Night Train to Lisbon (17 page)

“I know a gentleman,” she said slowly, “who might be of some help to you. His name is Lord Aidan Roberts, and he was an old and very dear friend of my late husband, Harold. They were commanders together in the Royal Navy during the last war. He now works in Special Intelligence, and if anyone would have access to information such as this, it would be Lord Aidan. I feel certain that he will be able to find out exactly how Alec has been implicated, where the investigation stands at the present time, and what steps need be taken to go about clearing his name. Alec hasn't been charged with anything, of course, which makes it a more complex matter. And whether or not Lord Aidan is willing to reveal any of this information to me is another story.” She paused for a moment, and then said, “I shall pay him a visit at his offices this very week. I need to get out a little more anyway; my physician says it will do my heart a world of good.”

Carson had to hide a smile. She now understood that beneath the quaint and gentle elderly-woman exterior there waited a surprisingly observant and cunning woman.
Wherefore art thou Mrs. Bertram?
she thought, and Carson realized that such was her hostess's grace and authority,
she felt warm and safe and welcome in this house, as if
she
were the one coming home, not Alec.

That night, Alec showed Carson to a guest bedroom on the third floor. The room was done up in royal blue and white, with a plush blue satin comforter and a picture window that looked out upon the spires of London. Alec's own room was down at the other end of the hall.

“I'll miss you all night,” he whispered into her hair as they stood in the center of her room. “I wish we could be together.”

“I know,” she said, wishing equally that they could spend the night together, lying in the depths of her bed. But then they did what they had to do, regretfully separating for the night, giving each other last-minute kisses.

A short while later there was a light knock at Carson's door. She was standing and brushing her hair before the antique oval mirror above the bureau. She put down the heavy silver brush and went to answer it. Mrs. Bertram stood there in the late-night hallway, dressed in a nightgown and yellow silk robe.

“I'm sorry to disturb you,” began Mrs. Bertram, “but I saw the light on beneath your door. And I saw the light on beneath Alec's door as well…” She let her words drift off purposefully here, though Carson didn't know what she was supposed to infer from them.

“Oh,” she said. “Did you want me to shut off my light, is that it? Am I wasting electricity? Because I never meant—”

But Mrs. Bertram simply laughed. “Of course not,” she said. “Look, it's absolutely none of my business, you understand, and feel free to tell me to keep out of it, but I suppose I just don't understand why you and Alec are not…well, together tonight. After all, were you not together on the ship?”

Carson gazed at the elderly woman. Mrs. Bertram wore a puckish expression, and Carson could not quite take in the message all at once, but as far as she could tell, the very proper and distinguished Mrs. Bertram was saying to Carson,
Go to him. Spend the night with him in my house. He is the man you love, and I know one or two things about love myself.

“Thank you,” said Carson softly, and Mrs Bertram simply nodded and retreated down the stairs, her slippers barely making a sound on the carpeted treads.

Within thirty seconds, Carson was knocking on Alec's door, and soon she was climbing into his bed beside him. “But what about Mrs.—” he said, and she put a finger to his lips, shushing him, telling him that it was all right, that Mrs. Bertram was a most accommodating hostess. He reached up to shut off the night-table lamp, and then they were together once again in darkness, and a warm bed, and each other's arms. Tomorrow, who knew where the story would lead? Who knew where it would eventually end? Tonight, though, it would end where bedtime stories always do: happily ever after.

T
his week,” she'd said, referring to when she would call on Lord Aidan, as if time were not of the essence, but in fact the following morning Mrs. Bertram appeared in the living room in a blue wool suit, mentioned she would be heading over to Whitehall as casually as if she'd said she needed to stop at the local apothecary, and urged Alec and Carson to make themselves at home.

After she left, disappearing into the London rain with an umbrella and an unmistakable sense of purpose, Carson and Alec quickly agreed that they couldn't bear the thought of simply sitting around the house waiting for Mrs. Bertram to return with some news of his fate. And so they set out into the light London rain themselves, two people making their way in the world under one
black umbrella, and together they walked the streets aimlessly until they came to the pub of an inn called The Rose and Stag. Inside, Alec blew into his cupped hands and ordered a breakfast of “bangers and mash” for the both of them.

“It looks as exotic as anything I ate in Portugal,” Carson said when the plates arrived. She was using a knife to poke at the glistening, spicy sausages, as if they were some sort of specimen in biology class.

“British food isn't known for its exotic elements, or for its tastiness, to put it mildly,” said Alec. “But this is what I grew up eating, and I have to say, I do have a soft spot for it.”

Carson smiled and, as she'd learned to say, “tucked in” to the meal. “Tell me about the war,” she said a moment later, changing the subject suddenly, getting down to the business of what she wanted to discuss.

“What war?”

“The next one,” she said. “You think it's coming, you told me. You think there's no way to stop it from happening.”

