The Lemon Tree (25 page)

Benji had never thought very much about a deity. As a child, his mother had taken him to an Anglican church which they still attended fairly regularly, though she had once let slip that she had been born a Catholic. Early in his life, he had noticed that she never took Communion and, later on, he learned that she could not, because, as a neighbour’s son told him scornfully, ‘She lives in sin, she does; and me mam says you’re a bastard.’

He sighed. It had ‘not occurred to him, until Wallace Helena had mentioned it, that his father had been hounded out of Lebanon solely because he was a Christian. God had not been very kind to him either. Perhaps that was why he had never been known to attend a place of worship; he had always occupied his Sunday mornings by checking the Lady Lavender account books and entering any profits in his private book, which he kept at home.

Wallace Helena had seated herself again in her rocking chair, her head leaned back against the cretonne cushion. Her cigarello dangled in a listless hand as a second tear slowly ran down her cheek.

Benji watched it. She looked very different from the assertive woman who had offended him so badly that morning. Whether he could bring himself to marry her was doubtful. But she was his cousin-sister and they had both let down their guards tonight, as if they were, indeed, siblings who could talk frankly to each other. He got up clumsily and went to bend over her and put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Would you like to walk a little in the fresh air?’ he asked, not sure what to do to comfort her. ‘You might feel better outside.’

She put up her hand to touch his. ‘Yes,’ she said.

As Wallace Helena and Benji paced slowly round the cobbled square outside the Fitzpatricks’ cottage, they discussed frankly the future of the Lady Lavender. It was as if during their slow conversation in the cottage, in which they had said very little, they had succeeded in communicating a great deal on a different level.

Benji had not forgotten the arrogance she had displayed during their hectic day, but he knew now that he could offer her something more than good management of the soapery. He could offer her an understanding and tolerance of her aggressiveness and arrogance; her tears had brought home to him forcibly the overwhelming hurt of the loss of her homeland and the subsequent loss of her father and mother, who had, in the alien world of North America, given her some tie to the country of her birth. Her description of the hardships of the first years in Canada had secretly appalled him, and even now it did not seem too easy; no wonder she was enjoying Liverpool, despite the rainy summer they had had. He was glad, for her sake, that September had brought more sunshine.

He had, as he grew more aware of his father’s origins, caught glimpses in the man of the same terrible sense of isolation that being a refugee engendered; he knew there had been days when even his patient, cheerful mother could not console him. When his father found himself at loggerheads with a businessman born and bred in Lancashire and, therefore, having a different approach to
whatever they were trying to negotiate between them, he would go out and walk for miles in the streets of Liverpool. When his frustration eased, he would return, sometimes late at night, tired, but himself. Eleanor and Benji would not comment on his absence but would cosset him with warmed slippers and the particular coffee, thick as creosote, which he liked.

It was late and the moon rose, but still they walked together, and Wallace Helena was grateful for the gentleness in his voice and the warmth of his presence; it was different from the comfort that Joe gave her because it was less easily defined. It had something to do with the soft Arabic phrases that he used and with an occasional gesture he made which was evocative of his father, when she had known him as a young man.

He did not attempt to court her in any way, for which she was grateful. He stuck firmly to the subject of the business in which they were both involved.

‘I’ve been stewing over what we should do,’ he told her. ‘I’d like to suggest that, once we’re up and running again after Probate, we should concentrate, first, on retaining and extending our market for soap. It’s our bread and butter. Keep up our quality and speed of delivery – and go for a narrow margin of profit.’ He put his hand under her arm and guided her down the slipway until the water nearly lapped their feet. The moon laid a pathway across the river and anchored ships looked like dark hulks on either side of it. Then he said, ‘This assumes you’re not going to sell.’

‘Yes?’ she queried, sensing he had not finished.

‘Turner reckons that he now knows exactly how George Tasker gets such good soap. The next job – a bit further down the road – would be to reproduce it mechanically with consistent quality. Not that we’d ever want to get rid of George. No matter how good machinery is,
there’s no substitute for a good soap master watching it.’

