“Is there anything, I mean, that I can do for you?”

“As you said just now. It’s been a long time.”

“For me too. So. If it’s any comfort there’s rather a lot of money coming your way. From her first, then me.”

As Rick once said, we laughed a lot, Liz and I. Now he could have included Emmy.

Everything went off OK. A crowd of relatives turned up to the funeral but tended to group round Emmy and leave me alone. It wasn’t shyness either. Rick came to the service which Emmy insisted on having and to the cremation afterwards. He sat at the back, crying noisily, and rushed away before the ceremony was over. Later, in the house, I was left alone even more pointedly as people scrummed politely for the smoked salmon and Moselle. Only once a man broke free, one of her relatives I suppose, though I don’t know. He may have been a chum of Capstone Bowers sent to depute for he had army written all over him, large, stout, red-faced. I was ready for conversation or even the offer of a drink but he glared down at me for a few seconds, opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish. Then he changed his mind and went back into the mob. I thought of my Italian connection and the come-uppance she gave me. This was an English Home Counties come-uppance. It went far towards confirming me in my rediscovered belief that there are better places.

“Home thoughts from abroad, forsooth!” It made me feel angry.

The young man, Douglas, emerged from the mob hastily as if to pour oil and repair some social damage. He had a black silk front and rather more clerical collar showing than usual. He came to me with the sort of ducking earnestness which reminded me of Rick Tucker in the days when he was really diffident. I was still angry.

“Ah—Douglas, isn’t it?—how’s the Church these days?”

“Struggling, Mr Barclay. In need of help.”

“Money, of course.”

He shook his head with decision.

“No. Or not—primarily.”

“If it’s spiritual assistance you need, you’ve come to the right person.”

“Really?”

“You will find this difficult to believe but I suffer with the stigmata. Yes. Four of the five wounds of Christ. Four down and one to go. No. You can’t see the wounds, unlike with poor old Padre Pio. But I assure you my hands and feet hurt like hell—or should I say heaven?”

“I don’t think—”

“You don’t think people like me should claim such distinctions?”

He was looking round in a worried manner as if, I thought, to find a really good shrink to recommend. Perhaps he would give me the name and address of his own.

“Come, vicar. Don’t you find it remarkable?”

“You are serious?”

“Otherwise you’ll be off again to those publicans and sinners?”

“Oh no. Or rather—you are serious?”

“I should be! At times they hurt like hell.”

He looked closely into my face.