The Clear Light of Day Read online

  Perhaps here, thought Esme, as she contemplated her reflection, I should turn over a new leaf. I could build in a program of regular exercise. I could go for walks in the country when I do my visits to the villages. Maybe—a new idea came to her—perhaps here I could ride a bike.

  Depressed by the vision of herself in the window glass, she made her way back to the study. For a little while she sorted papers, drank her coffee, filed things, and made notes, but with less and less enthusiasm or attention. Just this week, she told herself, just this week to get prepared. But something inside her refused to pay attention and be good. She toyed with the idea of preparing ahead one or two sermon outlines, glancing through the lectionary for the Year C readings for September. But the same something inside dug in its heels and wouldn’t, and in the end, she sat with her elbows on the desk, gazing out into the garden.

  I want to go outside, she thought, it’s lovely outside.

  Abandoning her papers and boxes of unsorted belongings, Esme grabbed her bag, stepped purposefully out of the house, got into her car, and fished in the glove compartment for the new map book she had bought. She decided that a foray to explore Wiles Green could reasonably count as work. She had been there once only, on the day of her visit eighteen months ago to meet the stewards in each of her three chapels. Beside the grim and crumbling majesty of Portland Road Chapel in Southarbour, Wiles Green Chapel had looked like a doll’s house; small and trim, set back from the road, surrounded by a flower border, sheltered by a tree, and enclosed on three sides by a yew hedge—the fourth side being open to the car park. A square gap had been neatly trained in the hedge as it grew, to accommodate the Wayside Pulpit containing a notice, that when last she had seen it had read, SEEK YE THE LORD WHILE YET HE MAY BE FOUND.

  Inside as outside, Esme had been impressed to find the chapel well maintained and lovingly kept; austere and free of religious art or any embellishment, but with an indefinable sense of good cheer.

  On that first day her interest had been focused entirely on the chapel. She thought it now time to explore the village. She had at least located the post office and the supermarket in Southarbour, and spent a morning wandering in the busy village of Brockhyrst Priory with its thriving family businesses, its teashops, and gift shops; but Wiles Green she remembered only as an indeterminate scattering of houses, and a pub—a place of no real consequence.

  She refreshed her memory from the map as to the directions and set out to explore. She left the town and drove through the beauty of the late-summer countryside, through Brockhyrst Priory with its picturesque winding main street—you couldn’t see the chapel from here, it was up behind the houses on Market Street—left at the fire station, out through fields and woodland, left at the crossroads, right at the next turning, down the hill through a lane that resembled a dry stream running between steep banks of earth fixed by the gnarled roots, green with moss, of trees that met in a canopy overhead and carpeted the road with leaf mold.

  Esme remembered from her earlier visit how long the lane had seemed, tunneling through the countryside with a sense of entering depths, passing the limits of civilization. I must drive out here at night, she promised herself, there will be badgers, foxes—maybe even hedgehogs and owls! The journey had a suggestion of having mistaken the way, a profound sense of secrecy, wilderness. I hope I’m not lost, Esme began to think. With relief she caught sight of a rather mossy sign partly obscured by the hedge, on which she could make out most of the letters of Wiles Green. The road remained uncompromisingly narrow but climbed a hill past a cluster of farm buildings and cottages and then turned a corner into the hundred yards or so that made up its village street. There was the pub—The Bull—the ancient and delightful parish church of St. Raphaels, a dozen or so houses, mostly cottages but some more imposing residences, and a temporary-looking structure built of corrugated iron with a handmade sign over the door saying Village Post Office & Stores. Along the road edges the pavement came and went, and there were so many trees and hedges that the houses seemed half-buried in the undergrowth. Leaving behind these buildings, Esme came to a turning whose sign said CHAPEL LANE, and she drove along it to remind herself of her chapel’s situation.

