by Andy Jarvis
ISABEL’S LIGHT
Andy Jarvis
Copyright © 2017 Andrew Jarvis
Isabel’s Light
First published in 2008 via Lulu (www.lulu.com)
This edition edited and republished in 2017
Andrew Jarvis asserts the moral right to be identified as the author.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the author.
The following work is fiction.
All characters portrayed in this publication are fictitious. All reasonable efforts have been made to ensure that the characters do not resemble real persons, living or dead. Any similarity is entirely coincidental. The dialogue of the characters is based on observation and not meant to be representative of the author’s opinion.
Cover image by Erisiar
ISBN: 978-1-326-95929-6
In for a penny, in for a pound,
Some things just aren’t meant to be found.
Winter 2005
The Holy Heating Company Ltd., that’s us. Number one in church heating systems. You probably think of old stone churches as cold, clammy places, and they are until we’ve done with them. Then they’re warm enough to raise the dead.
Our contract had taken us to the tiny Norfolk village of Candlewell. Me and my mate Baz spent the Monday morning driving down from our northern workshop. We usually drive in shifts. Baz takes the outward bound and I drive on return. This gives Baz a chance to catch up on some snoozing and me some reading. I like a good classic or best seller, with the odd pinup and car magazine thrown in. Well, not all tradesmen are uncultured oafs that wear their jeans just below the fault line, if you know what I mean. As for Baz, well he’s not thick either, but I suppose his image does fit – along with the jeans that don’t.
A heavy February mist clung to the Fens for most of the fifty miles of back roads, delaying our journey until after noon, but still time for a warm brew with the Reverend John Cannon of St. Mark’s.
It wasn’t the first time we’d been. Holy Heating has been servicing the old system off and on for years, longer even than the present staff could remember. It was something of a standing joke among the lads that Reverend John was installed at the same time as the old pre-war heating system; both providing the same function – supplying a load of hot air to a congregation.
Reverend John Cannon was old-school, and although quite elderly was stern, upright and loud. Hellfire and brimstone were his trademarks. The previous month we were called out on emergency service. That’s when the present contract was decided. Reverend John had had enough. The old boiler had sprung a leak – the mechanical one that is, not Reverend John. We arrived on a chilly Sunday morning, pulling up at the church front steps. Although we didn’t realise it at the time, service was still on. As I pulled open the heavy, ironwork laden door, Reverend John’s sermon blasted our faces like a wind tunnel. Brown water slowly filled the vestry and Reverend John’s voice filled the tiny cobblestone streets with damnation. When Reverend Cannon fired, he boomed.
In the afternoon we worked steadily away, draining the old coal fired system; shutting down valves and dismantling it for scrap, ready to replace with a top-of-the-range modern gas-pump feed. We stopped for a good warming tea brew while I drew up a few plans and sketches for the coming installation.
St. Mark’s is picture postcard England. A modest Gothic Revival style structure, I think they call it. You’ve seen the sort, with an arched front entrance and oak door under a tall pointy belfry with a huge bell. I suppose that was to call in all the farmers who lived way out from the village centre across the fields. And it had this really cool sounding pipe organ at the side of the altar which me and Baz couldn’t help but have a hit on now and then, pretending we were Deep Purple in concert. And there were none of those dumb posters on billboards outside, written on fluorescent paper, like you sometimes see, especially in the city where the faithful are a bit thin on the ground. You know the ones, with messages like: This is Your Ch - - ch. What’s missing? – UR! Or, Jesus Saves Better Than England’s Keeper! Which is a bit like saying God’s own son would be marginally better than crap in a penalty shoot-out with the Germans. Now on top of all that if you throw in a graveyard surround, the greenest of lawns and prim hedges, you’ve got the picture – a hub of salvation for generations of Fen folk for miles around.
That’s the best part of our job, going on call-outs to places like this village, tucked away from the mill of urban life. Getting away from the workshop gives us a break, and the job always seems to go smoother when Baz and me are just left to it, without the boss sticking his nose in every two minutes. And we like the travel of course. Nearly every week takes us to another part of the country. Sometimes it’s the inner city, where one of us usually has to watch over the van. Not so much a hub of salvation there, more like the locals trying to salvage our hubs when we're not looking. But just as often it’s places like Candlewell, idyllic and peaceful – unless you’re listening to one of Reverend John’s sermons.
They say there is an air or a subtle light in Candlewell like no other that makes folk want to stay. I don’t know if that’s true. The place has always struck me as an English version of Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow. Not much has changed appearance wise since the Middle Ages apart from cars. No property development, or stupid theme bars. Some folk do stay, but that’s more to do with being only a couple of hours commuting to the city than the light or air.
But they say the place has a feel. An almost opiate like peace comes to those who stop for any length of time, lulling them into wanting more. Baz calls it the Twilight Zone effect, and says that everyone living there is really a thousand years old and would instantly turn to dust if they ever tried to leave.
