The Bone Clocks (80 page)

The last house out of the town happens to be Muriel Boyce’s, standing alone after a row of terraced houses. It’s big and blockish, every window has net curtains, and its conservatory is now a greenhouse, like most other conservatories round here. The three houses before Muriel Boyce’s are occupied by three of her four big thumping sons and their wives, who seem to give birth only to boys, so the houses are referred to collectively as “Boyce Row.” I remember Ed saying how in tribal areas of Afghanistan sons mean power; the Endarkenment’s taking us the same way. Crosses are painted over Boyce Row’s windows and doors. Muriel Boyce has always been devout, organizing trips to Lourdes in the old days, but since her husband “was called to the Lord” two years ago—appendicitis—her piety has grown fangs and she’s let the hedge grow tall, though that doesn’t stop her seeing out, somehow. We’ve already passed her house when I hear her call my name. We turn, and she appears at
her garden gate. She’s dressed nunnishly and has her lumpish twenty-year-old son, Dónal, with her. Dónal wears cutoff shorts and a wife-beater’s vest. “Beautiful evening it’s turned into, Holly. Lorelei, aren’t ye after shooting up tall into a pretty young thing? And hello, Rafiq. What class are ye in at our school up above?”

“Fourth,” says Rafiq, cautiously. “Hello.”

“Lovely day, Lolly,” says Dónal Boyce, and Lorelei nods and looks away.

Muriel Boyce says, “Ye’re after having fox trouble, I hear?”

“You heard correctly, yes,” I reply.

“Now isn’t that fierce unlucky?” She tuts. “How many birds are you after losing altogether?”

“Four.”

“Four, is it?” She shakes her head. “Any of your best layers?”

“One or two.” I shrug, wanting to move on. “Eggs are eggs.”

“That hound o’ yours got the fox, I gather?”

“He did.” Hoping she’ll ask me to vote for her so I can give a vague reply and go, I say, “I see you’re running for mayor.”

“Well, I didn’t want to, but the Lord insisted so I’m obeying. People’re free to vote as they choose, of course—you won’t catch
me
giving my friends and neighbors the ‘hard sell.’ ”
Father Brady’s doing that for you
, I think, and Muriel brushes away a fly. “No, no. It’s about the youngsters,” she smiles at Lorelei and Rafiq, “that I was wanting a word with ye, Holly.”

The kids look puzzled. “I haven’t done anything,” protests Rafiq.

“Nobody’s saying you have,” Muriel Boyce looks at me, “but is it true you’re refusing to let Father Brady speak to them about the Lord’s Good News?”

“Are you talking about the religion class?”

“About Father Brady’s Bible study, yes.”

“We’ve opted out. Which is a private matter.”

Muriel Boyce looks away, sighing over Dunmanus Bay. “The whole parish admired how you’ve rolled up your sleeves, so to speak, when the Lord gave these two to your care—at your point in life. And when one isn’t even your blood! Nobody could fault you.”

“Blood doesn’t come into it.” Now I’m riled. “I didn’t give Rafiq a home because the parish admires me, or because ‘the Lord’ wanted me to—I did it because it was the right thing to do.”

Muriel Boyce’s smile is pained. “Which is ex
act
ly why the parish is so dismayed, now ye’re hell-bent on neglecting their spiritual needs. The Lord’s
so
disappointed. Your own angel’s crying, right next to you, right now. Youngsters in these godless times
need
the power of prayer more than ever. It’s as if ye’re not feeding them.”

Lorelei and Rafiq look around and see, of course, nothing.

“Oh, I can see all your angels, children.” Muriel Boyce gives a glazed look above our heads, just as prophetesses are supposed to. “Yours is like a bigger sister, Lorelei, but with long golden hair, and Rafiq’s is a man, a darkie but sure so was one o’ the Wise Men, but all three are sad, so sad. Your grandmother’s angel is weeping her blue eyes red, so she is. It breaks my heart. She’s begging ye to—”

“Enough of this, Muriel, f’Chrissakes.”

“Yes, it
is
for the sake of Our Lord Jesus Christ that I’m—”

“No no no no no. First off,
you
are not the parish. Second, I’m afraid the angels you ‘see’ happen to agree with Muriel Boyce too often to be plausible. Third, Lorelei’s parents weren’t churchgoers and Rafiq’s mum was from a Muslim background, so as the children’s guardian I’m respecting their parents’ wishes. We’re done here. Good day to you, Muriel.”

