before another swift sideways glance from Petra caught the wistful look in his eyes. Sharply she bit back the emotional rejoinder that she, too, wished they still lived in a cosy English country house with most of what she supposed added up to the good things in life. Not that she could ever recall being personally too hooked on them, but until she had lost it all she hadn’t realised how much she had taken for granted. There David and she had all the comfort and security anyone could ever have wished for, and, if it hadn’t been absolutely necessary for herself, it had been for David who had never been very strong.

  Her sigh frustrated, she looked at him again. Alone she might have made out, but it had proved too difficult with a young brother to look after. Nothing seemed to have gone right since that awful night of the fire, when their house had been burnt to the ground and, much worse than this, their father had died in the holocaust. Neither David or she had ever been able to guess how it had happened. Nor had anything ever been found to prove definitely it hadn’t been an accident. It hadn’t come out until afterwards that Charles Sinclair had been bankrupt, a man perhaps in a desperate frame of mind. Unbelievably it had taken the estate along with everything else he had possessed to pay his clamorous creditors. It was then, for the first time ever, that Petra had been thankful her mother had died when David was born. She had been eight when David had arrived and could still remember her beautiful, luxury-loving mother.

  The time which had followed the fire and her father’s bankruptcy Petra tried always to forget. The fire and its nightmarish aftermath, that had culminated in one horrible basement room—at least, after Redwell, that had seemed the only word to describe it! Then there had been a series of even more repulsive jobs because she had never trained for anything. Yet there had been nothing she might not have stuck if there hadn’t been a man somewhere in each one of them, a man to whom a slender nineteen-year-old girl’s obvious virginity appeared to constitute an unspoken challenge.

  If only she had been able to take a proper training, to have been free to approach the right people, to have gone through the normal channels. This way she wouldn’t have come to any harm, but for David’s sake she had felt unable to approach anyone who might have helped her. A weakly young boy, she was convinced, would have been taken from her and perhaps fostered out. This, while probably admirable, was something neither David nor she could bear to even think about. So, to date, she’d simply run from all the bored, usually middle-aged men who lasciviously chased her, always moving on, until the day came when she realised she couldn’t run much longer. The supply of jobs was not inexhaustible and David began noticeably to suffer from the effects of too much change and having to survive on often not even the barest essentials. When his one pair of shoes wore down through the soles she began to feel desperate. If they had any friends she might have turned to them, but since the crash none had wanted to know her and pride forbade her to beg. If it hadn’t been for the winning of a competition she didn’t know what she would have done. The money had enabled them to make this journey to Canada, whereas otherwise it would have remained only a dream. As things stood everything could still come to nothing if Neil Cameron wasn’t the right kind of man.

  Petra had known about Neil Cameron for some time through her father’s diaries which the family solicitor had handed her after his death. They had been in her father’s London office, which explained why she had never seen them before.

  ‘Of no great value, in fact none at all, unfortunately, Miss Sinc
lair,’ Mr.. Brown of Brown, Holling and Spalding had sighed regretfully, being fully conversant with her straitened circumstances. Yet he had given her the name of the well-known genealogist whom, her father had engaged to research his family tree and she had conceived the impression that Mr.. Brown wished to convey without the commitment of actual words that this was something she could be advised to follow up.

  Petra, to begin with, had been puzzled and not greatly interested. Enclosed with his diaries, which had been filled mostly with the dates of business appointments and meetings, had been a wealth of information about his ancestry. Why her father should have spent so much time and money on this she could not think, although to some, she realised, such a pursuit could prove absorbing. One thing had become clearly apparent—they had no remaining close relations, and his biggest expenditure had lain in the extensive investigation he had seemingly ordered into a branch of his family who had emigrated to Canada in the eighteenth century, 1799 to be exact, with the princely sum of five hundred pounds, lent by an elder brother of whom Charles Sinclair had been a direct descendant. There was no record of the debt ever being repaid. Indeed there was still reference to it in diaries which the genealogist had skilfully managed to procure and which he assured Petra were absolutely authentic.

  ‘Impossible to prove,’ Mr. Brown had sighed when Petra had returned to him. ‘Or perhaps I should say almost impossible to enforce, had your father such a thing in mind. I’ll admit, my dear, from all the facts he so assiduously accumulated, that he must have had something, but I doubt if it was financial gain. Not for himself, at any rate. No such sum as this, even if proven, could have saved him.’

  Again she had had the feeling that Mr. Brown was trying silently to suggest something if nothing came to mind immediately. Perhaps it had been merely because she had no other means of filling the winter evenings that the diaries had continued to fascinate her. The Canadian branch of their family lived in Alberta where, according to present data, they owned a ranch which was run by one Neil Cameron. It had been interesting to note that their Canadian cousins must have descended from an unbroken male line while her father’s had not. Occasionally she had toyed with the idea of writing to them, but whatever her interest she had had no fixed intention in her head to go any further. Not until she had won a few hundred pounds in the competition and David’s immediate needs had become too apparent to be any longer ignored. As also did those of the man who worked beside her in the small factory where she had been fortunate enough to find a new job.

  He had been watching her for days. Petra had been aware of it, although she had given him no encouragement, but it hadn’t been until she had found him waiting for her after work that she had known real fear. He had grabbed hold of her in a horrid little alley, a short cut to where she usually caught her bus, and even now she could still feel his beer-laden breath on her face, his hands tearing at her clothing. How she had eventually escaped him she had never known, but she was agile in spite of her fragile appearance. Shaken, if otherwise unharmed, she had rushed home, vowing, as the thought wildly entered her head, that she would leave for Canada as soon as possible.

