The Book of Ebenezer le Page (72 page)

I watched him go down the road and swing into his car; and the red light disappear. I came indoors and put the bar across the front door. I was on my own; but was I? I have given away, perhaps thrown away, all I've got; but I am not on my own. There is SOMEBODY HERE. He is like my father was, behind me, on the ladder. He is like my mother was, when she was cooking me ormers. He is not only my father and my mother. He is more. He in Whom we live and move and have our being. Jim is in Him. The Jerry I killed is in Him; and the boy he was buggering. Raymond and Horace are in Him. Neville is in Him; but don't know it yet. I wonder how he will shape out, that boy. He say he is a pagan; and I say he is a puritan. I hope he will not stick his heels in over getting married in a Catholic Church. He is honest in the mind. He must not expect to find what's what in any religion, or any person in this world. I hope he will not let his wild ideas run away with him. As bad as Guernsey is, I hope he will not butt in and try and change it. It will change quick enough without his help; and for the worse and worse. He must endure it. He have Adèle to love and a living to make and his pictures to paint. They are his way of prayer and praise.

I pulled the blinds down and lit the lamp. It was time for my supper; but I didn't want any. I was full of thoughts: more thoughts than I have had in all my days. I don't know how long I passed walking up and down, or resting in my chair, while thoughts came and went. It might have been an hour; for when I went outside for a piddle, it was quite dark. It was a fine clear night and the sky was full of stars. The Casquets light was doing its round: three flashes and down, three flashes and down; and far out to sea ships was passing without a sound. I don't know how many, but I must have seen a dozen, or more. Some was cargo boats with port and masthead lights, and the glow of a cabin or two, but others was great liners lit up like floating palaces on the way to America. I don't want to die, me! I want to stop alive for ever, if only to see the ships pass.

I came indoors. I made up my mind I would write this very night what have happened to me today. I have never written so much at one go. It is near on midnight, and I am writing yet; but now it is death and what come after I am thinking of. There is no after: it will only be now. I don't believe, I don't believe in the harps and the big fire, and the wheat and the tares, and the sheep and the goats; for the Day of Judgment is the Day of Forgiveness, and the repentant and the unrepentant sinner are with Christ in Paradise. I hear Christine singing:

Sing, Christine: sing! Be not bitter, as Lot's wife was. Forgive them, forgive them; for they have loved much! ... I wish I could live my life again. I wish I could write my story again. I have judged people. I do not want to judge people. I want to bless. I want to bless every soul who have ever lived and laughed and suffered on this whore of an island, this island in the sun, this island in God's sea!

I am on the last page of the last of my three big books. Who will ever believe I have written these three big books? I want to write another. Next time I go to Town, I will buy another from the
Press
. I want to write down in it all the good thoughts I have left out in this. Now it is high time I thought of going to bed. I mustn't forget to wind the clock; and I will turn the lamp down, but not right out. I don't like it in the dark. I like to be able to see my two china dogs while I am falling asleep. Damme, I am tired, me! I will sleep well tonight, I know. Ah well, that is all for now. À la prochaine!

Ebenezer Le Page writes his book in a variant of Guernsey English. It is the language of a man whose unselfconscious, natural speech is the patois of his island. He imbibed it with his mother's milk: but he has never seen it in print, nor seen it spelt in English or French approximate equivalents, or in the International Phonetic Script. In his early years he read
La Gazette
, but that was printed in Standard French; though in his mind, he pronounced the words in Guernsey French. In later years he read the
Guernsey Advertiser
(eventually the
Star
) and the
Guernsey Evening Press
. Both were written in straightforward, grammatical English, but did not wean him from the basic rhythms and syntax of his patois. By the time he is writing his book, he is thinking and speaking in English with a smattering of German words inadvertently acquired, but saying the words he writes to himself with the accent and timbre of his native tongue.

