The Lemon Tree (15 page)

As she returned the notebook to her reticule, she wondered where on earth she could get something to smoke. She had smoked her last cheroot aboard ship and she was feeling the acute lack of nicotine.

She saw an elegant, dark green carriage drawing up at the dock entrance and, recognizing it as that of Mr Benson, her uncle’s lawyer, she hastened towards it. She was nearly struck by a bicycle as she stepped off the pavement. The black-suited rider swerved to a stop, surprised to see a lady in such a place. He assumed that she must have come down to the docks to distribute temperance pamphlets to dockers. As he regained his balance and cautiously circled behind her, Mr Benson saw her and sprang forward from the pavement.

‘My dear Miss Harding,’ he expostulated, as he took her elbow and guided her solicitously towards the gate. ‘Really, you should have waited for me. Anything could happen to you down here.’ In the back of his mind, he was appalled to think of the awful problem of probably having to trace yet another legatee, if she managed to get herself killed by a cyclist. The very idea made him nervous.

‘Nothing happened to me,’ Wallace Helena stiffly responded. ‘It was a most interesting walk, I assure you.’

Several men were leaning against the dock wall, enjoying the weak sunshine, while they laughed and joked with each other. They were dressed in flat caps, stained trousers and striped shirts without collars; one wore a leather waistcoat and carried a curious metal hook. They stopped their conversation to watch the peculiar-looking woman passing by, and, for a moment, Wallace Helena hesitated and stared back with cold, brown eyes. Mr Benson’s hand under her elbow compelled her forward again, as she asked, ‘Who are those men, Mr Benson?’

‘Those? Just casual labourers – dockers – they come down here twice a day in the hope of getting work.’ His tone was uninterested.

‘Humph. I wish I had three or four of them on my farm.’

Mr Benson raised his eyebrows slightly, but made no comment. Idle men were two a penny on the dock road.

After stating their business, they were allowed into the dock, and Mr Benson led her over to the Dock Master who was standing at the far end of the wharf on the west side. Mr Benson had met him once before in the course of his duties as Executor of James Al-Khoury’s Will, and he now introduced him to Wallace Helena.

The heavy, bearded Dock Master received her courteously, though he wondered why she should trouble to come to see the Lady Lavender’s raw materials coming in. He assumed that Mr Benson was simply entertaining her; it did not occur to him that he faced a woman intensely interested in following all the processes of the soap works from beginning to end.

Holding on to her hat against the capricious wind, Wallace Helena turned to survey the scene before her.

On the other side of the dock, two sailing vessels were
being unloaded, derricks bent over them like pecking vultures. The shouts of the dockers attending them came clearly across the water. Nearer at hand, two men stood by an iron capstan, presumably waiting for a pair of barges being slowly towed through the dock entrance. Another group of men, shirt sleeves rolled up, red kerchiefs round their necks and blackened leather waistcoats protecting their humped backs, seemed also to be waiting for the same vessels. The sun glinted on the hooks they carried and on the fair hair covering their reddened arms. Wallace Helena stared at them unabashed. Used to dark Metis or Indians or to men so wrapped up against the cold that it was hard to discover what colour they were, the red and gold colouring of the English dockers was a rarity to her; she wondered idly if the rest of their bodies were equally red and gold.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Mr Benson saying, ‘Mr Bobsworth informed me that a shipment of carbonate ash was expected this morning from the manufacturers – and a cargo of salt – the salt’s shipped by canal from the Cheshire salt mines.’

Wallace Helena nodded her head in acknowledgment of this information; she presumed that the carbonate ash was similar to that used by Aunt Theresa and herself when, each spring, they boiled soap in the yard.

Anxious to show that he understood something of his late client’s industry, Mr Benson went on to explain, ‘I understand they make it liquid and caustic by putting it into vats with lime and water.’

‘In other words, they make lye out of it?’ suggested Wallace Helena.

‘Yes,’ responded the lawyer, a trifle surprised that a woman would be aware of such chemistry.

Between watching the progress of the barges, the Dock Master had been eyeing his female visitor with some
interest. He now mentioned to her that the shipping agent’s representative was at that moment in the dock office ready to attend to the paperwork in connection with the expected cargoes.

He was a little disconcerted to have a number of relevant questions shot at him. Who did the actual unloading? How many men did it take? How were the goods transferred to the Lady Lavender warehouse? How long did it take?

He hastily swallowed his amusement as his replies were entered in Wallace Helena’s notebook. As she wrote, he examined with curiosity the woman’s firm mouth with faint lines down either side, the long nose which added further strength to a face which gave a feeling of anything but womanliness. She snapped her notebook closed and looked up at him, her brown eyes twinkling as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. Embarrassed, he dropped his own bloodshot blue eyes. He was further surprised, when they went into the dock office to meet the shipping agent’s representative, to find that she understood much of the paperwork connected with the movement of goods, both within a country and when importing.

