The Clear Light of Day

by Penelope Wilcock

  “I expect it’s just muscle then,” said Ember consolingly. “Muscles be heavier than fat.”

  Jabez held out the mug of tea he had poured her and took his feet off the stool, pushing it toward her for a seat.

  “It’s okay,” she said, leaning her back against the edge of the sink, “I’m fine over here. I don’t think it is muscle, Ember, I think it’s middle-aged spread.” She sighed. “It makes me feel so frumpy.”

  “You don’t look frumpy,” Jabez said quietly. “Just—” and then he mumbled something in the direction of his tea that Esme didn’t catch. She looked at him, intrigued, but he wouldn’t look back at her.

  Ember, alert, her eyes snapping with mischief, caught Esme’s eye. “I believe,” she said with a grin, “those words, if that’s what you can call ’em, were ‘nice to hold.’”

  Esme took a moment to register her own delight in the compliment—that it was more precious to her than she might have expected. Jabez took refuge in his mug of tea. Ember regarded them both with intense interest.

  “Well,” she said, “you bring him something nice to hold, he got the bike shed, what are you waiting for?”

  Jabez froze in rigid embarrassment, his hand halfway returning his mug to the table. For a moment he said nothing, just stared fixedly at the space in front him. Then he placed the mug very quietly, deliberately, on the table.

  “Ember, for heaven’s sake, she’s a minister,” he said. “That’s disrespectful to say such a thing.”

  Not in the least put out by this rebuke, Ember regarded him with skepticism, leaning forward to say, “Jabez Ferrall, you tell me you look at Esme and see a minister, and I’ll call you a liar to your face.”

  Desperate, turning his head away as an animal turns its head from the bars of a cage, not looking at either of them, Jabez said firmly to Esme, “I wouldn’t lean against that sink if I were you; you’ll get a line of water on your back. Excuse me now, I haven’t fed the hens.”

  Avoiding their gaze, he got to his feet and crossed the kitchen, escaping into the yard and closing the door firmly behind him.

  “He has,” said Ember, with a grin.

  They heard the postman call to him, and Jabez reply; but he didn’t bring the letters into the cottage.

  “Oh, dear.” Esme felt worried. “I think he was really offended, Ember. Don’t you think you should maybe go and apologize?”

  Ember’s face wrinkled into laughter, which shook her small frame.

  “Leave him be, he’ll come round,” she chuckled. “Bring that tea and sit you down here at the table. Jabez takes hisself too serious most of the time. ’Tis a male disease.”

  Esme smiled, and came to sit with Ember.

  After awhile Esme asked, “Will either of his sons come home for Christmas?”

  Ember shook her head.

  “If you ain’t religious that way, then all Christmas brings is expense,” she replied. “He sends them a card and what money he can for a present. If he’s lucky, they remember to send him a card, at least before January’s too far started. We have Christmas very quiet here. Jabez likes to listen to carols on the radio, and when the shops reduce the prices of everything after Boxing Day, we have some stuffing and a bird, a Christmas puddin’ and a jar of brandy butter. Last year he gave me some chocolates—that was nice; and I’d knitted him a scarf which he was glad of. I got a book put away for him this year; saw it at a jumble sale in the summer.”

  “What’s the book?” Esme asked.

  “Annie Dillard—Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She done a good thing in there about stalking muskrats, and I reckon Jabez’ll like reading that.”

  “I don’t think I know it,” said Esme. She sat for a while, contemplating the month ahead and shook her head. “I think I’ll be lucky to get through Christmas alive! It’s just so hectic. The last thing in the marathon will be just a morning service on Boxing Day (being Sunday, but we’ve cancelled the evening worship); and then I drive up to stay with my family for a few days. Back in good time for the New Year’s services. It feels a bit like a treadmill sometimes.”

  Ember looked at her curiously. “Do you enjoy your work?” she asked.

  Esme blinked, surprised. “Do you know,” she replied after a moment’s thought, “that is not a question I’ve ever asked myself. I believe in it—I think. It’s worthwhile, I suppose. The church at its worst is soul-destroying, but it’s the only institution founded on a command to offer unconditional love and that’s a wonderful raison d’être.”

