The Lemon Tree
Page 17
He shifted his feet and wished the post office clerk would hurry up with his sorting.
If Wallace Helena could not be dissuaded from leaving Edmonton, Joe worried, he would be as lonely as he was when his grandfather died. Without her, he felt, the struggle to keep the farm going would be pointless; almost everything he did was for her sake.
It had been different when he and Tom first set out to establish the place. He had been young and adventurous and it had been a great joke to cock a snook at the heavy-handed Hudson’s Bay Company.
At a New Year’s Day party, he had found himself drinking with Tom Harding, and the white man had inquired if the negro had come up from the States. Joe had replied tartly that he was no American slave; he had been born free in Canada.
They had gone on to an amicable, though drunken, exchange of reminiscences, Tom about his not very successful trapline and his desire to put in a vegetable patch and, if possible, plant a crop of barley. Joe confided that he hated working on the Hudson’s Bay’s farm a few miles north. He said his father had also been a Company employee under Factor John Rowand.
It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship and a long, not uninteresting, vendetta with the Hudson’s Bay Company, the latter ending only when Wallace Helena got title to the land.
The two men might both have died the first winter they lived together in the old cabin, had it not been for Joe’s mother and his Aunt Theresa, both of whom were working in the kitchens of the Chief Factor’s house. They stole barley and oats for them, to eke out the rabbits the men snared and the fish they got by fishing through a hole in the ice of the river. Tom had the dream of owning his own farm to sustain him, and Joe found it a welcome relief to be treated as a friend and equal.
Joe brought his own small mare with him to the cabin, and, later, he stole two horses that appeared to have got loose from a Blackfoot encampment some distance away. He hoped that by leading them through the shallows of the river, the Blackfoot would not be able to track them down, and they never did.
‘Our need’s greater than theirs,’ Joe affirmed stolidly. It was true that the partners were quite as thin as the hungry Indians. The horses, very unwillingly, pulled the plough they had persuaded a friendly blacksmith in the Fort to make for them.
When times got better, Tom acquired his first wife, a plain, amiable Cree, and discovered that she was a gem of a helpmate. When she died in childbirth, both men mourned her.
Two years later, Tom had brought home Leila and her daughter. They belonged to neither the white nor Metis world of the Fort, nor were they Indians. They were, like Joe, outsiders.
The Scots in the Fort publicly called them Chinks or Jews, as they jeered at them if Tom was not with them. Both women looked down at them with silent contempt. Tom had not expected such reciprocal dislike. He became truculent and defensive of his womenfolk, fearing that they might be raped by men who obviously regarded them with such odium. He knew he could not hope for protection for them from his long-standing antagonist, the Chief Factor.
Leila regarded the Fort’s inhabitants as clodhoppers, peasants, men without origins or history. She loved her fair-haired American husband and respected Joe Black for his courtesy and knowledge. The ill-assorted little family turned in upon itself; they were like bison anticipating an attack, forming a tight, protective knot.
When, many years later, Wallace Helena successfully acquired title to a piece of land much larger than others, and had then made Joe her equal partner, the locals again began to call her a bloody Chink. Their jealousy was very great. It did not help her to make friends.
Joe loved her with an intensity which sometimes scared him; it was the only part of his life over which he was not in complete control. ‘Prickly as a porcupine,’ he would warn himself – and then he would laugh.
When the postmaster finally handed him several letters from her, he grinned his thanks and stuffed them inside his old wolfskin jacket.
Without a further word to anyone, he pushed his way through the small group still waiting. His horse was hitched to a post outside. He absently undid it and mounted. With the stiff envelopes crackling against his chest, he rode the old trail along the river escarpment, splashing through a couple of creeks, regardless of the fact that by then part of the track ran over lots owned by others. Alder and scrub oaks brushed him, as he passed, and flies buzzed crossly round him, but it was the easiest route home and he wanted to read his letters. If Wallace Helena was right in her predictions and if the railway came to Edmonton, there would soon be roads criss-crossing the whole district. There would be hordes of people glad of land and space, and they would form a ready market for everything a mixed farm could produce. But then, she had always been a bit of a dreamer, he considered wryly. He hoped that she was wrong; there were too many white folk and Metis around already.
