The Searcher

“For the last week and a half, someone has been watching Cal. Probably longer, but he had his mind on his own business and he took for granted, like anyone would have a right to do amid all this empty space, that he was alone. His mental alarm systems were switched off, the way he wanted them.”

This passage juxtaposes the alarming fact that Cal is being watched with his studied indifference to the situation. This indicates that Cal, a former cop, wants to harbor the illusion that no trouble of the kind he had at home can reach him here in the West of Ireland. The mental alarm systems that can so easily be activated are deliberately switched off so that he can get on with a different sort of life.

“In the face he’s ordinary: a little of the baby softness left, not strong-featured or fine-featured, or good-looking or ugly; the only things that stand out are a stubborn chin and a pair of grey eyes fixed on Cal like they’re running him through some CIA-level computer check.”

Cal’s first glimpse of Trey reveals the latter’s characteristic inscrutability. The fact that Trey neither complies with the extremes of strong or delicate features, good or bad looks, indicates that this seemingly male-presenting person could blend in with the crowd. However, the details of baby softness indicate Trey’s youth, while the “stubborn chin” suggests a stubborn character. The reference to a CIA-level gaze, hearkens back to Cal’s cop background and indicates Trey’s mistrust of strangers, as well as her frank wish to figure out what kind of person Cal is.

“When Cal hangs up he has the same empty feeling he always gets after talking to Alyssa these days, a sense that somehow, in spite of having been on the phone for all that time, they haven’t had a conversation at all, the whole thing was made of air and tumbleweed, nothing solid there.”

This passage reveals Cal’s estrangement from his daughter Alyssa. Rather than bringing them closer, the phone call reveals the distance between them, as though the empty words that pass between them serve to drive them further apart. The image of tumbleweed is one of rootlessness and conveys the shallowness of their connection.

“When he looks over, Trey is smiling, just a little bit. It’s the first time Cal has seen him do that, and it’s as startling as catching a baby’s first smile, seeing an unsuspected new person breaking through.”

Cal’s propensity to notice Trey’s change in expression indicates that he is beginning to feel for the child trespasser on his property. The mention of a baby indicates that Cal has paternal feelings towards Trey and sees her potential to be a regular child. The rarity of Trey’s smiles are symbolic of the hardship of her existence.

“Cal never could stand to leave a case unresolved. Mainly this was a good thing, making him into a dogged patient worker who got solves long after most guys would have given up, but on occasion it was also a failing: a hammering on and on at something that’s never going to break gets a man nothing but tired and sore.”

Cal deplores his former pride in doggedly sticking with a case until it was resolved. While he found outside acclaim, this habit wore him out and made him useless for his life outside the case. Arguably, Cal, who is on the cusp of accepting Trey’s proposition, is trying to defend himself against his own relentless nature when he leans towards not taking up the case of Brendan’s disappearance.

“Every conversation he’s had with Donna since the split has been peppered with these pauses, while she evaluates whether answering his question would fall within the new rules she’s single-handedly established for their relationship. She hasn’t communicated these rules to Cal, so he has no idea what they are, but sometimes catches himself deliberately trying to break them anyway, like some shitty little kid.”

This passage reveals Cal’s enduring preoccupation with Donna and the reasons for their split. He cannot bear the new emotionless formality with which Donna addresses him and finds himself childishly wanting to provoke her. Donna’s decision to stick by rules when communicating with Cal separates her from the more spontaneous communicators that surround him in Ireland.

“‘He can’t sit still,’ Trey says, in the end. ‘Mam gives out about that. He got in hassle in school for it, and for messing.’”

Trey identifies Brendan’s restlessness as the chief reason why he gets into trouble. While at the time of Trey and Cal’s conversation this seems like an innocuous explanation, Brendan’s inability to sit still turns out to be the exact reason why Mart Lavin and his establishment-loving cronies saw fit to dispatch him. Brendan’s desire to move and turn around the status quo is exactly what makes him threatening to Ardnakelty’s old guard. It also shows how the education system and patriarchy of the town are failing young men like Brendan.

“Sheila’s smile grows, and softens. A freebie, even a little one, does that to poor people; it loosens them. Cal still recognizes that in himself, even though it’s been twenty-five years since he was that kind of poor. It’s the sweet warm wave of astonishment that, just for once and out of the blue, the world is feeling generous to you today.”

