Summary
Over the next few weeks, Cal doesn’t have as much contact with Marcella. The only moments they spend together is on Sundays for church, where Marcella often crams in all her thoughts during the car ride. Shamie continues to be depressed and has quit his job. At first Cal visits him, but he soon fears he will run into Crilly or someone he knows, so he goes there less frequently. Mr. Morton needs surgery and so he and Mrs. Morton leave the farm for a week. The day they leave, Cal stops work early and sits in the farmhouse alone, thinking about how he cannot express his love to Marcella because of what he did. Thinking that he already has ruined his chances with her anyway, Cal feels justified to go to Marcella’s room and snoop around. He looks through her undergarments and reads her private journal.
When Marcella gets home, she brings in a load of groceries to cook an Italian meal, something she can only do when the Mortons are gone. She invites Cal to dinner, and Cal goes to get wine for them in the meantime. They sit down to dinner and wine, and Cal notices Marcella is dressed up and wearing extra makeup. Cal’s nerves die down as he drinks wine. After, they have coffee by the fireplace and talk, but Cal is bothered by the photo of Robert on the wall. Marcella notices, and explains that her mother-in-law put up the photo. Drunk and feeling more bold, Cal tries to kiss Marcella. She allows him to but afterwards says they should not do that, as she is a widow and it would be too complicated. Cal, offended, tells her something gruesome in order to hurt her but then apologizes. She kisses him goodbye for the night, calling him her friend.
That week Cal tries to focus on his work on the farm. He feels miserable, but knows it will pass. On the day before the Mortons are supposed to return, it snows and everyone stops work early. That evening, Marcella comes to Cal’s cottage to apologize for the other night, explaining that she is fond of him and misses intimacy with another. Cal feels a sort of love for her that is different than the “sullen lust” he felt for other girls. They start to kiss and end up in Cal’s bed. Marcella undresses herself in an instant, which astounds Cal, who is used to spying on her to catch a tiny glimpse of her body. He panics momentarily that he will make a fool of himself losing his virginity.
As they touch each other, Cal can’t help but think of the night he and Crilly murdered Robert. He has to have Marcella turn around so he can avoid her face and retain an erection. They have sex once in the cottage and again back in the main house. Marcella comments that Cal is an “attentive” lover, prompting her to talk about how Robert was cold and always imagining another woman when in bed with her. It is revealed that their marriage was not a very happy or loving one; Robert had many affairs and would constantly lie to Marcella. Before going to bed in their separate houses that night, Marcella tells Cal that she feels happy for the first time in years. At his cottage, Cal excitedly replays what just happened, although simultaneously realizing there isn’t much of a future for them.
Cal goes to buy Christmas presents the next day for Marcella, Lucy, and Shamie. He tries to visit Shamie at Dermot’s house and is alarmed to not see him there. Dermot informs him that Shamie is worse than he thought and the doctors have put him in a mental hospital to receive electric shock therapy. Cal is upset and gives Dermot the gift to give Shamie when he sees him. He then goes to the library, hoping he will see Marcella, but she is not working there; he forgot that she doesn’t work evening shifts.
In the library, Cal runs into Crilly, who pulls him aside to talk. Crilly is setting a bomb in one of the books, explaining he must burn down the library as it is government property. Crilly insists Cal come talk to Skeffington over tea. Skeffington’s father has recently been assaulted and badly injured. When they see Skeffington, he is in a serious mood and accuses Cal of being a traitor to the cause. Cal insists that he has not informed anyone of what they are doing but merely doesn’t want to be part of the movement anymore because of his conscience. As they talk, Cal is thinking about the library and the possible danger Marcella might be in. Skeffington and Crilly demand to know where Cal is staying so they can get in touch with him. They insinuate there is no other choice for him but to participate, otherwise they will have to hurt him.
Suddenly there is a knock on the door of Crilly’s house; it is the police. The three boys make a run for it out the back door. Cal is able to escape, but Crilly and Skeffington are presumably caught. Cal goes to a phone booth where he informs the authorities about the bomb in the library. Then he goes back to the Mortons and spends time with Marcella, making love and talking. He again feels the regret of not being able to tell her the truth about everything. They look at the Grünewald book Cal bought for Marcella and Cal fixates on the crucifixion image of Christ’s battered body. He has a suspicion that soon his freedom will come to an end, as Crilly might rat on him; perhaps then, in jail, he could write a letter of confession to Marcella. Sure enough, the next day on Christmas Eve, the police show up to arrest Cal. Cal feels relieved that someone will finally punish him.
