Clear Light of Day (23 page)

She took the hot-water bottle into the bed gratefully, and gradually its warmth enabled her to relax. After a few minutes she sat up, and propped against the pillows she drank the hot mixture he had made her. She began to feel warmer and a little less desperate.

“Is there anything more I can do for you, my love?” Jabez asked her as he took the empty cup from her hands and put it on her dressing table ready to take downstairs.

“Yes,” said Esme. Even as she spoke, a rational part of her mind was telling her,
Don't do this, Esme; don't drag him into this any deeper—be fair,
but she said, “I want you to lie on the bed with me and hold me. Oh, Jabez, I feel so ill.”

For a moment he hesitated, looking down at her. Her eyes ached unbearably, and now she was beginning to feel hot. She lifted back the covers and immediately a wave of shivery cold returned. She closed her eyes. “I feel so ill,” she said again. “Please, Jabez.”

Diffidently, because she asked it, he lay down on the bed beside her, and took her into his arms. “Just for a little while,” he said. “I think you need to go to sleep, my love.” Esme snuggled against him, hungry for the comfort of his kindness and warmth. As he held her, breathing quietly, saying nothing, the softness of his beard against her forehead; as the tension smoothed out of her, she began to feel his heartbeat, and an unfamiliar sense of trust and peace welled up and suffused her whole being. She felt like a child again. She felt as though she'd come home.

“Esme,” she heard him say gently as drowsiness enveloped her, “will it be all right if I let someone like Mr. Griffiths know you aren't well? I guess this is a busy week, and it might be as well to sort out someone to step in for you.”

“Oh … yes, please … whatever … thank you, Jabez.…” And she fell asleep in his arms.

For the next twenty-four hours Esme drifted in and out of feverish sleep. For two days after that she felt too weak to get out of bed. Each day Jabez called in twice to make sure she was all right, and he brought her simple, nourishing things to eat and left her with a hot drink in a Thermos flask by her bed. A message came from Marcus to say he had contacted the people in her diary, as passed on to him by Jabez, and she need have no concerns, just get well. He added that five other people from Brockhyrst Priory had flu, including the organist; but not to worry, he would deputize on the organ for the Christmas services if necessary.

On Christmas Eve, when Esme was on her feet and feeling like herself again, shaky but normal, she discovered with delight that in three days of illness she had lost five pounds, which made it all worthwhile. Jabez called in to see her in the morning and expressed doubt about her being sufficiently recovered for the Christmas services, but she reassured him she would be fine and thanked him, promising to call in to the cottage before she went away to visit her family.

She felt well enough to take the children's crib service at Portland Street, and their midnight communion, and despite feeling strangely insubstantial by Christmas morning, she managed the early service at Brockhyrst Priory, where Marcus played for her.

“Well done!” she said to him afterward. “I had no idea you could play!”

“Oh, well …” He shrugged his shoulders in deprecation. “I can fill in, my dear, but I'm not a patch on good old Clifford. When he plays, the spirit soars, but with me it's more a case of Toccata and Fudge in D minor, and that's if you're lucky on a good day. Glad to help out—but are you sure you're better? Should you be here?”

Esme smiled at him. “I feel a bit floaty, but I'm fine really. Thanks for all your help.”

Marcus looked at her thoughtfully. “Just as well Jabez Ferrall was about; he explained he'd been calling in with the church greenery and found you unwell. Kind of him to help out with decorating the church for Christmas. Jabez is a good man.”

“Ah!
There
you are, my dear!” Hilda's arm was suddenly around Esme's shoulders in a loving squeeze. “I was looking for you at the door and someone said, ‘
There
she is, look, Hilda, over by the organ!'—and here you are indeed. A teeny little Christmas gift, dear—just a small packet of fossilized ginger, very warming, good for the circulation. Merry Christmas!”

“Crystallized,” murmured Marcus, as he turned to assemble his sheets of music and lock up the organ console. “Merry Christmas,” he added, looking at Esme over the top of his glasses. “And make sure you get some rest.”

