Tracy Groot

“It was the worst picture she had seen in her life. It was worse than the crying baby in Shanghai.
‘Sometimes we need to see why we fight,’ said the burglar vicar gently. ’We need to see what God sees. Then we can understand just a little better His wrath, and His justice, and His love.’
He slipped the photograph from her hand, put it in the folder, slipped the folder from her. She pulled the pillow over her face and wept.
She’d not forget that image, not for the rest of her life.
She cried herself deaf for the child and for Arthur Vance; for Murray whose Rocket Kid could not save this child, and for William, because she finally understood what it felt like to be eviscerated.
She wept that she could not go and die for this boy.
‘I’m utterly useless!’ she screamed into the pillow, and finally came to her defeated senses. A good cry, and she did not feel better.
‘You are hardly useless,’ said the Burglar Vicar.
‘Oh really? I can’t even sit up.’
‘You can pray.’
‘How do you know it does any good?’
‘It’s better than moping, which does no good at all.”
She supposed it would be better to pray than to mope. The Shrew said prayer held them to their tasks. She said she saw before her eyes that it worked. ‘Yes, yes — I can pray!”
― Tracy Groot, Maggie Bright: A Novel of Dunkirk