The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (9 page)

‘They - don’t - have - time - for - God.’

He leaned forward, grabbing the edge of the pulpit as though he were going to .jump over it.

‘Well,’ he said quietly. ‘I .just want to tell those people one thing. One thing. If you don’t have time for God, God will have no time for you.

‘And speaking of time, your time will come before the judgment seat of Heaven. Don’t you worry about that. And then it won’t matter a brass farthing whether you were a dandy at the football pools, whether you know every film star by name from Charlie Chaplin to Donald Duck, whether you can reel off the name of every dog that ever won a race at Dunmore or Celtic Park.

‘There’lt be no time for that. No time at all.

‘No, good people, there’ll be no time for all that. But there’ll be time enough to fred out how you attended to your religious duties, there’ll be time enough to find out what kind of life you led, there’ll be time enouTh to make a reckoning of

how many hours you spent on your bended knees praying to our Blessed Lord for forgiveness of your sins.’

He paused and looked through the gloom at the clock. Miss Hearne fixed with attention, heard a faint, unmistakable sound beside her. Mr Madden was asleep. O, the mortification of it. She nudged him, trying to make it seem accidental, and he opened one eye, then dosed it.

‘Aye, there’ll be a change of temper then,’ Father Quigley roared above her. ‘And those young people standing here in this church, standing there like a bunch of hooligans at the back, waiting their chance to run out at the Last Gospel, what will God say to them on that terrible day? What will He say? Will it be, “Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you?” Will it be that now? Do you think it’s likely? Or will it be, “Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire that was prepared for the devil and his angels?” Will it be that now? Will it be that?

‘Not if/can help it, it won’t be. Not in this parish. Beginning next Sunday, I’m going to order the ushers to close the doors at the Offertory and not open them until Mass is over. If anybody is sick or has some good reason, he or she will be let out. Otherwise, not. Because Mass is the whole Mass and not a football match with people running in and out of the church as if it was a cinema.’

He paused and stared at the congregation. Then he made the Sign of the Cross.

‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, amen. Your prayers are requested for the souls of the following who died last week or whose anniversaries occur about this time: John Cullen, Thomas McCabe, Ellen Higgins, Hugh Gormley, Patrick Kennedy, Mary…’

As Father Quigley droned through the list of names, the collectors silently took up their stations, brass plates in hand. Assistant collectors licked their pencils and folded their notebooks open. Miss Hearne saw Mr Madden take half a crown from his pocket. She felt in her purse, found the sixpence she had put aside for this moment.

After mumbled prayers for the dead, die collectors speedily

went to work, moving down the aisles with practised ease. The priest stood at one side of the altar, immobile, with his back to the congregation, until a little bell discreetly signalled the completion of the collection. Then he began in rapid Latin and the Mass moved towards a close.

‘Are Missa Est,’ Father Quigley cried loudly, and the congregation collected prayer-books, slipped on gloves, nudged purses and umbrellas in preparation for the closing prayers. Outside, the rain clouds scudded past like big ships sailing out ofharbour. A morning sunlight filled the church. A heavenly sunlight, Miss Hearne thought, as it blinded and bathed her with its shining light. It faded then and she bent her head to her pew and gave thanks. Was it the light of God? Was it the answer to her prayers, was it the Sacred Heart giving her a sign, now that the sacred mystery of the Mass was over and there was rime to answer the prayers of individuals? It had shone down on her, on him, blessing them with its light. O Lord, she prayed, let it be, make it be, give him strength to see Your ways, let him be my guide, let him help me conquer my weakness, my wickedness.

She prayed, feeling pure, exalted, but closer to fear than exultation as the Mass ended and her prayers and exhortations dwindled before the reality of the people filing down the aisle into the world outside and the contradictions and unsureties of the streets. It was as though she had said her say, used all her arguments before a great and all-powerful judge and now the defence rested, the arguments were over and the decision would be announced in a dead anti-climax by some unknown secular juryman in the streets, away from the House of God and the surety of prayer and good intention.

And, as they left the church together, she thought of the pure chance of it all, how it had happened so suddenly, after nothing at all had happened for so many years: how it was pure chance that he had happened to ask her to walk to Mass with him and that they had talked together in private, so to speak. For if he had asked her to walk with him to anywhere else but Mass, she would have had to refuse him on so short an acquaintance.

