Jabez moved about his kitchen slowly and stiffly in the half light of the dawn. It was just after half-past five, and he felt weary still. He hadn’t slept well. He had added some dry kindling to the dying remains of yesterday’s fire in the Rayburn’s firebox, seen it crackle and blaze up nicely, pushed some chunkier bits on top, filled the kettle, and set it on the hottest place of the stove’s hot plate. He turned his back on it and leaned against the dishtowel rail on the front of the stove, glad of the warmth as he listened to the water begin to stir. He leaned forward and reached for his tobacco tin on the kitchen table, and he rolled a cigarette as he waited for the kettle to heat up. The radio muttered quietly in its corner. He fumbled in his pocket for matches, and lit the cigarette. He looked at the end of it glowing ruby in the cold, uncertain light of the morning; and he thought it beautiful, that small red glow.
After awhile, as he heard the first sounds of the water heating increase to something more determined, he pushed away from his resting place. By the yard door he struggled his feet into his Wellington boots, and went out of the kitchen across the yard for the faded plastic bucket he mixed the hen food in. The tabby cat appeared at his side, winding itself sinuously around his ankles, and he bent for a moment to scratch its ears affectionately. The weather had changed, the sunshine had gone, and today’s northeasterly wind carried a cold, thin rain. In the small wooden shed where, in with various gardening implements and a bale of straw for his nest boxes, Jabez kept the hen food, he scooped some meal into the bucket from the tin mug inside the paper sack and refolded the top with the absentminded methodical precision of habit. He carried the bucket back to the kitchen, the cat running at his heels, and added half the heated water from the kettle to the meal, set the kettle back on the hot plate, and took the bucket to the sink, stirring in the water and some scraps left from last night’s supper with a spoon that lay on the draining board. Then he carried the steaming mixture out into the yard, shivering in the slanting drizzle borne on the unrelenting wind, up through the orchard to the chicken house, where his brown hens, shut in securely against the visits of the fox, were still fast asleep, but willing to wake up for their breakfast. He propped the hen house door back and scraped their meal into the aged and dented aluminum bowl that lay on the grass there, watched them tumble out of their house in haste to find their food, checked the laying boxes—not expecting and not finding any eggs so early in the day—and turned back down to the yard, where he could hear the kettle beginning to whistle in the kitchen.
He left the bucket in the shed, kicked off his boots at the kitchen door, grateful to step out of the wind, and went in to make his tea, strong and dark, the way he liked it. He sniffed at the milk he found in the fridge and paused reflectively. Sniffed again, and after a moment’s hesitation, resigned himself to pouring some into the stained and chipped mug he had rescued from its fellows on the draining board. He poured some into the cat’s saucer on the floor near the sink. Opening the door of the Rayburn, he added a split log to the fire, closed it up again, and adjusted down the draught.
Then tea in one hand, cigarette in the other, Jabez moved in that quiet way of his from the kitchen into his living room, making for the refuge of his fireside chair. Nothing in the grate but last night’s ashes, still faintly astir. He put down his tea on the hearth. Sitting on the edge of the chair, leaning forward, his left hand rested on his knee and held the glowing cigarette while he took up the poker in his right hand, riddled the ashes through. He straightened up with a sigh, then sat for a moment with the poker dangling inert in his hand, his face as grey and hopeless as the ashes on the hearth, just still and letting his mind wander, until a cough shook him and he grimaced, recalled to the present moment, laid the poker down, and went patient on his hands and knees to lay kindling, roll the pages of the free local newspaper into firelighters, set a match to begin what was, for him, always a clinging to hope, warmth, life, and home; a fire to sit by, gaze into, brood upon.
There came a moment between kneeling to contemplate the yellow-orange flames beginning to devour the twists of paper, and rising awkwardly back into his chair, when something sharp and painful slid obliquely along Jabez Ferrall’s soul; a simple blade of acknowledgment—so abysmally lonely. But he turned from it before it became self-pity, to the last half-inch of his cigarette and to the comfort of tea still hot.
In his sixth year as a widower and the sixty-ninth year of his life, Jabez kept that economy of movement, inner stillness, of those who prefer to disturb the deep barren ache of living only as much as must be.
It was, he reflected, as he drew on the last of the cigarette and flicked the butt of it into the flames, a luxury really to light two fires, especially now that spring had arrived. Still, the stove had to be kept in to keep the house dry and warm and in readiness for cooking meals and heating dishwater. And this fire to sit by was a small and temporary delight; just for a moment, the space it took to sit awhile and drink a cup of tea before the day began. Primitive, really, he thought; not much advance on the Stone Age or whenever in human history they had lit fires to keep away the wild beasts and the evil spirits. For here he sat, keeping his own demons at bay with the comfort of a fire’s light; setting something bright and living between himself and the shades mocking his inadequacy and his entrenched, habitual gnawing of grief. Well, loneliness. Nothing to assuage it. No help for it. But firelight is something of consolation, essentially alive.
