Henry is dead.

Henry called 999, told them what he was doing, apologised, rang off, and kicked away the chair.

He was dead by the time they found his number and location and reached his house.

I actually heard the siren passing through the village, then fading out along the lanes.

He was hanging from a rafter in his workshop. BBC Radio 3 was playing, quietly.

The note on his desk read: “I won’t live in a desert where all the things I fought for are ruins”.

He’d already told me once: “We should be free to go when we like. I wish there was a more convenient way to do it.”

No sign of Maynard. Everyone assumed he had been shot and buried somewhere.

Today, a week after his death, I  got a mail which must have been timed to Send after he was dead. It  said: “ Please dispose of my books. Keep what you want.”

He’d put something in his will apparently because his sole heir, a niece in her sixties, who looked just like Angela Lansbury, called round two days ago and said: “I gather you are the keeper of the books.”

She told me to collect any books I wanted within a week and gave me a key. Henry had booked a home clearance company for July 14.

That’s planning for you. That was Henry.

I wondered if there would be some kind of memorial, a wake perhaps.

But nothing.

If I had been asked I would have ready the poem by W.H.Auden called Deftly, Admiral, Cast Your Fly. It’s a wonderful, poignant poem.