The Book of Ebenezer le Page Read online

  I was nearly struck dumb when he came round one evening and asked me to be the best man for the wedding. He was sheepish about it, and I knew there was something wrong. ‘Come on, out with it!’ I said. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘she’s going to have a baby.’ I said, ‘Ten to one it isn’t yours.’ ‘It is,’ he said. ‘I was the first.’ I lost my temper. ‘Damme, your mother was quite right!’ I said. ‘What you want is a nurse to look after you!’ He said, ‘I was afraid you wouldn’t like her.’ I said, ‘The only thing for you to do is to let her have you up, and pay her so much a week as the Court decides. It will come cheaper in the long run.’ ‘I can’t do that,’ he said, ‘she trusted me.’ I thought I bet she did trust you: she knew just what sort of fool she’d got hold of. I said, ‘How the devil did it happen? Was you drunk?’ He said, ‘It was in the barn. She threw herself on my chest and began to cry. I couldn’t do anything else in the circumstances.’ I said, ‘Well, it’s one way of stopping a girl crying: I know that. Myself, I’d have walked out of the barn and left her there to cry.’ He said, ‘Yes, but then you haven’t got a heart.’ ‘Thank goodness, I haven’t,’ I said, ‘or I’d be married a dozen times by now!’ He said, ‘I wish it hadn’t happened.’ I said, ‘How are your people taking it?’ ‘They are not very pleased,’ he said, ‘but they don’t want a lot of talk. Lydia says she will never speak to her again.’ I said, ‘All right, I will be your best man; and I will never say another word against Phoebe. God help you, Jim!’

  She didn’t have it all her own way, I’m glad to say. She thought she would be living at the farm, or at least in one of the cottages; but Lydia put her foot down. She wouldn’t have ‘that trollop’ living in the house, or near it, at any price. Mrs Mahy arranged for them to live in a cottage she owned at Sous L’Église in St Saviour’s. The old couple who had been living there wanted to go and live with a married son. It wasn’t a bad little place with three vergées of ground; but digging and planting and growing wasn’t what Jim had been used to, and he liked plenty of space to move about in.

  They was married at St Sampson’s Church at eight o’clock in the morning. They was going to Hastings for a honeymoon and had to catch the morning boat at ten. The Ferbraches was to the church in force; but, except for Jim’s father and mother and young Gerald, the only Mahy present was Christine Mahy’s sister, Gwen, who was one of the bridesmaids. The other was Phoebe’s sister, Eileen, who was as common as she was. Lydia didn’t go. I kept my word and tried to be nice to Phoebe. I told her the Russel was like a mill-pond and she was going to have a good crossing. She said ‘P’raps,’ as if she didn’t believe me even about that. She didn’t trust me from the start.

  When the wedding group was taken, I thought I had better make the best of it and so put on a grin like a Cheshire cat; but when I saw the photo in Norman Grut’s window in the Pollet, I wished I hadn’t. Poor old Jim was smiling sheepishly, but looked like a lamb led to the slaughter. Phoebe had a smirk on her face like the cat who stole the cream. She was wearing a white dress, and it fitted her tight; but I couldn’t see no sign of a baby. I wondered. There was a breakfast at the farm; but Lydia didn’t show herself. Jim’s father and mother and the bridesmaids was going to see the married couple off from the White Rock and I was asked to go with them. I said I must get home and change and go to work. I had been through as much as I could stand. Jim came to the gate with me to say good-bye. He hung on to my hand with both of his. ‘I want to see a lot of you when I get back,’ he said, ‘I’ll let you know when.’

  14

  I didn’t see Jim again for months. I knew he was back. I went down to the farm to find out and his mother told me she had been to see him. Gerald had driven her over. He quite liked Phoebe. Jim’s mother didn’t say much. She wasn’t one to let everything out like Hetty; but, reading between the lines, I got the idea Phoebe didn’t want Jim to be seeing his parents. Jim’s mother said, ‘I can’t blame the girl really: we don’t pretend to be fond of her.’ Lydia and Jim’s father was dead against her. It was only Gerald who was friendly. Jim’s mother said it was nice to have me there, even without Jim, and I must go any time I felt inclined; but it wasn’t the same for me.

  I went along once more to keep in touch. Jim’s mother had been to see him again. She was more outspoken this time and said she wasn’t going to be prevented from seeing her son by anybody: not even his wife. He was working very hard. The old couple who had lived there hadn’t been able to do much and the garden was a wilderness of couch-grass and dandelion. Jim had done well with the pears and the plums that year, and there was a sunny corner where he would be able to grow outdoor tomatoes the next summer. The house inside was looking quite nice, she said, but, again reading between the lines, I guessed she had provided most of the things. She didn’t say if he had mentioned me and I didn’t ask. She did say, however, that she hadn’t managed to get a word with Jim on his own, without Phoebe being there.

