The Book of Ebenezer le Page (62 page)

I chatted and we seemed friendly enough; but it wasn't like it used to be during the Occupation. In those days we was both up against it together; but now he was getting on in the world, and I was getting ready to get out of it. I asked him about the boys, who was both out. He said the second didn't like hard work, but was good at keeping the books. Himself, he wasn't much better at keeping books than I was; and nowadays, if you got a cow or a greenhouse, you got to employ a clerk to keep the books. After tea he said he would take me along to see the new glass houses he had just had put up. It wasn't fifty yards along the road; but, if you please, we had to go in the car. He said, ‘What is the use of having a car, if you got to use shanks' ponies?' It wasn't worth the trouble of getting in and out. I said, ‘I reckon legs will die out in Guernsey in a few years; and the future generations will be born with big heads on stumps.' After I had seen what there was to see, he had the impudence to say he could run me home. ‘I can walk yet, thank you,' I said. That silly business of the car decided me. He won't do.

It was round about the same time I went to see Mrs John Mourant of La Fontenelle. She was Elsie Le Gallez before she married, and a great-niece of my little grandmother; and so, I suppose, a sort of relation of mine. It is true she married so far above us, my mother refused to own her, saying it was not for her to bend the knee to the principalities and powers. Mrs Mourant herself had always known who I was, and would bow and smile when she saw me. She was now a widow and had no children. Her husband, Jurat Mourant, had left her pretty well off; but she had spent a pile of money having the old place at La Fontenelle done up, and now ran it as the Grande Hougue Guest-House. I had heard she gave wonderful food and comfort for what the people paid. In fact, she couldn't have made anything out of it; and it was mostly old or disabled people she had staying there. It was on the edge of the Common and safe for them to wander down to the beach, if they could. She was also on a committee to do with the Red Cross and had something to do with the St John's Ambulance, and with the Town Hospital, I believe. Anyhow, she was altogether a good living and a good doing woman.

I went one afternoon. She made me welcome without asking any questions as to why I had come, and said I ought to have called on her before, and must come again whenever I wanted to. Her guest-house was very different from Dora's. I could see everything was of the best; and I bet it was all paid for. She had a lounge for those who liked the T.V.; and another for those who didn't. She said she didn't care for it herself. The bedrooms was made sound-proof, so the old and sick could sleep in peace. There was a big room downstairs for eating in; and she introduced me to some of the guests who was sitting on the verandah in the sun. I noticed she didn't make them go out during the day; and she spoke to them more as if they was friends than strangers who was paying to live there. In fact, she was so good and kind to everybody, I began to wonder if perhaps she didn't like anybody at all really; but only liked being good and kind. I was looking at the decorations in the dining-room. The walls was washed a pale yellow; and painted straight on was pictures of comic bears and giraffes with long necks and woolly sheep and cheeky rabbits. I said they would do lovely for children; but she said it was a mistake to imagine elderly people didn't like gay things around them.

A servant brought in trays of tea and cakes for the guests, and a tray especially for us. Afterwards it was a bit awkward; because I kept on looking round, and couldn't see the place I wanted. In the end I had to ask her where it was. ‘Oh, in the bathroom,' she said; and showed me the way up the stairs, and the door. I had never in my life seen such a bathroom! The bath was pale green, and the walls and the ceiling and the tiles on the floor was the same colour; and even the mats and towels, and the rug to stand on. The windows was of green ground glass and in the green light it was like being under the sea, as it was in Sloan's Circus, only more so; and painted on the ceiling and all the walls was pictures of lobsters with great claws going to get hold of you, and enormous spider-crabs crawling after you, and an octopus with his eight legs going to curl around you, and a huge conger with his mouth open going to swallow you, and long-noses coming straight for you full of teeth. I wouldn't have laid myself down in that bath among those creatures for anything in the world. The nightmares came back to me I used to have when I was hungry during the Occupation and all the creatures I was longing to eat was going to eat me. I couldn't even do my business. I was out of that bathroom and down those stairs and had shouted a good-bye and thank-you to Mrs Mourant and got half-way across the Common before I dared to look round and make sure I wasn't being followed. I had clean forgotten what I had gone to see Mrs Mourant for.

