The Book of Ebenezer le Page Page 51

  I wanted to know if Adèle got herself into trouble with the boss because of me. He said she had known what I was doing, but it wasn’t her responsibility; and she let it pass. All the same, it was her got the blame; and she flared up and left. She needn’t have done so, but was glad of the excuse. She was fed up with it there. I said I had wondered if the young chap I had seen in the office with her and who took her place was her fiancé. ‘What, that drip!’ he said. ‘She won’t marry anybody, let me tell you, unless I give her the O.K. She looks on me as a father.’ I began to wonder if young Neville was as clever as he thought. Her real father was dead, he said; and her mother was married again and gone to Canada. Adèle was living with an aunt who kept a shop at St Andrews; and now she had gone back to serve in the shop. ‘I do hope she is going to be all right,’ I said. ‘It don’t sound much of a job.’ He said, ‘Adèle knows her way around, don’t you worry. She will only stay there as long as it suits her.’

  I asked him if he could spare the time to come indoors and have a cup of tea. ‘As long as you like,’ he said. ‘Good!’ I said. I hadn’t found out half I wanted to know about him yet. When I struggled to get to my feet, he jumped up and held out a hand to help me. I said I could manage; but he have nice ways. He hadn’t said nothing about his painting, so while we was walking up the beach, I said, ‘I saw the picture you painted in the paper; unless there is another Neville Falla.’ ‘There are a number of other Neville Fallas,’ he said, ‘but I am the culprit.’ ‘What is it supposed to be?’ I said. ‘What it says,’ he said. ‘I am glad you got the first prize,’ I said, ‘but I wish I knew why.’ ‘Of course it has to be looked at in the right way,’ he said. ‘In any case, it is only a blur in black and white. From how it was printed in the Press, nobody could possibly make any sense of it.’ Suddenly he caught hold of my arm and stopped, looking up at Les Moulins. ‘Now that would make a good picture!’ he said. It was a funny view from down there; but with the flowers in front and the path and the edge of the rocks, and the tree and the wind-mill behind, I could see it might look all right. That is, if I would know what it was, when he had done with it. What struck me as funny was here was me going to leave him that house to live in; and all he was thinking about was he wanted to paint a picture of it!

  The moment he got in the kitchen, the first thing he noticed was my Uncle Nat’s ship on the wall. ‘God, did you do that?’ he said. I said no: it was done by my uncle years ago. ‘Are there any more of his about?’ he said. ‘I don’t expect so,’ I said. ‘They went to his sisters when he died; and that was the only one my mother had. She didn’t want it, and only let me bring it because she didn’t want to make bad feeling in the family. The others will long ago have been thrown away as junk.’ I knew Hetty hung one in a back bedroom for years where nobody would see it. ‘They are only done with wool,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter what a picture is made of,’ he said. Since he was so interested, I told him how my uncle was making that particular picture while his mother was dying in the next room. ‘He didn’t know it,’ I said. ‘He was soft in the head.’ ‘I bet he did know it,’ said Neville. ‘It’s marvellous!’ I said, ‘Well, that is one thing you and me agree about, because I have always liked that picture; and have never got tired of seeing it on my wall.’

  I gave him a good tea. I’d got something special ready every day in case he came: which I’d had to eat up myself. That day I had a fresh chancre I had cooked in the copper the day before. While I was laying the table, he sprawled full length on the green-bed I had kept in the kitchen since Tabitha died, so as I would myself be able to sleep by the fire. ‘Can I do anything to help?’ he said. ‘No, you’re all right where you are,’ I said. I liked to see him there. ‘Shall I go to Canada, or to Australia, or New Zealand?’ he said. ‘I would have more room, eh? What do you think?’ I felt myself go cold. I didn’t want a day ever to come when he wouldn’t be coming in and out of the house, as if it was his home; and sprawling on the green-bed and me getting him ready a meal: but he was like a firework going off in all directions at once. I got the feeling he was half asking me to make up his mind for him; but I dare not, or ten to one he would go and do exactly the opposite. ‘It is for you to decide where you go to,’ I said. ‘I can’t compare Guernsey to other places, because I have never been to any other places; except for one day to Jersey to see the Muratti.’ ‘Do you really mean to say you have lived every day of your life in this house?’ he said. ‘Slept here every night, eaten every meal in this room?’ ‘Well, I have eaten a few meals elsewhere,’ I said, ‘and slept at the Huts when I was in the Militia, and usually Saturday nights and always New Year’s Eve at Les Grands Gigands when my friend, Jim Mahy, was living there.’ ‘I never have a friend,’ he said; and out came the chin. ‘Come on, eat up now!’ I said. I wasn’t having no more of that nonsense.

