Читать книгу The Lemon Tree - Helen Forrester - Страница 6

Unaware of the stir She had caused in the heart of Mr Tasker, her soap master, or the depth of the fears she had raised in all her employees, the thin, yellow woman from the wilds of Western Canada sat at a cherry-wood desk in the bay window of her bedroom in a house in nearby Hill Street. She was in the process of writing a letter to Joe Black, her partner on her homestead in western Canada.

She stared dismally at the soaking July downpour pattering against the glass. The room smelled damp and was unexpectedly cold. What a grey and black city Liverpool was and, yet, how exciting it was with its glittering gas-lamps and heavy traffic. And how alien she felt in it.

This proud Lebanese lady, who carried a man’s name and then the name of the patron saint of Beirut, St Helena, and who normally feared nobody, was, for once, feeling intimidated by men. ‘If you can call them men,’ she muttered. ‘Self-complacent barrels of lard.’

She scolded herself that she must not prejudge. ‘You’re tired with the journey, and the confinement of the ship. And being indoors all day. You must be patient.’

She leaned back and began to tug the hairpins out of her tight bun. ‘I don’t feel patient,’ she informed herself through gritted teeth.

‘Come on, now,’ encouraged her cooler self. ‘If you can make friends with miserable and angry Blackfoot and Crees, and cope with rebellious Metis – not to speak of Oblate Fathers with the power of God behind them – you can cope with an indifferent chemist named Turner, a Benjamin Al-Khoury, head of Sales and Assistant Manager, rude enough not to be here when the new owner of his company arrives – and a lawyer you don’t trust too much.’ She pressed a tanned fist hard onto the desk, as if to emphasize her thoughts.

Then she absently spread out her fingers to look at her gold, handmade rings. Her eyes gleamed, and she laughed sardonically.

What would these stuffy Englishmen think if they knew that she lived with Joe Black, the son of a freed Ontario black slave and a Cree woman? He would make two of any of them, she thought with quiet pleasure; a big man with a face filled with laughter lines, lines that could harden when he felt insulted, till his jaw looked like a rat trap and his huge black eyes with their back-curling lashes lost their gentleness completely. He rarely struck anybody with his great fists, but when he did it was with the punishing skill of a Cree guard warrior. He had a clear, uncluttered mind, well able to assess a situation, an ability to reason, to negotiate with patience, before he struck.

These latter gifts were invaluable, she reflected, in a country full of wrathful native people; the Hudson’s Bay Company had frequently used him as peacemaker between the Indians and themselves – and even missionaries were not past using him as an interpreter.

With one finger, she touched tenderly her gold rings. When Joe had discovered that she valued jewellery, he had panned for gold in the North Saskatchewan River and had fashioned the rings for her. Lots of men had subsequently tried to find the mother lode of the river’s gold, but no one had succeeded; it was the rich, black soil which held the real wealth of the Northwest Territories.

She laughed again. ‘These pink Englishmen would have a fit,’ she told the raindrops on the windowpanes. ‘But I’ll teach them to patronize a woman,’ she promised herself. ‘I will decide the future of the Lady Lavender Soap Works!’ In which remark, she was a little too optimistic.

As she met the various people in the new world she had entered in Liverpool, she had become slowly aware that she was shabby and out of date, almost a figure of fun – a small snigger from a messenger boy, hastily stifled, a raised eyebrow, a stare in the street. She found the crush of people round her difficult enough, after the emptiness of western Canada, and this added attention had bothered her; it was the first time since she had left Lebanon that she had thought of clothes as anything else but covering against the elements.

She was unaware that, despite her clothes, she had a formidable presence. She moved swiftly with a long effortless stride, and she had responded in cold, clear sentences to the explanations given her by her escorts through the soapery. When, later, she had asked for further explanation, she had surprised them by recalling exactly what had been said.

Most of the men in the soapery wore a head-covering of some kind; but only Mr Tasker, the Soap Master and key man in the whole soapery, had doffed his bowler hat, when she had been introduced to him by Mr Benson, the lawyer. He had answered her questions carefully, his blue eyes twinkling amid rolls of fat as he endeavoured to watch the great vats steaming and heaving, and occasionally said, between his answers to her queries, ‘Excuse me, Miss’, while he instructed one of his assistants in the delicate task of producing excellent soap.

