Free The Book of Ebenezer le Page by G.B. Edwards Page A

with Raymond from how he was with his other pals. He was cock of the walk among the rougher boys and his word was law; but with Raymond he was almost humble and willing to listen to what he had to say.
    By then the partnership between the two fathers was broken up, and the sisters was neighbours but no relations. The last job Harold and Percy did together was to build the wall between the two houses. Prissy said, ‘I don’t want strangers to see every time I go to the back, me.’ Harold went on building plain, solid houses and, later on, greenhouses. Percy branched out and went in for moulded concrete pillars and ornamental railings and windows with spikes that had no use nor beauty. Then he employed a young chap from Town who had done a lot of work in the Foulon Cemetery and went in for grave-stones and crosses and vaults for the dead. His last craze was for having angels made to decorate the crosses. Raymond, who knew about such things, said they wasn’t angels, but cherubs. I don’t know the difference, myself. I used to see what was going on when I passed down the Braye. The board that used to stand in front between the two houses with the words MARTEL BROS. BUILDERS on it had been taken down. At the side of Wallaballoo was a board with the words H. MARTEL. BUILDER on it; and at the side of Timbuctoo was another with the words P. MARTEL. MONUMENTAL BUILDER.
    It was a pity they wasn’t in partnership; for together they would have made a fortune. They supplied everything needful. If you was going to live, you went to Wallaballoo; and if you was going to die, you went to Timbuctoo. There was some people who went to both at the same time, to get it all settled and done with. I remember Muriel Bisson, who was a distant cousin of mine and a pretty little thing. She married Frank Nicolle from the Saltpans; and they was like turtle-doves, those two, while they was courting. After they had been to Harold to arrange about having a house built, Muriel happened to see one of those crosses with angels, or cherubs, climbing up it in Percy’s yard. ‘Oh I’d love one of those for you, darling!’ she said. ‘All right, my sweet,’ he said, ‘get it!’ It was ordered. I don’t know if it was paid for. Anyhow, she died before they had been married a year. She was never strong. Prissy hoped he would put it on her grave and order another for himself; but he said, ‘No, it’ll do for the next.’ Marriage is a terrible thing, when you come to think of it. Perhaps it’s as well I’ve never married. Mind you, I’ve had it a few times under the hedge.

6
    I thought a lot of myself when I was a young chap. I wasn’t bad-looking for a Guernsey boy. I was dark with a round museau of a face and thick lips and a pug nose and high cheekbones and deep-set brown eyes and a bush of black hair. I haven’t got much of that black hair left now, and what there is of it is white. I’ve still got enough teeth to eat with and I can hear all right and have never had to put spectacles on my nose, though I have to look through a magnifying glass to read the Births, Deaths and Marriages in the Press, and I write big in this book so as to be able to see what I’m saying. I didn’t grow very tall and wished I was taller; but I had broad shoulders and a good chest which I used to go round with stuck out like a pigeon. I was given fine strong legs, but they was a trifle bandy even then, and have got bandier and bandier the older I’ve got. I wish now I could straighten them out a bit; but I can still get along on them all right. With a stick.
    I was very particular about my clothes. At work I wore a guernsey, or a singlet if it was too hot in the greenhouses; but when I sat on the galley wall of a Sunday evening watching the girls pass, I was wearing my best. It was a suit made of good blue serge with the jacket braided at the edge and the trousers narrow at the