III Mam says she can’t spend another minute in that room on Hart- stonge Street. She sees Eugene morning, noon and night. She sees him climbing the bed to look out at the street for Oliver and sometimes she sees Oliver outside and Eugene inside, the two of them chatting away. She’s happy they’re chatting like that but she doesn’t want to be seeing and hearing them the rest of her life. It’s a shame to move when we’re so near Leamy’s National School but if she doesn’t move soon she’ll go out of her mind and wind up in the lunatic asylum. We move to Roden Lane on top of a place called Barrack Hill. There are six houses on one side of the lane, one on the opposite side. The houses are called two up, two down, two rooms on top, two on the bottom. Our house is at the end of the lane, the last of the six. Next to our door is a small shed, a lavatory, and next to that a stable. Mam goes to the St.Vincent de Paul Society to see if there’s any chance of getting furniture.The man says he’ll give us a docket for a table, two chairs, and two beds. He says we’ll have to go to a second- hand  furniture  shop  down  in  the  Irishtown  and  haul  the  furniture home ourselves. Mam says we can use the pram she had for the twins and when she says that she cries. She wipes her eyes on her sleeves and asks the man if the beds we’re getting are secondhand.He says of course they are, and she says she’s very worried about sleeping in beds some- 91