The Book of Ebenezer le Page Page 34

  She came to see me. I was horrified the Monday afternoon, when she turned up and caught me unawares. She said I was a bad boy: I hadn’t kept my word; but then she hadn’t expected me to: she knew men. I had to ask her in. After all, I had been in her house, but I hadn’t gone nosing round. She looked in every cupboard, and in every drawer, and I was in fear and trembling she was going to look up the chimney in the wash-house and find the pied-du-cauche. She went into my bedroom and had a look round; and into what had been my mother’s room, and came out looking like a dragon with a night-dress in her hand. She said a woman had been sleeping there. I said yes: it was my sister, when she came sometimes. She didn’t believe it was my sister. She said it was high time she was there herself to keep an eye on me. She then began finding fault with everything. Nothing was to her satisfaction. I must have the electricity put in, and the water-works; and she would rather have gas to cook by than my Guernsey range. The pigs would have to go. She said pigs in a pigsty against the house wasn’t ‘hygienic’. I said I didn’t think the place was really good enough for her. She said it was small; but it would do. I saw her to the bus and said, ‘Good-bye!’ and she said, ‘Au revoir!’ That is how the persecution of Ebenezer Le Page began.

  It went on for years. It was terrible. I never felt safe. It is true, more often than not when she came, I wasn’t in. I lived with the front door locked and the back door locked, and I locked myself in the greenhouse or the packing shed; and when I was working out-of-doors, I kept my eyes skinned to see her before she saw me. I would spot her coming round the corner of the Chouey; and, by God, she got along quicker and looked forty times more determined on her wooden leg, than any other woman with two legs of flesh and blood! I looked through my old book of Army Instructions for the drill on how to take cover in the presence of the enemy. She would try the front door, and try the back door, and look in the windows; and once she even looked in the double-u. I would be making myself invisible. I daubed whitewash on the glass of the greenhouse, so as she couldn’t look in; and I am ashamed now when I think of myself crawling on all fours on the floor of the packing shed, in case she peeped through the window. Young Lihou was a brick, and did his best to protect me. He would say I had gone to the White Rock, or St Sampson’s, or somewhere, and wouldn’t be back for hours; and once he told her I was dead in the Cottage Hospital, hadn’t she heard? She didn’t believe him; and came back in half-an-hour and caught me.

  I got into such a state of mind I verily believed the day would come when I would have to stand side by side with Louisa Trouteaud in front of the altar of the Vale Church and say ‘till death do us part’ as a punishment for my sins. When Raymond was living with me, he didn’t have much laugh left in him; but he used to laugh over Louisa Trouteaud. He called her ‘Captain Hook’. He was always very sympathetic with her when she came; and he was the only one of us she believed. He would say how sorry I was going to be when I got back and heard I had missed her. I was being tempted to shout out from where I was hiding, ‘Oh, you bloody liar!’ Raymond found it hard to tell a lie for his own good, but he told dozens for my sake. Well, if there is any justice in heaven, he will have his reward for that!

  I saw the birth of Horace’s kid in the Press. MARTEL. At Rosamunda, Les Effards, St Sampson’s, to Christine (née Mahy) and Raymond, a son, Gideon. I heard about it too from old Mrs Renouf I met in Weymouth’s shop. ‘Ah, I see your cousin, Raymond Martel, got another, then,’ she said: ‘It is funny they call him Gideon, isn’t it? I would have thought, if he was the brother of the other, they would have called him Cain. Cain and Abel, eh?’ I didn’t feel like giving him much of a present; but I thought I ought to give something. I couldn’t think what to give; so I asked Ada Domaille to buy what she thought, and she bought a monkey on a stick. She said it would make him laugh. It didn’t. He didn’t take any interest in it. He wasn’t a bright baby like Abel. He looked like a wizened, shrivelled little monkey himself. Christine thanked me for the present, but said it was too old for him.

