The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (21 page)

What does he mean, he couldn’t want to attack me, I’ll

scream …

‘I’ll only stay a few minutes, Miss Hearne. Surely you can

spare me a few minutes?’

‘Well…’

‘What about a drink? I see you have some Scotch.’ He didn’t miss that, did he, the sneaky thing. ‘All right if I use this tooth-mug?’

She nodded and sat down in the armchair, her nervous dark eyes shifting from him to the door.

Bernard replenished her glass and filled his own. Then he pulled the old straightbacked chair up to the fire and sat down opposite her. ‘I’m going to be frank,’ he said. ‘I’m going to

put my cards on the table. I want to talk about Uncle James.’ ‘I - I don’t understand.’

‘Uncle James is disturbing my work. He’s made Mama upset and he’s made life miserable for you. I’ve been watching

you at breakfast. It shows.’

‘What do you mean?’

He held up a fat hand for silence. ‘You know very well what I mean. Now, take me, for instance. I don’t mind telling you that I consider my work the only important thing in this affair. I’m writing a great poem. A great poem and it may take years to finish. And in the meantime, I’m forced to live here and let Mama support me. Which is as it should be.’

‘O?’

He refilled his glass, and handed her the bottle. He looks a bit mad, she thought, I’ve noticed that he has a queer look about him. If he-I could scream. Somebody would hear, somebody. I need another drink. To steady me.

‘People don’t understand,’ he said. ‘But you should, you’re a woman of some discernment. I need peace to work and Uncle James has destroyed all that. You see, Mama has changed since he came. She thinks he’s got a lot of money and she wants to get it. She’s greedy, poor Mama, not that I blame her, of course. There are no financial rewards in writing great poetry, you know.’

‘I suppose you could always get a job. I’m sure most poets have to work.’

‘No, no, you don’t understand. This work I’m doing, it’s an epic poem, a great epic. This is just the first phase of it. It may take five years. Why should I prostitute my talent?’

He jumped up from his chair and began to walk about the room. ‘Why?’ he said. ‘Why shouldn’t my mother invest in immortality? After all, that’s what mothers are for.’

What a funny duck he is, half crazy, the artistic type, I suppose. She handed him the bottle and he poured two drinks. Why, I’m not afraid of him at all, he’s harmless, just a funny duck.

‘No water, thanks,’ she said.

Bernard clasped his hands behind his back and struck a Napoleonic attitude, head thrust forward. ‘I’m forced to be ruthless,’ he said. ‘I can’t let my work suffer from this situation. It’s only right that Mama should support me. But now she’s supporting Uncle James too, and that’s not good for her morale. And he’s got money, he doesn’t need to be kept. Now,

that’s where you come in.’

The?’

‘You want him. Why don’t you take him away from here?’ ‘How dare you! What on earth …’

‘He loves you. He loves you, do you understand? He wants you and he thinks he’s not good enough for you. Did you know that?’

‘But - but that’s ridiculous. Why, only today he told me he said some very harsh things, he hasn’t the slightest intention of marrying me, I can tell you that.’

‘That’s Mama’s fault. She’s been putting in the black word against you. Like that drinking business.’

‘Well-O, I know she’s your mother and so forth, but really!’

Bernard nodded. ‘Yes, Mama’s a bitch, poor dear. Do you know what she told Uncle James about you? You’ll not believe this, but she actually told him that you said he wasn’t

good enough for you. That you’d had enough of him!’ ‘But I didn’t. I wouldn’t dream…’

‘I know. But Mama said you did, and he believed her. He’s a very proud man, you know. That’s why he was cruel to you today. His pride was hurt.’

‘But it couldn’t be that. Why, I made myself perfectly clear. I - well, anyway, it isn’t that at all. He’s going to Dublin to do some business. That’s why he was rude.’

‘What business? There’s no business, believe me. The only place he wants to go is the States and he can’t think of a good excuse to go back after boasting to all his friends over there that he was coming to Ireland to settle down. But if he got married, that would be another thing. He could go back then. To show his wife America, so to speak.’

‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘He wants to go back.’

‘Of course he wants to go back. With you. He told me. After all, I’m his nearest male kin. But that was in confidence, you mustn’t say I said it.’

‘No, no.’ She held out her empty glass. What if it could be true? It would explain so much, his cruelty, all a fraud, you could see he was hurt the way he spoke, maybe, maybe…

Bernard tilted the neck of the bottle into her tumbler. ‘And he’s not a bad catch financially,’ he said. ‘That’s another consideration.’