  “A what?”

  “Reason for being there. When my husband left me, I lost quite a lot of myself. Hope, you know, and confidence. I have found comfort in the work; if nothing else it keeps me busy.”

  “You ain’t very happy then?”

  Esme considered this. “Well—yes and no. I feel a bit restless sometimes, for reasons I can’t fully analyze. Something to do with my own fulfillment—I don’t know. I seem to achieve remarkably little. But the people are kind, and the work is something I feel able to offer. When I preach, I feel alive.”

  Under Ember’s perspicacious gaze, Esme felt it all sounded very empty and inadequate. “More tea?” Ember asked her, but she shook her head.

  “Surely, though,” Esme protested then, “that’s how it is for all of us, isn’t it? Life in the real world is a very humdrum thing; we have only moments of exhilaration. Isn’t it the same for you? Like the prayer book calls it—‘ordinary time’?”

  “I’ve had good times and bad,” Ember said. “I was not much more than a girl when I married; my husband left and good riddance and I never looked for another. Bad news is men, most of ’em. I never had any money nor wanted none. I done bits to get by, that’s all. But I had a day when I asked myself, What is it all? What’s it for? I remember it, I was standing in the lane that leads off the top of Stoddards Hill, high summer, and I just stood there and listened to the heartbeat of it, and I saw that life held out its hands to me, and that in the very core of it all there is joy. Make no difference that you got to grieve sometimes and these things happen that tear the very gut out of you. Makes no difference. Its heartbeat is joy, and it holds out its hands to you, and the only doorway into it is this living moment. Worry and fear and longing and desire is about living in tomorrow, and grief and bitterness and regret and pain is living in yesterday. Life is joy, and joy is never tomorrow. There is only now. If you ain’t living now, why, then, you’re dead. And trying to please other people slams the door to joy shut in your face. Walk your own track. Listen to life’s voice with your own ears. Don’t trust truth in packets, especially the ones got warnings and contracts with ’em. Don’t parade your soul around; live quiet and small and simple. Don’t blame anybody for what happens, don’t ask favors and, Esme, don’t look for approval. There’s joy at the middle, but you got to trust things enough to turn your back on the party and choose it.”

  “Ember,” said Esme, “you’re amazing.”

  On a sudden impulse, she got up from her stool, went round the table to Ember’s corner, and hugged the old woman’s small, plump body against her, bending down to kiss the top of her head. Ember close smelled of wood smoke and herbs and garlic—wood smoke principally; but a very pleasant, wholesome smell.

  After a moment, slightly embarrassed at her own display of emotion, she released her and stepped back, and returned to sit on her stool again. Ember looked across at her, dark eyes kind and laughing and wise.

  “Jabez’ll be up the orchard, Esme,” she said. “Always goes up the orchard when he’s upset. And I’ve upset him good and proper this morning. Overstepped his boundaries by about fifteen mile.” She spoke with perfect tranquillity, making no comment on Esme’s gesture of affection and contemplating with peaceful detachment the distress she had caused Jabez.

  “He’ll come round,” she added. “Needs a bit of a shove sometimes, does Jabez.”

  She got up from her chair and opened the stove door, fed it with more firewood, and began to colle
ct the breakfast crockery for washing up.

  “You’ll find him in the orchard,” she repeated.

  Esme hesitated. “Maybe he’d rather not be disturbed—maybe I should just go home,” she ventured.

  Ember paused with the pile of crocks in her hands and regarded her in a way that made Esme feel that she was pitied, better understood than she was quite comfortable with, and an unwilling source of amusement.

  “What you get out of this life depends on what you put in, my lady,” was all Ember offered, saying again, “You’ll find him in the orchard,” before busying herself with her tasks at the sink—this required turning her back on Esme: The conversation seemed to have terminated.

  Esme drew breath to say one more thing, but, “In the orchard,” said Ember firmly, and did not look round.

  So Esme wandered up into the orchard, where she did indeed find Jabez in the furthest corner, sitting on a pile of firewood, smoking a cigarette, and looking upset.

