2 June
HE was sitting. He was sitting all alone by himself on the bench. “Who will go to Edinburgh, please wait at platform 3”, it was announced. People of all ages were rushing here and there. Young ones, old ones and several. But no one took any notice of him. Alone, sitting with a pen and a book and a luggage beside him. The seat was not full, though. However, nobody came to sit beside him. Will you call this loneliness?
There was a clock across from him. It said, “9:30 a.m.” Not early or late. The day was sunny but the temperature was low. The wind blew once every five min-utes. Crowds gathered here. Then there, then here, alternatively. There were chil-dren laughing, weeping and skipping over stones. Parents could not tell them. They were all free as free birds. He had expe-rienced them before. And a few minutes later, train that ran between Glasgow and London came. People came rushing off and again the passengers rushed onto it. This old man moved. But not onto the train. He moved his legs and sat still. He was writing something in his notebookwith his only pen.
The handles of the clock worked fast as the day flowed rapidly. Again very soon, the brand new day was going to write its history. The sun was sinking to the west. Clouds had flown to the other places. Birds got ready for bed. Train after train arrived back to the station. And he got up,took his luggage,the book and the pen and walked slowly out of the station somewhere in London.
He would come everyday and he would do the same job. He would sit with he legs crossed on the same bench. He would write as usual. He looked neither left nor right, neither up nor down but onto his writing. Everybody else was too busyto sit and talk to him. He did not mind it, as well. And whenever that certain train came, he looked up, his eyes searched for something. It didn’t take long, he just concentrated into his business again. Time flew again and he just spent it like this. A young man in his 20s, sat down beside him one morning. The old man moved to his left so that this youth could sit more freely.
“Where are you going, sir?” He asked.
“Waiting.For someone from Glas-gow,”he answered.
“The train has just left, sir. About 10 mins ago”, he told.
“ I know,” the old man smiled. And they talked no more. Then, the train toDublin came and the young man said good-bye to him and left. When the evening fell, the old man left the place as usual.
It rained so heavily like the sky has lost its gravity already on one following day. The wind danced wildly. The train ran from the places despite the bizarre weather. The old man came rushing and sat down like usual. His clothes were wet. His hat was soaked and so was his hair. But his book and his pen weren’t. He wrote. He looked nowhere. Later, the water on him evaporated into the atmosphere. He was dry by then. The rain stopped too. The rain clouds had it enough.
On one of those September days thestation was busy like the other days with people with different faces, beautiful, not very good looking, dark and white. As the clocked showed the time, “9:35 a.m.”, the Glasgow - London train arrived. The trav-ellers, passengers, students and business-men came off.
“Have you seen the old man with a brown luggage and round glasses?”, asked a woman with grey hair, maybe in her 60s.
“ He’s at platform 2”, someone in-formed. She rushed there. There, on the same bench, she saw no one but a book with green paperback sitting on it. She looked high and low. No sign of him. She took the book and bought a paper and headed out of the station. While she was waiting for the red city bus, she browsed through the pages of the paper, and on one of them she saw, the headline, “An old man about 80 years old found dead at the Rose’s Inn.” She knew it.
On her way to somewhere in London, she suddenly read what was written in the green notebook. The words were,
“Dear Lily,
I wait for you every day and every hour, telling myself that you may come back one day. We will go around the city like we did years ago. We will have fun with our books back at home too. All I want to do is just apologize you for letting you down. Hope you can forgive me.Love you til I die.
Yours,
Jack
3rd Sept, 8:15 a.m.”
By AW Khin Myat PhoneGrade 11A, BEHS 4, Botahtaung
