Unnatural Order. Liz Porter

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СКАЧАТЬ women with narrow horizons: slick write-ups of chic cafes and fashionable writers interspersed with small doses of accessible social issues.

      Back in Sydney she’d regularly complained about the scant coverage the local newspapers gave to serious topics such as Aboriginal health or domestic violence. The sort of writing she was doing now made the Sydney tabloids look socially responsible.

      But she wouldn’t be ready to return to Australia until she had achieved something. Peace of mind, at the very least.

      She turned the shower off with a jerk. Moving to London? Living in Germany? With a man she knew nothing about beyond the fact that he liked Byron and Woody Allen. Was Karl’s way of thinking contagious? Towelling herself vigorously, she went back into the room to dress.

      ‘You are leaving Lisbon so soon?’ The concierge’s olive eyes looked soft with regret as he handed back their passports.

      ‘We’re going to Cintra,’ said Karl, ‘to see the castle.’

      ‘Ah.’ The man nodded approval. ‘Very romantic.’

      They drove in silence along the wide avenue that abutted the docks. Caroline stared at the flat glistening blue of the Tagus River, trying to imagine it erupting into the 15-metre high tidal waves created by the great earthquake of 1755. Overturned candles had helped to start a fire that had raged for six days, leaving 60 000 dead – crushed, burned or drowned – and the city in ruins.

      Husbands and wives perished in their beds, washed to their deaths as the water boiled up and crashed over them. Others must have died alone, lovers sulking after arguments, mothers out shopping, single women.

      Caroline’s single state only seriously bothered her when she thought about dying. The thought of a solitary death among strangers had always tormented her on aeroplanes. At the onset of turbulence, she would notice every worried woman who took her lover’s hand, and every man who stroked his partner’s hair.

      Caroline looked back up the hill at a row of pastel-washed houses that dazzled under a stark blue sky. A forest of laundry poles protruded from their windows. These were crowded family houses, where women her age had been having children since they were 18.

      Walking home from the tube station in London, she would look into the lit, book-lined front rooms of the large Victorian houses in her street.

      Children were doing their homework or practising piano, women pulled off neat work suits, kissed their husbands, changed into jeans and furry slippers and cooked dinner.

      She would like to settle down like that, but with whom? And where?

      Karl would have an answer for those questions. Should she try doing what he suggested? She had never managed to find happiness with men she had chosen herself. Might there be a better chance with someone who had chosen her?

      ‘What are you thinking?’ asked Karl.

      Caroline hastily rearranged her thoughts. Karl would just love to hear her anxieties about solitude, but she wasn’t inclined to share them.

      ‘I was just thinking about having your life snuffed out, all of a sudden. Like all the people who died in the earthquake. Disasters like that make you realise how meaningless most activities are. You know, superficial relationships, new cities, new friends, writing stupid magazine articles.’

      ‘But you told me that 200,000 women read your magazine.’ Karl’s eyes mocked her. ‘You’re entertaining them, helping them feel their own lives have a meaning.’

      ‘Most of the people who read my articles are more interested in their waistlines than the larger meaning of their lives.’ Caroline looked across at him, but his expression gave nothing away.

      The perfect life, in London Woman terms, entails a well-paid job, a nice house, a handsome husband, a sweet child, a good nanny, a treasure of a cleaning lady and the ability to produce an elegant dinner for eight within an hour.’

      ‘I think you’re too hard on them.’ Karl stared straight ahead. ‘A relationship and a family are the most important things in human life. I suspect that you think that too. You just don’t want to admit it because you’ve spent your life avoiding settling down.’

      He gave her one of his infuriatingly meaningful looks and smiled. ‘Until now, perhaps.’

      Caroline stared out the window. They were out of Lisbon now and driving along a road lined with rows of canna, pines, mimosa and eucalyptus. Away from the sea, the land sloped gently into green hills studded with large villas. On the sea side of the road, small white-washed hotels with blue-and-white-tiled facades overlooked a railway track which followed the sandy coast for 30 kilometres from Lisbon to the resort of Cascais.

      ‘The people on the train get the best view, don’t they?’ she said. ‘That’s very democratic.’

      ‘That’s how it is along the Rhine, too,’ said Karl. The only problem is that you can’t stop when you want to see a town or a castle. So we will drive when we follow Childe Harold to the Drachenfels.’

      ‘Dragon rock,’ translated Caroline. ‘It sounds like the name of a dish in a very expensive Chinese restaurant. Dragon rock garnished with mermaids’ tresses.’

      Karl pulled over to the side of the road.

      ‘You always try to change the subject. But this time I’m not going to let you.You will come back to Germany with me, won’t you? You were planning to spend two weeks in Portugal – you could spend your second week with me in Germany. I’ll pay for your flight back. What do you think?’

      She didn’t speak.

      ‘Well?’

      ‘OK. OK,’ Caroline laughed. ‘If you take me to see every castle on the Rhine.’

      ‘I promise,’ said Karl. ‘But first, we’ll warm up with some Portuguese castles.’

      Caroline opened the car door and breathed deeply. ‘Gum trees,’ she sighed. ‘Just like home.’

      ‘Home?’ said Karl. ‘Home for you has been Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong and London.’

      She could feel his eyes on her as he spoke.

      ‘And now you might find a new one.’

      Caroline avoided his glance. Why did he always have to spoil everything?

      Chapter 4

      ‘Home, sweet home,’ said Karl as a surly green-uniformed customs inspector waved them through the border crossing. Caroline looked across at him, checking for signs of irony, but his expression was bland and content.

      Three hours earlier they had been breakfasting in French sunlight, dipping their croissants into milk coffee at a rickety table outside a small bar-patisserie. Now rain drizzled a grey landscape as they drove along a four-laned autobahn. Huge blue signs overhead pointed to polysyllabic destinations. Echterdingen, Schaffhausen, Zuffenhausen. Untertürkheim. Caroline shivered. What depressing, ugly names. Zosia would have said they all sounded like concentration camps.

      As she stared bleakly out the window, wishing she was somewhere cheerful like an English pub, СКАЧАТЬ