Free Clear Light of Day by Penelope Wilcock Page B

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