“You must be very proud of them.”

That took me aback. He amplified with a grin of quite unclerical teeth.

“After all. There were three crosses.”

I stood there, seeing the room before me as on a screen—the relatives filing away past Emmy, young Douglas now making his goodbye to her, all the shaking of hands and agreeing that people only seemed to meet nowadays at funerals.

But I was left with so much cleared up! Three crosses—the whole spectrum— Not for me the responsibility of goodness, the abject terror of being holy! For me the peace and security of knowing myself a thief! I stood, saying nothing, doing nothing while they all went away. Emmy came and said something to me, I think, but I didn’t catch what. Indeed, I must have sat down at some point but I don’t remember doing it. Mrs Wilson must have cleared the mess away but I never noticed her. It was a kind of catatonia.

Next day Emmy said she’d sell the house as soon as I had, as she put it, “fucked off”. Then she went back to her social work in some middle-class slum or other and I was left to clear my things out of the house. I found I’d left little but the papers that had so annoyed Liz and Capstone Bowers. It occurred to me, I remember, that without pondering the matter I’d probably meant them to annoy. We don’t know much about our current selves, do we?

Rick came and begged me and cursed and yapped. I forbade him the house which is a bit of a joke when you come to consider it. But he hung round, sleeping God knows where and spying on me every now and then round corners. Since my dream I’ve been as certain as your average sane man could be when people are really there and when they aren’t. There’s no doubt at all, Rick is really there and spying on me. He hasn’t the least idea that I have it in my power and what is more in my purpose to heal him. I’ll get him his dream. Wilfred Barclay the great consultant.

Capstone Bowers rang. He didn’t come to the funeral but had the cheek to demand his books and his gun. I hung up on him. I ought to add he’d drunk what used to be my really brilliant cellar and not kept it up.

I’ve spent the time, since Emmy went, in ploughing through some of the piles of paper from the tea chests; but mostly in typing and brooding on this brief account. Yesterday I reread at a sitting the whole thing from Rick at the dustbin down to Douglas at the funeral. The wake. Ha et cetera.

Putting aside repetitions, verbals, slang, omissions, it’s a fair record of the various times the clown’s trousers fell down. At my age there can’t be many more. I do think the best of the lot, the real, theologically witty bit of his clowning, was surely the stigmata awarded for cowardice in the face of the enemy! But St Francis and all the other suggestible creatures didn’t just get it in the hands and feet, they got the wound in the side which finished off Christ or at least certified him dead. I’m missing that one; and there’s hardly time or occasion for a custard pie to provide it. For I intend to disappear again. A car in which one can sleep? Van? Caravan? A begging bowl under an Indian tree? Be your age, Wilf! It is too late for that. I shall disappear into comfort and security!