The Book of Ebenezer le Page Read online

  I was pleased and excited to be going with my father in the trap. It was beginning to get dark and, while he was harnessing the pony, I lit the big candles in the lamps. It was rough along the front and the sea was coming across the road by the gas-works and over the Salerie Corner. The house was in the Canichers. It was too narrow for the trap to go up and my father tied Jack to the lamp-post at the corner and told me to stop there and mind him. I felt very sad left there all by myself and talked to Jack. I remember the flickering gas-light and the round shadows on the road and a big old tree dropping leaves and the wind blowing them about. My father wasn’t long gone. When he came back all he said was, ‘She is with her mother.’

  When we got home and was having our supper, my father said to my mother, ‘Our boy is not going to work in the quarries.’ ‘What, then?’ said my mother. ‘We must find something better for him to do than that,’ he said. I don’t know if it was better, I don’t think it was; but when I left school he got me a job in Dorey’s Vineries. They was still growing grapes, but trying out tomatoes under the vines. I thought tomatoes was a funny sort of fruit. I didn’t like the taste much. I liked the grapes, though. It turned out there was a better sale in England for the tomatoes and in the end the greenhouses grew nothing else.

  I had to do what my father said; but, when he’d gone, I used to chuck it sometimes and go fishing for a spell. I was happier working out-of-doors and in a boat; but you can’t trust the sea, and the fishes get ideas into their heads and sometimes they are where they ought to be and sometimes they are not. The tomatoes are always there, so back I would go; but, golly, it was hot in those greenhouses! Ah well, I was born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards. I earned my bread by the sweat of my brow.

  3

  I mustn’t complain. I have never had a day’s sickness in my life. I put that down to the good food my mother made me eat. Now that I have seen how the English eat, I wonder how it is they keep alive at all. I always had a big breakfast at seven, a big dinner at twelve, and a big tea at six, or just after. At work I’d have a lunch in the morning at half-past nine, and a lunch in the afternoon at half-past three; and we always had a supper at half-past nine at night, before we went to bed. Our food didn’t come out of tins, either. The only thing we ate out of a tin was red salmon of a Sunday afternoon, if anybody we didn’t expect came to tea. There was a rack over the table on which there was always the salted side of a pig. It was from one of our own pigs we’d killed; and, if we ate a fowl, it was one of our own fowls.

  My mother believed in me eating plenty of beef. She bought it from Webb, the butcher, on the Bridge; and it had to be Guernsey beef. She said the white fat of the English beef made her feel sick. When she came home with a steak, it was a steak; and an inch thick. She bought mutton for sometimes, the best cut of the leg; and fresh pork from old Piggy Wright, the pork butcher. Fish she was very particular about. It had to be fresh from the boat. She wouldn’t cook a mackerel unless it had its tail up. I liked the long-nose better. The English are funny about the long-nose; or orfi, as we call it. They say it is poison because it got green bones. Well, I’ve eaten orfi all my life and I’m still alive. The fish I liked best was conger. My mother would buy the thickest part and stuff it like a fowl and bake it. It was so good you would never have thought it was fish.

  My father had crab-pots out and we had plenty of crabs; and sold some. It was the lobsters we sold most of. They are for the English, those; and the gentry. You can’t trust a lobster. He’s often half empty. A crawfish is always as full as an egg; but then he have coarser flesh and, of course, no claws. We used to have a chancre for supper of a Saturday night when we came home from Town. It was cooked on the Friday in the copper in the wash-house. It gave a scream when it was dropped in the hot water; but my father was funny about that and wouldn’t let my mother put it in cold water and bring it to the boil. He said it suffered. If it was dropped in boiling water, it died outright. It was one of the few things my mother had to do as she was told. She didn’t like having to cook it that way, because sometimes the claws came off from the shock and the water got in. The crab I like best, me, is the spider crab. I like to see him on the table in a dish: round and with his legs out like a spider, and knobs and spikes sticking up on his back. I used to catch lady-crabs in the pools and under the rocks. I don’t know why they are called lady-crabs. They are male and female like all the other creatures in the world. They have a crown on their back and people say it’s because they belong to the Queen; but I suppose everything belong to the Queen really. I used to catch them for Tabby. She liked them. I liked them all right, but they’re so small they take an hour to pick; and there’s not much to eat when you’ve done it.

