The Book of Ebenezer le Page Read online

  I heard rumours, as one do, he had been seen with this or that girl sitting in the van; and the van had been for a long time outside the house of Mrs So-and-so, or Mrs So-and-so. It may have been true, for all I know. He had nearly all his meals at Rosamunda. It was the way he found of helping Raymond. He provided most of the food and, as it was for himself as well, said he couldn’t charge for it. I noticed a difference when I went there the next time. The house was spic and span and everything was in its place; and it was Christine who got the meal ready and washed up after. Raymond and Horace dried and put the dishes away. It looked as if at last she was being a sensible girl; and I was glad, for Raymond’s sake. I might have known better. She wasn’t doing it to please Raymond. She was furious with Raymond. He was always going out with Horace. I was surprised myself when I met him one night in the Channel Islands, having a drink with Horace. I bet he had never been in a hotel bar before; or any pub, for that matter. Thursday afternoons the two of them went out on their bikes; and to the Pictures, or somewhere, in the evening. When they came in, they would sit by the fire yarning until all hours of the morning. Christine had to go to bed on her own.

  One night when I went down I found Christine in by herself. I had been feeling particularly lonely up at Les Moulins that night, and was hoping for a chat with Raymond, or Horace, or both. It was a night I thought she went to choir practice. I was disappointed when it was her who opened the door and said, ‘Ah, I had a feeling you were thinking about me! Come in, come in, do! I am a grass widow.’ She made me sit down in the armchair and arranged cushions at my back and patted me on the knee. Abel was in bed. ‘Where are the boys?’ I said. ‘You may well ask where are the boys,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where they have gone; and I don’t expect I will be told.’ I came as near to liking Christine that night, as ever I have. She dropped her holy voice, and said what was in her mind. It wasn’t a very nice mind; but, at least, she was honest.

  She said Raymond had changed completely since Horace was back. She hardly knew him: he was so different. He did as he liked without asking her. He went out with Horace without even bothering to enquire if she had a singing appointment for the evening; and, if she had an argument with Horace, it was always Horace who was in the right. I saw how it struck her. Raymond had been saying ‘Yes, Christine’ for so long because he thought it was right for him to be crucified, she couldn’t understand it now he said ‘Yes, Horace’ because he meant it. I said, ‘Well, they have known each other for a long time, you know. They couldn’t be separated when they was kids.’ ‘They are not kids now,’ she said, ‘and I don’t mind telling you I am going to separate them before long.’ The way she said that sent a shiver down my spine. ‘Why not have Gwen over here to live with you?’ I said. ‘There is the little room.’ ‘That is what Raymond wants,’ she said. ‘Well, why not?’ I said. ‘It would be company, and you would have help in the house.’ ‘Gwen does quite enough for Horace as it is,’ she said. ‘If he as much as smiles at her, you would think the sun was rising!’ Christine wanted to be the only woman in that house.

  I did my best to make her see reason. ‘After all, you are often out yourself,’ I said. ‘If I get the chance,’ she said, ‘and those are the very evenings my lords condescend to stay in! On the pretext of keeping an eye on Abel. Gwen could well come across and do that. When I come back, they have kept him up and are sprawled on the floor playing with his bricks. Raymond will say “They give you an encore, girl?” and he doesn’t care two hoots. The Other will say “How about some supper, honey?” That’s all he thinks of. Food!’ I was getting to feel very uncomfortable. ‘Oh, let’s forget about them,’ she said. ‘They are not worth it! What would you like me to get you for your supper?’ She patted my knee again. I thought I had been patted on the knee quite enough for one evening, and said I must be going because I got something on the boil at home.

  I ought to have guessed what was going to happen; but, more fool me, I didn’t. It never occurred to me Horace would do that to Raymond. Anyhow, one afternoon Raymond was at the Greffe and Horace wasn’t on his round as he ought to have been. How that came about I don’t know. Raymond told me all the afternoon he had been thinking of Christine. He thought of how lovely she had looked when he went up to see her after she had given birth to Abel. He thought of how beautiful she was the Sunday evening they walked home together from Birdo Mission. They hadn’t kissed as lovers do, or said sweet nothings; but walked hand in hand. All he had said to her was, ‘Will you be my wife, Christine?’ and she had answered, ‘I am your wife’, and he had believed her. Riding home from the Greffe on his bicycle he was thinking how he was going to tell her when he got in that what she had said was true, and would always be true, and she must never doubt it.