Esme went straight from Brockhyrst Priory to the morning service at Wiles Green, where one by one as they left the chapel, her congregation expressed their love and concern—“Are you all right?” “Take it easy, now!” “Have a nice rest with your family after tomorrow.”

She thought of the Christmas cards mingled with “Get well” cards crammed on every ledge and surface at the parsonage, the greetings and affection of her church members.

As she walked away from the chapel toward her car, Esme felt warmed and encouraged by their friendship and support, and privileged that she should be its focus.

“Esme.”

When she reached her car, Esme looked around to see who had spoken her name. In the shadow of the yew tree, well out of the sight of worshippers leaving the chapel, stood Jabez.

“Would you like to come to us for lunch, or have you got other plans?” he asked.

Esme smiled, grateful.

“Happy Christmas,” she said. “I'd love to be with you.”

Eight

I
n the days between Christmas and New Year's, Esme spent time with her parents and with her brother and his family who lived near them.

Over dinner one evening she told them about the changes agreed for the Southarbour circuit, and the suggested possibility of a move to Surrey. They listened with interest and saw it overall as a positive move—“Provided no one's doing you down or trying to push you out of where you are at present,” her brother said.

“Is the rectory in the Surrey parish nice?” asked her mother, and Esme explained that everything had still to be discussed, letters written, meetings arranged. Looking at the Surrey parsonage belonged to a later stage of negotiation.

She wondered whether to talk to them about Jabez but decided there was nothing really to tell. He had never referred again to the moment of intimacy they had shared when she was ill, and on Christmas Day she saw in his manner no hint of an invitation offered to move their relationship onto a deeper level. He was his usual self; quiet, friendly, and kind. Nothing more. Yet she felt so much had passed between them that to refrain from mentioning him to her family seemed wrong.

“I have made some very dear friends in Southarbour,” she said to her family, as her mother brought in the glass and silver-plate French press steaming from the kitchen at the end of their meal. Unsure how much to say, or how to describe Jabez and Ember, Esme hesitated. It seemed odd that, though they had become so important to her, in all the discussions with her colleagues and now with her family, there never seemed an appropriate point to mention them, to bring them into the equation. She supposed it was that there was no more to be said than that she loved them; and love had little place in decision-making about house moves and career opportunities.

“It's my one misgiving about going,” she went on; “I don't want to leave them.”

“That's the way of the world, young Esme,” her father said sagely, as her mother handed him the jug of cream to pour into his coffee. “Life was ever thus. You're a professional woman with a living to earn; you must put your career first. Friends are all very well, but I'm afraid what you must do is just move on and forget them. It's sad, but that's how it has to be. The job has to come first. Just forget them. Welcome to the real world.”

Her mother nodded thoughtfully in agreement, and her brother added, “Besides, Es, if you play your cards right and stay good friends with them, you'll have seaside holidays for life, which can't be bad.”

It sounded so sensible.
Perhaps that's what's wrong with me,
thought Esme;
maybe I just haven't got my feet on the ground. After all, I have got my living to earn. No one's offering me an alternative. And there's nothing to be gained by feeling miserable about what's inevitable.

She did not pursue the matter, and her family had no questions to ask about Jabez and Ember, seeing nothing of influence or significance in the relationship.

By the beginning of February, the negotiations for Esme's move had begun in earnest. The chairman had spoken to the circuit stewards in Surrey, and representatives from that circuit had discreetly attended one of her services to hear her preach. She had broken the news to the stewards of each of her three chapels and found it oddly gratifying to see them so stunned and upset at losing her (with the single exception of Miss Trigg, who made little comment, but whose face shone with holy triumph).

By March, the Southarbour circuit church councils had begun their arguments about how the circuit chapels should be redistributed between the remaining staff; and Esme had received a letter inviting her to Surrey to meet the stewards and some of the officeholders of the churches she would serve.

Only at this stage did Esme finally make herself talk to Jabez about the changes that were by now far more than a proposal.

