Free The Lemon Tree by Helen Forrester Page A

close to the Al-Khourys’ old shop.
    Leila was genuinely pleased, and congratulated her. Then she sat looking at her hands for a moment, before she went on to say determinedly, ‘Tomorrow, Helena and I, we go to tailor to ask for sewing work. Helena sew as good as me.’
    ‘Well, that would keep you going for a bit.’ Sally smiled at her, and then said very gently, ‘With your looks you could get a healthier job, a clerk in a store, say.’
    Leila smiled wanly back. ‘Later. Tailor give job now.’ She shrugged. ‘Nobody give me good job now. English so bad.’
    ‘You’re doing just fine,’ Sally assured her robustly.
    Helena looked up from the rice. She was dumbfounded at her mother’s decisiveness. A quick warning glance from Sally told her to be careful what she said.
    She deftly picked out a piece of chaff from the rice. ‘I’d love to work with you, Mama,’ she said softly.
    Her mother turned and smiled at her. ‘Would you? That’s good. We’ll manage, darling, won’t we?’
    Thankfully, Helena got up and went to her. Leila took her warmly in her arms, and Helena wanted to burst into tears with relief.
    The Civil War had caused an insatiable demand for uniforms. The tailor was very glad to have two skilledsewers for finishing work, though he bargained the wages down to near-starvation levels, on the grounds that Leila’s English was poor and that, at nearly fourteen, Helena was not yet entitled to a woman’s wage.
    The two clung to each other and managed to continue to exist, two tiny boats bobbing along in a sea of other immigrants, all competing for jobs, cheap rooms and cheap food, in a country where war had caused prices to skyrocket. Their Greek landlord was appeased, and the shop beneath their small nest was re-rented, to a locksmith and his family, who both worked and slept there. Because they had a side entrance, the two women were not disturbed by them.
    Helena had never in her life felt so exhausted. Underfed, she also lacked sunlight, diversions, and exercise. One day, on their return from work, she fainted.
    Leila bathed her daughter’s pinched, white face, and decided desperately that she would sell her best gold chain. In that way, she could pay the landlord his arrears instead of having to give him extra money each week. They could then spend more on food. She herself felt apathetic and intensely weary, and she thought, with real horror, of what might happen to her daughter if she herself should die.
    She took the necklace to a jeweller in a better area of the city, and it was in the jeweller’s shop that she met Tom Harding.
    Tom was a widowed settler from Fort Edmonton, a Hudson’s Bay Company Fort on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River in western Canada, an area as yet barely explored. Though Tom claimed to be a settler, he was, in fact, a squatter on land owned by the great fur-trading Company which had established the Fort. To the Company’s annoyance, he also trapped, and, having oncebeen a miner, was apt to dig Company coal out of the banks of the river and to pan small amounts of gold out of the river itself.
    His younger brother owned a prosperous grocery shop in Chicago, and their acerbic old mother lived with him. Tom had received an urgent letter from his brother, via the Hudson’s Bay Company, saying that the old lady was in very frail health. She had several times expressed a strong desire to see him before she died, and he should hurry.
    When he received the letter, Tom thought wryly that his brother had obviously no idea of the distances involved or the difficulties of the journey. He was, however, extremely depressed himself. He had recently lost his Cree Indian wife and his infant son in childbirth. An Indian wife was an enormous asset, besides which he had been quite fond of her and had been looking forward to the child. He wondered if he should return to Chicago and settle there.
    After discussing the matter with his friend, Joe Black, who worked with him