The Book of Ebenezer le Page Read online

  The house was freshly done up inside, and the furniture was a lot of new stuff didn’t look as if it would last anybody’s lifetime. Dora said it wasn’t paid for yet. ‘What I want to meet is a rich uncle,’ she said. ‘I expect you got thousands in the bank.’ I said, ‘I haven’t got a penny in the bank.’ She couldn’t get me out of the house quick enough then; but I wasn’t in a hurry and kept her talking and, when I wished her good-bye, said I would call and see her again. I went at the end of September. When she came to the door, I invited myself in and sat down. ‘Well, how have you been getting on?’ I said. Oh, she had had a wonderful season! She could have taken twice as many, if she had had the room; and most of them was coming again the next year. She was now under the doctor for a nervous breakdown, but never mind: she would get over it. She was going for a holiday to Bournemouth to look at the shops; and then would come back refreshed and get ready for the next season.

  ‘Tourism’ is a holy word these days: though it is a word I didn’t learn at school, and have only heard of late years. I know full well to say anything against it on this island is as if you wanted to ruin the island you was born on; but I really and truly believe any place which sell its soul to Tourism is a whore of a place, and put everything on for show and sell it for pleasure, even the gifts God gave it. I met one chap who didn’t like Tourism any more than I did, and he worked for it; but he wasn’t a Guernseyman. He didn’t know how it hurt. It was the tourists themselves he couldn’t stand. He said they might be all right at home when they had their noses to the grindstone; but when they was on holiday, they thought the world was made only for them. He came over a number of years running and never missed coming to see me. He said I was the only person he knew on the island who wasn’t caught up in the racket. I am talking now of years after the time I was going round visiting my Cousin Mary Ann and her children. By then the disease had really taken hold.

  I thought he was a nice chap for an Englishman, he made me laugh; but it turned out he wasn’t an Englishman. He was Irish. He said the Irish are like the Guernsey: they all love old Ireland, but will go and live anywhere else in the world, if they get a chance. He liked being in Guernsey himself. He said it was quite like home. Certainly he knew more about the history of the island than I do; and what he didn’t know he made up. The first time I saw him, he was coming along by Les Amarreurs with a crowd of tourists following him like a flock of sheep. I listened to his patter. He pointed out the martello tower on our side and the martello tower across the bay on Rousse, and said they was martello towers. I would have thought anybody could see they was martello towers without having to be told. Somebody said the walls was thick, and somebody else said the windows was narrow, and a woman asked what they was built for. He said, ‘For shooting bows and arrows.’ Well, I could have told him that was wrong. The martello towers was put up for the Guernsey people to get in out of the way of the Grand Saracen. If the poor visitors believe half they are told by the bus-drivers and others, they must go away with some very funny ideas about the history of Guernsey.

  He worked for a hotel at St Martin’s; and his job was to look after people who came over in parties. He said they was the sort who preferred having a guide, philosopher and friend going round with them, rather than go round and look at things for themselves. He felt like the old woman who lived in a shoe. They came over for a week or a fortnight, and he had to keep them amused every day and all day long. He arranged games for them on the sand; and had to watch out if any went in for a swim they didn’t drown themselves. He took them for walks along the cliffs and, as they would insist on going where there was no paths, he had to watch out they didn’t get stuck half-way down a precipice and him have to send out an S.O.S. for Mr Blanchford and The Flying Christine. I thought of me and Monsieur Le Boutillier’s pig. The fellow had all my sympathy. When he took them on coach tours to places of interest, as he had done that day, and let them loose to please themselves, he had to be careful not to lose any, or there would have to be a police search. I was sitting in the sun in my back garden and watched him gather his family around him like a brood of chicks. ‘Now you can all go and play with the Druid’s Altar,’ he said. My ancient monument isn’t a Druid’s Altar nowadays: it is a Dolmen; but I didn’t bother to put him right. ‘All be back in the coach in half an hour!’ he shouted. ‘All of you; and when I say all of you, I mean ALL of you! THE COACH WILL NOT WAIT!’ They rambled off in twos and threes. He sat on the low wall of my garden by the path in the shade of the apple-tree and wiped the sweat from his brow. It was a scorching hot day. ‘If you want to know human nature at its lowest and its worst,’ he said to me, ‘get to know it when it is on holiday.’ ‘Go on, go on, that is lovely!’ I said. ‘Say some more!’