The enthusiastic young shipping agent ventured to congratulate her on her grasp of the matter, and she told him honestly, ‘My father dealt in silk for export and I was often with him. When we were in Chicago, I was frequently his interpreter and his clerk. I grew up amid imports and exports.’

This was news to Mr Benson, too. James Al-Khoury had never mentioned to him what his brother had done for a living, and that his niece should understand something of the world of business seemed very odd; he had always believed that oriental women lived in strict seclusion.
Even English women did not concern themselves with the outside world; the home and family were their sphere.

When Wallace Helena moved to go outside again to see the actual unloading, the Dock Master asked her kindly, ‘Would you like to stay in the office and watch through the window? It’s chilly out there – and the dockers’ language is sometimes not fit for a lady’s ears.’

Wallace Helena laughed. ‘I have one or two male employees – I am quite used to being among men. And I love the fresh air.’

After stuffy offices, the wind was a joy and though it whipped at her skirt and shawl and she had to hold on to her hat, despite its huge hatpins, she leaned happily against it while she watched the dockers do their work. Mr Benson resignedly shrugged himself deeper into his Melton overcoat, and consoled himself with the thought that the Al-Khoury Estate would have to pay him well for these hours with its heiress.

Once she had the general idea of what was happening, she turned to him, ready to continue her morning in the Lady Lavender Soap Works itself. Looking over his shoulder, she pointed suddenly towards a young man entering the dock gates. ‘Isn’t that a boy from our works? I think he does messages for Mr Tasker.’

Mr Benson did not know the lad, but the Dock Master asked, ‘The coloured boy? He often comes over from the Lady Lavender for one reason or another. Name of Alfie.’

Carrying a white envelope, the youth jog-trotted into the office.

‘I’d like to speak to Alfie,’ Wallace Helena said, as the messenger reappeared and moved with them towards the gate. Mr Benson immediately called him over.

Alfie whipped off his cap to expose a head of brownish,
tightly curly hair. He smiled nervously at Wallace Helena and ran his cap through long, brown fingers. ‘Yes, Sir?’ he inquired of Mr Benson.

‘Miss Harding wishes to speak to you.’

Alfie turned fully towards her, a wary expression on his face. ‘Miss?’

‘Alfie, you smoke, don’t you? I saw you outside the works yesterday, smoking something.’

The youngster’s thick lips parted in surprise and she saw his body tense, as if he might take flight. He replied uneasily, ‘Well, yes, Ma’am.’ He fully expected a lecture on the evils of smoking.

‘Can you buy tobacco and papers – or ready rolled cigarettes round here?’

The astonishment on Alfie’s face caused Wallace Helena’s grim mouth to relax slightly. ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

‘Well, get me some. How much will it cost?’

He shrugged slightly and told her. Then, realizing that she was serious in her request, he added, ‘You can get cigarettes ready rolled, Ma’am, if you like.’

‘I would prefer to roll my own,’ she replied, as she opened her change purse.

‘Allow me, Miss Harding.’ Mr Benson took out a net purse from his inner pocket and loosened a ring at one end in order to get at a silver coin.

She looked at him, shocked. ‘Oh, no,’ she replied firmly. ‘I mustn’t put you to expense.’ She handed Alfie a shilling and asked him to leave the purchase with her late uncle’s secretary, Mr Helliwell. She said that he could keep the change.

Disconcerted, Mr Benson restored his purse to his pocket. Mrs Benson had instructed him to ask Miss Harding to dinner the following evening. What would she say if Miss Harding lit a cigarette in her drawing-room?

Wallace Helena again faced the wind, as she glanced
back once more towards the gaily painted barges. Bright red, yellow and blue flower designs ran riot all over them, and a metal ewer standing on a ledge at the front of the first barge had the same colourful patterns on it. She had been surprised that the person throwing the rope ashore from the first barge had been a well-built, middle-aged woman. Now the woman was sitting on the edge of the dock, her legs dangling over the water. She had a baby at her breast.

Mr Benson saw Wallace Helena’s bemused expression at the sight, and he explained as they approached the dock gate that whole families lived permanently on the canal barges. ‘There are probably more children inside,’ he told her.

Outside the gate, Mr Benson instructed his groom to pick him up from the Lady Lavender Soap Works in one hour’s time. Then he and his client did a quick tour of the Brunswick goods station from which another railway spur line sunk into the street ran into the soap works. Pointing to the spur line, Mr Benson told her, ‘That’ll be the way in which your company’s goods travel from the Dispatch Department to the railway.’

She nodded. Mr Bobsworth, the bookkeeper and dispatch clerk, had already told her that the lavender oil to perfume their toilet soap was shipped in by rail from Kent and that tallow and oil from seed processors was sometimes similarly shipped. He had said, ‘Though it’s quicker by rail, it is more expensive, so much of our raw material comes in by barge. We distribute our finished goods by rail – or by delivery van.’

