“Well,” Davey concluded, “tell him hello. From all of us.”

“I’ll do that, Davey. Thanks.”

When Malcolm put the phone down and went back in the kitchen, he knew Tommy wouldn’t ask who it had been. He had already learned that Tommy was scrupulous about observing privacy, both Malcolm’s and his own. But Malcolm found himself telling him, perhaps just for something to say, “That was Davey McPhee. Do you remember him?”

Tommy frowned. “Not really. Sorry.”

“He drove the school bus for years. Did it when you were small. Do you remember that?”

Tommy’s face cleared. “Yeah, I do. He was always nice to us.”

“He was asking if we wanted to go to the hotel bar. I said not tonight.” Malcolm remembered suddenly that Tommy didn’t drink, that he had given up, that he might even have a problem. “We don’t have to go any night,” he amended clumsily.

“You can go, Malcolm,” Tommy said. “Of course. Don’t change your routine for me. I don’t want to be in your way.”

“It’s not my routine,” Malcolm said, amused while slightly dispirited at how Tommy seemed to view his life. “It’s just a drink. I see them all the time, Davey and the rest. Feel I can’t escape them half the time.”

“I imagine not,” Tommy said dryly, “living on an island.” There was a pause, then he added, “You were speaking Gaelic.”

“Aye, we were,” Malcolm said, feeling oddly embarrassed all of a sudden. “It’s Davey, really. Feels we should keep it going. Not many of us left now.” Then, worried Tommy might assume they were saying things they didn’t want him to hear, he stumbled on, “He asked after you. Just briefly. I said you were well.”

Tommy nodded. “I haven’t heard Gaelic in a long time,” he said.

“Well. It’s still my first language, I suppose.”

Strange to think of that now. All through Malcolm’s childhood, he and John had spoken Gaelic at home, English only at school. Even by the time he met Heather, English had felt clumsy in his mouth. But now, in his old age, it was Gaelic that felt awkward to him; when they lapsed into the old language in the bar, there seemed to Malcolm something stilted and self-conscious about it, a foolish pathos in trying to grasp at what was lost. And at some stage—he didn’t know when—it had become Gaelic, not Gàidhlig; he always thought in English now. It was only in his dreams, and only rarely, that he was truly fluent again in the first language he had learned. The language of his forefathers, the language of his youth: to Malcolm it felt both ancient and young.

“You learned it at school, didn’t you?” he said to Tommy.

“A bit. I don’t remember much. We never spoke it at home.”