The Lemon Tree (9 page)

Glenn and Ada Harding provided a modest wedding breakfast in their back garden. Since it was a second marriage, only a few neighbours had been invited over to join the party. All of them were curious to see the bride. The men thought she was very pretty and congratulated Tom; the women tended to side with old Mrs Harding in saying that she was not strong enough to be the wife of a homesteader – and they whispered disparagingly that she looked like a Jewess. Acutely embarrassed by their stares, Leila held the soft brim of her summer hat close to her face and stayed very close to Tom.

The bride’s daughter sat, almost unnoticed, on a bench under a tree. Sally, who was herself totally ignored by the other guests, saw the forlorn young girl, and came over to join her. She saw tears on Wallace Helena’s cheek and she immediately handed her the glass of wine she was carrying. ‘Drink it down, hon. You’ll feel better.’

As Wallace Helena silently drained the glass, Sally carefully arranged the skirts of her dress; she had made it out of the bits of black silk Wallace Helena had given her. She looked over at the bride, who was also wearing black silk. ‘Gee, your mama looks pretty,’ she exclaimed, as if she was seeing Leila for the first time.

‘Yes,’ agreed Wallace Helena, without enthusiasm. Far more astute than her mother, she foresaw problems arising like thunderclouds – and probably considerable
hardship in an unexplored country like Canada. Yet, what could she do?

When she had suggested to Sally that perhaps she should remain by herself in Chicago, try to earn enough to keep herself, Sally had been very explicit about what was likely to happen to a fourteen-year-old left alone in a city.

Sally had added sharply, ‘You be thankful your ma’s found a decent man to take care of you both; I wish I could find someone like him. There isn’t nothing to fear about Canada; slaves run away to it, so as to be free.’

‘Do they? Could you come with us, Sally? Could you?’ Her voice was suddenly wild with hope.

The black woman had laughed down at her. ‘That Mr Harding don’t need another mouth to feed, baby. And I got my mother to keep. I’m no slave – I’m free.’ She had given Wallace Helena a playful shove with her elbow, as she said the last words. ‘He’s O.K. Be thankful he’s willing to take you in.’ She hesitated, and then said, ‘He’ll take care of you; he’ll never touch you, I truly believe.’

Wallace Helena did not understand the import of Sally’s last words; she was still overwhelmed at having to face another new country.

Old Mrs Harding did one very sensible thing for them. Realizing that she could not talk sense into Tom, as she put it, she persuaded Leila and Wallace Helena to buy a solid pair of flat-heeled boots each and enough veiling to attach to their hats, so that they were protected in some degree from blackfly and mosquitoes – and she ordered Tom to pay the bill.

In the course of their journey, which took weeks, both Leila and Wallace Helena had reason to be thankful to her: mosquitoes and blackfly plagued them most of the way. They went by train to La Crosse, then by stage to the Red River, and, despite the threat of yet another Sioux uprising, by paddle steamer to Fort Garry. There they
rested for a couple of days, while Tom made inquiries. They were not very impressed by what they saw of their first Hudson’s Bay Fort, and awaited with anxiety Tom’s decision as to how they were to proceed. Their landlady, the wife of a miner who ran a small general store, was aghast when told where they were going; as far as she knew, only one white woman had ever travelled that far, and she was the wife of a Hudson’s Bay man.

Leila wept, and Wallace Helena begged Tom to take them back to Chicago. Tom laughed, cheered them up and said they would travel by York boat. Several expeditions had gone out recently from Fort Garry to Fort Edmonton by land; but he was not going to chance such a dangerous journey.

The sail up Lake Winnipeg was not unpleasant. But the rest of the journey was done by York boat up the Saskatchewan River, a long dreary drag with little but pemmican to eat, cooped up in a tiny boat, one of a Company brigade returning to Fort Edmonton with stores.

To Leila’s horror, the boats were from time to time dragged out of the river, their cargo unloaded and transported on the backs of the voyageurs, to bypass waterfalls or rapids. The boats themselves were hauled along rough tracks, sometimes made of tree trunks and sometimes a well-trodden path. During these portages, Leila and Wallace Helena stumbled along as best they could, following the crew for mile after mile. Despite the heavy veiling protecting their faces and necks, they were badly bitten by mosquitoes and blackfly, which rose like a fog around them at every step; Tom and the other men seemed to have a certain immunity – their bites did not swell so badly. The crew were Metis, short, tanned, muscular men who cursed in fluent French, as they waged their usual battle against the flow of the huge river.

