Free The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore Page B

the noise of the people kneeling again, the priest rushed ahead to the OfFertory and turned around to become not the living speech of the Missal but Father Francis Xavier Quigley, tall, ascetic, hollow white, pointing an accusing finger at his parishioners.
    ‘Quiet!’ he shouted. ‘And let me tell those people who just came in at the back of the Church that they’re late for Mass, that they’ve not fulfilled their obligation and that they should be ashamed of themselves. They’d better leave now because
     
    they’ll have to come back to twelve o’clock Mass to fulfil their duty.’
    Then whirled, with a swinging lurch of vestments, back to the altar. The congregation practised silence. But Mr Madden turned his head towards Miss Hearne and winked. No laughing matter, Miss Hearne thought. Father Quigley seemed like a terribly stern man.
    The priest offered the chalice and she read her Missal, thinking of Father Quigley and of this tall man from across the water who knelt beside her. Both big men, both stern men, both men who were not afraid of anything. She shut her Missal and offered up a special prayer to the Sacred Heart, asking Him if this could be the answer to all her novenas and good intentions: if this man who knelt beside her might not be the one the Sacred Heart had chosen Himself to help her in her moments of pain and suffering, to uphold her and help her uphold the right, to comfort her and act as a good influence in her struggle with her special weakness. And at the sacred moment of the Consecration, she touched her breast three times and asked the Sacred Heart for a sign, a sign that would reveal to her whether He in His infinite patience and mercy had answered her prayers.
    Before the last Gospel the congregation sat up on the seats and Father Quigley picked up the book of announcements and made his way across in front of the altar. A tiny altar boy ran ahead to open the gate and the parish priest went slowly across the aisle to the pulpit, leafing through the lists of the dead. As he mounted the pulpit steps, he was hidden from the congregation and the whispering started again. But then he emerged at the top like a watchman and the heads lifted, the sounds died to silence. A the back of the church, the ushers, moving quietly from long practice, passed the brass collection plates among their number.
    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

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    preliminary lighting, the priest’s white arid 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