Clear Light of Day

by Penelope Wilcock

After breakfast in the morning, she cycled over to Wiles Green and found Ember returning down from the orchard with the hen-food bucket as she came round the corner of the house into the yard.

  “Mornin’.” Ember watched her dismount and prop the bike against the wall. “You welcome as always to a cup of tea if you fancy my company, but Jabez gone to Shropshire to see his son. Went Monday. He’ll be back for the weekend.”

  Esme looked at her in surprise. “I had no idea Jabez had any children!”

  “Two sons he got. Hardly ever sees ’em. He got no money to travel. They got no money to travel. He writes sometimes.”

  “Oh. Are they married? Has he got grandchildren?”

  “One was married but his wife left him, took the kids with her—you know how ’tis nowadays. The other one sits the other side of the church; he won’t be marrying.” She swung the bucket, making the handle rattle. “You having a cup of tea? I got the kettle just on the boil.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ll just stow this pail back in the shed. Don’t you let on to Jabez you caught me feeding his hens this late—he’ll be ticking me off. Don’t see why. Hens likes a lie-in same as I do.”

  Esme doubted this, but didn’t say so. She followed Ember across the yard into the kitchen and sat at the table, watching her make the tea.

  “Jabez’s sons,” volunteered Ember conversationally, as she peered into the brown depths of the pot and stirred the tea, “is, as you might expect, not unlike Jabez. Achievements and qualifications all about as spectacular as his. Samuel, the oldest one, he got a BA—failed—from York University. Enjoyed prowling around the North York Moors, investigating ancient archaeological sites, and studying up on The Dream of the Rood and Old English as I gather, but not so enthusiastic when it came to George Eliot or Milton. Young Samuel says Milton is good for sterilizing nappies and that’s about all. According to Jabez, unless you got a good nodding acquaintance with the Gospels, the Psalms, and the Catholic Mass, you got no understanding of any English literature up until the 1970s anyway. That’s what he says. If ’tis so then it’s hardly surprising Samuel missed his mark—never been near a church in his life, not even baptized. Adam now, his younger son, he never failed anything on account of he never went to any college in the first place. Adam says he’s like his father—got a hereditary DNA in Getting By. Seems to be the case, he can turn his hand to most things. If life has a manual or a rule book, nobody ever told those three.

  “’Tis Samuel was married. Well, if this ain’t brewed now, it never will be.”

  Jabez usually poured the tea through a strainer into the mugs. Ember didn’t bother. She said an occasional tea leaf to chew made it more interesting.

  “I suppose I should find a few days to visit my family sometime soon too,” said Esme, with less enthusiasm than she had intended. Ember watched her, attentive and shrewd.

  “I’m sorry—that sounded as though I didn’t look forward to seeing them. I do—I mean, they’re my family. It’s just, I don’t know what exactly, somehow they make me feel a bit of a failure. They’re not Methodist. I was brought up Church of England. They think chapel is quaint and unsophisticated and a bit vulgar. My parents came to hear me preach once. I remember it. I gave my best shot at quite a complicated expository sermon on the teaching structure of Saint Mark’s gospel. Afterward, my mother said—I can only imagine the remark was one she’d dreamed up earlier to have ready, and she’d slept through the actual service—‘Ah, you Methodists; a simple belief: Just have faith. How comforting. I wish I could be like that, but the Anglican Church is a thinking church, intellectual.’ They never came to hear me again. One of my sisters is the headmistress of a girls’ private school. She went on a conference last March, where they were told how important it is to give themselves little treats to reward all the hard work they do—she says she works a hundred-hour week. So she did treat herself. She bought herself a state-of-the-art wall-mounted CD player. Goodness only knows how much it cost. My other sister is a doctor. My brother is a research chemist. I’m not quite sure what he’s doing at the moment. It’s all covered by the Official Secrets Act. They’re very sweet to me, fond of me. But with the same affection they might show to a much-loved poodle, one that’s been in the family a long time. I’ve dreamed sometimes of becoming a superintendent and then a district chair and then the president of the conference—just to show them. Even if I managed it, I’m not sure they know what the president of the conference is, or does. Actually, I’m not sure I do myself. I think they vary wildly between the ones that deliver impassioned speeches expounding radical political views and the ones with nice smiles that have trouble finding a place to put their handbag down while they bless the winner of the sandcastle competition.”

