The Bone Clocks

“You don’t buy the meningitis theory, though, do you?”

Eilнsh hesitates: “It wasn’t Jacko’s brain that changed, Ed, it was his soul.”

I keep a sober face. “But if his soul was different, was he still—”

“No. He wasn’t Jacko anymore. Not the one who’d come to visit me when he was five. Jacko aged seven was someone else altogether.” Octogenarian faces are hard to read; the skin’s so crinkled and the eyes so birdlike that facial clues are obscured. The band have been nobbled by the Corkonian contingent; they strike up “The Irish Rover.”

“I presume you’ve kept this view to yourself, Eilнsh?”

“Aye. They’d be hurtful words as well as mad-sounding ones. I only ever put it to one person. That was himself. A few nights after the Beckett day there was a storm, and the morning after Jacko and I were gathering seaweed from the cove below my garden, and I came right out with it: ‘Jacko, who are ye?’ And he answered, ‘I’m a well-intentioned visitor, Eilнsh.’ I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask, ‘Where’s Jacko?’ but he must’ve heard the thought, somehow. He told me that Jacko couldn’t stay, but that he was keeping Jacko’s memories safe. That was the strangest moment of my life, and I’ve known a few.”

I flex my leg; it’s gone to sleep. “What did you do next?”

Eilнsh face-shrugs. “We spread the seaweed over the carrot patch. As if we’d agreed a pact, if you will. Kath, Sharon, and Holly left the next day. Only,” she frowns, “when I heard the news that he’d gone …” she looks at me, “… I’ve always wondered if the way he left us wasn’t related to the way he first came …”

An uncorked bottle goes pop!and a table cheers.

“I’m honored you’re telling me all this, Eilнsh, honestly—but why are you telling me all this?”

“I’m being told to.”

“Who … who by?”

“By the Script.”

“What script?”

“I’ve a gift, Ed.” The old Irishwoman has speckled woodpecker-green eyes. “Like Holly’s. Ye know what it is I’m talking of, so ye do.”

Chatter swells and falls like the sea on shingle. “I’m guessing you mean the voices Holly heard when she was a girl, and the, well, what in some circles would be called her moments of ‘precognition.’ ”

“Aye, there’s different names for it, right enough.”

“There are also sound medical explanations, Eilнsh.”

“I’m quite sure there are, if ye set store in them. The cluas faoi r ъ n, we’d call it in Irish. The secret ear.”

Great-aunt Eilнsh has a bracelet of tiger’s-eye stones. Her fingers fret at it while she’s talking and watching me.

“Eilнsh, I have to say—I mean, I respect Holly very much, and y’know … she’s definitely highly intuitive—bizarrely, sometimes. And I’m not rubbishing any traditions here, but …”

“But ye’d as soon eat your arm off as buy into this mumbo-jumbo about second sight and secret ears and whatever else this mad old West Cork witch is banging on about.”

That’s exactly what I think. I smile an apology.

“And that’s all well and good, Ed. For ye …”

I notice a headache knocking at my temples.

“… but not for Holly. She has to live with it. It’s hard—I know. Harder for Holly in shiny modern London, I’d say, than for me in misty old Ireland. She’ll need your help. Soon, I think.”

This is probably the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had at a wedding. But at least it’s not about Iraq. “What do I do?”

“Believe her, even if you don’t believe in it.”

Kath and Ruth walk up, glowing from their Latin dance action. “You two have been sat here thick as thieves for ages.”

“Eilнsh has been telling me about her Arabian adventures,” I say, still wondering about the old woman’s last line.

Ruth asks, “ Didyou see Kath and Dave dancing?”

“We did and fair play to ye both,” says Great-aunt Eilнsh. “That’s a mighty set of tail feathers Dave’s sprouted—at his time of life, too.”

“We’d go dancing when we first met,” says Kath, who sounds more Irish in the midst of the tribe, “but it stopped when we took on the Captain Marlow. No nights off together for thirty-odd years.”

“It’s almost three o’clock, Eilнsh,” says Ruth. “Your taxi’ll be here soon. You might want to start your goodbyes.”

No! She can’t go all paranormal on me and just leave. “I thought you’d be around for tonight, at least, Eнlish.”

“Oh, I know my limits.” She stands up with the aid of her stick. “Oisнn’s chaperoning me to the airport, and my neighbor Mr. O’Daly’ll meet me at Cork airport. Ye have your invitation to Sheep’s Head, Ed. Use it before it expires. Or before I do.”

I tell her, “You look pretty indestructible to me.”

“We all of us have less time than we think, Ed.”