The box truck, meanwhile, has backed into the Co-op warehouse across the square, where Seamus Li speaks with Olive O’Dwyer, Kilcrannog’s deputy mayor. Items loaded onto the truck are mostly farm produce; from the deep freeze come recently slaughtered beef, bacon, turkey, rabbit, mutton, and lamb, and from the fresh store come boxes of cured tobacco, leeks, kale, onions, potatoes, pumpkins, and late fruit. Most of the fruit and vegetables will feed the Ringaskiddy Concession, where the POC officials live with their families, or the crews of the People’s Liberation Navy’s Atlantic Fleet. The meat, uncloned and cesium-free—so far—will be sold for jaw-dropping prices in Beijing, Chongqing, and Shanghai. Milk is powdered at Ringaskiddy, and is a major export.
In return, the three Sheep’s Head Co-ops of Durrus, Ahakista, and Kilcrannog receive diesel, fertilizer, insecticide, machine parts, lightbulbs, tools, hardware, as well as the special requests—including vital medicines like Rafiq’s insulin—agreed upon every month by the town committee. The POC also has a deal with Cork Stability to deliver the basic commodities for our weekly ration boxes, though the quality of these has been going downhill in recent months. The most important item delivered by the Company, however, is security. The POC protects its Lease Lands by paying for the Stability Militia to man the sixty-mile Cordon, which is why the ten-mile coastal strip from Bantry to Cork has been spared the worst of the lawlessness that plagues much of Europe as the Endarkenment switches off power networks and emaciates civic society. The men in Fitzgerald’s bar mutter that the Chinese aren’t here out of love, and that the POC is no doubt turning a tidy profit from its operation, but even the drunkest lout can imagine how savage life on Sheep’s Head would soon become without the three Cs: Company, Convoy, and Cordon.
It’s our Great Wall of China, so to speak.
MY PRAM AND me are at the school gate at three o’clock sharp. I remember the various kindergartens and schools in north London and Rye where I used to collect Aoife. The main topic of conversation is the half-empty ration box, returned to us irrespective of age from the Co-op with a 400-gram bag of oatmeal bulked out with husk and straw, 200 grams of brown rice, 200 grams of lentils, 50 grams of sugar and 50 grams of salt, a packet of ten Dragon Brand teabags, half a small bar of DMZ soap, a tub of Korean detergent two years past its use-by date, a small bottle of iodine labeled in Cyrillic, and, bafflingly, a Hello Kitty cola-flavoured eraser. What isn’t used will become currency in future Friday markets, but today’s ration box is the worst in the six years since the system was introduced in the wake of the ’39 crop failure. “I know it’s a disgrace,” Martin’s saying to a group of the disgruntled, “but I’m your mayor, not a magician. I’ve threaded messages to Stability in Cork till I’m blue in the face, but how can I make them answer if they won’t? Stability is not a democracy; they’ll look after their own first and answer only to Dublin.”
Martin’s saved, sort of, by the bell. The kids troop out, and my two and I set off along the main road out of Kilcrannog, Lorelei and Rafiq taking it in turns to sniff the cola eraser. The scent awakens very early memories for Lorelei, but Rafiq’s too young to have tasted the real thing, and he keeps asking, “But what iscola? A fruit or a herb or what?”
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, Dуnal, with her. Dуnal 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 Dуnal 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 megiving 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 actly why the parish is so dismayed, now ye’re hell-bent on neglecting their spiritual needs. The Lord’s sodisappointed. Your own angel’s crying, right next to you, right now. Youngsters in these godless times needthe 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 isfor the sake of Our Lord Jesus Christ that I’m—”
“No no no no no. First off, youare 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.”