  Ember chuckled. “Something been upsetting you? You sound a bit curdled today.”

  Esme didn’t reply. She felt unsettled and restless and sad. Eventually, “Ember,” she said, “do you pray?”

  Ember considered this question without surprise.

  “I light fires,” she offered, after awhile.

  “Pardon? Fires? Where?” Esme looked at her, slightly startled, waiting for enlightenment.

  “Anywhere. In the orchard. In the little hearth in my bedroom. At my old place I lit ’em in the garden near the hedge. Under the stars is best. Fires is fragrant, and calls to the Being at the heart of it all. Twig by twig I makes ’em. I takes my time—just little fires we’re talking about, not roaring great bonfires. On the burning I lay dried pinecones from the woods and the roadside. Slips of rosemary, dried sage. In the smoke is all my yearnings. Dreams that never came to be. My sense of home. In the smoke is the brown bears, kept in cages, their gallbladders tapped for bile for Chinese medicine. And foxes, running for home, not knowing their earth is blocked by the hunter. And the forests, cut down for loggers and cattle ranchers. And the streams, fouled with factory effluents and sewage and corpses. In the smoke is the bluebell woods and the daffodil woods, the brilliance of the moon, and a bird singing after dusk on a warm summer night. The sound of the surf on the shingle, and the wind in the tops of the pines. I sits by the fire, and I says nothing, although sometimes I weep. I’m not sure what deity is, my love; but life is sacred, life is wise. One day, if my smoke finds the way home, and wakes the great Spirit, then the face of life that is death will come speeding silent like a hunting owl, and take the cancer of humanity off this poor, stripped, raped mother Earth, take it silent and quick, no more than a squeak of alarm; and the mountains will have their peace again, and the oceans give back the heavenly blue. The guns and the cars will rust, and the televisions will be quiet at last, and the factories and schools and government buildings will be for the bramble, the rat, and the crow. Is that what you call praying? Or is it just fires?”

  “I think it’s what I call praying,” said Esme. “Ember, I just can’t pray anymore.”

  There are very, very few people to whom a minister, whose house and income are linked inextricably to the willingness to pray, may make that deadly confession. Ember seemed like one of the few. Esme heard her own voice sadly and hopelessly speak the words; and it came as a relief.

  “Another cup of tea? I think we’d squeeze one more each out of this pot? Yes?”

  Ember poured out the tarry, cooling dregs.

  “What do you call praying, then, my love; that you can’t do?”

  Esme sighed. “Well, just the usual things. I should have a quiet time in the morning; read the Bible. Maybe use the prayer handbook or the district prayer calendar to intercede for the world and the church. I should confess my sins and pray for the sick; I should pray through the pastoral list. I might use the Order for Morning or Evening Prayer in the Methodist Worship Book. There’s lots of modern resource stuff I could get to help me, if only I could get by this terrible inertia. I could do Ignatian visualizations or meditate on a short text or use
the words of a hymn.”

  “I’m not surprised you got trouble praying!” Ember sounded impressed. “You got the same trouble I get buying food in a supermarket. Better with an apple from the orchard or the egg new-laid from under the hen.”

  “But what am I going to do?” Esme cried out. “I’m a minister, I can’t carry on just not praying; I’m a fraud!”

  “My mother was born in Wiles Green,” said Ember, with apparent irrelevance, “but my father didn’t come from this part of the world. My hat! This tea tastes foul, don’t it! Let me throw that out, and we’ll start again with a fresh pot.”

  The slops went in the compost bucket, and Ember drew fresh water, which she set to boil.