  The food I like best of all foods is ormers; but you can’t always get them. My father used to take me with him ormering. It was always at the spring tide when the sea was right down; and you had to go in up to your knees to get to them. If it was at night and fine weather, there would be a big moon shining on the rocks and on the wet sand and on the water. My father went further out than me and got more; but the ones near to he left for me. I’d have a hook and a bucket and he’d lift a big stone for me to see; and there would be the black creature sticking to it underneath. I daren’t breathe for fear he would know and clamp down, for then a stick of gelignite wouldn’t get him off. I’d make one sudden grab with my hook and have him in my bucket. He’s a funny creature when you see him close to. He have holes in the shell on his back, but I don’t know what for.

  My mother knew how to cook ormers. When she had cut the part you eat out of the shell, she would scrub the black edges with a scrubbing brush until they was perfectly clean; and that took some doing. Then she would put them between two towels and beat them with a flat iron for half an hour, or more. They are hard as leather, but she’d roll up her sleeves; and she had muscles on her arms, my mother. That was when she was happy. She’d be singing hymns all the time and you could hear her all over the house. When they was properly broke up and soft, she’d fry them over the fire in the iron frying-pan; and then stew them in the oven to finish up with. Some people stew them with onions, but my mother didn’t believe in that. She said it take the taste away and spoil the gravy. She liked them with just boiled potatoes.

  When there was a lot to be had, she would pickle some. They was four-pence a dozen, if you bought them; but they was worth it. After they had been scrubbed and beaten, they was boiled for a long time; and then pickled in the best vinegar with bay leaves in an airtight jar. We didn’t have no bay leaves in our garden; so I had to go and steal some from Mr Dorey of Oatlands. He had a bay tree with leaves hanging over the road. Mr Dorey would have given us as many bay leaves as we wanted, if we’d asked him: but my mother wouldn’t let me. She was proud, my mother. She would rather steal than beg; and I’m the same. The jar was kept on the shelf with the pots of jam; and sometimes I’d be given a pickled ormer for my tea with bread and butter, when I came home from school.

  I can’t say what ormers taste like. They are not like fish, flesh, or fowl. They are like no other food on earth. I have heard of the nectar of the gods. Or is it ambrosia they feed on? That must be ormers. Well, my poor old mother is in heaven now, if she is anywhere at all. If they got any sense up there, they will get her to cook them a meal of ormers. I can just see her banging away at the old ormers with a flat iron and her sleeves rolled up and singing ‘Where is my wandering boy tonight?’

  She was as fussy about butter as she was about meat. She wouldn’t look at the sickly white English butter. It had to be golden Guernsey. My grandfather kept a cow, as he was working only round the corner and could look after it; but there was no cow kept at Les Moulins in my time, and I had to fetch our milk, butter, and curds from the Roussels of the Grand Fort. My mother and Tabitha liked curds, but I didn’t. Of course there was no wine, beer, or spirits drunk in our house; but, for some reason, there was always a barrel of cider. In the early days, it was made from our own apples;
but when most of the apple-trees had been cut down to make room to build a greenhouse it was delivered from Randall’s Brewery in the Truchett. My mother wouldn’t touch it; but my father used to let me have a glass with my dinner Sundays. It goes without saying my mother was against smoking. She said if men was meant to smoke they would have been born with a chimney on the nose. It didn’t make any difference to my father. He smoked cigarettes he rolled himself and black twist in his pipe and a cigar at Christmas. I didn’t smoke in the house until I was a grown lad; but I smoked when I was a boy at the Vale School, of course.

  My little grandmother didn’t mind my father smoking: she said she liked the smell of smoke on a man. He got on well with his belle-mère, my father. He would often go along on his own to see how she was, or take me with him. ‘Hello, ma mère!’ he’d say and take her in his arms and kiss her on the forehead. He was big and strong and she was very small and frail against him. ‘Ah, comment s’en va, mon Alfred?’ she’d say. ‘Pas trop mal,’ he’d say.

  My mother thought more of her father than of her mother. She said he was a man of God. She knew he had been misled and in error while he was a Wesleyan, but she believed he had seen the Light when he was struck down. Her sisters, my Aunt Prissy and my Aunt Hetty, was so much younger than she was they hardly remembered their father, and thought more of their mother: especially La Hetty, the youngest. When my grandmother died, La Hetty said she wanted to die too; and cried so much they thought she was going mad.

