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‘Well, that’s interesting,’ Mrs Henry Rice said, uninterested. ‘Have a bikky, Bernie?’
‘No thanks, Mama.’
He yawned, patting the opened circle of his mouth with a puffy hand. Above the yawn his eyes, unblinking, watched Miss Hearne, bringing the hot blood to her face.
‘I do believe I’ll just throw off this cardigan, if you don’t mind.’
‘I’ll hold your cup,’ Mrs Henry Rice offered amiably. ‘This room does get a little hot with a good fire going. But Bernie feels the cold a lot, always has.’
Who does he think he is, no manners, staring like that. Give him a stiff look myself. But no, no, he’s still looking. Upsetting. Turn to something else. That book, beside him, upside down, it’s esrev, verse, yes, English Century Seventeenth. Reading it, yes, he has a bookmark in it.
‘I see you’re interested in poetry, Mr Rice.’
‘O, Bernie’s a poet. And always studying. He’s at the university.’
‘I am not at the university, Mama,’ the fat man said. ‘I haven’t been at Queen’s for five years.’
‘Bernie’s a little delicate, Miss Hearne. He had to stop his studies a while back. Anyway, I think the boys work too hard up there at Queen’s. I always say it’s better to take your time. A young fellow like Bernie has lots of time, no need to rush through life. Take your time and you’ll live longer.’
That fatty must be thirty, if he’s a day, Miss Hearne told herself. Something about him. Not a toper, but something. O, the cross some mothers have to bear.
And the cross brought back the Sacred Heart, lying on the bed in the room upstairs, waiting for a hammer to nail Him up. Still, it was nice to sit here in front of a good warm fire with a cup of tea in your hand. And besides, Mrs Henry Rice and this horrid fatty would make an interesting tale to tell when she saw the O’Neills.
For it was important to have things to tell which interested your friends. And Miss Hearne had always been able to find interesting happenings where other people would find only dullness. It was, she often felt, a gift which was one of the great rewards of a solitary life. And a necessary gift. Because, when you were a single girl, you had to find interesting things to talk about. Other women always had their children and shopping and running a house to chat about. Besides which, their husbands often told them interesting stories. But a single girl was in a different position. People simply didn’t want to hear how she managed things like accommodation and budgets. She had to find other subjects and other subjects were mostly other people. So people she knew, people she had heard of, people she saw in the street, people she had read about, they all had to be collected and gone through like a basket of sewing so that the most interesting bits about them could be picked out and fitted together to make conversation. And that was why even a queer fellow like this Bernard Rice was a blessing in his own way. He was so funny and horrible with his ‘Yes, Mama,’ and ‘No, Mama,’ and his long blond baby hair. He’d make a tale for the O’Neills at Sunday tea.
So Miss Hearne decided to let the Sacred Heart wait. She smiled, instead, at Bernard and asked him what he had been studying at the university.
‘Arts,’ he said.
‘And were you planning to teach? I mean, when your health …’
‘I’m not planning anything,’ Bernard said quietly. ‘I’m writing poetry. And I’m living with my mother.’ He smiled at Mrs Henry Rice as he said it. Mrs Henry Rice nodded her head fondly.
‘Bernard’s not like some boys,’ she said. ‘Always wanting to leave their poor mothers and take up with some woman and get married far too young. No, Bernard likes his home, don’t you, Bernie?’
‘Nobody else knows my ways as well as you, Mama,’ Bernard said softly. He turned to Miss Hearne. ‘She’s really an angel, Mama is, especially when I don’t feel well.’
Miss Hearne couldn’t think of anything to say. Something about him, so insincere. And staring at me like that, what’s the matter with me, is my skirt up? No, of course not. She tugged her skirt snug about her calves and resolutely turned the conversation towards a common denominator.
‘We’re in Saint Finbar’s here, I believe. That’s Father Quigley’s parish, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, he’s the PP. Isn’t he a caution?’
