THE LONELY PASSION OF JUDITH HEARNE

by Brian Moore

  By convent telepathy, the old lay sister who guarded the door seemed to know the whole sorry story. ‘Humph!’ she snorted as Miss Hearne approached. ‘There you are. Ah, I knew Sister was foolish to let you in. No visitors. No visitors! It’s the rule.’

  But there was the taxi, consoling in its size, waiting, the meter ticking. The taxi driver courteously opened the door and helped her in. I’m leaving in style anyway, she thought, I hope they’re watching.

  The driver got in the front seat and started the motor. ‘Where to, please?’ he said as the car crunched off down the avenue.

  Where?

  O, I’m in trouble, in awful trouble. And nobody to help me. Where? I’ve got to talk to somebody, some friend, someone who can advise me, the faith, I’ve lost my faith, I’ve burned my boats and it will happen soon, it will happen. Now, if You’re there, she screamed wordlessly. Now show me. Anything, a bolt of lightning, strike me down, anything. But don’t leave me, don’t leave me alone.

  ‘I didn’t hear you, mum,’ the driver said. ‘Where did you say?’

  ‘O, anywhere. The Plaza. Take me back there.’

  And what will I do there? That room, the mess I made last night, the maid will have been in by now. And this. She looked down and felt her legs wet under her wet skirt. The bottle, I must throw away. Wasted. No, not the Plaza. Lonely there. Somebody I must tell. Who?

  Moira. Moira always liked me. She always tries to be my friend.

  ‘Wait,’ she said to the driver as the car passed the little gate lodge and moved into the traffic on the road outside. ‘I’ve changed my mind. Take me to twenty Melrose Avenue.’

  CHAPTER XVII

  ‘IT’s Miss Hearne, ma’am,’ Ellen said, coming back into the kitchen.

  Mrs O’Neill closed the oven door and gently adjusted the gas. ‘Now what on earth brings her here?’ she said, untying her apron. ‘And the children will be home for lunch in half an hour.’ She handed the apron to Ellen and went out of the kitchen, along the dark back corridor to the hall, where Miss Hearne waited, her red hat askew, her big bag clutched to her stomach.

  ‘Judy dear. And how are you?’

  ‘Moira.’ Miss Hearne pecked at Mrs O’Neill’s cheek. ‘I know you must be busy, but I had to have a talk with you.’

  Well, I swear she reeks like a booze factory, Mrs O’Neill said to herself. Could it be possible? Squiffy. Better not let the children see her.

  ‘I’d ask you to come up to the drawing-room, Judy, but the fire’s not lit. Let’s go in here.’ She opened the dining-room door. ‘There’s a stove in here and it’s nice and warm.’

  ‘We’ll be alone?’ Miss Hearne asked, looking around her in a frightened way. She sat down on one of the dining-room chairs and put her bag at her feet. Mrs O’Neill saw the neck of the gin bottle sticking out of the bag. Somehow, it was like seeing Miss Hearne with her clothes undone. She did not dare look at her caller.

  Miss Hearne did not notice her gaffe. She stared moodily at Mrs O’Neill’s arms, bare to the elbow and with traces of flour on the skin.

  ‘You were cooking,’ she said. ‘I interrupted you.’

  ‘O, not at all,’ Mrs O’Neill lied. ‘Ellen can finish it as well as if I was there. It was all done, anyway.’

  ‘I went to see Edie Marrinan this morning. Poor thing, she hardly knew me.’

  ‘Yes, poor Edie. I must go out and see her some day soon. It’s such a long way out.’ Surely she didn’t come here to talk about Edie Marrinan? Of course, if she’s as tight as she looks, there’s no telling. The poor soul, it’s that disappointment about the Yankee, the one she mentioned last Sunday. You have to feel sorry for her.

  ‘I wanted to get some advice from Edie, do you see?’ Miss Hearne said. ‘But she was too sick.’

  ‘O, that’s too bad, Judy. Was it something special?’

  Miss Hearne put her head down on the table and began to sob. Her red hat rolled off. Mrs O’Neill, embarrassed, picked it up. ‘What is it, Judy dear?’

  But Miss Hearne did not raise her head. She covered her face with her elbows and her shoulders shook with sobbing. ‘I have come to you,’ she cried. ‘You, of all people. And I never liked you, Moira, that’s the truth, I never liked you.’