Muriel Boyce’s fingers clutching the top of her gate remind me of talons. “There’s many who were ‘atheists’ when Satan was dazzling them with money, abortions, science, and Sky TV but who’re sorry now they’ve seen what it’s all led to.” With one hand she holds her crucifix towards me as if it’ll awe me into submission. “But the Lord forgives sinners who seek forgiveness. Father Brady’s willing to come and speak with ye—at home. And it’s churches not mosques we have in
this
part of the world, thanks be to God.”

Dónal, I notice, is nakedly eyeing up Lorelei.

I push the pram away and tell the kids, “C’mon.”

“We’ll see if ye change your tune,” Muriel Boyce calls after me,
“when the Lord’s Party’s controlling the Co-op, deciding what’s going into whose ration boxes, so we will.”

Shocked, I turn around. “Is that a threat?”

“It’s a fact, Holly Sykes. Here’s another: The food in your bellies is Irish food. Christian food. If it’s not to your liking, there’s lots of houses going begging in England, I hear, near Hinkley.”

I hear wood being chopped. “Sheep’s Head is my home.”

“There’s plenty hereabouts who won’t be seeing things that way, not when belts are tighter. Ye’d do well to remember.”

My legs feel weak and stiff, like stilts, as I walk off.

Dónal Boyce calls after us, “I’ll be seeing you, Lol.”

He’s a leery, muscly, horny threat. We leave the village passing the
SLÁN ABHAILE
sign and the old 80
KPH
. speed limit sign. “I don’t like the way Dónal Boyce was looking at me, Gran,” says Lorelei.

“Good,” I tell her. “I didn’t, either.”

“Me neither,” says Rafiq. “Dónal Boyce is a jizbag.”

I open my mouth to say, “Language,” but don’t.

F
ORTY MINUTES LATER
we arrive home, at the end of the bumpy Dooneen track. “Dooneen” means “little fortress” and that’s how our cottage feels to me, even as I stow the food, items from the market and our ration boxes. While the kids get changed I try my tab to see if I can get through to Brendan, or even one of my closer relatives in Cork, but no luck; all I get is a
SERVER NOT DETECTED
message, and
IF PROBLEMS PERSIST, CONTACT YOUR LOCAL DEALER
. Useless. I check the hens and retrieve three fresh eggs from the coop. When Rafiq and Lorelei are ready, we go through the thicket between our garden and Mo’s, and over to her back door. It’s open, and Zimbra comes padding into the kitchen wagging his tail. He used to jump up more when he was a puppy, but now he’s calmer. Mo’s ration box and the eggs go in her cupboard. I click it shut to keep out the mice. We find Mo in her sunroom playing twohanded Scrabble with herself. “Welcome back, scholars. How were school and the market?”

“Okay,” says Rafiq, “but we saw a
drone
this morning.”

“Yes, I saw it too. Stability must have fuel to burn. Odd.”

Lorelei studies the Scrabble board. “Who’s winning, Mo?”

“I’m demolishing myself: 384 versus 119. Any homework?”

“I’ve got quadratic equations,” says Lorelei. “Yummy.”

“Ah, sure you can do those in your sleep now, so you can.”

“I’ve got geography,” says Rafiq. “Ever see an elephant, Mo?”

“Yes. At zoos, and at a reservation in South Africa.”

Rafiq’s impressed. “Were they really as big as houses? That’s what Mr. Murnane said.”

“As big as small cottages, maybe. African elephants were bigger than Indian ones. Magnificent beasts.”

“Then why did people let them go extinct?”

“There’s plenty of blame for everyone, but the last herds were slaughtered so that people in China could show how rich they were by giving each other knickknacks made of ivory.”

Mo isn’t one to sugar pills. I watch Rafiq’s face go almost sulky as he digests this. “I wish I’d been born sixty years ago,” he says. “Elephants, tigers, gorillas, polar bears … All the best animals’ve gone. All we’ve got left is rats and crows and earwigs.”

“And some first-class dogs,” I say, patting Zimbra’s head.

We all fall quiet at once, for no obvious reason. Mo’s husband, John, fifteen years dead, smiles out of his frame above the hearth. It’s a beautiful likeness in oils painted on a summer’s day in the garden of Mo and John’s old cottage on Cape Clear. John Cullin was blind and his life wasn’t always an easy one, but he lived at a civilized time in a civilized place where people had full bellies. John wrote fine poetry. Admirers wrote to him from America.

That world wasn’t made of stone, but sand.

I’m afraid. One bad storm is all it will take.