  Someone had hung a new sign in the Wayside Pulpit saying THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH, and Esme made a mental note to order a new set of posters. She had brought the keys with her, but something in the chapel’s neat appearance looked so closed and complete that she felt disinclined to go in. She could remember the interior. She would soon be preaching there. Today she could take the chance to explore places she would be less certain to see later on. She turned around in the car park and made her way back to the parish church.

  There she could find no designated parking place, so she pulled off the road as well as she could and got out of her car to look in the churchyard. Roses sprawled on the old rough stones, lichened yellow, of the wall, and trees spread welcome shade over the higgledy-piggledy graves in the long grass. Oh, but it’s so pretty, thought Esme as she ventured slowly up the path, gazing at it all, and when she reached the door and tried it, she found to her delight that it was open. She stepped inside, smelling the holy smell of cool stone and incense and beeswax candles. The sun through stained-glass windows dappled the deep golden brown of the pews with rich colors. Esme sat down in the back pew, and after a minute, pulled toward her one of the kneelers covered in hairy woolen fabric of a gentle blue. For the first time in years, she knelt down to pray, wondering fleetingly as she slid to her knees why Methodists never do.

  At first she just knelt, and let the peace of the place slide into her soul, but as she did so the calloused resistance began to ease and words started to form. She whispered, “What I’d really like, please, if it can be done, is someone to be my friend. It can be so very lonely. Please.” And then added, with a pang of guilt, “And help me to serve you well. And all the people.”

  She held the moment in silence—what was it about prayer that could so uncover the heart’s surprising secrets? Surrounded every day by people, her phone ringing from breakfast time to bedtime, her diary full two months ahead and almost every hour accounted for, days off jealously guarded, she had not realized until she took this fleeting space of solitary prayer that the hunger and the restlessness had to do with loneliness; the longing to be really known and accepted and understood—not only loved and needed. Someone to be my friend. The thought that had come to her shone faintly with hope. Perhaps it would be. Maybe in the chapel communities she had come to serve she might find other women like herself—professional, single, with interests in common. If so, there might be a chance of some fun, projects shared, leisure outings together. A friend.

  The habitual guilt began to pull at her. Here she was, kneeling in prayer—should she not seize the moment as an opportunity, commit her ministry in this area to God, intercede for her stewards, her treasurer, her pastoral visitors, her youth work, her colleagues? Probably. But here she felt somehow a necessity to take her prayer no further than honesty, to offer to God the simple truth of the desire of her heart: someone to be my friend.

  Esme stayed where she was, looking at the sturdy stone pillars, the rood screen, and the altar beyond; the carved wooden pulpit and the polished brass-eagle lectern bearing the heavy Bible open on its spread wings. She could not quite place from where comfort came, but she was stilled by the profound serenity of the ancient place steeped in so many people’s secret prayers.

  After a long while she got to her feet, and slowly, communing with the living sense of the place, walked back down the aisle to the heavy door, her hand caressing the dark wooden curves of the pew ends as she passed. Before she left, she stopped and turned to look down the length of the church to its altar under the east window. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Good-bye.”

  Out in the churchyard, the sunlight seemed dazzling. Esme lingered there a little longer, looking at the inscriptions on the graves as she wandered along the path that led back to the road, enjoying the wa
rmth and the birdsong, watching a beetle on the grass stems and the bees visiting the flowers against the wall. With a sigh she went out through the lych-gate. There was so much still to do.

  Out on the roadside, beside her car, she found a very old lady, whose clothing seemed to be composed of assorted loose layers in fabrics of a variety of hues but without the decoration of patterns or flowers, creating rather the effect of robes. Her hair, grey and disheveled, was more or less assembled in two very long plaits. On her head, she wore a multicolored African hat and some curious, primitive tribal earrings. Her right hand gripped the silver top of a walking stick. A jazz prophet, thought Esme. In spite of the overall impact of her appearance, undoubtedly the most arresting thing about this old lady was the unswerving gaze of her extremely dark eyes, which glittered at Esme as she emerged from the churchyard.

