After the Wake

by Brendan Behan

  ‘Or, the Lord be good to us all,’ said Mrs. Brennan, ‘the time the holy chap told us the end of the world was come to Dún Laoghaire and we were all going to meet a watery end at the butt end of the East Pier.’

  ‘It’s like the time,’ said Maria Concepta, ‘we seen the film about the king and all the people stood up.’

  ‘I’d have stood up for no king,’ said Crippen crossly.

  ‘You would,’ said Mrs. Brennan, ‘if you’d have seen this one.’

  ‘He was masterful,’ said Maria Concepta, ‘like me first husband who was only five foot nothing but very stern.’

  ‘Maria Concepta,’ said Mrs. Brennan, ‘give us that little stave about the Waxies’ Dargle.’

  ‘Well’, said Maria Concepta, ‘I’m not as good as I was the time I took first place and silver medal at the Fish Coyle.’*

  ‘Ah, poor ould Fish,’ said Mrs. Brennan, ‘he wasn’t bad when he had it.’

  ‘Well,’ said Crippen, ‘give us the stave.’

  ‘I will so,’ said Maria Concepta, making a noise like a cinder under a gate.

  ‘Oh, says my ould one to your ould one,

  “Will you come to the Waxies’ Dargle?”

  And says your ould one to my ould one,

  “Sure I haven’t got a farthing …”’

  ‘God love your stomach,’ said Crippen.

  ‘Ahmen, O Lord,’ said Mrs. Brennan, with feeling.

  ‘Thank yous, dear faithful follyers,’ murmured Maria Concepta. ‘It may be the last time I’ll be singing at yous.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Crippen … “But there’s them that says the divil is dead …”

  ‘Not half sooing enough,’ said Mrs. Brennan, ‘to hell with him.’

  ‘And there’s more that says he’s hearty

  And some says that he’s down below

  Eating sugary barley …’

  Maria Concepta finished on a low and throbbing note.

  ‘That was massive,’ said Mrs. Brennan.

  ‘Not a diver in the Port and Docks could have got under that,’ said Crippen.

  ‘I would like, as you’re the most melodious mezzo-soprano that ever muffled the markets,’ said Mrs. Brennan, ‘if you’d condescend to give us a verse of the Zozzoligcal Gardings.’

  ‘Ah, the dear old days,’ said Maria Concepta.

  ‘Quite right,’ said Mrs. Brennan, explaining, ‘we both met our husbands in the Zoo.’

  ‘Quite right, ma’am, and damn the lie,’ said Maria Concepta, ‘myself and my poor fellow’ – she choked from emotion – ‘we met in the monkey house. And shared a bag of nuts with an orang-outang.’

  ‘Well, carry on with the coffing, the corpse’ll walk,’ said Crippen, jovially, ‘give us that bit of a bar.’

  ‘I will so and the divil thank the begrudgers,’ said Maria Concepta, ‘with no more ahdo,’ and without further ado she broke into a croak:

  ‘I brought me mot up to the Zoo

  For to show her the lion and the kangaroo,

  There were he-males and she-males of each shade and hue

  Inside the Zoological Gardens …’

  ‘My poor ould uncle – oney …’

  ‘Owney?’ I asked.

  ‘Oney a marriage relayshing,’ went on Mrs. Brennan. ‘He used to sing that. Till they buried him – after he died – in Kilbarrack. Out be Howth direction. That cementery is so healthy for dead people that if a live one had have went out there, they’d be there yet, and going on for all time, meeting themselves coming back.’

  Paris – Visit it only in the Spring

  ‘Some day maybe I’ll go back to Paris

  And welcome in the dawn at Chatelet

  With onion soup and rum to keep us nourished

  Till the sun comes up on St. Germain de Pres …’

  And, as the man said, it wouldn’t be the first time. This is the time of the year for it. In the winter, Paris is habitable by brass monkeys and, in the summer, you’d die for a breath of the sea. That’s when people from here learn to appreciate our situation. A shilling will take you to the Bull Wall or the Forty Foot but, in the heat of the Paris summer, it’ll cost you two shillings to go into the Piscine which is a sort of floating swimming pool on the Seine. For one hour only. They control the length of time by a system of coloured tickets and when they shout out that it’s time up for the yellow tickets or the blue tickets it’s no good gaming on that you don’t know what jaune or bleu means.

