The Bone Clocks

Mo’s up and out. She’s hanging clothes on her line as we get to her gateway, wearing a fisherman’s geansa нso stretched it’s almost a robe. “Morning, neighbors. Friday again. Who knows where the weeks go?” The white-haired ex-physicist grabs her stick and hobbles across the rough-cropped lawn, handing me her empty ration box to take to town. “Thanks in advance,” she says, and I tell her, “No bother,” and add it to Lorelei’s, Rafiq’s, and mine in the pram.

“Let me help with that washing, Mo,” says Lorelei.

“The washing I can handle, Lol, but yomping off to town,” as we call the village of Kilcrannog, “I can’t. What I’d do without your gran to fill up my ration box, I cannot imagine.” Mo whirls her cane like a rueful Chaplin. “Well, actually I can: starve by degrees.”

“Nonsense,” I tell her. “The O’Dalys’d take care of you.”

“A fox killed four of our chickens last night,” says Rafiq.

“That’s regrettable.” Mo glances at me, and I shrug. Zimbra sniffs a trail all the way up to Mo, wagging his tail.

“We’re lucky Zimmy got him before he killed the lot,” says Rafiq.

“My, my.” Mo scratches behind Zimbra’s ear and finds the magic spot that makes him go limp. “Quite a night at the opera.”

I ask, “Did you have any luck on the Net last night?” Meaning, Any news about the Hinkley Point reactor?

“Only a few minutes, on official threads. Usual statements.” We leave it there, in front of the kids. “But drop by later.”

“I was half hoping you’d mind Zimbra for us, Mo,” I say. “I don’t want him going all Call of the Wildon us after killing the fox.”

“Course I will. And, Lorelei, would you tell Mr. Murnane I’ll be in the village on Monday to teach the science class? Cahill O’Sullivan’s taking his horse and trap in that day and he’s offered me a lift. I’ll be borne aloft like the Queen of Sheba. Off you go now, I mustn’t make you late. C’mon, Zimbra, see if we can’t find that revolting sheep’s shin you buried last time …”

AUTUMN’S AT ITS tipping point. Ripe and gold is turning manky and cold, and the first frost isn’t far off. In the early 2030s the seasons went badly haywire, with summer frosts and droughts in winter, but for the last five years we’ve had long, thirsty summers, long, squally winters, with springs and autumns hurrying by in between. Outside the Cordon the tractor’s going steadily extinct and harvests have been derisory, and on RTЙ two nights ago there was a report on farms in County Meath that are going back to using horse-drawn plows. Rafiq trots ahead, picking a few late blackberries, and I encourage Lorelei to do the same. Vitamin supplements in the ration boxes have grown fewer and further between. Brambles grow as vigorously as ever, at least, but if we don’t shear them back soon, our track up to the main road’ll turn into the hedge of thorns round Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Must speak to Declan or Cahill about it. The puddles are getting deeper and the boggy bits boggier, too, and here and there Lorelei has to help me with the pram; more’s the pity I didn’t have the whole track resurfaced when money still got things done. More’s the pity I didn’t lay in better, deeper, bigger stores, too, but we never knew that every temporary shortage would turn out to be a permanent one until it was too late.

We pass the spring that feeds my cottage’s and Mo’s bungalow’s water tanks. It’s gurgling away nicely now after the recent rains, but last summer it dried up for a whole week. I never pass the spring without remembering Great-aunt Eilнsh telling me about Hairy Mary the Contrary Fairy, who lived there, when I was little. Being so hairy the other fairies laughed at her, which made her so cranky she’d reverse people’s wishes out of spite, so you had to outwit her by asking for what you didn’twant. “I neverwant a skateboard” would get you a skateboard, for example. That worked for a bit till Hairy Mary cottoned on to what people were doing, so half the time she gave people what they wished for, and half the time she gave them the opposite. “So the moral is, my girl,” Great-aunt Йilish says to me across the six decades, “if you want a thing, get it the old-fashioned way, by elbow grease and brain power. Don’t mess with the fairies.”

But today, I don’t know why, maybe it’s the fox, maybe it’s Hinkley, I take my chances. Hairy Mary, Contrary Fairy: Please, let my darlings survive. “Please.”

Lorelei turns and asks, “You okay, Gran?”