The Lemon Tree (33 page)

‘Would they really be that stupid?’

‘Oh, aye. They’re more afraid of lunacy than anything else round here. Once they feel it’s in a family – goodbye!’

‘So you and Uncle James stayed quietly together?’

‘Yes. It were a bit rough on Benji, but better than it going round that, maybe, he were me husband’s kid and, therefore, tainted.’ She sighed again, ‘And I believed Jamie when he said he’d never leave me. Nor he never did. He were took, poor dear.’

She bowed her head and wept.

Wallace Helena hastily left her chair and eased her way round the tea table to comfort her. With her head against Wallace Helena’s skirt Eleanor cried heartily.

‘And now,’ she sobbed, ‘you got to go home, so the Lady Lavvie’ll have to be sold – and what are we goin’ to do, I’d like to know?’

‘You’ve nothing to worry about there,’ Wallace Helena assured her, as she took out her own grubby hanky to wipe Eleanor’s face. ‘Everything’s going to work out just fine – as long as Benji agrees.’

There was the sound of a key in the front door lock. ‘That’ll be Benji,’ his mother said, and hastily wiped her eyes with her hands. ‘What was you sayin’?’

‘I said everything’s going to be all right. Just wait till Benji’s here, and I’ll tell you.’

As a very tired Benji came into the room, she straightened up and forced herself to smile. Behind it, she felt as weary as he looked. She had had to give comfort, when she had hoped to receive it.

That afternoon, Wallace Helena had spent over two hours with Mr Benson.

As soon as she was seated in his private office, she had gone straight to the point.

She said, ‘You will be pleased to hear that I have reached a decision about the Lady Lavender.’

Mr Benson nodded, and drew a notepad towards him. ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked, with real interest.

‘I’m going back to Canada,’ she told him. ‘But I don’t want to sell the Lady Lavender.’

‘Oh, really?’ he queried, in some surprise.

‘Yes, really. I want you to draw up an agreement between Mr Benjamin Al-Khoury and myself, which will make him a full partner in the enterprise. So that we share the company half-and-half. He’d run it – he’d have full responsibility for it.’

The lawyer looked at her in some perplexity. ‘That would be very generous, Miss Harding. You do realize that you’ll be sacrificing a considerable capital sum – which you’d get if you sold the property?’

‘I know,’ she replied, a little irritated because she was tired. ‘But I believe I’ll get a steady income out of my share of it for many years – and Benji – Mr Al-Khoury – has to be considered.’

‘Does he know about this plan?’

He was surprised when she answered in the negative. He had imagined that young Benji had sold her the idea.
She said, ‘I’m buying his expertise with a partnership. If I leave him as Manager, he could be easily tempted to go to another soap company for higher pay – and I would not trust a new man. Then I would
have
to sell.’

‘I see.’ He sat quietly for a minute, while he thought the matter over, and she wondered if she could possibly explain to him the closeness which had grown up between her and her cousin. Would a lawyer understand such closeness? Or did he, as a family solicitor, have to negotiate, too often, between factions warring over Wills?

Finally, she said, ‘As far as we know, Benjamin and I are the sole survivors of our family; we have no roots, except what lie in each other. Because of this and because I think he’s an extraordinarily capable young man, I’m going to give him the chance of making a good living. He can draw a salary as Manager, and then whatever we make we share. Simple as that!’

‘You have thought this over – and you’re certain this is what you want to do?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, frankly, I’m delighted for Mr Al-Khoury’s sake. I’ve felt a great pity for him, ever since his father died. Mr James Al-Khoury always said that he could not have a better son.’

‘He couldn’t have had a more capable one,’ Wallace Helena said.

They hammered out the details of the agreement, and Mr Benson promised to have a draft ready for her and for Benji to consider within a week. She reluctantly agreed to this. She wanted to be gone. The winter was coming.

It was the content of this interview that she unveiled to Benji and his mother, as they sat round the kitchen table while he ate his warmed-up dinner.

When she said flatly that she was arranging with Mr Benson that he should have a full partnership with her,
he leaned back, fork and knife still in hand, and stated at her dumbfoundedly, and his mother, who was not quite certain what the partnership implied, looked anxiously at her son.

