The Book of Ebenezer le Page Read online

  He came out with me many times. He was waiting every time I went down to the Albert Pier, and he would push his way out of his turn to come with me; or make a sign for me to hang back, so as it would be him I would have with me. He soon learned to make himself useful; and I looked forward to the days when I would be going fishing with him. He was simple in the mind; he could only think one thought at a time; but he was as open as the day. He told me his name was Otto Schmidt; and in Germany he lived in a small place which, as far as I could make out, was in, or by, a big forest. What he liked most in the world was to be among a lot of trees; and, before the War, he used to camp out in the forest with his friends; and in the evening, they would sit around a big fire in the open air and play music and sing. That was his greatest happiness. He had never seen the sea until he came to Guernsey; but he said the sea and the rocks made him feel happy like being among the trees. He didn’t like cities or any place where there was a lot of houses.

  He spoke the English quite well. If it come to that, he spoke it better than me. He had learnt it from books when he was to school; and knew the big words. He spoke every word very exact; but sometimes he put them round in a funny way. I learnt a few German words from him; but not enough to speak with. He told me he had an older brother and a sister. His father was dead, and the sister was living with his mother in Germany. His brother came with him to Guernsey, but got into trouble with the German authorities because he fraternised with a Guernsey girl. Otto said there was nothing wrong in it. They was in love and the girl was willing to marry Hans, and he wanted to marry her; but the German boys wasn’t allowed to marry Guernsey girls, though nobody bothered much if it was anything else. So Hans was sent to the Russian Front. Otto didn’t expect he would ever see his brother again.

  I didn’t like to talk to Otto about the War, or how he came to be in the War, for when he was with me in the boat, I couldn’t believe we was on opposite sides. It was him brought it up. ‘In my country I am for my country,’ he said, ‘but the countries of other peoples I to have do not wish.’ ‘It is the same with us,’ I said. It was true of Guernsey, anyway. He said, ‘I you my country would be happy to show, and the house where I live; now I your so beautiful island have seen.’ One day when we was coming back with our catch by the Boue La Grève, I pointed out Les Moulins to him and said that was where I lived. ‘Ach, in a stone house it is you live,’ he said, ‘in a wood house, I.’ I asked him if he would like to come ashore and see it inside. He said, ‘Yes, very much, thank you.’ It was easy to run into La Petite Grève: there was nobody about. When I had grounded the boat, I picked out some of the best of the fish to take indoors. He didn’t say nothing, though he knew I wasn’t allowed. I was a little worried as to how Tabitha was going to feel. She had never spoken to a German. I had told her about Otto; but she had listened and said nothing.

  She was in the kitchen boiling the everlasting sugarbeet, when I asked Otto to come in. He came in and stood to attention as if he was on parade. ‘This is my friend Otto,’ I said. She turned round from what she was doing and faced him; but stood as stiff as he was, and didn’t make a movement to shake hands, nor say a word. I said to Otto, ‘This is my sister Tabitha. She is a widow. Her husband was killed in the First World War.’ I trusted him to understand why she was behaving as she was. He said, ‘My father was also.’ Tabitha held out her hand. He took it in his and bowed his head over it. ‘I’ve brought some fish,’ I said; and put it on the table. She said, ‘I will cook it now, if Otto can stop and have some.’ He said he could. Well, she cooked it and made real tea with some was left over from what I had bought from Horace, which she would never have done otherwise; and there was bread, though it was mousey bread rather, and even a wisp of butter. I taught Otto to say ‘orfi’. He said it was good. I know it was the meal I myself enjoyed most of any I ate during the whole of the Occupation. Nowadays, when every year there is a celebration of the Liberation, it isn’t so much the cheers and the excitement of when we was freed I think of, though I was as glad and excited as anybody, but of Otto, Tabitha and me sitting round the table eating long-nose. That was Liberation Day.

