The Lemon Tree (22 page)

In comparison with Mr Benson’s elegant home in Falkner Square, Eleanor Al-Khoury’s house seemed small and dark. Dark green linoleum polished to a high gloss covered the narrow entrance, the hall and the stairs. Near the front door stood a branched wooden hatstand on which Eleanor hung Wallace Helena’s shawl and hat.

Eleanor’s sleeves were rolled up, to expose plump mottled arms, and she wore over her dress a large white bibbed pinafore. Over the pinafore was wrapped a thick striped cotton apron.

‘Come in. Come in,’ she cried hospitably to Wallace Helena. ‘How’s your cold?’

As she was ushered down the hall to the back of the house, Wallace Helena replied that the cold was not much better. ‘It’ll go away soon, no doubt.’ In fact, her chest felt badly congested and she had coughed steadily during the night.

‘This is me kitchen-living-room,’ Eleanor told her, as they entered a pleasant, cosy room with a big window facing a back yard. Under the window was a yellow sink with two shining brass taps, and beside it a wooden drain board. A large iron stove took up most of one wall; it had two ovens at one side and the fire was big enough to hold two iron kettles side by side. From the ovens came a distinct odour of mutton being stewed. A steel fender protected the hearth.

Against another wall was a table covered by a dark red
chenille cloth which reached to the floor. A vase filled with dried flowers stood in the middle of it. Three dining chairs were tucked round the sides of the table, and much of the rest of the room was taken up by two easy chairs on either side of the fireplace. Over the mantelpiece hung two large amateur watercolours in mahogany frames, which Wallace Helena supposed were portraits of Eleanor’s parents. Two small photographs in metal frames stood on the mantelpiece and immediately drew Wallace Helena’s attention. ‘Why, that’s Uncle James!’ she exclaimed, touching the unsmiling face with her finger. ‘And this must be Benji when he was a little boy – in a sailor suit!’

Eleanor came to stand by her. ‘Oh, aye,’ she agreed. ‘I got a nicer one of Jamie in me bedroom. Took about four years ago. I told him I wanted one of him smiling for me birthday – ’cos it were natural to ’im to smile and laugh a lot I must’ve had a feelin’ he wouldn’t be with me that long.’ She gave a long sobbing sigh, and turned away without saying anything about Benji’s picture. ‘Come and sit down, luv.’ She gestured to one of the easy chairs, and Wallace Helena obediently sank into the collection of patchwork cushions which nearly filled it. ‘I were just goin’ to slice me soap for the boiler when you come. If you don’t mind, I’ll finish it afore we have a cuppa.’

Wallace Helena said she should go ahead exactly as she usually would. She remarked that she thought the picture of Benji was delightful. They talked desultorily about the peccadilloes of little boys, while Eleanor spread a piece of newspaper on the table and proceeded to shred up a bar of soap.

‘What are you going to do with that?’ Wallace Helena asked.

‘I’ll put ’em in the hot water in me boiler downstairs, and they’ll melt. Then I’ll put the clothes in and boil ’em.
Then I’ll scrub the clothes on me washboard and rinse ’em. I’m hoping it won’t rain today, so as I can hang ’em in the yard to dry.’

‘A lot of work,’ Wallace Helena said.

‘Oh, aye. Me gentlemen keep me busy. I got three, and then there’s Benji. It makes a lot of shirts and sheets. I’m ironin’ most of Tuesday.’

‘Gentlemen?’ queried Wallace Helena.

‘Yes. I do for three gents. One has a bedroom and the front parlour, and the other two is younger and they have a bed-sitter each. I make a bit on them to keep the house goin’, like. Our Benji’s real good. Ever since his dad died he give me housekeeping in addition to the bit he always gave me for his own food. But letting the rooms makes it easier to manage.’

‘Do you cook for them?’

‘Oh, yes. Bed, board and laundry is what they get.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘I look for decent young fellas, and they often stay with me till they get married. Of course, I gave up for a good many years, ’cos Jamie were doing well and there were no need. But I’ve bin real thankful these last few months that I had the house and could go back to takin’ gentlemen.’

‘I’m sure you have.’ Wallace Helena’s voice was sympathetic; looking at the worn face and roughened hands of the woman at the table, she felt a sense of guilt.

The sliced-up soap smelt awful, and Wallace Helena was reminded that Mr Lever was putting citronella into his bar soap to drown its natural odour. Two can play at that game, she considered grimly. Perhaps they should put a splash of lavender into the soap she was responsible for. She made a mental note to talk to Benji about it

‘Do you get free soap from the Lady Lavender, since Benji works for us?’ she asked. It was a loaded question.

