I ripped them apart (by brute force, with my hands – the pain was excruciating! – so I could walk once more; quite extraordinary how one depends on two buttocks to perambulate!), but after that I knew I couldn’t stop again, or they would meld for good and the game would be up entirely.

(Q. Why are you doing this to yourself, Franklin? Eh? Why, you damn fool?! A. Sorry … Simply have no time to get into all that right now.)

I don’t want to be dramatic, but the final five miles I have virtually no memory of. I was a bloodied stump. A husk. My scalp was very itchy. Very itchy. And at one stage, when I scratched at it (back left-hand side. Q. Fleas? A. Most probably) my fingers discovered a small, mysterious, slightly spiky ridge on the skin. It wasn’t … this wasn’t the kind of sensation – the kind of feeling – one expects to experience, quite out of the blue, on one’s own scalp. It was unexpected. Alien. I tried to inspect the area in shop windows and car side-mirrors but its difficult positioning (the back of my head) made this nigh on impossible. It was all but invisible to the human eye. Unseeable.

Perhaps I was just tired?

Hallucinating?

In the manner of all great pilgrims (and of all great imbeciles, come to that)?

I developed a theory that if my mouth stopped working (and why it might, I had no idea) then I could just as easily and audibly talk through my nose. One nostril for consonants, the other for vowels. For the most part I was thinking and speaking in pidgin Spanish. No te pares! Idiota! I no puede! Mis pobres pies! He terminado! Suficiente!

I was approached by concerned bystanders on several occasions.

Dejame en paz! Se ha ido! Pah!

Yes.

Pah!

(Dramatic hand gesture!)

Pah!

(Slight stagger. Fall to knees.)

Estoy desesperado!

(Noisy tears etc.)

By the time I found myself at the abbey (I didn’t have a clue what time it was, possibly early morning) I was no longer in any kind of pain. I was just doing things automatically – a stinking, squelching automaton. I had – to all intents and purposes – reached my destination, but there was no sense of relief. I didn’t stop. I’m not sure I knew if I could stop. If I had the requisite power (physical, spiritual, emotional) to desist. If I even wanted to stop. I had adapted, you see. I had become a creature of perpetual motion.

My nostrils were now at war with each other. The consonant nostril decried the vowel nostril, cruelly and persistently. With every in-breath and out-breath puh-puh-puh! Warred with ow-ow-ow! My septum tried – and failed – to arbitrate. My philtrum latterly got involved, but it was anxious in case the mouth should get wind of it (the mouth being, at this stage, in official retirement). Perhaps I couldn’t trust the mouth? Perhaps the mouth was the weak link? Remember how the mouth – the lips – had betrayed me with Miss Hahn? That agonizing kiss?