  The table was laid rough. I poured out the tea in the blue and white mugs without saucers I got from Woolworth’s, and the vinegar bottle was on the table: I couldn’t be bothered to use the proper cruet. There was a hammer to crack the claws with, and a nut-cracker I use for nuts at Christmas for the legs; and I cut him good thick slices of bread and butter. He tucked in as if he hadn’t had a meal for a week. I wondered if the boy was having enough to eat. Suddenly he said, arising out of nothing, ‘I think I would do best to make a go of it here: I don’t think I could paint anywhere else.’ I didn’t let my joy show. ‘I hear the visitors raving about the scenery,’ I said, ‘but I don’t notice it myself. I like the sea.’ ‘They don’t see the scenery, or the sea, or anything!’ he said. ‘They only look at it. It is in me from the start. Guernsey it shall be!’ I thought it safe to say then, ‘Well, I, for one, am very glad to hear it.’ ‘Unless they push me off,’ he said, ‘I am not very popular in some quarters.’ I thought it best to say nothing. He wasn’t to know I knew Constable Le Page.

  He wanted to help me clear away; but I said we could leave the things for now and go for a stroll. It was much too fine to stop indoors. ‘Your word is law,’ he said. I found myself taking him along the very same way I had gone with Abel. Now I look back on it, it seems as if everything was said and done that afternoon might all have been arranged beforehand. I didn’t have to think, or make up my mind, only take the next step. Just outside our gate, we met two of the Le Boutillier children, John and Peter. They are seventeen and fifteen, and was coming to see if I was all right. They gave me a funny look, when they saw I was with Neville, and just said ‘Hullo!’ and walked on. ‘They are real good to me, those two kids,’ I said. ‘They come and see how I am nearly every day.’ ‘I can’t stand kids hanging round me,’ he said. ‘I don’t want anybody hanging round me!’ I wondered what had bitten him all of a sudden. ‘How is it you are so much like a hedgehog?’ I said. ‘I am not a teenager!’ he said. I said, ‘When you are the oldest on the island, as I am, you will only wish you could be a teenager!’ ‘Who is the oldest on the island?’ he said. ‘How about old Mrs Renouf from L’Islet, who is a hundred and two? Are you a hundred and three, then?’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t know if I am quite as old as that.’ ‘Of course you are not as old as that,’ he said, ‘nor anywhere near it! You are an old sprucer, that is what you are!’ Anyhow, it got him into a good temper again.

  He is not bad-natured: it is something else. He is good at heart really; that is, so long as you don’t let him know it. He kept a kindly eye on me, as if I was a kid he had to look after. He was careful not to walk faster than I could go; and, when we got to Fort Pembroke, he found a comfortable place for me to sit in the sun with my back against a smooth stone. I was being looked after; and I liked it. He threw himself flat on his tummy on the grass in front of me, and grinned up at me. ‘Mustn’t take any notice of what I say,’ he said, ‘I am a misfit. I was hatched in the wrong nest.’ For the minute, I thought he meant his father wasn’t really his father, or his mother not really his mother. He read my thought. ‘Lord, no!’ he said, and laughed. ‘I am not a bastard. It might have be
en better for me, if I had been. If you had known my mother and my father, you would wonder how it was I ever managed to get born at all!’

  His father he had been against as long as he could remember. He was ready to like his mother, but she had always been afraid of him; and that made him angry. In looks he didn’t take after either. His mother was fair to gingery and had been beautiful, he thought, when she was young; but she married late, and was pale and delicate after his birth. He didn’t remember his grandparents; but knew his grandfather was killed in the First World War. His own father was dark with black hair like himself; but short and stocky. He was a man of good character, who always did the right thing. ‘He was the best man I have ever known for keeping his eye on the main chance,’ said Neville, ‘and he could always think up a good and pious reason for doing so.’ He was only a greenhouse hand before the Occupation; but he worked so hard and behaved himself so well, he had made a small fortune in German marks to change into English money after the Liberation. There was a ruined house at Paradise called Sea View, where slave-workers had been living, which was going for next to nothing. He bought it with the land attached, and had it done up; then got married to complete the picture. As a grower on his own account, he did well and was elected one of the new Deputies. He sat on a committee for the growers and Deputy H.J. Le M. Falla of Sea View was a name spoken only in a tone of respect: except by Neville. He was born and brought up at Sea View. ‘I came from a good home,’ he said, ‘a good Christian home. Billy Graham’s photo on the piano; and only hymns on Sundays.’

