When the noonday sun is beating down relentlessly on a deeply atypical July day, a country church looks like the ideal place to find some cool respite – or at least that’s what Jayne was thinking as she pushed open the ancient wooden door. Not that such a practicality was the uppermost reason for her visit this day, as she was supposedly doing some research for a book that she might or might not get round to writing at some unspecified point in the future.
Although she had not as yet committed a single word to paper or even thought of a working title, the as-yet uncreated book floated cloud-like around her mind in an oddly comforting way ; it gave her a useful excuse in potentially awkward conversations with strangers, where she could deflect the inevitable “and what do you do” question by alleging herself to be a writer, thereby awarding herself immediate and undeserved intellectual superiority over lesser mortals engaged in less worthy pursuits. That it was undeserved insomuch as she had written nothing much as yet bothered Jayne not one bit.
“All writers have to start somewhere” she mused to herself, and stepped inside the golden wedge of sunlight admitted by the door, closing it quietly behind her, or at least as quietly as a six inch thick and five hundred year old slab of oak will allow.
Jayne usually liked to be alone in the country churches she visited, claiming temporary sole ownership of the ancient stones and basking in the sense of history they radiated. Other visitors, with their loud voices and foolish comments, were an irritation which annoyed her intensely, interrupting her reverie, so she secretly hoped that the closed door would, for a little while at least, allow her the solitude she sought.
Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply to savour the unique scent, a heady amalgamation of cold stone, candlewax, furniture polish, altar flowers and incense, possibly with a trace of dampness. It was a small church, set a little way out of an even smaller village with no discernible centre, amidst the less attractive corners of Shropshire. She had dutifully looked up Pevsner’s comments on the architectural merits, or lack of, tersely recorded as “originally 13th C, tower rebuilt 15th C, some fragments of medieval stained glass. Interior partially remodelled 1870. Otherwise unremarkable”
This implied criticism she found a little irksome, devoted as she was to the “unremarkable”, not only in buildings but in every other facet of her life. All it meant to her was that the writer had not looked hard enough or long enough to discover the remarkable, if only in fragmentary form, instead using the lazy and subjective label she objected to so much. And her book would right those wrongs, pointing out the overlooked, the dismissed, the ignored, in a beautifully written, detailed and yet quirkily humorous account of the churches she visited – of which there were already quite a few – illustrated with the most sumptuous of photography, and blessed with a cover design of original and striking artistic merit. Imagining her as-yet to be written book stacked in hopeful gleaming towers in every bookshop in the land, with herself smiling brightly while signing hundreds of copies for eager and grateful readers lent Jayne a renewed sense of purpose as she approached the arched windows to her right.
Illuminated by the summer sun, the stained glass flooded pools of intense colours onto the stone flags, a brilliant patchwork of sapphire and ruby and gold, so bright against the neutral stones and whitewashed walls. For several moments, she was quite lost in the wonder of it, considering how to describe moments such as this.
She was completely unaware until the moment she heard a man’s voice from somewhere behind her, snapping her out of her reverie and back into reality.
“It is so beautiful isn’t it, when the sun’s round this side…..oh no, did I startle you, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to….I’m doing some work in the church, I saw you come in but I thought you’d seen me”
Jayne turned round sharply, initially alarmed by this intrusion to what she thought was a private moment, to see a tall man approaching her and smiling, his open palms in a gesture of friendliness and welcome. Relieved that she appeared to be in no immediate danger, she smiled back and said hello.
“Have you come to look around the church today? Or if you’re here for spiritual reasons, I’ll make myself scarce” he grinned.
“I am rather a church lover, well, any old building really, but churches are my special favourite, especially ones not in guide books, or deemed particularly remarkable for historical or architectural reasons, I’m so glad to find this one unlocked, and er…..”
Her words tailed off, as she realised with some embarrassment that she was, as she usually did when nervous, talking too much and too fast, and now, horror of horrors, a giveaway flush had coloured her cheeks crimson.
“Aha, a fellow church hugger!” he laughed. “This is one of my favourites, it’s been chopped and changed around so much in the last 800 years, with every generation thinking they had the best ideas for it, yet somehow the essence of it still remains the same as the day the first stone was laid. It is an amazing place”
“I’m trying to do some research for a book I’m planning to write. Though thinking about it, maybe that’s just an excuse to visit places like this” she replied.
As she spoke Jayne began to feel more relaxed and felt an easy companionship with her new acquaintance. He was a tallish man, in his early 40’s, somewhat angular, whose long fair hair and shabby jeans gave him the air of a someone clinging to the modes of his youth, and unconcerned with fashion. Realising that she was in danger of openly appraising his appearance – which it is fair to say she found very far indeed from displeasing – she felt the blush return to her cheeks and prayed inwardly that he had not noticed.