After meeting Mr Tasker and his helpers, Mr Benson had handed her over to Mr Turner, the chemist, who was, in the lawyer’s opinion, in the absence of Benjamin Al-Khoury, the most refined of her employees. He should, therefore, know how to treat a lady.

A shy, retiring man, who wanted to get back to his little laboratory, Mr Turner’s conversation was strained and desultory and did not particularly impress Wallace Helena. She was interested, however, when he told her that Mr Tasker was probably the best soap man in south Lancashire and could probably have gone to a bigger company.

‘You mean they would’ve paid him more?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wonder that he did not move.’

‘He and Mr James Al-Khoury were great friends. I believe they were together from the first establishment of the soapery. And there’s no doubt that he and Mr Benjamin get on very well.’

Wallace Helena murmured approbation.

They went into the Power House together, to meet Mr Ferguson, the Steam Engineer, a middle-aged man with a ruddy face and an air of great self-confidence and dignity. He was dressed in immaculate blue overalls. He was attentive and informative to his lady visitor, well aware that he belonged to a newly emerged class of employee able to cope with the mechanization of industry and was, therefore, a prized servant of the company. He was a trifle defensive with Mr Turner. Wallace Helena noticed this and wondered why. She had yet to discover the subtleties of class in British society; Mr Ferguson was exceedingly proud of his abilities, but he remained a working man; Mr Turner was also a highly trained man – but he was middle-class – a man of privilege as well as ability.

As she walked slowly round the works, she had noted carefully the reactions of her employees to herself and also reactions between them. After watching for years the body language of the Indians who passed over her land, to judge whether they were hostile or friendly, she had learned to observe the slightest shrug, the curve of a lip, the smallest move of hip or hand. She had quickly picked up the general nervousness of the men to whom she was introduced and she had felt sorry for them. In return, she had tried to show herself as a confident, capable person, and she felt that some of them had liked her.

Only Mr Benjamin Al-Khoury had failed to turn up.

According to Mr Bobsworth, the bookkeeper and forwarding clerk, he was in Manchester and would return in a few days’ time. ‘Life has been very hectic for Mr Benjamin since Mr James passed away, him being Assistant Manager to Mr James, like. Everything fell on him.’ Mr Bobsworth heaved a sigh deep enough to make every inch of his five feet quiver.

She had nodded, and remarked that Uncle James’s death must have been a shock to everyone.

‘Indeed, yes, Miss Harding.’ His eyes blinked behind his small, gold-rimmed spectacles, and then he said, ‘I should tell you, Ma’am, that Mr Benjamin asked me to convey his regrets to you at not being here today; he’s investigating the unexpected refusal of a customer to renew his contract with us – in the cotton trade, they are.’

‘I see,’ she had replied noncommittally, and Mr Bobsworth had begun to worry that young Benji had offended the lady deeply by his absence.

Now, seated in her stuffy bedroom, she made a face as she recalled the conversation.

If, as she suspected, Mr Benjamin Al-Khoury was her illegitimate cousin, a product of Uncle James’s love affair with an English woman, about which she had heard vaguely as a young girl when she was living in Chicago, he was probably suffering from an acute bout of jealousy because she had inherited his father’s business.

She was fairly sure that, if he had been a legitimate child, he could have claimed, in law, at least a part of his father’s Estate, no matter what his parent’s Will had said about leaving all his property to his brother, Charles, her own father. Mr Benson had, however, assured her that there were no other claimants to the Estate, and she presumed that Mr Benson knew his law.

It was possible, of course, that Benjamin Al-Khoury was some very distant relative, whose parents had also managed to survive the massacre of Christians in 1860.

With a wry smile at the foibles of his own youth, Mr Benson had explained to her that, when he was first setting up his law practice and was badly in need of every penny he could earn, her Uncle James had consulted him about the exact meaning of a contract he was about to sign. Afterwards, in pursuit of a small additional fee, he had inquired if Uncle James had a Will and, since he had not, he had been persuaded to make one.

