The Searcher(74)

“I’m getting the hang of the area,” Cal says. He stoops to pat Nellie, who, delighted to see him, is wagging her whole hind end. “Little by little.”

He expects Lena to put on a jacket and come out, but instead she holds the door open for him. He scrapes his boots on the mat and follows her down the hall.

Lena’s kitchen is big and warm, made up of things that have seen plenty of use but are solid enough that they’ve held up: gray stone floor tiles worn smooth in spots, wooden cabinets painted a chipped butter-yellow, a long farmhouse table that could be decades old or centuries. The lights are on against the dark day. The room is clean but not neat: there’s a tumble of books and newspapers spread across the table, and piles of ironing waiting to be put away on two of the chairs. The place makes it clear that whoever lives there has only themselves to please.

Mewling and rustling noises come from a big cardboard box tucked in a corner. “There they are,” Lena says.

“They moved indoors in the end, huh?” Cal says. The mama dog lifts her head and lets out a low rumble, deep in her chest. He turns away and fusses over Nellie, who’s brought him a chewed sneaker.

“That bit of frost the other night did it,” Lena says. She kneels down and cups the mama dog’s jaw to calm her. “Midnight, she came scratching at the door with a pup in her mouth, wanting to bring them all into the warm. They’ll have to go out again once they start running about—I’m not cleaning the floor after them. But they’ll do grand here for another few days.”

Cal ambles across and squats beside Lena. The mama dog doesn’t object, although she keeps one wary eye on him. The cardboard box is lined with thick layers of soft towels and newspaper. The pups are clambering over each other, making sounds like a flock of seabirds. Even in these few days, they’ve grown.

“There’s your fella,” Lena says. Cal has already spotted the ragged black flag. She reaches into the box, scoops out the pup and passes it to him.

“Hey, little guy,” Cal says, holding up the pup, which squirms and paddles its paws furiously. He can feel the change in it, both its weight and its muscle. “He’s gotten strong.”

“He has. He’s still the smallest, but it’s not getting in his way. That big black-and-tan bruiser there barges right over the rest, but your fella’s having none of it: gives as good as he gets.”

“Attaboy,” Cal says gently to the pup. It can hold up its head without wobbling now. One of its eyes is beginning to open, showing a droplet of hazy gray-blue.

“Will you have a cup of tea?” Lena asks. “You look like you could be there a while.”

“Sure,” Cal says. “Thanks.” She gets up and goes to the counter.

The pup has started to struggle. Cal settles himself on the floor and brings it in to his chest. It relaxes against his warmth and his heartbeat, turning soft and heavy, nuzzling a little. He runs one of its ears between his fingers. At the counter, Lena moves about, filling the electric kettle and taking mugs out of a cabinet. The room smells of toast, ironing and wet dog.

Cal figures Noreen is bound to have every kind of cardboard box in the land. He could get one the right size and line it with old shirts, so his smell would be a comfort to the pup. He could put it right beside his mattress, where he could keep one hand on the pup during the night, just till it settles in and gets used to doing without its mama. The thought hits him powerfully. Even in imagination, it changes his sense of his house.

“I was expecting I’d be mobbed with children looking to pet them,” Lena says, over the building hiss of the kettle. “I remember doing that when we were little, the whole lot of us running down to anyone that had puppies or kittens. But there’s only been a few.”

“The rest of them too deep in their screens?”

Lena shakes her head. “There’s no rest of them. Like we were talking about before. It’s not just this generation that headed for the towns. Ever since they started being allowed to do good jobs, the girls go. The lads stay if there’s land being left to them, but most people round here don’t leave land to girls. So they head off.”

“You can’t blame them for that,” Cal says, thinking of Caroline. The pup is starting to teethe. He shoves at Cal’s finger with both tiny forepaws, finally manages to get a corner of it into his mouth, and does his best to gum it to death.

“I don’t. I’d’ve done the same if I hadn’t fallen in love with Sean. But it means the lads have no one to marry. And now we’ve no children coming to see these, and a load of aul’ bachelors up on the farms.”

“That’s tough on the area,” Cal says.

The kettle bubbles and clicks off, and Lena pours the tea. “More ways than one,” she says. “Men with no children get to feeling unsafe, when they get older. The world’s changing and they’ve no young people to show them it’s grand, so they feel like they’re being attacked. Like they need to be ready for a fight the whole time.”

“Having kids can do the same thing,” Cal says. “Make you feel like you need to fight things.”

Lena glances over at him, as she drops tea bags into the trash can, but she doesn’t ask. “That’s different. If you’ve kids, you’re always looking out into the world to see if anything needs fighting, because that’s where they’re headed; you’re not barricading yourself indoors and listening for the Indians to attack. It’s not good for a place, having too many aul’ bachelors out on their land with no one to talk to, feeling like they need to defend their territory, even though they’re not sure from what. D’you take milk?”