The Funding Body was broken up into four separate organisations. Three moved to Carlisle, Norwich, and Okehampton. A rump body to be renamed the Office of Educational Finance moved to a vacated floor of the Civil Servants Union. There, for a month, the old GEFB flag flew.
He thinks about how he grovelled to his bosses, and how he boasted of his relationship with them. "And the Director said to me, Clive, he said, I trust you to do the right thing."
He thinks what a fool they made of him. He supervised the move; briefed his successors; they suggested early retirement; he said goodbye to what was left of his staff.
And then in the winter darkness, he climbed up onto the roof and he cut the cords of the flagpole with a stanley knife. They won't be able to hoist the GEFB flag down. They'll have to shimmy up the flagpole or build a scaffolding.
In the end, it's the thing in his life he's proudest of doing. No one knows. He's going back now, to take a photograph. Then he'll salute, the GEFB, the old world, himself.