Constable Le Page was another I went to visit. When he came to Les Moulins about those boys, I had thought of him as a possibility, but, for some reason, he had slipped my memory since. The picture of the handsome, sarcastic Neville Falla came into my mind, and so I thought of Constable Le Page again. He was a chap I was surprised was a policeman. When he left school he worked at first for his father, who was a grower at Le Hurel; and I knew he had always been a great boy for Chapel. He taught in the Vale Sunday School, and I had seen his photo in the paper with some other young chaps as having to do with Christian Youth: then I heard he had suddenly married Amy Sebire from Baugy, and joined the Police. It sounded funny to me. As Raymond used to say, a Christian is supposed to forgive the sinner; but surely it is the business of the policeman to catch the criminal and lock him up. I am not saying he is doing wrong, mind you; but I don't understand how a policeman can be a Christian. He have a different Master.

It was one summer evening I went along to his place. I found him in his blue policeman's trousers and shirt-sleeves, washing the outside of the front windows with a syringe and a bucket of water. ‘Hullo, is there more trouble your way?' he said, when he saw me. His first thought was the boys had been up to their tricks again. ‘I haven't seen hair or hide of the young rascals since,' I said. ‘I am surprised at that,' he said; and sounded disappointed. I said, ‘Have they been up to mischief elsewhere, then?' ‘Well, not as far as I know,' he said. ‘Of course, they have lost Neville Falla. He was the real dangerous character.' ‘Have he gone away, then?' I said. ‘No, but he chucked the gang,' he said. ‘He prefers to operate on his own.' ‘Why, what have he been up to now?' I said. ‘I don't know what he has been up to exactly,' he said, ‘but you can bet your bottom dollar he hasn't been up to any good.' Young Falla's father had died recently and, as his mother was already dead, there was nobody now to keep a hold on him. He was an only child and spoilt, and was spending what his father had left him like water; going around shooting his mouth, and making a mock of everybody. It was my guess those he made a mock of most was good honest Christian boys like Constable Le Page.

Anyhow, I hadn't come to see him on police matters; so I asked after his family. He changed his tune at once, and became quite a nice chap. ‘Come in and see my tribe,' he said; and we went indoors. He introduced me to Amy, his wife, who I hadn't met before. She just laughed: she couldn't shake hands. She was up to her neck in kids. She was giving suck to one; and there was three more, who had been got ready to go to bed. The three was all boys: at a guess, about three, five and seven years old, and as much alike as jelly babies, only different sizes; and they was all so exactly like their father they might have come out of the same mould. I said to him, ‘Goodness, couldn't you have done something different?' ‘The last is a girl,' he said. I could see that for myself from the very way her little fingers was curling round trying to get more drink out of her mother; and when she was put down in the cradle, she was just a round lump like her mother. The three boys kissed their mother and father good-night, and shook hands politely with me; then went in their pyjamas up the stairs to bed one behind the other, the eldest first. They won my heart.

It was a pity supper-time we got into an argument over motor-cars. It was me started it, of course. I said I didn't understand how it was nowadays, when they are making so many laws you can't put your right foot in front of your left without asking a policeman, they don't make a sensible law to keep down the number of motor-cars on the island. There are not roads for so many cars, for one thing; and they are not wide enough in many places; and, if you start widening the roads, it will have to be at the expense of somebody's land: and nobody got enough, as it is. I was quite willing to allow the doctors to have motor-cars; and there have to be ambulances and the fire-brigade; and lorries for hauling, and for carrying the produce to the harbour; but I didn't see why every Tom, Dick and Harry should be allowed to have a car. I know of some who go to Town every day in their blessed cars, and got further to walk to their offices from where they can park, than if they had walked straight from home.

