The Book of Ebenezer le Page

  He was carrying towels and things under his arm and bagsful of food. ‘On the table for now,’ I said, ‘but goodness, you needn’t have bothered to bring all that!’ ‘I got in a mood,’ said Adèle, ‘and when I’m in a mood, I must do something. I enjoy cooking.’ Neville wasn’t interested. His idea was since it was such fine weather, we must all go down on the beach, and they could have a swim before tea; but that wasn’t what she wanted. I saw she was a young miss with a will of her own. He must go along and have his swim; and she was going to stay and have a chat with Ebenezer: then we would both come down on the beach when the tea was got ready for his lordship. He said, ‘What’s going on here? I believe she likes you better than she do me.’ ‘Of course I like him better than I do you!’ she said. ‘Who wouldn’t?’ ‘Man not to reason why, his but to do and die!’ he said; and picked up his bathing suit and towel and went off.

  When he was gone, she wouldn’t let me do a thing. She made me sit in the armchair and arranged the cushions in my back; and then sat on the edge of the green-bed opposite me, and looked at me very straight in the face. I knew she had something to say to me, but I was surprised what it was when it did come out. ‘Thank you for what you have done for Neville,’ she said. ‘I haven’t done nothing for Neville,’ I said. She said, ‘He is a different person since he has been seeing you. He is human.’ I said, ‘Wasn’t he human before, then?’ ‘When he was in front of his easel, yes,’ she said, ‘but not when he was with people. It was ice where there ought to have been a heart.’ ‘He likes to make out he is like that,’ I said. ‘It is all right now,’ she said. ‘The ice is melted. I only wish I knew how you have done it.’ ‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘I expect just by being you, bless you!’ she said, and jumped up and gave me a quick kiss on the forehead, then began to unpack the things on the table.

  ‘If you will tell me where things are, I can cope,’ she said; so I stayed in my chair and gave the orders. It was a pleasure watching her moving about the house. She is quick and neat; and never clumsy. I liked her clothes. She was wearing a pleated skirt of mixed yellow-brown and green with black squares, and a black sweater open at the neck. It was just right with her black hair, and her bright, bright brown eyes. I noticed she had on sensible shoes, and not those with high thin heels make a girl look as if she is going to topple over. She got a tablecloth out of the chest-of-drawers in my mother’s room, as I told her; and the lobsters from the safe outside the back door. I made her use the best china on the dresser. She knew how to deal with a lobster; and had brought some home-made gâche and cream-cakes. The table looked real nice laid for the three of us. The kettle was on the side and would be boiling by the time we came in.

  Neville is a mystery to me, in a way, and will always be, I think. He have something I haven’t got, and don’t understand; but it is something I like him for. It is what make him able to paint, and be serious about how he paint. Adèle isn’t a mystery to me at all. I might have known her all my life. At times I almost forget she is Adèle, and fancy she is Tabitha; though Tabitha would never have said damn, nor worn her skirt up to her knees. At any rate, I was sure she wouldn’t mind if I said what I was thinking. I knew without her having to tell me she didn’t want Neville only for a friend. He was the boy she had set her heart on; and she wasn’t one who would change easy. I said, ‘If the ice have melted, as you say, don’t you ever let it freeze up again! It is up to you. He won’t unfreeze a second time, you know. He is not one who finds it easy to trust people; nor don’t you run away with the idea he is going to be satisfied to be only your husband and the father of your children. He have to go on painting his pictures: family, or no family. If not, he will turn nasty and start smashing things again.’ She was cutting up the lobsters while I was talking; but she was listening to what I had to say. ‘I wonder how it is you know him so well,’ she said, ‘you are very wise.’ I was thinking of Christine who I had never forgiven for putting herself in front of Raymond and knocking him out. ‘I like you very much, Adèle,’ I said, ‘very much indeed; but if, when I am gone, you hurt that boy, I will haunt you, I will!’ She laughed. ‘He has certainly found a champion in you!’ she said.

