Reckless (8 page)

The monsignor fell silent, perplexed.

‘He was crying, Monsignor. The sins of the world made him cry for us. He told me we must love each other or perish. He told me a great wind would come. He showed me the great wind. The sun went out and the wind swept over the land and all the trees and the houses and the people in them were destroyed. He told me I must tell everyone, Monsignor, before it’s too late.’

‘When will it be too late, Mary?’

‘I don’t know, Monsignor. I think he may tell me that this evening.’

‘This evening?’

‘He’ll come to me for the last time. He promised.’

‘May I be there, Mary? Would you mind?’

‘No, Monsignor.’ She sounded genuinely puzzled. ‘Why would I mind? I would wish that all of you could see him as I see him.’

‘Why do you think he has chosen you, Mary?’

‘I asked him that, Monsignor. He said, because my heart is open, and I have faith.’

The monsignor sighed, and looked round to meet Father Flannery’s eyes.

‘I shall join you this evening,’ he said.

*

On the final evening of Mary Brennan’s visions the little beach was crowded. Word had spread far beyond the village. There were people from Rosbeg and Portnoo and Ardara and Kilkenny, such a scrum that Eamonn Brennan and the priest had to make a space for Mary to walk clear to the water’s edge. Monsignor McCloskey was there, and a man from the newspaper come up from Donegal with a flash camera.

‘You’ll not be making flashes at her when she’s talking to Our Lord,’ said Father Flannery, and the cameraman said no, he would take his pictures afterwards.

Mary Brennan was not disturbed one bit by the crowd. The priest asked her if she would like them sent away, and she said, ‘No, Father. The more who come the better. I have so many people to tell.’

It was this that impressed the priest as much as anything, the humble practical way in which the girl saw the whole business as a task entrusted to her, much as you might give her a letter to take to the post. There was no vanity in her. So supposing Jesus had a message to give to the world, who would he choose? Surely just such an innocent child as this.

As they waited for sunset there was much talk in the crowd about the now famous stillness. They all knew that at the moment Jesus came walking on the water, the sea would become still. Only Mary Brennan would see and hear Jesus, but all of them would witness the stillness.

And so it proved. Mary went forward, apart from the crowd, and reached out her arms. The sun, partly in clouds, sent out its golden setting light over the water. And the sea became still. Not everyone saw it, but many did. Father Flannery saw it. The monsignor thought he did not see it, there were waves still washing in to the beach, and out to sea there was the gentle heave of the swell. But then for a moment there did seem to come a pause, and a silence. But perhaps he only imagined it.

Mary spoke to Jesus, they saw her lips move, but no one heard her words. Then after a little time, in the afterlight of the sunset, she turned and faced them all, gathered in the little rock-girt bay.

‘Dear friends,’ she said. ‘I’m not speaking to you in my own words, but in the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. I’m only the voice.’

This voice was soft and small, and partly obscured by the hiss and rush of the waves. Those who were nearest to her remembered what she said and repeated it afterwards, and out of these repetitions came the prophecy, which took several forms. However, everyone who had been present that evening agreed that Jesus, speaking through the child, was saddened by the sinfulness of mankind.

‘Why do you hurt each other so, when I made you to love each other?’

Mary spoke of Noah and the flood, when God looked upon the earth and saw that it was corrupt and filled with violence and said, I will destroy man who I’ve created. Now such a time had come again. This time all living things would be destroyed by a great wind. Everyone remembered Mary speaking of the great wind.

‘When this great wind sweeps over the land,’ she said, ‘it will be made clean. Jesus told me these things weeping.’

They remembered that most of all, how Jesus wept for the child, there in Buckle Bay.

‘Tell my children,’ said Mary, speaking in the words given her by Jesus, ‘you must love each other or perish. Time is running out. I asked my Lord, When will this happen? He told me, Yours is the generation that will perish. I asked my Lord, What can we do? He told me, Love each other, and love my Father in heaven. I asked my Lord, will there be a warning given to us before the great wind comes? He told me, When the time is near I will speak with you again.’

So there it was: the warning, the prophecy, the promise. All this was felt to be a great honour and a responsibility by the people of Kilnacarry.

