Five months into my mom’s second pregnancy Dad began working out the details of my sister’s immortality.

On the evening of the amniocentesis which confirmed finally that I would at last have a sister, he arrived home from town joyously drunk. In the sitting-room where Mom and I sat watching telly, he stood clutching a bottle of Bushmills in one hand and a glass in the other, swaying back and forth in the middle of the floor like a man bracing a small boat. He gulped back a mouthful of whiskey and began to treat us to a long speech dealing with history and the state of the world. He touched on several apocalyptic themes – the dwindling ozone layer, the pillage of the earth’s finite resources, the declining western economies and the continuing population boom among others. Finally he tied up the threads of his discourse by slopping more whiskey and announcing boldly that, as of this moment, he was renouncing the procreative urge; after the birth of my sister and his daughter there would be no more babies in the Monk household. There was a pause here for more whiskey before he continued. His life had been enriched by marriage to a beautiful woman who had borne him a fine son – his words, I swear – and now fortune had seen fit to extend to him the daughter he had longed for. He had his health and a roof over his head and all in all it would take the fingers of both hands to total up his blessings – a man could ask for no more. He paused again for more whiskey and continued on a cautionary note. Yes, it was true, a man could ask for more and the sorry state of the world was testimony to the fact that more men were asking for more every day of the week, but he, Christopher Monk, would countenance no such greed in his own heart. He had consequently decided to burden the world with no more expectations. In short, to use his own phrase, he was going to tie a knot in it. He continued swaying and slopping the whiskey as he refilled his glass. He then proposed a toast, heedless to the fact that he was the only one in the room with a drink.

‘Life,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘And plenty of it.’

He then nearly keeled into the fire before Mom grabbed his hand and both of us dragged him off to bed and took off his boots. His fifteen stone bulk rid us of any notion we might have had of trying to get him beneath the covers. We threw a quilt over him and left him there, sprawled out diagonally on the bed, snoring like a felled giant. For the first time in her marriage Mom slept alone in the spare room.

Next day Dad returned from town with a box of Solpadeine and a new telescope. He announced that he was going to examine the heavens. We took the announcement in our stride: Dad had always been a dabbler. Once it had been local history. In a rush of enthusiasm he had compiled a neat index of all the Neolithic and megalithic monuments in our parish, marking them out on an Ordnance Survey map that had covered an entire wall of the kitchen. This map became a major talking point among the men who came to our garage to get their cars seen to. Then this historical map had been replaced by a geological one that mapped out the rock formations of Clew Bay and the surrounding Mweelera mountains. His immediate interest had been the news that these mountains were yielding up six ounces of gold to a ton of limestone, the richest strike in Europe since the Bohemian mines of the seventeenth century. Dad was worried.

‘A total and utter disaster,’ he had opined grimly. ‘Do they not know the damage extensive mining could do to an area like this? All that pounding and grinding down of rock, not to mention the amount of cyanide needed to wash it.’

These words marked Dad’s entry into public life. Later, he had become something of a local hero when, as head of the anti-mining lobby, he had taken their case through the length and breadth of the legal system and finally, in the Supreme Court, wrung a concession from the government to ban all mining in the area till well into the next millennium. Till the arrival of the telescope the geological map had hung on the wall, a frayed monument to his tenacity and that glorious victory for local democracy.

The day the telescope arrived the map was taken down without ceremony and replaced with colour plates from The Philips Book of Astronomy. The pages of the book covered the entire wall between the kitchen sink and the window facing onto the backyard. From his place at the head of the table, Dad had a full view of the entire northern sky, its planets and constellations, nebulae and meteors. The room itself seemed to open out into space now, out into those far galaxies where the stellar winds blew and the music of the spheres chimed. The visionary in Dad was well pleased with the effect.

After the wall was papered he took the telescope onto the flat roof of the garage and bolted down the tripod against the winds that blew in from the sea. He then switched off the light in the yard and spent a long time peering through the lens, sweeping back and forth through the heavens and taking down notes with the help of a flashlight in one of my foolscaps. Mom and I just looked at each other and shrugged; Dad had another bee in his bonnet, no doubt we’d find out about it soon enough.

