Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? A Memoir(25)

Sometimes Daddy would come home from meetings on youth engagement or vocations outreach, re-energised by the mission of getting kids to love the church, and use us as an impromptu little focus group he could bounce ideas off. Sitting at the dinner table, he’d affect a ponderous air and wrestle with the task of making young people think Christ was ‘cool’. Should Father Bun Hanratty mention Oasis more in his sermons, perhaps? Maybe the church could pretend that Jesus Christ was the mysterious one in a boy band or – now squinting at some notes written in scrawly fountain pen – lived in Planet Hollywood. Would we like that? Would we like it if Jesus Christ wore a leather jacket and lived in Planet Hollywood? Because if we did, it was suggested, my dad could make that happen.

Some priests knew us so well they would drop by unannounced, as when Father McKenna and Father McLaughlin took a jaunt out to the country on a whim and sidled up to our house on bicycles. Ireland has spent the past thirty years shedding its attachment to the Catholic church faster than any other country in Europe, but even if we continued to secularise for a century or more, we would likely still agree that it’s always nice to see a priest on a bicycle. There is just something pleasing, something primal, iconic and utterly silly about the image. Possibly only a tandem could have bettered it, perhaps decorated with stickers of favourite saints.

On other occasions, a priest’s arrival could be more surprising, as when we returned home from an all-day trip to visit Auntie Kathleen in South Armagh and found Father Finbar Staples sitting in the living room watching Match of the Day. He had arrived earlier that afternoon and, upon discovering we were out, jimmied open our kitchen window and made himself at home until we returned, several hours later. What’s truly astonishing is not the event itself, but how muted our response to it was. At the time, it didn’t seem all that strange that he’d done this, certainly not to my dad, who was just happy to see an old friend, and even apologised that there wasn’t much to eat in the house. We were dispatched to make tea and cut up some fruitcake for the poor Father, who was likely wasting away on the meagre rations of crisps, biscuits, a ham sandwich, a jar of olives and three beers he’d had to make do with in our absence. For his part, Father Finbar didn’t seem even remotely embarrassed by any of this, and happily threw himself into a catch-up with my father – a man whom, prior to breaking into his home, he hadn’t seen in three or four years. When it came time for Father Finbar to take off, my father apologised again, as if it was poor form of us to have been absent, or at the very least not to have had the house fully stocked with priestly provisions. It was as if once you were baptised Catholic, you tacitly understood that your home was a waystation for any passing priest and the houses of rural Ireland were a tasty network of clerical birdfeeders. My dad still isn’t really sure why we find this story so funny, save for the final verdict it provided on Elmo’s qualities as a guard dog. Upon discovering a man in black was fumbling with our kitchen window, Father Finbar maintained she had done nothing more than lick his hand and nudge his forearm.


Elmo was Bruno’s daughter, and probably the best dog we ever had. She combined Bruno’s quiet temperament with a more outgoing personality and, her abilities as a watchdog notwithstanding, a keen intelligence. My father was particularly strident when it came to championing her IQ, and he quickly established a working theory on her failure to stop our clerical intruder. Elmo could, so my father insisted, intuit that Father Finbar was a friendly figure, but if he had been someone with malign intent she would have dealt with him differently. As always, when it comes to my dad’s theories of canine intelligence – for they are many and varied – no real detail was forthcoming on exactly what Elmo would have done in this circumstance. Called the police, perhaps. Such was the power of Elmo’s personality that even her failings were repurposed into strengths, and such was her charisma that we all went along with it.

Elmo had a grace and poise that conferred a certain nobility on her, even in youth. She lacked the impulsivity or recklessness of other dogs, as if she was in possession of information beyond their reach, giving her an inner well of confidence that stopped her from over-reacting to things. She was sincerely empathetic, and had a dozen quiet gestures of comfort she could deploy if you needed emotional support. Elmo showed my father’s softer side, since there’s no greater love than that between a taciturn rural Irishman and the dog he shouts at all day. The attachment between them was immediate, and long lasting. When I remember her, it’s at my father’s side as he undertook some task in his office; sitting sphinx-like behind the garage, watching the world go by on the main road; or snoozing on that same patch under the kitchen table where the lino sits directly over pleasingly heated pipes. As my father settled into middle age, Elmo was the ideal companion: affectionate enough that her company made him feel loved and appreciated, but sufficiently independent she didn’t really require any actual looking after.

Compared to Bruno, who had been a total homebody, Elmo was like a chirpy, self-assured little foreign exchange student. She spent most of her time ranging through the Derry/Donegal countryside, often returning to the house only for mealtimes and naps. One time she was spotted about five miles away on the Craigavon bridge, close to Derry’s city centre. On other occasions she would be dropped back in nice family cars by friendly strangers, who hadn’t just encountered her randomly but, it usually turned out, had built a relationship with her over some weeks or even months. Their children, clearly besotted, would refer to her with unfamiliar names, evincing some form of ownership over this wise and friendly dog that, unbeknownst to them, had been gaming the entire county for food. Her travels hadn’t merely been a whistle-stop tour through the borderlands’ scenic spots, but to any family home without a dog in a four-or five-mile radius of our house. I’m not sure how many families were involved, but it’s a good thing she covered so much ground as she had four or five dinners to burn off every day.