Free Clear Light of Day by Penelope Wilcock Page A

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