The Book of Ebenezer le Page Read online

  My Cousin Mary Ann was a very wise woman. She said very few words and listened to every word that was said. ‘Mais wai, mais non-nein’ was all anybody could get out of her; but not a word that she heard did she ever forget. Her relations hardly noticed she was there and would say anything in front of her. After all, she was only ‘La pauvre Mary Ann’. I don’t know how it was, but she always happened to turn up when something bad was going to happen. I remember she turned up at Les Moulins the day my mother died; and yet my mother was no worse than she had been for months. If somebody was going to die, she was there. If an engagement was going to be broken off, she was there. If a scandal was brewing in the family, she was there. So, of course she turned up at Timbuctoo the morning Horace was going to America.

  She was there when at the last minute he brought Isobel home for to show to his mother. When Prissy saw what a lovely girl she was, she took her in her arms and kissed her and cried and said, ‘Ah, mais qu’elle est belle! Si j’aurai su! si j’aurai su!’ Isobel was the very daughter she had always longed for; she could come and live in the house, she could be engaged to Horace and, when he had made his fortune in America, he could come back and marry her. It was all settled. Percy then took Horace in the van to the White Rock to catch the boat to Southampton; from where he was going to get on the liner for America.

  When they had gone, La Prissy began to think about the baby that was coming. What would the people say? ‘Ah, how they’ll laugh! how they’ll laugh!’ she said. She was thinking of Hetty the other side of the high wall. So the lovely Isobel was kept shut up in the kitchen all day long like a prisoner, and poor Percy was ordered to go and talk things over with Bill Mansell, who was the last man on earth he wanted to talk things over with. Anyhow, it was arranged between them somehow, without Percy getting murdered, for Isobel to be packed off to Grandma in Alderney to have the baby. I don’t know what they thought they was going to do with the baby when it arrived.

  Grandma in Alderney was no relation; or, at least, only by marriage. She was the widow of old Harold Martel from Ronceval. She was English. That’s why she was called Grandma, and not La Gran’mère. She had been married twice in England and had come to Guernsey when she was a widow for the second time for a rest-cure. Dick Stonelake, who married Harold’s and Percy’s sister, Lil, was a nephew of her second husband and, on the strength of that, she had invited herself to stay at Ronceval. Dick Stonelake and Lil lived at Ronceval with old Harold, who was then a widower. The merry widow wasn’t a young woman, but she had a way with her; and old Harold was married to her before you could say Jack Robinson. The children wasn’t all that pleased to have a step-mother; but she didn’t push herself. In fact, she went out of her way to make things easy for them. She got round old Harold to buy a house in Alderney, where she lived with him until he died: which wasn’t long. The house was then hers.

  She kept on very friendly terms with the step-children. ‘The children of all my dear husbands,’ she said, ‘are my own dear children as well.’ She treated them all alike. When she went to England for a holiday, she stayed with each of her children and step-children in turn; and when she came to Guernsey, she stayed a week at Ronceval with Dick and Lil and a week at Timbuctoo and a week at Wallaballoo. She never gave more to one than to the other. I don’t know that they would have minded much, if she had, judging from what they said about ‘the old woman from Alderney’ behind her back; but she had such a way with her that, while she was with them, they would use the silver tea-pot and bring out the best china and make as much fuss of her as if she was the Queen of England.

  It was clever of Prissy to think of sending Isobel to Grandma in Alderney. Grandma could hardly refuse because she had had Raymond to stay with her one summer for a month when he wasn’t well. It was wonderful how Prissy managed to do it without Hetty ever knowing. The morning Isobel was bundled in the van and taken to the harbour and put aboard the Courier, my Cousin Mary Ann was sent round to Wallaballoo to help Hetty and keep her busy indoors out of the way. Luckily, Harold was along the Braye Road working on a new house he was building for Tom Mauger, the son of old Tom Mauger my father worked for. They say ‘Be sure your sins will find you out.’ Well, that was a case when they didn’t. The only person who knew was my Cousin Mary Ann; and she didn’t tell a soul until she told me, and that was years after they was all dead and buried. It’s funny, because I’ve got a secret too, but that secret even my Cousin Mary Ann didn’t find out to her dying day.

