The Lemon Tree (32 page)

When Wallace Helena called on Eleanor Al-Khoury that evening, she found her alone.

‘Our Benji hasn’t come home yet. He said he’d be late – he sent me a little note by that coloured lad what works in the Lady Lavvie, so as I’d know you was coming. How are you, love? You’re lookin’ a bit peaky.’ She took Wallace Helena’s hat and shawl from her, and ushered her into the front parlour. ‘All me gents are out tonight, so we can have a nice little get-together in here. Haven’t seen you in ages.’

Wallace Helena kissed her and asked how
she
was.

Eleanor heaved a deep sigh. ‘I’m not so bad, all things considered.’ She moved towards the fireplace in which a small blaze gave cheerfulness to the room. As she bent down to put a black kettle on a hob and turn it over the fire to heat, she said, ‘Sit down by the fire, love. Aren’t the nights drawin’ in? I made a fire ’cos it seems to be a bit chilly.’

Wallace Helena obeyed, and asked, ‘What’s making Benji late?’

‘Well, he said the other day you gave him all the files in his dad’s private drawer to read – so he thought he’d do it when he wouldn’t be interrupted. I’ve saved him a bit of dinner for when he comes.’

Wallace Helena nodded. She decided Benji was probably making the reading of the files an excuse to give her time alone with his mother. Aloud, she said, ‘I felt that, as
Manager, he’d better know everything about the company – his father’s private negotiations with suppliers, anything there was about the staff. I’ve read them, and they do contain good background information.’ She bent towards the fire and rubbed her hands to warm them; she had not bothered to put gloves on.

They chatted desultorily about the weather, and agreed that they had both enjoyed an organ concert to which Benji had taken them about three weeks earlier. ‘Aye. Mr Best’s a lovely organist – there somethin’ about organ music, int there?’

Wallace Helena agreed there was, and wondered how to bring up the question of her pregnancy. She helped Eleanor to lift a small tea table closer to the fire and, while Eleanor poured boiling water into the brown teapot, she mentioned that her landlady, Elsie Fitzpatrick, had had a lovely baby boy, and that her mother lived in Dublin and could not come to her.

‘I expect the neighbours came in,’ Eleanor responded placidly. ‘Everybody loves a baby.’ She stirred the pot vigorously, and put a teacosy over it while the tea mashed.

‘I suppose,’ Wallace Helena replied. She stared into the dancing flames of the fire, and then she said, ‘Eleanor, Benji suggested I should come to see you tonight – because, quite flatly, you’re the only woman who might care about me or mine!’

Eleanor had just lifted the milk jug in order to pour milk into the teacups – her best ones. Now she put it slowly back on the tray.

‘What’s to do, love?’

‘I’m in the family way myself, Eleanor.’

‘And it’s our Benji’s?’

Wallace Helena laughed suddenly. ‘No, no. I’m much too old for Benji – though, when I told him about it, he did offer to marry me – to protect me, so to speak. Bless him.’

‘You mean you’re not married?’

‘Right’

‘Well I never.’ She was quiet, while she poured out two cups of tea. Then she said gently, ‘Not to worry, love. If our Benji wants to marry you, and don’t mind being a papa to your baby, you haven’t got nothin’ to worry about. There’s a few people at the Lady Lavvie as would be thankful if you was married to each other.’ She smiled warmly at Wallace Helena, and continued, ‘And I can think of lots worse to have as a daughter-in-law. I know you’re older, but you don’t act like it. Benji’d be fine with you.’

‘You’re very kind, Eleanor,’ Wallace Helena replied, with genuine gratitude. She went on to explain that, even if she loved Benji to distraction, she would not dream of marrying him, because the child would not match up. ‘Literally, it won’t,’ she assured a puzzled Eleanor. ‘It’ll be too dark.’

‘Too dark? Well, who is its dad? Will he marry you?’

‘Its father’s my partner in Canada. He’s half-Cree, half-negro, so his baby’s going to be dark. He’s a fine person, and I’d be happy to marry him. But, Eleanor, I’m in a terrible jam.’ She stopped, and Eleanor waited, wondering what on earth was to come. ‘You see, Eleanor, I must’ve conceived in the last day or two of my time in the Territories. He might not believe it’s his. I’m terribly afraid, Eleanor.’ The last words came out in a rush.

