“So how will you feel about turning eighty-two, then?” she teased.
“Why—I imagine I’ll love being eighty-two even better.”
And so it transpired. Being eighty-two was delightful, an experience topped only by being eighty-three, so there was no reason to do anything other than look forward to turning eighty-four. Oh, they both felt an occasional twinge in a joint or minor ache in the lower back when rising from a chair, but these tiny reminders of ageing were always passing, and merely served to make them more grateful for their wonderful lives, their wonderful occupations, and their wonderful marriage. Because they ate so many vegetables, naturally neither came down with any illness more serious than a bout of sniffles, whilst daily squats, lunges, planks, and press-ups (Cyril still did 200 every morning, albeit, he was quick to modestly point out, in two sets) kept their muscles firm, their limbs flexible, their skin radiant, and their bones strong.
Meanwhile, events in the larger world seemed to mirror the unremitting improvement of life in Lambeth. After the scare of what, in historical retrospect, proved a relatively brief economic downturn following the global lockdowns to suppress COVID-19, an obliging monetary theory was demonstrated to be faultless. Lo, it was more than possible for the government to print an infinite amount of money and then give the money to its citizenry to buy things. If the citizenry ever wanted to buy more things, then the government could print still more money so that the citizenry could buy more things. Everyone marvelled at why retrograde economists had ever installed the unnecessarily convoluted business of employment and taxation. The technique caught on all over Europe, effectively establishing an indefinite lockdown, except in this one you could leave the house.
Earlier concerns about the potential for uncontrolled migration from “overpopulating” countries in Africa and the Middle East proved altogether unfounded, and a certain demographic grump named Calvin Piper, with his alarmist, racist predictions that Europe was sure to be “swamped” with refugees, became a byword for there being no fool like an old fool. As long forecast by more upbeat observers of the continent, Africa became the global nexus of technological innovation and eventually overtook China as the world’s economic powerhouse. Far from forcing their starving or disaffected inhabitants to flee abroad to seek a “better life,” African leaders implored their countries’ diaspora to please come back home and take high-paying jobs that were going begging. (Roy’s Hospitality House started running so short of asylum seekers that the charity was obliged to reorient towards tutoring underachieving working-class white kids.) Women having been granted full political and social equality in the Middle East helped to make the likes of Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq peaceful, affluent societies that no one would dream of leaving, and the region’s only serious problem was so many infatuated American tourists overstaying their visas. Meanwhile, Muslims having joined Christians in a new worldwide religion (“Jeslam”) meant the end of terrorism.
After reducing carbon emissions to absolute zero in perfect unison (because who didn’t care about their children’s future?), all the nations of the planet kept atmospheric warming to a level low enough to be widely hailed as beneficial. If nothing else, the minimal rise in average global temperature had a salutary effect on the quality of British sparkling wine, which overtook champagne as the go-to bubbly even in France.
Thereafter, it was discovered that energy could be extracted from carbon dioxide (after all, if trees could do it . . . ), so fossil fuels and even the likes of Simon’s wind farm became anachronisms. Energy was free, just like all those products in Europe. Also free, and effortless, was the new process of desalination, so that the fresh water shortages that had seemed so ominous a few years before turned out to be one more product of a neurotic scientific establishment reliant on an infinite supply of insoluble problems to justify its existence. Likewise, antibiotic-resistant bacteria naturally evolved to be resistant to themselves.
Alas, however harmonious, prosperous, and environmentally sustainable, it was still a world in which people died. Yet for the Wilkinsons, a final leave-taking was merely one more occasion to pull off with panache.
Once Kay and Cyril turned 110 and 111 respectively, they had perhaps slowed an increment—Cyril’s morning press-ups had dropped to 180—yet they were otherwise fit, healthy, and so stunningly attractive that artists would stop them in the street and plead to be allowed to paint their portraits. The pair were more curious than ever, jollier than ever, and more involved with the lives of others than ever, as a consequence of which they were also ever more beloved. Cyril had just received the proof of the thirty-second book in his medical series, concentrating on the breakthrough cures for pancreatic cancer and ALS, whilst Kay was debating whether to accept the commission to redecorate Windsor Castle. Sure, they took a tincture of quinine to ward off muscle cramps and popped the odd low-dose aspirin to reduce the risk of untoward vascular events. Otherwise, it was full steam ahead.
Nevertheless, there came a day in late May when Kay turned to her husband at dinner and said, “My dear? I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel a bit odd.”
“Yes, now that you mention it,” Cyril said, “I feel a measure peculiar myself.”
“It’s not that I feel unwell,” she assured him.
“Certainly not, bab,” Cyril said. “We never feel unwell.”
“It’s more like a tingling. An inkling. An intimation.”
“Foreknowledge,” he said gravely. “Does it make you—sorrowful?”
“No,” Kay said in wonderment. “Not at all. It makes me feel complete.”
“That’s a good way of putting it. I would miss your insights, your ways of putting things, if I were going to be around to miss anything.”
“Looking back, I don’t believe we’ve missed anything whatsoever. But I do sense we’ve time to make preparations.”
Kay and Cyril literally put their house in order. They went through their drawers and threw out all the instruction booklets for printers, toasters, electric
