The Clear Light of Day

by Penelope Wilcock

By the beginning of February, the negotiations for Esme’s move had begun in earnest. The chairman had spoken to the circuit stewards in Surrey, and representatives from that circuit had discreetly attended one of her services to hear her preach. She had broken the news to the stewards of each of her three chapels and found it oddly gratifying to see them so stunned and upset at losing her (with the single exception of Miss Trigg, who made little comment, but whose face shone with holy triumph).

  By March, the Southarbour circuit church councils had begun their arguments about how the circuit chapels should be redistributed between the remaining staff; and Esme had received a letter inviting her to Surrey to meet the stewards and some of the officeholders of the churches she would serve.

  Only at this stage did Esme finally make herself talk to Jabez about the changes that were by now far more than a proposal.

  She sat on an upturned wooden crate by the fire in his workshop on a cold day in early March, absentmindedly stroking the ears of the purring cat rolling in the warm ashes.

  “There are to be changes in the circuit, Jabez.”

  Jabez said nothing. She looked up at him, standing at his workbench in the light from the window, methodically cleaning the parts of a bicycle headset in a biodegradable solvent. Sometimes when Barton’s Bikes at Southarbour had more bicycles than they could handle, they subcontracted work out to him. This was one of their customer’s bikes.

  “It means a move for me earlier than normal. I’m being asked to look at two churches in Surrey.”

  He paused for a moment, suddenly still, and then glanced across at her. “Oh, yes?” he said. “Excuse me a moment, I must wash my hands before I grease these ball bearings, I think I’m dirtier than they are.”

  While he was gone, Esme reflected that he seemed to have minimal reaction to her news. She thought of the distress among her Brockhyrst Priory stewards when she broke it to them, and the disappointment of her Wiles Green stewards. By comparison, Jabez appeared little disturbed. What does he feel for me? she wondered. Anything?

  When he returned, he opened the grease pot and began to position the ball bearings in the cup, carefully coating them with the right amount of grease.

  “Is it what you want?” he said at last, without looking at her.

  Esme explained how the decision had come about, emphasizing that she had in reality not much choice.

  “Here, they need me to move, so I need a church; there they need a minister. I ought at least to go and look.”

  With precise attention, Jabez put back the forks and all the parts he had dismantled and looked around for his headset spanners. “I had them a minute ago,” he remarked, exasperated; adding, “and you don’t mind leaving?”

  “All ministers have to leave,” said Esme. “Well, not ministers in local appointment, they just stay local, but they get paid only if they’re lucky. Those of us in the full-time work have to move on. That’s why it’s called itinerant ministry. That’s the setup.”

  “Yes,” said Jabez, tightening the top cup gently with his fingers, until he had it tight enough for there to be no play in the headset, “I do know.”

  He seemed distant, unconcerned. I was worrying about nothing, Esme said to herself; I could have told him ages ago.

  “So they’ve invited me to go and see—not till April, because one of the circuit stewards is away on a cruise and their superintendent is recovering from open-heart surgery.”

  Jabez nodded, holding the cup in place with one of the headset spanners (found hidden beneath his cleaning rag) while he locked it in place with the other.

  “What if you don’t like it?”

  “I’m not sure really. Back to the drawing board I suppose. Anyway, it’s worth a try.”

  Again he nodded, and he asked no more questions.

  Esme had expected something more from the conversation. She wished he might at least have said something to reassure her of their continuing friendship after her move. In some deep place she refused to look at, it hurt that he said nothing to try to persuade her to stay. His remoteness felt like a rebuff, a denial of the warmth and closeness between them. It confirmed the decision for her; her father was right, she had nothing to stay for—in the real world people move on. She remembered as a child hearing him remark heavily on more than one occasion, “You can’t eat hope. Love doesn’t pay the bills.” She thought he was probably right, but somehow it made her feel so sad.

  The time that followed felt strange, a limbo. The weeks of Lent pursued their usual pattern, culminating in the intensity of Holy Week and Easter, late this year again.

