The Book of Ebenezer le Page Page 31

  I can’t go into all the fuss and bother there was over those old stones. The next day he brought along a chap from the Lukis Museum and one of the masters from Elizabeth College; and day after day different people came. The stones was carefully uncovered, and the earth around raked and sifted. I must say it looked quite as good as the one on L’Islet. Myself, I thought it was better made, if anything; though, to my eye it looked newer, rather than older: but Dudley insisted it was older and more prehistorical.

  He didn’t get everybody to agree with him, I am sorry to say. In fact, the argument went on for years. Members of La Société Jersiaise came over from Jersey to have a look at it, and had the cheek to say it was a fake. They also had a look at the stones on the top of my wall and said they had been chipped with a modern chisel. I was furious. I swore they was axe-heads made by the first people who ever lived in the world. By then, I had taken sides. The members of La Société Guernesiaise, who came in dozens, all agreed the barrow was something not to be found in Jersey; but they wasn’t quite satisfied as to what it really was, unless they could find some bones. I don’t remember which year it was; but I know Raymond’s boy was already running about when those bones was found. There was nobody more surprised than me.

  That year Dudley was lodging with Christine’s mother at Ivy Lodge, where he stayed every summer after Prissy died. Percy had gone bankrupt. It wasn’t only the bills Prissy had run up he couldn’t pay, but when Harold gave up his business Percy tried to carry on by himself, only to land into more debts. I don’t know how well off Horace was in America, but he wrote and offered to put Percy straight. Percy preferred to go bankrupt. Perhaps he remembered how badly he had treated Horace, or had the sense to realise, if he was put straight, he would soon be bankrupt again. He was let off light by the Court; and I think saved a little from the wreck. It was then the house was sold to Harry Snell, and Percy went to live with the Mansell family at the Longstore. I happen to know Horace sent money to Bill Mansell, but on condition he wasn’t to say anything about it to Percy; so Horace was helping to keep his father after all. Percy was very bitter over Harold marrying Mrs Crewe and leaving him stranded; and I don’t think the brothers met again. Percy died years before Harold.

  I went down to Raymond’s quite often while the baby was on the way. Raymond was mad with joy one was coming, and almost worshipped Christine for it; but thousands of other women have had babies without being worshipped, or expecting to be. I would come in and find him reading out loud to her. It was usually poetry and I didn’t understand. I remember a book of verses called The Angel in the House by Coventry Patmore he read her a lot from. She seemed to be listening in a dreamy sort of way; but I doubt if she knew or cared what it was about any more than I did. At the time, however, she would be sitting very big and quiet sewing, or knitting, or embroidering. She was making what looked like a trousseau for the great event.

  He couldn’t do enough for her those days. He was up at all hours in the morning, working in the garden; then he would get her breakfast ready before he went to the office. He would be home on his bike dinner-time and leave her tidied up for the afternoon; and be home again in time to prepare the tea. If I was there in the evening, it was him got the meal for all of us. Christine’s mother could well have come across and helped, if she had wanted to; but she was too lazy to do anything. Raymond had taken to giving lessons in the evening to boys who was backward at school; and he would go to two or three houses some nights. He got two shillings an hour, and it helped; yet he was worried he was cheating the boys. It was for mathematics, most of the lessons he gave; and he said it was the last subject he was fit to teach anybody. His conscience was always troubling him about something or another. Thank goodness I haven’t got a conscience is such a nuisance.

  He was worrying too if Christine would come through all right; or if perhaps there might be something wrong with the baby when it was born. He had too much imagination. He said one thing I didn’t like. He said, ‘If it is a girl, I will send it back.’ ‘That is not a very nice thing to say in front of Christine,’ I said to him; but she didn’t seem to mind. She put on her Virgin Mary look and said, ‘I was born to be the mother of sons.’ It made me feel sick the way she said it. I knew she wasn’t at all worried about herself, whether she would come through or not; and she had no reason to be. She was as fit and strong as a girl on a farm.