One evening, after some time writing and scanning, he came into the sitting-room and called Mom out to the garage. I watched from the kitchen window and saw them talking at the foot of the ladder that led onto the roof. Evidently Dad wanted her to climb up. I saw Mom protest, a look of consternation on her face. She was pointing to her swollen tummy. She turned to come back to the house but Dad grabbed her wrist and seemed to plead some more with her, holding her face between his hands and leaning his forehead onto hers until she finally relented. She mounted the ladder cautiously, making her way heavily, rung by rung with Dad behind her, his hand on her waist. When they were together on the roof he stood close to her and swept his hand over the sky, pointing out constellations and vivid stars, then finally bringing it to rest open-palmed against one sector of the heavens. He kept it there and talked closely to her for a few minutes, his mouth almost on her ear. Then she turned and kissed him deeply, embracing him tightly for a long moment. What was going on? I was then mortified to see Dad stand behind her and lift up her sweater and T-shirt, exposing her swollen bump to the night sky. She leaned back into his arms with her eyes closed and he continued to stroke her exposed flesh. I turned from the window, deeply embarrassed.

When Mom came in minutes later she was smiling and shaking her head, looking real pleased. She saw my agitation. ‘That man is daft,’ she said. ‘Pure daft. As daft as a ha’penny watch.’

‘What’s he doing?’ I could hardly contain myself.

‘You’d better ask him yourself. Coming from me it would sound crazy, coming from him it just sounds daft. A good daftness though,’ she said. ‘The daftness of love.’ Her smile broadened now over her entire face – she was gently enjoying my disadvantage. ‘Go out and ask him.’

On the roof Dad was taking down more notes. I didn’t know how he stuck the cold – I cursed for not wearing a jacket. The night was clear and the sky glistened heavily; I could hear the sea booming onto the pier a quarter mile distant. To the west I could see the lights of Louisburgh, our little town.

‘Dad, what the hell are you looking at?’ I sounded gruffer than I felt.

‘What does it look like I’m looking at?’ He spoke without lifting his head from the copy.

‘You can’t be just looking at the stars.’

‘That’s true,’ he said, ‘I’m not. I’m not looking at, I’m looking for; I’m looking for your sister.’ He was looking at me now without a trace of mockery.

‘I didn’t know that the stork flew at night; besides, it would be four months early.’

He ignored my witticism and left down his copy.

‘Have you ever thought of how much death there is in the world?’

I swallowed hard. I hated these man-to-man talks. I remembered a similar feeling of trepidation as a ten-year-old when Dad had tried to instruct me in the facts of life. That discussion had been abandoned by mutual consent after a few minutes, when it became obvious that I, a voracious and indiscriminate reader, knew more about the ins and outs, dead ends and cul-de-sacs of twentieth-century sexuality than he did himself.

‘Why should I think about dying? I’m only sixteen. I don’t plan on dying for sixty years yet.’

‘You’re dead right,’ he said. ‘It would be a sorry theme for a young man your age. But I think a lot about it myself.’

I was worried by the turn the conversation had taken. I could see that Dad was going to climb onto one of his soapboxes.

‘What is the greatest gift that one person can give to another? It says in the Bible, John’s Gospel if I’m not mistaken, that no greater gift can a man give than to lay down his life for a friend. A typically martyred view of friendship, a curious inversion, having your friend shoulder the burden of your death. I say that the greatest gift is life and that there can be no greater gift than infinite life. So that is what I am going to give your sister – immortality, a place with the gods. I’m going to have a star named after her.’

‘I’m lost, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.’

He pointed to the heavens. ‘Over twenty-five years ago the Voyager space probe set out to map the Neptune and Pluto systems. It has now gone beyond those systems, out onto the margins of new galaxies where it has discovered new stars and planetary systems, so many in fact that NASA has a problem finding names for all of them; the old mythologies have been exhausted. A new programme has been launched whereby ordinary people can nominate someone instead. The only criterion is that they have to be dead and distinguished people. So, I’m going to have one of those new stars named after her.’

‘But she’s not even born yet, never mind dead.’ I felt uneasy talking about my sister like this – fate was being tempted, I felt.

‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘But when she is born there will be a star there for her carrying her name.’

‘But I thought she had to be dead and distinguished. They’re not going to hold a star aside for her till she does something with her life.’

‘That’s true. What we’re going to do is make a few nominations and see what happens at the end of the year when the first names are published.’

I quickly saw the flaw in that. ‘But that’s getting it back to front: you’re naming the child after the star, not the other way around.’

