The Book of Ebenezer le Page (29 page)

I must have looked how I felt, for she took my arm, and herself looked sad. ‘Thank you for the very great honour you have done me,' she said. ‘I am not worth it, I assure you; but now will you buy me a present I would really like?' ‘What is it you would really like?' I said. ‘A silver Guernsey milk-can,' she said. ‘All right, let's go in,' I said. I bought her a silver Guernsey milk-can. She didn't choose the dearest, but it was real silver. It was packed in a box and wrapped in brown paper, and she came out of the shop with the parcel as pleased as if she was a child with a toy. She said, ‘This is the one treasure I will never part with, even if I'm starving.' I said, ‘You'll never be that.' She said, ‘I might be, some day. I have nothing, except what I am given.'

I don't know how I can have been so happy with Liza for the rest of the evening. By rights I ought to have been downright miserable. I remember we walked down the White Rock and saw the
Reindeer
come in from Weymouth and go on to Jersey. A lot of the passengers who came ashore was green from being seasick. They made me laugh. I was too happy to be sorry for other people. I saw Liza back to Castle Carey and kissed her goodnight; but it was more like a friend. ‘When do I see you again?' I said. ‘How about next Saturday?' she said. ‘Call for me here.' She couldn't have said anything to please me better, because it meant she was owning me before those grand people; yet now as I write it, I feel the old fury rising in me at the cheek and the conceit of Liza. She had it all her own way with everybody. I must admit she have kept the only promise she ever made to me. She have never left Guernsey. I have always known where she was living: not only before, but after she left Castle Carey. I hear of her now and then from people I meet in Town who live round Pleinmont; and, by all accounts, she is still going strong, though according to her reckoning she must be hundreds of years old. I could visit her tomorrow if I wanted to. I wonder if she ever made a promise to anybody else. I don't think so. I don't believe she have ever said ‘I love you' to a single living soul; and she certainly won't say it now.

Christine didn't come home that Christmas, but spent the holiday with a schoolmistress friend in England. Was Hetty pleased? When Raymond came home she had him all to herself. He went to see Christine's people to wish them a happy Christmas, and to Chapel Sunday evenings, but otherwise he hardly left the house. La Prissy and Percy was invited for Christmas Day, and all at Wallaballoo went to Timbuctoo for Boxing Day. There was goodwill in the air. I stayed home with my mother Christmas and Boxing Day; but Tabitha came for the New Year and I went to Hetty's. She really was happy, poor Hetty, that first holiday of Raymond's. He kept on saying how glad he was to be back, and played ‘Home Sweet Home with Variations' until I was sick of it.

I didn't think he looked so well, myself, and Hetty thought he'd got thinner. It suited him better being a soldier than studying to be a minister. He said it was awful having to live with a gang of professing Christians. ‘I don't want to be a professing Christian,' he said. ‘I want to be a Christian who doesn't have to think about it.' He couldn't stand the Holy Willie smile, as he called it; and the voice they put on when they say ‘Our Lord'. ‘Give me the chaps in the guardroom any day!' said Raymond. I said, ‘What the goodness is there you can have to learn for all the years you are going to be in college?' He said, ‘Ah, I am being grounded in my theological position.' His face was wrinkled up with his wicked smile. He was making a joke of something else he didn't ought to have done. ‘You don't know any theology, do you, Ebenezer?' he said. ‘Not that I know of,' I said. He said, ‘There is Catholic Theology and there is Anglican Theology and there is ours. Ours is a hotch-potch of John Wesley, who broke off from the Church of England, and Martin Luther, who broke off from the Catholic Church, and Calvin, who broke off from everybody but himself and who your mother follows, more or less.' I didn't know that, me. He said, ‘Before you begin, it has been decided what you have to believe; and, after reading hundreds of pages of closely reasoned argument, you end up by proving what it was decided you have to believe is true. It is like a theorem in geometry at school. It gives me a headache. The others think it is religion.'