They stood together on the street corner and surveyed the dead Ulster Sunday. The shops were shut, the city had set its dour Presbyterian face in an attitude of Sabbath righteousness. There was no place to go, nothing to do.

‘What did you think of the sermon?’ she said.

‘It was okay, I guess. But what’s wrong with the movies? I don’t get it.’

‘O, Father Quigley’s quite a strict man, I hear. But a very honest speaker. You feel the sincerity leaping out of him, even though he’s not the most cultured man when it comes to giving a sermon. But he’s got a great presence, hasn’t he?’

‘He looks sick to me. I knew a priest in New York like that. He had TB.’

‘Most of the American priests are of Irish origin, aren’t they?’

‘Around New York, maybe. There’s all kinds.’

‘The faith is very strong in America, isn’t it?’

‘Not like here. But we have some good priests. I knew

Father Duffy. Used to see him often.’

‘O?’ She looked puzzled.

‘Father Duffy. Padre of the Sixty-Ninth in World War One. They put up a statue of him, right in Times Square. I used to look at it and think about him. I never figured why, but it used to remind me of Ireland, that statue.’ He smiled. ‘I used to say we both worked Times Square, Father Duffy and me. But he’s been there longer. The statue, I mean.

She watched him as he walked on, saw his face smile, saw it turn cold and serious. What could he be thinking of? He seemed to be trying to remember something, perhaps an engagement, perhaps an excuse to leave her. For eventually, they all made some excuse. But when they reached the end of the street, he turned and took off his broad-brimmed hat.

‘I guess you’ve got a lot of things to do,’ he said. ‘You going back to the house?’

‘O, yes. But I go to see my friends, the O’Neills, every Sunday afternoon. He’s a professor at the university, you know. A very clever man. I used to know him when we were

children. And now he’s married with a lovely family of his own.’ Why did I say that, she thought, why? But it was her old fault, the old boasts, the shields against pity, agaivot being forced to say that nobody wanted to see you that particular

day. The old mistake. Now he would go away.

‘That so?’ His face showed disappointment.

She tried to undo it: to let him know that life was not all gay friends.

‘It’s so nice to have someone to visit occasionally when one lives alone.’

It was a forward thing to say, but she had to come out with it some time: besides, it was the truth, although nobody liked to admit being lonely. How many times before had she turned men away by her habit of boasting, of pretending that she had a good time all the time and needed no one. Looking at him, tall, no longer young, with his rough-red face and his built-up shoe, she knew that he would be easily turned away, that he had not stayed so long alone without something of herself in him. And maybe, although it was a thing you could hardly bear to think about, like death or your last judgment, maybe he would be the last one ever and he would walk away now and it would only be a question of waiting for it all to end and hoping for better things in the next world. But that was silly, it was never too late. And so she waited, pretending not to see him lift his hand to say good bye, waited for something, for some little chance to keep him.

‘Not much to do in this town, that’s a fact,’ he said. He scuffed his feet on the edge of the gutter. ‘I find the time long too. Not like New York.’ Then, as if he had suddenly thought of it: ‘Do you like the movies?’

‘You mean the pictures? O, yes.’

‘Doing anything tomorrow night?’

It was so vulgar, the way he put it, just like an invitation to a serving girl. But I mustn’t think like that any more, she told herself. Nobody cares about manners nowadays. Times have changed, you know they have.

‘Well, no,’ she said, smiling. ‘I don’t believe I am.’

‘Okay, let’s take in a show then. About seven, would that be all right?’

‘Lovely. And thank you very much.’

‘Fine.’ He raised his big hat. ‘I got a date uptown,’ he said. ‘So long now.’

He hurried offacross the street as though he were afraid she would change her mind and tell him so.

It was, she realised, the way she herself/eft others, after a successful theft of their time, after a promise, so terribly wanted, a promise that she could come again.

CHAPTER 5.