The other woman took a moment to assess this, then she said, with a laugh, ‘He’ll believe it when he sees it There int many Blackies round these parts – and you’d never meet any, anyways.’ She put some more sugar in her tea and then stirred it She added, with dry humour, ‘Rub the kid over with boot polish, to make sure!’

Despite the strain she was under, Wallace Helena began to gurgle with laughter. It set Eleanor laughing, and soon they were rolling in their chairs with mirth. It
finished when Wallace Helena had a fit of coughing.

‘Really, Eleanor! You’re dreadful.’

When they had sobered a little and had mopped up the tea they had spilled, Eleanor asked, ‘Will you be going home?’

‘I’ll have to. For a while, I had a hope that I might persuade Joe to settle here – the last few winters have bothered him; we get such bad ones. But thinking it over, I know he’d never be happy here. So I’ll go home. I want the baby to have a father.’

‘Oh, aye. That’s important.’ Eleanor’s face was suddenly very sad, and Wallace Helena ventured to ask, ‘Why didn’t you and Uncle get married?’

‘Me hubby’s still alive,’ answered Eleanor, her voice dull and hopeless.

Wallace Helena’s mouth dropped open in complete surprise. ‘I didn’t dream you’d been married. I don’t think Benji knows, does he?’

Eleanor looked at her suspiciously, wondering how much Benji had talked about her with his cousin. She sighed, and said, ‘I don’t think nobody knows by now. It were a long time ago.’

‘Couldn’t you have divorced him?’

‘I couldn’t – being Catholic, like. Anyways, what for? He’s mental, you see.’

‘You poor woman!’ Wallace Helena forgot her own problems. ‘How did it happen?’

Eleanor swallowed, and looked round her rather helplessly. ‘It were really me dad’s fault,’ she said. ‘’Cos I were so young – and proper innocent; with no brothers or sisters so I could see the difference between boys and girls – or guess where they come from. I didn’t know what marrying was all about.’ She twisted her arms into her apron, as if to protect herself from something, and then she went on, ‘You know me dad left me this house?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, he and me mam run a boot and shoe shop for years. Me dad were much older’n me mam; but she were killed in a fall from the stepladder in the shop, when I were ten. And me dad couldn’t stand the shop after she were gone, so he sold it when his auntie died and left him this house; and we started doing bed and breakfasts. We had some as was waiting for a boat and some as come on holiday to see relatives, or somethin’, and not a few commercial travellin’ gentlemen on their rounds.’ She sighed gustily. ‘I used to make the breakfasts and see to the washin’ and all.’

That’s a lot for a ten-year-old.’

‘Me dad helped with the cleaning and that, and he’d carry some of the trays. And it were better’n working twelve hours a day in a shop or being in service.’

‘So, how did you meet your husband?’

‘Well, when I were about sixteen, he come here with his mam and dad. He must’ve been about eighteen. They’d come from Cardiff on a visit, they said, and they was ever so friendly. They stayed about ten days, going out and about all over the place. We supposed they was on a holiday, but it come out afterwards they come to show the boy, Hughie, to a specialist.’

‘Did he look mad?’

‘No. Just a bit stupid, like some youths do. He didn’t talk much, and he did whatever his dad told him – and I realized afterwards that him or his mam told him every step of the way. He weren’t too bad-looking – dark hair and blue eyes, like a smiling china doll. I was never alone with him for a minute – his mam or dad saw to that Dad watched out for me pretty well, too, seeing as men were always coming and going in the house; but mostly much older men – being sales reps, like.’

She sniffed, as if to dismiss salesmen as not being
worthy of much notice. ‘Anyways, his parents made up to me dad like anything, and, two months later, they come back for another stay. They said as Hughie’s uncle had got him a job, here in the docks. He were a big, heavy boy, so it sounded likely. And it seemed no time at all before his pa was saying to Dad what about a match between us.’

‘Didn’t your father see that he wasn’t all there?’

‘No. If you weren’t expecting it, it weren’t too obvious. When his mam said to kiss me, he wouldn’t, and she said he were a proper shy lad. When he was alone with me, he’d be a lion, she said – and I remember her laughing.’