‘O, is that so? I heard he was a wonderful man,’ Miss Hearne said. ‘Goodness knows, religion is a comfort, even in conversation. If we hadn’t the priests to talk about, where would we be half the time?’
‘He’s very outspoken, I mean,’ Mrs Henry Rice corrected herself. ‘I’ll tell you a story I heard only last week. And it’s the gospel truth.’
Mrs Henry Rice paused and looked sideways at Bernard. ‘Last week,’ she said, ‘Father Quigley was offered a new Communion rail for the church from a Mrs Brady that used to keep a bad house. And do you know what he told her?’
‘What Mrs Brady would that be?’ Miss Hearne said faintly, unsure that she had heard it right. A ‘bad house’ did she say? It certainly sounded like it. Well, that sort of place shouldn’t be mentioned, let alone mentioned in connection with the Church. You read about them in books, wicked houses, and who would think there were such places, right here in Belfast. She leaned forward, her black eyes nervous, her face open and eager.
‘Well, as I said, she’s the one that ran a bad house for men over on the Old Lodge Road,’ Mrs Rice said. ‘A terrible sort of woman. So, like all those bad women, she began to get afraid when she knew her time was coming near, and she decided to go to confession and mend her ways. The house was closed up last year and she’s been a daily communicant ever since. So, a couple of weeks ago – I heard it from one of the ladies in the altar society – she went to see Father Quigley and said she wanted to present a new Communion rail to Saint Finbar’s. Wrought iron from Spain, all the finest work.’
Mrs Henry Rice paused to watch Miss Hearne’s reaction.
‘Well, I never!’ Miss Hearne said.
‘And do you know what Father Quigley said to her? He just drew himself up, such a big powerful stern man, you know what he looks like, and he said, ‘Look here, my good woman, let me ask you straight out, where did you get the money?’
‘Good heavens,’ Miss Hearne said, thrilling to every word. ‘And what did she say to that, the creature?’
‘Well, that took her back, no denying. She just fretted and fussed and finally she said she made the money in her former business. Her business, if you please. So Father Quigley just looked down at her, with that stiff look of his, and said to her, he said: “Woman,” he said, “do you think I’ll have the good people of this parish kneeling down on their bended knees to receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ with their elbows on the wages of sin and corruption?” That’s the very thing he said.’
‘And right too,’ Miss Hearne commented. ‘That was putting her in her place. I should think so, indeed.’
Bernard pulled the poker out of the coals and lit a cigarette against its reddened end. ‘Poor Mama,’ he said. ‘You always mix a story up. No, no, that wasn’t the way of it at all. You’ve forgotten what Mrs Brady said, right back to him.’
Mrs Henry Rice gave him a reproachful glance. ‘Never mind, Bernie. I did not forget. But I wouldn’t lower myself to repeat the insolence of a one like that Mrs Brady.’
‘But that’s the whole point,’ Bernard said, pushing the poker back among the coals. ‘Wait till I tell you her answer.’ And he leaned forward towards Miss Hearne, his white, fat face split in a smile of anti-clerical malice. His voice changed, mimicking the tones of the bad Mrs Brady.
‘She said to him: “Father, where do you think the money came from that Mary Magdalene used to anoint the feet of Our Blessed Lord? It didn’t come from selling apples,” she said. And that’s the real story about Father F. X. Quigley, if you want to know.’
When he said this, Bernard laughed. His cheeks wobbled like white pudding.
‘What a shocking disrespect for the priest,’ Miss Hearne said. Where did the ointment come from anyway? Sometimes it made you see that you should read your Douay and know it better in order to be able to give the lie to rascals like this fat lump. But for the life of her she couldn’t remember where Mary Magdalene had got the money. What matter, it was an out-and-out sin to quote Scripture to affront the priest. She put her teacup down.
‘The devil can quote Scripture to suit his purpose,’ she said.
‘Just so,’ Mrs Henry Rice agreed. ‘But what else could you expect from the likes of Mrs Brady? No decent woman would talk to her.’