At that time, Uncle James had had no one else to whom to leave his modest possessions, so, at the age of twenty-three, he had left everything to his brother, Charles, in Chicago. And now, as the residual legatee of her father’s and her mother’s own Wills, Wallace Helena found herself inheriting a well-run soap manufactory.

‘Why didn’t Uncle James make a more recent Will?’ she had asked Mr Benson.

‘Dear lady, I do not know. I did mention the matter to him once or twice; but he was a tremendously busy man – and, like all of us, he did not anticipate dying at forty-nine.’ He had smiled indulgently at her. ‘Do you have a Will, Miss Harding?’

‘No, I don’t,’ she had admitted, a note of surprise in her voice; she had never thought of dying herself, despite the hazards she faced daily in her life as a settler. Mr Benson’s question had made her suddenly aware of the problems Joe Black might face if, indeed, she did die. She smiled a little impishly at the lawyer, and then said gravely, ‘I’ll attend to it.’

She reverted to the matter of her uncle’s Will. ‘Perhaps Uncle James really didn’t have anyone else to leave his money to, except Papa – or me?’ In view of her surmises about Benjamin Al-Khoury, the question was a loaded one, and she watched carefully for her lawyer’s reaction.

Mr Benson was not to be drawn, however, and he answered her noncommittally, ‘Possibly not.’ She was left to puzzle about her Uncle James’s private life.

Now, as she took up her pen and dipped it into the ink, preparatory to continuing her letter to Joe Black, she decided philosophically that she would deal with Mr Benjamin whenever he decided to turn up.

She wrote in English, a language she had learned in Chicago and from her stepfather, Tom Harding: ‘Dear Joe, how I wish you were with me! I need your brains – and I need your love to sustain me.’

Should she tell this man, whom she loved with a passion and depth which sometimes frightened her, how nervous she felt?

No. He would only worry, and worry never solved anything.

With deliberate cheerfulness, she continued, ‘Thanks to Messrs Cunard, I arrived safely in Liverpool yesterday morning. At Montreal, Mr Nasrullah, Grandpapa Al-Khoury’s friend – a very old man – saw me and my baggage safely transferred to the ship, as we arranged. He was worried that I was travelling steerage, alone; but everyone was very friendly to me, though it was not very comfortable. I gave Mr Nasrullah a hasty note to post to you, and I hope you received it safely. Now that the railway line has reached Calgary, it should make a vast difference to the speed with which we can send and receive letters, even from as far north as Edmonton. (I wonder if Edmonton and St Albert will ever be served by a railway line?)

‘My dearest, it was good of you to accompany me in the stage all the way down to Calgary, to see me onto the train. I shall never forget the wonderful night we spent in that dreadfully noisy hotel! How I miss you now!

‘When the train moved out and your dear figure receded into the distance, I wished I had never set out on such a wild adventure – and yet the English lawyers sounded so eager to sell Uncle’s business that I smelled a rat; as I said to you, the works could be more valuable than they would have me know. Could the lawyers make a gain by selling to someone with whom they had made a private agreement?

‘Today, I did a fairly thorough inspection of the plant. I have not yet seen the company’s books, nor do I know enough to say how well it is doing. I am, however, uneasy that Mr Benjamin Al-Khoury, the Assistant Manager, was not here to greet me; I felt snubbed!

‘He was left nothing in Uncle James’s Will, and I suspect that he is his illegitimate son. No matter which side of the blanket he was born on, however, I am excited at the thought that I may actually have a blood relative. You know how shorn I feel because I have no family – and, without your support, I am sure I would have given up on life long ago – bless you, my dearest one.

‘I must bear in mind, though, that this man may be very jealous that I, and not he, now own the Lady Lavender.

‘Mr Benson, the lawyer, has found me two rooms near the works, in the house of Mrs Hughes, a widow – the address is at the top of this letter. The rooms are clean and her cooking is good, though I am feeling the sudden change in diet.

