The Lemon Tree

‘Nope. I pan a bit out of the river sometimes – but nobody’s ever found the mother lode.’

‘Mother lode?’ she queried in puzzlement, her smooth brow wrinkling slightly.

‘The main vein of ore – gold, Ma’am.’ He watched her delicately sipping her coffee. What a beauty she was! He wondered if she could endure a wilderness home, and told himself not to be a fool. She must be able to pick and choose the men she would take up with.

He plunged into conversation again. ‘I don’t make much in cash,’ he admitted. ‘But one way and another we mostly eat O.K. The worst years are over. We’ve two other men helping us now – both Crees. And Joe Black’s mother came from working at the Fort, to help in the house. She’s Cree, too.’

She dimpled, and inquired coyly, ‘You’re not married?’

‘I was, Ma’am. Married a Cree lady – a nice, intelligent woman. But about a year ago, she died giving birth.’ He sighed heavily.

‘And the baby?’

‘Little Wallace? He died too; it was a bitter winter and a lot of kids died – and old folk round the Fort.’

Remembering her own dead sons, Leila felt an overwhelming compassion for the man before her. Impulsively, she put out her hand and touched his arm. ‘You suffer much.’

‘I think you have, too, Ma’am.’

She nodded sad agreement.

He called for more coffee, and then began to describe the country he lived in, its superb beauty, the summers hot and comforting; he omitted to mention the myriads of mosquitoes and blackfly in summer, the problems of getting water into the house during the harsh winter, the vast unexplored territory round the tiny settlement

She listened in wonderment. It was obvious that the man loved his adopted home. She visualized it as country rather like that she had passed through on the train between New York and Chicago, which had seemed very empty to her in comparison with the Lebanon or even Britain. She watched his face which was leathery with exposure to the weather, and noted the grey in his moustache. He was a fine man, she felt, and her sex-starved body cried out with need, though she was thirty years old – quite old, she told herself.

By the time the fresh coffee had been consumed, Tom was telling himself there was no way he was going to let her go. She could adapt, like other immigrant women to the United States had done. ‘She can take one more step in her life,’ he assured himself, hope overwhelming his doubts.

He accompanied her home and left her on her doorstep, after agreeing to meet the following evening. Leila went up the stairs in a dream. She slowly took off her hat and laid it on the table. Helena was not yet home from work, so she flung herself on her daughter’s bed, spread out her arms as if to embrace the world, and for the first time since she had come to Chicago, she laughed with pure joy.

Chapter Eight

A week later, Leila broke it to her daughter that she was seriously considering remarriage. Since Leila had already mentioned that she had met a very nice man, a Canadian, and had gone out to meet him every evening for the past week, Helena received the confidence without too much surprise. It did, however, sadden her that her own beloved father was to be replaced.

‘It hurts, Sally,’ she confided to her old friend, as they sat together on the bottom step of the staircase leading to Leila’s tiny flat. The weather was thundery and the rooms upstairs stifling. Leila was out with Tom.

Sally took a pull at the cigarette hidden in the palm of her hand and slowly blew out the smoke. ‘Your mother is a very beautiful person; it’s bound to happen. She must like this guy particularly, though, because I know one or two who’ve approached her and she’s turned them down.’

‘Really?’

‘Sure. I don’t suppose your mother told you, because she wouldn’t want to disturb you.’ She did not say that the indignant young widow had probably turned the men down because their offers did not include marriage. Mrs Al-Khoury had asked Sally if such offers were customary, and Sally had replied, with a grin, that they were common enough, but you didn’t have to accept them. Now Sally put her arm round Helena and reminded her that, when she herself married, Leila would be alone. ‘I suppose,’ Helena had replied uneasily, and had tried to accept the possible change in her life.

Leila stitched her necklace back into her black skirt. Then she told Helena that she had accepted Tom’s offer of marriage, and that they would all be moving to western Canada, probably within the month.

‘But, Mama!’ Helena gasped. ‘You said before you couldn’t move to another country! What are you thinking of? Couldn’t Tom live here?’

Leila’s agitation was immediately apparent. ‘He says he can’t, dear; he’s too much at stake in Canada – and he loves the country.’ She lifted her hands in a small helpless gesture and let them sink into her lap.