  Otto and me got away and well out, before our pet nuisance was on his round; but we was a bit late back to the Harbour. It was nearly dark, and the patrol boat was out looking for us. I tried to explain to the Jerry in charge we was held up by firing practice off the west coast, which was always a good excuse; but he wouldn’t listen to me and yapped at Otto in German like a machine-gun. Otto stood like the wooden block he was when I saw him the first time; but when he saw I had to go, he smiled and shook hands as usual, and said, ‘Auf wiedersehen.’ I didn’t see him again. I went week after week hoping, but it was always some other fellow; and I gave up going. I don’t like to think what happened to Otto.

  3

  I don’t know the name of the other. I don’t know what nation he belonged to. The only word I heard him say was in German, but it was a word I use myself; for we use it in the patois when we say ‘mais non nein dja!’ and mean ‘no!’ very emphatically. He may have used it because he was speaking to a German; or he may have been a German himself, for among the slave-workers who was brought over from being prisoners in Alderney I heard some had been put there for resisting Hitler. He might have belonged to the French Resistance, for the French are not all dark-haired; but he was tall for a French boy. If I had seen him in peace-time down the Harbour, I would have taken him for a Norwegian off one of the timber boats; but I don’t know. All I know is he looked like the son of a king.

  He was younger than Otto, I thought, though he looked older because he had suffered more; and he wasn’t the solid bull Otto was, but quick in the mind, I am sure. He was weak from hunger, but you could see what a fine strong boy he would have been with those broad shoulders and slim body and long legs; and I always remember his proud head. He was in rags with rags on his feet, and sometimes bare feet; and he wasn’t very clean, but he tried to keep himself clean, I know, for once I saw him shaved and he was never as dirty as the others. It wasn’t I saw him often, for the gang went to work early in the morning and came back late in the evening; and some soup was taken round in a cart to them at dinner-time. I bet it wasn’t very good soup. They troubled Tabitha more than they did me at first. She would say when we was eating what little we had to eat, ‘I wish I could give some of this to those poor prisoners.’ I didn’t like to think of them myself. One couldn’t help knowing they was there, for they was everywhere building those ugly forts the tourists come and stare at, but they was only animals who we dare not think of as fellow creatures, for at our worst we was living in luxury compared to them. I was mean enough to think they was robbers and murderers, if the truth was known; but I couldn’t think that when I saw that boy.

  Tabitha had pity for the lot, murderers and all; and she would have had them all in the kitchen and fed them, if she could. She said, ‘It is not against those Gervase and Louise are fighting.’ Well, it wasn’t much we had to throw away those days, but there was a barrel out the back where I threw such scraps as we had: a green crust of bread perhaps, a bone not even good enough for soup, fish-bones and bad fish, or fruit gone rotten; and I emptied it from time to time in the cesspit. One evening when it was nearly time for us to be indoors and Tabitha was getting in the washing off the line while I was in the greenhouse going to lock the end door, I saw the shabby gang of ruffians come shuffling down the hill. They passed rather nearer to Percy’s wall than usual; and it was in the corner the barrel was. There was an armed guard behind them and in front, and an armed guard each side, and I wouldn’t have thought those prisoners had enough heart left in them to notice anything; but there was a sudden rush and they was over the wall and on to that barrel, fighting each other like wild beasts for those dirty scraps. The guards shouted and I thought was going to shoot; but the prisoners was back in their wobbly lines in half a second. I was watching from in the greenhouse, and noticed the boy was the last back. He hadn’t rushed or fought
, but managed to get a rotten apple that was left at the bottom. I saw him break it in two and give half to the chap next to him, who looked a double-dyed villain, if ever there was one. I thought, that boy is somebody.

  Tabitha said in future it must be food fit for human beings to eat was left in the barrel. I washed it out and filled it nearly to the top with straw; and spread out the few bits we could spare. It wasn’t much, but it was clean and could be eaten. The first time, Tabitha and me watched from the greenhouse to see if they would be allowed to take it; but long before they came to the corner of the wall I heard the guards shouting, and it seemed nobody would dare to leave the ranks. I was thinking how with the best of intentions we had wasted our time, when, like a streak of lightning, the boy was over the wall and had scooped everything into a sort of blouse he was wearing and was back in his place. The guard said nothing to him. I thought now for a fight and a scramble, but no: he shared out what he had among those around him, as far as it would go; and they took quietly what he gave them, as though they knew he would by nature share it fair. I saw him going down the hill chawing a raw carrot.

