The Book of Ebenezer le Page (10 page)

His great stunt was pulling out teeth without pain. He pulled out hundreds of teeth that night. The people was all mad to have their teeth out. They said he didn't hurt at all; but the brass band made such a row while he was doing it they couldn't hear themselves screaming. It happened poor old Jim had toothache that night. It was a big one at the back that hurt, he said. I said he was lucky: it had happened just at the right time. It was only sixpence a tooth. Up the ladder he went and paid the sixpence. He sat in the chair. The band played and Sequois pulled out the tooth. He put it in Jim's hand. There was nothing wrong with it. Jim knew there ought to have been a hole in it, because he had felt it with his tongue. ‘Hi, you've pulled out the wrong one!' said Jim, ‘it's the other side.' Back he was in the chair and his jaw open, and Sequois pulled out the other. It had a hole in it all right. ‘I'm not going to pay you for this one,' said Jim. ‘That's all right, boy!' said Sequois: ‘Two for the price of one! Two for the price of one! Walk up, ladies and gents! Two for the price of one!' ‘That's all very well,' said Jim, when he came down the steps, ‘but it don't put the other one back.'

I only go to Town when I got to these days and I haven't been at night for years. It is dead compared to what it used to be. It used to be good of a Saturday night. The shops was open to nine or ten, and everybody was there, except the gentry, of course, who did their shopping in the morning. I remember one Saturday night especially. It must have been before Sequois because my father was alive. My mother had come to Town with him in the trap, and I was with Jim. She didn't bother about what I might be up to, as a rule, if I was out with Jim; but that night, when she saw us, she said, ‘Now mind you boys don't go up Horn Street, or they'll throw rotten eggs at you.' I wondered how my mother could know about Horn Street.

It put ideas into our heads and we went down to the Green Shutters to have a look at the whores. There wasn't none of them on show. All the shutters was closed, so they was all busy; but Madame Hamon herself was standing in the door. She said, ‘Bon soir, messieurs,' and we said, ‘Bon soir, madame.' Then we went for a walk along Havelet and up Hauteville and came back the short cut down Horn Street. My mother and father was standing against the railings by the market, looking over at the fire-swallower and the cheap-jack and the Salvation Army down below; and the German Band was playing round the corner of the Commercial Arcade. We was following our noses to the French Halls for to buy hot chestnuts we could smell roasting, but my mother spotted us and called us over. ‘Where have you two been?' she said. ‘Aw, we've just come down Horn Street,' said Jim, ‘but they didn't throw no rotten eggs at us.' My father doubled up laughing, and even my mother had to smile.

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.

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.