Analysis
In the last chapter of Cal, we find our protagonist finally coming face-to-face with both his greatest desires and his deepest fears. Initiating a romantic relationship with Marcella, Cal in one way feels on top of cloud nine. Yet it is this seeming achievement that simultaneously sinks him into more of the reality which he is denying: the awful crime he committed against Marcella’s family and the concealment of this fact for the sake of his own pleasure. This is expressed quite literally in the scene when Cal and Marcella have sex for the first time and Cal must look away from her face in order to retain his erection. Heartfelt and intimate connection requires complete authenticity, and unable to fulfill this quality, Cal must somewhat detach from Marcella as the person and instead relate to her as the illusory image of her in his mind.
Knowing full well that there will never be a future for him and Marcella, Cal thus feels justified in violating her boundaries and living out their relationship within the space of his own fantasies. For instance, he goes into her bedroom while she is at work to look through her undergarments and read her old journal, thinking that he might as well “ravish the things which surrounded her.” This is a pattern Cal also lives out when he repeatedly spies on Marcella from afar. Again, with Cal’s desires being unreachable in real life, he believes he can only indulge in them while alone in a state of separation from his beloved. And thus the reader will have to question if the love he feels towards Marcella is genuine when it did not develop in a space of transparency and honesty. The mixed motives of Cal’s subconscious also proves evident in the way he acknowledges that it was more satisfying to see Marcella’s bare body through covertly watching her while she was in the bath than to have her willingly engage with him sexually.
Yet interestingly and ironically enough we should also note that there is an inkling of a loving bond between Cal and Marcella. During their first sexual encounter, Cal experiences a sentiment of affection that he never felt in the past when he lustfully partnered up with girls; for him, Marcella is his first true love. Notably, Marcella tells Cal that he is an “attentive lover”—and we get the sense that this is a heartfelt statement. After they sleep together, she tells Cal that her marriage to Robert was quite unhappy, and that her former husband constantly lied and cheated on her. The revelation of this fact does not detract from the tragedy of Robert’s murder, nor the gravity of Cal’s implication in it. However, it challenges a simpler stance that Cal is the villain and Robert an innocent victim. That both Cal’s guilty subconscious motives and his genuine feelings of love can be factors at play attests to Bernard MacLaverty’s ability to render his characters through the messiness and complexity of real life.
If there is a singular conclusion that we can make by the end of Cal, it is that black and white judgements are foolish to make, for just one character— Cal—contains the whole spectrum of humanity, from ignorance and selfishness to true altruism. MacLaverty artfully portrays Cal’s sheer stupidity and weakness without ever eradicating the possibility for the reader to feel empathy for him. It is Cal who chooses to ruin his own life and Cal who also holds himself in great judgment afterwards, and thus he is his own worst enemy. With this realization, we are able to understand the most evil of actions without condoning them, but with compassion for the suffering that both causes and perpetuates them. And with this awareness, the situation of the Northern Irish conflict takes on new significance as not merely a brutal civil war, but also a profound example of sickness, where humans have lost their own souls so deeply that they are willing to destroy themselves and others.
The ending of Cal contains strains of both tragedy and redemption. On the most obvious level, Cal is arrested and finally given the punishment that he feels he deserves as fair retribution for his horrible crime. But of course this conclusion also brings a great sense of relief to Cal, for he finally feels liberated from his constant self-flagellation and effort to run away from the truth of his actions. The same cowardice which has led him to become a part of the IRA has also kept him from admitting the murder, even though he knows it would be the right thing to do. He thus has waited for the authorities to come to him to force the confession. The story ends abruptly before we can find out the details of Cal’s fate, as well as the reaction of Marcella to her lover’s true past. But these aspects are perhaps unnecessary, as the most important message has been conveyed: Cal, who has probably lost his physical freedom for a long time to come, is now internally free to confront his “sin” and begin his path towards forgiveness and redemption.