  Then one Sunday afternoon I was sitting on the grass in front of Les Moulins, looking down on La Petite Grève and thinking of nothing in particular, when I looked round as you do sometimes if somebody is looking at you, and there was Jim coming round the Chouey, pushing his bike! I jumped up and ran to meet him, and he threw his bike against the hedge and hugged me like a bear. ‘Come indoors and see my mother,’ I said. ‘She’ll be as pleased to see you as I am.’ She was. She wanted him to stop to tea, but he said he couldn’t. He had been to Les Gigands to see his mother and now had to go straight back home because Phoebe didn’t like being left on her own. My mother said, ‘How is your wife?’ ‘Flourishing,’ he said. I didn’t have to ask how he was. I could see. He had the look in his eyes of a hurt dog.

  When we got outside, he said, ‘All I came for really was to let you know Phoebe says you can come to tea next Sunday.’ I said, ‘Say to Phoebe thank you very much and I will be delighted to come.’ I meant at all costs to try and keep the peace. ‘Come early,’ he said. I walked to the main road with him and asked him when the baby was coming. I had counted in three months. ‘Easter,’ he said. That made it seven. ‘I hope it’s a boy,’ he said. ‘If it is, there will be another Ebenezer; and you’re going to be the godfather.’ When I got indoors, I said to my mother, ‘They’re expecting a baby Easter.’ I hadn’t told her, of course, Jim had been expecting one before. I saw my mother counting up the months in her old head. ‘Ah well,’ she said, ‘they’ve taken longer than some people. There’s that to be said for them.’

  I looked forward to the next Sunday all the week; and went along with all my good resolutions polished up. Jim was waiting by his gate for me, wondering if I was coming. I was a bit late because I couldn’t find the place at first. I knew it wasn’t far from St Saviour’s Church, but I didn’t know exactly where. ‘Phoebe is upstairs tittivating,’ he said, ‘come and see the garden.’ He showed me round. There was no couch-grass or dandelions now. The ground was freshly hoed and the paths was weeded clean. I knew how much work that meant from our own small patch. There was frames for cucumbers and marrows and pumpkins, and barrels for rhubarb. There was half a vergée or more of fruit garden: red currants and white currants and black currants and gooseberry bushes, and an overhead fig-tree like my little grandmother used to have. The pear-trees and plum-trees was against the gable of the house and against the old stable that was now used as a wash-house. The orchard was at the top end of the garden. ‘There’s one apple-tree I’d like you to see,’ he said. It was the biggest and in the corner, and in the fork of the branches a sprig of mistletoe was growing. ‘At Christmas, there will be berries on it,’ he said. ‘They will be the only living fruit in the garden.’

  He led the way to the back door. He had two pigs in the pigsty against the house. They poked their noses over the wall and grunted as we passed. ‘Shut up, you swine!’ he said, ‘you’ve had your dinner.’ They was the only livestock he got. ‘I’m getting some fowls,’ he said as we went in: ‘I want something alive around the place.’ The scullery was unti
dy, and I noticed saucepans and dishes from dinner hadn’t been washed up. My mother, or Tabitha, would have never left things in such a mess. Phoebe was in the front room laying the tea. I said, ‘Hullo, how are you?’ I made my voice as friendly as possible. She said, ‘Hullo,’ but had her back to me and didn’t look round. I said, ‘I like your dress.’ She turned round then and smiled at me. ‘I’m glad you like it,’ she said. ‘Jim don’t.’ I didn’t neither, as a matter of fact. It was an ugly mauve colour and all pleats and frills and looked common. I said, ‘Jim have done a wonderful job in the garden.’ She said, ‘That’s all he thinks about.’

  It wasn’t a good tea. There was some sort of sausage meat she had bought in Town, and there was peaches out of a tin and a piece of cake; but that was bought too. It looked seasick and had cherries in it. I don’t like cake with cherries in it. I thought of the lovely rich gâche Jim’s mother made. He must miss it. Phoebe poured out the tea in dainty little cups. It was comic really to see poor old Jim trying to drink his tea like a lady out of a dainty little cup, when I’d never seen him drinking tea out of anything else but a big china mug. There was a fancy lace tea-cloth on the table, but it didn’t half cover the wood. It was supposed to be genteel. The table and chairs was good solid stuff; but those I was sure had been given by Jim’s mother. The knick-knacks Phoebe got stuck all over the place she had bought from the Sixpenny-halfpenny Bazaar.

