The Lemon Tree (19 page)

Wallace Helena leaned back in her office chair and stretched herself. In front of her was the correspondence which had accumulated for Benjamin Al-Khoury’s attention during his absence. She had already read it. Her mouth twisted in a grim little smile, as she congratulated herself on having hit on such a simple method of keeping track of much that was going on in the soapery.

There was a quiet tap on the door. Mr Helliwell entered to announce Benjamin’s arrival with Mr Bobsworth. She told him to show them in, and pushed the correspondence to one side.

As they entered, she stared at the handsome, untidy man who followed Mr Bobsworth in. He’s quite young, she thought in surprise, younger than Helliwell, and, despite his western dress, he looks like an Arab. He seemed more relaxed than an Englishman, though he had the same self-confident air as Mr Benson. Although he was stocky, she gained an impression of physical fitness – and mental alertness. Very much his father’s son.

Her stare was merciless and it embarrassed Benjamin, who was already very irate at the news that she had taken the week’s correspondence to read. Beneath his black moustache, his mouth was clamped as tightly as hers.

The woman had eyes like stones, he thought as he greeted her with the courtesy of an experienced sales representative. She leaned over the desk to shake his proffered hand, smiling slightly, her eyes expressionless.

‘A bloody Mona Lisa,’ Benjamin added to his first impression, as she indicated the visitor’s chair and he sat down.

Wallace Helena turned her attention to Mr Bobsworth standing primly behind Benjamin.

‘Thank you for bringing Mr Al-Khoury in, Mr Bobsworth. I mustn’t keep you from your work any longer.’

Mr Bobsworth reluctantly retreated with Mr Helliwell. It was improper for a lady to receive a man alone in an office. He himself was nearly old enough to be her father, so he felt it did not matter if he were alone with her. But it was different when young Benji or even Mr Helliwell were closeted with her; things could happen. A woman who smoked was not quite what she should be – Benji should watch out.

As Benji loosed Wallace Helena’s long cool hand, his heart sank. He had had, in the back of his mind, the same vague hope that his mother had, that
things
might, indeed, happen. What he had not inherited because of his illegitimacy, he could perhaps gain control of by marriage, despite the new law.

But the long, almond-shaped light brown eyes, so like his own, were as cold as rain-washed pebbles on a November morning. The firm, wide mouth seemed infinitely unkissable, and the thin, pliant body, which had stirred Mr Tasker to unseemly thoughts, appeared sticklike to a younger man used to the plumper women of his own generation. Had Joe Black been present and able to read Benjamin’s thoughts, he would have cuffed him like an angry bear for being so uncomplimentary about such a fine woman.

Wallace Helena understood men well enough to be subtly aware that she had not aroused any admiration in
him; she did not feel the instant rapport that she had felt when meeting George Tasker.

She could see the family likeness between herself and him; he was indeed his father’s son. She had at one point, when thinking about him, wondered if he was a child conceived in an earlier liaison of his mother’s and foisted upon her uncle. The man before her had, however, the broad, muscular build of a Maronite from the mountains, the deep chest of peoples used to high altitudes, and muscles adapted to hard physical work, though in Benji’s case town life had made them tend towards fleshiness. His nose was not as prominent as her own and had a slight upward tilt at the end. His glossy black hair waved back from his face and his skin was a weather-beaten olive. There was nothing about him to indicate that he had an English mother.

She broke the silence between them by saying, ‘I’m very glad to meet you – at last. I understand you were in Manchester when I arrived?’

He took this as an implied reproof for his absence, and, pulling himself together, replied quickly, ‘Yes. I must apologize for not meeting you off the ship, but we suddenly lost a good contract to a new company setting up in Warrington. The Manchester market is so valuable that I thought I must go to see the customer myself.’ He did not say that he had spun out his absence, by going to pay courtesy calls on other customers, because he did not feel that he could face her until he had gained command of the anger and frustration he felt. He had wanted to beat his breast and tear his clothes, get away from his rightly distraught mother.

‘What had happened in Manchester?’ Her voice was cool and she sounded very alert.

