First he watched the programmes on TV with mindless dread. The TV was a couple of fields away. The Christmas programmes were long and sluggish and no one laughed. It was impossible to follow the story of any film. Pill time came but they gave him nothing to take for sleep. Not till the drink was out of his system. Then he knew he would not sleep.

Pill time. A Catholic remedy for a Protestant problem. Or is it the other way round?

To sleep for a thousand years. And to wake up and find it’s over.

His loneliness made him rigid. His loneliness was mistaken for aggression. So, as yet, the nurses did not sit by him.

But Jack had found a friend. A Bohola man paced up and down telling him he wouldn’t run out of fags. “You won’t run out of fags while I’m around, son,” he said. It’s eleven-fifteen. He has to go through with this. Possessed by all the bad memories and transfixed by the light above bed No. 7 on the wall opposite, his mind, becoming a persecutor, turned on him. On the hour, till dawn, the male nurse came. The few words he whispered to Jack brought a distant consolation. Then jack returned to the icon. Her voice and her image merged with his mind.

Down the corridor on Christmas morning comes the sound of Perry Como and Dean Martin. In a little room a bald man is crouched over an old-fashioned gramophone. At meal times the same man does all the washing up. He is cheerful in the face of all that’s wrong with him – a garden in Greece with a bottle of gin buried at the root of every tree.

When Mass came the place went quiet. Because of his sickness Jack missed all the Christmas dances down the wards. He sought solace thinking of Catherine. He shared his towel with the most sick man. As he towelled himself the sick man said: “They’re all Mayo men in here except for you and me. We’re the only Leitrim men that’s left in this part of the world. The rest are Mayo. Poor Mayo. And Roscommon. Watch out for Roscommon. They come on your blind side.” He towelled his jaw. “The madness started because of emigration. They only left the flawed behind.”

“No,” said Jack. “It’s the cowards run, it’s the warriors stay behind.”

“And what about you?”

“I have to stop punishing myself. And I have to watch that I don’t go religious.”

“It’s tricky, but then you’re an intelligent man.” They walked out onto the tarmac a little unsteady. They stood there in their pyjamas.

“Christmas Day in the workhouse,” said Jack.

“I often pondered the meaning of that,” the other replied.

Since she had the strength to stay away from him, he should have the strength to stay away from her.