Then as it sank in, he swallowed hard. ‘I don’t know what to say!’ he blurted out.

‘Don’t you like the idea?’

‘Wallace Helena, it’s wonderful! I never dreamed of such a thing.’

Wallace Helena heard Eleanor let out her breath as she relaxed. She leaned across the table to pat her hand absently, as she watched Benji. He put down his knife and fork, pushed himself away from the table and came round to her. He put his arm round her shoulder, and said, his voice thick, ‘I won’t fail you. It’s going to be tough, but I believe I can make something out of the Lady Lavender.’

‘What do you mean? Tough?’

‘The competition’s very keen.’

‘Tush! We’re tougher. As I once said, “We live in interesting times!”’

He squeezed her shoulder and went back to his dinner. ‘When do I start?’ he asked, an eager light in his eyes.

‘In about two weeks’ time.’

Eleanor had seen the same expression on his father’s face, the face of a man accepting a challenge. There’s a lot of Jamie in our Benji, she thought happily.

‘Are you ready for your puddin’, luv?’ she asked.

Joe had fumed and fretted for weeks over Wallace Helena’s prolonged visit to Britain. Admittedly, she wrote regularly to him, keeping him informed of what she was doing. He did not reply to all she wrote; he was hard-pressed in her absence, first with the harvests of barley, hay and vegetables – and what little was left of the oats after a hailstorm, and then with the preparations for winter.

He had sometimes used Emily to help him and Simon Wounded, because the two hired hands were not very reliable and they had a fair herd of cattle to watch this year. Aunt Theresa complained when Emily was borrowed from her; she wanted her in the kitchen, to help to make pemmican and preserve vegetables.

As long as she did not have to go near the hired men, Emily never complained; she was easily frightened by any strange male, and she clung to Aunt Theresa as if she were still a child clinging to the nuns. It was as if she had buffered so much as a little girl that her mind and her normal responses to other human beings had been frozen. Joe did not think of her very much; she was simply another person to be fed and clothed in return for her work. Emily’s real love, however, was for the hens that she fed and kept clean; they roosted in the barn and would come fluttering down from the beams, when she called them to be fed in winter. In summer, they fended for themselves and she clipped their wing feathers, so that
they could not stray very far. During Wallace Helena’s absence, she had set two clutches of eggs under broody hens, and she now had a goodly number of pullets scratching round the yard. She was anxious to show Wallace Helena how the flock had increased, before some of her feathered friends had to have their throats slit; the flock was thinned severely every year, once the weather became bad, because they could rarely spare enough grain to feed a large number of birds until spring. She ventured to ask Joe one night over supper when he thought Wallace Helena would be home.

Joe had become more and more taciturn as the summer passed. He fought a growing fear that she would never return. He sensed that she had been seduced by the city – she was originally a city girl, wasn’t she? He hoped that one of the fancy men around her had not also seduced her. Aunt Theresa had told him not to worry; but if Wallace Helena, without him, felt anything like he did without her, the temptation to seek consolation would be very great.

In answer to Emily’s question, he grunted, ‘Dunno.’

‘Maybe there’ll be a letter when you go down tomorrow,’ Aunt Theresa suggested, as she ladled beans onto his tin plate. She spoke in Cree.

It took precious time to fetch the mail from the village which was growing up round the Fort; yet he knew he would go, because his longing for something of her was so great.

There was a letter. As was his custom, he slipped it into his jacket pocket; he would read it while on the trail riding home. Though a few more people now used the trail, it was still no more than a muddy lane, and ice from an early frost crackled under his boots as he dismounted to open the letter.

He was stunned by its content. A baby? How did he feel
about becoming a proud father at his age? At her age? At first he grinned sheepishly. Then the idea hit him that it wasn’t his – she said it was due in March.

It was as if he had been unexpectedly struck by a friend. The hurt in him felt worse than the pain he had suffered when he had caught the smallpox. Here she was, making smart little jokes that he would have to go out and shoot a rabbit so that there would be a warm skin to wrap it in – and yet how could it be his child?

By mutual agreement, they had always followed her mother’s regime, so that they would have no children in such a harsh environment; he himself was easy about it because the tribe from which his mother came was either dead or scattered; his children would not have any particular group to belong to, and Wallace Helena had nobody, except her newfound cousin in Liverpool.

