I was minding my own business reading John Grisham’s ‘The Testament’ on a bench outside the Palace of Culture when an old man came and sat beside me. It puzzled me because there were lots of empty benches, maybe his legs got tired exactly there though. I continued reading and after a few minutes he turned to me. I said hello but I told him I didn’t really speak Polish. He produced a small battered old chess set. It came out of a hand held zip up case and the pieces were worn down, some of the pawns to just stubs. I smiled and explained that I didn’t really play. He asked if I was a tourist and I said no. He asked if I was English and I said yes.
“London, Covent Garden, Queen.” He muttered then smiled at me revealing his metallic teeth. Or rather his teeth had large vertical oblong plates on them. It was if Jaws from the Bond movies had been shrunk and wrinkled in the wash.
I gave in and helped him set up the pieces. I had played the computer a few times so I might as well humour an old man. After two moves he produced a 20
note and placed it under the board.
Was he trying to hustle me?
The crafty old fucker.
I waved him off and explained I had no money. He replaced the 20 with a 10 but I produced my empty wallet and showed him I had nothing. He picked up his pieces and wondered off. I must say that I respected that geezer, at least he was trying to do something. Before I could get back to my book Kins arrived and he was looking well.
“Hey you’re all happy again.” I said slightly disappointed.
“Yes I am.” He grinned.
“I had a joke prepared to cheer you up.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“So this girl I want to shag said I was shallow because I wasn’t passionate about any political causes.” I started.
“And.” He interrupted.
“Wait, I told her that I’d found something I could really get behind.” Dramatic pause. “Queuing.”
“Are those for me?”
He said pointing at his Mr. Kipling’s French Fancies. I nodded. He’d asked me about bring him some back from the UK, another little treat that was worth so much more abroad than at home.
“I have something else for you as well.” I said producing the letter that Elly couldn’t explain.
The letter that I’d put aside for special attention and then promptly forgotten about. When I finally remembered about it and took it in to discuss with Paweł
and Monika, the news wasn’t good.
“Your landlord is kicking you out.” He said after looking it over.
“I kind of got that. I need you to come and meet him with me. It wouldn’t be good if we had to move.” I said.
I had no experience scouting office locations let alone moving an office and the mountain of paperwork it would have required in Poland. Kins agreed to come along between bites of pink then yellow miniature cakes. When we arrived I couldn’t help but laugh. The guy looked exactly like Gargamel from the Smurfs he had the crazy eyebrows, bald head and hunch down but he didn’t have a cat.
We got straight down to business and he didn’t want to budge. I tried to strong arm him but I had no real leverage as the law was on his side. He had received an offer to sell and wanted to get rid of the place while valuations were still high. It made sense and I understood him but it left me in an awful pickle. I wasn’t relishing returning to the office to call Leeds but it had to be done.
Elly kept calling me to ask about various materials or shades of green that we should decorate the house with. We had driven past and looked at it and I saw more work needed to be done than I’d imagined but I hadn’t even stepped foot inside yet. I promised we’d go up at the weekend and start making plans. She had already got a list of things from the IKEA website and the Polish DIY
stores.
It was all she had to do and now she was expanding a little she had stopped shopping for clothes. To me it seemed strange, now was a good time to go shopping for something new but she hated the idea that she didn’t fit in a size 10.
I got into my office and sent a few e-mails to try to set up a conference call or Skype. I got a few people on the phone but they had no answers for me and when I gave up both Monika and Paweł were waiting for news. I had nothing positive to say but after my last joke about people getting fired there was no reason to worry them. I told them that we were evaluating options and that if they heard of a viable location they should tell me.
I started to think about myself.
Would Elly kick up a fuss if we had to move back to England?
What about the house?
That was a pretty sweet deal, even if it did need a lot of work.
I knew that it was a waiting game now though. Let the guys in Leeds make the decisions while I smiled and kept everything calm here.
Was my Polish adventure over?
After a few day of silence I got the damning response that the Polish office wouldn’t be relocating. The staff weren’t to be notified until two weeks before we had to leave when they would be told that they could go straight away or work their contracts out. I was told to stay and oversee the sale of the computers and I could remain in my apartment for a further two months. I was been given an extra two months in Poland free.