  When, on the second week of Eastertide, the date for her interview in Surrey finally came around, Esme felt intrigued and excited, her misgivings now mingled with curiosity.

  Lent had been busy, and though she had continued to call in to the cottage, she had found Jabez quiet and withdrawn, expressing little interest in the information she had gleaned so far about the Surrey congregation. Disappointed, rather hurt by his disinclination to discuss all that the changes meant, Esme wondered if she had imagined or at least misjudged the quality of their relationship. She wondered if it was simply that the daily round of his own world occupied his thoughts, and he was too insular to look past that into the concerns of her life. Chilled by his response, she felt discouraged from mentioning her plans to Ember—and nothing in Ember’s conversation led Esme to believe that Jabez had talked to her either.

  Alone in her study after evening worship on the Sunday before she was due to make her visit to Surrey, Esme felt suddenly swamped by loneliness. The people she had met in her congregations were to be left behind, forgotten, no looking back. Ministers who hung on to old friends were a nuisance to pastors who succeeded them. Her family lived by principles that sounded sensible and practical but left her feeling cold and empty. Her colleagues simply felt relieved and grateful that it was Esme going and not one of them. Jabez appeared to have closed his heart to her. She quite desperately hungered for someone to want her, to say nice things to her, to offer her a place to belong. Surrey began to look like a beacon of hope.

  On the day of the interview, she dressed with care, took the new map books she had bought from the supermarket service station, and set out with a sense of adventure.

  She returned from that day more than anything else flattered to have been considered: The experience had brought the sense of a career taking off. Glancing into the windows of the estate agents as she had stopped to investigate the high street, she had been astonished by the house prices for that area. Surrey seemed to be one vast green suburb populated with sleek cars drawn up in ones and twos on the brick-laid driveways of massive houses. Esme had never seen so much evidence of money in her life. The leather suites on which she was invited to sit, the up-to-the-minute fitted kitchens she glimpsed through doorways, the quality of the music centers she saw in the living rooms whose size was accentuated by the flawless yardage of immaculately steam-cleaned carpets; the groomed gardens with their azalea beds and judiciously selected conifers and huge pots spilling with begonias, and the large, confident voice of the steward who led her interview—a retired barrister—had impressed upon her the significance of this appointment. It meant she was on the way up. If she took this chance she might no longer be poor Esme out in the sticks while she recovered from her husband leaving her. Her colleagues and her family would stop feeling sorry for her at last. When she stepped through the arched porch and over the threshold of that solid 1930s parsonage set back in its huge leafy garden, she would have made it.

  The stewards asked Esme what her response would be if they invited her to come. She found herself caught in a final indecision, as though she were waiting for a reason to change her mind.

  “This seems like a wonderful appointment,” she said honestly. “I like the chapels and all the people I’ve met. There are no problems at all. Just because I’m a cautious person, can I say I should need to think it over carefully before I say ‘yes’?”


  This prudent response was favorably received, and Esme drove home feeling exultant that such an opportunity had been held out to her, and that they so clearly liked her. She turned impatiently from the tug of sadness for Jabez and Ember, for the cottage with its apple trees and quietness, its wood smoke and lavender and hens. After all, she told herself, with a garden that size I could plant my own apple tree: I could grow lavender and keep hens myself. What would be the difference? There was an answer to that, and she refused to acknowledge it.

  In the days that followed, a letter came with gratifying speed from the senior circuit steward of the Surrey chapel, offering her the appointment if she felt inclined to take it up.

  Excited, with the letter still in her hand, Esme left the envelope lying on her study desk, and hastily locking the back door she got in her car, threw the letter onto the passenger seat, and drove out to Wiles Green. She had to share her news with somebody whether Jabez was interested or not.

