Night Train to Lisbon (6 page)

 

The following morning, he telephoned. Jane answered the phone while Carson was sitting outside on the back porch, sketching the surrounding countryside, and Carson heard her aunt carrying on a friendly but slightly formal conversation. “Just a moment,” Jane finally said. “I'll see if she's available.”

Jane appeared outside on the porch and said quietly, “Carson, that young man is on the phone. The one from the train. You know, the one who joined us for dinner that night. Alex, I believe his name is?”

“Alec,” corrected Carson, her voice betraying nothing, but within herself she was imploding. Her heart had been set racing, and when she entered the large living room now and picked up the telephone receiver, her hand shook slightly.

“Hello?”

“Is that Carson?” asked Alec. His voice sounded tinny and distant.

“Yes, it is.”

“Hello there. Alec Breve speaking. Are you doing all right in Sintra? Country agreeing with you and all that?”

“Oh, yes,” she said lightly. “Everything is terrific. We've been exploring the area, and it's quite interesting.”

“Wish I had time to sightsee,” said Alec, “but the conference keeps me busy. However, tomorrow night, it turns out, there's nothing on my schedule, and I was wondering if you were free to attend the theater with me. You may recall I mentioned there's a production of
Roméo y Julieta
here in Lisboa—I mean Lisbon. You see, I'm already picking up the local words.”

“Romeo and Juliet,”
said Carson. “Yes, I'd really like to go. I'll have to ask permission first.”

“Of course,” said Alec. “You can telephone me back, if you like, here at the Pensão Moderna. Just ask for the bookish, gangly
senhor
in room twenty-three.”

“You're hardly that,” Carson said before she could stop herself, and then she was embarrassed.

She hung up the phone, and closed her eyes briefly. Alec's voice hadn't been in the slightest flirtatious. He had spoken, in fact, as though they were simply two people who had met aboard the night train to Lisbon, and who had in common the fact that both of them spoke English. Perhaps
that was the main feature they did share, although, as they stood out on the train platform together, their bond had been strong and undeniably sensual.

She was completely new to this sort of thing. Entanglements. Unspoken words and feelings. The way men and women were supposed to keep their true thoughts and desires hidden from the rest of the world, lest anybody find out. The subtle game that was played between interested parties. And apparently Alec
was
an interested party; apparently the kiss hadn't been a disaster. She'd kissed him like she'd meant it, because she had meant it. It hadn't taken any dissembling on her part.

But later on that night, at dinner with her aunt and uncle in the plaza downtown in Sintra, sitting under the moon, the palm fronds rubbing lightly together all around them, a band of mariachis seranading the tables with a mournful rendition of “Manha de Carnaval,” Carson felt she ought to present her desire to meet Alec in Lisbon in as light and casual a way as possible.

“So,” she said as she selected a morsel of
escabeche
—local uncooked fish delicately marinated in lime juice—and raised it to her mouth, “I've been invited to a Shakespeare play.”

“Ah. The bard himself. I knew him well,” said Lawrence, and it took Carson half a moment before she realized he was paraphrasing a line from Shakespeare. He looked at her across the table with its white cloth and glittering glasses half filled with local white sangria and floating
chunks of apple and melon. “I'm glad you'll be getting some culture this summer,” he continued drily. “I know how important that is to you.” And then he drained his glass.

Carson pretended not to notice the irony at work here. But clearly Lawrence was slightly uncomfortable with Carson going off to the city with a man she'd just met on the train.
What would your mother think?
That was the subtext of Lawrence's concern, though he hadn't said a word. Aunt Jane didn't offer an opinion, though Carson secretly hoped—and suspected—that her aunt was rooting her on. After all, Aunt Jane had been just a year beyond Carson's current age when she'd traveled abroad and fallen in love with an English civil servant. Carson had grown up hearing from her mother how Aunt Jane had shocked the entire family when she'd announced that she loved this young Brit named Lawrence Emmett, and that they were planning to be married. Carson's own mother, Philippa, had taken the safer course, marrying Arthur Weatherell, whom the entire family knew and approved of, and who was sure to provide well for her. But Lawrence Emmett was an unknown, an X factor from the other side of the ocean, and no one had known what to expect of him. Happily, the marriage had worked out well, and no one ever complained again, but surely Jane could still remember what tensions she'd created in her own family when she'd fallen in love with someone who hadn't been approved of in advance.

