Night Train to Lisbon (18 page)

“And Carson—” Alec called back, but it was too late. He was already out the front door, being herded down the steps, alternately turning back to try to catch sight of her and to look down to watch where he was going. A door to a black sedan swung open just long enough to swallow Alec up.

On the tidy, expensive street, there was no commotion, no excitement. A woman walked a small dog, yet she didn't even glance up to see what this official-looking car and all these men were doing in front of Mrs. Bertram's house.

Lawrence, too, was already leaving now, and it took Carson a moment to realize that she had to call after him.

“Can I come with Alec?”

But Lawrence shook his head as he quickly descended the steps. “No,” he said over his shoulder. “That wouldn't work.” At the sidewalk, he paused and turned, apparently deciding to grant his niece one small comfort. “Don't worry, Carson, nobody is going to hurt him.” And then he, too, ducked into the black sedan.

As the car pulled away, Carson caught sight of Alec turning to look at her through the back window. His mouth was forming words, but she couldn't make out what they were.
I love you,
maybe, or
Help me.

 

And then what?
Alec had asked her that night by the greenhouse back in Connecticut. Carson had
laid out a plan that would get them as far as Mrs. Bertram's house in London, and Alec naturally wanted to know where they would go from there. Now Carson was in that house, sipping sherry with Mrs. Bertram and sitting in front of a fire, and the breezy answer she'd summoned on the cool autumn night seemed as distant as the town of Marlowe itself:
I'll think of something.

She'd thought of nothing. The detectives had hustled Alec out of this house hours earlier, and in all that time Carson hadn't been able to think of what she might do to help the situation. At least Mrs. Bertram had known to telephone a barrister she knew named Simon Harkness, who promised to meet Alec at the interview room at the Yard and serve as his legal counsel during the intake. The best Carson had been able to do was root around in the icebox and fix a light supper of roast beef sandwiches for herself and Mrs. Bertram, but the tray of food sat untouched on a table between them.

Carson sat in one wing-backed chair, Mrs. Bertram in its mate. Carson imagined that Mrs. Bertram must have sometimes sat here just like this with her husband, year after year. The night before, Carson and Alec had lain together in bed, their arms and legs entwined; Carson realized now that she was beginning to understand what a marriage would feel like. It was the freedom to sit in front of a fire night after night. It was the freedom to lie with your lover over a period of years, letting time drift past, getting older to
gether yet not really minding, because the years that you mark off are years spent in the company of the one you love.

Carson didn't know if she and Alec would ever have those years. Simon Harkness was a fine lawyer, Mrs. Bertram had assured her, yet the tenor of her words betrayed her own insecurity about Alec's eventual exoneration. Who really had a great deal of sympathy right now for a supposed traitor? The fact was, all Carson could do was what she was doing now: sit still and wait for Simon Harkness to call. But it wasn't enough. Sitting tight and waiting for life to happen to her no longer suited Carson. It no longer satisfied her. It stifled her, frustrated her, made her flush warm all over with pent-up energy.

Or maybe it was the combination of the sherry and the fire that was warming her. Carson placed her empty glass next to the tray on the table. She rubbed her eyes. She looked over at Mrs. Bertram, whose own glass was empty, whose own eyes were closed, whose chin was resting on her chest, whose breaths, Carson felt, leaning her own head back on a wing of her chair, looking affectionately across the room at this elderly woman—whose breaths were pleasingly regular and calm and deep and enviably oblivious.

The telephone rang at nearly midnight. It jolted them both awake. Mrs. Bertram reached for the phone that she'd strung over to the table next to her, fumbled with the heavy receiver, said “Hello.”

Carson barely took a breath as she listened to Mrs. Bertram's end of the conversation.

“I see,” Mrs. Bertram said. “Yes, of course, I do understand. No, no, Simon, I know. There was nothing you could have—yes, certainly.” Then she replaced the receiver with a quiet thud, leaned back in her chair, and sighed deeply. She looked even smaller and frailer than she had before.

“They've formally arrested Alec,” she said to Carson. “And they're charging him with treason.”

 

When the sky turned light, Carson put on a coat and slipped out to go for a walk. She couldn't stand to stay inside any longer. Simply walking through the London streets had to be a better idea than sitting stunned in an easy chair in Mrs. Bertram's house. The early morning air was cool, and the pavement was wet and scattered with leaves from the trees that arced overhead.

