It is a promise to tell him.
ITEM 5a. WHAT ELSE HE SAID AT THAT TABLE.
The April conversation was eleven minutes and I have given four of them.
Near the end he asked me a question and I have never repeated it to anybody.
He said: “Am I bad yet?”
Those words. A man of a hundred and one, at his own kitchen table, asking his neighbour of thirty years for an honest assessment.
He was not being pitiful about it. He asked it the way you ask somebody to look at a mark on your back.
It is the only time in thirty years that man has asked me for anything.
I said: “You’re all right, Bertie.”
He looked at me for a bit and then he said: “Right.”
Then he got up and put the kettle on, which took him longer than it used to, and we talked about the fence.