I said, ‘Well, it's a chance a lot would jump at: to have no work to do and only study.' ‘I know, I know,' he said, ‘you mustn't take notice of half I say. I use you to let off steam on. They are good fellows, really; but I am a stranger there. When they sing:

I am saying under my breath:

I will never, never feel at home in England! Never! I look at it; but I don't see it. It isn't real. It's a dream. I wake up when I get back.' Well, I thought, if you let off steam on those in the college the same as you do on me, they will very soon bundle you back to Guernsey.

There is a story in the Bible about a man who buried his talent in the ground. I think he came to a bad end. Well, I am that man, I reckon. I don't know what my talent was exactly, but I do know I have done nothing in my life to shout about, except win the leg of mutton off the greasy pole. Otherwise, I have only managed to make a living and pay my way and save a bit and pass for being respectable, even if I haven't always been. At least, I have kept out of jail; but more by good luck than good management. I might easily have landed myself in there once or twice. Nor have they got me put away in the Country Hospital yet, which I suppose is something; but there are some people who think that is where I ought to be. I am not so sure that I don't agree with them. I wasted the best years of my life waiting and hoping to marry that Liza. I must have been mad.

It's true my mother was getting steadily worse; but that wasn't the reason stopped me from marrying Liza. La Tabby was quite willing to leave the Priaulx and come and live at home and look after my mother. I didn't ask her: she offered without me having to ask. She always seemed to know what was going through my mind, my sister. I could have afforded to have a little house built and there was a patch of ground next to ours I could have bought; but I wasn't going to launch out without some encouragement from Liza, and I got none. She said she couldn't leave the old lady. Lady Carey was now getting on in years and wasn't very well; but, as far as I could make out, all she suffered from was the rheumatics. I reminded Liza of what she had said about the healthy looking after the sick. ‘Ah, but that was different,' she said, ‘men are such babies when they're sick.' What Liza seemed to forget was that she was getting older as well. For ten years or more she didn't look a day older than twenty-six, and people said I looked young for my age. When I got grumpy and quarrelsome, she would laugh me out of it. ‘When we are dead and gone, we'll be a legend in Guernsey,' she said. ‘Ebenezer Le Page and Liza Quéripel who was lovers to the last day of their lives.' The trouble was we wasn't lovers.

By some miracle, I managed to keep myself from chasing after other girls. It was fat legs made me think of higher things, and now and again I would see a girl with fat legs and lust after her, but it was only with half an eye, and I would think to myself I'll only be tired and fed-up after, and didn't bother. I don't think Liza would have cared if I had. She caught me at it more than once, as I often caught her measuring up any big, tall bloke she happened to see. Once when we caught each other looking at a couple going into Gardner's Royal, she burst out laughing. ‘My dear, you and me are tarred with the same brush,' she said. ‘Shall we go in and have a drink and introduce ourselves?' ‘Of course not!' I said.

I was being made a fool of. For years I was at Liza's beck and call. It wasn't she allowed me to see her so often. Sometimes for two or three weeks she would say she couldn't see me. The old lady always came first. Sundays she didn't come out with me once. Saturday evenings she came to Town with me a few times; but Saturdays she preferred for me to have tea with her in the afternoon at Castle Carey. She had two rooms of her own there and it was very comfortable and nice; but we was waited on by a servant and I don't like being waited on by a servant, when I know I am no better than she is. Those evenings Liza would have dinner with the family and, if I wanted to go to Town, I had to go on my own. It wasn't one thing, or the other. To make it worse, she never knew if she was going to be free the next week. She would let Ada know because Ada had the telephone; and poor Ada had to come all the way from the Marais to tell me. She made a servant of Ada, as well as of me. Thursday afternoons was when she liked going out; and I had to ask Mr Dorey for the half-day off. He let me have it; but I wasn't paid, as I was having the Saturday afternoon in any case. In summer what she enjoyed most was going for a picnic to Fermain Bay. It was the nearest bay to Town and there was plenty smart young Townies there to admire her. I carried the basket of food. I was the perfect little gentleman.