She looked up at him thoughtfully. ‘Are you afraid he’s getting old?’ she asked.

‘Yes. He’s older than Father was, and we’d be in deep trouble if he were ever ill – or, worse still, passed on.’

She saw the danger immediately. ‘Aren’t the men under him any good?’

They know their jobs. But it’s George who has a feel for soap. Without him, they’d be lost. Lever has two of the best soap masters in the business, but I’m sure they wouldn’t want to leave him; I’m told they rule the roost there. Crosfield’s have some good ones – they’re right next door to him.’

‘Really next door?’

‘Yes. That’s why he can’t expand where he is; there’s no space. Mr Benson said someone representing him was sniffing round our place, to see what room there was for expansion if they offered for the Lady Lavender.’

‘Is there room to expand, if we wanted to?’

‘Not really. I’d like to keep the operation small; maybe make better use of the floor space, but not try to become very big. It’s not easy to raise capital in these depressed times, and we’re debt-free at the moment. The way we run the Lady Lavender, our overheads are low, and we can go for a lower priced market, if we’re not too extravagant when getting a sales representative.’

‘Could we choose a new employee to follow Mr Tasker – say, let him choose somebody himself?’ Wallace Helena asked, shaken by the idea that they could lose their most important employee.

‘He wanted his son to follow him, but he went into the army instead. We’ve never tried for an apprentice since then.’

They forgot their inner sadnesses, as they tossed ideas backwards and forwards in rapid Arabic, with an
occasional English sentence to express a technicality. Three fishermen sitting cross-legged near the slipway mending nets shrugged and laughed surreptitiously at the strange couple; middle-class people were not often seen in The Cockle Hole.

Wallace Helena saw the point of Benji’s caution in not launching any new products for the moment, though her suggestion was that, when they did, they should offer emollients, based on glycerine, as the beginning of a line of very cheap cosmetics. ‘So many women work, in Lancashire,’ she argued, ‘and you yourself said there’s more money in working-class households nowadays. If they’ve got a little money to spend, the young ones will want to make themselves pretty, like the ladies in the shows you’ve taken me to.’

‘They’d be afraid of censure if they used paint; their fathers would probably beat them if they did!’

‘I realize that. That’s why I said we should begin with creams to soften or heal the skin.’

‘In time, in time,’ Benji assured her.

She coughed, holding her hand to her chest to ease the pain. Then, when it passed, she managed to chuckle. ‘It’s good that you’re here to restrain me; Joe always says that I want to do everything at once. He’s suffering with my efforts to raise sheep at present – my latest idea.’

‘When do you expect to get an answer from him about what he wants to do?’

‘Soon,’ she replied. She did not say anything more. Once his reply was in her hand she would have to make a choice, and the thought made her heavy-hearted.

The fishermen spread their nets over an upturned rowing boat, and stood around lighting their pipes in the cool moonlight. Though Wallace Helena seemed to have retreated into herself, Benji had in the quietness become aware, from the warmth of her beside him, that he had a
woman on his arm, a woman still young enough to be desirable. He turned to her, lifted her chin with his free hand and kissed her on the mouth. It was a longing kiss, his tongue searching to open her mouth.

She broke away from him, immediately alert and teasing. ‘Benji, you scoundrel! That was not a cousinly kiss!’

Behind them, the fishermen laughed. A little mortified, Benji did not attempt to follow it up, and she caught his hand, and said, to his utter surprise, ‘I’m spoken for. You go find yourself some pretty young thing. Now walk me to the door.’

Dumbfounded, he did so and answered her cheerful goodnight with a bewildered ‘See you tomorrow.’

While she waited for a reply from Joe, Wallace Helena continued to probe into the soapery. She was careful not to spoil her newfound freedom with Benji by failing to consult him. Though intrigued by her as a woman, he made no further sexual approach, being cautious about touching her in any way. He reluctantly assumed that she was committed to her Canadian partner.

