EDWARD: That was Ella Fitzgerald singing, ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’.

ADAM: What was?

EDWARD: My eighth and final record for Desert Island Discs. It is also my single choice of record. Good old Ella. Did you have Desert Island Discs in America?

ADAM: No. What is it?

EDWARD: You pick eight records and your favourite among the eight. Then you choose a luxury. Then a book, apart from the Bible and Shakespeare. They’re already on the desert island. My book is a guide to home-brewing beer, and my luxury is a beer-making kit. And Ella Fitzgerald would sing to me. I’d be happy on a desert island. Easy pleased, that’s me. An easy-going man.

(Silence.)

Jesus, the boredom, the boredom, the bloody boredom. And they’re coming up the hill at Cheltenham and Dawn Run is fading, she is fading, the great Irish mare will not complete the unique double of the Cheltenham Hurdle and the Gold Cup, she’s tiring and she jumps the fence, she’s gaining strength in the air, she’s wearing them down, she passes one, she passes two, a third she passes and the winning post’s in sight, she’s done it, she’s won. Dawn Run for Ireland, mighty woman. She’s won the Gold Cup.

(Silence.)

Jesus, it was a real pity I didn’t have money riding on her. Dawn Run. Did I ever tell you about Dawn Run?

ADAM: She was your favourite horse. She won both her great races. She was magnificent. You loved her and would have married her, but it couldn’t have worked out. She was a horse and you were human. Besides, she was Protestant, you were Catholic, and you were already married. You’ve told me about Dawn Run.

EDWARD: Sarcastic yankee. She was a hero, that horse.

ADAM: So were Glasgow Celtic when they won the European Cup, and I don’t want to hear about them, either.

(Silence, ADAM exercises strenuously.)

How many press-ups did you do?

EDWARD: Didn’t count.

ADAM: How many?

EDWARD: Twenty.

ADAM: You did not.

EDWARD: Fifteen.

ADAM: You did not.

EDWARD: Twelve.

ADAM: Eleven. One more than yesterday.

EDWARD: Yes.

ADAM: Come on, Edward, we’ve got to keep going. I got to get you into condition. You know that, you agreed to it. We can have competitions when you’re in condition.

EDWARD: I don’t care about competitions or about my condition.

(Silence.)

ADAM: Yea, yea, I know what you mean. Who am I fooling? Who the hell am I fooling? Me. That’s who. No, no brooding. No blaming myself. That way I go under. I will not go under.

(Silence.)

EDWARD: The boredom, the boredom, Jesus, the boredom.

(Silence.)

I’m going to start to brood.

ADAM: I will not brood.

EDWARD: I’m going to start to blame myself.

ADAM: Don’t.

EDWARD: I’m imagining where I would be, if I hadn’t come to this country.

ADAM: Where would you be if you hadn’t come here?

EDWARD: At home wondering what it would be like to be here.

ADAM: Yea.

(EDWARD laughs.)

EDWARD: There’s some that cannot stay at home, and our Eddie, he is one of them. My father’s words, proved right, proved right. Time and time again. He has to be the big man, this boy, never getting stale, never being safe. And look where he’s landed today. Far across the sea. Not in Amerikay nor even in Australia, but in the land of the fucking Lebanon. Jesus, could I have found it on the map before I came here? I leave one kip at home to come to this kip here – oh Christ, look at this place. The dirt of it. Chained to a wall. No women. Food’s fit for pigs. You don’t know if it’s morning or night. You don’t know who belonging to you is alive or dead. You can’t even go to the shithouse without one of them handcuffed to you, watching your very bowels move. The heat, the dust, the smell. It’s a bad hole. But I will say one thing. It’s better than being in Strabane.

ADAM: What’s wrong with Strabane?

EDWARD: If you ever want proof there’s no God, go to Strabane. Hell on a stick, sweet Strabane. It’s not as bad as Omagh. Omagh, Omagh, God protect us all from Omagh. Omagh has a cathedral and a hospital in it. The hospital is slightly more reminiscent of Chartres. I screwed this woman in Omagh one night. When I looked at her in the sober light of morning, I thought she was a man.

ADAM: Were you married at the time you screwed with her?

EDWARD: Don’t remember. Why do you ask?

ADAM: Making conversation.

EDWARD: You’re making judgements.

ADAM: I don’t make judgements.

EDWARD: No, you just listen. Let me ramble on, you store it all up, then you size it up. Well, after two months sizing it up, what kind of specimen do you make of me? What kind of childhood would you say I had?

ADAM: Remarkably happy, I’d guess. You don’t mention your mother. That’s unusual. Something else is unusual. You barely talk about your own kids.

EDWARD: Barely.

ADAM: Why?

(Silence.)

After two months, can’t you tell me?

EDWARD: I don’t know them. Working too hard, playing too hard, me. Like father, like son in that respect. I didn’t know him until it was too late. I don’t know them. Now I never will. Because we’re going to be in here for a long time. They could be grown men and women by the time I next see them. If I next see them.

ADAM: You’re an Irishman. You’re from a neutral country.

They’ll let you go.

EDWARD: Didn’t I think that? Wasn’t it me waving the green passport in their faces, roaring, ‘Ireland, Ireland’? They still stuck the gun up my arse and dragged me in here. Green passport, neutral country? What’s that to these boys? Save your breath, Adam. We’ll be old men before we’re out of here. We’re stuck here.

(Silence.)

We’re stuck here.

(ADAM begins to exercise again.)

For the love of God, will you give it a rest? Do yous Americans ever stand still?

ADAM: Would you prefer I were an Arab?

EDWARD: I don’t go for Arabs that much. The sand blows up their skirts and they’re not allowed to scratch themselves. The itch has them the way they are, excitable.

ADAM: You’re pretty excitable yourself today.

EDWARD: And you never are?

ADAM: I don’t take it out on you if I am.

EDWARD: You should. It might give me something to fight against.

ADAM: I dislike fighting.

EDWARD: Do you really dislike it? I thought the fighting was our business, in our own ways. I report it, you – what do you do about the fighting? When we were covering the Northern bother, the boys we really hated were the Italians. I remember why. Their big interest was in photographing kids. Kids crying, kids cut to pieces, preferably dead kids.

ADAM: I am not interested in dead kids. I am not a photographer.

EDWARD: No, you’re – what? Someone that makes the fighting all nice and clean and...