‘Doesn’t sound as if there was much to laugh about,’ Wallace Helena said. ‘What happened then?’

‘Well, me dad hadn’t been well for some time, and I think he were worried about me being left alone; and here were a decent family with a son with a job, a quiet enough boy who didn’t drink – none of the family did. So he said it would be all right. And I were sixteen and thought, like most young girls do, that married life would be less work than being single; and me dad was going to buy me a new dress. I felt that important!

‘So Mr Jones goes with Hughie to get a special licence – ’cos they’ve got to get back to their business in Cardiff. No time for calling guests or anything, and the next thing I know I’m in church being married, and Hughie being whispered to by his dad as to what he’s to do and what fun it will be.’ She paused reflectively. ‘And that frightened me. We got back to the house, and I’d baked a cake and decorated it, so we had tea and cake. And Hughie was laughin’ like an ape and eating half the cake. Then Mr Jones brought down their luggage, when a hackney come for’em. He says goodbye, Hughie. They canter down them front steps as if the devil was after them, and away they go, leaving Hughie standing gaping in the hall. Me dad shuts the front door, and Hughie nearly goes berserk. He
smashes the glass in the inner door, and out he goes, with his hand bleeding, screaming, “Mam!” after the carriage.

‘Me dad went down the steps after him, wondering what had bitten him. Hughie turns round and hits me dad to the ground and comes back up the steps. I ran upstairs, I was so frightened. And I could hear him smashing the tea things on the table and then a big crash as he threw something through the sitting-room window here. He was a big lad and he made such a noise, a neighbour come out. Dad shouted to him to call the constable. Dad come in and couldn’t see me; only Hughie tearing everything apart in an absolute little-boy paddywack, kicking and screamin’.

‘I called Dad from upstairs, and he shouted back to stay where I was. It took the constable and me dad and the neighbour to arrest him.’

‘How awful!’

Eleanor nodded. ‘I were that scared, I thought I’d never come round,’ she admitted.

‘Whatever did you do?’ asked Wallace Helena.

‘Well, both me dad and me was terribly upset, as you can imagine. When Hughie were brought before the Magistrate, Dad went down to the Court. He told them he thought the man was mad, and told how he come into our house. The Magistrate agreed with him and the poor constable did, too. So they sent him to a hospital to be examined, and then they put him in a loony-bin.’

‘And is he still there?’

‘Not in that one. They finally traced ’is parents – they’d given us a wrong address, ’cos what they was doing was dumping him on us – getting rid of him, never wanting to see him again, like. He were like a little kid in his mind, and he acted like one when he realized his mam was leaving him with strangers.

‘Me dad was heartbroken that he’d been had like that.
All he wanted was a respectable fella to live in the house with me and bring a bit in. He died himself not too long after.’

‘But it was considered a legal marriage?’

‘Well, a long time after I heard that the Church could annul it You see, being Catholic, as I said, I couldn’t divorce him. It’s a big job to get an annulment – and it costs. And the priests ask you such terrible private questions. And I were still young – I hardly knew what normally happened after the church service – working in the house all the time, I didn’t have a close girl friend to talk to, like other girls have.’

‘Did you talk to your priest?’

‘I went once,’ she said sulkily, ‘and he read me a penny lecture about having to stay married even if your husband was sick. In them days, I was scared of God and the priests, so I took their word for it. I wasn’t going to get married again, anyway – not after that basinful.’

Wallace Helena leaned forward and caught her hand. ‘You poor girl,’ she said.

Eleanor smiled dimly at the kindly gesture, and said, ‘Then, years and years later, your Uncle Jamie come along.’ A slow tear ran down her cheek.

‘Did Uncle James know what had happened to you?’

‘He did later. After Benji were coming, he wanted to marry me. But, you know, I couldn’t apply for an annulment without the whole neighbourhood knowing. And as long as I kept quiet I doubt there was anyone around who knew the marriage had taken place, except the priest. Our next-door neighbour took it for granted that Dad had just had a spot of bother with a lodger.’ She leaned towards Wallace Helena confidentially. ‘And if I let it be known – or the Church did – that I’d been married to a loony, they could likely think that I were without me
wits, too. And that would be proper awful for me – and for Benji. It’d only need a bit of a rumour.’