Wallace Helena was very thoughtful as they walked over to the soap works. The general pattern of manufacture and distribution was clarifying in her mind. This afternoon she would look over the books with Mr Bobsworth and see exactly how their finances stood. ‘Do
you know if the Lady Lavender makes anything else other than soap?’ she asked casually of Mr Benson as they walked through the soapery’s yard.

Mr Benson cleared his throat. ‘Well, Mrs Benson uses a very delightful scent which they sell. You’ll have to ask Mr Benjamin Al-Khoury about anything else.’

‘I will,’ she replied gravely, ‘when he returns from his trip to Manchester.’ Then she said, ‘I think it is always better to deal in more than one commodity. At home, I produce barley and oats for the Government – and to feed ourselves. But some years the crop gets lost to hail or is simply poor. Then I’m thankful to have steers and a hay crop to feed them – and a vegetable garden. Or I can cut wood. I keep hens, too, mostly for our own eating and for eggs, of course; but nowadays there is even a market for these sometimes.’

‘We have mixed farms in Britain.’

‘Do you? My partner also runs a trapline for furs, though we do have a constant battle with the Hudson’s Bay Company over it; they seem to think they still run the Territories and are entitled to buy anything they fancy.’

‘So your farm isn’t being neglected while you are over here?’

She smiled. ‘Far from it. Joe Black is a very capable man – he used to be my stepfather’s stockman.’

‘Indeed?’ The lawyer was already beginning to wonder if she would sell the soapery. Her general understanding and quick grasp of detail made him sense that she might attempt to run it herself, especially if her farm had someone in charge of it. He was sure she would face a lot of prejudice; neither the firm’s employees nor the business community were likely to accept a woman very willingly.

As he handed her over to anxious, obsequious Mr Bobsworth, he wondered what Benjamin Al-Khoury would feel about her; James Al-Khoury’s son had been
cruelly cut off from his anticipated inheritance by his father’s unexpectedly early death and he was hardly likely to welcome his cousin.

When Wallace Helena arrived at the soapery, she found Mr Bobsworth very busy in the Shipping and Forwarding Department. He was in his shirt sleeves, and in his hand he held a brush dripping with black paint. He was in the midst of carefully marking boxes of soap with identifying numbers and with the addresses to which they were to be delivered.

Embarrassed at being found in his shirt sleeves by a lady, he hastily put down his brush and wiped his hand on a cloth exuding a strong smell of solvent. He then groped behind him for his jacket, while apologizing to Wallace Helena for his disarray.

‘So sorry, Miss Harding. I’ve always supervised Shipping and Forwarding myself; it avoids errors and delays in delivery, you understand.’ He shepherded her gently into his little office. ‘The smell of paint must be overwhelming to you,’ he suggested, as he pulled out a chair and his assistant, Mr Le Fleur, sprang respectfully to his feet. He turned to Le Fleur, and ordered him to go and finish marking the crates. The young man went reluctantly; he had no desire to get drips of paint on himself, and old Bobsworth had a great streak of it across his chin.

As diplomatically as she could, Wallace Helena informed the accountant of the streak. This sent him flying to a mottled mirror hanging over a tiny office sink in the corner, where he rubbed it ineffectually with his
handkerchief. ‘So sorry, Miss Harding,’ he breathed anxiously.

‘Don’t worry, Mr Bobsworth. I think it’s time I looked at the company’s books and inventory; I think I would first like to see what we owe and what is owed to us – and what orders and commitments we presently have.’

Poor Mr Bobsworth hastily stuffed his hanky back into his trouser pocket and felt around in his waistcoat for the key to his wooden book cupboard. He looked quite flustered, as he took out several account books and his ledger. ‘I’m sure you’ll find everything in order, Miss Harding. Mr Benson has, more or less, left the accounts to me while we are waiting for Probate, though his auditor has popped in from time to time to see that all is well. Would you like to sit at the table here?’

‘I’m sure everything will be just fine, Mr Bobsworth. No doubt Mr Benson has informed you that you may show the books to me?’

Though he assented, the remark sent him into another flutter; he hoped she would find his handwriting easily readable.

In dire need of a smoke, Wallace Helena rose from the table clutching the heavy books to her and announced that she would work in her uncle’s office.

Mr Bobsworth took the books from her and escorted her.

Mr Helliwell, her uncle’s private secretary, received her with the calm assurance of a man who had always enjoyed his master’s total confidence. He had studied Mr James Al-Khoury with the greatest attention and had understood his whims and foibles. As he often said to his wife, his lips were sealed. ‘Not even to you, dear heart, would I say anything about Mr Al-Khoury’s affairs.’

