Angel Harp: A Novel

by Michael Phillips

  “Oh, Alasdair!” I cried. “How could you even think I would forget you? Some of the most wonderful memories of my life will be of this place. I will treasure them.”

  “And the necklace?”

  Blinking hard, I forced a smile, but slowly shook my head.

  I embraced him again, tight and long, then let go and stepped back.

  “I will walk you down to your car,” said Alasdair, trying to encourage me with a smile. But it was a sad smile and nearly broke my heart.

  I took his arm and we walked downstairs and outside without a word.

  How I managed to drive to my cottage, I don’t know. I hurried inside, fell onto the bed, and cried myself to sleep. It was not how I had envisioned my last night in Port Scarnose.

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Angel

  Angel voices, ever singing, round Thy throne of light.

  Angel harps, for ever ringing, rest not day nor night;

  Thousands only live to bless Thee, and confess Thee, Lord of might.

  Yea, we know that Thou rejoicest o’er each work of Thine;

  Thou didst ears and hands and voices, for Thy praise design;

  Craftsman’s art and music’s measure, for Thy pleasure all combine.

  Honour, glory, might, and merit, Thine shall ever be,

  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Blessed Trinity.

  Of the best that Thou has given, earth and heaven render Thee.

  —Francis Pott, “Angel Voices”

  The following morning I went to see Iain. The instant I saw his face I knew that he knew.

  I sometimes thought he always knew what I was thinking.

  “So is this farewell between friends?” he said with a halfway sad and knowing smile.

  I stood shaking my head, my mouth open in bewilderment, my eyes filling again. I was doing a lot of crying these days. I had used up a ten-year allotment of tears!

  “How did you know?” I said slowly.

  “I had a feeling,” he replied. “I’ve seen it coming. But the day of Gwendolyn’s funeral… I think I knew what was on your mind.”

  I hoped he didn’t know all of what was on my mind that day. Though maybe he did. Iain was like nobody I had ever met in his ability to read people, or, as they say in Britain, to suss them out. He certainly had the reason for my visit on this day sussed.

  “I am sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” I said. “I just didn’t know how to tell you.”

  “I understand,” he said, smiling. “It is a complicated and emotional time, what with Gwendolyn’s death, and everything. I know you have had a lot on your mind.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  I paused briefly.

  “There is something I have wanted to tell you—something else, I mean,” I said after a moment. “You asked me a question once—the day we met, in fact. I didn’t exactly give you the whole answer that day. Maybe I should have. I mean, I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. But I didn’t tell you the full truth. I’ve been uncomfortable with your not knowing. But it was a little embarrassing, I just never got around to telling you. Now that I’m leaving, I want you to know.”

  Iain looked at me puzzled, but waited.

  “It’s about my name,” I said.

  “What?” he laughed. “Your name isn’t Marie?”

  “No, it is… well, sort of. My parents actually gave me three names. My full name is actually… it’s Angel Dawn Marie.”

  Iain’s eyes lit up and a smile spread over his face. “Angel!” he repeated.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should have. But it has always been hard for me, playing the harp, you know. I was self-conscious.”

  “I don’t know why. It’s a wonderful name—Angel Dawn Marie!” Iain repeated again.

  “There is also my married name. My husband’s name was Lorcini.”

  “Angel Dawn Marie Buchan Lorcini—that’s a mouthful! I can see why you would shorten it when you meet a stranger.”

  I laughed. Iain could always make me laugh!

  Even in the midst of this difficult parting, he never lost his sense of humor. I think one day he will be lying on his deathbed and still making wry comments or joking to put those around him at ease.

  “I’m not sure why I started using the Buchan when I came here,” I said, “certainly not out of disrespect for my husband. When you first asked me my name, it just popped out. The Marie and the Buchan had always been next to each other. I grew up saying them in that order Angel-Dawn-Marie-Buchan, so when I said Marie, out came the Buchan with it, and nothing else. And after I’d said it, it felt right, and I needed a change in my life, so I just kept using it. My legal name is still Lorcini. I suppose Buchan seemed more Scottish than Lorcini.”

  I paused and smiled a little awkwardly.

  “So, now you know—not exactly everything about me, but at least you know who I am,” I said. “And, now I am leaving Port Scarnose.—Iain,” I added, “there are no adequate words. I don’t know how to thank you for everything. I know God now. I wonder if I ever would have without you. There is nothing more precious one person can give another than a deeper knowledge of God, and you gave it to me. Thank you!”

  He nodded, gazing upon me and smiling such a smile of love that I nearly melted right then and there. Then an odd smile crept over his lips.

  “What is it?”

  “Actually I was just reminded of something—not a secret of my own, exactly, though I’m not sure I ever have told anyone about it. I never mentioned it before, I’m not really sure why, maybe because I didn’t want to trivialize your harp playing with the angel stereotype. Especially now that you have told me your name, and that that stereotype was one of your reasons for keeping it secret, I suppose it’s a good thing I didn’t mention it. But believe it or not, one of my favorite hymns is called “Angel Voices.” It is about the music of angel harps.”

