Clear Light of Day (4 page)

Esme fished in her bag for her diary, which experience had taught her to take with her everywhere, and in the memoranda pages at the back she wrote down what Marcus had said: “Jabez Ferrall” (
Peculiar, old-fashioned name,
she thought), “Wiles Green, behind the Old Police House, fifty yards beyond the pub.” “
BIKES
” she wrote above this memo, underlined.

Over coffee they chatted about Esme's parsonage. “Have you got all you need?” asked Marcus. “Is everything as it should be?”

“It's all in very good order.” Esme hesitated. What she wanted to say sounded a little unappreciative. “Will you understand if I say that for me a difficult thing to come to terms with in ministry is that I realize a parsonage can never quite be a home? Please don't misunderstand me—the circuit stewards have worked so hard to make it lovely, the kitchen has just been completely redone, and I have not a single grumble. It's just—well—looking round at your sitting room I can see you are people who love your home, and part of what makes it home I think is that it's either the place you grew up, or the place you chose because you fell in love with it. And part of what makes it lovable is its idiosyncrasies—like a person, really. But of course the whole point about acquiring and maintaining a parsonage is to find a neutral kind of place—a sensible purchase—with as few idiosyncrasies as possible, and iron out what ones there are before ever anybody moves in. Little things, oddities, I don't know.…” She was beginning to feel a bit silly and wondered if she would have been better never to begin this. Marcus and Hilda were both listening to her thoughtfully, and she could feel herself getting embarrassed and hot.

“Please don't think I'm complaining. The parsonage is really nice. There's nothing wrong with it as a parsonage, but—well, for example, here you have your fireplace, and it must be lovely in the winter to sit down by an open fire in the evening. But in Southarbour of course it's a smoke-free zone, and naturally the parsonage will be there because it's the biggest place in the section, the most convenient, and anyway parsonages never have open fires. But I do love a fire. D'you see what I mean? I can see why they don't have one—not everyone likes a fire, chimneys have to be swept, fires are hazardous, then as well they make dust and ash and so on. I can see why parsonages only have central heating.…”

Marcus just watched her (and Esme wished he wouldn't), but Hilda nodded sympathetically. “I know just what you mean, dear!” she said, warmly. “It's a blessing! Central heating is a blessing. Having the circuit stewards to sort things out leaves you free to do your wonderful work. I envy you your spanking new kitchen—ours leaves a lot to be desired—the parsonage is very convenient, everything done, all mod cons—but everything has a backside.”

In silence, Esme and Marcus pondered this judgment. Marcus put his coffee cup back on the tray. “Downside,” he murmured, absently. Then he looked very hard at Esme.

“I know exactly what you mean,” he said. “You are talking about home being somewhere that somehow recognizes one; a place where one truly belongs. Somewhere one can in the fullest and deepest sense call one's own. Well, please make this a second home. Investigate the junk shops. Find yourself a toasting fork and keep it here. You will always be welcome.”

He nodded slightly to give this emphasis, and Esme felt a sudden deep gratitude for the kindness of this couple.

“Thank you,” she said. “And thank you so much for a lovely evening. I won't make myself a nuisance, but certainly I'd love to come again.”

Before she knew it, the remainder of August slipped away. Esme met some other members of her congregations. One or two dropped in with flowers or cards—one with an apple pie—to welcome her, and she was introduced to more people than she could remember when she stayed for coffee after worship at Portland Street and Brockhyrst Priory chapels on her remaining free Sundays. Then September came, the beginning of the Methodist year, with its flurry of committee meetings, special services, the round of preaching and visiting and leadership responsibilities, and so many things to plan and do.

Esme's diary filled up until it was back to its usual level of dense notes on every page, scarcely thinning out until two months ahead. Her day off she guarded jealously; the rest of the time was like a juggling act in a circus of bureaucracy.

She had asked God for a friend, but right now she felt grateful she didn't have any within easy reach of her—friends are a time-consuming luxury in a minister's life.

Any thoughts of exercise, of cycling, or walking in the country were shelved for the time being. She might well get to that, but for now it would have to wait.

She knew that in due course patterns would establish, and familiarity would give space in the work; beginnings are always hectic. She worried sometimes that all her energies could be absorbed by the bigger congregation at Portland Street, leaving Brockhyrst Priory a poor second and Wiles Green to fend for themselves (which is what they were used to).

As she went to bed at night, in the brief time before she fell asleep exhausted, Esme whispered to herself, “Don't panic, Es,” and felt guilty that she was too tired to pray.

Two

T
he next eighteen months went by so
swiftly for Esme. The ancient seasons of the liturgical year, with its balance of fasts and feasts resting lightly on older pagan foundations, wove in with the slightly different rhythms and observances of the Methodist calendar. In her new pastoral appointment, she went softly with the inevitable changes her personality brought.

She had been asked at her first interview with the circuit stewards: “What will you do for the young people? What will you do to involve the Sunday school in worship? What will you do to improve the profile of the church in the community? What will you do about the falling numbers at Wiles Green?”

