Authors: William Nicholson
‘Oh, Eamonn.’
It made her angry. This good hard-working man with his wasted life. But who could you blame for it? Not Mam, widowed by the age of thirty.
‘God owes you more,’ she said.
‘You tell him, Mary.’
‘You’ve done the right thing all your life. When’s it your turn?’
In this new bright light she saw her family, and the people of her village, and the great crowd of pilgrims, and she understood that they had all been abandoned by God. They didn’t yet know it themselves, but they feared it with a terrible fear. That was why they reached out to her. They wanted a miracle, a touch of God in their hard lives. It needn’t be much. Just a little magic to promise them that they weren’t lost and abandoned after all.
Make God real to us, they begged her. Don’t leave us in this mess of a life without the promise of some shining glory to come. Give us a sign. And if it’s to be the great wind that sweeps everything away, so much the better. The end of the world strikes for the great as well as the small. We’ll all be equal in the apocalypse.
But the truth is we’re all lost and abandoned. There’s no glory to come. The whole giant edifice of faith is a story made up by a child.
She wanted to shout out loud, to shout at God, to shame him for having taken advantage of her.
‘Fifteen years,’ she said. ‘That’s enough, isn’t it?’
She started to shake. Suddenly the emotions flooding out of her were too strong to control.
I should have had a life of my own. I should have had babies of my own. I was a child, a stupid child! Why did you have to take away my life?
They were sitting squeezed tight together on the tractor seat. She could feel her body shaking against Eamonn’s big strong body, but he didn’t know how to put an arm round her.
Slowly the moment passed.
‘You want to go back now?’ Eamonn said.
The light was fading. Mary looked down at the shore. It was low tide. The crowd in Buckle Bay would be lighting their candles, shuffling forward over the wet sand, waiting for their miracle.
If none of it’s true, why not give them what they want? In the absence of eternal glory, put on a show. Then when the show’s over, they’ll leave at last.
‘Eamonn,’ she said, looking down at the white surf as it rolled in and then withdrew. ‘At low tide your tractor can go out on the beach, can’t it?’
‘Go anywhere, this one,’ said Eamonn.
‘Could it go round the headland from Kilnacarry and into Buckle Bay?’
‘If the tide’s far enough out.’
‘Could you take me into Buckle Bay, over the sea?’
‘Like you’re Jesus, coming over the water?’
‘Just like that.’
‘I can give it a go.’
He started up the engine, and turned the tractor about. They rumbled back over the coast path and into the village. Lights were glowing in the shop and in the pub. He dropped down onto the harbour road and followed the slipway where the fisher-men hauled in their boats. The tractor wheels swished in the shallow water. A few men loitering on the harbour wall stared to see the red tractor drive into the sea, but Eamonn didn’t go far. Hugging the coast, he followed the strip of beach round Buckle Head. He couldn’t see the ground over which he was driving because it was under water. Now and again the tractor hit a big rock and gave a lurch.
‘You all right there? Hold on.’
‘I’m fine, Eamonn.’
The grey cloud-filled sky was fading into night. Eamonn was steering more by feel than by sight.
‘Don’t want to damage your tractor, Eamonn.’
‘Take more’n this to hurt her’, he said.
‘You have headlights?’ she said.
‘You want ’em on?’
‘Not yet.’
At their deepest point the water came halfway up the great wheels, and the bigger waves broke against the side of the tractor and splashed their legs. Then they were round the headland and making for the beach, and the water was receding once more.
‘Told you she’d do it,’ said Eamonn.
There ahead was Buckle Bay. Paraffin lanterns, electric torches, candles, glowed among the figures crowded onto the beach. The strains of a hymn came over the water. This was how the pilgrims passed the long hours. They said the rosary together, and they sang hymns. They had guitars and harmonicas. It was a sort of beach party in honour of the end of the world.
Mary had made no plan. It was all the impulse of the moment. The anger she had felt on Dawros Head was still with her, burning inside her like a liberation. She no longer cared what she did.
‘Turn on the headlights, Eamonn.’
He clicked a switch. The tractor’s lights weren’t strong, but coming out of the sea like that, bouncing over the water, they created a sensation in Buckle Bay. The singing stopped. Voices cried out. All eyes were on the approaching brightness.
‘Keep driving till I say stop.’