Leila was not a heavy woman, but what fat she had fell
off her. She looked so gaunt that both Wallace Helena and Tom began to wonder if she could survive the journey.

Wallace Helena had, at first, thought that she herself would not survive, but the arduous exercise and adequate rations of pemmican actually began to improve her health. She was filthy dirty and nearly insane from the incessant insect bites, and she longed for some privacy, if only to wash herself down in the cold river water. The men did try their best to provide a little privacy, inasmuch as they turned their backs when the women had to relieve themselves, but they had a tight, fixed schedule to follow, and very little time was spent ashore. No special allowance was made for the fact that they had women with them. The party was soaked through by rain and, on one occasion, by sleet. ‘Lucky it hasn’t hailed,’ remarked one man to Wallace Helena. ‘Sometimes it hails heavy enough to bruise you.’

When the wind was in the right quarter, sails were rigged to ease the amount of poling which the men had to do; it also temporarily scattered the mosquitoes. Wallace Helena thought that she had never seen men work so hard for a living; yet they remained fairly good-humoured with each other. They were surprised that both women spoke French, admittedly very different from their own patois, but nevertheless enough for both sides to make rueful jokes about their suffering.

Towards the end of the journey, Leila showed signs of having a fever, and Wallace Helena’s heart sank. Wrapped in a blanket, she lay shivering beside her daughter, talking sometimes of the old days in Beirut or of her worries about Wallace Helena’s future, her mind wandering so that she did not know where she was.

It seemed to Wallace Helena that she had been crammed in the hated boat for months and that the journey would never end. She felt furiously that Tom had
embroiled them in an expedition that nobody should be expected to make.

‘What if Mother dies?’ she asked him desperately.

Dog-tired himself, Tom could not answer her. Although he knew the journey to be gruelling, he had not realized how profoundly different was the strength of his late Indian wife compared with that of city-bred women. He had expected his new wife to complain about the hardship, but he had not thought that it would be unbearable. Wallace Helena had only to see the anguish in his eyes to know that her dread of losing Leila was shared.

Then, when both women had nearly given up hope, it seemed that an air of cheerfulness went from man to man, an excited anticipation. The man in charge of their craft told Wallace Helena, ‘Tomorrow, we’ll land for a little while – get a chance to wash and stretch ourselves.’ He looked at Leila, lying wrapped in a blanket in an acutely uncomfortable position towards the stern of the boat, and added kindly, ‘We’ll get a fire going when we’re ashore, and I’ll make a bit of broth for your mother.’

Wallace Helena smiled her gratitude; the man himself looked exhausted. ‘Why are we stopping?’

‘We have to make ourselves look decent – for when we arrive at the Fort!’

‘You mean we’re nearly there?’ Her filthy face lit up.

‘Be there tomorrow night, God willing.’

‘Thank God!’ Wallace Helena said, and meant it. ‘Would you tell my stepfather?’ she asked, pointing towards the rowers, where Tom had taken an oar and was rowing with a kind of deadly mechanical rhythm, his eyes half-shut; it was heavy work, and he was almost oblivious of what was going on around him.

He nodded, and she turned round and carefully eased herself closer to the tiny moribund bundle which was her mother, to tell her the good news.

As promised, the voyageur made a soup for Leila. While Tom built a fire, the man cut up some pemmican and put it into an iron pot with water and some bits of chopped-up greenery which he had hastily gathered. A tripod was rigged over the fire and the pot hung on it. When he considered it ready, he added a little rum; and Wallace Helena spooned the resultant soup into her barely coherent mother lying by the fire.

There was much scrubbing of faces and hands in the chilly waters of the river; one or two men sharpened their knives and roughly shaved themselves. Then, fortified with rum, they poled the last few miles. Several canoes came out to greet them, and there was a small crowd waiting for them when they landed at the foot of an escarpment.

The crowd was dumbfounded when Wallace Helena stepped ashore, followed by Tom carrying her mother.

The Factor was furious when he heard that he had two women from Chicago resting for the night in
his
fort; didn’t his boatmen know that settlers were not to be encouraged? Tom Harding had been a big enough nuisance, an American carving out a piece of Hudson’s Bay land to farm. Now he’d brought a white wife – and her daughter. Other women would follow them; there was already a rumour that a missionary’s wife would be arriving in the district one of these days. Settlers would clear the land, ruin the fur trade. What were his men about?

