The Book of Ebenezer le Page (36 page)

It is impossible for me to say how much Raymond was not an ordinary chap. There was something in his looks and in his voice and in his manner and in the goodness of his heart, I think, drew people to him and made them like him and listen to him, even against their will. I hadn't forgotten what he had done at that service. He hadn't made us feel we was miserable sinners; or, as with most preachers, those outside was miserable sinners and our little lot was bound for heaven. He made us feel there was something good deep in the world, and something good deep in everybody. If he made even me feel that, there must have been something in him; for I am nothing, if not hard-headed.

It was soon after Easter when my Cousin Mary Ann telephoned to Raymond at the Greffe and said to come to Wallaballoo at once because his mother was dangerously ill. Actually Hetty was dead when my Cousin Mary Ann telephoned; but she put it that way to break the news. Hetty had only been in bed a few days and it was thought she would be up and about again, as she was before. It is true she was afraid to eat anything given her and would only drink water; and Harold was being made to sleep in Raymond's old room. She couldn't bear to have him near her. That last afternoon she asked my Cousin Mary Ann to give her something was hidden under some clothes at the bottom of a drawer. It was a long envelope with Raymond's name written on it in Hetty's big childish handwriting. She died holding it tight in her hand. My Cousin Mary Ann telephoned to Raymond before she went to fetch Harold. Raymond told me he felt no grief when his mother died. That came later. When he got the telephone message, he thought at once she might be dead already and, cycling home along the front, he was only hoping she was. He dreaded a death-bed scene. He felt he couldn't stand any more scenes with his mother.

Harold was sitting huddled over the fire when Raymond came in. He was completely broken up. ‘She's gone, my Hetty,' he said. All Raymond's sympathies went over immediately to his father and, if it hadn't been for that horrible Mrs Crewe, it might have been all right yet between father and son. They went upstairs together. The doctor had been, but the envelope was still in her hand. Raymond looked at his mother lying dead. Her face when she was alive had always been full of soft feelings. Raymond said in death it was frozen stern and hard as marble. He only felt a great load was lifted from his shoulders. Harold said, ‘Aren't you going to read what your mother has written to you?' Raymond had a fear of what it might be from the shape of the envelope. He read it downstairs while my Cousin Mary Ann, saying nothing but all ears, was moving about on tiptoe making tea for the two of them. It was a will. Hetty had managed to get a lawyer to draw it up, whether it was legal or not. As there was a marriage contract, it might have been proved, after a lot of wrangling. It left everything to Raymond with only a life-interest for his father. Raymond gave it to his father to read; but, of course, Harold couldn't understand it. Raymond was used to such things. He explained. Harold said, ‘Well, it is your mother's will, son.' Raymond tore it across and across and threw the pieces on the fire. My Cousin Mary Ann was the only one who ever knew; and she didn't tell a soul until she told me years after they was all dead. She went to fetch Prissy; and, once Prissy came, there was no peace in that house until after the funeral.

She came running with the tears streaming down her face. ‘Ah, la pauvre Hetty! la pauvre Hetty!' In not a minute the tears was all forgotten. ‘I don't suppose she ever even thought of getting a thing ready beforehand. She was always like that, my sister! It was always me who had to get her ready if she was going anywhere, or she would never have got there in time! Ah, la pauvre Hetty! la pauvre Hetty!' Tears! tears! tears! ‘Mary Ann, don't you stand there like a mommet doing nothing, you! Is there a big kettle of water on the boil? Have she got a clean night-dress? Or is it in the wash? Ah, la pauvre Hetty! la pauvre Hetty!' Tears! tears! tears! ‘Harold, have you written to the
Press
yet? If not, Raymond can telephone and pay when he go to Town. Are you sure, Mary Ann, you have pulled down the blinds of all the front rooms? Is there a white curtain for the window over the door? If not, you better put up a pillowcase. Ah, la pauvre Hetty! la pauvre Hetty!' Tears! tears! tears! ‘Raymond, have you got that black suit yet from when you was a minister? It will do for the funeral. After the day, you can wear your sports coat with a black tie and a black band on the arm. People don't go into mourning now like they used to. Harold, you mustn't forget to buy a plot of ground to bury her in. The grave of our mother is full. In any case, this house is in St Sampson's, so it will have to be in the cemetery of St Sampson's. It will do for you as well, when your time comes. Order a small stone with just room for the two names. Raymond will want to be buried with Christine. Ah, la pauvre Hetty! la pauvre Hetty!' Tears! tears! tears!