She wanted to be close enough for them all to hear her. The sky around was deep twilight, a rim of violet on the horizon. The crowd on the beach fell still, filled with amazement. The sound of the tractor’s engine was lost in the deep roar of the sea.
Just where the rolling waves broke into spume Mary told Eamonn to stop, and cut the engine. Then she stood up on the tractor seat, bracing herself between her brother’s strong shoulder and the upright of the high roll bar. Now her slim figure was in silhouette against the last of the daylight.
‘This is Mary Brennan,’ she said.
Her voice rang clear over the water. They all heard her. A sound went up from the crowd like a sigh. The messenger of the Lord had come out of the sea.
‘I have a new message.’
Another gasp rose up. All across the beach the people were dropping to their knees.
‘The voice of God came to me over the water,’ she cried. ‘The Lord said to me, “The people’s faith pleases me. I will not let my people perish. There will be no great wind. Your faith has saved the world.”’
Hearing this, the pilgrims began to cry and call out.
‘Thank you, Lord! God be praised!’
‘Go to your homes. Tell everyone. The world will not end. The world will live. Now make it a beautiful world.’
They were crying like babies on the beach. Cries of joy.
‘God bless you, Mary Brennan! God love you! We’re saved!’
To Eamonn, in a low voice, she said, ‘Now drive us home.’
Eamonn started up the tractor and powered it through the shallow water and up the beach. The crowd parted to let it past. Mary remained standing, waving back at the crying faces below.
‘Pray for me!’ she called out. ‘Pray for me! My work here is over! It’s all over now!’
When they were past the crowds, and rumbling up the track to the cottage, Eamonn said to her, ‘That was a fine message, Mary.’
‘I said it to make them go home.’
Eamonn said nothing to that.
‘I’m a wicked woman, Eamonn. I just made it up, in my wickedness.’
‘So the world could still end tomorrow?’
‘It could.’
‘And they’re thinking they’re saved.’
That made him laugh. His rich deep laugh filled the night air. She hadn’t heard him laugh for a long time.
‘Who did this? On whose authority?’
Khrushchev was appalled by the news. Here, at this most delicate point of negotiation, some trigger-happy cowboy in Cuba had done the exact thing he had been so careful to avoid. He had fired the first shot.
‘General Pliyev claims to know nothing about it.’
It was Sunday morning. Marshal Malinowsky was briefing Khrushchev in his Kremlin office, where he had slept that night.
‘An American pilot is dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘The Cubans did this? With Soviet weapons?’
Khrushchev continued turning over the pages of the report that had been prepared for him overnight.
‘What’s this? What is Castro saying?’
‘He’s convinced the Americans are about to invade.’
‘What does he mean, I must not let the United States strike the first nuclear blow? Does he want me to start a nuclear war?’
‘He appears to be very agitated.’
‘He’s lost his reason. What’s happening, Rodion Yakovlevich? Has the whole world gone mad?’
By now Khrushchev was badly frightened. He summoned a meeting of the Presidium at his private residence at Novo-Ogaryovo on the Moscow river. As he prepared for the meeting he received a further report, of a letter from Kennedy containing an offer of a deal. It appeared to be in answer to Khrushchev’s first long letter. Kennedy proposed to trade a promise not to invade Cuba for the removal of the missiles.
‘What about my second letter? What about the missiles in Turkey?’
‘He says nothing about that,’ said Troyanovsky.
‘Why not? I don’t understand.’
‘I think this is what we call the Kuragin ploy,’ said Troyanovsky. ‘He pretends to have received from you the offer he wants.’
Khrushchev stared at him.
‘You’ll remember, Chairman, in
War and Peace
, how the father of the lovely Hélène Kuragin becomes frustrated by Pierre’s slowness in making a marriage proposal. In the end the father bursts into the room and congratulates the young couple, just as if the proposal has taken place. Pierre is too embarrassed to object.’
‘Yes, of course.’
Khrushchev had not read
War and Peace
. He knew only that Hélène Kuragin’s most famous attribute had been her magnificent bosom.
‘Nobody dazzles me with tits,’ he said. ‘This is all a catastrophe. We can’t have a war over Cuba. It’s out of the question. You know why?’
‘Cuba is not our homeland, Chairman.’
‘Because we’d lose.’