His attention had been so completely caught by her news of the baby that he hardly took in the information that she had divided the soap works between herself and her cousin; and that, given ordinary luck, there would be a remittance each year from her share, some of which could be used to help them out at the homestead.

His face was grey as he remounted and rode towards home.

As the sun sank lower, a cold wind arose in the north. It freshened him, and he tried to order his chaotic thinking and decide how he would deal with the situation.

She had said in her letter that she would probably be sailing across the Atlantic before the letter reached him; that meant she could be in Calgary within a week or two. What should he do?

When he rode into the yard and dismounted, he still felt so distraught that he thought he would vomit. Emily had just shooed the last of the hens into the barn for the night, and he asked her if she would stable the horse and rub it
down for him. She took one look at his stony face, and nodded. She patted the animal and it went with her. His hunting dog, Bessie, heavy with puppies almost ready to drop, trotted over to him and nuzzled his hand. He ignored her, and she slunk away.

As he opened the heavy, wooden door into the cabin, Aunt Theresa looked up from the hearth; she was making bannock for supper. The cabin was still redolent with the smell of the dried meat, fat and berries of the pemmican she had made earlier in the month. Most of the work had been done outside, but she had finished the pounding of it indoors, because, she said, the wind had been so keen that it had made her old bones ache. Now, the smell was mixed with that of bannock, and to Joe it felt welcoming and homely.

He pulled out a chair and thankfully sat down. Aunt Theresa noticed, as he took off his felt hat and laid it on the table, that he was shivering slightly. He put his hand into his shirt pocket, took out Wallace Helena’s letter and flipped it onto the table beside the hat.

Aunt Theresa got up slowly from her squatting position and, in the silence, Joe heard her knees crack as she straightened them. The door also creaked, and he looked up. He had forgotten to shut it properly, and Bessie, his dog, nosed her way in. Half looking at Aunt Theresa, she slid almost on her stomach towards the fire. Aunt Theresa did not like dogs in the house, but Emily had accidentally shut her out of the barn, where she had found a warm corner in which to deliver her pups, and she knew her time was very near.

Aunt Theresa ignored her. She was far too concerned about her nephew. ‘You ill?’ she asked. She looked down at the letter and feared, suddenly, what it might contain. At no point had she thoroughly understood why Wallace
Helena had had to go to Liverpool; the concepts involved were too far removed from her own experience.

Joe sighed. ‘No, I’m not ill,’ he said.

Aunt Theresa bent down and expertly turned over the bannock cooking on the hot stone in the hearth. ‘What does she say?’ she asked suspiciously, pointing to the letter.

‘She’s coming home – home within the month, I’d think.’

‘You don’t sound too happy about it.’

‘She’s going to have a baby.’

Aunt Theresa’s normally immobile face broke into a suggestion of a smile. ‘Well, that’ll be good – we’re all getting too stuck in our ways; there
should
be youngsters around.’

‘How do I know it’s my kid? We never had any before,’ he snarled.

Aunt Theresa had turned back to her cooking. Now she froze where she stood. She was outraged.

When she found her voice, she was almost snarling herself. ‘Joe Black! You’ve no reason to doubt her. She’s never been flighty; if she had been, she’d have found a way to do it long since.’

‘If it’s not mine, I don’t want it’.

‘This is her home – and yours. If she wants to have it here, she’ll have it here.’

‘It don’t mean I’ve got to stay here. I can go anywhere and make a living.’

Aunt Theresa clenched her teeth. She bent and took the last bannock to cook off the stone and wrapped it with the others in a cloth. Then she came round the table, to face her nephew. She had no children of her own, and he was the nearest thing to a son to her.

She said softly to him, ‘We’ve all been together in this
cabin for a long time; we know each other – and we’ve learned to trust each other. She’s always shared what she had with us, good times and bad times. And she saved your life, when you had the smallpox, remember? If the child is yours, it’s great to have a kid, especially if it’s a boy; if it’s not yours, then she’ll need all our help very badly – she wouldn’t be coming home if that weren’t true.’

He did not respond. After she had waited for a moment, she touched the crouching dog’s flank with her moccasined toe. ‘You’re not turning Bessie out because she’s come home with a belly full of pups; are you going to turn away from Wallace Helena when she needs a place for her baby?’