  She heard news of Isobel through Prissy from time to time. Isobel got on well with Grandma in Alderney. She was allowed to go where she wanted, and talk to who she liked; and Grandma was given to entertaining soldiers stationed at Fort Albert, because they was such nice boys and had no homes to go to. The baby was still-born. ‘Ah well, everything turn out for the best!’ said Prissy. ‘When Horace come back, they can start all over again with clean sheets on the bed.’ The next news was that Isobel was married to a sergeant in the Staffords, and living in the married quarters at Fort Albert. When the regiment left Alderney, she went with it to England. Prissy said, ‘It only go to show what happen if you try to do the best you think for somebody. I will never be such a fool again, me!’

  Hetty came to see my mother full of complaints against Prissy because Horace was gone away. She didn’t know how Raymond was going to live without him. To make it worse, Horace hadn’t even told Raymond he was going away, or as much as come to say good-bye to him. Raymond was off his food and couldn’t sleep and was going about looking like a ghost. Then La Prissy came with her side of the story. She said Horace would have come to say good-bye to us, if he’d had the time; but he had to go away in a hurry, so as to be sure to get a good place on the liner. I happen to know he was made to travel steerage and given fifty pounds by his father and told never to show his nose in Guernsey again, or ask for more. Grandma from Alderney didn’t come and stay in Guernsey again; though she had to pass through on the way to England, but put up at the Belle Vue Hotel in Town for the night. She was going to stay with a granddaughter in Hampshire, who had just got married. While she was there, she tripped over the root of a tree in the New Forest and broke her leg and died from the shock. The house in Alderney was sold and the money went to the granddaughter. The Martels got nothing.

  There had been business going on with the lawyers for years over the house at Ronceval. Old Harold Martel was supposed to have given it to his son-in-law, Dick Stonelake, before he went to live with his new wife in Alderney. He can only have given it; because Dick Stonelake didn’t have a penny of his own. He came over to Guernsey with the English company that put up pumps and what-not to get gold out of the sea at Vazon. If a Guernseyman had got such a crack-brained idea, every other Guernseyman would have said he was mad; but because it was a Mr Smith from London, they believed every word he said and gave him their money in hundreds to throw in the sea. He didn’t get a penny of mine. Everybody on the island went to Vazon on Sunday afternoons in their traps and carriages to see the machine that was put up; and me and Jim went on our bikes. I heard they did get a little gold out of the sea, because there are a few specks of gold in the rocks around there; but they’d have had to pump up and boil away the whole of the English Channel to get enough to make a sovereign. The heads of the company vamoosed back to England, pumps and tanks and boilers and all; and with a lot of Guernsey people’s money in their pockets.

  Dick Stonelake wasn’t one of the heads. He was only a workman helping to put up the pumps and tanks and boilers, so perhaps he didn’t mean to rob the Guernsey people. Anyhow, he married Lilian Martel, and his part in the gold-rush was forgiven, if not forgotten. Old Harold had long before let his building business pass to young Harold and Percy; and, for his old age, had put up greenhouses and become a grower. Dick worked for his father-in-law, though he knew nothing about growing; and, when he was given the place, if he ever was, took over altogether. When the old man died, Harold said he had been cheated. The property at Ronceval ou
ght to have come to him by rights, as the eldest son. He found a lawyer in Town to back him up; and Dick found another lawyer who said old Harold had every right to give away his property to who he liked while he was alive. They went at it hammer and tongs; but I don’t think they ever meant to settle it, those two lawyers. There was old laws dug up and new laws made up, and appeals against the old laws and appeals against the new laws, and appeals against the appeals. In the end, all the money Harold might have got from his father’s house went to pay the lawyers; and Dick had to borrow from the bank, or he would have gone bankrupt. Lawyers are rogues. I always say whatever you do in this life, keep away from doctors and lawyers, or you will end up dead and have nothing left.

