The Book of Ebenezer le Page Page 5

  The drinking and singing went on for a week. The neighbours gathered outside and stood by the hedge and listened, while the big sunflowers looked down smiling. Then one morning all was quiet. The front door was open and my Uncle Nat’s friends had vanished in the night. The good neighbours got worried and, to cut a long story short, he was found lying dead with not a stitch of clothing on him, or a rag on the bed. All the money had been spent and the friends had taken everything they could lay their hands on, except the pictures and ornaments, which they didn’t want, and the heavy furniture they couldn’t carry.

  He was put away privily, as it say in the Bible. A hearse and two carriages : the three sisters in one and the three husbands in the other. He was buried with his mother, and was the last to be put in that grave because it was full. There was a share-out of the few things left; but there was no trouble. Nobody wanted the pictures; but nobody had the heart to burn them because he had made them with his own hands, stitch by stitch. La Hetty got the china fowl she wanted; and was happy. My Aunt Prissy said I could choose anything I liked, because I had grown to be such a fine strong boy. I chose the two china dogs on the mantelpiece. They are on my mantelpiece at this moment, listening with their long ears to every word I am writing down. I like my two china dogs. When I write down anything wicked, one of them look very serious; but the other one, he wink.

  The only article of furniture that came to my mother was the grandfather clock. It was made by Naftel, his name is on the front; and it have only five or six wheels and a weight on a chain and a long pendulum with a big brass bob, yet it is never a minute wrong. I don’t think I could live now, if I didn’t hear the slow tick-tock, tick-tock of my grandfather clock. One night, only a few weeks ago, I forgot to wind it before I went to bed. I’m getting into the way of forgetting to do things, I don’t know why. When it stopped in the night, I woke up. The place was dead.

  Les Sablons was sold and the money divided among the sisters. I know there was a lot of fuss and bother about getting the money, because La Prissy and La Hetty wasn’t speaking at the time and wouldn’t meet together in the lawyer’s office to sign the papers. When La Prissy and La Hetty was speaking, they went around together like a pair of Siamese twins and wore twin mushroom hats. When they wasn’t speaking, they didn’t know each other if they met face to face in the Pollet. When they was speaking, we never saw them at Les Moulins; but when they wasn’t speaking, they came one at a time to tell everything to my mother. I have known my Aunt Prissy be talking to my mother in the kitchen when, lo and behold, my Aunt Hetty would be coming down the garden path to the front door. My mother would let Prissy out quick by the back door, before she let Hetty in by the front. She was good that way, my mother. She was all for peace in the family.

  When my Aunt Prissy and my Aunt Hetty wasn’t speaking, they blamed each other for everything. When they was speaking, they blamed everybody else. I have never known the rights and the wrongs of how they came to marry the Martel boys. That’s the trouble of trying to write the true story of my relations; or of myself, for that matter. I don’t know the beginning, or the end. Hetty didn’t want to marry Harold Martel; I’m sure of that. It was not only that he was years older, but he had been married before. Hetty really wanted to marry Jack Bourgaize, who was her own age; but he was one of those boys who was mad to get away from Guernsey, and had gone to Australia to make his fortune. He had wanted her to go with him, but she wouldn’t because she didn’t want to leave her mother. It happened just then that Harold Martel was on the look-out for another wife; but, to be fair, I think he liked Hetty better than his first one. Hetty said she only went out with him for company, because Prissy was going out with Percy. Prissy said she only went out with Percy, because Hetty was going out with Harold. She didn’t like Percy. He was soft. Nobody could say Harold was soft. He was a big surly-looking bloke with heavy shoulders and, as the eldest, used to having his own way. Anyhow, they all four found themselves engaged.

  Then Jack Bourgaize wrote from Australia to say he’d got a smallholding. From his letter, it sounded as if the smallholding was as big as Guernsey, but all trees. He said he had made a clearing in it and built a shack; and he wanted Hetty to go out at once and marry him. Her mother said she must do what she wanted; but she went to ask advice of her Aunt Sarah, who she hoped was going to leave her some money. Her Aunt Sarah, who had never married, said, ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, my girl.’ Hetty married Harold Martel.