They drove together to Novo-Ogaryovo. As the big Zil limousine pulled up before the pillared porch of the house, Khrushchev said to Troyanovsky, ‘I need more Lenin. Tell me when Lenin retreated.’
‘Brest-Litovsk, March 1918. Lenin surrendered territory to the Germans to win a breathing space during the Civil War.’
‘Yes, of course. I remember.’
The members of the Presidium were seated on either side of the long polished oak table. Gromyko was there too, and Malinowsky, and Ilyichev. Khrushchev wanted to be sure that every one of the top leadership was implicated in what might be construed as a climb-down.
‘Comrades,’ he told them. ‘I believe we are face to face with nuclear war. I do not believe any of us wants to destroy the human race. At Brest-Litovsk in 1918 Lenin ordered a tactical retreat, to save the Soviet Union. Today we must order a tactical retreat, to save the world.’
He laid before his colleagues the hard facts of the crisis. An American pilot had been killed by a Soviet ground-to-air missile. There was mounting evidence that the Americans were preparing an invasion of Cuba within hours. Fidel Castro was behaving increasingly erratically.
‘The time has come to do a deal,’ said Khrushchev. ‘I propose that we respond positively to Kennedy’s latest offer. We agree to dismantle the missile sites, in exchange for a guarantee from the Americans that they will not invade Cuba.’
‘We trade weapons for words?’ said Mikoyan.
Only the great survivor could have dared speak aloud what they were all thinking. Khrushchev, who had feared just this reproach, responded with anger.
‘What are you saying? That I should go to war for the sake of Cuba? No, Anastas Ivanovich, much as I love Cuba, I love my country more. I have given my life for this great experiment, this dream of Marx, made real by Lenin. You keep Cuba if you wish. I choose to save the world!’
Mikoyan shrugged and said no more.
‘Moreover,’ said Khrushchev heatedly, ‘correctly understood,
this is a real victory. Who would have predicted, nine months ago, that we could force the imperialists into a pledge never to attack Cuba? It was unthinkable! Why should they give such a promise? But because we have been bold, and resolute, we now stand on the brink of achieving that very pledge!’
At this point Troyanovsky entered, looking flushed.
‘Comrade Chairman,’ he said. ‘A cable has just come in from Ambassador Dobrynin. He has had a meeting with the brother of the president.’
Troyanovsky read out the cable. Dobrynin reported that Robert Kennedy had come to him in a state of great agitation. The president was facing unbearable pressure from his chiefs of staff to order an invasion of Cuba. He needed a response from Khrushchev without delay. He repeated his pledge not to attack Cuba if the Soviet missiles were removed. He added that the Jupiters would be taken out of Turkey in exchange, but not at once. This would take place within four months, but most importantly, this was to be a private part of the deal. The president could not be seen in public to be sacrificing NATO allies to American strategic needs.
The Presidium members asked Troyanovsky to read the cable out again in its entirety.
‘Why must the Jupiters remain secret?’ said Malinowsky. ‘That would be a trade the whole world would understand.’
At this point the Secretary of the Defence Council was handed a phone message. It was another intelligence report. President Kennedy was due to make a televised address to the American people in four hours’ time.
Every man in the room believed this to be the declaration of war.
‘Enough!’ cried Khrushchev, banging the table. ‘Bring in a stenographer! I will reply to the president.’
Before the entire leadership, Khrushchev poured out a third
letter to Kennedy. He spoke of their joint responsibility to the world, of the honourable intentions with which the Soviet Union had set out to defend Cuba, of the hostility the United States had shown to that brave island, of the provocations the United States gave to world peace with its intrusive flights over neutral territories and its piratical actions on the high seas. And so at last he came to the point.
‘The Soviet government, wanting nothing but peace, has issued a new order to dismantle the weapons which are described as offensive, and to crate and return them to the Soviet Union.’
Gromyko then cabled Dobrynin in Washington to alert the Kennedys. A favourable response to their message would be read out over Moscow Radio shortly.
Two copies of the chairman’s letter then left Novo-Ogaryovo. One, carried by Mikhail Smirnovsky, head of the Foreign Office’s American desk, sped off to the American embassy. On arrival, Smirnovsky found his limousine blocked by demonstrators placed there by his own orders, shouting ‘Hands off Cuba!’