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Great Writing - Home > Extended > Three accounts of events - part 5
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Extended Work
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| Three accounts of events - part 5 | |
| By teddy | ||||
| 26 January 2007 | ||||
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I've been thinking of changing the title of this, the current one doesn't seem to be suitable anymore, but I haven't found anything better until now. advice and comments much appreciated. Thanks. George raised his arms above his head, stretching them vigorously, then leant forward and placed his elbows on the desk, resting his chin in his hands. He hopelessly stared at the monitor in front of him: numbers, words, contours were chaotically scattered all over the screen and nothing was making sense anymore. He rubbed his eyes and yawned; he felt tired and wished he could just switch the computer off and go to bed, but the design proposal he was working on had to be submitted to the client by Monday and, with Adi coming home on Saturday, he knew there would be little chance of him doing much work at the weekend. He hadn’t been having much sleep recently; at first it was because of Adi, after she started feeling better, he’d had to catch up with the workload mounted up in his office. With all Steve’s reassurance of ‘Don’t worry, George, we’ll manage without you, take as long as you need’ he knew exactly what to expect when he’d return to work. He joined Baker & Partners immediately after he left Harolds. Steve was an old mate, who had tried to persuade him for years to join his firm, but those days his loyalties lay with Paul and Harolds. When he decided to leave the latter, he phoned up his friend. ‘I’m sorry, George,’ Steve mocked him, ‘but the trainee position I was going on about all those years is gone. You can always join us as a partner though. This is all I can offer you at the moment.’ ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ George asked, quite surprised by the offer. ‘Nope, I’m being very serious,’ Steve replied, ‘don’t hold your breath though, George. There’s a catch. You’d better come over one of these days so we can have a chat.’ Harolds was owing him some holiday and he ended up spending it locked up in Baker’s offices, going through mountains and mountains of paper work: budgets, programmes, project designs, tender applications, you name it, everything that could give him a proper insight into the company’s state of affairs. And it didn’t look good at all. Steve was right, there was a catch, a big one: Baker & Partners were going down the hill. Steve had set up the practice in partnership with three other people six years ago. It started on well, all four involved were highly skilled professionals, but lack of proper management shook the fairly new founded company severely, and, as things were getting from worse to worst, the other partners abandoned the sinking ship one by one, leaving Steve to cork up the holes in the deck. And the business was, without a doubt, quite riddled. But it had potential and, with Anne gone and him falling out with Paul, George needed something he could focus all his energy on and that was a golden opportunity. So he decided to ignore the other offers he had received from other, some much more established, firms and go for Steve’s. And for the last eighteen months or so they had been both slogging their guts out and their efforts had been started to pay off quite a while ago. But when Adi had the accident, everything seemed to have fallen apart: his life, his work, nothing seemed to matter anymore. It was Vicky that kept him sane. Now Adi was recovering and there was hope that things might get back to what they used to be before, even with Paul being around. He knew he was seeing Adi, he didn’t know how often and when, but he realised the very first time Paul came to the hospital that he still cared about her. He just wished he knew what he wanted from them. He was half way across the hallway to the kitchen, in chase for a cup of coffee he hoped to scare the fatigue away with, when he heard the buzzer going off. He glanced at his wristwatch. It was gone nine o’clock, a bit too late for visitors, especially uninvited ones. Not that they had had any recently anyway; with Adi in hospital, socialising of any kind was the last entry on their agenda. Olga stuck her head out through the ajar kitchen door where she was busy sorting out the dishes left from their dinner. ‘Don’t worry Olga, I’ll get it,’ he smiled at her. He walked to the door and picked up the handset of the intercom. ‘Hello?’ ‘George, it’s me, Paul.’ ‘Hi, come in Paul,’ he pressed the button to open the entrance door, wondering what Paul wanted that time at night. Fair to him, since he found out about Vicky, he had come to see her regularly, few times a week, but never that late. ‘It’s you I’ve actually come to see,’ Paul said once inside when George informed him that Vicky had been long tucked up in bed, as if it wouldn’t have been obvious that the bedtime for a ten months old baby had long passed.. ‘Oh ok,’ George looked at Paul intrigued, leading him into the study. ‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked pointing at a few bottles of spirits on the tray resting on the filing cabinet by the window. ‘No thanks, I’m driving,’ Paul politely refused. ‘George, I’m not going to keep you long,’ he began, ’there are two things I want to discuss with you.’ His voice was sombre without any friendly inflections, and there weren’t the slightest smiling attempts on his face. ‘I’m listening,’ George said, composed on the outside, worrying inside. It didn’t sound good. ‘I want you to let me pay for Adi’s hospitalization.’ George looked at Paul bemused by the unexpected offer. ‘Thanks Paul, but it’s been all paid for already,’ was all he could say. ‘But it must’ve cost you a fortune. Surely you could do with some financial help.’ Paul was right, Adi’s treatment didn’t come cheap. The cottage he bought in Carlton had soaked up all his savings. The day Adi was taken into hospital, he rang up his dad. Karl was absolutely shocked when he heard about the accident. ‘I…I’ll come to see you straight away. How about you, are you ok, son?’ he asked concerned. No, he wasn’t alright, but tried to keep collected for Vicky, for Ady and her family’s sake. ‘Dad, I might need to sell some of the shares I have in Hamilton.’ ‘Why George?’ ‘I want to take her to a private hospital, make sure she gets the best possible care. And at the moment I’m a bit short of money.’ He knew his dad wouldn’t approve of him touching those shares, but he had no choice. Many times, especially when he told him he was intending to leave Harolds, Karl tried to persuade him to join the family’s business. ‘Dad, I’m an architect, my mind is made to create things not to sell bloody wine.’ he used to laugh him off. ‘What are you trying to say, George? That my work is not respectable enough for you?’ Karl would wince offended. ‘You know it’s not that, dad. It’s just not me, I’m sorry.’ ‘Is it really that bad, George?’ Karl asked him this time. ‘Yes, dad, it is.’ ‘How much do you need?’ ‘I don’t know yet.’ ‘Ok, let me know when you found out and I’ll transfer the money into your bank account right away.’ ‘But, dad…’ George tried to oppose the generous gesture. It didn’t sound right even though it was coming from his father ‘George, you’re my only son, all I’ve got will be yours anyway. And Adi means a lot to all of us.’ He didn’t consider necessary to go into all these details with Paul. ‘As I said, Paul, everything’s been sorted. It’s my problem anyway.’ He could see an angry shadow quickly brushing Paul’s face. ‘I wouldn’t put it like that, George. Adi’s my problem too. She’s the mother of my daughter, remember?’ Paul said. He moved forwards and stopped in front of him, fixing him with a cold look. ‘Moreover, George, I want her back, I want them both back.’ Paul’s directly expressed demand took him by surprise at first, but then again, he had been well known for being quite outspoken. ‘Ok,’ George said as calmly as he could, given the circumstances, ‘I assume this is the other thing you wanted to talk to me about.’ ‘Well, yes.’ ‘Right. I don’t quite know what you’d expect me to say, Paul. Don’t you think it’s for Adi to decide what she wants to do?’ ‘Certainly, I would never imply the opposite. But that’s the thing, George. I know what she wants; and that’s me, not you.’ ‘This is ridiculous,’ George suddenly stood up and walked to the window. ‘I don’t even know why I’m having this conversation. Does Adi know about all this?’ he asked, turning around to face Paul once again. ‘Of course, I wouldn’t be here if she didn’t.’ ‘And …and what does she say?’ ‘She doesn’t want to leave you because she doesn’t want you to get hurt. Her words, George, not mine,’ Paul said. George looked at him in shock, finding hard to believe what he was hearing. He was already hurting, no need for more. Adi had never mentioned any of these to him. They used to share everything, goods or bads, but obviously this time Adi'd had another idea. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well, there’s nothing else to say on the matter then, is there?’ ‘Just promise me you won’t try to stop her if she decides to come home with me,’ Paul asked as if George was owing this to him as a favour. ‘I’ve never tried to stop Adi from doing anything. If she wants to leave, then she’s free to do so,’ George glared at Paul. ‘Fine,’ Paul said. ‘I’ll see myself out then.’ There weren’t any hand shakes or good night exchanges. It was three o’clock in the morning and George was still wide awake. For the last three hours he kept tossing and turning in bed without being able to trick his mind into resting. He knew he couldn’t give up on her, not like that, not without at least trying. He jumped out of the bed and put some clothes on. He was just about to disappear through the open door when he heard noises in the hallway: it was Olga. She was standing by her bedroom door, staring at him. ‘You ok, George?’ she asked worried. ‘Yes, I’m sorry I’ve woken you up. I just need a bit of fresh air. I won’t be too long,’ he tried to put on a smile. When he pulled the car in the hospital car park, he noticed that there weren’t many other cars about, not in the visitors’ area anyway, in fact there was only one there: Paul’s. He parked up and stopped the engine. It was cold outside, warm inside the car though. Still, he was shivering. It was six o’clock in the morning, and the parking area was already filling up when he saw Paul emerging from the building.
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