The Box

The narrator reminisces about his father's obsession with a box, found in the house of a very old relative who'd just died. The box was locked and no one could find a key . . .

It was me that found it. I'd been stuffing coats and jackets into bags to leave for the binmen to collect - we'd never seen Uncle Joe wear any of them, my father said, so why should anyone else have to? - and there it was, this box, at the back of a wardrobe. If it hadn't been locked, I don’t think I would’ve been much interested in it. But it was locked.

It was a wooden box of dull brown colour, the same length as my ten-year-old forearm, and about six inches high. I turned it over a couple of times: there was no rattle or movement I could detect; I searched the floor of the wardrobe, then the shelves: there were various odd bits of metal - hooks, screws, and so on - but no keys. I went downstairs to the living room. "Dad," I said, "look at this. It's locked!” He was fishing out the glassware from an extravagantly-carved chiffonier, examining and wiping each piece before placing it carefully on the dining table. He did not want to be disturbed: "Just leave it," he grunted. I returned to Uncle Joe's bedroom and desultorily filled another bin bag with blankets and pillowcases from a wall-cupboard.

Presently, my father came stomping up the stairs. He appeared with the box: "where did you find this?" he snapped. I showed him. "Are you sure the key wasn't in it?” No, I couldn't be. "Did you check to see whether it'd fallen down the back?” At once my father began scouring the wardrobe, digging his nails into its dirt-choked crevices. Then: "What about the coat pockets? Did you check the coat pockets before you threw them away?” I hesitated. "Do it now, then!” I fumbled in one of the bin bags for a moment. "No, look!” My father grabbed hold of the bag and emptied it onto the floor. He searched one pocket after another, and seemed to forget about me completely: well, I was just standing there doing nothing and he never said a word. But the product of all his labours was a single raffle ticket. He sighed and looked round the room like he was hoping for a clue, then snatched up the box and went downstairs. I followed quietly.

We’d found a lot of old keys as we were clearing the place, most of them long since homeless it seemed. My father had kept them all together in a dish, just in case . . . Well, he tried nearly every one - though most were patently too big – but the box's pearly keyhole remained inviolate. There was an acute silence in the car as we drove home.

 * * *

It's twenty-five years now since Uncle Joe died. He wasn't actually my uncle, but a bachelor brother of my great-grandmother. After she died, he remained in her house with all the other furniture. The house was at the end of a terrace in the old part of a new town. I never saw it while he was alive: he spent almost all his waking hours at his niece’s - my grandmother's. He was so utterly a part of Grandma's that I had no conception he might exist outside it. But then one night the door to that unimagined house closed behind him for the last time. The next afternoon, Uncle Joe was found at the foot of the stairs. And I saw my mother cry for the first time.

* * *

I think my father was surprised when my mother told him she’d never seen the box before. He was annoyed too, but my mother said: "I bet you don't know the half the stuff your Auntie Nellie's got.” Of course, she had no idea where the key could be. “But the number of odd keys in this house,” she joked, “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was here.” My father searched her dressing table, then the kitchen, then the sideboard in the lounge. Me and my sister got to stay up late while he searched our rooms too! "Honestly, love! What would they be doing with the key?" my mother asked him.

I learned later that, about this time, my father had gone to see Grandma - alone: he'd never done that before. Grandma told me he'd shown her the box and asked about a key. She told him she didn’t know anything about it, but said she'd keep an eye open. This didn't satisfy him apparently: "really insistent, he was," Grandma recalled. He followed her around her house, watching as she turned over the contents of every chest, every cupboard, every jewellery box and biscuit tin. He was itching to join in too: once or twice, he even thrust his hand into a drawer just as Grandma was about to shut it! "It's a wonder he didn't do himself an injury!” But you could tell she didn't mind: after all, he was her son-in-law - family now.

 * * *

Uncle Joe didn't talk much. He'd been deaf since he was two: I was more likely to hear the high-pitched whistle of his hearing aid than the sound of his voice. "Paper's too small!” That might've been the only thing he said to me. He could fold paper into yachts, and he'd do it as often as I asked. One day I must’ve wanted to frustrate him, cos I gave him the smallest piece of paper I could find - a shop receipt I suppose it was - and demanded a boat. In a minute he appeared with the tiniest paper yacht: a delighted squeal, then mocking childish laughter. "Paper's too small!" Uncle Joe said. Yet there it was, a boat: very little, but unmistakable.

And now it's the only yacht I remember him making. I wish I'd kept it, just to watch the folds he pressed down so skilfully retain their shape year after year: it would've been some kind of remembrance anyway.

