Horace Camp: Two little boys

Let us picture two boys born on the same day in 1994 in the Princess Elizabeth Hospital, a matching pair as alike as two peas in a pod. The nurses fussed over them and everyone said what a fine pair they were. Within a week one of them had been adopted by a couple in England who had been waiting months for the call. The other stayed, going home with his mother to a modest place in town.

The boy who stayed grew up as Guernseymen always have, riding his bike down the lanes, coming home scratched by brambles and salt-stained from paddling at the bathing pools on long summer evenings. He could name half the people in his street and knew which fields you could cut across to get to the beach and which ones belonged to farmers who would shout if you tried. His world was small but in a good way, full of cousins and neighbours and a sense that this was his island.

At 11 he went to one of the States’ high schools. He started off well enough but by Year 9 motorbikes, fishing and girls had begun to seem more important than algebra or Shakespeare. Homework became something to dodge, lessons something to sit through, and school a place to endure until he was old enough to leave. At 16 he counted down the days until the summer term ended and when it did he was gone. He left without a single piece of paper saying he had passed maths or English. That did not surprise anyone. He was one of the majority. In the year he left, fewer than three out of 10 boys in the States’ high schools left with five GCSEs, including English and maths. The odds had been against him from the start and he stepped off the school bus for the last time with the same result as most of his mates.

The next Monday he was on a building site. At first he was just the lad who fetched and carried, pushing the barrow, sweeping up, keeping out of the way, but soon enough he was one of the crew. The older men showed him how to do things properly, how to barrow a load without spilling it, how to keep the scaffold boards level, how to leave the site tidy at the end of the day so the boss would be pleased.

He has never been afraid of work and in 14 years he has barely missed a day. He is known as a good worker, the sort of man you can trust to get on with the job without being watched. He takes a quiet pride in that. He married young, had three children and has tried to give them a better start than he had himself.

But life has been a struggle. When they first married he and his wife rented a couple of rooms in a creaking Georgian house in town, sharing a bathroom and a kitchen with other tenants. Later they found another place a little less run down, but never a proper family home. As the children have grown the rooms have seemed smaller and the rents have climbed faster than his pay. He has looked at applying for a States house but every time his income puts him just over the limit. He has thought about saving for a deposit but the prices run away from him faster than he can put money by.

He takes the dinghy out now and then when the weather is right. A few bass sold quietly helps with the bills. He does not think of himself as doing anything wrong. It is what people have always done here when the wages are thin and the month is long.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the Midlands, the other boy was growing up in a world of red brick terraces and sprawling comprehensives. He sat in classrooms with hundreds of others, did his paper round, played rugby on Saturdays and sat his GCSEs in 2010 with a better-than-even chance of passing English and maths. He passed them, not with any great glory, but well enough to stay on for A-levels. That led to a degree at one of the newer universities and then a steady job in the council offices.

It was a safe life, though not an exciting one. He clocked in, did his hours and went home. By his late twenties he was married, and by 29 he was divorced, walking away with a small lump of cash from the sale of the marital home. One evening, bored and scrolling through job ads, he saw a position in Guernsey. The salary was far higher than anything he could expect where he lived. There was a relocation package, help with housing, even someone to meet him at the airport. Within months he had accepted the offer and was on a flight back to the island where he had been born 30 years before.

Now he works in an office in St Peter Port, learning the systems, finding his feet and enjoying the novelty of island life. His rent is covered by his package and he is saving almost half of his salary. Already he is thinking about buying a house. It seems the sensible thing to do.

The brothers do not know each other. They may have passed each other in the street. One, in muddy boots and hi-vis, heading for the site before seven in the morning. The other, clean-shaven and carrying a coffee cup, on his way to the office.

One is proud of the fact that he has never been out of work, never missed a rent payment and never taken a penny he was not entitled to. The other is proud that he has taken a chance and made a new life, that things are looking up and that the future seems bright.

On Friday night one is down the pub with his mates talking about how everything has gone up again, the rent, the fuel, the price of milk and bread. The other is out with his new colleagues talking about how lucky they are to live by the sea and how this feels like a better life than they could ever have had back home.

When the lights are out and the house is quiet one of them lies awake wondering if he would be better off leaving the island altogether, trying his luck in England where the wages may be lower but the houses are cheaper and a man might one day own a home. The other lies awake thinking that perhaps this is the place to stay for good, that this little island might be where he puts down roots.

One thinks this island is getting harder and harder for working people to live in. The other thinks it is a paradise and that the salary is fantastic.

And they are both right.