  She was cutting bread-and-butter in the kitchen when he came in, wearing a stiff white overall: which was Horace’s idea of what a woman ought to wear when she was preparing food. She looked very clean: ‘bleached’, Raymond said. He came bounding in, meaning to take her in his arms and kiss her. He couldn’t. She was untouchable. ‘Frozen,’ he said. He knew in that instant what had happened. The shock was too great for him to feel it then. He felt far, far away and above the earth; and the only feeling he had left for her was pity. She hadn’t gone to heaven with Horace either. He saw that from one glance. She spoke to him in a cold, clear voice he had never heard her use before. ‘Horace is in the front room,’ she said. ‘He wants to speak to you.’

  Raymond went into the front room. Horace was sitting bent over with his head in his hands. He looked up when Raymond came in. Raymond saw his face. ‘It was the face of a man in hell,’ Raymond said, when he was telling me. ‘So it jolly well ought to have been!’ I said. ‘How, how could you have brought yourself to forgive him?’ ‘Forgive?’ he said. ‘Why, I would willingly have died to get that look off his face!’ ‘It’s all right, Horace,’ he said to him. ‘It’s all right: I don’t blame you.’ Horace was on his feet and crushed Raymond in his arms. ‘Christ, you mean more to me than any woman ever has, or ever will!’ he said. ‘I was in heaven then,’ Raymond said to me. I think it was then something in Raymond’s brain cracked.

  16

  Well, that was how those three people got tangled up together. I heard all sides; but I can’t say I am much wiser. Raymond said there was a thin thread between him and Christine, and, though their loving had not been perfect, so long as that thread was not broken there was hope. She broke it for no reason he could see. If she had done it because she loved Horace and preferred Horace to himself, he couldn’t have blamed her. He would have done the same in her place. He said you can have goodwill towards everybody; but you cannot choose who, or how you love. That is something you are landed with; as you are landed with your parents, and your body, and the place you are born in. Christine didn’t love Horace: she hated Horace. Raymond knew because she didn’t want any more to do with him after that once. ‘That is what hurt me most,’ said Raymond. ‘Horace isn’t only the lust of the flesh, you know. He is a good man.’

  I don’t think Raymond got it quite right. I think Christine wanted to master the big Horace, and once was enough for her to know she couldn’t ever do it; and that was why she hated him so much. When, during the Occupation, he didn’t know where Raymond was living and came and appealed to me to tell him, he said, ‘I know you think I am a rotten swine and did the dirty on Raymond; but Christine wasn’t Raymond’s wife: she was anybody’s woman. That woman was the bottomless pit!’ The one thing Raymond admitted he didn’t know was who made the first move. I knew. I didn’t tell Raymond, and perhaps I ought to have done, what Christine had said to me; but he was already getting enough funny ideas in his head, and I didn’t want to knock him sideways altogether. As a matter of fact, I don’t believe Christine made the move only to separate the two; though it was them being so close made her decide to do it. I think she wanted Horace the moment she set eyes on him. She was quite heartless. She was as cold as the moon and man-hungry. No
r do I think Horace was free of blame. He pushed himself in there, even if he didn’t know he was doing it; and when the chance was offered, he took it. It was the lust of the flesh all right.

  Raymond was asking for it really. He confessed to me he hadn’t ‘lain with’ Christine since Horace came home. He couldn’t. It was the old story. It had to be perfect; or he couldn’t face Horace in the morning. He thought, for some reason I don’t understand, if a time came when Horace was happily married to Gwen and living near, it would work out perfect between him and Christine. Anyhow, it turned out different from how any of them thought. If Christine imagined she was going to separate Raymond and Horace by having Horace, she made the greatest mistake she ever made. It drew them closer together. She told me she would gladly have killed the pair of them in the days that followed. It had been bad enough when they sat by the fire by the hour talking, and left her out of it; but now they seemed to be able to read each other’s thoughts without even having to talk. They would look at each other and laugh, and she didn’t have any idea what they were laughing about; and for conversation they would say ‘Um, ah, yes, no,’ and seem to understand what they meant and agree with each other. They nearly drove her mad. ‘They don’t even speak like human beings,’ she said to me, ‘they make animal noises at each other.’ I can understand how it was with them myself. They was exactly the same blood, might have been brothers; and both having been with Christine joined them deeper than brothers. Jim and me wasn’t of the same blood, nor was there a Christine between us; but we knew what the other was thinking with very few words.

