The Lemon Tree (26 page)

She now asked him to find Benji and see if he could spare her a few minutes. He bowed slightly and, with huge dignity, sailed into the works to find the man.

During the last week, as a result of Wallace Helena’s memos, Benji’s position as Assistant Manager had been clarified, and the men thankfully turned to him for their orders. Most of them would have agreed that a
woman
couldn’t even run a kitchen properly, never mind a soap works.

When Benji entered, she said, ‘Come and see what I’ve done.’

He went to stand close to her, while, with one beringed finger, she pointed out various employees’ names and checked that she had correctly described their duties. As they talked to each other, he again began to be aware of her as a desirable woman. He flushed with embarrassment and tried to concentrate on what she was saying, but she was so close that he wanted to put his arm round the thin waist and forget about diagrams for a while. Perhaps his mother was right; she would make a good wife.

He carefully put his arm round her waist to see what would happen. Nothing did; she simply went on talking, her finger squarely on one man’s name, waiting for his reply. She did not even look at him.

She was in fact acutely aware of him – Benji would not be a difficult man to fall in love with. The more she saw of him, the more she liked him.

But there was Joe. If he were here, she would not even think of anyone else.

Benji was disappointed. When she began to cough, he let his arm drop, as she moved to take her handkerchief out of her waistband.

They sat down and she began a discussion to explore whether their present staff and equipment were utilized in the best way. At first he answered her in monosyllables, but he soon became engrossed in what she was saying and began to put forward his own ideas.

She mentioned her first visit to his home to learn exactly how an English woman used soap. ‘I saw your mother slice up the soap to put it in her boiler. Could we produce a ready-sliced soap?’

‘I’ve a recollection that someone tried it, but that it did not catch on too well.’

‘Perhaps it was too expensive? Or was it not sliced thin enough? Your mother said it must be sliced very thin, so that it melts and doesn’t cling to the clothes.’

They were in the midst of a lively argument as to whether a line like she had suggested was a possibility for the Lady Lavender, when Mr Helliwell knocked at the door and brought in a written message for Miss Harding.

Mr Benson presented his compliments and would be obliged if Miss Harding could call upon him that afternoon. Probate had been received and he needed her signature on a number of papers. He apologized for not calling on her, but he felt it advisable that she should come to his office, so that if she required clarification on any point of law or needed advice about how to proceed as the new owner, she could have the benefit not only of his counselling but that of his partner as well.

Wallace Helena raised her eyebrows at the formal missive and passed it to Benji, while she scribbled a note for the lawyer’s office boy to take back to him, saying that she would be with him at half past three.

Benji read the letter. This was it, he thought bleakly.
From this afternoon she would hold his future in her hand. He must now decide whether he should stay to serve her, whether he should try to court her or whether he should apply to other soaperies for a position. He looked round his father’s office as if seeking an answer. He had, all his life, taken it for granted that from this little room he would preside over an expanding Lady Lavender, whenever it suited his father to step down. For that, he was sure he had been carefully groomed. And now the whole dream was gone, gone because of a crazy quirk of the law.

After Mr Helliwell and the lawyer’s messenger had gone from the room, Benji and Wallace Helena continued their discussion a little longer.

Benji said, ‘Talking about new lines, I don’t know the extent of father’s Estate, but I do know that he was saving like mad to finance an expansion. He believed in ploughing money back into the business.’ He glanced at Wallace Helena out of the corner of his eyes, and continued-ruefully, ‘You’ve probably realized that we lived very modestly – he didn’t keep any kind of carriage, for instance.’

Wallace Helena nodded. She had realized, when seeing Eleanor’s house with its shabby furniture, that either the soapery did not make very much or the family were very careful spenders. His remark about savings confirmed Mr Bobsworth’s records that the soapery, after the first few anxious years, had produced a healthy profit – even the current quarter had showed a gain, despite the intrusion into the market of the redoubtable Mr Lever.

In the back of her mind, she had wondered what Uncle James had done with his money. Now she thought, with a flash of humour, that he probably stashed it into an old trunk, exactly as she did. She hoped Mr Benson had the trunk and that it had been sealed before witnesses. And there must be a private account book, somewhere, if he were anything like Father, she considered.

