Night Train to Lisbon (3 page)

“‘Call it a day'? And what exactly does that mean?” her aunt asked.

“It means that I think I want to go home,” said Carson. “I've seen London and Paris. And I've seen a great deal of the inside of a Parisian toilet bowl. I think it's pretty much enough for one summer.”

“But what about Portugal?” said Aunt Jane with rising protest. “We've booked the train.
And
rented the house. We've got the entire summer there, Carson. Did you forget about that?”

“No,” said Carson. “But I just don't want to go. I want to go home.” In an even weaker voice, she added, “You've always asked for my honest response. Well, there it is.”

Her aunt stared at her with both pity and, Carson thought, some degree of contempt.

“For God's sake,” Aunt Jane said quietly. “I thought you were going to be different.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, nothing,” said her aunt.

“Please. Tell me,” said Carson.

Aunt Jane sighed and turned away, as if con
sidering carefully how to phrase what she wanted to say. She walked over to the window and pushed aside the drapes, then let them drop together again.

“Your mother and I—we were always very different,” she finally said. “Philippa stayed close to home, and I went off exploring. I guess I've always had a fantasy that you would take after me instead of your own mother.” Her aunt turned back to her. “Well, I suppose that was just my fantasy, wasn't it? The niece off in the States who was the spitting image of her aunt. The niece who longed for adventure, just like her aunt once did.”

Though she still felt weak and drained, Carson had enough energy left in her to take umbrage. “I could be like that,” she said, “if I wanted.”

“Well, then
show
it,” Aunt Jane said, crossing back to the foot of the bed. “Sure, it's fine to live a life like your mother does, staying in Connecticut and marrying the ‘right' sort of man. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, Carson.”

“Yes, you are,” Carson found herself replying. “You are, Aunt Jane.” She paused, shocked to hear herself standing up to her aunt. “I know my mother hasn't been very bold in her life. But she's happy, she really is. Some people want a life that's already laid out for them.”

Her aunt regarded Carson across the length of the bed.

“Yes, that's certainly true,” Aunt Jane finally said softly. She came and sat down beside her
niece on the blanket, taking Carson's hand in hers. “Which sort of person are you?” she asked. “Are you the kind who wants things to be a certain, safe way? Or are you the other kind?”

Carson, of course, knew the answer. She'd known it since that afternoon on the ship when she'd sat in the deck chair and stared out at the horizon and sorted out her feelings. But now she was sitting in a different place, with a different view. She looked about the room, at its long gold drapes through which she could just make out the warm light of a Paris afternoon. Those drapes, that window, was another kind of horizon, wasn't it? What lay beyond it? Carson could catch the sounds of people shouting in French, of horns honking, of horses' hooves clopping, of life being lived as surely as it was lived on the far quieter streets of Marlowe, Connecticut. And beyond Paris lay the rest of Europe—for Carson, the Continent remained undiscovered, unexplored, unknown.

What sort of person
was
she? She thought she'd known for sure, back on the ship. But maybe what she thought she'd known for sure was only what she'd always been told about herself. Maybe if she'd always been told something else—maybe if she'd been raised by her aunt instead of her mother—she'd be just as sure she was someone else, someone for whom change and possibilities and adventure were nectar, not poison.

Who was she? Suddenly she understood that
all an eighteen-year-old girl in her position could possibly know for certain was that there was no way to know yet. If she was indeed like her mother, there would be no shame in that. In learning this about herself, she would end up going back to Connecticut at the end of summer, ready to return to a life she understood. But if, somehow, she was
different,
then this, too, she would learn. And at the end of the summer she would return to Connecticut with this knowledge, facing a life that would hold…who knew what?

Carson Weatherell was tired and wrung out and confused. She was irritable from food poisoning and from being away from home, but she understood now that to turn her back on everything she was being offered would be not only selfish and insulting to her aunt and uncle, but also hurtful to herself.

She had to know who she was. Maybe she wouldn't find out here in Europe, but then again maybe she would. The prospect of an overnight train ride to Portugal was nerve-racking, not to mention uncomfortable sounding, but the thought of turning it down, after coming this far, was unforgivable.