As he drank his tea, folding his hands around the mug and sitting forward in his chair toward the fire’s warmth, Jabez reflected on his conversation with Esme yesterday. The memory embarrassed him. How had he come to give so much of himself away? He regretted his bitterness and his frank contempt of what after all was her way of life, the context for most of what she did. “I shouldn’t have said those things,” he murmured, ashamed. He felt the stirring inside him of the bad stuff—the self-reproach and uncertainty, the sense of inadequacy and weakness. What are you supposed to do with it, all that stuff? Where is it supposed to go?
After Maeve had died, he had just kept himself to himself, managed it all as best he could, the tearing, eviscerating misery of grief. Now he had grown a flimsy carapace over the first rawness but hadn’t gotten further than that really. It sufficed for the day-to-day, but when, as yesterday, he came to talk about any of it, the despair came back as fresh as ever, uncontainable. And what are you supposed to do with it?
Jabez sat a moment longer, his face drawn into haggard lines of weary bewilderment. Then, irritated at himself, he shrugged, inspected the quantity of tea left in the mug, knocked back the dregs of it, and got to his feet to begin the day. There was work to be done.
The day did not improve but continued in fitful showers and keen, persistent wind.
Through the morning Esme finished off her Easter sermon and worked through a pile of correspondence. She had one more Holy Week house communion to do, at Gladys Taylor’s almshouse out at Wiles Green. Facing her sickness with dignity, Gladys never complained, and greeted Esme on her visits with warmth and kindness; but Esme saw the pinch of fear underlying the set of Gladys’s features and heard the resolve of courage that had entered her voice. She called when she could with cartons of high-calorie, complete-nutrient drinks and magazines, and today for Holy Week, the bread and wine of communion.
She stopped briefly at Brockhyrst Priory on her way there and bought a bag of six currant buns and a loaf of bread, mindful of the closed shops in the coming public holiday. She took in a bun for Gladys—who would not eat it, she suspected, but might like to be thought of, and maybe would manage a taste. She was shocked by the deterioration of Gladys’s health; a new frailty, and blue shadows circling her eyes—“Let me call the doctor,” she said, but Gladys, surprisingly stubborn, refused to disturb her doctor until normal office hours resumed on Tuesday.
When she came away from the house, Esme sat in her car for several minutes feeling upset and adjusting to the evident reality that Gladys would be with them very little longer.
As she drove back through the village, she went more slowly, and stopped eventually, outside the Old Police House. I can’t go back again, she thought; that’s three days running. I mustn’t—I can’t … and she slowly took the keys out of the ignition, took the bag of currant buns from the seat beside her, and got out of the car.
As she followed the muddy path around the cottage, early weeds heavy with rain wetting the legs of her jeans, Esme became aware she was treading very cautiously—silently, actually. In one hand she carried the bag from the baker’s: a peace offering.
She came into the yard. The shed door stood open. Esme stole closer and stood uncertainly in the doorway. Inside, Jabez was crouched over his zinc bath in the middle of the shed, running an inner tube slowly through his hands under the water, checking for a puncture. He did not look around. Apparently he hadn’t heard her. His hair was tied back, but she couldn’t see his face; still his movements were as always calm, methodical. He didn’t look cross. She stood in the doorway, watching him.
After a few moments, “You’re standing in the light,” he said, and she answered, softly, contritely, “I’m sorry.”
He looked back at her briefly, an unreadable look, and stood up, holding the dripping inner tube over the water.
“For standing in the light? That’s quite all right.”
“No, Jabez. For trespassing on sore places. For hurting you.”
He hooked the tube over the handlebar of a bike propped against his workbench and rubbed his hands dry on his trousers. He lifted his hand to his face and with the back of it wiped away the drip that had gathered on the end of his nose.
Esme took in the wrinkled, shrunk look to his skin, presently various shades of mauve and blue except for his nose, which was rather red.
“Jabez,” she said, “you look absolutely freezing.”
“I am,” he replied, and, looking absently around for some mislaid item, he added, “and ready for a cup of tea.” And suddenly he looked up, looked directly at her, looked her in the eye—which in that moment she realized he rarely did—the bright flash of a glance that reminded her of every wild creature in a hedge whose eyes had ever met hers: “Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?”
On an afternoon of pastoral visits, a minister can be awash with tea. No village chapel meeting, not even the church council, can proceed without a cup of tea. Esme had lost count of the cups of tea she had been offered in Wiles Green, Brockhyrst Priory, and Southarbour since she came to live there. But here she had the feeling of being offered something most precious and rare. Jabez, she thought, would not give his hospitality lightly.
“I would love to,” she said, “and I brought you some buns. To say sorry.”
He was rummaging among the jumble of things pushed against the wall at the back of his workbench—sandpaper and bits of chalk, oily rags, spanners, and old margarine tubs, holding assortments of different-sized nuts and valves.
“To make peace with me?” he said.
She did not answer, but watching him she began to wonder if truly he had lost something or just found the rummaging a refuge from too direct a meeting. And he stopped suddenly, placing his hands on the edge of the workbench, rough, red, cold, chapped hands, resting there in absolute simplicity, stood with his head bent, adding quietly, “Because there’s no need to. Ever.”
And again that quick glance that shot like dark fire from his soul to hers. You and I, she thought, have known each other for a thousand years. You’re right. Nothing could break the peace between us. And then she thought, My goodness! Where did that come from? But she said only, “Thank you.”
And he withdrew his hands and left his ruse of searching, came out to her and into the yard, switching off the light, and pulling the shed door closed behind him.
Around the middle of her solar plexus, Esme felt a childish effervescence of excitement. For she so wanted to see inside this cottage.
As she followed him across the yard, clutching her bag of buns, Esme had the curious sensation of being once more about four years old: eager, inquisitive, excited, happy, and alive.
He pushed the kitchen door, which stood ajar, fully open, and stood back for her to go in first. She stepped inside, taking in at a glance its smallness and friendly clutter—a paper feed sack printed with the words Layers Mash lay down as a doormat; the saucer for the cat with its rim of congealed yellow milk; the shabby wooden table, two stools and a chair roughly drawn up to it; the wall above it fitted with shelves to house miscellaneous crockery and grubby jars of oats and rice and pulses, and dried fruit and herbs and brown sugar. She looked at the Rayburn that stood against the inner wall, giving off a steady comfort of warmth and a faint smell of wood smoke and ashes, and dishtowels set on the rail to dry at the front of it. She saw the clothes rack drawn up to the ceiling, a few garments still hanging there, and the various boots left higgledy-piggledy by the door; the deep white ceramic sink with its sturdy old-fashioned taps and wooden draining board, where various pieces of crockery stood propped to drain, and a cracked and grimy bar of workmanlike soap waited in a saucer near the taps. Everything was functional, comfortable, and plain; and, for no reason she could identify, it made Esme feel very peaceful, very welcome, and very much at home.
“I’ll just wash my hands,” Jabez said, “and then I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
He kicked off his boots and went to the sink. Esme sat down on one of the stools at the table, and she watched him; the stoop of his shoulders and the long tail of silver hair that hung down his back; the quiet focus of his absorption in washing his hands—soap, nailbrush, thorough rinsing; and yet she could feel him aware of her, even though his back was turned.
He was done and came across to the stove to rub his hands dry on a dishtowel. He did not look at her, and she sensed him suddenly shy. He took the kettle of water from the back of the stove, lifted the hinged cover back from the hot plate, and set the water to boil.
“It’ll be awhile,” he started to say, “but—” The door that led from the kitchen into the rest of the house opened, and Esme turned her head to find herself looking into the eyes of the old lady who had accosted her outside St. Raphaels Church on the first day she had visited Wiles Green.
“Good afternoon,” said the old lady, who looked as disreputable and as extraordinary as she had at their first meeting. “Where have you parked your car?”
Her face as she asked this regarded Esme impassively, but in the almost black, sharp eyes Esme saw a mocking twinkle that stopped her in time from taking the question too seriously.
“Down on the road,” she replied. “Well, half across the pavement actually. I do what I can to make life difficult.”
The old lady nodded. “I thought as much,” she answered. “Are you making tea, Jabez? I’ll have a cup if so.”
He looked at her, his head cocked to one side, not smiling, but a certain wry amusement in his face.
“Not ‘please Jabez’; not ‘thank you’; not any such thing. Esme, this is Seer Ember. She lives here. But I get the impression you’ve met.”
Esme smiled, and Jabez looked at her, sharply, then at the old lady. “Ember, you weren’t rude to her, were you?”
Esme was puzzled. “Forgive me,” she said, “but what is your name?”
The old lady’s face wrinkled in a grin—“Foreign, you think?” She laughed. “Seer. ’Tis a word, you know, you a holy woman. One who sees, a seer is. Inside sight. And I expect you come across an ember before today. The embers is all that’s left when a fire dies, but the real heat of the fire is there, under the ashes. Embers look like nothing, finished—but woe betide you if you don’t treat ’em with respect. ‘Seer Ember.’ See?”
“Yes,” said Esme. “Yes, I certainly do see. I’m sorry to be so obtuse—do you mind if I just get this straight? Which bit of it’s your surname and which is your Christian name?”
Ember’s eyes had depths like jewels, and her bright regard held Esme in mocking consideration.