Norman French, descending from the time of the Conqueror, through the Plantagenets to modern times in Guernsey, has assimilated some curious oddities on the way. For instance, ‘Mette le byke contre le shed' is good Norman French, as spoken in Guernsey, and the word ‘lighthouse' is invariably used in the most patois-speaking parish on the island; while ‘garage' is pronounced ‘garridge' in both Guernsey French and Guernsey English, though a gentleman in Town, referring to the edifice housing his most precious possession, will pronounce it ‘g-ah-r-ah-ge' in French, giving it the benefit of a full blast of English ah's. St Peter Port, the Town, is the only parish to have no characteristic Guernsey speech. It is the centre of government, official, banking and trading circles, and culturally dominated by the most lamentable of the island's institutions, Elizabeth College: an English Public School. It therefore has no native language. It is English.

Elsewhere, the patois varies, if only slightly, from parish to parish. At one time, no doubt, when travel was difficult and rare, each parish had its distinctive way of speaking, and there are still faint but distinct differences between the patois spoken in St Martin's and the Câtel; but the ear-splitting division is between Les Hautes Paroisses (the High Parishes to the south and south-west: Torteval, The Forest, St Saviour's and St Peter-in-the-Wood) and Les Basses Paroisses (the Low Parishes to the north and north-east: the Vale and St Sampson's). The vocabularies vary considerably, and there are two quirks of pronunciation which make High Parish patois sound almost a different language. Les Hautes Paroisses cannot endure an ‘r' to begin a word, or occur in the middle of a word with a consonant before it. It must be ‘er', and the last ‘r' of the word, if there is one, is casually sacrificed. Also they abhor the sound ‘ch' as in ‘church'. It must be ‘tch'; and they will suffer tongue-twisting agonies to insert a ‘t' in the middle of a word. Both these quirks have to some extent spread to the north and left traces on northern pronunciation.

Ebenezer Le Page is of the north and lives at the Chouet: spelt so according to the map; but Ebenezer has never seen a map. When he writes his book, he spells the places with which he is familiar as he says them. He therefore writes Chouey, which he fondly imagines is how he says it: but it isn't. He says ‘Tchouey'. It is an instance where a stray ‘t' has been blown down from the upper parishes. He is sometimes accidentally correct in his spelling of place-names. He spells Mont Cuet correctly, because that is how he says it; and the Bouet. His inconsistencies are reasonable. He refers to Bordeaux Harbour constantly as Birdo, never having heard it called by any other name; but Les Caves de Bordeaux, the historic wine-cellars in the Town, for which he has due reverence, he both spells and speaks in perfect French.

His few lapses into patois in the telling of his story are mostly in contexts where the meaning is apparent, if the words are incomprehensible; but now and again he may be obscure. ‘J'sis fier!' is equivalent to the colloquial English phrase ‘Glad to hear it!' Literally ‘I am pleased!' (not proud, as French). The transcription of patois would be simpler, if its pronunciation were not so dependent on the temperament of the speaker. A bonne-femme who has a lot to say to another good woman and wants to get it ALL out at once will speak with a velocity that leaves the silent listener staggering in amazement. The pace at which the patois can be spoken by country women has to be heard to be believed. It inevitably tends to a shortening of the vowels. On the other hand, a Calvinist housewife, who gives every word full consideration before uttering it, lest it enshrine a sin, will tend to lengthen the vowels. Ebenezer plonks for a middle course when he reports his mother as saying ‘chonna'. From a fast speaker, it would sound more like ‘chéna', while in the case of Ebenezer's mother, it probably sounded more like ‘chaw-na'.

He is inclined to be misleading as to his own pronunciation. When he writes ‘Je t'aime', he hears himself saying ‘Je t'oime'; and even when he admits to a Frenchman ‘aimé' in his mind rhymes with ‘my' and not with ‘may', he retains the stem of the spelling he remembers from
La Gazette
. In the same way, he is quite justified when he insists that ‘prochaine' rhymes with ‘shoine' and not with ‘shane'; but he omits to point out that the word he is actually saying is more accurately represented by ‘per(o) choine' than ‘prochoine'.

On personal names he is only guilty of minor transgressions. Sequah, the famous mesmerist who visits the island, he spells Sequois, assuming him to be French, which he had good evidence for believing. To Steve Picquet, the Hermit of Pleinmont, he grants full French honours; but The Picquet House, spelt exactly the same, he both spells and pronounces as The Picket House: which, indeed, is what its function originally was. English words he spells correctly by the simple expedient of having a dictionary.