But I think I know what they mean. Once on a past visit one summer, in the late afternoon when the crops were high, I made Baz pull into this lay-by that overlooks some fields near the village. Something odd had caught my eye. As we looked out across a flat sea of green and gold waving in the breeze, some distant farm buildings appeared, as though floating on an island in mid water. Sometimes they sank and disappeared, washed over by wave after wave of green. A sort of farmer’s Atlantis; complete with red tractor that, with a sudden change of wind across the crops, defied nature and once again rose and floated upon a shimmering corn sea.
Just a mirage, said Baz, which it is of course. But it doesn’t make my memory of it any less brilliant, especially on a contract like this one – freezing our nuts off in the middle of winter. We don’t get anything like it up our way. There, the nearest we’ll get to an illusion is some dope dealer offering you a temporary mindbender into Shangri-La, or a car shark convincing you that the old Ford Focus you’re driving away in is really a Rolls, and magically emptying both your wallet and card cash account in a single wave of a magic pen.
But every Eden has its snake, and ours was the bane of us all: our boss, Jim McBright. It usually followed the same pattern when we worked away, with him onto the mobile every two minutes: “Has that copper pipe arrived? Jesus H. Christ, Ed, where’s those bloody invoices I asked you to leave on my desk before you left? What’s that lard ass mate of yours doing right now? If that effin’ boiler is scratched I’ll bloody have your balls on a plate!”
Most of this was unfair. Baz and me work very hard, and Baz is more stocky than fat, and strong as a bull – the sort you want in your corner when there’s some heavy lifting to be done, or you’ve wandered into the wrong side of town. So, some of the names McBright called him were totally out of order.
And then silence. He had his say and rung off. I found myself
alone in the church in perfect peace. Baz had gone off to make the tea, and I breathed a heavy sigh of relief at the end of the call.
I walked slowly up the aisle, aware that my sigh echoed, and in the cold winter air of a church without heating, was visible. I followed the windows and their Old Testament stories in coloured glass, finally arriving at the altar and the South window to the right. This is the one where God has really blown his cool with Adam and Eve and decided to sling them out of Paradise. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen it, but in the past I’d never really given it much notice. We were usually too busy. It wasn’t quite right. It was just like the rest design wise, maybe a bit cleaner, like it had been taken care of more or installed more recently. But there was something else...
Although deep in thought, I was aware that Baz had come up behind me as I stared up at the scene.
“Penny for ‘em?” he said, sticking a mug of tea in my hand.
“It’s Adam.”
“Eh?”
“He’s missing, see.” I pointed and his eyes followed my gaze. “It’s the bit where God banishes them from Eden. Look at the big guy on the top left. Looks really brassed off, right? Then there’s Eve running away from the apple tree. But where is he? I don’t get it, it’s just weird.”
“I bet she’s chucked him already mate, you know women.”
“Or he’s run off down to the pub,” I said.
“Can you blame him? Not the prettiest of sights is she? And that ass would sink the Titanic.”
“But big asses were considered sexy in those days. It’s supposed to be a sign of fertility, you know, child bearing hips as they say and all that.”
“Yeah alright brainiac,” said Baz, placing his tea on the floor, removing his woolly hat, scratching his head with the same hand, while the other scratched his butt and tried to hitch up half mast jeans at the same time. “Just because you’re into books doesn’t mean you have to be such a poser with it. You know, sometimes you talk so gay it scares me.”
“It’s not posing. I thought everyone knew that in the days when food was scarce, big butts were a sign of good health.”
Baz stood silent and thoughtful for a minute looking up at the glass, scratching his chin (and butt). “Still…you just don’t get an ass like that eating apples,” he sighed.
Reverend John had appeared at the main door and was slowly making his way up the aisle towards us. Hands clasped behind his back, his short-cropped grey head held high above his broad shoulders, almost like some aged nightclub bouncer watching out for troublemakers, he looked about his church with an air of solid authority and pride as he walked. The black of his cassock seemed to shimmer in rainbow colours from the stained glass in the winter sunlight that beamed through each window he passed.
“I’ve just had your employer on the phone,” he said. “He asked me to look in on you, make sure you were getting on with the job and to report back. I shall tell him that you are hard at work and far too busy to come to talk shall I? Wouldn’t want to make a liar of a clergyman, would you?”
For all his gruffness I think Reverend John did have a soft spot for us. He probably knew we called him RJ or Rev, when we thought he wasn’t listening, that is. He wasn’t shouting at us, or even being sarcastic when he approached. He knew we worked hard and really would cover for us to McBright.
On that note Baz bent down, (displaying a good two inches of butt cleavage) picked up the toolbox, and letting out a bar of the High Ho! song from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, marched off to the vestry to do some boiler dismantling. Reverend John just smiled, winked at me and left us alone.
The Bell Inn, our home for the duration of contract, was one of those oldie worldy pubs built on the outskirts of town. You know the type, really low ceiling and beams, not the hollow board sort done over with Ronseal, but proper ones, stained with generations of lamp oil, nicotine and foul language. It was older than St. Mark’s according to the landlord. Well, in those days they got their priorities right – thirst things first. It was the first public building in Candlewell as you came in off the back roads. Right again, says the landlord, as most folk passing through and wanting to stop were forced to park at the Bell (as the streets are a bit tight elsewhere) and have lunch and a pint. In the old days it would be the first stop before any of Reverend John’s predecessors could convert the travellers from the work of the cursing classes.
