We are standing on the platform in the underground station now, waiting for the next District Line tube train to take Slávka back to Wimbledon. It is late, and from here Slávka can catch a tube direct to Wimbledon Park where she lives. After she’s gone, I’ll get a taxi or a bus home to Clapham Junction.
.
My heart is beating uncontrollably fast and I know that Slávka can feel my hands trembling.
I have to kiss her.
I must…
If I were not so wrapped up in my own thoughts, mentally encouraging myself to act, I would notice that Slávka had also become quieter than normal. Her face is lightly flushed, her eyes slightly unfocussed, her pupils dilated.
She is looking at me, smiling, her head slight bowed.
A train starts to pull into the station, the doors beginning to open.
“Slávka,” my mouth opens, not knowing what I am going to say, not trusting myself enough to make the first move.
A man rushes from the platform behind us, bursting onto the platform and making quickly for the train, pushing me slightly to the side.
The moment is broken. Slávka steps backwards onto the train, hovering in the door, contact between our hands now broken.
“Tomorrow?” I hear myself ask, the pressure of the impending closing doors driving me to say something, anything… “Can I see you tomorrow?”
The doors are closing now, the tube pulling away from the station.
Slávka is mouthing the word “Yes” from the other side of the glass doors, smiling and holding her hand to her ear and mouth. “Call me”, she mouths silently. And then she is gone.
Chapter Thirty Seven
.
.
On the train into London on Monday morning, spurred on by last night, I renew my consumption of Marrying Slovakia with refreshed hunger. The similarities between my own life and the plot of the book are beginning to take on an interesting trend and I am starting to really identify with the main character, Robert, who like myself moves to London, meets a woman from Slovakia and falls in love.
By page one hundred, their relationship is well advanced, and having already been going out with her for several months, Robert is now visiting his girlfriend’s parents in Bratislava and meeting them for the first time. As I leave Vauxhall, I smile to myself as Robert is welcomed by the parents into their house and served a round of Slivovica from a silver tray, and his girlfriend explains the custom of looking into each other’s eyes as they toast everyone individually. “Aha…I know that!” I pat myself on the back, thinking back to last night.
Up till now the book has been highly entertaining, mixing a number of different themes together, but essentially following the amusing experiences of Robert as he starts his new career in the capital, meets his Au Pair girlfriend, and then falls in love. Some of the descriptions of his girlfriend and how she behaves ring true of Slávka too, and I mentally congratulate the book’s writer for capturing what must be the essence of the Slovak people. However, now I am reading the book not just for the sake of enjoyment, but I am also trying to devour it’s pages for information on Slovakia, it’s women, it’s people, it’s history…anything that might help me to impress or understand Slávka.
My last thought as the train pulls into Waterloo is to wonder if I will ever be following in Robert’s footsteps and boarding my own flight to Slovakia, to meet Slávka’s parents and family?
I call Slávka around eleven o’clock, and am pleased to hear what I believe is genuine pleasure in her voice when she realises that it is me. We arrange to meet about nine o’clock, as soon as she gets off duty at the hospital.
By the Monday afternoon I notice that I am already getting a few ‘looks’ about the office, along with a few winks, the most notable of all coming from Ben. “Attaboy”, he says, clamping me heartily on the back as he puts a fresh cup of tea down on my desk. “She must be good…” he says, hoping I will qualify his remark with some sort of response. I refrain. I had been expecting some sort of reaction to Friday night’s activities and I wasn’t let down, but I still don’t understand just what satisfaction Dianne possibly gets from telling the office all about every time we sleep together?
.
Leaving the office promptly at five thirty I hurry home and quickly shower, shave and change. Forcing myself to overcome my growing nervousness about travelling by the tube, I am half way to the hospital by six o’clock. Apart from being excited all day about seeing Slávka again this evening, the other main focus of thought has been what I am going to do tonight at the hospital with Sal.
Last week I had come up with a plan, and I realise that I cannot delay it any longer. I have to go through with it.
When I got home to the flat last night, Guy was slightly drunk and very angry, pacing around the flat and shouting obscenities about Muslim fundamentalists. The Sunday papers had been full of more details and revelations about the terrorists, with long discussions on what they had done, why they had done it and what motivated them.
“Fucking terrorist bastards”, Guy was busy summing them up, as I walked in through the front door. “How would they fucking like it, if I blew up their wives and daughters?…And what sort of god encourages it’s followers to kill, just to kill for the sake of it!”
I had no answers to give him. None.
But now I have a plan, and the resolve to go through with it.
By the time I get to Sal’s bedside, Guy is already there, having returned to work today but come straight from the office to be by her side. We sit together for almost an hour until eight o’clock, when I persuade Guy to go and get some food in the canteen. “I’ve arranged to meet some friends at nine o’clock, but I’ll be here until then,” I tell him.
.
Left alone with Sal, and holding her hand, I worry about what I am just about to do. What if it’s the wrong thing? Will it have the desired effect? Will it work?
