First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

       Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

      This digital edition first published in 2017 by Canongate Books

       canongate.co.uk

      Copyright © Mike McCormack, 2016

      The moral right of the author has been asserted

      First published in 2016 by Tram Press, www.tramppress.com

      An extract of an earlier form of this novel appeared in Shine On: Irish Writers for Shine, edited by Pat Boran. Published by Dedalus Press, 2011

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

      ISBN 978 1 78689 129 7

       eISBN 978 1 78689 128 0

       for Maeve

      the bell

      the bell as

      hearing the bell as

      hearing the bell as standing here

      the bell being heard standing here

      hearing it ring out through the grey light of this

      morning, noon or night

      god knows

      this grey day standing here and

      listening to this bell in the middle of the day, the middle of the day bell, the Angelus bell in the middle of the day, ringing out through the grey light to

      here

      standing in the kitchen

      hearing this bell

      snag my heart and

      draw the whole world into

      being here

      pale and breathless after coming a long way to stand in this kitchen

      confused

      no doubt about that

      but hearing the bell from the village church a mile away as the crow flies, across the street from the garda station, beneath the giant sycamore trees which tower over it and in which a colony of rooks have made their nests, so many and so noisy that sometimes in spring when they are nesting their clamour fills the church and

      exhausted now, so quickly

      that sprint to the church and the bell

      yes, they are the real thing

      the real bells

      not a transmission or a broadcast because

      there’s no mistaking the fuller depth and resonance of the sound carried towards me across the length and breadth of this day and which, even at this distance reverberates in my chest

      a systolic thump from the other side of this parish, which lies on the edge of this known world with Sheeffry and Mweelrea to the south and the open expanse of Clew Bay to the north

      the Angelus bell

      ringing out over its villages and townlands, over the fields and hills and bogs in between, six chimes of three across a minute and a half, a summons struck on the lip of the void which gathers this parish together through all its primary and secondary roads with

      all its schools and football pitches

      all its bridges and graveyards

      all its shops and pubs

      the builder’s yard and health clinic

      the community centre

      the water treatment plant and

      the handball alley

      the made world with

      all the focal points around which a parish like this gathers itself as surely as

      the world itself did at the beginning of time, through

      mountains, rivers and lakes

      when it gathered in these parts around the Bunowen river which rises in the Lachta hills and flows north towards the sea, carving out that floodplain to which all roads, primary and secondary, following the contours of the landscape, make their way and in the middle of which stands

      the village of Louisburgh

      from which the Angelus bell is ringing, drawing up the world again

      mountains, rivers and lakes

      acres, roods and perches

      animal, mineral, vegetable

      covenant, cross and crown

      the given world with

      all its history to brace myself while

      standing here in the kitchen

      of this house

      I’ve lived in for nearly twenty-five years and raised a family, this house outside the village of Louisburgh in the county of Mayo on the west coast of Ireland, the village in which I can trace my seed and breed back to a time when it was nothing more than a ramshackle river crossing of a few smoky homesteads clustered around a forge and a log bridge, a sod-and-stone hamlet not yet gathered to a proper plan nor licensed to hold a fair, my line traceable to the gloomy prehistory in which a tenacious clan of farmers and fishermen kept their grip on a small patch of land

      through hail and gale

      hell and high water

      men with bellies and short tempers, half of whom went to their graves with pains in their chests before they were sixty, good singers many of them, all

      adding to the home place down the generations till it swelled to twenty acres, grazing and tillage, with access to open commonage on Carramore hill which overlooks the bay and

      this pain, this fucking pain tells me that

      to the best of my knowledge

      knowledge being the best of me, that

      that

      there is something strange about all this, some twitchy energy in the ether which has affected me from the moment those bells began to toll, something flitting through me, a giddiness drawing me

      through the house

      door by door

      room by room

      up and down the hall

      like a mad thing

      bedrooms, bathroom, sitting room and

      back again to the kitchen where

      Christ

      such a frantic burst

      Christ

      not so much a frantic burst as a rolling crease in the light, flow- ing from room to room only to find

      this house is empty

      not a soul anywhere

      because this is a weekday and my family are gone

      all gone

      the kids all away now and of course Mairead is at work and won’t be back till after four so the house is mine till then, something that should gladden me as normally I would only be too happy to potter around on my own here, doing nothing, listening to the radio or reading the paper, but now the idea makes me