Clear Light of Day (11 page)

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 seems 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 …”

Esme looked at him. “It's Miss Trigg, isn't it?”

Marcus shifted uncomfortably and looked down at his feet. “Miss Trigg is a force at Wiles Green, certainly,” he said, and then, valiantly, “What would Wiles Green Chapel be without her though, eh?”

“A lot nicer,” interjected his fellow steward, without turning from stowing the hymnbooks. Marcus looked discomfited.

“I absolutely didn't hear that,” he said, his face clouding. “Esme, they're a long time coming out this morning. You stay here to shake people's hands, and I'll go and fetch you a cup of coffee.”

As she greeted her flock straggling out of the church and through into the afternoon of that day, Esme continued to brood on the problem of Miss Trigg. She wished something would alter or give in the situation without direct intervention. The church had to have a place for everyone, an unconditional acceptance of even the most awkward personality. The difficulties came when one individual was so hard to relate to that the community as a whole became discouraged, newcomers felt alienated, and the faithful unobtrusively drifted away. Given that Miss Trigg had already lived eighty-one years, a natural solution lay in the not too distant future, but Esme hoped a less negative possibility could be found. Besides which, Miss Trigg looked as tough as baked leather, with plenty of life in her yet.

She was still on Esme's mind after the close of worship in the evening. Esme had been preaching in her superintendent's chapel at West Parade, in the next town along the coast from Southarbour. She drove across country toward Wiles Green, tired at the end of the day. Sunday preaching always drained her of energy, and the habit she had acquired over the summer of spending an hour with Jabez and Ember had transformed the feeling of Sunday evening from a fretful, spent, overweariness to a satisfied sense of completion.

She turned off the road and up the unmade track that curved behind Jabez's cottage into his yard with a sense of homecoming. She felt that she belonged here as she knocked on the kitchen door and let herself in.

In the cottage, although the evening was warm, as dusk approached Jabez had lit a fire in the sitting room, and Ember sat in her usual chair with her knitting while Jabez had a book on his lap in his armchair by the fire. He had left the Rayburn to go out, and their kettle stood on a trivet, fastened to the grate, that could be swung round over the flames.

Esme curled up in the corner of the sofa and told them about her day. She asked Jabez about being in Miss Trigg's Sunday school class, and he smiled, and reminisced about the other children and their experience of chapel fifty years ago. He spoke about going to evening worship with his mother, about how much it had meant to her, and how pleased she had been by his own devout leanings in those days.

“Yes. I gave my life to Jesus. I suppose he's still got it. I don't seem to have one myself. And I invited him into my heart. And—” he looked at Esme with a sudden defiance, “—he's still there, whatever Miss Trigg may have told you. Somewhere. Bit dusty perhaps. The poor carpenter of Nazareth.”

He bent down and picked up the poker, prodded the logs together on the fire, and poked the trivet, on which the kettle had begun to whine, aside from the flames. Then he relaxed his hand and let the end of the poker rest on the hearth.

“Dear Lord, what must it be like?” he said quietly. “All these years. A prisoner in the heart of such as me. 'Tisn't true then, what they say about hell. He's there, too. We were quite a stretch there together.”

With a sudden smile of mischief, Esme remembered and recounted to them Miss Trigg's glowering remarks on the state of Jabez's soul, his ignominious condition as a backslider, unfit for the kingdom of God. She laughed at the memory, but Jabez said nothing.

Ember startled them both by spitting with sudden force into the fire, which hissed back at her. She looked into the flames for a few seconds, and then turned her fierce gaze upon them.

“I like to know,” she said belligerently, “what kind of kingdom this kingdom of heaven be; all peopled with Miss Triggs and slamming its doors on Jabez Ferrall. Sounds a hell of a place to me. I choose my word with care. No wonder their God's always so miserable. I'd be the same myself if I had the governing of it. Such a kingdom as knows nothing of the meaning of gentleness. Trouble with chapel is all their eternity offers them is a choice of one hell or the other. No wonder they all look as though they got indigestion. 'Tis all that doctrine; it repeats on 'em. Heaven defend us from their salvation if it has no part in the life of such as 'e.”

She shut her mouth like a trap on the close of this vehement speech, her small eyes snapping and sparkling with her fury. Then, holding Esme's gaze, less angry but no less compelling, she added, “Jabez is a good man, and you know it well. And if you let that eyesore tell you different and you never contradicted her, then I hope you're ashamed of yourself.”

Esme could not think of any adequate reply to this. Without bringing it into consciousness, she vaguely registered the sense of dragging weariness that underlay everything in the years since she had been ordained. It came in no small part from the inescapable exposure to the relentless expectation and excoriating blame of strong-minded old women. Somehow she had become trapped in a life that forever held her in a direct glare demanding, “Well?”

She could feel herself blushing.