He said, ‘What about the people who make a living by selling cars?' I said, ‘There are many more honest ways of making a living than selling cars. Half of them aren't paid for, anyway.' He said it was no good me lamming into him: he didn't have a car of his own; but he wished he had, and would have as soon as he was made a sergeant and could afford one. ‘You are nobody, if you haven't got a car,' he said. I said, ‘Now you have hit the right nail on the head!' It wasn't because all those cars was necessary on the island there was so many, but because if Mrs Domaille happen to have a car, then Mrs Nicolle got to have a car, even if the bus to Town stop outside her gate. Where is there to go to in a car in Guernsey? All they can do is drive round and round, one behind the other; and you can go all round the island in an hour. It is mad.

He said it was no madder than in the days when there was horses and traps. I said it was quite different in the days when there was horses and traps. For one thing, the people was cheerier and more friendly than those who drive about in cars with their noses in the air. ‘I will tell you the reason for why,' I said, ‘a horse is one of God's creatures, and you can't have it all your own way driving a horse. Our old Jack was an angel from heaven on four legs; but even he got ideas into his head sometimes, and you had to give into him so far. When a man sit at the wheel of a car, he think he is God Almighty, and everything and everybody in creation got to get out of his way.' Constable Le Page said I had gone off on to quite a different tack, and was arguing for the sake of winning the argument, by fair means or foul. I didn't know a thing about cars, if I didn't know every car got ideas of its own. I said, ‘Well, all I can say it have come to something, if you got to give in to the ideas of a car!'

Once I get started, there is no stopping me. I went on to say not only was I puzzled as to why there was so many cars on the island, but also as to why there was so many policemen. They are useless objects. There are not less crimes on the island now than there used to be: there are more. I know there was a murder now and again in the past, and a few robberies; but now every week you read of stabbing, and the breaking of shop windows, and stealing, and doing all sort of damage got no rhyme or reason; and nobody dare go out without locking the doors of their houses back and front. ‘As far as I am concerned,' I said, ‘I don't lock my back door, even when I go to bed. I kept it locked when the Germans was here, it is true; but I am certainly not going to do it now against my own people, or against the English we are supposed to belong to.' He said, ‘Well, if you are murdered in your bed one night, it won't do you any good coming to the Police Station in the morning and blame us for it.' ‘I'd have more sense than to do that!' I said.

I was right. I know I was right. The more policemen you have, the more criminals you have; and the more criminals you have, the more policeman you got to have to catch them: and so it go on and on, until a time will come when everybody will be either a criminal or a policeman. I am not for stabbing and robbing, goodness knows; but I am not on the side of the police either. There is a mistake in their argument somewhere; but it would take a better brain than mine to find out what that mistake is. I wasn't arguing any more. I said how much I liked the kiddies, and left a present for each of the boys on the mantelpiece; but I went away disgruntled. I won't leave my money to a policeman.

Well, I am more than half-way through number three of my big books; and I could fill up the whole of the rest of it writing about nothing else than the different people, some relations and some not, who I went to visit with a vain hope. I don't know what I was looking for really. All I know is I didn't find it. There was always something to do with the person put me off. I am getting terribly cranky in my old age. Jim said once I didn't have a heart. He was joking then, I know; but I haven't got much of a heart now. It is cold and shrivelled up. I see my fellow creatures as trees walking; and, as Christine said, I couldn't care less. If Father Darcy was alive, I could leave him everything I got; for I would know he would make good use of it. Or I could leave it to Miss Ozanne for her Bird Hospital. I have more sympathy for birds who get hurt than I have for human beings who go to war, for instance. It is not the birds' fault. All the same, I have never been one to go out of my way to do good; and I would die an old humbug, if I made out I was wanting to do good when I am dead.

I little thought when I was arguing the toss with Constable Le Page I was myself in danger of getting into the hands of the Police. I could have been brought up before the Royal Court and made to pay, or put in prison; and everybody would have read about it in the
Press
. A man never know what a day may bring forth. I went to the States Offices that Friday morning as innocent as a babe unborn. I had filled in my three pieces of paper for the Cliffs Committee and the Natural Beauties Committee and the Ancient Monuments Committee; and I expected to hand them in at the cash desk, have a few words with my girl, and she would pay me my money as usual.