She said, in response to Benji’s remark about their standard of living, ‘I have every faith in Uncle James’s
business acumen. I’ll know this afternoon exactly what the position is.’ She did not want to appear too mercenary by expressing her inward relief that there might be some hard cash forthcoming, apart from the firm’s working capital in the bank.

As she folded up the diagram she had made of the staff’s positions, she asked her cousin if he would instruct Mr Helliwell to order a cab to take her down to Mr Benson’s office.

He had had a faint hope that she would ask him to escort her. He would have liked to know the exact value of the Estate and what taxes would be levied; the sums could make all the difference between having to sell the works or not. In any case, the levy would be a burden for them to carry, at a time when they needed further investment.

Unfortunately, in her excitement, Wallace Helena had not considered the wisdom of including Benji in the interview, so he went off a little huffily to order the carriage.

While waiting for the hackney to arrive, Wallace Helena tried to rest by sitting in her chair, her gloved hands holding her reticule in her lap. She wished she dared to smoke; it was so comforting to smoke, and she supposed that was why a compassionate Joe Black had taught her to smoke like a Cree woman. It had certainly helped; or had it been the presence of Joe himself, a self-assured man showing her that there was nothing to be unduly afraid of, and saying, ‘You’ve got to respect living things, but you’ve got to take enough to stay alive yourself – and this is how the Indians’ve always done it.’

She smiled wryly. By the time the Indians had discovered that their old ways would hardly keep them alive, in the face of the white invasion of their territory, Tom and Joe were managing to raise crops and a few precious animals.
Smoking had helped her through the long and excruciatingly cold winters, when food became short and tempers even shorter.

And now, a surly old man called Georgie Grant made it impossible for her to smoke while working at her desk. He had done what even her mother had been unable to do – banished the cloud of smoke usually wreathed around her head. The thought made her want to giggle; the giggle became a laugh. When Benji came, she was in a high good humour and she surprised him by giving him a friendly peck on the cheek, as she stepped into the vehicle.

The kiss was noted by the men moving about in the yard, and they smirked at each other; Mr Benji seemed to be doing well for himself.

Because she and her parents had had to wait in Liverpool for an immigrant ship to take them to America, she knew the layout of the centre of the city, except where new construction had altered it. The family had taken lodgings in a hostel run for European emigrants. It had been crowded and dirty, so her father and her uncle had taken her for walks in the town, to try to distract the young girl from the hard facts of what had happened to them. Now as she looked through the window of the vehicle, she saw in her mind’s eye the two brothers flapping along in clothes that made the local inhabitants stare, as they made jokes to keep her amused. They had tried so hard, she ruminated, to repair the ruin of their lives, and both had died comparatively young. Now, only she was left to carry the scars of their dreadful, shared experience. Once again, she wondered why she should have been spared.

It was a very sad, dignified lady who was led into Mr Benson’s private office by an elderly solicitor’s clerk.

Mr Benson had ready for her a number of papers requiring her signature, and he waited patiently while she read
them through carefully. Sometimes she did not understand a sentence and had to ask him for an explanation.

She was shocked at the amount of tax, but Mr Benson assured her that he had arranged for it to be paid by instalments, rather than see the Estate drained to such an extent that the Lady Lavender would have to be sold.

The cost of Mr Benson’s administration was not small, but he had paid himself, from time to time, so that most of it had already been met.

‘If you decide to sell the soap works, the total tax assessed would be immediately payable,’ he warned her. Then he explained that, as of that moment, he could no longer sign cheques on behalf of the Estate, and that she should see the firm’s bankers immediately, to arrange for her signature to be honoured by them. She promised to visit the bank in the morning.

After the work had been done, she accepted a glass of sherry and they drank the health of the company together.

She leaned back in her chair, twisting her glass in her fingers. She felt more overwhelmed than she had expected, almost afraid. All the problems of the soapery were now hers. All its employees would turn to her for sustenance; and behind them were their families depending upon her to feed them, as surely as if they were impecunious blood relations. Though she did not doubt her ability to steer the little soapery quite competently, she was well aware that, as in Canada, a woman was regarded as an inferior being, put on earth to serve her masculine betters. She would have to compete with men in a system devised by them.

The sheer load of responsibility appeared very great, and she whistled softly under her breath, while her lawyer, a male, watched her with interest. ‘It can’t be worse than the Territories,’ she said aloud.

‘Pardon?’

