Suddenly, Someone: The Novel (Chapter 1)
Chapter 1
The Old Man in the Train
“This world will only ever be a place to live in.”, my father said to me, frowning and sitting on a chair outside the office room, while the aggregate of financial losses incurred by his start-up, brought upon by perfidious investors, was being calculated inside. Still do I so desperately wish to have understood the crucial insinuation those words could have carried, no later than that day, and certainly not as late as after the complicated happenings I am going to narrate herein.
I would usually not call myself what a sceptical man would exhibit, but it is veracious that I have remained a little too dubious with jobs. After a delicate practice in the field of newspaper editing and article formulations, I saw myself in an internship as an assistant designer on a three-month project with Mr. Fridges Brietner, an entrepreneur who dealt his finances in textile and share markets. I would say the contract produced impressive pocket money, but that was never enough.
My father is a brilliant businessman, proficient to the maximum limit when accounts are concerned, but no, I had no interest to transform myself into an accountant or an economist. I did draw certain economic illustrations under my father’s supervision, fabricated with assistance from a dozen company advisors (I was the assistant on paper) but that did not purchase me the fruit of my desire. I did find my name on a work-experience which was certified by one departmental manager, but how much can you count on that!
I can code; write essays of rules that a compiler can absorb, but a nine to five overdose in an IT sector is not how I wanted to decorate my schedule. There was a time when I had a passion for writing songs, but that faded away in the eleventh grade, when Mechanics and Calculus presented themselves within my syllabus.
Therefore, I would lay lazy day in and out. My mornings represented me sitting idly in front of my laptop over a cup of beverage, constantly surfing LinkedIn for content management programmes. In the evenings, one would find me at the field trying out my skills at wicket-keeping, or otherwise, at Mr. Hudson’s Smoothies’, three blocks from the main street. On some days of the summer, when the temperatures would tend to one-third of a century by the Celsius scale, I might even be too lazy to leave my nest.
After galloping the streets of Lowestoft, which also happens to be my hometown, for exactly one year, I decided to pursue my career in Law and Criminology. Why law, might you inquire? As it so happens to be, diving into that pool of suspenseful depth and havoc, savoured by constant touches of mysterious thriller here and there, is something that stimulates the wires in my cerebrum. I have always shared an intense admiration for Conan’s works. As much, if it were the nineteenth century, I would have taken chances at my own office with a phone that would ring whenever crime in England was anticipated. (Would I have a telephone? If I am not very much mistaken, the caller was invented near Conan’s time of the limelight.)
Yet, consider this that today technology has evolved tremendously, and with it has evolved the way we respond to threats as those caused by our kind. The intelligence supervises suffice if not the local police. Even otherwise, Sherlock’s methods are outcast to be able to procure the tricks of any advanced criminal of these times. I figured this, that only as a member of the legal rationality would I be indulged with the world that I relate to so very ardently, while also, in passing, be able to profit the respect of my father who disbelieves the existence of a remarkable career beyond academic approach; a respect in its being a gruelling trophy I could only have imagined to be the champion of. No, I did not try for a policeman because I am sure there is no post that recruits men as slim and tiny, and nevertheless as lazy, as myself.
“It is a good subject,”, my father said as cordially as he could, “particularly good, indeed, if you can excel at remembering the details of all those articles you read, and then making the best out of what you’ve learned when you step foot in the courtroom. I guess that’s basically any other job, just so this might need a little more of your ‘smart’ skills as compared to the ‘information’ you happen to gather upon your course. Don’t overlook the ‘info’ part, though!”
“Why you learn Sciences back in high school for nothing?”, my mother interrupted. “Mason just made half your grades, and he wants to become a software engineer. Why you say you have to study law?”
“‘Sherlock’ is a lawyer. Pfft-”, my elder brother whispered mockingly and snorted away near the fridge.
“And why do you have to study criminology? Ain’t there no seats for you in the civil department?”, my mother continued.
“There is no civil department. Criminology is a common subject for a bachelor.”, I replied.
“Is it now?”, she stressed.
“Oh, now let the boy do what he likes.”, my father returned, who was simply satisfied that I did not choose to become a lyricist. He turned to me, “But my son, are you infallibly sure that this is what you want the next forty years of your life to look like? How confident are you, that you can and will do as good as you think you will be able to do in this profession?”
