The Book of Ebenezer le Page (59 page)

He liked to talk about Guernsey as it was long before my time: and those was really pleasant evenings for me. He wasn't worrying about religion then; or his troubles with Christine. He knew a lot I didn't know about Guernsey in the old days; and he made it as real as if he had lived in those days. There was sea originally where Wallaballoo and Timbuctoo was built; and the Bridge wasn't a solid quay with shops along one side of it as it is now, but a real bridge over the sea. If you wanted to go to Town from the Vale, you had to go across the Bridge; and the people who lived at Pleinheaume, say, if they wanted to go to the Vale Church, had to go by boat. The Clos-du-Vale was an island to itself; and wasn't built over with houses and greenhouses and bungalows like it is now, but was mostly common with a few scattered farms and no proper roads, only muddy tracks. Raymond thought it must have been a grand place to live in those days. If pirates landed, as they often did, the people got out of their way in the Vale Castle. I don't know I would have liked to live with pirates on my doorstep; but Raymond seemed to think it was all right.

I have been told often enough I am an old stick-in-the-mud; but I am positively go-ahead compared to Raymond. He was always looking back over his shoulder, and couldn't see any good at all coming round the corner in front. I would say, ‘After all, things have improved in some ways, you know. The world is getting better slowly, we hope.' That was the one idea would get him in a rage. ‘Has the world got better in your time?' he would say. ‘Well, I don't know,' I'd say, ‘perhaps not so as you'd notice.' ‘No, nor in anybody else's time either!' he would say. ‘What you gain on the swings, you lose on the roundabouts. Progress is the carrot in front of the donkey to make him go round and round.' Once I found him on the beach watching the creatures swimming in a pool. He would sit for hours watching the creatures chasing and eating each other. An aeroplane passed over our heads on the way to the airport. He looked up and said, ‘Nature is fallen from God; but it is near God. That thing up there is fallen much further.' I have never understood this ‘fallen' business. ‘I thought we was going up,' I said. ‘Hardly in an aeroplane,' he said.

When I go over in my mind the things Raymond said to me, I think the person he missed the loss of most was Jesus Christ. Jesus was his secret companion when he was a child and kept him pure when he was a young man; but now he was angry with Jesus, as with a friend who had turned out to be not as good as he thought. ‘He blessed with one hand and cursed with the other,' he said. I said, ‘Well, I suppose He had to, if He was going to make the sinners sorry.' ‘Sin is man-made,' said Raymond, ‘but suffering isn't. The Christ I stand by bears all the suffering of the world and doesn't care a bugger for sin!' It was the only time I ever heard Raymond swear. ‘Jesus cursed the barren fig-tree,' he said, ‘AND THE TIME FOR FIGS WAS NOT YET!' He shouted the words at me. ‘I expect He was feeling upset at the time,' I said. Raymond looked at me as if he had never seen me before. ‘Good old Ebenezer!' he said. ‘You are dead right, of course. He has to be forgiven too.' ‘There is this to be said for Him,' I said, ‘He gave us the best rule to live by. Do unto others as you would they should do unto you.' Raymond shook his head sadly. ‘Is it not do unto others as they would you should do unto them?' he said. ‘That is how you treat me.' ‘I don't pretend to follow the rule,' I said. He was getting me tied up.

He tried and tried again to make me understand, as if I was a child who wouldn't learn his lesson. ‘If a man loves a woman,' he said, ‘he doesn't do unto her as he would she should do unto him. He does the opposite.' ‘Yes, I suppose so,' I said. I didn't want him bringing up those things. ‘Well, you ought to know,' he said, ‘you have had enough experience!' ‘I don't know in my case I would call it love,' I said. ‘There is always some love in it,' he said, ‘even in the lowest; but it never takes us all the way. God knows I wanted it to; but how, how? How shall Man join together what God hath put asunder?' He raved on. A man is a woman inside out: a woman is a man inside out. It isn't only a few organs tacked on make the difference. They are absolutely different. She may speak the same words, and seem to think the same thoughts, and have feelings she calls by the same name; but they mean something altogether different from to a man. The verb for a man is to do; the verb for a woman is to have. ‘When I was thinking of what I was going to do in the world,' said Raymond, ‘Christine was thinking of what she was going to have out of it.' ‘Yes, but Christine was Christine,' I said, ‘you can't judge every woman by Christine.' ‘She was quite natural,' he said. ‘The natural man is no better. She thinks the whim of woman is the will of God: he thinks the wish of man is the will of God. They are both wrong. God has no will. He lets be. I have no will either now. I am anything; or nothing.' His poor brain was going. He got me scared.

