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–Take a chair, Rafferty, take a chair. It’s a bit hash this evening.

–Yes indeed, Mr Collopy.

–Very hash.

–Will you join me in a smahan?

–Now, Mr Collopy, you should know me by now. Weekends only. It’s a rule and a cast-iron one. I promised the missus.

–All right, keep the promise. To thine old self be true. Thine own self, I mean. I’ll treat myself in God’s name because I am not feeling too good in my health. Not too good at all.

He rose to go to the press.

–You know what I called for, of course?

–Indeed and I do. And I have it here.

Having arranged a glass with the crock on the range, he pulled from the back of the press a long brown paper parcel, which he laid carefully on the table. Then he poured out his drink and sat down.

–The name they have for it, Rafferty, is worth remembering.

He turned to my surprise to myself.

–You there, he said. What’s the Greek for water?

–Hydor, I said. High door.

–And measuring anything, how did the Greeks get at that?

–Metron. Met her on. A measure.

–There now Rafferty, didn’t I tell you, what? That articles on the table is a clinical hydrometer. As we agreed, you are to bring it to Mrs Flaherty. Tell her to take careful readings day and night for a fortnight from next Saturday at noon. And keep the most meticulous records.

–Oh, I understand how important that is, Mr Collopy. And I’ll make Mrs Flaherty understand.

–In these modern times, you are damn nothing unless you can produce statistics. Columns and columns of figures, readings and percentages. Suppose they set up a Royal Commission on this thing. Where would we be if we couldn’t produce our certified statistics? What would we look like in the witness chair?

–We would not be very impressive and that’s a sure thing, Rafferty said.

–We’d look like bloody gawms. We’d make a holy show of ourselves before the world and people would ask each other who let us out. Isn’t that right?

–Too right indeed.

–And when Mrs Flaherty has given us her readings, we will give the next fortnight to Mrs Clohessy.

–Very good idea, Mr Collopy.

–And I predict one thing. When we have got all the readings and compared them, bedamn but you’ll find very little difference in them, only slight variations. We might establish a great new scientific fact. Who knows?

–Do you tell me that, Mr Collopy?

–I do, and that is the way the history of the whole world has been changed in the past. Patient men are looking for a particular thing, the answer to a profound difficulty. And what by the jappers happens? By accident they solve an entirely different problem. And I don’t care how many problems are solved with the aid of the clinical hydrometer so long as what we ourselves are so worried about is put right.

–Hear, hear, Mr Collopy. I’ll go off now, and straight to Mrs Flaherty’s.

–And God be with you, Rafferty. See you at our usual committee on Friday night.

–Right. Good night.

Just after he left, I went out myself. For I had a tryst with the Sors: and with Penelope.

12

THE old kitchen seemed the same but the brother had gone, and with him those stormy little scenes with Mr Collopy. I am sorry I cannot present an interesting record of the events and words of his actual departure. He had stressed with Annie the great importance of an early knock so as to make sure he would catch the morning mail boat from Kingstown to Holyhead. Annie did her duty but she found nobody in the brother’s bed nor any sign of his packed belongings. He had stolen away some time in the night, perhaps finishing his last Irish sleep in somebody else’s house or, perhaps again, marking his departure with a valedictory carousal with his cronies. I felt offended that I should have been included in his boycott for I felt I had something of the status of a fellow-conspirator, apart from being his brother, but his mysterious exit infuriated Mr Collopy. I never knew quite why, but I suspected that he had planned a magnanimous farewell, a prayer of God Speed and perhaps the present of one of his prize cut-throat razors. Mr Collopy was ever fond of an occasion, and with