Proverbs 3:3
Wednesday 21st November: The bishop's study had become a refuge of sorts for Sean Hartnett. The carpet had a design of pale brown circles and stars inside a flower patterned border worn feint with age. Sean stared down at it now, his bourbon glass held resting on his crossed knee. He was trying to talk to the bishop but he didn't look up at him.
"Go on Sean." Patrick O'Malley was smiling at his friend, his warm blue eyes crinkled at the edges. "Spit it out."
"Trish and I are making a go of it," he said. He looked up at him and his dark brown eyes locked instantly on the bishop's. "I mean it Patrick. We are making a serious try at it this time."
Patrick O'Malley sighed. It was his turn to drop his gaze, to study the well worn carpet. "I am glad, Sean," he said. He meant it. "She needs you. Now more than ever with so much suspicion falling on her."
"She didn't do it." Sean's words were a sharp, staccato burst. His eyes burned into the bishop's forehead, as if daring him to gainsay him.
"Kill Bob Young you mean?"
"Uh huh." Sean nodded. "She didn't do it," he repeated.
"I don't doubt that. But who did?"
Sean replied with a beligerent edge to his tone. "Well it wasn't my Trish is all I know."
Bishop Patrick nodded kindly. He didn't say anything.
Sean watched his friend and softened. "You gonna be OK?" he found himself asking.
The bishop looked up and as he did so he used the slender fingers of his left hand in womany fashion to brush a lock of hair back in place. "Of course," he said.
Sean hesitated, "Without me I mean."
The bishop looked up again. "We can still be friends?" It was more a statement than a question.
Sean shook his head. "I don't think so," he said. "That wouldn't work."
"Ah," said the bishop, as if acknowledging some profound truth, which in a way he was.
"Will you be OK?" asked Sean for a second time.
"Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?" The bishop recited Christ's crucifixion lament.
"What the fuck are you talkin about?" Sean said. Then more gently, "You forget Patrick, I know what that means. Bible knowledge is one of the benefits of a good catholic education."
The bishop smiled again. "I am not going to pretend that the loss of your friendship is a small thing." He paused, looking closely at his friend. "We each carry a cross in our different ways. Losing you is, in its way, an Armageddon experience. Christ dealt with the cross by embracing death, by emptying himself as he breathed his last with the words, 'It is finished'.
"So between us it is finished?" The bishop held up his hand to stave off the interruption from Sean to what was, after all, a rhetorical question. "No I know I cannot compare this ordeal to the crucifixion in a literal sense. But we all learn from life and are made greater because of it. This has been painful but beautiful. Cleansing. And now it is finished. There is a beauty in that too. Now my life moves on as does yours. In that sense, my dear friend," and the bishop paused for emphasis, "I will be OK without you."
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