  He liked me to go down and spend the evening with her when he was out giving his lessons, because he didn’t want her left alone. I wasn’t all that keen; but Gwen was in and out, anyhow. Gwen worked for Leale on the Bridge in the desk during the day. I liked Gwen. She was a sensible girl. It was a pity she had a birthmark down one side of her face. One evening when I was alone with Christine, she said, ‘I have decided on a name for him.’ So it was going to be a him. ‘Oh what?’ I said. ‘Abel,’ she said. ‘Why, that’s a funny name, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Abel Martel,’ she said. I said, ‘Well, it don’t sound too bad.’ I went on about names: how perhaps it would be better if we could choose our own; yet I don’t suppose I would be Ebenezer Le Page the same as I am if I hadn’t been christened Ebenezer Le Page. She wasn’t interested in what I had to say, naturally, but was thinking about herself as usual. ‘Abel was the son of Eve,’ she said. I ask you?

  Towards the end I didn’t go so often, as Raymond stopped giving lessons, so he could be home if anything happened. It was tea-time one afternoon and I had just come indoors when I saw him through the window, coming round the Chouey. I knew at a glance it was all right. God, he was up in the air! He burst in. ‘Abel it is!’ he said, ‘and she is doing fine!’ I was almost as pleased as he was. ‘Come down now and see him!’ he said. He wanted me to go as I was; but I made him wait while I got washed and changed. I didn’t bother about tea. It had started at eight in the morning, he said: and he had fetched Nurse Wright and rung up the Greffe he wouldn’t be going in that day. It was Nurse Wright who had brought Raymond himself into the world, and she had a soft spot for him. She let him stay with Christine until nearly the time, and everything had gone wonderfully well. Gwen and her mother was with her now.

  Gwen and the mother was downstairs actually, when we arrived; and Raymond took me straight away upstairs. Christine was sitting up in bed having a tea of fish boiled in milk and thin bread-and-butter on a tray, and wearing an embroidered night-dress I had seen her making. She really did look beautiful and as well as if nothing had happened. I made to take her hand and congratulate her, but she offered her cheek and I kissed her. ‘Well done, Christine!’ I said. The newly-born was in the low wickerwork cradle on rockers, and Raymond was waiting impatiently to uncover it for me to see. ‘He got little nails on his fingers and little nails on his toes,’ he said. Well, a baby is a baby, but I must say young Abel was well made; and I liked the way he clenched his little fists. I said I wanted to buy him a present but I didn’t know what to buy, so they must get him what they liked; and I put an envelope I got ready in my pocket on the chest-of-drawers. There was twenty pounds in it. I left the three together. I think now perhaps Raymond was too happy. Christine was taking it more in the course of a day’s work. Perhaps it is better to live more on a level, even if it is on a lower level, as I do, than be like Raymond, up and down.

  14

  When I look back, the years between the two big wars seem to have passed in no time. There was nothing much happened to me. I did well, I suppose, for a small grower and fisherman, as Liza said I was. When you got nobody to love and nothing to live for, you can always make money. I employed young Lihou in the greenhouse for the summer months, and a girl Giraud from the Longcamps to help with the packing. I managed my boat by myself. I didn’t mind the summer so much. I could get up at daylight and go to bed at dark, and work all day; and the time passed. It was the long winter evenings I didn’t like. After I had eaten my tea and cleared up and read the Press, there was nothing for me to do except get ready my supper and eat it and, when I had washed up, lay the table fo
r the morning. I got to know Alf Brouard who came to live by the Vale Church with his sister and brother-in-law, and who was an old bachelor like me. He said I ought to join the Oddfellows. He belonged. I didn’t want to belong, but I went a few times with him to a Beetle Drive; and twice I won a prize.

  I didn’t see nothing of Liza. I don’t think she ever went to Town. She wasn’t the sort to go shopping herself, but would have her things sent. If I ran into Ada, I was careful not to mention her name, but Ada always said, ‘Liza asks how you are.’ I said to tell her I was all right. It wasn’t true; but Liza ought to have known without having to ask. I heard she went to see Christine and the new baby. Raymond was full of praises of her when I went down. I would have thought Christine would have been jealous, but she wasn’t: and, for once, she was right. Liza and Raymond was more like brother and sister than anything else. I think she felt about Raymond the same way as I felt about Tabitha. He was somebody who knew her very well and understood her, and yet who was better than her in some way. She brought a big, white woolly beast for Abel. I don’t know if it was supposed to be a sheep, or a polar bear. Abel had plenty of toys given to him: even Lydia took him a golliwog; but Liza’s beast he wouldn’t be parted from. For years it slept with him, even when he was in a cot.

