The Book of Ebenezer le Page Page 10
One Sunday evening when we couldn’t think where to go, I said to Jim, ‘How about going to hear my great-aunt preach, eh?’ He said, ‘Goodness, I didn’t know you have a great-aunt who preaches!’ I said, ‘Well, she is not my great-aunt, really. She live with my great-uncle.’ He said, ‘Then she is your great-aunt by marriage.’ ‘They’re not married,’ I said. ‘Then she’s your great-aunt in sin!’ he said. ‘Golly, let’s go and hear her!’
It was a rough night, and at first I wasn’t sure where the Seaman’s Bethel was along the Banks. It was well back in a field by a quarry before you come to Richmond Corner: there are houses there now. I had seen it by day. It was only a tin hut and there was a board outside which said SEAMAN’S BETHEL. BRIGHT GOSPEL SERVICES. ALL WELCOME. They had already started when we got in and was standing up singing ‘Eternal Father, strong to save’. The place was packed and we had to stand at the back. I had never seen such a congregation. It was all men. They was of every race and colour and nation, and young and old, and bald and curly and straight; and had come every one from off the ships in St Sampson’s Harbour. They had wonderful faces. They wasn’t in no Sunday best clothes, but in guernseys and old jackets and coloured mufflers and sea-boots, and holding their caps in their hands. The only light was a paraffin lamp hanging from the rafters; and, on a low platform at the other end, my great-aunt was conducting the service.
She was a finely built woman, but looked as if she hadn’t washed for years, and was wearing a skin-tight black robe that was green with age. She had a crumpled old black hat on her head with what had once been an ostrich feather on it, but was now only a spike sticking up. She was leading the singing in a voice that shook the corrugated iron roof and rose above the voices of the seamen, who was singing like the roaring of the sea. My great-uncle in a reefer-jacket, and looking like an old sea-captain with his white beard flying, was putting his whole heart and soul into the wheezey old harmonium and bringing out the rage of the storm and the whistling of the wind in the shrouds, until I thought every minute the old harmonium was going to fall to pieces on the floor.
When they had sung the hymn, the seamen sat down on the forms and bent over with their faces in their caps, while my great-aunt prayed. I have never in my life heard anybody pray so good as my great-aunt. She didn’t ask God for what she wanted: she told Him what He’d jolly well got to do. He’d got to look after every one of the boys now in His Presence as He looked after the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, and not let a hair of their heads perish. If He did that, she would praise His Name.
They all said Amen and sat up; and she read a piece from the Bible. It was the story of the stilling of the tempest on the Lake of Galilee; and every fellow listened with a face as set and serious as if he was in that boat and in that storm. Then they stood up and sang another hymn:
Jesu, Lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll,
While the tempest still is high.
I thought the collection was coming next, and got a penny ready; but there was no collection. Instead, the chaps sat down and made themselves as comfortable as they could on the hard seats. They knew what was coming.
I wish I could remember the sermon my great-aunt preached that night; but I laughed so much, it went clean out of my head. I remember the text. ‘Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth to destruction; but wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth unto salvation.’ I knew there was something like that in the Bible, but I thought at the time she’d got it the wrong way round. Or perhaps it was me who’d got it the wrong way round. She brought down the fire from heaven and frizzled and blistered the churches and the chapels of every denomination, even the Salvation Army. She was all for Jesus. He was the only Person ever lived on earth who had dared to stand up and say He loved sinners. ‘I know you’re all sinners, boys!’ she said, and wagged a finger at them and winked: ‘Jesus loves you. Who will give himself to Jesus?’ ‘I WILL!’ It was a mighty shout from every man-jack there. ‘Now let us refresh our spirits in the Lord,’ she said.
I’d noticed my great-uncle had disappeared round the back. In he came with his eyes twinkling and every curly hair of his beard twinkling, and three or four bottles under each arm and a corkscrew in his hand. He uncorked a bottle and gave her a swig, and had one himself, and passed it round; and another and another: gin and brandy and cognac and rum and goodness knows what. ‘For Christ’s sake, let’s get out of here!’ I said to Jim. ‘She knows who I am and will be dragging me in. If my poor old mother could see me now, she’d drop dead!’ ‘A pity,’ said Jim, ‘I thought we was going to have a free wet.’