The rack of equipment on the right hand side of the bed is alive with beeps and blips, green lines that monotonously but ominously plot identical traces from one side of a screen to the other. When I first came to visit Sal, the presence of the monitoring equipment scared me, and I found it difficult to ignore the constant pulsing sounds that emanated from it. Now though, I find it strangely comforting, perhaps because I know that it is that same constancy that signifies Sal’s prolonged ability to cling to life.
I am nervous. And scared. Can I go through with this?
I think back to what everyone has been saying: “You have to shock her out of it”, and “the longer she remains like this, the greater the risk of permanent brain damage or death…”.
Of course, what I want to do all depends upon the assumption that Sal can actually hear everything we can say, although after last night when she gripped my hand when I cried aloud, I am now absolutely certain that she can.
I feel guilty about the plan. In recent weeks, Sal has become my friend, and now a part of me feels as if I am about to betray the new found friendship we have found between us. In return for the help she has given me, I am about to become her own personal Judas…
I look at my watch. It’s twenty minutes to nine. Guy will be back soon. I’ve got to do it now…
“Sal,” I say, swallowing hard, and fighting back a wave of emotion that wells up from within me. “I know you can hear me…I know that you’ve been listening to everything I said to you last week…and I’m really grateful for you being there for me…I mean it.”
She squeezes my hand, her grip hard.
I pause, hesitating, considering calling it all off, but when nothing else happens, I know I have to carry on. I close my eyes, thinking back to the scene I witnessed on the dance floor, the betrayal of my best friend, thoughts of Guy patiently waiting by this woman’s bed, as she perhaps lies dreaming of another man… Anger swiftly comes to my aid, and I breathe in deeply.
“The thing is Sal,...there is something else I have to tell you. Something important. And this isn�
��t just about you…It’s about Guy too. He’s my best friend. He’s head over heels in love with you. He wants to marry you… he cries himself to sleep every night worrying about you, and praying that you will recover, get better and become his wife…”
I pause, there is no going back now.
“But, because I am his best friend, I think that there is something that he should know about you. I think that he should know that the night before he proposed to you and asked you to become his wife, I was in a club near the Angel. I think he should know that you were there too. With another man…I saw you Sal,…”
Her fingers begin to twitch, the grip on my hand intensifying.
“I saw you Sal,” I continue. “I saw you kissing another man. I saw you all over him. I saw him putting his hands up your bra, feeling your breasts, his hands running all over your body. And I saw how much you enjoyed it. I saw it all.”
Her hand is beginning to quiver, the firm grip she has of my hand becoming almost painful.
“…And then I watched as you left the club with him. As you went home with him…I know what you did that night Sal. The night before Guy asked you to become his wife…and the thing is, I’ve decided that Guy has a right to know just what you did. So,…”, her grip on my hand is rock solid, her arm now extended, beginning to shake and taught with tension. “So, Sal…I’ve decided that tomorrow morning I am going to tell him. First thing, before he goes to work, I’m going to sit him down and tell him the whole, fucking truth. Everything.”
Her grip on my arm is too uncomfortable now, so I wrestle her hand off with my free hand, curling back her fingers and breaking her grip. I stand up, leaning over her bed, my mouth centimetres from her ear.
“Unless you stop me, I’m going to leave now Sal. And when I leave I am not coming back. And if you don’t stop me, I’m going to tell Guy. Everything. Everything…”
I step back from the bed. There are tears in my eyes and I am about to cry, something which Sal must not hear. “That’s it then. I’m going now Sal. I gave you your chance…” I say, taunting her one last time. “Goodbye Sal...Goodbye!”
Turning my back on her and stepping toward the curtain, I hear the beeping of the monitoring equipment beginning to increase in pace. Beep. Beep. Beep… Faster. Faster. Seemingly louder. More intense.
I am in the process of closing the curtain behind me when an alarm sounds, a high pitched wail that pierces the air and makes me jump.
Instantly, a nurse appears, running towards me, immediately followed by the other nurse Mary who emerges from the glass office, dives at a large trolley full of equipment and starts pushing it towards me.
The first nurse pushes me aside and disappears inside the curtain behind me, and as Mary rushes towards me I step back, letting her through.
“What’s happening?” I ask, suddenly very scared.
“She’s having a heart attack,…her heart has stopped,” Mary says in passing, before the curtain swishes back into place, blocking her off from me.
I feel a strong hand on my arm as I step towards the curtain to look inside, and the voice of a doctor urges me to stay outside. He steps inside the curtain, and a moment later, the alarm stops.
I am left staring at the curtain, a wall of green preventing me from understanding what is going on inside with Sal.
“What’s happening?” I hear Guy’s voice shouting, as he runs toward me down the ward. “What’s going on?”
There is panic in his voice.
“I don’t know...” is all I can muster in reply.
He pushes past me, hurrying inside into the inner sanctum of suffering and death, and it’s then that I realise just what I have done.
I think I have just killed Sal.
Part Three
.
.
Chapter Thirty Eight
Two Weeks Later
Falling
.
.
