The Lemon Tree (10 page)

It dawned slowly on Wallace Helena that, though everybody in this untamed land was subject to the vagaries of weather, forest fires, angry Indians and clouds of insects, she was herself much more free than she would have been as the daughter of a Beirut silk merchant. When she considered what her life would have been like had she returned to Lebanon after living in Chicago, she knew she would have found it difficult to endure such a protective environment. Yet, like other immigrants, she often wept, and longed to hear her own language, her own music, have books in Arabic to read, and be able to wear her soft, light native dress. The extraordinary lack of people also bothered her, and she once asked Joe lightly, ‘If all the people in all Rupert’s Land met together, would they form a decent crowd?’

‘Well,’ he drawled softly, ‘there’s plenty of Indians – only they don’t build forts or homesteads; they can pack up a camp and move on – and a few months later you wouldn’t know they’d been here. You’ll see some of them, when they come in to trade at the Fort.’

She asked him what they traded, and so began a long period of learning the background of Indians, Metis and Europeans, now face-to-face in the land which she had, at first, believed to be empty. It was also the beginning of a great friendship with the big, dark man.

The outdoor work in pure cool air acted as an anodyne to Wallace Helena’s sense of loss, yet again, of her roots. Being young, she had begun to be accustomed to Chicago; faces of fellow immigrants had become familiar to her and she had made a devoted friend in Sally. Her father’s little shop had begun to prosper. Within their tiny apartment they ate Lebanese food and spoke Arabic. The day her father died her small hopes had shattered; yet there remained the familiarity of place and neighbours.

Now, she and her mother had to start again. Leila had Tom to console her. Wallace Helena mourned for her father, and wondered if she would ever know again a peaceful life such as they had enjoyed in Beirut until the day of the massacre.

After living in cities, the immensity of the empty land appalled and terrified her; even the mountains of Lebanon did not have the close-packed, silent forests that the Territories had. Her journey by York boat had given her an idea of the hugeness of the country, and, though Agnes had comforted her by telling her of other forts and other settlements further east, she could, for a long time, be suddenly seized by an unreasoning terror of the unknown. When, once or twice, she rode along the old trail following the river bank to the Fort and saw it from a short distance as they came to land that had been cleared, it looked too puny to survive, a tiny anthill liable to be blown out of existence by the merciless gales. Closer to the river, below
the Fort, there were usually a few small boats drawn up on the beach, and when she considered the hundreds of miles of river she had seen, they looked like little cockleshells, too small to take her back to civilization, even if she had a place to go to.

The days became sharply colder; the mud of the yard froze to an uneven lumpiness; the breath of men and animals hung like a mist in the air and the snow drifted down on the roofs, first a skiff of it, then short flurries and then the occasional storm. It did not melt but piled high enough for it to be necessary to dig paths to the barn, to the windbreak where the steers huddled against the rough shelter to keep warm, to the privy and to Joe’s and Agnes’s shack.

Fearing that the roofs might collapse with the weight of the snow, Joe and Tom several times during the winter climbed up to shovel some of it off. They were watched by both Wallace Helena and Leila with some apprehension for fear they would fall; broken bones could spell disaster for all of them. As the cold increased, their world became the yard and the buildings round it and the steers nearby. Occasionally, Wallace Helena would struggle down the slope to look at the white expanse of the river. Sometimes, there were the marks of a sleigh in the snow covering the ice, and once she saw one and waved to the musher, thankful to greet another person. He raised his whip in salute and she stood and listened to the occasional yap of the dogs as they vanished upriver.

Though she tried to keep a bright face for her mother and Tom and Joe, her courage sometimes failed her. In the privacy of the barn, when she went to feed Peggy, her piebald pony, she would, now and then, lay her head against the animal’s blanketed flanks and weep.

Joe found her there, one night, sobbing quietly as she shovelled manure away from the animal, in the light of a
lantern flickering on a shelf. He took the shovel away from her and leaned it against the wall. Anxious to stem the passionate tears, he put his arm round her. She put her head against his wolfskin jacket and cried, innocently unaware of the feelings engendered in him, ‘It’s so lonely, Joe.’

He patted her back as he held her. ‘It’s not so lonely as you think,’ he assured her. ‘You’ve got your ma and Tom and me – and Agnes and Simon.’ He rocked her gently from side to side, and his voice was a little thick, as he continued, ‘This cold spell will pass and we’ll get a chinook wind; that’ll send the temperature up.’ The sobs began to ease, and he lifted her chin with one hand to look at her face. ‘Don’t cry, honey. Christmas will soon be here, and if your ma’s well enough, we’ll get out the sleigh and go to the dancing at the Fort.’