‘You are Raymond Martel of Wallaballoo,' I said. ‘Would to God I was!' he said. He broke down. He had never done anything right, he had made nothing but mistakes, he wanted to undo, undo, undo!!! He wished he had settled down to be a carpenter and builder like his father. He wished he had never been to a good school, he wished he had never read books. He wished he had never gone to college and trained to be a minister. He wished he had never married Christine because he wanted to love her. ‘God!' he cried, ‘why didn't I have the sense to marry a girl for bed and board and breeding and live to earn a living and be a local preacher and preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and know nothing of love, or the meaning of love; and then I wouldn't have been cast out!' I would have given anything to be able to say a word to comfort him; and when he wasn't there and it was only his ghost was with me, I said out loud, ‘I am sorry, Raymond: I am sorry!'

Christine came over to settle Gwen's affairs. I don't know if she was sharing the money with her sister-in-law, Edna; but I had heard from Gwen the mother, Emmeline Mahy, was gone ga-ga and couldn't feed herself, let alone manage money. Gwen hadn't done badly with the start Horace gave her, and must have had quite a tidy sum put away. I always got on all right with Gwen, but some people didn't like her; and I must say she was a dried up old maid the last years. I didn't know then she got consumption, and was spitting blood. It was old Mrs Renouf told me Christine was on the island and staying with Lydia Mahy at the Gigands. Lydia had sold most of the land, and lived in the big house on her own with a servant to wait on her. She can't have had much left to make all that show. The few vergées she hadn't sold she let to the Le Patourels; and I still used to meet her sometimes going along the lanes as stiff as a poker with her little black book in her hand.

Christine arranged for the sale of the Arsenal Stores to Amelia Renouf, a granddaughter of old Mrs R., and the stock-in-trade was sold by public auction. Amelia was going to open a beauty parlour there; though what Amelia knew about beauty I don't know. She looked like a freak of nature. It is true she had been trained by Monsieur Lafayette in Town; but he was only a Le Sauvage from St Saviour's. I didn't go to the sale. I had come down to eating out of tins sometimes to save myself trouble, and I might have bought a few to put in the cupboard; but I didn't want to run into Christine. When she turned up at Les Moulins, I didn't know who she was at first. I thought she was a visitor. She had a young man with her.

I was working in the front garden, as it happened; and she stopped by the gate and said ‘Good-afternoon.' I straightened my back and said ‘Good-afternoon,' as I would have to anybody. I saw a well filled-out woman with hanging breasts and popping eyes: so much so I wondered if she drank. She was wearing the same style of clothes as she used to wear, her ‘own personal style as a simple soul'; and that was how I guessed who she was. The simple frock was of white dots on black, and the cloak was of black corded-silk lined with red and made her look like Madame Hamon who kept the Green Shutters. She had a small round black cap on the top of her head, and her hair was frizzed and gingerish; though it used to be straight and yellow. Her face had make-up on was supposed to make her look young, but made her look even more of an old hag. I began to feel very sorry for Christine. How was it possible the lovely girl who walked into Wallaballoo with Raymond the Sunday evening he preached was changed in a few years into this awful creature? Raymond had a lot to answer for.

It didn't cross her mind I might not know who she was. ‘I am glad you are at home to receive me,' she said. The holy voice was gone; and she spoke as a person accustomed to be important in a deep voice, almost a man's. ‘This is my son Gideon,' she said, as if he was the Prince of Wales. He shook hands, but limp. If I hadn't known Horace was his father, I would never have believed it. I couldn't see anything in him of Horace at all. He wasn't very tall, but slim and boyish and much too good-looking; and he had straight fair hair and there was something in his face of Christine when she was his age. I took a dislike to him on sight. He ought to have been on the Pictures; and when he smiled, it was as if he knew he was having his photo taken. I made up my mind there and then he wouldn't get a penny from me. Christine said, ‘I have come to see you on the matter of Raymond's property. I assume he left it to you; but he had no right to.' ‘Property!' I said. I couldn't believe my ears. ‘Raymond didn't leave any property,' I said, ‘he didn't have any to leave.' ‘It is that we have to discuss,' she said. I said, ‘All right, come in; and we'll discuss it!' I was boiling with rage. Did she think I had stolen poor Raymond's things?