  In vino veritas, Mrs O’Neill said to herself. But then, for some reason which she could not understand, she too felt as though she must cry. For after all, she thought, drunk or not, it must cost her something to say that to me. Because now she can never pretend again.

  ‘Well, Judy, I suppose you had your reasons. What can I do for you?’

  Miss Hearne lifted her teary face from the shelter of her elbows. Her rouge was smudged into two blurred scars across the paleness of her cheeks.

  ‘Moira. I’ve lost my faith. And I’ve left Camden Street and I’m living in the Plaza Hotel and everything’s finished, Moira, everything.’

  ‘But why, Judy, why?’

  ‘What am I doing with my life? I ask you,’ Miss Hearne cried loudly, leaning across the table and catching hold of Moira’s bare arm. ‘A single girl with no kin, what am I doing? O Moira, you always were the lucky one, a husband and children around you, you’ll never know what it’s like to be me.’

  ‘Judy dear, I know it must be hard at times. But just a little bit quieter, please Judy! The children.’

  ‘But I have to say it, I have to tell somebody and you’ve always been kind to me, inviting me over here on Sundays, you’ll never know what it meant to me, Moira, to come here and sit with a family and feel that I belonged here, that I was welcome. Do you know what I mean, Moira, do you know what I mean?’

  Only you didn’t belong, you poor thing, Mrs O’Neill thought sadly. ‘Yes, Judy, I think I know.’

  ‘And then, just a few weeks ago, I might have got married. Do you know how long I’ve waited to be married, Moira? Do you know how many long years, every one of them twelve long months? Well, I’ll tell you, it’s twenty odd years, Moira, if you count from the time I was twenty. O, I know I didn’t think about it all that time — when my aunt was ill, I gave up thinking about it for a while. But a woman never gives up, Moira, does she? Even when she’s like me and knows it’s impossible, she never gives up. There’s always Mr Right, Moira, only he changes as the years go by. At first he’s tall, dark and handsome, a young man, Moira, and then you’re not so young and he’s middle-aged, but still tall and handsome. And then there’s moments when he’s anybody, anybody who might be eligible. O, I’ve looked at all sorts of men, men I didn’t even like. But that’s not the end, that’s not the worst of it.’

  Her fingernails dug into the flesh of Moira’s arm. She leaned forward, across the table, her dark nervous eyes filled with confessional zeal.

  ‘No, no, I’m going to tell you the whole thing, Moira, the whole thing. Because I have to tell it to somebody, somebody must listen. That’s not the worst when he’s just anybody who might be eligible. You might as well forget about eligible men. Because you’re too late, you’ve missed your market. Then you’re up for any offers. Marked down goods. You’re up for auction, a country auction, where the auctioneer stands up and says what am I bid? And he starts at a high price, saying what he’d like best. No offers. Then second best. No offers. Third? No offers. What am I bid, Moira? and somebody comes along, laughable, and you take him. If you can get him. Because it’s either that or back on the shelf for you. Back to your furnished room and your prayers. And your hopes.’

  Mrs O’Neill began to weep. ‘O Judy,’ she said. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Your hopes,’ Miss Hearne repeated, her dark eyes clouded and strange. ‘Only you’ve got no hopes left, Moira. Then you’re like me. You’ve got daydreams instead and you want to hold on to them. And you can’t. So you take a drink to help them along, to cheer you up. And anybody, Moira, who so much as gives you a kind word is a prince. A prince. Even if he’s old and ugly and common as mud. Even if the best he can say for himself is that he was a hotel doorman in New York. Would you believe t
hat now, would you believe it?’

  The American. The one she was talking about. A doorman. O, the poor soul!

  ‘That would be bad enough, wouldn’t it?’ Miss Hearne cried. ‘Bad enough, yes, you’d be ashamed of yourself. And rightly so. But there’s worse yet. What if that doorman turned you down? TURNED YOU DOWN!’

  Miss Hearne stopped, open-mouthed, her face quivering. ‘Have you got a drink, Moira?’ she said. ‘I need a drink.’

  Mrs O’Neill got up from the table and went over to the side-board. She unlocked the liquor cabinet and took out a bottle of whiskey. (Afterwards, she said she just knew instinctively it was whiskey was wanted, although, if she had stopped to think of it, she said, she would have realised that the poor soul didn’t need another drink, seeing she had far too many in her already.) She took a glass from another shelf and poured a tot of whiskey into it. This she placed in front of Miss Hearne and sat down beside her. Not a word had been spoken.