  He already had a house at Pleinheaume, where he had lived with his first wife; but Hetty didn’t want to live in the same house as that other woman and use the same things. Harold thought he might as well turn over a new leaf and start on a clean page. He sold the house at Pleinheaume and bought the ground to build another. Prissy said Percy must build one next to it, so as whatever was to happen, she and Hetty would always have each other. The two brothers went into partnership. Everything was arranged for the best and turned out for the worst.

  It’s a wonder those two houses ever got built at all, there was so many quarrels. It wasn’t the brothers. Percy was quite willing to give in to Harold; and Harold worked with Percy all right, so long as he was the boss. It was the sisters. There never was two sisters more different from each other than those two. Hetty wasn’t stout yet, but she was short and roundish. She had a beautiful face really: squarish with strong bones and big sky-blue eyes and a lovely straight nose. If only that face had been on a body to match, she would have been one of the beauties of those days. Prissy wasn’t a beauty. She was pretty with a small face, a small body and small bones; and, though she was five years older than Hetty, could pass for the same age. She had a tongue like a needle, and she knew exactly where to dig it in so it hurt; and Hetty was easy to hurt and easy to make happy. She was always either laughing or crying.

  It was agreed between them that the houses must be exactly alike, since they was for two brothers marrying two sisters; but for everything Harold did to his, Percy was made to do something different by Prissy. Harold’s idea of a house was four walls and enough windows and a door back and front and a roof on top. Percy had to do everything fancy. Harold wanted plain granite. Percy had to do dashing. Both houses finished up half dashing and half granite. Percy had to build a front porch. Harold had to build a front porch. Percy had to make the top windows with points like a chapel. Harold had to re-build the top storey to have windows with points like a chapel. Then Hetty got ideas of her own. She wanted bow windows downstairs; so as she would be able to sit behind the curtains and watch the people pass, without being seen. Percy had to put in bow windows. The last great row was over the names of the houses. La Hetty decided she would have hers called Wallaballoo. It was the name of the place where Jack Bourgaize had his smallholding in Australia. La Prissy came to tell my mother about it in a rage. ‘What d’you think she’s going to do now?’ she said; and she told us. ‘Have anybody ever heard of such a name for a house?’ she said. ‘The people will think she’s mad! Well, if she’s going to call hers Wallaballoo, I’m going to call ours Timbuctoo!’ She did, too. There they are to this day, the two houses, in the meadow the other side of Braye-side with a high wall between them. There wasn’t a high wall between them when they was built. It was a low hedge with an open gap to go from one to the other. Well, I have seen hells and hells lived through at Wallaballoo and Timbuctoo.

  The Martels of Ronceval was Church and the two brothers was married at St Sampson’s Church on the same day and went on the same boat to England and in the same train to London for their honeymoon. They all four put up at the Empress Hotel in Waterloo Road and went to the Zoo and the Crystal Palace and Madame Tussaud’s and saw the Chamber of Horrors and the old Queen driving in her carriage out of Buckingham Palace. The sisters wasn’t speaking when they came back; and the brothers wasn’t allowed to speak either. There was a letter waiting for Hetty. She had written to Jack Bourgaize that she was getting married to Harold Martel, but it had crossed with a letter
from him saying that, if she wouldn’t go out to Australia, then he would sell his smallholding and come back and settle down in Guernsey and marry her. She cried for weeks and had to have the doctor. It was three or four years before Raymond was on the way; and when he was born she nearly died. Horace arrived before the first year was out.

  I have never been able to understand how Horace came to be a Guernsey boy. He was a born American. He was showing off and making a big noise from the moment he poked his head out. Raymond was a quiet boy. Sometimes I think he was born too good for this world. He worshipped the big Horace from a child; and Horace was quite willing to have him following along behind like a little dog. That is, if La Hetty and La Prissy was speaking. Of course, if they wasn’t speaking the boys wasn’t supposed to speak either; but there was no keeping them apart.