  “No… really! I had no idea there was such a hymn.”

  “Absolutely—incredibly majestic. ‘Angel voices, ever singing round Thy throne of light. Angel harps, for ever ringing, rest not day nor night; Thousands only live to bless Thee, and confess Thee, Lord of might.’”

  “I can’t wait to look it up. It will be the first song I learn when I get home.”

  We both grew quiet once more.

  “Again, I am sorry I didn’t tell you about my plans sooner,” I said. “I should have talked to you, I wanted to talk to you, but—”

  I looked away and tried to steady myself. I was finally crying in earnest.

  I felt a gentle hand on one shoulder, then on the other. I looked up. Iain’s face was six inches from mine, his eyes misty, his lips parted as if he was about to speak. But then he closed them and continued to gaze deeply into my eyes.

  It was “the look” revisited. This time there was no mistaking its meaning.

  Slowly he pulled me toward him. I felt my arms going around his waist as he pulled me into his embrace. We stood a minute in silence. There was too much to say. So we said nothing. I wept.

  “Good-bye, Angel,” Iain whispered. “You have indeed been a messenger of God to this place, and you will never be forgotten.”

  “Good-bye, Iain,” I said through my tears. “I will always… thank you. Good-bye.”

  I stepped back. For another moment our eyes met.

  Then I turned and walked to my car.

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Everywhere Is God’s Home

  Fareweel, fareweel, my native hame,

  Thy lonely glens an’ heath-clad mountains,

  Fareweel, thy fields o’ storied fame,

  Thy leafy shaws an’ sparklin’ fountains.

  Nae mair I’ll climb the Pentlands steep,

  Nor wander by the Esk’s clear river:

  I seek a hame far o’er the deep,

  My native land, fareweel forever.

  —“The Scottish Emigrant’s Farewell”

  I had been thinking on and off about returning to Ca
nada for so long, that it was with a deep sense of relief and finality that at last I settled into my seat aboard the British Airways 747 bound for Toronto. It was not really a sigh of relief because part of me didn’t want to be going home at all.

  But I had to. I knew that. I was in too much emotional turmoil to stay. The potential complications were too great.

  What would I have done, kept living in my little rented cottage until either Iain or Alasdair proposed to me, and then try to decide what to do?

  That was not a decision I wanted to face!

  Who did I think I was, anyway? Most women worry about whether one man will ever propose, not two! Maybe I was in love with both of them, but what if I had misread the whole thing? What if neither of them was in love with me?

  I had never really considered myself a romantic. I was aware of the old saying that a woman always knows when a man is in love with her. Though I hadn’t had all that much experience in that department, I now knew what the saying meant. I was pretty certain of what both men hadn’t said. It seemed… that is—

  Forget it! I wasn’t going to probe that question too deeply. Weepy farewells and looks did not necessarily mean that either of them loved me.

  My drab, uneventful life had certainly changed. I’d gone to Scotland and had fallen in love twice!

  When I arrived back in Calgary, I was drained on so many levels that for once in my life the exhaustion of jet lag was a blessing. I didn’t want to think, just sleep.

  By the time I began to recover, the cliffs of Port Scarnose seemed very, very far away.

  I did not exactly resume my activities from the previous spring, but I visited a few friends, went to the school where I had worked to inquire about returning, and began contacting my former harp students.

  I was melancholy. I didn’t know what else to do but resume my former life. I had left so much of me behind.

  Would Canada ever really be “home” again?

  In spite of such questions, however, part of me was glad to be back on the North American continent. I knew that behind me I had left two men who would be friends for the rest of their lives. It had been a wonderful experience, a fairy tale, a dream come true. Now it was time to put it behind me.

  That was easier said than done, however. Less than a week after my return, a letter arrived from Iain. I grabbed it and tore feverishly at the envelope.

  Dear Marie,

  I have been thinking about what you told me about your name. What a wonderful name it is! I can hardly believe it—Angel, God’s messenger. Yet I will always think of you as Marie, no less godly and precious a name. I know you came here as a visitor who did not even know if you believed in God. Not only did you find a relationship with your heavenly Father and his Son, he used you. He used you to bring healing and reconciliation to an entire community. Everything is changed here. A new spirit of openness and optimism pervades the very air. I notice it in church and when walking in town. Everyone asks about you. Of course, people are sad about Gwendolyn. Yet somehow in her death, life has blossomed anew. No one here will ever forget you. I will never forget you. Thank you for being open to God’s work in your life, and thus for being a vessel for his life to flow out to so many others. Alasdair and I had lunch together yesterday. He asked if I had heard from you. I said no but that I intended to write. He asked me to include greetings from him, which I do. Actually, you were nearly all we talked about. Have no worries—it was all good. It almost goes without saying that we both miss you.

  I think he is doing well. He is often seen in the village now, walking and visiting. He has lowered the rents for most of his tenants and has committed whatever funds are needed for the upkeep and maintenance of the church. He walks along the headlands frequently. I know he is thinking of Gwendolyn, and you. I pray that in time he begins to absorb the love of God that is all around him. And he will. Everyone will. They cannot help it.