He swallowed, and said, ‘It’d be hard to be father to another man’s brat.’

‘Bah! It wouldn’t be the first time a man’s found a good kid by taking in a foundling. Anyway, she’d tell you straight if it wasn’t yours – she’s not afraid of anyone.’ She put a comforting hand on his shoulder. The wrinkles on her face rippled as if, suddenly, she was trying to control a smile, and then she asked him, ‘Are all Englishmen white?’

He looked sharply up at her in surprise. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen a black one.’

‘Well,’ responded Aunt Theresa, with a flicker of triumph in her expression, ‘where’s she going to get a brown baby from in England? Any kid of yours she has is going to be easily recognizable.’

He stared blankly at her for a moment, and then he began to laugh, almost hysterically.

She did not let him see the triumph in her eyes. She merely said, in her usual gentle way, ‘Now you get your stuff off the table so that we can have supper. Simon and Emily’ll be in soon – starving, as usual.’ She busied herself round the fire, and then remarked, ‘I know I’ll be thankful
when Wallace Helena’s back – there’s too much work without her. And if we’re going to have a little kid round the place, I’ll enjoy it, I know that’

Joe nodded, and slowly took off his boots and jacket He went to the water barrel and took out a pannikin of water to wash his hands. Aunt Theresa spread tin plates round the bare table.

‘You know, Joe,’ she said to him, ‘lately I’ve wondered who would look after you and Wallace Helena when you grow old. Our tribe’s scattered, your uncles and cousins are dead, except for one – and he’s in gaol in Montana. There are no young men to take a lead in bringing the tribe together again. I reckon you need a kid more than you need anything in the world.’ She slapped spoons down by the plates. ‘It’d be someone to continue here, after all the work you and Tom have put into this place – and Wallace Helena.’

He bit his lower lip and did not answer her while he wiped his face with a bit of towelling. She had brought up a subject which he had never before considered. He and Wallace Helena had always been smart enough to plan ahead for the homestead; but he himself had rarely thought about his old age. When he had thought of death it had always been because of an immediate threat – epidemics like scarlet fever, diphtheria, tuberculosis, a dozen scourges to which prairie dwellers had been subject He remembered his terror the day he had been cut off by a forest fire – that would have been a fast but painful death. And out on the trapline, alone, a small accident could incapacitate a man and leave him to freeze to death. There had been for years the hovering fear of starvation. That he and Wallace Helena might grow old and weak, in need of the help of others, had never occurred to him.

As he sat down at the table, he shuddered at the idea of being dependent upon others; but that was why his old
grandfather had had a number of wives – to breed sons to protect the tribe and their hunting grounds when he was too old to do it, the best man amongst them to take his place when he died.

He never said a word throughout supper. Afterwards, he went over to the hired men’s bunkhouse to have a word with Simon Wounded about the work for the next day. Then, though the temperature was dropping fast, he sat on the fence and again thought about becoming old.

Amongst the surviving Cree and Blackfoot, he had a number of friends and even distant relatives; he also considered some of the Metis who had settled round the Fort to be his friends, though Wallace Helena would have little to do with them; she had, in her youth, been too often insulted by them. Some of them already looked older than he himself did!

Partly because he had left his grandfather’s lodge so young and partly because of the decimation of normal Indian life by the intrusion of white people – even the first settlements thousands of miles away in the east had had a ripple effect across the country – he had considered himself a loner, perfectly capable of looking after himself. He had never considered that he might need care from someone else.

Even as a young man, he had realized that the traditional Indian way of life was coming to an end, and he had seen the wisdom of joining up with friendly, easygoing Tom Harding in an endeavour to wrest a living from the land. That decision had been a wise one, which had brought Wallace Helena into his life as a wonderful, additional gift.

He was lucky, he reflected, as he struck a match to light another cheroot that he had a large homestead – half a large one, he corrected himself – which was flourishing very well. And now Aunt Theresa had suddenly knocked
his feet from under him, by telling him he needed a child because he was going to grow as old as some of the toothless gaffers sitting on the bench outside Ross’s Hotel on a warm summer day. And who do they live with? he asked himself suddenly. The reply came equally fast – with their sons or daughters!