Belfast Memories

This is an extract from Belfast Memories, my memoir covering the years 1951, when I was born, until 1977. It is from the first complete chapter I’ve written which has been critiqued by my writing group. The chapter is titled Family Dogs – I come from a line of dog lovers!

A little background: It is 1960. We are living in a two-up, two-down terrace house off the lower Falls Road. A factory, warehouses and a post office depot occupy most of the street with only a smattering of terraced housing at either end – making it a high risk area for children and dogs. At that time, my dad worked as a delivery man for a bottling plant, McKenna & McGinley, delivering soft drinks across an area outside of Belfast – hence ‘country run’.

I was nine when Daddy came back at the end of his country run with a dog – a fox terrier. From then until I was fifteen, there was always a fox terrier in the house. There were maybe four in all – for a dog living on our row had only to dart through an open door once to fall under the wheels of one of the many vans or lorries that lumbered to and fro daily. In my mind they all merged into Spot, the last and longest lived of the line. She and they were all small white-haired long-nosed dogs with various black markings on ears, over eye sockets or on back. For Kate and me they were our dogs in a way which my younger sister, Nano never felt. A family story has her sitting on the front step one afternoon and calling Mammy in a dead-pan voice: ‘You’d better tell Mary and Kate their dog’s just been run over.’

‘Though she be but little she be fierce.’ Shakespeare could as easily have been thinking of a fox terrier when he wrote that line to describe Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. From early on Spot waged guerilla war with my father as to whose role it was to protect her pack, barking furiously at any sign of a man through the front door. In the beginning this usually led to her being grabbed by the scruff of the neck and lifted to and locked in her kennel in the backyard.

However over time she evolved a strategy, to my and Kate’s delight. At the first sound of any man at the door, she would squeeze under the low scalloped edge of the sideboard in the front room. There she’d crouch in the back corner, watching the door. She’d bide her time until the visitors got up to leave. Any women would be ushered out first by the men. As soon as the last departing man was poised to step out, Spot would catapult herself out, a barking furry missile, eyes and teeth homing in on his heels. In the confusion of nervous laughter or shocked curses from the visitor and apologies from my parents, she’d escape back under and there she’d skulk. Daddy’s attempts to dislodge her were futile. On bended knees, he’d stretch his arm under the sideboard as far as he could, his fingers groping for a handhold while she shrunk further into the corner. Either he’d give up or Mammy would say, ‘Leave her Malachy. She’ll come out in a while.’ She would and she’d still end up locked in the kennel, but the victory was hers.

This gave a whole extra dimension to having visitors. Kate and I would watch with glee as Spot would first wrong-foot Daddy and then we’d sit through the visit, anticipating the finale. When we caught the other’s eye, we’d look quickly away for it wouldn’t do to start giggling. It wasn’t that we disliked the visitors. Far from it. It was that Spot did what we could never dare to do – disrupt and discomfort the big people with fearlessness and daring – and get away with it.