“Well, no, I’ll manage ……”, I replied.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“I guess, that’s settled, then.”
I was confident about it, more confident than ever before. Here is the thing with confidence, it is always accompanied by a trifle, yet pointy and infuriating fear of self doubt, defined by a touch of ‘negatory’, which su mmons defeat over a goal that seemed so achievable. As disregardable as it might appear, this fear is what marks the bridge between participation and success. Many either exhibit ignorance or succumb to this fear to provide more attention to what the goal is. My father taught me; it is important to stand up to and tackle this fear while on the runway track because it pessimises you and keeps you from your destination. “Assemble but an intermingled assertion of strength and perseverance, and the cue to this problematic delusion will you have.”, he claims.
But yes, I was, as I mean it, confident. I was ready to accept this challenge; determined as much to fight this fear as Tony Stark against the Chitauri; motivated not less than a 17’s Barcelona squad marc hing into the Camp Nou against a menacing looking Paris to establish something never encountered before, something as auspicious as ‘La Remontada’. As any other student would, I took every exam and tried every college, until my search ceased when the Unive rsity of West London acknowledged my proposal.
Not much did I know about London, back then. That air a capital state might carry, I believe is conventionally suffocating. I was not scared, if something, I was excited about it. I have had my way into tro ubles my entire life, and I have been resilient, psychologically, and physically. My brother had a different opinion about the capital.
“London is a beautiful city, don’t you think, eh? The profusely decorated and architectured capital of England. Quite a market has grown of it recently, with business and opportunities. Institutes of assistance and knowledge have developed alongside entertainment and sports, which otherwise has produced some remarkable industry over the last few decades. Skills and talent s as many as drops of water in a house water tank wanders the streets of this city. Fashion and money have had a splendid influence on the buildup of this society. A man of your stature will like it there. Oh yes, you are momentous. Don’t underestimate yo ur capabilities, now, will you? You go out there, and you fetch yourself an LLB, and you take to the court, then you take the court. Period!”
I did not know where that blunt perception of his originated from. Probably, he was concerned I was afraid. I ju st listened, patiently, to whatever he had to spit.
In London, there lived my maternal uncle, Fredric Hopes, who is by profession, none other than the chief of the London Police Department. You will not want a piece of this man, that I know for sure. H e is a barbarous man, very barbarous indeed. He has a portly figure, and always seems to be infuriated with even the most trivial matters that can exist. Never will you find this man talk without an amplified tone. The maximum of his fiendishness is observ ed when you see him deal with a criminal. Does he interrogate? No, he enters the cell with his beloved and priced redwood cane that has but a stylish metal knob, greased to the maximum limit, and thwack the bare back of the guilty several times, completely irrespective of the extent of guilt. Some days when he is a little monotonous, he might just strangle the hair of the prisoner (if his constables left some upon him), while smoking onto his pipe like a hopeless romantic .
In continuation of staging these bestial attributes about my uncle, it would be unjust to not mention the quality he possesses as a policeman. He is a man of stupendous vim and size and strength in addition to a prodigious brain. He has a remarkable memory, one that is appreciated in the entire of London. A span of ten years of service has seen him unravel fiftyseven byzantine cases alongside another hundred minor ones. He claims his own merit was enough to reach this status, however, a close friend of his, and eventually mine, owns a di fferent opinion. Now, so it happened that with mutual understanding between Mrs. Hopes and my mother, I was supposed to tag along with this family upon my visit to the capital.
Heavens, I was defiant about it! And so was my father who insisted that he will subsidize, helping me establish my spot in a rental that is furnished and costs no more than five times a hundred Pound Sterling. Not to mention, that was a failing attempt.
I was at the station, the other day, at 5 pm, when not many people had boarded the train. There is a train to London, almost after every hour from Lowestoft, and will reach its destination in the proximity of three hours. Although that I generally prefer the bus as a genuine mode of public transport among the others, I was n ot willing to spend six mundane hours in a cabin. Yes, you could read a book or admire the beauty of nature but neither did I have the patience or capacity to continue to do so for such a colossal amount of time.
