After the Wake Read Free Page A

Byrne.
    ‘For God’s sake, whisht up out of that, you,’ said my granny, ‘people’s not bad enough.’ She fumbled with her handkerchief.
    ‘All the same, Christina,’ said Lizzie MacCann, ‘you’d feel bad about leaving the poor devil in a place like this.’
    The jarvey was trying to smoke without being caught. ‘It’s a very holy place,’ he said, but not looking too sure about it.
    ‘Maybe it’s that we’re not that holy ourselves,’ said Lizzie MacCann. ‘We might sooner die medium holy, like.’
    ‘It’s not the kind of place I’d like to leave a neighbour or a neighbour’s child,’ said Long Byrne.
    ‘Oh, whisht your mouth,’ said my granny, ‘you’d make me feel like an … an informer or something. We only do the best we can.’
    A very severe looking lady in a white coat came out and stood in front of us. The jarvey stuck the pipe in his pocket and straightened his cap.
    ‘Whars in charge of the peeshent?’ she says in a very severe tongue.
    My granny stood up as well as she could. ‘I am, with these other women here. She’s a neighbour of ours.’
    ‘There are no admissions here after five o’clock. The patient arrived here in an intoxicated condition.’
    ‘She means poor old Murphy was drunk,’ says Long Byrne.
    ‘The poor old creature had only about six halves, the couple of glasses of malt we had to finish up, and the few bottles we had over in Eccles Street,’ said Lizzie MacCann, counting on her fingers, ‘God forgive them that’d tell a lie of an old woman, that she was the worse for drink.’
    ‘And I get a distinct smell of whiskey here in this very hall,’ said the woman in the white coat.
    ‘How well you’d know it from the smell of gin, rum or brandy,’ said Long Byrne, ‘Ah well, I suppose practice makes perfect.’
    The woman in the white coat’s face got that severe that if she fell on it she’d have cut herself.
    ‘Out,’ she put up her hand, pointing to the door, ‘Out, at once.’
    There was a shuffling in the back of the hall, and Mrs. Murphy came out, supported by two nurses.
    ‘I wouldn’t stop where my friends aren’t welcome,’ said Mrs. Murphy.
    ‘Come on so,’ says my granny.
    When they got back to Jimmy the Sports, they had a few and brought some more over to Mrs. Murphy’s while they put her to bed.
    Long Byrne said herself and Lizzie MacCann would look after her between them.
    My granny liked laziness better than she did money and said she’d bunce in a half a bar* towards their trouble.
    ‘And it won’t break you,’ says Long Byrne, ‘damn it all, she’s not Methuselah.’

I Become a Borstal Boy
1
    I awoke on the morning of the 7th February, 1940, with a feeling of despondency. I’d had a restless night and fell asleep only to be awakened an hour later by the bell that roused myself and 1,253 other prisoners in Walton Jail.
    As I awoke the thought that had lain heavily with me through the night realised itself into words – If they carry it out … Just then I heard the shout ‘Right, all doors open. Slop out.’ … they will die in two and a quarter hours.
    Then another thought followed into my mind, ‘I might go down to Assizes to-day’. But I had said that every day since January 29, when I had been informed at the Committal Court that commission day for Liverpool Winter Assizes Court was six weeks off.
    I rose and washed myself and settled myself to wait for the rattling of keys and opening of doors that would indicate that my breakfast was on its way. After breakfast I heard the call, ‘Right, R.C’s. Parade for Ash Wednesday Service,’ and when the other Catholic juvenile offenders of C wing had been marched away to chapel my cell door was opened and I was escorted there in solitary state. I went to myusual place between Ned, a Royal Engineer from Carlow awaiting trial for housebreaking, and Gerry, a Monaghan lad of Republican ideas and of many convictions. A whispered conversation ensued.
    ‘Brendan,’