And surely, too, Jane was looking across the dinner table at her niece with something approaching admiration. “Honestly, Lawrie,” Jane murmured. “Leave the poor girl alone. She's just trying to have a little fun. You remember fun, don't you? It's spelled
F-U-N,
and it tends to happen to young people,
if
they're lucky.”

“Don't patronize me, Jane,” said her husband. “We promised your sister that we'd protect Carson this summer, not expose her to all kinds of people we know nothing about.”

“Oh, but we do know about him,” said Jane. “I found him to be perfectly charming, and I thought you did, too.”

Lawrence grumbled something that Carson couldn't hear, because just at that moment, the mariachis reached a climactic moment in their ballad, and the guitars were suddenly strummed very loudly. But the upshot of the discussion was that Carson would apparently be allowed to attend the Shakespeare play with Alec in Lisbon, provided he return her to the villa by midnight.

“Or else my coach will turn into a pumpkin?” Carson teased her aunt and uncle.

“Something like that,” said Lawrence, and she could see a smile playing on the edges of his lips. “All right, all right,” he conceded. “I suppose I am a worrywart. But we've been entrusted with your care this summer, and you're still quite young.”

“I know that, Lawrence,” Carson said. She had begun to enjoy casting the word
uncle
aside.
She'd decided that it made her feel far more sophisticated than she really was.

“But what else is being young for,” put in Jane, “if not for moments like these?”

So the following day, Carson boarded a local train in the center of Sintra and traveled to Lisbon. This time, she sat in a compartment full of well-dressed and proper Portuguese men and women. No one spoke English, and all the men smoked. Though Carson was just beginning to pick up some of the language—
ola
for “hello,” and
obrigado
for “thank you,” and
Quanto custa?
for the tourist's most necessary question, “How much does this cost?”—the culture still felt exotic, yet she wasn't anxious. She had somewhere to go, and someone who was meeting her there.

Sure enough, barely an hour later, there he was at the Rossio train station in Lisbon, standing out on the boiling platform in the same suit jacket and shirt he'd worn on the train, tieless and open-collared, his face a high color, his expression expectant. He squinted out at the train as it slowly chugged into the station with a few sluggish blasts of steam and soot, and then ground to a halt.

“You came,” Alec said as he took her hand and helped her down off the metal stairs.

“You didn't think I would?” she asked.

“Wasn't sure,” he admitted. “Actually, I thought it was rather impressive that you'd said yes in the first place. But whether or not you'd really show up—well, that was another point en
tirely. But I had faith,” he went on as he led her through the station. Here and there, vendors were selling bunches of local flowers in cones of newsprint, and small paper bags of freshly fried almonds, the hot oil seeping through the bag, and brightly colored scoops of ice cream, known here as
sorveto.

Once out of the Estação Rossio, they strolled through the maze of small streets together, passing through the Baixa section, Lisbon's old business district, with elegant buildings and stone streets, heading toward the Tague River, where they stopped by the rail and looked out for a few moments. Alec bought Carson and himself some lemon soda, and the two of them held the small greenish bottles in their hands and drank and talked shyly.

“Do you like Portugal?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said immediately. “Though I haven't seen much yet. Just what my uncle and aunt have shown me. A bit of local tourism and the antiquities of Sintra. Moorish castles, very beautiful. And in a few days we're all going to the beach. How about you?” she asked.

“Well, I haven't seen very much either,” said Alec. “Mostly I've been in conferences. Not very exciting, I'm afraid. Lots of blowhards from around the world, speaking through simultaneous interpreters. But I'm giving my little lecture tomorrow. Think I'd better do something to liven it up. I don't know, maybe I should use hand puppets in my presentation, what do you think?”

Carson laughed. “Hand puppets, definitely,” she said. “And musical accompaniment, too, I hope.”

