The Book of Ebenezer le Page Read online

  I did see Christine again. It was almost as if it was meant. I had been to visit Enid Torode who lives at the Vingtaine de l’Épine. She is a cousin on my father’s side and a widow; and was on the list I carried about in my head. She was very nice to me that afternoon, and can’t have had any idea of what I had gone to see her for; but she was one of those who, as soon as tea was over, had to turn on the T.V. I got up to go. She looked surprised. ‘Well, thank you very much for the good tea,’ I said, ‘I would rather have a chat with you when you haven’t got visitors.’ I don’t think she had the brains to understand. I had no intention of going to see her again, anyway. I walked home by the coast road and, when I got to the Pêquéries, who should I see coming towards me but Christine and another young man? I didn’t need telling it was Abel.

  I don’t think she would have stopped, if I hadn’t planted myself in her way. ‘Hullo, Christine!’ I said, as nice as pie. ‘It is being lovely weather for your visit, isn’t it?’ ‘I was hoping we might get to Vazon in time to see the sunset,’ she said. ‘I am always telling my friends in England how marvellous the sunsets are over here.’ ‘Is Gideon gone?’ I said. ‘He only flew over for a few days,’ she said. ‘He couldn’t spare longer. In his profession time is money.’ ‘How did he get on with the Tourist Committee?’ I said. ‘Oh very well, very well,’ she said, ‘they were most impressed. Unfortunately, they are slow to get moving.’ I noticed she didn’t introduce me to Abel. He was standing quietly by her side, looking at me; and I was looking at him. In spite of all she had said had put me off him, I couldn’t help liking him. He was tall and broad-shouldered with dark eyes and thick lips like Harold; but his hair was fairish, and he didn’t look such a bully as Harold. I could see what Christine meant when she said he was kind. I thought I am going to get to know this boy.

  ‘Hullo, Abel!’ I said, ‘we have met before.’ ‘Have we?’ he said, ‘I am afraid I don’t remember.’ ‘How d’you like your island?’ I said. He smiled; and his smile reminded me of Raymond. ‘I haven’t seen much of it yet,’ he said. ‘Well, you come and see me,’ I said, ‘and I will show you round our corner.’ ‘I doubt whether he will have the time,’ said Christine. ‘He is only over on a short leave.’ I took no notice. ‘My house is easy to find,’ I said, ‘along the north side of Grand Havre and round the Chouey and you can’t miss it. There is a mill and an apple-tree behind.’ ‘Really, I am getting quite cold standing here,’ said Christine, and shivered. ‘I will show you where you made your great discovery,’ I said. ‘It is in the Museum now.’ ‘I have never heard of this,’ he said. I thought I bet there is a lot more you have never heard of. ‘I will be in any afternoon,’ I said, and waved and walked on. I was pretty sure he would come. I doubted if he was quite as much under Christine’s thumb as she thought.

  I trusted him to have the sense not to bring her with him; and, sure enough, the very next afternoon, when I was clearing up after dinner, he turned up on his own. The front door was open, but he knocked. ‘Who’s there?’ I shouted out. ‘Abel!’ he said. ‘Good boy!’ I said. ‘Come on right in!’ ‘I thought I’d pop round while Mother was having a nap,’ he said. ‘I’m all arse-over-head,’ I said, ‘you have to take me as you find me.’ I felt quite at home with him already. I thought to myself he is my sort, this one. ‘I don’t know who you are, though,’ he said. ‘I am Ebenezer Le Page,’ I said, ‘the cousin, the first cousin, of your father; and of Gideon’s father, of course. Your fathers was first cousins.’ I wanted to make sure he knew the truth about himself and Gideon; and hadn’t been told lies.

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘something went very wrong there. It was tough on Mother. She has always spoken well of my father. She is very forgiving.’ I saw how clever Christine had been. I knew just how she would look and the voice she would put on, when she was being ‘very forgiving’. Anybody who didn’t know beforehand what she was up to would be sure to put all the blame on Raymond, because she was such an angel; and well she knew it! There was a lot more I had on the tip of my tongue to tell Abel about Christine; but then I thought, after all, it isn’t for me to turn the boy against his mother. ‘Yes, something went very wrong indeed,’ I said, ‘but whatever your father may have been, or whatever your father may have done, you can take it from me there never was a boy born who was loved by his father more than you. If ever you have a son of your own, you will know what that mean.’ He looked down; but didn’t say nothing.