He shook his head. ‘Not at all. The nominees are published at the end of this year, six months after your sister is born. They do not name the stars officially until the new year. All we have to do is pick a name from the list of nominees and we can be pretty sure that the child will have a star all to herself. Besides, it’s not a matter of chronology – the child, the living being, has priority over the star no matter what the naming sequence.’

‘And all this will give her more life?’

‘Yes indeed. Up there in the company of gods and angels, deep in the bosom of the goddess Nut, a talent for eternity is bound to rub off on her. She will live forever, I have no doubt of that.’

I was stunned in disbelief. I no longer felt the cold. I had heard Dad come out with some prize nonsense in his time but right then he was setting a new standard.

‘Well, what do you think of the idea?’

I gave it to him straight, a mixture of anger and disbelief. ‘I think it’s a load of bollocks. I’ve never heard such shite in all my life. Why can’t we just name her after Mom?’

‘It’s no use naming her after Mom. Mom is having her life now and your sister will have hers. You have to remember that a name is more than a handle – it’s a pathway, a route. We have to be careful how we go.’

‘Do you have any idea then what you intend to call her?’

‘No, I haven’t given it much thought yet. But there are bound to be plenty of names: nineteenth-century writers, politicians, scientists and so on. The options are wide open,’ he said breezily. ‘Can you think of anything off-hand yourself?’

‘No, nothing comes to mind, I think I’ll leave it up to you. You seem to have it all figured out.’

He continued taking down notes and I left him shortly after.

So, for the next four months Dad kept an eye on the heavens. With the aid of his wall map and navigating carefully between constellations he got a fix on the general area of the star’s location. It lay directly overhead at the farthest reach of the sky, a tiny spark of light harboured within the cusp of the Corona Borealis. I could not distinguish it from any of the other stars that thronged the vicinity but, as usual, Dad knew no doubt.

Six weeks before the birth he began his letter writing campaign, sending off hundreds of nominations covering a handful of eminent women, using names and addresses he lifted from the telephone book – he wanted no one suspecting that there was a concerted campaign. I was persuaded eventually to send off a few of my own, more to keep him happy than anything else. I still had my doubts.

I watched Mom carefully. Now that she was carrying this celestial being I half expected her to take on a kind of starry radiance, a numinous glow. But I saw no change in her whatsoever – she maintained the lush beauty of her pregnancy and her ankles remained visibly swollen right up to the end. She did, however, develop a ferocious thirst. A continual supply of clear water from a nearby spring was always on hand, particularly at night when she sat watching telly. Glass after glass she drank until finally Dad brought the bucket in and left it between her feet. She dipped her glass into it as the night wore on, lowering its level by a truly jaw-dropping amount.

‘She’ll thank me for this later when she has nice clear skin,’ she said.

My sister is now six months old and she has yet to be baptized. In the meantime we call her ‘The Child’ and we’re comfortable with it. But it’s something of a scandal in our village and people have begun to talk.

Last week the parish priest came to our house, something I can never remember happening before. He sat for two hours in the kitchen, beating around the bush with useless gossip and drinking enough tea to drown a man of lesser perseverance. Mom put him out of his misery by assuring him finally that yes, The Child would indeed be baptized, it was just a matter of time, a few more weeks. What she did not reveal was that we were waiting for the list of published nominees from NASA. I don’t think he would have understood.

To pass the days we spend our time speculating over The Child’s cradle, lowering names gently onto her sleeping form, seeing how they fit. I’ve always wanted to be able to sing but since I’m nearly tone deaf a singing sister would be next best thing. Therefore, I’m holding out for Maria Callas: Maria Callas Monk. I had wanted Janis Joplin but I’m smart enough to know that her death is too recent and troubled, not highbrow enough. The philanthropist in Dad has his hopes pinned on – believe it or not – Emily Pankhurst; Emily Pankhurst Monk, another piece of daftness. I don’t think he has a hope with it, however. Mom says nothing, she just lets us get on with it, but I think we both know that her choice will be decisive.

But what’s strangest of all is that I think Dad may have started something. Last night I saw him on the roof with a couple of newly-weds. They stood close together with their arms around each other, the young woman holding her skirt down in the breeze. These December skies are huge and jewel-strewn. Dad had just finished mounting the telescope and he was starting to point out the heavens.