  As she made her way through the lanes darkened by the unfurling leaf canopy and narrowed by the wild herbs and grasses sprouting in the verges, enjoying the spreading green of spring, Esme admitted to herself how much she had grown to love this hidden, beautiful place, and how much she would miss it. She smiled at the recollection of a chance remark overheard the previous Sunday.

  Greeting her congregation as they made their way out of the chapel, she had heard the door steward say amiably to Hilda Griffiths, “Hasn’t it been lovely and warm! Such a change from all the damp, chilly days we’ve had. It’s brought the flowers on so, the garden looks beautiful.”

  “My dear!” Hilda had nodded with enthusiasm. “Marcus and I have been out in the woods and fields with the Ramblers, and it’s delightful, quite delightful. And I don’t care what they say, I know people frown on it and complain about it, but I think rape is lovely. I’d hardly know the spring had come without it.”

  Esme laughed aloud as she remembered the momentary shocked bewilderment on her door steward’s face; but as she looked along the lane and saw through the cool green tunnel of trees the blazing glory of yellow rape in dazzling blossom, she had to concede that Hilda was right. Poor old Marcus—she grinned—he’ll be getting an undeserved reputation!

  She brought her car to rest on the roadside by the Old Police House, and snatched the letter up from the passenger seat, too impatient to negotiate in the car the potholed track leading to the yard.

  Her intention focused on Jabez’s whereabouts, Esme walked with the swiftness of purpose up the rutted lane and around the cottage, but the loveliness of the orchard in spring blossom flooded her consciousness with its glory, and she smiled at it as if to a person, in spontaneous happiness at its beauty, which shone into her soul so vividly although her footsteps hardly paused.

  She found Jabez sitting on the ground outside in the yard, in the sunshine, evidently taking a break from giving Marcus’s lawnmower its spring service, the dismantled parts spread about him. He sat with his back against the cottage wall, smoking a roll-up, a mug of tea steaming on the flags beside him. She paused for a moment, the ineffable aura of peace that hung about him affecting her almost physically. And from that came a rush of love from the middle of her, a gratitude to have known this man and this place; to have learned so much, and have been loved so much, to have been allowed into his refuge-place and known his wisdom, and his gentleness.

  That he had heard her step and was aware of her she knew with no doubt. She never really understood why he kept this stillness, allowed her to approach without acknowledgement, not speaking or looking at her until their togetherness in the space was a self-established fact. Yet this was so much a part of him, and she found it had the effect of holding a momentary mirror to her soul, showing her the quality of self that she brought to today’s encounter, before the dubious currency of conversation opened its own negotiations.

  “Jabez, I’ve had a letter from the church in Surrey!” Esme felt too excited at the importance of her news to let the time of coming into the presence of another soul unfold. She expected him to turn his head then, and look up at her with the familiar warmth of welcome: It surprised her when, instead, his habitual quietness fell into an almost total stillness, as though every rhythm of his being had temporarily stopped dead.

  “Jabez?” she said, unsure.

  And then he did turn his head to look at her. He smiled, her excitement requiring a response, but he asked her nothing.

  “Sit down a minute while I get you a cup of tea,” he said, getting to his feet. “Then you can tell me all about it.”

  The kitchen door stood open, and he took only a moment to return with her tea, but in that time she felt the inside of her fidgeting with eagerness to tell him.

  She took her mug—“Thanks”—and perched on the edge of the wooden chair that stood in the yard among the bits of Marcus’s lawnmower. Jabez slid his back down the wall to resume his earlier position. Part of the peace in Jabez’s company was that having brick dust all down his jacket was no more a consideration than the oil-black that usually smudged his hands and had extended its grubby influence to every garment he wore. The exacting social requirements of etiquette and cleanliness were waived.

  “They’ve invited me!” she said, pride and delight spilling into her voice. It felt like such an achievement, in spite of which Esme had a sense that it would be utterly impossible to communicate the consequence of any of this to Jabez.

  So, “It’s a big opportunity,” was all she said, rather lamely, watching him inspect the end of his cigarette, which had gone out, and then take a drink of his tea.