“All right,” Carson said, gently pulling back the blanket beneath which she lay. “I'm in.”

T
he atmosphere inside an overnight train is very much its own world. As soon as you board and find your own compartment, you have entered a place unlike the one you have just left. Narrower, dimmer, and more dramatic: these are the qualities of train life, in which everything is compressed, and the rest of the world simply passes you by in a glassy blur of green and brown and gold.

This was what Carson noticed as she and her aunt arranged themselves inside their sleeping compartment in the Gare St. Lazare, on board the train that would soon be leaving for Lisbon. Uncle Lawrence had just arrived from London and met his wife and niece at the station, and was now settling into his adjoining compartment. He
was in a snappish mood, Carson noted, for he barely said hello and he muttered as he handed the porter his bags and briefcase, which was fairly bulging with work.

“Darling, you're not planning on working during the ride, are you?” Aunt Jane asked.

“I'm afraid I have to,” Uncle Lawrence replied. “There's nothing to be done about it. Whitehall has its needs, you know, which tend to override the needs of civil servants like me.”

Aunt Jane told Carson she was determined to let neither Uncle Lawrence's distractedness nor Carson's own reluctance to travel ruin the trip. “We're simply going to have fun,” said Jane, “and that's all there is to it.”

And Carson had to admit that there was something sort of grand and wonderful and nineteenth century about train travel. European trains were so different from trains in the States. Here, the first-class carriages seemed like old-fashioned coaches, their interiors decorated with inlaid wood and plush, faded maroon velvet and brass trim. The compartment meant for Carson and her aunt was surprisingly spacious, though the steamer trunk that the women were taking to Portugal took up a good deal of the space, even when stood on end. There were curtains sashed on the window, and a basket of fruit sitting on its wide ledge. A sliding glass door kept the women separate from the rest of the train, though every time someone passed by, Carson couldn't help but strain to catch a glimpse.

The other passengers on the Paris–Lisbon train spoke a variety of languages: French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, English, all of which came together as if in one mostly incomprehensible cloud above Carson's head. There were ladies dressed in chic tailored outfits and others in old-fashioned, heavy muslin mantillas; there were gentlemen in suits and some more casually attired. Children clattered loudly up and down the corridor, followed inevitably a moment later by nannies or mothers crying “
Pierre, arrête-toi!
” Or “Stop this moment, Edmund!”

Carson was still feeling somewhat weak from her bout of food poisoning in Paris, but something about the peculiar and peculiarly festive life inside this train was making her feel better rather quickly. In fact, when Aunt Jane asked if Carson wanted to rest before dinner, she shook her head.

“Can we go exploring instead?” she asked.

Her aunt looked at her with an expression that suggested she was trying to hide her surprise. “Of course, dear,” she said. “I'd like nothing better.”

The two women headed out of the sleeping compartment into the corridor. Next door, in his solitary sleeper, they could see Uncle Lawrence through his door, his head bent studiously over a sheaf of papers.

Aunt Jane sighed. “Carson,” she said over her shoulder as they made their way down the corridor, “when you meet a wonderful man someday, years from now, and fall in love, I only hope he doesn't have a mistress, like your uncle does.”

“Pardon?” said Carson.

But Aunt Jane only smiled. “I mean that your uncle's mistress is his
work,
” she said. “Sometimes, I can get extremely jealous of those endless sheets of paper he pores over.” She shrugged. “Oh, well,” she continued. “I'm so glad I've got you here on this journey to keep me company. We women need to stick together.”

