Summary
Cal McCluskey goes to the abattoir to find his father, who works there. He wants to ask him for a cigarette even though the smell of the place repulses him. He asks a young man named Crilly to get his father, Shamie, for him. His father appears and lets him take three cigarettes from his carton. As he is able to smoke now, Cal feels himself relax. He walks down the street and is worried that people are looking at him; he sticks out as part of the only Catholic family left in their neighborhood in Northern Ireland. He notices many flags hung up, showing that the Loyalists (those loyal to the British nation) are getting angry. Cal carries anxiety about how he might, at some point, be discriminated against for being Catholic.
Cal goes back to his house, where he lays in his bedroom smoking and listening to music. We learn that he often curses at himself in both English and French and that he has been trying to learn Gaelic, for the sake of the “movement.” He hears noise downstairs and is startled; he looks out the window and sees it is only the postman. He collects his unemployment check and goes out to cash it. He visits the library where he browses through a magazine and is happy to see an article about Northern Ireland.
He is fascinated by the new clerk working there, a woman in her late 20s. By eavesdropping he finds out her name is Marcella and Cal is startled to recognize her name. He runs out of the library quickly and tries to think of what to do. He returns to the library and takes out a cassette so that he can interact with the clerk and verify that she is Marcella, which he does.
Cal’s father returns home from the abattoir. Cal cooks food for them while they talk about finding jobs and Marcella. He confirms with his father that it is in fact Marcella Morton, which sends Cal into feelings of shame. The next day he visits the library again. He observes Marcella while waiting in line so he can return his tape. He spends time at the library reading a magazine and glancing at her. He waits outside until she finishes her shift and follows her for a bit. When Cal gets home, his father is irritated that he wasn’t there to start making dinner. His father tells him that Crilly wants Cal to meet with him at 9 o’clock. Shamie doesn’t like Crilly and resents that Crilly got the job at the slaughterhouse that Cal declined.
Cal goes to his room and contemplates what Crilly could want for him. They used to be in school together and Cal recalls how he was the type of boy who you wanted to be on the “right side of,” as he was known for getting into fights. Cal remembers the time when Crilly beat up a boy in school who brought in pornographic pictures; he was encouraged to do so by a teacher who knew Crilly’s ability to hurt others. Cal thinks of how he wants nothing to do with Crilly, as he is the one responsible for Cal’s stomach tensions over the past year.
Cal goes to Crilly’s house, where Crilly is sitting with a man named Finbar Skeffington. Finbar and Crilly are both involved in the local resistance movement and they inform Cal that two other men in the movement were arrested the night before. They then ask Cal if he wants to be a driver for them, to help rob businesses. Cal listens to the two men talk about killing a policeman on the “enemy side” before he says that he “wants out,” as this sort of thing makes him too tense. Skeffington tries to reason that very few people get hurt in what they do, and that it’s worth it for freedom; someone has to do it. After being pressured somewhat, Cal agrees to do it just temporarily.
One evening Cal waits for Marcella again as she gets out of work and follows her. She is carrying a lot of groceries and drops something; Cal picks up the item and uses this opportunity to talk to her. He carries her box for her to her car and they make awkward small talk. When he gets home that night, he finds a note left for him threatening that he must leave the neighborhood or his house will be burnt down. It’s signed from “UVF,” the Ulster Volunteer Force. He goes inside and ponders how someone whose face he has never seen before could hate him so much. He goes to wake up his father and show him the note. Shamie calls them bastards, loads his gun, and puts it under his pillow before going back to sleep.
Cal tries to sleep but is kept awake listening to the different sounds outside as well as the silence. He thinks about how after the first note they received from the UVF, Crilly came by to give Shamie the gun, and how Shamie now feels protected. Cal, though, is more pessimistic about the situation, knowing how easily the Loyalist group could come and kill them. After Crilly gave them the the gun, he came back several times to ask if he could store boxes full of stuff in their house, to which the McCluskeys obliged. Then Cal would help Crilly by driving him around in his van on different tasks. There were a couple of “close calls” when they were stopped by the Army. This is partly why Cal now dreads to be involved in the movement.
