Pavel and Agnieska were from villages eight miles apart, but they had never met until twenty-two days ago. They had smelled the same air growing up, fished the same rivers, but they spoke two completely different languages.
Pavel was from a small village in Czech Republic, near the Polish border, and Agnieska was from and even smaller village, in Poland, a ten minute drive from that same border.
They first met in a downmarket greasy spoon cafe in a West London industrial estate on a wet and miserable afternoon in November. Agnieska, who worked there as a waitress, had been clearing up a table and accidentally dropped a tray full of plates, smashing every single one into tiny pieces. Pavel, ever the knight in shining armour, with his trusting face and uber-denim attire, was down on his hands and knees in a flash, helping the immensely embarrassed girl, who appeared hugely grateful. A brief exchange of names clearly highlighted a familiarity in one another’s accents. This was followed by the apparent knowledge of where each other’s villages were, and an almost Surprise Surprise-like euphoria of long lost siblings as they discussed people from the area which the other may or may not know.
Over the next two weeks, Pavel would be in that cafe every lunchtime, standing by the counter as Agnieska served a vast array of boiler-suited men. Agnieska developed the habit of wrong changing her customers, because she was so engrossed in Pavel’s tales of his time in the Czech military service. Pavel, who worked nearby in a factory which installed the whistling noise inside hearing aids, had been in the UK for less than six months, and had gotten the job through his cousin Juri, who actually wore a hearing aid but wasn’t deaf. Pavel lived with Juri, and Juri’s wife, and Juri’s three week old baby who cried thirty six hours a day.
Agnieska had been in London for almost four years. She left for the UK after her fiancée was killed in a jet ski accident, and moved in with her older sister, who has since moved back to Poland and is getting married sometime in the new year. Agnieska doesn’t really have anyone to talk with since her sister left, and feels desperately lonely in the city. She spends her evenings with her cat, Magda, and her colouring-in books, which is a silly hobby from childhood that she has never been able to shake.
By the third week, Pavel and Agnieska had agreed to start taking their lunch breaks at the same time, and were often found strolling through the nearby cemetery, nibbling on corned beef sandwiches, kindly prepared by Juri’s wife. They would make up fantastically imaginative biographies for each headstone; biographies and life stories which involved Russian spies, the legends of vaudeville, and one goat rapist, which Agnieska just nodded along to, faking enthusiasm.
Then one day, in the fourth week, they were gone; and I never saw them again. I’d like to think that they had returned home to get married and raise a family, surrounded by their own family and friends. But you see, the thing is, I don’t actually know if that was even their names, or if he had a cousin, and she a sister. I don’t even know if they were from Eastern Europe. I’m just a dull grey granite headstone, sitting in a long-forgotten cemetery, who spends the day making up back-stories for the people who pass by. And for the record, my guy never went near any goats!
