Mike McCormack - Solar Bones

the whole thing was clunky, hempen homespun in its execution but the point of it all clear enough — City Hall and all who sailed in her, politicians and engineers, dead and drowned beneath the waves of this political protest and

did you see what our daughter got up to last night, Mairead wanted to know the following day, shaming us in front of the nation, not a stitch on her

yes, I saw

and were you shocked this time

I’m not so easily shocked any more

good, she replied, and sunk back in the pillow with a tired smile drawing her face open so

I’m a bit confused though, I said, the water thing is easy to understand but the jumping off the roof bit, what was that all about

I was a bit lost myself with that — I hope she calls today, she might explain it, maybe they hope it will be the sort of inspiring image or event that will rouse the city to more urgent protest

is that what they want

maybe it is, getting people to rise up and start a political and social renewal, startle the people out of their torpor and

you sound like Darragh

well, he didn’t lick it off the stones you know and

it’s coming back to me now, the stones and

driving to town that day

the trip to town with

Mairead sitting up in the bed, her first day on the turn, her first day getting better and

the pain of it all

this fucking pain when

I drove to town to pick up that prescription for her, some sort of a tonic prescribed by Dr Cosgrave to build her up towards the end of her illness, by which time she was seriously thin and enfeebled, her lowest ebb but the very point at which she began to rally, the illness draining from her like a neap tide, leaving her sitting up in bed against a pile of pillows, pale and breathless with her body labouring to keep her upright, the worst of it definitely over but weak as water so that Dr Cosgrave prescribed her this tonic after she examined her for the last time, pronouncing herself happy that she was indeed on the mend and that all the signs were good, her appetite gradually returning to cups of soup and toast after so long taking nothing but glasses of tepid water to wash the virus from her body, every puke and purge drawing with it some of her own colouring so that she was now almost translucent from all the weight she had lost but

that’s nothing to panic about

Dr Cosgrave assured us, smiling around at both of us in the dimly lit room

she’s lost weight but she has the summer months ahead of her to get stronger and build herself up and this will help her

she said, as she tore the script from her book and handed it to me and I understood that it was some sort of a tonic in capsule form, something to be taken three times a day after meals and that I would have to skip into Westport and get it for her as

she frowned up at me, her voice rasping

a tonic — it sounds so old fashioned, do people still take that sort of thing

I guess so, at least that’s what this prescription calls for

it sounds like something from an age of poultices and leeches

I think you’ve had enough of leeches and bugs, will you be ok for an hour or two while I get this

yes, I’ll be fine

do you need anything else

bring back apple juice

ok

and will you take my car, it hasn’t been started in a while, it could probably do with a quick spin

ok, it’s half eleven now, I’ll be back around one o’clock, is that ok

yes, I’ll be fine

she smiled at me, her thin face opening along sharper lines than I was used to but still unmistakably hers

it’ll do you good to get away for a few hours

you’re trying to get rid of me

yes, I’m waiting for my fancy man to come and see me the minute you’re out the door

well I won’t get in his way, there’s water here and a towel and

that’s all I need, go on before I change my mind and one last thing

yes

you did a good job

what job

looking after me, you did a good job looking after me, thank you

yes

and I grabbed her keys from the bowl on the hall-stand, pulled the door behind me and went out to the car, her old Corolla, which stood at the gable in shadow and stillness with leaves and twigs caught in the wipers and a scurf of dust on the windscreen, all the markers of time passing converging on it, the wind and rain already going about the patient work of wearing it down, this car which had lain dormant for so long that I stood to look at it a moment, to marvel before I opened the door and sat into her, wondering to myself

will she start

I’ll bet the battery’s dead in her

as I pushed the seat back to give myself some legroom so that my knees were not up under the steering wheel and adjusted the seat-angle as I could never sit comfortably into a car after Mairead, whose legs are a lot shorter than mine and who always likes to sit forward in the seat, whereas I like to lean back from the steering wheel, settling myself in but still wondering

will she start

is the battery dead

as I turned the key in the ignition to bring up all the lights in the dash before a couple of sluggish, laboured turns of the engine finally caught and the causal chain from ignition spark to engine turn was completed smoothly and held as the car surged to life with a healthy growl which carried through the floor panels and up through the seat so that I could feel it vibrate in the bottom of my spine as I pumped the accelerator a few times, warming her up, the noise of the engine rising and falling against the gable of the house, and in that roaring moment all neglect and idleness was set aside as the engine sung out in some mysterious way which thrilled me but embarrassed me by bringing tears to my eyes, sitting there and pumping the accelerator while all the gauges in the dash rose to their proper levels

temp, oil, revs and petrol

of which there was over half a tank, more than enough for the journey ahead so I sat there a few moments longer revving her, feeling extraordinarily happy and impressed that this car had started so easily after lying idle so long in rain and cold, this fifteen-year-old car which had a full circuit of the clock behind it, most of it racked up during the kids’ teenage years with all its trips to

discos, cinemas, summer camps, football matches

all the childhood and adolescent occasions to which, I have to admit, Mairead more often than I ferried the kids and their friends, so much so that she was especially attached to it, a sentimental link to that special part of our family’s life, a repository of all our times together which would be gone forever if it were scrapped, even if for the time being there was no pressing reason why it should be, as year after year it passed the NCT, flying through the test with none of those major engineering flaws that would consign it to the breakers yard, each year returning a snag list of small fails

mirrors, number plates, shocks, lights, tracking and steering but

never any major parts needing replacement, nor mechanical failure after fifteen years bouncing across the roads of West Mayo, till it had gradually become clear that this car might keep going forever like some pristine machine that had been engineered in some frictionless realm, knowing nothing of deterioration or obsolescence as long as the body hung together, which, in fairness, might not be too many years longer as corrosion had begun to eat along the bottom of the door and the edges of the bonnet, which was to be expected, but so long as the floor-panels held out and the road did not start showing under our arses, I didn’t have to weld steel plates onto the chassis, and

I sat there a while longer enjoying the sound of the engine humming away as if it were a melody from a better world where things ran to their proper purpose — a world where things worked as they should — before I fired some water up on the windscreen and was momentarily blinded as the dirt thickened under the wipers, driven across the screen in a heavy scurf for a few moments before it gradually cleared a broad sweep through which I could see clearly by which time the sound of the engine had sunk into my own flesh and bones, synching with my own shorter rhythms in such a sweet way that when I