Reckless

by William Nicholson

  After tea she went out and didn’t tell anyone where she was going. That way if she died they wouldn’t find her right away and would be sick with worry, and then they’d find her and she’d be dead and they’d be sorry, Bridie most of all. She went out of the village past the church and on round the bay, past the beached fishing boats where the men were mending their nets. Michael Gallaher hallooed her as she ran by, and she waved back but didn’t stop. Once Michael Gallaher got going on one of his fishing stories you could never get away.

  Round the little headland she trotted, her dark hair flying free in the light of the descending sun. It was August already, which wasn’t midsummer at all but almost autumn, and the days had been shortening for six weeks now. Down the far side of the hill, on the sheep track now, passing between the great boulders that lay on the brown grassland, and there ahead was her own special private place, where she came when she was hurt or angry or just wanted to be alone. It was a small sandy cove, protected by two lines of rocks, and between them the waves came rushing in, making white foam on the beach. It was called Buckle Bay, no one knew why. Sometimes when it was high tide the sand was all covered with frothy white water, but mostly there was some beach to walk on. She loved the feeling of the firm wet sand beneath her bare feet. She loved to stand just where the waves reached, and feel the cool water rush over her feet and ankles, and then the water sucking the sand from under her heels and toes as the wave ebbed.

  If you stood and looked out to sea at a time like this, you saw the sun going down. That was grand, and also a little bit melancholy, because the brightness of the day was fading, and you knew in a while it would be dark. But before the darkness there came the colours, the reds and golds and purples of sunset.

  Mary stood on the sand and watched the sun descend and the agitation that had filled her all day slowly passed. The horizon was straight and strong and clear, and the sea big and calm, and the sky above bigger still, and the long warm day was ending.

  Mary thought of how she had flicked up her skirt to show the devil her knickers and she knew it had been wrong. There was a spirit of wickedness in her, no denying it. Also, although she was always saying in her prayers thank you for her home and her family, secretly it made her sad that they had no da and were so poor. You had to be brave and put a smile on your face the way Mam did, but surely it wasn’t fair. What had they done to deserve it?

  That meant she was having blasphemous thoughts about the goodness of God, and that was a mortal sin. So maybe she’d end up as one of the devil’s minions after all.

  The sun was near the horizon now. It had grown bigger and more gentle as it had descended. There were lines of cloud above it, come out of nowhere, pink streaks beneath the softening blue. It was good to stand here on the warm sand and listen to the hiss of the waves and feel the kindness of the sun.

  Such a calm evening. The sea so still you’d say it wasn’t moving at all, but for the ripple of water over her bare feet. Then even that became still, and all the world was hushed before the coming of night. The stillness moved her deeply. All is well, said the stillness. All is for a reason.

  Then across the water, out of the red glow of the setting sun, came the figure of a man walking towards her. He was far away but she could see him clearly. He wore a loose white robe, and he had his arms reached out before him, as if he wanted to touch her. She thought she could see his face, though he was too far off and surely that wasn’t possible. It seemed to her that his face was filled with love, and that he was speaking her name.

  ‘Mary. My beloved, my Mary.’

  No movement anywhere in the whole wide world, only the slipping down of the sun and this beautiful man coming towards her. She felt her heart melt with joy. She reached out her hands towards him.

  ‘Here I am, Lord,’ she said.

  Then she saw that even as he was beautiful, even as his face was filled with love, he was weeping tears of sorrow. She knew he was Jesus, her Lord and Saviour, and that he was weeping for the sins of the world. She knew that he was coming for her, and that when he reached her, when he took her in his strong arms, she would experience a pure and intense bliss, and her life would be over.

  ‘Take me, Lord,’ she said.

  Closer he came, over the still water, and closer still, but not yet close enough to touch her.

  ‘Be my voice, Mary,’ he said. ‘Warn my children. A great wind is coming.’

  Then the sky went dark and the wind swept in off the sea, but it never touched Mary. She stood on the beach, her pinafore dress quiet about her, as the wind swept over the land and stripped it clean, scoured it of all the works of sinful mankind. Mary understood that she was made to see this so that she could be the voice of the Lord, and give the warning. Then the wind passed and all was as before.

  ‘Time is running out,’ said Jesus. ‘Tell my children they must love each other or perish. Tell them, Mary. Be my voice.’

  ‘Why me, Lord?’

  ‘Because your heart is open wide, my child. Because you have faith.’

  Jesus was near now, she could see his kind face so clearly, and the shine of the tears on his cheeks. She wanted to run into his arms, but her legs would not move.

  ‘Come here again, Mary. You will see me twice more, as you see me now. After that you will see me no more in this world.’

  His voice was close, a gentle whisper in her ear, but he was still many paces away from her. She reached out to him in yearning, and as she did so he faded before her, and the golden light of the setting sun wrapped him round, and he was gone.

  The stillness ended, and the sea was moving once more. She felt the breeze on her cheek, and flurrying her hair. The tide had gone out, she was standing far from the waves’ edge. She must have been here for a long time. Soon it would be dark.

  Slowly, dreamily, Mary Brennan made her way home. She knew what she must do now. She must tell everyone what Jesus had said to her. She knew she would not be believed, not at first, but she had no worries on that score. She had become an instrument of God. She had only to obey. God would do the rest.

  They noticed the change in her as soon as she came into the cottage. Bridie was just lighting the oil lamp on the wall. Eamonn was on the wooden seat smoking a cigarette. Mam was at the table, making an apron in a crossover design, every stitch sewn by hand. She sold her aprons for half a crown each, which provided for a few little extras.

  ‘What’s become of you, missy?’ said Mam. ‘We thought the fairies had got you.’

  ‘No, Mam,’ said Mary. ‘I was down by Buckle Bay and I saw Jesus.’

  ‘You did no such thing!’ exclaimed Bridie sharply. ‘That’s taking the name of the Lord in vain.’

  ‘A great wind is coming,’ said Mary.

  It was the way she didn’t snap back at Bridie that made them sit up and listen.

  ‘What great wind?’ said Eamonn.

  ‘Come here, my chick,’ said Mam.

  Mary went to her, and her mother looked her in the face.

  ‘Is this one of your tricks?’

  ‘No, Mam,’ said Mary.

  ‘Then you’d best tell your story to the priest.’

  *

  Father Dermot Flannery was not absolutely in bed when the knock came on his door. He was sitting in a deep-cushioned chair, a tumbler of Jameson’s balanced on the arm, reading the sports pages of the newspaper by the light of a tilley lamp. But his body, following many years of regular habit, was halfway through the routine that suspended his waking self, stage by stage, until it took only the final act of lying down in bed to release his spirit to sleep. For this reason the knock on the door made him irritable.

  Father Flannery was a martyr to his irritability. He hated it and was ashamed of it, but seemed unable to control it. In his own mind he was a humble and charitable shepherd to his flock. Why then this peevish snapping?

  ‘What in God’s name time do you call this?’ he barked at the door.

  ‘It’s us, Father,’ came a
muffled voice from outside.

  ‘Oh, us, is it? Us should be in their own homes, in my opinion. Well, then, well, then, let’s be seeing you.’

  In shuffled Eileen Brennan and her three children, the entire Brennan clan, great gawky youths that filled up his parlour with their loose limbs and their odour of poverty.

  ‘Sorry, Father, but it’s our Mary,’ said the mother, blinking in the bright hissing light of the tilley lamp.

  ‘Is it now?’ said the priest, scowling.

  He had turned fifty years of age in the last twelve months, and also his mother had died, and so it was he had discovered to his great surprise that he had become a priest not so much to serve the Lord as to please his mother. Her pride in his status had never faded. But now that she was gone there seemed not so much point to it all somehow. He was not a learned man, but he was honest. He did not deceive himself that he made any real difference to the souls in his care. Their lives were hard, his heart bled for them, but you couldn’t go on bleeding out your heart for ever, and the suffering went on in the same way. After twenty-five years as a parish priest there was nothing new to discover. Misery had ceased to be interesting.