Of course, everybody thought we was engaged. When Prissy came to see my mother, it was always ‘Is it that son of yours isn't married yet, then?' My mother would say, ‘Mais ils ne sont pas seulement engagie!' Prissy would then bring up about this one and that one, who had been going about together for twenty years and wasn't married yet, and never would be. ‘It don't do to know the one you're going to marry for too long,' she said, ‘or nobody would get married at all. That's why I'm all for boys and girls marrying young; before they find out their mistake.' She was hoping Horace would marry a rich American girl and bring her home; but he said he had too many over there to choose from. He was travelling all over the States for the company he worked for. They was doing a roaring business since the War.

La Prissy was one of the first to take regular summer visitors; and, in fairness to her, I must say she fed them well and didn't charge them much. Anyhow, they must have been satisfied, because the same ones came again year after year. Prissy was happy to have the company, and it kept her off the drink. My Cousin Mary Ann didn't go near Timbuctoo during the summer months. Myself, I was getting so desperate, I was working out mad schemes in my mind to go to America. I wasn't going to tell Liza. One day when Ada would come with a message, I would be gone, and Tabby would be looking after my mother in my place. I thought perhaps Liza would be sorry when she heard. I didn't go, though. Instead, whenever Ada did come with a message, I would start cleaning my hands with pumice-stone and put on my best suit and follow at Liza's heels like a little dog. I could kick myself now.

I went round with the boys on occasion, when Liza didn't want me. It was the same old gang, what was left of it; and when I'd had a few drinks, I'd open my big mouth as I used to about things I knew nothing about and cared less. One night I was in the Caves de Bordeaux with much the same crowd as the night we got chucked out. Eddie Le Tissier wasn't there; and old Wally Budden was gone to be with Prince Albert the Good. Jim Le Poidevin was there with his one leg, and Jim Machon coughing up his guts. He wasn't supposed to drink, according to the doctor, but he said if he couldn't have a wet now and then, what was there to live for? Amos Duquemin was there, knowing the rights and wrongs of everything, as he always did. All the talk that evening was about the money the English wanted the States to pay. The English wanted thousands from us every year to help them to pay for the War. The States was hm-ing and ha-ing in their slow way as usual, but they wasn't paying up. In the end, they agreed to offer a lump sum once and for all; but the English didn't want that, and wouldn't accept it. After a few years they had to, or they wouldn't have got nothing. I was arguing the States didn't ought to pay a penny. I made a nice long speech and everybody agreed with me, except Amos Duquemin. He said the English and the Canadians and the Australians and the New Zealanders and God knows who else was all one big family with us, and we ought to help to pay each other's debts. I don't know where he got that daft idea from. Mess Fellerah said I ought to be on the States.

The King and Queen came over to Guernsey in their yacht, the
Victoria and Albert
. It was a lovely yacht. Liza was invited with the Careys to a Garden Party to meet the King and Queen; but I was grumpy and angry about everything, and swore I would keep out of their way. I said to Liza, ‘Those sort of people only come to Guernsey when they want something.' It was a big holiday for everybody on the island, but I worked at home all the morning, and in the afternoon I thought I would go and see Jim Machon. He was getting so much worse he couldn't go out. I knew the King and Queen was going to drive from the Town Church along the Banks and round Bulwer Avenue to St Sampson's. Jim Machon lived at the Grandes Maisons, so I thought I would dodge their Majesties; but I had just come down Delancey Lane and was standing at Luff's Corner, when who should I see coming along the road in a motor-car but the King and Queen. There was two other cars behind with some nobs of the States; but nobody put me in the road. I heard after that they had been held up in Town by the people cheering and therefore had to give Bulwer Avenue the go-by and cut in at Pike's Corner, or they would have been late according to the programme. There was another colossal crowd waiting to cheer them on the Bridge. I was caught. I didn't know what to do. I didn't have a hat on, so I couldn't take it off. I just stood to attention at the edge of the kerb. The Queen was a fine figure of a woman with a bust, and wore a round hat like Liza's. Her face looked as if it was made of enamel and she couldn't smile, or it would crack; but she bowed stiff from the waist up. She didn't look to see who I was. The old King did, him, and put up his hand and smiled. I forgot myself. I waved and shouted, ‘Warro, George! Good old George!' He looked back over his shoulder and laughed. God, he was a nice chap, that!