In February, Nan insisted that the pattern they have developed come to an end. She said to Una over tea, 'my life is full of rotas, for flowers, refreshments, ushers, readers…do I have to have one at home too?'
'Of course not,' said Una, who knew the feeling, having been obliged for much of her life to be actively involved in rotas in the plural. It was nice to at long last be able to pick and choose, to say that she would rather arrange flowers than greet people with leaflets. So that was the end of that.
At the time, it had been a great relief to Nan, who had wanted to reclaim her house. Now she had done, and her hands were still the wrong temperature for pastry, she had not Rilla's knack of laying a fire, and there was nothing around which to centre her day. When she had been anticipating Rilla, or Una, or even Faith, she had had things to work towards; she could not, for instance, leave the bread to be made by Faith, she wouldn't forgive herself if Una was compelled to do the dusting again, she did not see why any of them should have to do the mending when she could do that sitting down without any trouble. She still did these things, and all the things they had done in their turn, and yet the day stretched vast and expansive before her, with nothing to fill it. She wrote to Di often, long letters full of everything from the upcoming Coffee Morning at the Lowbridge Church to what Mrs. Lewis thought about politics. She would have liked to phone Di, but unlike Jerry, she did think of what the cost would run too, and anyway, Di's letters, which were fewer and farther between but twice as full and longer than Nan's own, made it clear that her sister is not wanting for things to do.
If, and it was a very big if, the twins had lived, she would have had her hands full, would probably still be cherishing the help so freely and lovingly given. As it was, she could not bear to spend the entirety of the day trying not to look out the window at the uneven lawn, trying to have every conversation but the one she probably ought to have with Jerry. They had not really talked about the babies, although Nan had agonized for months over them. What would they look like now, for instance, how much bigger would they be, what would they like and dislike? She had no answers for such questions and so did not articulate them, and they lived in the house, not talking for great long stretches, both feeling suffocated by the emptiness and the quiet. They had too much time together, she thought, and not enough to do in it.
Jerry, Nan knew, had made a concerted effort to work in the church office every so often, feeling acutely aware of the tomb-like quality the Manse had developed and frustrated he couldn't find a way to get rid of it. Certainly the call to Di had helped enormously…but a thing as complicated as grief did not go in the twinkling of an eye; how well he knew this. The trouble really, was that the church office was only notionally his. In practice it belonged to Mrs. Mainwaring, who answered the telephone and wrote messages down to relay to Jerry, and it had proved impossible to work there with her hovering at his elbow. But it was equally impossible to work in the room he had filled with his books and made his office, in the knowledge that Nan thought she was being helpful by keeping to herself, letting him get on with his sermon. In another life she used to look in and ask after the upcoming lectionary, sometimes argue with him over how to interpret it. It had been maddening at the time, the arguments, not her looking in; the thought of an unexpected conversation had helped to give focus to his work; now he would welcome an argument over the readings. It was to be Ruth, Corinthians I and Mark on Sunday and he didn't know where to start. He had half a notion that whoever allocated this week's lectionary on the liturgical calendar had done so by opening his bible at random, only checking to make sure there was an Old Testament, Epistle and Gospel selection put down. On a whim, because the books on Ruth were dry and he had long ago given up connecting up all three readings, he went downstairs to look for Nan. But she was not in, and he knew not where she had gone to or for how long. He looked through the window of the sitting room, somehow distinct to the drawing room, though he couldn't say how, and inspects the garden. The sight of it bare and only vaguely green was depressing. He thought of Shirley's offhand comment the last time they were together for dinner, about what good company Miriam was, 'she is fluent in numbers,' he had said laughing. 'I enlist her help when I can't work them out.' And thinking of this, as he looked out over the garden, he thought of a possible way to bring life back into the house.
The cat was one of Norman Douglas's. He had never quite forgiven Rosemary for choosing a Silver Bush cat over one of his barn kittens when she brought Cinders home. Quite why this had come as a shock no one could say; it was not that Rosemary did not get on with Norman Douglas, she got on with him very well at a pinch, for propriety's sake, but that did not mean she had to like him, and she did not. Jerry though, felt indebted to him yet for the day he tramped through the snow with the news that they were to go over to Ingleside after all, for the way he got Nan to glow, and so he went to Norman Douglas for a cat. It was indicative of how problematic Ruth as a text has proved that the black thing called 'Midnight' in a fit of originality, on the seat beside him, was renamed Boas by Jerry on the drive home.
And by some piece of good luck, Boas had ideas about theology in the way Miriam understood numbers and Tabitha did her best to stage a takeover of the kitchen. Nan, coming in after a long and exhausting afternoon at Mrs. Lewis's –why was it Jerry had so much trouble with the pastoral care aspect of his work –felt sure there must be company in the house. By the sound of it, his father had come round and they were talking religion as only they could, at a stretch it might be Bruce. But it was only Jerry talking happily to a black cat, whose providence was unknown to Nan, about Ruth's speech to Naomi.
'…and of course the words recall Jacob's words to God,' Jerry is saying.
'Do they?' said Nan, coming and sitting by him, only half understanding what he was talking about. Ruth only came up in year three of the liturgical calendar and then with an alternative suggestion, so it was not a book Nan knew about. It didn't matter; it had been too long since she had done this.
'Yes, and they ought to because much of Ruth's narrative sets her up as a matriarchal figure; there are all kinds of parallels with Abraham,' he said.
'I thought you were comparing her with Jacob?' Nan asked, reaching for the cat and transferring it to her arms.
'Did I? I got turned about,' and this, he thought, was why he needed to talk a sermon idea out at someone, even if it is only the cat his wife had appropriated.
'Isn't there supposed to be another option, when Ruth comes up?' she asked, cuddling the cat close.
'Is there? You know an awful lot about it, to say lectionary is my territory.'
'I think Una mentioned it once, or Bruce, does that sound right?'
'Either of those is plausible. Una always did the reading ahead, so she would have noticed if two texts were down for the first reading. If there is, it's too late now, I've committed to this text.' He took her hand and presses it. 'I've missed this.'
'So have I, but you seemed so busy, and I was sure I'd be in the way…'
'You don't take up enough space for that,' he said and pressed again the hand he was still holding to his lips in an outmoded show of affection.
'You couldn't be in the way if you sat down and thought about it for a fortnight before trying.'
'Where does that expression come form?' she asked now, moving to sit nearer him, reaching for his other hand as she does so.
'You're the one who's meant to know those things,' he said, 'you read literature at Redmond after all,' and there was laughter in his voice. He had not teased her for a long while. She did not answer, they simply sat and thought quietly and he found the hook he wanted for his sermon while she settled on what to cook for supper. He was sorry when she got up to make a start on preparing it, returning Boas to him as she did so, but there was a light at the edge of her eyes that he felt sure was trying it's best to take over as it used to do, and he thought the end might be in sight at long last.