The Book of Ebenezer le Page (31 page)

Those stones on the top of my wall was prehistorical axe-heads. They had been made thousands and millions of years before 55 B.C. As far as I could understand, they was the first axe-heads ever to have been made in the world, because they was so badly made they couldn't have been made later. He said it was a ‘unique discovery' and a red letter day for him, because now he would be able to prove everybody else so far had been wrong. I suppose I ought to have told him then it was Percy who had chipped those stones; but I didn't have the heart. He would have been too disappointed.

He explained. Up to now it had been thought there was people on Jersey before there was people on Guernsey, because once upon a time Jersey was joined to France and Guernsey wasn't; but if my stones really did belong to Guernsey, then there must have been people on Guernsey at the same time as the first people on Jersey. I said there was a Jerseyman living at La Corbière, but I didn't think he had brought over a bag of stones with him. Dudley asked me if I would break the cement and let him have one of the stones to be examined in a museum in London. I thought I had better not. I said I was sorry, but I couldn't do that: it would spoil the look of my wall. He said it didn't matter for the present, because he must have further evidence. There ought to be a midden near at hand, whatever that was; or a burial-place like the one at L'Islet, only older. Anyhow, his holiday was over and he would have to leave it an open question for this year; but, in the meantime, would I please be good enough under no circumstances to mention it to anybody else. I promised I wouldn't, and it was a promise I was only too willing to give. I thought that was the last I would hear of it. It wasn't.

I didn't see much of Raymond the years he was to College. For one reason, I was working harder on my own than ever I had worked as a foreman for Mr Dorey, and I didn't have the time to go to Wallaballoo. He came to see me every holiday at least once; but I thought he had changed somehow, and I didn't like him so much. He didn't let off any steam; and I realised what he did say wasn't what he was thinking, but what he was being taught. I got the idea he was now resigned to trying to fit in, and be a proper minister like the others.

He always brought one fellow or another home with him for the long summer holiday. I have wondered since if the only reason he did so was to keep Christine at arm's length. She reminded me of a big cat sitting by a mouse-hole; and Raymond was the mouse. He had only to be off his guard for one second, and a great paw would come down; after which she would play with him as long as it amused her, and then eat him up. That would be the end of Raymond. I didn't like the sort of chaps he brought over; and I doubt if he liked them himself. He liked big innocent sinners like Horace and Harry Whitehouse. These new friends of his was far from innocent. They was Christian sinners who had been saved. I remember especially one he brought to see me. Donald somebody: Donald Mallison, I think the name was. The Reverend Donald Mallison. He had just passed his final exam and got his license to preach. I took an instant dislike to him. He was a weed of a chap with no chin to speak of and teeth like a rabbit's. He said to me, ‘Are you of our persuasion?' Raymond laughed. It was his wicked laugh, so there was hope for him yet. ‘He is an old pagan,' Raymond said. ‘I don't know what a pagan is,' I said, ‘so I don't know if I am one or not; but I don't know what a Christian is either. There are thousands of Christians of all shapes and sizes on this island. They may not all of them go after the flesh-pots, though some of them do on the sly; but they go to war and kill other people, and in peace-time make as much money as they can out of each other, and don't love their neighbours any more than I do.' ‘My grumpy uncle is not so far wrong,' said Raymond, ‘though he doesn't know all there is to know.' ‘Christianity is taking up your cross wherever you are,' said the Reverend Donald Mallison, and showed me his rabbit's teeth in a Holy Willie smile. He may have been right at that; but he wasn't taking up no cross, that one. He was as pleased as punch with himself. When he went, he said to me, ‘I will pray for you.' The cheek, I thought.

Well, if being a Christian is taking up your cross, I reckon I took up mine all right when I took up with Liza. I was getting fed up with going out with her. I was feeling like Clive Holyoak when he went to Divine Service. I was bored. I got to the point when, if Ada came along and said Liza wanted me to meet her, I would say I couldn't go because I had to look after my mother. It wasn't always true, as Tabitha came nearly every Saturday and Sunday. The truth was I wanted something a bit less divine. I chased after this one and that one, when I had the time. I expect Liza got to hear of it; but I didn't care.