  It had, of course, been a decision born of a rising hysteria, but even when she had calmed down and firmly taken hold of herself the idea had persisted. Would it be so very wicked to make one last attempt to secure a new life for David? She must manage somehow to get herself admitted to Neil Cameron’s house. He was, as far as she could make out, a bachelor. More important, she had convinced herself, with the cold, unfeeling clarity she was reduced to, that he was a man with, no doubt, all a man’s contemptible weaknesses. If the worst did happen she would sell the one commodity she had to sell dearly, rather than that part with it for nothing to one of the detestable rogues it seemed her everlasting misfortune to meet!

  The money she had won had made an enormous difference even though Petra soon became aware that it wouldn’t last forever. The change in David already after only two or three weeks of better food and heating was wonderful, but although she had been careful she seemed to have spent a great deal. Expenses had mounted so rapidly that there was now nothing left for their return tickets, should they need them, but this was something she intended keeping to herself for the time being.

  As if on the same wavelength as herself, or possibly just glad she had stopped lecturing, David said more cheerfully, ‘It’s been good to have more to eat lately.’

  ‘You’ve liked it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he hesitated, ‘but only if we can really afford it. I wouldn’t want you to get into any trouble. I don’t really mind living in one room, you know.’

  She forced a faint smile as she tried to speak brightly. ‘But you remember how nice it was to live at Redwell? The house, your ponies, the fun you had.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ David’s thin shoulders lifted resignedly. ‘I try not to think about it’

  If, at the last moment, Petra had almost been tempted to turn back, the unconscious pathos in David’s shrug strengthened her former resolutions. David had never been over-strong, and she should know, as hadn’t she been with him ever since he had been born—or practically! Their father had even allowed her to go to a local school rather than a boarding one, so she could always be on hand to keep an eye on motherless son. He had been away on business so much himself. The sudden transition from a country mansion with large grounds to a cold, sunless basement had nearly been too much for David. He had never got used to it. While Petra might have adapted and survived on her own, David’s face, growing daily paler and thinner, had haunted her. For some weeks she had the frightening conviction that something awful would happen to him if she couldn’t find a way out.

  ‘Never mind,’ she smiled swiftly, as David waited, ‘you won’t have to just dream of all the things you loved any longer. From now on ...’

  Whatever her next words they were lost in David’s excited cry, ‘Petra—watch out!’

  Too late she swerved to avoid a huge beast that appeared to charge straight from nowhere. With a wild, wholly terrifying bellow it plunged towards them. As, panic-stricken, Petra wrenched the wheel around the animal lurched frantically across the nearside door, the impact stunning as the car took the deep incline on the right in what seemed to be a flying leap.

  Petra had never been involved in a car accident before, nor had she ever driven a vehicle that hadn’t belonged to either her or her father. She had had her own small sports model, in a beautiful shining silvery blue, for just over a year and this she had driven with care if, occasionally, too much speed. Since yesterday, in this hired car, she had been extra careful, but in spite of keeping to all the rules of the road this stupid thing had to happen! It was not her fault, but this was no comfort. It could mean—it must very definitely mean complications she could well do without.

  Fearfully she raised her ringing head apprehensively from the steering wheel against which she had come to rest. She was conscious of some pain in her left wrist but, apart from this and feeling decidedly shaken, she seemed to be all right. Swiftly alarmed that she had not thought of David straight away, she swung around, opening her mouth to ask how he was, just as he did.

  ‘We must look like a pair of goldfish, Petra,’ he giggled suddenly, but she was aghast to notice that his face was white in spite of his humour, and that he was trembling. ‘You have some blood on your face, Petra!’ he whispered, his eyes widening.

  So this was partly why he was so shocked? Nervously surprised, Petra belatedly switched off the still spluttering engine before raising exploratory fingers to her head. In the same instant she saw how the window above her door was shattered. It must have happened when the cow, or whatever it was, had crashed into them. They were probably fortunate it was no worse.

  ‘Petra!’ David’s voice grew hoarse as she didn’t answer, ‘You’re not going to die too, are you?’

  Dazed, Petra looked at the blood on her fingers. ‘Just a scratch, I think.’ She tried to make light of it, to reassure him.
‘It always seems worse than it actually is, darling. We could both have been really hurt How do you feel?’

  ‘Oh, fine!’ David, now he knew she was none the worse, pulled a careless face. It was the kind of emotionless indifference Petra was coming to dread. ‘My legs feel funny, but I expect yours do too.’

  ‘Umm, you could say.’ Petra had her handkerchief from her pocket and was trying to rub the trickle of blood from her brow. ‘I think I’d better get out and take a look at the car. I don’t suppose there’s much wrong, but I can’t see how we’re to get it back on to the road, not up that bank, anyway!’

  Awkwardly they both clambered out, Petra dismayed afresh to find her left wrist peculiarly useless and beginning quite definitely to ache. Together they stood back from the car, surveying the damage. They were at the bottom of a sandy incline, not a very steep one, and the soft bottom had probably cushioned their precipitous descent. It was quite obvious, though, that the car would have to be hauled out by a machine, that it would never make it by itself. It lay half on its side, like a small, drunken box, and of the beastly cow there was no sign.

  ‘I’d like to tell the owner of that objectionable animal exactly what I think of him, but at least we can be thankful it’s nowhere to be seen,’ Petra muttered somewhat incoherently. ‘Just what one gets, driving innocently along country roads minding one’s own business. The horrible thing! I bet it’s got an equally repulsive owner!’

  She didn’t really mean it as, instinctively, she knew to whom the cow must undoubtedly belong, but staring at their broken transport she knew she must either be belligerent or cry. The latter would never do! David, at all costs, must be protected from any possible worry, and he would worry if she were to break down and weep.