To date, in all my time on this planet, I can honestly say I have never shared a social encounter with a monk, a nun or a priest. But this, of course, was before I had Scottish friends. Now I can boast that I have made the acquaintance of all three – in the space of a short trip to London, no less – and shared cocktails and canapés with them.
Jeanette and I decided that a bout of retail therapy, sightseeing and catching up with friends ‘down south’ was in order. We rented ourselves a charming coach house in Pimlico and boarded the Inverness train for London Kings Cross. We even upgraded our tickets to First Class which turned out to be a bit of a disappointment because we were only served the weekend menu which didn’t include silver service plated food or champagne.
To pass the nine-hour journey (it was the slow train), Jeanette worked on her craft studies. As far as I could tell, this was akin to kindergarten/playschool exercise and involved cutting out lots of scraps of pictures from magazines and gluing them into her art book. But it kept her happily engaged for about three hours. It also kept the man across the aisle from us entertained. He watched her every cut, trim and stick with fascination and to add an extra frission of excitement to his journey, he gradually leaned further in, so he could overhear our conversation and report on snippets to his wife.
At cocktail hour, we purchased refreshments from the Buffet, and I unpacked the paper carrier, my every move monitored by Mr Nosy.
I divided the ice between the two glasses. I served us each a miniature gin bottle. I shared out the tonic water.
“There’s no lemon!” I said, aghast.
Mr Nosy whispered to his wife: “There’s no lemon.”
“There’s no lemon?” she said, in a confused sort of hiss.
“No lemon,” he said.
The cocktail party that Jeanette and I held the next day had no such omissions. Together with Jeanette’s daughter Gillian, we threw open our French windows (a bit of an exaggeration as the doors jammed and were protected by two padlocks, a key lock and four window bolts powered by three keys, but eventually we flung them wide) and invited guests into the courtyard to enjoy an unseasonably warm afternoon.
Our garden was right next door to St Gabriel’s Church and – being Sunday – we needed no background music because the lusty singing of the congregation wafted into our yard.
Gillian introduced me to her friend, Mary, until recently Sister Mary. Sister Mary left her nunnery a few months ago, after more than 10 years. She is now keen to find a career, a husband and start a family. I thought vows were for life, I told her. Oh no, she said, she was allowed to have a year out which she could renew for a further two years. If however, career and family don’t eventuate, she will return to her nun’s life because she does not believe she could find anything else more fulfilling to do. As (Sister) Mary is extremely beautiful, with a serenity and an intense, yet calm, focus, I think she will be snapped up and the Church will be the loser.
The front bell rang – a late arrival. Dressed in full monk’s habit!
This turned out to be Brother Charles Mary. It also transpired that it was Brother Charles Mary’s last day as a monk – and fancy, he chose to spend it at our little drinks party! He too had given the Church about ten years’ service but now wanted to make his way in the world. He rather enigmatically told me that he no longer needed the secular life.
He had evidently been preparing hard for his worldly re-entry. He told me a wealthy benefactoress had recently paid for him to be coached by a nutritionist and he had lost about 30 kilos. He proudly showed me his ‘before’ picture – in which he looked like your stereotypical fat jolly monk.
“Are you having to do a lot of exercise to tone up?” I asked.
“No, I’ve done none,” he said. “This hides a multitude of sins,” he added, pointing at his voluminous habit.
Emboldened, I asked him why his name was Brother Charles Mary because I found it rather odd he should have a girl’s name. Apparently he is from a French order where it is tradition to have two names, the first male and the second female. Anyway, from tomorrow he will just be plain old Charlie.
This was not our only social event in London. Gillian invited us to the opening of a photographic exhibition in Mayfair. She had high hopes of meeting eligible bachelors so we dressed up in our finery and arrived fashionably late.
After meandering around, champagne in hand, trying to avoid looking at the photographs because that is NOT what you do at an opening, we were invited to join in the conversation of a group standing next to us – two guys and a poe-faced girl, who it turned out belonged to the more chinless of the males.
‘What beautiful eyes you have!” Gillian declared to the chap who was introduced to us as Michael. Not a bad opening line, I thought. Soon they were deep in conversation. Jeanette was trying to join in until I grabbed her elbow and propelled her to the other end of the Gallery to look at photographs of dead elephants and tribal elders.
“She thinks he has beautiful eyes,” I explained. “So I suggest tomorrow you go to Philip Treacy and look for a new hat.
“And don’t forget to invite me to the wedding.”
After three twirls around the gallery, it really was time to leave, so we returned to the young lovers-in-training. I decided to quiz Michael about his prospects.
“So, what do you do?” I asked.
“Well, I spent twelve years as a chef in a Michelin restaurant, but now I am studying photography,” he said.
(Not with a view to taking shots of dead elephants, I hoped).
“But originally, I trained as a priest, until I found my sexuality. Now I am a Catholic, but I am also an atheist.”
My face must have made one of those surprised O looks, accompanied by raised eyebrows and – I must confess, a stifled giggle.
After all, how many people, formerly from religious orders, can one meet in a weekend?
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