  ‘I will bet you anything you like one of those won’t be back in time,’ he said. ‘There she goes, the darling! She ought to be kept on a lead.’ She was an old woman with rats’ tails of hair and a hat like a pancake and holding an umbrella in her clenched fist. It must have been for self-defence because there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. He went on talking and when I looked round she had disappeared. I couldn’t think where on earth she could have got to. She had vanished into thin air. The others was wandering away; some of them up the hill and some down on the beach. I noticed not one of them had gone to look at the ancient monument, for all the work I had put in keeping it tidy.

  Anyhow, he let out his troubles; and could he talk? He said the worst day of his week was the day he took his party to Sark. He really had to keep a close eye on them that day, for there was a number of danger spots and he didn’t want a serious accident. Actually, I think he was very patient and very kind, in spite of what he said; and he was a charming fellow with a mop of dark curly hair and blue eyes and a happy laugh: but he swore by the end of a day in Sark, he would willingly have pushed the whole tribe over the Coupée. The only time he really liked them was on the Saturday morning when he went down to the White Rock to wish them good-bye. Unfortunately, it was more than made up for by the awful time in the afternoon when he went to the boat to meet the next week’s consignment. He would stand on the new jetty by the sheds and watch the passengers come down the gang-way; and when he saw one who looked a particularly unholy terror, he would say to himself ‘I bet she is for me!’ and she was. Generally speaking, the men wasn’t so bad, he said; but now and again you got one who thought he was a big noise, and he was more obstreperous than all the women put together.

  The most to be dreaded was widows on the loose. Once her husband is dead, a woman gets a new lease of life, he said: and she knows all the tricks. Middle-aged married couples was easy: the husband did what he was told, or she had to keep watch on him. In either case, the woman had her hands full. The lonely hearts was a bloody nuisance. Paddy was funny about the lonely hearts. Anything in trousers was in danger of having them pulled off. The hardest part of his job was to remain more or less virtuous, and yet not hurt anybody’s feelings. After all, they had paid for their holiday; and he was being paid to see they had a good time. There was lonely hearts male, too, but not so many, perhaps one a week. Paddy found the lonely hearts male came in useful to unload some of his lonely hearts female on; but it was hard lines on the poor chap, as usually he wasn’t interested in lonely hearts female: he was more interested in the waiter. Paddy enjoyed himself watching the game.

  He said everybody goes up a class when they come over to Guernsey for a holiday. The girl who works in a newspaper shop in England drinks her tea with her little finger crooked like a duchess. It is pathetic really, he said. The class of visitors he had to do with wasn’t those who stay at Old Government House. They had saved a whole year for their precious holiday and wanted to feel they was gentry with money to spend for a week. They was willing to blue the lot and have nothing left when they got home except debts on the never-never. Some had spent a week in Jersey before coming to Guernsey; and, from what Paddy had heard, they really do know how to rook the visitors over there. ‘It ha
s been reduced to a fine art,’ he said. Guernsey wasn’t as good at it yet; but they was learning.

  When his people began to drift back, he counted them, and there was one missing. Old Mrs Mackintosh. Had anybody seen her? Nobody had seen her. ‘If she isn’t sitting in the coach, we’ll go without her,’ he said. I didn’t see how she could be sitting in the coach or we would have been sure to see her pass. He said good-bye and hoped he would see me again. I watched him lead his flock back to the coach. I heard it tooting and so knew old Mrs M. wasn’t in it. It kept on and on loud enough to wake the dead. At last I heard it start. I was standing outside my back door and worrying rather if she had really gone and done what the old pig had wanted to do: when up she arose from behind the pigsty where she had been sitting in the sun all the time, listening to every word was being said. ‘I’m here! I’m here!’ she screamed. ‘Wait for me, wait for me! Oh don’t, don’t, don’t leave me behind!’ and ran full pelt down the path after the coach, and she could run, the old thing, waving her umbrella. The coach was half-way to Grand Havre by then, but the fool of a coach-driver waited; though I expect it was Paddy who was looking round and saw her, and told him to stop. I would like to have heard what the others said when she got in.

