Unnatural Order. Liz Porter

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ by the waiter. Her eyes followed his every movement as he set down small silver jugs of coffee and milk and a wicker basket of sweet rolls and poured a small amount of coffee into each of their cups. Anything rather than meet the green-eyed gaze pressing against her downcast eyes.

      They ate and drank in silence. But Caroline could almost hear Karl wrestling to regain his composure as she flipped through his guidebook.

      When he finally spoke his tone was mild and conversational.

      ‘How much can you understand of it?’

      Did he really want to know? Or was it just a safe topic to pursue?

      ‘Not nearly as much as I should, for all the German books I read at university.’ She struggled to match his similar neutral politeness.

      ‘Why don’t we read some together tonight?’ He leaned back in his chair and signalled for the bill.

      ‘I’m sorry to be pushing you with my questions. If I pretend I don’t love you, will you come with me for a walk around the Alfama? Very picturesque, the guidebook says. Sixteenth century houses, tightly jammed together in little winding streets. It sounds like a good place to take some photographs.’

      He looked over at her.

      Caroline took a deep breath.

      ‘It would be a pleasure.’

      ‘Am I permitted to say that it’s romantic here?’ Karl took her arm as they made their way up a steep cobble-stoned street barely wide enough for a car to pass through. ‘So much here is just as it was 400 years ago. Just the right scale for people, don’t you think?’

      ‘I think I’d prefer it horizontal.’ Caroline wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. ‘Aristocrats used to live here, the book says. I wonder how they got around. Probably carried in sedan chairs.’

      An olive-skinned girl strode past them, a battered basket of fish balanced on her head. Hoping she was taking the catch to a restaurant, they followed her.

      Ten minutes later they were at a rickety table on the narrow pavement of black and white mosaic tiles outside a small dark restaurant. Three skinny cats appeared from the alley separating the restaurant from a shabby two-storey house next door and settled themselves down at a respectful distance, their ears twitching as a tall tanned youth with pale blue eyes emerged from the alley and said something swift and sibilant in Portuguese.

      ‘Do you mind if I join you?’ he asked. ‘It’s been days since I’ve spoken English.’

      Without waiting for a reply he took Karl’s guidebook off the third chair at the table and sat down. ‘A terrific place for pics around here, isn’t it?’ He brandished his camera – a professional-looking Nikon, its black finish battered and scratched – and put it on the ground next to Karl’s bulging camera bag.

      The shadow of a frown passed over Karl’s face before he composed his features into a mask of polite enquiry.

      ‘Photography is your hobby?’ Karl leaned down and picked up the camera, weighing it in his hands.

      ‘Not exactly.’ The stranger ran both hands through a thicket of brown curls.

      ‘I’m an art student. Photography is one of my subjects. But how rude of me. I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Oliver. Oliver Bramwell.’

      Caroline had to make a conscious effort to take her eyes off him. On his way to becoming a man but still a youth. There was something unformed, untested about him. Plenty of sexual experience, she’d guess, but little else.

      ‘Karl Dorfler.’ Karl extended his hand and inclined his head formally.

      ‘You’re German.’ Oliver raised one arched eyebrow.

      Karl nodded. ‘Yes. But I try not to speak it when I’m travelling. My countrymen aren’t very popular in most of the countries I like to visit.’ He eyed Oliver. ‘People remember the war.’

      ‘I’ve been speaking nothing but German, very badly, for the last three days,’ Oliver replied, ignoring his glance. ‘I’m travelling with two German girls that I met in Oporto. Their English is worse than my German, and I thought the practice would be good for me.’

      ‘Where are your friends now?’ asked Caroline. Friends? Lovers more likely, she thought. Or one lover and her friend, the gooseberry, tagging along, annoyed at the ease with which her friend had been captivated by such a professional charmer.

      ‘An Australian!’ he said, raising one eyebrow again. Certainly a practised move, Caroline decided. He probably rehearsed it in the mirror.

      ‘How nice. I shared a flat with two Australian girls once.’

      ‘It sounds like you spend your life in threesomes,’ said Karl, a new sharpness in his tone.

      Oliver looked up, as if he’d forgotten Karl was still at the table.

      ‘I prefer women’s company to men’s,’ he shrugged.

      ‘Anyway, Kristina works for some animal rights group in Berlin, and she wants to report on animal abuse in all the zoos along the way. I’m sure the Portuguese style of keeping animals will keep her busy and outraged. And Anneliese follows Kristina.’

      The dour-looking bald man who had taken their order appeared with a carafe of wine and three glasses. Oliver spoke to him in Portuguese so swift that Caroline could only catch the words for please. The man laughed and slapped Oliver on the shoulder as he walked back into the restaurant, beaming.

      ‘So where did you learn your Portuguese?’ Karl sounded like an examiner facing an unlikeable but talented pupil.

      Oliver directed his reply at Caroline. ‘My mother is Portuguese. She hated England. At home she spoke only Portuguese to me and my sisters. It really annoyed my father. Typical arrogant Englishman, he never bothered to learn anything more than please and thank you; words he never used in English. Our house was Lisbon in Kensington. The heavy carved furniture, antique candelabra, blue and white ceramic tiles everywhere – and olive oil and garlic in everything. The only English room in the house was my father’s study. Anyway, Mother is living back here now, in a little house in Sintra. She left my father the year I started at art school.’

      Caroline studied Oliver’s elegant profile. She had seen it before, on Minoan vases. The Minoans had obviously travelled far and wide.

      ‘Do you think your mother would have been happier with a Portuguese man?’ she asked.

      Oliver shook his head.

      ‘My mother behaves as if life is one big fado song. You know: unrequited love, sadness, jealousy and nostalgia. She was very moody. My father’s being English made him more tolerant, if anything. He thought that all southern Europeans were like that: hot-blooded, passionate, always bursting into floods of tears.’ He smiled. ‘A Portuguese man would probably have smacked her in the mouth. And then gone off to his mistress.’

      ‘Your father didn’t have a mistress?’

      ‘No.’ Oliver turned his attention to the grilled sardines and a bowl of potatoes that had just been set in front of them.

СКАЧАТЬ