  I was to school yet when my little grandmother died. She didn’t know anybody for seven days and seven nights. I think the doctor gave her some stuff at the end to ease the pain. She lay on her back breathing loud and they had to feed her with a feather. The three sisters and the husbands went every night; and people came from the Vale and St Sampson’s and the Câtel, and even as far as from St Saviour’s, to see her. They would go into the bedroom one by one on their tiptoes, and come out saying ‘Ah, la pauvre Charlotte! la pauvre Charlotte! Ch’est la fin, enfin: ch’est la fin!’ The last night the three sisters stopped all night and sat by the bed watching. The husbands went home to have a sleep, so as they would be able to go to work in the morning. I stopped with my mother. I was the only big boy there. My Cousin Horace, Aunt Prissy’s first, was only three and was put to sleep in a cot in the little room. My Cousin Raymond, Aunt Hetty’s boy, was there; but he wasn’t born yet. I said I didn’t want to go to sleep. I had never been allowed to stop up all night before. I wanted to sit and watch my granny die.

  My mother wouldn’t let me and made me go in the kitchen, and I sat with my Uncle Nat. The lamp was lit and there was a stuffed owl on the table, and lustre-ware jugs and willow-pattern plates on the dresser, and a china fowl to keep eggs in; and two china dogs on the mantelpiece. A big fire was burning on the hearth and a copper kettle boiling on the terpid, in case hot water was wanted. My uncle was sitting up on the green-bed wide awake. I don’t think he knew what was going on. He was busy making the picture of a wonderful boat with a golden hull and curly gunnels and black masts curling aft and red sails like the combs of cockerels; and a big green wave was curling over it. I could hear my granny breathing with a rattle in her throat, and I began to pray, ‘Please God, don’t let my granny die! Please God, don’t let my granny die! Please God, don’t let my granny die! Please! Please! Please!’ I fell asleep in my chair.

  She was laid out by the time I woke up in the morning. My Aunt Prissy was a great one for laying out the dead; and she’d made sure beforehand everything was ready in the top drawer of the chest-of-drawers. On the day of the funeral I saw my granny in her coffin before it was screwed down. She was like wax. They said she had come to herself before she died and sat up in bed and called out. She had seen somebody. My Aunt Prissy said it was Nico, her husband, she saw; but my Aunt Hetty said it was SOMEBODY ELSE. My mother didn’t say nothing.

  She was given a grand funeral. It stretched from Cobo to Grand Havre. My Aunt Hetty didn’t go because she couldn’t stop crying; but my Aunt Prissy went, and my mother. The three husbands was pallbearers, and Mess Phineas Le Page from the Coutanchez, the écrivain. She was buried Chapel; but the cemetery was only over a wall from the Church. All the way along the road from Les Sablons to the Vale there wasn’t a house that didn’t have its blinds down. I was wearing a black suit. My Aunt Prissy cried at the grave, and my mother put a handkerchief to her eyes. I didn’t cry. After the funeral, the Reverend Dumond came back to Les Sablons to have tea with the mourners and near relations. It was only bread and butter and cheese and Guernsey biscuits, but there was enough for everybody to have a good feed. When he had gone, the will was read.

  Mess Phineas Le Page read it. It was in a tin box on the side table in the kitchen, where my grandmother kept the tickets she was given each month from the Capelles Chapel to show she was saved. It was as everybody expected. My Uncle Nat was to have the house and furniture until he died, and a quarter of the money. My grandmother had quite a nice little nest-egg in the pied-du-cauche. Her clothes was to be divided among the three daughters. The sharing was done in the bedroom where she died. They sat on the floor and cast lots. My Uncle Nat was out of it; but he understood enough to fish up a couple of dice out of his pocket for Mess Phineas Le Page to rattle in his tall hat.