‘But even if he wanted to marry me - which is not the case - even if he did, your mother has poisoned him against

‘If you want him,’ Bernard said. ‘You’ll have to go after

hint. You’ll have to fight for him. And you will. Because you

want him, you want him badly.’

‘How dare you!’ she cried drunkenly. ‘How dare you.

Want him indeed, whatever gave you that idea?’

‘I’ve watched you these last weeks. You’re in love with him.

But you allowed Mama to walk roughshod over you. Didn’t

you?’

‘Well, she certainly had no business…’

‘That’s right. She had not. Now, what are you going to do

about it?’

‘Well, I - there’s nothing more to do.’

‘You won’t catch a man by sitting in your room sopping up

whiskey, Miss Hearne. No, I’ll tell you what you’re going to

do. You’re going to tell him you love him. That you want to

marry him. You’re going to keep on telling him, no matter

what he says. Because at first he won’t listen ‘

‘But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t dream…’

‘Yes, you could. And you will. Ask him, ask him, don’t take no for an answer. He’ll balk, he’ll fuss, but he’ll do it. Because he wants to. And you’ve got to.’

‘But it’s unhcard of-I couldn’t bring myself…’

‘You must,’ Bernard said quietly. ‘You need him badly.’

‘How dare you!’

‘It’s either that or drink yourself into a madhouse. And you know it.’

‘Get out!’ she screamed. ‘Get out this instant!’

‘I’m sorry, Miss Hearne, I didn’t mean to upset you. Keep your voice down, there’s a good girl. You don’t want Mama

to come up and find you half seas over again, now do you?’ ‘No,’ she sobbed. ‘No, no.’

‘Or Uncle James. If he found you like this, he might believe Mama’s stories. And that would be terrible, wouldn’t it?’

‘O, dear God,’ Miss Hearne sobbed, holding her face in her hands. ‘Leave me alone, leave me alone. Please’

‘Don’t get hysterical, Miss Hearne, I’m trying to help you. Let’s be sensible. You and I are going to hook him, if you do what I tell you.’

She stopped crying then and sat up straight in her chair.

‘What do you mean, hook him? Have you no morals? Have you no shame at all? And me, I’m as bad as you, listening to you, you horrid sneaky thing, poking your nose into other people’s affairs.’

‘Come off it,’ Bernard said blithely, picking up the bottle. ‘Put that bottle down! Taking what doesn’t belong to you, have you no manners? A boy like you, what were you taught at school, where’s your religion, you good-for-nothing little sneak, plotting the way you do?’

He laughed. ‘Religion is it? And what has religion ever done for you, may I ask? Do you think Godacher, lonely, drinking yourself crazy in a furnished room. Do you want to thank God for that?’

‘So you’re an atheist!’ she cried. ‘A rotten atheist. No wonder you think the way you do.’ His fat face suffused with blood, his long blond hair, falling over one eye, he leaned forward and caught her by the elbows. ‘I think, Miss -

to bear in order to store up merit in the next. Don’t you know your Catechism at all?’

‘Is that your answer?’ He looked at the picture on the wall. ‘You and your Sacred Heart. What the hell good has it done you? It’s only an idealised picture of a minor prophet. It won’t work miracles. You’ve got to make your own miracles in this world. Now, listen to me. I can help you, if you’ll forget this nonsense and do what I say. You want a man. You can have Uncle James. But don’t bore me with this nonsense, with these silly scruples. Your God is only a picture on the wall. He doesn’t give a damn about you.

‘Stop it!’ Miss Hearne screamed. ‘Stop it, taking the Holy Name in vain. Get out of here this instant!’

‘Shh!’ Bernard said. ‘You’re waking the whole house. Sit down and keep quiet. I’m sorry I lost my temper. I’m sorry.’

‘I will not sit down, she cried. ‘You rotten atheist. She struck at him. ‘Get out of here, get out of here.’

But he had moved aside and her flailing arm met no resistance. She blundered against the bedside table, spilling the remains of the whiskey bottle on to the floor.

‘Look what you we done! she screamed. You’ve made me spill it!’

His fat white hand caught her throat. He pressed her close as a lover. ‘Shut up,’ he whispered. ‘Shut up, for God’s sake. You’ll wake everybody up.’

Caught in his flabby grasp, she fought to get free. Her fists beat against his face, his chest. He swayed back, catching his heel on the worn fibre threads of the carpet. He fell and she fell with him, close to the fire. Something hurt her head. But she became warm, sleepily warm, as her mind slipped into unconsciousness.