How beautiful this city was, Carson thought; how peaceful. And yet there was an ominous quality in the air, too, a sense of fragility and temporariness. Or maybe it was just her—the fact that she'd barely slept last night, or that the man she loved was in jeopardy, or that war seemed a certainty, or that she was powerless to do anything about anything.

The roast beef sandwich from the night before had remained untouched, and now Carson stopped for a bite at the pub where she and Alec had eaten breakfast the day before. This time she
sat alone in the corner, facing the cracked wall, hunched over the small, scarred table as she chewed a currant scone and drank a cup of strong, unsweetened tea. Out there, somewhere, Alec sat in his own solitary corner. What had happened to him seemed surreal, strange in a way that was reminiscent of
love's
own strangeness, and yet, of course, it was more like love's opposite: isolation instead of union, a flush of sorrow instead of pleasure.

The barman leaned over the bar and asked Carson, “Where's the mister this morning?”

She was startled. They'd been in here only once, yet the barman remembered them. “Oh, he couldn't come with me today,” she said, trying to sound casual, taking a small sip from her teacup.

“Too bad, pretty young thing like you, breakfasting all alone, and looking none too happy about it,” he said, and he picked up a rag and began wiping down the polished wood of the bar. “It isn't right, no it isn't. Seems like nothing's right with the world these days,” he continued to himself. “Everything's out of sorts, and headed for disaster.” He yawned softly, then retreated into a room behind the bar.

Carson didn't disagree with his words, and yet, she had to ask herself once again, what was she supposed to
do
about the situation? It was as though she were in the backseat of a car and watching as an accident happened in slow motion. Sitting here in a pub and drinking tea and eating a scone, while elsewhere Alec was being
accused of treason, was
crazy.
Although Mrs. Bertram had hired a good barrister to defend Alec, it somehow didn't seem enough. Even if Carson was only going to give the illusion of activity, she wanted to take part in his defense. She didn't know if there was anything she
could
do to help Alec, but she was sure that sitting here crying into her tea wasn't it.

She tossed a few coins onto the table, bade the barman good morning, and then headed out into the street. The sun had come up more fully, and the day was clear. So much for London fog; the white rotunda of the British Museum glowed in the light, and all the surrounding buildings seemed freshly polished, as though the barman from The Rose and Stag had given them a swipe with his rag.

Carson stopped on a sidewalk and tried to get her bearings. During that talk on the lawn with Alec back home in Connecticut, she had vowed to learn to trust herself, and to do so by living moment to moment, step-by-step. And the first step she'd taken that night was toward Alec. Now Carson didn't know where her steps would take her—whether she would somehow stumble toward some possible resolution to the problem of Alec's imprisonment or simply go in circles. All she knew was that she had to take steps, to
walk,
and then to keep walking, as though a destination might appear to her through the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other long enough.

And so, she walked. She passed row houses
and tube stations. She passed bookstores and shuttered restaurants. She passed flower shops and fruiterers, and still she walked. She walked along the Thames, she walked among the colonies of pigeons of Trafalgar Square, and she walked past the long row of imposing white marble buildings of Pall Mall. And still she walked, aimlessly yet determined, until finally, when her feet were starting to ache inside the only pair of shoes she'd brought with her to London, she realized where it was she wanted to go, and understood that she wasn't very far away.

Carson's sense of direction had never been very strong, yet somehow she'd seemed to have absorbed bits and pieces of the street map of London during her brief stay there in the summer. So it was that she'd unconsciously wandered toward the vicinity of Claridge's Hotel, where her aunt and uncle lived.

The stone facade of the building was pristine in the early morning light. A doorman in pressed uniform and white gloves—as formal in bearing as a Buckingham Palace beefeater—held open the front door, and Carson walked inside. She thought of her first day in England, earlier that same year, and how she'd arrived at this very hotel, knowing nothing about the world. Frightened. Shy. Out of her element. That first day she'd let her aunt and uncle do most of the talking, and allowed herself the luxury of simply sitting back and basking in the glow of their knowledge and sophistication.

But today, months after that first morning, Carson strode through the lobby of Claridge's with a sense of purpose, even righteousness. She'd trusted Uncle Lawrence, and look what had happened. She needed to confront him face-to-face, to make him talk to her, to force him to reveal more specifics about the case he was helping to build against Alec.

Carson pressed the button on the elevator, and the door slid to one side, folding over itself. She walked into the gilt cage and asked the elevator man to press three, which he did with one gloved finger and a somber nod. As the lift ascended, Carson thought of her uncle's flushed, angry face when he appeared at the doorstep of Mrs. Bertram's yesterday.

