The Bone Clocks

by David Mitchell

  Rafiq’s shaking with silent giggling and hides behind me as Declan lumbers over like a manure-spattered Frankenstein.

  “Lol,” Declan says, “Izzy told me to say sorry but she’s gone on into the village early to help her aunt get her veg boxed up for the Convoy. You’re coming for a sleepover later, I am informed?”

  “Yes, if that’s still okay,” says my granddaughter.

  “Ach, you’re hardly a rugby squad now, are ye?”

  “It’s still good of you to feed an extra mouth,” I say.

  “Guests who help with the milking are more than—” Declan stops and looks up at the sky.

  “What’s that?” Rafiq squints up towards Killeen Peak.

  I can’t see it at first but I hear a metallic buzzing, and Declan says, “Would you look at that now …”

  Lorelei asks, disbelievingly, “A plane?”

  There. A sort of gangly powered glider. At first I think it’s big and far, but then I see it’s small and near. It’s following Seefin and Peakeen Ridges, aiming towards the Atlantic.

  “A drone,” says Declan, his voice strained.

  “Magno,” says Rafiq, enraptured: “A real live UAV.”

  “I’m seventy-four,” I remind him, sounding grumpy.

  “Unmanned aerial vehicle,” the boy answers. “Like a big remotecontrol plane, with cameras attached. Sometimes they have missiles, but that one’s too dinky, like. Stability has a few.”

  I ask, “What’s it doing here?”

  “If I’m not wrong,” says Declan, “it’s spying.”

  Lorelei asks, “Why’d anyone bother spying on us?”

  Declan sounds worried: “Aye, that’s the question.”

  “ ‘I AM the daughter of Earth and Water,’ ” recites Lorelei, as we pass the old rusting electrical substation,

  “And the nursling of the Sky;

  I pass through the pores of the oceans and shores;

  I change, but I cannot die.”

  I wonder about Mr. Murnane’s choice of “The Cloud.” Lorelei and Rafiq aren’t unique: Many kids at Kilcrannog have had at least one parent die as the Endarkenment has set in. “Oh, I can’t believe I’ve forgotten this bit again, Gran.”

  “For after the rain …”

  “Got it, got it.

  “For after the rain when with never a stain,

  The pavilion of Heaven is bare,

  And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams—”

  “Um …

  “Build up the blue dome of air …”

  Unthinkingly, I’ve looked up at the sky. My imagination can still project a tiny glinting plane onto the blue. Not an overgrown toy like the drone—though that was remarkable enough—but a jet airliner, its vapor trail going from sharp white line to straggly cotton wool. When did I last see one? Two years ago, I’d say. I remember Rafiq running in with this wild look on his face and I thought something was wrong, but he dragged me outside, pointing up: “Look, look!”

  Up ahead, a rat runs into the road, stops, and watches us.

  “What’s a ‘convex’?” asks Rafiq, picking up a stone.

  “Bulging out,” says Lorelei. “ ‘Concave’ is bulging in, like a cave.”

  “So has Declan got a convex tummy?”

  “Not as convex as it was, but let Lol get back to Mr. Shelley.”

  “ ‘Mr.’?” Rafiq looks dubious. “Shelley’s a girl’s name.”

  “That’s his surname,” says Lorelei. “He’s Percy Bysshe Shelley.”

  “Percy? Bysshe? His mum and dad must’ve hated him. Bet he got crucified at school.” He throws his stone at the rat. It just misses and the rat runs into the hedgerow. Once I would’ve told Rafiq not to use living things for target practice but since the Ratflu scare, different rules have applied. “Go on, Lol,” I say. “The poem.”

  “I think I’ve got the rest.

  “I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

  And out of the caverns of rain,

  Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

  I arise and unbuild it again.”

  “Perfect. Your dad had an amazing memory, too.”

  Rafiq plucks a fuchsia flower and sucks its droplet of nectar. Sometimes I think I shouldn’t refer to Örvar in front of Rafiq, ’cause I never met his father. Rafiq doesn’t sound upset, though: “The womb’s where the baby is inside the mum, right, Holly?”

  “Yes,” I tell the boy.

  “And what’s a senno-thingy?”

  “A cenotaph. A monument to a person who died, often in a war.”

