My galoni had appeared and I started drinking. Those memories were like worms eating into the flesh, Rick pursuing, worms eating, and monstrous Halliday brooding over all. I thought to myself that the strain was building up in me because I’d stopped writing and should instantly start on another book, but the trouble was my head was empty of all but these thoughts triggered by John St John John who was continuing to talk whether I listened or not.

“Beware of the worm—”

I came to with a dreadful start. He had said that, not I! Of course, I’ve worked out since then that while I was brooding in what I thought was silence I must have muttered something about the worm; but at the time it was terrifying as necromancy. It seemed to me that everyone in the world but I could see, had some sort of access, and only I was trapped in myself, ignorant, bounded by my own skin with none of the antennae They seemed to have in order to reach out and touch my secret self.

“What worm?”

“—that flies in the night in the howling storm—wasn’t Britten divinely clever? I do envy composers, don’t you? Like mathematicians. They don’t have to have any politics and that sort of thing, just sit up there on a cloud.”

“What worm?”

“My dear boy. They are eating you alive. Shall I give you a complete diagnosis?”

“No.”

“You see, you are what biologists used to call exoskeletal. Most people are what they called endoskeletal, have their bones inside. But you, my dear, for some reason known only to God, as they say of anonymous bodies, have spent your life inventing a skeleton on the outside. Like crabs and lobsters. That’s terrible, you see, because the worms get inside and, oh my aunt Jemima, they have the place to themselves. So my advice, seeing you’re going to make me a loan and noblesse oblige et cetera, is to get rid of the armour, the exoskeleton, the carapace, before it’s too late.”

“Any suggestions?”

“You could try, let me see, religion, sex, adoption, good works—I think sex is the best in the circumstances. After all, even lobsters get together, though I must confess I don’t see how, quite. It’s probably the extraordinary onanism that One Above allows to go on unblasted provided it’s under water.”

“Salmon and suchlike.”

“Just so. You’ve been reading that little verse I wrote for the TLS. ‘For man is a funniful fish, a mere fish but a queer fish, a holy roly poly fish, very particular where his milt (the queerest flesh of the fish) is spilt.’ And so on. Good, don’t you think?”

“No.”

“Curse you. A jeu d’esprit, of course. You have no sense of rhythm, I’ve always thought so.”

“I’m tired.”

“As I was saying, you need a chum. You see, my dear, I know a thing or two. You think I’m an ageing queer in your categorizing way, and of course I am, among other things. I don’t think I’ll try the snail soup. It’ll have to be mousaka again. Isn’t Greek food perfectly loathsome? If it weren’t for bloody Sappho— At the very least you need a woman. Or are you the sort who discovers himself late in life and goes overboard for some handsome young fellow?”