The Book of Ebenezer le Page Read online

  By 1930 he was married. A survived document of that year reveals that he was living in Hornsey; and he gave his profession as ‘author’. The marriage was not a success, and he seems to have gone abroad to Holland and Switzerland in the early 1930s to try to earn his living by his pen — articles and poetry, as well as plays. He told Mrs Snell that he destroyed much of his best work, including ‘a very good play’. Like many, perhaps all, writers he remained a manic-depressive about his work throughout his life.

  His marriage finally broke down about 1933. One of its four children tells me that her father disappeared entirely from her life between that date and 1967, and the gap had become too great by the time the relationship was renewed to be very successfully bridged. Even to her, very little was ever said of the past. Where or how Edwards spent the next years (the Toynbee Hall records were severely war-damaged) is not known; but during the Second World War he worked in an employment exchange and he seemingly remained a civil servant (in 1955 he was living in Balham) until retirement in 1960.

  The storm-petrel then went to ‘live rough’ in Wales for a year; from 1961, he spent three years in Penzance; from 1964, three years in Plymouth; and in 1967 moved on to Weymouth. In that latter year he told his daughter that the first draft of this book was completed, and the second part, Le Boud’lo, half done. He also spoke of returning to Guernsey ‘to die’, but one may guess that the high cost of living — and property — on the island made that impossible for a man of his limited means; and perhaps added a bitterness to both his book and his exile. That his sense of the latter remained very real can be deduced from the move to Weymouth — the nearest place one can be to Guernsey on the English mainland.

  In 1970 he became Mrs Snell’s lodger in ‘the small room of a large house’ at Upwey, just outside Weymouth. Mrs Cynthia Mooney, a Guernsey woman herself, remembers the room as ‘like that of a monk’. It was ‘very tidy, terribly tidy’. Edwards himself wrote in 1972 that ‘I live from day to day, at the edge of living’. But the general impression given from his letters to Mr Chaney is not of crabbed misery, but of a kind of tart serenity of soul, an acceptance of ascetic outsiderdom. The tartness — ‘My dislike of Heath, like my aversion to television, is almost pathological’ — did not spare anything or anyone surrendered to what Edwards saw as false values; on the other hand his affection, when it was given, was unmistakably sincere and unstinting. One can assume that the very similar combination of traits in Ebenezer was closely autobiographical.

  The vital new encounter for him in this last period was undoubtedly with Edward Chaney and his wife. Their sympathetic encouragement made him entirely re-write this book, a task he undertook in 1973 and 1974. He continued revising it until the end. Mr Chaney thinks there were never more than brief drafts for the rest of the intended trilogy; and most of those Edwards seems to have destroyed before he died. Once or twice he showed a restlessness, a need to escape Weymouth (and a truly remarkable willingness in a man of his age to travel light); but these fugues to the Scillies and the Orkneys ended back in Upwey. The letters show an impressive blend of honesty and self-humour, besides a frequent Orwellian excellence of plain English prose. They would do very well as a contemporary appendix to the Grub Street side of Dr Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets, and I hope that one day Mr Chaney will consider publishing parts of them.

  Joan Snell sums up her recollections of him thus: ‘He was a man of dynamic character, yet full of feeling and sympathy. Proud but humble, he had a superb memory. He could remember conversations of fifty or sixty years before, word for word. He hated machines, modern technology, he thought they had brought so many bad things into the world. He needed nothing, and lived on a small pension. All he possessed could be packed in a small suitcase. He was charming and endearing; he was despairing and moody. A man of heights; and of deepest, blackest depths. I cannot do him justice in a short comment. All I can say is that it was a great privilege to have known him.’

  Gerald Edwards died after a heart attack, in his small room near Weymouth, on December 29, 1976. His ashes were scattered at sea. I should like to think that some at least were washed up among the vraic and granite of his long-lost native shore.

