IX Mam says, Alphie is enough. I’m worn out.That’s the end of it. No more children. Dad  says, The  good  Catholic  woman  must  perform  her  wifely duties and submit to her husband or face eternal damnation. Mam says, As long as there are no more children eternal damnation sounds attractive enough to me. What is Dad to do? There’s a war on. English agents are recruiting Irishmen to work in their munitions factories,the pay is good,there are no jobs in Ireland,and if the wife turns her back to you there’s no short- age of women in England where the able men are off fighting Hitler and Mussolini and you can do anything you like as long as you remember you’re Irish and lower class and don’t try to rise above your station. Families up and down the lane are getting telegram money orders from their fathers in England.They rush to the post office to cash the money orders so they can shop and show the world their good fortune on Saturday night and Sunday morning.The boys get their hair cut on Saturdays, the women curl their hair with iron tongs hot from the fire. They’re very grand now the way they pay sixpence or even a shilling for seats at the Savoy Cinema where you’ll meet a better class of peo- ple than the lower classes who fill the tuppenny seats in the gods at the Lyric Cinema and are never done shouting at the screen,the kind of peo- ple if you don’t mind who are liable to cheer on the Africans when they 216