  I said I would show him round outside. I thought the greenhouse or the garden might remind him; but all he said was, ‘It must be pleasant living here.’ I said, ‘Don’t you remember any of it?’ ‘I can’t say I do,’ he said. ‘Well, you was trotting around here often enough when you was a two-to-three-year-old,’ I said. I led the way down the gully and showed him the spot where he had dug up the prehistoric monster. ‘That was clever of me,’ he said. I think he knew I was disappointed, for he smiled in his kind way. I said we could go for a stroll, if he would wait while I got my hat from indoors. ‘I do like this part very much,’ he said, when I came out, ‘it does seem familiar somehow.’ I thought that is good. I chose the path along by La Jaonneuse and took him as far as Fort Pembroke. I wanted him to see across the whole width of L’Ancresse Bay and Fort Le Marchant on the other side. ‘Gosh, this is the real thing!’ he said and sniffed the air. I brought him back across the Common past La Varde, so as he could have a look at the Druid’s Altar. He was interested in it, and went in and examined the big stones which are the roof. ‘It’s been there a long time,’ I said. ‘Yes, it has,’ he said. He was a big simple chap, and looked at everything in the same slow interested way as Jim might have; and didn’t say much. It was a pleasure being out with him.

  When we got by the Vale Church, I said, ‘Some of your ancestors are buried in that cemetery.’ ‘Are they?’ he said. He didn’t sound as if he cared much. ‘The church is nice to see inside,’ I said. ‘Shall we go in?’ ‘I think not, thank you,’ he said. ‘I have never been inside a church.’ ‘It is Chapel you have been brought up, then?’ I said. He laughed. ‘I have been brought up nothing,’ he said. ‘I am surprised at that,’ I said, ‘your mother was Chapel. She used to sing in the choir.’ ‘She doesn’t sing now,’ he said. I was going to ask him to come home and have tea with me, but he looked at his wristwatch and said he must be getting along. His mother would be wondering where he was. ‘What’s this work you’re doing?’ I said. I wanted to know. ‘Atomic research,’ he said. ‘For to blow up people?’ I said. ‘In the event of a nuclear war, I am afraid so,’ he said.

  If he had stuck a knife into me, he couldn’t have hurt me more. I had been so happy walking with him across the Common: I had been having a wonderful dream all to myself. I would leave him what I got and make up to him in a small way for what he had lost through his father; and then he would always have a home in Guernsey where he belonged; and, while I was yet alive, perhaps he might come over and stay with me now and again. ‘Well, good-bye,’ he said, and shook hands, ‘I am glad to have met you, Mr Le Page. Thank you for showing me around. I have enjoyed it very much.’ He had no idea what I was feeling. He was a kind, polite stranger from England. It was a sad Ebenezer who walked back to Les Moulins. I can understand fighting, man against man; or even going to war, soldiers against soldiers; but to make things to go and kill millions of people you don’t know, don’t see even, because somebody sitting in a big office say you got to, no: I couldn’t leave him what I got to do that! I couldn’t.

  11

  It don’t do to get on your high horse in this world, for a man never know when he may come a cropper. I never thought a day would come when I would let a room in my house to summer visitors, but did so for two summers. It is true, it was only to oblige. Miss Eunice Hocart came and asked me if I would sleep out some of her guests, who she didn’t have room for at Timbuctoo. She offered to provide the towels and the blankets and sheets; but my mother had left me plenty, and they only had to be taken out and aired. I said
I wasn’t going to do the washing, because washing and ironing clothes is one woman’s job I won’t do: but old Mother Tostevin from the Vaugrat comes once a fortnight for a washing day and the next day for the ironing, and I would pay her a bit extra and she could do the lot. Otherwise, I was willing so long as Miss Hocart didn’t send me no women in trousers; or any woman on her own, for that matter. I knew how people talk. A man can’t be too careful when he live by himself.

  It would mean a few pounds extra, and nothing to do for it. Also I thought it might be company; but I can’t say I remember much about those visitors now. It wasn’t so long ago either. The truth is I was losing interest in the people around me. It was only the winter before, after Abel had been and gone, I had taken to writing my book. I didn’t write so much in the summer months; but was looking forward to the winter when I would be able to spend the long dark evenings with those people I had known when I was younger. They was more real to me than any of those I saw and spoke to every day.