Leila was put to bed in a comfortable cabin by the Indian wife of an acquaintance of Tom’s, and, afterwards, she brought Wallace Helena a bucket of hot water in which to wash herself. Tom was sent for immediately to attend the Factor at the Big House.

Tall and silent, an exhausted, worried Tom was harangued in the man’s office. Both men were aware,
however, that it was largely bombast; the British Government had left the renewal of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Charter up in the air, when it had been discussed in 1858; and already Government survey parties were beginning to penetrate the Bay’s kingdom; a few people, some American, had begun to settle.

Despite the hardships of his life, Tom loved his land and dreaded being driven off it by the Company; so, when the Factor had finished what he had to say, Tom politely told him that he missed his dead wife and son, and now sought to rebuild his family. He would be transferring his wife to his cabin in the morning – he carefully did not use the word
homestead
which would have implied his ownership of a piece of land claimed by the Company as their own.

The Factor had kept Tom standing and had offered him no hospitality, so Tom felt free to turn on his heel and walk out.

Word of the arrival of the brigade was brought to Joe while he was bringing the small herd of cattle he and Tom possessed closer in to the homestead. He had heard a rumour of a party of Blackfoot roaming the area, and he assumed that they had penetrated so far into Cree country because buffalo were getting scarce and they were hungry. He had no desire to have his precious beasts eaten by them.

The boy who brought the message was a Metis, the son of a friend of Joe’s working as a cooper in the Fort. While he got his breath after jogging most of the way, he hung on to Joe’s stirrup. Then he burst out, ‘Mr Harding’s with them. Brought a new wife, a white woman, and her daughter. Says to ask your mother to have the place neat and prepare some food. One woman’s sick.’

‘You’re kidding?’ exclaimed Joe, well aware of the Crees’ sense of humour – and this youngster was half-Cree.

The lad was offended. ‘I’m not,’ he responded crossly. ‘I saw them. They’ll be at your place about midday tomorrow.’

Joe sat on his horse and stared down at him. ‘I’ll be damned!’ he muttered.

He roused himself, and drew out a wad of chewing tobacco from his top pocket He took out his knife and cut a generous piece of it which he handed down to the boy,
with his thanks. ‘Like to go down to the cabin and have something to eat?’ he asked.

‘No. Dad wants me back.’ The boy let go of the stirrup. ‘Mr Harding says not to send horses; he’s borrowing two – and a cart – from Mr Ermineskin.’

Joe nodded, and handed the boy his water bottle so that he could take a swig. After he had drunk, the young messenger said he would sit under a nearby tree for a few minutes to rest and then go home.

Joe finished the job of persuading his steers into the home pasture, and then rode down to the cabin to break the astonishing news to his mother, Agnes Black. The bachelor home had a very fast tidying up.

Late the following morning, when Joe cantered down the narrow trail towards Edmonton to meet his friend, he could hear the ear-splitting shriek of the ungreased wheels of the Red River cart accompanying Tom, long before he saw him.

The wind was quite brisk and the mosquitoes were few. The breeze was whipping the leaves off the trees, and it was through a sudden storm of them that he caught his first glimpse of Leila, barely visible amid shawls and veils. Tom was riding a heavy, black horse and held her in the crook of his arm in front of him.

Behind him, clutching the reins of a smaller animal, rode a scarecrow of a young girl. She had thrown back the veil of the hat perched on the back of her head, to reveal a sallow face so thin that it seemed to consist of two enormous brown eyes surrounded by masses of newly washed black hair; soft strands of it blew across her hollow cheeks.

For a second, Joe ignored his grinning friend. As Wallace Helena approached and caught sight of him, he saw the desolation in the girl’s wonderful eyes suddenly
replaced by intense fear. It seemed to him that, on seeing him, she reined in her horse instinctively, and half-glanced back along the trail as if to escape.

Uncertain himself, Joe stopped his own horse and dismounted, to wait until Tom reached him. The infernal shriek of the cart behind slowed and ceased.

‘Hullo, there,’ said Joe carefully to the party. ‘Glad to see you.’

A small hand emerged from the shawls in front of Tom, and Leila smiled shyly at him. Although she looked very wan, Joe understood immediately what had captured Tom. She was a beauty. He turned to look at Tom, whose lined, suntanned visage went suddenly bright red with embarrassment. He managed to say, ‘Hi, Joe. Good to see you again.’ Then he looked down at Leila and said, ‘This is my wife.’