“Definitely music,” Alec agreed. “In fact, I'm hiring a mariachi band. They'll play that famous, sentimental, international favorite, ‘Electrical Conductors and Alternating-Current Receptivity.'”

They both laughed easily together, before beginning to talk more seriously. “Are you nervous?” she asked, referring to the lecture.

He paused, looking at her, considering the question. “A little, I think,” he finally said. “I've spoken in public before, but only to groups of well-wishers, never anybody particularly important. It's not that this conference is bound to make my name, exactly…though if my paper goes over poorly, it certainly will be a bit of a blow.”

“I'm sure it won't go over poorly,” said Carson.

“How do you know?” he asked.

“I can tell.”

There was a pause, and then Alec asked her, “Are
you
nervous?”

She was thrown by the question for a moment, for of course she wasn't going to be presenting a paper, but then she understood that he was asking her if she was nervous right now. Here, with him.

Carson was aware that she actually felt comfortable with Alec. Her nervousness had dissipated. If he were to kiss her again today, she would not be as shocked as she'd been on the
train. She hoped he
would
kiss her again; now that he'd called, now that they were together again, she rather expected that he was going to do so before the day was over. Oddly, a sense of calm flooded her.

“No,” she said to him. “I'm not nervous.”

“Good,” said Alec. “I'm glad.” Then he took her hand and led her away from the water. They hopped on a bus and headed to the Bairro Alto, an area of the city that was heavily populated by young Portuguese men and women. The neighborhood was anything but fancy; there were plenty of narrow streets and flights of stone stairs and Baroque churches, mixed in with little stores. A fish vendor called out the exotic names of his wares on a corner, and three fat ladies dressed in widow's black hovered around his cart, examining the merchandise. In a small jewelry shop called Fragil, Carson admired a simple bracelet with blue beads, and Alec immediately bought it for her.

“No, no,” she protested, but he insisted. The bracelet was inexpensive, but Carson knew that Alec lived on a tutor's wage, and that money surely was scant. She had her own money with her; her parents had sent her to Europe well prepared. But she didn't want to make him feel bad, and so she accepted the gift. They stood outside on the Rua de Carmo while he opened the clasp and slipped it onto her wrist. The tiny blue beads looked beautiful against her slender white arm.

“Lovely,” he said quietly, and Carson just nodded.

After they'd wandered the city and shopped some more (Carson bought candles for her aunt and uncle, as well as soap and perfume for her parents), then stopped in a café for iced, sweet Portuguese coffee, the sky darkened and they made their way to a restaurant that Alec said he'd read about in his Baedeker guidebook. “It's supposed to be excellent,” he said. “Wonderful seafood, the book said.”

What the Baedeker had not said about the Restaurante Estrela do Chiado was that it was also a very romantic spot. Carson and Alec had their meal on the patio out back, beneath the stars and a line of laundry hanging distantly from a building high above, and the sounds of children's voices echoing in the evening. The tables were spaced far enough apart to give the diners their privacy. Carson and Alec sat facing each other, speaking only when they really wanted to. The occasional waves of silence did not really need to be filled; Carson and Alec were simply enjoying being together at this table, in this place. Food was almost an afterthought. Carson realized that she hadn't thought once all day about that night on the train. She didn't need to now. Now she was here, with him.

“I've heard that there is a local classic dish in Lisbon,” Alec finally told her when the waiter had brought their menus, “called
bacalhau cozido com grao e batatas.”

“It sounds exotic,” said Carson.

“Not really,” Alec said. “It's just codfish, chick
peas, and potatoes. Ingredients that you have eaten separately before in America, I presume, but the combination is supposed to be pretty great.”

They both ordered the
bacalhau,
and it was garlicky and delicious, and when they were done and Alec had paid the bill, they headed toward the nearby outdoor amphitheater for the Shakespeare performance. There was a preponderance of couples in attendance, Carson realized as they took their seats on curved, rustic wooden bleachers. All around her, other young men and women sat closely, arms entwined. She and Alec, they weren't a couple, not really, but here at this theater, everyone who saw them would certainly think they were.
We look good together,
Carson thought. She was delicate-boned, blond, and fair-skinned, and he was darker, brown-haired, and angular.