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, you don’t. You just think you do. You can’t love someone you’ve just met.’
Again she was rescued 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