Her answer to all those questions had been, “Nothing. I will watch, and wait, and listen. Nothing for a year, at the very least. Then, when I have seen enough to understand, where change seems helpful, it can begin. But at first, nothing. Until they trust me. Let them get familiar with the sound of my voice.”

One of the strangest and most surprising things to Esme in her first probationer appointment had been the unsettling accuracy of the simile describing a congregation and their pastor as sheep and shepherd. The relationship centers in the voice of the shepherd. “My sheep know my voice,” Jesus had said once, long ago, and Esme had grown up thinking that to be a reference to spiritual call, but she had found it in practice to be simpler and more basic than that. When a faith community comes to know and trust a leader, that leader's voice can bring them to peace. As the pastor's voice opens the worship of the community, the trust implicit in the relationship gathers the people of God into one, so that their prayer and praise arises in one peaceful drift of incense smoke finding its way to heaven.

In her first year and a half with her new congregations, already there had been the usual trickle of domestic tragedies and small emergencies. A troubled mother had poured out to Esme her concerns about a child truanting from school and making friends on the fringes of the drug world. There had been two bereavements in Portland Street families—one SIDS—and one of her Brockhyrst Priory pastoral visitors had died after a very swift illness. At Wiles Green a much-loved member of the congregation in her nineties had been diagnosed with cancer—Gladys Taylor, a sweet and gentle white-haired lady who hosted the Bible study in her small room in the almshouses by St. Raphaels Church. Gladys, unfailingly kind and understanding, restored Esme's faith in old ladies; it was with a pang of real sadness that she heard of the diagnosis. As Esme spent time with these and others passing through trouble and anxiety, word went around that when they needed her she came. She chaired her business meetings with competence, insisting that they close no later than half-past nine—well, twenty minutes to ten if “Any Other Business” turned out heated. Her stewards in all three chapels worked well with her, and all her pastoral visitors did their work with diligence. The usual cold wars and simmering feuds seemed temporarily dormant: After eighteen months Esme relaxed enough to consider her own life beyond the occasional visit to her mother or day off window-shopping and enjoying a cappuccino in Brockhyrst Priory.

Her minister's diary was printed to span well beyond a year, and though she had begun her new one in September at the beginning of the Methodist year, the old one still lay on her desk, handy when required for transferring details of this year's engagements made far in advance. She intended to trawl through noting down all engagements still forthcoming and all the valuable margin notes of addresses and telephone numbers and personal details; but so far she had not found the time, and last year's diary had not yet outlived its usefulness.

In February, as Lent began, Esme looked in her old diary—the one that had been new when first she sat at her desk on those August days at the beginning of this appointment—to check the memoranda pages for details of services and study courses held jointly with churches of other denominations at this season of the year.

As she flicked through the pages, she came across her long-forgotten entry:

Bikes
Jabez Ferrall, Wiles Green, behind the Old Police House, 50 yards beyond the pub
.

She paused and reread it and looked at it for a while. The watery sun of early spring streamed through the window onto her desk. The tree that overhung her driveway was developing sticky red buds that one day soon would unfurl in crumpled new green leaves. When she drove out to Wiles Green for Sunday worship or to lead the Wesley Guild, the dog mercury was advancing cautious early shoots on the verges of the lanes. The air smelt fresh and inviting.
A bike
, she thought.
Why not?

Not today, but one day soon. And time went on, but the idea stayed with her, so that on the Tuesday of Holy Week, before the days erupted into the liturgical marathon of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, culminating in Easter Sunday's multiple Eucharists, Esme made a space to investigate the possibility of buying a bike.

It must be somewhere near here, then.

Nosing through the narrow street, Esme tried to be mindful of the traffic and look out for the Old Police House at the same time. With almost nothing to boast in the way of commercial premises at Wiles Green, the pub stood out proudly, and “A bit beyond the pub, fifty yards, no more—set back a little from the road,” Marcus had said.

Esme pulled up at the roadside, just straddling what pavement there was, and found that the square and solid pink painted house, behind the neatly trimmed privet hedge alongside her car, bore an engraved plate:
OLD POLICE HOUSE
. So the unmade track half-grown with weeds and rutted with potholes that disappeared around the back of the house must be the path she was looking for.

She climbed out of the car and looked up the little lane. Walking up it she passed on her left the Old Police House and on her right the brick wall that formed the side of a house that fronted the road. A few tender shoots of early weeds and the hopeful beginnings of buddleia sprouted from the base of the wall. Ahead of her, self-seeded hawthorns and elder overhung the path. She could smell wood smoke. Beyond the limits of the back-garden walls that flanked the way, the path finished at a low picket fence lichened and leaning with age, pushed out of place somewhat by an unruly planting of lavender, rosemary, and sage; and a confused burden of honeysuckle vines that sprouted the beginnings of their leaves among the dry, climbing, thorny stems of wild rose. Behind this fence, two gnarled apple trees bowed over the tangle of grass and herbs. A few brown hens wandering there muttered to each other and remarked on the finds, their fierce eyes detected in the undergrowth. In the fence a gate stood ajar, opening onto a damp brick path, home to a multitude of small, early weeds, leading directly to the front door of a cottage. The cottage windows were small and low, the walls red brick, and the door painted green. On the lintel of this door, a hand-painted sign said
JABEZ FERRAL—BICYCLE REPAIRS
. And a grey-weathered table to the left of the door held a collection of jars with a card propped against them that read
LOCAL HONEY
,
alongside a tray of eggs, a cardboard basket of last year's apples, and a jam jar for callers to leave their money.