I saw the old lady's death in the paper; and a few days later there was a lot about the grand funeral she was given. Then on the Saturday morning up comes Ada and says Liza begs me to meet her that afternoon. At three o'clock by the Weighbridge. I cleaned myself up and put on a blue serge suit and a black tie, and prepared to put on a long face and be sympathetic. The bus missed the tram and I was a minute or two late. Liza was already waiting under the clock. She was wearing a beautiful black dress with a long pleated skirt sweeping the ground and a wide black hat that was wider than her shoulders; and she was holding open a ridiculous little fancy black parasol which didn't nearly cover the hat. She didn't look as if she was in mourning: she looked as if she was going to a dance, or on the stage. I said, ‘Goodness, you look like the Merry Widow!' She said, ‘That's just how I feel. Tra-la-la!'

I don't like crocodile tears, but I did think she might have been sorry. ‘She have been very good to you, your mistress,' I said. ‘I have never shed a tear in my life,' said Liza, ‘and I am certainly not going to begin now. Angela would much rather see me walking down the High Street in this dress than weeping over her grave. Men are soppy!' ‘All right, I will take you down High Street,' I said, ‘and we'll have tea at Le Noury's, and everybody can see you.' I paraded her up the Pollet and down High Street, though I can't say I walked with her exactly. I walked behind. I couldn't get near her side for the hat. It was nearly touching the shop windows both sides. The extraordinary thing was she gave no sign of knowing anybody was looking at her. Perhaps she didn't know. Perhaps she was only thinking of Angela; but she was being looked at all right. The good country women doing their shopping stood on the edge of the kerb staring at her with their mouths open. The moment she had passed, their heads was together talking nineteen to the dozen; and I don't like to think what they was saying about me.

Over tea I asked her what she was going to do now. She said she was leaving Castle Carey and going to live in her grandmother's old cottage at Pleinmont. I knew her mother was dead and old Mère Quéripel had been dead years, but I thought the brothers, half-brothers, or cousins was living there. ‘I'm turning out that dirty lot,' she said. ‘They're all born on the wrong side of the blanket. They have no claim.' I didn't know if she had either, for that matter. Anyhow, the old lady had left her some money, and she would have enough to live on from the interest. ‘I am going to be an old maid,' she said, ‘since no man will marry me.' I could have crowned her with the teapot.

Here was me had been willing to marry her for years; and now she was putting the blame on me. She knew damn well I couldn't marry her just then. I wasn't going to leave my mother, when I knew she wouldn't be with me for long; and, besides, I had spent some of the cash I could have built a house with on my new greenhouse and the wall, and an out-board motor for my boat. It is true I hadn't touched the stockingful of sovereigns; but I couldn't have slept in peace in my bed at nights, if I hadn't known those was up the chimney in the wash-house. ‘I am going to become a real old Guernsey woman,' she said, ‘and wear a scoop and sabots and feed the chickens out the back, me.' She could speak the Guernsey English when she wanted to. I had to laugh.

I said, ‘Aren't you going to be lonely with only the chickens for company?' She said, ‘I can take in a lodger.' ‘I hope he pay his rent,' I said. She said, ‘If he is a nice lodger, I might not ask him to pay rent.' It was no use. I couldn't get under her skin nohow. She patted my hand. ‘My dear, you mustn't worry about me,' she said. ‘I will get along all right.' ‘It is not you I am worried about,' I said. ‘It is the poor bloody lodger. You would come out on top, if you was in hell!' ‘Now that is the nicest thing I have ever had said to me!' she said.

I paid for the tea, though she tried to snatch the bill. When we got out in the Arcade, I said, ‘Well good-bye, then!' ‘Is it good-bye?' she said. She sounded surprised. I said, ‘I wonder what you take me for?' ‘I don't believe he likes me any more,' she said. I said, ‘I wonder what you think there is in you to like? Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!

I turned on my heels very dramatic and walked off and left her, but not before I saw her lean against Le Noury's window and throw her head back and burst out laughing; and when I was running down the steps to catch the tram as fast as I could to get away from her, I could hear, or thought I could hear, her laughing.

