October 27
UP BEFORE DAWN to pluck the feathers from four dead hens. Only twelve hens left, now. When I first moved to Dooneen Cottage—a quarter of a century ago—I couldn’t have plucked a hen if my life depended on it. Now I can stun, decapitate, and gut one as casually as Mam used to make a beef and Guinness stew. Necessity’s even taught me how to skin and dress rabbits without puking. One old fertilizer bag of feathers later I put the dead hens into the wheelbarrow and walk down the end of the garden via the hen coop, where I add the fox’s body to my one-wheeled hearse. He’s male, I see. Don’t touch fox’s tails, Declan says. A fox’s brush is a bacteriological weapon, barbed with disease. Probably got fleas, too, and we’ve had enough trouble with fleas, ticks, and lice as it is. The fox looks like he’s having an afternoon nap, if you ignore the ripped-out throat. One of his fangs protrudes slightly, pressing in his lower lip. Ed’s tooth did that. I wonder if the fox has cubs and a mate. I wonder if the cubs’ll understand that he’s never coming back, if the heart’ll be ripped out of their lives, or if they’ll just carry on foraging without a second thought. If they do, I envy them.
The sea’s ruffled this morning. I think I see a couple of dolphins a few hundred yards out, but when I look again, they’ve gone, so I’m not sure. The wind’s still from the west and not the east. It’s an awful thing to think, but if Hinkley is spewing radioactive material, which way the wind happens to be blowing could be a matter of life or death.
I tip the wheelbarrow’s grisly cargo off the stone pier. I never name our hens, ’cause it’s harder to wring the neck of something you’ve named, but I’m sad they had such frightened deaths. Now they’re drifting away with their killer into the open bay.
I want to hate the fox, but I can’t.
It was only trying to survive.
BACK AT THE house, Lorelei’s in the kitchen spreading a bit of butter on yesterday’s rolls for her and Rafiq’s lunch. “Morning, Gran.”
“Morning. There’s dried seaweed, too. And pickled turnip.”
“Thanks. Raf told me about the fox. You should’ve woken me.”
“No point, love. You can’t raise chickens from the dead, and Zim dealt with the fox.” I wonder if she’s remembered the date. “There’s a few strips of corrugated iron from the old shed—I’ll try sinking some underground walls around the coop.”
“Good idea. It should ‘outfox’ the next visitor.”
“That’s one gene you inherited from Granddad Ed.”
She likes it when I say that sort of thing. “It’s, uh,” she makes an effort to sound breezy, “Mum and Dad’s Day, today. The twenty-seventh of October.”
“It is, love. Want to light the incense?”
“Yes, please.” Lorelei goes to the little box shrine and opens up its front. The photo shows Aoife and ?rvar and a ten-year-old Lorelei, against the background of a dig at L’Anse aux Meadows. It was taken in spring of 2038, the year they died, but its greens and yellows are already fading and the blues and magentas blotting. I’d pay a lot for a reprint but there’s no power or ink cartridges to print one, and no original to make a reprint from; my feckless generation trusted our memories to the Net, so the ’39 Crash was like a collective stroke.
“Gran?” She’s looking at me like my mind’s gone walkabout.
“Sorry, love, I was, um …” Often, there are just blanks.
“Where’s the tin with the incense sticks?”
“Oh. I tidied it up. Put it somewhere safe. Um …” Is this happening more these days? “The tin, above the stove.”
