The Book of Ebenezer le Page (12 page)

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 ought 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.'

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:

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 baptizings 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.

One Sunday evening when we couldn't think where to go, I said to Jim, ‘How about going to hear my great-aunt preach, eh?' He said, ‘Goodness, I didn't know you have a great-aunt who preaches!' I said, ‘Well, she is not my great-aunt, really. She live with my great-uncle.' He said, ‘Then she is your great-aunt by marriage.' ‘They're not married,' I said. ‘Then she's your great-aunt in sin!' he said. ‘Golly, let's go and hear her!'

It was a rough night, and at first I wasn't sure where the Seaman's Bethel was along the Banks. It was well back in a field by a quarry before you come to Richmond Corner: there are houses there now. I had seen it by day. It was only a tin hut and there was a board outside which said SEAMAN'S BETHEL. BRIGHT GOSPEL SERVICES. ALL WELCOME. They had already started when we got in and was standing up singing ‘Eternal Father, strong to save'. The place was packed and we had to stand at the back. I had never seen such a congregation. It was all men. They was of every race and colour and nation, and young and old, and bald and curly and straight; and had come every one from off the ships in St Sampson's Harbour. They had wonderful faces. They wasn't in no Sunday best clothes, but in guernseys and old jackets and coloured mufflers and sea-boots, and holding their caps in their hands. The only light was a paraffin lamp hanging from the rafters; and, on a low platform at the other end, my great-aunt was conducting the service.

She was a finely built woman, but looked as if she hadn't washed for years, and was wearing a skin-tight black robe that was green with age. She had a crumpled old black hat on her head with what had once been an ostrich feather on it, but was now only a spike sticking up. She was leading the singing in a voice that shook the corrugated iron roof and rose above the voices of the seamen, who was singing like the roaring of the sea. My great-uncle in a reefer-jacket, and looking like an old sea-captain with his white beard flying, was putting his whole heart and soul into the wheezey old harmonium and bringing out the rage of the storm and the whistling of the wind in the shrouds, until I thought every minute the old harmonium was going to fall to pieces on the floor.

When they had sung the hymn, the seamen sat down on the forms and bent over with their faces in their caps, while my great-aunt prayed. I have never in my life heard anybody pray so good as my great-aunt. She didn't ask God for what she wanted: she told Him what He'd jolly well got to do. He'd got to look after every one of the boys now in His Presence as He looked after the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, and not let a hair of their heads perish. If He did that, she would praise His Name.

They all said Amen and sat up; and she read a piece from the Bible. It was the story of the stilling of the tempest on the Lake of Galilee; and every fellow listened with a face as set and serious as if he was in that boat and in that storm. Then they stood up and sang another hymn: