After the Wake Read Free

time, and she leant a minute on the side looking in at him.
    ‘What’s this the name of that crowd that owns this child is?’
    ‘It’s Rochfords’ baby,’ said I. ‘Out of upstairs. He’s only new out of the Roto* this week.’
    ‘How do you know he’s out of the Roto?’
    ‘I heard my mother and them saying it. That’s where all babies are from. They have pictures there too.’
    She waved her hand. ‘Shut up a minute, can’t you?’ She put her hand to her forehead. ‘That’d be Dan Rochford’s son’s child, or his child maybe.’ She fumbled in her handbag. ‘I’ve two thrupenny bits. Here, take one of these in your hand. It has to be silver. Put it in the baby’s hand and say what I say: “Hold your hansel, long life and the height of good luck to you.” Come on.’
    I tried to speak but the tears were choking me. I thought she would give me one of the thrupenny bits anyway. It was like a blow in the face to me, and I’d done nothing on her but walked nice and easy down the street when she leaned on my head, and went over and got the snuff.
    She looked down at me, and I put the thrupenny bit into the pram, and turned my heart, and – cheeks and eyes all full of tears – ran through the hall and out into the street.
    My mother only laughed and said it didn’t mean that Mrs. Murphy fancied the baby more than she didme. It could have been any new baby. It was the thing to do, and I a big fellow that had run out of two schools to be jealous of a little baby that couldn’t even talk.
    She brought me into Mrs. Murphy, and the two of them talked and laughed about it while I didn’t look at them but sat in the corner playing with Minnie Murphy who, if she was vicious enough to scrawb you if she thought she’d get away with it, didn’t make you feel such a fool. When my mother went I wanted to go too but my mother said Mrs. Murphy was sick and I could mind her till she came back.
    Mrs. Murphy called me to the bedside and gave me a pinch of snuff, and had one herself, and the new baby went out of our heads.
    The doctor came and said she’d have to go to the Refuge of the Dying. He told her that years ago.
    Mrs. Murphy didn’t know whether she’d go or not. I hoped she would. I heard them talk about it before and knew you went in a cab, miles over the city and to the southside. I was always afraid that they might have got me into another school before she’d go for, no matter how well you run out of them or kick the legs of the teacher, you have to go sometime.
    She said she’d go and my granny said that she’d order a cab from the Roto to be there in the morning.
    We all got into the cab. Mrs. Murphy was all wrapped up in blankets. She didn’t lean on my head, but was helped by the jarvey, and off we went.
    Going past a pub on the corner of Eccles Street, she said she didn’t like to pass it, for old times’ sake. My granny and Long Byrne and Lizzie MacCann all said they’d be the better of a rozziner*. And the jarvey came in with the rest of us. On the banks ofthe other canal we went in and had another couple. We stopped there for a long time and my granny told the jarvey she’d make it up to him.
    Glasses of malt she ordered, and Mrs. Murphy called on Long Byrne for a bar of a song.
    The man in the pub said that it wasn’t a singing house, but Mrs. Murphy said she was going into the Refuge and it was a kind of a wake.
    So Long Byrne sang, ‘When the Cock, Cock Robin, comes hop, hop, hoppin’ along,’ and On Mother Kelly’s Doorstep, and for an hour it was great and you’d wish it could go on forever, but we had to go or the Refuge would be shut.
    We left in Mrs. Murphy and waited in the hall. Long Byrne said you get the smell of death in it.
    ‘It’s the wax on the floors,’ said my granny.
    ‘It’s a very hard-featured class of a smell, whatever it is,’ said Lizzie MacCann.
    ‘We’ll never see her again now, till we come up to collect her in the box,’ said Long