 * * *

My father spent many hours polishing the box. It was quite beautiful when he finished: its luxuriant dark red grain looked a bit out of place in our cheap pine and plastic-topped home. He carried it around a lot too, and even wore gloves so he wouldn’t smear the polish. I was puzzled by his devotion, for though the box was certainly splendid to look at, it was still locked.

Then one Saturday, it sat in my mother's lap as father drove us up town, to an antiques shop. The proprietor lifted his eyes as we paraded in. Father headed the procession, holding the box in front of him like he was bearing gifts. It was locked, he told the proprietor, was there anything he could suggest? The man smiled indulgently; he didn't reply, but took the box from my father and examined it. "Rosewood veneer . . . mother-of-pearl escutcheon . . . late Victorian . . . a tea caddy I should say.” (Tea? Who'd want to lock tea up?) Can it be unlocked? my father asked humbly. Of course, said the proprietor; the locks on tea caddies weren't unique: take twenty or thirty, and chances are a key from one would fit a couple of others too. "And it just so happens I've picked up a good assortment of keys over the years: cabinet keys, jewellery box keys, piano keys - if you'll pardon the pun; you name it. Some of my regulars are keen collectors.” (Collectors? Why would anyone collect keys?)

"I've got some of them in here," said the proprietor. He pulled out a drawer from a tallboy behind him and fussily made an even spread of the keys within. Some were small flat metal chips, others tiny cylinders with baby teeth at one end; a few door keys looked like monstrous freaks of nature in this company. "Anything there for you?”

My father tried every key of roughly the right size, but he wasn't very methodical and even I noticed him try the same one twice. The proprietor sighed a couple of times while this was going on. I suppose he was irritated by my father, but at that age though I knew how to be ashamed of myself, I did not know how to be ashamed of anyone else.

The door ringed and another customer came in. "Afternoon, John!" greeted the proprietor, and they began talking about a vase the man had brought.

"Do you have any more keys?" interrupted my father. The proprietor did not answer, but I could see him stiffening. "Do you have any more keys," he repeated, louder, at what seemed a lull in the men's examination of the vase. But even before he had finished the question, the proprietor turned to my father and said "Excuse me sir, I'm talking to a customer!"

My father just stared at him. Then he picked up the box, marched to the door, and opened it. "Peter! Louise! Come on!” I couldn't understand why he wanted to go: there would be more keys here. My mother looked confused for a moment. Then she turned to the proprietor: "Who do you think you are? Who the hell do you think you are?” She shepherded me and my sister out as she spoke. I felt a horrid incomprehension. I tried to keep up with my father as he blasted down the street. I would be allowed only one question: "Dad, why did we have to leave?” He stared straight ahead as he finally answered me: "I don't know, Peter."

 * * *

I'm trying very hard to remember what Uncle Joe looked like. A few traces of white hair around his temple? A large squat head with the vaguest pointed chin? The only photograph I've ever seen of him showed a small fair-haired boy sat uncomfortably on a chaise-longue. He never had his own family of course, so I suppose there wasn't much call for him to appear in photos once he'd grown up. When I asked Grandma to describe him, to help me remember, she seemed not to know where to begin. But even if she had managed a description, I wonder whether I would’ve accepted it.

Because though I can’t recall his likeness, I can still picture him. Picture him standing beside a huge ancient chest of drawers. He'd had this thing delivered to our house one untraceable summer day. I'd come down to the hallway to see what the commotion was about. His eyes are on me now: his left hand betokens his gift; behind the chest, my mother's face swells gladly; neither speaks, neither moves; the world is still, silent, its centre a sombre displaced hulk.

 * * *

I didn't see my father much that week. Not that he was out or anything, he just went straight upstairs to his bedroom when he got home from work, and even had my mother bring him his meals on a tray. But he was there, that was the main thing. One time, as I was kicking a ball about in the garden with my sister, I caught sight of him, staring out of the bedroom window. In a moment he turned away, and dissolved into the greyness behind the glass.

Next Saturday, we went up town with the box again. I wondered if we were going back to that antiques shop. But my father led us to the covered market, to a stall selling games, colouring books, teddy bears, that sort of thing. My sister squealed with joy, she didn't know where to start; she took all my mother's restraining attention. Me, well I was more curious about the fact we'd been brought there: we never went out to buy toys, they just appeared in the house on birthdays and at Christmas. So I watched as my father made his way to a keycutting booth down the aisle; I followed, but stopped some distance short of the booth.

A man with black-smeared hands had taken the box from my father, but seemed to be telling him he couldn't help, that he didn't have the tools, or a license, or something. My father had produced his wallet, had lifted a few notes from it. "It's urgent," I heard him say. The man must have relented: he held the box under a lamp and prodded inside the keyhole with some short metal spike. He didn't persist long in this, though: I think he said he didn't have the time; he held the box out to my father. But my father looked tired, he wouldn't accept it. At last, the man laid the box on its back; shaking his head, he squeezed a chisel under the lid by the keyhole and gave it a few blows with a mallet. My father glanced around him as the claps pierced the cosy murmur of the crowd. Our eyes met, but he turned away quickly. I went back to the toy stall where my sister was cuddling the huge pink rabbit my mother had just bought her.