  You can’t stop there till it shuts and they’ll charge you the difference afterwards – like travelling first class on a third class Metro ticket The inspector, if he catches you, will waste no time bemoaning the dishonesty of any part of the human race, yours or his. He’ll hold out his hand for a ten-shilling fine.

  And once, at a party held on a little island, under the auspices of some students from Trinity College, Dublin, I dived in from the Pont Notre Dame. The pompiers, or river fire brigade, shone searchlights from their boats.

  I hardly had my clothes on when the flic were down wanting to know what I thought I was making of the place altogether and where I was from and had I my papers? I showed them my papers and they saw the cover of the passport and bothered me no more. One nodded to the other not to mind me, that I was an Irishman, and tapped the side of his cap to indicate that I was one of the Gormans of Grange and a foreman in the puzzle factory.

  He saluted and wished me a civil good-night and they went off, much gratified, to the strains of The Marseillaise sung by the choir of Trinity scholars in the version attributed to its distinguished alumnus known as The Pope:

  ‘Oh, the Board takes grave excep - chi - o - on, …

  yours sincerely, Matty Fry …’

  As the Paris police are mentioned, let me say this much about them. Some people from the island across the way and Irish visitors from that stratum of society that would eat cooked Kenyan if they thought the Quality over the way were doing likewise adversely criticise them as armed State police as compared to the dear old village constable in Dryraching-under-the-water.

  My grandmother’s favourite toast was: ‘Here’s to the harp of old Ireland and may it never want for a string as long as there’s a gut in a Peeler,’ and I am not that mad about police of any sort myself but my experience of the Paris police has been a pleasant one.

  In a spirit, quite in keeping with the democratic tradition of their country, they will reprimand the wealthy rentier in his delage and the workman carrying his child on the back-wheel and as freely assist them. French or foreign, rich or poor, they are at everyone’s disposal and, if your papers are right, they don’t care how little else you have in your pocket; you can go on home and the sleep will do you good.

  The best spot from which to view the chestnuts and beautiful Paris in the spring is the top of the Arc de Triomphe. I was up there, like any other tourist, and worse is to come, a true born Dubliner: I have been on top of the Pillar.

  I first noticed the Pillar, one day not long ago, when I met a man, a pal of my cradle days. We graduated together to the more serious considerations of ‘the make in,’ ‘fat,’ ‘pontoon,’ and the ‘ha’penny rummy’*, before emigration parted us. He went to the Navan end of Cabra and Paw and Maw and us broke virgin soil in the highlands of Kimmage.

  I came out of Henry Street and who should I see but my old school mate staring up at the top of the Pillar before.

  ‘Me tearing man, Jowls. I didn’t know you were out.’

  ‘Aw hello the hard. Yes, this three weeks. Wasn’t bad, I was in the laundry during the winter.’

  He was still examining your man on the Pillar as closely as he could from a distance of a hundred feet.

  ‘Very interesting that. Up there.’

  ‘Nothing got to do with us.’

  He looked at me angrily.

  ‘Why hasn’t it got something to do with us?’

  I had never suspected such loyalty in the bosom of the Jowls who sat with me, a boy, under the watchful eye
of the French Sisters of Charity in the North William Gaeltacht.*

  ‘Did you ever go up and look at him?’

  I started off the usual long spiel about being a Dublin man, but Jowls cut me short.

  ‘Come on up, and I’ll show you. It’ll give us an appetite for a couple.’

  We started in and, to cut a long story short, I died seven deaths on the way up, all from shortness of breath. Jowls was in better condition being just back to this sinful world from his place of retirement. We got up to the top and I crawled out after him to the platform, or whatever you call it, and knelt before Nelson. I hadn’t the strength to stand.

  Jowls looked up at the Hero of Trafalgar, sighed deeply, and reached up to pat the sword, victorious shield of England, home and beauty. I looked up at Jowls and said humbly, ‘Napoleon wasn’t a bad one either.’

  He came out of his reverie, ‘Wha’? Do you see that?’ He tapped the point of the sword. I nodded up to him.