L
ATER
, L
ORELEI GOES
off to Knockroe Farm for her sleepover. Mo comes down to the cottage for dinner, where Rafiq and us two old ladies eat broad beans and potatoes fried in butter. At Rafiq’s age
Aoife would have turned her nose up at such plain fare, but before he reached Ireland Rafiq knew real stomach-gnawing hunger and he never turns anything down. Dessert is blackberries we picked on the way home and a little stewed rhubarb. Dinner is quieter without our resident teenager, and I’m reminded of when Aoife first left home to go to college. Once the dishes are done, we all play cribbage listening to an RTÉ program about how to dig a well. Rafiq then escorts Mo home before it gets dark, while I empty the latrine bucket into the sea below and check the wind direction; still easterly. I round the hens up into their house and bolt its door shut, wishing I’d done so last night as well. Rafiq comes back, yawns, strip-washes in a bucket of cold water, cleans his teeth, and takes himself up to bed. I read an old copy of
The New Yorker
from December 2031, savoring a story by Ersilia Holt and marveling at the adverts and the wealth that existed so recently.

At eleven-fifteen
P.M.
I switch on my tab to patch Brendan, but when the thing asks for my password, I blank. My password. F’Chrissakes. I never change it. It was something to do with dogs … Years ago I’d laugh about these flashes of forgetfulness, but at my age, it’s like the beginning of a slow-motion death sentence. If you can’t trust your mind anymore, you’re mentally homeless. I get up to retrieve my little book where I write things down, but Zimbra’s on my foot, and I remember:
NEWKY
, the name of the dog we had when I was a girl. I enter the password and try to thread Brendan. After five days of letdowns I’m ready for the error message, but on the first go I get a hi-res image of my brother frowning into his tab, 250 miles away in his study in his house on Exmoor. Something’s wrong: His strands of white hair are a mess, his haggard, puffy face is a mess, his voice is a nervous mess. “
Holly?
I can see you! Can you see me?”

“And hear you, Brendan, clear as a bell. What’s happened?”

“Well, apart from”—he reaches offscreen to get a drink, and I’m left looking at a photo on his shelf of a twenty-years-ago Brendan Sykes shaking hands with King Charles on Tintagel Gated Village’s opening day—“apart from the west of England looking more like
the Book of Revelation and a nuclear reactor down the road about to blow? Jackdaws. We had a visit two nights ago.”

I feel sick. “In the village, or in your actual house?”

“The village, but that was bad enough. Four nights ago our dedicated guards all buggered off, taking half the food in the store
and
the backup generator.” Brendan’s half drunk, I realize. “Most of us stayed—where’d we go to?—and we drew up a security rota.”

“You could come here.”

“If I don’t get sliced and diced by highwaymen at Swansea. If the trafficker doesn’t cut my throat a mile off the Welsh coast. If Immigration at Ringaskiddy takes my bribe.”

I know now, if I didn’t before, that I’ll never see Brendan in the flesh again. “Maybe Oisín Corcoran could help?”

“They’re all too busy trying to survive to help an eighty-year-old English Asylumite. No, you reach an age when … journeys, voyages, are for other people, not you.” He drinks his whisky. “I was telling you about the Jackdaws. At one o’clock or so this morning the alarms all went off, so I got dressed, got my .38 and went to the storehouse, where about a dozen of the bastards with guns, knives, and face-masks were loading up a van. Jem Linklater walked up and told the organizer, ‘That’s our food you’re thieving, sunshine, and we’ve the right to defend it.’ He shone a solar right in Jem’s face and said, ‘It’s ours now, Granddad, so back off, and that’s your last warning.’ Jem didn’t back off, and Jem”—Brendan shuts his eyes—“Jem got his head blown in.”

My hand’s over my mouth. “Jesus. You
saw
this?”

“From ten feet away. The murderer said, ‘Any more heroes?’ Then a gun went off and the guard went down, and total bloody anarchy broke out, and the Jackdaws realized we weren’t quite the doddery old farts they’d expected. Someone shot out the headlamps on the van. It was too dark to know who was where, what was what, and”—Brendan’s chest’s heaving—“I ran into the tomato polytunnel, where a Jackdaw came pounding at me, waving a machete, I thought … And my .38 was suddenly in my hand with the safety off, a bang sounded, and something skidded into me … His
mask’d come away, somehow, and I saw—I saw he was a boy, younger than Lorelei. The machete was a garden trowel. And”—Brendan controls his voice—“I shot him, Hol. Straight through the heart.”

My brother’s trembling and his face is shining, and a memory comes to me of a woman lying at a crossroads in an impossible labyrinth with her head staved in and a marble rolling pin dropping from my hand. I manage to say, “Under the circumstances …”

“I know. I thought it was him or me and some reflex kicked in. I dug his grave myself, at least. That’s a lot of earth to shift, at my age. We got four of them, they got six of us, plus Harry McKay’s boy, who’s in a bad way with a punctured lung. There’s a clinic in Exmouth, but care standards are pretty Middle Ages, by all accounts.”