Solar Bones

by Mike McCormack

  there’s nothing to worry about Dad, yes, there might be finger-pointing and accusation but it wasn’t personal, none of it was at you or Mam for that matter – you’re exonerated of all charges – it’s an idea in embryo and

  she turned her whole face towards me with an expression of such open appeal that I softened instantly as some wiry tension in my gut unravelled to something warmer which drew the edge off the moment so that we could raise our glasses now, allowing us to settle into the knowledge that we had tested the moment severely and could let it rest for the time being, a conclusion confirmed in the relaxed expression on Mairead’s face who, till then, had studiously faded into the background but now, sensing the difficult moment had passed, was refilling her glass from the water carafe in the centre of the table and raising

  a toast to our daughter on her big day, that it may be the first of many, and

  so the moment was solved and we raised our glasses and clinked them together with a lingering note that hung over the table, taking a long time to fade

  like the Angelus bell

  which still reverbs in my head now, a single note ringing on in the brightness of the day as if the whole world were suspended from it

  mountains, rivers and lakes

  past, present and future with

  the whole moment so complete now and tidied away that we could settle easily into each other’s company and turn to safer topics – specifically Darragh and his adventures down under, a subject which drove each of us in turn to different types of disbelief and frustration because

  have you seen the head on him

  the beard and the hair

  that Methuselah look he’s cultivating

  is it Methuselah or Mad Max

  you can hardly see his face now when he comes on screen, just two eyes stuck in a bush

  he reminds me of your father with that hair

  Jesus, don’t go saying that

  I don’t think he’s shaved since he crossed the equator

  it’s more scarecrow than Old Testament prophet, if that’s what he’s going for

  he say’s it’s hard work, that whole Waltzing Matilda thing, no time for personal grooming or

  hard work my arse, the only photos he’s posted are of himself and the lads around a campfire in a woollen hat, skulling cans of Four X so

  he had to go the other side of the world to do that and

  but I think he’s moving on to some other job shortly, they’ve picked all the fruit in the greater Brisbane area and now they’re thinking of doing some time on a dairy farm and

  what does he know about dairy farming when

  as ever, when Darragh was the subject we fell easily to our separate roles – Agnes, the contentious older sister who looked on his antics with a mixture of admiration and jealousy, Mairead, the doting mother who saw something to be proud of in the blithe way he had set aside his studies to take to the road and myself, the father whose patience was sorely tested and who found himself in a constant state of grating irritation with him – a topic of conversation enlivening and productive of so many different themes and moods that to be reminded

  later, as we drove home, by Mairead of how completely overthrown I had been earlier in the evening reduced me instantly to a shamed helplessness which she probed in that way of hers, warning me there may have been every chance I had reacted more aggressively than I thought so that it was now advisable that I should bethink myself and come to a clearer assessment of what had happened because

  you were frightened

  how do mean

  you were, I was worried you might lash out at someone

  when have I ever lashed out at anyone

  I know, that’s what worried me

  Mairead said, with the darkness passing in a wet glare on the windscreen as we made our way along the narrow secondary roads connecting the sleepy villages of our homeward journey, me in the passenger seat, unused to someone else behind the wheel of my own car, so finding it doubly hard to cope with Mairead’s questions but eventually admitting

  yes I was

  hoping that the subject would be buried quickly once and for all

  I was frightened, both for me and for her, are you saying I overreacted

  no, but I was surprised you reacted as you did – what was it exactly that got you so upset

  there was blood

  yes, it’s different to oils, a big swerve away from her previous work, but I still find it odd that you could be so shocked by it

  I would have thought it would be shocking not to be shocked by it – when did we become so blasé about such things – and she was so poorly as a child

  she wasn’t poorly, she was a bit anemic, low in iron so she had to take a supplement which stained her teeth – did you notice how she had them polished tonight, it gave her that shine –

  I wasn’t looking at her teeth – all that blood – I had an image of her sitting on the side of a bed with a syringe in her arm, that’s the picture that came to me

  for god’s sake Marcus, you’ve no worries about her

  I’m her father, it’s my job to worry, do you know how she harvested it

  harvested it – you’d swear we were talking about one of her organs

  you have a better word

  no, but if she said she was careful then I believe her – look, you need have no worries about a woman who wears a coat like that, they are not likely to put themselves in harm’s way

  that’s nonsense

  no it’s not, so now

  I worried that some new sensitivity to shock and fear had opened up in me, some defect or weakness that might expose me to some unanticipated shame with which I would have no ability to cope, something that would have to be met with definite refutation if the grinding anguish which now churned inside me were to be prevented from growing into something more corrosive and

  not to worry, Mairead continued, it was only blood, it could have been a lot worse

  how could it have been worse

  you could have walked into the gallery and found her standing naked

  why would she be naked

  oh you know, some of these performance artists are pretty out there, she could have been cuddling a pig

  a pig

  yes, or naked and peeing into a

  ok Mairead, I get the picture

  I groaned as she

  drove on through the wet night, passing through those small towns and villages which slept with their empty streets under a sodium shroud, moving on into the narrow bog roads that were unlit but that had a precarious sense of being raised over the sea of heather and scutch grass stretching out on both sides, driving on through the ragged moonlight in which we seemed to be the only car on the road, Mairead taking it easy because