I would be paid.
I would have a free apartment but then what?
I didn’t get the feeling that they wanted me back and starting from scratch, cultivating clients didn’t really appeal to me. Maybe they were trying to tell me something. Take two months for yourself and find another job there, stay there, don’t come back. Whatever they were saying, whatever my future held I had no idea about it at that time because my head felt like it was in a vice.
After everyone had left, eager to search out new locations and tap their contacts for some real, high level business dealings, I was left in an empty room feeling empty. I had to tell Elly but there was no point telling her what I didn’t know and stressing her out. I’d read that stress was the worst thing for a pregnant mother, even worse than smoking or drinking alcohol.
I agreed with Elly to visit the house, our house that weekend and this time instead of renting a car we took the tram and then the bus when we got to the end of the tram line. It took an hour from the centre to reach the house and that didn’t excite me. It didn’t matter that by the time we moved in I wouldn’t have a job in the centre, it should have done though. I knew that when I had a moment alone at home or at work I had to start making enquires about finding a new job.
I couldn’t risk Elly or any of my staff finding out and I could feel my hair thinning and waist expanding as the pressure grew.
The street which the house was on was called Church Street, well in English anyway. It was very quiet and standing on the street you’d never have guessed that only another row of houses away was one of the busiest roads in Poland.
There was a little shop or grocers at the end of the street and a huge church after a small river. The church was painted a sickly yellow, the kind a dog might cough up after swallowing a frog.
We ambled down the bizarre street. Some houses looked half finished while others where beautiful. There was an empty lot with overgrown grass and as me and Elly peered in at it a big dog popped its face out. We were both taken aback by it but it was very friendly. We continued down to our place and heard our neighbour’s music blaring out.
They call it Disco-Pol and it is a love child from a drunken meeting of cheesy disco and lounge jazz. I didn’t mind it but it made Elly cringe. It was soon replaced by thumping Euro-Trance and I laughed when I saw the small old man who was listening to it. He was chopping wood. He looked about a hundred but the rhythm and strength he had suggested that he was much younger.
I looked at the place and didn’t see the neglected shell that it was, I saw what it could be. I saw a home for me and my family, a garden for a dog to play in or for me and Andrew to kick a ball about in. The garden was actually full of rubble and discarded rubbish. It looked like the local hobo’s had congregated in the garden and smoked and drank as there were large piles of cigarettes and beer cans. I was a bit scared to go in the house so as I pried open the wood panel that covered where a door would be with a claw hammer I kept it and edged inside slowly. As I moved the board to one side a spider crawled across my knuckles. I dropped the board and it made a loud thud. I felt other movement in the house.
“Are you sure no one is here?” I asked Elly.
“No one. Don’t be so scared. I will go if you want.”
“No way. You and Andrew wait here while I investigate.”
I could at least pretend to be brave even if I was shitting it. As I entered, a small space opened into a large hallway which then led off to four rooms and a staircase. To call it a staircase is a misnomer. It was a series of steps starting about half a metre off the ground and turning back on itself and into the second level of the house.
I checked the other rooms and other than odds and sods there was nothing about. I went and fetched Elly who had already got her notebook out and my camera around her wrist. I hadn’t had much chance to snap anything in Poland yet. I had a lot of pictures of Elly, the Palace of Culture, a couple from Krakow, I really should have taken more there, and now there would be a few of our future casa.
I heard something scuttling around upstairs so I grabbed the claw hammer, pulled myself onto the stairs and made the short walk to onto the second floor.
This floor seemed bigger. The rooms were bigger and one had a balcony. The balcony wasn’t fenced off so I don’t know if that would be considered a balcony technically or just a health hazard. I saw the bastard. Trying to hide in the corner and when he knew I’d seen him he sped past me and down the stairs. As I stumbled down the stairs trying to catch him I fell.
When I woke up Elly said I’d banged my head. She had caught our trespasser though and he was purring at her feet. I had a little gash on my forehead and was bleeding badly from biting the inside of my cheek. Today the house had won but I was determined to get back and tame it. I would clean out that garden, install a proper door, put something down on the floor and paint its walls. I might have been a desk jockey but my weekends were going to be full of manual labour and I couldn’t wait.