The Clear Light of Day Page 9

“You got a good buy,” he approved and picked up the almost-cold mug of tea waiting for him beside Esme on the bench.

  “Ember’s lived in the village forever,” he said, “but she gate-crashed my life after Maeve died. I was in a state, then. In pieces, to be honest. Ember turned up at the cottage one evening, asking if I would fill her Thermos flask with some tea. She had a very small clapboard cottage, dilapidated; falling down it was, but she didn’t care. She cooked outside on a fire in the back garden when it was fine and on her fire indoors when it rained. I think she did most of what she had to do outside, but she had water laid on there—one tap if my memory serves me right. She came to my cottage because a variety of things had happened all at once. She wasn’t very well, which is unusual for her; she’d had an intruder, an unpleasant young man who threatened her with all manner of things when she saw him off, which she did in no uncertain terms. And the washer had gone on her tap. A Thermos of tea sounded a bit insufficient, and I offered her a bed for the night, because it was dusk and she seemed rather vulnerable—” he grinned, “—I didn’t know her very well, then! She came in and had a meal, and I thought it was me doing her a good turn, but I was so grateful for someone to talk to. Everything still hurt in a very raw way then, and it all came pouring out, and she listened. She had no advice and no platitudes, which was a relief. I sorted her tap washer for her in the morning, and she went back to her cottage for a while. My place was in a bit of a mess; I’d let it slip, lost interest in life and myself, really; and after that night Ember came and cooked for me and did some basic housework—very basic, is Ember’s housework. She wouldn’t have any payment, but she ate with me, and after awhile it seemed sense for her to move in. After all, she’s getting on a bit. So she sold up her cottage—or in real terms I suppose you’d say she sold the land her cottage stood on, because no one could have lived in that ruin but Ember. That was about four years ago. We get on all right, but no—” he smiled, “—she certainly isn’t my partner. There you are, then; that looks good to ride. What hidden faults it has will no doubt show up later.” He drained the mug and put it back on the bench. “Happy cycling. You’ll get good use out of that.”

  As Esme gained in confidence and experience in her ministry, establishing her own style as a pastor, her own role in the community, she found that when it drained her, when she was confused or bewildered or discouraged or tired, an evening curled up on the sofa by the fire in Jabez’s cottage would restore her and bring her back to peace.

  There were times when she needed Jabez and Ember very much. As Gladys Taylor’s illness progressed through that summer, Esme spent as much time as she could with her; visiting her in hospital, sitting by her nursing-home bed. She knew it was routine work for a minister, so it took her by surprise to discover how far her soul slipped out of its customary housing to walk with Gladys on the unearthly paths of spirit as Gladys began the long journey out of this world.

  Afterward, on the day of the funeral, when the service was over and Gladys’s body committed to cremation, Esme shared in the tea and sandwiches that followed at Wiles Green, and then took refuge with Ember in the cottage—Jabez was out fixing someone’s hen coop that had been disastrously compromised by a fox. Ember made tea and said little, didn’t resort to her usual sardonic banter, listened while Esme told her the story of Gladys’s commonplace dying, tears slipping down her face.

  “You done well, my love,” was the only comment she made.

  Esme realized that something had eased in her being; that the ordinary troubles of her congregation no longer chafed on her; her housebound elderly members’ anxious preoccupations and fixations with present illness and past relationships no longer irritated her; she had time for them and affection. She wondered if this was because of Jabez and Ember, who asked nothing, but always had time for her.

  Apart from the sickness and sorrow to which she was often witness, and the ongoing difficulties presented by the responsibility for aging and decaying buildings carried less and less effectively by aging and dwindling congregations, one of the greatest challenges Esme met in an average week was that of trying to keep the peace between some of the stronger personalities of her chapel communities. Sometimes the personal effort of tact and diplomacy required by this almost exhausted her. At Portland Street, she had made a huge mistake. Her property steward had stepped down from office after nine years of smoothly fielding the emergencies and routine dilemmas of managing the premises. To replace him, she had been delighted to secure the willing services of a quiet and reticent man who had been a manager for a large electrical supplier before his retirement seven years ago. With horror, having appointed her new steward, she watched as, in the intoxication of new power, he blossomed into something akin to a military dictator, so that in turn the leaders of the playgroup, the Mothers and Toddlers group, the Brownies, the Boys Brigade, the karate club, and the women’s meeting called on the phone or in person in states of indignation and distress. The long saga of what Esme afterward thought of as The Blutack War took most of her energies for several weeks.