Lorelei lights the new incense stick at the stove, then blows out the tiny flame. She crosses the kitchen, placing the stick in the holder in the little shrine. On the ledge are a Roman coin, which Aoife gave to Lorelei, and an old windup watch ?rvar inherited from his grandfather. We watch the sandalwood smoke unthread itself from the glowing tip. Sandalwood, yet another old-world scent. The first year we did this, I’d prepared a prayer and a poem, but I started weeping so uncontrollably that I appalled Lorelei; since then we’ve tacitly agreed that we just stand here for a little while and sort of be alone together with our memories. I remember waving them off at Cork airport five years ago—the last year that ordinary people could buy diesel, drive cars, and fly, though ticket prices were spiraling through the roof, and they couldn’t have gone if the Australian government hadn’t paid ?rvar’s way. Aoife went to see her aunt Sharon and uncle Peter, who’d moved out there in the late twenties and who I hope are still alive and well in Byron Bay, but there’ve been no news-threads to—and precious little information from—Australia for eighteen months. How easily, how instantly we used to message anyone, anywhere on earth. Lorelei holds my hand. She would’ve gone with her parents if she hadn’t been getting over chicken pox, so Aoife and ?rvar drove her here from Dublin, where they were living that year. A fortnight with Grandma Holly was the consolation prize.
Five years later, I take a deep, shuddery breath to stop myself crying. It’s not just that I can’t hold Aoife again, it’s everything: It’s grief for the regions we deadlanded, the ice caps we melted, the Gulf Stream we redirected, the rivers we drained, the coasts we flooded, the lakes we choked with crap, the seas we killed, the species we drove to extinction, the pollinators we wiped out, the oil we squandered, the drugs we rendered impotent, the comforting liars we voted into office—all so we didn’t have to change our cozy lifestyles. People talk about the Endarkenment like our ancestors talked about the Black Death, as if it’s an act of God. But we summoned it, with every tank of oil we burned our way through. My generation were diners stuffing ourselves senseless at the Restaurant of the Earth’s Riches knowing—while denying—that we’d be doing a runner and leaving our grandchildren a tab that can never be paid.
“I’m so sorry, Lol.” I sigh, looking around for a box of tissues before remembering our world no longer has tissues.
“It’s all right, Gran. It’s good to remember Mum and Dad.”
Upstairs, Rafiq is hopping along the landing—probably pulling on a sock—as he sings in hybrid Mandlish. Chinese bands are as cool to kids in the Cordon as American New Wave bands were to me.
“We’re luckier, in a way,” Lorelei says quietly. “Mum and Dad didn’t … Y’know, it was all over so quickly, and they had each other, and at least we know what happened. But for Raf …”
I look at Aoife and ?rvar. “They’d be so proud of you, Lol.”
Then Rafiq appears at the top of the stairs. “Is there any honey for the porridge, Lol? Morning, Holly, by the way.”
SCHOOL BAGS PACKED, lunches stowed, Lorelei’s hair braided, Rafiq’s insulin pump checked and his blue tie—the last vestige of a uniform the school at Kilcrannog can reasonably insist on—done again and redone, we set off up the track. Caher Mountain, whose southern face I’ve looked at in all seasons, all weathers, and all moods nearly every day over the last twenty-five years, rises ahead. Cloud shadows slide over its heathered, rocky, gorse-patched higher slopes. Lower down is a five-acre plantation of Monterey pines. I push the big pram that was already a museum piece when me and Sharon used to play with it during summer holidays here in the late seventies.
Mo’s up and out. She’s hanging clothes on her line as we get to her gateway, wearing a fisherman’s geansaí so 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 Wild on 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 RTé 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 Eilísh 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’t want. “I never want 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 éilish 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?”
WHERE DOONEEN TRACK reaches the main road we turn right and soon pass the turnoff leading down to Knockroe Farm. We meet the farm’s owner, Declan O’Daly, hauling a handcart of hay. Declan’s around fifty, is married to Branna, has two older boys plus a daughter in Lorelei’s class, owns two dozen Jerseys and about two hundred sheep, which graze on the rockier, tuftier end of the peninsula. His Roman brow, curly beard, and lived-in face give him the air of a Zeus gone to seed a bit, but he’s helped Mo and us out more than a few times and I’m glad he’s there. “I’d give you a big hug,” he says, walking across the farmyard to the road in stained overalls, “but one of the cows just knocked me over into a huge pile of cow shite. What’s so funny,” he mock-fumes, “young Rafiq Bayati? By God, I’ll use you as a rag …”
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 ?rvar 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