“I had a father once and I was born under his name. I was given to a man in marriage, and I came under his name. He left, and good riddance: He found another and I hope she brought him the luck he well deserved. I was baptized in a church and given a Christian name; but my ways parted from the ways the pious tread in long ago. I bow my head to Jesus Christ, for he walked, and he stopped, and he was nailed; he understood the speed of love. Love burns slow. Enduring. But I want my own name. I’m nobody’s property. I am what I am, and my name’s my own self. Seer Ember. I sit in the ashes now, but I still got a spark, and I know reality when I see it. Will that do you?”
Jabez, listening to this conversation with his arms folded, leaning against the rail along the front of the stove as he waited for the kettle to boil, offered the comment, “I tried to tell her that Tsunami was a pretty name that would have suited her just as well, but she wouldn’t have it.”
Ember took no notice of this remark at all, her eyes challenging Esme with an insolent sparkle that Esme found endearing but imagined might be hard to live with.
“So—” Esme persevered, “I’m sorry not to be quicker on the uptake—‘Seer’ is a form of address, like ‘Mrs.’? And I call you ‘Ember’?”
“You got it. Jabez, you been to the shop? I don’t know what there is to eat in the house to go with a cup of tea if we got a visitor.”
“Oh!” Esme held out the bag of buns. “I bought these from the baker at Brockhyrst Priory. It seemed like an afternoon for holing up with a hot cup of tea. They might be nice with some butter if you have any.”
Ember peered into the bag with interest. “Smells good. Yes, I don’t doubt we got butter. I’ve laid a fire in the house for the evening. Shall we light it now and toast them?”
Jabez, moving about the kitchen washing up mugs and finding milk and emptying the cold dregs from the teapot into the compost bucket, nodded in assent. “Yes, I’m ready to sit down. Take Esme through and light the fire, Ember; I’ll be there with the tea in just a tick.”
Ember turned on her heel and retreated the way she had entered, Esme following her into the living room, which looked friendly and shabby, the furnishings reasonably clean, but old and worn. On one side of the fireplace a long sofa with squashy, untidy cushions stood under the low, square window where potted plants grew on the deep sill. An armchair stood to the other side of the fireplace, and another smaller chair atop a confusion of knitting, newspapers, and spilling piles of books also faced the fire. The tabby cat Esme had seen before in the workshop lay curled in this chair.
“Sit you down while I light the fire—try the sofa,” said Ember.
Esme sank into the feather cushions and watched Ember as she kindled the crunched paper and split sticks to begin, her small, plump figure dressed in its approximation to robes bent over as she waited the moment to add larger pieces of wood. She wore her hat still, even indoors. You look extraordinary, Esme thought, and Ember turned her head to look at her.
“’Tisn’t usual for Jabez to ask somebody in. He doesn’t trust easy. Must have taken to you.”
Having got the fire going to her satisfaction, Ember turned to the smaller armchair, unceremoniously routed the cat, and sat there herself. Jabez came into the room carrying a tray with mugs of tea and the currant buns cut in two and piled beside a dish of butter.
He set the tray down on the floor, gave Esme her tea, for which she thanked him, and Ember hers, which she received without comment.
Sitting down opposite Esme in the armchair next to the fire, Jabez took up the toasting fork that lay on the hearth, and spiking a half currant bun on it, held it to the flames for a while, turning it when the first side was done.
“Help yourself to butter,” he said, giving her the first one completed and beginning to toast the next.
Esme found herself feeling wonderfully content. The homeliness and simplicity of this place permeated her being. The world of committees and computers, of safeguarding practice and health and safety regulations, of tactful ingratiation and carefully worded preaching seemed to have receded to a very distant place, and she felt more relieved than she would ever have guessed.
“This is lovely,” she said. “It feels like being on holiday.”
Jabez smiled, handing Ember a toasted bun. Fitting the third one onto the toasting fork, he glanced at Esme, drew breath as if to speak, and then changed his mind.
“Well?” said Ember, not looking up from spreading butter on her currant bun.
“I think—” Jabez kept his eyes on what he was doing, “—I think I owe you an apology, Esme.”
“You do?” She was startled.
“I must have sounded bitter and contemptuous yesterday—”
“That’s nothing unusual for you,” Ember interjected, which he ignored.
“—and I’m sorry if what I said was hurtful. I didn’t mean it so. There have been some bad times. Thank you for giving me another chance.”
“That’s smoking,” said Ember nodding toward the teacake he held to the fire, adding with some curiosity, “what did you say to her, then?”
Jabez laid aside the fork and reached across to butter his toasted bun. He sat back in his chair, a mug of tea in one hand and a currant bun in the other, looking into the flames of the fire.
“I was rude about the church,” he said quietly, “and just generally prickly and unfriendly.”