  It was Raymond who told me the story. He used to laugh about it. He called it the Hundred Years’ War. ‘What was that, then?’ I said. He said England and France was once at war for a hundred years and Guernsey was in between, so got it from both sides. I didn’t know that, me. I thought Guernsey had always been a peaceful little island. I learnt a lot from Raymond. After Horace was gone, he often came to have a chat with me. He missed Horace terrible. He said, ‘I’d have gone with him, if he’d let me!’ Horace didn’t send him as much as a postcard. Prissy got letters and said he was going wonderful. He was working for a company rich enough to buy up the whole of Guernsey and not notice it. She didn’t say what he was doing for that company, or how much of their money was going into his pocket. There was no mention of Raymond.

  Raymond have puzzled me more than any other chap I have ever known. He was a serious boy and a good boy; yet sometimes he pulled people to pieces so much he quite frightened me. For instance, he said when he was living with Grandma in Alderney, she had pictures of her three husbands on the wall of the sitting-room. They was all enlarged photos of old men with piggy eyes and bushy beards; and she would come into the room and say, ‘Whenever I come into this room, Raymond, your dear grandfather’s eyes follow me everywhere,’ and look from one picture to the other. Raymond said, ‘I bet she didn’t know which was which!’ He was the same about religion. He went to St Sampson’s Chapel regular, but sometimes I thought he didn’t believe a word of it. He said Horace said it was all made up. That was the first I heard of Horace having any idea in his head except girls and his belly and swank. Horace didn’t believe Jesus was conceived of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Ghost. He said there are plenty of virgins on Guernsey who conceive, but it is not by the Holy Ghost. Raymond was worried about Jesus Christ going up to heaven in a cloud. He said it was awful to think of the people in all the churches and chapels on the island praying to somebody who perhaps wasn’t there: yet sometimes you have the feeling somebody is there, he said; and then everything is all right.

  Once I thought Raymond was gone in the head when he was talking about Horace. ‘Horace used to save me from sin,’ he said. It was the last thing I could imagine Horace doing for anybody. Raymond said, ‘I sin on my own. D’you know what I mean?’ He was looking at me very straight and honest with those blue eyes of his. He was innocent, Raymond. ‘I think I do,’ I said. ‘Who started you on that tack?’ ‘A boy at the Secondary,’ he said. He didn’t tell me who. I said, ‘Well, don’t worry: you’ll soon go with a girl.’ He said, ‘It isn’t a girl I think of while I’m doing it.’ I didn’t know what to say. He said, ‘Horace didn’t do it. I asked him. That’s why when he was here I didn’t either; or I couldn’t have looked him in the face.’

  I was glad one night on the way home from work when I saw Raymond talking at the corner at Baubigny to Christine Mahy from Ivy Lodge. She was a cousin of Jim’s and I had met her a few times at his house. I can’t say I liked her very much. I know people said she was a lovely-looking girl. She had the Mahy look and was not unlike Lydia, but not so tall and thin; and I couldn’t see her going into a decline. She was a strong country girl, really, for all her pale face and high cheek-bones and big mysterious eyes. She had a lovely singing voice, and sang solos in the chapel choir; but she also had a sing-song holy way of speaking, as if she was saying her prayers. I didn’t trust her. By then I had been with two or three besides Big Clara and was getting to know what girls was made of. I put Christine down as one of those who looked as if she was cool, but was hot. I had seen her out with the Renouf brothers and the Birds from St Sampson’s; and they wasn’t at all the sort of boys who would go out with the Virgin Mary. She was a pupil-teacher in St Sampson’s Infants’ School; and it was not long after I had seen her talking to Raymond that she went away to England to study for two years in a Training College. I ran into Fred Renouf one evening and said, ‘I hear your friend, Christine Mahy, have gone to England.’ ‘Good riddance!’ he said. ‘Why, what’s she like, then?’ I said. ‘Prick teaser,’ he said.

  When I saw Raymond again I mentioned I had seen him talking to Christine. ‘For goodness sake, don’t tell my mother!’ he said. ‘What d’you take me for?’ I said. ‘It’s only platonic,’ he said, ‘we were talking about Robert Browning.’ ‘Who’s he?’ I said. ‘A poet,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t understand,’ I said. ‘I like Tennyson better,’ he said: ‘In Memoriam.’ ‘What’s that mean?’ I said. ‘It’s a poem he wrote in memory of his friend who died,’ he said. I didn’t think Hetty had much to fear from Christine Mahy. He said, ‘God is love. That’s true, isn’t it?’ I said, ‘It say so in the Bible.’ He said, ‘Yes, but it’s true, isn’t it?’ I said, ‘I’m not a minister.’ I didn’t want to argue about religion. He said, ‘If it isn’t true, everybody who is alive ought to go down to the sea and drown themselves; because then there is no hope for anybody.’ I said, ‘Come on, let’s go and see what’s in the crab-pots.’

