Unnatural Order. Liz Porter

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СКАЧАТЬ just not good in the morning,’ she lied. ‘Let me just have a quick shower and we’ll go.’

      Caroline leant her forehead against the cool tiles of the shower recess and sighed as the warm water rushed over her head. ‘Oh well, you’re here now,’ she lectured herself in the mirror as she brushed her hair. ‘You’ve made a mistake but he’s nice – and he actually reads books. And you don’t have to marry him. Just enjoy the travelling.’

      They walked in silence to a dusty little cafe in a street around the corner from their hotel.

      ‘Has this place been cleaned since Byron’s time?’ Karl flicked imaginary dust from the chair he had just pulled out for her.

      Caroline didn’t answer. Were all Germans obsessed with cleanliness? Part of the work in her German linguistics course at university had involved a comparison of Roget’s Thesaurus with the German equivalent. How many different German words for ‘dirt’ had there been? Scores, she seemed to recall.

      ‘Well, I just associate it with this exaggerated love of order. You know. Signs everywhere telling people to keep off the grass, and everybody obeying them.’

      ‘Ordung muss sein.’ Karl lit a cigarette. ‘We must have order.’

      That sounds like something that should have been written over the gate of a concentration camp,’ she snapped back, suddenly irritated with him.

      ‘Arbeit macht frei. Ordung muss sein.’

      Karl bit his lip and looked at the floor and Caroline felt herself blushing. What a predictable insult that had been. And mean-spirited.

      Even Zosia, in her more rational moments, knew that it wasn’t fair to blame all Germans for what had happened during the war. And Caroline had studied so many periods of German history at university that she didn’t automatically think ‘Nazi’ the moment someone said ‘German’.

      For all she knew Karl’s parents might have been resistance fighters, or concentration camp inmates themselves. She doubted that, however. He seemed too conventional.

      She glanced across at his clear-skinned, untroubled face. He looked solid. Middle class stock. Father in the army? Maybe even low ranks of the SS. She tried imagining Karl’s broad-shouldered trim-waisted figure in a well-cut SS uniform, a sharp-peaked cap shading his chiselled features. It worked. But his father would have done something clean – requisitions, perhaps. There was no sense of inherited family angst about Karl. No guilt, no troubles.

      ‘I didn’t notice too much Ordnung in your room in the hotel.’ She picked up his cigarette packet. Low tar, low nicotine. Very careful smoking.

      Karl laughed. ‘That’s because I’m a German on holidays.’ He flicked his ash into the ashtray.

      ‘There’s a difference?’

      He nodded.

      ‘I couldn’t possibly explain it. You’d have to observe me in my home environment to see. Why don’t you come back with me and have a look around?’ He smiled. ‘No strings attached. You’ll be allowed to leave the country.’

      Caroline shrugged. ‘I told you. I’ve been there. I studied there for two months when I was a student.’

      ‘I remember.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘But I also remember hearing that you spent most of your time inside that silly language school. This time you’d have a guide, someone to show you everything.’

      He sat forward. ‘Germany is so close – only two days’ drive away, across Portugal, Spain and France. Why don’t you just say yes and be done with it?’

      The waiter rescued her, arriving with two outsized menus.

      ‘Well?’ said Karl, after they had ordered coffee and rolls.

      ‘What about coming back to Germany with me? School starts the week after next and I have to be back a few days earlier for staff meetings.’

      ‘I know.’

      ‘This week will not be long enough.’

      ‘For what?’

      ‘For us to get to know one another.’

      ‘Who says we have to get to know one another?’

      ‘Didn’t you read my letter?’ Karl’s eyes glistened with reproach.

      Caroline studied her right ankle. Damn him. Why was she letting him make her feel so uncomfortable, so guilty? A sense of irritation started pounding behind her eyes like a headache and she cursed herself anew for last night. If she had only insisted on returning to her own room, they wouldn’t be having this conversation now. They might never have had it. Or, more realistically, they might have had it a few nights hence. And by then she might have had some time to think.

      ‘Has it occurred to you that there are two people involved in this… this…’ She broke off. Was there a word to describe the potential link between them, this mixture of lust, flirtation and hope? She hoped not. She wanted to enjoy this state of delicious uncertainty without pinning it down, if Karl would only let her.

      ‘Relationship?’ Karl threw the word out like a challenge.

      ‘It’s not a relationship yet, for God’s sake.’ Caroline spat the words out. She was being rude. Mean, even. But why couldn’t he enjoy a little ambiguity. Just for a while?

      How did other people decide how they felt about someone new? Wasn’t some time, alone, to think a necessity?

      It was like the words of that silly pop song: How can I miss you if you won’t go away? How sensible it seemed right now.

      Meeting Karl’s stare, Caroline studied the dark flecks in the green shimmer of his pupils. What would an iridologist say about them? Probably that he was sick at heart.

      ‘Well, if it’s not a relationship, what is it?’ His question hung in the air.

      Caroline tapped the filtered end of the cigarette on the table. Her father had always done that with his Turfs. He had died of a massive heart attack when she was 18 and she had continued to recall the cigarette routine with great affection.

      He probably would have loved Karl. But could she? She wouldn’t know until he stopped pressing her for a response.

      ‘Look,’ said Karl, taking her hands, balled in damp fists, between his cool dry palms. ‘I don’t care what we call this. I just don’t want to be uncertain about you. Can’t you understand? I have thought of nothing else except you since we said goodbye on Mykonos. I know exactly how I feel about you and what I want of you.’

      ‘But you have to let me decide what I think about you!’

      A tanned matron at the next table raised two neatly pencilled eyebrows at her companion.

      ‘It’s ridiculous to be having discussions like this.’ Caroline lowered her voice. ‘We hardly know one another.’

      ‘After last night, I feel I know you. I love you.’

      ‘Well, СКАЧАТЬ