The Book of Ebenezer le Page (53 page)

Horace told me Steve ran a Black Market shop in Town during the Occupation, and his customers was people high up in the States: even a magistrate who used to fine him to please the Germans, and then pay him the fine back in return for a rabbit from under the counter. Anyway, he made a mint of money, but it soon went, for he had a bout of heavy drinking after the Liberation. Horace had a down on Steve. He said he was a Nazi in spirit, and was for the Nazis really. I don't believe that for a moment. I don't think Steve was on any side. He was against all sides. He was in with the Police; and made fools of the Police. He had more control over the bad boys than the Police had; and they had to ask him for his help to stop a number from being a nuisance. He never gave the boys away, though. He kept their names to himself, if they obeyed him; if not, he reported them and let the Police do their own dirty work. He was himself in the Town jail a number of times. I never really got to know what for. He said it was for a rest-cure. In my opinion, he thought himself and all grown-up human beings was rotten. He was for children and animals. I am quite, quite sure he never did harm to a child; and he looked after a herd of twenty or more wild goats he kept loose on the cliffs at Pleinmont. He was in everlasting trouble with the States who wanted those goats caught and tied up, because they was eating up respectable people's gardens.

The day I was having with old Steve I had more or less forgotten the last winter of the Occupation, and by then being hungry and desperate was only a bad dream; but something he told me brought it all back again, and I realised that for some people it had been far more of a nightmare than it had been even for me. He said there was a German woman on Alderney, when he was imprisoned there, who was supposed to be a lady doctor; and, among the foreign prisoners was a French boy who had been extraordinarily brave in the Resistance. She cut off his thing with a pair of garden shears and he went screaming mad and died. I made out I hadn't heard. It was too horrible. I was thinking of Raymond in his innocence saying ‘God is love. That is true, isn't it?' I was glad he was dead, so he would never know such things could happen, or even be thought of. When we got up to go, I said I would pay for the dinners; but Steve wanted to pay for the dinners, and we nearly came to blows. In the end, for the sake of peace, I gave in and let Steve pay. I walked down to the buses with him; and he got on the Pleinmont bus, and I got on the L'Ancresse. That was the last I saw of him. I read letters by him in the paper from time to time in which he was fighting for the rights of his goats. He won most of his battles with the States, because he knew too much about too many people. There are many who must have given a great ‘Ouf!' of relief, when he breathed his last. He was given a grand funeral in Torteval Church. God rest his soul! as Liza said.

What really got my goat the last year of the Occupation was being robbed right and left. Some of it was done by German soldiers, or slave-workers who had escaped and was on the prowl; though most of the slave-workers was gone the last year. The worst was a lot of the stealing was done by Guernseymen. I know Dan Ferbrache, Phoebe's brother, who was a widower and living at Sandy Hook, stole a spade of mine from in my tool-shed; and I believe it was him who took my tomatoes. The spade I have no doubt about, because I saw him digging with it and recognised it as mine: but I couldn't say anything because I hadn't burnt my mark on it. He must have had the cheek to pinch it during the day; for I had long since taken to locking everything up at night. But I was a fool. I locked the door at the far end of the greenhouse, but left the key in the lock on the inside; though the other end I locked from the outside and put the key in my pocket. I had been growing sweet-corn that year; but had a few tomato plants for myself at the far end. It was late in the season but there was still a few tomatoes on them; and I treasured those tomatoes, if only to look at. They was only to be picked one at a time. One morning, when I went out, I found somebody had smashed the glass, turned the key in the door, and gone in and got the lot.

In the house, what food we had was fairly safe. There was a bar across the front door and a bolt on the back; but, even so, every crumb was kept up in the garret where the apples used to be, and the ladder was taken down and locked away in the packing-shed. It was a business going to the cupboard those days. Out of doors, it was hopeless. Turnips, parsnips, carrots went; apples went; beans went; the robbers didn't even give things time to grow. When the tomatoes went, I was so angry I decided I would do a bit of robbing myself. So one afternoon, by accident on purpose, I went for a walk along the lane gives down on the backs of Timbuctoo and Wallaballoo. I kept my eyes open and got the lie of the land. Against the dividing wall between Timbuctoo and Wallaballoo, Harold had built a lean-to in which to grow a few things for themselves. The Dobrées had left it there and was now making use of it. I saw there was quite a nice crop of late tomatoes in it. Ah good, I thought!