  10

  I am Church, me. I was christened Church and I will be buried Church; and, if I’d got married, I would have been married Church. I go in the Vale Church sometimes, when there is nobody there. I like the old place. I have lived all my days to the sound of the bells of the Vale Church, coming to me on the wind over the water. When I was a boy I used to hear them playing a hymn of a Sunday evening, and then the quick ding-dong, ding-dong, before the service began; and I would hear them practising of a Wednesday night. I have heard them ring out merry for weddings, and toll the big bell for funerals; but, even when they ring out for joy, they are sad, the bells of the Vale; and now I am old, when I hear them, I tremble.

  The young people of nowadays can have no idea how much religion there was on the island, say sixty or seventy years ago. There was nothing else to go to. People didn’t go on the beach much and picnics was only for Thursday afternoons early closing. There was no Pictures, or they was only just beginning; and the Radio and the T.V. hadn’t yet been thought of, thank God! La Hetty had a phonograph. It was the first of those sort of things I heard. It was a machine with a roller that turned, and the music came out through a trumpet. I can remember it playing:

  Side by side in sunshine,

  Side by side in rain,

  Sharing each other’s troubles,

  Bearing each other’s pain.

  La Hetty used to cry she thought it was so lovely.

  Of course, people still go to church and chapel, but not as many as used to. I know one chapel that have been a Picture House, and then a garridge; and another is now the Labour Office in Town. There are people who would turn in their graves if they knew. Me and Jim went the round of most of the churches and chapels to see what was going on. There was plenty to choose from. I think every religion in the world, except the Mormons, must have come and built a place of worship in Guernsey at some time or another. I heard there was even two of those came over once; but they was thrown into the harbour, because they believed in having three or four wives like in the Bible. I don’t see why they should have been thrown in the harbour for that: there have been more than one Guernseyman who have had three or four wives. It’s true, perhaps they didn’t always all live in the same house; but it come to the same thing.

  Jim and me used to go to the Baptists when there was bapt
izings going on. There was two lots of Baptists. There was those who didn’t think they was properly baptized unless they went right down into a tank of water, and those was the ones Jim and me used to like to go and see; and there was those who was satisfied if they had a few drops of water sprinkled on the forehead. Jim said, ‘I had that done to me when I was a baby. I don’t want to get wet again, me!’ There was the Quakers we heard about; but we didn’t go. There was only a few on the island and Mr Vaudin, the one I knew, was such a patient, kind, good man, I didn’t want to be disrespectful. He said they didn’t say or do anything arranged beforehand at their meetings, but just waited for the Spirit to move them. That wouldn’t have done for me. If I had to wait for the Spirit and was honest, I would have to be dumb and wouldn’t move for the rest of my life. There was also the Christian Scientists in Mount Row; and we went once. They had a woman for a Minister, and she told us that if you think you haven’t got a pain, then you haven’t got a pain; but I have always found I get the pain first and the thought after. Then there was the Wesleyans.

  The Wesleyans was nearly Church. The difference was that in Church you said your prayers for yourself, according to the words was written in the book; and, in Chapel, the Minister said your prayers for you in his own words. The great attraction in Chapel was the sermon: people would follow what they thought was a good preacher from chapel to chapel, Sunday after Sunday. I have never liked the people who preach, me. They pray for themselves and preach to themselves, and do not know the good and the bad that is in the heart of Ebenezer Le Page. It wasn’t to hear the sermon Jim and me went to the Wesleyans. It was for the Harvest Festival. It was as good as Church, if not better. Jim liked to see the fruit and the flowers and the vegetables and the big loaves. There was a lot of well-to-do people belonged to the Wesleyans; and they gave plenty. It was for the poor after. I have noticed if you belong to the Wesleyans and are in business, you get on well. The Lord look after His own.