Читать книгу Unnatural Order - Liz Porter - Страница 5

‘Our siesta, eh?’ said Caroline as soon as they had turned the corner. ‘I didn’t know we were in the habit of taking afternoon siestas. But how silly of me. This is the second day, counting Mykonos, that we’ve spent together. Plenty of time to develop the little routines of a lifetime.’

Karl looked away. ‘Sorry, but I just couldn’t help it. I just did it to remind him that you were with me.’

‘Are you reminding him or me?’

‘Both of you, I suppose.’ He laughed. ‘Oh, well, I suppose he’ll be useful tonight. He’ll be able to translate all the fado lyrics for us. He’ll insist on it, it’s such a great chance for him to show off his Portuguese.’

They walked back to the car in silence.

‘Anyway, let’s not talk about him. And having a siesta is still a good idea. You’re tired. I’m tired.’ His breath was warm on her neck. ‘Look how quiet the streets are now. Even the cats are asleep. Just think. Behind those closed shutters people are making love.’

Karl put his arm around Caroline and squeezed her to him.

Leaning against him, she felt a fluttering in the pit of her stomach. How much easier it was when there was no need to discuss anything.

She slipped her hand between the buttons of his shirt and stroked the curly mat of hair on his chest.

‘Does that mean yes?’

Caroline nodded.

The topic of Oliver, apparently forgotten for the rest of the afternoon, resurfaced as they made their way along an undulating pavement to the dockside bar Oliver had suggested as a meeting point.

‘You like him, don’t you?’ Karl burst out, breaking the companionable silence of the previous ten minutes.

‘It’s not a matter of liking or not liking. He’s an entertaining companion, that’s all.’ Caroline felt her cheeks redden. How could she admit to finding an obvious narcissist attractive?

A few hours ago she had been lying in bed looking for references to Portugal in her Byron biography. But the pages kept falling open at anecdotes revealing churlishness by the poet and irritating adoration from the women: Lady Caroline Lamb writing to Byron begging for a picture or a lock of hair; Byron sending a lock cut from the hair of his new mistress, the Countess of Oxford, in an envelope on which the wax had been impressed with the Countess’s seal; Byron taking his new bride to visit Augusta, then flaunting his incestuous love for his half-sister in front of his puzzled wife.

She wrenched her thoughts back to the present. ‘Anyway, you don’t have to like someone to find them entertaining. And he already has two girlfriends here.’

‘Yes, my darling,’ Karl didn’t sound convinced, although he squeezed her hand as they pushed their way through the crowded bar to the tiny garden terrace.

‘And here they are, the luckiest women in Portugal.’

Caroline followed his glance to the very furthest table, where Oliver was sitting with two women. The slim blond on his left was leaning towards him, watching his every gesture, as if he might disappear if she looked away. On the other side of the table sat a 25-year-old with thick, brown, basin-cut hair framing the earnest, matronly face that some girls have at 11 and keep until menopause. She leaned back in her chair, surveying her companions with bright brown eyes, a chaperone giving the young lovers their time together.

The blond, as Caroline expected, was Kristina, the animal rights worker. The other woman was Anneliese, the follower.

‘I understand English very well,’ said Kristina, when Oliver introduced them. ‘I just don’t speak it too good.’

‘Me too,’ said Anneliese. ‘You must speak slowly.’

‘Karl can translate.’ Oliver waved a hand in his direction. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

Without waiting for a reply, he turned to Caroline. ‘Now let’s drink up. I’ve reserved a table at the fado club I mentioned. But they won’t hold it if we’re more than half an hour late.

Caroline noticed that Karl had started speaking in German to Kristina and Anneliese. The bar was too noisy for her to catch what he was saying, although it seemed to be standard polite questioning about their travels. But Kristina didn’t appear to be listening. She was still staring at Oliver, her sharp features hardening as Oliver continued to speak rapidly in English.

‘Amalia Rodrigues, the Joan Sutherland of fado, used to sing there,’ he continued, oblivious to Kristina’s stare. ‘She’s supposed to have been discovered in the early 50s wandering barefoot around the docks just near here, selling flowers for a living. She was already performing in a New York club in the 50s. God knows how old she is now.’

Caroline felt Karl drumming his fingers on her knee under the table.

‘This all sounds quite wonderful. Shall we get going then?’

A look of gratitude softened Kristina’s features. She took Oliver’s arm as they walked out of the bar.

The strains of taped guitar music floated upwards as Karl and Caroline followed the others down a flight of narrow stairs into a wood-panelled taverna with a tiny stage at one end.

