The Book of Ebenezer le Page Page 26

  I don’t remember what the second hymn was. It had something to do with the Holy Spirit; but I didn’t understand it, and I didn’t know the tune. The hymn after the Lesson was a hymn he said was sung by the Manx fishermen. ‘Hear us, O Lord, from heaven Thy dwelling place.’ It was one of my favourite tunes; and I can well imagine that hymn being sung by fishermen on just such another shore as Birdo Harbour. I could see through the open doorway some fishermen in guernseys sitting on the grass listening, and a boat was drawn up on the shingle and others moored to the cauchie. The sky was as clear as a pearl, and the tide was out and the butt-end of Herm seemed so near you would have thought you could step on it. It was after that hymn Raymond said his short prayer. ‘I ask you to pray with me in silence,’ he said, ‘for us to be honest in our minds ... and tender in our hearts ... and true in our secret places ... so the love of Christ may dwell in us ... and unite us one with the other.’ There was a long silence; and then he said ‘Amen’. It is the only prayer, except the Lord’s prayer I learnt at the Vale School, I have never forgotten.

  He then came down to earth and read the notices. There was to be a week-night meeting in the Mission Hall on the Wednesday and a meeting of the Y.L.U. in the schoolroom on the Thursday and a jumble sale on the Friday. While the collection was being taken, Reg Underwood played a voluntary. It was the piece by Beethoven I liked so much. I don’t know if Raymond had me in mind when he chose it, but I do know he himself arranged every detail of that service as he wanted it. After the collection, he said, ‘Christine Mahy will sing the next hymn.’ She stood up by herself in the choir. I can see her yet. She let the cloak she was wearing fall off her shoulders on to the chair behind her, and you almost heard the shudder of horror from many in the congregation; for her frock had no sleeves and her arms was bare.

  I have pondered and wondered over Christine many times. She was, I think, the most callous and cruel person and the most vain and selfish woman I have ever known. Was she a human being? Or only a female? I don’t know. I do know when I think of Christine Mahy, I love old Liza. For all her wickedness and vanity, Liza was human through and through. Dudley Waine choked me off once for criticising Christine. ‘Christine is beyond criticism,’ he said. ‘She is a force of nature.’ That may be, but a force of nature can be a great nuisance, if it isn’t kept in order; or if you don’t find some way of dealing with it. There is nothing holy about a force of nature. Christine seemed to think everything she did was holy because it was Christine Mahy did it. I will go so far as to grant she may have been what she thought she was, when she was singing. It wasn’t only every note was pure and every word clear, it was as if she wasn’t singing words she had learnt from a book, or to a tune was being played on the organ for her to sing to, but as if she was making up the words and the music for the first time as she went along, and pouring it out of her full heart as she sang:

  O Love, that will not let me go,

  I rest my weary soul in Thee;

  I give Thee back the life I owe,

  That in Thine ocean depths its flow

  May richer, fuller be.

  O Light, that followest all my way,

  I yield my flickering torch to Thee;

  My heart restores its borrowed ray,

  That in Thy sunshine’s blaze its day

  May brighter, fairer be.

  O Joy, that seekest me through pain,

  I cannot close my heart to Thee:

  I trace the rainbow through the rain,

  And feel the promise is not vain

  That morn shall tearless be.

  O Cross, that liftest up my head,

  I dare not ask to fly from Thee:

  I lay in dust life’s glory dead

  And from the ground there blossoms red

  Life that shall endless be.

  and as I write down those words I have heard sung so often, but have only heard sung truly once, I know they are the words of Raymond’s religion and of the whole of his religion. He came to turn against it and deny it and try and tear it out of himself; but I know he didn’t ever quite tear the roots from his heart. When she sat down there was not a sound in the chapel. Raymond stood up and read the text: ‘Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.’

