The Lemon Tree

by Helen Forrester

  ‘Mind yourself, Queen!’ a man shouted urgently and pushed her roughly aside. Uncomfortably close to her, a sacking-covered bale was lowered swiftly onto a stationary dray at the kerb. ‘Aye, Missus, watch yourself. You could’ve bin killed.’

  Though a little alarmed by the unexpected danger, she managed to smile at the labourer and thank him.

  Before she continued on her way, she edged past the great flanks of the horses, to stand well in front of them, so that they could see her, despite the blinkers that they wore. They were chomping at their bits as they waited. Another labourer stood idly by them.

  ‘Are you the carter?’ she inquired.

  The man touched his cap. ‘Yes, Missus.’ Though he was respectful, there was nothing humble about him. His interest was aroused by her foreign accent, and he turned a brown, foxlike face towards her. ‘You visitin’ here, Missus?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her eyes were on the Percherons before her. ‘May I pet them?’ she asked.

  ‘For sure, Missus. They’re real gentle.’

  She spoke softly to the nearest animal and, after a moment, it stretched forward to nuzzle her. She stroked its nose and neck.

  The carter warned her. ‘Be a bit careful, Missus. Bobby, here, could be a bit jealous.’ He need not have worried; Wallace Helena had already transferred her attention to the other horse. Then she stepped back. ‘I’ve got horses at home – but nothing as good as these; I could use a pair of them, especially in winter.’

  ‘Where are you from, Missus?’

  ‘Canada.’ She turned to look him in the face and smiled her wide, generous smile. To the man, it changed her from an austere, strange lady into a warm human being. Emboldened, he asked what Canada was like.

  ‘Very cold – and very hot,’ she told him, and then added thoughtfully, ‘It’s big – the distances are enormous.’

  She remembered suddenly the lawyer she was supposed to meet, so she smiled again and turned away.

  At the bottom of Hill Street, when she was about to cross the road, her eye was caught by a flutter of brown sail in a gap between black buildings. She stopped to get a better look.

  Between the Coburg Dock and the Brunswick Dock lay a small quay. It was being approached by a fishing smack floating lightly on the silver river. A man was reefing sail. Near the quay was a muddle of low domestic buildings, half surrounding a cobbled square, in which fishing nets had been spread to dry. Ivy nearly smothered a particularly pleasant-looking cottage at one comer; in its clean, curtained window sat a canary in a cage. Two men in rough blue jerseys came out of the cottage and went down to the quay to watch the smack tie up. At their approach a cloud of gulls glided into the air and circled the boat. One of the men leisurely lit a clay pipe. Despite the threat of rain, nobody seemed in a hurry; it was a peaceful vignette, next to the maelstrom of activity in the main road.

  Wallace Helena thought a little wistfully how pleasant it would be to walk into the quiet square. She had a feeling that its inhabitants might greet her in a friendly country way, as she had been greeted as a little girl when her family had gone up into the mountains to avoid the damp heat of Beirut’s summer.

  For a minute, she stood entranced, poised on the corner of Hill Street, the soapery forgotten. ‘That’s how Liverpool must have been long ago,’ she guessed. Then she roused herself and crossed the road. She was accompanied by a band of small ragamuffins; they ran in and out of the traffic, followed by the scolding voices of the draymen, who were afraid the scurrying mob would make their horses rear.

  Before crossing Sefton Street, she paused again. Further along, in another side street parallel to Hill Street, lay the soap works. Across the road before her lay the Brunswick Dock. She watched carefully, as at the dock gate the driver of a cart paused to speak to a uniformed man at the gate and was then allowed to drive in. She presumed that everything that came into the Brunswick Dock for the Lady Lavender Soap Works would have to be off-loaded onto just such a cart and be taken the very short distance to the works to be unloaded. She had the previous day overheard a brief conversation between Mr Bobsworth, the bookkeeper, and one of his underlings from which she had understood that goods left long in the dock warehouse were subject to high demurrage charges; everything must be removed quickly to its own warehouse or yard. She was as yet unaware that the soapery had its own spur railway line, along which its goods could be rolled straight from the dock to its yard. She retreated to a niche in a wall, while she fished out a small black notebook and pencil to make a note to remind herself to ask Mr Bobsworth more details of the movement of ingredients and finished goods; the notebook was already nearly full of observations and questions in her small, cramped handwriting. Accustomed to the acute shortage of good farm workers in and around Edmonton, she had been shocked at the mass of labourers involved with the soap works, and many of her queries were in connection with the cost of this; she had as yet little idea of the cheapness of labour in Liverpool.

