Road to Paradise Island

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On the night of the great storm, our house, like so many in the village, was damaged; and it was due to this that the discovery was made. I was eighteen years old at the time and my brother Philip twenty-three; and in the years to come I was often to marvel at what followed and to speculate how different everything might have been but for the storm.

It came after one of the hottest spells on record when the temperature soared into the nineties, and there was hardly a topic of conversation which did not concern the weather. Two old people and one baby died of it; there were prayers for rain in the churches; old Mrs. Terry, who was ninety and after a frivolous youth and less than virtuous middle age, had taken to religion in her seventies, declared that God was punishing England in general and Little and Great Stanton in particular by starving the cattle, drying up the streams and not providing enough moisture for the crops. The Day of Judgement was at hand, and on the night of the storm even the most sceptical of us were inclined to think that she might have a point.

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