Aunt Theresa stood expectantly at the cabin door and Emily ran out to open the yard gate for him as he rode in. Simon Wounded, out in the fields, saw him from a distance and came running to hear any news of Wallace Helena. They crowded round the scrubbed table in the old cabin, regardless of the fact that it was August and there was an immense amount of work to do.
Joe had been taught to read by an Oblate priest, and he read the letters slowly and accurately, translating into Cree some phrases which were difficult for his listeners to understand. He omitted paragraphs that were personal to him. Some parts of the letters were almost incomprehensible to them; they were too far removed from city life.
As he put down the last page, he felt a little forlorn himself. As if she understood, Emily brought him a hot cup of coffee from the kitchen lean-to. He nodded, and then sent them back to their work. ‘Barley’ll be ready for cutting,’ Simon warned him.
Joe nodded again. ‘We’ll start tonight – it’ll be cooler. And start again at sun-up. I’ll be out to have a look at it soon.’ He picked up the letters again and turned them over. Simon sighed and went to look at the pigs. He felt suddenly very old and was not looking forward to the long, arduous days of harvest without Wallace Helena’s help.
Joe read parts of the letters again while he drank his coffee. Wallace Helena sounded too damnably comfortable amongst her lawyers, soap masters and accountants. Unlike the men in Edmonton, these men seemed to be treating her with some respect, though she had admitted flatly that being a woman was a disadvantage to her. He felt a strong twinge of jealousy.
He leaned back in his chair and lit his pipe. Until he had begun to receive letters from her in Liverpool, he had never felt himself to be less than she was; he had his own wide areas of knowledge and experience – she had hers. He knew how to foretell the weather with some accuracy and he decided when they should sow and when they should reap. He could hunt and trap as well as his grandfather had. Ahead of the other settlers, he knew the movements of the dispossessed Cree and Blackfoot, understood the desperate frustration of the Metis – hadn’t he foretold the Riel rebellion long before it happened and prepared himself for it as far as he could?
Mr Tasker in Liverpool might have a feel for soap, but I have a feel about this land, he argued. Wallace Helena may do the bargaining with agents buying food for the railway gangs building further south or for the Indians, poor devils; it’s me – me – who delivers steers and grain safely to their camps – and that’s no mean feat, lady, in a country riddled with rivers and creeks and bogs to be crossed.
Frustrated by distance, by the strangeness of the world she described in her letters, he was vexed and confused. She wrote with affection and consideration for him – but she appeared far too happy!
Feeling sullen and resentful, he went to join Simon Wounded in the fields.
That night, he wrote asking her to come home as soon as possible; he needed her. He gave her no news of the harvest or the excellent contact he had made with a railway surveyor nosing round Edmonton and in need of provisions. He continued to reply to her letters, giving no news but simply asking when she expected to return.
He felt better, and was able to write to her that he and Simon had got the barley crop into the barn, one day before a heavy rainstorm carrying hail in it had destroyed neighbours’ fields. Yet, when he thought of Wallace Helena’s new world, the sense of inadequacy resurfaced. Against the comforts of a city, he had little to offer her, except himself, and the continuation of a harsh, uncertain life in a climate which would test anybody’s fortitude.
Chapter Twenty-Two
After her visit to Mr Benson, Wallace Helena asked the cabbie to put her down at the gates of the Lady Lavender. She walked slowly through the wicket gate. To her left was the carpenter’s shop, and she glanced through its open doorway. The boxes in which the soap was transported were made here, and at one end a young wheelwright repaired the delivery vans and their wheels. Heaps of wood shavings and sawdust lay in every corner of the shed, and, seeing them, she realized what a fire hazard they represented.