‘I thought he might take us here,’ Karl whispered. ‘This place is so authentic and non-touristy that it’s listed prominently in my tourists’ guidebook.’

‘You’re such a bitch,’ Caroline hissed back. She felt a sudden rush of fondness for him and squeezed his hand in the dark. He squeezed back by way of reply.

Oliver turned around, smiling, as they threaded their way through the tables.

‘We’re at this front one. Caroline?’ He pulled out a chair for her and took the seat next to it himself, apparently blind to the meaningful looks Kristina was firing in his direction.

Karl made a production of pulling out the two chairs on the other side of the table for Kristina and Anneliese and seating both women. He then sat on the other side of Caroline. Caroline could feel Oliver’s eyes on her. To avoid engaging his glance she studied the walls. The place was as kitschy as he had promised, its walls crowded with photographs, lamps, wood carvings and amateurish-looking paintings.

Oliver leaned over and touched Caroline’s arm.

‘So how long are you going to stay in Lisbon?’ His breath smelt of peppermint. ‘There are some galleries I’d love to show you. The National is important. They’ve got Bosch’s The Temptation of St Anthony. And a Salome by Cranach, and a St Catherine, probably his; and the British cemetery, where Henry Fielding is buried. He actually came here for his health, but the warmth didn’t have the desired effect and he died two months after arriving.’ He paused and looked at her, trying to gauge the effect on her of his knowledgeability.

Karl’s fingers danced on Caroline’s knee. She liked him in this quiet, ironic mood.

‘Would you like wine?’ said Kristina, reaching over him to lift the huge pitcher of wine that a waiter had just brought.

‘Thank you.’ Oliver accepted a glass from her without looking up.

‘Anyway, my mother read us his Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon when we were kids. I think it was a hint to my father that we should all take a voyage too.’ He took a small sip of wine. ‘But it didn’t work.’

Kristina banged the wine pitcher down on the table in front of Caroline.

As if this had been a signal, the four musicians, who had been idling around the stage smoking, put down their glasses and seized guitars and violas. A small curtain at the side of the room parted to reveal a tall gypsy of a woman with a black lace shawl clutched tightly over a voluminously skirted vermilion dress. A waiter hovered nearby with a large glass of whisky on a silver tray.

The woman’s long red-nailed claw shot out from beneath the shawl and grabbed the glass from him, raising it to scarlet lips. She then strode on to the stage, pausing to stare down at the audience before launching into a haunting, slow song, its melody sad beyond words.

Oliver’s mouth was next to Caroline’s ear. ‘Her lover had only–’

‘No.’ Caroline shook her head. ‘I can understand it without words.’

Under the table, she felt Karl’s foot gently rub her ankle. His forehead creased in a small frown of concentration as he stared up at the singer.

Back at the hotel, Karl sprawled on the bed while Caroline stood over the basin, scrubbing the red wine stains off her white shirt.

‘I know Kristina didn’t mean to knock the wine over,’ he said. ‘It made Oliver even less pleased with her than before. But I bet she’s not sorry that it went all over you.’

‘Except that she should have poured it over Oliver.’ Caroline filled the basin with another lot of cold water.

‘Come on, you’re not exactly innocent, my darling.’

‘Good heavens, I refused his offer of a guided tour of all the galleries.’

‘Yes, but you made it clear you’d see him in London.’

‘Well, why shouldn’t I exchange addresses with him? We live two suburbs away from one another. We might have a drink together some time.’ Probably several drinks, she thought. And bed? Perhaps. She was enjoying Oliver’s puppy-like habit of dropping nuggets of information about art and Portugal at her feet.

Also, as a journalist, she had a great deal of respect for pure information, no matter how randomly collected.

‘And it’ll be nice to go to a gallery with someone who at least claims to be able to explain Jackson Pollock.

‘Claims would certainly be the word,’ said Karl. ‘He’ll spend hours memorising sections from his art history book, just so he can impress you.’

‘In fact he doesn’t impress me at all,’ said Caroline. ‘I just find him… decorative. And what are you smirking at?’

Karl sat up. ‘Look, Caroline, I know you can fancy a man even when you don’t like him. I laugh because I am amused by the way you always spill water on the floor whenever you do anything at the basin. And you never notice. It’s your total inattention to practicalities. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

Caroline looked down and noticed a small puddle of water on the carpet. She shrugged and turned the tap off.

‘I can just imagine what the kitchen looks like when you cook.’