 * * *

Uncle Joe has not proved the sort to draw attention to himself after death. Even in my early teens, when I would happily listen for hours to Grandma chat with contemporaries of his, I never heard his name spoken. I suppose they'd all known him too well; he'd left nothing for them to wonder at. But I'm sure they would've been happy to tell me anything I wanted to know about him, if I'd asked.

Actually, there was something, one fact, about Uncle Joe that preserved its vitality long after he'd gone: he was 'red-hot Labour.' His relatives were all Tories - shopkeepers, builders, wholesalers - but not Uncle Joe: he'd worked at the coal mines, and he was 'red-hot Labour.'

I got interested in politics when I was seventeen or eighteen. My involvement was strictly theoretical, I never actually did anything. But in the midst of Mrs Thatcher's England I decided I was a socialist. I won't pretend I knew what socialism was - I held some blurry precepts about 'fairness' for the poorest in society - yet this idea made me feel bigger somehow. And so uniquely a part of myself did it seem, I could hardly conceive that the idea existed before I found it, or that it was shared by other people. Uncle Joe was 'red-hot Labour' only because I was destined to be (for a time). I knew about the things he must've lived through: a General Strike, fascism, communism. I knew about nationalisation, devaluation, joining the Common Market, all the stuff that must've vexed his closing years. But history was history. Uncle Joe was merely Uncle Joe. All he told me was that the paper was too small.

 II

My mother's out when I draw up with the van. But I still have a key to the house I grew up in, sixteen years after leaving. I see that Louise and Richard have had the furniture removed already. I dutifully remind myself that this is the last time, as I wander from room to room. Yet I hear nothing from the cardboard boxes waiting in the hall, filled with books and bottles, crockery and shoes. The gaps in the lounge, where the sideboard was, where the bookcase and the settee were, they jar, but they don’t speak. I go upstairs: the plaster on the walls, all those years, it has been just plaster all along . . .  The irregular shapes of the landing, the bedrooms - were they always as cold and abstract as this?

I see a small white car pulling into the drive. "Hello," says my mother, with that downward inflexion she uses with me now. The irony is, I genuinely want to be here, to do something. And not just because I wasn't around when, at just 59, my father collapsed and died.

"Looks like you've done most of the packing already," I say. But after I've loaded up the van, my mother mentions she hasn't been able to get into the loft to see what's there. So I stand on the stepladder, push the board away, and heave myself into it.

In my younger days, it was an adventure to clamber up here, to rummage among the rolls of hopelessly discoloured wallpaper and trimmings from a lounge carpet long gone: you never knew what you'd find. But there's no pleasure in it now: my chest tightens in the dust as I contort myself around a strut that is rough and dry on my hands. I'm annoyed by the rugs, cases, fold-up chairs, all the stuff up here, because it'd be a pity to leave, but it's too much hassle to move.

Then I see the box again, lying open and defenceless on a strip of fibreglass lagging. I crouch down to examine it in the shaft of light from below; I notice the maroon paper lining which once reminded me of a dolls house, and the veneer which still glints with a remnant of the polish my father brought out. The box is less disfigured than I remember. After it was forced open, I asked my father what he’d found inside. "Nothing," he snapped. And that was that.

"Recognise this, Mum? All the trouble we had trying to find a key . . .  Did Dad say what he found when he had it opened?"

"I don't think there was anything in it."

"I'd be surprised if there was nothing. I mean, when I asked, he said there was 'nothing' but . . . I assumed he meant none-of-your-business nothing, not nothing nothing."

“No, I think it was empty.  . . . You know your Dad. Everything had to be a certain way. Everything had to be just so.”

For a few brief moments, I'm at Uncle Joe's again. It's our final visit: the 'For Sale' sign has gone up outside the front door, and the last of the bin bags has disappeared from the back yard. The furniture has all gone: the dealer boasted he'd have it shipped off to Japan or America by the end of the month! My sister and I are in the living room, stamping on the cold stone flags to hear the echo fizz up into the coving. But we're quickly bored and go upstairs to join our parents: "What do you need the key for now, love?" our mother is saying, "You've had it opened?"

As we turn into Uncle Joe's bedroom, we see our father squatting where the wardrobe used to be; he has lifted a corner of lino. Immediately he lets it go, causing a little cloud of dust to blow up from the floor. As the four of us are leaving, I glance back into the room, and see the last few specks of dust still flickering in the sunlight.