Without hesitation, she walked in and told the elderly carpenter to sweep them up and dispose of them. ‘They could cause a fire,’ she said sharply.
The man had taken off his cap when she entered, and now he scratched his head, while he gaped at her. ‘Never in me life have I bin told by a woman what to do in me own shop,’ he told his wife that night. ‘Who’s she to tell me what to do?’
Wallace Helena scouted round the rest of the shop. The young, dark-haired wheelwright ignored her and gave earnest attention to a wheel he was refitting to a light van; he didn’t want any trouble.
As it became apparent that she knew the names of most of the tools lying around the shop and what they were for, the carpenter began to recover himself, and when she returned to his side to remind him again to sweep up, he stammered, ‘Mr Al-Khoury were goin’ to get me an apprentice, Ma’am. Me last one’s gone to be a journeyman in another place; done well for himself, he has. An apprentice’d clean up for me, like. I gotta lot of work here.’
‘Which Mr Al-Khoury?’
‘The ould fella – Mr James, Ma’am.’
‘I see. I’ll see what can be done. Meanwhile, perhaps Mr Tasker could spare his labourer, Alfie, to sweep up for you. I’ll speak to him.’
He heard the note of authority in her voice and muttered, ‘Yes, Ma’am.’
The stable was next door, and she realized that she had not yet visited it, though from the wage sheets she knew the names of the employees working there. The stableman was eating his lunchtime bread and cheese, while he leaned against the open doorway. A heavy, redfaced man, he straightened up as she swept in. Lifting up her skirts, she walked the length of the building and returned to storm at him. How could he expect the horses to be healthy with weeks of manure underfoot? It was enough to make employees ill, as well. She ordered an immediate clean-up and the establishment of a manure heap in a corner of the yard which did not seem to be used. Horse manure was valuable to farms; she would find a market for it and have it collected weekly. ‘It’s a wonder that the city has not complained at such a conglomeration,’ she raged. ‘How do you dispose of it at present – when it gets up to your knees?’ she asked with heavy sarcasm.
The man hung his head sullenly and did not reply. In fact, he periodically sold it himself; he considered it a perk which went with his job. But he wasn’t going to tell a bloody bitch like her.
There had been a solitary horse in the stable and Wallace Helena had taken a good look at it. Now, finding that the man was not going to reply to her, she said, ‘And give that animal a hot bran mash. I’ll take another look at him in the morning.’
The man lifted his head and looked her angrily in the eye. ‘I done it,’ he replied.
Wallace Helena pursed her lips into a thin line. ‘Right. I’ll come in the morning.’
‘Sour as a bloody lemon, she is,’ this man told his wife, and then added thoughtfully, ‘Seems she knows somethin’ about horses, though.’
Outside the stable, Wallace Helena paused to scrape some of the muck of the stable off her boots. She sighed, as she rubbed the sides of her boots against cobblestones which she noticed were heavy with grease, presumably from the barrels of fat and oil stored on the far side of the yard. Here was another fire hazard, she considered uneasily.
Before moving, she pulled the hatpins from her hat and took it off, to let the light breeze cool a face flushed with anger. Not only did she feel hot, she felt nauseated from the reek of the stable. She thought she might vomit, and she turned to the office intending to run over to the latrine behind it.
She almost knocked down a stocky, well-built young man in a black suit and bowler hat. Off balance, he stumbled and dropped the carpet bag he was carrying. He was saved from a fall by the vicelike grip of Wallace Helena’s long fingers on his arm. As he steadied himself, she took a large breath in an effort to quell her nausea.
Though the collision was not his fault, the man apologized for bumping into her, as he mechanically bent down to pick up his bag again. She nodded acknowledgment, and hurried away to the privy. He was left with the vague impression of a very thin, plain woman with a sickly, sallow face, dressed in shabby black and carrying a small hat; he assumed that she was the wife of one of the workmen, bringing in his midday meal.