  She had a bad time having Gideon, and was in bed yet when I went. Raymond told me he and Horace sat together by the fire downstairs the whole day, listening to her screams upstairs in the bedroom. He said he felt very close to Horace that day. They both suffered with her; but there was nothing they could do. Gwen fetched the doctor. She wanted to get them a meal, but they couldn’t eat. It wasn’t until nine o’clock at night it was over. When Nurse Wright came down with the doctor and said Raymond could go and see his wife and child, Raymond pushed Horace in front of him to go first up the stairs. Christine was sitting up in bed giving Gideon his first feed. Raymond said she was very pale, but had never looked more beautiful. ‘Like a spirit,’ he said. She didn’t look at Horace, but held out the baby for Raymond to see. ‘Another for your tribe,’ she said. Raymond didn’t know what she meant.

  I don’t know neither. I have often wondered if, perhaps in her heart of hearts, Christine did love Raymond; or, at least, Raymond as he was the night he preached at Birdo Mission. It may be she was jealous of Horace, and wanted to get rid of him by hook or by crook. If so, I am all wrong; and Christine is greatly to be pitied. I can only say again I don’t know; for women as they are to themselves are a mystery to me. I do know she couldn’t bear to have Horace in the house once Gideon was born. The doctor said it might affect her mind, if she wasn’t given way to; and Raymond had to ask Horace not to show himself. Raymond then devoted himself to looking after Christine and the baby. It was him gave Gideon his bath every day. He said he liked doing it. Gideon was Horace’s flesh and blood. I said, ‘Why on earth didn’t you and Christine join up again then, and bring him up as your own?’ He just shook his head. ‘Why not? Why not?’ I said. I couldn’t understand it. Liza had been with other men and had children by other men; but it hadn’t made any difference to my feeling for Liza. He said:

  ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

  Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

  All the King’s horses and all the King’s men

  Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.’

  17

  When I saw Christine again she looked anything but a spirit. She was downstairs and blooming. It was Raymond who didn’t look so well. I asked her how the infant was. She said I could go upstairs and have a look at him, if I went on tiptoe. He was asleep in Raymond’s cradle. He was beginning to look more as if he might be a human being some day; but I would never have thought he would grow up to be the much too good-looking young man he was, when he came over with Christine a year or two ago. I said I thought he was improving. Abel was still up and playing with his toys; but I could see he was crying tired. Raymond said, ‘Christine, isn’t it time now Abel was put to bed?’ Christine said, ‘Abel doesn’t want to go to bed yet; do you, Abel?’ ‘I won’t!’ said Abel, and looked daggers at his father. I saw what Christine was up to. I had seen that game played before. She was going to let Abel have his own way in everything; and then he would be all for her, and not for Raymond. It was for that reason Raymond was willing, and even glad, for Abel to go to England. ‘Is marriage only war at close quarters?’ he said, when he looked back on it. ‘I couldn’t fight Christine over Abel’s body. I didn’t want him brought up on a battlefield, as I was.’

  I didn’t stay long. I had soon had enough. I was just leaving when Dudley bounced in. ‘Hullo, darling!’ he said to Christine, and kissed her. ‘How is my beautiful tonight?’ Raymond said he would see me part of the way home. He couldn’t stand being in the same room as Dudley Waine. I didn’t have anything against the fellow, myself: I just put him down as English. Well, Christine let him take her to England when he went back in September. It was arranged for Christine to teach in his mother’s school; and she and the two children would be able to live there. As it was a special boarding school for the children of separated parents, perhaps they was as well there, in the circumstances, as they would have been anywhere.