‘Well – when I think of it – that hussy!’ Miss Hearne said. ‘It’s downright blasphemy, that’s what it is, saying a thing like that in connection with Our Blessed Lord. O, my goodness, that reminds me. My picture. It’s of the Sacred Heart and I always hang it up as soon as I get in a new place. I mustn’t be keeping you. The hammer.’
‘The hammer. I forgot all about it,’ Mrs Henry Rice said. ‘Now, let me think. O, I know.’
She stood up, opened the door and yelled into the hall.
‘Mary! May-ree!’
A voice called back. ‘Ye-ess!’
‘Get the hammer out of the top drawer in the dresser in the attic,’ Mrs Henry Rice bawled. She closed the door and turned back to Miss Hearne.
‘Another cup of tea before you go?’
‘O, no, really, it’s been lovely. Just perfect, thank you very much.’
‘She’s a new girl, you know,’ Mrs Henry Rice said, nodding towards the door. ‘I got her from the nuns at the convent. A good strong country girl. But they need a lot of breaking in, if you know what I mean.’
Miss Hearne, completely at home with this particular conversation, having heard it in all its combinations from her dear aunt and from her friends, said that if you got a good one it was all right, but sometimes you had a lot of trouble with them.
‘You have to be after them all the time,’ Mrs Henry Rice said, moving into the familiar groove of such talk. ‘You know, it’s a wonder the nuns don’t do more with them before they send them out to take a place. Badly trained, or not trained at all, is about the height of it.’
‘Even when these girls are trained, they’re not used to the city,’ Miss Hearne said. ‘I know the trouble friends of mine have had with convent-trained girls, taking up with soldiers and other riff-raff. Indeed, I often think the nuns are too strict. The girls behave like children as soon as …’
But she did not finish because at that moment there was a knock on the door and Mary came in. She was a tall, healthy girl with black Irish hair, blue eyes and firm breasts pushing against the white apron of her maid’s uniform. Miss Hearne looked at her and thought she would do very nicely indeed. If you were civil to these girls, they often did little odd jobs that needed doing.
So she smiled at Mary and was introduced by Mrs Henry Rice. The hammer was given into her hands and she fumbled with it, saying thank you, and that she would return it as soon as she had finished hanging her picture. Mrs Henry Rice said there was no hurry and to let them know if she needed anything else, and then Miss Hearne went back up the two flights of stairs to her room.
She found a picture hook and began to nail the Sacred Heart over the head of the bed. And then, thinking back on the people downstairs, it occurred to her that while Bernard Rice was interesting in a horrible sort of way, he was also creepy-crawly and the sort of person a woman would have to look out for. He looked nosey and she felt sure he was the sort of slyboots who would love prying into other people’s affairs. And saying the worst thing he could about what he found. Instinctively, she looked at her trunks and saw that they were locked. Just keep them that way, she told herself. I wouldn’t put it past him to creep in here some day when I’m out. Still, his mother is certainly friendly, if a little soft where her darling boy is concerned. And the fire and the tea were nice and warming.
She stood back and surveyed the Sacred Heart. Prayers, she must say later. Meanwhile, she drew the curtains and lit the gas stove. With the electric light on and the gas stove spluttering, warming the white bones of its mantles into a rosy red, the new bed-sitting-room became much more cheerful. Miss Hearne felt quite satisfied after her cup of tea and biscuit, so, after unpacking some more of her things, she laid her flannel nightgown on the bed and turned the covers down. It had all gone very well really, and the cab driver had looked quite happy with the shilling she gave him for carrying the trunks upstairs. It should have been more, but he hadn’t said anything nasty. And that was the main thing. She was moved in, she had chatted with the landlady and as a bonus, she had a couple of interesting stories to tell. The one about Father Quigley was not for mixed company, but it was certainly interesting. She decided to discard Bernard’s ending. It just wasn’t suitable and spoiled the whole point. And then there was Mrs Henry Rice and Bernard himself. They’d be something to talk about. Maybe some of the young O’Neills knew Bernard if he had been at Queen’s.