  It say something in the Bible about raising up seed to your brother. Well, Christine raised up the seed. It wasn’t long before she knew she was going to have a baby. I have no idea what she felt about it. She let it be thought it was Raymond’s; but the neighbours knew better. I don’t know how. I know she didn’t tell her mother who was so loose-tongued she might have let it out. Gwen she told, to show up Horace; but I am certain Gwen never breathed a word. She got a raw deal, that girl. She gave her heart to Horace once and for all, and got nothing for it; yet she was at his beck and call as long as he lived. Christine came off best. When she shook the dust of Guernsey from off her feet and went to England with her two sons, she got everybody’s sympathy. She spread abroad she was leaving Raymond because of his unspeakable abominations, what ever that might mean, and she must save the children from his influence. Raymond was left to face a shame from which he never raised his head. The good Chapel people, who already wouldn’t speak to or about him, now raised their voices and seemed to know more about ‘unspeakable abominations’ than Raymond, or even I, did. The truth was he hadn’t behaved like on the Pictures. If he had fought Horace, or murdered him, or even Christine, it would have been very wrong, of course; but it would have proved their way of looking at things was right, and they would have been satisfied. As it was, they just didn’t understand. It seems to me he behaved rather like a Christian.

  The day came when I went down and there could be no doubt about a baby coming. Raymond said, ‘Christine is expecting an addition to the family.’ I said, ‘Fine!’ I didn’t know then what had happened; but I couldn’t help feeling all was not well. Christine was sitting knitting; but being very icy and distant to both Raymond and Horace. She was quite friendly to me, and said she thought I had forgotten she was alive: it was such a long time since I had been to see her. Raymond and Horace was on the floor, helping Abel to build a ‘Big house’. When Abel was sent to bed, Horace sat in the armchair as if he was the master of the house. Raymond didn’t seem to mind, and sat on a hassock with his arms round his knees. I tackled him about it once. He remembered that night very well, and said the only thing he minded was not being able to tell me the baby coming was Horace’s. ‘I would have liked to be honest with you,’ he said, ‘but it wouldn’t have been fair to Christine.’ God Almighty, as if it ever entered Christine’s head to be fair to Raymond! I don’t think ‘forces of nature’ are ‘fair’.

  It was Raymond got the meal, and Horace helped to clear away after and wash up. They both waited on Christine, and asked her if she had all she needed; and she said ‘Thank you’, as if they was servants. The washing-up place was small; and I noticed how Raymond and Horace worked in together well, and didn’t get in each other’s way. I talked to Christine nothing that mattered of people we both knew: gossip really. Raymond admitted he wasn’t unhappy those days. Horace was there. He was only wondering how it was going to end. Christine really was living quite on her own. She had the big bedroom with Abel in his cot. Raymond slept in the little room and Horace at the back of the shop. Otherwise, Horace lived at Rosamunda: ate his meals there and was there every evening. Christine gave up singing and choir-practice, and they stayed in together as I found them the evening I went down. I didn’t know what to make of it. I knew something was gone wrong; but I didn’t really want to know what. I was soon told. I ran into Len Carré from Pleinheaume in the Mariners. ‘I hear there’s a cuckoo in the nest round your way,’ he said. ‘I don’t know nothing about that,’ I said. ‘Ah well,’ he said, ‘it’s not the first time that’s happened, and it won’t be the last.’ He went on to tell me about two brothers we both knew who swopped wives; and, after a spell, swopped back again. There was children from all the pairs; and the families now lived next door to each other. The children all played together, and the parents seemed to get on quite well. I didn’t say nothing. I didn’t want to talk about it. The whole business was upsetting me more than I liked to admit. I thanked my lucky stars I didn’t take things as serious as Raymond.