  I got the news from Horace when he brought the groceries.
‘It’s a rotten business all round,’ he said. He had hoped now he was keeping away, Raymond and Christine would make it up; but he didn’t take it as hard as Raymond. As far as I know, he didn’t have much feeling for Gideon, if any. He hardly realised it was his. He did offer Christine to help pay for its keep, but she refused. ‘Ah well, it’s all in a day’s work,’ he said. He was more concerned about making his mark in Guernsey. He was already getting on the right side of the right people; and by the time the Second World War came, he was a Douzainier. People seemed to forget his part in the story, once Christine and the children was out of the way. It was Raymond who was no good. I did another stupid thing. I got in a rage, when I thought over what Horace had told me, and went down to Rosamunda to let Christine know, before she cleared off to England, what I thought of her. I didn’t know the half of what I know now; or I would have let sleeping dogs lie. I didn’t do a scrap of good to Raymond, or Christine, or even to myself; except I let off steam.

  I chose to go in the afternoon, and it happened I found her in on her own. The children was with their grandmother across the road. It was a battle royal. I let fly and she didn’t mince her words either. I don’t remember the half of it now. I know she went off about money to begin with. How was Raymond going to keep a family? If he got a rise at the Greffe, it would only be a few shillings. She couldn’t earn anything now herself by teaching in an ordinary school, because she was married. How were they to live? If it wasn’t for her good English friends, she didn’t know what she would do. Ah, so it was Dudley’s mother who was backing her, I thought, and that was why she could refuse help from Horace and leave Raymond. ‘Raymond is no use to me now!’ she said. ‘He is your husband,’ I said. She laughed. ‘In Chapel!’ she said. She went on to tell me things about him she had no right to tell anybody. I wouldn’t say such things about any woman I had been with, however much I might dislike her. ‘I don’t want to hear none of that!’ I said. I didn’t believe half of it, anyway. She said Raymond and Horace was unnatural; and I know damn well they wasn’t. She brought up the things Raymond had told her he had done when he was a boy. I said, ‘I heard from boys you played about with when you was a girl of things you had done. I bet you never thought to tell those to Raymond!’ ‘Would to God I had married a man!’ she said. ‘Well, when you got one, you didn’t like it, did you?’ I said. ‘Pooh!’ she said. ‘When it was over, he cried because he’d had to betray Raymond. I laughed in his face!’ I said, ‘I think you are the rottenest Judas of a woman who ever walked the earth!’ She said I was a snake in the grass. I said she was a spider! She told me to get out of her house that instant. I said I would get out of her house when I had done saying what I had come to say. I was going to make her see once and for all the sort of creature she really was. All she wanted was for every chap who saw her to be after her, so as she could tie him up and hang him in her web; and, when she was hungry for a man, gobble up the one she fancied most. I thought that would spite her! Instead, she only smiled her mysterious smile. ‘Naturally,’ she said. ‘I am a woman.’ ‘Well, if that is what being a woman is,’ I said, ‘God have mercy on every man born!’ I couldn’t say no more.

  The week before she went away, she moved with the children to her mother’s house, and left Raymond on his own. She didn’t even tell him which day she was going to England. It was Gwen let him know; and he went and asked Horace to go with him and see her off. He hoped she would part friendly enough to let him know in the future how the children was getting on. Horace said all right; but was silent all the way in the van to the White Rock. They got there early, and stood one each side the gangway to be sure not to miss her. She came with Gideon in her arms and Abel walking, holding her hand. Dudley was behind, carrying the luggage, but went ahead up the gangway because he had the tickets; and she passed between Raymond and Horace without looking to the right or to the left. Abel dragged on her hand and was going to speak to Raymond; but she pulled him along. ‘Come on, darling,’ she said, ‘or the big boat will go without us.’ Raymond and Horace walked back to the van. They got in and Horace drove as far as the Weighbridge. He was going back to the Arsenal Stores and Raymond to his office in the Greffe. Horace stopped the van and opened the door, looking straight ahead. Raymond got out and Horace drove on. There was not a word said. They didn’t speak again until their last meeting.