‘I wish you were with me. The city is very lively. I confess that I doubt if you would enjoy the noise and confusion – or the heavy smoke in the air – near the works, the filth of it is overwhelming.

‘The products of the soapery put our home-made efforts to shame. They are sweet-smelling tablets, light brown or blue-grey in colour. To scent them, they use lavender oil, caraway or cinnamon. They have, also, a fuller’s earth soap for very delicate skins. They do make plain bars of soap for laundry and for the cotton industry, and these do not smell much better than the ones we make at home!

‘The lavender oil is produced by a lady in the south of England. She also makes a perfume of it by diluting it with spirits of wine and bottling it. We act as her northern distributor for these little bottles of scent and they are sold side-by-side with our lavender soap. It is very pleasant to dab a little on my wrist and sniff it.

‘The whole operation is so interesting that I am already questioning whether I should sell it. If it is financially sound, I could, perhaps, find a knowledgeable man to run it.’

She stopped writing, and chewed the end of her pen. She knew already what she would like to do, she considered longingly. She had been born and spent her childhood in a city, and she would like to settle in Liverpool, rain and dirty air notwithstanding, and run the business herself. After all, she ruminated, she knew the centre of Liverpool quite well; she and her parents, as refugees, had spent some weeks in it, waiting for an immigrant ship to the United States – and she remembered with pleasure the pool crowded with sailing vessels which had given Liverpool its name.

‘With all that Papa taught me, I could learn to manage the Lady Lavender – it’s obviously got some good employees,’ she assured herself. ‘I suspect that before I was ten I’d learned more than some of these fat Englishmen know. I don’t know the detail of their work, but I can organize people – I can sell. But what on earth would Joe think of it – of coming to a city?’

She considered the question seriously; he wasn’t getting any younger; it was possible that he might enjoy the sheer comfort of city life after the remorseless struggle they faced on their homestead.

Wishful thinking! she chided herself, and slowly dipped her pen into the ink.

‘If we drew income from the soap works,’ she continued, ‘we could accumulate more riverside land, as it becomes available, and increase our grain crops – the minute a railway crosses the North Saskatchewan and reaches Edmonton, eastern markets would be opened up to us – and we might even have money to spend!’

She paused in her writing and wondered how many more terrible winters they would have to endure before they made enough to, perhaps, move south to a better climate. And it’s not only winter, she considered sadly, it’s clouds of merciless mosquitoes, forest fires, unsettled Indians and Metis, floods – and hunger – gnawing hunger – and the endless, endless physical work.

She bit her lips, and continued to write, asking him how the crops were doing. She hoped the cougars were not being a nuisance again this year – that was a huge pair he had shot last year.

Cougars? Bobcats? Wolves? They were a curse when one had livestock. She grinned suddenly at the idea of a cougar sniffing its way comfortably into the yard of the soap works, and then went on to give him a different piece of news.

‘Yesterday, in the street, I heard Arabic being spoken, and, frankly, I was surprised that I still understood it – though it is my childhood tongue. Three men definitely from the East, probably seamen, were talking together at a street corner; they had lost their way, but being a stranger myself to this end of the city, I could not help them so I passed on. While I am here, I hope to get some accurate news of the present situation in the Lebanon.’

She put down her pen and slowly stretched herself. It had been good to hear the language of her family. She would give a great deal to walk the ancient streets of Beirut or sit quietly in her parents’ courtyard, if it still existed, and listen to cheerful Arab voices.

But there were no familiar voices left, she reminded herself; she would have to sit by herself under the old lemon tree.

She shivered, and a sense of awful aloneness engulfed her, the ghastly loneliness of a sole survivor, with no one else alive to understand completely the horrors she had seen. For a moment she did not hear the horses’ hooves in the street outside or the rain on the window or feel the chill of her room; she was lost in a misty ebb of consciousness, through which she heard the roar of a mob out of control and the screams of the dying.

She sat perfectly still in her stiff little chair, her white face covered with perspiration, until the moment passed. Then she got up and stumbled to the washstand, to pick up a damp face flannel and press it to her temples.