If her uncle and Alec were right about war being inevitable, then it was even more urgent to help Alec now. As difficult as it might be to clear Alec under the present turbulent circumstances, after war broke out it would be impossible to find anyone willing to stick his neck out in defense of Alec—Alec the traitor, Alec the German-lover, Alec the “guilty-until-proven-innocent.” Not that Carson had any idea what she could possibly say to her uncle to convince him to tell her what kind of evidence the government had collected in its case against Alec. But her intuition, moment to moment, step-by-step, had taken her this far, and now she had to trust herself to do what was next, whatever it was.

“Three, miss,” the elevator man was saying.

“Oh. Thank you. Sorry,” said Carson, for the elevator doors had been opened for a moment, and she was expected to leave.

Carson stepped onto the pale, deep carpet of Claridge's hallway. She turned and walked along the long corridor toward the door at the far end. When she arrived at Suite 306 she knocked sharply, and then waited.

So: What was it going to be? What would she say? Or, as Alec might ask, “And then what?”

I'll think of something,
Carson told herself, and she almost smiled.

“Coming,” came a muffled voice from the other side of the door. It wasn't Jane's voice; and it certainly wasn't Lawrence's. It was a woman's voice, and it might very well have belonged to a hotel maid or to one of Lawrence's secretaries. Yet Carson thought it sounded familiar somehow, though she couldn't quite place it.

There was a fumbling with a latch, and then the turning of a lock. And then the door swung open.

And there standing opposite Carson Weatherell, across the threshold of Suite 306 in Claridge's Hotel, London, England, was her own mother.

C
arson.”

With just one word, Philippa managed to convey equal parts relief at seeing her daughter again and disapproval at what Carson had done. She stepped across the threshold of the hotel suite, opened her arms, and wrapped Carson in a tearful embrace. Carson, stunned, stood still, swaying only to the extent that her mother's attentions demanded.

“Oh, Carson, darling,” Philippa said, pulling herself back and gripping Carson by both shoulders, “you've had us all worried sick. Thank God you're all right. Thank God I've found you.”

But I didn't
want
to be found,
Carson said to herself.
That was the whole point of my note.
But already her mother had turned and was heading
back down the entrance hall into the suite, and Carson had no choice but to follow if she wanted to see Lawrence. She turned a corner and entered the drawing room, where she found Jane waiting, standing at the far end, arms crossed, posture straight, and Carson somehow sensed that her aunt and her mother had been having an argument. Jane, seeing who the visitor was, unfolded her arms now and smiled and crossed to Carson, giving her niece a kiss on both cheeks. “Carson,” she said. “This
is
a pleasant surprise.”

“Well, this isn't,” Carson said, gesturing toward Philippa. “Mother,” she said, “what
are
you doing here?”

“Well,” her mother began, easing herself onto the couch and patting the cushion next to her, indicating that Carson should sit there, “it wasn't easy, let me tell you. When we found that awful note of yours, it gave us quite a fright, as you can imagine. Your father and I simply had no idea what to do. At first we thought that surely you would come to your senses and telephone us. But then, when you didn't, I had a hunch this disappearing act of yours might have something to do with that man Jane had written me about during the summer, the one who'd been sending you all those letters. And that's when I thought to telephone Jane.”

“It was Lawrie who knew your exact whereabouts, actually,” Jane spoke up, seating herself in the chair opposite Carson and Philippa, the same one where Carson had sat on her first day in Lon
don. “When he got home from work that day, I told him about Philippa's call. He seemed hesitant at first, and then he made me promise not to ask him how or why he knew, but in the end he said I could ring Philippa back and tell her that Carson was on board a ship that had just sailed from New York for Southampton. He also said I was to instruct Philippa that she was not to interfere. No cables to the ship, for instance. Matters were to be allowed to ‘run their course,' was how he put it. It was all very mysterious, especially as it concerned you and Alec, but one learns not to ask questions after a while, when one is married to someone in British intelligence.”

“So,” Philippa said, “I simply booked passage on the next available transatlantic crossing, as you might imagine.”

“No, actually, I
can't
imagine,” said Carson. “Why would you need to come all the way here?”

“Why, to make sure you were safe, Carson darling.”

“But you could have simply asked Jane to do that.”

“Yes, well,” Jane herself said, reaching down to the silver service on the table and pouring coffee into a fresh cup. “My sister doesn't exactly approve of my influence on you, as I've been hearing from her this morning. You take your coffee black, as I recall,” she went on, nudging the cup and saucer across the table toward Carson.