  Miss Hocart said I needn’t give her guests anything to eat or drink, as she was giving them full board; but I got up at six in the morning as usual and, when I’d had my breakfast, made a fresh pot of tea and put it on a tray outside their door with biscuits and cups and saucers and so on, for them to pour their own. Of an evening when they came in, I gave them a bite of supper before they went to bed, if they wanted it; or, at least, a cup of cocoa. They liked to sit and chat to me about what they had been doing and seeing during the day. I learnt a lot about Guernsey I didn’t know before. I will say they all liked Guernsey; and they liked my little house. In fact, many of them said they would prefer to stay at Les Moulins all the time: it was more homely. They may have said that only to please me; but I still get cards every Christmas from some of them, though half the time I don’t know which they are.

  I wondered sometimes if perhaps Miss Hocart was unloading her awkward squad on me; for she certainly sent me some odd objects from time to time. There was James Walker, Esquire; or, as he said when he introduced himself, ‘James Walker, not Johnnie, ha, ha!’ That was the trouble with James Walker, Esquire. He was always making jokes I didn’t think was funny; and if I cracked a Guernsey joke he couldn’t see it. The result was whenever one of us made a joke the other was dead serious. He didn’t want tea in the morning, but a glass of cold milk put outside his door. It was like putting out milk for the cat. He was rather like a big cat, as a matter of fact. He was the same shape as a pear; and was continually washing himself. He had about a dozen bottles of lotion for shaving and for his hair and for his hands and for all the other parts of him. He wore very good clothes; and I think was pretty well off. He told me he was a dealer in antiques in Chelsea, London; and he liked to rattle off the names of the grand people with titles and plenty of money who came into his shop and bought antiques. I said I wasn’t interested in people with money.

  I think he was what Paddy would have called a lonely heart, male. He went out during the day, but always by himself; and I had to put up with him most of the evening. He said he didn’t like being at Timbuctoo after dinner in the evening: it was only a lot of old biddies sitting round gossiping; but he was as good at gossiping as any old biddy, and he was nosey as well. He had to pick up everything I got and examine it. He said I got some quite good stuff in the house, mixed up with a lot of junk. It was him wanted to buy my lustre-ware jug, and he had his eyes on my china dogs; but I wouldn’t have parted with those for the world. He admired my grandfather clock, and was willing to make me an offer; and said he would give me something for my coronation mug. It amused him. I said I didn’t want to sell it. He said no doubt it had a sentimental value. I don’t know what he meant. Anyhow, he went at the end of the week, and I was glad to see the back of him. I was lucky to have anything left.

  The worst nuisances of all was a married couple. They hadn’t been married a year, but they fought like cat and dog day and night. I thought by the end of the week they would have murdered each other; and every morning I woke up expecting to have a couple of dead bodies on my hands. Frank and Dorothea. I forget their other names. They are two I never get a Christmas card from. As a matter of fact, I didn’t think Frank would have been such a bad chap, if he had been on his own. He was in the Police Force before he married her and was a fine built fellow, if wooden on top, but all right for a policeman; only her family owned a cotton-mill in Bolton, and she made him resign from the Police and take on a job as manager. Goodness knows what he saw in her. She was all skin and bone. She was for ever saying how sensitive and artistic she was; and went about in sandals and wore clothes like Joseph’s coat of many colours, and long green ear-rings and a green bandeau round her hair. She looked like something come out of the rag-bag.

  I tried my best to make peace between them; but I don’t know that I did much good. One morning after a night of battle had woke me up several times, they was carrying on in the kitchen when he made a dash for the bedroom to get a revolver from his trunk and shoot himself. She clung to him then, and cried, ‘Oh, don’t do it, darling: I love you so much! I can’t live without you!’ ‘Let him do it, you fool,’ I said, ‘if he want to!’ He turned on me and wanted to know what the hell I thought I was up to, coming between husband and wife. He forgot all about the revolver. Another morning he went off in a huff for a swim. He was a powerful swimmer. He swore he couldn’t bear to have to sit face to face with her across the breakfast table at Timbuctoo. Whereupon she grabbed my Woolworth’s bread-knife and was going to stab herself. ‘This will make him sorry!’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t do it with that knife, if I was you,’ I said, ‘it have a blade like a saw. Try the carving knife: it is sharper. Or better, the skewer: it will go in easy.’ She threw the bread-knife on the floor at my feet and said I was a brute and a beast and as insensitive and unfeeling as he was! I thought they might make it up the day they went to Sark, since Raymond said Sark was heaven on earth; but it was rough coming back and she was seasick all over him.