‘Well, you don’t have to marry him! There’re other men in Chicago, surely, Mama? I’ve got used to Chicago now – and so have you.’

‘I don’t want to marry anyone else,’ Leila replied, almost crossly. ‘Marriage is very special, very personal.’

‘I know that!’ Helena’s pinched little face was taut with suppressed fear of the unknown. ‘If he wants you, he can stay here,’ she said resentfully.

‘I’ve asked him, dear. But he either won’t or can’t. And I can’t let him go.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I love him very, very much.’

This silenced Helena. Falling in love was something that occurred in books. It had never occurred to her that it might happen to her mother – or, possibly, to herself. In Lebanon, you accepted gratefully the husband chosen for you by wise parents and then hoped he would be kind to you.

Emboldened by her daughter’s sudden quiet, Leila said, ‘Consider, my darling, how very poor we are. Where will I get the chance again to meet a really nice man – and he is nice.’

Stifling a desire to cry, Helena nodded dumbly. Their current life was very hard and seemed to lack all hope of change, at least until her mother’s command of English improved. She could understand that, to her mother, Tom Harding offered an escape from total penury. But to what?

‘Has he told you about where he lives?’ she asked dully.

‘Yes, he has. And it sounds possible, with a good future for you.’

Three weeks later, a numbed Helena found herself in a Registrar’s office, standing behind her mother and acting as her bridesmaid, while next to her was Glenn, a rotund version of Tom Harding, acting as his brother’s best man. Behind them stood Sally and Mrs Ghanem and one or two friends of Tom and Glenn. Seated in a chair specially set for her was Tom’s scary old mother, anxiously attended by plump, harassed Ada Harding, Glenn’s wife.

Old Mrs Harding had already told her besotted son, in front of his new fiancée and her daughter, that he was a fool and always had been one; these women would be no use to him in a pioneer settlement. She had been a pioneer herself and knew what it was like.

Helena had listened to her with growing disillusionment. Leila had been as terrified as if she had been cursed by a witch, and it had taken all Tom’s cajolement to assure her that his friend Joe’s mother lived on the homestead and would come every day to help her. To beguile her, he said he had a little sleigh which she could learn to drive in winter, and that Helena could go to school, either in St Albert, where there was a Roman Catholic Mission, or in the Fort.

On the eve of the wedding, Helena had sat with her mother in their bare, tiny living-room, while Leila unpacked a beautiful, embroidered head shawl, delivered by Mrs Ghanem’s eldest son, with the family’s good wishes for the marriage. Helena, seeing the fine Lebanese handiwork of the shawl, had put her head down on the table and wept.

‘Couldn’t we go home to Beirut, Mama? Please, Mama.’ She spoke, as usual when addressing Leila, in Arabic, and the words seemed all the more poignant because of the language used.

‘Darling child, you know I’ve thought of that often, but the times are bad. Even if we weren’t murdered by either the Druze or the Turks, a widow woman, with no family to protect her, wouldn’t stand a chance.’ She put down the shawl and moved round the table, to hold Helena in a warm embrace.

With her head resting on her child’s thick black hair, she said frankly, ‘I don’t know what life holds for us, my love. But I feel Tom is honest and kind; and he has high hopes of giving you a better life. He says there is a great shortage of women round the Fort, so you should be able to make a good marriage when the time comes.’ Her voice trailed off, but she continued to hold the girl close to her. She was herself very nervous. She was also desperately in love – and she had no conception of wilderness barely touched by human hands.

Helena did not reply to her mother’s assurances. She wept for her father. Through her tears, she looked down at her hands. Her left forefinger was raw from constant pricks from blunted pins and needles at the tailor’s workroom, and she remembered the long, dreary days she spent penned up there. If she stayed in Chicago, would that go on forever?

She raised her head. ‘How do we know he’s even got a farm?’ she asked, as she fumbled in her skirt pocket for her handkerchief.

‘Well, I’ve done my best to confirm it. You know that young lawyer on Main Street? He’s originally from Lebanon. I asked him if he could inquire for me.’

Surprised at her mother’s temerity, Helena glanced up at her. ‘What did he find out?’

