The Clear Light of Day

by Penelope Wilcock

  “So everything is good?” Esme said. Jabez glanced at her briefly, but said nothing in reply. Ember grinned and drained the remains of her tea from her mug.

  “And if everything is good,” Esme persisted, “where does the force behind greed and corruption and oppression come from? If we all live in God and all are holy, where do torture chambers fit in? If you take away the balance of heaven and hell, God and the Devil, you have an awful lot of explaining away to do.”

  Jabez smiled, and looked into the fire. “Yes, I know,” he said. “There’s lots of ways of resolving this, isn’t there? ‘The problem of evil.’ The Parsees—Zoroastrians—who were very big when the Bible was being made, so that lots of their thinking was woven into it, believed in a universe at war. They posed two supernatural giants, Ahura Mazda, the creator of light and order and peace, and Angra Mainyu, the creator of darkness and disharmony and disease. These two were eternally at war, and the whole cosmos was caught up into their battle. Every single thing every single one of us does would serve to advance the battle in one direction or the other. Every word or action or thought contributes toward the eventual supremacy of light and wholeness or of darkness and disintegration. It’s interesting that, as far as I can tell reading the Old Testament, the ancient Jews didn’t really have a formal belief in life after death. The immortality of the human soul is the concept of a different culture—Hellenistic, I suppose. The ancient Jews made little distinction between the individual and the community; you lived on in your descendants. Your living being came from God’s breathing—he breathed out, you were created; he drew breath in, you died. But the Zoroastrians seem to have introduced a belief in spiritual orders of beings—demons and angels—which became culturally incorporated into our Testaments. Then of course, also, they divined wisdom astrologically—like the magi in Matthew’s gospel, who would have been Zoroastrians. Matthew wrote from Syria, fairly near their territory, and like the book of Isaiah, which speaks so highly of Cyrus of Persia, there’s a lot in his writing that resonates with Zoroaster.”

  “Such as?”

  Esme, fascinated and astonished by Jabez’s easy erudition, wondered how he had come to such a familiarity with things most people she met knew nothing about, even ministers. She waited, intrigued, to hear what his reply would be.

  “Oh,” he said, “in Isaiah, the rough places being made smooth—the Parsees believed the world should be perfectly round. The lumps and dents are Angra Mainyu’s work. And in Matthew the broad way and the strait and narrow way—it’s a reversal of a Zoroastrian teaching. But anyway, what I’m trying to get round to is that if you go back to ancient Judaism, you have a concept that all that comes our way comes from the hand of God to train and shape and discipline us—everything, ‘weal and woe.’ I suspect this demons and devil stuff came from a different culture—very strong in Matthew, as I say, who seems to be much acculturated to Zoroastrian thought. For myself I’m quite interested in what William Blake said about the polarization of reason and energy, as an alternative concept to good and evil. I believe that everything has a circular flow, coming from good and returning to good; the circulation of God, maybe. When we try to go against the flow, we run into trouble; life hurts us then—it’s a learning opportunity, a chance to find the direction of God’s love. But then you’ll ask me, how should we try to go against the flow if we’re part of it? We make mistakes, don’t we, awful mistakes, and we wound each other terribly. But I still believe in the goodness at the core of every human soul and the center of all living being. I believe it’s all a chance to channel energy wisely. I believe every agony, every cruelty, every adversity is a chance to learn wisdom and compassion, a better way. Patience. Like the paintings that show Christ’s hands open, with the nails in their palms. Not clenched. Agonized, but open. It isn’t how it must have been, physically; it’s an icon of the spiritual wisdom of the cross. And even while I’m struggling to explain, I know it doesn’t all tie up neat. There’s just some things I don’t understand. But in my heart I feel it.”

  Jabez stopped speaking suddenly and glanced at her, anxious. “Oh dear, I’m sorry—I’m going on too much. Esme, I’m so sorry—you must be bored out of your mind. I get carried away. I’m sorry.”