‘What makes you think I cook?’

‘Never mind.’ Karl stretched out one arm and pulled at the zipper on her skirt.

‘When you come back to Germany with me I’ll cook for you.’

Caroline lay against him on the bed, nuzzling her head under his arm. Pulling up his T-shirt, she rubbed her nose in the blond tufts of hair in his armpit.

‘Does that mean you might come back with me?’

She ran her hand down his stomach and slid it under the waistband of his underpants.

‘You’re so predictable,’ she said, moving her hand around to squeeze the taut muscles of his buttocks.

‘Do you mean me,’ he said, ‘or him?’ He took her other hand and pushed it down the front of his jeans. ‘Both of you.’

‘So you will come?’

‘I’m thinking about it.’

Caroline woke, alone, in a room glowing with sunlight. On Karl’s pillow was a battered book. Its front cover was missing and the back one was half torn away. She looked at the spine. The Collected Works of Byron.

She laughed aloud as a note fell out of the book.

‘Good morning, sleeping beauty,’ it said. ‘Couldn’t sleep. Went for a walk and found a secondhand bookshop – and this. Look at the two pages where there are book marks – I think we should follow his travel hints.’

Caroline opened the book at the first mark and found a passage marked in pencil.

Lo! Cintra’s glorious Eden intervenes

In variegated maze of mount and glen.

Ah, me! What hand can pencil guide, or pen,

To follow half on which the eye dilates

Through views more dazzling unto mortal ken

Than those whereof such things the Bard relates.

At the second bookmark a passage was marked in red.

The castled crags of Drachenfels

Frowns o’er the wide and winding Rhine,

Whose breast of waters broadly swells

Between the banks which bear the vine;

The door opened and Karl came in, holding a tray.

‘Childe Harold’s pilgrimage. What better tourist guide could you have?’ he said. ‘But before we leave to follow in his footsteps, here’s two cafe com leite.’

Caroline jumped out of bed and took the tray, setting it down on the bedside table.

He smiled down at her, his eyes sea-green.

‘Why do you continue to be so impossibly nice?’ She reached out and stroked his cheek. ‘You know that I have been feeling pressured by your… your seriousness. And instead of sulking that I wasn’t returning your feelings, you’ve just been so graceful and dignified about everything.’

‘I don’t know.’ Karl took her hand in his. ‘I just want you. I like to make you happy. And I thought, if it makes her happy not to talk about feelings, well I won’t.’

He dropped her hand and slumped into a large armchair by the window.

‘But I don’t understand you. I like the way you’re different from the other women I’ve known. But you’re too different. When you make love with me, I think that you care about me. Yet other times, you’re so detached. So I’m trying not to think about it all. I don’t always succeed.’

Caroline stared past him out the window.

‘Can’t we just pretend we’re having a nice holiday romance, and then at the end of the week, we’ll see how we feel?’ She walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

‘Anyway,’ she called over her shoulder, ‘you’ll probably hate me by then.’

Shutting the bathroom door, she stepped into the shower recess. If only she could get away somewhere and assess her feelings. She had felt so close to Karl last night. In the semi-darkness of the fado performance she had studied his features with quiet relish.

Next to him, Oliver had looked like a little boy showing off. So far, they even seemed to have some interests in common: books at least. And he touched her with such passion and such delicacy. Thinking about it made her thighs go weak.

Would she miss Karl if she were back in London now? Probably. But she couldn’t imagine the feeling. And how would she feel if some female Oliver turned up and laid siege to his vanity? Furious. But even if they were well suited, what then? She could hardly go and live in Germany. And there would be no point in him moving to London. She didn’t know whether she wanted to stay there herself. She loved her working conditions at London Woman: high wages, warm and witty women to work with, free tickets to film previews and regular Friday afternoon champagne parties. But the work she was doing was smart rubbish aimed at privileged women with narrow horizons: slick write-ups of chic cafes and fashionable writers interspersed with small doses of accessible social issues.

Back in Sydney she’d regularly complained about the scant coverage the local newspapers gave to serious topics such as Aboriginal health or domestic violence. The sort of writing she was doing now made the Sydney tabloids look socially responsible.

But she wouldn’t be ready to return to Australia until she had achieved something. Peace of mind, at the very least.

She turned the shower off with a jerk. Moving to London? Living in Germany? With a man she knew nothing about beyond the fact that he liked Byron and Woody Allen. Was Karl’s way of thinking contagious? Towelling herself vigorously, she went back into the room to dress.