  Advancement and career openings meant less than nothing to Jabez, that Esme understood, but she could not repress a sense of disappointment that he said not a word, only patted his pockets to locate his matches, relit the flimsy cigarette, drew on it, and contemplated the drift of smoke he breathed out into the spring sunshine. At last, his voice level, steady, he asked her, “Then how long have we got?”

  Esme could never analyze, though on occasion she had given it a lot of thought, how Jabez could both create an aura of stillness even when he was working, or walking down the street, and equally impart a sense of movement when, as now, he sat entirely still yet in some way she could not define, seemed to be vanishing, withdrawing into himself, before her eyes.

  “Stationing normally takes about eighteen months,” she said. “But because of the particular situation both here and in Surrey, they’re going to curtail my appointment here. It might be as early as this autumn. More likely in the beginning of the winter. We just want to give ourselves time to do everything properly.” She waited for him to speak again, eventually saying into the silence, “Aren’t you pleased for me?”

  He took a drink of his tea.

  “I shall miss you,” he said finally. “If it’s what you want, of course, I’m pleased for you.” He glanced up at her, squinting into the sunlight. “I’m sorry, I’m not meaning to be a wet blanket. I can’t quite imagine life without you now.”

  Esme smiled. “You can always come and visit me at the parsonage in Surrey! It’s huge. You could stay overnight.”

  Jabez stubbed his cigarette out thoughtfully on the stone flags of the yard. “Can I?” he said. “Thank you.”

  He picked up his mug, drank most of the tea, and tossed the dregs down the nearby drain. “Better get on,” he remarked. “Well done, Esme; that’s great news.”

  Esme watched him work until she finished her cup of tea. Deflated by the flatness and anticlimax of his reaction, she decided against trying to show him the letter. He was evidently determined not to discuss it. It was hard to think of anyone who would be pleased to read it among her church members either. So after a little while of further desultory conversation, she took the letter home and telephoned her mother, who was comfortingly congratulatory.

  As she sat down at her desk with a cup of coffee that afternoon, and switched on her computer to draft her order of service for Sunday in time for the organ
ist phoning through for the hymns, Esme felt exulted in her success. I’ve made it! she said to herself. Then, as she waited for the computer to be ready, unexpectedly her mood changed to reveal an inexplicable underlying weariness, as though the whole Surrey thing amounted to no more than a balloon brought home by a child from a party. She had a sudden sense of her professional life as a flimsy house built to impress; instead of a solid foundation, an empty reservoir of loneliness.

  Don’t be silly, you’re just tired, she told herself firmly. She turned from the thought, reminding herself that staying was no longer an option, and she opened a new file and set up the page as she wanted it.

  In the yard of his cottage at Wiles Green, carefully, meticulously, Jabez completed the servicing of the lawnmower. He loaded it in the back of his truck, returned it to Marcus’s garage, and received his payment politely. He wanted to ask Marcus how much he knew about Esme’s move but thought better of it in case she preferred anything kept private.

  Through the afternoon he occupied himself, working doggedly, systematically, sorting and tidying things in his workshop, listing spare parts to be ordered. He took some old oil to be recycled and called for some bread at the bakers on the way home. His face was still and remote as he worked, like reflections on dark water. In some locked recess of his being, he felt the terrifying music of grief begin again, and he held his being as still as he could to quiet its broken, discordant cacophony. His hands shook. He had been this way before. He felt it approaching.

  Ember, coming through to feed the hens toward evening, found him standing in the middle of the living room, his face in his hands, the convulsing muscles of his belly bending him almost double, his silver waterfall of hair shaking with the storm of sobbing that racked his body, the muffled groan of his voice in despair, “Oh, Jesus; oh, Jesus.”

  Ember went swiftly to him, and with firm hands guided him to the battered old sofa, sat him down, and seated herself beside him, very close, one hand on his back and one on his knee, feeling his body hard and tense with his anguish.