There was inexplicable chaos. Had a lunat ic let alose a millennium crying Moluccan cockatoos I would not have heard more noises. There was this guy, in green checked shirt with a suitcase that hung from his closed palm who went past outside my window. Another loafer accompanied coughing. Not anot her moment wasted, I drew the window glass on. I could have helped myself with some McDonald’s fries and a Starbucks exclusive had those warm cucumber sandwiches wrapped in aluminium foils pressed against the tiffin inside my backpack not met my eyes. Ther e is definitely someone who does not want me to enjoy some taste on my journey. You cannot not be vexed when you have been imagining those salty bricks of yellow potato swerve in your mouthful for over thirtysix hours and then this happens.
When I had just bit onto one of those triangular pieces of bread, a man dressed in a black coat and a formal shirt inside, with a formal look so tight no other person could have assembled, walked down the aisle beside me. There is only one man with this description tha t travels the inside of a train. At once I fumbled for my wallet in my back pockets and confirmed my ticket for myself.
Within another fifteen minutes, a crowd started gradually lining up on the platform adjacent to where my conveyance was parked. They h ad to get to Ipswich for the local transport was announced to be arriving at any moment on that rail. Another minute had passed when the crowd had disoriented, not of position but of patience, and had eventually turned into a mob. There was shouting, and p ushing, and cursing on platform number four. Platform number four! How interesting it is there is a platform number four in Lowestoft station which has but a total of three platforms. Apparently, someone assumed naming them two, three, and four would be conventional.
I had almost finished Fitzgerald’s exclusive copy of The Great Gatsby when I thought I had read enough for the day. The train was parked now for almost thirty minutes in the middle of somewhere, somewhere where darkness seemed to have had it s territory established since almthis planet was born. It was raining outside, a faint downpour. One old lady sat in the corner of the very last bench of the cabin. Otherwise, there was this man, in his sixties, who sat just across me constantly chasing his p sized metallic pocketwatch. Not another soul was in the bogy. Everyone else that had been in the cabin had deboarded at previous stations. I remember turning on my mobile hoping to connect to my Facebook when a ‘No Signal!’ message would pop up on the screen.
Where the train was parked exactly, I had no idea of. Although considering the length of the journey already travelled and the stations that the vehicle passed along, I should say I was closest to my destination. In the meanwhile, that the vehic le was parked, a couple of men dressed in halfcop vests did once or twice pass across outside my window. This led me to assume that a legal checking must have been in progress. Considering the need to stop an overland transport while on the wheels, I coul d guess the matter was of serious gravity. I rolled my eyes outside the window to gather of the policemen endeavours and kept my gaze constant for few minutes, but to no avail did I find myself. Boredom had me terrorized sooner and this was when I started observing the passenger closest to me. This was my first interpretation of London, and I cannot agree if it were an escapade, for save the panorama an awkward situation had born since. Bizarre, I would say, rather than awkward! The bizarreness of which I c ould only understand after another three weeks, and of which you will be able to learn as you turn the concluding chapter of this dossier.
Faint aqua drizzles plummeted from the stratosphere. The stars hid behind the clouds that covered the night sky. Silence defined the surrounding except the faint, irritating distant buzzing of the crickets, which had come with the sole purpose of disturbing an evening moment, maintaining their decibel of noise while constantly roving around an illuminated lamppo st. The blink of an eye saw the bulb extinguish completely and the darkness of the woods crept in closer towards the cab.
The old man across me would draw the shutter across the glass of his window, and then continue to smoke a rather long pipe; quite pr imeval as of the texture, and a unique finger cell it had. I gazed upon the elegant masterpiece with bulging eyes until another belonging of the old man happened to intervene.
He produced a paperback and a newspaper from his suitcase and a pen that was t ucked beneath the button lining of his shirt and started writing and scribbling. His head was bent, and he could not have been more absorbed into his writing. It appeared as if he was trying to note business details from off the newspaper. His pen moved wi th speed. Initially, it did not attend to me, but as expired five minutes, I wanted to obtain what the fellow passenger happens to interpret so searchingly. An effort to peer over the old man’s shoulder went in vain. Nevertheless, that did not cease any in at that moment. ch of curiosity I happened to have had.
