The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(127)

This Island




It is called Jersey and is constructed of granite, shale, diorite and porphyrite, as every schoolboy knows. The whole thing is sort of tilted so that it faces south, which I’m sure is good for the weather. (I never discuss the weather; that is for resort-owners, the peasantry, and certain gentle maniacs who choose to inhabit the Admiralty roof.) The coastline is wild and lovely past belief.

Tobacco and ardent spirits are cheap and income tax benignly low but I dare say these blessings will vanish, along with the Public Schools, as soon as the Socialists get a real majority and start to feel their oats.





The People




There are many layers of these. First, the holiday-makers, who need no description, bless them. Their name is legion.

Next, the farmers, who are all of old Jersiais stock, and, in an unobtrusive and po-faced way, run the Island to their own quiet satisfaction. They have ugly old names, ugly old faces and hideous old wives. Their workers are like them but drunker. Some transient peasants drift in from Normandy, Brittany and even Wales to see to the daffodil, potato and tomato harvests; they are small and squat and sinister, like Italians from the Abruzzi, and they are the drunkest of all and who shall blame them.

Third, and best known, are the rich immigrants who have come to enjoy the Isle’s peculiar tax benefits. The modest tax they pay swells the local coffers in a way the Jerseyman finds hard to forgive. Some of them are total abstainers, which I suppose is one way of becoming rich, but most of them are pretty drunk too: whisky is about the same price as cheap wine – and much nicer.

They have brought so much money with them that I sometimes fear the Isle may one day sink beneath its weight. Their conversation is brilliant so long as you stick to the subject of the length of their drawing-rooms – or ‘lounges as they are called in the local argot.

Hordes of bankers and other money-borrowers, of every degree of venality, have followed them here like greedy shite-hawks and each prime site in St Helier is snapped up by these shameless guzzlers as soon as it falls vacant. This is probably a bad thing.

There are several minor categories like nobility and gentry, Portuguese waiters, Indian trumpery-mongers, transient barmaids and drunken novelists but these, although uniformly nice, concern our story but little.





The Fauna




The prop of the economy, and the only large mammal other than the Jersey lady, is the Jersey cow. She is doe-eyed and quite beautiful and secretes wonderfully rich milk. She is usually tethered because pasture is precious and fences are costly; in winter she is ‘rugged’ with a plastic mackintosh and in summer she sports a sun-bonnet. Yes, truly. There are some pigs but I believe no sheep, which is perhaps why a certain Highland Regiment has never been stationed here. There is a great number of horses and the suburban cavalry may be seen tittuping along the lanes at any hour of the day.

Wild-life is scarce except for sea-birds; the dominant species are the magpie and the sparrow. There is no shooting land and therefore no gamekeepers, so the ubiquitous magpie munches up all the nestlings; only the sparrow, that bird of Venus, can outbreed magpies by diddling his mate all the year round, sturdy little chap. In the late autumn small rare birds may sometimes be seen on passage, resting in the fields of unborn daffodils.





The Flora




This is chiefly grass and gardening, the latter often of an excruciating garishness. There is some bracken and gorse on parcels of land wailing for planning permission but all the rest is luxury crops: early potatoes, daffodils, anemones, tomatoes and the occasional shy cauliflower. Certain cabbages with prodigally long stalks are grown for tourists to photograph: the natives assure them with straight faces that these are grown for walking-sticks but no one in his senses would believe that, would he?





The Buildings




These range from the gloomy to the absurd via the pretentious. St Helier is a positive barrel of architectural fun: even Sir John Betjeman would be unable to keep a straight face. In the countryside the characteristic building is a large, grim farmhouse made of liver-coloured granite, with huge outer walls and a shortage of windows. Rich incomers grab them avidly and modernize them hideously. The finished article is worth ten times the price of a comparable house in England. I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or not.





The Language




This is rather a difficult bit. Your actual Jerseyman of the artisan classes speaks something which sounds quite like English until you try to understand it, then you realize that it is like an Australian trying to imitate a Liverpudlian. ‘His’ is pronounced ‘ease’ and most sentences begin with the phrase ‘My Chri’ and end with the vocable ‘eh?’ It is an unlovely tongue and one can readily learn to dislike it.

Laws and other official matter are written in a quaint old Norman-French reminiscent of Domesday-Book Latin. Members of the grand old Jersey families can still speak it, I’m told, but you won’t get them to admit it.

The true patois Jersiais is something quite different and barbarous beyond belief. (Guinness es bouan por té.) When I tell you that the word ‘Jersey’ represents the Latin ‘Caesarea’ I think you will take my meaning.

Finally, most tradespeople can produce enough schoolboy French of modern vintage to puzzle the transient workers with, especially since the latter are usually tired and drunk.