Marcia had first set eyes on Domingos in the foyer of Duncan’s Hotel in Glasgow on a cold, drizzly day. He was leaning over the counter, all wrapped up in oilskin garments to protect himself from the weather. He looked like so many characters put into one—a brigandish-looking macho type with dark moustaches, eyes like tiny beacons setting off sparks on a distant hill. He looked a Hemingway character, or even Conradian—a lighthouse keeper, a revolutionary. He could even have been a plain and simple Scotsman. For one moment, since he looked at her with such welcome warmth and unmitigated curiosity, she, being Asian, different, thought he might be the proprietor of Duncan’s Hotel. Duncan’s Hotel—the home for transient students close to Glasgow Central Station. A caravanserai. The first home of the British Council scholars on their Commonwealth scholarships, all newly arrived in Scotland to study in Scottish universities. Hollow-sounding, disembodied voices announcing arrivals and departures against a background of pleasant music filled the lonely passengers disembarking from the long train journey with a sense of euphoria.

Marcia had been seen off at Euston by a young English university student who did part-time work for the British Council, She had requested and been grateful for his presence. They had taken a cab from the Regency Hotel in London for which she had paid with crisp, new English pound notes. She had wanted to dispel the feeling of loneliness by being seen off in her carriage. She bought his platform ticket, quite grandly let him keep the change and slipped into his hands a slab of Toblerone chocolate. So she had not had such a lonely send-off from London and felt his friendly presence, a sense of comfort and security.

On the train she had been befriended by a Scotswoman who spoke of missionaries who lived and worked in India and now lived in retirement in Glasgow, and Marcia felt, yes, perhaps this would be yet another point of contact with the colonial history of her country. It was all this, then, that had culminated in this journey.

On the way to Scotland she had felt as she had on a previous journey to this country in her youth. Remembered scenes, recollections of prints from the illustrated books of her past with Scottish country scenes: sheepfolds and sheep dogs, bales of straw like shredded wheat packed in cardboard boxes of cereal, riders in hunting gear on horseback, on a foxhunt in the countryside, coppices and woods flashed past her bemused gaze.

And now, mounting the steps from pavement to hotel, she was already being enveloped in an easy sense of familiarity, with the Hall Porter already telling her about his life, his long relationship with a woman of means and of his approaching marriage that year.