Raymond had three days off from the Greffe; and with Prissy in charge at Wallaballoo everybody moved at the double and didn't have time to think. The night before the funeral, my Cousin Mary Ann was sitting down to supper with Harold and Prissy. Prissy was saying, ‘Ah well, I think everything is done and ready now. If it hadn't been for me, my poor dear dead sister would have been left to rot on her bed,' when there was a knock on the front door. My Cousin Mary Ann went to see who it was. It was Mrs Crewe. ‘I think Mr Martel will be wanting a housekeeper,' she said. ‘Mr Martel will not be wanting to talk about any such thing now,' said my Cousin Mary Ann. ‘He has a dead wife in the house.' ‘It is not the dead I am thinking of,' said Mrs Crewe, ‘it is the living.' For once in her life my Cousin Mary Ann didn't know what to say or do, and went back in the kitchen to ask. Mrs Crewe followed her in.

Mère Quéripel was a witch; but I don't know if she looked like a witch. Mrs Crewe looked how a witch ought to look, even if she don't. She wasn't as old as Harold quite, but she had scores of wrinkles and looked older, and she had the chin of a witch and the nose of a witch and bright, bright greedy eyes. She spoke as if she wouldn't hurt a fly. ‘I saw the white curtain over the door in passing,' she said, ‘and I thought there is no time like the present.' It was funny, if she only saw the curtain over the door in passing, she had brought a bag with a night-dress and an apron in it. Prissy said, ‘Harold, this is meant! I have the summer visitors coming and can't be over here every day; and you know yourself you can't as much as boil an egg!' My Cousin Mary Ann, who didn't trust Mrs Crewe from the start, said, ‘Well, it is rather late to get a bed aired for you to sleep in tonight.' ‘I can sleep on the sofa,' said Mrs Crewe, ‘or in a chair. I don't want to put anybody to any trouble. I am here to help.' When my Cousin Mary Ann went to close the front door, expecting to find it open as she had left it, she found Mrs Crewe had closed it herself as she came in.

Poor Hetty had a grand funeral. A hearse and the coffin covered with flowers; and a long line of motor-cars. Harold sent a motor-car especially to fetch my mother, and I went with her. It was her last outing. Raymond wore a bowler hat, I remember. Prissy said a bowler hat would do for a son. It wasn't worth while to buy a box hat just to wear once. It looked like a black pudding on his head. Harold and Percy wore box hats. There was tea and bread-and-butter and cheese at the house after; and a lot of cousins of the Martels I had never seen, or heard of, came back. I don't expect Hetty had ever seen or heard of them either; and I dare not think what she would have said if she had known Christine was there. Mrs Crewe waited at the table. Harold asked her to sit down and eat with the others; but she said it wasn't her place to sit down with the family.

After tea, Harold brought down the box in which Hetty had kept her jewels. She had been buried with her wedding ring, but the rest was in the box. He asked Prissy to take anything she fancied for all she had done. She chose the gold necklace and locket. Then he asked Christine if she would choose something. She said, ‘That brooch is lovely.' She hadn't said a word until then. It was a gold brooch made like a spider's web and studded with small jewels; and Harold had bought it for Hetty in London on their honeymoon. He pinned it on Christine's simple black dress. She said, ‘That is very good of you.' I thought it was too. He was thoughtful of my mother. It was no use offering her jewellery, because she wouldn't wear it; but he made a car wait to take her home. It saved me having to hire one, for she couldn't have walked it. Prissy came to the road to see us off. ‘Ah well,' she said, ‘my poor dear dead sister will be able to rest in peace now she know she have been properly buried.'

I get mixed up as to when it was they changed the money. I can't remember if it was when they called in the sovereigns, or before, or after. I thought it was a lot of nonsense, anyhow. We had managed all right up to then with francs and fippennies and Guernsey pennies; and English money for stamps or a Postal Order. The things in the shops was marked in English and we paid in French or Guernsey, and it was quite simple. When the French money was got rid of and the Guernsey pennies was counted as English, we lost a shilling in the pound because the shops didn't put down their prices. As for doubles, they are not worth anything now; and I have still got an egg-cupful my mother used to keep handy to give the baker change from a farthing. Now, after all these years, they are talking of changing the money back so that you can reckon up in tens again. They can't leave well alone.

