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relief in his reaction.
Destiny
, she said to herself.
    She went back to Jenners, bought what she needed, and then walked the short distance to the North British Hotel. They had plenty of rooms, and they gave her a suite overlooking Princes Street. She sat there, her feet propped up on a stool. She ordered a half-bottle of champagne, which was brought up to her room by a smartly attired young man. The young man opened the champagne bottle for her and gave her a look. It was not a look that she understood, but it had a flirtatious feel to it. Men, it seemed, were plentiful, once one started to search for them. Indeed, she thought, Marjorie was right: one had to fight them off—or at least some of them.
    She sent him away. She closed her eyes. Such happiness, she thought; such happiness came from knowing who you were and where you came from. And from knowing, too, that you did not have to go back unless you really wanted to, and sometimes you did.



1
    “He was very proud of being Scottish, you know.”
    She touched the photograph gently, as one might touch something precious. The young man sitting opposite her, on the other side of the card table on which the photographs had been spread out, noticed that there was sun damage to her hands. Or was it those discolourations that people called
liver spots
? No, it was most likely the sun, because it was fierce here in southern Tuscany, and the summer months—of which this was one—could be oven-like, even here in the hills, where it was meant to be cooler because of the Apennine wind. On the way up the winding road from San Casciano dei Bagni he had passed a sign that warned of snow—inconceivable now, in this heat, but presumably a real enough issue in winter.
    “Yes, very proud,” she continued. “Not in an embarrassing way, of course. He often wore a kilt—just as he’s doing in this photograph. But he didn’t go on about Scotland as some people do. I think that’s boastful, don’t you? To go on at length about your country and its merits. Boastful and distasteful, too, because going on about one’s country often involves adverse comparisons with other countries, don’t you think?”
    The young man nodded. “Countries and football teams…”
    She laughed. “I suspect you don’t take much interest in football, do you? No, I thought not.” She paused. “But being proud of
being
something is rather odd, I’ve always thought. It’s rather like being proud of being tall. How can you be proud of something that had absolutely nothing to do with any effort or talent on your part? Frankly, I don’t see it.”
    “No, probably not.”
    “You can be relieved, I suppose, that you were born something or other—American, say—but that’s not the same thing as being proud. You can be thankful that your parents reached America in time for you to be born there—and I suppose a lot of people were grateful for that—but you can’t claim any credit for it.”
    “They could, though.”
    She frowned. “Who could?”
    “The people who reached America. They could be proud of being American.”
    “Yes, of course. But that pride would be about what they had achieved. They got there, and they could feel proud of that. That’s legitimate enough, but it only works for the first generation.”
    “I see what you mean.” He touched his forehead. It was hot and he felt damp. “You’re Scottish too,” he said.
    She smiled, and sat back in her chair. He noticed that the hem of the skirt she was wearing had become unstitched. Age could bring neglect of one’s clothes—a giving up, really—but then he reminded himself she was only sixty-three and that was hardly all that old. He himself would be sixty-three in exactly thirty years’ time. And that would be in—he did the mental arithmetic quickly—two thousand and three. He thought: Would they say
twenty three
in the way in which we said nineteen seventy-three? He thought it unlikely. It would have to be something