It say in the Bible ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his man servant, nor his maid servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour's.' Well, I coveted my neighbour's tomatoes and that night, while Tabitha was asleep, I crept out to steal them. It was Providence there was a water-butt handy for me to climb down from the lane into the garden at the back of Wallaballoo; and the lean-to was a good way from the house. I could easily smash a few panes of glass and get in and out before Raoul had time to come out and see what was happening: if he wasn't too frightened to come at all. I was gripping in my hand one of my mother's old net-bags I was going to fill. I didn't hear a voice from heaven saying I mustn't do it; but I had cocked one leg over the wall and was going to cock the other and jump down on the butt, when I was horror-stricken by the picture in my mind of what I had come to. I leapt back into the lane, as if it was from the edge of the bottomless pit: did a smart right-about turn, and marched back home. There are some things a man must not do.

I don't know that starving is such a bad way of dying: at least, so long as you got water to drink. The worst is having just a little to eat, but not enough. If you have nothing for a few days, it hurt at first; but after a while you get weaker and feel like a ghost and don't care about nothing. I know I got so I didn't care if it was the Germans won or us. The whole shoot seemed to me nothing but a lot of nonsense nobody would worry about who wasn't mad; and when you are nearly dying, you stop being mad. That is, while you are awake. It was going to sleep I was afraid of; and I had plenty of time to go to sleep, goodness knows. By three o'clock in the afternoon, even when I had food of a sort, I was so tired I was ready to knock off; and, at that, I had been having to sit down every five minutes. There was only the long evenings to look forward to with no light and no fire; and hours and hours lying on my bed in a sort of half and half state, when I wasn't awake and wasn't asleep and a lot of mixed up nonsense was going through my head; then when at last I did fall asleep properly I would have the most horrible dreams I would wake up from in a sweat. I was never able to remember exactly those dreams; but in some roundabout way they always had to do with food. I never dreamt I was eating anything; and the food didn't have a smell. I wonder if anybody have ever dreamt a smell.

Tabitha said she slept quite well; and I think it was true. She ought to have been more tired than me, for she worked harder than me. She walked miles a day doing the housework; and often it was her went out and got the shopping. I didn't even go out to listen to the radio: I found I couldn't see any more in the dark. Sometimes I worried and thought to myself I wouldn't live to see the end of it. It wasn't the thought of dying worried me: it was the thought perhaps after all I had gone through, it would be for nothing. That thought didn't seem to worry Tabitha. Her mind was at rest. When it was touch and go whether we would be allowed to be brought food by the Red Cross, she didn't get excited, or hope. ‘We'll see,' she said. When I heard the Red Cross ship, the
Vega
, was in, I got so excited I had to go and see it. I grabbed a walking-stick had belonged to my grandfather, and off I went to Town on my wobbly legs. There was crowds looking at it; though, of course, none of us was allowed to go down the harbour near it. It was an ugly old boat. When I got back home, hobbling along like an old man of ninety, Tabitha laughed. ‘Well, d'you feel you've had a good meal now?' she said. ‘As good as,' I said.