  She wanted to go for a swim now, and got her bathing things; while I put on my hat and jacket, and took my stick. When we got out the front door, she caught hold of my free hand, and we walked down the beach hand-in-hand. It seemed quite natural. Neville was sprawled only in his bathing slip on the flat rock in the sun. He sat up when he heard us coming. ‘Now what have you two been hatching?’ he said. ‘Ah, wouldn’t you like to know?’ she said; and slipped away behind a rock to get changed. He had already had his swim. I have never been in the sea, except to paddle up to my knees, but how to swim is one of the things I would learn if I had to live my life again. When she ran down the sand, she turned round and waved. I said to Neville, ‘Now she don’t spoil the picture, do she?’ ‘Adèle doesn’t,’ he said. ‘If I was a painter,’ I said, ‘I would only want to paint human beings.’ ‘I have enough on my plate for the first time being,’ he said. ‘I am only beginning to see. I might paint Les Moulins a dozen times, and every time see it different. I wouldn’t be surprised if I am painting it yet at the end of my days: like Cézanne and Mont Sainte Victoire.’ ‘I hope you will be,’ I said.

  I find it next to impossible to write about that happy afternoon and evening with Neville and Adèle; and happy isn’t the word, quite. It was joy bubbling up inside me. I can’t say how much it meant, after being so many years on my own, to have these two young people being so good to me. It was a lovely tea. I sat at the head of the table, but it was them looked after me. Their wet bathing-suits and towels was hanging up in the wash-house to dry; and the two of them looked fresh and clean in their nice clothes. I don’t remember what was said much. It was silly things mostly: jokes and laughing. I know I ate a lot. I was made to sit in the grand-pa’s chair after, while they cleared away and washed up. I was altogether spoilt. It was a golden evening and the sun was shining in at the windows. When it began to get dark, Neville ran out to put the light on of his car; and then they pushed the table back and we sat round the fire with the lamp lit and the blinds down. Les Moulins was a home again.

  They made me feel I was one of them. Neville was talking to me, but also half arguing with Adèle: in fact, near quarrelling at times. He got excited and started lamming out right and left at everything happening in the world in general, and Guernsey in particular. He is clothed and in his right mind when he is talking about painting; but I am not sure when he is talking about other things. He didn’t have a good word to say for his school; and I thought it was a good school. He said all they taught you was to pass exams so you could be packaged in the appropriate coloured paper on the conveyor belt bound for a successful career. It was your selling-price mattered. The rest was make-weight. ‘I will never be able to look Shakespeare in the face,’ he said. ‘Say by whom and when spoken “The quality of mercy is not strained: it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath”.’ I said, ‘A namesake of yours, Mess Henri Falla from La Moye, used to make us learn that piece by heart at the Vale School. If we forgot a bit, it was “bend over, touch your toes: whack! whack! whack!”’ ‘Oh come,’ said Adèle, ‘it is not as bad as that now!’ She had been educated by the nuns; and they was wonderful teachers, she said. I hadn’t thought she might be a Roman Catholic, though I had noticed she wore a cross on a chain round her neck. It was a blow: but at least they know what is right and wrong.

  I was surprised when Neville said, although he was a pagan himself, he had every respect for the Christian Faith. So long as it wasn’t only dead dogmas. Or just a list of do’s and don’ts. Or politics. ‘It is when a big noise stands up in the pulpit of the Town Church and blethers about Christian Principles in War, I see red!’ he said. ‘Well, there was the Scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees, you know,’ I said. ‘There will always be those people. They got to live, the poor creatures. The rest of us got to buil
d mansions in heaven.’ ‘It is the only place you will get one if you are a Guernseyman!’ he said. He ranted on about the States. They do nothing for those of their own people who are poor and got nowhere to live; but they will kow-tow to any tax-dodger from the other side who wants to dig in, if only he brings a big enough wad of money to the island. I said, ‘Well there was Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas; but we are lucky to have our own, and not be ruled over by the Romans.’ He lay back in his chair and rolled about laughing.

