The Parish (16 page)

That night, they slept on the couch in the kitchen and I got up during the small hours to check that all was in order. It was like being back on baby night-feeds. Their previous owner had instructed us that in the morning they were to be put on the lead and taken to a specific place in the garden and told “Toilet”. But either I did not have the right accent or they were just challenging my new role; so, when after half an hour nothing had happened, I decided that there had to be an easier way and left them off. They hit the garden like a hurricane
and, having done a few laps of the lawn and knocked down a little stone man, they tore up into the grove and decided that this was the place for their private ceremony. That was the big issue decided, but the water outlet proved to have a more long-term effect because within weeks my lawn took on the appearance of Joseph’s Technicolor coat.

Gradually they settled in and a routine developed. At night, they slept on the kitchen couch with the door open, so they had the run of the hallways, and one night when Lena forgot her key she found out that they were not very hospitable to strangers in the night. During the day, they had the run of the yard and garden but were tied up while deliveries were coming through the yard to the shop. Customers passing the open gate viewed them with surprise and felt happier that they were at a safe distance.

Kate and Lolly had a huge curiosity about their new surroundings and soon discovered that the big store to the back of our shop had a flat roof which then led them on to the flat roof of the pub next door. Part of the pub roof was glass, and they loved to go up there and watch the action below. One evening, an inebriated customer looked up to see two Dobermans looking down at him and promptly decided that he was not as sober as he had thought. After that, we had to bar them from pub visitations.

The neighbours called to see the “two girls”—as they were christened—and, once over the initial surprise at their size, everyone thought they were beautiful. Kate had decided that I was worthy of her patronage, or else she was smart enough to know that I was the source of the food, but in any case she followed me around like a shadow

All was going well until sex came into the picture. These
were two well-bred bitches with royal connections, whose mothers and grandmothers had blue blood, and the fathers’ contributions were also impeccable. They were not of the same litter but both had papers to impress. I had no interest in breeding or rearing litters of royal pups. I planned to get them neutered or spayed or fixed, though I did not even know the correct terminology. Gearóid, however, vehemently opposed this plan. We had head-on arguments with no solution. During these arguments, the word Nazi even came into play; I have been described as many things, but this was the first time that Hitler was invoked. So I decided to go underhand and booked them in with the vet without telling Gearóid, praying that he would not call during the recovery days. What he did not know would not bother him. Or so I thought.

When I visited the vet, I found a big shock waiting in the wings. She inspected the fasting dogs, and then told me that Kate was in heat. So I left Lolly, and an unhappy Kate came home and ran around the yard crying for Lolly. But she had more to cry about than missing Lolly. The previous week, there had been an incident that at the time had been of little consequence but in the light of Kate’s condition could be nothing short of a canine disaster.

Around our village rambles a geriatric mongrel, Jack the Lad, himself the product of a long line of one-night stands. He could be a cross between a greyhound, a terrier, a sheepdog and a Labrador; his bloodline would confuse any DNA test. Over the years, when he ambled around the village, eyeing the local talent, it was a case of lock up your bitches. Now he could hardly walk but the big question was, how geriatric was Jack the Lad? Because the previous week, while the gate was open for deliveries, he had come into our yard and had gone
up into the garden and hidden in the bushes until the gate was locked and the girls were let loose. An hour later, I had glanced out the window and there, to my horror, between my two beautiful girls was Jack the Lad. I nearly fainted! I shot out the back door and booted Jack the Lad out the gate with every intention of damaging his artillery. Now the burning question was, had he or had he not? I rang my sister Ellen, who had returned to Canada.

“Ah, Alice,” she assured me, “Jack the Lad is too old; he couldn’t rise to any occasion.”

But how old was too old? I rang my friend Mary and explained my dilemma, adding, “But he wasn’t in the yard very long.”

“Long enough for Jack the Lad,” she informed me.

I rang Paddy who, as a farmer, could be expected to know everything about sex in animals.

“Oh, there’s a morning-after pill for cows now,” he assured me cheerfully.

“Paddy, this morning after was five mornings ago,” I told him apprehensively.

“Oh, Alice, you don’t need a morning-after pill,” he told me regretfully. “You need a miracle.”

To add to my troubles, Gearóid called unexpectedly and, when I heard his voice out in the yard asking Kate where Lolly was, I felt like running for cover. But I had to face the music, and a raging son went in to the vet to collect Lolly, who arrived home in a prone state, much to Kate’s consternation. But her consternation was nothing compared to mine. When I looked at my beautiful Kate and thought of the geriatric mongrel who could have polluted her well-bred elegance, I came out in a cold sweat.

The following day, after a veterinary consultation, I was told to bring Kate in the following Monday and he would do the needful. The days passed slowly and I watched Kate for signs of morning sickness but she was in fine fettle. Maybe dogs don’t have morning sickness. I was so relieved when the day came and she went into the veterinary clinic; later that day, the vet informed me that all was well and that Jack the Lad could no longer pose a problem. But I wanted the answer to one question: had Jack the Lad invaded virgin territory or had he not? The answer was, he had.