  They both went to the Secondary School in Brock Road. At first it was the Misses Cohu’s School at the Albion Terrace Raymond went to, and Horace was sent to the Capelles School for Boys. Prissy said she didn’t want him to grow up to be a girl. There was no fear of that. Raymond was ten when he went to the Secondary, but Horace stayed on at the Capelles until he was old enough to leave school altogether; and Prissy only sent him so that Hetty couldn’t say Raymond had been to the Secondary and Horace hadn’t. He was put in the same class as Raymond. Hetty said to Prissy, ‘It isn’t always the boys with the big legs got the big brains. Le Raymond will finish up working in a bank yet, you’ll see!’ Prissy said to Hetty, ‘It isn’t those who work in the bank got the money. It’s those put the money in the bank got the money. Le Horace is going to make plenty, you’ll see!’ For six months after, Le Raymond and Le Horace had to go different ways to school. Horace would go along the Vale Road on his bike and Raymond would go round Baubigny on his; and they would meet at the Half-way. Raymond was a boy who didn’t like to do the slightest thing wrong, yet he would break any rule to be with Horace.

  Cyril, the baby, grew into the most beautiful child I have ever seen. He looked like an angel. He had long golden curls Prissy wouldn’t have cut off; and she was for ever having his photo taken. She adored him. I am sure he was the only creature in the world she ever adored. Nobody, not even his mother, could adore Horace. The funny thing was that Cyril really took after his father. Percy had been a good-looking young chap with fair curly hair; and he was of a sweet nature until he married Prissy and turned nasty. When Cyril was five he got diphtheria and died. The sisters wasn’t speaking at the time, but they came very close together then; and the whole family went to the funeral. He had a small grave to himself in St Sampson’s cemetery; and a small tombstone, and on it: CYRIL MARTEL. AGED 5 YEARS, 3 MONTHS. Prissy wouldn’t have any words put under.

  5

  The worst schemozzle between the two sisters was over the planchette. They was never properly friendly again after. It wasn’t that they didn’t speak. It was worse. I remember once I was talking to La Hetty by her gate and La Prissy came out from round the back of Timbuctoo, going to the shop. She went out of her way to speak. ‘Ah, well I never, there you are, then!’ she said. ‘It is such a long time I haven’t seen you, I was beginning to wonder if it was that you was laid up for life!’ La Hetty laughed. ‘Ah, but no, then: I’m fine, me!’ she said. ‘I was saying to Le Harold only this morning: “It’s such a long time I haven’t seen that Prissy, I wonder if it is she can be dead!”’

  To tell you the truth, I would have liked to have had one of those things myself; but if I had brought one into the house, my mother would have said I was trafficking with the Devil. I was earning the money and was the man in the house; but there was some things I wouldn’t do to hurt the feelings of my mother. I’d seen the planchettes on show in the window of Le Cheminant’s toy-shop in the Commercial Arcade, when me and Jim was in Town one Saturday night. He said, ‘Let’s buy one each, eh?’ but I explained to him about my mother and he said, ‘Yes, that would never do.’ He bought one for himself and said, ‘You can try it to my house.’ I was in and out of his house, as if it was my home and I always had supper there Saturday nights.

  After supper he tried to make it work on a big piece of paper on the kitchen table. It was a funny thing, the planchette. It was a flat piece of wood made like a heart with a pencil through the point and two little wheels at the back of it for it to roll on. It said on the box that if you put your hand on it and asked it a question, it would write out the answer. Jim put his hand on it and said, ‘Planchette, Planchette, is it going to be fine weather tomorrow?’ He wanted to know because it was Sunday, and we was going for a ride on our bikes after dinner. It didn’t move. Jim said, ‘Well, I thought that was an easy one. It only had to write Yes, or No.’ I said, ‘I’m going to ask it something harder.’ I put my hand on it and said, ‘Planchette, Planchette, am I going to win the leg of mutton off the greasy pole?’ The one thing I wanted to be able to say I had done was to have won the leg of mutton off the greasy pole at the Grand Havre Regatta.

  ‘It moved!’ said Jim. It did move, damme; and made a small mark on the paper: but you could hardly see it. ‘It’s the electric in you!’ he said. I don’t know if it was the electric in me; but I swear I didn’t push it on purpose. Old Jim was always willing to give me best and I wouldn’t have played a dirty trick like that on him. I said, ‘Planchette, Planchette, is that all you can do? Are you really able to answer any questions? Say Yes, or No!’ It didn’t move at all. I said to Jim, ‘A pity you throw away a shilling for nothing. I’ll pay half,’ but he wouldn’t let me.