Only when Benjamin Al-Khoury was discussing a minor complaint with Mr Tasker, and Miss Harding’s name came up, did the likely identity of the woman in the yard occur to him.
The bitterness that had haunted him since his father’s death welled up once again. His father had failed both him and his mother; and he wondered for the hundredth time why his parents had never married. They were obviously devoted to each other and the home was a happy one. His own illegitimacy had been well known in the neighbourhood and he had suffered the usual snide remarks flung at such children; presumably his mother also had had her share of opprobrium. It didn’t make sense.
And now this wretched woman had been dug up by the lawyers as the legal residual legatee of his father’s Estate; his patrimony was going to a cousin he had never heard of, because she was the only legitimate descendant of the two brothers. And, to add to his sense of a world turned upside down, she was presumably his employer – unless she sold the business, as expected, in which case he could lose his job as the new owner moved in his own choice of men. It was not a pleasant prospect.
He left Mr Tasker amid his bubbling cauldrons and went to see Mr Bobsworth, with whom he intended to have lunch. He was met by the information that Miss Harding would see him at two o’clock.
‘Blow her,’ he muttered, though he realized he could not put off meeting her much longer.
As if reading his thoughts, Mr Bobsworth said, ‘Better to get it over with, lad.’
‘What’s she like?’
‘A Tartar,’ replied Mr Bobsworth gloomily. ‘Thinks she owns the place.’
‘She does, old man. Let’s go and eat. I’ll leave the orders I’ve got with Le Fleur – he can send them to be made up.’
‘I’ll check them as soon as we return,’ Mr Bobsworth promised. ‘I always label everything myself, you know that. Want a job doing well? Do it yourself.’
It was old Bobsworth’s usual remark, so Benjamin let it pass.
In the shabby dockside café, crowded with seamen, Customs men and men from the warehouses nearby, though no dockers – they had their own, even smaller, eat
ing houses, where the stench of the cargoes they handled was more acceptable – Mr Bobsworth found his usual quiet corner table. They hung up their bowlers, undid their jackets and sat down. Unasked, a florid woman in a coloured apron put a pint of bitter in front of each of them. ‘Like to order?’ she asked, a stub of pencil poised over a grubby notebook.
They both ordered steak and kidney pudding, and, while they were waiting, Benjamin brought up the problem of the rabid competition in the Manchester area, where the cotton mills consumed a massive amount of soap.
‘This man Lever’s started to wrap his bar soap in bright yellow paper with Sunlight printed all over it. Even his delivery vans are plastered with sunrays and the same word. And he’s advertising “Don’t just ask for soap – ask for Sunlight.” He’s making a hole in our market, I can tell you.’
‘We make better soap,’ responded Mr Bobsworth uncompromisingly. ‘Tasker makes better soap than anybody.’
‘Yes, but we’re not telling everybody that – and women seem to love having their washing soap wrapped.’
‘We wrap our toilet soap.’
‘In mouldy grey paper – beige for the cinnamon and fuller’s earth! Anyway, it’s plain bar soap that everything gets scrubbed with – it’s our bread and butter. I’m sure Dad would have done something about it.’
‘Your father had in mind to branch out into lotions and scents for working-class women. He’d even thought of a kind of paste to tint the skin – cream colour for pale skins, pink for rosy youth – packed in chemists’ little bottles and boxes. Vanity! Nothing but vanity, that’s what I say.’
‘Girls in the mills have a bit of money to spend, a few pence here and there. Dad would’ve been selling them something better than gin.’
‘He had a job persuading their mams to let them have a bath with scented soap – and get the mams themselves to put a bit of lavender on their Sunday handkerchiefs.’ Mr Bobsworth was a Roman Catholic and did not think much of Methodist austerity. On the other hand, he did not like to think of his wife and daughters painting their faces like actresses or worse; so he was quick to condemn cosmetics.