The Book of Ebenezer le Page (15 page)

New Year's Day I helped to get ready for the party. The Mahys used to have a quiet Christmas with just the family; but New Year's Day they gave a big party. I remember one year Christine Mahy was there. She had done her time in College and was teaching in a school at Frimley in Surrey, but she was then home for the holidays. I asked her if she had seen anything of Raymond lately. He hadn't been round to see me for months, and I was beginning to wonder if something was the matter with him. ‘Oh yes,' she said, ‘I've been seeing quite a lot of Raymond.' His health was all right, it seemed, but he had decided he wanted to be a minister. I couldn't make that out at all. He was such a sincere boy, I'd have thought a minister was the last thing he would want to be.

La Hetty came to see my mother soon after to tell her all about it. The two of them was having tea and a chin-wag when I came in from work. La Hetty was half for it, and half against. At first she blamed Horace. She said Raymond only wanted to be a minister so as he could go away from Guernsey, because Horace had gone away from Guernsey. I was sure there was something more to it than that. She went on to say that Raymond had been converted. He had always gone to Chapel; but he had never ‘come forward', as they say. Hetty was ashamed he had made a show of himself in front of everybody. She did say there hadn't been much talk. As a matter of fact, it was done quiet at St Sampson's. They didn't cry aloud their sins and throw themselves on their knees at the penitent form, as they did at the Salvation Army. They just stood up in an after-meeting where most of those present was already converted.

Hetty said Raymond now taught in the Sunday School and was out most nights of the week on something to do with Chapel. He helped with the Band of Hope and the Scouts and went to Mr Carrington's Bible Class. Mr Carrington was manager for John Leale on the Bridge, and Hetty was pleased Raymond was getting mixed up with the Leales and the Birds and the Doreys and the Johns and such people, who was all well-to-do and relations of each other in one way or another. ‘After all,' she said, ‘the Le Pages are as common as flies.' She wasn't as worried as I would have thought at the idea of him going away. She said she didn't know how she was going to bear it while he was away; but if when after he came out of College, he was sent to preach in a Chapel in England, she could sell up everything and go and live with him. She didn't say what was going to happen to Harold. I didn't know if Wallaballoo was her house, or his. I thought it was his. She said, ‘There's nothing I'd like better than to go and live in a place where I'm not known, and where everybody don't know all my business.' I listened, but I didn't say nothing, except that I hoped Raymond hadn't forgotten he got a Cousin Ebenezer.

He came round the next evening. ‘Hullo, stranger!' I said. He said he was sorry he hadn't been to see me before, but he'd been busy. It sounded all right; but he was different somehow. He didn't look at me straight. It was as if there was something he was ashamed of. I said I was just going down to my boat to mend a net, if he'd like to come with me. He said he'd come and he sat on the shingle watching me. La Petite Grève is only a small bay, but it's nice with the rocks and the noise of the sea, and only the sea and the rocks to look at. I was quite happy working with him sitting there saying nothing. I wasn't going to bring up religion, unless he did. At last he said, ‘I suppose you think I am a hypocrite.'

I said, ‘I reckon we're all hypocrites, one way or the other, if the truth was known.' He said, ‘Jesus saves.' I didn't like to hear a boy talking like that. I said, ‘It was brave of you to stand up for what you believe.' He said, ‘It's true, you know. I've proved it.' I said, ‘Well, I haven't. I'm not saved.' He said, ‘I don't do it any more.' I wondered how that could be. Myself, since I was thirteen or fourteen, I hadn't managed to live without something having to happen sometimes. I said, ‘Yes, but nature is nature. Something got to happen.' ‘It doesn't happen to me now,' he said, ‘except when I'm asleep, and, when I wake up, I repent.' I began to feel rather sick of Raymond. I liked him better when he was a sinner. I said, ‘How long before you go to your college?' ‘Years yet,' he said. ‘I have exams to pass first.' ‘You'll do that all right,' I said. He said, ‘I really came to ask you to do the same.' ‘How d'you mean?' I said. ‘Make the Great Decision,' he said. ‘I don't know,' I said. ‘We'll see.'

My mother prepared some supper for us and sat reading her Bible while we ate it. I will say for my mother's lot they didn't go round trying to convert everybody. They knew they was right and it was other people's own look-out if they wasn't. Raymond started me thinking about Liza again. She was my idea of being saved. I didn't want to have to keep on chasing after this one and that one for what I could get. The chance came. It happened it was that year Jim and me went to the Coronation Fête at St Peter in the Wood. There was a Fête in each parish on a different Thursday for the Coronation of King George V, and we went to them all; but it was the one at St Peter in the Wood was the red-letter day for me, because it was there I tried to get down to brass tacks with Liza.

