The Book of Ebenezer le Page Page 8

  As a matter of fact, La Rue des Cornets was rough, but there wasn’t many proper whores living there in those days. It wasn’t until the Green Shutters was closed down by the States at the beginning of the First World War, so as the pure English boys who came over for their Army training wouldn’t be led into temptation, that the whores went into private business in Cornet Street. They was very well behaved in public, I will say that for them. They used to sit quietly on the seats in the cemetery facing the Town Church and wait for customers. There was old tombstones all round against the walls and a lovely big tree growing in the middle. The road have been widened since then and part of what was the cemetery and all the tombstones have gone; and so have the old whores. St Peter Port is not St Peter Port without the old whores.

  8

  It’s funny how when you remember you can’t choose what it is you remember. Nowadays I forget things from one day to the next. Of things that have happened of late years, I forget even the people’s names; yet I remember some things have happened fifty or sixty years ago, as if it was yesterday. I don’t mean to say I don’t get it mixed up sometimes.

  I am not the only one. There’s old Abe Robilliard from Rocquaine. He was only a boy when he used to bring stuff for his father to the Huts and I was there doing my time in the Militia. He had his golden wedding the other day. It was in the paper. He have had seventeen children, and fifteen are alive; and there are dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and over a hundred in the family. I ran into him in Town one Friday morning, and we had a drink in the Albion. A young chap came in and said, ‘Hullo, Gran’pa!’ He said, ‘Hullo, sonny!’ I said, ‘I didn’t know he was one of your grandchildren.’ He said, ‘I suppose he is. They all know me.’ I said, ‘Why, don’t you know, then?’ He said, ‘Goodness, no: the wife do!’ He remembered his own lot, though he didn’t always know which came first; but when it came to grandchildren and great-granchildren, they was the ones who had to do the remembering. I’m like that; and I don’t always remember which came first.

  I like soldiering. I fancied myself in a red coat and a red stripe down my trousers. I was a good soldier. They made me a full sergeant and I enjoyed myself. Three weeks at the Huts each year was a change from the greenhouses. Jim didn’t do so well; but all the fellows liked him. He wasn’t cut out to be a soldier. He never looked smart. He looked better on the farm in his dirty boots and dung on his leggings and his shirt open at the neck and his old hat on the back of his head. They made him a lance-jack; but it was only because they wanted somebody tall at the end of the front rank to fix bayonets by. I was glad he was never in my platoon. I couldn’t have brought myself to make him jump to it, as I did the others.

  It must have been round about then we went to Jersey to see the Muratti. I don’t know which year it was, but I know they hadn’t been having it long. Football was getting more popular, and our Cycling Track was become a football ground. I wasn’t all that struck on Beautiful Jersey, as they liked to call it; and I have never wanted to go again. I was glad it was us won. The Jerseys came down to the harbour after the match to see us off on the boat. It was loaded with people, what with the team and supporters. Jack Priaulx, who was the captain of our team, was standing high up on the deck, waving the cup about. It’s true he’d had a few drinks and was perhaps looking too pleased with himself. One of the bright Jersey boys shouted out ‘Guernsey donkeys!’ The others laughed and we laughed too; but then a whole crowd of the sods started calling out ‘Guernsey donkeys! Guernsey donkeys!’ Our boys wasn’t having that. They started shouting ‘Crapauds! Crapauds! Jersey crapauds!’ There would have been fights if we could have got ashore, but the gangway was up. As it was, the boat went out the harbour with the Jerseys on the quay shouting ‘Guernsey donkeys! Guernsey donkeys!’ and all of us bawling out ‘Crapauds! Crapauds! Jersey crapauds!’ and Jack waving the cup. They came over to Guernsey the next year and got it back. I am glad I am not a Jerseyman. I would rather be a black man than a Jerseyman. A black man is a black man but a Jerseyman is a Jerseyman.

  Jim and me wasn’t much more than kids when we got ourselves stranded on Lihou Island. I remember I’d only just got my first bike. It was an old bone-shaker and didn’t have neither a free wheel, nor a three-speed gear, and went grinding up the hills; and Jim’s wasn’t much better. It was on our bikes we explored Guernsey; though the visitors nowadays have seen more of it than I have. There are plenty of parts I haven’t been to; and places like Jerbourg and Petit Bôt and the Gouffre I haven’t been to since I went with Jim. Though it was more often along the west coast we went for our rides because it was flat; and the day we went to Lihou we had been right to Pleinmont. There wasn’t so many houses round there those days: only a farm here and there inland, and a few cottages by the sea, and the old Imperial Hotel. That day we went up by the side of the Imperial and along the top by the haunted house and then full-pelt down the zig-zag with our feet off the pedals. On the way back round Rocquaine, Jim said, ‘Let’s go on Lihou.’

  It was Sunday and nearly evening by then. I said, ‘We’ll have to see first if the tide is down far enough.’ When we got to L’Érée we turned up by Fort Saumarez, and there wasn’t a soul about. The stone causeway for horses and carts to go vraicing wasn’t covered by the sea yet. Jim said, ‘It’s all right, the sea is going down.’ I said, ‘The sea isn’t going down, it’s on the turn.’ He said, ‘Come on, I’ll go by myself, if you won’t.’ I said, ‘All right, I’ll come,’ and we dumped our bikes against a hedge and I went across with him. There wasn’t much to see. There was a few old walls and a house with nobody living in it. There was some sort of big pans, I didn’t know what they was for; but Jim said once upon a time they was used to boil vraic to make iodine. There was thousands of rabbits on the island. It didn’t matter where you walked they popped out from under your feet. Jim wanted to go on Lihoumel, the smaller island at the other end, but the sea was in between. He was going to try and jump it, but I told him not to be a fool. ‘The sea is coming up,’ I said, ‘we must get back quick.’

  He was in no hurry, as usual. He wanted to see all there was to see. There was a good view of the Hanois Rocks and the lighthouse. While we was looking at it, the light came on; but it wasn’t dark yet. By the time we got back to the L’Érée end again, the sea was over the causeway. He couldn’t swim and nor could I, and to get back up to our waists in the water it was hopeless to try because the current is very strong there, and we would have only been swept out to sea. Jim said, ‘Well, it looks as if this is going to be our home for the night.’ I said, ‘Yes, but what about our bikes?’ He said, ‘Aw, they’ll be all right, nobody will pinch those.’ I said, ‘If we was to light a fire, somebody might see it and fetch us off in a boat.’ He said, ‘If we had any matches, we could light a fire; but I haven’t got any. Have you?’ I hadn’t. It was before I smoked openly. I wasn’t worried, though. I’d never felt so happy.

  I wish I could remember what we said to each other that night. I know we sat down on the grass and talked more friendly than we ever had before. Jim was always open with me, and said anything that came into his head; but I wasn’t so open with him, as a rule. That night I was. I could say anything to Jim. If I had done a murder, as it happens I have in a way, I could have told him; and he would have liked me just the same. It was quite dark and we was still talking. There was a few lights twinkling on the land from the farmhouses and the cottages, and the Hanois light was going on and off. The sky was pitch black but full of stars. There was millions and millions of them. Jim said, ‘There are a lot of stars in the sky, eh?’ I said, ‘There are a lot of stars in the sky.’

  ‘Now it’s time for by-bys,’ he said. He found a place out of the breeze behind a rock that had bracken growing against it, and we curled up together: him with his back to the rock, and me against him. ‘The babes in the wood,’ he said. ‘I don’t see no wood, me,’ I said. ‘Mustn’t be so particular,’ he said. I fell asleep with his arm around me. I woke
up once in the night. He was awake as well. ‘Are you cold?’ he said. ‘I’m as warm as toast,’ I said. I was cold in front, but I didn’t want to change places. ‘Are you all right?’ I said. ‘Snug as a bug in a rug,’ he said. It was broad daylight when we woke up again. I said, ‘Goodness, I’m going to be late for work!’ I had only just started working for Mr Dorey, and I didn’t want to be late. I ran up to the top to see if our bikes were still there. They was where we’d left them; but the sea had gone down and was coming up again, and would soon be over the road back. Jim was stretching himself and yawning in his lazy way. ‘If you don’t buck up,’ I said, ‘we’ll have to live here for ever.’ ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ he said. I had to grab hold of his big hand and drag him across, or he would be there yet.