Esme pushed the gate fully open, half-surprised to find it swung silently, hung precisely on perfectly oiled hinges. She took a few steps along the brick path and stopped, entranced. Whoever lived here? Something in the sight of it tugged at the heart of her. It looked peaceful and simple. Quiet and left to be. And a green fragrance of herbs and earth hung about it all. Entirely still on the path she stood, and took it all in, and loved it.

“Can I help you?”

The quiet voice with its country burr startled her, coming from behind, and she turned quickly, flustered momentarily by a sense that she had intruded—an unfamiliar sensation to her these days, accustomed by years of pastoral visiting to a warm and grateful reception by people in any state.

I am so glad I came here,
Esme thought, as she looked at the owner of the voice.
I am so glad I didn't miss this in my life.

“Mr. Ferrall?” she said.

Jabez Ferrall looked at her shyly; a little sideways, from under his eyebrows, which were wiry and silver grey. He would have made five feet, seven inches, in his work boots if he had not stood, with the habit of years, slightly hunched. Clothed in faded and shabby green corduroy trousers below a battered brown waxed cotton jacket that was far too big for him, his hair in a waterfall of silver and white almost to his waist, and his beard straggling to a stop somewhere in the middle of his chest, Esme could almost have believed one of the characters from her childhood fairy stories had come to life before her. She gazed at him in delight.

He stood his ground, but something in his habitual stance gave the odd impression that he was backing away from her.

Very bright and clear was his glance when his eyes briefly met hers. A half-formed impression of something very transparent and truthful, and yet wary—no, guarded—no, only shy, Esme thought.

“Yes,” he said, and again, “can I help you?”

“My name's Esme Browne. I'm the Methodist minister for the chapel here—” Esme registered in herself a sense of surprise as Jabez Ferrall inclined his head slightly—the smallest movement, but clearly indicating that this was not news “—and I'd like to buy a bicycle. I was recommended to come here.”

A flicker of amusement came into his eyes.

“From me?” he said. “Who told you to come to me to buy a bike?”

Esme felt mildly irritated. He didn't seem to be taking her seriously.

“Well, it's what you do, isn't it?” she rejoined crisply, “—bicycle repairs?”

“Yes, but—” he looked at the ground a moment, and when he raised his face to glance at her again, the flicker of amusement had become a lopsided grin, “—come and have a look.”

The path was narrow for two people to pass, and Jabez Ferrall hesitated; once again the bright look he darted at her gave her the odd feeling of coming from behind something, from a place of hiding. As though he saw her more accurately than she might have wished but kept himself hidden.

“Shall I come by you?” he asked, and stepped on to the grass to pass in a careful circle around her. “This way.” He looked over his shoulder at her, and she followed him along the path, which progressed from brick to gravel and mud between a vigorous growth of assorted weeds, around the back of the cottage to a yard paved with stone flags. They crossed the yard, passing the back door of the cottage, where a cast-iron frame supporting an old-fashioned grindstone stood against the wall, to the entrance of a long, low shed built out from the side of the cottage and in the same red brick. As they went across the yard, Esme looked at the small and antiquated green open truck that stood parked rather haphazardly against the hedge that bordered the yard.
Does he paint everything green?
she wondered. Perhaps he'd had a job lot to use up. A memory stirred somewhere. Hadn't she seen that truck before? Following Jabez into the shed, which was his workshop, Esme stopped for a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the gloom. A window, not very big, was set into the same wall as the door, but Esme thought he could have done with at least one large roof light.

Inside the workshop, the walls were lined entirely with a combination of shelves storing an assortment of containers—rusty biscuit tins, mostly, and margarine tubs relabeled with paper and adhesive tape—and things hanging from nails hammered into the brickwork—bicycle parts, machine parts, garden implements, and tools. In the center of the workspace stood a zinc bath of water, the surface of the water made a rainbow with a film of oil. Esme looked at it all; at the cluttered workbench under the window which (she thought) would have admitted more light with fewer cobwebs; the bike stands supporting various frames, a sturdy table spread with newspaper on which stood cleaning cloths, a can of three-in-one oil, and some dismantled machinery that meant nothing to her. There was so much to take in, she did not at first register, against the furthest right-hand wall of the shed, a spreading bed of ashes, in the midst of which lay a small heap of smoldering logs, their lazy smoke drifting up into a brick canopy leading into the flue above. No grate. Not even a fireplace in any very structured sense. A large cat lay dozing on the edge of the mound of ashes.