  I am always surprised how quick children grow up. Raymond’s boy was running about before I had time to turn round. The time Liza saw him, when he was a baby, she said to Raymond, ‘Goodness, he is only you all over again! What do you want to go and do that for?’ Raymond was as pleased as punch when he told me; but I thought Abel grew to be more like Harold. He had the same black eyes when they got to their proper colour, and thick lips like Harold; but he had fair curly hair. He really was a lovely looking little chap. It was pitiful how proud Raymond was of him. He would come up to Les Moulins of a Saturday afternoon with Abel sitting on his shoulders and hanging on to his neck and nearly choking him. ‘How’s the nipper?’ I’d say. ‘That’s you, the nipper!’ Raymond would say to him. When he started to run about he was a picture; for he was strong and sturdy for his age, and quite the little man already. He was like Raymond in one way: he was very well behaved. I remembered how Raymond used to sit in the boat and say, ‘It’s nice here, eh Uncle?’ Abel didn’t say much; but he looked at everything with big eyes. I liked having him in the greenhouse with me. I suppose the tomato-plants must have looked to him like big trees, for he used to catch hold of my hand, and look up at them and say ‘Ah! Ah!’ very solemn. I will never forget the first time he went in the sea. He was wearing only a little green slip embroidered by Christine, and was as brown as a berry. Christine herself was there that day, and was nervous about him going in; but Raymond said he would be all right. He went in by himself and wasn’t a bit afraid; and, when a big wave came, he laughed when it broke over him, and didn’t fall down.

  He called Raymond ‘man’ and Christine ‘oomie’, until she taught him to say ‘mother’ properly. I was ‘Ewwy’. He touched something in me: something I didn’t know was there. I am sure he would have done in Harold too, if Harold had been allowed to see him. Raymond had wanted to take him with Christine to see Harold soon after he was born; but she said it wouldn’t be wise. She knew the state Raymond got into with his father, and was afraid of what might happen if Harold turned nasty. So, instead, Raymond wrote a letter to his father, asking him to come and see them; and he enclosed a photograph Dudley had taken. They gave me one of those photographs. I still have it and was looking at it only the other day. Christine is looking like the mother of sons; but Abel, who was only seven months old then, is sitting on her arm and grinning all over his face with one tooth. He would have melted a heart of stone. The photo came back in an envelope without a word. It nearly broke up Raymond. When the day came I accused Christine of many things, she defended herself over that; and there was something to be said for her. ‘The Martels are a mad lot,’ she said, ‘and I’m not sure the Le Pages aren’t as bad. Raymond is both. Nobody will ever know what I went through with him when he got that photo back. If I hadn’t been as strong and as evil as you say I am, I would never have got him round.’ The awful part of it was Harold never saw that photo. Raymond didn’t know that; and nor did I, until my Cousin Mary Ann told me. She was there in the house when Mrs Crewe opened Raymond’s letter to his father; for she always opened Harold’s letters before he saw them. ‘To save him any worry,’ she said. She burnt Raymond’s letter and sent the photo back. She was even cunning enough to address the envelope in Harold’s carpenter’s script.

  As soon as Abel could feed himself, Christine took to going out a lot. She went to Chapel mornings and evenings Sundays, and one night in the week for choir practice; and she was in great demand for singing at concerts all over the island. I would see a Grand Concert advertised, and always at the top was CHRISTINE MAHY: SOLOIST. She kept to her maiden name as a singer, I suppose because it was by that name she was known; but it meant people in general thought of Raymond as Christine Mahy’s husband, and not Christine Mahy as Raymond Martel’s wife. A few times he went with her and played the piano, and Gwen would come in and mind Abel; but Raymond preferred to stay at home with Abel and let Lydia Mahy, who was coming out more and more into the world, go and play for Christine. The winter she was going to sing in a Cantata was being done at Ebenezer Chapel, she was out night after night. I went down to keep Raymond company.