"The human mind is a dirty thing, a dirty deranged assimilation of temptations. Offer but a task and will it not hesitate but initiate it yourself and it will want to dive in, experience, and contemplate. An interest born of inexistent cause, an idiosyncrasy.”, the old man whispered unexpectedly.
“Wh ..... What!”, I replied casually, while trying to ratify the base of his sentences in the back of my mind. I was confused! Everything the old man egressed so voluntarily did not make sense to me. Curious I certainly was to know of his working, so I looked, but temptation it was not. An offer for me to watch was neither made. As far as I could obtain, a fundamentally incorrect structure of opinions is how I treated those words as. I looked at him with browsing eyes, he was deeply sunken into his papers. Initially I assumed he just ignored my presence, but what actually was, was a more believable scenario; he did never consider my presence.
“Did you say something, young man?” He finally turned to me while adjusting his spectacles with his right hand.
“Oh! No, I-”
“Ah- this report you see, in The Times today”, geniality described his face that soon turned into angst. “In Liverpool has someone apparently played a thousand fresh Sterlings in a casino pool. As it turns out, the money was fake. A replica of the incident that tricked the National Bank just week ago. What has humanity stooped to these days! The government and the police claim they will see especially to it that these forgers are captured behind bars. But no progress! Six months and the same old story. Ah! - these cunning days-”
“I’m sure something will be done.”
“When? When will they do something? When papers and not money will occupy the banks entirely?”
The intense volume of his voice indicated the strength of the emotion behind those words.
“Have you lost any?”, I asked.
A sign of terror flashed across his face, but he seemed to recover quickly.
“Money? To these frauds? Ain’t not a shilling. It would take a might to trick the experience out of me. Why do you ask?”
“Well, certainly you seem to be more displeased than anyone I can remember of.”
“Displeased? I am disgusted. We install votes and this is how they stall us. Stall our rights to a proper living. Those bastards print their counterfeit in the goddamn banks and the gutters and god knows where and all the police can think of is money inflow from other states through the rails.”
“Eventually, something will be done.”
“Six months. Six months since the grand forgery in Athena. I don’t trust those men anymore.”
“You did lose money? Didn’t you?”
“I said, no.”
“This amount of outrage, then? I’m intrigued.”, I commented casually.
The old man gazed at me with a stern look in his eyes, which was incongruous to his dazzling smile. That was a look that terrified me within. I looked away nervously until he resumed the conversation.
“Everyone has their own elements to provide to their vision of life. I see life as a constant struggle for authority. The divided struggles of the powerful and the weak. The combat! Anyone can build money, but not everyone its value. Skills make that. And these cruel games of the insanely powerful compromise the hopes of the skillful poor!” He slowly finished as he wiped his cuffs from windowdirt and brushed his spectacles.
“Well, yes! ”, I responded nervously, noticing mostly his obtrusive qualities of listening to what he had to speak. wear and only barely At least I could gather why the cops had the train halted.
I asked myself, if that is a reasonable excuse for stopping a raildriver, but I did not introduce much thought into that and believed whatever I was told. I wanted to ask of the old man’s immense credence against the smuggling through the overland mails and I could never grasp till this date why I did not continue with that. That man had now returned to his own universe, which shall never be trespassed by another being. An indescriptible perplexity passed upon my face as I saw that statue sit with leg inwards without the minutest of displacement. Five minutes gone, an inch had not the old man palpitated.
About this time, certain babbles, faint and distant, became audible, which seemed to originate from behind my cabin. A listener could tell obscure clangour followed by the sound of boots striking against the ground was perceptible. Time witnessed as the noise transformed into commotion. It was the cops, I guessed. The old man was still for another five seconds, after which he rose from his seat while elongating his stick, and walked away, rather staggered, as if he were trying to flee away from sight, and I started to gradually become susp icious of his movement.
“I might use the washroom, now.”
By the time he finished his comment, he already had one step into the washroom, after which he completely expired out of my sight.
‘Zeal without knowledge is the sister of folly.’ I have acquired this learning and have been fascinated by the various illustrations of it.
It is difficult, I believe, to believe, to acquire trust.