“All I know,” Philippa said, “is that when Carson left for Europe this summer she was a cheer
ful, outgoing young woman with a full social calendar and her pick of the eligible well-to-do young men in Marlowe, and when she came back she was a morose, moody homebody with some sort of fixation on, well, I'm not sure what.”

“She'd fallen in love, Philippa,” said Jane. “What was I to do—deny her one of life's greatest pleasures and mysteries?”

“Love,”
Philippa repeated, adding a mildly derisive timbre to the word. “This wasn't love. This was…I don't know what. Infatuation. Obsession. Sorry, dear,” she went on, turning to Carson, planting a hand on her knee, “but you can't blame me for saying what I think.”

“You wouldn't be saying any of this if you saw what I saw this summer,” Jane said to Philippa, then turned to Carson. “The way you and Alec behaved around each other—my God, it was like looking at myself and Lawrie about a million years ago, back when we decided to get married.”

“Carson is hardly old enough to be entrusted with making such decisions,” said Philippa.

“Why, she's the same age I was when I met Lawrie,” said Jane.

“As I say,” said Philippa, and Jane stiffened as if she'd been slapped.

“Enough!” said Carson. She had to wonder what exactly was going on here. Somehow this morning she'd found her way to the hotel without really knowing where she was heading; then once she'd gotten here, she realized exactly what she wanted: information from her uncle. What
she'd gotten instead was her mother and aunt in midargument—an argument, moreover, that at first impression might seem to be about
her,
as if she were some sort of trophy, but that actually centered around, Carson suspected, some ancient rivalry between the two sisters.
That's
what got her mother on a transatlantic ship, Carson thought: not her daughter; her sister. “Look,” Carson said now, “I haven't come back to England just because I love Alec. And I
do
love Alec,” she emphasized for the benefit of her mother, who simply pursed her lips and looked in the other direction. “But there's something far more important going on here, and I really must speak to Lawrence about it.”

“In that case I'm afraid you've just missed him,” Jane answered. “He's gone to the office.”

“Oh, no.” Carson fell back against the couch cushion.

“He left rather early for him—I suspect when he saw where my conversation with Philippa was headed,” Jane said. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

“No,” Carson said, her voice empty of emotion. Then, after a moment, she added, “You really don't know what I'm talking about? What's going on here? Why I've come all this way back to England?”

Her aunt shook her head. “As I said, Lawrie tells me little about his work. Nothing, is more like it. And I do take it that this has something to do with his work, though I can't imagine how.”

Carson nodded numbly. She was already thinking of how she would have to track Lawrence down at his office, and as unlikely as prying information out of him here at home might have been, even if Jane had helped, it seemed ridiculous to hope to do so at the ministry itself.

Carson looked up at her aunt. Jane was looking back at her, eagerly, ready to assist as always. Carson thought of that moment on the train during the return trip to Paris, when Jane had offered to be Carson's confidante, and Carson had declined out of some sense of loyalty to Lawrence. But where had that loyalty gotten her? Where had her loyalty to Lawrence gotten
Alec
? And then Carson thought about how she'd told Jane on the train that one day she
would
confide in her.

That day had come, Carson decided.

She didn't see how telling Alec's story to her aunt, let alone her mother, might help, but neither did she see what else she could do. Anyway, who knew? Maybe it
would
help in some way she couldn't anticipate.

“Look,” Carson said, “what I'm about to tell you—well, it's something I probably
shouldn't
be telling you. But I don't see any other way out right now.”

“Oh, don't be so melodramatic, Carson,” said her mother.

But already Carson was gathering herself. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then launched into the story of Alec and the Watchers.
She began in Lawrence's study on that afternoon in Sintra and the role she'd been asked to play with Alec over the following three days, continued back in the States with the letters she'd received from Alec as well as his midnight visit to Marlowe, and concluded with the events of the past forty-eight hours, ever since she and Alec had appeared on Mrs. Bertram's doorstep and right up through Carson's arrival at Claridge's and what she'd hoped to ask Lawrence.

When she was done, Philippa blinked at her several times, as if Carson had suddenly popped into the room from another planet. Finally, rather blankly, she said—and it was equally a statement and a question: “So my daughter is a spy?”

