Sympathy was another. I send my deepest sympathy and my thoughts are with you, he would write, and sign the letter and duly post it with the knowledge of a necessary task performed to the best of his ability. He knew now that he had not had an inkling of what he was talking about. Grief was not a state of mind, but a physical thing, a void, a deadening blanket of unbearable pain, precluding all solace.
