If I knew there was going to be no-one else, then for me I think I would rather live not knowing the truth, but with the security and knowledge that once-upon-a-time I was loved, and that life could have been beautiful.
Which leads me to conclude, that because I do not know where Guy’s life will lead him, it is right for me not to tell him under any circumstances while Sal continues to sleep like Sleeping Beauty waiting for a kiss to wake her up. I have to wait, either for her to die, and then case dismissed, or for her to wake up, …and then and only then can I take some form of action. What I will do then, is as Gail and I discussed before, something that we must decide if and when that bridge presents itself to be crossed.
.
I cough lightly, and Guy turns around and looks up at me and smiles.
“Hi there mate,” he says. “Thanks for coming. I could do with seeing a friendly face. It’s been pretty tough going today.”
I walk over to the bed, shake Guy’s hand, and then stroke Sal’s head, saying “Hi there Sal. It’s Andrew. Just come over for a quick visit after work. How about a smile today or a word of welcome? Or just squeeze my hand to say that you can hear me.”
I put my fingers in the palm of her hand and we both stare at her, hoping for the fingers to move or encircle mine. There is nothing.
“Has Sal moved at all, or said anything more?” I ask Guy.
“Nothing today. I got the results back from the test…”
“I know” I say, making a “Ssshhhh!” sign with my finger against my lips and nodding at Sal. I beckon to him to come outside the curtain with me. “I talked to the doctor already and he filled me in on the results. I was just thinking that perhaps it’s not a good idea to talk about the test and the results in front of her. She may be able to hear everything, and we don’t want to scare her.”
“True, but on the other hand, the doctor said that we really do need to try and find a way of stimulating her mentally to get her to try and really want to wake up. Maybe we just have to tell her the way it is. If we have to scare her into waking up, then we just have to do it.”
“What, like, ‘Hi Sal. If you don’t wake up in the next week, you’re probably going to die?’”
“Maybe.”
“But we don’t know what sort of battles she is fighting within herself, and maybe if she is struggling already, hearing everything we say, do you not think that putting it as bluntly as that could just tip her over the edge, and with the added pressure she might blow a fuse and end up having some sort of brain haemorrhage or something?”
“I don’t know. Listen, I’m not a doctor. I just know that from what the doctor was saying today, if we don’t do something soon, I’m going to lose her…”
He turns away from me, emotion overcoming him. He lifts both his hands to cover his face for a moment, and I put my hand on his shoulder, waiting for it to pass.
“I’m sorry, mate, it’s just that …”
“No need to excuse yourself. I think you’re doing an amazing job of coping with all this. Honestly.”
“You think so?” he asks, his eyes searching me for some form of approval.
“Absolutely. If that was Kate, sorry, bad example, if that was Hannah lying on the bed there, there’s no way that I would be able to cope with it as well as you are doing. Sal’s lucky she’s got you. You’re giving her all the support she needs.”
“But it’s not enough though, is it? Shit, but what is? What do we have to do?”
“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do now. You’re going to go home right now and get some food and sleep, and I’ll stay with her for an hour or two. Look,” I say, waving my copy of Marrying Slovakia in the air, “I’ve got my book with me, and I’m going to carry on reading the chapters to her. I think she’ll enjoy it. Now get your stuff and go, okay?”
Five minutes later we are alone, just me and Sal, and for a while I sit there in silence just looking at her, the classic Mexican stand-off, waiting to see which one of us is going to say something first. Which it would seem, is pretty much a foregone conclusion.
I pick up the book to start reading from where I left off, but as I start to read I instead find myself telling her about Slávka. I tell her about the chance meeting in the café right here in the hospital, and all about our first date, describing to her how I felt at the end of the evening.
All the time I am holding her hand in mine, just in case of any sign of any acknowledgement that she can hear me.
“So, what do you think?” I ask her. “Do you think she might like me?”
No response.
“You know, I don’t even know how you and Guy met,” I lie. “What was it like the first time you saw Guy? Was it love at first sight? Can you remember?”
Her finger moves.
I almost jump with shock, just as if a ghost had jumped at me out of the wall.
“Sal? SAL? Did you hear me?” I ask quickly, watching her finger intently. “Can you remember what it was like the first time you saw Guy? The first time you met him? Can you remember how you felt?”
This time there is no response.
“Can you remember what it was like the first time he kissed you?”
Three of the fingers on her right hand curl inward, and I see it. I laugh aloud, shouting for the nurse.
A few seconds later she appears through the curtain, “Andrew, is everything alright?” she asks, immediately coming over to my side and starting to examine Sal.
“She’s moving her fingers in response to my questions. She can hear me. I’m sure about it. Look, watch, we’ll try again.”
The nurse stands beside me, her hand on my shoulder, and together we stare intently at Sal’s fingers.
“Sal? Sal, if you can hear me, please move your fingers. Listen, I have a friend here that I would like you to meet. Her name is…” I look up at the nurse expectantly, as she mouths the word ‘Mary’ back at me. …Mary. Please open your eyes to say hullo to her?”
Her fingers are not moving.