  “I didn’t get the poem either,” says Lorelei, “till Mo explained it. It’s about birth and rebirth and the water cycle. When it rains, the cloud’s used up, so it’s sort of died; and the winds and sunbeams build the dome of blue sky, which is the cloud’s cenotaph, right? But then the rain that was the old cloud runs to the sea where it evaporates and turns into a new cloud, which laughs at the blue dome—its own gravestone—’cause now it’s resurrected. Then it ‘unbuilds’ its gravestone by rising up into it. See?”

  A gorse thicket scents the air vanilla and glints with birdsong.

  “I’m glad we’re doing ‘Puff the Magic Dragon,’ ” says Rafiq.

  AT THE SCHOOL gate Rafiq tells me, “Bye!” and scuttles off to join a bunch of boys pretending to be drones. I’m about to call out, “Mind your insulin pump!” but he knows we’ve only one more in store, and why embarass him in front of his friends?

  Lorelei says, “See you later, then, Gran, take care at the market,” as if she’s the adult and I’m the breakable one, and goes over to join a cluster of half-girls, half-women by the school entrance.

  Tom Murnane, the deputy principal, notices me and strides over. “Holly, I was after a word with you. Would you still be wanting Lorelei and Rafiq to sit out of the religion class? Father Brady, the new priest, is starting Bible study classes over in the church from this morning.”

  “Not for my two, Tom, if it’s no bother.”

  “That’s grand. There’s eight or nine in the same boat, so they’ll be doing a project on the solar system instead.”

  “And will the earth be going round the sun or vice versa?”

  Tom gets the joke. “No comment. How’s Mo feeling today?”

  “Better, thank you, and I’m glad you mentioned it, my mem—” I stop myself saying, “My memory’s like a sieve,” because it’s not funny anymore. “Cahill O’Sullivan’s bringing her in on his horsetrap next Monday, so she can teach the science class, if it still suits.”

  “If she’s up to it she’s welcome, but be sure and tell her not to bust a gut if her ankle needs more time to recuperate.” The school bell goes. “Must dash now.” He’s gone.

  I turn around and find Martin Walsh, the mayor of Kilcrannog, waving goodbye to his daughter, Roisín. Martin’s a large pink man with close-cropped white hair, like Father Christmas gone into nightclub security. He always used to be clean-shaven, but disposable razors stopped appearing in the ration boxes eighteen months ago and now most men on the peninsula are sporting beards of one sort or another. “Holly, how are ye this morning?”

  “Can’t complain, Martin, but Hinkley Point’s a worry.”

  “Ach, stop—have ye heard from your brother in the week?”

  “I keep trying to thread a call, but either I get a no-Net message, or the thread frays after a few seconds. So, no: I haven’t spoken with Brendan since a week ago, when the hazard alert went up to Low Red. He’s living in a gated enclave outside Bristol, but it’s not far from the latest exclusion zone and hired security’s no use against radiation. Still,” I resort to a mantra of the age, “what can’t be helped can’t be helped.” Pretty much everyone I know has a relative in danger, or at least semi-incommunicado, and fretting aloud has become bad etiquette. “Roisín was looking right as rain just now, I saw. It wasn’t mumps, after all?”

  “No, no, just swollen glands, thanks be to God. Dr. Kumar even had some medicine.
How’s our local cyberneurologist’s ankle?”

  “On the mend. I caught her hanging out washing earlier.”

  “Excellent. Be sure to tell her I was asking after her.”

  “I will—and actually, Martin, I was hoping for a word.”

  “Of course.” Martin leans in close, holding my elbow as if he, not I, is the slightly deaf one—as public officials do to frail old dears the week before election in a community of a mere three hundred voters.

  “Do you know if Stability’ll be distributing any coal before the winter sets in?”

  Martin’s face says, Wish I knew. “If it gets here, the answer’s yes. Same old problem: There’s a tendency for our lords and masters in Dublin to look at the Cordon Zone, think, Well, that bunch are living off the fat of the land, and wash their hands of us. My cousin at Ringaskiddy was telling me the collier docked last week with a cargo of coal from Poland, but when there’ll be fuel enough to fill the trucks to distribute it is another matter.”

  “And a shower o’ feckin’ thievers ’tween Ringaskiddy and Sheep’s Head there are so,” says Fern O’Brien, appearing from nowhere, “and coal falls off lorries at a fierce old rate. I’ll not be holding my breath.”