As the flight circles to land at Poprad airport in Slovakia I stare out of the airplane window at the towering Tatra mountains below, stretching out in both directions as far as the eye can see. Tall, impressive, pointed granite peaks rise quickly out of the ground from a flat surrounding landscape, reaching up and trying to pluck us from the sky. The base of the mountains are covered by lush green forests, and in the bright sunshine of the summer afternoon, the view is incredible.
We start to descend surprisingly quickly towards the edge of the mountains, and I wonder just how close to the jagged peaks the airport really is. Slávka had said that it was right on the edge of the mountains, but I didn’t think it would be this close.
We land on the what seems to be the first piece of unwooded flat countryside the captain can find, and we then taxi to what must be the smallest international airport-building I have ever seen.
The aircraft comes to a halt, and we collect our stuff, and walk down onto the tarmac and across to the terminal, if that is what you can call it- a single storey building with a little tower at one end. I stop still on the runway, and turn back to look at the airplane, now sitting between myself and the massive mountains behind which are literally probably less than a mile away, towering above the surrounding countryside. My eyes are drawn to the tall, jagged peaks in the distance, and I realise just how much I have missed Scotland, and my weekends spent walking and climbing in the mountains. Mountains are in my blood, and just standing here on the tarmac looking at the view in front of me, I am already beginning to feel better. Without even thinking about it, my eyes automatically start scanning the distant mountains for paths and routes, a way up from the bottom to the top of the highest peak. I feel my pulse begin to quicken with excitement and I start to wonder just what it would be like to stand on the top, surveying the world all around, and looking down from there to the airport so far below.
“Wow!” I say to Slávka, turning to her and smiling in wonderment, “this has just got to be the most beautiful airport in the world. It’s incredible.”
She laughs, wrapping her arms around mine in now typical Slávka-style. “And this is just airport. Rest of country is even more beautiful. Welcome to my country. Welcome to Slovakia!” She kisses me on the cheek and laughs again. “It is good be home. I hope you like country as much as I. Come, let’s get luggages and rental-car. I want now hurry and drive you see waterfall, and we go for walk in woods before we go arrive hotel.”
We walk across to the single storey terminal, queue up for all of five minutes in passport control and walk through into the next small room where the luggage is already being offloaded by hand onto a mini-conveyor belt.
As we wait for our ‘luggages’ to appear, as Slávka so cutely put it, thoughts of the nightmare in London start to flood my mind. I am only too aware that this is just a temporary escape from the reality of what is awaiting me back home, but for now, even if it is only for a few days, I need to forget. When I get home, there are so many questions to be answered, so many truths that have to be faced, and Guy…How do I tell him the truth?
I close my eyes, suddenly feeling rather nauseous, and I feel a hand upon my arm.
“Andrew, please, for now, you must stop thinking. Please, you promise me that for next few days, you not think no more about London? In few short days you be back there, but now you are here with me. Do not worry…everything will be fine okay, I you promise!”
I swallow hard, cough and open my eyes. Slávka is smiling at me. “Promise me,” she asks again.
“I promise,” I reply.
“Good. Now you wait here, I go get trolley…” she says, and walks away.
I look around the room and am immediately struck by the make up of our travelling companions: about a third of the passengers are young women, all with an English speaking boyfriend or husband in tow. A few have little children with them but it is quite obvious that the majority of men are like myself, boyfriends making the two hour journey to visit the homes of their girlfriends, perhaps for the first time.
I realise then
that we are the first wave of a whole new variety of European, the Anglo-Slovak, except in my case I will be the new clan leader of the Scoto-Slovaks.
We wait for a few minutes then pick up our luggage from the small conveyor belt and walk out of the exit into the sunshine. Once outside, I wait in the carpark as Slávka walks back into the ‘departure lounge’ to find the Hertz Rental desk.
Around me people are streaming out of the terminal and hugging relatives and jumping into waiting cars. I am surrounded by the sound of spoken Slovak, and it occurs to me that for the first time in my life I am in a country where I can speak no single word of the local language. I will be entirely dependent upon Slávka.
Moments later, she is walking towards me waiving a car key.
“We have new shining Audi.”
“But we only wanted a small Volkswagen…”
“Woman from Hertz was pupil of my mother at school. She gives us better car for same price.”
“I didn’t know your mother was a teacher?”
“She is former teacher. Now she is retired…but I think you know very little about my family. You not ask many questions about them. Perhaps it would be good idea to take you to meet them on Monday…?”
She sees the look of panic appearing on my face, and laughs aloud. “Only joking. You not need come.”
I feign a laugh in return.
Five minutes later we have left the airport and are driving straight at the massive Tatras mountain range which looms almost vertically out of the ground in front of us. Pressing the electric button, the window winds down and I let the car fill with the scent of pine trees which surround us everywhere we look. I push pack into the seat and relax, studying the landscape up ahead, and trying to forget the past two weeks in London.
The Sleeping Truth : A Romantic Thriller (Omnibus Edition containing both Book One and Book Two) Page 26
