Hurt

HIS SAVING GRACE

George visits to The Willow became frequent. He would helped Benjamin harvested vegetables and fruits from his glass house and picked lily for his wife. He would helped Nora cooking and be taught by Benjamin how to tinkered around the house.

One day Benjamin took out an old gramophone and asked George to help him fixed it. When he was finished fixing it, he would played it and asked Nora to dance with him. At the end of the day he gave it to George as a token of appreciation for helping him fixed the old gramophone.

They spent a lot of time together in the glass house, farming together, explored Ben's big mansion for old things that still could be fixed. When it rained outside they would spent time in the library, reading. And to think that before he started to hang out with Ben, George hated reading.

One day Benjamin told George to suit up - he gave George a beautiful tailored suit that his tailor made especially for the young man - he took him to the country club. He taught George to socialized with other people; nice, educated people. He showed him the women, the respectable women that he should have for a wife if he cleaned up his act and got it together.

"I didn't say that rich woman who hangs out at the country club is the only wife material there is. What I'm trying to say is, if you don't clean up your mess you would never find a good woman worthy for you. This is what you'll miss if you keep being in a wrong path. A decent society where you could exchange ideas like a civilized person," Benjamin stretched his hand, gesturing the whole room, the women, the gentleman, and the lovers – especially the lovers.

And from that moment on, George started to cleaned up his mess. He stayed out of excess alcohol, he quitted smoking, he quitted playing hooker, he quitted hanging around his drunken friend and he started his new life. That was around time when his father got sick and Veronica got home after having finished school.

When his father was absent from the shop, it was clear to George that this whole time it was Veronica who really was going to make father rich. But unfortunately his father didn't live to see it. Shortly after he was diagnosed with lung cancer, his father passed away and Veronica took over the shop.

She did even better than her father when in a year she opened 3 shops in 3 different towns near Ipswich; Woodbridge, Needham Market and Stowmarket. After that she started exploring a new line of business and keep hitting gold. That was around time when George finally realized that his true passion was to be a farmer.

George met an old lighthouse keeper one day at a local bar. The lighthouse keeper named John and he was in need of an assistant but the job paid so little and it was located quite far from Ipswich, it was in Bidston Hill, Merseyside and it was also very secluded andq lonely. But George loved it! He loved what he heard from the old guy and said he would love to take the job.

Benjamin was very happy to hear that, he was relieved to know that George has a passion after all, even though the passion took him far away. Veronica on the other hand was ferocious! She was raging mad when George broke the news, she wanted George to stay and work with her in his father shop now turned into medium size enterprise thanks to the fierce businesswoman, herself. However, George kept his ground and that night after dinner he packed his clothes, the old pot that Ben gave him – now has a healthy green grass like plants living in it - went to the train station and caught the midnight train with John, far away from his hometown onto a new, serene place called Bidston Hill.

He soon found himself felt more like at home in the lighthouse more than he had ever felt in his own home. He wrote regularly to Ben and Nora and sometimes to Elda – they became quite close when he was working with Benjamin – and reluctantly to Veronica whose replies mostly contained her disaproval to George's decision and endless questions about when George would finally came home to wich the answer was always, never.