  It was easier when she herself bore the brunt of the oddities of her church members. A sense of humor was usually sufficient, even with Miss Trigg.

  The chapel at Wiles Green had no central aisle but two aisles on either side of the main block of pews and flanked by the smaller side blocks. At the conclusion of worship, Esme, having blessed her congregation, would make her way from the pulpit down one aisle, through the door at the back into the Sunday school room, where she would be met, greeted, and thanked by the steward on duty emerging from the door at the foot of the corresponding aisle on the other side of the chapel.

  This was often a moment of friendly and kindly fellowship—a brief time to comment on the weather and catch up on the steward’s home news before the rest of the congregation finished their personal concluding prayers, greeted each other, and made their way out of the church.

  This brief moment of fellowship metamorphosed into an ordeal on the occasions when Miss Trigg’s turn came on the stewards’ duty roster. Zealous, grim-faced, and overlooking nothing, she would greet Esme with a list of the theological shortcomings of her preaching, as often as not demanding an explanation.

  The first time Esme ventured all the way out to Wiles Green on her bicycle for evening worship (Miss Trigg approved this mode of transport, being both arduous and frugal and thus reminding her of her youth) on a dry Sunday after a wet week in early August, her duty steward for the service was Miss Trigg. In the vestry before worship, Esme was as charming as she knew how to be, enquiring solicitously after the condition of Miss Trigg’s hiatal hernia, the well-being of her nieces, and the progress of her vegetable garden. Miss Trigg, whose arthritis eased in the summer, in easygoing mood, felt disposed to be pleasant.

  After worship, with a kindly smile, she had prepared her compliment.

  “When you came to us,” she said, advancing to shake Esme’s hand as they emerged through their respective doors, “they said you preached good sermons; they said you preached wonderful sermons!” She contemplated Esme from under the brim of her felt hat. “Well, I haven’t heard any yet. But I thought tonight’s was a little better.”

  “Thank you,” said Esme, weakly. Straight after leading an act of worship, a preacher has very little in the way of defenses.

  When she had shaken the hands of her congregation, enquired after their various ongoing life situations, and seen them on their way, she found herself alone again with Miss Trigg, who, with an armful of hymnbooks received from the departing worshippers, stood admiring her bicycle. They chatted for a while about the old days before the war, when Miss Trigg as a young woman had been able to reach terrifying speeds freewheeling down Stoddards Hill, and Miss Trigg enquired genially where Esme had acquired her bike. As they wandered across to the bookshelves and Esme picked up her papers to stow in the basket Jabez had fixed on her handlebars, she explained about the advertisement in the newspaper and added that Mr. Ferrall in t
he village had been kind enough to look the bike over before she bought it.

  “Mr. Ferrall? Oh, so you’ve met him, have you?” Miss Trigg replaced the hymnbooks in the shelves with a certain veiled violence. Esme waited for whatever might follow. She had a feeling Miss Trigg had not finished.

  “Backslider, Mr. Ferrall is,” continued Miss Trigg with the particular air of vicious relish she kept for matters of disapproval. Esme waited, intrigued. Her imagination was trying unsuccessfully to fit Jabez into the context of this chapel congregation.

  “Known him all my life.” Miss Trigg slapped the last hymnbook into line with its fellows. “He was in my Sunday school class when he was a lad.”

  Esme’s eyebrows rose. Jabez in Miss Trigg’s Sunday school? However old must she be?

  “A quiet lad,” remembered Miss Trigg, “and quick at his lessons. Quick to learn and to remember. Always had his verse ready, from the week before. ’Course, he had a good start—his mother was chapel. She used to bring him, not just send him, every week: Faithful, was Alice Ferrall. And a true believer. Washed in the blood of the Lamb. From sixteen. But Silas Ferrall, he was a freethinker!” Miss Trigg flashed a glance of absolute knowledge at Esme—“The sins of the fathers!” she explained.