  I tried to show interest in her. ‘How did you like England?’ I said. ‘Oh lovely!’ she said. ‘I wish I could live there for good. It was awful having to come back to Guernsey.’ ‘I don’t see why,’ said Jim. ‘England is all right; but we’ve got everything they’ve got, only better.’ ‘It’s not so small,’ she said. He agreed. ‘Ah yes, it’s bigger,’ he said, ‘and they got nice big fields; and then there’s the trains. I liked going in the big train.’ ‘Well, that’s more than I have done,’ I said. ‘The people are so nice,’ she said. ‘They don’t treat you as if you was dirt.’ I must admit she had some excuse for saying this; but it was a nasty thing to say. I couldn’t help speaking up on Jim’s side. ‘Well, you don’t know what they’re like to each other,’ I said. ‘Perhaps they’re like us and make a fuss of strangers.’ I was thinking of Grandma from Alderney. ‘That’s what I say to her,’ said Jim. ‘They’re nice to you because you got the money in your pocket. Every smile is another sixpence on the bill.’ I don’t know what Jim would say if he was alive now, when everybody on the island is doing it. Phoebe said, ‘Jim is always in a paddy about something. He is never satisfied.’ I could have hit her. Jim was the most good-tempered person in the world.

  As soon as we had done eating, she began to clear the table. ‘Leave the dishes for now, Phoebe,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a hand with them later on.’ ‘Oh, I don’t mind doing the work while the men talk,’ she said. Jim would have got up there and then and helped her, if I hadn’t kept him talking. I asked him what Hastings, the town, was like. Was it all that better than St Peter Port? He said it wasn’t a patch on St Peter Port. It have miles of front he got tired of walking along, and big ugly hotels; but nothing much of a harbour. The place he liked was Battle. It was more in the country and was where the Battle of Hastings was fought. On the grass a guide was telling a crowd of people he was standing on the identical spot where King Harold was when he got an arrow through his eye. A hundred yards further on another guide was telling a crowd of people he was standing on the identical spot where King Harold was when he got an arrow through his eye. A hundred yards behind another guide was telling a crowd of people he was standing on the identical spot. ‘He must have been a slippery sod, that Harold,’ said Jim, ‘if he could be in three places at once. It’s a wonder we ever got him at all!’

  Phoebe came back. ‘Very funny! Ha, ha!’ she said. In his place I’d have flared up, but Jim passed it over. ‘You’ve been quick,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to change my dress first,’ she said. I knew Jim would have to do those dishes in the end. I’d had enough of it; and more than enough! I said I had better be going because my mother was on her own. Jim came to the road with me. The front of the cottage looked nice with ivy and a porch. Jim had cleared the front garden of everything, except the feathers in one corner. ‘It was a tangle of weeds,’ he said. ‘I’ll get some flowers in when I have the time.’ He got my bike for me but hung on to it, as if he didn’t want to let me get on. ‘Now you know where I live,’ he said, ‘come and see me whenever you like. This house is your home as much as mine.’

  Jim meant it; but when I had said ‘Good-bye and thank you’ to Phoebe, she hadn’t said ‘Come again.’ I let a month or more slip by before I went again. I went on a Saturday afternoon, so it wouldn’t seem I was inviting myself to Sunday tea. I noticed Jim hadn’t done anything to the front garden. He was out the back digging. I went round to talk to him. It was in full view of the house and I saw Phoebe’s face at the window once. I asked him how he was getting on with the place. He said he was only working on his own land Saturday afternoons now. There wasn’t much he could do until the New Year. The rest of the time he was working for Mess Le Sauvage of Les Buttes. He didn’t want to have to fall back on the old people for money to keep going, he said. Les Buttes was a fine old farm and Mess Le Sauvage was only too glad to have Jim’s help. Mrs Le Sauvage was being very good to Phoebe and had taken her to Town in the trap that Saturday morning. I said I was glad for Phoebe to be having a good friend and neighbour. Jim asked how I was. I said so-so. I had been knocking around with Jim Machon and Jim Le Poidevin; but it was only to have somebody to go with. I didn’t like going round on my own. ‘Jim!’ called out Phoebe from indoors. ‘All right, I’m coming,’ he said; but he went on asking about the two Jims, who he hadn’t seen since he was married. Phoebe opened the back door and stood there with a face as black as night. ‘Jim, your tea is ready!’ she said. ‘How many more times have I got to call you?’ ‘I’ll have to go,’ said Jim. He went indoors. I got on my bike and rode into Town. I saw a few to say hullo to and had a drink or two; but I didn’t stay long. My mother wasn’t in bed yet when I got in.