  He didn’t seem to mind Christine leaving him so much on his own. ‘She enjoys singing,’ he said, ‘and she is good at it. A person with a light mustn’t keep it under a bushel.’ That was all very well, I thought, but he had a light too, Raymond. It struck me he was putting it out on purpose for her sake. He didn’t even play the piano, unless she wanted to try a piece over. When I asked him to play me something of Beethoven, he said the piano they had wasn’t good enough. It was only a rickety old piano with a satin front and yellow keys that creaked; not the beautiful smooth instrument he had been used to play on at home. He didn’t even read. I would usually find him sitting by the fire thinking. He had been a chap full of hope and faith; but he didn’t seem sure of anything now. I asked him why he didn’t go to Chapel. He said if he went it would mean he was bearing witness as a believer. It wouldn’t be honest. I said, ‘Well, damn it, you can’t be as honest as all that!’

  He said when you are young you are full of trust, but are taught all manner of things which are not true; and then, when you grow up, you have to undo it all, and think different: but you have lost your ability to trust anything taught. The one thing he wanted to make sure of now was that Abel was not taught a lot of lies to start with. I realised he had given up hope for himself and all his hope was in Abel. I was afraid he was going to be disappointed. I wondered where he was going to find a school where Abel wouldn’t be taught a lot of lies. The more I got to know educated people, the more it seemed to me that was what schools was for. Oh, he thought it was all right for children to be told stories, he said, so long as they wasn’t forced to believe the stories had actually happened.

  Tell me the old, old story

  Of Jesus and His love

  was a wonderful story and the Holy Family was a beautiful picture; but the story was doubtful and it wasn’t a true picture. The father in the picture wasn’t the real father. Nobody knew who the real father of Jesus was. ‘A young Greek, I think,’ he said. The early Christians had done untold damage to succeeding generations by preaching God had become incarnate on earth in one human Person. How could He be? He would have to be the perfect child, the perfect boy, the perfect youth, the perfect friend, the perfect husband, the perfect father; and then He would only be half of God Incarnate. He would also have to be the perfect virgin, the perfect bride and the perfect mother as well. I didn’t say nothing. I didn’t know what to think.

  The day came when young Abel was digging in the gully. I had bought him a little spade and kept it solemnly in the shed with my big tools, so that he could help me whenever he came. He liked digging with
Ewwy; though by then I was Ebben. That Thursday afternoon Raymond brought him trotting along by his side; but it was Raymond’s half-day off and he wanted to go for a swim, so he left Abel with me to look after. Dudley and a couple of his pals was digging among the famous remains, still hoping to find something; and Abel, for some reason, thought he would like to go and dig there too. He wanted me to go with him, but I said it wasn’t my business, though he could go by himself, if he wanted to. I knew he would be quite safe. Off he went with his spade on his shoulder like a little man; but he didn’t go and dig with the others. He picked out a corner for himself. I kept an eye on him and saw he was making quite a hole.

  Another boy, if he had found something, would have shouted out; but not Abel. He went on quietly digging his hole, and made a neat pile on the side of what he found. Myself, I went on working and didn’t notice much what he was doing, so long as he was all right. When Raymond came back from swimming and saw only me, he said, ‘Hullo, what have you done with the boy?’ I said, ‘Oh, he is over there digging up a prehistoric monster.’ Raymond went over to see. Abel looked up and smiled and showed his father the treasure he had unearthed. ‘Tones,’ he said. He thought they was stones. ‘Ye gods,’ shouted Raymond, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he has and all!’ Dudley and his two chaps came running to have a look. Abel wouldn’t let them touch his ‘tones’: he said they was for Ebben. I went over and explained the land down there didn’t belong to Ebben, so Ebben couldn’t have them. He made no fuss, but let Dudley take possession; and that was how Dudley made his great discovery.