Pulse

food.’
    ‘That was the best.’
    ‘And no one mentioned the C-word.’
    ‘Or gave us sexual homework.’
    ‘Let me give you a toast instead.’
    ‘We don’t do toasts around this table. House rules.’
    ‘It’s all right, it isn’t to anyone present. I just give you:the world in 2060. May they have as much pleasure as we do.’
    ‘The world in 2060.’
    ‘The world.’
    ‘Pleasure.’
    ‘Do you think people will still lie about sex in 2060?’
    ‘Perhaps as many as one in five will.’
    ‘It was A. J. P. Taylor, by the way.’
    ‘Who was?’
    ‘Who said he had strong opinions weakly held.’
    ‘Well, I raise a silent glass to him as well.’
    There was the usual shuffling, and putting on of coats, and hugging and kissing, and then we trooped out, heading down towards the minicab office and the Underground.
    ‘Loved the smell of that fire,’ said Sue.
    ‘And we didn’t have to eat anything from a dead cow’s mouth,’ said Tony.
    ‘Odd to think we’ll all be dead by 2060,’ said Dick.
    ‘Oh, I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,’ said Carol.
    ‘Someone has to say the things other people don’t,’ said David.
    ‘I’ll see you guys,’ said Larry. ‘I’m heading this way.’
    ‘See you,’ we mostly replied.

Marriage Lines
    THE TWIN OTTER was only half full as they took off from Glasgow: a few islanders returning from the mainland, plus some early-season weekenders with hiking boots and rucksacks. For almost an hour they flew just above the shifting brainscape of the clouds. Then they descended, and the jigsaw edges of the island appeared below them.
    He had always loved this moment. The neck of headland, the long Atlantic beach of Traigh Eais, the large white bungalow they ritually buzzed, then a slow turn over the little humpy island of Orosay, and a final approach to the flat, sheeny expanse of Traigh Mhòr. In summer months, you could usually count on some boisterous mainland voice, keen perhaps to impress a girlfriend, shouting over the propellor noise, ‘Only commercial beach landing in the world!’ But with the years he had grown indulgent even about that. It was part of the folklore of coming here.
    They landed hard on the cockle beach and spray flew up between the wing struts as they raced through shallow puddles. Then the plane slewed side on to the little terminal building, and a minute later they were climbing down the rickety metal steps to the beach. A tractor with a flatbed trailer was standing by to trundle their luggage the dozen yards to a damp concrete slab which served as the carousel. They, their: he knew he must start getting used to the singular pronoun instead. This was going to be the grammar of his life from now on.
    Calum was waiting for him, looking past his shoulder,scanning the other passengers. The same slight, grey-haired figure in a green windcheater who met them every year. Being Calum, he didn’t ask; he waited. They had known one another, with a kind of intimate formality, for twenty years or so. Now that regularity, that repetition, and all it contained, was broken.
    As the van dawdled along the single-track road, and waited politely in the passing bays, he told Calum the story he was already weary with repeating. The sudden tiredness, the dizzy spells, the blood tests, the scans, hospital, more hospital, the hospice. The speed of it all, the process, the merciless tramp of events. He told it without tears, in a neutral voice, as if it might have happened to someone else. It was the only way, so far, that he knew how.
    Outside the dark stone cottage, Calum yanked on the handbrake. ‘Rest her soul,’ he said quietly, and took charge of the holdall.
    The first time they had come to the island, they weren’t yet married. She had worn a wedding ring as a concession to … what? – their imagined version of island morality? It made them feel both superior and hypocritical at the same time. Their room at Calum and Flora’s B & B had whitewashed walls, rain drying on the window, and a view across the machair to the sharp rise of Beinn Mhartainn. On their first night, they had discovered a bed whose joints wailed against any activity grosser than the minimum required for the sober conception of children. They found themselves comically restricted. Island sex, they had called it, giggling quietly into each other’s bodies.
    He had bought new binoculars especially for that trip. Inland, there were larks and twites, wheatears and wagtails.