  I went to see Dora once more: just to keep friendly. She had told me her daughter was leaving school and would be helping with the guests in the summer. I wanted to see what the daughter was like. I wasn’t leaving nothing to Dora; but that didn’t mean I was cutting the daughter out of my will. I expected to find a house full of visitors, but there didn’t seem to be a soul about. When I knocked, a girl of seventeen or so came to the door. She wasn’t bad-looking but was wearing skin-tight woollen trousers of a black and white herring-bone pattern, and a skin-tight woollen sweater to match. She would have looked all right in a circus, but I wouldn’t have liked to have her around me while I was eating. I thought she was the waitress. I asked if I might speak to Mrs Domaille. She said, ‘Mother is having a siesta. She will be awake presently.’ I heard Dora’s voice calling, ‘Who is it, Doris?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Doris; and she sounded as if she didn’t care either. I thought you don’t get a penny out of me, my girl.

  Dora came to see who it was. ‘Oh, it’s you!’ she said. ‘What a time to choose! Come in, then: since you’re here!’ I went in, but she didn’t ask me to sit down. I sat myself down in the most comfortable armchair I could see, and looked round. ‘Haven’t you got any visitors?’ I said. ‘Three in a room,’ she said, ‘we’re absolutely full up!’ ‘Where are they all, then?’ I said. ‘Good gracious, I don’t allow them in the house after breakfast,’ she said. ‘They can have a packed lunch, if they want it; and come back at six for a wash before their evening meal.’ I said, ‘It’s hardly a home from home, is it?’ It was a dull blowy afternoon, and big drops of rain was beginning to fall. She said, ‘They don’t come to Guernsey to sit indoors.’ I said, ‘Yes, but it rain in Guernsey like it do in other places. Where are they to go when it rains?’ ‘That is their affair,’ she said. ‘I can’t have them in and out under my feet all day long.’ I thought well, if I was a visitor, I wouldn’t come and stay in your guest-house a second time.

  She wanted to know what I thought of Doris. I got the idea she didn’t altogether believe I didn’t have a penny in the bank. Doris was in an unsettled state at present, she said: she was helping with the guest-house now she had left school; but of course it was only temporary. She wanted to go to a university and have a career; but that would cost more money, as well as being years without earning. Or she could get married. She already had a number of young men to choose from. ‘I am broad-minded,’ said Dora, ‘and let her have them all here for musical evenings. She is a good girl.’ I said, ‘Well, she is a well made girl, I can see that; but why don’t she put some proper clothes on?’ ‘She is perfectly decent,’ said Dora, ‘she likes to feel free.’ ‘I have no doubt she feel free,’ I said. ‘She would do fine for a mermaid.’ I saw old Dora’s face was getting red. ‘Fashions have changed since your time,’ she said. ‘In my time men was men and women was women,’ I said, ‘and they dressed accordingly. I hate to see a woman in trousers.’ She was wearing trousers herself: of brown corduroy. ‘How would you have us dress, then?’ she said. ‘Like our grandmothers?’ ‘I think a woman ought to look like a flower,’ I said. She laughed sort of bitter. ‘I am rather past looking like a flower, I am afraid,’ she said. ‘I can’t see that,’ I said. ‘It is true perhaps it is too late now for you to look like a rose; but you can always look like an everlasting.’ I really meant it for a compliment, and to put her in a good mood; but, woman-like, she took it the wrong way. ‘Have you come here to insult me?’ she said. ‘As a matter of fact, I haven’t,’ I said, ‘but, if you want me to be frank, you don’t have to go about looking from the back like a Buff Orpington going to lay an egg.’ That is why she didn’t invite me to my Cousin Mary Ann’s funeral.

  8

  One Thursday the next winter when I went to visit my Cousin Mary Ann, it was Nora who came to the door. I knew at once who she was: I had seen her serving in the Crown, and taken quite a fancy to her across the bar. I ought to have known then she was the daughter of Eugene Le Canu, for she looked so much like him with her red hair, and was slim and quick like he was. She was getting on, of course, and you could see she had knocked about a bit; but she had something yet she would never lose. ‘So you’re Ebenezer!’ she said. ‘I wondered. I remember you standing me a drink once.’ ‘I would do it again!’ I said. ‘It is my turn tonight,’ she said. ‘Come on in, do!’ Her mother was laid up for a day or two. ‘There is nothing really the matter with her,’ she said, ‘she is only tired of life. Go upstairs and cheer her up; and have something when you come down.’

