Clear Light of Day (20 page)

After a moment, slightly embarrassed at her own display of emotion, she released her and stepped back, and returned to sit on her stool again. Ember looked across at her, dark eyes kind and laughing and wise.

“Jabez'll be up the orchard, Esme,” she said. “Always goes up the orchard when he's upset. And I've upset him good and proper this morning. Overstepped his boundaries by about fifteen mile.” She spoke with perfect tranquillity, making no comment on Esme's gesture of affection and contemplating with peaceful detachment the distress she had caused Jabez.

“He'll come round,” she added. “Needs a bit of a shove sometimes, does Jabez.”

She got up from her chair and opened the stove door, fed it with more firewood, and began to collect the breakfast crockery for washing up.

“You'll find him in the orchard,” she repeated.

Esme hesitated. “Maybe he'd rather not be disturbed—maybe I should just go home,” she ventured.

Ember paused with the pile of crocks in her hands and regarded her in a way that made Esme feel that she was pitied, better understood than she was quite comfortable with, and an unwilling source of amusement.

“What you get out of this life depends on what you put in, my lady,” was all Ember offered, saying again, “You'll find him in the orchard,” before busying herself with her tasks at the sink—this required turning her back on Esme: The conversation seemed to have terminated.

Esme drew breath to say one more thing, but, “In the orchard,” said Ember firmly, and did not look round.

So Esme wandered up into the orchard, where she did indeed find Jabez in the furthest corner, sitting on a pile of firewood, smoking a cigarette, and looking upset.

“I'm on my way home, Jabez.” Esme approached him, speaking in a cheerful, ordinary tone, choosing to ignore the look on his face. She had to wait a little while for his reply, and wondered if it would be better just to go, but eventually, “What must you think of us?” he said, bitterly.

“Think of you? You and Ember? I think I'm so, so lucky to have you as my friends. You feel like real friends, true friends, both of you. You always make me feel welcome and loved. And I love your honesty—I wish the world had more people in it as honest as you and Ember.”

He shot her a glance of incredulity. “Ember! I dare swear the world could stand another one or two as honest as me, but if I thought there were any more like Ember I'd take to the woods or top myself!”

“Jabez, why are you so upset?” Esme was beginning to laugh; it all seemed a bit out of proportion. “She was only joking! She didn't mean it!”

“Joking? Ember doesn't make jokes. She sees what's inside you, and she got no mercy. And I hate it. It wasn't proper what she said—it wasn't decent. Bike shed! I'm not that kind of man!”

He looked at the end of his cigarette, saw it had gone out, and threw it with some force into the hedge. From under the silver eyebrows another fierce glance shot her way. “And, yes, you are welcome. And you are loved. But I'm not—I wouldn't—” He stopped, finding himself in difficult territory. “I'm not that kind of man,” he said again. He bent his head, and Esme looked at him sitting with his shoulders hunched to his ears, his elbows resting on his knees, and his hands clasped tight together. She noted her own sense of hope that resulted from his being unable to go through with his insistence that he was not and that he wouldn't.
And what on earth am I doing?
she asked her heart.
What am I offering him anyway? Where does Jabez fit into my world? How can I be anything but a day-tripper in his?

She watched him, not sure what to do. They seemed to have reached an impasse, it was time to go; and yet she felt certain that she would leave him unhappy all day if she couldn't bring something better out of this before she left. So, what to put in? For what after all did she want to get out of this life, this encounter?
There is only now
, Ember had said: “If you aren't living now, why then you're dead.” What did she want now, then? Her head and her heart seemed to have met head-on in a Wiles Green lane too narrow for passing places. She just knew she didn't want him to look so upset.

“I know you aren't that kind of man,” she said at last. “Bike sheds, I mean. For didn't you tell me once, making love should be done in a bed; because it's a thing of tenderness, and it should be warm and comfortable?”

Startled, he looked up at her.
So that,
she thought,
is what it takes to make this man look at me for more than two seconds at a time
. She raised her eyebrows, enquiring, smiling at him, deliberately keeping things light. Trying to, at least. He swallowed, blinked, continued to look at her. She had rather hoped he might laugh, but he looked absolutely transfixed.

“What must you think of me?” She echoed his words to him, but gently, offering him his own dignity back. “Jabez, I think I should go.”

Now whatever have I got myself into?
she asked herself, as she turned and left him, sitting motionless on the pile of logs.

Is this normal behavior?
she wondered, exasperated, as she got on her bike and set off through the lanes.
Doesn't he know how to make light of a thing? Whatever next?
She pedaled furiously along the lanes back to Southarbour.
I'm neglecting my work. I should be in my study! Why am I wasting time on visiting people who will never come to chapel and on pottering round the countryside on a bicycle?

Suddenly thrust closer to Jabez than she had quite expected to be, she felt flustered and defensive. She directed the energy of her confusion into cycling fast, quite impressed at the ease with which she could master the hills these days. Without allowing it to break into her conscious mind, she turned vigorously from the sense that there was something unfair about keeping from Jabez the plans for her future. She lumped them together in her mind,
Jabez and Ember
, and reflected that delightful as they both were, they were also undeniably eccentric, odd, and difficult. Tiresome of Jabez to make so much of Ember's mischievous joke; tasteless and provocative of Ember to say it in the first place. She avoided the memory of her own quick pleasure at what he had said—“nice to hold”—and of something more unsaid between them in the orchard: “For didn't you tell me, making love should be done in a bed?” Jabez looking at her, startled, hearing what she didn't say—shouldn't say, couldn't say, because she was leaving. And because—with an effort she suppressed the whole memory—there was nothing to be said.