She laughed, and made a deprecatory gesture with one hand. ‘I meant to say that I don’t think running the Lady Lavender will be any worse than running my farm in the Territories.’

‘So you will manage it yourself?’

‘Probably. I have written to consult my partner in Canada, because any decision I make will affect him – he owns half shares in the property. I expect to hear from him in a week or two. There are many ramifications in a move to England – and I’ve been giving them considerable thought over the last few weeks.’

‘I’m sure. Please don’t hesitate to consult me if I can be of help. Company law is quite complex, especially for a lady, who may not have come in contact with it before. I presume Mr Benjamin will be staying with the company?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ she answered automatically, and then hastily amended her statement, as she suddenly remembered the closed-off look on Benji’s face when Mr Benson’s note had been delivered. ‘At least, I hope he’ll stay,’ she said a little anxiously.

Suddenly, the fear that he would not stay swept over her. Already very weary, her face went white, her glass fell from her fingers and she fainted.

Mr Benson half-rose from his chair. ‘Miss Harding!’ he exclaimed, and banged his bell frantically. When his clerk flew in, he demanded that his typewriting lady be sent to help his client.

In a few seconds, after a timid knock, a plain, small mouse of a woman, smelling salts in hand, slipped in.

‘Oh, dear, dear,’ she whispered, viewing Wallace Helena slumped in her chair. Blinking nervously behind her glasses, she put down the bottle of salts and very carefully removed Wallace Helena’s hat She put her arm round the unconscious woman’s neck to raise her head a little,
picked up the little bottle of
sal volatile
and waved it under her nose.

Wallace Helena did not stir. The typist turned a frightened face to her employer. ‘Could we lie her down, Sir? I ought to loosen her lace collar – and, if you’ll forgive me mentioning them – her stays – she probably laced them a bit tight.’

Mr Benson’s expression had the slightly hunted look of a man suddenly enmeshed in a situation he wanted to get out of at all costs. He rang his bell again and sent for reinforcements. Two young clerks were instructed to lift the lady onto a straight-backed sofa on the other side of the room, a sofa usually sat upon by submissive wives, not directly included in a client’s consultations with the lawyer.

Wallace Helena was rather tall for such a stiff narrow piece of furniture, but they tucked her feet up onto a chair hastily pushed close to it. The three men then stared uncertainly down at her, while the typist tried again to revive her with the smelling salts.

Fortunately, she began to stir, so the two clerks were dismissed, and Mr Benson went to his desk to find the bottle of brandy he kept there, for emergencies; sometimes, information he had to impart to clients was so shocking that they needed something to stiffen their resolve. It was the first time that a lady had actually fainted in his office, however, and he wondered, as he poured a little of the spirit into a sherry glass from the same cupboard, exactly what had caused Wallace Helena to lose consciousness. Al-Khoury had left her a good business and a reasonable bank account on which to draw for immediate needs, not to speak of a strong box holding a very nice sum in good golden sovereigns. What would make her faint?

He was not more puzzled than Wallace Helena. As she
came round and was persuaded to drink the brandy, she was ashamed at her weakness.

‘I’ve never fainted before, except once from hunger – one spring when we were down to porridge and very little of that’ She shrugged, as she handed her glass back to the typist and thanked her. ‘It’s probably the immense change from being out-of-doors all the time to spending most of my time at a desk.’ She smiled up at her lawyer. ‘I wonder if you could order a carriage for me?’

‘Indeed, I will, and Miss Williams shall go with you.’

Mr Benson refused to accept Wallace Helena’s protestations that she would be quite all right alone, and Miss Williams, armed with her return fare to the office by the clerk, was very happy to escape, though tomorrow she would have to finish the work left undone.

Though sapped of strength, Wallace Helena was still alert enough to notice a hoarding that they passed at the side of the dock road. It exhibited a large poster advertising Pear’s Soap. ‘Right on my doorstep!’ she exclaimed to Miss Williams, with mock indignation. She immediately drew out her notebook and scribbled a reminder in it, to talk to Benji about a poster of their own.

Benji! He was the core of the whole ambitious enterprise she had in mind. And at a moment of intense pressure, the thought that he might leave the Lady Lavender, leave her stranded when she most needed him, had been the last straw. Already run down by the chill she could not shake off, she had fainted. Joe would never believe it!