  Raymond was a clever boy. He was the clever one of the family. I am not clever; and I am glad I am not. It didn’t do him much good. I remember he began, ‘According to the Scriptures, those were the last words uttered by Jesus Christ before He ascended into heaven.’ He didn’t say it was so: he said ‘according to the Scriptures’; and it was not the Gospel of Jesus Christ Raymond preached that night. I knew the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I couldn’t help it. I had heard it all my life. Here was me, or anybody else, alive on earth; and, when we died, we was going either to heaven, or to hell. If we had accepted Jesus Christ as our Saviour, we would go to heaven. It was our only chance. It wasn’t going to be the reward for our works; but for our faith. It is true, if you was saved, you didn’t smoke, or drink, or fornicate except in the marriage bed; and you didn’t rob from your neighbour, unless you could do it by law; but if you didn’t believe Jesus Christ died for your sins, none of that would get you into heaven. Church wasn’t so hard and fast; and it suited me better. I didn’t bother my head about it much; but I did think if I got what I deserved, I would go to hell for sure.

  Raymond’s argument was reasonable, I thought. He said it wasn’t much use arguing about what may or may not have happened on earth nearly two thousand years ago. Christ was in heaven. That was where we must think of Him as being. He was in Heaven here and now. He is in the heart of God. He is the love in the heart of God. God in the stories of the Old Testament and in the world around us as we see it and in history as we learn it is a bully and a brute; but the heart of the brute God is love. He asked where heaven was. He answered, ‘Where Christ reigns.’ He quoted two texts from the New Testament to catch the good Christians in his net. The first was ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand’; the second was ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is within you’. He said Christ is in every creature and every creature is in Christ. ‘The whole creation is afloat in Christ,’ he said, ‘or Christ is not at all!’ Reg Underwood, who didn’t care tuppence about religion but was mad about music, said to me when I talked it over with him, ‘Young Martel blew the fuses and down came the house of cards!’

  I don’t remember half he said. Once he had cleared the decks, he said whatever came into his head. He made us laugh, I know; and that wasn’t often done in Chapel. The Reverend Whetnall of St Sampson’s, who was a very popular preacher at the beginning of the War, used to make his congregation laugh, but only at the P.S.A.; and he always made it all right by preaching retribution in the end. There was no spirit of retribution in Raymond. He delighted in the scamps he told us stories of. I remember his story of Jurat Theodore Montpelier, also of the Hook Chook. I knew and everybody else knew there was no such Jurat and no such place; but it was very near the bone. The Jurat came of a good old Guernsey family which, in the Middle Ages, always had the sense to fight on the side paid best; and later on, when they became smugglers, they smuggled both ways, from France to England and from England to France. When smuggling was made illegal in Guernsey and they took to privateering to be respectable, they captured French ships for the English and English ships for the French. The present Montpelier, the Jurat Theodore, who was a very important person on the States and a model of all the virtues, was a staunch Wesleyan; but Raymond wouldn’t say which chapel he belonged to.

  It was no use looking to the States for the Kingdom of Heaven. If you work on the roads for the States you work from seven in the morning to six at night, and are paid accordingly. If you work only from five in the afternoon, you don’t get paid much. In the Kingdom of Heaven you get paid just as much if you start at five in the afternoon, as if you start at seven in the morning. I didn’t follow him there. I didn’t follow him after. I listened more as if to music, or to the waves of the sea. ‘The Kingdom of
Heaven is at hand’ was the text he really preached from. He spoke of everything being changed. He said, ‘In the twinkling of an eye a veil is lifted; and you see with other eyes and hear with other ears and are given another understanding.’ I didn’t understand then, and I don’t understand now; but I know he brought me near to believing in the promise of a happiness I have only known in dreams.

  He ended quietly and there was not a movement in the chapel until he announced the last hymn:

  Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;

  The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.

  and we sang it softly, Christine too, yet her voice was heard over us all. He pronounced the Benediction; but I noticed he said ‘keep our hearts and minds in the knowledge of the love of God’ and not ‘of Jesus Christ, Our Lord.’ I was among the first out and asked Hetty if she wanted to wait for Raymond, or go round to the vestry. ‘What, and meet that girl?’ she said. ‘Not me!’ The chapel was emptying and I noticed the small groups of people standing around saying little, but smiling kindly at each other. I said to Hetty, ‘He was good, you know.’ She said, ‘I notice he got a lot to say to strangers. He don’t have so much to say to his own mother.’ She hadn’t understood a word.