She sat on an upturned wooden crate by the fire in his workshop on a cold day in early March, absentmindedly stroking the ears of the purring cat rolling in the warm ashes.

“There are to be changes in the circuit, Jabez.”

Jabez said nothing. She looked up at him, standing at his workbench in the light from the window, methodically cleaning the parts of a bicycle headset in a biodegradable solvent. Sometimes when Barton's Bikes at Southarbour had more bicycles than they could handle, they subcontracted work out to him. This was one of their customer's bikes.

“It means a move for me earlier than normal. I'm being asked to look at two churches in Surrey.”

He paused for a moment, suddenly still, and then glanced across at her. “Oh, yes?” he said. “Excuse me a moment, I must wash my hands before I grease these ball bearings, I think I'm dirtier than they are.”

While he was gone, Esme reflected that he seemed to have minimal reaction to her news. She thought of the distress among her Brockhyrst Priory stewards when she broke it to them, and the disappointment of her Wiles Green stewards. By comparison, Jabez appeared little disturbed.
What does he feel for me?
she wondered.
Anything?

When he returned, he opened the grease pot and began to position the ball bearings in the cup, carefully coating them with the right amount of grease.

“Is it what you want?” he said at last, without looking at her.

Esme explained how the decision had come about, emphasizing that she had in reality not much choice.

“Here, they need me to move, so I need a church; there they need a minister. I ought at least to go and look.”

With precise attention, Jabez put back the forks and all the parts he had dismantled and looked around for his headset spanners. “I had them a minute ago,” he remarked, exasperated; adding, “and you don't mind leaving?”

“All ministers have to leave,” said Esme. “Well, not ministers in local appointment, they just stay local, but they get paid only if they're lucky. Those of us in the full-time work have to move on. That's why it's called itinerant ministry. That's the setup.”

“Yes,” said Jabez, tightening the top cup gently with his fingers, until he had it tight enough for there to be no play in the headset, “I do know.”

He seemed distant, unconcerned.
I was worrying about nothing,
Esme said to herself;
I could have told him ages ago.

“So they've invited me to go and see—not till April, because one of the circuit stewards is away on a cruise and their superintendent is recovering from open-heart surgery.”

Jabez nodded, holding the cup in place with one of the headset spanners (found hidden beneath his cleaning rag) while he locked it in place with the other.

“What if you don't like it?”

“I'm not sure really. Back to the drawing board I suppose. Anyway, it's worth a try.”

Again he nodded, and he asked no more questions.

Esme had expected something more from the conversation. She wished he might at least have said something to reassure her of their continuing friendship after her move. In some deep place she refused to look at, it hurt that he said nothing to try to persuade her to stay. His remoteness felt like a rebuff, a denial of the warmth and closeness between them. It confirmed the decision for her; her father was right, she had nothing to stay for—in the real world people move on. She remembered as a child hearing him remark heavily on more than one occasion, “You can't eat hope. Love doesn't pay the bills.” She thought he was probably right, but somehow it made her feel so sad.

The time that followed felt strange, a limbo. The weeks of Lent pursued their usual pattern, culminating in the intensity of Holy Week and Easter, late this year again.

When, on the second week of Eastertide, the date for her interview in Surrey finally came around, Esme felt intrigued and excited, her misgivings now mingled with curiosity.

Lent had been busy, and though she had continued to call in to the cottage, she had found Jabez quiet and withdrawn, expressing little interest in the information she had gleaned so far about the Surrey congregation. Disappointed, rather hurt by his disinclination to discuss all that the changes meant, Esme wondered if she had imagined or at least misjudged the quality of their relationship. She wondered if it was simply that the daily round of his own world occupied his thoughts, and he was too insular to look past that into the concerns of her life. Chilled by his response, she felt discouraged from mentioning her plans to Ember—and nothing in Ember's conversation led Esme to believe that Jabez had talked to her either.

