The Lemon Tree. Helen Forrester

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ all depends,’ he answered gloomily. ‘I’m the Soap Master and they can’t make soap without someone like me. But they could buy it and then shut it down – to get rid of a competitor.’

      ‘Well, we’ll worry about it when we get to it,’ Sarah responded, determined to be brave and not increase her spouse’s misgivings.

      She wondered how far their savings, hidden under the loose board in the bedroom above them, would stretch if he were unemployed. With jobs so hard to find, he would hardly be likely to get another at his age, even though his mates always said he had a wonderful feel for soap.

      ‘What’s she like to look at?’ Sarah felt very curious about this strange woman who had come all the way from Canada. Since she was the Ould Fella’s nearest relative – except for his illegitimate son, Mr Benjamin, who didn’t count, poor lad – she must be an Arab, like he had been. George had told her that James Al-Khoury had come from Lebanon, the same Lebanon that she had read about in her Bible. Did that really make him an Arab, she wondered suddenly, and was Miss Harding, therefore, an Arab lady, for all that she had a Western name? She smiled gently. The Ould Fella had been more like a friend than an employer. Many were the times when he had sat in this very kitchen, talking about the soap works. Always talked to George, he did, before making any changes. George and him got on like two o’clock.

      With a sigh she pushed her plate of tripe to one side; she would try to eat it later. Arab or not, Mr James Al-Khoury and George had been happy together. Tears welled inside her, but she crushed them back; she must not let George know how worried she was.

      While he ruminated over Sarah’s question about Miss Harding, George took another slice of bread and spread it thinly with butter.

      Eventually, he replied, ‘Well, she’s tall; same height as me, I should say. Thin as a rake. But when she smiles she’s got a lovely face – and great brown eyes like a young heifer. She don’t smile much, though. She were talkin’ quite sharp to Mr Turner, the chemist. I didn’t hear what she said, but I could see Turner didn’t like it. He can be a bit uppity, and he wouldn’t like being put down by a woman.’

      ‘What was she dressed like?’

      ‘Oh, she were all in black, in mourning, with a black veil thrown back from her face. She’d great rings on her fingers, all gold. No stones. She’d a ring on her marriage finger what looked roughly made; ugly, it was – not much polished. Never seen one like it before.’ He picked up his mug of tea and held it between his great hands. ‘She int married, though. I heard her correct old Bobsworth, when he called her Mrs Harding. She’s got a proud, cold way with her and she said as tart as a lemon to old Bob, “Miss Harding, if you please, Mr Bobsworth.”’

      Sarah knew Mr Bobsworth quite well and she smiled, despite her forebodings. The strange lady rose in her estimation. Though she would not have hesitated to call Mr and Mrs Bobsworth her friends, they did tend to put on airs, because he was the firm’s head bookkeeper and forwarding clerk. ‘And her only the daughter of a stevedore,’ thought Sarah sourly.

      George was speaking again, his heavy, grey brows knitted in puzzlement

      ‘As I said. Miss Harding shook hands with me, and then with everyone – even Alfie. She asked Alfie if he were born in Liverpool.’

      Alfie was the seventeen-year-old mulatto labourer who swept the soap-boiling area. He also fetched and carried for the temperamental soap boilers, who sometimes dared not leave their soap pans, for fear they might miss the moment when the soap must be proved, or brine added or the boiling mixture turned off and carefully left to cool. The soap boilers were like housewives producing fine sponge cakes – everything had to be done exactly right. Sarah knew that a few people still regarded Mr Tasker as a magician, because he said he could feel how his great cauldrons of soap were getting on. He knew, they said. What he knew they did not specify – it appeared to them to be magic.

      ‘She told me she makes her own soap on her farm in Canada,’ expanded Mr Tasker. He put down his mug, leaned back from the table and belched. ‘She told me as the nearest soap works is hundreds of miles off and there’s no proper roads to it. Proper surprised I was, when she said it.’ His three chins wobbled, as if to indicate agreement with his remarks.

      Sarah omitted to remind him that she never used any soap at all on her face, because she believed that soap spoiled her skin. As a country girl, she had always scrubbed her face with a rag dipped in water from the rain barrel at her father’s cottage door, and the present velvety smoothness of her complexion, despite her age, indicated that the natural oils of her skin had never been removed. Her five married daughters thought she was terribly old-fashioned and said that she owed it to her husband to use the soap he made. But she stubbornly refused, and told them that if they followed her example, they would not have to put that new-fangled cold cream on their faces every night. Lucky, they were, she thought, to be married to men with regular jobs, who could afford falderals like an occasional pot of cold cream.

      ‘It’s terrible she int a man,’ George said with feeling. ‘The Ould Fella was a good master, though he never paid out a penny he didn’t have to. Young Benji takes after him – pity the lad’s illegitimate; he could have followed him very nicely.’ He paused toget a bit of bread from between his stained front teeth with his finger. ‘Now, if she were a man, she’d be the same – a real firm hand on the tiller, she’d have. Backbone, she’s got, by the sound of her. But a woman? What can a woman do? In a soap works?’

      He paused, as he contemplated in his mind’s eye the woman who now held his future in her slender fingers. Though she was so thin, he thought, she’d a nice waistline – and breasts like it said in the Bible, like pomegranates. Her long black dress fitted so closely, it stirred thoughts in a man, it did, he chided himself ruefully.

      ‘What about Mr Benji?’ inquired Sarah, interrupting his contemplation of the new owner’s charms.

      ‘Well, I’m sure James Al-Khoury were training him up to take his place when the time came, as a son should. But he only made one Will in his life, according to Mr Helliwell, and that were before Benji were born – and he were born on the wrong side of the blanket, so he int entitled to anything by law, poor lad. His dad could have left him everything in a Will and he would’ve got it all right. His mam and him and the lawyer has hunted everywhere, looking for another Will; but Mr Benson told Mr Helliwell that he’d have known if there was another Will – the Ould Fella would have come to him about it, ’cos Mr Benson used to vet all the firm’s legal papers, contracts and such – James Al-Khoury didn’t trust ’is own knowledge of English, so anything major he were goin’ to sign, he got Mr Benson, his lawyer, to check first.’

      ‘I suppose Mr Al-Khoury thought he’d plenty of time before he’d die.’

      ‘Oh, aye. He weren’t yet fifty. He never thought of a heart attack, that I’m sure; it come as an awful shock to all of us. Proper sad it is for Benji and his mam. And him a smart lad, too.’

      

      That night, in many tiny homes round the Brunswick Dock, Wallace Helena Harding was the subject of anxious discussion; times were so bad that the very hint of the loss of a regular job was enough to cause panic. Even Alfie, the mulatto casual labourer, who slept in the back hallway of a nearby warehouse, courtesy of the nightwatchman of the building, and who had endured bitter hardship all his life, viewed with equal terror the possibility of starvation or, the only alternative, the workhouse.

      The warehouse watchman was an old seaman with a wooden leg who had known Alfie and his slut of a mother all the young man’s short life, but as he sat beside him on the bottom step of the stone stairs of the СКАЧАТЬ