  9

  I expected Raymond to catch us up, but he didn’t, though I had to stop several times on the way for Hetty to have a rest. She couldn’t get her breath and complained of her heart. When we got in, my Cousin Mary Ann had laid the table for supper in the front room, and was cutting bread and butter. I thought myself there seemed to be a lot of places laid. Hetty said, ‘Goodness, is it all the parish is coming then?’ My Cousin Mary Ann said she thought perhaps Raymond would be bringing a friend home. Hetty said, ‘He didn’t say nothing about bringing a friend for supper.’ She went upstairs to take off her hat and get out of her tight boots. She always wore boots a size too small, so as to have small feet like Prissy; but they made walking for her an agony.

  Harold was sitting by the fire without a cap, reading the News of the World. He was allowed to sit in the front room without a cap, if it was only some of the family was expected. ‘The boy remember to say his piece?’ he said. Harold’s idea of a sermon was the preacher learnt it by heart out of a book beforehand and stood up in the pulpit and spouted it. ‘I don’t think he forgot much,’ I said. ‘He got his head screwed on right,’ said Harold. It was the only time I ever heard him say a word in praise of Raymond. ‘Was there many there?’ said my Cousin Mary Ann. ‘It was full,’ I said, ‘and sitting on the steps.’ Hetty came down in a blouse and skirt with slippers on her feet. ‘Are your feet easier now, my ducks?’ said Harold. She didn’t say nothing but sat on the other side of the fire. ‘Tired?’ he said. She sighed and put a hand under her heart. ‘Shall I make the tea?’ said my Cousin Mary Ann. ‘Might as well,’ said Hetty, ‘if that Raymond would rather stop and talk to those I wouldn’t be seen dead with than come home for his supper with his people, he can go without.’

  I can remember every look and every word was said that evening. I think for once I was gifted with the second sight. I would have sworn something terrible was going to happen. I could feel it coming. I heard the front door open. ‘Ah, here they are!’ said my Cousin Mary Ann. It wasn’t only Raymond. He came in leading Christine by the hand and with his clergyman’s hat in the other. I don’t know if souls can love souls without bodies; but, if so, they looked like two souls in love. I had never thought of Christine as a beautiful girl; but that night she was beautiful. She was filled with something, as she was when she was singing. As for Raymond, he was thinking all his troubles in this world was over. I didn’t like Christine and I did like Raymond; but when I saw them as they was then, I would have done anything, anything, to keep those two together.

  It was Hetty who spoke. ‘Who is this?’ she said. As if she didn’t know! ‘She is my wife,’ said Raymond, as if it was the most ordinary thing to say. For one mad moment I got the wicked thought they had already been together under a boat, or on the Hommet, or somewhere; but one look at Raymond’s face and I knew no such thought could have come into his head. In his mind they was married in heaven. The face of Hetty set like a stone; and she stood up on her two dumpy legs and in her carpet slippers. ‘I have not asked that girl to my house,’ she said. Raymond let go of Christine’s hand. ‘Ma!’ he said; and I have never heard so much pain and so much surprise in one small word; or in any number of words, for that matter. He looked to his father, tried to speak, but couldn’t. ‘You heard what your mother said, son,’ said Harold. Christine showed no sign of being upset. If anything, she looked more heavenly. She held her hand out for Raymond. ‘Come, dear heart,’ she said, ‘we are not wanted here.’ He took her hand and followed her out. They hadn’t been in the room two minutes.

  It would have been better, I think, if Hetty had cried and screamed and made a fuss, as I would have expected her to do; but she sat up to the table as if nothing had happened. Harold tried to jolly it off. ‘Eat and keep your pecker up, my ducks!’ he said. My Cousin Mary Ann poured out the tea. Never in all my life have I sat through a more miserable meal. Harold said to me, ‘How is the good mother these days?’ ‘She don’t get no better,’ I said. ‘Have you left her by herself, then?’ said my Cousin Mary Ann. ‘La Tabby is with her,’ I said. ‘Ah, bon!’ said my Cousin Mary Ann. I couldn’t think of another word to say. It wasn’t about Raymond and Christine I was worried. She would take him to her home and he would be made welcome. It was Hetty I was sorry for. She ate half a slice of bread and butter and pushed her plate away. Again she had done a great wrong; but Raymond must have been mad to walk in and spring it on her the way he did.

