The Book of Ebenezer le Page (18 page)

If it taught anybody a lesson, it was me. I kept on telling myself I was in the right; but then Jim hadn't done any wrong. For weeks I couldn't get it out of my mind, until I had to do something about it. I knew now it was no use trying to be friendly with Phoebe, but I couldn't see why that should make any difference between me and Jim. Anyway, the least I could do was to go along and say to him I was sorry for what I had done. I went one evening after tea. When I got to the top of the hill by the church, I could see him out the back getting a bucket of water from the well. I rang my bell, but he didn't look up. I watched him go indoors. He looked absolutely done in. Even his walk was different. He had always walked with his shoulders back and his head up; but now he walked as if he had no heart or pride left in him. I leant my bike against the wall and walked up the path to the front door. I noticed he had finished putting in my rose cuttings. I knocked. Phoebe opened the door. ‘Please can I speak to Jim?' I said. ‘He's not in,' she said and shut the door in my face. I walked slowly back to my bike. I was too miserable even to go to Town and get drunk. I saw the birth in the Press. MAHY. At Sous L'Église, to Phoebe (née Ferbrache) and James, a son, Stanley.

The War came. It came without me knowing it. One day everything was as it always had been, and the next day the War was on. I was to the races on L'Ancresse Common when I heard. I went every year. I didn't bet on the horses, though Jim did and sometimes won a few shillings; but I liked to see the horses running and all the funny sorts of people who was there, who you never saw anywhere else. There was one chap who would sell you a wad of paper full of money for sixpence. You saw him drop the money in, pounds' worth, and roll it up; but when the paper was undone there was nothing in it, not even the sixpence. Those who was fools enough to buy it couldn't say anything, because it wasn't allowed by law to buy and sell money.

I had heard of the Kaiser, of course, and of the murder of somebody or another, and of the scrap of paper that was torn up, and of poor little Belgium; but I hadn't taken much notice. I had other things to think about. Mr Dorey had made me foreman and, what with my own greenhouse to look after as well, I had plenty to do. I was packing nearly every evening and the tomatoes was making a good price. The weather was wonderful that summer, I remember, and I thought it was mad for anybody to be going to war. I know now I ought to have guessed there was something in the wind, because a lot of big nobs had come over the month before and made speeches about the Entente Cordiale; and St Peter Port was decorated red, white and blue.

Actually, the excuse was they was come over to unveil a statue of Victor Hugo. Victor Hugo was a famous Frenchman who used to live in a big house up Hauteville; but that was before my time. He wrote stories and poetry books in French; but I haven't read any. I used to see his books for sale in Boots' window up Smith Street, but I don't see them about now. The statue was put up in Candie Grounds, and there was a lot of talk about it. Up to the last minute some people was saying it didn't ought to have been allowed. I like the statue myself. He is standing on the edge of a rock with his coat-tails flying in the wind, and looks as if he was alive. The trouble was that at the top of the Gardens there was a statue of Queen Victoria, and all she could see of Victor Hugo was his backside. It seems he had said some very rude things about her when he was alive and it was thought it had been done on purpose by the French as a dig at the English. However, the fuss and bother died down after a lot of writing for and against, and the statue was left where it was put, or perhaps there would have been a war between France and England. It's all right now, because they have built a pavilion between the Queen and Old Victor, so she don't have to look at his behind for the rest of her life.

I didn't like the French, and I think most Guernsey people felt the same. I thought they was dirty. Certainly Fountain Street and Rosemary Steps and round there, where it was mostly French people lived, nobody could say was a clean part of the town. I liked the ‘Marseillaise'. It was the only one of the national anthems I liked to listen to during the War. It made you want to go and fight. ‘God Save the King' was a funeral march. However, I got friendly with a young Frenchman over the Victor Hugo Fête, and then I thought the French mightn't be so bad after all. I was looking at the statue after it was unveiled and the young Frenchman was standing by me and asked me in English, though from the way he spoke I could tell he was French, what I thought of it. I said I thought it was good, though I didn't know about such things. He said it was good. ‘The old man would like to see himself up there,' he said, ‘looking out to sea.'