It was the same over the daylight saving. I don't see how you can save daylight, when there is only the same number of hours of daylight anyway, whatever you do to the clocks. It was before the War they got that bright idea; and we have had to have our dinner at eleven in the morning all the summer, instead of in the middle of the day, as is natural. It didn't make any difference to the number of hours we worked. In Guernsey everybody work from sunrise to dark and nowadays, they even have electric light in the greenhouses and work half the night. We are not a lazy lot like they are in England.

I know I had my mother with me yet when the sovereigns was called in, because I remember I talked it over with her. There was a notice in the paper that after a certain date sovereigns would no longer be legal tender, but up to that date they could be taken to any bank and changed for pound notes. Gerald Mahy said half the population must have had sovereigns hidden away, because for weeks he did nothing else but count the things. There was one old couple from Albecq, who you would have thought to look at didn't have a penny to bless themselves with, walked into the Old Bank with two tomato-baskets full; and they knew exactly how many there was in each basket too. I didn't have as many as that; but there was well over four figures in the pied-du-cauche. I didn't fancy giving all those to a bank to lose.

I don't believe in banks. I am quite capable of looking after my own money, thank you. Come to that, I can't see what banks are for, except to make money out of other people's money: and then, when they go bust, they don't pay it back. All the same, I asked my mother what she thought, because the sovereigns was hers as much as mine. I explained to her we wouldn't be able to spend them in the shops; but gold is gold and we would have it. She said, ‘It says in The Word “Lay not up treasure for yourselves upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt, and thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where moth and rust doth not corrupt and thieves do not break through and steal.” Let us abide by The Word.' I knew then she didn't want a bank to have our sovereigns.

I was by no means pleased when, the summer after Hetty died, Master Dudley Waine with an ‘e' turned up again, looking for his old stones. I thought I had seen the last of that nuisance. He came mooching round the garden and round the house and, by chance, his eye fell on my pigsty. ‘It is! it is!' he said; and was down on his knees examining the big stone made the trough in the wall I fed the pigs through. The old pig was interested, him: he thought Dudley was something good to eat. Dudley didn't mind. ‘Is it possible to get this out?' he said to me. I said, ‘It is NOT possible to get it out!' He said it was part of an ancient barrow of the Old Stone Age. I said, ‘Well, I don't know nothing about that! I wasn't here then. All I know is it was put there in my grandfather's day when the house was built; and there it is going to stay!' He said it was a crying scandal the way the people of Guernsey made use of the sacred stones of their ancestors for building barns and stables and pigsties. I said, ‘Now you listen here, Mr Waine: if you think you are going to start digging up my property, you are making the biggest mistake of your life. There are plenty other places where you can go and dig; and I sincerely hope you will find what you are looking for.' He said he would be over to see me again the next year, by which time he hoped I would have thought better on the matter.

I didn't see any more of him that summer, but he got to know Raymond. They must have met at Prissy's where he was staying. Raymond was never interested in pre-historic Guernsey. He said historic Guernsey was too much for him; but he did show Dudley some papers at the Greffe about old graves and stones which have since disappeared. There was none said there had ever been any such things in the gully of La Petite Grève. Dudley must also have met Christine; but, as far as I know, they didn't become great friends that year.

Raymond went to see his father regular after his mother died. At first Mrs Crewe was very humble, and called him Mr Martel; but once, when she saw him coming, she came to the door and said, ‘Raymond, your father is not very well today. I don't think you ought to bother him. He has had a great shock and is an old man, you know.' Another time, when Mrs Crewe happened to be out and Raymond did get to his father, Harold asked after Christine. She hadn't been to see him since the funeral. ‘Why don't she come and see me as well?' Harold said. ‘She says she doesn't want to push herself,' Raymond explained. Harold pooh-poohed the idea, and said the next Sunday they must both go to tea. They went. Harold made a great to-do of Christine and, so Raymond said, flirted with her. I have no doubt in my own mind she led him on. Raymond was shocked. ‘I had no idea my father could behave in that way,' he said. Mrs Crewe had prepared a good tea for them, for she was a good housekeeper; but when they sat down to table, she came over faint and couldn't touch a mouthful herself. She said she had the palpitations. They didn't eat much, or stay very long. When they said good-bye and thank you, her palpitations miraculously disappeared.