Apart from that, everything else was all mod-cons. We each had comfortable en-suite second floor rooms with regular clean sheets, towels and plenty of those ridiculously miniature soap bars that you can find stuck to your butt after losing one in the bath.
In the evenings over pints in the bar, between talking football, drinking, munching crisps and scanning the pages of the Sun, we often discussed the aesthetics of eighteenth century church architecture. Oh yes we did! Well, I did say we weren’t uncultured. Me and Baz could discuss the pants off anyone when we’ve had a few pints. Nothing was beyond our debating skills: politics, religion, global warming and the best way to screw up an empty crisp packet so that it doesn’t spring back to its original size in the ashtray.
Anyway, Baz argued that the Victorians and pre-war generation were right to insist on concealing the supply pipes, to keep the place as original looking as possible. You see, in most churches the pipes run along the walls beneath the pews. Not in Reverend John’s church. Perhaps even in the Post-Victorian era the council had to tie everything up in red tape and planning permission. The pipes ran underground, and the radiators were housed in beautiful grilled cabinets decorated in purple and white, laid with lace and vases of flowers. To me it was just a bloody nuisance and extra labour unbolting pews and shifting them before digging the pipes out.
But we have a method.
Swearing makes you strong. It’s true. I swear. And the louder and fouler the swear word, the more strength exerted. It’s the direction of the swearword, and therefore energy, that counts. I think the Japanese invented the idea when they created those dummies that you could stick a photo of the boss’s face onto, for young office executives to punch, kick and swear at whenever they got frustrated with the job. But that’s where the Japanese missed out: the idea of harnessing all that wasted force. Almost like James Watt forgetting to put a piston in his steam engine; it’s just energy blown off like a fart in a hurricane.
Now, applied to a big steel bar inserted between stone flags (pretending it’s between a part of McBright’s anatomy helps) by a couple of seasoned profanitists like Baz and myself, and you’re in business.
Which is why, on the Tuesday morning, with Reverend John doing some book keeping in the vestry nearby, we achieved practically nothing in the first three hours. And one stone in particular was having none of it. We tried various combinations of bad words under muffled breath as we threw ourselves onto the bar, but nothing works as well as a hearty fucking twat! thrown behind full body weight.
“I’ve got an idea,” said Baz. “Why don’t we try singing?”
“What, you mean like the old time slaves in the cotton fields?”
“No, not like that, I mean any song, only when we get to a chorus on a particular word, you shout the proper word and I swear. The Rev will never figure it.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said. “What do we sing?”
“How about that drunken sailor song? You know – all that ooh, aye and up she rises.”
“Appropriate, I’ll give it that.”
“And when we get to the word ‘morning’ you shout morning and I’ll shout…whatever.”
Teamwork you could frame. At the appropriate word we threw our weight and shouts into the bar, just enough lift for Baz to get a wedge under one corner of the slab. Then with a bit more grunt and groan shunting, it slid away from the wall, but not before Reverend John came flying from the vestry.
“What in heaven’s name?” he demanded. “Do you have to make such a racket? This is God’s house, I’ll remind you, a place of solemnity.”
We explained the energy philosophy and he seemed to accept that. “I’ve nearly done for today anyway,” he said, walking back to the vestry. “By the way,” he said, turning, “you should work on your timing a bit. Your lyrics seemed a bit jumbled up and I couldn’t quite make out that last part. I shouldn’t bother going in for any talent shows.”
Baz followed him a couple of minutes later to make us a brew. I wandered over to the north wall, where the stones still lay beneath unbolted pews, and lamented on the amount of labour ahead. Old man McBright, who always worked to the tightest of budgets, had left a task worthy of a Roman legion – with tools just as primitive. The stones were various shapes and size, and the one we’d just shifted was a relative baby. A month of swearing and levering wouldn’t move this mountain before Mohammed. But prophets are one thing, and profits are another, and getting McBright to tap into some of his for hired labour…now that would be a miracle.
It was the strangest of sights, when I turned around. Baz had returned with the tea from the vestry, but not to me. He stood with his back to me, silhouetted against the morning sunlight from the high arched, blue-green image of Jonah being devoured by the whale, staring at the ground where we’d just shifted the last stone. Between him and the window something moved.
I remember the cold as much as anything, getting cooler as I approached and stood next to Baz, who just stared at it with a dumb look on his face. Although the church was cold anyway, the temperature seemed to have plummeted like a brick from a mason’s hod.
It was mist. A bit like the stuff we’d driven through on the trip down here, only it stood on this one spot spiralling very, very slowly from a small point in the centre of the bare ground. It was unwavering, almost elegant in its perfect gentle twist as it rose above us, dispersing to a point in Jonah’s light like the vapour from some invisible giant cup of coffee. At first I had the stupidest of notions and thought that Baz had spilt the tea on the ground. I even looked to check that both mugs he clutched were full. They were. I shook my head, slapped myself for the thought; this wasn’t kettle steam.