Miss Hearne unpacked the little travelling clock which had come all the way from Paris as a gift to her dear aunt. It was only seven, too early to go to bed. But she was tired and tomorrow was Friday, with nothing to do but unpack. Besides, if she went to sleep soon, she wouldn’t need any supper.
She put the clock on the bed-table and switched on the little bed lamp. Then she undressed and knelt to say her prayers. Afterwards, she lay between the covers in the strange bed, watching the shadows of the new room. When the reddened mantles of the stove had cooled to whiteness and the chill of the night made goose-pimples on her forearms outside the covers, she looked over at her dear aunt and then turned her head to look up at the Sacred Heart. She said good night to them both, then switched off the bed light and lay, snuggled in, with only her nose and eyes out of the covers, remembering that both of them were there in the darkness. They make all the difference, Miss Hearne thought, no matter what aunt was like at the end. When they’re with me, watching over me, a new place becomes home.
2 (#ulink_8053893e-c0ae-50da-990c-6a507c804275)
Her eyes, opening, saw the ceiling, the frozen light of what day? Sight, preceding comprehension, mercifully recorded familiar objects in the strangeness of the whole. Led the blind mind to memory; to this awakening.
She sat up, her hair falling around her shoulders, feeling a gelid draught through the flannel stuff of her nightgown. Her thighs and calves, warmed in the moist snuggle of sheets, were still lax, weary, asleep. The gilded face of her little travelling clock said ten past seven. She lay back, pulling the yellow blankets up to her chin and looked at the room.
A chair, broadbeamed, straight-backed, sat in the alcove by the bay window, an old pensioner staring out at the street. Near the bed, a dressing-table, made familiar by her bottle of cologne, her combs and brushes and her little round box of rouge. Across the worn carpet was a wardrobe of brown varnished wood with a long panel mirror set in its door. She looked in the mirror and saw the end of her bed, the small commotion of her feet ruffling the smooth tucked blankets. The wardrobe was ornamented with whorls and loops and on either side of the door mirror was a circle of light-coloured wood. The circles seemed to her like eyes, mournful wooden eyes on either side of the reflecting mirror nose. She looked away from those eyes to the white marble mantelpiece, cracked down one support, with its brass fender of Arabic design. Her Aunt D’Arcy said good day in silver and sepia-toned arrogance from the exact centre of this arrangement, while beside the gas fire a sagging, green-covered armchair waited its human burden. The carpet below the mantelpiece was worn to brown fibre threads. She hurried on, passing over the small wash-basin, the bed-table with its green lamp, to reach the reassurance of her two big trunks, blacktopped, brass-bound, ready to travel.
She twisted around and unhooked the heavy wool dressing-gown from the bedpost. Put it on her shoulders and slid her feet out of bed into blue, fleecy slippers. Cold, a cold room. She went quickly to the gas fire and turned it on, hearing its startled plop as the match poked it into life. She spread her underthings to warm; then fled back across the worn carpet to bed. Fifteen minutes, she said, it will take fifteen minutes to heat the place at all.
There was no hurry. Friday, a dull day, a day with nothing at all to do. Although it would be interesting at breakfast to see what sort of food Mrs Henry Rice gave and who the others were. She lay abed twenty minutes, then washed in cold water and went shivering to the mean heat of the stove. She slipped on her underthings under the concealing envelope of her nightgown, a habit picked up at the Sacred Heart convent in Armagh and retained, although keeping warm had long supplanted the original motive of modesty, which occasioned the fumblings, the exertions and the slowness of the manoeuvre. When she finally pulled the nightgown over her head, she was fully dressed, except for the dress itself. It was time for her morning hair-brushing exercise. She set great store by it: it kept one’s hair dark, she said, and if you did not wash the hair, ever, it kept its sheen and colour. Her hair, visible proof, was dark brown with a fine thickness and smooth lustre.