  “I’m on my way home, Jabez.” Esme approached him, speaking in a cheerful, ordinary tone, choosing to ignore the look on his face. She had to wait a little while for his reply, and wondered if it would be better just to go, but eventually, “What must you think of us?” he said, bitterly.

  “Think of you? You and Ember? I think I’m so, so lucky to have you as my friends. You feel like real friends, true friends, both of you. You always make me feel welcome and loved. And I love your honesty—I wish the world had more people in it as honest as you and Ember.”

  He shot her a glance of incredulity. “Ember! I dare swear the world could stand another one or two as honest as me, but if I thought there were any more like Ember I’d take to the woods or top myself!”

  “Jabez, why are you so upset?” Esme was beginning to laugh; it all seemed a bit out of proportion. “She was only joking! She didn’t mean it!”

  “Joking? Ember doesn’t make jokes. She sees what’s inside you, and she got no mercy. And I hate it. It wasn’t proper what she said—it wasn’t decent. Bike shed! I’m not that kind of man!”

  He looked at the end of his cigarette, saw it had gone out, and threw it with some force into the hedge. From under the silver eyebrows another fierce glance shot her way. “And, yes, you are welcome. And you are loved. But I’m not—I wouldn’t—” He stopped, finding himself in difficult territory. “I’m not that kind of man,” he said again. He bent his head, and Esme looked at him sitting with his shoulders hunched to his ears, his elbows resting on his knees, and his hands clasped tight together. She noted her own sense of hope that resulted from his being unable to go through with his insistence that he was not and that he wouldn’t. And what on earth am I doing? she asked her heart. What am I offering him anyway? Where does Jabez fit into my world? How can I be anything but a day-tripper in his?

  She watched him, not sure what to do. They seemed to have reached an impasse, it was time to go; and yet she felt certain that she would leave him unhappy all day if she couldn’t bring something better out of this before she left. So, what to put in? For what after all did she want to get out of this life, this encounter? There is only now, Ember had said: “If you aren’t living now, why then you’re dead.” What did she want now, then? Her head and her heart seemed to have met head-on in a Wiles Green lane too narrow for passing places. She just knew she didn’t want him to look so upset.

  “I know you aren’t that kind of man,” she said at last. “Bike sheds, I mean. For didn’t you tell me once, making love should be done in a bed; because it’s a thing of tenderness, and it should be warm and comfortable?”

  Startled, he looked up at her. So that, she thought, is what it takes to make this man look at me for more than two seconds at a time. She raised her eyebrows, enquiring, smiling at him, deliberately keeping things light. Trying to, at least. He swallowed, blinked, continued to look at her. She had rather hoped he might laugh, but he looked absolutely transfixed.

  “What must you think of me?” She echoed his words to him, but gently, offering him his own dignity back. “Jabez, I think I should go.”

  Now whatever have I got myself into? she asked herself, as she turned and left him, sitting motionless on the pile of logs.

  Is this normal behavior? she wondered, exasperated, as she got on her bike and set off through the lanes. Doesn’t he know how to make light of a thing? Whatever next? She pedaled furiously along the lanes back to Southarbour. I’m neglecting my work. I should be in my study! Why am I wasting time on visiting people who will never come to chapel and on pottering round the countryside on a bicycle?

  Suddenly thrust closer to Jabez than she had quite expected to be, she felt flustered and defensive. She directed the energy of her confusion into cycling fast, quite impressed at the ease with which she could master the hills these days. Without allowing it to break into her conscious mind, she turned vigorously from the sense that there was something unfair about keeping from Jabez the plans for her future. She lumped them together in her mind, Jabez and Ember, and reflected that delightful as they both were, they were also undeniably eccentric, odd, and difficult. Tiresome of Jabez to make so much of Ember’s mischievous joke; tasteless and provocative of Ember to say it in the first place. She avoided the memory of her own quick pleasure at what he had said—“nice to hold”—and of something more unsaid between them in the orchard: “For didn’t you tell me, making love should be done in a bed?” Jabez looking at her, startled, hearing what she didn’t say—shouldn’t say, couldn’t say, because she was leaving. And because—with an effort she suppressed the whole memory—there was nothing to be said.

