Clear Light of Day (2 page)

August was precious. The new church year began on the first day of September. Sorting through old papers and getting her new home into some semblance of order must be done this week or never. There was no time now for reflection. There never was.

But as (turning as she always turned from the restlessness in her soul that never quite had found peace—not in prayer, not in study, not in fellowship nor solitude) she got up impatiently from her desk and went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee, Esme surprised herself by saying aloud into the empty room, “Is there no one in the world who would really listen, really hear me, really see me for who and what I am?”

Having assembled milk, her mug, the jar of coffee, and a packet of biscuits, she stood waiting for the kettle to boil. Leaning against the kitchen counter, she gazed through the window at the dark bulk of the garden shed across the yard. Because of its darkness, her image stood clearly reflected in the window; a depressing reminder that in the last six years lived in the driver's seat of a car, in the office chair behind her desk, in the chairs at hospital bedsides, and in the armchairs of housebound members' sitting rooms, she had put on thirty-five pounds. Despite which she refused to be deprived of a biscuit with her coffee.

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 warmth 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.