  “Alice Ferrall died when Jabez was fourteen.” Miss Trigg narrowed her eyes and leaned in a little toward Esme. “And since that day he’s set foot in a church but twice. Once to marry a woman and once to bury her. And that was church, not chapel. Backslider. There’s no redemption for such as ’e. One who’s known the ways of the Lord. Which he did. One who’s put his hand to the plough and looked back. He’s not fit now for the kingdom of God. That’s the Word of the Lord. Have you your key or am I locking up?”

  As she cycled home from this encounter, Esme turned it over in her mind, conscious of a divergence of possible responses open to her. She could choose to confront Miss Trigg head-on, taking issue with her strange theology and flagrant bigotry. She had a suspicion that sooner or later this might be necessary, because Miss Trigg’s disapproval of her resulted in a steady low-key campaign of undermining that would bring them in time face-to-face—unless her pastoral input in sickness or personal tragedy in some presently unforeseen event should win her that allegiance of gratitude that can bridge any depth of doctrinal mismatch.

  Or she could choose to continue with her present course of careful courtesy, agreeing with everything she could find to agree with, persisting with friendly overtures, and working at damage limitation among the members of her flock wounded by Miss Trigg’s ruthless promotion of her views, undertaken with unflagging scrupulosity as a biblical witness. Esme disliked confrontation and knew that the way she handled things, sympathizing behind Miss Trigg’s back with the enemies she made, was less than honest.

  Yet she also knew that, because of the responsibility of authority she held, if she ever took Miss Trigg on in direct and outright battle, it was essential she win the fight, or Miss Trigg’s grip on that long-suffering congregation would be unbreakable and would be a problem for any pastor following Esme as well as Esme herself.

  There was something more besides. If Esme won that fight, Miss Trigg, who was eighty-one, would be broken and would have to retire from battle in humiliation. Her aggressive religion and self-righteous posturing arose partly from narrow experience of life and loyalty to those she had loved and the traditions they had instilled in her, but also covered, Esme felt sure, a deep insecurity and lack of self-esteem. Miss Trigg was a bully, and bullies are brittle and frail. She must just carry on with her present approach for now—keep things sweet. Time would tell, and the balance of relationships in the faith community was always an evolving dynamic.

  When she offered herself to serve as an ordained minister, Esme had not imagined that her energies would be so occupied with the shadowboxing exercise of negotiating the minefield of intricate relationships among the personalities of the chapel communities. She had imagined spiritual battles in intercession alongside dedicated prayer warriors; she had imagined herself empowering the faithful by her collaborative style of ministry; she had imagined a personal discipline of prayer and theological study, refreshed by a rhythm of retreats—not keeping her head down with the low stealth and cunning of a fox in the wily accomplishment of the smallest achievements, along with a permanent low-grade exhaustion that made the tasks of prayer and theological study so unattractive.

  Space to breathe and dream and be is the essential foundation underlying any program of reading and prayer. Esme knew this but watched helplessly as every day and all her energy were relentlessly swallowed by the unending round of expectations and jobs to be done. It seemed impossible to claw back the amount of time necessary for an adequate routine of spiritual refreshment. Time and again, in the vestry, before worship began, beneath the prayer the steward offered aloud to God, Esme slipped in her own silent entreaty, I’m sorry, God, I’m sorry—I haven’t given this enough prayer or thought or time. Feed them because they are your flock. They should be fed because of me—but feed them in spite of me, for your love’s sake.

  In her preaching, she knew she had added very little of fresh insight in the last few years. She still relied on the resources of her ordination training lectures and was grateful that oversight of three different chapels meant most sermons had a minimum of three runs before they had to be discarded.

  Cycling through the fading light of the evening, Esme turned all this over in her mind as she had so many times. On the steep incline sweeping down toward Brockhyrst Priory, preoccupied with the perplexity of how to pick her way through everything with some kind of spiritual integrity, she almost collided with a squirrel that scampered across her path, stopped sharply to avoid hurting it, and felt her brakes suddenly go.

