"Can't? The end of the world is inevitable? "
"I thought I'd answered that one already. In fact, it's getting closer all the time." He began to move toward the cloakroom. God, I understood, couldn't lie. Which didn't mean he always liked telling the truth. And he knew anything he added would probably sound patronizing or unnecessarily accusatory. Then the taxi had turned up, and Death was bustling God off into it.
And that was that. As we gathered round the fire, Lizard Bayliss said he thought it was a rum do altogether and God must be pretty desperate to seek out company like ours, especially on a wet Saturday night. What did everyone else make of it?
We decided that nobody present was really qualified to judge, so we'd wait until Monday, when Monsignor Cornelius returned from Las Vegas. The famous Cowboy Jesuit had an unmatched grasp of contemporary doctrine.
But this wasn't good enough for Engelbrecht, who seemed to have taken against our visitor in a big way.
"I could sort this out," he insisted. If God had a timepiece of any weight he'd like to back, Engelbrecht would cheerfully show it the gloves.
That, admitted Jillian Burnes with new admiration, was the true existential hero, forever battling against Fate, and forever doomed to lose.
Engelbrecht, scenting an opportunity he hadn't previously even considered, became almost egregious, slicking back his hair and offering the great novelist an engaging leer.
When the two had gone off, back to Jillian's Tufnell Hill eyrie, Lizard Bayliss offered to buy the drinks, adding that it had been a bloody awful Friday and Saturday so far, and he hoped Sunday cheered up because if it didn't the whole weekend would have been a rotten write-off.
I'm pleased to say it was Taffy Sinclair who proposed we all go down to the Woods of Westermaine for some goblin shooting, so we rang up Count Dracula to tell him we were coming over to Dunsuckin, then all jumped onto our large black Fly and headed for fresher fields, agreeing that it had been one of the most depressing Saturdays any of us had enjoyed in centuries and the sooner it was behind us, the better.