” I’m very interested in the idea of your book. I hope you will be including a photograph of the Morville monument which I’m working on at the moment, with a special mention of the quality restoration carried out by yours truly” he chuckled. “I’m reversing the ravages of three hundred years of dust, damp and neglect, would you like to come and have a look?”
Together they crossed the chancel, him trying hard to look at the pattern on the carpet instead of Jayne’s womanly curves bobbing alongside, so distracting to a craftsman whose art depended on concentration of eye and hand and a calm head. The monument in question lay to their left, a square marble tablet some six feet square, garnished with intricately carved heraldry and memento mori of skulls and bones.
“This church will be my workplace until I have restored this to its former glory, the faded gilding, as you can see, needs to be replaced with new gold leaf, the lettering likewise, and the pigments on the escutcheons renewed, and all made good….oh, my name is Clifford by the way, I’m really pleased to meet you”
With that, he took her hand in not so much a shake as a warm grasp, which possibly went on for slightly longer than appropriate for two people of such brief and slender acquaintance. Yet even so, neither wanted to be the first to let go.
“I’m Jayne, with a Y”
“Like Jayne Mansfield?”
“Yes, I think my parents had a bit of a thing about her, or perhaps they thought I’d grow up to be a gorgeous Hollywood filmstar. Which as you can see hasn’t actually happened”
Oh no, she thought…”as you can see”? am I actually inviting him to give me the once over? Perhaps he didn’t notice..
There followed a rather awkward small space of time in which they both feigned intense and sudden interest in the cold marble before them. Clifford tried desperately to think of a pleasant and non threatening compliment to make in which he would not come over as a leering pervert ; Jane tried equally feverishly to think how to formulate a relaxed and amusing conversational gambit to indicate her continuing interest in Clifford without appearing too eager.
Both failed, and so the silence continued. And an “atmosphere” had developed and occupied a space between them, invisible yet as obvious as if it were reality.
Jayne was shocked and not a little thrilled by this, for goodness sake this is plain, dull, slightly overweight Jayne, with her outdated hairstyle, lack of engagement with current affairs, serial failures of relationships and work, schemes and plans that never somehow materialise and predilection for haunting old buildings…
At her side, Clifford is also engaged in a singular moment of interior self awareness, aware of the bright bubble of possibilities hovering between them, considering his profession (in which he is patchily employed) in an antique world, restoring memorials to people dead and buried and forgotten hundreds of years ago, finicky and painstaking work carried out for the most part in chilled stone boxes visited by no-one.
After some rather awkward conversation, hastily concocted to fill up the silence, during which neither of them could bring themselves to acknowledge a quite definite mutual attraction, Jayne felt it was time to leave.
“I’m interrupting your work, so I’ll be on my way. It was lovely to meet you.” she said.
“A very welcome interruption, if I may say so, it’s been a pleasure talking to you” replied Clifford, politely, and reaching for her hand once more.
Jayne blushed, unwilling to leave, but felt she should go, lest she had misjudged the warm and pleasant sensation that being in her new acquaintance’s company had given her. For his part, Clifford felt equally unsure, and hoped he had not overstepped the mark.
“Well, goodbye for now”
“Goodbye” said Jayne, as she made her way to the door, somewhat regretfully.
Clifford returned to his work with a profound sense of disappointment at such a missed opportunity. It was a long afternoon for both of them.
Two long weeks had passed since Jayne’s encounter with the reticent artisan in the church, and for those two weeks she had thought of little else. Every time she opened up her laptop to create what she hoped would be a quirky, original and amusing chapter for her debut book, her impulse to write would be replaced by endless reassessments of what she should have said, or not said, or behaved, or more riskily, not behaved. She berated herself inwardly for failing at least to secure even the vaguest of contact details, a phone number, an email address or even a surname from which she could carry out some surreptitious online sleuthery, because meeting Clifford another time was all she could think about.
Unsurprisingly, her book remained half written, a collection of scribbled post-it notes admonishing her from the fridge door – “Today I will write for two hours at least” “If I manage a chapter today I will buy myself a treat” and more threateningly “No book = no money”, but they were all ignored. She went to her work at the library in a distracted frame of mind. Upon her return, she trawled idly through endless web pages, many of which were not entirely relevant to the furtherment of her book by way of research ; truth be told, much of her searching involved following any avenue, however vague, which might lead to the identity of the man in the church, and even better, once found, plans to engineer another encounter with him.
Sighing wearily, she turned off the computer, any chance of literary inspiration having well and truly departed for the day, and went into the tiny kitchen to put the kettle on. Outside a light rain was falling, silvering the windowpanes. Tea makes everything better, she said to herself and the tortoiseshell cat weaving her way around Jayne’s ankles in hope of supper. They both knew it wasn’t really true.