Eleanor answered innocently, ‘Well, you know, there’s
lots of bars as don’t get cut quite neat; or they get dropped on the floor, so they look dirty. But it’s still decent soap. So the men take it home to their wives. Benji brings me a bit regular.’

‘I see.’ Wallace Helena sounded so noncommittal that Eleanor paused in her slicing to look up at her. ‘It goes with the job,’ she said a little defensively.

‘I understand.’ Wallace Helena made another mental note; this time to check on theft, which she had felt from her quick checks on the inventories might be more widespread than was tolerable. She would have to walk lightly, because she saw the common sense of allowing the men to have stuff which was definitely unsaleable. It was possible that the Cutting and Stamping Room was being deliberately careless. In slums even faulty soap could be sold; all kinds of goods had been available in the back streets of Chicago, she remembered grimly.

Eleanor was again giving her attention to the soap. She hoped uneasily that she had not told Wallace Helena something that Benji would have preferred to keep from her. ‘There,’ she said, and put down her knife while she carefully gathered up the soap chips into the newspaper. ‘The water in the boiler downstairs must be hot now. Would you like to come down with me?’

Wallace Helena smiled and followed her hostess down the worn stone steps to the cellar. It had been stiflingly hot in the living-room and she hoped that the cellar would be cooler.

She found herself in a dank, windowless room lit by a kerosene lamp hanging on the wall. It was half divided by a partial wall; the furthest section held coal which gleamed faintly in the light. Nearer them, in one corner in a whitewashed area, was a steaming copper built of brick and clay; under it lay an iron grate protected by a perforated iron door; through the perforations, Wallace
Helena caught a glimpse of glowing coals. The copper itself had a loose wooden lid over it Nearby were two rough wooden tables, obviously well scrubbed. On one table were several heaps of damp, wrung-out dirty clothes; through the steam Wallace Helena could smell the odour of men from them.

Eleanor took the lid off the copper and sprinkled her soap chips into the heaving water. ‘I always add a bit of soda,’ she said, as she picked up an old earthenware marmalade jar and poured a little of its contents into the water. She then stirred the water with a pair of wooden tongs. She picked up a pile of white shirts and dropped them in, stirring them around and lifting them up with the tongs until they were thoroughly wet.

‘There, now,’ she said cheerfully, ‘we can leave that for a bit, and go and have a cup of tea.’

‘Will they come out nice and white?’ asked Wallace Helena, in an effort to make conversation.

‘By the time I’ve finished, they will,’ Eleanor assured her. ‘I’ll put bleach in the second rinse. Then I rinse ’em again with blueing. And finally I rinse that out. With me sheets and tablecloths, I don’t scrub ’em; I put them in this tin bath and I dolly ’em, after I’ve boiled ’em. Give ’em a couple of rinses, dollying them again, and that’s it. I put everything through the mangle in the yard, before I hang it out – gets rid of any dirty water in it, better’n hand-wringing.’

Since Wallace Helena had never seen a dolly or a mangle, she was gravely introduced to the dolly in the corner of the cellar. It looked to her like a three-legged stool attached to a spade handle, and Eleanor showed her how she lifted it up and down and half twisted it to pound dirt out of a bath of clothes. The mangle standing in the yard seemed quite new. It had two heavy wooden rollers, but the rest of it was iron and was beginning to rust. ‘Benji
keeps the wheels oiled for me, but I’ve got to watch I don’t get the grease on me clothes. He sometimes turns the mangle for me, if he can get home for lunch on Mondays, ’cos it’s heavy work – though not so hard as hand-wringing sheets.’

Wallace Helena thought of the fast, perfunctory wash done on her farm, and asked, ’is it necessary to work so hard?’

Eleanor looked at her as if she had queried the existence of God. ‘Oh, aye,’ she affirmed without hesitation. The clothes get filthy in the town, and my gentlemen work in offices or shops, so they have to be well turned out Mr Jenkins wot has the ground-floor front changes ’is collar twice a day – not that I do ’is collars – I send ’em out to a woman wot does nothin’ else.’

‘It must take you all day to do so much.’

Eleanor sighed, and then said with a wry grin, ‘It does. I put everything to soak the night before, and I were up at half past five this mornin’ to get the boiler lit and the first load in afore I started breakfast for me gentlemen. And afore I go to bed tonight I’ll get Benji to help me pull and fold me sheets and tablecloths ready for ironing. And I’ll use the nice soapy water from the copper to scrub the kitchen and the bathroom floors.’