  Miss Hearne put the whiskey to her lips and drank it down neat. She put the glass back on the table and they sat there, side by side, in silence. At last Miss Hearne shook her head.

  ‘That’s what I’ve come to, Moira. Turned down by a doorman. And what’s more, I didn’t want to be turned down. I’d take him yet.’

  Mrs O’Neill patted her arm. There seemed nothing to say.

  ‘Nobody wants me, Moira. I’m too old. And I’m too ugly. Yes, he was the last one and now I’m left on the shelf.’

  ‘Now Judy,’ Mrs O’Neill said. ‘There are other things in life besides that. You have lots of friends, you know.’

  ‘But I don’t. I don’t.’

  ‘Judy, that’s not so. And besides, just because life is hard at present, there’s no need to think it will always be hard. Now, why don’t you let me see you home and then you have a nice lie down for a while. You’ll feel better about all this tomorrow. Remember, God has given us all heavy crosses to bear.’

  ‘God!’ Miss Hearne said bitterly. ‘What does He care? Is there a God at all, I’ve been asking myself, because if there is, why does He never answer our prayers? Why does He allow all these things to happen? Why?’

  ‘O, you’re not yourself, Judy,’ Mrs O’Neill said, shocked. ‘You don’t really mean that.’

  ‘I do. I do.’

  ‘Now, Judy, why don’t you let me take you home? Tomorrow, when you feel better, you can go and talk things over with your confessor.’

  ‘He won’t listen to me,’ Miss Hearne said, beginning to cry again.

  ‘Now, that’s nonsense, Judy. Of course, he will. Have you talked to him already?’

  ‘He didn’t pay any attention!’

  ‘Well, perhaps he didn’t understand how seriously you felt. Go and see him again. Or you can go and see an Order priest. They’re very understanding.’

  ‘Mama?’ A voice said at the door. Mrs O’Neill hastily stood up, blocking Miss Hearne from the newcomer.

  ‘What is it?’ she said crossly. ‘I’m busy.’

  ‘Hello, Miss Hearne,’ the little girl said.

  ‘Hello, Kathy. My own Kathleen,’ Miss Hearne cried, getting up from her chair. She advanced, falteringly, her arms wide in welcome.

  ‘Judy!’ Mrs O’Neill detained her. ‘Run along, Kathy, I’m too busy to talk to you now.’

  She hurried the little girl out of the room. But the child had seen Miss Hearne advancing in a parody of affection, her outstretched arms trembling like a pilgrim’s.

  And Miss Hearne saw the fright in the child’s face. And the way Mrs O’Neill came between them. She turned, clutching the dining-room table and searching Mrs O’Neill’s face for the truth, seeing herself, a child, hurried on along the street when a drunk man passed. Not in front of the children. What have I done? she thought, allowing Mrs O’Neill to seat her in a chair. Coming here like this, in this condition, telling her all those secrets, telling her what I think of her.

  And it came to her then that in all the years she had known the O’Neills, they had never really known her. In all the thousands of conversations with Moira, she had never so much as hinted at the things she had told today, openly, irrevocably. All the years of polite chatter, all the small Christmas presents exchanged, all the little courtesies accepted, the wine, the cakes, the tea, all of these things had been swept away for ever by this one small encounter. The child at the door; the mother hurrying to shelter it from these signs of an adult grief, an adult failing; the drink poured not in hospitality but to supply a shameful need; the confession of feeling, the admission that she disliked Moira, nullifying scores of Sunday afternoons of polite inquiry, hundreds of false pleasant welcomes; all of these things came to her mind now with brutal clarity. The choice of the dining-room as a place to talk had not been for the purpose stated: it had been to hide her from the children, to keep her shameful condition from their eyes. And Moira’s kind words were only to calm her down, to shut off this shocking flow of unwanted confidence. In Moira’s eyes I am drunk, that is all she sees, a drunk person, nobody takes them seriously. Lie down and you’ll feel better. Nobody listens.

  I am drunk.

  I must get out.

  She bent to the floor to pick up her bag and saw the shameful neck of the bottle sticking out of it. O! Her red hat rolled off her head again and settled on the carpet. Mrs O’Neill picked it up.