  I’ve never driven these roads at night

  she said, her gaze focused as she kept a steady speed into the bends and sudden turns which

  you never realise how narrow they are till you have to drive them at night, so narrow and twisty

  there’s no rush, just take your time

  I thought you engineers would have straightened all these roads during the boom years

  we were told we had better things for doing with our money – most of the boom money went into bypassing or linking major urban centres – there wasn’t a whole lot spent on bog roads, certainly not a few miles of blue road like this

  blue road

  yes

  what does blue road mean

  blue road means that it is not green road

  blue road and green road

  yes

  let me guess, blue and green politics

  that’s it

  and this road got ignored

  it did

  because green was in power

  yes

  because, let me guess again – the ballot boxes in this townland keep coughing up blue votes

  that’s right

  and as long as they do these roads will stay na
rrow and windy and the pot-holes will deepen

  certainly not much will be spent on straightening them out – slow down here, this is a temporary surface stretch, these chippings could slide out from under you on a bend like this and

  she drove on, keeping a steady speed in the middle of the road, through more bogland stretching away into the darkness, the lights of scattered homesteads winking in the level distance like ships out to sea, miles of bog before stone walls and sod fences began to rise on both sides of the road to close in around the car and

  that’s odd, she said

  what’s odd

  we just passed a single street light in the corner of that field, one street light all on its own in the middle of nowhere and

  I know, did you see what was under the streetlight in the corner of that field

  a few cows

  there was a half ring feeder

  so

  so why would you need a street-light over a half ring feeder

  how would I know

  think about it

  it’s the light

  yes, shining on

  feeding cattle

  exactly

  so someone got a streetlight put in the corner of his field so he can see his way at night to feed them, is that right

  yes, that light has been there for years, one engineer tried to get rid of it but word came down from on high that the light was to stay where it was

  so now we’re stuck with it

  we are

  that’s ridiculous

  it’s not as ridiculous as trying to remove it now, when our engineer tried to do that he was told fairly sharpish that he could forget about making a budget submission the following year if he moved it

  a friggin streetlight, Mairead murmured, in the middle of nowhere

  yes, a streetlight and

  we finally arrived home just as it was coming up to one o’clock in the morning and when we got inside Mairead went straight to bed as she had to be up for her first class at nine but I stayed up for another forty minutes, took a bottle of beer from the fridge and turned on the telly to watch one last news bulletin before turning in for the night, Sky News inevitably, from which I learned that avian flu was threatening to cross the species barrier in Southeast Asia and that the surge of troops in Iraq was likely to continue for the rest of the year, while the search for a serial killer was now underway in some city after the bodies of two prostitutes had been discovered on waste ground – the same old stories at that hour of the night but still somehow new, after which I turned off the television and set aside the urge to check my email and see if Darragh had dropped me a line, because I knew that if I sat down to the computer so late at night I was likely to get swept away for another hour or so on other news sites or on Amazon or something, sliding sideways into one search after another and all of a sudden it would be three in the morning and I’d have wasted two hours better spent asleep, for which I would have to pay the following day in sluggishness and fatigue, so I checked that my keys were on the stand inside the front door and switched off the lights in the hall and the bathroom before turning into bed behind Mairead with my arm around her and her arse tucked into my belly, drifting off on the warmth of her body, asleep within moments, deep and untroubled and so completely free of dreams that

  I got to work shortly after eight o’clock the following morning feeling fresh and sharp, arriving in the council offices just as the two girls at reception, Miriam and Eimear were sorting through the morning mail and pulling on their headsets to answer the phones and there was already a few people in the foyer filling out motor tax forms, trying to get ahead of the queue which would form in half an hour when the counter opened, so I waved to the girls and

  took the stairs up to my office at the end of the hall, the small narrow office with its twelve-foot-high ceilings, where I screwed open the blinds on the window which is high up on the wall behind my desk so that light pours down on me from a great height, often giving me the feeling that I am trapped at the bottom of a well and forever unable to see the sky save for this lighted sliver above, an impression which never fails to colour my mood every morning I step into this room so, with my

  jacket hung on the chair behind me and the cuffs of my shirt rolled up, I swept my gaze over the desk with its computer and its clutter of papers and envelopes and straight away I lined up five jobs for immediate attention – a penstock outside the village of Kilasser which needed to be opened quickly if the recent heavy rainfall was not to build up on the road surface – a procurement order for six hundred tons of polished granite from Roadstone had to be sorted, a couple of invoices to be signed and passed on to the accounts department and lastly, a message on my answering machine from Charlie Halloran that I should give him a call as soon as possible, a message logged at twenty-two minutes past seven, which was early even by Halloran’s standards and which I knew immediately signalled nothing but bad news and while I toyed for a moment with putting it off till later in the morning, I thought to hell with it, better get it out of the way early and not have it hanging over me the whole day, so I dialled him up and cut across him with my cheeriest tone before he could start, saying