  ‘D’you know what I’m going to tell you, there’s about a fiver’s worth of scrap in that. It’s not much but not much trouble either, of a dark evening, and bring it down wrapped up in brown paper; they’d never miss it till morning.’

  The Tale of Genockey’s Motor Car

  ‘It’s not every day in the week I get invited to an eviction,’ said I.

  ‘It’s not an eviction,’ said Dion. ‘Only a seizure of the goods, as heretofore mentioned. One Chrysler motor car on which there are twelve instalments owing to the Farmers and Merchants Heart and Hand United Mutual Assistance Company (Incorporated in Great Britain).

  ‘I’m owed nothing. My commission came out of the first advance from the Farmers and Merchants, God bless them,’ he added cheerfully. ‘I’m only there to identify the goods. We’re meeting Mr. Claythorpe of the Farmers and Merchants at the premises of Mr. Genockey, the purchaser of the Chrysler car, aforesaid. Mr. Carr here – very appropriate name – is going to seize the car, or what’s left of it, and give it over to Mr. Claythorpe.

  ‘I’m there to identify the goods and renew acquaintance with Mr. Genockey who has, in the transaction, benefitted me to the extent of some scores of pounds and is, in my opinion, one of the most remarkable men of our time. If you ask my opinion, he’s a credit to his country and the sort of man that Ireland wants. Mr. Carr, as a Sheriff’s man of some antiquity …’

  ‘Fifty year, and only off suspended once over me little trouble.’ Mr. Carr is a small man, wearing a black suit with little lapels and drainpipe trousers like a Teddy Boy gone backwards and with an old pair of eyes, God bless the mark, that look as if he’s got them in a forced sale. ‘And though I won’t go as far as to agree with Dionysius about Mr. Genockey, the defaulter in the present case, as to say that he is a credit to his country, I will say he keeps us Sheriff’s men going. It’s only a year or so since the case of the washing machine.’

  ‘This Mr. Genockey,’ said Dion, driving North from Lower Mount Street, ‘hires a washing machine, pays one down payment but no more and, after hiring it out to every old one in the neighbourhood at three bob an hour and pay for the juice for two years, they finally got round to seizing it. You were there, Mr. Carr?’

  ‘Yes, Dionysius, it was one of my cases. He got it as a birthday present for his wife, wrote his name in Irish on the order form. That’s how they didn’t twig him.

  ‘They asked him how his name in Irish was spelt differently before and he said there was different kinds of Irish and he believed in giving them all a go, a fair field and no favour, “Up Down” and every man for his own county.

  ‘The hire purchase man cried when he saw the state of the washing machine but Mr. Genockey told him to cheer him up, so to speak, that it was only where he’d lent it to a man to mix concrete in, a neighbour was putting down a bit of a path in the garden.’

  We pulled up at the premises aforesaid, beside an expensive looking black Humber. An expensive looking gentleman with a moustache got out of it and stood with us on the pavement.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr. Claythorpe,’ said Dion.

  ‘Effanoon, ’m,’ said Mr. Claythorpe from between his cool, white teeth and, nodding to Mr. Carr, ‘Effanoon, Cur.’

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ moaned Mr. Carr respectfully.

  Mr. Claythorpe looked at me. ‘You a bailiff’s man?’

  ‘He’s a newsboy,’ said Mr. Carr. ‘He’s only here with Dion, sir.’

  ‘Well, I suppose we had better go in, Cur,’ said Claythorpe.

  We were met by a smiling big woman with a Munster accent.

  ‘Yeer the man that’s coming to see Mr. Genockey about the oul’ car? Come in and rest yourselves a minute. Is that yourself, Mr. Carr? Friends meet though the hills and the mountains doesn’t. I didn’t see you now, Mr. Carr, not since the washing machine, and God help you, it must have been an awful trouble to you carrying it down the stairs and you sit down, sir,’ she said to Mr. Claythorpe, ‘you’re another friend of Mr. Genockey’s.’

  ‘May neem is Claythorpe,’ said Mr. Claythorpe through clenched teeth.

  ‘Ah sure himself’d murder me if I let you out of the house before he comes back. It’s often he does be talking about you. He won’t be long. He’s only gone in the oul’ car to Athlone to bring back a few pigs. He brought down a load of coal in it to oblige the man he’s buying the pigs off. He said he’d be back at three o’clock to the dot though the oul’ car might have broken down, it’s only a heap of scrap now, but sure nothing lasts only for a time, ourselves included,’ – she put her hand to her ear – ‘now here he is.’