When she reached the safety of the parsonage, Esme felt surprised and impressed with herself to see that she had made it out to Wiles Green and back, and had half an hour's conversation, and it still wasn't quite ten o'clock. She made a cup of coffee and retreated to her study with two biscuits. She switched on the computer and going online to check her inbox she found an e-mail from her superintendent minister. He had something to discuss with her, he said, and would she ring him, to make an appointment.

E-mail didn't come naturally or easily to Esme's superintendent, though he had recognized the necessity of electronic communications and mastered the basics required. He was of the old school and utterly predictable; in the study every morning, visiting in the afternoons, meetings in the evening. His wife, Sheila, had dedicated her life to being his mainstay and support, her unself-conscious sweetness of manner and warmhearted concern for others providing the backbone of the pastoral care he offered. On the occasions she had been in his parsonage, it amazed and intrigued Esme to see that, after thirty-seven years of ministry, when he heard the telephone ring, which he probably did about twenty times a day, her superintendent would still run from wherever he stood in the house to answer it.

She wondered why he had asked to see her. An inarticulate man with few social skills, he would never contact his colleagues unless he found it unavoidable to do so. A miner's son, brought up in a family of seven children, frugality was nearer than second nature to him; his phone calls were short, his letters came by second-class post, and he would calculate in advance whether he had to mail them at all, carefully consulting his diary to ascertain if he might rather take advantage of crossing paths with the recipient at a forthcoming church business meeting. He had worked out the shortest mileage from his parsonage to every destination his work regularly encompassed. He wasted no money of his own and none of the circuit's, though he was generous with both when called upon by others in need. His preaching was sound, safe, uninspiring, and conscientiously recycled over the thirty-seven years, each sermon annotated with the occasions and venues of all its outings.

Esme respected him; in his dealings with his colleagues, he erred from strict fairness only when he felt it necessary to be kind; he understood his administrative responsibilities clearly and undertook them with meticulous detail, remembered everything, and she trusted him to play his part in the circuit reconstruction with honesty, competence, kindness, discretion, and total lack of imagination.

She picked up the telephone and dialed his number. Nine thirty on a Tuesday morning in late November. He answered the telephone instantly, being seated, as she had visualized, in the padded office swivel chair provided by the circuit, at his desk in the study.

“Brian Robinson,” he said, in his loud, unemotional way.

“Hello, it's Esme. You wanted to see me.”

“Ah, yes, my dear. Some news from the chairman I'd like to discuss with you when you can spare a moment.”

“I can come over today if you like,” she replied.

“Today? Now let me see. I've got a funeral call later this morning, about eleven, and a Wesley guild in the afternoon. Tomorrow is my midweek communion, and then in the afternoon I'm running Sheila to the osteopath for her regular visit, taking in some pastoral calls on the way home. How about Thursday?”

“Can't do,” said Esme. “I've got a school assembly early, a sick communion, then I'm the speaker for the ladies' fellowship at Brockhyrst Priory after lunch, and a wedding rehearsal in the evening. Friday's busy all day too—I mean, I can pop over right now, I can be with you in ten minutes; or even we could talk on the phone?”

“Oh no, I'd rather not discuss this on the telephone. Let me see.…” He paused. She could hear him breathing. He already had a funeral call to take him away from his sermon preparation in the study. This would further eat into his time. It was Tuesday and he liked to type up and print his order of service and notices sheet on Thursday morning; the sermon would have to be finished before then. Esme could feel him weighing it up in his mind.

“Well, all right. My funeral call is no more than half a mile from you. I'll finish off this correspondence later, and come over to you now. See you shortly. Righto.”

Puzzled and curious, a quarter of an hour later Esme opened the door to his ring on the loud electric bell and offered him coffee. He accepted the offer, but asked for a small cup. Since he passed his sixtieth birthday, large cups of coffee taken early had started to be a problem to him later in the morning.

He seated himself on her sofa, she gave him a coffee and sat in the armchair, and looked at him, his almost-bald head covered by a few thin strands combed carefully from above his left ear over the pink shining expanse of his scalp to meet the balancing growth of hair at his right ear. The elbows and cuffs of his battered tweed jacket had been reinforced with leather, probably by Sheila. His hand-knitted dark blue waistcoat concealed the fact that his clerical shirt was really only a stock, easily removed when it was time to do his half hour of gardening while Sheila washed up the dishes after their lunch.

“Well?” said Esme.

“It's about your appointment, my dear.”

It transpired that a minister from a circuit in a wealthy suburb of London had rather precipitately abandoned his congregation in the company of his senior steward, who was the wife of his organist. The organist, heartbroken and embittered, had refused to have anything further to do with the Methodist church and offered his services to the Baptists (they had gratefully accepted, having been managing for years with a second-rate pianist who could neither sight-read nor play the pedals). The church community had been left shocked and distressed, without a minister, a senior steward, or an organist.

In the immediate emergency, the chairman himself had plugged such gaps as he could, and the other staff of the circuit had arranged medium-term pastoral and preaching cover. But the chairman had promised to do what he could to secure a new minister without waiting for the usual slow wheels of stationing to begin to grind. Knowing that when Esme left she would not be replaced, it had occurred to him that though she should give her congregations ample time to make their parting, and the circuit ample time to adjust, nonetheless her move might be brought forward and considered before the usual time in May, if she were interested in investigating the possibility.

“It's a plum job,” her superintendent stated frankly. “If you want to do well, this would set you on your way. They wouldn't tolerate just anybody in that part of Surrey. It's a compliment to your preaching and admin gifts. There's a rough patch in that circuit, but the section they're offering you is very smart indeed. Good parsonage—I've been in it. Compliment to your pastoral gifts too—it will take something to pull the congregation through this in one piece. Chairman thinks highly of you, my dear; he knows you won't let him down. What do you think? Take a look?”