  Of course Le Raymond had to have a planchette because Le Horace had a planchette; and Le Horace had to have a planchette because Le Raymond had a planchette. Le Raymond was unlucky like Jim. It wouldn’t move at all for him; but for Horace it wrote out answers for every question he asked. La Prissy was cock-a-hoop and invited herself and Percy and Horace to Wallaballoo on the Sunday evening to show what wonders the planchette could do. She went so far as to say that Horace would do it with Raymond’s planchette, just to show that everything was open and above board. Raymond tried again and nothing happened. ‘Ah well,’ said Prissy, ‘it isn’t everybody have got the gift.’ It behaved wonderful for Horace that night. He asked it his name, and it wrote it out; he asked it his birthday, and it wrote it out; he asked it where he lived, and it wrote out his address long: Timbuctoo, Braye Road, St Sampson’s, Guernsey, Channel Islands, British Isles, Europe, The World; and when he asked it if he was ever going to leave Guernsey, it wrote that he was going to America and make millions.

  ‘There, you see!’ said Prissy. ‘The planchette know. Horace is going to be somebody. It isn’t working in a bank he is going to be, and earning less than if he was working in the greenhouses and think he is one of the gentry because he is wearing a white collar and a tie.’ ‘The planchette write big,’ said Hetty. ‘That only go to show that it is the planchette who is writing, him; and not Horace,’ said Prissy, ‘because Horace, he write small.’ ‘It don’t spell very well,’ said Hetty, ‘I’ve always thought the word millions have two l’s, me.’ ‘Well, you can’t expect a piece of wood to know everything,’ said Prissy. ‘It is not the planchette who do not know how to spell,’ said Hetty, ‘it is Le Horace who do not know how to spell. Do he think we are all fools that we cannot see him pushing it?’ ‘Well, if THAT is what you think!’ said Prissy; and she got up on her two feet. I can just see her standing there with her thin lips together. ‘After we have been sisters for so many years, I thought we was going to be sisters for the rest of our lives,’ she said. ‘Come Horace, come Percy: we are no relations!’ and they both followed her out like sheep through the gap in the hedge to Timbuctoo.

  My mother had to listen to the sad story a dozen times from the one and the other. I don’t know why they came and told everything to my mother. I never told my mother anything. She didn’t say much. She would listen with her big white face and go on with her work. ‘Ah, la, la,’ she’d say, ‘mais es-che comme chonna, donc? Es-che la véritai?’ She didn’
t take sides. She only wanted to know the truth. Prissy said, ‘Well, even if Horace did push it, Raymond could have pushed it too. He’ll never get on in the world, that boy, if he don’t learn how to push!’ When Hetty’s turn came, she said she was glad it had happened; for it meant that at last Horace wouldn’t come bothering Raymond any more. From the time Raymond was a little boy the big Horace was always around the place, breaking his toys and climbing over the roofs of the sheds, and Raymond would try and follow and make holes in his trousers. ‘It’s all for the best,’ she said.

  She was wrong about Raymond. Unbeknown to her, they often came together of a Saturday afternoon for a bathe in the little bay under Les Moulins. That is a thing I would never have thought of doing, me: to wash myself all over in the sea. Once when Horace was undressing, I saw he got some bad marks on his back. I asked him how he got those marks. ‘Oh, it’s my old man with his belt,’ he said and laughed. I’d have never thought Percy would do that with his soft ways. I took the two of them out in my boat with me a few times. Raymond wasn’t much use, but he liked to sit looking at the sea and the rocks. ‘It’s nice here, eh Uncle?’ he’d say, and smile. I was only his cousin really, but I was so much older he called me Uncle. I liked Raymond. He was weak and sickly when he was a child, but by the time he was twelve or thirteen, he was quite healthy and strong. He wasn’t big built but had a well-made young body and an old-fashioned face with fairish hair and bright blue eyes that looked at you very straight. He was serious for a young boy, but had a nice smile and sometimes he’d wrinkle up his face laughing at something all to himself. He was no fool.