  “My father came from some mountain part on the border of India, I think. He grew up in one of they villages you see on calendars, houses with the roof made out of grey stone shingles. He had a pilgrim soul, my father, didn’t stay with us all that long; but after he moved on he used to write to me now and then. He sometimes used to speak to me about Siddhartha, the Buddha. My father told me this word Buddha just means someone who is awake. He said that Siddhartha taught people only to wake up. To pay attention, be present—‘as I am to you,’ my father used to say—to live mindfully. My father spoke about life lived on purpose. When he walked, he walked slow, because his feet kind of loved the ground. Every step he took, he gave attention to. He said whatever I was doing, I was to do it with all my attention, even just sitting quietly, watching, or listening. He said you got to have presence of mind. When I was podding peas, he taught me to gaze on my hands and love them working. He said that in the peas were sunshine and rain from clouds and dew and earth. Our mother spoke about the garden having good soil for growing peas, and he used to say, ‘Not soil; soil is a word that means dirt. Say earth, not soil; for the earth puts out living plants from the living body of her sacred being. Reverence the gift. Reverence the earth.’ He would take up a handful of earth in his hands, rub it, and sniff it, and he’d nod in satisfaction. ‘Earth is clean and good,’ he told me. And he said to our mother we children were to have earth and air, fire and water to play with, which fortunately wasn’t hard in the part of the country we lived in at that time. He often told us to practice the yoga of reverence, until when I was a teenager I asked him what he meant by it. He laughed at me—almost everything made him laugh; not unkindly, he just didn’t mind about things. He said it meant seeing into the heart of whatever you had before you until the fire of its divine life revealed itself to you. Anything—from a cut finger to a plate of steamed cabbage to a sinkful of washing up. A vase of perfumed lilies or dog mess in the yard. The eyes of your bridegroom when he gives himself to you in marriage and the eyes of the same man when he tells you he’s leaving you. He said we were to be present to every being we encounter with absolute respect, and treat ourselves with the same respect. I can remember him now, he spoke softly always, saying, ‘Every living being is present to this moment, therefore you are a part of everything because you are also in this moment. Therefore you are holy because this moment pulsates with the divine. Your only responsibility is to bring your attention to this moment; when you do so, you will perceive the radiance of divine light illuminating everything that is.’ He said all kinds of stuff along those lines. I never saw him praying as such—but I saw him peeling potatoes sometimes, and I believe it was much the same thing.”

  Esme sat quietly and thought about what she had just heard. She drank her tea Ember had made and poured out and set before her as she was talking.

  “I think my congregation would expect me to have a daily quiet time,” she said at last.

  “Then take quiet time every day,” Ember replied. “Invite your God. Say, ‘God, have you noticed the quietness of this time? Have you got your full attention on this moment? Good. So have I.’ I tell you what isn’t prayer, my love. Worrying isn’t.”

  Esme smiled. “No—you’re absolutely right. I can see that.”

  The conversation remained with her through the week—she realized that it had been the first time she had talked with Ember at any length. She felt that in Ember she had encountered something very solid and uncompromising and strong, very wise, too. Esme had mentioned how helpful she had found it to spend time with Jabez, to have the fresh view of his perspective on life, and to hear what he had to say as they sat and chatted in his workshop or by the fireside in the living room of his cottage. Ember had looked at her, a look that Esme couldn’t read.

  “Jabez?” she had replied. “He got plenty to say to anyone with the same interests. And sometimes, my love, you do well to listen to what he doesn’t say—especially to you.”

  That puzzled Esme. Had she been insensitive in some way? As she looked back on the many times they had talked, becoming easy with each other as the months went by, Esme felt the sudden upwelling of sadness again; she did not want this move, without really knowing why.

  In early November, once Marcus had come back from Italy, the leadership team met again. It was decided that after Christmas, Esme could talk to the stewards in her section churches about the changes to come. Then alternative plans for the future would be presented to the church councils and to the circuit meeting in the spring, the implications of the decisions there being returned for consideration at the annual church meetings. As they disbanded after an evening of animated discussion, Marcus said to Esme, “You rang us while we were in Italy, my dear. Was it something in particular? Is all well?”

