Excerpt from Chapter 2.....

The family which Stewart spoke of as being on the verge of welcoming an additional member were chaperoned by two security guards and a woman          who exhibited a frosty, austere expression.  Her gaze was even sharper,     cutting through every effort by the expectant, non-indigenous mother to         return them with friendlier stares.  Even the physical motion of the parting        of her lips to verbalise a little of what she was feeling was rewarded with       stark, ocular disapproval.  The walk that the family of three, plus the child       still in its incubatory period within the fleshy cocoon, took was regimented, devoid of any welcoming gestures on the part of most of the members of staff designated with the task of seeing them reach the place they were to be housed in, until a less bureaucratic form of residency could be arranged for them.  Here and there, an overuse of bleach to keep the corridors fully cleaned and sterile was smelt by the family and by the officials around them.  For the female, pregnancy made the stroll even more arduous, but her husband, or lover – the authorities weren’t certain that the marital status existed on the world they hailed from, so they could only guess, rather than assume as to whether or      not they were a wedded couple or something other than that – stood near enough to the woman’s back to apply gentle leverage when it was needed.     Two left turns around two corridors later, they were facing the door, behind which were the living quarters the authorities had provided.  The stern woman swiped her identity card through the code reader in a downward thrust, and then briskly typed in a four-digit number known only to her: she was careful to stand at the kind of angle that would prevent anyone else seeing the digits she had keyed in.  The prohibitive red light switched to a green one in a split-second after the single beep that heralded ease of access for those who were about to become the temporary residents of whatever type of living quarters awaited the immigrant family who were expected to abide by the laws put in place, as a result of the restructuring of the immigration service: a move that had been implemented because of the first batch of aliens arriving in the manner they       did.  With a hearty tug, the woman with the icy demeanour yanked the door open, revealing a living room that was officious in its decoration and in the     way the furniture was placed.

The walls were white, and there were no windows.  There was only one sofa and there were no appliances that served any entertainment needs: all in all, it was only a couple of steps above in terms of luxuriousness being a prison.  The command  “move” was whipped out from the mouth of the humourless  lady like a bullet, engendering a small amount of fear from the child that had been expelled from its mother’s womb some years ago on a planet many light years from the one he was now encountering, and he noiselessly clung onto the upper thigh of his male parent’s left leg.  The attitude of one of the pair of security guards was softer than his other colleagues and with a gentle pat on the child’s back, did what he felt he could to allay some of the kid’s fear, or rather what the code of professional behaviour pertaining to his job would permit.

Excerpt from Chapter 1.....

To give you a small idea of the novel I am writing, I will be post excerpts from every chapter that gets written and typed up. Here is the excerpt from the first chapter:

Part of Stewart’s method for curbing his junior co-worker’s temptation to open his mouth and talk to anyone he wasn’t supposed to about this, who would then feel the very human urge to gossip unnecessarily about the secret they had been let in on, was to chat about the occurrence as if they were talking about shopping, mowing the lawn, or worrying about monetary concerns.  Stewart was still experiencing all three of these considerations, plus a dozen or so more, in his married life.  When he was on the verge of leaving his teenage years behind, domestic harmony had been the advertisement to sell the concept of marriage to him. The accumulation of adult-based sensibilities had allowed him to cope with him waking up to the truth that the sales pitch was a sugar-coated fabrication, with the reality not rewarding him with any of the delights promised; all he received instead were dirty nappies, sleepless nights, marital arguments – one or two, in his case, leading to two trial separations – and psychologically-felt disenchantments. The only       flame of hope that burned was that he wasn’t going to suffer alone:       his circumstances were undoubtedly common.

He had definitely been a stabilising influence in Paul’s own life, taking on the responsibility of looking out for, and professionally nurturing   the new boy.  When he and Paul weren’t being one part of a scheme to remove outer space vehicles from the locations they landed at, their occupation was to commute furniture from one property to the newer residence.  The jobs they did in amongst this could slip into the gaps in between the duration of every time they ensured somebody’s personal, house-based possessions made it safely from the house that had been sold to the one that had been bought, so that it became unofficial enough for no impetus to be available that might make anyone’s curiosity fire up.  It could not be seen to be anything special, certainly not in private discussions.  These examples of verbally exchanging information had to be kept within the psychological and physical boundaries set by the powers-that-be.  The one freedom they did have was to express their views on these jobs to each other.  Yet, in spite of there being over five years of these conversations, Paul had never asked the obvious question relating to their recent endeavour, until now.

Next excerpt coming soon.....