As she threaded her way along the first-class corridor, Carson couldn't help peering into the other compartments. It was like racing through an art gallery at closing time, she thought; each glimpse through a glass door afforded a different combination of poses, of reading or talking or simply staring out at the countryside, but the theme of the various tableaux was the same: first-class passengers in quiet repose. Only at the very end of the car did she find a compartment with an atmosphere that seemed markedly different from the others'. All the passengers in here were young men in shirtsleeves, and they were playing cards, which were spread out on someone's upturned trunk, and they were drinking bottles of pop and smoking and talking in an animated fashion. Carson couldn't help herself. She paused, as if she needed a moment to fully absorb a scene where so much was happening at once, and all of it behind a scrim of smoke—as if it really were a scene being presented for her close consideration. The men were so intent on their cards, so serious, yet they were so obviously enjoying themselves, too, with their fast-moving mouths forming words
she couldn't hear. And then one of the men looked up from his fan of cards. He was wearing a white cotton shirt and loosely knotted tie, and he had dark brown hair and a crooked smile. Carson knew these details to be true, because when he looked up, he looked at her, and she looked back, forgetting for the moment that this wasn't at all a scene being presented for her consideration but lives being actually lived by people who could see her, and seeing her, smile, as this young man did now. Carson caught herself then. She raised a hand to her lips in embarrassment and turned away and quickly hurried on, pushing through the heavy doors that separated the cars.

“What was keeping you?” Aunt Jane asked, waiting in the aisle of the next car, but Carson said nothing. She didn't know why she had stared at that man. No, she did know. It wasn't simply that the scene she'd witnessed was so lively, or that she'd lost herself in the seeming illusion of the moment. It was the man himself. He wasn't conventionally handsome, yet she had wanted to keep looking at him—had found herself staring at him for that very reason. His features weren't predictable. They weren't classic—weren't symmetrical. They were…individual, and somehow more interesting for that. This was an idea of “good-looking” that was new to Carson, she realized, one that she'd never before considered. As she and Aunt Jane strode through the train, peeking in at the dining car, which even now was being laid with linen and
silver and glassware by a fleet of efficient-looking Frenchmen in white jackets, Carson felt a light-headedness, and knew that it had nothing to do with the illness from which she was recovering.

 

Was it really coincidence, later, that brought Carson Weatherell elbow to elbow with the man she'd stared at? For that night at dinner, when he was seated beside her in the dining car, she felt an excitement, a prickle of fear and curiosity that seemed to run lightly down the back of her neck.

Carson and her aunt and uncle were having dinner at a four-person table set for four, when the waiter appeared and apologetically began asking in stilted English if they would mind terribly if “a lone diner, a gentleman he seem very nice,” sat with them this evening. “His friends they come earlier to dinner and he did not join them,” the waiter explained. “So now he is…
tout seul,
and seeing how you are a table of four…”

“Bien sûr,”
said Aunt Jane. “Why not?”

Uncle Lawrence simply rolled his eyes. Carson herself had no opinion on the matter until the lanky young man in the tweed jacket approached the table and Carson realized who he was.

“Sit down, sit down,” said Aunt Jane. “We've barely begun our soup. Please join us.”

“I'm terribly sorry,” said the young man. His accent was English, educated, though with a subtle hint of something less fine beneath it. “You see, my friends and I, we were playing whist earlier, and I gather that I fell asleep shortly after the game. They
came to the early seating, and they didn't want to wake me, and so I find myself in need of food.”

“It's perfectly fine,” said Uncle Lawrence as though he were already bored with the explanation and simply wanted to get on with the meal. Then Lawrence picked up his soup spoon and dipped it into the shallow bowl of consommé.

“I'm Alec Breve,” the young man said to no one in particular. “I promise not to put my elbows on the table or try to eat my peas with a knife.”

Carson regarded him from her seat at his side. He had a wry smile on his face: crooked again, she noticed. Throughout the remainder of the meal, Alec Breve carried on an animated conversation with Jane and Lawrence. They talked about the situation in Spain, and in Germany, and occasionally Carson put in a few words, but for the most part she felt like someone with almost nothing to say. Everyone else at this table was full of life experience and stories about themselves and their escapades in the world. Alec Breve, she quickly learned, was a physicist at Cambridge University who, with his group of friends, was traveling to an international science conference, where he was going to deliver his first formal paper before an audience.

“I'm quite nervous, actually,” he admitted. “The last time I remember speaking in public was during a school-days performance of
Hamlet.
”

“Ah,” said Aunt Jane. “Did you play the prince himself?”