  Esme shook her head. “No problems, nothing to worry about. I just had a thought that maybe I could come and see you, to talk through where I might go, what I might do next.”

  “Why don’t you join us for supper, Esme? Tonight is good if you have no other engagement and feel you can face any more on the topic today.”

  Esme accepted, gratefully. That evening, driving through the dark lanes to Wiles Green, she reflected on how quickly the summer seemed to have come and gone; the seasons like a wheeled thing rolling downhill, picking up speed as it goes. I suppose it’s because the summer was so chilly and wet this year, she thought. I haven’t had enough of the sun, I feel so tired and dispirited; I’m not ready yet for the winter.

  Hilda, on the lookout, saw her approach, and stood framed in the warm light of her open doorway as Esme climbed out of her car.

  “Welcome! Come in, my dear, come in! Such a dreary night, come in by the fire, come in!”

  As Hilda took her coat, Esme asked how the trip to Italy had gone.

  “Oh, marvelous, my dear, but just marvelous! It was so lovely to have Jeremy with us—our youngest son, did you know he came? It’s never easy for him to get time away from that business of his, it seems to gobble up his living daylights, but just for once he could snatch a few weeks—he had to fly home from Venice of course, and I would so much have liked him to be able to enjoy Florence, but well—I’m sorry, Marcus? Did you call? No, of course we’re coming, just a moment of girlish chatter—wine I should think if you’re pouring. Come along in, my dear, I’m just dying to show you our photographs—unless of course you absolutely detest other people’s holiday snaps—well, it can be tedious, don’t you think? Of course it can. There now, in you go, make yourself comfy, that’s right, here’s Marcus with your wine. Oh, and nuts—I shouldn’t know Marcus at a party without his nuts, a very pressing host sometimes—take a handful, there you are!”

  Esme admired the photographs of lakeside hills and wayside shrines, the Venetian squares and bridges and waterways, and the glories of Florence. She learned that Jeremy, who appeared in some of the snaps, a youthful clone of his father, ran a small chain of juice bars catering to health-conscious executives in the West End of London. Hilda again expressed concern about how hard he worked and how time-consuming his business commitments were. Required to corroborate this, Marcus expressed the opinion that possibly Jeremy’s attitude to his work was a little less languid than it h
ad been to his studies at school; but Esme could see how proud of the young man his father felt.

  “And of course now Sophie has her little gallery in Piccadilly, it’s much more handy—she and Jeremy can both be based in the London flat now, and it does save so much running about. Back and forth to Paris was no joke in the long term.”

  Esme said she could see that this would be so. Gathering the photographs into neat piles again, she replaced them in the envelopes on her lap. “Those are beautiful. What a wonderful trip,” she said.

  “Oh, it was! Last year in Russia,” Hilda threw up her hands in horror at the memory; “well, Marcus would go. Leningrad it had to be. Oh, I admit we saw some splendid things but, dear me, icons ad infinitum and the acrylic alphabet that nobody could make head or tail of. I was honestly just glad to come home! Now then you must be famished—I’ve a nice little casserole, just the thing for a cold night. You and Marcus can talk over your church nonsense while I flap about in the kitchen. It’s so nice of you to look at my photographs, my dear—you know how it is, people just fall asleep looking!”

  Marcus, ensconced in the comfortable depths of his armchair on the other side of the fire, sipped his wine reflectively.

  “Are you happy about your move?” he asked Esme, when Hilda had gone out of the room.

  She responded cautiously, “Well, if this hadn’t come up, I think I should have hoped for a reinvitation to stay, but it all seems practical; I am looking upon it as an opportunity.”

  Marcus nodded. “But you—” he bent and placed his glass on the corner of the modern York stone hearth, which looked remarkably at home in this old house with its antique furnishings, “—you had no particular reason why you might have preferred to stay on with us at Wiles Green?” he asked.

  Wiles Green? Esme thought of Miss Trigg. How strange that he might think I had a special attachment to the chapel at Wiles Green. He can’t face worshipping there himself!