Night Train to Lisbon (9 page)

How could she be without him? She could, but she didn't want to. He was right; he would have to come be with her in Connecticut in the winter.

And yet, and yet…

As she looked from face to face around this table, she knew that his friends had started to become part of her, too. What if she didn't return home, but in fact stayed on in Europe? What if she and Alec lived together in England? They'd have no money, but so what? There were other things that mattered more than material possessions. In the back of her mind she heard the words
Fascists
and
Germany
and
Nazi Party
and
war,
which all served as a kind of Greek chorus to remind her of the real dangers that existed here in Europe, but somehow she didn't believe them. They seemed so far away from this idyllic spot, this tiny café called João, where the
caipiroscas
went down sweet and easy.

Later, at the bus stop, Alec kissed her dozens of times, unwilling to part, wanting to taste her lips one final time, even though they would be seeing each other the next afternoon.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” he said quietly, playfully, but still with a sense of urgency.

“You're drunk, Alec,” said Carson.

“Yes, I know,” he said, lightly playing with the blue-beaded bracelet on her wrist, turning it around and around. “But it doesn't matter. With or without the drinks, I still love you. You know I do.”

“Yes,” she said, pressing him harder against her. “I know.”

When the old bus arrived at the stop and Carson stepped on, Alec held her hand for one second and spoke a single incomprehensible line in Portuguese.

“What's that mean?” she asked.

“‘Parting is such sweet sorrow,'” he said.

 

Moving from the bliss of being with Alec to the far more mundane environment of her aunt and uncle's household was no small feat. After the bus pulled into Sintra, Carson had hurried home, arriving just in time for dinner.

“Ah, Carson, good, you're here,” called Jane as her niece pushed open the heavy front door of the villa. “I could use a little help with the salad, if you don't mind.”

The comment was said lightly and without the slightest audible trace of annoyance, yet somehow Carson felt there was a bit of pointed criticism beneath her benign words. After Carson freshened up, she entered the kitchen, smoothly going to stand beside Jane at the counter and begin to chop vegetables for the salad. She held the small knife in her hand and let the blade fall repeatedly against the head of lettuce and the onion, trying to appear casual and nonchalant, but she realized that her hand was shaking slightly.

“So,” Carson said, “what did you do today, Jane?”

“Oh, not much,” her aunt admitted. “Lawrence received a telegram, of all things; I guess his work
never really does end, does it, even when he's on vacation. We had been planning to take a picnic lunch out to the beach, and perhaps get some sun and surf, but oh, no, he decided he suddenly
had
to respond to the telegram by making a telephone call. And the telephone service here is so primitive—it's practically two cups and some string—so it took him forever to get a line abroad. He had to wait for the operator, and that took practically all afternoon. So my lovely picnic was ruined. I had bought some
bacalhau,
and some delicious local olives, too. Oh, well.”

Carson looked up at her aunt and realized that her expression wasn't one of disapproval toward Carson, but rather discontent with her own life right now, with having a husband who was often unavailable, even on vacation.

“I'm sorry,” Carson said softly. “You must have been very disappointed.”

“Well, I was, I suppose,” said Jane. “It's silly, isn't it? You marry someone and expect your relationship to be as romantic as it was the day you first met. You tell yourself it will be, that you two will be different. But then work slowly and surely gets in the way. It always does, especially when you're married to someone who works for one of the ministries.”

“Tell you what,” said Carson suddenly. “Tomorrow, let's you and I do something together.” She would have to call Alec and break their date for the afternoon, and then one more day would be crossed off the calendar before he left Carson
and returned to Cambridge. But Carson loved her aunt, too—not in the same way she loved Alec, of course, but Carson was willing to sacrifice even one of her precious few days with Alec if it meant restoring some measure of her aunt's happiness. “Maybe we can go to the beach and have that picnic you wanted.”

“No, no, I know you're busy, too,” said Jane. “You and Alec, I'm sure you both want to spend as much time together as you can.”

“Well, yes, but I want to be with you, too,” said Carson.

Her aunt hesitated then, and turned to Carson, but before she could give her answer, Lawrence appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Hello, Carson,” he said in a flat voice.