He hung about outside to see the end of it, and I kept out of the light. My great-aunt brought the lamp to the door and held it above her head, so as the boys could see their way along the rough path; and when in twos and threes they staggered on to the road, she burst out singing ‘God be with you till we meet again!’ and her lovely ginny voice rang out like a trumpet and a bell and you could have heard it to the Town Church. The seamen went rolling along the Banks and up past the Grandes Maisons on the way back to their ships singing, singing ‘God be with you till we meet again!’ Jim and me was falling on each other laughing, and as drunk as they was. The sea was up against the galley wall and the waves was coming over and the spray was blowing in our faces, and there was a full moon and flying clouds and the sky was green between, and the moon sailing behind the clouds and out again, and we was singing too:
God be with you till we meet again,
Till we me-ee-eet ... till we me-eet,
Till we meet ... at Je-ee-su’s feet,
Till we me-ee-eet ... till we me-eet,
God be with you till we meet again!
‘Damme,’ said Jim, ‘that’s a grand religion!’
I won the leg of mutton off the greasy pole. It’s the one time in my life I have done what I really wanted to do. I only tried for it once; and I succeeded that once. Until then, every year I’d gone to the Grand Havre Regatta and watched it being done. Some years nobody really won it, but it was given to the one who got the furthest up. I didn’t want that. I wanted to get right to the top and win it properly; or not at all.
The pole wasn’t straight up and down: it was on the slant, but it was a steep slant and greased as smooth as glass, and was out over the water. Most of those who tried was like me and couldn’t swim; but there was boats around to pick them up if they fell in. It’s what most of them did. I had seen chaps try it all ways: hanging on by their hands, hanging on by their knees, rolling around it, wriggling along it and Edwin Gaudion from Les Salines, I remember, tried to push himself up feet first. He got plenty of laughs; but he didn’t get the leg of mutton. The crowd always gathered round to watch those who had a go make fools of themselves; but the one who got the leg of mutton was the joker in the pack and the hero of the hour.
I had my hour. I was cheered another time when I played football for the Upton Park Cup on the Cycling Track and the North won; but that was for the others as well as me. When I heard the laughing and the shouting and was at the top of the greasy pole, I knew it was only for me. I was clever. I wasn’t called Monkey Le Page for nothing. It was with the flat of my feet and my bandy legs I climbed the greasy pole. I started slow. ‘Go on, go on, Monkey!’ the boys called out: ‘Are you asleep?’ I wasn’t asleep. I went up a bit and slipped back a bit; but I wasn’t as far down as when I started. ‘Are you going up, or coming down?’ they called out. I was going up. I hung on with my hands and my knees like grim death. The pole got narrower towards the top and it was easier to brake with my arms and not slip back; and I twined my legs around the wider part. I didn’t hurry, or even look how far I had to go yet; and when I saw the leg of mutton in front of my nose, it was like the crown of glory in the Bible.
I untied it and held it up; and it was then the shouting and the cheering began, and you could have heard it on L’Ancresse Common.
‘Now mind, Ebenezer,’ I said to myself, ‘no swank!’ I let myself slide down slow and steady, and kept a firm grip with my legs. I didn’t want to fall in the sea at the last minute and get the meat wet. Jim was the first to thump me on the back. ‘I knew he’d do it!’ he said. ‘I said so from the start, didn’t I?’ I gave him the leg of mutton to hold, while I slipped away and cleaned myself and got properly dressed. When I got back he was holding it as if it was a bunch of flowers, and all the fellows laughing. He was laughing too, and was as pleased as if he had won it himself. I had a few drinks and could have been rolling drunk, if I’d taken half what was offered me; but I wanted to see the final of the first class sailing. They had to go round the Moulinets and across to Chouey and back. The Renouf brothers won it; and they deserved to. I shook hands with them, but I wouldn’t go back to the marquee for more drinking; or hang about after the girls. The fun was only just beginning, but I wanted to get home with my prize and give it to my mother. Jim came with me as far as Salem. ‘That old planchette was a fool,’ he said, ‘it ought to have known it would be right if it said yes.’