Alec nodded. “Yes, I do think it's coming,” he said. “I think it's inevitable. I'll never be able to understand the aggressiveness and territoriality of Hitler. And the prejudice against Jews and immigrants—anyone who's different—well, that speaks for itself. Growing up poor in London, with a charwoman for a mum, I faced a good amount of prejudice myself. People thought that because we were poor, we were somehow
dirty.
When in actuality my mum was one of the cleanest people I knew, and she kept our tiny little flat as neat as a pin. The world is basically just one long food chain,” Alec went on, “with people gobbling up whoever's just below them. Germany mobilizes its citizens to think it's not the economy or the policies of their government that's making their lives so economically bleak. Oh no, it's the
Jews,
and the tide of unwashed immigrants, of course; what else could it be?”

He ate a forkful of bangers, and washed them down with a swig of hot, sweet tea. “There are plenty of Britons who have no love for anyone other than their own elitist selves, of course,” he added. “
Plenty.
The Watchers are among them. But unlike some of their outspoken and aboveboard brothers, they operate in secret, working within the system, within elite corridors, keeping their identities hidden so that they can transmit ideas and defense plans more easily to Germany. They believe that though they're against it, war may be inevitable, and if it is, they want to be on the right side when victory comes.”

Alec pushed away his plate suddenly. “I can't eat any more,” he said. “I've no appetite after having this conversation. The idea that someone would say I was a member of those bloody Watchers—the idea that
my
name is on a list in some government office, that
I'm
being watched myself and considered a traitor to my country—is hateful to me.”

She held his hand tightly across the table, and
they sat in silence in the pub for a few moments. His anguish was her own now; that was what being in love did to you. This was something she'd never known before, for when they'd first fallen in love, all that they'd shared had felt bathed in a golden light. And then, when they'd parted, all that they'd shared had felt ruined, rotted, like old fruit, but those were feelings that Carson had endured alone. Now she'd arrived at a third alternative: she and Alec had left behind the golden glow of first falling in love, yes, but they had left it together. And now, together, they were entering reality: eating bangers and mash in a London pub and talking about injustice.

“I believe you, you know,” she reminded him softly. “I really do.”

“I can't imagine why you would,” Alec said. “You've no proof I'm not who they say I am. You've only got my word against theirs.”

“It doesn't matter.” She shook her head slightly. “I can't explain it,” and the fact was, she couldn't. It had something to do with intuition, with a certainty deep inside—with learning to trust yourself. That moment on the ship when she'd realized she truly believed Alec? She saw now that it was actually the moment when she finally knew what she'd in fact known all along, which was what she'd been talked out of by her uncle, despite her better judgment. And she saw now that what had changed in her literal moment of truth—that moment of recognizing and accepting what she'd known to be true all along—had
nothing to do with Alec and everything to do with her.

“What is it, Carson?” Alec suddenly said. He reached out and tipped her chin up with his hand. “What's wrong?”

She didn't realize a revealing expression had crossed her face, but it must have—at least long enough that a lover would notice.

“What if—?” she started to ask, not quite sure how to phrase what she wanted to say. There wasn't much precedent in her life for this kind of question:
What if you go to jail even though you're innocent?
“What if,” she said, taking a deep breath, throwing a napkin on her plate, “things go wrong?”

He smiled to himself. Alec folded his own napkin and deposited it on his own plate. And then he looked up at her.

“We just do what we can do,” he said. “There's really nothing else, is there?”

As he lightly brushed her cheek with the back of his hand, she closed her eyes and felt his flesh on hers and tried to commit the sensation to memory.

They spent the rest of the morning wandering through the softly lit galleries of the British Museum. Carson paid particular attention to paintings that depicted men at war: horses rearing up, bayonets flashing, soldiers lying splayed and dead on rain-soaked foreign battlefields. This, too, was flesh: the potential not for indescribable pleasure but for pain, equally indescribable. The sheer volume of war imagery in the museum was
sufficient to silence the two of them, and she and Alec barely spoke as they walked through gallery after gallery. Even if Alec was vindicated in this whole Watchers business, Carson thought, there was still the prospect of war to think about. Alec had already told her that he would definitely sign up to fight the Germans, and she knew, of course, that she wouldn't try to stop him. The precariousness of life here in England—this nation so small and vulnerable and close to Germany—shamed her for a moment, as if she were personally responsible for the easy comforts and certainties of life in Marlowe, Connecticut, where war was, at most, a bit of unpleasantness that might upset a few applecarts on the other side of the globe.

And yet it was true. She
was
personally responsible, wasn't she? For herself at least, for her own actions, for her own beliefs and convictions and ideals? If not her, then who else? Who else might possibly be responsible for Carson Weatherell? A generation earlier, of course, the answer would have been obvious: her parents, or, later, her husband. But this was 1936. Carson had the right to vote now, she had the right to drink, she had the right to
think.
And to think for
herself.
It was just as her uncle had told her in his study in Sintra on that horrible, distant, echoing afternoon—something she hadn't understood at the time but now, she feared, she understood all too well: Everyone is political. You just have to pick your battles.