  “We raised the subject,” says Martin, “at the last committee meeting. A few o’ the lads and me’re planning a little excursion up Caher Saddle for a spot o’ turf cutting. Ozzy at the forge has made a—what’s the word?—a compressor for molding turf logs, so big.” Martin’s hands are a foot apart. “Now sure it’s not coal, but it’s a sight better than nothing, and if we don’t leave Five Acre Wood alone, it’ll be No Acre Wood in no time, like. Once we’ve the logs dried, I’ll have Fíonn drop down a load each to you and Mo on his next diesel run to Knockroe Farm—whoever you cast your ballot for. Frost doesn’t care about politics, and we need to look after our own.”

  “I’m voting for the incumbent,” I assure him.

  “Thank you, Holly. Every last vote will count.”

  “There’s no serious opposition, is there?”

  Fern O’Brien points behind me to the church noticeboard. Over I go to read the new, large hand-drawn poster:

  ENDARKENMENT IS GOD’S JUDGMENT

  GOD’S FAITHFULL SAY “ENOUGH!”

  VOTE FOR THE LORD’S PARTY

  MURIEL BOYCE FOR MAYOR

  “Muriel Boyce? Mayor? But Muriel Boyce is, I mean …”

  “Muriel Boyce is not to be underestimated,” says Aileen Jones, the ex–documentary maker turned lobster fisherwoman, “and thick as thieves with our parish priest, even if they can’t spell ‘faithful.’ There’s a link between bigotry and bad spelling. I’ve met it before.”

  I ask, “Father McGahern never did politics in church, did he?”

  “Never,” Martin replies. “But Father Brady’s cut from a different cloth. Come Sunday I’ll be sat there in our pew while our priest tells us that God’ll only protect your family if you vote for the Lord’s Party.”

  “People aren’t stupid,” I say. “They won’t swallow that.”

  Martin looks at me as if I don’t see the whole picture. I get this look a lot these days. “People want a lifeboat and miracles. The Lord’s Party’s offering both. I’m offering peat logs.”

  “But the lifeboat isn’t real, and the peat logs are. Don’t give up. You’ve a reputation for sound decisions. People listen to reason.”

  “Reason?” Aileen Jones is grimly cheerful. “Like my old doctor friend Greg used to say, if you could reason with religious people, there wouldn’t be any religious people. No offense, Martin.”

  “I’m beyond offense at this point, Fern,” says our mayor.

  UP CHURCH LANE we come to Kilcrannog square. Ahead is Fitzgerald’s bar, a low, rambling building as old as the village. It’s been added to over the centuries and painted white, though not recently. Crows roost on its ridge tiles and gables as if up to no good. On our right’s the diesel depot, which was a Maxol garage when I first moved here, and where we used to fill up our Toyotas, our Kias, our VWs like there was no tomorrow. Now it’s just for the Co-op tanker that goes around from farm to farm. On the left’s the Co-op store, where the ration boxes’ll be distributed later by the committee, and on the south side of the square’s the Big Hall. The Big Hall also serves as a marketplace on Convoy Day, and we go in, Martin holding the door open so I can wheel in my pram. The hall’s noisy but there’s not a lot of laughter today—Hinkley Point casts a long shadow. Martin says he’ll see me later and goes off electioneering, Aileen looks for Ozzy to speak about metal parts for her sailboat, and I start foraging through the stalls. I browse among the trestle tables of apples and pears and vegetables too misshapen for Pearl Corp, home-cured bacon, honey, eggs, marijuana, cheese, homebrewed beer and poitín, plastic bottles and containers, knitted clothes, old clothes, tatty books, and a thousand things we used to give to charity shops or send to the landfill. When I first moved to the Sheep’s Head Peninsula thirty years ago, a West Cork market was where local women sold cakes and jam for the craic, West Cork hippies tried to sell sculptures of the Green Man to Dutch tourists, and people on middle-class incomes bought organic pesto, Medjool dates, and buffalo mozzarella. Now the market’s what the supermarket used to be: where you get everything, bar the basics found in the ration boxes. With our modified prams, pushchairs, and old supermarket trolleys, we’re a hungry-looking, unshaven, cosmeticless, jumble-sale parody of a Lidl or Tesco or Greenland only five or six years ago. We barter, buy, and sell with a combination of guile, yuan, and Sheep’s Head dollars—numbered metal disks engraved by the three mayors of Durrus, Ahakista, and Kilcrannog. I turn forty-eight eggs into cheap Chinese shampoo you can also use to wash clothes; some bags of seaweed salt and bundles of kale into undyed wool from Killarney to finish a blanket; redcurrant jelly—the jars are worth more than the jelly—into pencils and a pad of A4 paper to stitch some more exercise books, as the kids’ copy books have been rubbed out so often that the pages are almost see-through; and, reluctantly, a last pair of good Wellington boots I’ve had in their box for fifteen years into sheets of clear plastic, which I’ll use to make rain capes for the three of us, and to fix the polytunnel after the winter gales. Plastic sheeting’s hard to find, and Kip Sheehy makes a predictable face, but waterproof boots are even rarer, so by saying, “Maybe another time, then,” and walking off I get him to throw in a twenty-meter length of acrylic cord and a bundle of toothbrushes as well. I worry about Rafiq’s teeth. There’s very little sugar in our—or anyone’s—diet, but there are no dentists west of Cork anymore.