When I got indoors my mother was laying my supper at one end of the table. ‘Look, Mum!’ I said: ‘That’s for you!’ ‘Where d’you get it from?’ she said. ‘I won it off the greasy pole,’ I said. She looked it over and poked it with her finger. ‘It’ll do for our dinner Sunday,’ she said, ‘and we can have it cold Monday, and Tuesday for soup.’ She took it and put it in the meat safe outside. She came back in and I sat and ate my supper. She was sitting at the other end of the table reading the big Bible, as she always did before she went to bed. It was then I wished my father was alive. He’d have said ‘A.1., son! That’s the ticket!’
11
I suppose I will have to say something about Liza Quéripel. If she knew I was writing this book, she would be dying to know what I am saying about her. It is not that she would care tuppence what I do say, so long as I say something. Well, I’ve got plenty to say about Liza Quéripel; though for two pins I’d leave her out just to punish her! I don’t know how many years it is since I have seen her, but she must be quite an old woman by now. She is not as old as I am, of course, but she is well on the way to catching me up. Anyhow, there she is, living at Pleinmont in the same small cottage her mother and her wicked old grandmother lived before her. It is far enough away from Les Moulins, thank goodness, for us not to be able to fight any more. It isn’t possible for two people to get further away from each other on this island and not fall off. Yet who would ever have thought Liza Quéripel would end up the way she have, when she could have married a lord?
Was I sixteen or seventeen the first time I saw her? About that. I didn’t know who she was, or where she came from; but she was a girl you would have picked out from among a dozen. I was sitting on the galley wall at Cobo that Sunday evening with Jim and Jim Le Poidevin and Jim Machon, the three Jims, and Eddie Le Tissier from the Landes du Marché, watching the girls coming out from the Salvation Army. A row of them was passing arm-in-arm, all wearing light summer dresses down to their feet with tight little waists and coloured ribbons and small round hats perched on the front of their heads. The two Roussel girls from the Rouvet had their hair down yet and the youngest, I remember, had five black cork-screw curls hanging down her back. Muriel Bisson, my cousin who married Frank Nicolle, was another; and Ada Domaille, who was plain and never married. Liza was in the middle, as she always was when she was with a crowd of girls. I wonder if I would know her now, if I was to meet her in Town. I can see her yet as she was that Sunday evening with her small square chin and straight nose and her hair done up for show. She had lovely hair. It wasn’t red and it wasn’t gold, but in between; and she didn’t have a flaw in her skin. It was smooth and rather pale, but it could flush really like a rose; and she had the mouth of an angel when she was pleased, and the mouth of a she-devil when she was vexed. She was taller than the others and they wasn’t so much walking along as dancing, and their little feet was coming out like mice from under their skirts and they was singing:
There is a fountain filled with blood,
filled with blood,
filled with blood,
There is a fountain filled with blood
flows from Emmanuel’s veins!
They knew they was being watched by us fellows on the galley wall. Ada Domaille nodded and my Cousin Muriel smiled; but the Roussel girls was shy and made out they didn’t see us. Liza, as she would, looked us over one by one from head to foot, as if we was fish on a slab in the fish-market she didn’t want to buy. I thought, you wait, my bitch! I’ll show you yet I’m not a fish! ‘Who’s the one in the middle?’ I said. The fellows didn’t know. ‘She’s a hot bit of stuff,’ I said. ‘She think a lot of herself,’ said Jim.
It wasn’t long after, I ran into Ada Domaille on the Bridge. She was going to get some ointment from Burgess, the chemist, for old Mrs Tourtel’s bad legs. She was always doing things for other people, that girl. ‘I didn’t know you was Salvation Army,’ I said. ‘I’m not,’ she said, ‘but Liza wanted to go and hear them crying for their sins.’ ‘Who is Liza?’ I said. ‘Liza Quéripel,’ she said, ‘didn’t you notice her?’ ‘I can’t say I did,’ I said. ‘She noticed you all right,’ she said. ‘She wanted to know who you are and where you come from.’ If I’d been talking to any other girl, I might have said, ‘I didn’t notice Liza because I was looking at you,’ but I didn’t have the heart to say that sort of thing to poor old Ada. ‘If she was the one in the middle,’ I said, ‘she is too stuck up for my liking.’ ‘She is not at all stuck up,’ said Ada. ‘She can’t help being so beautiful. She is a wonderful girl!’ If ever a girl had a good friend, it was Liza in Ada Domaille. She went on to say that Liza wasn’t happy at home and so had come to live with her and her mother at the Marais to get away from the mess. There was a step-father and a mother who drank and a brother who wasn’t a brother and old Mère Quéripel and a lodger she’d had living with her for fifty years; and they all had to make do in two or three pokey rooms.