About a dozen or so miles away, the same rain was falling on a small untidy workshop, littered with half-finished projects and pots of paint and varnishes, where an equally frustrated and disquieted man looked critically at the carved woodwork on the bench before him. Laying down his chisel and sweeping back his hair, Clifford was less than happy with today’s work. It wasn’t particularly difficult or taxing, and he knew it was well within his capabilities, which was exactly why it was all the more annoying. He had been having trouble concentrating of late, which he tried to explain to himself as perhaps tiredness, needing new glasses or perhaps even an unfavourable alignment of planets, none of which were true, and he knew it. Brushing away the sawdust, he was more than aware of the source of the problem, yet had little idea as to how to resolve it.
Turning off the light, he closed the door behind him and walked the short distance to his small house. The showery weather seemed to him entirely appropriate for the way he felt just now, and had done for the preceding fortnight, a feeling of chances missed and a resigned faint melancholy which had settled over him like mist in a valley.
The knowledge that he had let another chance slip away so easily, a crossing of paths that could have, if he had had the courage, led to something he wanted so much. That woman in the church, she seemed to like him a great deal, they seemed to gel easily and their conversation was very pleasing . . . he had desperately wanted to ask her more about herself, her book, perhaps, if she was agreeable, even to stay in touch? They had got on well together, much alike and much in common. In the evenings he had often (after a glass or two of wine) mapped out for himself a pleasing if imaginary trajectory of friendly emails leading to cosy phone calls to and from the lovely distant Jayne. And one night he might (after perhaps the third glass of wine) imagine sending her a flirtatious text message, to which she would respond (to his delight, and relief ) in like manner, suggesting meeting up for a coffee, in the daytime?
Clifford replayed this scenario over and over again in his head, gaining both a comfort from its repetition and a salacious thrill imagining the next steps that might be taken.
But to no-one’s surprise, least of all his, a natural reserve and heartfelt desire not to appear in any way threatening or inappropriate had got in the way, and stifled any notion he could have had about continuing their conversation at some point in the near future. Another chance slipped away, he mused bitterly, and turned on the television to provide some distraction.
After a restless night, with the non-advancement of both her writing career and her personal life laying heavy on her mind, Jayne decided positivity to be the best course of action, and made plans to return to the small grey church to take some photographs. Perhaps a little visual refreshment might do the trick, she thought, and I’ll be able to resume my writing. Staying in had done her no favours, daydreaming about situations that will never happen. Yesterday’s rain had cleared away to leave a bright and sunny morning, the world looked new and clean.
Less than an hour later, she pulled up in front of the church opposite the vicarage, and took a moment to study the stonework gleaming damply silver, set amongst a churchyard of rarely visited gravestones and surrounded by a mantle of high trees, the fields behind falling away in a patchwork of green. Secretly of course, she hoped for a repeat chance encounter inside, but held out little if no hope.
Opening the door, she sighed at the remembrance of things not said and roads not taken, and looked around at the now familiar surroundings. Everything looking so neat and tidy as before, she thought, as she walked over to the Morville monument, gleaming in the sunlight with its precious gold leaf so skillfully restored by Clifford, the marble shining white and clear. She had half hoped that it would still be a work in progress, but it appeared pristine and complete, and a little sadness came over her. Suddenly remembering why she had come here, she looked around for suitable subjects and angles for the photographs she intended to take.
Near the back of the church was an old oak table, where the hymn books had been carefully replaced after yesterday’s service, all ready for the faithful few (fewer each passing year) who would return next Sunday. Jayne regarded it quietly, a ready made still life, complete with brass collection plate, a blue pottery vase of roses spilling petals, and the visitors’ book thoughtfully laid out complete with a pen. A hastily-printed parish Newsletter cast there spoilt the composition, so she picked it up and put it to one side, intending to read it later. Pictures taken, she was pleased with her morning’s work and left quickly before any return of the momentary sadness could waylay her.
Sitting in her car, Jayne looked briefly at the newsletter ; she loved these little insights into the lives of people she would never know, snippets of parochial news, coffee mornings, meetings, weddings and funerals. Sadly there were more of the latter, as the church was visually overshadowed by a far more picturesque Gothic building a couple of miles away, with soaring arches, wide aisles and immaculate flowers, a far more appealing backdrop to wedding photographs. Among the notices of services to come, her eye was caught by the following :
“There will be a service of dedication following the restoration of the Morville monument, Thursday 10th August at 2.30. All welcome. The Morville family are indebted to both the Parish Council and Mr. Clifford Thomas for his craftsmanship. All welcome, refreshments after the service”
And her heart skipped a beat.