The Book of Ebenezer le Page (38 page)

I ought to laugh at myself now for what I did. I went to see Liza. I waited until the house was done and my crop was planted and spring was on the way. If I had been eighteen years old I couldn't have behaved more like a young fool. I decided not to go on my bike, because I would get dusty and have my trousers creased from the bicycle-clips. I put on my best suit with a black band round the arm and a black tie; and I went on the bus and tram to Town, and then on the bus to Pleinmont. I was as nervous as a boy with his first girl: far more nervous than I had been with my first, who I wasn't nervous with at all. I didn't know what I would find when I got there. I had asked Ada from time to time how Liza was getting on; and she always said, ‘She is keeping very well,' but that was all. I wondered if there would be a lodger; or, if perhaps Liza was married by now and I had missed seeing it in the
Press
. If there was a lodger I could fight him and get him thrown out; but I didn't know what I was going to do if there was a husband.

I got off the bus at the Imperial and walked back along across the grass. The old house was still there and had the same crooked chimney and the wicked windows that looked at you sideways from under the thatch; but there was bright-coloured curtains in the windows now and the woodwork was painted yellow and the door light blue; and, in front, was flowers, flowers, flowers. I walked down the path and knocked on the front door. It opened of itself as I knocked, because it wasn't properly shut. I saw right into the room and the back door was open as well. Nobody was in; but I knew Liza couldn't be far.

I walked round the back; and there was Liza feeding the fowls, as she said she would be. She was wearing a light grey skirt and a white silk blouse and had on a fancy apron she was holding up by the corners, full of corn. She was teasing the fowls and throwing a handful here and a handful there, so they had to run all over the place for it. That was how I wanted to see her in my own back garden. It was as if she knew I was watching her; for she looked my way suddenly. She gave a sort of cry and emptied the apronful of corn all over the poor birds, so they was fighting and jumping on each other to get it. ‘Ebenezer!' she cried. ‘How lovely of you to come and see me!' and she ran to meet me and was in my arms. She didn't kiss me: just hugged and hugged. ‘Where are the sabots and the scoop?' I said. She wasn't wearing nothing on her head, and had on good brown leather shoes. ‘Give me a chance!' she said. ‘I'll come to that yet.' I bet you won't, if I know anything about it, I thought.

‘Come indoors!' she said, ‘I want to hear all about you.' I think two rooms had been knocked into one since the days of her grandmother and mother; for it was quite a largish room. It had a low ceiling of oak beams and an open hearth and a terpid, and the green-bed against the bulge of the wall, where the old oven was; but now there was coloured cushions on the armchair and thick rugs on the stone floor, and the green-bed was made comfortable for sleeping on. The other side was a form against the wall, built in with the house, and the table was full length along it. I noticed a number of brass ornaments on a cabinet: boats, a lighthouse, a windmill; and, in the place of honour among them, was the silver Guernsey milk-can I had given her. There was a ladder up to the loft; and I gave it a sideways look. ‘That's for the lodger,' she said laughing, ‘but I haven't got him yet.'

She made me sit in the big armchair, and curled herself up on the green-bed to talk to me. ‘I was sorry to hear about your mother,' she said. I said, ‘Well, it was a peaceful end. I wouldn't mind going the same way myself.' ‘I have been thinking about you a lot lately,' she said. ‘I want you to get married now and have a family. It is the only way you will ever be happy.' I said, ‘I quite agree with you.' She said, ‘I have given Ada strict instructions to keep an eye on you, because it has to be to a very special girl; and I will have to see her first and approve. I am not having my Ebenezer made miserable.' I didn't like the way the talk was going at all. I was losing my bearings. ‘It is too beautiful this weather to be indoors, don't you think?' she said. ‘Shall we go for a walk on the cliffs?' I said, ‘Yes, let's do that!' I wanted to get her on another tack.