‘Now I’ve done as I was told,’ said the child in her soft voice. ‘I’ve spoken all the things he said. There’s nothing more.’

As she fell silent the flash camera exploded with a pop, and
her ecstatic face was lit up for a second, and they all saw. The girl’s simple clear speech had a profound effect on all who heard it.

‘Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all the Holy Martyrs!’ murmured old Molly Lynch. ‘Haven’t I been saying it for years? The world has gone to the bad.’

In low voices they repeated to each other the words of Mary’s warning, crossing themselves as they did so. The two priests conferred in undertones as the crowd dispersed into the night.

‘There’s nothing against the doctrines of the Church in what she says,’ said the monsignor. ‘A call to repentance is always timely. But this talk of a great wind disturbs me.’

‘That’s the part they’ll all be spreading,’ said Father Flannery.

‘We have to guard against needless panic.’

‘That, and the stillness.’

Monsignor McCloskey said nothing to that, but Father Flannery could tell that he had been affected by the evening’s events.

‘I believe her to be honest,’ said Father Flannery.

‘Oh, she’s honest, all right,’ said the monsignor. ‘But even an honest person can be deluded.’

‘Did she sound deluded to you?’

‘Time will tell. The Church in her wisdom does not rush to judgement on such matters. It was thirteen years before the visions of Fatima were declared worthy of belief.’

*

The next day, August 9 1945, the local newspaper carried an account of a terrible new weapon that had been dropped on Hiroshima to end the war against Japan. Father Flannery read about the ‘cosmic bomb’ which harnessed ‘the force from which the sun draws its power’. He read how a single bomb had destroyed an entire city, ‘wiping it off the face of the earth’. He read how there were many more such cosmic bombs waiting to be unleashed.

‘The great wind,’ he murmured to himself.

On that day the lethargy dropped off him, and he made a resolution. He would break himself of the little selfishnesses of the priestly life. He would devote the rest of his days to propagating this message God had seen fit to put into the mouth of a child of his parish. He would build a shrine at Buckle Bay, and make it a place of pilgrimage so that the word might be spread far and wide. And he would protect Mary Brennan, so that her purity of heart might remain untouched, and God continue to find in her a vessel for His word. There was after all, by her own account, one final warning to come before the prophesied destruction.

Ours is the generation that will perish.

His name was Rupert, which she found funny because it was like Rupert Bear. But even at the age of seven Pamela understood that he was not a funny man but a sad man. She liked this about him. She too was sad, as was only proper for a child whose father had recently died. She also liked Rupert for not being in love with her mother, the way everyone else was.

‘Mummy, why doesn’t Rupert like you?’

‘Who says he doesn’t like me?’ said Kitty Avenell, sitting before her dressing table in her bedroom, brushing her hair.

‘Well, he doesn’t look at you that way.’

Kitty laid down her hairbrush and met Pamela’s eyes in the mirror.

‘What way?’

Pamela obliged with a simpering ogle. They both burst into laughter. Pamela loved to see her mother laugh. She was so pretty anyone would fall in love with her.

‘Well, thank goodness he doesn’t,’ Kitty said. ‘That just goes to show how sensible he is.’

‘I think he’s sad.’

‘Why should he be sad?’

‘Because he doesn’t have a wife, of course.’

‘Maybe he doesn’t want a wife.’

‘Of course he wants a wife! He’s old!’

The year, which was 1950, had excited Pamela very much when it first began. It seemed so different from 1949, so new and full of possibility. Forming that big round O in her exercise book at school had felt grand and noble. But then everything had gone on just the same.

Not just the same. Daddy had his accident. Funny how she kept forgetting about that.

Rupert was only visiting them for the day. Really he had come down to Sussex to talk to Larry Cornford, who just about lived with them these days. Larry was supposed to be married to Rupert’s sister, but now they were getting a divorce, which meant Larry wouldn’t be married any more.

Pamela found Rupert in the room called the study, that was full of her father’s books. It still had her father’s smoky smell even though no one used it now. Rupert was gazing at the bookshelves.

‘Hello,’ said Pamela.

She wasn’t shy with grown-ups. It was one of the things everyone remarked about her.

