He switches on the oil heater. “Well,” he says. He thinks, fleetingly and ridiculously, of putting the toy sheep on Trey’s pillow. “Good night. Sleep tight.” She watches him over Lena’s shoulder, with her one open eye beyond any expression, as he shuts the door.
The bloodied dish towels are scattered around the armchair. Cal collects them and throws them in his new washing machine. He doesn’t turn it on, in case its whirring disturbs the kid. He switches on the electric kettle and sets out two mugs—what he needs is a shot of whiskey, but he might yet have to drive tonight, and he’s learned enough to know that around here tea is an appropriate response to any situation at any time of day or night. Blood has dried in the lines of his knuckles; he washes his hands at the kitchen sink.
Lena comes out of the bedroom and closes the door quietly behind her. “How’s she doing?” Cal asks.
“Asleep before I got the duvet on her.”
“Well, that’s good,” Cal says. “You want some tea?”
“Go on.”
Lena settles herself in the armchair, testing it out, and kicks off her shoes. The kettle boils, and Cal pours and brings a mug over to her. “I don’t have milk. This OK?”
“You savage.” She takes the mug and blows on it. She looks at ease in the armchair, as if it were her own. It’s an ample, lopsided creation in a peculiar purplish green that might have been fashionable for a minute a long time ago, or might just have started out a different shade; it’s surprisingly comfortable, but Cal never envisioned inviting anyone to sleep in it. He has that sense of being weightless again, off his feet and borne along with nothing to grab hold of.
The fire has burned low; he puts more wood on it. “She say anything to you that I oughta know?” he asks.
“She said nothing about anything, except what I told you. But I didn’t ask.”
“Thanks.”
“No point. You’re the one she trusts.” Lena sips her tea. “She’s been coming here a lot.”
“Yeah,” Cal says, taking his mug to the table. He can’t imagine that Lena is aiming to lecture him on the unseemliness of letting Trey Reddy hang around, and sure enough, she only nods. “Are you gonna get any hassle for helping me out?”
She shrugs. “I doubt it. You might, but, depending what you do next. Are you going to bring her home in the morning?”
“You know anywhere else she can go?”
He feels Lena take in the implication. She considers and shakes her head.
“Aunt? Uncle? Grandparents?”
“Most of her relations are emigrated or dead or useless, depending on which side you mean. Sheila’s got cousins over the other side of town, but they wouldn’t want to get mixed up in this.”
“I can see their point,” Cal says.
“Sheila does the best she can,” Lena says. “You and I might not think it’s great, but we haven’t spent twenty-five years on the wrong side of Johnny Reddy and Ardnakelty. Sheila’s had all the fancy notions worn right out of her. All she wants is to keep the children she’s got left alive and out of jail.”
Cal has no idea what to say to this. He can’t tell whether he’s angry at Lena, or whether his anger at Sheila and whoever got to her is so high that it’s spilling over onto her.
Lena says, “She’s got used to doing whatever needs to be done. Right or wrong. She hasn’t had much choice.”
“Maybe,” Cal says. He doesn’t find that reassuring. If Sheila felt her best or only option tonight was to beat the living shit out of Trey, she might feel that way again sometime. “I might see if I can get a few things done before I send the kid back there.”
Lena glances up from her tea. “Like what?”
“The stuff I shoulda been doing tonight.”
“Man business,” Lena says, mock-awed. “Too serious for a lady’s delicate ears.”
“Just business.”
The firewood pops and shoots a spray of sparks upwards. Lena stretches out a toe to nudge the screen more snugly into place.
“I can’t stop you doing something stupid,” she says. “But I’m hoping if you have to leave it till morning, you might think better of it.”
It takes Cal a minute or two to figure out why this comment startles him so much. He was assuming that the reason Lena made him stick around—apart from not wanting his business dumped in her lap, which is fair enough—was because the kid wanted him there. Instead, she sounds like her aim was to prevent Cal from getting his ass kicked, or something similar. Cal finds this unexpectedly moving. Mart has put considerable effort into the same goal, but it’s different coming from a woman. It’s been a while since a woman gave that much of a damn about Cal either way.
“Well, I appreciate that,” he says. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
Lena makes a wry pfft noise, which leaves Cal slightly chagrined even though he agrees that it’s warranted. “I’m going asleep,” she says, leaning to put her mug on the table. “Will we turn out the light?”
Cal switches it off, leaving only the firelight. He goes into the spare bedroom and brings out his heavy winter duvet—he hasn’t got around to buying a cover for it, but it is at least clean. “I apologize for this,” he says. “I’d like to be a better host, but this is all I’ve got.”
“I’ve slept in worse,” Lena says, taking out her ponytail and snapping the hair band around her wrist. “I wish I’d brought my toothbrush, is all.” She curls sideways in the chair and tucks the duvet around herself.
“Sorry,” Cal says, getting both his coats from their hook. “Can’t help you there.”
“I’ll go down to Mart Lavin and ask if he has a spare, will I?”
Cal is so off-kilter that he spins around horrified. When he sees her grin, he’s startled into a crack of laughter loud enough that he claps a hand over his mouth, glancing at the bedroom door.
“You’d make Ardnakelty’s day,” he says.
“I would, all right. It’d almost be worth it, only Noreen’d pat herself on the back so hard she’d do herself an injury.”
“So would Mart.”
“Jesus. Is he on this too?”
“Oh yeah. He’s already decided that Malachy Dwyer’s gonna cater the bachelor party.”
“Ah well, feck the toothbrush, so,” Lena says. “We can’t let those two think they’re right every time. ’Twouldn’t be good for them.”
Cal arranges himself in front of the fireplace and wraps both coats around him. By firelight the room is all warm gold flickers and pulses of shadow. It makes the situation bloom with a seductive, ephemeral intimacy, like they’re the last people left awake at a house party, caught up in a conversation that won’t count tomorrow morning.
“I don’t know that we’ve got much choice,” he says. “Unless you leave before dawn, someone’s gonna see your car.”
Lena thinks that over. “Mightn’t be a bad idea,” she says. “Give people something to talk about, keep their minds away from the other thing.” She nods at the bedroom door.
“Are you gonna get hassle, though?”
“What, for being a loose woman, like?” She grins again. “Nah. The aul’ ones’ll talk, but I don’t mind them. It’s not the eighties; it’s not like they can throw me in a Magdalen laundry. They’ll get over it.”
“How ’bout me? Is Noreen gonna show up with a shotgun if I don’t marry you after this?”
“God, no. She’ll blame me for letting you slip through my fingers. You’re grand. The lads in Seán Óg’s might even buy you a pint, to congratulate you.”
“Win-win,” Cal says. He stretches out on his back, with his hands behind his head, and wishes he’d thought to bring his extra clothes out of his bedroom. He’s not planning to sleep if he can help it, in case of the various situations that might arise, but after a night on this floor he’s going to be walking like Mart.