He told me his name was Marcel Duhau and he was French master at the Secondary School. I spent the evening of the Fête with him; and after that went out with him Thursday evenings for several weeks. One of these we was sitting in Candie Grounds listening to the band playing. It was a seat under the trees we was sitting on, and he was wearing a brand-new smart jacket. A bird in the branches up above, who I suppose couldn't get to sleep because of the music, dropped a plop on his shoulder. If I had been wearing a nice new jacket and a bird had done that on it, I would have been very upset. He wasn't. All he said was, ‘Dieu merci les vaches ne volent pas!' I have never forgotten it. I only saw him once or twice more. Immediately the War broke out he was called back to France. He had already done his military training and was sent to the Front straight away. He was killed the same year. It was all wrong. A chap who could make a joke like that didn't ought to have been killed.

The War didn't make a lot of difference to Guernsey at first. It wasn't the end of the world, as some people thought it was going to be. A few fellows I knew who had served in the Navy, mostly pilots and fishermen, was called back; and chaps who had served in the regular Army and was on Reserve, mostly fellows from the quarries, had to join their units. Some of the Townies, who wanted to make a show, went off and volunteered; and sons of the gentry who was in the Training Corps of Elizabeth College went for officers, as was only natural for them to do. My boss's son was one and Douglas Blackburn I knew from the top of Sinclair was another. Myself, I was in the Reserve of the Militia, but the Guernsey Militia wasn't the regular Army. I went on raking in the shekels. The tomatoes went up to five bob a basket, and that was good for August, when you only expected three. The boats and trains was more or less as usual. I got a supply of baskets from Munro on the Esplanade and sent my consignment to a Mr J. Winstanley in Weston-super-mare. They seemed to like tomatoes in Weston-super-mare. Then the States passed a law letting the Militia become part of the British Army for the duration, and called it the First Battalion of the Royal Guernsey Light Infantry. I might have to go.

Just about then I ran into La Prissy in Town one Saturday. ‘Goodness, aren't you in khaki yet?' she said. ‘Ah well, all the men are going to have to go and get killed and the women will be left to do the work!' I shied clear of Prissy when I could. Her tongue was getting more like a needle every day. I wasn't one to say much of what I was thinking those days. I didn't want to get mixed up in arguments and quarrels if I could help it; and then I'm damned if one Saturday night I didn't go and start a fight in the Caves de Bordeaux over the bloody War! I was with Jim Le Poidevin and Jim Machon, and Eddie Le Tissier was there, I remember, and Amos Duquemin and old Wally Budden and Solly Entwistle and a dozen others, I've forgotten now who.

When I walked in all was peace and joy. Mess Fellerah was behind the bar with Jack Bullock from Vauvert serving drinks and said ‘Good-evening,' as nice as pie. There was a picture of the King and Queen on the wall, draped in the Union Jack, and another of Monsieur Poincaré, draped in a tricolor, and one of the Tsar of Russia. The Tsar had no bunting, him. That wasn't from lack of respect, I don't think: I don't expect Mess Fellerah knew what colours to put. I'd already had a few drinks before I got there. That was the worst of going out with the two Jims. I said I wouldn't mind a drop of cognac; and that did it! I opened my tatie-trap wider than I had ever done before.

I said I was all for a fight, me; but I didn't see no sense in going to fight somebody I didn't know. ‘I don't see why Guernsey have got to go to war because England go to war,' I said. ‘Guernsey people go all over the world, but they quarrel at home among themselves: they don't go and quarrel with the people of other countries. They are not the ones who want to paint the map of the world red, white and blue. No! No! No!' I shouted. ‘It's for every true-born Guernseyman to stop at home and mind his own business!' The fat was in the fire. There was a hell of a row! Mess Fellerah said, ‘That is not the sort of talk I want to have to listen to in here, Mr Le Page!' and pointed to the picture of the King and Queen and to the picture of Monsieur Poincaré and to the picture of the Tsar of Russia with tears in his eyes. Jim Le Poidevin backed me up.