  For the few times more they passed there was always something for them, and it was always the boy fetched it and shared it out; and the guard let him. I noticed it was always the same guard his side. There was something about that guard I particularly didn’t like; and yet I wasn’t sure what. He was as lean as a whippet, but it wasn’t because he was underfed: he was full of energy. He had a lean hard face, and was very smart. The boy must have known he was being favoured. I noticed when he broke ranks, the guard smiled; but it wasn’t at the boy, it was to himself. I didn’t like that smile. The last time we saw them the job must have been finished and they had knocked off early, for they passed in broad daylight and along the path in front of the house; so that day they didn’t get what was left for them. I was working in the front garden and when I saw them coming I called to Tabitha, who was indoors, and she came and stood with me by the gate to see them pass. The boy looked our way and I saw his eyes wrinkle and light up and thought of Jim, and he gave a sort of laugh straight to Tabitha, and she put out a hand as if she would have liked to have touched him. I was glad for him to know he had a friend in Guernsey. I only saw him the once more.

  Since the day I found out what happened to Raymond and Horace, I wasn’t feeling so willing to lie low as I had been. Even before then, I had been going along to the Hamelins from Les Mielles to listen to the radio, after Monsieur Le Boutillier’s had been taken away and he was in prison in France. It was a good distance for me to have to go, but I knew every inch of L’Ancresse and would creep along by the hedges and not make a sound. Nellie Hamelin was the jolly sort and Jack, her husband, said she could diddle any German any time. He admitted he couldn’t have himself: he would have looked guilty, even if he was innocent. She looked on it as a game, and the house was searched time and again by the Germans; but they never found the radio. I was worried leaving Tabitha for the evening, but she insisted I went as it did me good to go there for a change. Julia Le Boutillier used to come across to keep her company, while young Jean stayed at home with his mother.

  Julia worked in the Post Office at St Sampson’s; and one evening on the way home from work she came into Les Moulins looking very grim. She had come across a letter in the Post Office which she had stolen, and brought for me to see. It was addressed to the Herr Kommandant at the German Officers’ Club at Castle Carey. I knew the writing. I knew that thin, mean, spidery handwriting; and Julia had recognised it too. I said, ‘I am opening this.’ She said, ‘That is what I brought it to you for.’ He hadn’t written much. I have it yet. He didn’t give his address, I noticed; nor his name. ‘Dear Herr Kommandant,’ he wrote. ‘It may interest you to know that radio parties are being held nightly at Beaulieu, Route Militaire, Vale, in contravention of current regulations.’ He signed it ‘A friend of law and order.’ I didn’t know the people who lived at Beaulieu, but it might just as well have been the Hamelins, or anybody. I said to Julia, ‘I will go and see Mr Dobrée in the near future, and have a few kind words with him.’ She said, ‘You couldn’t do better.’

  I went the next afternoon. My luck was in. I walked up the drive and round the back of Wallaballoo and found Master Raoul sitting in a deck-chair on the lawn in the sun, reading a book. He was wearing a clean white open-neck shirt and a new pair of grey flannel trousers. I wondered where he got them from; and how. He said, ‘Hullo, Mr Le Page,’ and put down the book he was reading. I said, ‘Good afternoon, Mr Dobrée. I have come from the German Kommandant in answer to a letter you have written to him about the people who live at Beaulieu.’ He looked at me like a frightened rabbit with his popping eyes and didn’t know what to say. ‘In my humble opinion, Mr Dobrée,’ I said, ‘a man like you is worse than Hitler. Hitler is mad and bad; but what he is doing he think is for the good of his people. I don’t know if you got people somewhere; but I do know you got none on Guernsey.’ His mother came to the back door and called out, ‘What is it, dear?’ ‘Nothing, nothing, darling,’ he said; and she went indoors again. ‘Stand up!’ I said. ‘I am going to knock you down.’ He stood up, the fool! He was years younger than me, and much bigger. ‘Be reasonable, Mr Le Page,’ he said. ‘Try to understand my point of view.’ I understood his point of view all right: he wanted the best of both sides. I knocked him down. ‘Stand up!’ I said. I was going to knock him down three times: that would be enough; but he didn’t stand up again. He crawled on his hands and knees across the lawn and up the back steps and indoors. I spat and walked away. I haven’t spoken to him from that day to this.

