Victoria Street, Edinburgh Scotland

It doesn’t take much to take me back to that afternoon, walking along Victoria Street in Edinburgh, Scotland. I had flown to the old and bustling city from Belfast, Northern Ireland with my friends, Clare Campbell and her parents, David and Diane, both of who were younger than me; Clare younger by thirty-plus years. But if ever my energetic nature came out, it was here, in the brisk outdoors, the clearest blue skies, the vibrant colors and storefronts and the antique stonework above and around them.

Victoria Street dates back to the early 1800s when it became an addition–and a renovation–to the Old Town. It is narrow by American standards and sweeping and, within the curve, a tad steep. But it is also rich in history and atmosphere and vitality.

I remember so much and yet so little about walking in and out of the shops that afternoon. I recall the cacophony of languages and of the thrill of hearing the Scottish lilt from the locals. Of trying to make out what they were saying as they talked between themselves, even though we spoke the same language. I was in search of specific items–tee shirts and postcards and refrigerator magnets. But I also searched for anything that might catch my fancy, some marvelous something that would remind me forever of having been there.

At some point Clare and I had met up with David and Diane and then, after a cup of something hot and delicious and topped with whipped cream sprinkled by shaved chocolate, we separated again to carry on in our shopping. At some point along the curve of colorful storefronts, we stepped into a store specializing in purses and wallets where Clare found a clutch with the delightful image of book spines etched into its leather. And it was here that I had my only negative moment in Scotland.

Clare and her family are from Northern Ireland, which is not part of the EU but of Great Britain and under the Crown. While we were in the Republic of Ireland, we had spent euros, but in Northern Ireland and Scotland, we made our purchases with pounds. When Clare went to pay for her new bag, she pulled out a few bills and handed them to the clerk who looked at them as though they were poison and said, “These are from the bank of Northern Ireland.”

“Yes,” Clare said. “They’re twenty pound notes.”

Again, a look of disgust swept over the young girl’s face. “We don’t accept notes from Northern Ireland, but you can go around the corner and use an ATM to make an exchange.”

“But it’s a pound,” Clare argued, although she had already warned me that there was some undercurrent tensions between the Scots and the Northern Irish.

“Sorry, no,” the woman said.

Clare really wanted that clutch, I could see that she did, so she pulled out her Bank of Ireland bankcard and said, “Will you accept my bankcard?” to which the clerk said, “Yes.”

This made absolutely no sense to me, but it reminded me of a moment in my Aunt Janice’s life story, a story she shared with me once when we talked about growing up in the South during the 1960s. As the story goes, Aunt Janice, only eleven years my senior, walked to the drug store one summer’s afternoon with a dime in her pocket, her taste buds set for an ice cream cone. When she walked in, an older black man stood near the counter, his shoulders hunched and his eyes cast to the tile floor. Aunt Janice stood a little off to the side, waiting for the woman behind the counter to serve the man.

“What can I get for you, Janice?” the woman asked.

Aunt Janice, who was only about ten at the time, already had a keen sense of racial justice and a heart for what was right and what was wrong. She raised her chin and said, “This man was here before me.”

The woman behind the ice cream counter was clearly perturbed by this, but nevertheless looked at the black man and snapped, “What do you want?”

Without raising his eyes, the man held up a dime and said, “I’d like an ice cream cone, ma’am.”

The clerk huffed as she scooped the cold dessert into the cone, then handed the cone across the counter with a clipped, “Go on, now,” after the man slid his dime across the counter.

Aunt Janice never forgot that moment . . . of how little the woman had tried to make the man feel, but how little she looked to a child. How bigoted. How un-Christian-like, this woman who sat a few pews up from my aunt and grandmother each and every Sunday.

“Wow,” I said to Clare when we left the store on Victoria Street in Edinburgh. “I haven’t seen that kind of prejudicial attitude since the early 70s in the South.”

“I know,” Clare said with a shake of her head, no doubt hoping to dismiss the whole ugly thing. “And I would have walked out, but I really wanted that purse!”

We laughed and then, within a few steps, came across a man in full Scottish regalia, standing on the old, black stones, playing tunes on a bagpipe for the entertainment of the crowd. The awful moment slipped away, momentarily forgotten as the beauty of the songs filled the air . . . and the people clapped . . .