The psychiatrist argues politics with Jack. The night Jack appeared on the doorstep of the hospital he had been about to turn him away. Then he relented. But now no matter how Jack tries to explain the quandary he’s in, the doctor returns the conversation to Belfast. Jack tells him that doctors drive home to the safe parts of Belfast. The only blood they see is on the operating table. It’s not spilt on their doorstep. The psychiatrist speaks of Wolfe Tone. Jack speaks of his fears.

“You’ve had a nervous breakdown,” the psychiatrist says, “and you can find out for yourself if you’re an alcoholic. The only one who can tell you that is yourself.”

There is an awkward silence.

“Why did you go to live in Belfast?”

“To live with Catherine.”

“You could have found a more congenial home.”

“I had no illusions about the North,” replies Jack, aware that he is answering a question that he has posed himself, “if that’s what you are insinuating.”

“No?”

“I thought maybe I could help.”

The psychiatrist lets this go. “This play of yours,” he asks, “is it about the North?”

“It used to be.”

“And now?”

“I don’t know,” Jack answers painfully.

“And I suppose it was about the Catholic unemployed?”

“And the Protestant.”

“Maybe that was your mistake. Trying to write ‘the scripture of the poor’, as Tom Kettle called it.”

“I wasn’t aware it was a mistake.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because I’m heartbroken.”

“Let’s leave that aside for a while, if you don’t mind.”

“I can’t.”

“I suppose you can’t. It’s always difficult with you arty types.”

There’s another silence.

“Do you object to the word ‘arty’?” he asks.

“Yes,” said Jack.

“Well what do you want me to call you? You’re not a scientist, are you?”

“Hamlet was a psychiatric patient like us,” said the Leitrim man. It was Sunday morning. “Where are you for now?”

“I’m going to an AA meeting.”

“There’s always an awkward silence,” said Hamlet, “when a crowd of alcoholics are collected in one room.” The stories in the room are lucid accounts of fear and death and discovery of God. On the steps of the hospital the sick man told Jack he was finest man in the place.

“One minute,” he said, “you’re the one thing, the next, the other thing. How do you explain that?”

He gave Jack an apple.

“How do you explain that?” he asked again. Then he offered a cigarette which Jack refused.

One of the AA men picked Jack up outside the hospital by chance. Jack said he was on his way to have a cup of coffee with a girl in the outside world. Instead, the man – slight, fair-haired, freckled – took Jack up roads he didn’t know. He drove on, here and there, making phone calls.

Jack said: “Where are we going?”