  I chat with Niamh Murnane, Tom Murnane’s wife, who’s sitting at a table with hemp sacks of oats and sultanas; Stability no longer has any yuan to pay teachers, so it’s sending out salaries of tradeable foodstuffs instead. I was hoping to find sanitary towels for Lorelei, too, as Stability no longer includes them on the list of necessities, but I’m told there weren’t any on the last Company container ship. Branna O’Daly uses strips of old bedsheets, which we’ll need to wash, ’cause even old bedsheets are getting rarer. If only I’d had the foresight to lay in a store of tampons a few years back. Still. Complaining is rude to the three-million-odd souls who have to somehow survive outside the Cordon.

  • • •

  IN THE ANNEX, Sinéad from Fitzgerald’s bar serves hot drinks and soup made on the kitchen range that keeps the Big Hall warm in winter. As I trundle up with my pram, Pat Joe, the Co-op mechanic, pulls up a chair for me with his giant oily hands, and by now I need the sit-down. The road from Dooneen gets longer every Friday, I swear, and the pain in my side’s more acidy than before. I should’ve spoken with Dr. Kumar, but what could she do if it’s my cancer waking up? There’s no CAT scans anymore, no drug regime. Molly Coogan, who used to design websites but who now grows apples in polytunnels up below Ardahill, and her husband, Seamus, are also at the table. As the Englishwoman there, I’m asked if I know anything about Hinkley Point, but I have to disappoint them.

  Nob
ody else has had any luck with threading out of the island of Ireland for two or three days now. Pat Joe spoke with his cousin in Ardmore in East Cork last night, however, and holds court for a few minutes. Apparently two hundred Asylumites from Portugal landed on the beach in five or six vessels, and are now living in an old zombie estate built back in the Tiger Days. “As bold as you please,” says Pat Joe, nursing his soup, “as if they own the place, like. So the Ardmore town mayor, he leads a—a deputation up to the zombie estate, my cousin was one of them, to tell the Asylumites that, very sorry and all, but they can’t winter there, there’s not enough food in the Co-op or wood in the plantation for the villagers as it is, let alone two hundred extra mouths, like. This big feller walks out, takes out a gun, cool as you please, and shoots Kenny’s hat off his head, like in an old cowboy western!”

  “Shocking! Shocking!” Betty Power is a theatrical matriarch who runs Kilcrannog’s smokehouse. “What did the mayor do?”

  “Sent a messenger to the Stability garrison in Dungarvan, asking for assistance, like—only to be told their jeeps had no feckin’ diesel.”

  “The Stability jeeps had no diesel?” asks Molly Coogan, alarmed.

  Pat Joe purses his lips and shakes his head. “Not one drop. The mayor was told to ‘pacify the situation’ as best he could. Only how’s yer man s’posed to manage that when his deadliest weapon’s a feckin’ staple gun?”

  “I heard,” says Molly Coogan, “that the Sun Yat-sen”—one of the Chinese superfrigates that accompanies the Chinese container ships on the polar route—“sailed into Cork Harbor last week with five hundred marines on deck. A bit of a show of force, like.”

  “Sure you’re missing a zero, there, Moll,” says Fern O’Brien, who leans over from the next table. “My Jude’s Bill was on loading duty at Ringaskiddy that day so he was, and he swears there wasn’t a man under five t’ousand trooping the color under the Chinese flag.”