  If anything, I went more often to listen to the radio at the Hamelins. For some reason, I wanted to feel there was other people in the world, besides us shut up in Guernsey. One night when I was creeping home along the hedge the other side of the road to Rocque Balan, somebody passed like a ghost on the grass. It was a very dark night, and he couldn’t have seen me against the hedge; but I could make out the shape of his head and shoulders against the sky, and knew it was the boy. I had no idea where he was living. I knew a lot of German prisoners lived at Paradise, and it was said terrible things happened there; but it may be he was living in another house that way, perhaps a hundred or more sleeping on the bare boards. My first thought was he had run away, and it was to us he was running. I thought, we will hide him in the packing-shed, and he can come in the house at night; but I don’t think now he was coming to us. It was not in his character to make himself a burden on other people, though God knows he would have been welcome! I know now it was not from being a slave-worker he was running away, but from worse.

  The next minute I heard the footsteps of somebody else; and it was somebody who was not afraid of being heard. I knew him by his legs and his walk like a jockey, though I couldn’t see his face. I know he didn’t have a hat on. I have the idea he didn’t have a belt either, and the collar of his tunic was unbuttoned; but I don’t know how I can have seen. He caught up with the boy just by Rocque Balan, and put a hand on him. I saw the boy lean against the rock. It was from weakness: he was so tired. The guard spoke to him; but I didn’t understand what he said. He didn’t sound as if he was speaking rough, though, but begging almost. I wondered if he was being kind to the boy after all, and trying to make him see reason and go back quietly. He wasn’t armed, I don’t think, for I saw both his hands on the boy. ‘Nein! Nein! Nein!’ I heard the boy cry out. I knew then.

  I was across that road. I can’t take any credit for it; for it happened without me thinking. The guard was not expecting me, and was taken completely by surprise. My fist caught him sideways on his ear, and he fell. I don’t think the boy looked round; or even knew. I think he just thought the guard was finished, and that was that. I saw him pull up his rags of trousers, and drift over the common towards the sea. The guard moved at my feet. It was a miracle I saw a piece of rock was loose: it was a boulder really. It was more of a miracle I had the strength to lift it. I lifted it abo
ve my head and crashed it down on his. I heard the bones crack.

  I felt nothing. The boy was gone down to the beach. It was no good to follow him: to try and save him now. I knew what he would do. He would walk in his lonely proud way down over the shingle and on to the sand, and on and on until he came to the edge of the sea; and the sea is shallow there and you have to walk a long long way before you are over your height: but he would walk it. The shame was too great for him to live. It is strange he have never come to me in dreams, but only in memory; and I remember him always as he was when he passed our gate, and laughed to Tabitha. The other I have dreamt of often. It is always the same dream of his cracked head and the blood. The strange thing is I always see him with his hair short and sticking up like the bristles of a brush, yet I never saw him by daylight with his hat off to know what sort of hair he got. I have never told a soul, and I heard nothing about it. It is only in dreams it come back, and I feel horror, but I don’t feel sorry: even in my dreams.

  I committed one other act of violence during the Occupation, and that on an innocent creature; but I cannot say I am sorry for that either. I got into the way of dodging the chap on patrol and going down on La Petite Grève now and then at nights to pick a few limpets, if I could; but the Germans had skinned the rocks and, I heard, lived on limpet soup until they was sick of it. By then, they was nearly as hungry as we was; and one couldn’t help feeling sorry for them. In the paper, they blamed our side for the shortage of food: they said ships coming from France with food was bombed by orders of Churchill. I don’t know. Anyway, it wasn’t to try for limpets, or ormers, I went down on La Petite Grève the night I am thinking of. I don’t know what I hoped to find: a few lady crabs crawling about perhaps.