Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? A Memoir(17)

My wife has become mostly inoculated against the boredom of me breaking out this or that or another story, no longer looking for new ways to respond to the same old questioning. She can spot the subtle movements of my mouth as I wait for my turn to speak, so that I can win – win at having a big family. It’s a bit like a party piece, and I’ve long since perfected its rhythms: get in there with the big family stuff but make sure to introduce the fact my mother died early on, since it can make people awkward if they ask about my parents and I haven’t already said. Sometimes this happens with spectacular results, like when my friend Charlotte introduced me to her fabulous Swedish mother, who was particularly fascinated by the size of my family.

‘Oh mi gott,’ she said. ‘How did your mother cope?’

‘Well,’ I said, with the calm, don’t-worry-about-it air I’ve perfected for this question since my teens, ‘she actually died when I was very little.’

‘Cuh!’ Charlotte’s mum broke in with the greatest response I’ve ever heard. ‘I’m not surprised.’


For years I’ve been told that my family must be such a treat to write about, since there’s so much material. Well, there is, but there’s also something narratively problematic about having so many people in one place at the same time. For one thing, it’s hard to hold that much information in your head. Jesus had twelve apostles, and despite more than twenty years of religious instruction, services, prayer groups and sing-songs, I can name four, maybe five at most.

There’s a reason Mark Twain didn’t write a novel in which Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer and eleven other named individuals sailed down the Mississippi on a raft. Maybe Friends would have been just as popular if every episode opened with eighteen pals sitting on five different couches, all speaking at once, in a dangerously overcrowded Central Perk. Perhaps, having been forced to accommodate this new, more perfect cast size, the camera would retreat back around eight feet so you could only just about make out the antics of Joey, Phoebe, Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Alan, Percy, DJ Hype, Polly, Gary A, Gary D, Stinky, Jackie, Jack, Jacquie, Boris and Claire, although you’d be surprised to discover they’re all still white. No, once you start to examine storytelling dynamics, it’s clear that few stirring or memorable tales are better served by tripling the number of characters in every single scene. It’s often easier to focus on the real star of the show, my father, especially since I can’t be bothered remembering the others’ names.





5


This One Time Daddy Lifted a Car


This one time, Daddy lifted a car. My eldest brother Dara was twelve, and had popped outside to grab his cello from the boot of the red Volvo 240 my father kept as a smaller, less mortifying vehicle when journeys didn’t require a twelve-seater minibus. The boot lock was broken, so Dara thought it best to start the car, engage the electrical release switch inside, grab his preposterously large instrument and be on his way. Inevitably, the car then started to roll, sending him instantly to ground and trapping his leg in the wheel arch. Daddy heard the screams from the kitchen and ran outside to find Dara sprawled beetle-fashion on the concrete, trapped under a cello that was roughly his own size, and a Volvo now intent on breaking his leg, inch by inch. Seized by adrenalin, Daddy raced to the car and heaved at the advancing wheel arch with his bare hands, lifting 1.2 tonnes of Swedish engineering off the ground long enough for Dara to free his foot. It’s a feat of strength that defies comprehension, and one my father maintains he doubtless could never have done had he not been so energised by the panic of the moment. Even Daddy was stunned by his own exertion, and the thought of what would have happened had he not managed to perform this mystifying feat of strength. But such introspection was short lived, and he was soon giving Dara, shell-shocked but miraculously unscathed, a thorough treatise on the correct use of the electronic release mechanism. ‘You don’t need to key the ignition,’ he said as he helped Dara into the house, ‘you just have to turn it to 1 to allow power from the battery to the electrics.’ Dara nodded, invisible now behind the cello he was carrying on uneven feet.

This story has the air of one of those myths children tell about their dads, based on an unerring belief that their own father is the God who built the world and everything in it. I mean, it is one of those things but, conveniently, it’s also something that really happened. This is proven by my father’s reaction when I ask about the incident three decades later, which is to spend roughly forty seconds recounting the act of lifting an actual car off of someone, and a further eight minutes explaining how electricity is drawn from a Volvo’s battery.


My father’s reluctance to reflect on such achievements has been a challenge while writing this book. That’s not to say that he’s without conceit, of course. He is, in many ways, the most maddeningly self-assured person I know. It’s just that he is a ridiculous man who takes pride in ridiculous things. He has an overweening regard for his ability to communicate with dogs, or to relate the biographical details of every single priest in Ireland. He takes great pride in recalling the licence plate of every car he’s ever owned, and will dispense this list so readily it’s hard not to think he occasionally practises it. He is alarmingly cocky when it comes to his skill at killing mice, a species he hates with a malevolent, black-hearted glee. It’s an odd facet of his character; a man regarded by his friends as one of the kindest, gentlest humans on Earth, and by mice as Joseph Stalin. He takes particular joy in improvising weapons for the purpose, and has killed rodents with a shoe, a book and at least one bottle of holy water shaped like the Virgin Mary. He famously dispatched one with a single throw of a portable phone, without even getting out of bed. I know this because he woke us so we could inspect the furry smudge it left on his bedroom wall, before ringing my auntie in Spain to relate the entire tale.