Clear Light of Day (24 page)

She brought her car to rest on the roadside by the Old Police House, and snatched the letter up from the passenger seat, too impatient to negotiate in the car the potholed track leading to the yard.

Her intention focused on Jabez's whereabouts, Esme walked with the swiftness of purpose up the rutted lane and around the cottage, but the loveliness of the orchard in spring blossom flooded her consciousness with its glory, and she smiled at it as if to a person, in spontaneous happiness at its beauty, which shone into her soul so vividly although her footsteps hardly paused.

She found Jabez sitting on the ground outside in the yard, in the sunshine, evidently taking a break from giving Marcus's lawnmower its spring service, the dismantled parts spread about him. He sat with his back against the cottage wall, smoking a roll-up, a mug of tea steaming on the flags beside him. She paused for a moment, the ineffable aura of peace that hung about him affecting her almost physically. And from that came a rush of love from the middle of her, a gratitude to have known this man and this place; to have learned so much, and have been loved so much, to have been allowed into his refuge-place and known his wisdom, and his gentleness.

That he had heard her step and was aware of her she knew with no doubt. She never really understood why he kept this stillness, allowed her to approach without acknowledgement, not speaking or looking at her until their togetherness in the space was a self-established fact. Yet this was so much a part of him, and she found it had the effect of holding a momentary mirror to her soul, showing her the quality of self that she brought to today's encounter, before the dubious currency of conversation opened its own negotiations.

“Jabez, I've had a letter from the church in Surrey!” Esme felt too excited at the importance of her news to let the time of coming into the presence of another soul unfold. She expected him to turn his head then, and look up at her with the familiar warmth of welcome: It surprised her when, instead, his habitual quietness fell into an almost total stillness, as though every rhythm of his being had temporarily stopped dead.

“Jabez?” she said, unsure.

And then he did turn his head to look at her. He smiled, her excitement requiring a response, but he asked her nothing.

“Sit down a minute while I get you a cup of tea,” he said, getting to his feet. “Then you can tell me all about it.”

The kitchen door stood open, and he took only a moment to return with her tea, but in that time she felt the inside of her fidgeting with eagerness to tell him.

She took her mug—“Thanks”—and perched on the edge of the wooden chair that stood in the yard among the bits of Marcus's lawnmower. Jabez slid his back down the wall to resume his earlier position. Part of the peace in Jabez's company was that having brick dust all down his jacket was no more a consideration than the oil-black that usually smudged his hands and had extended its grubby influence to every garment he wore. The exacting social requirements of etiquette and cleanliness were waived.

“They've invited me!” she said, pride and delight spilling into her voice. It felt like such an achievement, in spite of which Esme had a sense that it would be utterly impossible to communicate the consequence of any of this to Jabez.

So, “It's a big opportunity,” was all she said, rather lamely, watching him inspect the end of his cigarette, which had gone out, and then take a drink of his tea.

Advancement and career openings meant less than nothing to Jabez, that Esme understood, but she could not repress a sense of disappointment that he said not a word, only patted his pockets to locate his matches, relit the flimsy cigarette, drew on it, and contemplated the drift of smoke he breathed out into the spring sunshine. At last, his voice level, steady, he asked her, “Then how long have we got?”

Esme could never analyze, though on occasion she had given it a lot of thought, how Jabez could both create an aura of stillness even when he was working, or walking down the street, and equally impart a sense of movement when, as now, he sat entirely still yet in some way she could not define, seemed to be vanishing, withdrawing into himself, before her eyes.

“Stationing normally takes about eighteen months,” she said. “But because of the particular situation both here and in Surrey, they're going to curtail my appointment here. It might be as early as this autumn. More likely in the beginning of the winter. We just want to give ourselves time to do everything properly.” She waited for him to speak again, eventually saying into the silence, “Aren't you pleased for me?”

He took a drink of his tea.

“I shall miss you,” he said finally. “If it's what you want, of course, I'm pleased for you.” He glanced up at her, squinting into the sunlight. “I'm sorry, I'm not meaning to be a wet blanket. I can't quite imagine life without you now.”

Esme smiled. “You can always come and visit me at the parsonage in Surrey! It's huge. You could stay overnight.”

Jabez stubbed his cigarette out thoughtfully on the stone flags of the yard. “Can I?” he said. “Thank you.”

He picked up his mug, drank most of the tea, and tossed the dregs down the nearby drain. “Better get on,” he remarked. “Well done, Esme; that's great news.”

Esme watched him work until she finished her cup of tea. Deflated by the flatness and anticlimax of his reaction, she decided against trying to show him the letter. He was evidently determined not to discuss it. It was hard to think of anyone who would be pleased to read it among her church members either. So after a little while of further desultory conversation, she took the letter home and telephoned her mother, who was comfortingly congratulatory.

As she sat down at her desk with a cup of coffee that afternoon, and switched on her computer to draft her order of service for Sunday in time for the organist phoning through for the hymns, Esme felt exulted in her success.
I've made it!
she said to herself. Then, as she waited for the computer to be ready, unexpectedly her mood changed to reveal an inexplicable underlying weariness, as though the whole Surrey thing amounted to no more than a balloon brought home by a child from a party. She had a sudden sense of her professional life as a flimsy house built to impress; instead of a solid foundation, an empty reservoir of loneliness.

