I plunge forward into Chapter Two, helpfully untitled – though I’ll get into all that later – in which we find Stephen apparently teaching Ancient History to a class of boys who seem to have uppermost in their minds a fast approaching game of hockey. At least the history gives me a chance to look up Pyrrhus, which I’ll admit I didn’t immediately recognise as the root of that familiar phrase “a Pyrrhic victory”, but which must have some relevance to Stephen’s state of mind. In this chapter we get to hear his thoughts as they tumble from one subject to the next, but all coloured by the same underlying theme.

I’m assuming he is projecting his grief over his mother’s death onto the boys. That death was referred to in the previous chapter, but I’m not sure how long ago it was, so I’m guessing about the grief – it may just be mild regret for all I know. Stephen gives the eager boys a riddle, but since neither they or I know what it means one can safely assume it is aome kind of bitter private ‘joke’. Is Stephen beating himself up? If so, about what precisely? If that becomes obviously apparent later keep it to yourselves – if I’ve missed something, fill me in.

Stephen hardly lingers on the history. After the moulding of a suitably meaningful answer for the boy Armstrong who, like me, does not know Pyrrhus, he is led, by the class it seems, onto Milton and then they all race off to hockey, while Stephen helps another boy with maths. It is demonstrated that Stephen is a sympathetic teacher, no disciplinarian, but whether that is entirely his natural condition or whether this is an aspect simply of his grief I don’t know. Add this to the long list of things I don’t know, but I’m rather more fond of questions than answers, so I seem suited to this novel!

One word (well, more than one but I’ll make it easy for you) stands out for me as half-recognised and piques my interest enough to look it up. Stephen refers to Haines’s ‘chapbook’. Look it up for yourself on Wikipedia, but that it was a generic term was news to me – I thought it was an American magazine from the turn of the century – maybe it is. I think this throws up one of the delights of such a book, in that it prompts you to look up so many references, but it does seem to be one of the problems also. If I look up everything I don’t immediately get I’ll still be reading this during the London Olympics.

The rest of the chapter concerns itself with Stephen taking payment and engaging in a rather one-sided conversation with the school head – Mr Deasy. This is very much more complicated. Complicated perhaps by my lack of understanding regarding Anglo-Irish history. Deasy is English? They talk at any rate, Stephen being in the position of employee and therefore at something of a disadvantage. Deasy is, by his position, able to enjoy the gentle sparring more than Stephen. The counting out of the money and the focus on it seems to hark back to the exchange over the milk in the first chapter – what’s the obsessive need for precision in all these transactions?

Aside from the English and the Irish question the issue of the Jews also looms large. Nearly a hundred years have passed but does that issue still have the same connotations now as it did for the original audience? I can’t imagine it does, but then again prejudice is a fairly basic human trait unfortunately. Although I haven’t met him yet I do know the central character is the Jew, Leopold Bloom. So what is the significance of the mentions here, or is this just a re-iteration of what everyone (of the time) already knows so as to set-up our main character who may or may not be along shortly.

This chapter, difficult as it is, still retains enough straight-forward structure that I can follow it as a narrative even when when not getting very much of the meaning. I gather that might not be the case for some of the chapters to come!