The Book of Hours

by Davis Bunn

  It seemed to Brian that the vicar’s own frailty spoke to him. There before him stood a man wearied to the point of fatigue. Yet he spoke with a confidence that rose beyond his exhaustion and his worry. He spoke with an authority that defied how he felt and what he feared. Brian found himself able to listen and accept, because there before him stood the power of a living example.

  “Jesus does not expect perfection,” The vicar continued. “He does not welcome you because you are either strong or whole in your own right. He knows you are weak, flawed, sick, worried. He is fully aware that you are human. And His response to all of us, no matter what our condition or our needs, is the same: Come home. We also shall become part of this rock, this community, this herald to a dark and confused time. Find the hope, the healing, the peace, the power to face tomorrow—whatever you need, it is here in the Lord’s open arms.”

  Nineteen

  CECILIA’S HEAD POKED UP THROUGH THE ATTIC HOLE AND said, “Gladys tells me you’ve found another letter.”

  “That’s right.” Brian shifted the final board into place and dug in his shirt pocket for another nail. “At least, Bill Wilke did.”

  “Are you sure I can’t help you up there?”

  “There’s not room for two.” Every pound of the hammer meant almost clobbering himself in the forehead, the crawl space was so narrow. It was also freezing. Winter seeped through a multitude of leaks and crevices. “There’s hardly room for one.”

  When he stopped hammering Cecilia said, “I can’t thank you enough for helping out like this.”

  “I’m happy to do it.” Brian tested the board, found it secure, and started sliding out on his back. “To tell the truth, I needed to find something like this to do.”

  She backed off the ladder to let him down. “What do you mean?”

  “The way you stood up there in front of the crowd, it . . .” He was stopped by the look on her face. “What’s the matter?”

  “I was a miserable failure!”

  Brian’s laugh was halted only by the distress in her expression. “You were a lot of things, but a failure was not one of them.”

  “Oh, please.” She collapsed the ladder with an angry clatter. “I was so nervous I couldn’t even recognize my own voice. I dropped my cue cards. I sounded like a loon.”

  “Cecilia.” He waited until she had turned to face him. “I don’t know how to make you believe this, but I spent all last night convicted of all the mistakes I’ve made. And it was because of you.”

  She studied his face for any hint of mockery. “Because of all the blunders I made?”

  “No. Because you did what you believed in, despite the fact that you were afraid.”

  “Terrified out of my skin,” she woefully agreed.

  “Right. And everybody saw that. And they admired you for doing it anyway.”

  “They thought I was nuts.” She kicked the wall. “Not to mention the fact that I let Trevor down.”

  “Nobody could have done a better job,” Brian replied with conviction. “Of that I am absolutely certain.”

  “You’re . . .” She was halted in midflow by the sound of an engine revving just outside her cottage, one loud enough to rattle the windows. A horn sounded impatiently. Cecilia walked over to the window and said, “It’s Bill Wilke. Whose car is that?”

  “Mine, at least for a few days.” Brian walked over to stand beside her and looked down. The car positively gleamed in the afternoon light. “Would you come for a ride with me?”

  The walrus mustache parted in a wide grin as they emerged from the cottage entrance. Bill Wilke revved the engine another couple of times before cutting the motor. In the sudden silence he called over, “Grand afternoon for a spin.” But his breath sent plumes out over the car. “That is, it shouldn’t rain for the next couple of hours. In this fair land, you take what you can get.”

  Slowly Cecilia approached the car, then turned back to where Brian stood. “This is yours?”

  “Miss Heather left it to the lad.” The mechanic grunted with the effort of squeezing himself out from behind the wheel. He rose to his feet, whipped a clean cloth from his back pocket, and began stroking the already gleaming hood. “Goes like a rocket, she does. Alex never took her out more than once a week or so, and only in summer. Clock doesn’t have but four thousand miles.”

  “I can’t thank you enough,” Brian said.

  “Think nothing of it.” Bill Wilke gave Cecilia an affable nod.

  “Grand performance you put on last night.”

  Cecilia cast Brian an uncertain glance before timidly responding, “Thank you.”

  “Left a lot of us thinking perhaps we ought to do more. Spent a good few hours pondering on just that last night. That is, when the wife wasn’t getting on me for opening somebody else’s mail.” Bill turned to where Brian was circling the car. “Any luck with the riddle?”

  “Nothing so far.”

  “Well, sleep on it, that’s my motto. Anytime you can’t see heads from tails, have a kip. Wife says it’s on account of my lazy nature, but I’ve solved more of life’s puzzles flat on my back than I ever did deliberating.”

  Brian knew it had to be said. “About the bill for the repairs. I’ll have to wait until I sell it to pay—”

  “Like I said yesterday, lad. Think nothing of it. You’re good for what you owe, of that I have no doubt.” He squinted at the sky. “Lovely to see the sun, ain’t it?”

  “Fantastic,” Brian agreed, wishing there were some way to offer real thanks. “Been like this almost every day since I arrived.”