Wallace Helena glanced down at the kitchen-living-room floor; it was made of stone flags and had rag rugs under the table and near the fireplace. She decided she preferred to have to work outside, despite bitter winters or broiling sun. Her respect for Eleanor grew, as she realized the appalling amount of work the woman did.

She was grateful for a strong cup of tea and a piece of pound cake before she left. ‘I do me cakes and pies on Fridays,’ Eleanor confided. ‘I used to bake me own bread when Jamie was alive, but lately I haven’t had the heart, so I buy it.’

As the two women were going down the passage to the front door, and Wallace Helena reached for her hat, Eleanor said, ‘You should take a mangle and dolly back to Canada with you, when you go. They’d save you a lot of work.’

Wallace Helena nodded. It was possible that by now she could obtain such worksavers in western Canada; the railway had suddenly made everything possible. She answered Eleanor circumspectly, though with a smile. ‘I haven’t yet decided whether to go back to Canada or not. I may stay here.’ She was anxious that any idea that she
must
sell the soapery be dispelled; such gossip would not improve the price she would get if she did have to part with it.

Eleanor looked taken aback. ‘What you goin’ to do with it? You couldn’t run it yourself.’

‘I believe I could.’

‘But you’re a woman!’

‘Women can do anything they set their minds to.’

‘Well, I nevaire!’ Then Eleanor’s eyes twinkled. ‘Good thing your uncle can’t hear you.’ Then she looked sad. ‘He didn’t like women going to work.’

‘I wonder if he believed they didn’t work at home? You work crushingly hard.’

‘I don’t know, luv.’ She picked up Wallace Helena’s shawl and wrapped it round her shoulders. ‘Now, you take care of yourself, luv, with that cold. You’ve coughed quite a bit this morning; you should stay home today.’

‘Thank you very much, Eleanor,’ Wallace Helena said with feeling. ‘You take care of yourself.’

‘I’m all right, for sure. Now I must go and start me coloureds and me woollens. I haven’t done nothing about them yet’

Wallace Helena went back to Mrs Hughes’s house for lunch, but, after Eleanor’s pound cake, she only picked at the sausage, mashed potatoes and peas, followed by cold apple pie, which Mrs Hughes regarded as a light lunch.

As she drank a pot of tea, she reviewed carefully many of the things that Eleanor had mentioned. Cheap soap, she had said, had filler in it – fuller’s earth or sand – and it was not much good if you wanted a clean wash. She had also told her that she kept her supply of soap on a shelf for weeks to harden it, because it then didn’t melt so quickly and she got a better lather. Was the latter true? If so, how long did the Lady Lavender keep its soap in store? Did Mr Lever store his soap for long?

It seemed clear that the Lady Lavender would have to sell on quality and low price, to stay in business. She wondered if the patronizing Mr Turner had ever tried to deduce exactly what was in their various competitors’ soap – it could be interesting to know. Mr Turner seemed a bit of a luxury for such a small firm, despite what Benji had said about him; she would put him to work.

That afternoon she discussed some of her ideas with Benji, and particularly asked him straightforwardly about theft.

He confirmed his mother’s remark that the men were allowed to take soap that was, in some way, not fit for their customers. She suggested that the system be tightened up and that the handling of the finished soap should
be more carefully supervised, so that it was not deliberately made unsaleable.

He chewed the end of a pencil, while he considered this, and then he said, ‘I don’t think it’s out of hand yet But it could be happening, if you say the inventories are not too accurate. The business has grown so much in the last three years that we need to look at the organization of the staff and the chain of responsibility. I haven’t had time to do a thorough inventory for eighteen months.’ He put his pencil into his top pocket and took out a handkerchief to mop the perspiration off his face. Though the stiff office window had been prized open by Mr Helliwell, on Wallace Helena’s instructions, the room was still uncomfortably warm, and the smell of the fats and the oils and the boiling, together with that of manure, drifted unpleasantly round them.

Wallace Helena closed her eyes. Her head felt heavy and her chest hurt every time she coughed; for once, she was not smoking.

She said slowly, ‘As soon as we get Probate – Mr Benson says it will be a few weeks yet – and we’re free to really manage, we’ll look at the whole staff situation in the light of what we intend to produce – and we’ll look at the long term – new machinery, and so on.’

‘So you’ll stay here? Have you heard from Canada?’

‘Not yet. But I intend that if we have to put this place up for sale, we get the best possible price for it – and the best arrangement we can for the employees. And we can only do that if it looks like an excellent purchase.’

‘Of course.’ She was talking sense, but he wished the uncertainty was over. He was tired of being asked persistently by worried men if he knew what was to happen.

