Free Reckless by William Nicholson

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.

7
    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