  “Then you’re lucky. Rained all but three days last month. We often get a nasty November. And October. Mind you, December can go right off as well. And January’s not worth mentioning. Gets so cold I’ve frozen my mitts to an engine block. Happened the year I repaired my first E-type. That was one nasty job. The old place didn’t have heating, and I was so cold I couldn’t remember what I’d done and what I’d left. The fellow got halfway down the street, and the motor blew right off the frame.”

  Cecilia asked, “What did you do?”

  “Took off for parts south, what do you think?” The twinkling eyes surveyed the two of them, and Bill Wilke seemed to nod his approval. But all he said was, “Four feet of snow we had that very same week. Sixty degrees two days later. That’s England for you. All the weather, all the time.”

  Brian asked, “Anything I should know about driving this car?”

  “Turn the key in the ignition, press on the gas, put it in gear, aim, and shoot. That’s the way most motorcars work this side of the puddle.” He nodded once more. “Guess I’ll be off, then.”

  “Can I give you a lift?”

  “Thanks, lad, but I live just past the good doctor’s clinic. Been within sound of the village bells all my life.” His look to Cecilia was one of deep affection. “Almost forgot how much all that clatter meant to me, or what it stood for. Guess too many of us did.”

  In the silence of his passage, Brian found himself smiling at Cecilia’s look of utter confusion. When she finally turned his way, he asked, “Do you have an extra scarf I can borrow?”

  Their departure became a rather public affair. Gladys spotted them there by the car and came bustling out, her arms loaded with Arthur’s clothes—two sweaters, flannel trousers, a garish checked cap, even a leather bomber jacket. The only reason there was only one pair of trousers was because she had only found the time to let out one set of cuffs. At the women’s insistence, Brian retreated into Rose Cottage and changed. He came out smelling of mothballs. Even with the cuffs let out, he showed quite a lot of ankle. But the leather jacket was cut broad in the shoulders and small in the waist. Cecilia’s checked scarf almost matched the cap, and both went extraordinarly well with the car.

  The car started with an impatient roar, then settled back to a purring impatience. Gladys watched Cecilia clamber on board, and announced, “The two of you look like an advert for days gone by.”

  They left K
nightsbridge by way of the central square. Any number of people stopped what they were doing and watched as they went roaring by. Cecilia found herself unable to hold back the smiles. The wind pushed and buffeted and rushed in her ears. The sun was bright enough to offer a myth of warmth. The car roared and bounced her about upon the stiff springs and hard leather seat. Every corner threw her one way or the other. She could see how Brian was forced to grip the wheel tightly and use real effort to make the turns. He kept to the small country lanes, roads so narrow he had to slow and pull to one side to allow oncoming traffic to pass. The lanes were bordered by high hedges and even taller trees, opening only when they entered hamlets of a dozen houses and a church and a pub, then closing back again to fragrant burrows.

  He halted at a sign posted on a squat stone marker with hand-painted names. She was relieved to see he could not seem to contain his smile, either. Brian asked, “Any idea where we are?”

  To Cecilia it seemed as though the entire day had been leading her to this point, where she could look at a medieval road marker and realize it was time to share with this stranger one of her closely guarded secrets. And feel in the process only a rightness as gentle and comforting as the afternoon. “Take a right.”

  Brian squinted through the narrow windscreen and read aloud, “Wittenham Clumps.”

  She directed him down one country lane after another, until the road ended at the base of a hill so strange Brian could only gape and say, “Is this natural?”

  Cecilia opened her door and asked, “Feel like taking a walk?”

  A narrow path cut a swath through fields browned by the season, leading up a steep hill that looked like a perfectly fashioned golden cone. That time of year, they had the path to themselves. It felt wonderful to be up and moving. Gradually her muscles worked out the strain from the bumpy ride, and warmth returned to her ears and cheeks.

  Cecilia pointed ahead and explained, “This is a dwelling area that dates back to the time of Stonehenge. Back before the Roman era, a tribe cleared the hillside and planted their crops. They founded their village in the forest you see at the top. They built two walls—an outer barrier of thornbushes that still grows today, and an inner one of stone. Their final defense was the forest. They left the trees standing close and tight, protecting them from invaders and the weather.”

  She led him up and into a crown of trees so tall and dense neither sun nor wind could enter. Cecilia found herself tempted to halt here, where the loudest sound was birdsong and the strongest sensation was of peace. But this was not why she was here, and to do anything less than complete the task would be to leave unfinished a truly fine day. She pointed to the path leading out the forest’s other side. “Let’s go this way.”

  The walk and the sun warmed him such that Brian took off his hat, scarf, and jacket. He followed Cecilia along a path too narrow for them to walk side by side, and drank in a view so complete it seemed as though he could see to the end of this fair isle and beyond. Fields stretched out to join the misty gray horizon, dotted with little villages and church spires and stone border walls and tree-lined lanes. The river Thames cut a mirror-green swath through the land. Clouds flittered overhead, painting the landscape with shady islands.

