“I know someone in it,” answered Jack.

“Sure you do.”

The nurse sat with him till the same advertisement appeared once more. Immediately Jack stiffened. He leaned forward with a demented look on his face. The swirl of familiar guitar music started.

“Which one of them do you know?” asked the nurse.

Jack pointed towards the blond girl who now entered the bar on the arm of a cowboy. With a demure look she laid a playful hand on the cowboy’s hand.

“She’s very beautiful all right,” said the nurse helpfully.

“That’s right,” said Jack.

“That’s right,” agreed the woman. “Some have it.”

Jack, as a correction against over-exposure to his self, read a book on Republican prisoners by Republican prisoners. Hugh brought him the book and also a bedside lamp. What were his thoughts as he read it? None could be read from his face or his general demeanour. What he was looking for was evidence that the prisoners were at odds with those Republicans living outside of jail. This, at the time, appeared to him to be an important theme. The book was a re-reading of Irish history. He read avidly their account of Wolfe Tone. Next morning he is prepared for the psychiatrist. But he cannot sustain another man’s argument.

The psychiatrist presses him on his political ideology. Jack tries to be objective. He wants to speak of his broken heart. But the psychiatrist presses on, praising the much-maligned bourgeoisie of Ireland. Jack misses both supper and medication.

“Why did you not marry this woman?” the psychiatrist asks. He is smoking a pipe.

“She would view marriage as a situation where a woman can be raped legally.”

The psychiatrist condemns feminists. Jack defends them. He hears himself present a very ordered defence of Catherine’s ideas. The argument continues. Jack tells him that he drinks only the same amount as other people. Then he admits to telling lies. He drinks, he confesses, sometimes maybe too much.

“I could not see my contribution, he tells the psychiatrist.”

Immediately they are back talking of Wolfe Tone.

At last, the two of them stand facing each other across the table. He is dismissed. Leitrim has kept him a plate of hot supper. The night nurse has his pills, and a few extras. “You must have him puzzled,” he grins. And then he adds: “You want to watch the news?” Again he leans forward in his chair to follow the programmes and sits white-faced as the break for advertisements comes on.

Each man in the hospital sets up house for the night, and breaks camp the following morning. Next begins the arduous task of walking.