‘Sit down!' I said, when I got her indoors. She sat. She could see I was angry. I didn't sit, but stood over her like a judge. Gideon was standing behind her, and made a face and winked. I didn't like him for that either: he had no respect for his mother. I gave him a black look. ‘Now listen to me, Christine,' I said. ‘Raymond when he went away from here left behind a few rags of clothes I wore, or Tabitha used for mending, during the Occupation. His suitcase I suppose Liza Quéripel kept; but there can't have been much in it, perhaps the relics of a few things I got for him. His books and everything else he had he left at Rosamunda.' She was only half listening. ‘Oh, of course,' she said, ‘he lived with Liza Quéripel at the end. I had forgotten. Gwen did mention it in a letter. Well, well, I didn't think he had it in him!' ‘He didn't live with Liza Quéripel in the way you mean,' I said. ‘I couldn't care less, if he did,' she said. ‘It is not his suitcase I am thinking about: it is the house.' ‘What house, for goodness sake?' I said. ‘His father owned a house, didn't he?' she said. ‘I know he sold one; but he bought another. It is Abel's now.' ‘It is not Abel's,' I said. I tried to make her see how Wallaballoo would have been Abel's, if Harold had not sold it; but the house he bought when he married again he was in his legal rights to leave to Mrs Crewe when he died; and she left it to her niece when she died. ‘I think you might at least have gone to law about it,' she said, ‘seeing you were so fond of Raymond.' I let her think what she liked. It was hopeless.

‘How is Abel?' I said. ‘Abel bores me!' said Gideon. ‘The question was addressed to me,' said Christine. There wasn't much love lost between those two. I reckon they was too much alike. She went on and on about Abel; and though every word was a word of praise, by the time she had done I was sick of the sound of him. There never was anybody so perfect. He was good, he was patient, he was kind; and from a small boy had but one idea in his mind: which was to take care of his mother. He had been the head boy of the school, he had passed all his examinations first class, he had done three years as an officer in the Army in Germany for his National Service; and now he was doing very important work for the Government. ‘He is an electrician, isn't he?' I said. ‘An electronic engineer,' she said, as if he was the Prime Minister of England. ‘Well, what do he do?' I said. ‘Ah, that is a secret,' she said, ‘even I, his mother, am not allowed to know.' ‘Why, is he ashamed of it, then?' I said. ‘He lives for his work,' she said. I had been thinking she had lost her holy voice, but it came back when she was speaking of Abel.

I invited them to stop to tea: I couldn't do less; but she said they were expected at Les Gigands. I asked what Gideon was doing, if it wasn't too secret to be told. ‘Oh, he has come over to Guernsey to contact the Tourist Committee,' she said. The firm of advertisers he was working for was hoping to take over complete responsibility for the advertising of the island on the other side. ‘It is time Guernsey was put on the map,' he said, butting in. ‘Good God, isn't it on the map already?' I said. ‘It wasn't a bad little place to live in when people didn't know where it was.' Christine got up to go. ‘Better have a picture of him on the front page of the brochure,' she said. ‘The Immortal Islander!' ‘Quite an idea!' said Gideon. He had a camera slung over one shoulder and made a movement as if he was going to take me. ‘If you take me, I will smash that camera,' I said, ‘and no bones about it either!' I would have too! I wasn't going to have my photo taken to make fun of Guernsey.

Instead he tried to sell Guernsey to me: to ME, of all people! He certainly could talk. He hadn't been on the island three days and knew more about it than the Tourist Committee themselves. ‘They are throwing away their chances,' he said. ‘They think a few pretty pictures of bays and rocks are going to bring over the crowds. There are hundreds of other holiday resorts with pretty rocks and bays. The one advantage you have over the others is the German Occupation. The Germans made your fortunes for you; if only your people would wake up and realise it. “The only British Territory to be trodden under the heel of the Hun.” That is the line to take! That is what the British Tourist wants to see! Photograph every block of concrete the Germans left behind: not try to cover them up, as you are doing! Fence in every fortification and charge for admission, as at least you do for the Underground Hospital. They are lying around empty and disused, when they could be making money: money, man, money! Open them up as casinos, night clubs, pleasure palaces: the bunkers as souvenir shops! Cash in on it: cash in on it!' He was beginning to sweat and had to stop for breath. I managed to get a word in. ‘Yes, but where are the souvenirs coming from?' I said. ‘Birmingham, Birmingham,' he said, ‘where the Sark stone comes from!' Christine had gone down the path and Gideon was following. I ran after him shouting.