  —John Fowles

  1980

  [1] Literally, ‘The Puppet: the Book of Philip the Amputated’ and ‘The Grandmother of the Cemetery: the Book of John the Sluggard’. Edwards’ full title for the present book was Sarnia Chérie: the Book of Ebenezer Le Page, in symmetry with the other two. The first phrase has been dropped in this edition because of the unfortunate connotations of chérie to English ears and the general ignorance of Sarnia — the Latin name for Guernsey. The phrase was not of Edward’s invention. ‘Sarnia Chérie,’ beloved Guernsey, is the island’s private anthem. There is incidentally a short essay by Edwards on the patois of Guernsey at the end of the book, to which I have added a glossary of the more difficult words in the text.

  THE BOOK OF EBENEZER LE PAGE

  SARNIA CHÉRIE

  Sarnia, dear Homeland, Gem of the sea,

  Island of Beauty, my heart longs for Thee,

  Thy voice calls me ever in waking, or sleep,

  Till my Soul cries with anguish, my eyes ache to weep.

  In fancy I see Thee again as of yore,

  Thy verdure clad hills, and Thy wave beaten shore,

  Thy rock sheltered bays, ah; of all Thou art best,

  I’m returning to greet Thee, Dear Island of Rest.

  I left Thee in anger, I knew not Thy worth,

  Journeyed afar, to the ends of the earth,

  Was told of far countries, the heaven of the hold,

  Where the soil gave up diamonds, silver and gold.

  The sun always shone, and ‘Race’ took no part,

  But Thy cry always reached me, its pain wrenched my heart,

  So I’m coming home, Thou of all art the best,

  Returning to greet Thee, Dear Island of Rest.

  Chorus:

  Sarnia Chérie, Gem of the sea,

  Home of my childhood, my heart longs for Thee,

  Thy voice calls me ever, forget Thee I’ll never,

  Island of Beauty, Sarnia Chérie.

  G. A. Deighton

  The Property of Neville Falla

  PART ONE

  1

  Guernsey, Guernesey, Garnsai, Sarnia: so they say. Well, I don’t know, I’m sure. The older I get and the more I learn, the more I know I don’t know nothing, me. I am the oldest on the island, I think. Liza Quéripel from Pleinmont say she is older; but I reckon she is putting it on. When she was a young woman, she used to have a birthday once every two or three years; but for years now she have been having two or three a year. To tell you the truth, I don’t know how old I am. My mother put it down on the front page of the big Bible; but she put down the day and the month, and forgot to put down the year. I suppose I could find out if I went to the Greffe; but I am not going to bother about that now.

  My father was killed in the Boer War. He went off and joined the Irish Brigade and fought for the Boers. His name is with the others who died for their country on the monument was put up in St Julien’s Avenue and unveiled by the Duke of Connaught. I remember that day well, because me and Jim Mahy, my chum, went to Town to see it unveiled. It was drizzling in the morning and, by the evening, the rain was coming down in dollops. It put out the Chinese lanterns was all the way along Glatney and the fairy lights right to the end of the White Rock. There was an illuminated barge in the Pool, where the Band of the Militia was going to play; but it was a wreck. I thought it was going to be lovely to hear music coming over the water. They tried their best; but they had to give up. The Duke of Connaught was all right, him: he was indoors out of the rain, eating and drinking.

  I was a young man already when my father died; yet I can’t see his face now, what he looked like. I have seen his photo in the Family Album, of when he was a young man. He was wearing a braided jacket and trousers wide at the bottom; and he had a thick
moustache and his hair done in a curl across his forehead. He looked as if he got a spice of the devil in him. I don’t know how he came to marry my mother. She was a good woman. She read the Bible day and night and, towards the end, when she got so big she couldn’t move, she did hardly anything else.