Late at night, Cal makes tea for him and his father and they discuss again how Cal left the job at the abattoir and how that embarrassed Shamie. They also talk about maybe moving; Cal suggests England but his father says it is a rotten place. We learn Cal lost his mother when he was 8 years old. Her memory still brings tears to his eyes and he can only recall good moments of her, as she passed before his adolescence when things got hard. Since he was a teenager, Cal has been fighting with his father, who has struggled to raise Cal as a single dad. Cal tries to fall asleep but can only do so when it becomes light outside, as then he knows there is no more threat of the Loyalists coming to attack. He has one of his recurring dreams about a young girl who seems to desire him sexually, but, when approached by him, recoils in terror.
Analysis
In the opening chapter of Cal, the reader is right away dropped into the action surrounding Cal McCluskey, a young man at the the edges of the IRA (Irish Republican Army) who is trying to deal with the constant threat of attack from the Loyalist army, which desires to oust all Catholic families from the neighborhood. Without much introduction to the historical situation, we are transported to the gritty and dangerous setting of Northern Ireland in the 1970s, a time of great political conflict between those who wanted to break free of the United Kingdom and those who wanted to remain a part of it. Author Bernard MacLeverty doesn’t explicitly try to provide context, but rather trusts the reader to put the pieces of the situation together through the natural unfolding of the plot.
One of the main points that is apparent from this first chapter is that Cal and his peers are young men who are desperately searching for their place in life. At 19, Cal is not quite a child but not yet a grown man and hasn’t chosen which path he wants to follow. There are different sorts of expectations that surround him: his father wishes he would be like him and work at the slaughterhouse; his former schoolmate Crilly, now turned IRA soldier, keeps trying to pull Cal into the movement; the Loyalist faction who overwhelm Cal’s neighborhood are pressuring the McCluskeys to leave town altogether.
Another sure conclusion the reader can make is that Cal is no stranger to anxiety and insecurity. This is made clear in various ways, such as when he tries to make small talk with Marcella and then curses at himself later for his awkwardness, or how he walks away from a conversation with his father when it gets heated, or the way Cal often feels a tension in his stomach that can only be soothed by chain-smoking cigarettes. His quietness and tendency to keep to himself, holing up in his bedroom, portrays a young man who is challenged to speak his mind and confront his problems directly. Thus it can also be inferred that with his poor self-esteem and lack of direction, he is a prime target for extremist groups like the IRA.
Cal’s timidness and sensitivity sometimes help to protect him, in many instances, from the uglier parts of life—despite how other characters may judge him for it. He quits his job at the abattoir after a week, even though it greatly disappoints his father, because he simply cannot stand the smell of animal carcasses. He hesitates before diving head first into working with Crilly and his ilk after a frighteningly close call with the Loyalist army makes him aware of the extreme danger in this sort of activity. Yet in many ways Cal is trapped between a rock and a hard place, with the looming threat of the UVF forcing him to question whether it is possible to stay put in their current Protestant majority neighborhood if he doesn’t start to fight back in the company of other Catholics.
Stylistically, MacLaverty fleshes out his characters through the small, seemingly insignificant details that he includes. There is the description of Cal in his solitude, playing guitar for hours in his bedroom, with his hair hanging “like curtains” in front of his face. This image shows, rather than tells, the reader that Cal is a sensitive and introverted young man who is reluctant to live fully in the world. Later, when Cal goes to Crilly’s house, the author emphasizes the “rabbitness” of Finbar and the swiveling head of Crilly. These two details paint a vivid picture of these characters and the nervous demeanor that comes with being part of a criminal organization. On page 30, the sweet portrayal of Cal’s mother in her lightheartedness also serves to demonstrate Cal’s fondness for his mother and how her absence in his life now is carried by him like a burden.