‘You are leaving Lisbon so soon?’ The concierge’s olive eyes looked soft with regret as he handed back their passports.

‘We’re going to Cintra,’ said Karl, ‘to see the castle.’

‘Ah.’ The man nodded approval. ‘Very romantic.’

They drove in silence along the wide avenue that abutted the docks. Caroline stared at the flat glistening blue of the Tagus River, trying to imagine it erupting into the 15-metre high tidal waves created by the great earthquake of 1755. Overturned candles had helped to start a fire that had raged for six days, leaving 60 000 dead – crushed, burned or drowned – and the city in ruins.

Husbands and wives perished in their beds, washed to their deaths as the water boiled up and crashed over them. Others must have died alone, lovers sulking after arguments, mothers out shopping, single women.

Caroline’s single state only seriously bothered her when she thought about dying. The thought of a solitary death among strangers had always tormented her on aeroplanes. At the onset of turbulence, she would notice every worried woman who took her lover’s hand, and every man who stroked his partner’s hair.

Caroline looked back up the hill at a row of pastel-washed houses that dazzled under a stark blue sky. A forest of laundry poles protruded from their windows. These were crowded family houses, where women her age had been having children since they were 18.

Walking home from the tube station in London, she would look into the lit, book-lined front rooms of the large Victorian houses in her street.

Children were doing their homework or practising piano, women pulled off neat work suits, kissed their husbands, changed into jeans and furry slippers and cooked dinner.

She would like to settle down like that, but with whom? And where?

Karl would have an answer for those questions. Should she try doing what he suggested? She had never managed to find happiness with men she had chosen herself. Might there be a better chance with someone who had chosen her?

‘What are you thinking?’ asked Karl.

Caroline hastily rearranged her thoughts. Karl would just love to hear her anxieties about solitude, but she wasn’t inclined to share them.

‘I was just thinking about having your life snuffed out, all of a sudden. Like all the people who died in the earthquake. Disasters like that make you realise how meaningless most activities are. You know, superficial relationships, new cities, new friends, writing stupid magazine articles.’

‘But you told me that 200,000 women read your magazine.’ Karl’s eyes mocked her. ‘You’re entertaining them, helping them feel their own lives have a meaning.’

‘Most of the people who read my articles are more interested in their waistlines than the larger meaning of their lives.’ Caroline looked across at him, but his expression gave nothing away.

The perfect life, in London Woman terms, entails a well-paid job, a nice house, a handsome husband, a sweet child, a good nanny, a treasure of a cleaning lady and the ability to produce an elegant dinner for eight within an hour.’

‘I think you’re too hard on them.’ Karl stared straight ahead. ‘A relationship and a family are the most important things in human life. I suspect that you think that too. You just don’t want to admit it because you’ve spent your life avoiding settling down.’

He gave her one of his infuriatingly meaningful looks and smiled. ‘Until now, perhaps.’

Caroline stared out the window. They were out of Lisbon now and driving along a road lined with rows of canna, pines, mimosa and eucalyptus. Away from the sea, the land sloped gently into green hills studded with large villas. On the sea side of the road, small white-washed hotels with blue-and-white-tiled facades overlooked a railway track which followed the sandy coast for 30 kilometres from Lisbon to the resort of Cascais.

‘The people on the train get the best view, don’t they?’ she said. ‘That’s very democratic.’

‘That’s how it is along the Rhine, too,’ said Karl. The only problem is that you can’t stop when you want to see a town or a castle. So we will drive when we follow Childe Harold to the Drachenfels.’

‘Dragon rock,’ translated Caroline. ‘It sounds like the name of a dish in a very expensive Chinese restaurant. Dragon rock garnished with mermaids’ tresses.’

Karl pulled over to the side of the road.

‘You always try to change the subject. But this time I’m not going to let you.You will come back to Germany with me, won’t you? You were planning to spend two weeks in Portugal – you could spend your second week with me in Germany. I’ll pay for your flight back. What do you think?’

She didn’t speak.

‘Well?’

‘OK. OK,’ Caroline laughed. ‘If you take me to see every castle on the Rhine.’

‘I promise,’ said Karl. ‘But first, we’ll warm up with some Portuguese castles.’

Caroline opened the car door and breathed deeply. ‘Gum trees,’ she sighed. ‘Just like home.’

‘Home?’ said Karl. ‘Home for you has been Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong and London.’

She could feel his eyes on her as he spoke.

‘And now you might find a new one.’

Caroline avoided his glance. Why did he always have to spoil everything?