She put on a grey pleated jacket went with the skirt, and we went for our walk up as far as the Old Guard House. It was a lovely afternoon and the sea was like silk. I remember the wild daffodils growing on the hedges and, ever since, when I see wild daffodils I think of Liza. I didn't say anything on the way; and nor did she. I wanted that walk to go on and on and on, for I knew somehow there wouldn't be such another. At last, when we got to the Guard House, I said, ‘I have come to see you today with one purpose, Liza, and that is to ask you to marry me.' She said, ‘Oh, why must you spoil it? I was feeling so happy to be with you!' I said, ‘If you don't want to marry me because you don't like me, say so; but, for goodness sake, give me a reason.' ‘I will die a virgin,' she said. ‘A funny sort of virgin!' I said. ‘I am a virgin, didn't you know?' she said. I said, ‘Well, you won't be a virgin for long, if you marry me!' ‘That is just what I am afraid of,' she said. ‘Now what do you mean?' I said. ‘I wouldn't be me any longer,' she said. I said, ‘You would be Mrs Ebenezer Le Page of Les Moulins.' That finished it!

‘Mrs Ebenezer Le Page of Les Moulins! Mrs Ebenezer Le Page of Les Moulins!' she said, ‘and all the people would say “I wonder what in the world that Liza Quéripel, who have lived for years among the English and the gentry, can be thinking about to marry that Ebenezer Le Page from Les Moulins, who is only a rough Guernseyman and a small grower and fisherman and got nothing and is nobody!”' I said, ‘I got enough to feed you and keep a roof over your head, anyhow. I know you got money of your own, and I wish you didn't. I don't want it; but you can spend it on your clothes. I like to see you well dressed.' ‘Oh my dear, my dear,' she said, ‘as if I meant that! I am only saying what the people would say. They would say far worse things about me. “I wonder what on earth that Ebenezer Le Page, who is an honest, decent fellow and work hard and look after his mother until she die, can see in that Liza Quéripel, who for all her grand ways come from the lowest of the low and is a gad-about and a fly-by-night and think of nothing but to make a show of herself. She will never make a good wife for any man, that one!”' I laughed. It was my old trouble with Liza. I felt I wanted to strangle her; and I laughed!

She caught hold of my arm and said, ‘Come on, let's go back across the fields, eh? I want to see the three churches.' I let her drag me back across the fields. It was no use me being sulky. I couldn't make her marry me, if she didn't want to. We got to a spot from which we could see the three churches: Torteval Church and St Saviour's Church and the Church of St Peter-in-the-Wood. I wasn't interested in seeing the three churches; and I doubt if she was either. It was just something to look at like most people pass their time doing who come to Guernsey nowadays. She gave me a good tea when we got in; but I didn't know what I was eating. She talked to me about her house and how she'd had it done up inside and out. ‘Eva Gallienne comes in to clean,' she said. I didn't know who she was talking about. ‘Remember Eva Robilliard?' she said, ‘Queen Elizabeth. She is married to a Gallienne now and have five children. The eldest is a hulking great brute of nineteen who comes and does my digging for me.' I found it hard to believe it was all those years ago Eva Robilliard was bowing and throwing kisses to the people at the Coronation Fête. Liza didn't look a day over thirty, if that.

After tea I said I must be going. ‘You're not going yet, surely,' she said. I said, ‘Well, I got to get home some time; and the bus don't go late.' ‘Why, you're your own master,' she said, ‘you don't have to be at work at seven in the morning. Go home tomorrow.' ‘Liza,' I said, ‘I want you open and above board: before God and all men. Or not at all!' ‘As you please,' she said. I said, ‘Well, good-bye, then. I don't expect I will see you again.' I didn't make to kiss her; or offer to shake hands. She made no movement either. ‘If there is ever anything I can do for you, let me know,' she said, ‘I know it won't be for yourself: you would be too proud to ask; but for anyone dear to you. I wish I could make you happy.' She was crying when I left her.

I caught the bus to Town and the tram to the Half-way and walked the rest. I was too down-hearted even to call in at Hutton's for a drink. It was dark when I got indoors and I lit the lamp. The house was empty, empty, empty! I was alone and I knew I would be alone for the rest of my days. I don't know how I have managed to live since then. I have had friends or, at least, people I have talked to; and many people have been good to me. I can't ever say how good Tabitha have been to me; but I took it for granted while she lived. I have chased after this girl, or that girl, when the spirit moved me; or, more likely, as Raymond would have said, from force of habit. I have lived in Raymond's tragic story as if it was my own; but it is a mystery to me yet, and perhaps I put things wrong when I tried to put things right. I have held my own against strangers and against enemies from another country; and against the double-faced behaviour of some of my own people. I have seen the funny side of things, and made a lot of people laugh; and I suppose they have thought I am the happy-go-lucky sort: but since that night I have lived without hope. I have often wondered what it is I can have done wrong to have to live for so many years without hope. It is no wonder I think a lot and am a bit funny in the head.

