After the Wake Read Online Free PDF Page A

Confirmation, frightened us, and said the Bishop would fire us out of the Chapel if we didn’t answer his questions, and we’d be left wandering around the streets, in a new suit and top-coat with nothing to show for it, all dressed up and nowhere to go. The big people said not to mind them; they were only getting it up for us, jealous because they were over their Confirmation, and could never make it again. At school we were in a special room to ourselves, for the last few days, and went round, a special class of people. There were worrying times too, that the Bishop would light on you, and you wouldn’t be able to answer his questions. Or you might hear the women complaining about the price of boys’ clothes.
    ‘Twenty-two and sixpence for tweed, I’d expect ashare in the shop for that. I’ve a good mind to let him go in jersey and pants for that.’
    ‘Quite right, ma’am’, says one to another, backing one another up, ‘I always say what matter if they are good and pure’. What had that got to do with it, if you had to go into the Chapel in a jersey and pants, and every other kid in a new suit, kid gloves and tan shoes and a scoil* cap. The Cowan brothers were terrified. They were twins, and twelve years old, and every old one in the street seemed to be wishing a jersey and pants on them, and saying their poor mother couldn’t be expected to do for two in the one year, and she ought to go down to Sister Monica and tell her to put one back. If it came to that, the Cowans agreed to fight it out, at the back of the brewery wall; whoever got best, the other would be put back.
    I wasn’t so worried about this. My old fellow was a tradesman, and made money most of the time. Besides, my grandmother, who lived at the top of the next house, was a lady of capernosity and function. She had money and lay in bed all day, drinking porter or malt, and taking pinches of snuff, and talking to the neighbours that would call up to tell her the news of the day. She only left her bed to go down one flight of stairs and visit the lady in the back drawing room, Miss McCann.
    Miss McCann worked a sewing-machine, making habits for the dead. Sometimes girls from our quarter got her to make dresses and costumes, but mostly she stuck to the habits. They were a steady line, she said, and you didn’t have to be always buying patterns, for the fashions didn’t change, not even from summer to winter. They were like a long brown shirt, and a hoodattached, that was closed over the person’s face before the coffin lid was screwn down. A sort of little banner hung out of one arm, made of the same material, and four silk rosettes in each corner, and in the middle, the letters I.H.S., which mean, Miss McCann said, ‘I Have Suffered’.
    My grandmother and Miss McCann liked me more than any other kid they knew. I like being liked, and could only admire their taste.
    My Aunt Jack, who was my father’s aunt as well as mine, sometimes came down from where she lived, up near the Basin, where the water came from before they started getting it from Wicklow. My Aunt Jack said it was much better water, at that. Miss McCann said she ought to be a good judge. For Aunt Jack was funny. She didn’t drink porter or malt, or take snuff, and my father said she never thought much about men either. She was also very strict about washing yourself very often. My grandmother took a bath every year, whether she was dirty or not, but she was in no way bigoted in the washing line in between times.
    Aunt Jack made terrible raids on us now and again, to stop snuff and drink, and make my grandmother get up in the morning, and wash herself, and cook meals and take food with them. My grandmother was a gilder by trade, and served her time in one of the best shops in the city, and was getting a man’s wages at sixteen. She liked stuff out of the pork butchers, and out of cans, but didn’t like boiling potatoes, for she said she was no skivvy, and the chip man was better