“The religious establishment is fair game, generally speaking,” said Esme, with a grin. “I mean, even Jesus called religious leaders ‘whitewashed tombs and a viper’s brood.’ Why would anything change in two thousand years?”
“Well, you may have something there.” Jabez shot her an amused glance. “But then again perhaps it’s not for me to say so.”
“Okay,” said Esme, “so you’ve told me what you don’t believe and what you don’t like about the church, and I have to admit I sympathize. Tell me about what you do believe as well.”
His brief, expressive grimace communicated the daunting nature of this prospect, and he took a bite out of his bun, chewing it thoughtfully.
“I tell you one thing Jabez believes,” remarked Ember, before he was ready to speak. “He read a book on macrobiotics while he was nursing Maeve, which gave him all kind of ideas about the yin and the yang of his table, and put into his head the idea that every mouthful should be chewed thirty times before ’tis swallowed—and you may take it from me, there’s no sillier sight than a macrobiotic convert doing his best to chew porridge. So between trying to chew that bun and trying to chew his cup of tea and trying to describe the Cosmos According to Jabez Ferrall, you’d better take over toasting them buns or it’ll be a mighty long time before you get your other half.”
Jabez’s eyes closed briefly in silent dismissal of this speech, but with a smile Esme took up the toasting fork. She could see Ember had a point.
“I believe,” he said eventually, “in the mysteries of Christianity, don’t mistake me. Where I stand in life I can well see the cross, and I comprehend its power to transform. I see the resurrection, too, how it lies at the heart of things. If a thing is true, then its truth runs through all of the universe; you take soundings anywhere and you’ll find the same truth. Every winter and spring, every sunset and sunrise is the melody of resurrection, and the Christ sits at the heart of it like the pip at the heart of the cherry. There’s a deep reverence in me for who Christ is; I know him. I know. But when I told you I got no time for the church, I’m speaking about the house of cards that’s built on the top of the mysteries. I’m not interested in all of that. It interferes with the nature of things like Victorian corsets interfere with a woman’s body. What I live by is the interweaving and interdependence of all life. The vitality of Spirit is in all creation like sap or blood or breath—even in the stones and the dust and the light, everything. So I believe in treading gently; in healing it where it’s hurt and holding it where it’s in danger; not using up too much, not taking what isn’t given. I think I’m not separate from anything that shares life with me; if I hurt you or disrespect you, I diminish myself, whoever you are—a mouse, a sapling, a river; or another human being. We are all one thing, the being of God expressed in creation, most lovable, most profoundly to be adored. To me ‘integrity’ means the out-living of that oneness in accountability; looking after things, being trustworthy, keeping faith.”
“He hardly knows what hot food is,” observed Ember, which prompted Jabez to take a mouthful of tea and another bite of his bun. “Have you done with the butter?” she added as Esme passed her a newly toasted half of teacake, and “Toss a stick or two on that fire, Jabez.”
Jabez obediently added some split wood to the fire, and Esme leaned down and pushed the butter dish along the rug in Ember’s direction.
Esme felt a sudden, unfamiliar quickening of joy in listening to Jabez. The biggest and most unexpected disappointment for her, in pursuing the path of ordained ministry, had been the reluctance to engage in conversation of spiritual things among the people with whom she lived and worked. She found the aspirations and yearnings and adventures of the human spirit caused universal embarrassment, except among those whose lives would very soon be at an end. To find here, in this simple cottage, an apparently uneducated man discoursing with ease on all the matters she had longed to explore further, the things that were closest to her heart, delighted her.
She leaned forward eagerly. “I suppose what you mean,” she said, “is the relationship between holiness and wholeness. In the Lord’s Prayer, ‘hallowed be thy name,’ the word hallow means holy but comes from the same root as in the Old English greeting wes hal! which means ‘be thou whole!’ and is the basis for our modern hallow. Healing, completeness, come from Spirit.”
Jabez nodded, wiping a trace of butter from his fingers onto his trousers as he completed the chewing of his teacake. He swallowed, his eyes kindling with pleasure at her ready interest, and said, “The Native Americans’ tepees are circular dwellings arranged into circular villages because they believe the movement of power is circular, like the roundness of the sun and moon and sacred earth, the cycle of the seasons and the curving arc of life that comes back on itself from the helplessness of infancy to the helplessness of great age. Life has a circular dynamic. What goes around comes around. There is no escape from what we put into life; one day it will return to us again.”
“Do you think, then,” asked Esme, “that there is a separate God—a God over and above us, like the Father of the Christian faith, essentially other, standing apart from creation and watching over it? Or do you believe that there is divine Spirit diffused through everything like perfume or smoke?”
Ember had spread butter on the second half of his currant bun toasted for him by Esme, and put it in his hand. Having just taken a bite of it, Jabez shook his head.