She again visited Eleanor, and was taken to a local stonemason’s yard, to see the marble cross which was being carved as a memorial to be put on her uncle’s grave. Eleanor wept over it, and Wallace Helena tried to comfort her.

She had a long conversation with Mr Turner, who, this time, was less patronizing. She asked him particularly to describe to her any new technical advances in the soap industry of which he was aware. He confirmed the need for an experienced soap master, no matter what machinery was eventually installed. He was flattered when, after listening to him for an hour, she asked him to sit in on a meeting with Mr Tasker that she and Benji proposed to have, where, amongst other matters, they would discuss the need to train an understudy for the soap master.

He looked at her curiously. She appeared to have understood his explanations of the approaching changes in methods of manufacture, and, since he was, like everyone else, a little apprehensive about his position, he asked
shyly, ‘Do you propose to stay with us, Miss Harding, or will you sell out?’

She answered him as she had done when at the meeting of the staff in her office. ‘I’m not sure yet, but you will be one of the first to know my decision. It should not be more than a few weeks at most’ She smiled, as she picked up her notebook. ‘Be patient a little longer. If I sold, I would do so on condition that all my senior employees are accommodated with the new company.’

His anxiety somewhat relieved by her last words, he bowed her out of his laboratory. He had no real desire to be absorbed into a larger company, where he would probably be outshone by more brilliant German chemists, and he hoped the Lady Lavender would continue. He smiled as he put on his white laboratory jacket. No lady would ever run a company, so Benjamin Al-Khoury would run it – a capable, forward-looking man of his own generation with whom he got on well.

Wallace Helena had, quite early in her visit to the soapery, felt that a full-time chemist was rather a luxury in such a small soapery, and had wondered why Uncle James had recruited him. It did not occur to her that her uncle might have been a little dazzled by other soap merchants employing well-known German chemists. Not being able to afford such exotic creatures himself, he had found an intelligent man with a modest B.Sc., who, in a depressed economy, was thankful for a respectable job testing the ingredients and the end products of the Lady Lavender.

Though Turner was not a Ph.D., and was, therefore, not a true research man, he was quick to understand the research of others and he read everything he could find on soap technology. He liked and respected Mr Tasker and listened patiently to his explanations of the need for a sense of smell and the delicate interpretation of exactly
what was happening in his great cauldrons, when the well-sniffed-over ingredients were put together. In between his routine duties and his experiments with glycerine, he had sketched a design for a mechanized line for soap production. A good working chemist, Turner felt, should be able to reduce Mr Tasker’s
magic feel
for soap to an exact recipe. Quite soon, machinery would make possible a constant flow of evenly mixed and formed bars of soap; and he discussed these possibilities with Mr Ferguson, whose alert and inventive engineer’s mind sometimes ranged much further than his precious boilers and steam pipes. Mr Ferguson had done his apprenticeship in Manchester and was still a member of a Mechanics’ Institute there. As he often said, he knew what was going on, because he had friends with whom he kept in touch, remarks which would have gravely disturbed other soap-makers, who were doing their best to hide any of their advances in technology from their competitors.

The Steam Engineer always made himself a can of tea to drink with his sandwich lunch, which he ate at an old desk in a corner of the shed which housed his boilers. Sometimes, Mr Turner would drop in to share a mug of tea with him. Mr Ferguson always set great store by the visits.

When Mr Turner mentioned Wallace Helena’s talk with him, Mr Ferguson said earnestly, ‘Other soap companies are on to mechanization like you’d nevaire believe. If there’s anything left of the Lady Lavender by the time the lawyers and Miss Harding are finished with it, you and I should get together with Mr Benji right away.’

Unaware that she had been mentally dismissed by two of her more important employees as a minor aberration in the life of the Lady Lavender, Wallace Helena walked
along busy Sefton Street to her lodgings in The Cockle Hole, for lunch.