The next night I went down to Raymond's. I couldn't face being in the house by myself. I didn't altogether like the idea of going, because I didn't want to get so as I would have to depend on Raymond and Christine; but, as it happened, it was a good thing I went. Christine was in the kitchen getting the meal ready. I thought she wasn't looking as pleased with herself as usual; and I liked her better. ‘Will a cold supper do?' she said. ‘Yes, of course!' I said. ‘Raymond is in a mood,' she said. ‘I can't do anything with him. I wish you would go in and speak to him.' I found him in the front room. For the moment I thought he was having a fit. He was sitting on the floor, pale as a ghost and trembling; and all around him was books I had seen in his room at Wallaballoo, books from when he was to school, his picture of
The Light of the World
, photos of himself from a baby onwards torn out of the Family Album, baby-clothes and the wickerwork cradle on rockers he had been put in when he was born; and he was touching this thing and that thing, and then pushing it away. ‘They are my things,' he kept on saying. ‘They are my things! He has sent me all my things!' ‘Who?' I said. ‘My father,' he said. ‘He has sent me everything might remind him of me. He doesn't want anything of me left in the house!' ‘Come on, sit up and pull yourself together!' I said. I lifted him up and sat him in the armchair, and sat on the arm beside him. ‘Now tell me all about it,' I said. He managed to tell me, more or less sensibly.

Harold had sent a chap down with a hand-truck loaded with everything he could find in the house that belonged to Raymond, or had anything to do with him. There wasn't only his toys from when he was a child, but even the letters he had written to his mother when he was in England. The chap said Harold was going to sell up Wallaballoo and buy another house and marry Mrs Crewe. It didn't worry Raymond his father was selling up Wallaballoo. I don't think it even entered his head he wouldn't inherit a penny. Another house Harold could leave to Mrs Crewe. It was being turned out of his father's heart hurt Raymond. ‘He needn't have done this to me,' he said. ‘He wishes I had never been born! He doesn't want me to be alive! Christine doesn't understand.' ‘I understand,' I said, ‘but it isn't quite as you say. It is your father's idea of being straight.' It was, in a way. Harold wouldn't keep a thing that had once belonged to Raymond; and then his conscience would be clear. ‘He wants to start on a clean sheet,' I said. ‘He was the same over his first wife, when he married your mother. All her things was got rid of. She had to be forgotten. It is all, or nothing with your father.' ‘I am rather like that myself,' said Raymond. I thought, you are indeed; and you get that, not from Hetty, but from Harold.

I said, ‘Now let's get some order in this muddle,' and I put the toys together and the letters together, and helped him sort out the books. He said he would hang the picture over the bed in their room. I said, ‘Anyhow, the cradle will come in handy.' He smiled. ‘I hope so,' he said. When Christine called us in for supper, he was quite himself again. I saw her give him a quick look; but when she saw he was all right, she carried on as if nothing had happened. I admired her good sense. Nothing was said to upset anybody during the meal; and, afterwards he said he would do the washing-up, and she came to the gate with me. She took my hand in both of hers. ‘Thank you, thank you for coming tonight of all nights,' she said. ‘I don't know what I would have done. I can manage Raymond on his own; but not when he got his parents round his neck. Mothers and fathers are all right, if you bring them up the way they ought to go. I have.'

My Cousin Mary Ann was the only one of the family who managed to keep on speaking terms with Mrs Crewe; or Mrs Martel, as I suppose I ought to call her now, but I have never been able to think of her as anything else than Mrs Crewe. Even during the Occupation, my Cousin Mary Ann went along to see her and Harold, when the old couple was living at Rozel Cottage, the house he bought at the Can'-du-Ré. Mrs Crewe treated my Cousin Mary Ann as everybody else did: that is, gave her the rough work to do and a few things to take home, though it wasn't much she, or anybody, had to give away those days. For the rest, Mrs Crewe didn't notice she was there. My Cousin Mary Ann never interfered, or said anything out of place; though she detested Mrs Crewe. She let be. ‘Ah, mais ch'est la misère pour tous partout!' she said. As she only ever went to houses where and when there was misery, what she said was so.