  She had been a handsome woman in her time, going by her photo of before she was married. She had straight black hair parted in the middle and done in a chignon at the back of her neck; and was in a black dress from under her chin to the tips of her toes, and wore a bustle. When she was a widow, she wore a black crêpe veil over her face for a year; and then went into half mourning and put a mauve flower in her bonnet. I never heard her speak of my father as ‘Alf’, or ‘Alfred’, or ‘my husband’; but only as ‘the father of Ebenezer and Tabitha’: me and my sister. When she said anything to me my father had said, it was always ‘according to your father’; and the way she said it made me think he was something I had done wrong. The only time I ever heard her speak of ‘my husband’ was once when she said to me, ‘Your father was my husband in the flesh: he was not of the Household of Faith.’

  The trouble was he was Church and she was Chapel. She didn’t mind being married Church. As she said, ‘After all, marriage is only for a few years’; but she made him promise that if she was the first to go, he would see to it she was buried Chapel. She didn’t want there to be any mistake later on. For some reason, she turned against the Wesleyans soon after she was married, and joined the Brethren. There was two lots of Brethren: the Open Brethren and the Closed Brethren. She joined the Open first; but they sang the hymns with a harmonium, and she said that was sinful because the first musical instrument was made by Jubal, who was of the offspring of Cain. So she changed over to the Closed. They sang the hymns only from their hearts and prayed and read the Bible and preached and broke bread. She said theirs was the pure milk of the Word.

  There wasn’t no rows in our house, mind you. My father didn’t come home drunk and swear and knock my mother about like Dan Ferbrache and Amy from Sandy Hook. There was very few words spoken in our house. My mother would say ‘Will you do that?’ and my father would say ‘Yes’; or my father would say ‘Can I do this?’ and my mother would say ‘No’. He was only home to eat his supper and go to bed; except for Saturday afternoons and Sundays. He worked for old Tom Mauger from Sous les Hougues in the Queen’s quarry from seven in the morning to six at night, and took his dinner with him in a tin, and a can of tea he kept warm by the stove in the tool-house. He was a good quarryman. In the summer, when he worked a quarter overtime, he would come home of a Friday night with as much as twenty-five bob in his pocket. We wasn’t poor, you know: we didn’t go without and always managed to save.

  I used to go to work with my father some days: that is, before I was big enough to go to school. I liked going to the quarry with my father. He would sit me on the horse in the horse-box and I would go right down into the pit. When the gun went dinner-time, I had to climb the ladder up the side, because the horse ate from his nose-bag and didn’t come up for dinner. My father would be behind me on the ladder shouting ‘Va t’en, fényion! Va t’en, donc!’ I wasn’t afraid. I knew if I was to fall, he would catch me. The dinner-hour I’d sit in the tool-house with the men and have a sip of his tea and a bite of his dinner; then he would take me down to St Sampson’s to see the ships. St Sampson’s Harbour was full of sailing ships those days, and there would be three or four anchored in the Roads outside, waiting to come in. I couldn’t make up my mind if I wanted to work down the quarry, or go to sea when I grew up; but sail was fast giving way to steam, and when it was nearly all steam-boats in St Sampson’s Harbour I didn’t have the same feeling for going to sea.

  In the afternoon he would leave me with Fred Tucker, the crane-driver. I liked being with Fred Tucker in the cabin of the crane. He would let me pull the lever that started the machinery to go. ‘Look, you’re bringing up a load!’ he’d say; and when it came up out of the quarry, he would swing the jib round and lower the cart until the wheels touched the ground. There would be a horse and driver waiting to take it to Mowlem’s cracking-machine on the North Side. The North was busy those days with the humming of the cracking-machines and the rumbling of the iron tyres of the heavy carts on the roads. When the time came to knock off, I was dog-tired and could hardly put one foot in front of the other. My father had to carry me on his shoulders most of the way home.

  Saturdays he came home for dinner at one o’clock and, in the afternoon, worked in the back garden; or went out fishing in our boat. I liked going out fishing in the boat with my father. He let me pull the rudder. ‘If you pull that way, the boat will go this way,’ he’d say, ‘if you pull this way, the boat will go that.’ I got the idea. After tea, he would wash himself all over in front of the fire, while my mother got me and my sister ready in the other room to go to Town. He would have the pony harnessed and the trap waiting by the time my mother was satisfied us two was fit to be seen. It was a high trap with thin wheels and a narrow seat; and my father used to sit at one end and my mother at the other and me in the middle with my sister at my feet. It was a heavy load for poor old Jack.