This passage juxtaposes Cal’s intimate knowledge of humanity with his own experiences of poverty and hardship. The statement that poor people like the Reddys are tempted by freebies could sound glib if Cal also had not experienced a similar level of poverty. He understands that for poor people, the odds always seem bad and that a small gesture of kindness is elevated as a break in their misery.

“Cal knows that look. He’s seen it on plenty of street corners and in plenty of interview rooms. It’s the look you get, not from the kid who did it, but from his buddy, the one who can convince himself that he knows nothing because he wasn’t there; the one who just got told about it, and is determined to prove himself worthy of that little bit of secondhand adventure by not being a snitch.”

Cal applies his acquired knowledge as a cop to the task of finding Brendan, as he finds a parallel between Fergal’s studied silence and that of the typical passive character who is aware of a secret and now keeps that secret to maintain their reputation. Here, French paints a picture of Fergal’s holding on to a small degree of agency in a scheme that is beyond his control as he refrains from telling a nosy interloper like Cal everything he knows.

“Cal likes seeing them all this way, the wild boys shining through the solid farmers. For a moment he wonders which one of them was Brendan back in the day, the restless one on the hunt for hustles and escape routes, and how he ended up.”

Cal’s observation of Mart and his farmer cronies in a drunken state creates a parallel between them and Brendan. While by day the solid-seeming landed farmers seem the opposite of Brendan, Cal can see that by night and in an intoxicated state, they are cut from the same cloth. Cal can easily imagine that one of them was once a restless hustler like Brendan, as notions of past and present collapse.

“There’s mockery in it, but around here mockery is like rain: most of the time it’s either present or incipient, and there are at least a dozen variants, ranging from nurturing to savage, and so subtly distinguished that it would take years to get the hang of them all.”

Cal must get used to the subtleties of behavior in his new community. The different shades of mockery are like the variable and unpredictable weather in Ardnakelty, and Cal can find this disorienting. In the observation that it would take him years to identify every type of mockery, Cal implies that it will be difficult for him to understand the ways of his adopted community and to fully integrate into it.

“Cal is clear that last night he got warned. The warning, however, was done with such subtlety that—whether by design or not—he’s unsure what, exactly, he was being warned off.”

This passage reflects the patterns of Cal’s thoughts, as French uses numerous conjunctions to show Cal trying to work out what the locals warned him of. It is also an important turning point in the novel, as it paves the way for the locals’ interference in the Brendan matter, both before and after Cal’s arrival in the community. The subtlety of the locals’ methods is a ruse that delays Cal’s suspicion that they were seriously involved in Brendan’s disappearance.

“He’s, he gets. Caroline, just like Fergal and Eugene, thinks Brendan is alive. Cal doesn’t set too much store by that. To them, the idea of someone their age dying is impossible. He hopes it can stay that way a while longer.”

Middle-aged Cal feels protective over Ardnakelty’s youngsters as he appreciates the difference between their consideration of death and his own. While he, as an experienced ex-cop, considers that death is a likely possibility for a vanished young man, the youth feel a magical protection from mortality. This makes the eventual discovery of Brendan’s death more poignant.

“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.”

Lena’s observation about the insecurity of older men in a community where there are few young people, proves prophetic in the full course of the novel, when it turns out that Ardnakelty’s elders were involved in the brawl that ended Brendan’s life. Lena also points to a lack of communication between Ardnakelty’s older and younger community, as they grow distant and become suspicious of one another.

“The wind doesn’t reach them here, but it rakes the treetops with an unceasing restless mutter. Cal doesn’t like the stark contrasts in this terrain. They have the same feel as the weather, of an unpredictability deliberately calculated to keep you one step behind.”

French employs pathetic fallacy to show how Cal is out of his depth. As he and Trey make their way through the mountainous terrain around Brendan hideout, Cal finds it difficult to gain a sure footing. The relentless sound of the wind through the trees is ominous and creates the sensation of a natural realm where human knowledge and authority means little. Even an experienced cop like Cal is made subservient to nature.

“He was picturing one of those clusters of raggedy stone-wall scraps with maybe a piece of roof here and there, left to nature’s slow devices for generations. This is a squat white cottage no older than his own, and in much the same shape as his own was when he arrived.”