  As she returned the notebook to her reticule, she wondered where on earth she could get something to smoke. She had smoked her last cheroot aboard ship and she was feeling the acute lack of nicotine.

  She saw an elegant, dark green carriage drawing up at the dock entrance and, recognizing it as that of Mr Benson, her uncle’s lawyer, she hastened towards it. She was nearly struck by a bicycle as she stepped off the pavement. The black-suited rider swerved to a stop, surprised to see a lady in such a place. He assumed that she must have come down to the docks to distribute temperance pamphlets to dockers. As he regained his balance and cautiously circled behind her, Mr Benson saw her and sprang forward from the pavement.

  ‘My dear Miss Harding,’ he expostulated, as he took her elbow and guided her solicitously towards the gate. ‘Really, you should have waited for me. Anything could happen to you down here.’ In the back of his mind, he was appalled to think of the awful problem of probably having to trace yet another legatee, if she managed to get herself killed by a cyclist. The very idea made him nervous.

  ‘Nothing happened to me,’ Wallace Helena stiffly responded. ‘It was a most interesting walk, I assure you.’

  Several men were leaning against the dock wall, enjoying the weak sunshine, while they laughed and joked with each other. They were dressed in flat caps, stained trousers and striped shirts without collars; one wore a leather waistcoat and carried a curious metal hook. They stopped their conversation to watch the peculiar-looking woman passing by, and, for a moment, Wallace Helena hesitated and stared back with cold, brown eyes. Mr Benson’s hand under her elbow compelled her forward again, as she asked, ‘Who are those men, Mr Benson?’

  ‘Those? Just casual labourers – dockers – they come down here twice a day in the hope of getting work.’ His tone was uninterested.

  ‘Humph. I wish I had three or four of them on my farm.’

  Mr Benson raised his eyebrows slightly, but made no comment. Idle men were two a penny on the dock road.

  After stating their business, they were allowed into the dock, and Mr Benson led her over to the Dock Master who was standing at the far end of the wharf on the west side. Mr Benson had met him once before in the course of his duties as Executor of James Al-Khoury’s Will, and he now introduced him to Wallace Helena.

  The heavy, bearded Dock Master received her courteously, though he wondered why she should trouble to come to see the Lady Lavender’s raw materials coming in. He assumed that Mr Benson was simply entertaining her; it did not occur to him that he faced a woman intensely interested in following all the processes of the soap works from beginning to end.

  Holding on to her hat against the capricious wind, Wallace Helena turned to survey the scene before her.

  On the other side of the dock, two sailing vessels were being unloaded, derricks bent over them like pecking vultures. The shouts of the dockers attending them came clearly across the water. Nearer at hand, two men stood by an iron capstan, presumably waiting for a pair of barges being slowly towed through the dock en
trance. Another group of men, shirt sleeves rolled up, red kerchiefs round their necks and blackened leather waistcoats protecting their humped backs, seemed also to be waiting for the same vessels. The sun glinted on the hooks they carried and on the fair hair covering their reddened arms. Wallace Helena stared at them unabashed. Used to dark Metis or Indians or to men so wrapped up against the cold that it was hard to discover what colour they were, the red and gold colouring of the English dockers was a rarity to her; she wondered idly if the rest of their bodies were equally red and gold.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Mr Benson saying, ‘Mr Bobsworth informed me that a shipment of carbonate ash was expected this morning from the manufacturers – and a cargo of salt – the salt’s shipped by canal from the Cheshire salt mines.’

  Wallace Helena nodded her head in acknowledgment of this information; she presumed that the carbonate ash was similar to that used by Aunt Theresa and herself when, each spring, they boiled soap in the yard.