  When I got home and indoors, my father was gone to work, and my mother was cooking the breakfast for herself and the rest of us. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, ‘I thought you’d run away to sea.’ ‘Jim and me got cut off on Lihou Island,’ I said. Tabitha wasn’t up yet, but she must have heard me. She came running out of the bedroom in her nightdress and threw her arms around my neck and kissed me. Ours wasn’t a kissing family, and I was quite surprised. ‘He’s come home, he’s come home!’ she said. ‘Now you go and get yourself dressed this minute, my girl!’ said my mother. Tabitha was still going to school. I went into my little room and changed into my working clothes. I gobbled down my breakfast as quick as I could: I was late already. When I was going out the door, my mother said, ‘Your father is going to tan you when he comes home.’ It was at the back of my mind all day. He had never hit me in his life.

  I was having my tea that evening when he came in. ‘So you’re back!’ he said. ‘Yes, Pop,’ I said. ‘Finish your tea,’ he said. ‘I’m finished,’ I said. He said, ‘Come in the wash-house.’ I followed him out to the wash-house. He began to undo his belt. ‘Where was you last night?’ he said. I explained to him what had happened. ‘D’you know you kept your mother awake half the night?’ he said. I looked him in the eye. He couldn’t look at me straight. ‘I am sorry I kept you awake half the night, Pop,’ I said, ‘I didn’t mean to.’ He did up his belt. ‘Please don’t do that to me again, son!’ he said. ‘I won’t,’ I said.

  Jim didn’t get into trouble, either. I went down later to find out how he’d got on. ‘Lumme, they didn’t even miss me!’ he said. ‘They wouldn’t have known I was out, if it hadn’t been for Victor howling his head off.’ Victor was a bull-pup Jim’s father had bought him for his birthday. He was the apple of Jim’s eye. He was ugly enough, goodness knows, and, when he got old, he was grumpy as well. Jim wouldn’t be separated from him. If you saw Victor lying in the sun anywhere on the farm, you could be sure Jim wasn’t far off. He would have had him to sleep on his bed, if his people had let him. As it was, Victor had to have a basket in the kitchen by the fire that never was let go out at night.

  Victor was only a pup when poor old Jim was laid up. He got terrible pains in his inside. Dr Leale was sent for and came and said he had appendicitis, and must be cut open and have his appendix taken out. He said the King had had his taken out and was as right as rain. Jim was taken away to the Cottage Hospital, and Dr Benson did the operation. I was worried to death. His people went to see him after he came out from under the chloroform and said he was all right, but weak and pale. I didn’t like to poke my nose in, because they was as worried as I was; but I did ask his mother if perhaps I could go and see him one day in the hospital. She said I could go on the Sunday afternoon, and she would make a gâche I could take to him. The hour for visitors was from three to four.

  After dinner on the Sunday I went down to the Grands Gigands to get the gâche, and Jim’s mother wrapped it in a towel. Victor was in his basket by the fire, looking as miserable as sin. ‘I know what I’ll do,’ I said, ‘I’ll take Victor with me. He’ll cheer Jim up.’ ‘You can’t do that!’ said his mother. ‘Yes, I can,’ I said. ‘Lend me Jim’s overcoat. He won’t be seen underneath.’ It was about four sizes too big for me, but it was a cold day and didn’t look out of place. I put Victor’s collar on him, and took the strap so I could hold on to him. He walked all the way there on his own four feet. I swear he knew where he was going. He pulled and pulled, and dragged me along, and I could hardly keep up with him going up the Rouge Rue.

  When I got outside the hospital, I put him under the coat and made him snuggle down. He wanted to peep out, but I wouldn’t let him. I didn’t like the smell in the hospital; it made me feel sick. Jim had a nice little room to himself, and a nurse showed me in. He was surprised to see me, because they hadn’t told him I was coming. I said, ‘I’ve brought you a gâche from your mother,’ and put it on the table by his bed. He wasn’t looking very well, I thought. ‘How are you?’ I said. ‘I’ll have a mark,’ he said. ‘That don’t matter, if you’re all right,’ I said. ‘It isn’t where it will show.’ He said, ‘You’re wearing my coat.’ I said, ‘Yes, it’s cold outside.’ He said, ‘You look like a sack of potatoes.’ ‘I’ve brought somebody to see you,’ I said; and let Victor out on the bed.