Yet it was over those precious Red Cross parcels I quarrelled with Tabitha. I had never quarrelled with her in my life before. I don't know I can say I quarrelled with her even then, for you couldn't quarrel with Tabitha, but I said hard and cutting words to her. I hurt my sister. It hurts me now to think of it; but it is one of those things can never be undone. When we got our parcels, I said, ‘Well, they are for you to ration out,' but there was chocolate in mine as well as in hers. ‘Except for the chocolate,' I said. ‘I don't want any.' It was true. I had never been one for eating chocolate, even when I was a kid. The only sweets I liked was bull's eyes, twelve a penny; and I knew how much she liked chocolate. She said, ‘I think you ought to have the chocolate for when you are working: mine as well. It is you who do the heavy work.' I flashed out at her. ‘I am sick and tired of seeing you sacrificing yourself for me!' I said. She opened her eyes wide in surprise. ‘Ebenezer!' she said. I said, ‘What do you take me for? A weakling! It is to show me up, you do it; and make me ashamed!' She said quietly, ‘I don't sacrifice myself for you, Ebenezer. I am with you. I thought you understood.' Her lips was trembling and there was tears in her eyes. I said, ‘All right: I'll eat a piece of chocolate now and then'; and I did so to please her. The next time we got parcels, there was tobacco and cigarettes as well; and she gave me hers, as she didn't smoke. I let her and didn't say anything: but she hadn't forgotten. She never forgot.

The 9th of May in the year 1945 is the other date in history I will never forget. I didn't see the first British soldiers come ashore in the morning; but I heard they had come and some more was expected in the afternoon. I desperately wanted to see those. Tabitha said she would like to come with me, but she couldn't walk so far; and I knew she couldn't, for she had been getting very tired and feeble the last few weeks. She said I must go; but I wouldn't go without her. How could I be happy celebrating and her by herself at home? It looked as if we would neither of us go, when Dan Ferbrache turned up and asked us if we would like to go with him in his van. He had managed to hang on to an old nag for his van. I said it was good of him to think of us and how about Olive Le Boutillier? He said the more the merrier. He was already taking old Mrs Renouf from L'Islet. It was a real old-fashioned lot we was in that van: we must have looked as if we was going on a picnic from the Town Hospital.

I was full of feeling for the English that day; and was real glad to see the Tommies, marching from the White Rock, after years of the clock-work German variety. Of course, they didn't look as smart in their khaki battle-dress as we used to in our red jackets in the Guernsey Militia: but I cheered until I was hoarse. There was no getting out of the van: which was just as well. Tabitha had on her best dress, but it was mended and mended; and we none of us had anything fit to be seen on our feet. Glatney was black with people, like the Albert Pier of a Bank Holiday. Tabitha said, ‘I wish Gervase was here. It is him have done this for us; and Louise.' She thought as much of those two as if they was her own. The last she had heard of them through the Red Cross, they was all right; but there hadn't been any messages from either of them for some months. I looked at Tabitha. She was quite the little old woman with her grey hair and her black dress. She was old before her time.

Perhaps I ought to write more cheerfully about what is supposed to have been our happiest day; but ours was a sad van-load, if the truth is to be told. Old Mother Renouf got a wicked tongue and was a born liar; but she had lost two grandsons she thought the world of, who was killed in North Africa. They was none other than the sons of the very boys who won the first class sailing the day I climbed the greasy pole. Olive Le Boutillier was wondering where her husband was; if he was alive. He wasn't, but she didn't know it for sure yet; though she had said to me several times she felt in her heart he was dead. Dan Ferbrache wasn't much of a chap, perhaps; but there was one person he really loved: that was his daughter. He had let her be evacuated, so as she would be safe, as he thought. He was only living for the happiness of having her home again. She was safe all right; but the people she was put to live with in England didn't have any children of their own and, when the time came for her to come home, they wanted to keep her. In the meantime, she had forgotten Guernsey and her father and got into English ways, and wanted to stay with ‘Mum and Dad'. They was well-to-do people and could give her everything of the best. Dan said he wouldn't stand in her way. Our happiness that day was for the moment only; and make-believe.

For myself, I cannot get the idea out of my head that, after the Liberation, Guernsey had a chance of starting afresh it can never have again; but for some reason, it took the wrong turning, even if it didn't go downhill as fast and as willingly as Jersey. It was business as usual: only more so. The dog went back to its vomit and the sow to its wallowing in the mire. There was something else could have been done. I don't know quite what. I haven't the right to criticise. I remember too well how I thought at times when it comes down to rock bottom, I didn't care tuppence about anything, or anybody, except myself; and that everybody else was the same. If that is true, it is something a man should not know. It may be it was the one lesson we learnt from the Occupation; but it was the wrong lesson.