The Television Actor

   I had been commissioned to write a profile of a very handsome actor in a successful television series.

       “You’re called Gabrielle!” he greeted me when I went to interview him. “What a great name!”

Photo by Helen Majska on Unsplash

       “Well, thank you,” I said, because I’m pretty pleased with it, too, and also with my parents for giving it to me.

       He leaned forward confidentially towards me in his chair.

       “Gabriel,” he informed me, “was an angel.”

       Coming as I do from the sort of Catholic household which had felt the Spanish Inquisition could have tried just that little bit harder, I had heard a rumor to that effect.

       He nodded, impressively.

       “An angel,” he repeated.

        I nodded back. I was given my name because I was due to be born on March 25, which is the day Catholics call the Feast of the Annunciation: it is exactly nine months before Christmas Day, and thus, according to church lore, the day on which the Angel Gabriel appeared to the teenaged Virgin Mary to announce to her – somewhat to her surprise, all things considered – that she was pregnant with the Son of God and Savior of all mankind. As it turned out – and as my late and sainted mother lost few opportunities to remind me – I actually arrived in the world several thoroughly uncomfortable days later than the 25th, and during a freak blizzard to boot. But my parents kept the name anyway, which was considerate of them since the alternative attached to my actual birthday consisted of the glittering choice between Saints Theodolus, Anesius and Machabeo, and for Christmas after Christmas throughout my school years, I was required to don a white nightdress, stand in front of my classmates, and look commanding after yet another form teacher had found it hilariously original to cast me in the angelic role in the class Nativity play.

       “He wasn’t just an angel, either,” my new friend continued of the heavenly entity after whom I had been named. “He was an archangel.”

       I’d known that too. There were four archangels up there, apparently, doing whatever it was that archangels did. Gabriel was the one who had spoken to Mary, Michael was the one who carried a sword, Rafael was also the name of a Spanish boy I had a fling with a hundred years ago, and I could never remember the name of the fourth. Ringo, maybe?

       “Angels were important,” my friend explained. “But archangels, now, they were something.”

       Well, this was very illuminative, but the clock was ticking and we had an interview to start.

       “Shall we …?” I began.

       But he was not to be stopped.

       “The angels were God’s army,” he expanded.  “There were whole bunches of them. There were the angels and the seraphs and the thrones and the dominions. But the archangels were the top of the heap. They were the A team, you know?”

       I wasn’t entirely convinced of the liturgical accuracy of this, but we did have that interview to get to.

       “I thought we could start,” I attempted, “with talking about …”

       “They did everything God wanted,” he said. “They spoke to prophets. They ended famines. They slayed dragons. They cast other angels out of heaven when they went rogue. I’m not kidding about that: you went rogue, there was no messing, it was boom!  –  you were o-u-t. You didn’t shape up, the archangels made you history. You did not argue with an archangel, if you know what I’m saying.”

       This was getting serious. I had less than an hour to spend with him, and we had a troubled adolescence, twelve years of sobriety, a motor cycle trip across Central Europe and a rumor of a rift with his co-star to cover. It was time to bring out the big guns; and a benefit of having been raised Catholic is that it affords access to some really quite efficient tools for shutting people up. A Latin phrase is a good one; a Feast Day has been known to send hardened journalists running for the hills; a Feast Day which also happens to be a Mystery of the Rosary is the Vlad the Impaler of conversation killers.

      “Angelus domini nuntiavit Mariae,” I informed him ruthlessly. “I know because I was born close to the Feast of the Annunciation.”

       My friend, however, was made of stern stuff.

       “No kidding,” he smiled sunnily. “In that case, I’ll have to enunciate real clearly for you.”

       He was very handsome, mind you.