The Lemon Tree. Helen Forrester
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