  ‘So what’s ailing your Mary?’ he said. ‘She’s looking well enough.’

  And better than well. The youngest of the Brennans was a sturdy lass with a round pink face and a look in her eyes that made him put his head on one side. It was a bold look, but not at him.

  ‘Tell Father, Mary,’ said her mother.

  ‘Mary’s seen Jesus,’ blurted out Bridie Brennan.

  ‘Is that a fact?’ said the priest.

  ‘Yes, Father,’ said Mary. ‘It was over by Buckle Bay. He came walking to me over the water.’

  So the priest got her to tell the whole story, which of course was all just so much nonsense, but there was no need to injure the child’s young faith. Also there was a way she had of speaking about her experience that touched him, weary though he was and wishing for his bed. Her eyes shone as she spoke, filled with the wonder of it, and there wasn’t so much wonder in the world.

  ‘The whole sea was still, Father, and he was so beautiful, and I did feel his great love.’

  ‘And he gave you a warning, you say?’

  ‘There’ll be a great wind, Father. We must love each other or perish.’

  ‘Well, I’ll not be disagreeing with that.’

  ‘Should we be telling the Holy Father, Father?’ said Mrs Brennan.

  ‘One step at a time,’ said the priest. ‘First you must go home, and say your prayers, and get a good night’s sleep. Then we’ll see what the world looks like tomorrow.’

  ‘I shall see him again,’ said Mary. ‘And once more after that.’

  So the Brennan clan departed, and Dermot Flannery went thoughtfully to bed. The girl had said nothing of any significance, of course, but she had impressed him even so. Kilnacarry was a village at the end of the road, and no one came down the road who didn’t already live there, and the folk of Kilnacarry were too poor to go up the road to anywhere else. The outcome was that every day God sent looked much like every other day, except that some days it rained and some days it didn’t. And now here was a child who said she’d had a vision of Our Lord himself. A little stir and bustle and a few sixpences from the curious would make a welcome change for the good people of the parish.

  5

  Colonel Paul Tibbets handpicked his crew from guys he had flown with in bombing missions over Europe. He asked for Dutch Van Kirk as his navigator and Tom Ferebee as his bombardier. These three knew each other well. Then there was Wyatt Duzenbury for flight engineer, and Deak Parsons looking after the weapon. Tibbets had spent time at Los Alamos, he had been at meetings where Robert Oppenheimer chain-smoked, and General Groves, who hated people who smoked, worked alongside him, and he knew about the atom bomb. He knew it was a big deal, and would shorten the war, but mostly it was a bunch of technical challenges. The bomb was so heavy that the plane that carried it would have to be stripped down to its shell. Then there was the matter of getting away after the drop. The usual bombing pattern was you dropped your load and went on flying straight ahead over the target, but you couldn’t do that with this new gadget, because it was going to be a big bang. Oppenheimer told Tibbets he had to turn tangent to the expanding shockwave, 159 degrees in either direction, and get the hell out of there. They timed the drop with dummy bombs and reckoned he had forty to forty-two seconds to make that turn, which was not an easy matter in a B-29 Superfortress at twenty-five thousand feet. Tibbets practised turning, steeper each time, until the big plane’s tail was shaking, but he got so he could make the turn and get eleven miles away in forty seconds. Eleven miles from the detonation and the plane could ride the shockwave.

  ‘I sure am happy to hear that,’ said Dutch Van Kirk.

  ‘You just get us there on time,’ said Tibbets. ‘I’ll get you home.’

  The crew shipped out to North Field airbase on Tinian in the west Pacific to await orders. The words ‘atom bomb’ were never spoken. They had been told the weapon they were going to drop would destroy an entire city. So the Japs would finally get paid back for Pearl Harbor, and the Bataan death march, and all the cruelties they’d inflicted on American POWs. Everyone knew the Japs were monkeys. Just about everyone back home wanted to see the whole bunch exterminated, men, women and children. Tibbets told his crew what General Uzal Ent told him at Colorado Springs.

  ‘Paul, be careful how you treat this responsibility, because if you’re successful you’ll probably be called a hero.’