“No,” he said, when he had finished it, “neither. I believe we are held in God. It is all sacred because it is held in the mind of God and maintains its being because it is held in the heart of God. We are in God as the wave is in the ocean; and God is in us as the ocean is in the wave.”
Ember grinned. “You want to watch out for my wave, it’s got a stingray in it,” she interrupted. Jabez looked at her, but wouldn’t be drawn.
“When I was a child,” he continued, “Mother had a text framed on the chimney breast there, IF GOD FEELS FAR AWAY FROM YOU—WHO MOVED? After Dad and Mother died, I took it down because I never liked it. Because I think if you feel far away from God that’s just part of the loneliness of being we all suffer. Maybe it means you need a hug or a cup of tea with a friend or an early night, but it can’t possibly mean you moved away from God; I mean, where would you go? ‘Whither can I go from thy Spirit?’ God wouldn’t be God if God had finite being—love you could stray outside of. Ember, is there any more tea in that pot—would you like another cup, Esme?
“I read a story once,” he continued, as Ember gathered their mugs and bent over the tray to pour more tea, “about a Zen monk on pilgrimage, who sat down at the site of a holy shrine and put his feet up on a statue of the Buddha. I expect I’m telling you what you already know if I say that in the East it’s a grave discourtesy even to sit with your feet pointing toward something sacred—you got to keep them tucked back underneath you. So this monk was in trouble, and a fellow pilgrim passing by reproved him for his shocking disrespect, which was fair enough except, as the monk said, ‘But where shall I put my feet that is not holy?’ Is that tea too strong—I like it that way, but you might find it a bit overpowering?”
“So everything is good?” Esme said. Jabez glanced at her briefly, but said nothing in reply. Ember grinned and drained the remains of her tea from her mug.
“And if everything is good,” Esme persisted, “where does the force behind greed and corruption and oppression come from? If we all live in God and all are holy, where do torture chambers fit in? If you take away the balance of heaven and hell, God and the Devil, you have an awful lot of explaining away to do.”
Jabez smiled, and looked into the fire. “Yes, I know,” he said. “There’s lots of ways of resolving this, isn’t there? ‘The problem of evil.’ The Parsees—Zoroastrians—who were very big when the Bible was being made, so that lots of their thinking was woven into it, believed in a universe at war. They posed two supernatural giants, Ahura Mazda, the creator of light and order and peace, and Angra Mainyu, the creator of darkness and disharmony and disease. These two were eternally at war, and the whole cosmos was caught up into their battle. Every single thing every single one of us does would serve to advance the battle in one direction or the other. Every word or action or thought contributes toward the eventual supremacy of light and wholeness or of darkness and disintegration. It’s interesting that, as far as I can tell reading the Old Testament, the ancient Jews didn’t really have a formal belief in life after death. The immortality of the human soul is the concept of a different culture—Hellenistic, I suppose. The ancient Jews made little distinction between the individual and the community; you lived on in your descendants. Your living being came from God’s breathing—he breathed out, you were created; he drew breath in, you died. But the Zoroastrians seem to have introduced a belief in spiritual orders of beings—demons and angels—which became culturally incorporated into our Testaments. Then of course, also, they divined wisdom astrologically—like the magi in Matthew’s gospel, who would have been Zoroastrians. Matthew wrote from Syria, fairly near their territory, and like the book of Isaiah, which speaks so highly of Cyrus of Persia, there’s a lot in his writing that resonates with Zoroaster.”
“Such as?”
Esme, fascinated and astonished by Jabez’s easy erudition, wondered how he had come to such a familiarity with things most people she met knew nothing about, even ministers. She waited, intrigued, to hear what his reply would be.
“Oh,” he said, “in Isaiah, the rough places being made smooth—the Parsees believed the world should be perfectly round. The lumps and dents are Angra Mainyu’s work. And in Matthew the broad way and the strait and narrow way—it’s a reversal of a Zoroastrian teaching. But anyway, what I’m trying to get round to is that if you go back to ancient Judaism, you have a concept that all that comes our way comes from the hand of God to train and shape and discipline us—everything, ‘weal and woe.’ I suspect this demons and devil stuff came from a different culture—very strong in Matthew, as I say, who seems to be much acculturated to Zoroastrian thought. For myself I’m quite interested in what William Blake said about the polarization of reason and energy, as an alternative concept to good and evil. I believe that everything has a circular flow, coming from good and returning to good; the circulation of God, maybe. When we try to go against the flow, we run into trouble; life hurts us then—it’s a learning opportunity, a chance to find the direction of God’s love. But then you’ll ask me, how should we try to go against the flow if we’re part of it? We make mistakes, don’t we, awful mistakes, and we wound each other terribly. But I still believe in the goodness at the core of every human soul and the center of all living being. I believe it’s all a chance to channel energy wisely. I believe every agony, every cruelty, every adversity is a chance to learn wisdom and compassion, a better way. Patience. Like the paintings that show Christ’s hands open, with the nails in their palms. Not clenched. Agonized, but open. It isn’t how it must have been, physically; it’s an icon of the spiritual wisdom of the cross. And even while I’m struggling to explain, I know it doesn’t all tie up neat. There’s just some things I don’t understand. But in my heart I feel it.”