And she'd picked hers.

“Where were you?” Alec whispered now, coming up behind her. “You looked far away.”

“Yes, about three thousand miles,” she answered. “But I'm back now.” She reached up over her shoulder to cup his cheek in the palm of her hand, and this time he was the one to close his eyes, as if trying to commit the sensation to memory. “I'm right here,” she said.

 

Later, when they got back to the house, Mrs. Bertram had already returned. She was sitting in the front parlor waiting for them, and the expression on her face was anything but encouraging.

“Sit down, Alec, Carson,” she said.

“Did you see Lord Aidan?” Alec burst out before he'd even settled into his chair.

“Yes, yes I did. I will tell you everything.”

Mrs. Bertram took a deep breath. Carson reached out from her chair to place a reassuring hand on Alec's arm.

“At first,” Mrs. Bertram went on, “he was quite reluctant to say a word. He knew about the case, all right, though he hadn't realized that I knew you. In fact,” she said, shifting uncomfortably, “he seemed quite shocked to learn that you had any information about the investigation in the first place. I assured him that I trusted you completely, but he said I was naive. To press his point, he removed a file from a drawer in another office and examined it himself. Your name was on the file, Alec. He wouldn't let me see the contents, but
after he'd read them over, he said there was no doubt about your complicity with the Watchers.”

“This is madness,” said Carson. “We don't even know specifically what the accusation is, or what evidence they have.”

“I agree,” said Mrs. Bertram. “It
is
madness, and one with an extraordinarily fine pedigree. It's the kind of madness that supposedly democratic and free nations develop when it suits their purposes. On such occasions it can become, shall we say,
difficult
to distinguish between the so-called good guys and the bad guys they're supposedly trying to protect us from. But as much as I'd like to discuss the finer points of this argument, I'm afraid I can't at the moment because, as it happens, we have a far more immediate concern.” She turned her attention entirely to Alec now. “It would appear,” Mrs. Bertram said, “that the only reason the authorities haven't arrested you yet is that they've wanted to observe your actions and contacts.”

“Yes, Carson's already explained that to me,” said Alec.

“Well, that situation has changed now,” Mrs. Bertram went on. “Given my inquiries, they now know that
you
know. They know that Carson has told you of their suspicions. It used to be that you were more valuable to them as a free man. Now—” She paused, lowering her eyes. “I'm sorry, Alec. I tried.”

“Oh, no,” Carson gasped.

Alec said nothing. He simply slumped back in his chair, his eyes wide and hollow.

It was the moment they'd both feared for a week now, a possibility they'd discussed and tried to brace themselves for, but in the end nothing could have prepared them for the dull thud of this reality.

“As a good friend of my late husband's,” Mrs. Bertram went on, her voice even and quiet, as if she could impose dignity onto the scene through the sheer force of her will, “Lord Aidan did grant me the courtesy of five minutes alone with you first. He didn't have to do that, and I'm grateful to him. When you weren't here earlier, he said they would simply wait outside and return after they'd observed your arrival. And now, my dear Alec, I'm afraid those five minutes—”

But before she could complete her thought there came an insistent, no-nonsense rapping at the front door.

“Carson,” Mrs. Bertram said, in the ringing silence that followed, “would you please open the door? I'm afraid I don't quite have it in me.”

Carson stood unsteadily. Her legs went liquid for a moment, like that moment on the
Queen Mary
some months earlier when the ship first pushed back from the dock. Another voyage, Carson thought. The beginning of another long journey. Only this time she didn't know where it would lead her, or how long it would take to get wherever it was she was going, if ever.

She opened the door. Four men waited there, and as they brushed past her one of them rattled off the formal introductions—two detectives from the Yard, two from the Ministry of Defence. One
of those Defence detectives, however, needed no introduction: Lawrence Emmett. He barely met his niece's gaze as he walked past.

“Lawrence,” she tried, “you have to understand why I told Alec—”

“Carson,” her uncle said, turning toward her, his face impassive, his lips thin. “You did what you had to do, and now I'm doing what I have to do. Obviously, it was an error on my part to include you in the investigation this summer. We weren't yet ready to bring Mr. Breve here in for questioning, but now we have to. I should never have trusted a young girl with this kind of information, but I didn't know what else to do. I thought you were our best shot.”

“I'm not a young girl,” Carson said tersely, though the words themselves made her sound young and inexperienced, and she was embarrassed. Still, she didn't know what else to say; she couldn't possibly tell her uncle what she believed:
Love makes you rely on instinct. And sometimes instinct is all you've got.

Already it was all over. As her uncle had been talking to her, Carson could vaguely hear the murmur of voices from the parlor, the flat declarations of arrest, the mild protestations of innocence, the brusque lockstep footfalls of men on a mission: the other three detectives parading Alec through the foyer.

“Mr. Emmett,” Alec managed to say as he was nudged past Lawrence and Carson. “I want you to know that I've done nothing wrong.”

Lawrence just nodded impersonally, looking away.