‘Well, he confirmed that Tom’s brother has a good reputation – it’s been known for years that he had a brother homesteading in Canada. There’s nothing to prove it, of course, but a neighbour told him that a few years back Tom asked his mother to join him. She didn’t go because her health’s so bad. The neighbour also said that the old lady is all against the marriage, because she says I won’t be able to work hard enough; I’ll be a burden to him.’

A small smile curved Helena’s mouth. ‘I doubt that, Mama. I think you’ll make him very happy.’

Her mother bent and kissed her. ‘Thank you, dear.’ She paused, and then said, ‘The lawyer also advised that Tom should make a Will, to be signed at the end of the wedding ceremony, leaving everything to me, if he should die – which God forbid. Tom’s going to do this, so at least we’d have a farm, dearest.’

Though Tom agreed to the Will, he omitted to tell her that he was, as yet, still a squatter and that the Hudson’s Bay Company still owned the land; he hoped sincerely that he would gain ownership before he died.

Later on that evening, when Tom came to spend an hour or two with Leila, he tried to reassure the girl.

‘The Fathers will teach you school,’ he told her. ‘And Joe Black or me – we’ll teach you how to skate and ride. And you can have a pup if you’d like one.’

She replied heavily, ‘I can already read and write in French and Arabic. English is coming. And Papa taught me arithmetic and how to keep accounts – some geography, as well. And how to buy and sell – and judge silk.’

‘Then you’re a very accomplished young lady,’ responded Tom patiently. ‘I could use your help, if you’d give it me.’

Though he had caught her interest, Helena looked at him with suspicion. ‘Help you?’

‘Sure. I can get folks to do all kinds of chores – but Joe and me – neither of us is good at accounts, keeping records and such. And, one of these days I reckon the British Government’s going to reach out and take over from the Hudson’s Bay Company, which rules us now – and we’ll have a pack of Government officials on our backs – and we’ll need everything down in pen and ink.’

Helena smiled involuntarily. ‘Just like the Turks?’ she asked with sudden interest.

Tom did not understand what she was referring to and turned to Leila for enlightenment. Leila told him about the avaricious tax collectors of the Turkish Emperor, and he laughed. ‘You’ve hit it right on,’ he told Helena, which made her smile again.

Realizing that much of his and Leila’s happiness depended upon Helena being reasonably content, he spent until midnight telling her about the Fort and his homestead. He also told her that he had married a Cree wife, and that the loss of her and of his son had been hard to bear. ‘Cree women know how to preserve meat, and how to make clothes out of skins – and how to cure sickness,’ he said. ‘Joe’s Ma is a Cree, and she came to help us when my wife died – and she’ll help your Mama, so that it won’t be too hard for you.’ In the back of his mind, he fretted that two more mouths to feed that winter could be a problem, and he hoped the pig had produced a good litter.

Watching the man as he spoke, Helena felt a sense of pity creep into her. He, also, had lost people he loved, she realized, and she felt a hint of kinship.

He was saying to her, ‘I can’t make up to you for your pa – I wouldn’t presume to. But I’ll take care of you as much as I can. You could be the only youngster your mama and I’ll have.’

The inference that her mother could have more children shocked Helena. She looked up at her mother, who smiled quietly back. It could happen, she realized. She turned to Tom. His expression was quite sad. He said suddenly, ‘I’d like to give you an extra name, in memory of my little boy. Then you’d be real special to me. I’d like to call you Wallace Helena.’

She was immediately offended. ‘That’s a boy’s name.’

‘It’s a boy’s or a girl’s. We called the baby after my mother – she’s Wallace Harding.’

‘I don’t need another name.’ The wide mouth compressed in disapproval.

‘Aw, come on, now. Indulge an old man’s fancy.’

Helena looked up at her mother again. ‘Do I have to, Mama?’

Her mother’s mouth began to tremble, as it always did when she was in doubt. Helena saw it and remembered suddenly how close her mother had come to a complete breakdown after her father’s death. She considered warily what might happen if she refused Tom’s absurd idea. For a moment, she thought that if she raised a tremendous fuss about it, the whole engagement might be broken off, something she had been praying for for the last four weeks.

The silence between the three of them became tense. Helena’s hands were clenched, her mother’s eyes wide and despairing.