Joe raised his hand in salute to her, and said to Tom, ‘Congratulations! Du Pont’s son told me the news.’

He turned towards Wallace Helena, who was regarding him cautiously from under her long fringe of lashes. He grinned up at her, and asked Tom, ‘And this lady?’

‘My stepdaughter, Wallace Helena.’

Joe’s eyebrows lifted slightly at the familiar first name. He then raised his hand again to salute her. His eyes twinkled cheerfully, and he was glad to see her relax slightly, as he said, ‘Nice to meet you, Miss. Hope you and your ma’ll be happy here.’

She nodded, and replied in a shy whisper, ‘Thank you.’

Because the path was too narrow to ride abreast, Joe remounted his horse to lead them back to the cabin. The cart resumed its terrible shriek, making any communication impossible. News would have to wait.

Thanks to Jeanette, her hostess of the previous night, a bathed and tidy Leila managed to walk across the
threshold of the cabin which was to be her home for the rest of her life.

As she entered on her husband’s arm, she paused. The room seemed quite large to her and, except for the hunting and trapping gear hanging on the walls, looked more comfortable than the miserable apartment they had left in Chicago.

During the night just past, her mind had cleared of the fever, and she had come to the conclusion that, whatever awaited her here, it could not be worse than the traumatic journey she had barely survived. Here were four solid walls to protect her from the jungle outside.

With timid determination, she surveyed the cabin’s interior. If she could regain her strength, she would make it into a real home for the husband of her choice.

She looked up at Tom and smiled shyly. ‘You have a nice home,’ she lied.

Very thankfully, he squeezed her arm, as Agnes Black, another shy person, came out of the lean-to summer kitchen. She was a heavily built, short woman, garbed in a full, printed cotton skirt and a black blouse. On her feet, she wore shabby skin slippers. As she waited for Leila to speak to her, she pushed wisps of grey hair away from a face like a raisin. Her black eyes gleamed in the firelight.

Leila had not forgotten old Mrs Harding’s remark that she would be no use as a pioneer’s wife, and she realized that she would be dependent upon this quiet, foreign woman to show her how to do practically everything. She smiled at her and said slowly to her, in poor English, ‘I am glad you here.’

The genuine relief expressed in the words touched the Indian woman. She made a small gesture towards the hearth where a pot of coffee was keeping warm before the fire. ‘I’ve made coffee for you,’ she said simply.

Leila nodded and smiled again, and Tom propelled her towards a roughly made wooden chair. She sat down thankfully and closed her eyes; tears of weakness eased out from under the lids.

She wondered how Tom could expose her to such a terrible journey. Yet, when he held a mug of coffee to her lips and she opened her eyes, to see him peering anxiously at her, a warmth coursed through her feeble frame. She drank the coffee slowly, allowing him to continue to hold the mug.

Wallace Helena and Joe Black had followed Leila and Tom into the cabin. Joe took his boots off at the door, so Wallace Helena did the same. Her eyes were wide with apprehension as she looked round her new home. She felt at a loss, almost unable to cope with anything more that was new to her.

Joe’s mother poured cups of coffee for them and they sat down, side by side, on a bench to drink it. Most of the attention was focused on Leila, resting in the curve of her husband’s arm.

Joe said something in Cree to his mother. She nodded, and asked Tom in the same language if his wife would like to lie down. What was her sickness?

Tom explained about the fever, and Agnes asked if she would like to have a draught which she could concoct; it would help her to sleep and relieve any fever remaining.

Leila was a little reluctant to take a strange medicine, but Tom assured her that Agnes was known for her ability to heal. She was persuaded to lie on his bed to rest, in a tiny, doorless room at one side of the cabin, and after supper she sipped down the bitter mixture which Agnes brought to her. Covered by buffalo robes, she slept for fifteen hours.

Meanwhile, Agnes, apparently unruffled by the addition of two females to the household, showed Wallace
Helena the summer kitchen and the clay oven outside, in which she baked rough barley bread.

They inspected an adjacent store house, which had a hole dug into its earthen floor. ‘When the river has frozen, Joe cuts out blocks of ice and lines the hole with them – it lengthens the time we can store raw meat,’ she explained in halting English. The hut also held smoked fish, pemmican and various boxes and barrels collected over the years to store vegetables in.

