For all the strategy and strokes and the showtime and spin, there comes a time when the polls have to close.
They closed for PJ Mara when there was a Fianna Fáil ardfheis in full swing, a general election in the offing and loose talk of coalition with the unlikeliest of political partners.
“Oh, he’d be in his element” they were saying at his requiem mass.
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Mourners wondered what the strategist supreme might have to say on the battle to come.
“They could do with him in Fianna Fáil now,” mused some, as Micheál Martin arrived from his party conference out at Citywest to St Mary’s Church in Haddington Road.
So what would PJ have to say?
“I’ve no doubt he would have been very interested in what is going to happen in the next few weeks,” remarked parish priest Fr Pat Claffey - a long-time friend, despite admitting to political leanings in the FG direction.
“And I’ve no doubt he would have had a word of advice, here and there.”
The church was stuffed with former politicians and retired journalists. A large slick of demobbed political handlers had trooped down from the rich grazing uplands of private enterprise. There were business figures and comfortable legal types and an assortment of neighbours from Dublin 4. And Michael McDowell and Harry Crosbie and Charlie Chawke. And Donie Cassidy and Oliver Barry and Eamon Dunphy.
The photographers couldn’t decide who they wanted the most.
Early arrival
Bertie Ahern was an early arrival. PJ Mara masterminded his unprecedented run of three general elections on the trot. In fact, PJ was probably too good. Had Fianna Fáil lost in 2007, when many predicted they might, the party would have escaped the economic carnage of the following years and left Fine Gael swinging in 2011 as the villains of the piece.
The Haughey family, Maureen, widow of former taoiseach Charlie, with her children Eimear, Conor and Seán, came to pay their final respects to the man who was gatekeeper and key political adviser to CJH.
Brian Cowen reminisced about his friend. Micheál Martin arrived with his wife Mary, while past ministers included Charlie McCreevy, Dermot Ahern, Dick Roche, Batt O’Keeffe and a blast from tribunals past, Ray Burke, who braved the cameras for his old pal.
The Taoiseach’s wife, then Fionnuala O’Kelly, was working for Haughey as a press officer when Enda Kenny first set eyes on her. She worked with PJ back in the day and joined a number of her former press office colleagues in the congregation.
But it was a non-political figure who caused the biggest stir. Billionaire Denis O’Brien is box office these days, but in Haddington Road he was keen not to divert attention away from the obsequies of his good friend. O’Brien waited at the back of the church until the hearse arrived, then took his place alongside Mara’s son John in the bearer-party as they shouldered the coffin to the altar.
PJ, who was ill for a number of months before his death, arranged most of the funeral.
He wanted to mark his passing in a simple and dignified way, said Fr Claffey, “far away from any razzmatazz and spin.”
This was, after all, a funeral Mass. Nobody really expected the cleric, even if they might secretly have wished it, to open proceedings a la Mara with a jaunty “OK folks, it’s showtime!”
In an unusual departure for a funeral, Fr Claffey made a particular point of welcoming members of the media. He noted all the acres of newsprint dedicated to PJ in the previous 24 hours and wondered what he might have made of it, recalling how he had a way of throwing his eyes up to heaven when word were not sufficient.
‘Man of substance’
The priest imagined him doing the same when the weekend papers came in.
More than once, he stressed there was much more to PJ Mara than the impeccable dress, the flamboyance, the impishness, the mischief. “He was a man of substance: spiritual substance and moral substance. He was a spiritual man with a deep personal faith.”
As he neared the end of his life, Mara knew he would be “passing to that other reality where he knew the spin didn’t count. This was big issue territory and he took it very seriously.”
Or as PJ put it to his clerical friend: “I want a clean passport.”
It was a very traditional mass, with beautiful singing from cantor, Emer Barry. There were readings and prayers from friends - PJ’s brother-in-law Declan Brogan; Maurice Manning, chancellor of the National University of Ireland; former presidential advisor Eileen Gleeson; Fianna Fáil general secretary Seán Dorgan and Denis O’Brien, with whom Mara worked closely in recent years.
Where his send off was concerned, PJ had two requests: he didn’t want a eulogy and he didn’t want memorabilia brought to the altar.
It didn’t stop the parish priest from imagining what he thought might have been brought up.
“A Charvet shirt?” Or maybe manifestos from the 1997, 2002 and 2007 elections?
There were words of sympathy and support for the Mara family, his adult son John, his young daughter Elena and partner Sheila. Breda, who died in 2003, was also remembered. The mass booklet was exactly the same as the one used at her funeral. PJ will be buried beside his wife in Mount Cross cemetery Kinvara, on the Atlantic coast.
At the end, the family had a message. “PJ would not like it to stop here.” Mourners were invited to the Burlington Hotel (now the DoubleTree by Hilton), scene of many an FF presidential dinner bunfight, to talk and laugh and have a drink.
The final song was a familiar instrumental.
Lord of the Dance.