“Okay, okay, …can you remember what we were talking about a moment ago? Can you remember how you felt the first time you saw Guy? The first time you kissed each other? Or can you remember the first time you slept with each other? How did it feel? …or can you remember the first time you told him that you were in love? Or when he told you that he was in love with you?”
Nothing. No movement. Her hand is once again as passive and immobile as it was before.
“Honestly,” I turn to Mary. “honestly, it moved. At first it was just one finger, then the next time it was three fingers. I felt them, and I saw them.”
Mary smiles at me.
“It happened to Guy too. That’s why we did the further tests. Unfortunately, unless we can get her to open her eyes up, or establish some sort of regular communication with us through touch, then there’s no real proof that it’s not just spasmodic movements of the fingers which may occur as a result of the nerves firing off at random.”
“But she moved them in direct response to my questions…” I protest, still excited, but now also very frustrated.
Mary puts her hand back on my shoulder, “…and if she did, then let’s hope she does it again. And again, And that it all leads to something. The bottom line is we have to be patient, but the important thing is that you keep doing what you’re doing because it could be that you’re getting some results.”
She smiles encouragement at me and then walks away, disappearing through the curtain.
I spend the next thirty minutes trying to get another response, but with no success. At ten o’clock, I kiss her gently on the forehead and leave, catching Guy on my mobile just before he goes to sleep and telling him the good news. Ten minutes later I am in the corner of a nearby pub, a pint of Pride in my hand and my mind replaying the moment over and over again when Sal proved to me that she could hear every word I was saying to her.
Slowly, very slowly, a plan begins to form in my mind.
Chapter Thirty T
hree
.
.
For a single person, the joy of any Friday in London is always two-fold. Firstly, simply because it is Friday: in the same way that Sunday night in the Western world automatically elicits the ‘Sunday Evening Blues’ in everyone who must return to work the next morning, everyone who wakes up on a Friday morning knows that the weekend is only hours away and can’t help but feel good. Secondly, Friday night is party night! The night when all someone’s hopes, dreams and wildest expectations could, just could, come true.
Except not for me, because for the first time since I got to London, I am going to give tonight a miss. Tonight I have other plans, none of which involve carousing, flirting or dancing. My plans for tonight involve yet another trip on a 42 bus and knocking on a certain door in Mitcham.
Gail seems disappointed when I tell her that I will not be stopping by the Lemon Tree after work. I ask her if Ben will be there too, but she mumbles something that I don’t quite catch, but sounds like a sentence containing the words ‘Poker Night’ and ‘night out with the boys.’
I work through lunch, getting progressively more nervous as the afternoon passes by. By five o’clock I am finding it difficult to concentrate on anything, and I slip out of the office at five-fifteen, hoping that no-one will try to stop me and drag me off to the pub. On a Friday night, the call of the pub in the centre of town to someone young, single and admittedly on heat, is probably rather akin to the mating instinct that drives salmon up waterfalls and rivers against the current. It just doesn’t seem natural to me to be getting on a bus and heading away from town, instead of into it. However, tonight my determination wins through, and soon I am in Clapham Junction, swapping buses and boarding the southbound number 42.
It’s half past six as I turn into Beech Gardens and walk slowly up to number 38. Having already failed twice to find anyone at home during the weekend, I decided last night that I should try an evening during the week. Failing that, if there is no-one home tonight, I’m going to try knocking on the neighbour’s door and making a few enquiries of my own.
I am about fifty metres away from the house on the opposite side of the road when I see a light go on in the upstairs front room of the house. I stop dead in my tracks and watch mesmerized as an arm reaches across the window and draws the curtains.
In stark contrast to last week when I was cooler than any refrigerated cucumber could ever be, my legs and arms immediately begin to shake, and I break out into a cold sweat.
For no apparent reason, except perhaps as a subconscious stalling tactic that my inner coward throws into the works, I look at my watch. It’s six thirty-six, a time with no particular significance except that it marks the moment I decide that I will override the desire to run away and hide, and I begin to cross the road.
The gate is already open, and I walk swiftly up the path and knock on the door. By now, my heart feels like it is about to explode, but having come this far, I am looking forward to this moment of truth. This is it. No more dreaming, no more fantasising, no more wondering.
I hear footsteps.
I cough, thrust my chest out, and hurriedly check my flies.
From the other side of the door, I can hear the sound of someone fumbling with a chain, the dull thud as a bolt is drawn, and slowly, as if in some weird time warped slow-motion, the door begins to open.
A figure is standing in the doorway before me, taller than I expected, older than I expected, fatter than I expected, but as I stare up into those dark green eyes, the same clear hazel irises and those same dark eyebrows that Hannah has, and that same, unmistakable nose that points back at me every time I face myself in the mirror, I struggle to choke back the tears and say the word that has been denied me for the past twenty two years of my life. “Mum…?”, I whisper nervously, before coughing quickly to clear my throat and say much louder and more boldly the sentence that I have prepared and practised a million times before. “Hi, My names is Andrew Jardine, …and I think that I may be your son.”
.
.
