THE LONELY PASSION OF JUDITH HEARNE Page 7

  Father Quigley laid the announcement book on the edge of the pulpit and sighted the clock underneath the organ loft. It began to rain outside and the stained glass windows grew dark, darkening the whole church as though it were evening and the sun had sunk out of sight. In this gloom, this sombre preliminary lighting, the priest’s white and gold vestments shone brightly out of the murk above his congregation. He lifted his long white hand and made the Sign of the Cross. Then he began:

  ‘I had in mind to say a few words about the Gospel of today, which you have all read, or at least the good people have read, the ones that bring their Missals and prayer-books to Mass of a Sunday morning and try to follow the Holy Sacrifice. But I’m not going to talk about the Gospel, because this Gospel doesn’t deal with the subject which has to be settled in this Church today, before this kind of hooliganism goes any further.’

  He paused, stared hollow-cheeked at the crowded gallery. Then pointed a long spatulate finger at the people sitting above.

  ‘You know what I mean, you people up there,’ he shouted in hard flat Ulster tones. ‘You that’s jiggling your feet and rubbing the backs of your heads along the fresh paint that was put on the walls. I mean the disrespect to the Holy Tabernacle and the Blessed Body of Our Lord here in it. I mean coming in late for Holy Mass. I mean inattention, young boys giggling with young girls, I mean running out at the Last Gospel before the Mass is over, I mean dirtying up the seats with big bloothers of boots, I mean the shocking attitude of people in this parish that won’t give half an hour to God of a Sunday morning but that can give the whole week to the devil without the slightest discomfort. I mean the young people, and a few of the older ones too, some of them that should know better but don’t because ignorance and cheekiness is something that they pride in and the House of God is just a place they want to get in and out of as fast as possible and without any more respect for it than if it was a picture house, aye, not half as much, for you can see those same people of a Saturday night, or any night they have a couple of shillings in their pockets, you can see them lining up two deep outside a picture house. But I’ll ask you one thing now, and I want you to examine your conscience and tell me if it isn’t true. Have you ever seen the young men of this parish queuing up to get into a sodality meeting? Or have you ever seen the girls and women of this parish lining up to get into the Children of Mary devotions? You have not, and I’ll tell any man he’s a liar if he says he has. Because I haven’t and I’m not at cinemas or dog tracks or dance halls during the week, I’m here, that’s where I am, here in the Church, with a few good souls listening to me and the benches empty, the sodalities, just a few good men stuck in the front benches and the House of God empty, aye, empty.

  ‘But the dog tracks aren’t empty, are they now? Celtic Park or Dunmore Park on the nights the dogs run, they’re not empty. Oh-ho no! No, no, the trams are full of young men and old men, and the buses too, and those that don’t have the price of the tram after the races are over are thick as flies on the pavement. And the taxis are kept running full blast too. Aye, there are dogs in those taxis, dogs sitting up like human beings while human beings walk. And there are men in those taxis too. Men with bags of money on their knees and bookmakers’ boards stuck on top of the taxis on the luggage racks. Aye, dogs ride home in taxis while Irishmen of this parish walk home without a penny piece in their pockets after giving it all away without a murmur. But let me ask for the money tomorrow for a new coat of paint for those walls that the young people of this parish seem to take a delight in dirtying up, and see the story I get. O Father, times has been very hard. Ah, yes, very hard. But not too hard to give that week’s wages to the dogs. No, never that hard. And not too hard for the young bits of girls nowadays to have plenty of money for powder and paint and silk stockings and chewing gum and cigarettes and all kinds of clothes which you wouldn’t see on a certain kind of woman in the old days. And not too hard to slap down a couple of shillings any night in the week to go into the cinema and look at a lot of people who’re a moral disgrace to the whole wide world gallivanting half naked in glorious technicolour. No, no, there’s always plenty of money for that.’

  He paused, breathing heavily. Looking up at him, Miss Hearne saw his nostrils flare like a horse that has run a race. Such a powerful speaker, she thought, so very direct. Not the old style of priest at all, doesn’t mince words, does he? But the young people, well, I think he’s right, goodness knows, those young girls I saw at . . .

  ‘Plenty of money!’ Father Quigley roared. ‘Plenty of money! Plenty of time! Plenty of time! Yes, the people of this parish have both of those things. Time and money. But they don’t have it for their church! They don’t even have an hour of a Sunday to get down on their bended knees before Our Blessed Lord and ask for forgiveness for the rotten things they did during the week. They’ve got time for sin, time for naked dancing girls in the cinema, time to get drunk, time to fill the publicans’ pockets and drink the pubs dry, time to run halfway across the town and stand in the rain watching a bunch of dogs race around a track, time to go to see the football matches, time to spend hours making up their football pools, time to spend in beauty parlours, time to go to foreign dances instead of ceilidhes, time to dance the tango and the foxtrot and the jitterbugging, time to read trashy books and indecent magazines, time to do any blessed thing you could care to mention. Except one.

  ‘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’ll 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 find 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 enough 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 closed 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 I 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 . . .’
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  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, the 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.

  ‘Ite 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 of harbour. 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 time 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, against 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 off across the street as though he were afraid she would change her mind and tell him so.

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

  CHAPTER V

  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 the 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.’