Monk Years

W. and I both had our monk years. It surprises everyone who knows us. It surprises us, too. What do you remember of them, your monk years?, I ask W.

He'd taken a vow of silence, W. says, and lived a life of great simplicity. Of course, his fellow monks were all having affairs. Not with each other, W. says, but with hangers on. There are always hangers on around monasteries, W. says. You'd know all about that, wouldn't you? Was I a hanger on?, W. wonders. I was the guestmaster, wasn't I?, he remembers.

It was a lay religious community, wasn't it? W. recalls how I told him of welcoming monks and hermits from all over the world. Copts, Dominicans, Ukranian Catholics, the lot. I even taught them, didn't I? I was an English teacher and guestmaster, and lived for free in the highest, coldest room in the house. Of course we differ, W. notes, in that he, for a time, had genuine religious belief, whereas I never had any. It was entirely lacking in you, W. says.

But W.'s monk years had to come to an end, he says. There were barely any monks in the monastery, for one thing. They rattled around a huge building designed by the architect who had planned the Houses of Parliament. It was on a island in the middle of nowhere. W. used to take walks in the afternoons, he remembers, where he would surprise monks who were having affairs, walking hand in hand with men and women on the rocky shore.