Cal is shocked to find that Brendan’s hideout cottage resembles the house that he rescued from dereliction and is not in worse repair. The repetition of the phrase “his own” indicates how spooked Cal is by the resemblance, as though he is thinking that Brendan could have just as easily chosen his own cottage for his schemes.

“Whatever people do, right up to killing, nature absorbs it, closes over the fissure and goes about its own doings. He can’t tell whether this is a comforting thing or a melancholy one.”

This passage proves prophetic later in the novel, when murdered Brendan is absorbed into a bog, his body perfectly preserved. Cal does not know how to respond to the resilience of nature, even in the face of human tragedy. It forms part of his inquiry into right and wrong.

“The kid looks the same as always, all ratty parka and unyielding stare. Cal can’t see a girl there. […] It occurs to him that one reason he’s pissed off with Trey is because he would have liked at least one person around this damn place to be exactly what they seem.”

Cal is aggravated to find out the truth about Trey’s assigned gender, as it is another thing that is not what it seems in this town of dissimulation. However, in the observation that Trey looks the same as usual, French hints that the old guard’s rigid notions of gender binaries are not important to Trey. Therefore, she is another example of Ardnakelty’s younger generation living in a different world to that of their ancestors.

“The kid still trusts him, or else she just has no choice. Cal doesn’t know which possibility kills him worse.”

Although Cal intentionally sought to break Trey’s trust when he sent her away and told her to never return, when she does return, he is profoundly moved that she seems to trust him. However, as with everything in the novel, there is a level of ambiguity because he is uncertain of the reason for her trust. Given that Cal does not consider that nurturing comes naturally to him, he is galled by the possibility that Trey has no one else to rely on in her vulnerable predicament.

“Cal keeps on singing. He used to fix up the words a little bit for Alyssa, change the cigarette trees to candy-cane trees and the lake of whiskey to one of soda. There doesn’t seem to be much point in doing that for Trey, but he does it anyway.”

This passage illustrates the paternal nature of Cal’s feelings towards Trey, as he adapts the lullaby to be more childish and benign, as he did for his daughter Alyssa. While he considers that an experience-hardened child like Trey would not need to be mollycoddled with candy-cane instead of cigarette trees, Cal’s change of the lyrics indicates his underlying belief that Trey deserves a childhood as much as a more privileged child like Alyssa.

“The world tilts and seethes and he can see only one thing clearly: a lighthouse beam of gold spreading across the grass, and at its apex, silhouetted in the bright rectangle of the doorway, Trey aiming the rifle. Trey has come out of that house like a flamethrower, fuelled to the brim with a lifetime’s worth of rage, all ready to burn everything for miles to the ground.”

As Cal recovers from being knocked to the ground and removes the bag from his head, he is confronted with the almost supernatural force of Trey’s anger. The imagery of the lighthouse beam and the flamethrower indicate that her rage has a fiery quality with the potential to destroy the status quo. The “lifetime’s worth of rage” refers to the injustices that she and her family have cumulatively endured at the hands of the other Ardnakelty residents who look down on them and want to keep them in check.

“‘Leave it be,’ Mart says, gently and firmly, in a voice that Cal has used a hundred times to tell suspects that they’ve come to the end, to the place where there’s no choice left, no journey and no struggle. ‘Go home to the child and telI her to leave it be. That’s all you need to do.’”

Mart’s injunction to Cal at the climactic moment when he reveals his part in Brendan’s disappearance, encapsulates his general attitude to Cal’s interference in the community. He repeats the phrase “leave it be,” a polite, understated variant of threatening Cal to mind his own business. The gentleness of Mart’s diction juxtaposes with the violence of his treatment of Brendan, thus showing how Cal has mistaken the mildness of Mart’s manner for his essence and so underestimated him.

“‘Brendan Reddy was headed that way anyway,’ he says, ‘as fast as he could run. If it hadn’t been us that done it, it woulda been someone else.’”

When Cal learns from Mart the shocking fact of Brendan’s death, Mart reveals Ardnakelty’s characteristic prejudice against the Reddys when he insists that it was Brendan’s destiny to end up killed in a fight. To Mart, the identity of Brendan’s assailant is almost irrelevant, as he must die in order that the status quo should be maintained. Mart’s statement shows the pragmatic ruthlessness of his character, which contrasts entirely with his garrulous fool persona.