‘Lever offered them a better price – and supporting
advertising.’ He went on to explain that Lever had begun to wrap his common washing soap in gaily coloured paper, and to scent it with citronella to drown its normally unpleasant odour.

‘Humph.’ She shifted in her chair. ‘We’ll have a meeting with MrTasker and Mr Bobsworth – and perhaps MrTurner – that’s the name of the chemist, isn’t it? Well go into the matter thoroughly, so that the minute I have Probate we can take some action. How did you leave the matter?’

‘I asked them to let us tender next time the contract came up – they’re middlemen and buy in bulk.’

She nodded agreement, and then banged the bell on her desk. As soon as Mr Helliwell materialized in response to it she ordered tea. While it was being made, she began to ask Benji a little about himself and the position of Assistant Manager, which he held.

Tight-lipped Mr Helliwell brewed tea in a pot, paid for out of Petty Cash with much grumbling from Mr Bobsworth. He was glad he had a gas ring in his office and did not have to go down to put the kettle on the watchman’s coke brazier, which was not always alight on summer days. It would be humiliating to let the yard know that he made tea like a parlour maid. Mr James had always asked young Le Fleur to make it.

Benji had learned from his father the gentle art of making a customer feel comfortable – and tea or coffee had always been one of his father’s ploys, whether the visitor drank it or not. He had also passed to his son, brought up in an alien culture, something of his own quick-wittedness and business acumen passed down to him through generations of traders in Lebanon and Syria. This began to surface in the son as he explained his duties in the company to Wallace Helena. In the back of his mind he wondered why she bothered, if the business was to be sold.

He mentioned that the idea of selling a scented soap for the skin had been his. ‘There’s plenty of competition,’ he told Wallace Helena. ‘But we make our tablets small and hard, wrap them and sell them as cheaply as possible. It’s been my opinion, for a long time, that there’s more
cash
in working families nowadays and they can afford small luxuries. My mother says that, in the old days, the women hardly spent anything on themselves; it was a matter of survival only. Now, I sell them not only a bit of scented soap but a little bottle of scent as well, despite the old diehards who say it’s vanity – of course, old people often think having a bath is vanity!’

Wallace Helena laughed. ‘Good heavens!’ she exclaimed.

Emboldened by her spontaneous laugh, he went on, ‘Another thing I think I could sell is a cream for hands. All the cleaning they do – with soap – takes the oil out of their skins, and immediately the cold weather comes they chap and the skin splits very painfully. In the country, on the farms, there’s always a bit of lard or goose grease they can rub into the sore spots, but it’s very sticky – and women in cotton mills and suchlike can’t afford to have sticky hands. We’ve glycerine left over after the soap-making; Turner’s working on the refining of it, to use as a base for a cream. We know how to do it, but we want something very, very cheap that will have a small mark-up and a big turnover – I’ve been pricing small ointment tins and glass jars to pack it in.’

‘That’s another thing to talk about after Probate,’ Wallace Helena replied. ‘We’ve got to decide what we’ll make in future, particularly since competition seems to be getting more intense. I can see that Mr Turner may be invaluable.’

He was heartened that she said
we
, as if taking for granted that, whatever was to happen to the company, he
was, as far as she was concerned, to be included in the decision-making. He wondered if Bobsworth’s idea that she wanted to run the firm herself was correct.

He nodded agreement with her remark about the chemist. Then he said, with an amused expression on his face, ‘Mr Al-Khoury used to watch and listen for news of towns putting in waterworks; he’d go personally to any such place and sell our soap to every grocer or hardware store he could find. “Once a woman has a water tap in the house, she wants soap,” he would say. “So we get ours in first.”’

Benji’s description of her uncle’s impetuosity was so apt that it made her smile. She mentally saw him bursting into the office of the silk warehouse in Beirut, eager to suggest something new to his elder brother; or, in the house, snatching her up from her play to whiz round with her and tell her she was his little lemon flower.

Benji watched the passing expressions on her face and wondered what she was thinking of. He was surprised by her next question.