Before the free tea, which was what we went for, was a Grand Procession of farm waggons with chaps and girls in dressed up showing tableaux of the History of England. There was King Alfred burning the cakes and King Canute getting his feet wet and King John looking for the Crown Jewels in the Wash and King Richard murdering the Princes in the Tower and Queen Elizabeth sitting on her throne. Liza was Britannia. There was going to be three prizes given: first, second and third; and a lot of people thought Queen Elizabeth was going to win the first. Eva Robilliard was Queen Elizabeth. She was a very pretty girl and wore a lovely dress; but she was bowing and smiling and throwing kisses to everybody: not at all like a queen. Liza stood like a statue. She didn't move a muscle. Her lovely hair was down over her shoulders and she was wearing a long white robe with a golden girdle and golden sandals. She was standing on shingle with a conch shell at her feet. She rested one hand on a shield of the Union Jack done in flowers, and was holding a sort of fork thing in the other. She had a helmet on her head like you see in pictures of Britannia in books. She came on the last waggon and, when the crowds of people saw her, they cheered so loud the judges had no choice but to give her the first prize. I thought that's the girl for me!

Jim and me was with the three Bichard girls from La Croûte. Jim always said there was safety in numbers and thought three was a good number because you couldn't very well ask one to play gooseberry. The tea for everybody was spread on trestles set up on the grass at L'Érée, and each of us was given a Coronation mug. I have mine yet. When we was just going to begin, who should come along but Liza? She'd dropped the shield and the fork thing, but still had the fancy helmet on her head. She saw me and came over, all smiles. ‘Fancy seeing you right out here!' she said. I said, ‘I'm glad you got the first prize. I'd have given it to you myself.' She said, ‘Is there room for me?' I said, ‘Of course there's room for you!' and pushed up and made room on the form for her between me and Jim. I had never known Liza be so nice to everybody as she was that afternoon. She went into raptures over the Bichard girls because they had such lovely hair, though it was nothing like as lovely as hers. She said Jim looked the picture of health and ought to have gone in the Procession as Richard, Coeur de Lion. After the tea there was going to be racing and games, but she said she couldn't go in for racing and games in her present dress. I said, ‘How about coming for a stroll along the beach?' ‘All right,' she said, ‘then I can call in to my mother's house and change. I don't like being looked at by everybody.' I thought well, that's a lie to start with.

She gave me her hand to help her down over the rocks, and we walked across Rocquaine Bay towards Fort Grey. She asked me if I knew the story of how it was Fort Grey came to be haunted. I didn't. She said that hundreds of years ago, when it was called Rocquaine Castle, two young lovers sat on the wall in each other's arms by moonlight and threw themselves together into the sea. ‘Whatever did they want to do that for?' I said. ‘They was lovers,' she said. ‘They was mad,' I said. She said, ‘If you was in love with me, wouldn't you want to throw yourself with me into the sea?' I said, ‘If I was in love with you, I would want to live as long as I could and have you for my regular girl.' She stopped dead in her tracks and threw her head back and laughed. I didn't know if she was laughing at me, or if it was because she was pleased.

I said, ‘Listen here, Liza: be serious for once. I like you and you like me: and I know it.' I did know it. When she had kissed me, her lips was hungry enough to eat me up. I said, ‘I don't want you to be going out with Don Guille and every other Tom, Dick and Harry in the town.' She said, ‘How is Florrie Brehaut getting on?' I said, ‘I don't know how Florrie Brehaut is getting on. She have gone to Southampton and is working in a hospital.' ‘I suppose she writes to you every day,' she said. ‘She don't write to me any day,' I said, ‘and I don't write to her neither.' ‘I only wondered,' she said. She had found out what she wanted to know. I was furious.