Chapter Thirty Four
.
.
For a moment the women in front of me is silent, her eyes quickly appraising me, examining me from head to toe. I see the recognition in her eyes, and I know that she too has recognised in me the DNA that we both share.
“My son?” she repeats the word softly, her voice deep and steady.
“Yes,” I repeat. “My name is Andrew Jardine, and I think that you may be my mother.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she says, matter-of-factly, laughing. “I don’t have a son, and if I had had one along the way, I think I may have noticed it.”
Suddenly all of the replies that I had practised, preparing for every possible response my mother would throw back at me when this moment came, …they all just evaporate and I am left standing naked and alone on the doorstep, stumbling for the next thing to say.
“But… are you not, or were you once not Miss Alice White?”
The smile disappears from her face, and she steps forward. She looks at me, her eyes once more appraising me from head to toe. For a second I see Hannah as she will be in thirty years time, and I am shocked by the similarity. I open my mouth to say something, but am beaten to it.
“Well, well. I never thought the day would come when a Jardine would have the nerve to turn up on this doorstep, but now you’re here I suppose you’d better come in,” she says, stepping aside and waving me into the hallway.
I step inside, waiting at the bottom of the dark wooden stairs on my right, struggling to understand the reaction she is giving me but noting her recognition of the name Jardine. She closes the front door behind us, and as she walks past me, I follow her further into the house, my eyes adjusting to the dark, dimly lit hallway. The first thing that hits me as I step inside is the stink: the house smells disgusting, an overpowering stench of cats assaulting my nostrils and making me want to screw up my nose. As we step into the room on the left hand side at the back of the house, two long-haired brown cats scuttle past my feet and disappear up the stairs.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” she says, pointing me to an armchair and obviously inviting me to sit down.
“Yes please,” I reply. “Milk, no sugar.”
She disappears for a moment, and I am left standing alone. I hear the sounds of a kettle being taken to the sink, water gushing out of a tap, and then the click of a switch. A cupboard is opened, cups are removed, then another door, probably a fridge is opened and closed. A moment later she appears in the doorway to the room, one hand resting on the door frame, the other on her hip.
“Actually, I always thought this day would come,” she says. “I used to think about it a lot, but as the years dragged on, I stopped wondering about it. I realised that maybe I was wrong. Perhaps you would all be so caught up in your own lives that you would never have any time to wonder what your mum was really like, or to bother finding out for yourself. Do you want a chocolate biscuit?”
“Sorry?…Oh,… yes, please.” I say, struggling to cope with how surreal this is all feels. In all my mental rehearsals of how this scene would run, I had never imagined it like this. I feel numb, not knowing what to say or do, or how to react. It puzzles me that when I look at this woman I do not have a rush of emotion, as I always imagined it would be like when I saw my mother for the first time in over two decades. Instead there is just a curious feeling of bewilderment, wondering what is going to happen next, letting her lead the interaction between us both. It is strange: nothing for twenty years, no guidance, no discipline, no love, …nothing, but already I am waiting for her to tell me what to do.
“Please sit down,” she shouts at me from the kitchen. “You’re only twenty years late, but now you’re here, you may as well make yourself comfortable.”
Obediently I move to the armchair and after brushing off a million cat hairs, I reluctantly sit down. My eyes start to dart around the room, scanning for clues to my mother’s li
fe, a life spent completely without her children. The decoration in the room is old fashioned, dark green swirling flowers cascading down the wall on white wallpaper that has long since turned a light shade of brown. A dark brown mahogany wooden dresser with glass doors occupies an alcove near the window looking into the garden, standing on the right hand side of a marble fireplace with an open chimney and a basket containing the remnants of a wood fire. Two armchairs, one of which I am sitting in now, sit either side of the fireplace, facing each other, a tall reading light standing behind the other chair, though not now switched on. The room is dark, the light in the red, marble effect glass lampshade hanging from the ceiling, probably 40 Watt instead of a proper 100 Watt. There is a serving hatch in the other wall on my left which leads into the kitchen, a small dining room table squashed against the wall underneath the hatch.
My attention turns back to the fireplace, and to four photographs sitting on the mantelpiece in tarnished brass frames. The largest of the four is an old photograph, of a mother and father standing proudly in front of three small children: a boy and two girls. The one on the right of it is smaller, and more recent, showing a man and his wife, probably in their forties, with two grown up teenage girls. Another photograph is of a young girl, probably taken long ago. The girl is about five years old, and the twinkle in her eye reminds me of Hannah when she was younger. The last of the photographs is of a man, wearing a military uniform of some sort, which I think is probably the army. He looks young, but the photograph was obviously taken a long time ago.
I stand up to look instead at the contents of the dresser, discovering that it is full of an assortment of wine glasses, plates, and small ornaments. The sort of ornaments that I would personally quite gladly destroy with a hammer and which serve no purpose whatsoever except to gather dust and look old fashioned, but which for a reason which I have never been able to fathom, have always been attractive to the older generations.
The Sleeping Truth : A Romantic Thriller (Omnibus Edition containing both Book One and Book Two) Page 22