  It was like going back fifty years going into my Cousin Mary Ann’s bedroom. She was wearing a pink flannelette night-dress, and there was an old patch-work quilt on the bed. Herself, she looked like an old sheep, lying there with her grey hair all over the pillow. ‘What’s the matter now?’ I said. ‘Oh nothing,’ she said. ‘It must be something,’ I said, ‘it’s not like you to be off your feet. Have the doctor been?’ ‘I don’t want the doctor,’ she said. ‘What for do I want to be kept alive? Nobody want me now.’ ‘Well, I would miss coming to see you,’ I said. She gave her old laugh like a horse. ‘You are not one to miss anybody,’ she said. ‘You got too much sense.’ I don’t think my Cousin Mary Ann knew me very well.

  There wasn’t enough misery about for her: that was the trouble. People was getting on well since the War, and didn’t need her help; and her family was settled for. Eugene would have the house when she was gone; so at least he would have a roof over his head. ‘He think he is going to be married soon,’ she said, ‘but that girl won’t have him.’ ‘Who is he going with now?’ I said. It was an Eva Tourtel from Prospect Villa, but I didn’t know the girl. ‘Dora is all right,’ she said, ‘and Nora have made up her mind to marry that Jan van Raalte.’ ‘Who is he, for goodness sake,’ I said, ‘with a name like that?’ ‘A Dutchman,’ she said. ‘He have come to Guernsey to grow flowers.’ I said, ‘Guernsey get more like the League of Nations every day.’ ‘He is a nice young chap,’ she said, ‘but he will have plenty of others.’ ‘Is there anything you don’t know?’ I said. ‘Eugene is the puzzle,’ she said. ‘He don’t speak.’ ‘Why, is he dumb, then?’ I said. ‘He do say a few words now and then,’ she said. I thought hers was a funny family.

  I was looking at the photo of the handsome Eugene over her bed. I didn’t know and have never known what happened to him. I expect he ended up an old roué and died of the pox. She caught me looking, for she said, ‘He was right to leave me, my poor Eugene. I trapped him.’ ‘If it come to that, is there any man who isn’t trapped?’ I said. ‘It is the man’s look-out.’ I had managed not to get trapped; but I couldn’t bear the way she was talking. I thought it was better to be dead, than have everything cut and dried and be so hopeless. ‘He won’t be there to meet me
,’ she said, and the tears came out of her eyes, and rolled down her cheeks. I wished I could have said something about God, or such-like, to comfort her; but how could I after my gallivanting? ‘Cheer up, old girl,’ I said, ‘never say die!’ ‘Ah well, I’ve got what I deserve,’ she said. ‘It isn’t for me to complain.’ She dried her tears on her night-dress and smiled her lovely ugly smile. ‘I’ll come and see you again soon,’ I said. That was the last time I saw her.

  When I got downstairs Nora had some wine and biscuits on the table. ‘How d’you find her?’ she said. ‘Well, not exactly cheerful,’ I said. ‘She never was,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I like my mother very much.’ ‘She have done the best she could for you children,’ I said, ‘and she had to manage all on her own.’ ‘She is a kill-joy,’ she said. ‘I say let the children play; as your cousin Raymond used to say.’ ‘Why, did you know Raymond, then?’ I said. ‘I knew Raymond very well,’ she said. ‘He was a wonderful friend to me: at a time when I had nobody else to turn to, who would even begin to understand.’ ‘He never told me,’ I said. ‘There is a lot Raymond never told anybody,’ she said. ‘He knew how to keep other people’s secrets.’ I said, ‘How is it you didn’t step into Christine’s shoes, if you liked him so much?’ ‘I’m a baby-snatcher,’ she said, ‘to me he was an old man.’ ‘Then I didn’t have a chance when I stood you a drink?’ I said. ‘Not an earthly!’ she said and laughed; but when I left she kissed me good-night.