Chapter Seventy-Eight

For the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts.

Malachi 2:7

Saturday 8th March: The kitchen of Meadowview Friary's small guest house overlooked one of the smaller lakes that dotted this border area between Maine and Eastern New Hampshire. There were still a few late winter drifts of snow in amongst the pine trees and the mist was down. In the summer the little lake would be a magnet for children and midges, the latter in infinite number. But now all was still, almost eerie.

But the kitchen was warm and they sat round the pine breakfast table, scrubbed white from weekly applications of bleach in a ritual imitated in backwoods settlements down through the generations. It was cosy here.

Seb was drinking wine. "My first glass since Christmas," he said gleefully. It was lent but he felt no obligation to set aside the alcohol. "It's always lent here," he said.

Mike Hanlin nodded. He had just had lunch with the monks. Lentil soup and home made bread. Healthy, provided you weren't prone to flatulence. Hanlin liked the soup, thought it exciting even, as a now and then thing. But wouldn't choose it for pretty much every day, which was how it was for the monks.

And these were Franciscans, the supposedly 'happy' monks.

Seb still wore the half smock of a postulant. It made him look like a nineteenth century fisherman. "I get my habit when I take my vows at Pentecost," he'd said. "Then I become a novice."

"You won't be lonely?" asked Hanlin. "Being a monk I mean." Hanlin had noticed how dysfunctional many of the monks were. Seb was an extrovert in a crowd of introverts; many of those who chose the monastic life were socially challenged.

Seb dodged the question to give himself space to think. It was an issue that troubled him, loneliness. But he wasn't going to share that particular dark night of the soul with Hanlin. "We Franciscans are friars you know. Not monks. Monks generally hang out in one spot for much of their lives, usually a monastery. Friars can live in monasteries or purpose built friaries or even in the community at large. They get posted hither and thither like soldiers to different barracks. Generally they are more involved in the world than monks." He shook his head. "But to answer your original question, "I am not as lonely as you might think," he looked down at the floor as he continued. "No for the first time in my life I have a family."

"You didn't have a family before?" asked Hanlin. Then he added a little pompously, regretting the words as soon as they were uttered, "What was your congregation if not your children?"

"No you misunderstand. A family of my own. I belong. A congregation is different. They are your flock. You care for them. But you never really belong to them. You are set apart. Here I belong. This is my family."

Mike nodded. "So you'll stick with it? This monastic life I mean?"

Seb laughted. "I think so. I have three years as a novice then I get knotted."

Hanlin raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Three knots in the rope round your cassock means you're a proper monk - or in our case friar - not a mere novice." Seb smiled. "Then another three years and you take your final vows and give away all your possessions."

"Which in your case is irrelevant because you have no possessions. But at any of those points you could leave the order?"

"Yes."

"Will you?"

"Who knows. For now though, this is best for me."

Hanlin refilled his friend's wine glass. "Angie Merill and Jennie Moore are lovers now. You know that?"

The answer, when it came, was a little mechanical. "I am very happy for them."

"You don't miss her?"

"Of course I do."

"Would you go back to her?" Mike asked, pushing at the envelope. "If you could I mean."

"And take the other path through the wood - the road less travelled?"

"No," Hanlin laughed. "The well beaten path. This is the road less travelled."

"Not for me and my kind." Seb smiled in turn. "And the truth is I can't answer you. Life is filled with might have beens. I was younger back then, a few short months ago. Less able to cope. I am older now. But time has shifted. She has moved on as have I. And I am happy. And I am happy for her."

Hanlin thought 'the lady doth protest too much' but didn't say so. Instead he asked, "So no might have beens?"

Seb smiled the bitter-sweet smile that comes with memories of what had been. Then shook himself like a dog shaking off the rain. "No," he said. "No might have beens." And he meant it. He had no regrets. Though in his heart he knew that of all the friends he'd ever known over all the years of his life, there'd be one face he'd hold in his mind's eye as he went to his grave. And that one face would be that of his one and only lover, Angie Merill.