The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore

Author:Brian Moore [Moore, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Literary, Women's Fiction, Single Women, Literary Fiction, British & Irish, Psychological
ISBN: 0771061358
Amazon: B004J4WLMI
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Published: 2011-08-16T16:00:00+00:00

seem funny, and if you were feeling down at the mouth, or a little lonely, there was nothing like it for cheering you up. She said as much to Edie Marrinan afterwards, and Edie laughed and said, it’s good, but whiskey’s the best ….

She and Edie drank several glasses of whiskey one night in Edie’s digs. The next day Miss Hearne felt awful. She ‘phoned Edie and told her and Edie laughed and said the only thing that will cure you, Judy, is a hair of the dog that bit you. Edie came over that same night with a Baby Power in her bag and Judy had to admit that it did wonders.

After that, she used to buy cheap whiskey in a shop in North Street where they were very discreet. Gin was cheaper and it didn’t smell, but it hadn’t the bite of the whiskey that was good for her bronchitis. And sometimes, when she needed it badly over a week-end, she would take the long tram ride out to Ballymacarret and buy it in a place that Edie showed her. There as nothing like it; medicinally, of course, to make you feel better. And goodness knows, Miss Hearne often thought, I need something to cheer me up.

For as the years wore on, there was not much to be cheerful about, old friends dying off, young men a thing of the past, and even Edie Marrinan, poor Edie, ill in a nursing home run by the nuns at Earnscliffe. And all the things Miss Hearne used to dream about in those lonely years with her poor dear aunt: Mr Right, a Paris honeymoon, things better not thought of now, all these things were dipping farther away each year a girl was single. So she cheered herself up as best she could and if she overdid it, it was a private matter between herself and her confessor, old Father Farrelly, and he was understanding, he liked a drink himself, right up to the end, in 1952, when he had a stroke one Friday night before devotions. But after him there were harsh young confessors, young men who didn’t really understand the circumstances. So Miss Hearne made a novena, after she lost three of her pupils because that Mrs Strain said she smelled of it one day when she met her in the street. She stopped drinking then, didn’t touch a drop. She bought two bottles and kept them in her trunk, a temptation which nightly it gave her comfort to resist. Truth to tell, she used to say to

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