  They descended into a narrow, tree-lined valley. The day was so quiet, the valley so fair, even the raven’s caw seemed content. Cecilia did not speak as she led him along the narrow path. The sunlight and birdsong sang a distinctly English tune, chanting a myth, promising only fair days to come, neither rain nor chill nor blustering dark days of foreign seasons. And because the day and the lady beside him found answering chimes within his heart, Brian smiled his pleasure of the fable and the teller both. Because he could give himself fully, because the chains of past seasons did not hold him in the here and now, he found it possible to call this day eternity, and so the fable became real.

  They reached the base of the hill and entered a narrow cut. A copse of ancient chestnut and oak closed in about them. Cecilia led him to where the tiny valley took a sharp right turning, and halted before a church. It was a tiny structure, so old the stones seemed to have melted and run together. A thick mantle of moss dressed the slate roof. The same green adorned the waist-high stone wall, within which grew five massive trees. Tombstones dotted the church forecourt, markers from which all traces of names and dates had been washed away, as though to say that here such minor things no longer mattered—these people rested easy, and that was all one needed to know.

  Cecilia led him to the single stone bench that was still upright and level. Overhead two trees had grown so intertwined that it was impossible even in barest winter to say where one stopped and the other began. The expression on Cecilia’s face said this was a longstanding habit. Brian settled down there beside her and felt the silence seeping into his very bones.

  Finally she spoke, her voice as quiet as the wind. “I found this place my first year in medical school. We’re only about twenty miles from Oxford.”

  He found himself unwilling to disturb her flow and the moment with words of his own. So he leaned on the stone wall and let her go forward alone. She breathed a pair of long sighs, then continued,“My parents were never happy. They seemed to enjoy quarreling. My mother was English, I’ve told you that. My father was in the military. She hated America; she moaned constantly about how much she missed her little English village. It was only when I graduated from college and won a scholarship and came back . . .”

  She halted once more, and this time the silence was long enough for the birdsong to speak in her place. Brian felt no desire to push the conversation in any particular direction. The day had its own course, certain as a river’s. His task was to chart it and follow it as well as he could.

  “Everything was so different from what I expected,” she finally continued. “I was so alien and so totally alone. Then I met Mark. He was doing his residency in cardiology at Radcliffe; that’s the Oxford hospital. That year we became engaged to be married. This was my second try at commitment; I also got engaged as an undergraduate. His name was Steve, and the only thing he shared with Mark was an absolute confidence that if he loved me deeply enough and argued long enough, he would turn me from my dream of becoming a country village doctor. That is the clearest memory I have of both my engagements, the quarrels. It seemed as though I was doomed to the same kind of life as my parents’. So I broke off both engagements. But each time it seemed as though I had cut off a part of my own soul as well.”

  A pair of gray doves fluttered down, their wings gentle thunder. They waddled before the bench, cooing in sympathy as Cecilia went on, “This place became my refuge. I would come here and cry and try to sort through the mess I was making of everything. I knew part of what drove me was my mother’s own unanswered dream of returning to live in an English village. Even so, it was my dream now. And I didn’t want to give it up. Even if it meant having to live my life out alone.” There was another long sigh, this one so harsh it rattled her throat. Then, “When I first came to Knightsbridge, I made the worst mistake of all, at least as far as the men in my life. I started up with a local. A dashing fellow, village born and raised, so handsome and charming.” She cast him a shamefaced glance. “You know him.”

  Brian guessed, “Joe Eaves.”

  “Did somebody tell you?”

  “No. I just thought there was more to the argument I saw you have with him than a hole he was digging in your front yard.”

  She nodded glumly. “What a disaster that was. In all the time we spent together, I never figured out the real man behind his bright smile and his glib tongue. After a while I just stopped caring. But by then I was Joe’s girl. Everybody in the village knew about us. So when I broke things off, I just accepted that I was fated to spend my life here alone. I worked, I had my few friends like Trevor and Molly and Arthur and Gladys, I had my little cottage. Most of the time it was almost enough.”

  “I’m so sorry, Cecilia.” It was not much, but it had to be said. “Both about th
e problems you’ve had and about your losing Rose Cottage.”

  They continued to look out over the tiny tousled courtyard and the church and the trees and the day. When he spoke again, it was not in regret, but in peace. “Sarah would have loved it here.”

  They rose then, their time done. Brian walked over to the nearest tombstone and found his heart inscribing his own words of parting upon the time-washed surface. Written this time with the clarity of passage and the strength of healing. He reached down and patted the stone, then turned away.

  Halfway back up the hillside, Cecilia reached behind her, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world for Brian to lean forward and take her hand.

  Twenty

  THEY PULLED INTO CASTLE KEEP’S GRAVEL DRIVE AND CUT the motor. Brian felt as though his body still rocked and hummed in time to the now-silent engine. Cecilia turned to him and said, “I can’t thank you enough for a lovely day.”

  “Sharing that church with me was very special. I wish I knew how to tell you . . .”

  She stopped him with a hand on top of his. “You’ve done just fine.”

  They sat in companionable silence, the narrow cockpit forcing them into intimate closeness. Then he heard voices outside the front gates and the treads of several feet start down the drive. He was pleased to see Cecilia frown, for that was how he felt as well. As though the outside world was encroaching on them and their special day all too soon.

  She leaned closer still and said, “Let me cook you dinner tonight.”