So each morning it was her custom to sit conscientiously at the mirror, her head bent to one side, tugging the brush along the thick rope of her hair, counting the strokes, thinking of nothing except the act of doing the exercise, her head jerking slightly with each long, strong stroke of the brush.
But this morning, hair brushing actually had to be hurried because it would never do to be late one’s first morning in a new place. Especially when there were other boarders to meet. She had said three, Mrs Henry Rice, were they men or women? Maybe, most likely, men, and what if one were charming?
Her angular face smiled softly at its glassy image. Her gaze, deceiving, transforming her to her imaginings, changed the contour of her sallow-skinned face, skilfully refashioning her long pointed nose on which a small chilly tear had gathered. Her dark eyes, eyes which skittered constantly in imagined fright, became wide, soft, luminous. Her frame, plain as a cheap clothes-rack, filled now with soft curves, developing a delicate line to the bosom.
She watched the glass, a plain woman, changing all to the delightful illusion of beauty. There was still time: for her ugliness was destined to bloom late, hidden first by the unformed gawkiness of youth, budding to plainness in young womanhood and now flowering to slow maturity in her early forties, it still awaited the subtle garishness which only decay could bring to fruition: a garishness which, when arrived at, would preclude all efforts at the mirror game.
So she played. Woman, she saw her womanish glass image. Pulled her thick hair sideways, framing her imagined face with tresses. Gipsy, she thought fondly, like a gipsy girl on a chocolate box.
But the little clock chittering through the seconds said eight-fifteen and O, what silly thoughts she was having. Gipsy indeed! She rose, sweeping her hair up, the hairpins in her mouth coming out one by one and up, up to disappear in her crowning glory. There (pat) much better. A little more (pat) so. Good. Now, what to wear? A touch of crimson, my special cachet. But which? Reds are so fickle. Still, red is my colour. Vermilion. Yes. The black dress with the vermilion touch at collar and cuffs. Besides, it hasn’t been crushed by the moving.
She opened the wardrobe, breaking the unity of its imagined face. Her dressing-gown fell like a dismantled tent at her feet as she shrugged her angular body into the tight waist seams of the dress. Then, her garnets and the small ruby on her right hand. She rummaged in the jewel box, deciding that the pink and white cameo would be a little too much. But she wore her watch, the little gold wristlet watch that Aunt D’Arcy had given her on her twenty-first birthday. It didn’t really work well any more. The movement was wearing out. But it was a good watch, and very becoming. And goodness knows, she thought, first impressions are often last impressions, as old Herr Rauh used to say.
Then back to the dressing-table to tidy the strands of hair which her dress had ruffled. A teeny touch of rouge, well rubbed in, a dab of powder and a good sharp biting of her lips to make the colour come out. There, much better. She smiled fondly at her fondly smiling image, her nervous dark eyes searching the searching glass. Satisfied, she nodded to the nodding, satisfied face. Yes. On to breakfast.
The dining-room of Mrs Henry Rice’s Camden Street residence was furnished with pieces bought by her late husband’s father. A solid mahogany sideboard bulged from one wall, blossoming fruit bowls and empty whiskey decanters on its marble top. The table, a large oval of the same wood, islanded itself in the centre of the room, making passage difficult on either side. Around the table eight tall chairs rode like ships at anchor. Daylight fought its way down to the room past grey buildings and black backyards, filtering through faded gauze curtains which half hid two narrow windows. Over the sideboard this light discerned a gilt-framed oil painting in which a hunter raised his gun to fire at the misty outline of a stag. Beside the door, like an old blind dog, a grandfather clock wagged away the hours.
Around the table the guests sat in semi-gloom, silent except for the tiny crash of teacups and the tearing of hard toast. Cups and saucers moved up and down the table like items on an assembly belt, entering the little fortress where, ringed around by teapot, hot water jugs, tea cosies, milk jug, sugar bowl, plates, cutlery and a little bell, Mrs Henry Rice dispensed stimulants. Matutinal in a flowered housecoat, her hair sticking out from her head like a forkful of wet hay, she smiled a welcome to Miss Hearne and gestured her to a seat at the opposite end of the room.
