The Book of Ebenezer le Page (57 page)

I went to see Dora once more: just to keep friendly. She had told me her daughter was leaving school and would be helping with the guests in the summer. I wanted to see what the daughter was like. I wasn't leaving nothing to Dora; but that didn't mean I was cutting the daughter out of my will. I expected to find a house full of visitors, but there didn't seem to be a soul about. When I knocked, a girl of seventeen or so came to the door. She wasn't bad-looking but was wearing skin-tight woollen trousers of a black and white herring-bone pattern, and a skin-tight woollen sweater to match. She would have looked all right in a circus, but I wouldn't have liked to have her around me while I was eating. I thought she was the waitress. I asked if I might speak to Mrs Domaille. She said, ‘Mother is having a siesta. She will be awake presently.' I heard Dora's voice calling, ‘Who is it, Doris?' ‘I don't know,' said Doris; and she sounded as if she didn't care either. I thought you don't get a penny out of me, my girl.

Dora came to see who it was. ‘Oh, it's you!' she said. ‘What a time to choose! Come in, then: since you're here!' I went in, but she didn't ask me to sit down. I sat myself down in the most comfortable armchair I could see, and looked round. ‘Haven't you got any visitors?' I said. ‘Three in a room,' she said, ‘we're absolutely full up!' ‘Where are they all, then?' I said. ‘Good gracious, I don't allow them in the house after breakfast,' she said. ‘They can have a packed lunch, if they want it; and come back at six for a wash before their evening meal.' I said, ‘It's hardly a home from home, is it?' It was a dull blowy afternoon, and big drops of rain was beginning to fall. She said, ‘They don't come to Guernsey to sit indoors.' I said, ‘Yes, but it rain in Guernsey like it do in other places. Where are they to go when it rains?' ‘That is their affair,' she said. ‘I can't have them in and out under my feet all day long.' I thought well, if I was a visitor, I wouldn't come and stay in your guest-house a second time.

She wanted to know what I thought of Doris. I got the idea she didn't altogether believe I didn't have a penny in the bank. Doris was in an unsettled state at present, she said: she was helping with the guest-house now she had left school; but of course it was only temporary. She wanted to go to a university and have a career; but that would cost more money, as well as being years without earning. Or she could get married. She already had a number of young men to choose from. ‘I am broad-minded,' said Dora, ‘and let her have them all here for musical evenings. She is a good girl.' I said, ‘Well, she is a well made girl, I can see that; but why don't she put some proper clothes on?' ‘She is perfectly decent,' said Dora, ‘she likes to feel free.' ‘I have no doubt she feel free,' I said. ‘She would do fine for a mermaid.' I saw old Dora's face was getting red. ‘Fashions have changed since your time,' she said. ‘In my time men was men and women was women,' I said, ‘and they dressed accordingly. I hate to see a woman in trousers.' She was wearing trousers herself: of brown corduroy. ‘How would you have us dress, then?' she said. ‘Like our grandmothers?' ‘I think a woman ought to look like a flower,' I said. She laughed sort of bitter. ‘I am rather past looking like a flower, I am afraid,' she said. ‘I can't see that,' I said. ‘It is true perhaps it is too late now for you to look like a rose; but you can always look like an everlasting.' I really meant it for a compliment, and to put her in a good mood; but, woman-like, she took it the wrong way. ‘Have you come here to insult me?' she said. ‘As a matter of fact, I haven't,' I said, ‘but, if you want me to be frank, you don't have to go about looking from the back like a Buff Orpington going to lay an egg.' That is why she didn't invite me to my Cousin Mary Ann's funeral.

One Thursday the next winter when I went to visit my Cousin Mary Ann, it was Nora who came to the door. I knew at once who she was: I had seen her serving in the Crown, and taken quite a fancy to her across the bar. I ought to have known then she was the daughter of Eugene Le Canu, for she looked so much like him with her red hair, and was slim and quick like he was. She was getting on, of course, and you could see she had knocked about a bit; but she had something yet she would never lose. ‘So you're Ebenezer!' she said. ‘I wondered. I remember you standing me a drink once.' ‘I would do it again!' I said. ‘It is my turn tonight,' she said. ‘Come on in, do!' Her mother was laid up for a day or two. ‘There is nothing really the matter with her,' she said, ‘she is only tired of life. Go upstairs and cheer her up; and have something when you come down.'

