‘Supposing you did see them, what does that prove?”

“There is no ‘Supposing’.”

“People can think themselves into these things. It’s like a false pregnancy—every symptom there but no baby. Remember what I told you about when I was a bank clerk?”

“You are disgusting, Wilfred Barclay.”

“And later on, years later. Look at that hand! I was hypnotized. I mean, I was literally, professionally hypnotized. At a party it was and in my, my—”

“Oh, I, I, my my—”

“Will you listen? Yes. Egotism. I didn’t think anyone could do such a thing to me. And what happened?”

“I do not wish to talk about it.”

“There, on the back on my hand, my own initials, flaming like scars, inflamed like burns—”

“I will not talk about it!”

(But the man knew. It was his triumph, his power. There was infuriating complacency in his smile. You are very receptive to hypnotic suggestion, sir. Give Mr Barclay a big hand, ladies and gentlemen!)

“Look, dear. You don’t want to talk and I don’t want to hurt you—but you see suggestion can do such things!”

“An old man bleeds for you day after day, year after year. He allows God to dispose of him in two places at once because his charity is too great for the resources of one, poor body—”

The extraordinary woman burst into tears.

After that, of course, we fought no more. It was a sort of truce, I suppose. I treated her with uncomprehending and heavy tact, staying out of her way as far as possible. She herself withdrew and became the perfect hostess like Liz. It’s an awful effect to have on people. I wish women would throw things.

Even so, it might have turned out differently if my attention hadn’t been taken up by another matter. I had to lecture. It’s amusing in a way that a man whose education finished in the fifth should find himself mixed up so with scholars. The truth is that what began with my feeling flattered ended by boring me—and worse. As I say, I was sometimes called to lecture for my country’s good. I did it obediently, at gatherings of academics. You see, though you can accuse Wilfred Barclay of being an ignorant sod with little Latin and less Greek, adept in several broken languages and far more deeply read in bad books than good ones, I have a knack. Academics had to admit that in the last analysis I was what they were about. I repeat there was nothing in it for me but a bit of flattery, a tiny, perhaps absurd, feeling that my country needed me and the occasional interest of an exotic place. It was a long time before the penny dropped. The penny was, of all things, of all people, the badger at the bin, Rick L. Tucker.

At the time of the row about stigmata, with my Italian chum behaving like a gracious lady, I was about to go to Spain. I debated pushing off without seeing her but rashly came to the conclusion that would make things worse. I wish now I had left in the dignity of silence.