Alec Breve smiled. “Not quite,” he said. “But
the other fellows tell me I made a simply lovely Ophelia.” He shrugged. “That's what happens when you attend an all-boys school, as most boys in England do. You're forced into Shakespearean roles that tend to, well, strain credulity.”

“Just like back when Shakespeare wrote them,” put in Carson.

“Yes, that's right,” said Alec. “No women were allowed onstage in Elizabethan England. Though I daresay, nowadays, there are some wonderful actresses portraying these roles. Even in Portugal this summer, you know, you will be able to catch a Shakespeare play.”

“Is that so?” said Uncle Lawrence.

“When I received the literature for my scientific conference,” Alec said, “I was also sent some information about local events and so forth. Seems that a Portuguese troupe will be performing
Romeo and Juliet
sometime next week. If you'll be in the area, perhaps you might like to attend.”

“I don't speak Portuguese,” Carson said.

“Doesn't matter,” said Alec. “I think you can still get the gist of it. It's a love story. That's a fairly international theme.”

“As a scientist,” said Uncle Lawrence suddenly, lowering his glass of claret, “surely you don't find yourself entertaining too many questions in your work about the nature of love.”

“Perhaps not,” said Alec. “Though I wish I did. My work tends to be far duller than all that.”

“What
is
the nature of your work?” Uncle Lawrence asked.

“Oh, it will only bore you,” said Alec.

“Try me,” Lawrence persisted, and Carson realized she'd never seen her uncle quite so engaged with another person, quite so lively and invested in the conversation. She listened, now, as Alec Breve spoke, noticing how modest he was, how embarrassed he seemed by being the center of attention.

“I'm involved in the study of thermodynamics. I conduct experiments and spend hours recording my findings into a little green notebook. Extremely dull. In fact, simply hearing an
explanation
of the nature of my work has been known to put people to sleep. I've been frequently hired by frantic mothers to come babysit their cranky youngsters. I'm told to sit near the cot and simply talk about what it is I do for a living. Within minutes—often, seconds—the child is out cold.”

Everyone laughed at the joke, as well as at Alec's perfect, deadpan delivery. As dinner came to a close, Carson realized she was disappointed it was ending. Soon Alec would retreat to his compartment with his friends, probably for card games and cigars. But now, as if he was reading her thoughts, he turned to Uncle Lawrence and lightly said, “I wonder, actually, if I might borrow your niece for a little while this evening. That is, if she's willing.”

Uncle Lawrence blinked slowly, like someone coming to the surface from a deep thought. “It's entirely up to Carson, I suppose,” he said. “What is it you wish to borrow her for?”

“The other fellows and I are going to play a bit more cards, and one of our party has vowed that he must stay in his berth and work, if you can believe it. Work! On a train trip to Portugal! Who ever heard of such a thing?”

“Shocking,” Aunt Jane said, and Carson saw her cast Uncle Lawrence a weary glance, which he in turn acknowledged with a weary sigh.

“So you see,” Alec went on, “we'll need a fourth hand.”

“I'm sorry, but I don't play,” Carson said quietly.

Alec looked at her neutrally. “Want to learn?” he asked, and his voice was casual, as if he didn't want to put any pressure on her to say yes; as if, she realized, he didn't even really care all that much whether she said yes.

Carson looked from her uncle to her aunt, but they, too, seemed neutral.
If my mother was here,
Carson thought,
she would be giving me eye signals that told me what it was I should be doing, whether I ought to be saying yes or no.
For one of the first times in her life, Carson realized, she was being asked to make an independent decision.

“All right,” said Carson, and Alec smiled.

“Good,” he said. “It will make the game so much more interesting.”

 

The atmosphere inside the compartment where the young scientists were playing cards was basically composed of smoke. Alec led her past the steamer-trunk playing surface and onto a seat by the window. “Gentlemen,” he said. “We have a
new player among us. This is Miss Carson Weatherell, and I have a feeling she's going to be a crack whist player.”