‘If it comes to that, you don't think anything of me really,' she said, ‘you think more of that Jim Mahy than you do of me.' I said, ‘What have poor old Jim got to do with it? I know where I am with Jim. I don't know where I am with you.' She said, ‘I am not going to be chained to you, or to anybody else, like a dog. I wonder who you think you are.' ‘I am Ebenezer Le Page from Les Moulins,' I said, ‘in case you don't know.' ‘I know, I know,' she said. ‘Ebenezer Le Page from Les Moulins! Is there anybody can be more Guernsey? He is countrified, he is ignorant, he is small! Why, I am even taller than you are!' ‘You are NOT taller than I am,' I said, ‘I am an inch taller than you!' ‘You are not! You are not!' she said; and she ran up on a rock and stood feet above me. I ran up after her. She was standing on wet vraic and there was a pool of the sea on the other side. ‘Aren't I?' she said. ‘Say I am! Say I am!' ‘It's that thing on your head make you look taller,' I said and grabbed it. ‘Give it me back!' she said and started to fight me for it. I couldn't fight fair because I had my Coronation mug in my other hand, and I didn't want to let it fall on the rocks and break it. I gave her a push.

She slipped on the wet vraic and went screaming down into the pool. I jumped off the rock on to the dry sand and went round to see: there she was sitting with the water up to her waist and her golden sandals tangled in the green seaweed and the little fishes swimming round her legs. ‘I hate you! I hate you!' she said. ‘Here, have your silly hat!' I said and threw it at her and it floated on the water. ‘Britannia rules the waves!' I said and went off and left her. When I got back to Jim and the Bichard girls, he said, ‘What have you done with Liza?' ‘I've drownded her,' I said. ‘Well,' he said in his slow drawl, ‘perhaps that's the best thing you could have done.' I felt miserable all the way going home.

Victor died. He wasn't all that old for a bull-dog and I have always thought he must have got himself hurt inside on his last gallivant. He lost interest and wouldn't move, but lay in his basket all day long and got fat and wheezy. The vet said there was nothing wrong with him: it was his breed and he would get over it; but he began to get shivering fits and had a hot nose. He wanted to drink a lot of water, but went off his feed. Jim's mother said she was sorry but she couldn't have him in the kitchen any longer because he smelt; so Jim put his basket in the stable and gave him plenty of straw. One Saturday afternoon we was all having tea in the kitchen when out comes Victor from the stable and trots across the yard. He was as lively on his bandy legs as when he was a pup, and grinning all over his ugly face. ‘Victor's got better!' said Jim. In came Victor and Jim's mother patted him and Wilfred, who was there, said, ‘Hullo, Victor!' though he didn't like him much, and I said, ‘Well done! Good boy!' and at last he got round to Jim, jumping and licking and wagging his tail; and Jim was nearly in tears, he was so happy. Victor went quiet then and rolled his black eyes at the rest of us and trotted back across the yard to the stable. Jim couldn't wait to finish his tea but must get up from the table at once and make a mash of meat and potatoes to take to him. ‘He'll eat this now,' he said, as he went out with it. He hadn't been gone two minutes when he came out of the stable with Victor dead in his arms.

Jim looked terrible. I went outside to meet him, but he turned away from me and went down the meadow. I followed him. He sat on the grass with his big shoulders hunched and laid Victor down in the sun beside him. He spread out Victor's legs so the sun would get to his belly and sat there stroking his back and head. I think in his simple mind he thought the sun might bring Victor back. I was standing behind him, but I couldn't say a word. All of a sudden, he jumped up and said in a rough voice, which was not at all the way Jim spoke to me as a rule, ‘Bring a couple of spades, you! What we wasting time here for?' and bundled Victor under his arm as if he was a bundle of rags. I fetched the spades and brought a bit of sacking. Jim chose a tree by the stream and we dug a deep hole between the roots and I wrapped Victor up in the sacking and put him in it. Jim filled the hole and stamped down the ground. When we got indoors his mother said, ‘Well, he's had a happy life for a dog. You can always get another.' Jim turned on his mother as if he hated her. ‘I don't want another dog!' he said.

Jim began to think about emigrating. He didn't come right out with it at first, but asked me how Horace was getting on. I didn't know. According to Prissy, he was doing wonderful; but you couldn't believe a word she said. La Hetty said if the truth was known, he was begging for his bread from door to door. ‘I don't expect he have made his fortune yet,' I said, ‘or he would have been back to show us.' Jim said, ‘Who wants to make a fortune? All I want is enough to keep myself alive.' It was all very well for Jim to talk. If at any time he wanted a new suit, all he had to do was to have it made to measure by Carré in the Arcade and the bill was sent to his father. When I wanted a new suit I had to save for months, unless I spent some of what I already got put away; but I would never do that.