  “Your car.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes,” Esme said. “Is there a problem?”

  The old lady looked at her.

  “Supposing,” she said, “I was to bring out a table and chair and set it up in the middle of the road to play cards, would that be a problem?”

  Esme blinked uncertainly. The old lady continued to fix her with her gaze. She didn’t look cross, but something momentous regarded Esme through those bright eyes set in the wrinkled brown face.

  The old lady continued, “There’s something about cars that gives folks the idea that the whole world must make way for them while at the same time they have absolute right to block the way of others. ’Tisn’t so. Pavements is for pedestrians. We may not have much of a pavement in Wiles Green, but such as there is, is entirely filled up by your car.”

  “There’s nowhere else to park by the church,” said Esme reasonably.

  “Put it somewhere else, then,” said the old lady, “and walk.”

  The sense of well-being Esme had found in the quietness of the church evaporated. Why was life like this? Where did they come from, these vile old ladies who made a career out of being rude and finding fault and telling people off? Did God send them to test our faith in the divine image within the human soul and the goodness of creation? Who needed a belief in a personal devil—wouldn’t old ladies do just as well?

  She looked down at the ground and counted to ten slowly.

  “I am so sorry,” she said. “I’ll move it straight away.”

  The old lady’s wrinkled face reassembled into a most mischievous grin. “There’s patience!” she said, and held out her hand to Esme, “Seer Ember.”

  These two words meant nothing to Esme, but she shook the hand offered her, shook it politely, and said, “Pleased to meet you,” climbed into the safety of her car, and left.

  As she pulled away, she glanced into her mirror, chancing therefore to see the old lady, her medley of clothing bright in the afternoon sun, prodding the hedgerow moodily with her stick and pausing to spit in the road as she ambled along its verge. Esme kept her in view in amazement, until the narrowness of the road claimed her undivided attention. She had met the steward of Wiles Green Chapel. She had met this extraordinary person. She wondered who else might live in Wiles Green.

  Following the lane back along its twists and turns the way she had come, Esme glanced along the unexplored ways that led off it here and there, saving them for another day. She paused at the crossroads for a very shabby and antiquated green-painted open truck to pass, otherwise meeting very little traffic until her passage through the center of Brockhyrst Priory coincided with traders and customers making their way home from the farmers’ market just closing in the village hall.

  When she reached the parsonage, and made the now almost familiar turn into her short driveway, Esme made a determined effort to muster the resolve necessary for tackling her desk work again as soon as she came in through the door. She began by visiting the kitchen to collect a cup of coffee and a biscuit (two biscuits—she ate the first while the kettle was boiling), which she carried along the passage to her study.

  She turned on her computer and created a new file, set up the page margins, and font size and centered a heading: Sermon Notes for Portland Street, 10:30, September 6th. She pressed the return key and centered a subheading: Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time. And she gazed at the empty screen, ate her biscuit, sipped her coffee, gazed at the empty screen, played a game of solitaire, and returned to the file she had begun.

  The Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time. “Ordinary Time.”

  Esme thought about all the things that happen to ordinary people in their lives in ordinary time. A baby being born to a girl of seventeen in a precarious partnership, living on welfare benefit, and housed in a basement flat. A woman of forty-eight opening a doctor’s letter telling her the ominous results of her smear test. A teenager who desperately wants to be a veterinarian waiting for the results of his university application. A five-year-old clutching his mother’s hand as they walk together through the infant school gates at the start of the autumn term, trying to find the courage for separation. A housewife married twenty-six years, looking across the street at young lovers locked in passionate embrace, wistful for the passing of the years and so much that slips away almost unnoticed. A young man who has tried and tried to find employment, wondering about joining the army. Ordinary time is the place where people are born and die. It is full of hopes and regrets and scored over and over with moments of deep emotion.