She understood her mother’s passion for this man, and that if the couple married she herself would be dependent upon Tom’s goodwill – not something she desired at all. But if she succeeded in breaking the liaison, what else was there? A dreadful servitude, unless she herself could marry decently – and she, like her mother, had discovered that in Chicago she ranked as a coloured girl, not suitable for marriage to a white man. She bit her lips as she bitterly considered this fact, and that there were few boys of her age within the Lebanese community and probably none who would want a penniless girl. She was poor and plain and yellow, she told herself, and without any alternative future worth having.

She took a big breath, and said unsmilingly, ‘I don’t suppose it makes much difference.’

‘Well, that’s nice of you,’ Tom told her, thankful that he had not alienated her; he had regretted his impulsive request the moment he had made it. Leila had, however, been strangely silent when he had casually mentioned the children they would have.

When pressed, she had said, with a faint smile, ‘Let’s not worry – see what God sends.’

He wanted another son, but it seemed suddenly possible to him that he would not have one. At the thought, he had urgently wanted to perpetuate the memory of the small brown innocent buried with his mother in the black earth of the north pasture. It had occurred to him that he could give the child’s name to his stepdaughter and make her Wallace Helena.

When he was leaving, he shook the girl’s hand, then held it for a moment, as he looked down at her. ‘You won’t regret it, honey,’ he said warmly.

Wallace Helena smiled up at him wanly. He seemed to her a simple, honest man – but she wanted to cry.

Chapter Nine

Glenn and Ada Harding provided a modest wedding breakfast in their back garden. Since it was a second marriage, only a few neighbours had been invited over to join the party. All of them were curious to see the bride. The men thought she was very pretty and congratulated Tom; the women tended to side with old Mrs Harding in saying that she was not strong enough to be the wife of a homesteader – and they whispered disparagingly that she looked like a Jewess. Acutely embarrassed by their stares, Leila held the soft brim of her summer hat close to her face and stayed very close to Tom.

The bride’s daughter sat, almost unnoticed, on a bench under a tree. Sally, who was herself totally ignored by the other guests, saw the forlorn young girl, and came over to join her. She saw tears on Wallace Helena’s cheek and she immediately handed her the glass of wine she was carrying. ‘Drink it down, hon. You’ll feel better.’

As Wallace Helena silently drained the glass, Sally carefully arranged the skirts of her dress; she had made it out of the bits of black silk Wallace Helena had given her. She looked over at the bride, who was also wearing black silk. ‘Gee, your mama looks pretty,’ she exclaimed, as if she was seeing Leila for the first time.

‘Yes,’ agreed Wallace Helena, without enthusiasm. Far more astute than her mother, she foresaw problems arising like thunderclouds – and probably considerable hardship in an unexplored country like Canada. Yet, what could she do?

When she had suggested to Sally that perhaps she should remain by herself in Chicago, try to earn enough to keep herself, Sally had been very explicit about what was likely to happen to a fourteen-year-old left alone in a city.

Sally had added sharply, ‘You be thankful your ma’s found a decent man to take care of you both; I wish I could find someone like him. There isn’t nothing to fear about Canada; slaves run away to it, so as to be free.’

‘Do they? Could you come with us, Sally? Could you?’ Her voice was suddenly wild with hope.

The black woman had laughed down at her. ‘That Mr Harding don’t need another mouth to feed, baby. And I got my mother to keep. I’m no slave – I’m free.’ She had given Wallace Helena a playful shove with her elbow, as she said the last words. ‘He’s O.K. Be thankful he’s willing to take you in.’ She hesitated, and then said, ‘He’ll take care of you; he’ll never touch you, I truly believe.’

Wallace Helena did not understand the import of Sally’s last words; she was still overwhelmed at having to face another new country.

Old Mrs Harding did one very sensible thing for them. Realizing that she could not talk sense into Tom, as she put it, she persuaded Leila and Wallace Helena to buy a solid pair of flat-heeled boots each and enough veiling to attach to their hats, so that they were protected in some degree from blackfly and mosquitoes – and she ordered Tom to pay the bill.