  I wish I could leave out the next part of my story; but I don’t see how I honestly can. I can’t be expected to write the truth about other people, because I don’t know it; but at least I can write the truth about some of the stupid things I have done myself. This was the stupidest. It was because I wanted to forget about Raymond and his serious nonsense I decided I would go on a gallivant like old Victor. I was more or less on the spree for a week. It didn’t amount to much. I got drunk a few nights and had a couple of fights, I don’t remember who with or what about; and then on the Saturday afternoon I went to Town with the intention of having a last blindo, but happened to see Gerald Mahy on the other side of the road in Fountain Street. I thought how young and sprightly he looked, though he can’t have been many years younger than me. He hadn’t got into trouble at the Old Bank yet, and been nearly put in jail. He was talking and laughing with a couple of girls I didn’t know; and I crossed over the road to ask him how his mother was. He was living with his mother then at St Martin’s and I knew she wasn’t very well. He said she was no better; and introduced me to the two girls. The one he was getting off with I could see at a glance was a trollop; but I wasn’t so sure about the other. The great mistake I made, and God knows I paid for it, was that in her eyes I was getting on in years. I thought she was quite taken with me. She smiled and shook hands and said she was pleased to meet me; and told me her name was Dolly Trouteaud, and she lived in Doyle Road. I thought it was rather a grand part for a girl of her sort to live. Anyhow, when Gerald and his piece went off for a stroll down Havelet, I asked if I might see Miss Trouteaud to her gate. Miss Trouteaud was delighted. I don’t remember what we talked about on the way; but when we got there, she said, ‘Come in and meet my mother. She will love to meet you.’

  I had nothing else to do, so I thought I might as well. I ought to have known there was something in the wind. As soon as she had introduced me to her mother, she said she had to go out again, and I was left alone with Mrs Trouteaud, or Louisa, the name I came to know her by all too well. She was a woman of my own age, or older; and was stout with a square face, and had a wooden leg. I felt sorry for her because she had a wooden leg, and she sat with it stretched out for me to see. I never dared at any time to ask her how she got it, but from the way she got about on it, I think she was born with it. It was a big house she lived in; but it came out she and Dolly only had two rooms o
n the ground floor. She soon let me know Dolly was engaged. She was engaged to a young English chap who worked for Le Riche’s, but was taking on a better job as a manager for Sainsbury’s somewhere in England, and Dolly was getting married and going with him. I didn’t see the danger. That wicked young puss of a Dolly had jumped at me as an old man sent by God to palm off on her mother. She and her bloke didn’t want the old woman going to live with them in England, and I was to be bribed and corrupted into taking her off their hands.

  As a matter of fact, I quite enjoyed myself that night. The old woman was the rough and ready sort, and I felt quite at home with her. She told me she was a widow and her husband had been a sea-captain; though from what she said, I gathered he was only skipper of a trawler. When he was alive, she used to go with him to sea, she said: because she didn’t trust a man out of her sight. I took that for a joke, and laughed. She got out glasses and a bottle of wine, and buttered some of Guérin’s biscuits. I ate and drank, and there was a good fire, and I felt warm and comfortable. She asked me a lot of questions about who I was, and where I came from, and what I did for a living, and so on; and I answered her straight out, without letting her know too much. When I left, she said she hoped I would go and see her again, because she was a lonely old woman. I promised. The next Saturday I went. Dolly opened the door and showed me in, but said she was on the way out. The glasses and the wine and the buttered biscuits was out ready; and Louisa was sitting by a small table, telling herself her fortune from the cards. The moment I came in, she sprang up on her wooden leg and pointed dramatically to the cards spread out on the table. ‘It is in the cards!’ she said. I was mesmerised like a rabbit. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I would like to meet the chap who could have stood up on his hind legs and said to Louisa Trouteaud ‘It is NOT in the cards!’ I would have to wait a few weeks, she said: the course of true love never did run smooth. She must make sure Dolly got properly hooked up; and then she would be mine! I sort of laughed. I ate and drank, but didn’t know what I was eating and drinking; and she talked and I said yes to everything she said. I wasn’t listening. I was only thinking of how to get out of the house as soon as possible. I promised faithfully I would go and see her the next Saturday. I had no more intention than the man in the moon of ever going to see her again; or even of ever going along Doyle Road again, as long as I lived. I counted without Louisa.