It was like going back fifty years going into my Cousin Mary Ann's bedroom. She was wearing a pink flannelette night-dress, and there was an old patch-work quilt on the bed. Herself, she looked like an old sheep, lying there with her grey hair all over the pillow. ‘What's the matter now?' I said. ‘Oh nothing,' she said. ‘It must be something,' I said, ‘it's not like you to be off your feet. Have the doctor been?' ‘I don't want the doctor,' she said. ‘What for do I want to be kept alive? Nobody want me now.' ‘Well, I would miss coming to see you,' I said. She gave her old laugh like a horse. ‘You are not one to miss anybody,' she said. ‘You got too much sense.' I don't think my Cousin Mary Ann knew me very well.

There wasn't enough misery about for her: that was the trouble. People was getting on well since the War, and didn't need her help; and her family was settled for. Eugene would have the house when she was gone; so at least he would have a roof over his head. ‘He think he is going to be married soon,' she said, ‘but that girl won't have him.' ‘Who is he going with now?' I said. It was an Eva Tourtel from Prospect Villa, but I didn't know the girl. ‘Dora is all right,' she said, ‘and Nora have made up her mind to marry that Jan van Raalte.' ‘Who is he, for goodness sake,' I said, ‘with a name like that?' ‘A Dutchman,' she said. ‘He have come to Guernsey to grow flowers.' I said, ‘Guernsey get more like the League of Nations every day.' ‘He is a nice young chap,' she said, ‘but he will have plenty of others.' ‘Is there anything you don't know?' I said. ‘Eugene is the puzzle,' she said. ‘He don't speak.' ‘Why, is he dumb, then?' I said. ‘He do say a few words now and then,' she said. I thought hers was a funny family.

I was looking at the photo of the handsome Eugene over her bed. I didn't know and have never known what happened to him. I expect he ended up an old roué and died of the pox. She caught me looking, for she said, ‘He was right to leave me, my poor Eugene. I trapped him.' ‘If it come to that, is there any man who isn't trapped?' I said. ‘It is the man's look-out.' I had managed not to get trapped; but I couldn't bear the way she was talking. I thought it was better to be dead, than have everything cut and dried and be so hopeless. ‘He won't be there to meet me,' she said, and the tears came out of her eyes, and rolled down her cheeks. I wished I could have said something about God, or such-like, to comfort her; but how could I after my gallivanting? ‘Cheer up, old girl,' I said, ‘never say die!' ‘Ah well, I've got what I deserve,' she said. ‘It isn't for me to complain.' She dried her tears on her night-dress and smiled her lovely ugly smile. ‘I'll come and see you again soon,' I said. That was the last time I saw her.

When I got downstairs Nora had some wine and biscuits on the table. ‘How d'you find her?' she said. ‘Well, not exactly cheerful,' I said. ‘She never was,' she said. ‘I don't think I like my mother very much.' ‘She have done the best she could for you children,' I said, ‘and she had to manage all on her own.' ‘She is a kill-joy,' she said. ‘I say let the children play; as your cousin Raymond used to say.' ‘Why, did you know Raymond, then?' I said. ‘I knew Raymond very well,' she said. ‘He was a wonderful friend to me: at a time when I had nobody else to turn to, who would even begin to understand.' ‘He never told me,' I said. ‘There is a lot Raymond never told anybody,' she said. ‘He knew how to keep other people's secrets.' I said, ‘How is it you didn't step into Christine's shoes, if you liked him so much?' ‘I'm a baby-snatcher,' she said, ‘to me he was an old man.' ‘Then I didn't have a chance when I stood you a drink?' I said. ‘Not an earthly!' she said and laughed; but when I left she kissed me good-night.

I saw my Cousin Mary Ann's death in the paper and when I didn't get an invitation to the funeral, I thought of writing a letter of sympathy to somebody; but I couldn't think to who. I couldn't very well write to Dora. Eugene I didn't know; and Nora didn't seem to me as if she would cry much. I left it. I kept my eye open for news of Nora's wedding and when, after some months, I hadn't seen it I wondered if perhaps she hadn't managed to hook the Dutchman after all; but I ran into Albert Le Page, the bone-setter, who is a distant cousin of mine, and he told me Jan van Raalte had broken his thumb climbing a cliff, and put off his marriage until it was mended. I couldn't make out why a chap should put off getting married because he had broken his thumb. I thought the least I could do was to go and see Nora again, and cheer her up while she was waiting; but the day I went to see her at the house at the Robergerie, there was no answer when I knocked on the front door. It wasn't a Thursday, so I wandered round the back in case she was in the garden. Eugene was working in the greenhouse and came out to see what I wanted.