  My Cousin Mary Ann made a good meal, and Harold and me ate a little; then my Cousin Mary Ann got up to clear away. ‘I’ll just wash up before I go,’ she said and, in the same breath, ‘Raymond won’t have nothing to sleep in. I had better take him something on my way home, eh?’ ‘I’ll get you his pyjamas,’ said Hetty, and went out of the room like an old woman; and I heard her stumbling up the stairs. ‘I’ll take them along,’ I said to my Cousin Mary Ann, ‘and save you going the long way round.’ I was dying for any excuse to get out of that house. ‘Then you had better take him another suit as well,’ she said. ‘He won’t want to be wearing his good black suit on a week-day.’ She thought of everything, my Cousin Mary Ann. She went up the stairs after Hetty.

  I got up ready to go and Harold sat by the fire with his newspaper. ‘That boy have done a bad night’s work for himself,’ he said. ‘Aw, it’s nothing to take so much to heart,’ I said, ‘He’s young and he’s in love with the girl. He’ll come round.’ ‘He walked out of his home of his own free will,’ said Harold. ‘He won’t come back into it again, if I know it.’ It was the first hint I got of how hard Harold could be as a father. My Cousin Mary Ann came down with a suitcase. It weighed half a ton, so they must have put a lot of his things in. Hetty had gone to bed and she hadn’t even drunk her tea. I thought of saying I would call back before I went home; but I didn’t want to promise anything. I just said good-night.

  I had never been inside Ivy Lodge before, though I had seen it often enough when I was passing up the Effards. From the outside, the house didn’t look as if it was very well kept. The curtains wasn’t too clean and the blinds was all anyhow. It was different from Hetty’s where the starched lace curtains was spotless and the venetian blinds always all pulled up to exactly the same level. Christine’s mother, Emmeline Vaudoir that was, from Fountain Street, wasn’t one to bother. It was her came to the door. She was fat and free and easy and wearing a loose pink dress that looked like a night-gown. She knew me by sight. ‘Come in, come in!’ she said. ‘Raymond was just saying you might bring his things.’ They was all sitting round the fire in the front room, drinking coffee out of glasses and eating sandwiches from a table on the side. The room was very untidy with cushions all over the place; but everybody was comfortable. Mahy, the father, looked like a sad, long-faced dog; but he smiled
and said hullo when I came in. Being Jim’s uncle, he knew me from when I used to go round with Jim. Gwen was there and Edna, the sister-in-law from across the road with her little girl. Raymond still looked as if he was in heaven; but Christine was come down to earth, I thought. She had her cat face on, and I bet was feeling proud of her night’s work now she was with her family. Mrs Mahy wanted me to sit down and have coffee and sandwiches, but I said I had only come to bring the suitcase and, if Raymond had a message for his people, I could take it on the way home.

  It was Mrs Mahy who did most of the talking. She had her wits about her, that woman, for all her lazy ways. She was delighted she was going to have Raymond for a son-in-law: he was an only son, and would have plenty. She didn’t say as much, but I knew that was what she was thinking. What she did say was it was a pity Raymond’s mother had turned funny; but she would get over it. They was going to get married at the Capelles Chapel as soon as possible. In the meantime, Edna and the child was going to stay at Ivy Lodge, and Raymond was going to sleep at Rosamunda, so as people wouldn’t be able to talk. Christine, of course, would have to give up her job as a teacher in a school; but she could go and help Raymond with his work in England. He was going to write to the chapel he was going to, and say he would be arriving with a wife. They would have to find him a place to live, if there wasn’t room with the others. Mrs Mahy had it all thought out and he was letting it happen as if he didn’t have a will of his own. He did say he would want some papers from his desk, if they hadn’t been packed, but that it was too late for me to go back to Wallaballoo and fetch them that night. I said I would come and see him the next evening when he would know what it was he wanted. He came with me to the door. As I was going, he said, ‘Will you be my best man?’ ‘Yes, with pleasure,’ I said, ‘and I hope you are going to be very, very happy,’ and I meant it. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ he said. ‘I will never be alone any more!’