In the course of their journey, which took weeks, both Leila and Wallace Helena had reason to be thankful to her: mosquitoes and blackfly plagued them most of the way. They went by train to La Crosse, then by stage to the Red River, and, despite the threat of yet another Sioux uprising, by paddle steamer to Fort Garry. There they rested for a couple of days, while Tom made inquiries. They were not very impressed by what they saw of their first Hudson’s Bay Fort, and awaited with anxiety Tom’s decision as to how they were to proceed. Their landlady, the wife of a miner who ran a small general store, was aghast when told where they were going; as far as she knew, only one white woman had ever travelled that far, and she was the wife of a Hudson’s Bay man.

Leila wept, and Wallace Helena begged Tom to take them back to Chicago. Tom laughed, cheered them up and said they would travel by York boat. Several expeditions had gone out recently from Fort Garry to Fort Edmonton by land; but he was not going to chance such a dangerous journey.

The sail up Lake Winnipeg was not unpleasant. But the rest of the journey was done by York boat up the Saskatchewan River, a long dreary drag with little but pemmican to eat, cooped up in a tiny boat, one of a Company brigade returning to Fort Edmonton with stores.

To Leila’s horror, the boats were from time to time dragged out of the river, their cargo unloaded and transported on the backs of the voyageurs, to bypass waterfalls or rapids. The boats themselves were hauled along rough tracks, sometimes made of tree trunks and sometimes a well-trodden path. During these portages, Leila and Wallace Helena stumbled along as best they could, following the crew for mile after mile. Despite the heavy veiling protecting their faces and necks, they were badly bitten by mosquitoes and blackfly, which rose like a fog around them at every step; Tom and the other men seemed to have a certain immunity – their bites did not swell so badly. The crew were Metis, short, tanned, muscular men who cursed in fluent French, as they waged their usual battle against the flow of the huge river.

Leila was not a heavy woman, but what fat she had fell off her. She looked so gaunt that both Wallace Helena and Tom began to wonder if she could survive the journey.

Wallace Helena had, at first, thought that she herself would not survive, but the arduous exercise and adequate rations of pemmican actually began to improve her health. She was filthy dirty and nearly insane from the incessant insect bites, and she longed for some privacy, if only to wash herself down in the cold river water. The men did try their best to provide a little privacy, inasmuch as they turned their backs when the women had to relieve themselves, but they had a tight, fixed schedule to follow, and very little time was spent ashore. No special allowance was made for the fact that they had women with them. The party was soaked through by rain and, on one occasion, by sleet. ‘Lucky it hasn’t hailed,’ remarked one man to Wallace Helena. ‘Sometimes it hails heavy enough to bruise you.’

When the wind was in the right quarter, sails were rigged to ease the amount of poling which the men had to do; it also temporarily scattered the mosquitoes. Wallace Helena thought that she had never seen men work so hard for a living; yet they remained fairly good-humoured with each other. They were surprised that both women spoke French, admittedly very different from their own patois, but nevertheless enough for both sides to make rueful jokes about their suffering.

Towards the end of the journey, Leila showed signs of having a fever, and Wallace Helena’s heart sank. Wrapped in a blanket, she lay shivering beside her daughter, talking sometimes of the old days in Beirut or of her worries about Wallace Helena’s future, her mind wandering so that she did not know where she was.

It seemed to Wallace Helena that she had been crammed in the hated boat for months and that the journey would never end. She felt furiously that Tom had embroiled them in an expedition that nobody should be expected to make.

‘What if Mother dies?’ she asked him desperately.

Dog-tired himself, Tom could not answer her. Although he knew the journey to be gruelling, he had not realized how profoundly different was the strength of his late Indian wife compared with that of city-bred women. He had expected his new wife to complain about the hardship, but he had not thought that it would be unbearable. Wallace Helena had only to see the anguish in his eyes to know that her dread of losing Leila was shared.

Then, when both women had nearly given up hope, it seemed that an air of cheerfulness went from man to man, an excited anticipation. The man in charge of their craft told Wallace Helena, ‘Tomorrow, we’ll land for a little while – get a chance to wash and stretch ourselves.’ He looked at Leila, lying wrapped in a blanket in an acutely uncomfortable position towards the stern of the boat, and added kindly, ‘We’ll get a fire going when we’re ashore, and I’ll make a bit of broth for your mother.’

Wallace Helena smiled her gratitude; the man himself looked exhausted. ‘Why are we stopping?’