He was a pleasant, slightly pompous man around thirty years old. Wallace Helena thought him rather stupid, but
Mr Benson had told her that, like Mr Bobsworth, he was as faithful as a bulldog. She did not hesitate to ask him if the tobacco had arrived and if he had any matches.

He nodded and pulled out the desk chair for her. She sat down mechanically in front of the books and absently tore open the packet of cigarette tobacco handed to her by the secretary. While he watched the quick deft movements of her fingers as she rolled a cigarette and licked the paper to seal it, she said to him, ‘Mr Helliwell, we use olive oil and other kinds of oil in our soap, don’t we?’

‘Yes, Miss Harding.’

‘Do you know if anyone has discovered an oil which will heal smallpox scars?’

Though the question was unexpected, Mr Helliwell answered immediately in the negative. ‘I believe I would know if there were such an oil. My wife’s eldest sister is badly scarred – we still get smallpox here, sometimes – and I’m sure that if such an oil existed, we would have tried to obtain it for her.’ He leaned forward, struck a sulphur match and lit Wallace Helena’s cigarette. She thankfully inhaled.

‘Poor woman,’ she said with feeling. She half closed her eyes, sickened by the sudden memory of her stepfather’s and her mother’s last hours. It appeared that Joe would be terribly marked for the rest of his life, and she sighed. Then she smiled faintly. He was still her irrepressible Joe, always optimistic that the next harvest would be better, the next winter milder or that the trapline would unexpectedly yield a wondrous collection of valuable furs.

As she took another puff at her cigarette, she said to Mr Helliwell, ‘Mother and my stepfather both died of smallpox.’ The heavy lids of her eyes were, for once, lifted towards him and he saw and understood some of the
tragedy of her life reflected in them. ‘It took a third of our population,’ she went on a little heavily, ‘and the living are scarred to this day – that’s why I asked.’

Mr Helliwell blinked. ‘Dear Miss Harding,’ he exclaimed with genuine feeling, ‘how very sad for you. I wish I could suggest something for those who are pocked … you might ask a doctor, while you are here. Just in case something has recently been discovered – one never knows what science may divulge.’

‘Very true. I must ask.’ She looked up at him and said a little stiffly, as though she regretted the confidence, ‘I’m sure you must have work to do. I’ll ring if I need you.’

Dismissed, Mr Helliwell went back to his own small cubbyhole. Poor lady! She must also have gone through the same travail in Beirut that Mr James had; he knew about that because, once a year, on its anniversary, the old man had taken a holiday. He had explained to Mr Helliwell that on that particular day he wanted to be by himself to remember his friends killed in Beirut. As far as Mr Helliwell knew, he simply spent the day walking in the country. And, on top of that massacre, this poor woman had gone through a smallpox epidemic. He wondered how she had herself survived the latter unscathed, and decided that it was pure luck; God chose those He would take.

Now, she had lost her uncle, as well as her parents. He decided that she needed his complete support as much as he needed to keep his job.

Mr Helliwell’s perception of her was in contrast to that of nervous Mr Bobsworth, who became more and more defensive, as, for several days, she waded through his beautifully kept account books and pried into all his other responsibilities. He was a portly little man, with the colourless face of someone who has little time in the fresh air. There was a permanent deep frown line between his
thin eyebrows; and his old-fashioned side whiskers stuck up over his winged collar in an equally permanent, untidy bristle. As he trotted importantly through the works, his pen parked comfortably behind one ear, Wallace was often beside him. When he sat in his tiny office, amid a sea of invoices and bills, receiving constant interruptions from boys or men in big aprons, who came for instructions, Wallace Helena was often there, too, perched on a stool to watch what went on. As the days went by, he began to regard her as a female busybody, an interloper in a life already made difficult enough by the death of his old friend, James Al-Khoury.

‘Mr Tasker and me – we’ve bin bere almost from the day Mr Al-Khoury started up. We all worked together to get the business going. You really don’t have to worry.’ He took off his gold-rimmed glasses and polished them on a spotless pocket handkerchief with quick impatient movements. ‘And Mr Benjamin Al-Khoury – he’s been keeping tabs on everything as much as he could, ever since Mr James died.’

‘I’m sure you have all done very well,’ she soothed. ‘My uncle’s passing must have been a personal loss to you, as well?’

Surprised, he glanced quickly at her. ‘Indeed, Miss Harding, it was,’ he replied a little huskily. ‘We were very good friends, if I may presume to say so.’

She was kind, he admitted to Mr Tasker. But she was a pest. ‘Forever at my shoulder, as if I can’t be trusted,’ he complained. He was further annoyed that Mr Tasker seemed to be entranced by her – and at his age he should know better. Why didn’t she get on with the sale of the place, so at least they would all know the worst, he asked Mr Tasker.

‘She’s not got no Probate yet,’ responded Mr Tasker. ‘She can’t do nothing till she gets that.’