That evening, I waited at my front door with murder in my heart and watched Jack the Lad drag himself down the street. He was fifteen years old, which in human terms is one hundred and five. Slowly easing forward his front right leg, he gradually pulled that half of his body along and then, gradually pushing forward his left leg, he painfully dragged his second half along. Very slowly he came down the street. He had to stop every few seconds to draw a laboured breath, and I could hear his lungs rattling from ten feet away. As I viewed him, I found it difficult to believe that there was life in that old dog yet. He certainly had to be the oldest swinger in town.

“G
reat God!” Steve exclaimed in horror—which was a bit rich coming from this man who does not believe in divine existence. I was tempted to come out with Gabriel’s response in similar circumstances. If Gabriel had given you a shock by suddenly coming unexpectedly around a corner and you reacted by gasping, “Oh, God!” Gabriel would smile and say, “No, I’m Gabriel.” It was a family joke with which Steve would probably not have been impressed. Now I watched his reaction to my once-beautiful garden.

Steve, who is the editor at Brandon, had seen the garden for the first time twenty years earlier when he had come to take a photograph before my first book,
To School Through the Fields
was published. He had wandered around our overgrown, dog-friendly garden and was heard to mutter to himself, “Is there any corner here that resembles a garden?” In later years, when I caught the gardening bug, he had to eat his words, and one day he acidly informed me: “When I came here first, it was all about writing and no gardening, and now it’s all gardening and no writing.”

Now he stood at my garden gate and surveyed in disbelief what lay in front of him.

“What happened here?” he demanded, and the answer took just one word.

“Dogs,” I said.

“Good God!” he declared in his best Anglo-Irish accent. Born into a posh Dublin background and educated in England, he came in later life to live and work in Dingle where, over the years, he turned into a lapsed Anglo-Irishman whose BBC accent succumbed to the soft
blás
of the Kerry mountains. His accent became that of an Anglo-Irish Kerryman, but on certain occasions, when under emotional stress, he reverted like some of my garden shrubs to the original of the species.

“What are you going to do now?” he asked with searching precision, and again it took just one word.

“Redesign,” I told him.

All my adult life, one of my gardening neighbours had constantly assured me that dogs and gardening did not a successful marriage make. Now was the time to prove her wrong; to try to effect a compromise acceptable to all parties. There were three of us in this marriage bed: the dogs, the garden and me. The dogs were the dominant party, the garden the sleeping partner and I was the liaison officer trying to make the whole thing work. A divorce had to be avoided at all costs. I knew that I had a big job on my hands but the stakes were high. I loved my garden and had grown to love my dogs, and I wanted all to live in peace.

Peace is not a word that two exuberant Dobermans bring to mind. In their lineage are greyhound genes, and they proved it by turning my garden into Shelbourne Park. In front of the gate was a wide lawn with a sweeping curve around an
old apple tree, and Kate and Lolly would round this turn at breakneck speed. As I watched them, a Grand National radio commentary from my childhood would come to mind and I would recall the voice of Peter O’Sullivan: “And now they are coming up to the canal turn.” When this was taking place, tufts of grass would scatter in their wake and then they would slam on the brakes, leaving skid marks across the lawn.

After a while, my lawn became a thing of the past. This did not happen overnight: the dogs came in May, which was a good month because the lawns were dry and firm and most of the shrubs were in their full health, but during the summer Kate and Lolly tested the well-being of the shrubs. Anything too fragile for their exuberance died underfoot. It was good that the garden was mature: most of the shrubs were able to contend with the constant assault; but as the fine weather faded, so did my lawn. Bitch urine and the Grand National on a daily basis proved more than any lawn could endure. A great Irishman once said, “Victory is won not by those who can inflict the most, but by those who can endure the most.” My lawns could endure no more; it was time for a major rethink.

Gardens talk to you, so I walked around my garden and listened to it; we had long debates about possibilities and impossibilities. The list of the latter was slightly longer than the list of the former, but there was no future in negative thinking. As I walked around, I constantly reminded myself that Uncle Jacky had gardened here with two dogs, three cats and about twenty hens. So what had I to complain about? I began gradually to work out a feasible plan. Then there came a sense of excitement at the concept of a whole new garden and a whole new challenge. This was going to test all my ingenuity and my limited gardening skills.

As I walked around, devising my plans, the two culprits accompanied me and when, in a fit of exuberance, they raised themselves on their hind legs and danced together on top of flowers or tore around the apple tree turn to test which of them might win the Gold Cup, they kept me aware of the necessity for basic solid structure. Neighbours who dropped in raised their eyes to heaven and one friend told me, “You’re actually gardening for two dogs.” He was right.

With a vague plan in mind, I strode around the garden in long strides to get measurements. Uncle Jacky had never used a measuring tape but had gauged the length of his stride and measured accordingly. It was a handy gardening ploy. That night I put the design on paper. It looked good, but then everything can look good on paper. On my showing it to a gardening neighbour, she gasped: “No lawn!” But no lawn was better than a yellow brick road or a winter sea of mud.