  ‘And if we fail?’ said Tom Ferebee.

  ‘Our worries are over,’ said Tibbets.

  He named the B-29 after his mother, Enola Gay Haggard, who herself had been named for the heroine of a novel called Enola, Or Her Fatal Mistake. His mother had backed him up in his dream to be a flyer even when his father said he was going to be a doctor. He did some time at med. school in Cincinnati but he quit to join the Army Air Corps. His father was angry and said, ‘If you want to kill yourself, go ahead, I don’t give a damn.’ But his mother said, ‘Paul, if you want to go fly airplanes, you’re going to be all right.’ So he called the plane the Enola Gay; had it painted on the side.

  *

  The order came through on August 3, requiring the delivery of ‘the first special bomb as soon as weather will permit visual bombing’. It was authorised by Henry Stimson, Secretary of War. No order was ever signed by President Truman.

  The weather station on Guam predicted that the skies over Honshu would be clear on the sixth day of August. On August 5 Tibbets was cleared to go. Target time was 09.15 next morning, Tinian time, 08.15 Japanese time. Tibbets told Dutch to figure out what time they had to take off to be over the target at 09.15 and Dutch calculated 02.45. The crew were then ordered to get some sleep. Tibbets, Van Kirk and Ferebee had no inclination to sleep. They stayed up playing poker.

  Deak Parsons, the weaponeer, oversaw the loading of the bomb into the aeroplane. This was an anxious time. ‘Little Boy’ was three metres long, weighed almost ten thousand pounds, and was extremely vulnerable to accidental detonation. Crash impact, or an electrical short, or fire, or lightning could all set it off, and if it blew it would take out Tinian Island and all five hundred Superfortresses based there. So Deak did not load the four silk powder bags, each containing two pounds of slotted-tube cordite, into the gun breech, and he instructed Morris Jeppson to remove the three safety plugs that connected the bomb’s internal battery to its firing mechanism.

  That night the airstrip was floodlit as if for a Hollywood premiere or, as Dick Nelson said, ‘like a supermarket opening.’ The crew were filmed and photographed as they climbed on board, but none of them had too much to say. They each had their job to do and their minds were on the mission.

  The Enola Gay took off right on time and made its rendezvous in mid-air with the instruments plane that would measure the blast and the picture plane that would take the pictures. Flying time to target
was six hours, if Dutch had got it right. When the three planes were in formation, Tibbets left the pilot’s seat and crawled down the tunnel to speak to the crew. Eight of the twelve men on board had been kept in ignorance of the nature of the bomb, at least in theory. But they weren’t stupid. No one had ever before seen a bomb like the one they were carrying.

  ‘We’re going on a bombing mission,’ Tibbets told them. ‘But it’s a little bit special.’

  Bob Caron, the tail gunner, said, ‘Colonel, we wouldn’t be playing with atoms today, would we?’

  ‘Bob,’ said Tibbets, ‘you’ve got it just exactly right.’

  Then Deak Parsons loaded the bags of cordite into the bomb’s gun breech, and Morris Jeppson climbed down into the bomb bay and pulled out the green testing plugs and put in the red firing plugs. After that the bomb was armed. There was a timer device that stopped it going off for fifteen seconds after release, then a barometric switch took over, a thin membrane that got pushed in as air pressure increased during descent, and closed the final circuit at two thousand metres. Then the three gun primers ignited and blew the cordite, which shot the uranium projectile down the gun barrel inside the bomb at three hundred metres a second to smash into the solid uranium target, and set off a chain reaction. Once the bomb was armed, who knew what might go wrong? Some random radar signal could do it, or plain old water leakage.

  Tibbets had orders not to use the radio but he reckoned he owed it to his crew to talk them down to the drop. So the Enola Gay flew on, and the sun rose, and it was a clear day down there. Japanese early warning radar picked up the incoming planes and sounded the alert, but when they confirmed that it was only three aircraft they assumed it was a reconnaissance mission and lifted the alert. The Japanese Air Force was so short of fuel they no longer made any attempt to intercept small formations.