My father has always anticipated the growing harshness of society. “Today, trust is harder to gain than money.”, he says, “The world today has reached an advanced level of precariousness. Insecurities have had newer definitions. Humility has become more fragile than before. In this society, you would be bovin e and insouciant and certainly not a carefree nonchalant not to question the qualities of a stranger in your proximity. That person sitting as lonely as a cloud in a hoodie and a mask right behind you in a coffee shop, might be a robber. This is a devilish blend of anxiety and preconception, and the society today might never upheave from this. “Tell you, you often fail to address the help of a stranger under pressure of anxiety. Apprehensions are tough to overcome, and it gets tougher with each day you witness. Doubts make us aware, that’s good; doubts also make us appear rude and when this happens, its not our's to judge.
“What has brought this? No, that is not the answer I ask of. Where have and where will this lead to?”
I have applied this proposition wherever I could, experimented socially on whomever seemed possible, and results claim society is majorly impacted likewise my father’s considerations. This is what I have observed since. The impact insecurities have had on humanity is immense and in a certain way, adverse. Just sometimes people tend to be characterized with an exclusive touch of a micable ‘proclivity’, although, human beings are selfabsorbent animals, introverted and prying from ambivalence on normal days. In the train that evening, I was no different.
A police constable had now entered the cabin. He looked around; there was the lady and on the other side was me with a backpack and a black suitcase that could have belonged to any elderly workperson but a college guy. The policeman took a shallow breath as he drew a piece of folded paper from inside his pockets and ticked away at something. He looked again; his hands frozen on the piece of paper while his eyes into mine. I was petrified. The cop assumed nothing and walked away.
I did not move for another minute, for startled I was, after which I tried to peep outside the window and check on the activity of the cops. They were checking for a person in disguise, I guessed, and that they managed a paper record of the bogies and a photo of the escaper. I could not tell very accurately of their investigations for they were constantly moving except one policeman, who probably was the chief, who strolled across the edges of the rail just beside my cabin. I got down from the train and approached him. A constable from behind me shouted, “Hey, young man, get back to your seat, now will you, mister?”
The chief stopped his constable with his left hand.
“You better return to your seat, lad.”, he said, “unless you have something for us.”
“It.. I was just.... i thought you were lookinv for someone -– ”, I replied. I thought you were looking for “It’s confidential.”, he said, then he turned and strolled two walks away, when suddenly he turned back and retrieved those steps, “Have you seen this man anywhere?”, he produced a photo of a man in jailwear, with thick brown hair, round face without a beard, was British and in his forti es, but I had not seen him anywhere.
“Uh... no....I don’t think ……”, I said. The policeman let out a grunt as he walked away hastily from me. I returned to my cabin.
When I returned to my seat, the old man was already there. He was standing closest to his bench and staring widely while wiping his hands with a napkin that I did not knew, wherefrom it originated. I slowly made myself comfortable on the seat. The old man was still staring, and he continued to do so for some more time. Awkward, it was, that sta re. His eyes, half opened, half hid by the eyebrows; followed by a serene-appearing halfsmile that tilted towards the left. There was something in this stare that I could not tell, something that displayed leniency and forbearance. Had time stopped? Suddenly, the man lowered down his head and extended his smile. Then he looked at me, this time with gratitude. “It seems the train is taking off, finally.”
“Oh yes, it does.”, I replied.
The train started and the clash of the metal wheels against the rails w once again. as audible Until the train approached London, there was hardly another conversation back in the cabin. The old man had once again chosen to become a statue, with legs inwards, as he completely engrossed himself into his papers. I never cared to ask about those documents, ever again.
“Well, we haven’t exchanged our names, now, have we?”, the old man finally decided to speak when we were about to deboard the train.
“I am Doctor Adridge Fillian, from the University of Liverpool. Here’s my card. ”
“I ..... I am Noah. Noah Vurkey!" I never stopped being an idiot. We took different cabs outside the station and went our own ways.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Relevent LINKS TO BUY from:
Paperback Version:
E-Book Version:
You may find my book on Goodreads as well.
(Do leave a review after reading. Happy read!)
Contact author:
Find relevent contact handles at click here
Comments
Post a Comment