He said the Militia was never meant to go and fight across the water. It was meant to defend the island against Buonaparte, or anyone else who tried to come and take it. Amos Duquemin, who always knew everything, said it wasn't only to defend the island: it was to defend the King's Person. I said the King's Person was quite safe. He was in his big palace in London, eating and drinking. Amos Duquemin said, ‘He won't be for long, if the Kaiser gets there!' Old Wally Budden, who was ninety, if a day, and had whiskers on his chin like a fringe of vraic, said, ‘I say to you it is the duty of every Guernseyman with red blood in his veins to go and fight for Prince Albert the Good!' I said, ‘What on earth have Prince Albert the Good got to do with it? It's George and Mary now.' He didn't know about those. He said Queen Victoria came over and only made bad worse, but when Prince Albert came with her, he made it all right. I said, ‘I don't know nothing about what happened those days. What is the use of digging up the past? It's the present we got to live in!' He said, ‘His statue is on the Albert Pier.' ‘A nuisance of a statue it is too!' I said. ‘The birds make their mess in his hat.' ‘He'd have liked that, Prince Albert the Good,' said old Wally and started shaking his stick at me. He only wished he was a young man again so he could go and shed the last drop of his red blood for Prince Albert the Good! ‘It's not too late, yet, Gran'-père,' said Jim Le Poidevin. ‘If the Kaiser saw you coming, he'd run!'

Eddie Le Tissier was trying to calm me down. ‘Ebby, be your age!' he said. ‘If England didn't look after us we'd starve. Guernsey could never grow everything to feed itself.' He said we had to have tea and sugar and flour sent, and coal as well; and all from England. Besides, it wasn't the Guernsey Militia saved the island from Buonaparte: it was Lord Nelson and the British Navy at the Battle of Trafalgar. Jim Machon said he didn't care a bugger about Lord Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar, but he wanted to go to the War because it was a chance to get away from Guernsey and have his passage paid. Over here you can't go for a piss without everybody knowing it, but a soldier is here today and gone tomorrow, and can do what he like.

I didn't seem to have many on my side; but Solly Entwistle was wriggling to get a word in. He was over forty, but like a child, and had St Vitus Dance, and was very religious. ‘He that taketh the sword shall perish by the sword!' he said in his squeaky voice. ‘The Lord is a man of war!' croaked old Wally Budden. ‘That's ri'! That's ri'!' said Amos Duquemin. He was drunk. ‘If there's any man here who don't want to go and fight, he ought to be tarred and feathered!' he said. ‘I'll see you tarred and feathered first, Amos Duquemin!' I said. I don't know if it was me hit him first, or him me; but I do know that the next minute everybody was fighting everybody else. I don't think anybody knew which side they was on. Jack Bullock, who used to take on all comers in a tent at the Fair on the Albert Pier, was around the counter in two shakes and, before we knew what had happened, we was all bundled out. It was cold outside, and we stood shivering on Trinity Square, blindly hitting out, but not hitting anybody. I remember thinking it was a funny sort of square, because it only got three sides.

Jim Le Poidevin had left his van in the Bordage Yard. I had brought my bike, but he said it would be safer in the back of the van than with me on it, and drove me home. Next morning when I woke up I gave myself a good talking-to. ‘Who are you, Ebenezer Le Page,' I said to myself, ‘to open your big mouth about things you know nothing about? In future, remember you was born one of those who have to do what he is told. If the Bailiff and the States of Guernsey don't know what is the right thing to do, how d'you expect you can?' I thought of what my Uncle Willie said to my father. ‘Look after Number One, Alf; and let the world manage its own affairs.' If my father had taken his advice, he might have been alive yet. I wasn't going to volunteer for something I didn't want to do; but I wasn't going to grumble about the War either. If I had to go, I'd go; and obey orders.

At the beginning, there was so many wanted to go the powers-that-be didn't have to call up any; and, later on, they picked on the ones they wanted, but I don't know how. I know some of the fit ones was left behind, and others wangled cushy jobs in the Orderly Room at the Fort and never left the island. Most of the young quarrymen was called up and went to France. The quarries kept on working somehow; but the stone piled up to be sent to England after the War, as there wasn't ships to spare. I never understood about the fishermen. I know Jean Batiste was among the first to be called up; but then he was only one chap on his own, and didn't have nobody to put in a word for him. I was lucky and my number didn't come up.

The price for tomatoes went up and up; and soon they was a pound a basket. That was one-and-eight a pound, and goodness knows how much they sold for. I thought the people who bought them must be mad. I was then sending mine to a Mr Ralph Philips in Covent Garden for sale to the big hotels in London where the officers ate. I changed all the cheques I got into sovereigns. They had stopped making sovereigns in England, but there was plenty in the Old Bank in Guernsey. It was hopeless to try and keep so many in my money-box, because it was already crammed full to the top; so I emptied it into the pied-du-cauche where my mother kept the money she had saved during her lifetime. By the end of the War, there was more than a good many hundreds of sovereigns belonging to my mother and me in the pied-du-cauche up the chimney.