That was the whole of his gift.

He would come in and sit down on the floor beside me, in his work trousers, on a cold tile, and he would not say anything useful at all for a long time, and then at some point he would say something completely beside the point — that the gutter needed clearing, that his mother had telephoned twice, that there was a programme on at nine he thought I would like.

He drove me to every appointment he could get out of work for, which was most of them, and sat in every waiting room with his knees too high for the chair.

He learned the vocabulary.