The fire was banked high and glowing in the handsome grate, the flowered chintz furniture covers had been freshly washed, and the silver, the brass, the mahogany, were polished and

gleaming. Copies of The Observer, the Sunday Times and the Sunday Independent lay on the sofa and there were cigarettes in two silver boxes. The warm, well-used feel of the drawing room, and the relaxed air of its occupants made the driving rain on tile window-panes an additional comfort as though emphasising that nothing in this dull provincial city could rival the pleasure of home on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Shaun O’Neill lifted his head from a book and glanced at the ornate, painted clock on the mantelpiece.

‘Five minutes,’ he said. ‘Or maybe ten. Let’s say ten minutes at most before the advent of the Great Bore.’

His mother shook her head: ‘How often do I have to tell you not to talk like that? You’ll be old soon enough yourself and glad of somebody to chat with.’

Una, his sister, rolled her magazine into a baton and struck at him. He ducked, catching her wrist, and they began to wrestle.

‘Now, stop that, you’ll break something,’ Mrs O’Neill said. Una freed herself and stood up with her back to the fire, a tall dark girl, wearing a smart grey wool dress.

‘What’s a word for danger in eight letters?’ Professor O’Neill asked. He sat in his favourite armchair to the right of the fire with a newspaper crossword puzzle on his lap, a big man with a harsh, handsome face, a shiny bald head and a tortoiseshell rimmed monocle set staring in his right eye. The monocle, attached to his coat lapel by a black silk ribbon which hooked over one of his large pointed ears, gave him a look of Mephistopheles in modern dress. He ignored the children’s horseplay. His voice and manner were mild.

‘Jeopardy,’ Kevin said, without looking up from his copy of Picture Post. He moved his small rump in its short trousers,

rubbing his woollen-socked ankles together. ‘Is that it?’ he asked his father.

‘Doesn’t go. At least, it doesn’t fit with some of the across

words.

‘Where’s Kathleen?’ Mrs O’Neill looked around the room, a small plump woman with grey hair and large brown eyes which missed nothing in her particular circle. ‘I thought Kathy was here. Is she studying, does anyone know?’

‘Can I have one of those sweets, Mam?’ Shaun asked, pointing to a box of chocolates on top of a bookcase.

‘You cannot. You’ve just eaten enough lunch for two.’

‘Yes, but I’m going out. I told Rory Lacey that I’d go over some physics with him.’

‘O, so we’re going out now, are we? I thought you said you were staying in. You didn’t do a single stroke of work all week-end and now everything has to be done when I want you to spend a little time with poor Judy Hearne.’

‘Talk of the devil,’ Una said. ‘Is that the door-bell?’ They all looked up, listening.

‘It’s only me. Shaun cried, in a high-pitched feminine voice. Una and Kevin echoed it.

‘It’s only me! It’s only me I’

Professor O’Neill stood up hurriedly, gathering the Sunday Times, his pipe, matches and tobacco pouch. ‘I’ll be in my study if you want me.’

Shaun bounced up from the sofa, big boned, adolescent. ‘I’ll come with you, Daddy.’

‘You’ll stay here, sir,’ Professor O’Neill said. ‘Stay for half an hour at least, to help your mother.’ He looked at his son and raised his hand against an unspoken protest. ‘Now, that’s enough. No nonsense.’

The O’Neills’ maid was coming upstairs as the professor left the drawing-room. ‘It’s Miss Hearne, sir,’

‘Well, just wait until I get into the study, Ellen. Then show her up to the drawing-room.’

Below, in the darkness of the hall, Miss Hearne was taking off her wet raincoat. She handed it to Ellen when the maid returned.

‘Thank you,, Ellen. Just hang this somewhere. I’ll find my own way up.

She climbed the stairs slowly, giving young Kevin time to escape to the chilly solitude of the attic and his chemistry set. Just like his father, she thought, seeing his small legs scuttle around the curve of the banisters, two flights above her. Always running off to work on something or other. Dear Owen, the child takes after him.

The drawing-room door was ajar. I wonder how many of them are in? Una and Shaun, and perhaps little Kathleen. And Moira herself, half asleep already. She knocked lightly on the drawing-room door.

‘It’s only me I’ she called.

There was a sound of movement inside and then Moira

O’Neill came forward, her arms outstretched in welcome. ‘Judy dear. And how are you?’