Bletchley laughed and they embraced, warmly.
There that's better, said Joe. And now it is time, and as a man we both know used to say at moments like this, God bless. Mysterious presence that he always was, so much so I could never even figure out in the end whether he was a Moslem or a Christian or a Jew.
Curious man, really. Just large and awkward and there and no shape to him particularly, yet reassuring somehow, strangely so. And an odd smile on his face and a certain clumsiness about him sometimes, last seen in these parts as a beggar, a dignified man and poor, surveying his limitless kingdom in the deep of the night. . . . Stern. I wonder how he ever got a name like that?
Because he was always anything but that. Everything else probably, but not that.
Yes. God bless now. . . .
Joe turned and waved and began walking across the runway, a slight figure in a collarless shirt and shabby clothes that looked too big for him, his head down as he bent forward against the wind . . . a small man.