She smiled wanly at him, and said, ‘Sally used to call me Honey.’

She felt the great barrel of his chest shudder, as he laughed down at her. ‘Did she? Who’s she?’

He let her go as she began to tell him. While she spoke, he took up the shovel and finished the job of moving the manure.

‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘you could write to her, if you know her address. Mail goes in and outta here twice a year at least. Mebbe she’d write back to you.’

‘Really? Could I write to Uncle James in Liverpool – in England?’

‘I don’t see why not. The Bay carries letters for Tom, down into the States.’ He hung the shovel on its hook and prepared to help her across the yard.

He had caught her interest. She rubbed the tears out of her eyes, and her expression was suddenly animated.

‘I’ll ask Tom if he can spare a piece of paper to write on. Mama might like to write as well.’

‘Sure. Tom’ll spare you a sheet – he keeps some to write his ma.’

He opened the small side door of the barn, and they fought to shut it again after them, while the wind tore at it. The cold hit them, and he put his arm round her to steady her across the yard.

Wallace Helena had been quiet as they battled their way to the cabin door. Now with her hand on the latch, she turned to Joe, and asked him without preamble, ‘Joe, could you teach me Cree? Then I could talk to the Indians. When that band came through in the autumn, you and Tom had a good laugh with them. But I couldn’t understand a word.’ She pulled her scarf up over her mouth against the cold, though they were standing in the lee of the cabin.

Surprised, he said, ‘Sure. I’ll try.’

‘Thanks, Joe.’

The big eyes narrowed in a smile of gratitude, as she lifted the latch. ‘Goodnight, Joe.’

He nodded and turned away. Heavy with uneasy thoughts, he went over to his mother’s cabin by the barn. Up till then he had enjoyed his bachelorhood; when food had been in better supply, he had gone to parties and special celebrations given by local Crees and had sometimes roistered with young Metis down at the Fort. Though women were a little scarce, there was usually someone happy to lie with a handsome man for a small consideration. When Tom had married for the first time, it had stretched the resources of the fledgling homestead to its limits, and Joe had decided that since there was no one whom he particularly fancied he would stay single for a bit longer.

That evening, as he sat cross-legged making a pair of snowshoes for Wallace Helena, he began to think differently. As he carefully twisted and knotted the gut in the
snowshoes, he sighed. He was twenty-seven years old – getting on – to her fourteen; and, though Tom Harding spoke of him as his partner, he knew that Tom regarded the homestead as his, and Joe got his keep and a small share of any cash that came along – as wages. Only the money he earned from his trapline was his own, and furbearing animals got scarcer every winter.

He told himself not to be a fool.

A few days later, just before Christmas, Leila asked Tom if he would take her down to the Fort to see Jeanette, who had kindly put her up on the night of her arrival at Fort Edmonton. It seemed warmer outside and the snow was not too deep on the trail, so Tom amiably agreed. Joe had gone to tend his trapline.

Eager for a change, Wallace Helena begged to go with them, so the sleigh was got down from the wall of the barn and, with hot bricks to their feet and blankets and a buffalo robe tucked round them, the women were driven in style down to the Fort. It was a bumpy ride, but they enjoyed it.

Leila was consumed with anxiety about her abysmal lack of knowledge, and while she sat by Jeanette’s fire and discussed the duties of a settler’s wife, Tom went to have a drink with the blacksmith, and Wallace Helena wandered out into the yard of the Fort, to see what was happening. Both men and women stared at her; she had thrown her shawl back from her head and it gave them a chance to examine Tom Harding’s new daughter. Some of the women smiled at her and spoke to her in Cree, but she did not understand. So she smiled back, and passed on. The gate of the Fort was open and a number of Metis were hanging around it, smoking and gossiping. She had to pass close to them to go out of the gate, and one of them said to another in French, ‘They’re Chinks, all right.’ He sounded derogatory and presumably believed that
Wallace Helena could not understand French. ‘Bit of stuff for a cold night.’

Wallace Helena stopped in her tracks. Slowly she turned to face the speaker. She took a step towards him, and slapped him hard across the face. ‘You dirty bastard,’ she shouted, and told him in fluent French translation of Arabic phrases who his mother had probably been.

