One of the most beautiful and rare and probably the most intelligent of all the world’s creatures is that incomparable artist, the Lyrebird … The bird is extremely shy and almost incredibly elusive … characterised by amazing intelligence.
To say that he is a being of the mountains only partially explains him. He is, certainly, a being of the mountains but no great proportion of the high ranges that mark and limit his domain can claim him for a citizen … His taste is so exacting and definite, and his disposition so discriminating, that he continues to be selective in these beautiful mountains, and it was a waste of time to seek him anywhere save in situations of extraordinary loveliness and grandeur.
Ambrose Pratt, The Lore of the Lyrebird
1
That Morning
‘Are you sure you should be driving?’
‘Yes,’ Bo replies.
‘Are you sure she should be driving?’ Rachel repeats, asking Solomon this time.
‘Yes,’ Bo replies again.
‘Is there any chance you could stop texting while you’re driving? My wife is heavily pregnant, the plan is to meet my firstborn,’ Rachel says.
‘I’m not texting, I’m checking my emails.’
‘Oh well then,’ Rachel rolls her eyes, and looks out the window as the countryside races past. ‘You’re speeding. And you’re listening to the news. And you’re jet-lagged to fuck.’
‘Put your seatbelt on if you’re so worried.’
‘Well, that’s reassuring,’ Rachel mumbles as she squeezes her body into the seat behind Bo and clicks her seatbelt into place. She’d rather sit behind the passenger seat where she can keep a better eye on Bo’s driving, but Solomon has the seat pushed so far back that she can’t fit.
‘And I’m not jet-lagged,’ Bo says, finally putting her phone down, to Rachel’s relief. She waits to see Bo’s two hands return to the wheel but instead Bo turns her attention to the radio and flicks through the stations. ‘Music, music, music, why does nobody talk any more?’ she mutters.
‘Because sometimes the world needs to shut up,’ Rachel replies. ‘Well, whatever about you, he’s jet-lagged. He doesn’t know where he is.’
Solomon opens his eyes tiredly to acknowledge them both. ‘I’m awake,’ he says lazily, ‘I’m just, you know …’ he feels his eyelids being pulled closed again.
‘Yeah, I know I know, you don’t want to see Bo driving, I get it,’ Rachel says.
Just off a six-hour flight from Boston, which landed at five thirty this morning, Solomon and Bo had grabbed breakfast at the airport, picked up their car, then Rachel, to drive three hundred kilometres to County Cork in the southwest of Ireland. Solomon had slept most of the way in the plane but it still wasn’t enough, yet every time he’d opened his eyes he’d found Bo wide awake spending every second watching as many in-flight documentaries as she could.
Some people joke about living on pure air. Solomon is convinced that Bo can live on information alone. She ingests it at an astronomical rate, always hungry for it, reading, listening, asking, seeking it out so that it leaves little room for food. She barely eats, the information fuels her but never fills her, the hunger for knowledge and information is never satiated.
Dublin based, Solomon and Bo had travelled to Boston to accept an award for Bo’s documentary, The Toolin Twins, which had won Outstanding Contribution to Film and Television at the Boston Irish Reporter Annual Awards. It was the twelfth award they’d picked up that year, after numerous others they’d been honoured with.