“Oh, Lawrie, dinner's not ready yet,” said Jane, blinking and turning away from Carson, plunging her hands back into the water in the sink where the lettuce leaves were soaking. “Go back to whatever important thing you were doing.”

“I didn't come for food,” Lawrence said. “I came for Carson.”

“Me?” Carson put down the knife and looked at her uncle quizzically, but he only nodded. “You want to talk to me?”

“Yes, very much,” he said.

So this was going to be it. The big scold. He'd somehow found out that his niece had actually become lovers with Alec Breve, and he was going to insist on breaking it up. He was furious with
her. Carson felt the muscles in her stomach tighten as she girded herself for the argument that was sure to follow, the wearisome back-and-forth volley of:
I love him madly
and
But you're too young.

“Come into my study, Carson, all right?” Lawrence asked, and Carson nodded, wiping her hands on a cloth towel before following him out of the kitchen and across the cool red tile floor.

Carson entered her uncle's study, and he closed the door behind her with a quiet click. When he turned around to face her, she saw that his expression wasn't at all angry. In fact, it seemed more sad than anything else, and suddenly Carson was frightened.

“Please sit down,” her uncle said. “There's something I need to tell you.”

C
arson reached behind her, found the chair cushion, slowly sat down across from her uncle. Lawrence removed his glasses, folded them up, and sighed, shaking his head. “What I have to tell you,” he said, “is difficult for me. But it will be much more difficult for you; I'm well aware of that, believe me.”

Oh God, something has happened to one of my parents,
Carson thought. A car accident, she imagined, and she closed her eyes as if to ward off the blow of terrible news.

But when Lawrence spoke again he surprised her. “It's about Alec,” he said.

Alec? She had just left him in Lisbon; surely nothing could have happened to him.

“I received a telegram today,” Lawrence continued. “It was from London, from the undersec
retary at the Ministry of Defence. The contents of the telegram are classified. Urgently so. Yet I have been sitting here all afternoon since it arrived, trying my damned best to figure out how to handle what is clearly a very delicate and pressing situation. And I've decided, Carson, that there's really no way to keep you in the dark. That, in fact, it's essential that you
not
be kept in the dark.”

“I don't understand,” Carson interrupted. “What are you telling me?”

“I'm telling you,” Lawrence began, “that your Alec Breve is not who you think he is. That he's not simply a hardworking young academic physicist on the side of God and the Queen.” Lawrence's voice was sour as he spoke. “That in fact he's a member of a pro-Fascist group that calls itself the Watchers. That he is sharing his expanding store of highly technical information with young German scientists who are essentially his counterparts.”

All Carson could do was laugh. Her laughter came out louder than she'd thought. “This is the craziest thing I've ever heard,” she said. “Your information is completely wrong. It's so wrong it's insane,” she went on. “I mean, Alec is concerned about the situation in Germany the way his friends are. I've heard him speak about it. But how could he have ‘highly technical' information that would be useful? He studies
heat.
”

But Lawerence shook his head. “No,” he said. “I'm afraid it's not that simple, Carson. Alec also studied radio waves when he was at Cambridge.
He was a top student in those classes. We have suspicions that he is instructing the Germans in technologies for intercepting British telegraphic codes. And should there be another war…”

His voice faltered here, and then he shifted in his chair, his tone softening just slightly. He looked up at her, and then down at the letter opener on his blotter. He pushed it one way across the felt fabric, then another.

“Look, Carson, I do know this is tough for you. But it's true. We know Alec is involved with the Watchers. We have proof.”

“What proof?” she said.

Her uncle opened his mouth, then shook his head. “I can't say,” he finally answered her. “It would be a breach of security. Already I've had to go through extraordinary channels just to be able to divulge what little I've already told you. Ever since I received the cable this afternoon, I've been on the telephone to Whitehall securing clearance for you to know even this much.” He glanced up at her, and for a moment she actually felt sorry for him. Clearly this conversation was taking a toll on her uncle. His eyes were sorrowful, as if asking his niece for forgiveness.

“Maybe there's been a mistake,” she said. “Some horrible misunderstanding.”

But already her uncle was shaking his head. “I'm afraid not, Carson. The evidence is, shall I say, compelling.” He looked her in the eye. “It's
him.
”

“Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?”

“Yes, well”—he cleared his throat—“this isn't a court of law, and I'm afraid that sometimes legal niceties are among the first victims of war.”