  Anxious to show that he understood something of his late client’s industry, Mr Benson went on to explain, ‘I understand they make it liquid and caustic by putting it into vats with lime and water.’

  ‘In other words, they make lye out of it?’ suggested Wallace Helena.

  ‘Yes,’ responded the lawyer, a trifle surprised that a woman would be aware of such chemistry.

  Between watching the progress of the barges, the Dock Master had been eyeing his female visitor with some interest. He now mentioned to her that the shipping agent’s representative was at that moment in the dock office ready to attend to the paperwork in connection with the expected cargoes.

  He was a little disconcerted to have a number of relevant questions shot at him. Who did the actual unloading? How many men did it take? How were the goods transferred to the Lady Lavender warehouse? How long did it take?

  He hastily swallowed his amusement as his replies were entered in Wallace Helena’s notebook. As she wrote, he examined with curiosity the woman’s firm mouth with faint lines down either side, the long nose which added further strength to a face which gave a feeling of anything but womanliness. She snapped her notebook closed and looked up at him, her brown eyes twinkling as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. Embarrassed, he dropped his own bloodshot blue eyes. He was further surprised, when they went into the dock office to meet the shipping agent’s representative, to find that she understood much of the paperwork connected with the movement of goods, both within a country and when importing.

  The enthusiastic young shipping agent ventured to congratulate her on her grasp of the matter, and she told him honestly, ‘My father dealt in silk for export and I was often with him. When we were in Chicago, I was frequently his interpreter and his clerk. I grew up amid imports and exports.’

  This was news to Mr Benson, too. James Al-Khoury had never mentioned to him what his brother had done for a living, and that his niece should understand something of the world of business seemed very odd; he had always believed that oriental women lived in strict seclusion. Even English women did not concern themselves with the outside world; the home and family were their sphere.

  When Wallace Helena moved to go outside again to see the actual unloading, the Dock Master asked her kindly, ‘Would you like to stay in the office and watch through the window? It’s chilly out there – and the dockers’ language is sometimes not fit for a lady’s ears.’

  Wallace Helena laughed. ‘I have one or two male employees – I am quite used to being among men. And I love the fresh air.’

  After stuffy offices, the wind was a joy and though it whipped at her skirt and shawl and she had to hold on to her hat, despite its huge hatpins, she leaned happily against it while she watched the dockers do their work. Mr Benson resignedly shrugged himself deeper into his Melton overcoat, and consoled himself with the thought that the Al-Khoury Estate would have to pay him well for these hours with its heiress.

  Once she had the general idea of what was happening, she turned to him, ready to continue her morning in the Lady Lavender Soap Works itself. Looking over his shoulder, she pointed suddenly towards a young man entering the dock gates. ‘Isn’t that a boy from our works? I think he does messages for Mr Tasker.’

  Mr Benson did not know the lad, but the Dock Master asked, ‘The coloured boy? He often comes over from the Lady Lavender for one reason or another. Name of Alfie.’

  Carrying a white envelope, the youth jog-trotted into the office.

  ‘I’d like to speak to Alfie,’ Wallace Helena said, as the messenger reappeared and moved with them towards the gate. Mr Benson immediately called him over.

  Alfie whipped off his cap to expose a head of brownish, tightly curly hair. He smiled nervously at Wallace Helena and ran his cap through long, brown fingers. ‘Yes, Sir?’ he inquired of Mr Benson.

  ‘Miss Harding wishes to speak to you.’

  Alfie turned fully towards her, a wary expression on his face. ‘Miss?’

  ‘Alfie, you smoke, don’t you? I saw you outside the works yesterday, smoking something.’

  The youngster’s thick lips parted in surprise and she saw his body tense, as if he might take flight. He replied uneasily, ‘Well, yes, Ma’am.’ He fully expected a lecture on the evils of smoking.

  ‘Can you buy tobacco and papers – or ready rolled cigarettes round here?’

  The astonishment on Alfie’s face caused Wallace Helena’s grim mouth to relax slightly. ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

  ‘Well, get me some. How much will it cost?’

  He shrugged slightly and told her. Then, realizing that she was serious in her request, he added, ‘You can get cigarettes ready rolled, Ma’am, if you like.’