Outside the cabin itself, against one wall, was a pile of roughly hewn logs. A middle-aged Indian with long thin plaits on either side of his face was stolidly swinging an axe, as he reduced the trunk of a tree to logs. He paused, put down his axe and leaned on it, as they approached. ‘Simon Wounded,’ explained Agnes. She spoke in Cree to the man, and he nodded understanding. He did not look directly at Wallace Helena, but lifted his axe again and continued his work.

‘He lives with Joe and me over there.’ Agnes pointed to a shack on the other side of the muddy yard. She turned and pointed again to a bigger building. ‘That’s the barn.’ They walked over to inspect it and disturbed a flurry of hens.

Agnes showed her the outhouse behind the cabin, and then they returned to the cabin.

While Agnes watched her with some amusement, Wallace Helena walked slowly round it to examine the amazing collection of implements, pieces of harness, lanterns, clothes and wraps on the walls. There were guns on a rack over the fireplace, and shelves at man-height were littered with caps, hats, old boots and shoes, tools, a shaving mug, what looked like folded skins, and a series of beautifully woven round baskets. From the beams hung what Wallace Helena imagined must be traps for small animals, side by side with bunches of herbs, several
bunches of onions and two flitches of bacon. Agnes pointed to the latter, and said, ‘I finished smoking them a while back. Tomorrow, Tom’ll probably find time to make a space in the store house for them.’

Wallace Helena nodded. Despite the clutter, the place had a sense of being a home, long-established and cosy.

As she helped Agnes prepare an evening meal, and Tom went round his domain with Joe, to hear all that had happened in his absence, Wallace Helena began to emerge from the desolation and fear which had gripped her for so long.

She did not like what she saw, but Agnes’s quiet competence assured her that there was an organized way of life in the isolated homestead, probably a more dependable one than that they had endured in Chicago.

Sensing the girl’s uncertainties, Agnes told her about life inside the Fort, and that there were other forts strung across the country, with which the Company kept in touch. The boats plying the river brought them news from Fort Garry and York House, on Hudson Bay. ‘And from London, where they say the Great Queen lives,’ she added.

Wallace Helena was impressed and comforted; they were not quite so alone as she had imagined. Good weather also helped her; the autumn skies were a flawless blue and the leaves on the deciduous trees and bushes flaunted their reds and yellows. There was little hint of the bitterness of the winter to come.

Leila stayed in bed for most of the first few days in her new home. Then, as her strength returned, she got up and slowly explored the immediate environs of the cabin. In her soft, poor English, she asked quiet questions of Agnes Black and Simon Wounded about their daily tasks and listened respectfully to their replies. She asked Tom details about what was required to prepare for the winter, which, she had gathered from Agnes, was very severe.

Once it was apparent to Wallace Helena that her mother was beginning to take charge of her new domain, she thankfully left her in the stuffy cabin and went out with Joe and Tom. She had ridden once or twice in the mountains behind Beirut but it took her some time to control the pony on which Joe mounted her. With a good deal of laughter, she learned to stay on it and became devoted to it.

Being short of labour because of Tom’s absence, they were late in getting in the last of the oats and potatoes, so Wallace Helena fetched and carried for all three men, who worked from dawn to dusk. She also helped Agnes raise water from the well, a long, slow job of lowering a bucket on a rope and hauling it up again. Agnes assured her that it was easier than carrying bucketfuls on a yoke, from the river.

She slept in a bunk in the living-room, so tired that she was not even haunted by her usual nightmare about the little boy she had seen dying in a lane in Beirut.

Though almost overwhelmed by the length and harshness of the journey, Wallace Helena had, throughout, followed Sally’s advice with regard to her new stepfather; she had set out to make a friend of him.

A kindly man, worried to death about his new wife’s health, Tom Harding thankfully met her half way. It was not an easy adjustment; they sometimes found themselves at loggerheads. Wallace Helena was understandably resentful that she had been replaced by the quiet American as first in her mother’s affections.

For his part, Tom remembered his own terror of the empty wilderness, when he had become lost en route to Fort Edmonton. He sympathized with Wallace Helena’s obvious fear of the strange, primitive world in which she now found herself. To help her in adjusting, he asked Agnes and Joe Black to be particularly patient with her.
Though Wallace Helena was largely unaware of their solicitude, she began to relax with them and to talk to them.