  There was two I did like; though perhaps I didn’t ought to have done. They was two young chaps, and Miss Hocart said she hoped I didn’t mind them sharing a room; but I didn’t see nothing wrong in that. Geoffrey and Tony was their proper names, but they called each other Gib and Tib. What I liked about them was they didn’t make out to be something they wasn’t. Over in England they was only painters and decorators working on their own. They had been working in a factory making match-boxes when they got to know each other, but they didn’t like being shut in all day long; so they decided to buy a van and a few things between them, and go round the country parts doing odd jobs. They had done well enough the last year to be able to afford a holiday in Guernsey. Geoffrey was dark and ugly, and reminded me of Jim’s Victor; but he was quiet and a chap could be trusted, I thought. Tony was fair and good-looking, and reminded me of the young German Raymond was friendly with. He was the lively one; but was moody sometimes. Geoffrey thought the world of him.

  The Friday morning while they was staying with me, I was coming out of the States Offices from getting my pay when I ran into big fat Le Bas. I had been having a heart-to-heart talk with my girl in the pay-desk. She really is a fine girl, that. She reminds me of Tabitha when she was young. She is neat and small with a round face and a smile for a joke; and is no silly miss by any means, but looks at you with straight honest brown eyes. I said to her that morning, ‘It is much too fine for you to be indoors: you ought to be out in the sun.’ ‘I wish I was,’ she said. ‘Why on earth do you work in an office?’ I said. ‘Needs must when the devil drives,’ she said. I said, ‘What would you really like to be doing?’ ‘Looking after a husband, and a home and a family,’ she said. I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of a husband. He would never be good enough. I said, ‘Well, that won’t be difficult to get for you.’ She made a face. ‘I don’t know about that,’ she said. ‘It is the husband. He has to be who I want; or nobody.’ ‘The fellow must be a born fool if he doesn’t want you,’ I said. ‘He is anything but a fool,�
�� she said, ‘I can only keep myself available; and hope.’ ‘I will hope with you,’ I said. I thought well, I can leave you a house but I can’t leave you a husband, I am afraid; and you don’t want an empty house.

  I didn’t like fat Le Bas: he was like a big slug; but I was feeling so good, I stopped and spoke to him. I asked after his old mother he lived with, who was as cantankerous as the day is long; and it happened while we was talking Geoffrey and Tony passed on the other side and waved. I knew they was going to Herm for the day; so I shouted, ‘Got your passports?’ They laughed. ‘Goodness, you don’t know those two, do you?’ said fat Le Bas. ‘Can’t you see what they are?’ It is true Tony was happy, and walking along rather as if he was dancing. I said, ‘Yes, I know them well. They have been living in my house for a week.’ ‘Their sort ought to be shot!’ he said. God, coming from him, it made me go hot under the collar! I don’t say he had been caught doing anything wrong; but everybody knew he had been warned off time and again for hanging round the schools, when the children was coming out, with bags of sweets to offer to the little girls. I said, ‘It take all sorts to make a world, my boy; or you, for one, wouldn’t be allowed to live in it.’ He shuffled off without saying another word. I bet he have been saying plenty about me since.

  I did wonder if perhaps he was right about Geoffrey and Tony; and, if so, I was sorry. I have never liked the idea of that sort of thing; yet the way he spoke about them made me want to stick up for them. That evening when they came in, I went out of my way to make it pleasant for them. I don’t keep beer in the house, as a rule; but I got in a few bottles from the off-licence on the Bridge, and we stayed up talking and drinking until midnight. They said Herm was absolute paradise. It was funny to think I had never been there, yet had seen it all my life a few miles across the water. I told them some of the things I had learnt from Raymond about Guernsey as it used to be; and Geoffrey was like Raymond, and thought it must have been grand to be living here in those days. ‘Turn back the clock and we’ll come again!’ he said. When they went to bed, they both said they was sorry they was having to leave in the morning.