  The squirrel dashed to safety, and Esme swerved sideways into the hedge to avoid picking up any more speed on the way down the hill.

  Feeling silly, and grateful for the deserted road, she freed herself from entanglement with the twigs and thorns, dismounted, and walked down to the foot of the hill, then cycled the rest of the way home to Southarbour with caution, stowing the bike in the shed with the intention of dealing with it later.

  Though August was often a slow month, Esme had a busy week, occupied with hospital visiting, officiating at two funerals on behalf of colleagues on holiday, then a wedding to do on the Saturday. As she prepared her sermon for Sunday morning, Esme reflected that she had been two years in her present appointment, with little so far to feel proud of.

  At Brockhyrst Priory morning worship, she thought about the difference it made to have a cheerful and pleasant steward on duty, as Marcus met her at the door with a smile, unobtrusively available as she organized her papers in the pulpit and spoke to the organist, and ready to accompany her into the vestry when she was ready to go there.

  In the vestry, during the ten minutes remaining before the time for Marcus to say a prayer with her and precede her into the body of the chapel, they chatted amiably, Esme enquiring after Hilda’s health and telling Marcus about her bike and how much she was enjoying it.

  “Yes, I’ve spotted you from time to time, whizzing by out in our neck of the woods. Did you find Jabez Ferrall any help?”

  He nodded as Esme spoke enthusiastically about Jabez’s kindness to her, both in his help with the bicycle and with a variety of minor repairs at home.

  “Indeed, he’s a good man. Very able. Very intelligent. I’m glad you’ve found him useful. I do myself.”

  “Yes, I’ve come across him getting your lawnmower ready for cutting the grass in the spring.”

  “Oh well—” Marcus chuckled, “—he does sterling work. I always say to Hilda, it’s important to take our custom to people in the village if we want a living village community to continue. Otherwise it’ll just peter out into a holidaymakers’ dormitory. I can’t really put much business Jabez Ferrall’s way—but maybe enough custom to help keep him in diesel for that old green truck of his—which he se
ems to have had from time immemorial and keeps on the road by patient determination and consummate skill. I’m glad you went to him. He’s retired now really, of course, but I doubt if he has any sort of pension from what he used to earn. And he may look like a leprechaun, but I imagine he is actually flesh and blood and occasionally has to eat some bread with his free-range eggs and his local honey. What time do you make it, Esme? Ten twenty-eight by my watch. Are you ready to pray?”

  Esme heard not a word of his prayer, though she did her best to concentrate. Jabez had never asked for payment for any of the numerous small jobs he had done for her, and she felt suddenly sick with anxiety at the thought of him managing on a state pension, undertaking work for nothing for a woman with no dependents living in occupational housing on a stipend that probably amounted to more than twice his annual income.

  She followed Marcus into chapel feeling wretched, fluffed her call to worship, and hardly recovered her concentration until two-thirds of the way through the first hymn.

  She consoled herself then with the recollection that the failure of her bicycle brakes would require a repair for which, this time, she would offer payment on a proper footing.

  When the first prayers were done, as she listened to Marcus giving out the notices, welcoming her to the pulpit and announcing the offering, it occurred to Esme to wonder why he and Hilda worshipped at Brockhyrst Priory and not in the chapel at Wiles Green. She thought perhaps they had lived nearer Brockhyrst Priory before his retirement, and she asked him about this at the end of the service, as she stood with him by the door waiting to greet the people; he having shaken her hand and thanked her, commenting thoughtfully on some of the points she had raised in her sermon.

  The second door steward stood a few feet away, replacing unused hymnbooks into the empty shelves.

  “The chapel at Wiles Green—well—um—Wiles Green …” Marcus seemed embarrassed by her question. “I mean, I hope you’ll be understanding, Esme, if I say that the chapel style at Wiles Green is just a bit too holy for me. I’m an ordinary chap, really. Please don’t misunderstand me. My faith is of huge importance to me. But …”