“But there is no war.”

“Don't kid yourself, Carson. This is very grave business, and these are very grave times. It's one thing to be pro-Fascist, a follower of Sir Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirt crowd. And you're right, you can't convict someone for what's in his heart. People are allowed to meet and discuss political convictions, no matter how heinous they are to us. But when that person takes his sympathies and uses them to provide
classified information
to a country whose leadership is heading in an alarming direction—well, that's another matter entirely. Although on the surface I've tried to appear calm about the news that's coming out of Germany—the brutality of the Nazi party, the anti-immigration stance, the condoned violence toward Jews—in fact my colleagues and I are increasingly convinced that war is inevitable.”

He sighed deeply and shook his head. He glanced up at Carson, then back at the letter opener. He picked it up and absently ran a fingertip along the long golden wedge. “What does it take,” he asked, “to remind people that war is a nightmare from which recovery takes generations? Apparently, collective amnesia is in fashion. And people like your friend Alec are part of this. They feel that Germany has some good ideas. They think they have more in common with the German elite than the British lorry driv
ers. Some of them may loathe Hitler personally, but they also think, sometimes for ideological reasons, and other times purely for economic ones, that brokering a deal with the German party in power isn't such a bad thing for Britain. So they hold their noses and do it. Damn!”

He'd drawn blood. Lawrence dropped the letter opener to the desk blotter and examined the tip of his forefinger. A pin drop of red pooled there. Carson leaned forward in her chair and made a sympathetic sound, but Lawrence shook his head fiercely and stuck the fingertip to his lips. Somehow Carson knew that her uncle would disapprove of any offer of help now, as if her wanting to attend to a matter as minor as a flesh wound would have communicated to him that she didn't understand the importance of this conversation. So she sat back in her chair and tried to match his level of solemnity.

“For what it's worth,” Carson said, “I've never heard Alec utter one word that you might consider elitist, or anti-immigration, or anything else one of these Watchers would say. Really, if you knew Alec, really knew him the way I do, you'd see. He
isn't
very political.”

“Oh, please,” Lawrence snapped, “everyone's political. To live in the world is to be political. If you think you're exempt from it because you're young, or ‘not interested,' or not educated in the matter, well, you're sadly mistaken. Alec Breve is ‘interested' in politics, very much so, and so should you be. Just because Philippa has chosen
to raise you in such a sheltered manner doesn't mean she can actually shelter you.”

Carson opened her mouth to speak, perhaps to defend her mother's choices, but her uncle overrode her.

“Nor
should
she shelter you,” he said with emphasis. “Please forgive me for speaking harshly of Phil—” He caught himself, and softened his tone. “For speaking harshly of your mother. But these convictions of mine transcend family niceties now.” He looked up from his finger and met Carson's eyes. “You've come over here this summer, Carson, in order to see a little bit of the world. Perhaps you're seeing more of it than you bargained for. But that can't be helped. In fact, it's to be celebrated, don't you think?”

Carson didn't move. Neither did her uncle. The two of them simply sat there in the stifling heat of a summer afternoon in a villa in Portugal, and let the moment breathe.

Carson breathed. She felt herself breathe. She felt herself run the palm of her hand along the white cotton fabric that separated the outside world from the skin of her flat stomach, felt herself rub there, in a circle, as if to calm herself, to keep herself from breathing too hard, or from feeling too much.

She would have to choose. She had wanted the freedom to make her own choices in life, and now she had that freedom, and with it a choice beyond imagining. To one side was her uncle, spouting what seemed to her perfect nonsense. To the other
was her lover, professing his undying devotion. And in the middle was Carson, and the hell of it was that even though she was trying to compose herself and remain calm and tell herself that there must be a reasonable explanation for whatever it was some anonymous operative in British intelligence had supposedly discovered and passed along to her uncle, she could nonetheless feel even now a stab of uncertainty about Alec, a wedge of doubt widening inside her, as if her uncle's letter opener had pricked not his finger but her heart.