  Esme sat looking at Jabez in some amazement. She had never met anyone quite like this. He flushed slightly under the intrusion of her gaze and looked down at his hands, gripped together in sudden embarrassment between his knees.

  “What did you say you do for a living?” she said. “Mend bicycles?”

  And Jabez’s head shot up—stung, he flashed a glance at her, affronted.

  “That’s right,” he said, on the defensive. “That’s me. But I can read and inform myself as well as any man. And I can think. Is that okay?”

  “No, no! I didn’t mean—of course it’s okay—I didn’t mean to imply there was anything wrong with that, I’m just surprised you haven’t chosen to—er—”

  “Make something of myself?” There was a dangerous glint in Jabez’s eye.

  Ember, who had taken up her knitting while Jabez was talking, said, “Sixty-nine years ago in January, the immortals in their grand stupidity made the blunder of entering Jabez Ferrall for the Human Race. All he done ever since is dawdle along admiring the buttercups and the vetch that grow alongside the track. He won’t be coming in second place, he won’t be coming in third place, nobody even suggested he might try for first place. If the gods are kind, they’ll watch over him wandering along to the finishing line and give him a rosette saying ‘I had a go.’ He’s got all his grey matter intact, in a funny order be that as it may; but you could hardly accuse Jabez of being an achiever.”

  Esme smiled. “I suppose it depends what you mean by achievement. I’ve no idea what academic qualifications he may have, but he clearly has the intellectual capacity for anything! And I don’t think I could make a living with the work of my hands like he does. I simply haven’t got the skills. Speaking of which, Jabez, it occurs to me—should I have the lawnmower at the parsonage looked at before the summer? Or will it just be all right?”

  Jabez, relaxing, relieved to be let off the hook, placed a small log on the fire and asked, “What did you have done to it last year?”

  “Last year? Nothing. I mowed the lawn once or twice when the grass got long and emptied the clippings onto the compost heap, and then I just put it back in the shed.”

  “Did you clean it?”

  “Well—no, I didn’t actually.”

  “Last time I serviced that mower was two summers before you came. Is it running all right?”

  “I think so. I mean, I didn’t find it very easy to start, and it coughs and splutters a bit—but it cut the grass. Would you—should I have it serviced? How often do you do Marcus’s?”

  “I look it over before he starts cutting in the spring and before he puts it away in the autumn. Are you asking me to come and see to yours?”

  “Well, if that’s okay. If you don’t mind. How much do you charge?”

  “Oh, well … pass me your mug.” Jabez began to gather the things together on the tea tray. Esme had an odd sense of seeing his spirit furling, of withdrawal, and a quiet shuttering of his soul.

  “Thursday be all right for you?” he said. “I got to go into Southarbour then to have a look at the window frame in the bathroom at your superintendent’s parsonage. I could come on after. Be about three o’clock I expect.”

  “That would be really helpful,” said Esme. This sounded like something of a dismissal, and she stood up, concerned not to outstay her welcome.

  “It’s been ever so kind of you to invite me in for tea. It feels like, well, sort of like home here. You’ve done me no end of good.”

  Jabez straightened up with the tray. He looked pleased.

  “Next time you come,” said Ember, without looking up from her knitting, “you can bring some more of they buns if you pass through Brockhyrst Priory. I liked ’em. It’s nice to have a treat. Maybe they do coconut
macaroons?”

  “Ember! For pity’s sake! You can’t—you mustn’t—” Jabez blinked anxiously, and Esme couldn’t help laughing at him.

  “They do, as it happens,” she said. “I’ll bring both.”

  Ember nodded, continuing serenely with her knitting.

  Jabez took the tea tray out to the kitchen and Esme followed him. She stood in the doorway to the yard. The rain had stopped, but the wind still blew cold.

  “Thank you, Jabez,” she said, turning back to face him before she went on her way. “It’s felt so nice being here today. I mean—” she hesitated, feeling shy; “—like being with friends.”

  Jabez stood with the dishcloth in his hands, looking down at it. He nodded.