  When she reached the safety of the parsonage, Esme felt surprised and impressed with herself to see that she had made it out to Wiles Green and back, and had half an hour’s conversation, and it still wasn’t quite ten o’clock. She made a cup of coffee and retreated to her study with two biscuits. She switched on the computer and going online to check her inbox she found an e-mail from her superintendent minister. He had something to discuss with her, he said, and would she ring him, to make an appointment.

  E-mail didn’t come naturally or easily to Esme’s superintendent, though he had recognized the necessity of electronic communications and mastered the basics required. He was of the old school and utterly predictable; in the study every morning, visiting in the afternoons, meetings in the evening. His wife, Sheila, had dedicated her life to being his mainstay and support, her unself-conscious sweetness of manner and warmhearted concern for others providing the backbone of the pastoral care he offered. On the occasions she had been in his parsonage, it amazed and intrigued Esme to see that, after thirty-seven years of ministry, when he heard the telephone ring, which he probably did about twenty times a day, her superintendent would still run from wherever he stood in the house to answer it.

  She wondered why he had asked to see her. An inarticulate man with few social skills, he would never contact his colleagues unless he found it unavoidable to do so. A miner’s son, brought up in a family of seven children, frugality was nearer than second nature to him; his phone calls were short, his letters came by second-class post, and he would calculate in advance whether he had to mail them at all, carefully consulting his diary to ascertain if he might rather take advantage of crossing paths with the recipient at a forthcoming church business meeting. He had worked out the shortest mileage from his parsonage to every destination his work regularly encompassed. He wasted no money of his own and none of the circuit’s, though he was generous with both when called upon by others in need. His preaching was sound, safe, uninspiring, and conscientiously recycled over the thirty-seven years, each sermon annotated with the occasions and venues of all its outings.

  Esme respected him; in his dealings with his colleagues, he erred from strict fairness only when he felt it necessary to be kind; he understood his administrative responsibilities clearly and undertook them with meticulous detail, remembered everything, and she trusted him to play his part in the circuit reconstr
uction with honesty, competence, kindness, discretion, and total lack of imagination.

  She picked up the telephone and dialed his number. Nine thirty on a Tuesday morning in late November. He answered the telephone instantly, being seated, as she had visualized, in the padded office swivel chair provided by the circuit, at his desk in the study.

  “Brian Robinson,” he said, in his loud, unemotional way.

  “Hello, it’s Esme. You wanted to see me.”

  “Ah, yes, my dear. Some news from the chairman I’d like to discuss with you when you can spare a moment.”

  “I can come over today if you like,” she replied.

  “Today? Now let me see. I’ve got a funeral call later this morning, about eleven, and a Wesley guild in the afternoon. Tomorrow is my midweek communion, and then in the afternoon I’m running Sheila to the osteopath for her regular visit, taking in some pastoral calls on the way home. How about Thursday?”

  “Can’t do,” said Esme. “I’ve got a school assembly early, a sick communion, then I’m the speaker for the ladies’ fellowship at Brockhyrst Priory after lunch, and a wedding rehearsal in the evening. Friday’s busy all day too—I mean, I can pop over right now, I can be with you in ten minutes; or even we could talk on the phone?”

  “Oh no, I’d rather not discuss this on the telephone. Let me see.…” He paused. She could hear him breathing. He already had a funeral call to take him away from his sermon preparation in the study. This would further eat into his time. It was Tuesday and he liked to type up and print his order of service and notices sheet on Thursday morning; the sermon would have to be finished before then. Esme could feel him weighing it up in his mind.

  “Well, all right. My funeral call is no more than half a mile from you. I’ll finish off this correspondence later, and come over to you now. See you shortly. Righto.”

  Puzzled and curious, a quarter of an hour later Esme opened the door to his ring on the loud electric bell and offered him coffee. He accepted the offer, but asked for a small cup. Since he passed his sixtieth birthday, large cups of coffee taken early had started to be a problem to him later in the morning.