She was feeling exactly the same. The tug-of-war between what she wanted to do and what was possible
was getting her down; and now she was so full of cold that she felt downright ill.

As the days moved into weeks, Wallace Helena got impatient at the length of time Probate was taking. Mr Benson assured her that it always did take time; she was not to worry. During August, she began, bit by bit, to take control, regardless of the fact that she did not yet own the firm. Mr Benson seemed to be glad not to be bothered with day-to-day problems, and arranged that Mr Bobsworth and Benji could jointly sigh cheques under a certain value. She was careful to consult Benji or Mr Bobsworth as she took her first steps in management; and the company began to function better.

The bad cold which she had had left her with a hacking cough, which was not improved by her smoking. She ignored it. She was feeling the change in her lifestyle very keenly. As the summer wore on, the damp heat and the polluted air seemed stifling. If she opened the office window, her desk and papers were rapidly covered with black dust, and the collar on her dress was grey before evening came. After the dryness of the Territories, the humidity of the Lancashire climate made clothing and bedding feel damp to her. To her surprise, she began to appreciate the pristine blue skies and the strong sunshine of her faraway homestead.

She also found the food unsatisfying. After years of eating her own beef and pork or wild ducks and moose brought in by Joe, she thought it tasteless. Even a plate of Aunt Theresa’s beaver tails would have been welcome.

Yet both the city and the soapery fascinated her. Encouraged by a friendly Eleanor, Benji introduced her to the pleasures of the music hall and the theatre. Eleanor would not go herself; she said it was too soon after her husband’s death to consider it. Anxious to foster
the relationship between her son and Wallace Helena, she did, one Sunday, accompany them on the ferry boat, to New Brighton, where they walked along the shore and ate a picnic lunch; it was a relief to Wallace Helena to find brisk, clean breezes and an open space to walk.

Another time, Benji took her to a concert in St George’s Hall and for the first time saw her overawed. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ she cried, and she sat spellbound as the mighty organ was played by the City Organist, Mr W. T. Best. Nothing would please her until he took her again, and she wrote ecstatically to Joe about it.

‘I’ve never heard such music,’ she told Eleanor, her face alight

In Benji’s eyes, Wallace Helena improved on acquaintance. He reckoned she must be close to forty, but she could be so light-hearted and enthusiastic that you’d never know it, and it was street lore that an older woman was more interested in you, because she was grateful for a sex life. He began to think seriously of marrying her. He was aware that under a fairly recent law about married women’s property the soap works would not automatically become his on marriage; nevertheless, he took it for granted that, in practice, he would be in charge of Lady Lavender if he married the owner – women always deferred to men.

His own sex life had been somewhat limited. His father kept a close hold on him, because he wanted him to marry a Lebanese. He had, however, met young women at church social events, and had been out on the town with young Tasker a sufficient number of times to be acquainted with the ladies of Lime Street.

On her part, Wallace Helena was amused by him. Though she was ignorant of English marriage laws, she knew it was not simply cousinly solicitude which had
sparked so much attention, and she awaited events with detached interest. She was also very lonely in Liverpool. Not only did she miss Joe as her lover; she missed him as a close companion with whom she could freely discuss anything. Despite her growing trust of Benji, he was a poor substitute; he was too young, though indubitably very capable. She wondered idly what he would be like in bed; she had never slept with anyone but Joe. She decided the boy would probably be charming, like his father had apparently been, and she then dismissed the matter. She was not going to mix business with pleasure.

One close bond the couple had: after Eleanor’s remark that he spoke both Arabic and French, Wallace Helena spoke to him daily in Arabic, and was delighted to find that he understood the subtlety of it, although he was not acquainted with any of its poets – or with Middle Eastern music. Wallace Helena’s English, though adequate, was not nearly as good as her native tongue, and the bond of a common language grew between them.

When she was alone in the evening and the day was fine, she occasionally walked in the park or in the centre of the city. At other times, she sat in her high-ceilinged, gloomy sitting-room and read books culled from her uncle’s office shelves on various aspects of soap-making, and one or two on factory planning and management. Without chemistry and without personal knowledge of other great industries in the north of England, she sometimes had difficulty in understanding what she had read. At such times, she would either consult Benji or seek out Mr Turner or Mr Tasker and ask them to clarify the text for her.

Mr Tasker was, by far, her favourite. ‘Without a good product to sell, you can’t do nothing,’ he once said, mopping the perspiration from his face with a large, redspotted handkerchief. ‘And good soap begins with good
ingredients. And that’s me first task – to check on the incomings.’

