Brighton is the seaside setting of the novel’s final scene, where a Sunday visit to the church of Our Lady of the Assumption gathers Gerry Fenn, Sue, and Ben after the catastrophe at the Banfield shrine. The town’s ordinary coastal morning—sunlight, winter chill, and the smell of the sea—stands against the violence and uncertainty that Fenn carries with him.

Seaside Setting

The scene presents Brighton as a seaside town on a bright but cold Sunday morning. Few people are out in the streets: some walk dogs, while others appear to be drawn from their homes by loneliness or by Sunday services at the town’s many churches and chapels. The sea air and pale sunlight give the setting a calm, everyday texture, sharply different from the panic and destruction associated with the shrine.

Churches and Public Explanations

Brighton’s varied religious buildings form part of the town’s visible Sunday life. Gerry Fenn judges the contemporary church of Our Lady of the Assumption to be elegantly simple, without the solemnity or oppressive quality he associates with other churches. As he approaches it, however, his attention is caught by a newspaper headline and by the unsettled public debate surrounding the disaster.

Theories circulating after Black Sunday range from an electrical storm, blamed for damage to equipment and the shrine, to mass hysteria among the crowd. Other explanations attribute the events to Alice Pagett’s supposed paranormal powers, an underground disturbance, or a bomb planted by an antireligious group. The accounts do not settle what happened; their multiplication leaves Fenn weary of conjecture and without a secure explanation.

The Closing Scene

Gerry Fenn first watches Sue and Ben make their way toward the church, with Ben skipping beside her and holding her hand. He has arranged to collect them later, but remains in the car, preoccupied by the glow he saw at the base of the tree during the disaster and by the possibility that a woman in white appeared within it. He doubts his own perception, yet Ben had also asked who the woman was. That independent observation keeps the vision from being dismissed as Fenn’s private delusion.

Sue turns and smiles at him; Gerry Fenn leaves the car and joins her and Ben as they enter the church. Brighton thus becomes the setting for a modest but consequential movement: not proof that Fenn has resolved the mystery, but a step toward companionship and faith despite the questions that remain.