Free The Children of Men by P. D. James Page B

manifestation of their success. In the first five years after Omega the message had some validity, as Rogerfulminated against inner-city violence, old women attacked and raped, children sexually abused, marriage reduced to no more than a monetary contract, divorce the norm, dishonesty rife and the sexual instinct perverted. Text after damning Old Testament text fell from his lips as he held aloft his well-thumbed Bible. But the product had a short shelf-life. It is difficult to fulminate successfully against sexual licence in a world overcome by ennui, to condemn the sexual abuse of children when there are no more children, to denounce inner-city violence when the cities are increasingly becoming the peaceful repositories of the docile aged. Roger has never fulminated against the violence and selfishness of the Omegas; he has a well-developed sense of self-preservation.
    Now, with his decline, we have Rosie McClure. Sweet Rosie has come into her own. She is originally from Alabama but left the United States in 2019, probably because her brand of religious hedonism is over-supplied there. The gospel according to Rosie is simple: God is love and everything is justified by love. She has resurrected an old pop song of the Beatles, a group of young Liverpool boys in the 1960s, “All You Need Is Love,” and it is this repetitive jingle, not a hymn, which precedes her rallies. The Last Coming is not in the future but now, as the faithful are gathered in, one by one, at the end of their natural lives and translated to glory. Rosie is remarkably specific about the joys to come. Like all religious evangelists, she realizes that there is little satisfaction in the contemplation of heaven for oneself if one cannot simultaneously contemplate the horrors of hell for others. But hell as described by Rosie is less a place of torment than the equivalent of an ill-conducted and uncomfortable fourth-rate hotel where incompatible guests are forced to endure each other’s company for eternity and do their own washing-up with inadequate facilities although, presumably, with no lack of boiling water. She is equally specific about the joys of heaven. “In my Father’s house are many mansions,” and Rosie assures her adherents that there will be mansions to suit all tastes and all degrees of virtue, the highest pinnacle of bliss being reserved for the chosen few. But everyone who heeds Rosie’s call to love will find an agreeable place, an eternal Costa del Sol liberally supplied with food, drink, sun and sexual pleasure. Evil has no place in Rosie’s philosophy. The worst accusation is that people have fallen into error because they have not understood the law of love. The answer to pain is an anaesthetic or an aspirin, to loneliness the assurance of God’s personal concern, to bereavement thecertainty of reunion. No man is called to practise inordinate self-denial, since God, being Love, desires only that His children shall be happy.
    Emphasis is placed on the pampering and gratification of this temporal body, and Rosie is not above giving a few beauty hints during her sermons. These are spectacularly arranged, the white-clad choir of a hundred ranked under the strobe lights, the brass band and the Gospel singers. The congregation join in the cheerful choruses, laugh, cry and fling their arms like demented marionettes. Rosie herself changes her spectacular dresses at least three times during each rally. Love, proclaims Rosie, all you need is love. And no one need feel deprived of a love object. It needn’t be a human being; it can be an animal—a cat, a dog; it can be a garden; it can be a flower; it can be a tree. The whole natural world is one, linked by love, upheld by love, redeemed by love. One would suppose that Rosie had never seen a cat with a mouse. By the end of the rally the happy converts are generally throwing themselves into each other’s arms and casting notes into the collection buckets with reckless enthusiasm.
    During