  I didn’t see Raymond to speak to myself for, I think, nearly two years; or it may have been nearly three. I saw him in Town now and then and nodded; and I met him in a pub a few times and said ‘Hullo’, but he was with fellows I didn’t know, and didn’t want to know. He left Rosamunda the week after Christine went away; and Herbert’s widow and child moved back. It was like Raymond to leave behind all his precious books, and the things he had bought for the house, and not ask to be paid for any of it. He found a room in Victoria Road in a house was let in separate rooms to waiters and barmen and such-like, and run by an old woman who drank all the money she got from her lodgers. I never saw the room. Raymond said it was dreary and dingy in the extreme, and he couldn’t get it clean; and all he could see through the one dirty window was somebody else’s back wall. Those two or three years are the part of his life he told me least about; but I know he lived in hell.

  During the day he was a respectable clerk at the Greffe; but at night goodness knows what he was, or who he knew. He seemed to know every chap on the island who was a bit crooked; and most of those I saw him with I wouldn’t have trusted as far as I could see them. He said to me once, ‘Those who were cast out were the only ones I was fit to mix with: my secret life was the same as theirs.’ Len Carré told me he had met Raymond several times in The Beehive. Well, I had been in The Beehive and I knew what he meant. Queenie Brehaut sold very good clothes for men, and cheap, and I would have bought most of my clothes from him, if it hadn’t been he always brought the conversation round to the one subject. He was very gentrified and I don’t suppose there was much harm in him. It was said he played with the boys. Well, if he did, I bet it was the boys who egged him on, judging from the young ruffians I saw there when I went in. Unless boys have changed a lot since I was to the Vale School, they are dirtier-minded little buggers at fourteen than he was at forty, the poor old sod. His wife was English. She was tall and square-shouldered with a face like a horse, and she wore a tweed jacket like a man and stout brogue shoes. I reckon she knew all there was to know about her Queenie. She used to turn up at the shop regular every evening when it was going to close to make sure he got home safe. She was a good sort, old Flora.

  Raymond liked her. He said she was the only person he knew those years who was really decent to him. She had him to the house quite often. They chatted about books, for she was a great reader; and it was through her he got to know the people who had to do with the Little Theatre. The Little Theatre was Bartlett’s Flea-pit done up and fumigated; and a company came over from England every summer and did plays there. I didn’t go, but I heard some of them was good. Anyhow, I used to see Raymond out with people who I knew could only be actors and actresses. They may have been all right, but they wore showy clothes and as little as possible; and, even so, it wasn’t always easy to tell from looking which was the young hero and which the leading lady. Raymond himself was dressed quietly and decently, as he always was, and there was something about him, even in his worst years, made him look a cut above any of those sort I saw him with.

  Once I saw him out with a chap I thought was more up to his mark, and that day Raymond looked quite his old self again and waved cheerily. The chap was fair-haired and not unlike Raymond to look at, only younger; and I didn’t think he looked English somehow. He was the one friend Raymond did tell me something about. He was a German. He was studying at a University in England, but was mad about islands, and, when he came over to Guernsey for a holiday, used the opportunity to go to the Greffe and look at some ancient documents to do with the history of the Island. It happened it was Raymond who dug out the old papers to show him and the
y took to each other right away. They arranged to meet, and went for walks along the cliffs and to the bays swimming; and they talked about everything under the sun, and seemed to agree. Raymond said they got on so well, for six months he was only living for his next visit. When he came again at Easter, it began all right; but soon the fellow began to get moody, and then came out with it. Raymond didn’t say exactly what. ‘I couldn’t do it to him,’ he said. ‘I liked him too much.’ The German didn’t understand, and turned nasty. He went back to England before his holiday was over, and never wrote. I have always thought it was that friend leaving him gave Raymond his last push. Raymond said to me, ‘I thought we would be together for ever: even if we had to live far apart.’ The War was on when he was telling me, and he was still worrying about Karl; wondering if he had been put in a prisoners’ camp in England. He hoped he got back to his own country.