Alone in her study after evening worship on the Sunday before she was due to make her visit to Surrey, Esme felt suddenly swamped by loneliness. The people she had met in her congregations were to be left behind, forgotten, no looking back. Ministers who hung on to old friends were a nuisance to pastors who succeeded them. Her family lived by principles that sounded sensible and practical but left her feeling cold and empty. Her colleagues simply felt relieved and grateful that it was Esme going and not one of them. Jabez appeared to have closed his heart to her. She quite desperately hungered for someone to want her, to say nice things to her, to offer her a place to belong. Surrey began to look like a beacon of hope.

On the day of the interview, she dressed with care, took the new map books she had bought from the supermarket service station, and set out with a sense of adventure.

She returned from that day more than anything else flattered to have been considered: The experience had brought the sense of a career taking off. Glancing into the windows of the estate agents as she had stopped to investigate the high street, she had been astonished by the house prices for that area. Surrey seemed to be one vast green suburb populated with sleek cars drawn up in ones and twos on the brick-laid driveways of massive houses. Esme had never seen so much evidence of money in her life. The leather suites on which she was invited to sit, the up-to-the-minute fitted kitchens she glimpsed through doorways, the quality of the music centers she saw in the living rooms whose size was accentuated by the flawless yardage of immaculately steam-cleaned carpets; the groomed gardens with their azalea beds and judiciously selected conifers and huge pots spilling with begonias, and the large, confident voice of the steward who led her interview—a retired barrister—had impressed upon her the significance of this appointment. It meant she was on the way up. If she took this chance she might no longer be poor Esme out in the sticks while she recovered from her husband leaving her. Her colleagues and her family would stop feeling sorry for her at last. When she stepped through the arched porch and over the threshold of that solid 1930s parsonage set back in its huge leafy garden, she would have made it.

The stewards asked Esme what her response would be if they invited her to come. She found herself caught in a final indecision, as though she were waiting for a reason to change her mind.

“This seems like a wonderful appointment,” she said honestly. “I like the chapels and all the people I've met. There are no problems at all. Just because I'm a cautious person, can I say I should need to think it over carefully before I say ‘yes'?”

This prudent response was favorably received, and Esme drove home feeling exultant that such an opportunity had been held out to her, and that they so clearly liked her. She turned impatiently from the tug of sadness for Jabez and Ember, for the cottage with its apple trees and quietness, its wood smoke and lavender and hens.
After all
, she told herself,
with a garden that size I could plant my own apple tree: I could grow lavender and keep hens myself. What would be the difference?
There was an answer to that, and she refused to acknowledge it.

In the days that followed, a letter came with gratifying speed from the senior circuit steward of the Surrey chapel, offering her the appointment if she felt inclined to take it up.

Excited, with the letter still in her hand, Esme left the envelope lying on her study desk, and hastily locking the back door she got in her car, threw the letter onto the passenger seat, and drove out to Wiles Green. She had to share her news with somebody whether Jabez was interested or not.

As she made her way through the lanes darkened by the unfurling leaf canopy and narrowed by the wild herbs and grasses sprouting in the verges, enjoying the spreading green of spring, Esme admitted to herself how much she had grown to love this hidden, beautiful place, and how much she would miss it. She smiled at the recollection of a chance remark overheard the previous Sunday.

Greeting her congregation as they made their way out of the chapel, she had heard the door steward say amiably to Hilda Griffiths, “Hasn't it been lovely and warm! Such a change from all the damp, chilly days we've had. It's brought the flowers on so, the garden looks beautiful.”

“My dear!” Hilda had nodded with enthusiasm. “Marcus and I have been out in the woods and fields with the Ramblers, and it's delightful, quite delightful. And I don't care what they say, I know people frown on it and complain about it, but I think rape is
lovely
. I'd hardly know the spring had come without it.”

Esme laughed aloud as she remembered the momentary shocked bewilderment on her door steward's face; but as she looked along the lane and saw through the cool green tunnel of trees the blazing glory of yellow rape in dazzling blossom, she had to concede that Hilda was right.
Poor old Marcus
—she grinned—
he'll be getting an undeserved reputation!