The Book of Ebenezer le Page (11 page)

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.

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 couldn'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.

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.