She felt tired, and her chest hurt when she coughed. As she walked, she wondered idly if Mr Turner could, some time in the future, make anything of her mother’s beauty recipes. Her mother had had her own little mixtures for enhancing her looks, though, once she was married to Tom and had moved to Fort Edmonton, she had not had much time to use them. In Canada, she had used lamp black as kohl for her eyelids, instead of antimony. It had certainly made her eyes look enormous and had enhanced their glitter.

Wallace Helena wondered if she could ever sell kohl to Lancashire women, and decided regretfully that from what she had been told about them, she probably could not.

Better to do as Benji advised, and stick to making soap. But not forever, she promised herself. Fashions could change; women were already converted to using soap. Why not cosmetics?

Her mother’s recipes did not have expensive ingredients. Packaged in small enough quantities, they could be sold cheaply and yet make an excellent profit. ‘Buy cheap and sell expensive,’ her father had told her, and she grinned. She might do better to buy very cheaply and sell inexpensively.

As she washed her hands before lunch with a sliver of washing soap put in the soap dish for her by Elsie, she realized that Mr Lever’s idea of scenting his soap with lemon was a good one. The piece of soap smelled very badly, and yet surrounded by the reek of stable and cowshed, of unwashed, sweating men and strong tobacco, she had, at home, never noticed that the soap she made did not smell good. She made a wry face at the discovery; she wondered if the smell bothered Eleanor – or Elsie –
surrounded with Monday washing, boilers and dolly tubs.

When she went down to her sitting-room, she was surprised to find her meal served to her by a stranger, a flustered elderly woman, who carefully set a dish of scouse before her and ladled the mixture of lamb, onions and thin slices of potato onto her plate.

‘I’m Mrs Barnes from next door,’ she introduced herself. ‘Elsie’s beginnin’ to feel ‘er pains. It’s too early yet to get the midwife, if you know what I mean. But it’s her first, like, and she’s nervous, so I come in to be with her for a while – and I’ll be lookin’ after yez while she’s confined.’

Wallace Helena nodded and asked if she could be of help. ‘I’ve never delivered a human baby, but I’ve helped cows calve and horses in foal – and I even managed a sheep that was in trouble last spring.’

‘Really, Miss? Well I never.’ She smiled down at the soap mistress, and said confidentially, ‘I’ve helped a few into the world meself in me time, but I don’t like doin’ first births – sometimes they’re difficult. Anyways, John Fitzpatrick’s in regular work and he insisted Elsie have the midwife.’

‘I hope she’ll be all right,’ Wallace Helena said, as she picked up her knife and fork.

Mrs Barnes heaved a sigh, ‘Oh, aye, we all go through it – and she’s a strong girl.’ She went over to the mantelpiece and took down a letter which she handed to Wallace Helena. ‘A Mrs Hughes sent this down for you by her maid.’ It was from Joe, and Wallace Helena tore it open eagerly.

It was a month old and was full of the small problems of a homesteading family looking towards the threat of winter. His short sentences made his letter sound petulant. She tossed the letter down on the table and picked up her fork again to eat a meal that she did not want

She decided irritably that he had probably already dealt
successfully with most of his troubles; surely he could manage without her for a few months. Then she chided herself that she was being unreasonable; he was carrying her work as well as doing his own, and harvest time stretched the capacity of all of them. Joe would ensure that all the outside work would be done, she thought uneasily; but it was she who drove Aunt Theresa and Emily to bottle enough fruits and vegetables, bury carrots in sand, make sauerkraut and pickles, even do another boiling of soap, so that the six people she had to feed during the winter kept well. And there were always hungry Indians passing along the trail – they had to be found a meal, somehow. She must remind Joe to chase Simon Wounded to urge him along to build up the woodpile ready for the cold weather; they had now cleared so much of their land that he had to log trees towards the edge of their holdings. Soon she would have to buy coal from the miners who dug the dirty stuff out of the river valley – and that meant they must pay out cash, an idea which made her feel even more irritable.