  ‘I must go now,’ Miss Hearne said, scrabbling to hide the bottle inside her bag. ‘I’m sorry, Moira, I must have been an awful nuisance to you. With your lunch ready and everything. I must go at once.’

  ‘That’s perfectly all right,’ Mrs O’Neill said, handing her the red hat. ‘I think I’d better take you home in a taxi. Just wait a minute while I get my hat and coat.’

  ‘No, no. I’m going alone. No, you mustn’t come.’

  ‘It’s no trouble, Judy. I’d feel happier if I went with you. Then you can have a good nap and you’ll feel better.’

  The red hat would not fit somehow. Mrs O’Neill straightened it. ‘There, that’s better. I’ll get a taxi.’

  ‘I have a taxi. It’s outside now. And I’m going alone.’

  ‘A taxi? Waiting all this time?’

  ‘Yes. Good bye, Moira.’ She did not kiss her. I couldn’t. Not after what I said.

  But Mrs O’Neill impulsively put her arms around Miss Hearne and kissed her on the cheek. ‘O Judy,’ she said. ‘Take care of yourself.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Moira.’ The tears, uncontrollable, began again in her eyes.

  ‘Nothing to be sorry about.’ But Mrs O’Neill looked cautiously into the hall before she showed her out. They clasped hands again.

  ‘Sure you’ll be all right?’

  ‘Yes. Good bye dear.’

  ‘Good bye.’

  Moira watched as she walked to the waiting cab.

  Watching me, mustn’t stumble. Mustn’t stu . . .

  ‘Here you are, mum.’ The taxi driver steadied her. ‘That’s right.’

  He helped her in and shut the door. It was beginning to rain. Through the blurred pane of glass she saw Moira wave, standing at the door of her house.

  ‘Where to now, mum?’

  Where?

  CHAPTER XVIII

  REVEREND Francis Xavier Quigley was taking his ease in front of a roaring fire in the back parlour of his presbytery, his black boots propped up on the fender, a copy of the Tablet rising and falling gently on his lap. Nearby, on his cluttered desk, the monthly report on the School Building Fund waited his scrutiny as did the returns from the Black Baby Society. But Father Quigley’s eyes were closed. It was the slack time of day, half-past one. Two whole hours of peace before his afternoon calls.

  ‘There’s a woman to see you, Father,’ said Mrs Connolly.

  Father Quigley opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. ‘What?’

  ‘She come in a taxi,’ Mrs Connolly offered.

  ‘Is it somebody sick?’

  ‘She kept the taxi-man waiting, Father.’

  Father Qui
gley closed his eyes.

  ‘To tell the truth, Father, I think she has a drop taken.’

  ‘Well, find out what she wants.’

  ‘I told her to come back later, Father, but she didn’t heed me. She wouldn’t let on what she wanted, Father.’

  Father Quigley swung his feet from the fender to the floor. The Tablet fell beside the grate.

  ‘She’s in the front parlour, Father,’ Mrs Connolly said, her mission accomplished.

  Father Quigley pulled the ends of his black clerical waistcoat down over his hard narrow stomach. His hollow-cheeked face flushed by the fire, he left the cosy warmth and strode down the dark presbytery hall. The taxi driver, waiting by the front door, did not salute him. Father Quigley gave him a sharp look and went into the parlour.

  ‘Good afternoon.’

  The woman looked at him out of staring dark eyes that were swollen from weeping. Her red hat was awry, her red raincoat unbuttoned down the front. She came forward, through the maze of worn Victorian furniture, and fell on her knees at his feet, clutching his trouser legs.

  ‘O Father, Father, help me,’ she sobbed.

  Father Quigley disengaged her clutching hands from his shanks and surreptitiously hoisted his trousers. Then he bent down and dragged the woman to her feet.

  ‘Now, now,’ he said. ‘Control yourself. What’s the matter?’ But, as he said it, he smelled the drink off her. Stocious, she is, stocious drunk.

  ‘O Father . . .’

  Father Quigley guided her to a chair. ‘Sit down,’ he ordered. He sat down opposite her. ‘Have you been drinking?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘And you mean to say you’ve come here to see me, drunk?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Father. But Father, I had to. I need your help.’

  ‘What kind of help?’

  ‘You know!’ the woman said.