  His mother was genteel. She came, or thought she came, of a better family. In the house everything had to be so-so. It was covers on the cushions, d’oyleys on the table, and never a speck of dust anywhere. If she had heard a swear word she would have dropped dead. Neville, in spite of himself, was urged by some devil to do everything he wasn’t supposed to do. He finished up by knocking round with the roughest types of St Sampson’s and the Vale; only to find himself the leader of a gang of hooligans, who repeated every word he said and copied him in everything he did. ‘If there is one thing makes you sick of yourself,’ he said, ‘it is to see yourself being imitated by a gang of nit-witted hangers-on! It makes you realise there is something very wrong with you, if that can happen.’ He had succeeded in shaking them off; but now the good people had no use for him because of his bad reputation, and the wild youngsters didn’t trust him and steered clear of him. That was quite to his satisfaction. It was only when he was painting he felt good; even if the painting itself wasn’t good. ‘Practically everybody is after power,’ he said, ‘power over other people. Well, I can have it, if I want it; but I don’t want it! It isn’t worth a tinker’s curse! The only power I want is over my paints and brushes.’ He was going on painting, and painting what he wanted to paint, and painting it in his own way. For the rest, he didn’t care a damn!

  He was pretty near broke. His house, Sea View, was let and was going to be sold to the people living in it; but there wouldn’t be much left for him to play about with, when the debts on it was paid. For the present, he was living in a room in the attic, and feeding out at cafés as best he could. ‘I hope you got a good lawyer to manage your affairs,’ I said. ‘Yes, I have, as a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘Eustace de Lisle.’ I said, ‘I had an uncle who used to work for a de Lisle who lived in the Grange.’ ‘I don’t know where he lives,’ he said, ‘his office is with the Advocates.’ ‘Robbers’ Row,’ I said, ‘that is what my father used to call it.’ ‘Oh, he is not as bad as that,’ he said. ‘He does his best for me.’ ‘I don’t know him,’ I said. I wasn’t asking any more. He had let out exactly what I wanted to know. ‘It is getting a bit fresh out here now,’ I said, ‘how about coming back indoors and having a snack before you go home?’ ‘Rightio!’ he said.

  I cooked him a good meal of ham and eggs, and he gollopped it down with mugs of tea. I chatted about the visitors I had staying with me, and told him about the old girl who hid behind the pigsty. He roared with laughter. It is his laugh saves him. It warms the world. I was sorry when he had to go. I walked down the road with him as far as the Vale Church. ‘I have thoroughly enjoyed myself,’ he said, when he wished me good-bye, ‘I really and truly have.’ ‘Then come again whenever you like,’ I said. ‘Next time I will bring my painting things,’ he said, ‘and see what I can make of your house.’ I trotted back to Les Moulins feeling lively as a cricket. I don’t know when I have felt so well. I had no sooner put my head on the pillow than I was sound asleep.

  16

  The next morning I woke up feeling flat as a pancake. I had as much as I could do to spruce myself up to go to Town and get my money. I knew I ought at the same time to go and see that lawyer, but I had great doubts in my mind if, after all, what I was going to do was for the best. It wasn’t because I thought Neville was a young criminal; and, to tell you the truth, I didn’t care if he was. He was innocent, as Raymond used to say, and I wondered if it was right for me to interfere, and perhaps change the course of his whole life. I interfered in Raymond’s case, and it didn’t do much good. I have the excuse Raymond was helpless, and couldn’t fight his own way out; but Neville is the fighting sort, and will fight his way out of any trouble, if only to land himself into a worse. Yet I took out the few papers have to do with the house from the drawer in the dresser and put them safely in my inside pocket. If I did it, it might turn out bad; but if I didn’t, it might turn out bad too. How was I to know which would be the worse? The truth was the thought of not doing it made me lose heart, and feel I had nothing to live for. I can only say it is something for which Neville will never have to thank me. I am doing it for myself: to keep alive.