‘Aren’t there any rich ladies in England?’ she inquired. ‘You speak all the time of women who do their own work. I thought everybody in England had servants?’

‘Well, not everybody has servants. We’re going after working-class women, because they’re a comparatively new market. Rich women have bought quite expensive soap from their hairdressers, for years. The competition in that kind of soap is
very
keen.’ He chuckled a little ruefully. ‘For a long time in the new cities, like the cotton towns, working people didn’t have access to much water – they had to endure the filth around them. Now, many of them have a decent water supply, so Fath … Mr Al-Khoury set out to sell them cheap soap. A small mark-up, but, on the other hand, a huge market.’

He was beginning to feel more at home with Wallace
Helena, and he leaned back in his chair and shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘But now we’re faced with a very innovative competitor, in the shape of Mr Lever, trying for the same market. We often undercut the older firms, because our overheads are low – but Lever is another kettle of fish. He’s causing ripples throughout the industry.’

‘We’ll try to give him a run for his money,’ Wallace Helena promised, intrigued at the chance to outwit a smart man.

‘Well, I was trying to persuade Mr Al-Khoury to improve the presentation of our toilet soap, at least – a brighter wrapper, or something. But he passed away before we got down to it – and now we’re in limbo.’ The last words came out with a sigh.

Wallace Helena observed his change of expression, the sudden woodenness of his rugged face. She began to realize his personal uncertainty – in limbo, he was, personally, and he also shared the uncertainty of the other employees. She knew she must soon make up her mind whether she would stay in England to guide the company – or sell it. It
was
not fair to the employees to dither. But there was Joe to consider. Could she persuade him to settle in a city, and if she did, what would he do? It would be like caging a tiger.

She thought bitterly that, if Joe didn’t exist, she would never return to the hardship of her life in Canada – she would stay in Liverpool, and even, perhaps, take a look at making a second move back to Lebanon. And what would you do there, without a family or at least a man to protect you? she asked herself. She suddenly hated her kind, generous uncle for facing her with such a dilemma.

In an effort to clarify Benji’s position, she said, ‘I remember Uncle James writing to Father and mentioning that he had a little boy. Was that you?’

‘Yes, Miss Harding.’ He fidgeted uncomfortably, taking his hands out of his pockets and then clasping them in front of him on the side of her desk. He said abruptly, ‘I didn’t know you existed – I never saw your father’s letters, of course. Mr Benson told me about you.’

‘My father was the eldest and he used to worry about Uncle James. I’m sure he must have often scolded him when he wrote to him. That’ll be why you never saw the letters!’ There was a hint of humour in her voice, but it did not raise his spirits. ‘Probably you were too small to be able to read, anyway.’

‘Yes, Miss Harding.’

‘Stop
Miss Harding
me. I’m your cousin – that’s almost like a sister. Call me Wallace Helena, like a relation, can’t you?’ She got up from her chair and began to pace up and down impatiently. Then she stopped in front of him, and said contritely, when he didn’t answer, ‘You must miss your father dreadfully, and I’m truly sorry you’ve lost him.’

‘Thank you. I do miss him.’ He suddenly looked very exhausted, and she said gently, ‘I understand why you did not get any of Uncle’s Estate – and I’m sure it was not Uncle’s intention that I get it. But I’m stuck with it – and it’s causing me considerable heartache, believe it or not.’

‘Is it?’ He was surprised out of his depression. ‘Father simply didn’t expect to die, so he didn’t prepare for it. Which of us ever does?’

‘Not many,’ Wallace Helena admitted glumly. Her full skirt swished, as she returned to her chair. She opened a heavy box on her desk. ‘Like a smoke?’ she asked.

‘No, thanks. I smoke a pipe.’

‘Well, get it out and smoke it,’ she suggested, as she put a cigarello between her lips, and struck a match to light it.

There was a strict
No Smoking
rule in the works, but he did not think this was an appropriate moment to mention
it, so he took out his pipe and tobacco pouch and proceeded to pack the pipe. She threw the box of matches to him across the desk. ‘Your official designation is Assistant Manager, isn’t it?’