In Boston, when they were implementing a huge redesign of the entire city, it was christened the Big Dig; it went on for years. Starting out on my own Big Dig, I hoped it would be short term. As a one-digger outfit, I could work all the hours that God gave.

There is nothing more therapeutic than digging: we are deeply connected with the earth, and working with it soothes our inner being. When I began my Big Dig, I was deeply grieving the loss of Gabriel, and those long hours spent digging in the garden were better than tranquilisers or counselling. There is no way to explain this because it has to be experienced to understand the concept. It is as if in some way the bleeding wound of amputation that is death soaks down into the brown earth and the earth draws out the festering wound of grief. Then the earth becomes a poultice
for the wound. All this happens while you are occupied doing something else. I was busy redoing the garden and the dogs were in heaven because I was with them every day.

I soon discovered that more than the appearance of the garden had changed. Prior to dogs, gardening gloves could be dropped and trowels left in every corner, and there they remained. Now Kate and Lolly had tugs of war with my gardening gloves, and my pruners developed chewed handles. The price of keeping things safe from them was eternal vigilance. I hid pruners up trees and promptly forgot where I had put them; I tucked gloves into the elbows of branches where they were discovered weeks later. When I confessed this to a neighbour who was keeping an eye on my progress, he told me, “You’re a member of CRAFT”, and when I asked what that meant, I was told: “Can’t Remember A Fecking Thing.” I certainly qualified for membership.

As I dug up the green sod and turned over its brown underbelly, the garden changed slowly from green to brown. Some of my neighbours watched the transformation in dismay. The dogs, however, were delighted with all the activity, racing across the brown sods of earth, breaking them up more effectively than two rotovators. Every night, they were covered with earth, which on wet days converted to mud, and their coats changed from black to brown.

Following my plan, I laid out curving paths and edged them with large stones. I love working with stones; though these were so heavy that they nearly crippled me. After several hours of wrestling with them, I was a physical wreck, but mentally I was in heaven. My creative juices massaged my tired muscles. Flower beds that had previously surrounded the lawns I now extended out to the paths. The main path led from the gate
to the statue of St Joseph, from which others curved off into different parts of the garden including “around the canal turn”. I thinned out overcrowded beds and became expert at shifting into new homes reluctant residents who found themselves uprooted. After their initial protestations, they settled down happily because they now had more leg-room and light. Even temperamental plants know when they are better off and stop complaining once they readjust. Despite a lot of replanting, some extra plants were needed to fill these extended beds, but whereas on previous visits to Barry Shanahan’s nursery in Clonakilty the yardstick for plant buying was all about scent and colour, now it was all about toughness and the ability to survive.

Despite careful choosing, some poor plants still suffered: a mature
Acer palmatum
Osakazuki got its ears chewed, and a delicate golden
Robinia pseudoacacia frisia
that was to be my last tree planting had a close shave with destruction. There really was no room for another tree in my garden but, having seen its beautiful golden foliage, I thought that no garden could be complete without this elegant creature. The temptation proved too strong, and the tree was delivered on a very wet, windy day. It stood against the wall waiting to be planted the following day, but that night the wind blew it sideways and, when my two smart dogs were let out for their nightly run, they came on my poor tree and chewed the head right off it. The following morning, the dogs themselves were lucky not to be beheaded.

Steve had given me a rose called Dawn Chorus, a lovely apricot rose that flowered all summer until the first frost. It proved very healthy, and one day out in Hosford’s Garden Centre I came across half a dozen of them and was just
delighted to bring them home. I planted them above the garden gate on either side of the path and had visions of a soft sea of pale apricot wafting a delicate aroma to welcome us into the garden. As it is a thorny rose, I thought it would be safe from the dogs; I could not believe my eyes when, a day later, Kate came out the gate with a Dawn Chorus between her jaws. We had a running battle for a few days but she won because she chewed up two more rose bushes, which left me with four. Now three roses stand at one side of the path and one on its own at the other side—not good garden design! Gardening with dogs is an ongoing battle, but despite all the upheavals the garden is now beginning to take shape and develop a whole new look.

A garden, like life, is a constant challenge. In order to cope with the changing times, I had had to redesign my garden. I had been reluctant to start but the task proved to be both challenging and rewarding. Our parish, too, has been going through changing times. Much new planting and transplanting has gone on, and continues. But the old residents, like Uncle Jack’s mature trees, provide the shelter-belt for the new planting. Those who occupy the apartments that have sprung up in the village are like bedding plants—probably most of them here on a short-term basis. Some new householders, like the freshly planted shrubs, may take a while to settle in and will have to invest energy in their new soil before they take root. Some old residents, like the mature shrubs, may be feeling a bit overcrowded and may have to prune back a little to give space to the new plantation The farming community runs like a sheltering hedge through our parish and, if too much of our farmland disappears under concrete developments, the soul of rural Ireland will be damaged. The big question is: can we
recreate a new supportive community within our changed landscape and extended boundaries? All in all, challenging times.