The Dogs of Inishere

Literary Review, Summer, 1997 by Alannah Hopkin

She was told in Rossaveale while she waited for the ferry that the islanders are great dog lovers. Nothing pleases them more than to be given a puppy to take home.

The ferry, the Dun Aengus, had a crew of two. It could have carried about forty passengers, but there were only a dozen or so on board and a clump of cardboard boxes. When they were close enough to the islands to distinguish between Inishmore, away on the starboard beam, Inishman, the middle island, dead ahead, and Inishere the smaller island, just visible to port, the engine broke down.

The mate disappeared down a hatch. The captain joined him and without way they drifted, beam ends on to the Atlantic swell as diesel fumes swept up on deck and lingered there in spite of the breeze. A solemn-looking bearded man sitting opposite her stared anxiously back at the Connemara coast.

"I should have stayed with Delaney," he said, looking straight at her. She pretended she hadn't heard.

Ten minutes later the captain re-emerged, sweaty forehead, greasy forearms, and gave a long exasperated explanation in Irish to a male passenger, concluding with the words "fecking diesel."

The captain pointed towards a house that did bed and breakfast as they landed at the pier. An old man sat in the garden twisting sally rods into small baskets. When he greeted another person after her she turned around to see that the bearded man who should have stayed with Delaney had followed her up.

"We made it," he said. "Is it your first time on the island?"

"Yes."

"Inishere is different," he said.

"So I've noticed. I can't get over all the grey stone. Grey stone and bleached out grass, no colours at all. Even the sky is a paler blue."

"Are you a painter?"

"I'm a photographer."

A small English sheep dog type, grey and white and in need of grooming, lay on the door mat. He opened one milky eye, then grunted and turned over. Katy reached across and turned the latchkey, opening the door as Mrs. Flaherty came into the hall.

"Grand day."

"The skipper on the ferry said you'd have rooms."

"A double is it?"

"Two singles."

"We're both from the ferry. The captain sent us over."

"That would be Mihail, my nephew. He's very good to me."

Mairead Flaherty stood in her front garden and pointed to a house with a wooden sign on its side: "Restaurant."

A small stone-walled field between the Flaherty's house and the restaurant was occupied by an abandoned blue Ford Cortina. The field could have held two, at a pinch, it was that small. An undernourished black and white bitch with something of a King Charles spaniel about her was sniffing around the rusting car. The field was a wild-flower meadow. Harebells, scabious, purple clover, ox-eye daisies, saxifrage and bloody cranesbill grew among the tall grasses.

An L-shaped ground floor room had been furnished with simple tables and chairs. There were no curtains and the walls were plain apart from a framed certificate from the Western Health Board saying that the establishment was licensed as a "limited restaurant."

A shy young girl with a notepad came up to her.

"Is the soup homemade?"

"No, it's from a packet."

Only one other table was occupied. There were four women in their mid-twenties, drably turned out. The words "chapel" and "sister" occurred frequently in their conversation.

She walked from the restaurant back to the pier and on to the beach. It took about four minutes. The quiet was strange to her after the city. Cries from the bathers on the strand and the murmurs from people gossiping on the pier sounded eerie against the silence.

A short-legged terrier and a miniature mainly-Dachshund were hanging around on the pier. Neither they nor any of the other dogs on the island ever barked. She left them staring silently out to sea and walked barefoot onto the sand.

She watched as the Doolin ferry, a small motor boat with a very loud engine, made its way across to the pier. The four women from the restaurant were sitting in a cove with their backs to the rocks, each reading a paperback. As she stared towards the mainland, a speck appeared in the sky on the Inishman side of the island. A Land Rover suddenly roared up and down the landing strip scattering the donkeys who grazed there. The plane came in so low that she could watch the anxious faces of the passengers.

On her way back to the B&B, between the pier and the thatched cottage she met a medium-sized short-haired mongrel. One pat on the head made him lie at her feet grovelling in abject adoration, paws and nose stretched out on the ground. Then he rolled over and waved his legs in the air. He followed as she walked away, jumping up to lick her face, doggy breath warm on her cheeks, his long pink tongue hanging out of snapping, Alsatian-like jaws.

She changed from shorts into trousers, then went straight out again to the restaurant.

The man who should have stayed with Delaney was leaving it.

"Half an hour," he said. "They've forgotten to put the potatoes on. Michael Madden."

She shook his hand.

"Katy Collins."

"Shall we wait in the pub?"