He knew who I was, but I didn't remember having seen him before. He was a big chap with a corporation already, and a flat face rather like Dora's, and he had a thin black moustache. He looked as if he might be a French chef in a hotel. I said I had been very sorry to hear about his mother. He made a noise. It was like a laugh, but it wasn't a laugh. He didn't say anything more. ‘It's a nice greenhouse you got here,' I said. He made his noise and signed for me to go inside and see it. He got heat and water from the waterworks and a good early crop ripening; and everything was spic and span to the last degree. I went outside to have a look at the boiler, and had a quiz at the garden. It was the same. There wasn't a weed; and the path was so raked I was afraid to walk on it. I said, ‘Well, I congratulate you. I wish my place looked like this.' ‘I like everything to look perfect,' he said. Those was his first words to me. I thought he was going to be a hard chap to live with for that Eva from Prospect Villa.

I got the feeling he wanted to be friendly but didn't know how. I liked him myself. When he nodded towards the back door as much as to say ‘Will you come in?' I said, ‘Yes, I'd like to.' Over the back door was a glass porch of coloured glass with ferns and geraniums in pots on the side and, as we went in, he noticed a few petals was fallen on the floor. He stooped and picked them up one by one. He then took off his boots and left them on the mat. I wondered if he expected me to do the same, but I only wiped mine hard to get the ground off. When he had washed his hands and got into some slippers, he made tea. I noticed he had very small feet for such a heavy man. He was good in the house and laid the table dainty; not rough-and-ready and without a tablecloth, as I do. He turned on the radio. It was the weather. Myself, I don't trust the radio for the weather. I trust my nose; and nine times out of ten I am right. There was music after; and he left the thing on. I asked him where Nora was. From what I could hear him say against the noise, I understood she was at La Passée helping Jan to get ready the house where they was going to live. I noticed a shelf of new books hadn't been in the kitchen when I was there before. I saw they was
The Complete Works of Charles Dickens
. ‘Have you read all those?' I said. He said he hadn't bought them to read: he had seen them advertised in a newspaper, and thought they would look nice on his wall.

After tea he washed up the dishes and put everything away in its place; though I can't laugh at him for being fussy, for I am the same about putting things away in their right place. If I didn't, I would never remember where anything was. He made a sign for me to go upstairs with him; and he showed me the bedroom he had done up for when he was married. It was my Cousin Mary Ann's old bedroom and I thought of her lying there dying by herself. He had changed it all. The old furniture was gone and the big bed and the picture of his father. The walls was papered with grey paper like satin; and the wood-work painted white with gold beading. The press for clothes and the dressing-table and the chest-of-drawers was of plain unvarnished wood; and there was two single beds with pink covers, and a pink velvet-pile carpet on the floor. ‘If I was married,' I said, ‘I would want to sleep in the same bed.' ‘I am not getting married for that,' he said. I couldn't make Eugene out at all. I said I hoped he would be happy; but I didn't say I would see him again.

I can't say I was all that delighted when Dudley Waine with an ‘e' turned up. He hadn't changed much. He was fatter and rounder and his face fuller; but quite smooth. He hadn't lost his hair, as I was beginning to, but it was iron grey, and he wore it long and brushed right back. He looked very distinguished. He might have been a musician. I said, ‘You're looking well,' and asked how he'd got on during the War. ‘A strenuous time,' he said. He had worked for the Ministry of Information, and was in London all the years the bombs was falling; but wasn't hit. They say the good die young; and I am sure they are right. He was back in his pre-war university job now, and was come over to go on with his researches. I was scared he would get on to the subject of the ancient monument; but it was our patois he was interested in now. Its roots. He had discovered it was really the language of the religion of the witches of the days of old, and all the dirty words in it was holy words. He said ‘Baise mon tchou!' was a royal salute. I had never thought of it that way, me.