  ‘I would prefer to roll my own,’ she replied, as she opened her change purse.

  ‘Allow me, Miss Harding.’ Mr Benson took out a net purse from his inner pocket and loosened a ring at one end in order to get at a silver coin.

  She looked at him, shocked. ‘Oh, no,’ she replied firmly. ‘I mustn’t put you to expense.’ She handed Alfie a shilling and asked him to leave the purchase with her late uncle’s secretary, Mr Helliwell. She said that he could keep the change.

  Disconcerted, Mr Benson restored his purse to his pocket. Mrs Benson had instructed him to ask Miss Harding to dinner the following evening. What would she say if Miss Harding lit a cigarette in her drawing-room?

  Wallace Helena again faced the wind, as she glanced back once more towards the gaily painted barges. Bright red, yellow and blue flower designs ran riot all over them, and a metal ewer standing on a ledge at the front of the first barge had the same colourful patterns on it. She had been surprised that the person throwing the rope ashore from the first barge had been a well-built, middle-aged woman. Now the woman was sitting on the edge of the dock, her legs dangling over the water. She had a baby at her breast.

  Mr Benson saw Wallace Helena’s bemused expression at the sight, and he explained as they approached the dock gate that whole families lived permanently on the canal barges. ‘There are probably more children inside,’ he told her.

  Outside the gate, Mr Benson instructed his groom to pick him up from the Lady Lavender Soap Works in one hour’s time. Then he and his client did a quick tour of the Brunswick goods station from which another railway spur line sunk into the street ran into the soap works. Pointing to the spur line, Mr Benson told her, ‘That’ll be the way in which your company’s goods travel from the Dispatch Department to the railway.’

  She nodded. Mr Bobsworth, the bookkeeper and dispatch clerk, had already told her that the lavender oil to perfume their toilet soap was shipped in by rail from Kent and that tallow and oil from seed processors was sometimes similarly shipped. He had said, ‘Though it’s quicker by rail, it is more expensive, so much of our raw material comes in by barge. We distribute our finished goods by rail – or by delivery van.’

  Wallace Helena was very thoughtful as they walked over to the soap works. The general pattern of manufacture and dist
ribution was clarifying in her mind. This afternoon she would look over the books with Mr Bobsworth and see exactly how their finances stood. ‘Do you know if the Lady Lavender makes anything else other than soap?’ she asked casually of Mr Benson as they walked through the soapery’s yard.

  Mr Benson cleared his throat. ‘Well, Mrs Benson uses a very delightful scent which they sell. You’ll have to ask Mr Benjamin Al-Khoury about anything else.’

  ‘I will,’ she replied gravely, ‘when he returns from his trip to Manchester.’ Then she said, ‘I think it is always better to deal in more than one commodity. At home, I produce barley and oats for the Government – and to feed ourselves. But some years the crop gets lost to hail or is simply poor. Then I’m thankful to have steers and a hay crop to feed them – and a vegetable garden. Or I can cut wood. I keep hens, too, mostly for our own eating and for eggs, of course; but nowadays there is even a market for these sometimes.’

  ‘We have mixed farms in Britain.’

  ‘Do you? My partner also runs a trapline for furs, though we do have a constant battle with the Hudson’s Bay Company over it; they seem to think they still run the Territories and are entitled to buy anything they fancy.’

  ‘So your farm isn’t being neglected while you are over here?’

  She smiled. ‘Far from it. Joe Black is a very capable man – he used to be my stepfather’s stockman.’

  ‘Indeed?’ The lawyer was already beginning to wonder if she would sell the soapery. Her general understanding and quick grasp of detail made him sense that she might attempt to run it herself, especially if her farm had someone in charge of it. He was sure she would face a lot of prejudice; neither the firm’s employees nor the business community were likely to accept a woman very willingly.

  As he handed her over to anxious, obsequious Mr Bobsworth, he wondered what Benjamin Al-Khoury would feel about her; James Al-Khoury’s son had been cruelly cut off from his anticipated inheritance by his father’s unexpectedly early death and he was hardly likely to welcome his cousin.