  “I’ll see you Thursday, then,” he said.

  “Esme!” he called after her as she went out into the yard. She stopped. “Esme, when you come again, bring your car up into the yard. There’s room. Don’t leave it parked on the road.”

  “Oh, I think it’s okay there,” she said. “I know it blocks the pavement a bit, and I know Ember doesn’t like that, but I park it carefully so pedestrians can get by.”

  “Yes, but …” He shrugged his shoulders and buried his hands deep in his pockets, offering her a brief sideways glance. “Traffic comes by close sometimes and besides that … Bring your car into the yard, Esme; don’t leave it parked on the road.”

  “Well, okay, if you think so. Thanks anyway. Bye-bye!”

  As she went on her way, Esme felt a warmth of acceptance and belonging somewhere at the center of her being. Next time you come … When you come again. She stowed their words away as a secret treasure of belonging. I love those two. They’re amazing. I love that cottage, she thought. She walked cheerfully down the path to her car, smiling at the thought of Ember looking forward to macaroons.

  Jabez went back into his kitchen, checked the firebox in the Rayburn, and threw in a couple of small logs from the basket. He picked up the tin of tobacco from the table and rolled himself a cigarette. He stood leaning against the stove rail, smoking reflectively, very still.

  After a short while Ember came into the kitchen. She washed up the mugs they had used and emptied the teapot.

  “’Tisn’t like you to invite somebody in,” she remarked, drying the crockery and hanging the mugs on their hooks beneath the shelf beside the table.

  “I like her, Jabez,” she said.

  Their eyes met, and he held her gaze, but he said nothing, had no need to.

  “You want to roll ’em thicker,” said Ember. “That thing’s gone out.”

  Though she and Marcus worshipped at Brockhyrst Priory, on the afternoon of Holy Saturday, Hilda Griffiths took a large armful of daffodils and a generous mound of greenery from the garden to help decorate Wiles Green Chapel for Easter Day.

  She returned from this mission to find Marcus relaxing in the sitting room with a cup of tea and the Saturday Telegraph.

  “Do you know, my dear,” she said conspiratorially, “I’ve just seen Pam Coleman in the village as I was coming away from the chapel.”

  “Really?” Marcus tried unsuccessfully to sound impressed.

  “And, do you know, she says she’s seen Esme going into Jabez Ferrall’s place three times this week! Parks her car right outside on the road!”

  “Well, I should think she’s wise to do that,” Marcus murmured vaguely. “I expect Jabez’s yard has been cluttered up with bits of lawnmower belonging to people like me with the first sign of fair weather.”

  Hilda perched herself on the chair opposite him, and leaned toward the screening Telegraph, not to be put off.

  “I said to Pam, ‘I expect she’s looking for a bike, dear—I know she was interested to find one; Marcus recommended her to try Mr. Ferrall.’ But, really! Three times in one week! I think it’s a bit indiscreet! In a person of her standing—don’t you think she should know better? After all, an odd-job man! And right under our noses in the village! What’s more, Mr. Ferrall must be twice Esme’s age!”

  “Twice her age?” Marcus lowered his paper, disregarding the crumpling of its pages, his eyes vaguely aglow. “Twice her age? Then, my dear, the time must be auspicious for them, if your surmise is correct, and they have embarked on a now deepening friendship. Because only in one year of your respective lifetimes can you be twice someone else’s age.”

  “Marcus, whatever are you talking about?” Hilda’s tone grew petulant, and she flung up one hand in a gesture of frustration. “He’s twice her age and he always will be!”

  Marcus’s gaze rested its lambent gleam upon her.