Jabez stopped speaking suddenly and glanced at her, anxious. “Oh dear, I’m sorry—I’m going on too much. Esme, I’m so sorry—you must be bored out of your mind. I get carried away. I’m sorry.”
Esme sat looking at Jabez in some amazement. She had never met anyone quite like this. He flushed slightly under the intrusion of her gaze and looked down at his hands, gripped together in sudden embarrassment between his knees.
“What did you say you do for a living?” she said. “Mend bicycles?”
And Jabez’s head shot up—stung, he flashed a glance at her, affronted.
“That’s right,” he said, on the defensive. “That’s me. But I can read and inform myself as well as any man. And I can think. Is that okay?”
“No, no! I didn’t mean—of course it’s okay—I didn’t mean to imply there was anything wrong with that, I’m just surprised you haven’t chosen to—er—”
“Make something of myself?” There was a dangerous glint in Jabez’s eye.
Ember, who had taken up her knitting while Jabez was talking, said, “Sixty-nine years ago in January, the immortals in their grand stupidity made the blunder of entering Jabez Ferrall for the Human Race. All he done ever since is dawdle along admiring the buttercups and the vetch that grow alongside the track. He won’t be coming in second place, he won’t be coming in third place, nobody even suggested he might try for first place. If the gods are kind, they’ll watch over him wandering along to the finishing line and give him a rosette saying ‘I had a go.’ He’s got all his grey matter intact, in a funny order be that as it may; but you could hardly accuse Jabez of being an achiever.”
Esme smiled. “I suppose it depends what you mean by achievement. I’ve no idea what academic qualifications he may have, but he clearly has the intellectual capacity for anything! And I don’t think I could make a living with the work of my hands like he does. I simply haven’t got the skills. Speaking of which, Jabez, it occurs to me—should I have the lawnmower at the parsonage looked at before the summer? Or will it just be all right?”
Jabez, relaxing, relieved to be let off the hook, placed a small log on the fire and asked, “What did you have done to it last year?”
“Last year? Nothing. I mowed the lawn once or twice when the grass got long and emptied the clippings onto the compost heap, and then I just put it back in the shed.”
“Did you clean it?”
“Well—no, I didn’t actually.”
“Last time I serviced that mower was two summers before you came. Is it running all right?”
“I think so. I mean, I didn’t find it very easy to start, and it coughs and splutters a bit—but it cut the grass. Would you—should I have it serviced? How often do you do Marcus’s?”
“I look it over before he starts cutting in the spring and before he puts it away in the autumn. Are you asking me to come and see to yours?”
“Well, if that’s okay. If you don’t mind. How much do you charge?”
“Oh, well … pass me your mug.” Jabez began to gather the things together on the tea tray. Esme had an odd sense of seeing his spirit furling, of withdrawal, and a quiet shuttering of his soul.
“Thursday be all right for you?” he said. “I got to go into Southarbour then to have a look at the window frame in the bathroom at your superintendent’s parsonage. I could come on after. Be about three o’clock I expect.”
“That would be really helpful,” said Esme. This sounded like something of a dismissal, and she stood up, concerned not to outstay her welcome.
“It’s been ever so kind of you to invite me in for tea. It feels like, well, sort of like home here. You’ve done me no end of good.”
Jabez straightened up with the tray. He looked pleased.
“Next time you come,” said Ember, without looking up from her knitting, “you can bring some more of they buns if you pass through Brockhyrst Priory. I liked ’em. It’s nice to have a treat. Maybe they do coconut macaroons?”
“Ember! For pity’s sake! You can’t—you mustn’t—” Jabez blinked anxiously, and Esme couldn’t help laughing at him.
“They do, as it happens,” she said. “I’ll bring both.”
Ember nodded, continuing serenely with her knitting.
Jabez took the tea tray out to the kitchen and Esme followed him. She stood in the doorway to the yard. The rain had stopped, but the wind still blew cold.
“Thank you, Jabez,” she said, turning back to face him before she went on her way. “It’s felt so nice being here today. I mean—” she hesitated, feeling shy; “—like being with friends.”
Jabez stood with the dishcloth in his hands, looking down at it. He nodded.
“I’ll see you Thursday, then,” he said.
“Esme!” he called after her as she went out into the yard. She stopped. “Esme, when you come again, bring your car up into the yard. There’s room. Don’t leave it parked on the road.”
“Oh, I think it’s okay there,” she said. “I know it blocks the pavement a bit, and I know Ember doesn’t like that, but I park it carefully so pedestrians can get by.”