  Mr. Genockey came into the room, kissed his wife, and shook hands with Mr. Carr and Dion, ‘How’s every bit of yous?’ He looked at me and smiled, ‘You the Sheriff? I’m like a big kid I am, I’d love to meet the Sheriff. Have you your star? And your six-gun?’

  Mr. Claythorpe spoke from behind him, his face pale and his knuckles showing white where he gripped the back of a chair. He struggled to get out the hoarse words, ‘Genockey! I’m Claythorpe!’

  Mr. Genockey turned. ‘Well, I’m more nor pleased to meet you in the flesh,’ he smiled affectionately, ‘though we’re a kind of pen pals, we still only know each other by correspondence. Acushla‚* did you make Mr. Claythorpe a cup of tea?’

  Mr. Claythorpe looked as if he could do with it.

  ‘The old car is outside and you can have it with a heart and a half as soon as I get the few pigs out of it.’

  Later, I asked Dion, what was Mr. Carr’s little trouble that got him suspended from his office.

  ‘He discovered a law that said that all pawnbrokers that hadn’t attended Divine Service the previous Sabbath had to pay a fine of seven-and-sixpence, and he went round collecting it and charging an extra half-a-crown for lip when they were slow to pay up.’

  Three Celtic Pillars of Charity

  This life is full of disappointments. The band of the Beaux Arts School is one of them. Not in noise, volume or variety of costume but, as the man said, basically.

  The Ecole des Beaux Arts, or the the School of Fine Arts in Paris in the popular imagination, is a sort of Tír na nÓg* of young geniuses, painting and sculpting with fresh, savage efficiency during the working day, cursing the professors, damning all academics, till the light fades, the stars rise over the garret, and Mimi, the little midinette, knocks timidly on the door and comes in with the bottle of wine, the piece of veal, the garlic, the bread and cheese purchased, mayhap, with the fruits of her long day’s stitching for the rude and haughty ladies of the rue de Faubourg Saint Honoré.

  And if, at festival time, he dashes madly through the streets most daring of his band, well, youth must have its fling, and the staid conventions of looking where you are going are not for such ardent spirits as these.

  The present Beaux Arts School has a band. Its instruments are not the usual instruments of brass and reed; they are composed mostly of household instruments.

  During the summer nights they have a march-out at least every Saturd
ay night, up and round the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter, playing in close harmony on buckets, tin cans, biscuit tins, old motor horns, auctioneers’ hand bells, basins, bowls, with a male and female voice choir in sections variously represented; the howl, the screech, the moan, the groan, the roar, the bawl, the yell, the scream, the snarl, the bay, the bark, in time to the steady and rhythmic thud of the big bass dust-bin, and the more sombre tones of the tin-bath.

  Along the street the foreigners smiled and nodded indulgently at each other. Dear old Paris. Dear old Latin Quarter has never changed since Mimi’s hand was frozen; since Gene Kelly’s feet were hot; since the last time we were over.

  We wondered at the sour looks on the faces of the French and the disgruntled voice of the big vegetable porter who cursed the noise and said people had to be up at five in the morning to go to work.

  Don’t bother with work we thought; those lads outside aren’t worried about work. Free spirits. Another cognac there, garçon; the noise did not upset us. This is what we came to Paris for. Outside they were advancing on Saint Germain. Someone beat the bath on the boulevard.

  I turned to Donal and, amidst the satisfied sighs of the foreigners and the curses of the French, shook my head indulgently, and remarked apropos the vegetable porter and other native grumblers: ‘Woe to the begrudgers. Aren’t they gas men, the art students? Is maith an rud an óige.’

  ‘They manage an imitation of it,’ a voice beside me said.

  I turned and saw that a girl had come in and was standing beside us.

  ‘What does who manage an imitation of?’ I asked.

  ‘You said in Irish that youth is a great thing. You were obviously referring to those dreary architects making a nuisance of themselves up the street.’

  ‘What architects? Anyway how did you know what I said in Irish?’

  ‘I suppose I went to school as much as you did.’