Amazing short stories. Some of the chapters are dinner party discussions and are simply amazing.
TA few minutes later, the Twin Otter took off straight out across Orosay and the open sea. There was no farewell view of the island before that world below was shut out. In the enveloping cloud, he thought about marriage lines and buttons; about razor clams and island sex; about missing bullocks and fulmars being turned into oil; and then, finally, the tears came. Calum had known he would not be coming back. But the tears were not for that, or for himself, or even for her, for their memories. They were tears for his own stupidigty. His presumption too.
He had thought he could recapture, and begin to say farewell. He had thought that grief might be assuaged, or if not assuaged, at least speeded up, hurried on its way a little, by going back to a place where they had been happy. But he was not in charge of grief. Grief was in charge of him. And in the months and years ahead, he expected grief to teach him many other things as well. This was just the first of them.
The city of Carcassonne looks solid and enduring, but what we admire is mostly nineteenth-cenutry reconstruction. Forget the hazard of 'whetehr it will last', and whether longevity is in any case a virtue, a reward, an accommodation or another piece of luck.