  I thought Adèle was looking sad while Neville was talking wild; but she brightened up when it ended with a laugh: yet it was her brought up about the blessed T.V. She said to me, ‘I am surprised you don’t have the T.V. It would be company for you in the long winter evenings.’ I said, ‘Goodness, I don’t want those sort of people in my house!’ That really did set Neville off. He tore the T.V. to shreds; and he had seen more of it than I have. The Big Bang was a threat; but the T.V. was a menace always with us. If you talk to people nowadays, nothing exists unless it has been seen on T.V. It gives people the idea they have seen and know everything, when really they have seen and know nothing. It is the deadliest drug on the market. They go sky-high if the boys smoke pot. It is perpetual pot for the millions of goggle-eyed addicts who watch it nightly. ‘Oh, but I like watching the T.V.,’ said Adèle, ‘for then my aunt isn’t nagging at me. She loves watching it herself, and says she doesn’t know she ever managed to live without it.’ ‘I am doing nothing to prevent you watching the T.V.,’ said Neville, ‘so long as I don’t have to see it or hear it myself. I will build you a padded cell where you can watch it day and night.’ I thought she was going to flare up, but she answered meekly, ‘If I was living with someone who wasn’t always finding fault with me, perhaps I wouldn’t insist on a padded cell.’

  They didn’t want much for their supper: only a cup of coffee and a biscuit. I wasn’t hungry either. I had some real coffee in the cupboard I had seen ground from the beans; and Adèle made it and we sat with it on our knees. I was sorry they had to go so early; but he had to get her back to St Andrew’s by ten. Her aunt was very strict. ‘I got to keep on the right side of her aunt,’ he said, ‘as I may want to take her out on loan again.’ ‘I should jolly well hope you do!’ I said, ‘because I want to see her again.’ She hugged me when she went. I watched them go down to the car from the front door. ‘À bientôt!’ she called out.

  19

  I was afraid that cup of coffee was going to keep me awake; but I slept like a log and woke up late. I cut myself shaving and had to choke down my breakfast. I only just managed to get to Town by eleven. I was hot and cold all over when I got to Mr de Lisle’s office. ‘I am sorry if I am late,’ I said to the girl; but she was as nice as she could be. ‘Oh, that’s quite all right, Mr Le Page,’ she said, ‘Mr de Lisle will see you immediately.’ She opened the door to his room, and held it open for me to go in. He got up from his desk and smiled and shook hands and said, ‘Hullo, Mr Le Page, how are you?’ as if I was an old friend. ‘I overslept and had to hurry,’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ he said. ‘Now sit down and relax.’ He was more like a young doctor than ever; and when he sat down to his desk, he looked as if he might be going to tell me in as kind a way as possible I would be dead next week.

  I noticed the papers I had let him have was spread out in front of him, and a lot of other sheets of paper with writing on. ‘I have gone very carefully into your affairs, Mr Le Page,’ he said. ‘As regards the house, the greenhouse and the land, in fact all your real estate, there will be no difficulty whatever; and the same may be said of the various cash repositories in the house.’ I said, ‘Yes, but what about the sovereigns?’ ‘Ah, there’s the rub,’ he said. ‘If there are any of before 1838, those can be freely held and sold.’ ‘I wasn’t born then,’ I said. He said there might be some early issues among them for all I knew; but of those of a later date, only four could be held: and even those it would be necessary to get permission to sell. I said, ‘Who say all this?’ It was the Exchange Control Order relating to Gold Coins Exemption agreed to by the States. ‘I don’t understand how that can be,’ I said, ‘gold is gold. The States can’t change that, surely.’ It seems they could; if they was under pressure from the other side. British currency was no longer on the gold standard, as surely I knew, and any sale of gold in quantity might upset the balance of credit. ‘The balance of credit?’ I said, ‘I haven’t the vaguest idea what that mean; but I do know whoever it was made that law are a lot of rogues and vagabonds! I worked for every penny of those sovereigns!’ I was real angry.

  He said he knew it was hard on me, and he was sorry; but all he could do was advise me which course of action he thought best. If I wished, I could admit now I was in possession of those sovereigns and apply to the Treasury for permission to hold them. It might be granted, or it might not; but it was extremely unlikely I would be given permission to sell any issued after 1837, and certainly not in bulk. He thought the best way out was for me to agree he didn’t know I was in possession of those sovereigns. ‘I don’t see how I can do that,’ I said, ‘I have told you now.’ He said that didn’t matter. He might know it personally, but that didn’t necessarily mean he knew it in law. ‘At that rate,’ I said, ‘what is so in solid fact and what the law say is so are entirely different.’ ‘Exactly,’ he said, ‘Mr Le Page, you would have made quite a good lawyer yourself.’ ‘God forbid!’ I said.