“Yes, but …” He shrugged his shoulders and buried his hands deep in his pockets, offering her a brief sideways glance. “Traffic comes by close sometimes and besides that … Bring your car into the yard, Esme; don’t leave it parked on the road.”
“Well, okay, if you think so. Thanks anyway. Bye-bye!”
As she went on her way, Esme felt a warmth of acceptance and belonging somewhere at the center of her being. Next time you come … When you come again. She stowed their words away as a secret treasure of belonging. I love those two. They’re amazing. I love that cottage, she thought. She walked cheerfully down the path to her car, smiling at the thought of Ember looking forward to macaroons.
Jabez went back into his kitchen, checked the firebox in the Rayburn, and threw in a couple of small logs from the basket. He picked up the tin of tobacco from the table and rolled himself a cigarette. He stood leaning against the stove rail, smoking reflectively, very still.
After a short while Ember came into the kitchen. She washed up the mugs they had used and emptied the teapot.
“’Tisn’t like you to invite somebody in,” she remarked, drying the crockery and hanging the mugs on their hooks beneath the shelf beside the table.
“I like her, Jabez,” she said.
Their eyes met, and he held her gaze, but he said nothing, had no need to.
“You want to roll ’em thicker,” said Ember. “That thing’s gone out.”
Though she and Marcus worshipped at Brockhyrst Priory, on the afternoon of Holy Saturday, Hilda Griffiths took a large armful of daffodils and a generous mound of greenery from the garden to help decorate Wiles Green Chapel for Easter Day.
She returned from this mission to find Marcus relaxing in the sitting room with a cup of tea and the Saturday Telegraph.
“Do you know, my dear,” she said conspiratorially, “I’ve just seen Pam Coleman in the village as I was coming away from the chapel.”
“Really?” Marcus tried unsuccessfully to sound impressed.
“And, do you know, she says she’s seen Esme going into Jabez Ferrall’s place three times this week! Parks her car right outside on the road!”
“Well, I should think she’s wise to do that,” Marcus murmured vaguely. “I expect Jabez’s yard has been cluttered up with bits of lawnmower belonging to people like me with the first sign of fair weather.”
Hilda perched herself on the chair opposite him, and leaned toward the screening Telegraph, not to be put off.
“I said to Pam, ‘I expect she’s looking for a bike, dear—I know she was interested to find one; Marcus recommended her to try Mr. Ferrall.’ But, really! Three times in one week! I think it’s a bit indiscreet! In a person of her standing—don’t you think she should know better? After all, an odd-job man! And right under our noses in the village! What’s more, Mr. Ferrall must be twice Esme’s age!”
“Twice her age?” Marcus lowered his paper, disregarding the crumpling of its pages, his eyes vaguely aglow. “Twice her age? Then, my dear, the time must be auspicious for them, if your surmise is correct, and they have embarked on a now deepening friendship. Because only in one year of your respective lifetimes can you be twice someone else’s age.”
“Marcus, whatever are you talking about?” Hilda’s tone grew petulant, and she flung up one hand in a gesture of frustration. “He’s twice her age and he always will be!”
Marcus’s gaze rested its lambent gleam upon her.
“Not at all, my dear, you are surely not considering. Supposing Esme to be thirty-five and Jabez to be seventy—though I am not as convinced as you are that the gap is so very great; I should have put Esme more nearly at forty myself. But, taking these ages as correct—for surely Jabez Ferrall is not eighty years old, then he would indeed be twice Esme’s age. Yet, in the year Esme was born, when no doubt Jabez would then have been already thirty-five, he was clearly at that time far more than twice her age; as he would have been when she was eight—or sixteen. But, as she grew older, she would have gained on him, until she has this year, if you are right, achieved the triumph of becoming half his age. Therefore, by the time she is seventy (given that is his present age, though as far as I am aware he has not in reality celebrated his seventieth birthday yet), she will be two-thirds his age, for he will by then be only a hundred and five. And, should he live to be 140 (though by the sound of his cough now I think he may not), why by then she, at 105, will be three-quarters his age; time thus perhaps moving more slowly for Jabez Ferrall than it does for Esme—as indeed the thoughtful observer might in any case deduce from the relative tempo of their lifestyles—though no doubt it seems to crack on fast enough to him. Who knows but, if he could only live long enough, she continuing thus to gain on him, one day she might so far advance as to be twice as old as he is!”
Hilda eyed him with uncertainty and suspicion.
“But …” she paused to compute in her mind, “that couldn’t happen, my dear,” she said firmly, adding, after a pause, a note of uncertainty creeping in, “could it?”
But Marcus had returned to his paper, declining to take further part in the conversation. “No …” he murmured absently, his voice barely audible, not the faintest hint of encouragement in his tone.