Yes, she knew Alec, knew him as well as she'd ever known anyone. Of that, she was sure. But, she had to ask herself, precisely how well
was
that? How well could anyone ever know someone else—
really
know,
truly
see into, the soul of another? Wasn't it, after all, difficult enough to know oneself? Wasn't this the lesson that Carson had been learning all summer, over and over again, ever since that afternoon on the aft deck of the
Queen Mary
when she'd decided that she wasn't the adventurous type after all? Wasn't that resolutely nonadventuring virginal homebody now an experienced woman with a lover who might be an international spy?

Carson almost laughed. But that would have been disrespectful of her uncle, disastrously so. What she wished she could do was to plead innocence—to confess a literal lack of experience. “Experienced” she might be, as the American euphemism went, but knowledgeable, and wise, and able to draw from the well of worldly endeavors, she most decidedly was not.

“Well,” she began, “if Alec really is a Fascist, as you say, then he's been able to successfully fool all his friends. You should hear them talk; they trust one another, they know one another intimately. They would be just as shocked by this news as I am.”

Her uncle, she could see from his overly earnest expression, was paying her the courtesy of a hearing. But that's
just
what he was paying her: a courtesy.
Don't patronize me,
he'd once snapped at his wife within Carson's earshot, in a momentary departure from their usual cheerful banter; even so, that's precisely what he was doing now to Carson. He was patronizing her, merely hearing her out, letting her expend her girlish exertions until, at last, she would come around to his inarguably airtight compendium of facts relating to the subject of one Alec Breve.
No, no, do go on—this is fascinating!
she could almost hear him say, even as he sighed inwardly.

What, she wondered, could she possibly do to show him she meant what she said—or, at the very least, to show him she deserved his respect?

And then she knew.

“What,” she said to her uncle, “do
you
think I should do?”

Uncle Lawrence raised his eyebrows. He'd probably been trained
not
to raise his eyebrows in a situation such as this, but there they were: eyebrows, up.

“Well,” he said, taking a deep breath, drawing back in his chair, his gaze raking the desktop,
“well, he's not to know we're on to him.” Then her uncle caught himself. He glanced up at Carson, and he leaned forward, placing his hands firmly on the blotter, splaying the fingertips. “Are you absolutely quite sure you're on board?”

“Oh, Uncle Lawrence,” she said, “I'm not sure of anything.”

Suddenly Carson collapsed, burying her head in her hands. She pitched forward, and it was as if everything she'd kept contained inside all summer had suddenly loosed itself. She pressed her forehead into her cool knees, knew somewhere in the back of her mind that her uncle would interpret this display as some sort of sign of weakness, and decided she didn't care. She heard her uncle give a guttural curse, and she heard the distant scraping of a chair, and then, after a moment, she felt his hands on her shoulders. She wished she could be stronger. She had so much
wanted
to be stronger. She had wanted to be strong, and simple, and uncomplicated. Uncomplicated, where she came from, was a virtue. But then, she had wanted Alec Breve to be uncomplicated, too. She had wished him to be a simple physicist who would follow her to the States. And maybe that's what he was, in fact. Or, maybe not. And it was in that shadowy realm of maybe/maybe-not that her uncle was now forcing her to dwell.

“None of us is,” she heard her uncle saying softly, gently, as he rubbed her shoulders. “Sure of anything, I mean. It just takes some of us longer to learn that lesson than others. And some
never learn. You're fortunate, Carson. You're learning it at an early age.”

“I don't feel very fortunate,” she said.

“No, I don't suppose you would,” her uncle said, releasing her shoulders.

Carson sat up. She wiped the back of her hand against her eyes. She smoothed her skirt. She nodded her head, indicating that she would be all right now.

“It's just so much to take in all at once,” she said. “I mean, it all just seems so incredible. That you should receive an urgent cable involving the very man I've happened to fall in love with.”

Her uncle didn't answer at first. After a moment, he came out from behind her chair and went back behind his desk. But he didn't sit. Instead, when he began speaking again, he was facing away from her, staring out the window.

“Yes, well, it's not quite a coincidence,” he said. “It turns out that he's why I'm here. Why you're here, and Jane. It isn't a coincidence that I chose a house to summer in just down the road, so to speak, from the most important physics conference of the year.”

“What?” Carson said.

“We've known for some time that someone at Cambridge has been getting military secrets to the Germans. We just haven't known who.” He turned back toward Carson, and the matter-of-factness in the tone of what he said next made Carson shiver. “Now we do.”