Don't be silly, you're just tired,
she told herself firmly. She turned from the thought, reminding herself that staying was no longer an option, and she opened a new file and set up the page as she wanted it.

In the yard of his cottage at Wiles Green, carefully, meticulously, Jabez completed the servicing of the lawnmower. He loaded it in the back of his truck, returned it to Marcus's garage, and received his payment politely. He wanted to ask Marcus how much he knew about Esme's move but thought better of it in case she preferred anything kept private.

Through the afternoon he occupied himself, working doggedly, systematically, sorting and tidying things in his workshop, listing spare parts to be ordered. He took some old oil to be recycled and called for some bread at the bakers on the way home. His face was still and remote as he worked, like reflections on dark water. In some locked recess of his being, he felt the terrifying music of grief begin again, and he held his being as still as he could to quiet its broken, discordant cacophony. His hands shook. He had been this way before. He felt it approaching.

Ember, coming through to feed the hens toward evening, found him standing in the middle of the living room, his face in his hands, the convulsing muscles of his belly bending him almost double, his silver waterfall of hair shaking with the storm of sobbing that racked his body, the muffled groan of his voice in despair, “Oh, Jesus; oh, Jesus.”

Ember went swiftly to him, and with firm hands guided him to the battered old sofa, sat him down, and seated herself beside him, very close, one hand on his back and one on his knee, feeling his body hard and tense with his anguish.

“What?” she asked him. “Who has done this to you?”

Long ago, Jabez, having wondered if when a heart breaks it snaps like a dry twig or more raggedly like a green branch, or rends reluctantly like the tearing of strong linen, discovered that in fact the human heart never breaks at all. Its tragedy is that it belongs to our flesh, and however lacerated and swollen and bruised, it goes on loving, it cannot let go, being offered neither the respite nor the welcome end of breaking.

“She's leaving me. Oh, it's so painful! So painful! So painful! She's going.” He sobbed out the words incoherently. “Oh, God, it just hurts so much, so much, so much!”

He collapsed into a paroxysm of weeping, and Ember waited, quite still, while the tempest shook and racked and wrenched the frame of him.

Eventually the choking sobs that tore him abated, until he sat trembling, his breath shuddering and catching, his hands covering his face.

Then Ember lifted the corner of her apron and, removing his hands one after the other from his face, wiped away the tears without speaking. He did not look at her, but shook his head, hopelessly, deep tremors of grief running through his whole body.

“Oh dear,” he said at last. “Oh, dear, dear me; what am I going to do? Whatever am I going to do? Oh, dear …” In utter misery he wrung his hands together, and then his face twisted as he collapsed again into helpless weeping.

“I can't!” he cried out through the tears. “I can't go through it again! I can't lose her! Oh, God, help me. Oh, God, what can I do?”

Ember held him, rocked him gently, talked soothing nonsense to him, stroked his hands. She sat by him until, empty and wrecked, he was still. Then, “Lie down, Jabez,” she said, “while I make up the fire.”

She put a cushion to pillow his head and made him lie down on the couch, stood in pity watching his body involuntarily contracting into a tight ball as the torture of grief started again, and his features distorted once more into a mask of agony. He turned his face away into the privacy of the cushion.

Ember frowned, in a small, densely concentrated space of thought. Then her habitual expression of clarity and determination returned. She left him, went to her room, and pulled the blanket from her bed, brought it downstairs and tucked it around him. She knelt at the hearth to light the fire, then got to her feet and stood by the sofa again to look at him, curled up in desolation, his eyes open but gazing without hope at nothing. Ember bent and stroked the silver hair, tenderly molding her hand to the contours of his head and neck.

“You just rest now, my lamb,” she said. “Get you some sleep. It'll be all right. You'll not lose her. 'Tis entirely of God that lies between you and she. 'Tis not a passing fancy, 'tis eternal. Take comfort now and rest. It will be well, Jabez, I promise you.”

She regarded him a moment longer, then treading quietly she left the room, found her coat and scarf, fed the hens and locked them in against the visits of the fox, shut up the garden shed and the workshop, fetched her hat and stick, and set off to walk to Southarbour.

It had turned midnight when Esme, finishing off the updating of her pastoral lists on her computer, was startled by a determined knocking at her door. She switched on the porch light and drew back the bolt.

“Good gracious, Ember, whatever is it?” she asked, astonished as she opened the door and beheld the small and furious bundle of rage wrapped in winter woollies on her doorstep. “Come in!”

“Thank you, I will,” snapped Ember, continuing as she stepped into the hall. “What do they teach you in these Christian chapels? Anything? Nothing? Have you no shame? Have you no pity? Have you no wisdom? No understanding? No insight? Do they not teach you that
love brings responsibility?”

She stood, bristling, glaring at Esme, her obsidian eyes bright with anger.

Esme experienced the familiar quailing in her abdomen, the urge to run, lie, get help. She wondered if there was any place in the world safe from old ladies.

“What are you talking about, Ember?” she asked when the gunfire of questions had stopped. “Come into the kitchen. Let me make you some coffee. How did you get here? It's awfully late. Come on.”

She let Ember follow her into the kitchen, filled the electric kettle, and switched it on to boil.

“I walked.”

Esme turned and looked at her in amazement. “Walked? Why, Ember, you're eighty-six! It's seven miles to Wiles Green from here! It must have taken you forever!”