Humour

That's what I always forget when I write about him, W. says. It's what's always left out: our joy. Were ever two people so joyous? Did laughter come so readily from any other pair of friends?

Laugh – that's what we do. We shake the air. We laugh until we cry, laugh until beer runs from our nostrils. We become giddy and light with laughter; we stagger like drunkards, and it's worse when we're drunk. Worse we attain that mystical plane of drunkenness, when Sal tells us she's sick of us and goes to bed.

Of course I couldn't write down what we say, says W. I shouldn't! Our obscenities. Our smut. How simple our sense of humour is! How base! And yet innocent, too – light. Wordplay, says W., it's all about that. Not wit – anything but that, although W. can be witty – but wordplay, innuendo.

It's a very British form of humour. It's where our Britishness redeems us, W. says. Didn't W. return from his year in France because he missed the humour? Hasn't it dragged him back from every adventure? He could have stayed abroad; could have wandered the great learning places of Europe, but did he? No. He came back. For a long time he kicked himself – why did he come back? Why did he return? But now he's embraced it; he understands what he is and of what he is a part.