But it was Jane who let out a small gasp, and then another, and then said, “Oh, my poor girl. My poor, poor girl.” Jane got up from her chair and crossed to Carson, squeezing beside her on the couch and wrapping her arms around her niece. Carson leaned into her, resting her head on Jane's shoulder, hugging her aunt back. After a moment, though, she felt Jane's mouth moving at her ear. “Lawrence couldn't have known what he was asking of you,” her aunt whispered. “In Portugal, those last three days. With Alec.
You
know what I mean.”

Carson pulled back and looked at her aunt. “You knew?”

“Knew what?” said her mother, but Jane was speaking only to Carson now.

“As I said,” Jane said, “you reminded me of
Lawrie and myself. The way you prepared for him, getting dressed, trying to look a certain way. And then the way you seemed whenever you returned to Sintra from an afternoon in Lisbon. How”—a darting glance here past Carson to Philippa, then back to Carson—“
worldly
you were. My God,” she went on, “I can't imagine what it was like for you those final days there, thinking what you thought about Alec, but having to, to, to…pretend to love him anyway.”

Carson closed her eyes, not so much to ward off the pain of the memory as to compose herself. Her aunt knew about the full nature of her relationship with Alec, had known all along, had done nothing to interfere. Had approved, perhaps.

Carson lowered her aunt's arms from her own shoulders, took her aunt's hands into her own, and gave them a squeeze. “The thing is,” she said, “despite everything Uncle Lawrence says, I believe Alec now. I know,” she hurried on, “it must sound foolish. Crazy.”

“Not to me—” Jane began.

“Well, it does to me,” Philippa interrupted.

“—but I don't know what I could possibly do to help you,” Jane went on. “I can't just go up to Lawrie when he comes home from the office tonight and ask him what evidence they have regarding Alec. First, he'd never give it to me, and second, it wouldn't exactly improve his estimation of you if he knew you'd told me. Told
us,
” she added, looking past Carson again to Philippa.
“
Two
people who have no business knowing. Unless…”

Jane turned her face away from Carson and, after a moment, slowly stood up. Carson craned forward slightly.

“Unless?” she said.

“There is one possibility,” her aunt said. “No, I couldn't.”

“Couldn't…what?” Carson prompted.

“It's out of the question, I'm afraid,” Jane said, crossing back to her chair.

“What is?” said Carson.

“Now that I think about it, I don't even understand what good this information you want from Lawrence would do you anyway. How would knowing what evidence they have against Alec help?”

Carson shook her head. “I don't know. I can't say. Maybe it
wouldn't
help. But it would be
something,
wouldn't it, Jane? It would be information, which is more than I have now. I can believe in Alec all I want, but the faith of a foolish young girl isn't going to mean much to the authorities.”

“So you're out to prove Alec's innocence? That's a rather tall order.”

“I don't know what I'm out to do,” Carson said miserably, running a hand through her hair. “But I do know this: These last few days I've learned to trust myself, or tried to, anyway. I've learned to follow my intuition. And my intuition right now is telling me that at the very least I should know
why
Alec is in prison.”

Jane stood quite still. Her arms were folded in front of her, and her posture was rigid; she looked just as she had when Carson entered the room this morning, though this time the argument she seemed to be having wasn't with Philippa but with herself. A full minute passed while Jane stood absolutely still and gazed off toward a window. Outside, the branches of a tree moved slightly. They were mostly bare, and their bareness somehow looked more white than brown in the glare of the morning sun. Every so often a car horn sounded. A whistle shrilled; the beefeater-like hotel doorman must be calling for a taxicab. Finally Jane returned her gaze to Carson.

“I can't,” she said. “I'm sorry, Carson. Truly I am. Lawrence trusts me, and I would never do anything to betray that trust. I do hope you understand. You must. Lawrie and I—well, we trust each other the way you and Alec trust each other.”

Carson was silent, considering this. “If that's true,” she then said calmly, “surely he trusts you to do what
you
think is right.”

At this, Jane straightened even more, if possible, and her eyes narrowed at Carson. Her aunt, Carson thought, was regarding her with a new appreciation, though what she might conclude from this fresh analysis was anybody's guess. But then Jane allowed herself a slight smile, gave her head a little shake, and turned to her sister.

“This young generation, Philippa,” she said. “What
are
we going to do with them? You. Come,” she added to Carson.

Carson hopped off the couch and followed her aunt down a hall and into the bedroom area of the suite. Off the master bedroom was a smaller room that had a desk and bookshelves. This, Carson supposed, was Lawrence's study. Without pausing, Jane opened his desk drawers one by one. “Now, let's see, where does he keep this old thing?” she muttered to herself.