  Councillor, you’re on the ball early this morning

  I’m early every morning

  he said bluntly

  which caused me to sit up immediately because there was no doubt now but that he was on the warpath as he said

  you’re not the only one who knows what a day’s work is –

  what can I do for you, Councillor

  I’ll tell you what you can do for me – Keeva Bridge, what’s the story with it, I passed by it yesterday – or rather I didn’t pass by it yesterday, I had to turn back, what’s happening with it

  you know yourself what’s happened with it, two months’ rain has washed it away, undermined the piers and the whole thing came down under its own weight – there’s a crew onsite, it will be repaired in less than three weeks so –

  there was a sour guffaw on the other end of the line

  it will take a lot longer than three weeks if things are moving at the pace I saw them yesterday

  what did you see

  I saw damn all, that’s what I saw, certainly nothing that resembled work that’s for sure, a whole crew of men standing around in hi-vis jackets smoking and talking into their mobiles, that’s what I saw at three o’clock yesterday afternoon so

  that put me on guard, the frustration in Halloran’s voice was sharper than our normal exchanges, the man was obviously riled so I said cautiously

  in the middle of the afternoon, they were probably having a tea break

  tea break my arse, one lad sleeping in the van with his boots up on the dash – I wound down the window and had a word with another lad leaning on a Stop/Go sign, he put the elbow on the roof and leaned in like he had all the time in the world, all talk, he said there was some sort of hold up, something about the delivery of concrete slabs, I couldn’t make out what the hell he was on about so

  I had no clue what he was talking about either but I couldn’t let Halloran know that so I had to let the conversation spin out till it became clear what exactly he was referring to, saying

  there’s been a small delay but the men will be on top of it in a day or so and

  what I want to know is, are there any arrangements for a temporary bridge – there are eight families in the townland of Aughawill cut off from civilization

  we’ve decided against a temporary bridge, the time and expense

  what time and expense – you don’t have to be reminded that the bank holiday is coming up and the first tourists of the year will be driving around in that part of the world and

  the new bridge will be done in a few weeks, well in time for tourists, it’s a single arch bridge, it’s not a listed monument so

  it better be done for that weekend, I don’t want to have to go on Midwest Radio explaining why there are holdups on that narrow road or seeing pictures of the pe
ople of Aughawill ferrying their kids to school across the river in a transport box, making their local representative look like an idiot and

  if they’re that intent on making you look bad you might want to remind them that they would still have their bridge if their sheep hadn’t overgrazed those hills above the river and

  oh yes Marcus, I’ll remember that, Halloran said with dry sarcasm, better still, the next time I’m canvassing that whole area you can come with me and lecture those people on hill-grazing and crop rotation and whatever else is bothering you, we’ll see then how you get on, one last thing – has the Legislator been on to you about this

  Moylette

  yes

  no, Deputy Moylette hasn’t been onto me about it yet, at least not so far as I know

  it’s only a matter of time, that whole area is right in his heartland, I’m surprised you’ve not had a concerned call about it from him – how about Lavelle, has he called, I’ll bet he’s called

  no

  it’s not like him to be so slow, I would have bet on him being on to you by now

  well, I look forward to calls from those two men

  yes, ok, I’ll leave it at that – do what you can about that bridge, get it sorted

  I’ll look into it, thanks for calling

  bye

  bye

  and the line went dead as he hung up and I sat back in my chair, gathering my thoughts because Halloran the fucker had now given me something to think about – what the hell was happening out on the bridge, what delay was he talking about and how come Keville, the site engineer hadn’t contacted me about it – these were the thoughts I sifted through after that conversation, taking my time before making a phone call because I knew well from past experience that the worst thing I could do at that moment would be to lift the phone and start bollocking someone at the other end, no surer way of fucking things up or of making a bad job worse, so I sat back in the chair and closed my eyes and considered the problem from as many angles as possible – first of all from the engineering angle and what exactly this hold-up was and then the political one, that aspect which specifically concerned Halloran with his vigilant need to keep his own patch tended and to keep himself positioned in such a way that any credit for its repair and restoration would come to him because it was well known that Halloran’s ambitions beyond a council seat made him a real threat to Moylette, the sitting deputy, and it was only when I put the two names together in my head that I knew I would have to contact