I had heard of Mère Quéripel from Pleinmont. Who on the island hadn’t heard of old Mère Quéripel? She was a witch. She gave powders for those who wanted husbands, and powders for those who had husbands they didn’t want. La Prissy and La Hetty went to see her once, while Percy and Harold was out watching a boxing match in St Julien’s Hall. Horace drove them in the buggy. I don’t know what they went to ask her for; but Percy and Harold didn’t peg out. It’s possible the old lodger was Liza’s grandfather, but she wasn’t sure herself. She liked to think her grandfather was an officer from the Fort, or a captain off one of the ships. Her idea was to go into good service in Town.
It was through Jack Domaille, Ada’s brother, that Liza got her feet on the ladder. He was head groom in the stables at Castle Carey, and was thought the world of by the mistress. It was him arranged for Liza to see Lady Carey. The lady took an instant fancy to Liza and engaged her on the spot as a lady’s maid; but Liza wasn’t a lady’s maid for long. She was friend and companion to the lady, and lived and ate with the family; and for many years she ruled the whole Carey household, as only Liza could do. Her grandfather may well have been an officer in the Army, or a ship’s captain, for she was to the manner born. The Careys was real gentry, but dowdy and old-fashioned. Liza looked and dressed and behaved as if she belonged to the Blood Royal. ‘If I had played my cards right,’ she said to me once, ‘I could have been Queen of England.’ I don’t know about Queen of England, but she did get to know King Edward VII. The trouble was that, for all her grand manner, she was also everything you might expect the wild granddaughter of a wicked old witch to be.
She hadn’t been living long at Castle Carey when me and Jim spotted her in Town one Saturday night. She was with a young chap I knew at a glance must be English. He was a pale thin weed of a chap with a few fair hairs on his upper lip, and looked as if he had a nasty smell under his nose. He was well-dressed and carried a cane he kept on whacking against
his leg. I thought he must be an officer in mufti. It turned out he was a Lieutenant Leslie Carstairs who was a guest at Castle Carey and on leave before going out to India. I nearly dropped dead with surprise when Liza called out, ‘Hullo there, Ebenezer! How goes it?’ as if she had known me all her life.
It was at the top of High Street and the Pollet and the bottom of Smith Street; and there was crowds of people going all ways, and everybody talking to everybody else and waving their hands about the way Guernsey people do when they talk. She stopped and introduced me. ‘This is Ebenezer Le Page from Les Moulins,’ she said. ‘He belongs to one of the oldest families on the island.’ ‘Oh?’ said Leslie and shook hands with me. I introduced him to Jim, and Jim said, ‘Wharro!’ and shook hands with him. Leslie had been holding Liza by the elbow with two fingers, as if she was so delicate she might break; but I noticed, after he had shaken hands with Jim, he kept on trying out his fingers to make sure they wasn’t broken. Jim didn’t know his strength.
I couldn’t think what Liza went out with a bloke like that for. I wouldn’t have, if I had been a girl. She said he wanted to see the native life. Well, I agree he wouldn’t see much native life with the Careys. The gentry are the gentry, whether they’re Guernsey or English. I didn’t like the way he was looking at the natives, anyway. It was as if they was animals in a zoo. ‘Amazin’, amazin’!’ he said. Liza asked me if I’d seen Ada lately. I said I’d met her once on the Bridge. ‘She speaks very well of you,’ she said. I thought bless old Ada! Leslie was edging to get away. ‘Aren’t we being rather con-spic-u-ous?’ he said. She shrugged her shoulders, as if she had to obey him but didn’t want to. ‘I must go now,’ she said. ‘À bientôt!’ ‘When?’ I said. I wasn’t letting the chance slip. ‘That’s for you to say,’ she said, and looked down as if she was shy; but I knew she was putting it on. ‘How about Thursday?’ I said. ‘Half-past six at the Weighbridge.’ ‘I’m afraid it will have to be half-past seven,’ she said, ‘after dinner.’ I thought that was a funny time of the day to be having dinner, me. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘half-past seven, then. Mind you’re there!’ ‘I may have to be a few minutes late,’ she said.