  And ordinary means also that which is ordained; the paths that cross, the eyes that meet, the decisions made, and bargains struck that shape the future. She thought of how as an eight-year-old child, during the school holidays, she had tagged along with her mother going to fulfill her turn on the church-cleaning roster. While Mother rubbed the fragrant lavender wax polish onto the pews with the stiff, waxy putting-on rag and then buffed them vigorously to a beautiful deep shine with a clean duster, Esme wandered about the church, touching the cool stone and squinting through the grating set in the floor, exploring the choir stalls, and eventually, greatly daring, climbing the steps into the pulpit, like a tree house just right for a child. She stroked the faded velvet cloth on the sloping pulpit desk, peered over the edge at the rows of pews below, and wondered what it would be like to be the minister, standing here preaching the Sunday sermon. She wondered if St. Raphaels had done something to reach that child buried under the passing years. An ordinary child in ordinary time, growing into an ordinary woman with all the ordinary griefs and doubts and insecurities. Memories might open a way back to the lost self hidden by her professional persona with its collateral brittleness and weariness. She reflected that ordinary means just normal and ordained; that even the casualness of every day is on purpose, meant to be. The net of heaven is wide. Not even the whisper of a thought slips through it. This imposes grave responsibility. Sometimes it brings hope as well.

  Esme began to type. She had no formed ideas as yet. She was just copying the words of the Collect for the Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time:

  O God, you bear your people ever on your heart and mind. Watch over us in your protecting love, that, strengthened by your Spirit, we may not miss your way for us—and then the phone rang.

  On the upper side of the telephone receiver, to catch her attention before she lifted it from its cradle, Esme had attached a sticker on which she had printed in bold letters, breathe. smile, and drawn a little flower. Despite this, she felt a small frown of irritation and an involuntary compression of her lips as she grabbed the thing that had scattered her train of thought and said into it, crisply, “Hello. Esme Browne.”

  “Um … Marcus Griffiths here.”

  Esme recognized already the deceptively absentminded tone of her senior steward of the chapel at Brockhyrst Priory.

  “Oh, hello, Marcus.” She tried to sound friendly, and then waited while he paused.

  “Look—am I disturbing you? I mean, you aren’t yet here, are you. Tell me if I’m intruding.”

  Yes, you are, leave me alone, thought Esme as she r
eplied, “Of course not, it’s lovely to hear from you. How can I help?”

  “Oh, well—” he hesitated. “I mean really, feel free to say no—but really. Hilda and I thought that you might be relishing the peace, but on the other hand you might be lonely. And if you’re not relishing the peace, if you’d like to—I mean, please, just say no—would you like to pop over for supper? This evening—if you’d like to? Not if you’d rather not.”

  He sounded so thoroughly apologetic that Esme hadn’t the heart to say no. She accepted his invitation, thanked him, and went back to her sermon notes, added a few observations on the lectionary readings and on what it meant to be ordinary. She made a list of appropriate hymns and then shut down her computer and abandoned her study for a hot bath.

  And so, for the second time that day, as the evening chill mingled with the amber of late sunshine, she found herself driving out to Wiles Green, where Marcus Griffiths, a retired bookseller, lived with his wife, Hilda.

  Their home proved to be a comfortable family house, with pleasing proportions and low ceilings, furnished with unpretentious but lovely antique furniture (fruitwood, rural craftsmanship with an unerring aesthetic eye), armchairs, and a generous sofa occupied by a truculent-looking border terrier who watched her out of one eye. The large open fireplace was filled, in these days still hot at the end of the summer, with an arrangement of dried grasses and seedheads. An assortment of paintings hung on the walls, striking modern oil or acrylic portraits mixing surprisingly successfully with more traditional landscapes and watercolor sketches. The ancient oak floorboards were softened with Eastern rugs whose colors glowed with the richness of silk. Taking all this in, Esme reflected that Marcus must have been a spectacularly good bookseller.