Shocked and then outraged, his face contorted, the man would have gone for her, but he was held back by his friends, whispering anxiously to him, ‘Tom Harding will give you hell. Leave her alone.’

Restrained by his friends, he could do nothing but spit at the girl’s feet, as she turned and went hastily back to Jeanette’s quarters. Terribly shaken, she sat quietly by her mother for the rest of the visit. She never forgot or forgave this first insult and the others which subsequently came her way when the Scottish clerks in the Fort decided loftily that she and her mother were Jewish and that Tom Harding should never have been allowed to bring them into the district; it was doubtful, she thought, if any of them could have found Lebanon on a map.

Leila never went anywhere without Tom, so she was spared direct slurs on her origins. She was willing to go to the dance at the Fort at Christmas, feeling that her daughter would enjoy the gaiety of the season there. The place was packed with men, women and children of all ages, though there were no white women. Leila sat on a bench beside Agnes Black and her sister Theresa, who worked in the kitchen of the Fort. She refused to dance because she thought it was unseemly, but she was polite and charming to those women who spoke to her, speaking French when they understood and her broken English when they did not.

Though both Tom and Joe encouraged Wallace Helena to join them in the mixture of Indian dances, Scottish
reels and French folk dances, she was apprehensive and shy and was glad to go back to her mother and stay close to her. The Scots passed her with a scornful look. None of the Metis came near her, having heard the story of how one of their number had been slapped in public by this forward little piece who, if she wasn’t Chinese, was indubitably Jewish.

Defiant and insulted, Wallace Helena stonily refused to go down to the Fort again. Since she would not give either Joe or Tom a reason for this, it was some time before the men heard the story and identified the man concerned. Tom was furious and wanted to ride down to the Fort straight away to give him a sound beating. Joe, more cautious, pointed out that the man was a Company employee and that the Factor would probably take his part against a pair of illegal squatters like themselves. It was possible that if they created a fracas, the Factor would make a much greater effort to drive them off the land they occupied. Better to wait and if anybody else insulted either Leila or Wallace Helena to immediately file a complaint with the Company. Meanwhile, one of them should always be close beside them, and not let them out of sight.

A fuming Tom was finally persuaded to agree to this, and Leila continued to visit Jeanette whenever Tom had business at the Fort. Jeanette did not return the visits, mainly because her growing number of small children tied her to her home. It was months before Wallace Helena was persuaded to accompany her mother, and she stayed with Leila in Jeanette’s quarters until Tom collected them.

Slowly, the young girl learned Cree from Joe and Agnes. It was learned verbally, because there were no books in Cree, and she often made amusing mistakes, so that the three of them laughed together over them. Tom
had a smattering of it, but Leila felt she had enough to learn anyway, without wasting time on another language, and she never learned to speak it, though through constantly hearing it, she often understood what was being said. The language opened the door to communication with friends and relations of Joe’s who sometimes arrived in the course of their seasonal migrations. It was another new world to Wallace Helena, and, because she was respectful and a good listener, some of them became fond of her in their undemonstrative way.

As the winter passed and the spring sent the men out on to the land again, Leila discussed with Agnes the tremendous list that Jeanette had given her of the duties of a homestead wife. Neither spoke English very well, but Agnes understood quickly enough Leila’s doubts that she would be able to fulfil them all.

Agnes said comfortably that there were two of them, which cheered up Leila a little. The Lebanese proved to be a good organizer; she had been used to supervising servants in her Beirut home. She could cook, and learned from Agnes how to make the most of what food was available to them. Between the two of them, they looked after the all-important vegetable patch and the precious hens, milked the cows, scrubbed clothes and sewed garments for all of them, either out of trade cloth, bought from the Hudson’s Bay Company, or from skins that Agnes cleaned and tanned.

Prompted by Jeanette, Leila discussed quantities with Tom and Joe. How much wood, how much meat, how much grain should be ground for the winter? How many hens should they kill in the autumn? How many pigs – how much bacon? They soon learned to be thankful for her forethought.

As her health was restored to her, she used her own experience in Lebanon and made better use of the milk
they had by preserving it for a few days as yoghurt, then making butter of it. She got Joe to make a small churn to her design and, later, a rough copy of a cheese press that she had seen in Chicago, so that she could make cheese.