  It worked out quite peaceful to begin with. My Aunt Prissy won the sabots and my Aunt Hetty the scoop and my mother the widow’s veil. The best bonnet went to Prissy, who said it was too old for her; and the second best to Hetty, who said she was only glad to have anything that had belonged to her mother. The best blouse went to my mother, who said it was too small for her and gave it to Prissy, who was thin. There was three bundles of underclothes; but they was wrapped up in brown paper, so as the men wouldn’t see. They went one to each. There was only the wedding-dress left. It was a lovely dress of white corded silk and had been kept in the bottom drawer of the chest-of-drawers with camphor and between tissue paper for fifty years. It went to Prissy. Then there was the most terrible schemozzle. My Aunt Hetty said her mother had always promised the wedding-dress to her, for when she had a daughter. My Aunt Prissy said it was hers now by the will of God; and she wasn’t going to part with it for anybody. My Aunt Hetty screamed, ‘Mais je te grimerai, donc!’ and clawed at my Aunt Prissy’s hair. My Aunt Prissy screamed, ‘Ah, tu fichu petite volresse, té!’ and tried to scratch my Aunt Hetty’s eyes out. The two husbands had to separate the two wives and hold them back like fighting cocks. My father didn’t do nothing. Mess Phineas Le Page didn’t know what to do. He kept on saying, ‘Ah, mes pigeons! mes pauvres petites pigeons!’ It was my mother who showed she had the wisdom of a Solomon.

  She said she had better have the wedding-dress herself. If either of the others had it now, it would make bad blood in the family; especially as they lived next door to each other. The husbands said, ‘Anything for peace!’ My mother played fair. She offered to La Hetty the widow’s veil and to La Prissy her bundle of underclothes. My Aunt Hetty said she didn’t want the widow’s veil, because when she was a widow she wasn’t going to wear a veil. My Aunt Prissy said she’d have the bundle of underclothes: they would always do for rags and dusters.

  It turned out for the best, in a way. My sister was married in the wedding-dress and looked lovely. La Prissy had a second, but it was a boy again when she wanted a girl; and, after Raymond, La Hetty couldn’t have any more. The dress would have been wasted; and it wasn’t so many years before my mother had to wear the widow’s veil. Ah well, in the midst of life we are in death, as it say in the Bible.

  4

  My Uncle Nathaniel lived a few years after his mother died; but not many. There was a lot of talk about him living alone at Les Sablons. People said he ought to have been put away in the Country Hospital; but he could feed himself and do his business and mooch round the house. He didn’t keep the place very clean, it is true, and his sisters went along now and again to give the house a good spring-clean. It was small thanks they got for it. ‘It ai
nt for the sake of your brother you come,’ he said, ‘it is for the sake of what the people say. What the people say is the Ten Commandments on this island. Fiche le can’!’

  The fellows who had been his friends when he was in health brought him fish, if they had any to spare, and drink, which he paid for. They dug and planted the back garden for him, and the neighbours fetched his meat for him, and groceries. I suppose he had enough to eat, one way and the other. The front garden was a wilderness. The marigolds ran wild and big sunflowers on tall stalks looked down on you as you passed; and the hedge grew and grew until all you could see of Les Sablons from the road was the dormer window. It was like the forest around the Castle of Bluebeard. The neighbours, who was Domailles and cousins of the Domailles from the Hautes Capelles and so of a good family, came and complained to my mother and my aunts and said it was a disgrace. There was a council of war in our kitchen.

  It was decided it couldn’t go on any longer, something must be done about it; and the Reverend Dumond, who had managed to get himself dragged into it somehow, said it would be a good idea if the family was to call on my uncle in a body and ‘appeal to his better feelings’. The husbands didn’t have time, or couldn’t be bothered; but the brigade of Le Page women and children, under the command of the Reverend Dumond, advanced in line of attack on the enemy camp. The children brought up the rear to appeal to my uncle’s better feelings. Raymond was three or four, and holding on to his mother’s hand; and Horace was seven or eight, and rough already and throwing stones; and his young brother, Cyril, was in the bassinette. Tabby, my sister, who’d just left school, had her hair up because she was going out to service. I was in long trousers. The good minister forced a way through the jungle and got to the front door. My uncle had a crowd of fellows in the house singing drunk; and he must have had his spies out, for they had piled the furniture against the front door and barricaded themselves in. The Reverend knocked and knocked, and tried the handle, and begged them to open in the Name of the Lord. He then commanded them to let him in if they feared damnation. They didn’t. He had to beat a retreat. He said even the Grace of God was unavailing against the unrepentant sinner.