  He had drawn up a provisional will, listing my assets, among which was a cash-box, of which I held the key. As it was mentioned in the will, it would naturally be searched for, and he would drop Neville a hint as to where it was to be found. After that it would be Neville’s headache. There would be delays and fees and what-not; but at least there might be some compensation. He promised he would advise Neville, according as to how the wind was blowing at the time; and use what outside influence he could bring to bear, so as much as possible would be realisable in terms of ready cash. In the long run, Neville might do quite well out of it. It would be to his advantage he could in no way be held responsible, as I could, for being in illegal possession of the gold, in view of the fact he was ignorant of the legacy. What did I think? ‘I leave it to you,’ I said. I was too miserable to think. Having those golden sovereigns had kept my head up all my life. ‘It seems to me,’ I said, ‘there is nothing you can be sure of in this world.’ ‘Strictly speaking, that is true,’ he said. ‘Money is the measure of our distrust.’

  He read the will out loud for me to hear. I could have written it all down on the back of a postcard, but he made pages and pages of it. It sounded all right; and I suppose another lawyer would understand it. ‘There remains the appointing of an executor, or executors,’ he said. Well, I knew a will had to have an executor, and I had always meant to ask young Jean Le Boutillier to do it; but now I had my doubts as to how he would feel doing it for Neville’s benefit. It was going to be bad enough for him to have Neville Falla for a neighbour. ‘Is it possible for you to do it yourself, Mr de Lisle?’ I said. ‘I will pay.’ ‘I will do it willingly,’ he said, ‘but in my private capacity; and payment will not be necessary.’ ‘Thank you very much indeed,’ I said. ‘Then consider that done,’ he said; and wrote down some more.

  I thought it was finished now; but he went on to say it was often the custom in a will to give parting advice to the legatee, or set down a condition, or conditions, under which the legacy was to be enjoyed. Had I any advice, or conditions, I wished to add? ‘None,’ I said. ‘Then it is to be completely without strings,’ he said. I said ‘Your famous law have tied me up in enough strings, as it is, without me tying up poor Neville in any more.’ He said, ‘That will be all then, I think.’ I thought for a minute. ‘No, wait,’ I said. ‘There is something else. I want you to say I give;’ but he stopped me. ‘Bequeath,’ he said. ‘I bequeath,’ I said, ‘my spirit to my Maker and my sin-rotten body to be buried with my fathers and my forefathers in the graveyard of the Church of the Vale, where
the bells ring and the wind blow.’ He copied down word for word what I said; and put down his pen and looked at me. He said, ‘I pray to God it will be many a long day yet before that come to pass.’

  We parted good friends. He said if I came in the next Friday morning, it would be ready for me to sign. I asked him couldn’t I sign it before then? I could come in the next day, if he wanted; or on the Monday. He said he would rush it through and I could sign it on the Tuesday morning. I asked him about paying for it, so as to know how much money to bring; but he said there was no hurry. He would send a bill; and, in any case, the charges could go against the estate. I would rather have paid. He came with me to the front door and the girl said ‘Good-bye, Mr Le Page,’ as we passed through her office. I don’t know what have come over that girl. When we shook hands, he said it had been a pleasure to do business with me. He only wished all his clients knew their own minds as well as I do mine.

  I had been with him for over an hour. I hadn’t had time before to go to the States Offices; so I went in and got my money. There was nothing for me to do then but come home. I didn’t know how I was going to wait until the Tuesday. A day is a long time to get through when you get to my age. I passed the afternoon somehow. The Saturday went quicker than I thought; but the Sunday was a long day. In the evening I went on with my book; but I didn’t have much heart for writing. It was the real thing I wanted. I kept on thinking how Neville had barged in the Sunday before with the frame, and was wishing for it to happen again; but a good thing never happen a second time. The Monday wasn’t so bad. I spent most of the day in the greenhouse, trimming the plants. I am going to have a wonderful crop of tomatoes this year.