  On Sundays my father wasn’t allowed to work out-of-doors, but had to sit by the grate and watch the potatoes didn’t boil dry and the meat didn’t burn in the oven, while my mother and Tabitha was gone to Morning Service. Once he forgot and didn’t take the potatoes off; and that was the only time I ever saw my mother lose her temper. Other times, if he did wrong, she would give a big sigh; but that was all. This time she went for him and told him she couldn’t trust him out of her sight. It was his fault really. He would forget everything else in the world once he got his head stuck in his old newspaper. It was a pink paper called the Police Budget, which he used to buy from Tozer in Smith Street on the Saturday night; and it had pictures in it of all the murders they do in England: women with their throats cut and blood all over the bed! It was always a heavy dinner Sundays and, if my father could have had his way, he would have had a nap after; but my mother made him change into his best clothes and sit on the sofa in the front room, in case any of our relations came to tea. I don’t like to think of my father those Sunday afternoons. I like to think of him in the quarry, where he was respected by the men and might have become a foreman, if he had lived.

  La Tabby, as we called my sister, was put to bed early of a Sunday evening, and my mother went to Evening Service on her own. As soon as she was out of the front gate, my father would say, ‘Come along, son: let’s go mitchin’!’ and we’d go out to the shed at the back and take the lamp, if it was dark. He kept his chisels and hammers and saw out there; and wood and glue and string. It was those Sunday nights he taught me how to make kites. I always had the best kite of any of the boys who flew kites on L’Ancresse Common; and everybody knew it was mine, because it was covered with the pink paper of the Police Budget and all the women with their throats cut went up flying in the sky. When my mother came in, we would both be back indoors sitting like two angels, one each side the fire.

  He had been all over the world, my father. He didn’t have any schooling to speak of, but knocked round with the Noyon and the Corbet boys of Birdo in the pilot boats; and at the age of twelve he went to sea. He rose from cabin boy to second mate, and yet he came back and settled down in Guernsey. It is true he had a nice little house to come to, when his father died; but it wasn’t only that. I have seen the same happen to dozens of Guernsey boys. They’re just busting to get away from the island; and, when they do get away, they’re breaking their hearts to come back. That’s why I have never left Guernsey, me. I knew I would only end up where I begun.

  It was funny my father going off to fight in a war when he didn’t have to; but he had some funny ideas in his head. He wasn’t against the English; but he thought they was wrong to be against the Irish and the Boers. Of course, he didn’t talk about such things to my mother; but I heard him talking it over with his young brother, my Uncle Willie. My father
thought the world of his young brother. Willie was a great sportsman and won the championship cup three years running at the Cycling Track. His Photo was in Bucktrout’s window down High Street, standing by his penny-farthing bicycle, which was nearly as high as him, with the big silver cup at his feet. He laughed at my father for bothering about what was going to happen to the Boers. ‘Look after Number One, Alf,’ he said, ‘and let the world manage its own affairs.’

  He didn’t manage his own affairs very well, my Uncle Willie. He was gardener for Mr Roger de Lisle from the Grange and a friend of the son and lived in the house: then if he didn’t let himself be dragged into getting engaged to a girl Le Couture from St Martin’s. The evening before the wedding he said he was going to shoot rabbits on Jerbourg. When long after dark he didn’t come back, young de Lisle went to look for him and found him shot dead through the head. It was decided at the inquest it was an accident; but everybody knew he had done it on purpose. He was used to handling a gun from a boy, and had won prizes at Bisley. I knew why he had done it, the poor chap. He did the brave thing. After waiting a year, the Le Couture girl married old Cohu from Les Petites Caches for his second wife and he left her well off.