He hadn't. He'd nodded, said nothing really till Andrew drove away, and then he spoke a bit to himself. 

A lot of post had accumulated. He tipped it into a drawer. There were Jiffy bags from publishers hoping, he supposed, for puffs for books. The hell with them. He couldn't read anything anyway.

There was a sheet of paper in his old Olivetti manual. Across the river and into the trees, last words of Stonewall Jackson. How come he'd written that? Had he intended to go on, write about Hemingway? Well, he hadn't. Evidently. Had found nothing to say. Fine yourself for any echo of Hemingway, an editor had once told him, go fuck yourself, he had thought; he remembered that, and waited for days to drift by him. 

Now it was another afternoon, late autumn turning to winter, just short of twilight.

A tap on the window-pane. He looked up and saw a girl. He shook his head. She tapped again. He recognised her as his granddaughter, Katie, went through the house and opened the door to admit her.

"I thought you were your grandmother," he said.

She leant forward and kissed him on the cheek.

"You don't look so bad," she said.

"My face has always been a liar."

She turned and gestured to the car. A young man got out. He wore a thick polo-neck flecked jersey and green corduroy trousers as if he had stepped out of a dead decade.

"That's Johnny," she said. "He wants to meet you. He was excited when he discovered I was your granddaughter."

"The man he wanted to meet died a long time ago," he said. "Tell him to go away."

"Stop play-acting," she said, and went to bring her friend in.

"His name's Johnny," she said again. "I'll make some tea."