The men got used to her shrill voice scolding Simon Wounded or Joe, reminding Agnes, calling in Wallace Helena to do something. Her daughter grinned, as she heard the familiar tones of an Eastern lady asserting herself in her domestic sphere. Leila was, however, generous with praise, as if, at times, everyone was a miracle worker, and she would croon tenderly over those who suffered the inevitable knocks, cuts and burns of their hard life, learning from Agnes something of local cures and sedatives.

Agnes, Simon and Joe often laughed at her privately, and occasionally cursed at her insistence on jobs being finished when she said they were to be. She treated them, however, absolutely as friends and equals and she often took their proffered advice. When she found their friends hanging round her door, she would always find something in her storeroom to feed them with.

Not everything went perfectly. In the first years, there were often domestic disasters, like the awful day when Leila clapped her hands at a skunk when it came into the summer kitchen and the skunk sprayed everything. Leila would cry passionately on Tom’s shoulder, venting her frustration for all to hear. Yet he never regretted his marriage.

Under the weight of work in a harsh climate, her beauty soon faded. They became dear friends and often laughed at secret jokes, which sometimes made Wallace Helena feel left out.

Wallace Helena not only inherited Tom Harding’s son’s name, she also learned to do the work that he would have done, had he lived. It was as well that, though not large-boned,
she was lithe and, as she grew older, she acquired considerable physical strength.

Joe Black reluctantly decided that he was much too old for her and continued his bachelor ways, visiting the obliging women who lived in a shack not far from the Fort when he felt the need for feminine company. As they worked together, however, he did shyly share with her his profound knowledge of the wildlife round them and of the sorely distressed aboriginal people who were beginning to feel the pressure of the white settlements in the east. She learned to speak enough Cree to enjoy a joke with them, and one young man asked Tom for her in marriage. She turned him down.

Though so hard-worked that she had little time to think of herself as a person with needs of her own, she was not unaware of the stirring of desires in her that, as far as she could see, could not be met. She nursed a terrible resentment of the men in the Fort and it became a latent bitterness as she grew older.

She thought of Joe as being of the same generation as her stepfather, though in fact he was much younger, and considered him the equivalent of an uncle.

Often dressed in an Indian woman’s moccasins and gaiters, she would ride alongside him and became nearly as adept as him in caring for the livestock. She left the slaughter of pigs and steers to him, but she soon got used to cutting the throats of chickens, snaring and skinning rabbits and catching fish and gutting them.

Leila was, at first, shaken at what her daughter was doing, but Agnes Black laughed and told Leila she was lucky not to have to do the butchering herself. Leila cheerfully cooked whatever the others brought in, learning from Agnes the art of reducing a beaver, a lynx or, once, a bear, to edible stews. The skins of the wild game were carefully cleaned by Agnes or Tom and were sold into the
fur trade, providing either much-needed cash, or credit at the Hudson’s Bay trading post.

As Wallace Helena grew into a tough independent young woman, rejecting the people in the Fort as ignorant and uncivilized, Agnes Black, quiet and observant, worried a little about her son. Sometimes, after shutting the yard gate after them, she would stand and watch Joe and Wallace Helena race out along the rough lane which strung Tom’s and Joe’s holdings together, the girl nearly as skittish as the mare under her.

Joe should have got married years ago to some decent Cree girl, she thought. But she had never persuaded him to do anything he did not want to do; and his grandfather was too distant to exert his influence. Now, she sensed Wallace Helena’s attraction for him; she saw it in the careful way he always dealt with her, keeping just sufficient distance between them to discourage intimacy.

On summer evenings, before they all went to bed, they would sometimes sit outside to catch the evening breeze, Leila and herself on the cabin step, Tom, Joe and Wallace Helena on the nearby fence. The men and Wallace Helena would smoke. Joe had taught the girl how to use a little Indian pipe or roll a cigarette for herself if papers were available. When she first arrived, she had been so on edge that Joe had feared she would be ill, and he had suggested that she learn to smoke, to calm her. Now, she could not imagine being without tobacco, and she looked forward to this quiet half hour when sometimes they talked and at other times were glad simply to relax under the wide, darkening sky.

Once the afterglow had faded, Leila would call them in, because, ever since the brush with the skunk and a later encounter with a porcupine, she had been afraid of wild animals straying in after dark. Wallace Helena never
demurred and went in with her mother, and Agnes saw her son’s eyes follow her.

‘If he wants her,’ she thought fretfully sometimes, ‘why doesn’t he ask her?’ And she answered herself by saying that Tom would not tolerate it.