  Golly, it was worth it! I have never seen two such happy people. Victor was jumping up and licking old Jim, and Jim was hugging Victor, and the colour came back into his face. There was a scream from the nurse, and other nurses came running in. ‘A dog, a dog!’ they screamed: ‘Who bring a dog in? It is not allowed to bring a dog in!’ The head nurse, the Sister, came in. ‘That dog must be put out at once!’ she said. I said, ‘Why?’ ‘It is against the rules,’ she said. ‘It is not against the rules,’ I said. ‘On the board downstairs it say VISITORS. 3 to 4. He is a visitor.’ She said, ‘The Matron will murder me, if she finds out.’ I said, ‘She won’t do anything of the sort: you are much too good to the patients.’ I gave her a wink. ‘Well, I know one patient I won’t be good to, if I get him in here,’ she said. ‘For heaven’s sake, keep it out of sight, when you go out of this room!’ He lay quiet on the bed against Jim while we had a chat; and when I said good-bye I put him under my coat. Outside I put him down on the road and tried to make him walk home, but all he would do was try and pull me back again to the hospital. I had to carry him all the way to the Gigands.

  The last time I saw Jim in this world, before he went back to the War, was outside Salem Chapel, where we stopped to say good-bye. He had come for tea to our house that Sunday afternoon. He didn’t want to go, and I didn’t want him to go; and we stood there like two mommets and there was nothing we could say. At last he said, ‘Well, cheer-bye, then!’ and I said, ‘Best of luck!’ and we shook hands. I watched him go down the road. All of a sudden he turned round and came right back and caught hold of me by the jacket. ‘Remember the day you brought Victor to see me in the Cottage Hospital?’ he said. ‘There isn’t another boy in the world would have thought of doing that!’ and he went off laughing. ‘À la prochaine!’ he called out.

  9

  Jim is the only chap I have ever known who I can think nothing bad about. He never said or did a thing to hurt me; or anybody else, as far as I know. I’ve got mixed up with all sorts of people in my time. I haven’t always been ‘that funny old man who live by himself at Les Moulins’. For example, Horace and Raymond: I got to know quite a lot about those two. Horace I didn’t really know much about before he went away; but I got to know much more about him when he came back. He went to America, after all. He didn’t go because he wanted to, though. He went because he was pushed. He put Isobel Mansell in the family way and Percy said if that was all he could do, the only place for him was America.

  Isobel Mansell was a very pretty girl. She worked in the Post Office on the Bridge and her father kept a grocery shop at the Longstore. Her mother was dead. Of course a Mansell from the Longstore wasn’t good enough for Prissy, and Horace daren’t bring her home. When her father found out what had happened, he came to see Percy and nearly killed him. He put all the blame on Percy for the soft way Horace had been brought up: as if it was poor Percy’s fault! Horace coul
dn’t be brought up. The only person who could ever do anything with Horace was Raymond. Bill Mansell said the great lout of a Horace wasn’t fit to untie the shoe-laces of Isobel; and he wouldn’t have him marry her, if he was the only boy in the world. Horace was quite willing to. I think Isobel Mansell was the only girl he ever really liked.

  Nobody knew a word of this at the time, mind you. La Prissy said in a grand way to everybody that they had decided to send Horace to America, because there was no chance for a boy like him on a small island. I wouldn’t know even now what really happened, if it wasn’t for my Cousin Mary Ann. When I got friendly with her and used to go and visit her for a chat in her old age, I discovered she knew more of what had happened between the four walls of every house in the Parish of the Vale and the Parish of St Sampson’s and the Parish of the Câtel than anybody else on the island. By rights, it was her who ought to have written this book.

  When she was left with three children and no husband, all she had was her small house, and the garden and the greenhouse behind. Her father helped a little and her brother helped a little; but her father died and her brother got married, and that was that. I don’t know how she would have managed if she hadn’t been everybody’s cousin. They was all sorry for her, of course; and always spoke of her as ‘La pauvre Mary Ann’. I expect that’s about as much as they’d have done, if it hadn’t been that she always managed to find time to go round and help. She would do anything. She’d milk the cows, pack the flowers, pick up the potatoes, or do the dirty work in the house. As she was a relation, they didn’t like to pay her; but they gave her clothes for herself and the children, and butter and eggs and a cut from the pig, and anything that was left over. You would see her trudging home along the lanes of an evening, bowed down from being loaded like a donkey with all the things she had been given. Her own garden was doing so well she could afford to pay a boy to look after the greenhouse.