‘What about Mr Turner, the chemist?’

‘Oh, aye. Mr Turner can analyse and tell you what he reckons is in a barrel of tallow. But he don’t allow for fiddles.’

‘Fiddles?’

‘Aye. Like when there’s a bit o’summat inferior at the bottom, and such. Pass something like that and you’ve clarified it before you know it int up to snuff. Meself, I go and stand over an open barrel and I smell it – careful, like. I can tell you right off, when they’re tryin’ to fob us off with somethin’ inferior.’

He did not explain who
they
were and she presumed they were the butchers and farmers who sold their surplus fat to soap makers. She was amused when he finished his remarks by a long slow sniff, as if to demonstrate the power of his nose.

She also felt a sense of trust growing between her and dapper Mr Helliwell, who was already betting to himself that she would be his new employer, after Probate. She knew that he had been aware, before her arrival, that Wallace H. Harding was a woman. He knew, because he had packed up and posted the books sent to her by Uncle James. Yet, since Mr Benson had not seen fit to mention her sex, even to Benji, while he was checking that he had tracked down the right legatee, Mr Helliwell had apparently maintained absolute silence on the subject. As he had once said to her, Mr James’s business was confidential; if anybody knew about it, Mr James had told them himself. ‘And you, Miss Harding, may be sure of the same confidentiality.’

Wallace Helena intrigued him. Seeing her each day at her uncle’s desk, sometimes at bad moments coping with the many problems which inevitably arose in a small
business, he felt that she would deal fairly with him and the rest of the staff, possibly better than a man would. And, like old Mr James, she was interesting.

Like Mr James, she swore and bullied, and he was fairly certain that anybody wanting a rise in pay would have to ask for it more than once; she obviously knew the value of every penny. Again, like her uncle, she showed signs of being quite human. He had, each year, treated the whole works to a picnic on New Brighton beach, and he had made himself pleasant to their wives and children. When Mr Helliwell had ventured to inform her that, owing to Mr James’s untimely death, the picnic had been cancelled, she had sat thoughtfully, her chin cupped in her hand, and then suggested, ‘Perhaps we could clear enough space in the factory, somewhere, and have a Christmas party – with dancing – instead.’

Mr Helliwell assured her that it was a splendid idea. She had, however, asked him not to mention it to the staff until a firm decision had been made about the future of the Lady Lavender, and he had bowed and again assured her of his complete discretion. He did, however, assure the wheelwright, when he wanted a day off to attend his father’s funeral, that she was a very human lady, and the man should go into the office and ask her.

When the request was immediately granted with a few words of kindly sympathy, Mr Helliwell was secretly triumphant that his belief that she belonged to the human race had been confirmed.

When she dictated a note to Mr Bobsworth, carbon copy to Mr Benjamin, saying that the man’s wages for the day of absence were to be paid, he ventured to remark that it was just what Mr James would have done. ‘Mr Al-Khoury very rarely had any trouble with labour, Miss Harding. Like you, he was compassionate towards the men’s
genuine problems. Once a man had a tally from the company, he did his best to keep him in work – even when we weren’t doing very well. He knew everybody he employed by name – more than many employers do.’

‘What’s a tally?’ It was the first time she had heard the word.

‘Oh, hasn’t Mr Benjamin mentioned them? Perhaps the need for giving one out has not arisen since you arrived. It’s a tin tag that a man can produce to show that he’s worked for us before. A decent, sober man, once he’s taken on, we like to keep him. If business is so slack that we have to lay him off, he’d be the first to be taken on again – before any stranger.’

Wallace Helena nodded. Her father’s firm in Beirut had treated casual labour in the same way, most particularly in connection with those, however humble, who could be considered related to the family. She wondered irrelevantly, as she looked up at her hovering secretary, whether any had survived the massacre. From stories she had heard from one or two other refugees who had followed them to Chicago, it would seem unlikely; the massacre had been horrifyingly thorough.

She said, ‘I noticed that most of the men had a small metal disc pinned to their jackets or overalls. Is that the tally?’

‘Yes, Miss Harding. It’s a quick way for the supervisors to spot an intruder. If he’s not wearing a tally, he’s immediately stopped and asked what his business is with the company.’

‘Do you know if the men are worried about what is going to happen to them in the present situation?’

‘Well, naturally they will be. Unemployment is rife in Liverpool.’

She stubbed out the cigarello she had been smoking and rose, preparatory to going back to her lodgings for lunch. ‘Perhaps I should talk to them,’ she said.

They might appreciate it, Miss Harding.’