‘Hello,’ said Rupert.

‘Are you looking for a book?’

‘Not really. But there are some very interesting books here.’

‘I’m not really interested in books,’ said Pamela.

‘I am,’ said Rupert.

This surprised Pamela. Her response had been of the kind that usually elicited a smile, a knowing glance, as if to say: She’s very sure of herself for her age. But Rupert simply took it at face value.

‘Why?’ she said.

‘Books help me make sense of my life,’ he said. Then he added, ‘Well, some books, anyway.’

This rather impressed Pamela. She felt he had raised the stakes of their conversation, and it was up to her to follow suit.

‘My daddy died,’ she said.

‘Yes, I know,’ said Rupert. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You could marry my mummy if you want.’

She had learned that this sort of suggestion caused a subdued consternation among the grown-ups, which added to her prestige. But once again, Rupert took her seriously.

‘Your mother’s a wonderful person,’ he said, ‘but I’m quite sure she doesn’t want to marry me.’

‘But she’s sad,’ persisted Pamela. ‘And you’re sad.’

Rupert gazed at her through his spectacles in a way that made her feel he was thinking not about her but about what she’d said.

‘Sometimes I’m sad,’ he said, ‘and sometimes I’m happy. Isn’t that how it is for you?’

‘Yes,’ said Pamela. ‘But I’d rather be happy.’

His words stayed with her. Simple though they were, they seemed to her to be important, perhaps because of the serious way he looked at her when he said them. She wondered if they were true. Then it struck her that although she was often cross she was rarely sad. In fact, sometimes she wasn’t nearly as sad as she should be. Her father dying was very bad, and everyone looked at her sorrowfully, but the truth was that for most of her young life he had been away. He was always going away. This dying felt like just another going away.

Already she was forgetting him. That showed that deep down she was a bad person, which she had long suspected. She made herself cry because of forgetting him, but then realised she was crying for herself, not for him, and stopped and wiped her eyes.

There was a little house at the end of the yard that had been an outside lavatory, which she had taken over as her secret place. She would often sit there on the warped wooden seat and listen to the rain on the tin roof and watch the spiders in their webs in the single-paned window. She wasn’t sure why she liked
going there, it was boring and she never stayed long, but it was while perched in that musty-smelling gloom that she wondered about her own badness. The main form her badness took was only really caring about herself. Good people cared about other people. She pretended to, but she didn’t. It was just one of those things about her, like her brown eyes and her skinny legs, and being pretty like her mother. It never struck her that there was anything she could do about it.

Her five-year-old sister Elizabeth kicked at the closed door of the outhouse.

‘Pammy? You there?’

‘Go away, Monkey.’

‘Mummy says Rupert’s going and you’re to say goodbye.’

‘I said go away.’

She waited until her sister had gone back into the house and then emerged. That was an example of her badness. She wouldn’t come out when told to by her sister, even though she wanted to come out. Now why was that?

Rupert shook her hand to say goodbye, which she liked better than the grown-ups who expected to be kissed. Then Larry drove him to the station. Hugo turned up in his big white van and started unloading boxes of wine into the garage. He and her father had been partners in the wine business. Now, after the accident, Larry was going to be his partner instead.

Pamela liked Hugo, and knew he liked her.

‘How’s my little sweetheart today?’ he said.

They had an agreement that when she was old enough he would marry her, but of course it was only a game. It was her mother he really loved. Once he had kissed her, and she had seen.

‘Darling Hugo,’ said her mother, ‘he’s only a boy.’

But he wasn’t a boy, he was a grown-up.

‘Do you want to play with the families?’ said Elizabeth.

‘Not with you, Monkey,’ she replied.

Elizabeth burst into tears.

‘Why do you have to be so mean?’ said Kitty.

Why did she? It was a mystery. But now she had a way of silencing all criticism.

‘I miss Daddy,’ she said.

‘Oh, darling.’

Tears sprang into her mother’s eyes, but didn’t fall.

‘So do I,’ said Elizabeth, which was a lie.

‘He’s watching over you both,’ said Kitty. ‘He’s in heaven, watching over all of us.’