Tush! Here she was thinking as if it were certain that she would return to the Territories, and she did not want to. She rose, and put down her napkin on the table. The letter she slipped into her pocket. Hurry up, Joe, she muttered, and tell me you’ll take a chance on a new country and come here.

The sudden movement of getting up set her coughing again. Mrs Barnes came in with a kettle of hot water to fill up her teapot, and said, ‘Aye, Miss, that’s a nasty cough you got. I can hear you wheezin’ from here.’ She whipped the tea cosy off the teapot and poured a little water into the pot. ‘I’ll give yez some tea to sip.’

The paroxysm was so intense that Wallace Helena could not protest and found the teacup held to her lips. She tried to control herself sufficiently to drink a little and
slowly her throat cleared, and she sank down onto the chair again.

Mrs Barnes put down the teacup and, hands on hips, surveyed the younger woman. ‘You should see a doctor, Miss. You could get T.B.’

‘Yes.’ That was what Mrs Hughes had said. She asked, ’is tuberculosis common here?’

‘Oh, yes, Miss. Me little sister died of it – only eleven, she was.’

Wallace Helena sighed. ‘I am so sorry,’ she said.

‘You could buy yourself some honey and lemons and mix ’em with hot water. It might ease it.’

Wallace Helena smiled and nodded. The coughing had tired her more than she liked to admit, so she promised to try Mrs Barnes’s remedy. She inquired after Elsie and was surprised to learn that Mrs Barnes had sent her outside to walk up and down in front of the house. ‘It’ll help her later,’ she informed Wallace Helena.

As Wallace left the house to return to work, she paused for a moment to wish Elsie a safe delivery.

Joe had mentioned in his letter that two families had come west on the train to Calgary and then felt it worthwhile to trek north to take up land only a couple of miles from their boundary. ‘Fort Edmonton’s going to be a town one of these days,’ he wrote. Wallace Helena smiled to herself. Joe was not fond of new immigrants; every white family in the district put further pressure on the dispossessed Crees. The plight of his mother’s people troubled him and he often shared his own expertise as a farmer with them, in the hope that it would make their reserves more productive.

On her arrival in her office, she found on her desk a slender volume of verses by Mr William Wordsworth, which she had asked Mr Helliwell to buy for her.

Apart from conversations directly concerning the soap
works, she had sensed in the bustling city a great pride in a newly acquired literacy. Even Mr Tasker read the papers; and he could quote an appropriate biblical text in almost any answer he gave her. Mr Helliwell, a man in his thirties, was very fond of larding his discourse with poetical quotations, and she had even come across a Latin tag in one of Mr Bobsworth’s letters to a debtor.

She had been brought up as a child amongst talented, cultivated people, and she found her employees’ carefully inserted quotations endearing, and had asked Mr Helliwell to buy a few poetry books for her. She promised herself that that evening she would read Mr Wordsworth’s book instead of one on oils and fats lent her by Turner. The more she saw of Liverpool, the more she realized what was lacking in her life in the Territories; there was more to existence than a battle for survival. There were other places, besides Beirut, where people had time for pleasure.

She slipped William Wordsworth into her reticule, and leaned over her desk to study a sheet of paper which was spread out on it. The scrawls on it looked like an untidy family tree descending from herself. Her name was written at the head of the paper and was joined by a line to that of Benjamin written immediately below. From him, lines arched out to the names of the senior employees. Beneath them, were the names of the men who reported to them. At the very bottom, were listed people like Alfie and the recalcitrant Georgie. By each name, in brackets, were a few words describing the man’s duties.

She wanted now to ask Benji at what points in the structure she had depicted they could, perhaps, provide simple machinery to speed up their lines and their delivery process.

She rang for Mr Helliwell. He was busy making her two card indices, one of the name and address of every
supplier from whom they had bought and another of every company who had ever made a purchase from the Lady Lavender. When she had first asked him if a proper record existed, he had replied simply, ‘Mr James knew the names of everyone; he didn’t need any more record than Mr Bobsworth’s account books, occasionally.’