  “Not at all, my dear, you are surely not considering. Supposing Esme to be thirty-five and Jabez to be seventy—though I am not as convinced as you are that the gap is so very great; I should have put Esme more nearly at forty myself. But, taking these ages as correct—for surely Jabez Ferrall is not eighty years old, then he would indeed be twice Esme’s age. Yet, in the year Esme was born, when no doubt Jabez would then have been already thirty-five, he was clearly at that time far more than twice her age; as he would have been when she was eight—or sixteen. But, as she grew older, she would have gained on him, until she has this year, if you are right, achieved the triumph of becoming half his age. Therefore, by the time she is seventy (given that is his present age, though as far as I am aware he has not in reality celebrated his seventieth birthday yet), she will be two-thirds his age, for he will by then be only a hundred and five. And, should he live to be 140 (though by the sound of his cough now I think he may not), why by then she, at 105, will be three-quarters his age; time thus perhaps moving more slowly for Jabez Ferrall than it does for Esme—as indeed the thoughtful observer might in any case deduce from the relative tempo of their lifestyles—though no doubt it seems to crack on fast enough to him. Who knows but, if he could only live long enough, she continuing thus to gain on him, one day she might so far advance as to be twice as old as he is!”

  Hilda eyed him with uncertainty and suspicion.

  “But …” she paused to compute in her mind, “that couldn’t happen, my dear,” she said firmly, adding, after a pause, a note of uncertainty creeping in, “could it?”

  But Marcus had returned to his paper, declining to take further part in the conversation. “No …” he murmured absently, his voice barely audible, not the faintest hint of encouragement in his tone.

  FOUR

  As the days lengthened and warmed, and full summer burgeoned in the great green canopy of leaves, Esme delighted in the sparkle of sunlight on the ocean when she was in Southarbour and the country lanes adorned with wild flowers as she drove out to Brockhyrst Priory and Wiles Green.

  With some reluctance, because she would rather have bought something from him, Esme accepted Jabez’s reiterated advice to choose a modern, lightweight bicycle. He found her one in the “For Sale” columns in the free newspaper and came with her to have a look at it before she purchased it.

  At first, as spring blossomed into summer, she restricted herself to modest cycling forays at quiet times of the day—round the corner to the grocer’s or along to Portland Street for worship and evening meetings. Then, more adventurous, in the warmth of the long summer days, she cycled out to Brockhyrst Priory for her pastoral visiting; and by the middle of August, the seven miles to Wiles Green seemed entirely manageable given a day with a not-too-crowded schedule. She felt stronger and fitter, moved easier. Every now and then she had hopes of losing weight, but cycling increased her appetite. Somehow it seemed less important; she liked herself better than she had.

  Her hair went blonde in the sun, and her skin brown, and life seemed good.

  She knew that much of her contentment came from her friendship with Jabez and Ember, whom she visited several times in the week. She would call in whenever she passed through Wiles Green; and on her day off, or if she felt lonely or at a loose end. Without ceremony, they made her welcome. Sitting on the floor of Jabez’s workshop, watching his capable hands patient on
a task, mending and making, coaxing the best out of worn machinery most people would have thrown away, Esme felt utterly at home. On colder days she would light the fire at the back of the workshop, and the cat would climb onto her lap as she sat on the edge of the ashes. Most days, through the summer, Jabez worked out in the yard, and then she would sit in the sunshine, resting her back against the wall of the cottage. They talked about so many things, and sometimes silence lay companionable between them.

  Early on in this friendship, Esme had been puzzled by the relationship between Jabez and Ember.

  “Are you and Ember—is Ember your partner?” she asked him on the day in late spring that Jabez checked over the bicycle she had bought as she sat on the edge of his workbench, a mug of tea in her hands.

  He looked up, startled. “Ember’s eighty-six!” he said. “Not that age needs to be a bar,” he added, returning to his task; “’tis who you are not how old you are that counts. But … God save us …” He straightened up, gazing sightlessly out through the yard door, a look of absolute horror on his face as the thought sunk in: “Imagine being married to Ember!”

  “Somebody was, once,” said Esme.

  He glanced at her and laughed. “Yes,” he replied, “but not for long.”

  He looked at the bike from all angles, having examined, cleaned, and oiled parts of it to his satisfaction, then pronounced it fit for use.