When Marcia moved from Duncan’s hotel, Domingos came with her to the new Hall of Residence which had once been a big hotel in the thirties on Sauchiehall Street. They sat together in the large, bare room which had yet to be filled with her life, her thoughts, her presence. It was to be yet another room to be locked from within. One room in a passage with many other rooms where, before faces became familiar, only the sound of footsteps was heard. Sometimes, walking along the corridor to the room where the students heated water, or where the cleaning ladies sat down casually to drink tea or smoke cigarettes, she could see other lives in other rooms. An immigrant family inhabited an apartment in one of the old, grey, stone buildings, their lives open, naked and exposed to the view of any onlooker. The one room they lived in served many purposes. It was full of enormous, shining pots and pans with food simmering and boiling on the cooker. The women waved to Marcia and made friendly gestures of invitation when they recognized her as being, like themselves, Asian. The sink was perpetually piled with crockery and cooking utensils. One day Marcia saw a young man acrobatically washing his feet in it, first one, then the other, with great meticulousness. It was all quite natural, people and their lives and their needs to be catered to within that space in one small room, just as Marcia’s own life would gradually be. People would come and go, sit, talk, read her books, drink lambrusco, eat Scottish oatcakes or haggis or fish and chips.

But Domingos could not fit his own life into one of these rooms among hundreds of other students. The size and girth of his personality could never be contained within these walls. He came to see her at Halloween, the time when the young students went crazy, whooping and racing madly through corridors with painted faces. ‘Let’s go and see the fireworks and the carnival near the River Clyde,’ he said.

They walked, it seemed for miles and miles, through street after street until they came to the river. Fireworks spluttered in the air. The lights sparkled. They stood on the outskirts of the carnival and gazed at the brilliance like two happy children. On the fringe, outside the gaiety and fun, watching. Spectators. They had only to step in to be part of it, and yet they held themselves back, like strangers who were unsure whether that happiness was for themselves as well. But Domingos and Marcia were adults, afraid to be children. They gazed to their fill, feeling the Glaswegian accents swing past their ears—voices, high, excited, of children holding their parents’ hands or held tight in their arms.

‘Let us return,’ said Domingos. ‘Shall we go back?’