  May the blessings of the Father fill you, my dear angel-friend!

  Iain

  The letter fell from my hand and I closed my eyes. Again I wept. The memories were not ones I would ever forget. I didn’t want to forget them. Maybe I had to. I didn’t know.

  Walking with the Canadian hills looming nearby, beautiful and majestic as they were, was not the same as in Port Scarnose. There was no sea. There were no headlands, beaches, or tides.

  But the whole world is God’s home. Wherever you are, he is with you. Gradually I found new retreats, whether on high hills, beside a lake or river, or in secluded woods, where I could walk and think and pray to the God I had not known when I was here before. In that sense, Canada was new. It felt changed. God was now part of everything.

  Or rather, the other way round—I was now part of everything with God. He had always been there. I just hadn’t been aware of it. I had come awake to what had been around me and inside me all my life—the love of a good and giving and forgiving and compassionate and tender Father.

  Was I now saved, I wondered. Had I not been saved before? I didn’t care about the theology of it. I was with God for the first time in my life. That was what mattered.

  A smile came to my lips as I tried to imagine what Iain or Ranald would say to such questions. Oh, how dearly I longed to hear what either of them might say in person!

  Maybe that’s why I wasn’t particularly anxious to go to church after my return to Canada. Maybe in time I would try to find a church with a minister who understood God the way Iain Barclay and Ranald Bain did. But I saw little point in hearing things preached and taught that did not resonate with the new image I had of Jesus and his Father.

  I had the feeling that the people I had known in church before would probably still wonder about me. They would want to define my new faith, categorize it, ascertain whether Iain had the proper credentials and whether he was saved or not. They would want to know if I had prayed the right kind of prayer to guarantee saving faith. They would be concerned that I was trusting more in God the Father for my salvation than in the Atonement alone. They would probably go so far as to think that I spoke too much about the Fatherhood of God, and not enough about Jesus and the Cross. They would raise all kinds of concerns based on their own doubts rather than upon my faith.

  None of such things mattered to me. I knew only that I had discovered a Father I had never known before.

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Facing Destiny

  Ae fond kiss and then we sever, ae farewell, alas for ever,

  Deep in heart-wrung tears I’ll pledge thee, warring sighs and groans I’ll wage thee.

  Had we never lov’d sae kindly, had we never lov’d sae blindly,

  Never met—or never parted—we had ne’er been broken hearted.

  —Robert Burns, “Ae Fond Kiss”

  The weather came on.

  Winters in Alberta are fierce. I wondered if Port Scarnose was likewise buried in snow. From all I had heard about the Gulf Stream and its effect on western and northern Scotland, probably not.

  But it was for other reasons than the mild climate that I wished I was there.

  Christmas came and was dreary and sad. I suppose it always is for single people. A Christmas card from my dad in Portland depressed me all the more. He alluded to a few health problems, though he was keeping up his usual sixty-hour workweeks. The card was a reminder that there were unreconciled relationships in my life, too. Yet in this particular case I was not eager to do anything about it. I sent him a card in return but only signed my name. Someday I needed to resolve my inner conflicts and questions about my dad, but I didn’t know how. I think down deep I knew that there was something blatantly inconsistent with thinking so glowingly about God’s Fatherhood, when my relationship with my earthly father wasn’t right. But I didn’t know what to do, except possibly go see him. And personally, I just wasn’t ready for that. So I continued to put off thinking about it.

  The new year arrived. After another two months, winter began gradually to loosen its grip on the frozen North.
r />   Sporadic letters went back and forth between Alberta and Scotland.

  Cordial. Friendly. Impersonal.

  Most of Iain’s letters told good things about Alasdair’s growth. Most of Alasdair’s letters told of Iain’s help in that growth. Iain mentioned Ranald every once in a while and continued to visit up the hill.

  Suddenly in early March I had a realization.

  I had relived my good-byes to Iain and Alasdair a thousand times in my mind. I often woke up in the middle of the night thinking about them. I dreamed about them.

  I realized that, had it not been for the other, either one of them might well have proposed to me then and there.

  I was not the only one being protective of the feelings of others.

  They were both doing the same! They were both sacrificing what love they might feel for me for the sake of the other. Their letters were continuing that sacrifice.

  As things stood, neither would ever make an advance, however much they might love me. After what had happened years before, and the recent healing, each would be too mindful of the feelings of the other to step forward himself.

  Iain would not allow me to come between Alasdair and him.

  But Alasdair was changed now, too. He would do the same thing.

  This time around, he would sacrifice his love for Iain’s sake. As I replayed our last conversation in the castle the night before my departure, everything was suddenly obvious.

  Was he trying to nudge me in Iain’s direction?

  Was it perhaps to make up for what had happened before, figuring that this time, to make it sound like a Gene Kelly movie, he would let Iain “get the girl”?

  This was too weird!

  Both men were subtly encouraging me toward the other, loving me so selflessly that they would do nothing to stand in the other’s way. Both of their letters were devoted more to talking about the other than themselves.

  I had heard of love triangles, but this took the cake.