‘This is Miss Hearne, our new boarder, everybody. I’ll do the rounds so that you can all get to know her. Now, first, this is Miss Friel. Miss Friel. Miss Hearne.’
Miss Friel bit on her toast and laid the crust reluctantly on her plate. She looked to Miss Hearne and nodded. Light blue dress, grey lisle stockings, short clipped whitish hair, like a fox terrier. A Pioneer Total Abstinence Pin rode her shelving bosom. Hard chapped hands and a red roughness about the wrists. There was a book in front of her, propped up against the jampot.
‘Mr Lenehan.’
Mr Lenehan rose, his head turned sideways, his thin mouth curving into a sickled smile. His clothes were clerical black and a battery of cheap fountain pens raised their silver and gold nozzles like a row of decorations across his chest. His collar was white, waxy, uncomfortable, imprisoning a dark green tie, loosely knotted around a brass collar stud.
‘Vary pleased to meet you, I’m sure,’ Mr Lenehan intoned.
Miss Hearne nodded, smiled, her eyes going on to the next, the most interesting.
‘And this is my brother James. Mr Madden. Miss Hearne.’
He was a big man. He alone had risen when she entered. He held his linen napkin like a waiter, waiting to seat her. She looked at his well-fed, rough-red face. His smile showed white false teeth. He was neat, but loudly dressed. A yellow tie with white golf balls on it, a suit of some brown silky stuff like shantung. Her brother, Mrs Henry Rice had said, but surely he was an American. Who else but an American would wear that big bluestone ring on his finger?
‘Glad to know you, Miss Hearne.’
I guessed right. An American for sure, by the sound of him. She smiled, waited for his male movement, the turning away, the rejection. But he winked at her with a merry blue eye and bending down, he drew her chair out from the table. He did not turn away.
They sat down, formally. Mrs Henry Rice asked her preference in matters of sugar and milk. The assembly line was set in motion and from the American’s blue-ringed hand a cup of tea was given into Miss Hearne’s possession. She said her thanks. Mrs Henry Rice smacked the little bell. Jing-jing-jing it cried.
Mary, young and flustered, put her face around the edge of the door.
‘Yes ’m.’
‘Did you bring Mr Bernard up his tray?’
‘Yes, ’m.’
‘Well, bring some hot toast then, for Miss Hearne. And see if the Irish News is here.’
Miss Hearne stirred genteelly. Miss Friel turned a page in her book and noisily bit off another mouthful of toast. Mr Lenehan took out a silver watch, consulted it, snapped the case shut. He slurped his tea and wiped his mouth with a napkin.
‘I’m late,’ he told the company. Nobody said anything. Miss Hearne, trying to be polite, looked at him in inquiry. He saw his audience. ‘Time and tide wait for no man, alas. Isn’t that a fact, Miss Hearne?’
‘Indeed it is, Mr Lenehan.’
‘Well, very nice to have met you,’ Mr Lenehan said, pushing his chair back from the table. He looked at the others. ‘So long, all.’
The American waved his hand. Miss Friel did not look up. Mrs Henry Rice nodded absentmindedly.
‘So long,’ Lenehan said again. And hurried out on his match thin legs. Good riddance, Miss Hearne thought, to bad rubbish. Why did I dislike him so much? O, well, maybe he’s not so bad after all. Old before his time. And something about him. Unpleasant.
She looked at the other. Mr Madden. And saw that he was looking at her. Embarrassed, she turned to Mrs Henry Rice.
‘I see a family resemblance. You and your brother. Yes, there’s a family resemblance, all right.’
‘James spent most of his life in the United States,’ Mrs Henry Rice told Miss Hearne. ‘Some see the likeness between us, but it escapes me. Still, I suppose it’s always that way with brothers and sisters.’
