Clear Light of Day (19 page)

“Esme, I better get those leaves done,” he said after awhile, finishing his tea. He got down from the high stool, took his mug to the sink, rinsed it, and looked round for the dishtowel to dry it.

“My experience is limited,” he said, glancing at her with a shy smile as he dried the mug, “but I guess you have to be wary of eloquence. In general, if a man is in love—I mean really, deeply in love—you won't get much more out of him than the bleat of a strangled sheep when he tries to tell you how much he cares for you. Never trust the staying power of a love that can be expressed as ‘I
adore
you, darling!'”

Esme laughed. “I see!” she mocked him. “So you could go weak at the knees at the sight of me, and you'd never be able to tell me so!”

He put the mug back on its hook with the others, and hung the dishtowel back on the rail it had come from.

“That's right,” he said quietly. “Now I better get on with those leaves.”

Seven

E
sme woke early, with Advent on her mind. Tuesday today, first Sunday in Advent coming up. Through her childhood, and as a young woman, Advent had been a season of excitement and happy anticipation, a magical time of year. All that seemed to have been crushed out of it now, by the weight of too many events. She had organized her Christingle service for Portland Street, with a modest prize for the child with the best decorated orange. She had contacted the Scout leaders from Brockhyrst Priory to arrange a small band of instrumentalists for the Advent service of light. She had appealed for carol singers from all three churches for carol singing round the village at Brockhyrst Priory. Her Christmas service details were in to the local paper, and she had written three pastoral letters for the church magazines of each of her three chapels, remembering to include a plug for the Covenant service in early January, there being no January magazine. The watch-night service on New Year's Eve was sorted and the Christmas midnight communion, too. The carols services at each of her three chapels had been scheduled so that she could officiate at all three—it meant Wiles Green taking the 4:30 slot again this year, but they didn't seem to mind. In her diary she had noted a number of social occasions; the circuit staff and stewards' New Year's party (all ladies to bring a dessert, the superintendent's wife to provide the main course; Esme was on fruit salad again) and the Portland Street choir dinner at a two-star hotel in a side road a few hundred yards in from the seafront. The choir went there every year, securing at a knockdown price a cheerful evening with a mediocre meal. The youth leader had invited her to the Brownies' and Rainbows' Christmas party, and she had been approached with a request to take a small service for the playgroup that met at Portland Street. She had been invited to the Christmas celebrations of five house groups; in each case Esme was to give a Christmas message, after which there would be a party with finger foods. She had been asked to give the Christmas address for the Multiple Sclerosis Society carol service, taking place in Brockhyrst Priory chapel for the first time this year, and she was to say a prayer at the conclusion of the annual junior school Christmas concert in Portland Street chapel. There remained outstanding some arrangements to be made about the donkey belonging to the livery stables, in preparation for the Living Crib that the vicar of St. Raphaels at Wiles Green masterminded each year. It had occurred to him that ecumenism would spread the burden of forward planning, and he had invited Esme to be part of the proceedings, which involved her sourcing a recently delivered mother, a lantern on a hook, and a reliable donkey. The stable was a regular venue, so nobody had to fix that. On the first Saturday in December, which was AIDS week, Esme had promised to take part in a special service at the Anglican church in the center of Southarbour. She also noted that she had two planning meetings scheduled in early and late December for a bereavement group preparing special intercessions for the hospice anniversary service, which wasn't till February but had to be planned ahead to enable fliers for distribution in the New Year.

Suddenly remembering the preparatory planning necessary for the week of prayer for Christian unity in mid-January and the ecumenical service on Bible Sunday, Esme found herself very wide awake at six o'clock in the morning, which was early for her. Lying in bed mentally reviewing her various commitments and responsibilities for a while hardly seemed to improve them. Fervently hoping that no one would die and require a funeral before the end of the first week of January, Esme got up to make a cup of tea.

Seizing the opportunity offered by an early start to the day, in a moment of resolve she took her copy of the Methodist Worship Book off the shelf and used the set form of Morning Prayer as devotions to start the day. Feeling virtuous, as light came, she decided to go for a ride on her bike as well. She ate a bowl of cereal and left the washing up in the sink for later, locked up the house, and got her bike out of the shed. As she cycled out in the direction of Brockhyrst Priory, encouraged by the emergence of a promise of sunshine after two weeks of drizzling rain, it occurred to her to push on in the direction of Wiles Green and drop in for a cup of tea with Jabez and Ember, who she thought would most likely be up by now. The morning sunlight strengthened as she rode through the lanes. She encountered a number of people out walking their dogs and some schoolchildren walking along to the main road to wait for the bus. She went cautiously, because the postal delivery vans were busy in the lanes at this time, and other vehicles were hurrying to workplaces. Fallen leaves packed on the road surface made the way slippery, and in the places of shadow it was still icy. Esme felt glad to arrive in one piece at the Old Police House. She dismounted from her bike and wheeled it up the path to the cottage, leaving it propped against the wall of the kitchen.

Knocking on the door, and then immediately opening it to let herself in, she found her friends in the warmth of the kitchen, chatting, the early sunlight streaming through the window above the sink that looked up the garden into the orchard. On the table, the remains of breakfast things still stood around the big brown teapot in its multicolored knitted tea cozy (Ember's work). Ember sat in her corner by the stove, and Jabez sat by the table on one stool, his back resting against the wall, his feet up on the other stool. They each held a mug of tea, steaming. It was a companionable sight, and as Jabez put down his tea without question and reached up a hand to the shelf for a third mug, Esme felt a sudden impulse of happiness in the warmth of the welcome always there for her, confidence in friendship given.

“You're abroad early,” said Ember. “You had your breakfast, or will I make some more fried bread?”

“Oh, dear, don't give me fried bread!” It may have sounded ungracious but the words were spoken before she thought twice. “I mean, it's ever so kind of you, but I just have to lose some weight. I cycled everywhere during the summer but I don't seem to have lost a pound—it just made me hungry and I ate more.”

“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.