When she opened her eyes, she heard Mrs Henry Rice’s voice, saw Mrs Henry Rice’s feet in carpet slippers, a few inches from her face.

‘A nice thing in a respectable house,’ Mrs Henry Rice said.

‘I just came in to see what was wrong and she was lying there. She must have hit her head,’ Bernard said.

‘It’s a wonder she didn’t kill herself. O, come on in, Jim,

I want you to have a look at your dear friend, Miss Hearne.’

‘Accident?’

‘Accident, my eye! Drunk as a lord and screaming all over

the house. Well, it’s my own fault, I should have asked for references. Out she goes, bag and baggage, first thing in the morning. Would you look at the cut of her, Jim!’

‘Put her on the bed,’ Madden’s voice said. ‘She might have

hurt herself. You can’t leave her lying there.’

Then hands, Madden’s hands, slipped under her shoulders.

Other hands lifted her feet. She kept her eyes shut, her mind shut as they lifted her on the bed. The shame of it, the shame. I must say something. Something.

But her arms would not obey when she tried to sit up. She

fell back.

‘Thanks be to God, Miss Friel is still out, or I’d have lost

two boarders instead of one. I never saw such a sight.’

Somebody was bending over her. A man. Him? She opened

her eyes a tittle and saw Bernard, his fat face near, his eyes

worried.

‘Go away,’ she cried. ‘You rotten atheist, go away!’ She

managed to sit up, her hair about her shoulders, her dressing

gown loose. ‘Filthy little liar,’ she cried.

Mrs Henry Rice, menacing, bent over the bed. Her great

white arms reached out to seize Miss Hearne by the shoulders. She began to shake her. ‘Sober up!’ she shouted. ‘Sober up. Have you no shame, carrying on like that?’

‘Easy there, May,’ Madden said. ‘Let her be. Let her be.’

But Mrs Henry Rice continued to shake until Miss Hearne

jerked up and down like a rag doll.

‘Leave her alone,’ Madden said, louder now. ‘She’s loaded,

she doesn’t know what she’s saying.’

Released, Miss Hearne turned her head, weeping, and

pointed straight at Madden.

‘You I’ she cried. ‘And I thought you were a man. A man

who could do his own asking, not a man that would send a rotten fat atheist around to talk for him. You’re as bad as the rest of them.’

‘What did she mean by that?’

‘Never mind her. Never mind, she’s offher rocker,’ Bernard said.

‘just a minute, just a minute! What d’you mean by that, Judy? Judy?’

Miss Hearne fell back on the pillows, her hand over her

eyes. ‘You know what I mean,’ she whispered. ‘You know.’ ‘What?’

‘He said you want to marry me. Tonight, he said it. He said you were afraid to ask.’ She looked up at him, her face a ruin of tears. ‘Why?’ she cried. ‘Why?’

But Madden had grabbed hold of his nephew. ‘Leave me alone, Uncle James, leave me alone.’

‘What’s this? What the hell’s going on? What you up to, you creepin’ jesus?’

‘Leave me go, leave me go. It’s nothing. Nothing.’

‘Leave my Bernie alone this minute. Leave him alone, you big bully.’

‘Please, Uncle James, you’re breaking my arm!’

‘Don’t lilt him. Don’t, Jim, don’t!’

‘You sonofabitch, I got your number. Trying to get rid of me, eh? Telling her lies so’s she’ll chase me, eh?’

‘No no.’

‘I’m going, don’t you worry. But I got a few things to say before I do.’

‘No!’ Bernard shrieked again. ‘You were in it too, remember!’ ‘Sleeping with the kid upstairs, your darlin’ boy, that’s what’s worrying him. Shacking up every night with M, ary. Look at him, May, look at him, if you don’t believe me.

‘Don’t listen to him, Mama, he’s telling lies. It was him, it was him that did it.’

Mrs Henry Rice sat down on the armchair and keened back and forth. ‘No, no,’ she moaned. ‘You wouldn’t do that, Bernie. You wouldn’t do that to your poor mother.’

‘He would and he did,’ Madden shouted. ‘And then sneaking in here, trying to ruin me with that poor woman.’

‘Don’t listen to him, Mama. Mama, please! He nearly tore Mary to pieces himself. Ask her, ask her, she’ll tell you.’

‘I don’t want to hear it,’ Mrs Rrice shrieked. ‘I don’t want

to hear it, that child’s only sixteen, O my God, the police could have you up, Bernie-Bernie, why did you do that to me?’

‘Sixteen?’ Madden said.