  I hardly went out at all that winter. I decided I would plant potatoes in the greenhouse to have something to do. It wasn’t a good idea really. A winter crop tires out the ground and makes the tomatoes late, unless you have heat; and you miss the best price. I saved a bit another way. Poor old Jack was dead, and I sold the trap rather than buy another pony. When it was a horse-bus from L’Islet to the Half-way, my mother wouldn’t go in it, she would rather I drive her to Town; but now it was a motor-bus, she liked going in it. I don’t know why, because more often than not the old motor-bus broke down. It was the first motor I remember on the island and must have been worn out before it came here. My mother didn’t mind if she had to walk from Baubigny, carrying her two heavy net-bags full of groceries. She didn’t go Saturdays, because there was too many people, but did all her shopping Wednesdays. I didn’t go Saturdays often.

  Sunday nights for a few weeks I went out with Ivy Lake from Lowlands. She was quite a pretty girl, but had a silly way of speaking. Everything was a ‘dear little’ thing, and she would say to me ‘Aren’t you sweet!’ or ‘Aren’t you mean!’ She was very loving and all that; but I soon found out that was as far as she would go, unless she had been to Church first. That didn’t suit me. So I changed over to her friend, Mildred Three-in-a-bed. I can’t remember what her other name was, but that was the name she was known by. Her mother kept a lodging-house for seamen on the South Side. It may have been true what the boys said about Mildred, for she was a good-natured girl. The last I heard of her she was married to a Gordon Highlander and gone to Bonnie Dundee.

  Once on a Saturday night before Christmas I went to Town, and who should I see but Jim? He didn’t see me. It happened my bike had a puncture, so I was without it and was getting on the tram by the Town Church to catch the last bus home, when he came out of the Albion with Phoebe and two of her brothers and some chaps I didn’t know. The Albion those
days was a rough house, especially Saturday nights, and I would never have taken a girl there, or in any public house, for that matter. The brothers, who was rolling drunk, got on the same tram as me, but I was glad that when we changed at the Half-way they went on the top of the bus. I didn’t want to have to speak to them. I wondered if they would get their heads knocked off by trees over the road. I always went inside, me.

  I thought I had better go down to the farm and wish Mrs Mahy a Happy Christmas. She said she had invited Jim and Phoebe for Christmas Day, in spite of Lydia; but Phoebe was having her mother and father and a crowd of her brothers and sisters for Christmas. So Mrs Mahy had made some puddings and cakes, and Gerald had taken them along. Jim told Gerald that Phoebe’s mother and her sister Eileen was going to stay on until the baby was born. Jim was going to have a houseful of women. Mrs Mahy asked me to come on New Year’s Day for the party as usual; but I said I would be staying at home with my sister and her husband. I got a Christmas card from Jim. On the outside was a picture of a robin on a twig with snow. It wasn’t very sensible, as I had only seen snow once and that was in April, not at Christmas. Inside he had written ‘From Phoebe and Jim.’ I didn’t like for Jim to write his name as if he was the tail-end of Phoebe. I bet anyway she hadn’t sent me any good wishes for Christmas. I hadn’t sent a card myself. I’m not one for spending my money on such rubbish.

  When February came and spring was on the way, I thought I would take Jim some cuttings for his front garden. I stacked the lot on my carrier and went one Saturday afternoon. He must have got the same idea himself, for he was out in the front garden working. He didn’t have much to put in, but there was already some primroses had come out against the house. He was terribly pleased to see me. ‘I was afraid you was never coming near me again,’ he said. ‘You don’t ever have to be afraid of that,’ I said. I asked him how Phoebe was. He said she was doing all right. She had been having sickness in the morning, but that was over now. I told him I had seen him in Town. ‘Who was those you was with?’ I said. They was the Sarchets from Hurel. I said, ‘Aren’t you friendly with the Le Sauvages now?’ He said Phoebe didn’t get on so well with Mrs Le Sauvage. ‘She says those people look down on her,’ he said. ‘I expect it’s only her fancy,’ I said. ‘It may be,’ he said, ‘but a girl gets funny ideas when she’s carrying. She isn’t strong, you know.’ I thought poor Jim, she’s as strong as an ox, that little thing; but I didn’t say so. Jim said it didn’t matter about the Le Sauvages, he had plenty of work of his own to do now. Phoebe was happier with the Sarchets. They was more her sort and she enjoyed going to Town with them Saturday nights in the van. Jim thought they wasn’t so bad; except that they stopped at every pub on the way. ‘It’s a good job the old nag know his way home,’ he said.