If I had the arranging of things in this world they would be different, I can tell you. I don't mean to say I would go round improving things right and left. I think every improvement ought to be looked in the mouth first: to make sure it isn't an improvement for the worse. Guernsey have been improving so much for the worse these last years, even me, who have lived here all my life, can hardly recognise it. I know things got to change as the years go by; but they ought to change so as you don't notice. The weather, even, isn't what it used to be. When I was a boy, you could rely on a cloudless sky and sunshine from July to September with, perhaps, a thunderstorm or two. Mr Collenette, who used to write up the Probable Future Developments outside the Guille-Allès Library, only had to write ‘Fine' or ‘Very Fine' for the summer months and he was sure to be right; and in the winter if he wrote ‘Fair to Moderate' or ‘Rough' he was pretty safe. Nowadays you don't know what it is going to do from one day to the next.

I have another complaint to make about the way things are allowed to go on in this world. I am not one who is all that particular about the letter of the law, but I do think there ought to be some sort of rough and ready order for people to go by. I am now thinking of Raymond. He was either trying to go one better than nature, or, later on, I am afraid, one worse. I got to feel about that boy as if I had a sick child on my hands; though I reckon I knew more about him than most fathers know about their sons. It stands to reason a boy can't very well talk to his parents about what they had to do to bring him into the world. He told me most things about himself in time; and I know for a fact he never got square with the business of man and woman. He never found out how they can live together on earth without killing one another off in some way or another. I can't say I have either.

At least he was right in thinking Harold and Hetty would get on better once he was gone away. It seemed so, at any rate, for a time. I met Hetty one day in Weymouth's shop and she said my Cousin Mary Ann didn't go to see her from one year's end to the other. I took that as a sure sign things wasn't going too bad for Hetty. Hetty was quite worried about it, as a matter of fact. She wondered what she could have said or done to my Cousin Mary Ann because, as soon as winter came, she would see her passing the house two or three times a week on the way to Timbuctoo. Of course I had no idea then my Cousin Mary Ann was bringing the bottles of whisky from the off-licence Prissy drank in secret for weeks on end, locked up in her room. Percy didn't know either: he just thought she had the shivers. If she came downstairs to eat, it was when he was out to work; and he was put in what had once been Cyril's little room to sleep.

The Easter before Raymond finished College, a Reverend Bingley came over with his daughter and stayed at the Manse at St Sampson's. He was head of the college Raymond was in and high up in the Wesleyan Church. The daughter was a friend of Raymond's, and Raymond brought her home to meet his mother. I would never have believed it possible Hetty could take to any girl who was a friend of Raymond's, but she did to Miss Phyllis Bingley. Hetty had her to the house a number of times, and invited me to tea one Sunday to meet her. She was certainly a lovely girl, or young woman, I should say, for she was a few years older than Raymond. She wasn't mannish, but had a strong-looking face with straight black hair coiled tight around her head, and those clear, clear blue eyes I had only seen in Hetty. She wore a dark costume and spoke very quiet. She was a real lady, ycu could see, and there was nothing put on about it. She made herself quite at home in the house and helped Hetty to get ready the tea in the front room. Hetty, for her part, didn't bother to try and speak the English properly, so there wasn't aitches flying all over the place. Miss Bingley would have been absolutely the right daughter-in-law for Hetty: all the more so because she was English and nobody knew nothing about her. The trouble with marrying a Guernsey girl is you marry all the scandal in the family for three or four generations, half of it not true. None of the bad things are ever forgotten: rather, a few more are made up.

When Raymond introduced me, he said, ‘This is Ebenezer, my wicked uncle.' She shook hands with me and looked at me and smiled. ‘He doesn't look very wicked, she said, ‘mischievous, perhaps.' She herself had a twinkle in those blue eyes. After tea, Raymond left us together, while he helped his mother wash up. Harold had been given his tea in the kitchen, where he could keep his cap on. He wasn't allowed to meet Miss Bingley. She began by telling me she had lost a very dear brother during the War, but her mother wouldn't believe he was dead, though the War Office said he was. It was for that reason the mother had not come to Guernsey. She would not leave their house in London, in case he came home while she was away. I said I could understand that.