The names of the local people he spells as in the paper, having read the Births, Deaths and Marriages since childhood; but an English reader would be surprised if he knew how some of them are being said. Tostevin may be Tos-te-vin (Phonetic), or Tôde-vin (French), or Toad-vin (English). Mr Tostevin will answer to all three. If Mr Domaille lives in the Hautes Paroisses, his name will be pronounced as though the ‘ll' were a ‘y'. If he lives in the Basses Paroisses, the ‘ll' will be normal. That is, in both cases, if he is addressed in patois. If he is addressed in Guernsey English, he will be called Mr Domoile anywhere. Robin as a surname is not pronounced like the bird, but Ro'-bin; and so on and so on! Remains ‘Damme!' It is not said as ‘Damn me!' in English; but in one syllable, and is stronger. It derives from the Mediaeval Norman French oath ‘Daume!' and, far from invoking the aid of Our Lady, is being sacrilegious.

Guernsey English is spoken in as many different ways (or, at least was in Ebenezer's formative years) as Guernsey French. King's (or Queen's) English emanated from St Peter Port. St Martin's is virtually a suburb of St Peter Port; and as the patois spoken by the country people inclined to Standard French, so the Guernsey English inclined to Good English. The north has always been the most English-speaking part of the island: but of rough English. Ebenezer owes his vocabulary and idiom to quarrymen and seamen; and his vagaries of singular and plural are as much English bad grammar as due to the anomalous features of Norman French. He retains his mannerisms: the resigned beginning ‘Ah well,' of a statement from which it is abundantly clear that things are not by any means well; the tendency for a sentence, having made a statement, to turn its tail up at the end and ask the question ‘Is it?'; the use of the emphatic: I am going to Town, me. Are you going to Town, you? accompanied by the appropriate gestures indicating who the you and the me are. The Guernseyman of Ebenezer Le Page's day, and before, was a tough bird on a hard, if fertile, rock, and capable and guilty of every wickedness known to man; but he was never cold, never impersonal. He had not become scientific.

The Book of Ebenezer Le Page
ends some time in the mid-nineteen-sixties, judging from the people still living, or who have recently died. He is stingy with dates. It is therefore a story of the distant past; for an epoch has transpired since then. It is doubtful whether any Guernseyman alive anywhere on the island today feels and thinks like Ebenezer Le Page. St Peter Port has extended to the remotest purlieus of Rocquaine Bay, where in £30,000 houses nestling in a coign, plastic people display their impeccable selves behind picture windows to the visiting gulls.

The number of cars per mile of road is the peak in Europe. A few cows are allowed to survive for the breed and a few flowers grown for the market. Guernsey Toms maintain their public image on the mainland by being produced under dehumanised pressure of terrifying intensity. The separate villages (villes) into which the island was once divided are now merged into an amorphous mass indistinguishable from the more densely populated districts of Surrey. The cliffs, it is claimed, are unspoiled; but that is for the tourists' benefit, to leave the pests something to look at; though they have to get into a boat to do so. Otherwise, if they are lucky, they can lower their behinds into a vacated hollow of sand. Tourism is an incubus that saps the natural and spiritual vitality of the island. It pays. They say. The Town is paved with gold. It seems. Certainly nowhere else on the earth's crust in a comparable acreage are so many banking companies accommodated, unless it be in the inmost citadel of the City of London. Guernsey people are different from English. When they do a thing, they do it thoroughly. The interlocking system of committees which provides the fodder for the democratically elected and royally appointed States to regurgitate would show up Whitehall. The secret content of the statistical arcana is, of course, unknown; but it may be, like the Holy of Holies in the Temple, if the curtain were rent, it would be revealed as empty and dark. Meanwhile, the great Goddess Smug can reign supreme. The economic future of the island is mortgaged on States authority to the success of a Recreation Centre to be built at colossal expense for the benefit of the coming generation. The irony is, at the rate the island is going, by the time the Recreation Centre comes into existence, there will be no generation left to re-create: only machine-man; and machine-man cannot be re-created. He is the dead end.