  I went to Town and after I came out of the States Offices nearly killed myself, by being fool enough to climb up the Pier Steps. I thought it would save time. I got to the top puffing and blowing, and my old heart going like a hammer; and saw myself dropping dead in the middle of the High Street. I must never do that again. When I had recovered more or less, I walked slowly up Smith Street; and, at the top, I stopped to have a look at Jim’s name on the War Memorial. I don’t expect there is anybody on the island now who remembers what he was like; and yet I could see his old smile as plain as if it was only yesterday I had seen him. I turned to the left and passed in front of the Court; but I don’t know my way around there very well. It is a part of the town I have never been to much, and there have been a lot of new big offices built down Robbers’ Row. I examined the brass plates on the doorposts, and was lucky, for only the second block along I found one with Eustace de Lisle’s name on it. The front door was open and I walked in. On the right, in a small room with a desk and a lot of papers, was a girl with pale yellow hair done up like a beehive on the top of her head, and a skirt up round her neck, and hands that flapped like the fins of a fish. ‘Can I help you?’ she said.

  ‘Please can I speak to Mr Eustace de Lisle?’ I said. ‘I am afraid not,’ she said. ‘He is engaged at present.’ ‘It is important,’ I said. ‘If you will give me some idea of what it is about,’ she said, ‘I can tell you if it is business Mr de Lisle will care to undertake.’ I said, ‘It is Mr de Lisle himself I want to speak to.’ I wasn’t going to tell this slip of a girl all my business. ‘In that case, you could write,’ she said. ‘It is not something I can write myself,’ I said, ‘I want to explain to Mr de Lisle; and it is him who will have to write it down.’ ‘I could book you an appointment,’ she said, ‘but there will be a fee.’ I could see she thought I didn’t have a penny to my name. ‘I don’t mind about the fee,’ I said, ‘but I only come to Town Fridays.’ She opened a book and turned over the pages. It was a thick book with hard covers like the books I buy for myself. ‘Mr de Lisle could see you next Friday morning at eleven,’ she said, ‘if that will be convenient.’ ‘I suppose it will have to be,’ I said. She asked for my name and address to put down in the book; and I had to tell her. ‘Thank you, good-morning,’ I said and came out. It was a smack in the e
ye for me. I had hoped to have it all settled that morning; and imagined myself coming home with the will in my pocket. Now I expect I will have to pay seven-and-six for her writing down my name and address.

  I could have kicked myself when I got outside for not saying I could go and see him on the Monday, but it didn’t enter my head when I was in the office. The idea of having to wait a whole week was almost more than I could bear. How about if something was to happen to me before the next Friday? All the winter I hadn’t cared a button if I woke up from one day to the next; but now there was something I wanted to do, I was worried to death I might pop off any minute. The Sunday evening I got out my book and wrote down about the day Neville came to see me. It brought him back to me with all his sparks and full of life, and I wanted more than ever for him to live in Les Moulins some day, and I didn’t care how soon. I knew I would have to wait at least until the Thursday before I could expect to see him again, for the other days he would be working; and for my part I went about my work from day to day as if I was going to live for ever, and tried not to worry or get excited.

  The moment I woke up on the Thursday morning I knew it was going to be a good day. I felt as I used to feel Christmas morning when I was a kid, and woke up knowing Santa Claus would have put something in my stocking; though I had been told it was my father really, for my mother said Santa Claus was a heathen superstition. I didn’t care if it was superstition, and would have bet anything Neville would come; and, sure enough, I was just finishing my dinner, when in he walked by the back door. ‘Hullo!’ he said, ‘and how is Ebenezer?’ I noticed it wasn’t Mr Le Page this time. ‘Fine!’ I said. ‘I’ve brought my gear,’ he said. He was carrying an easel and a stool, and had a box slung over his shoulder, and several pictures under one arm. He unloaded the lot on to the green-bed. ‘How about something to eat before you begin?’ I said. ‘No, thanks,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea.’ ‘Help yourself, then,’ I said. He got a mug from the dresser and poured himself a mugfull. He would have made a good picture himself, as he stood there drinking it. He was wearing a blue vest with red rings around it, and blue trousers with sandals; but no socks. For a minute I hated him because he was young and fine-looking, and I was an old crab. He had everything to come, and I had nothing to look forward to; but I couldn’t hate him for long. He was far better to look at than I had ever been; and I was glad he would be in the world when I was gone.