THE BOX

A box found in a junk shop brings
things to life - literally!

Martin had taken the same route to and from work since he had started there. Why was it therefore that on this particular evening he found himself on a street he didn’t recognise? He had been lost in thought and had stopped opposite a grubby looking shop selling what for the most part appeared to be junk some of which spilled out onto the narrow pavement. In the window central to his gaze amongst the chaos was a wooden box. It was the kind in which, he recalled from TV shows, family bibles used to be kept. Martin, or his wife, had no real interest in antiques, and no bibles, but there was something appealing about it.

A bell tinkled over the door as Martin entered and waited for the proprietor to appear. 

‘Hello, anyone there?’ Martin called but there was no reply and no sound from beyond the furniture and bric-a-brac piled almost to the ceiling. A gap left between the items turned a corner a few metres away beyond which were more dark recesses and other filled rooms. Cobweb covered chairs and dusty mirrors having found no space below had escaped up the walls along with empty picture frames and dark Victorian portraits.

Martin turned towards the only light, that of the window and used it as a guide until the box was within reach. There was nothing special about the box other than its age and its rich dark brown colour. Nevertheless he felt a connection to it, a connection which intensified as he lifted it out of the window. No sooner had he got hold of it than,

‘That sir, if I may say so, is a very fine box.’

If it had been any more than a whisper Martin may have dropped it. He turned round to see a diminutive old man in excess of seventy, even eighty, upright in stature and apart from a white silk muffler, dressed all in black. He held his gnarled hands together in front of him like a servant waiting at table, and like a servant avoided any direct gaze, instead he looked fixedly at the wooden box that Martin was holding.

‘Yes. It’s not what I was looking for but I saw it in the window and as you were still open . .

‘We never close sir, not so long as there’s business to be had.’

‘That’s very enterprising of you. How much is it?’

‘Do you know what it is sir, what such a box might be used for?’

‘Well, it could be a bible box, certainly old, perhaps early Victorian?’

‘Much older sir. Notice the patina, the corners worn smooth by handling, a little damage here and there, many times lost and found again.’

‘Is it yours?’

‘It’s in my shop sir.’

‘Ah no, I meant . . ’

‘I know what you meant sir, but do we really own anything? Perhaps things own us.’

Whilst examining the box Martin had tried to open it without success. There appeared to be no keyhole, and no lock where one would expect to find it.

‘Is it locked?’ Martin asked the dealer.

‘Perhaps it’s the damp sir. When it needs to open, it will. These things have a way about them.’

’Well it won’t be of any use unless it opens, will it?’ This observation, thought Martin, might reduce the price, as all he had in cash was twenty pounds.

‘Mmm, how much is it,’ Martin asked.

‘Well sir, you’ll never find another one like that, only when you get it home will you appreciate how special it is.’

Holding the box had already given Martin a sense of ownership, a sense that he was reluctant to give up.He could feel his twenty pounds was going to be wildly insufficient.

‘I was thinking, sir,’ began the old dealer, ‘something in the region of twenty pounds,’ and he knowingly held out one of his gnarled hands. Martin nodded and shook the hand gladly but noticed the hand felt it as cold as ice. The old man looked up at him for the first time, though it was not so much at him as through him. Unnerved Martin paid him the twenty pounds and was pleased to leave. At the end of the street, with the box tucked under his arm, Martin immediately recognised his usual route and continued his journey home. On the way he put his hand in his pocket and to his surprise felt a note, a twenty pound note, so maybe he had more than he thought.

Over the next few days the box remained resolutely shut and Gill, his wife, ridiculed him for buying a box that couldn’t be opened. One evening Martin decided to take a screwdriver to it irrespective of the damage it might cause. Scratching around what appeared to be the join Martin in his frustration began pleading with the box to open at the same time inserting the screwdriver. Then suddenly to Martin’s delight the box opened to reveal - nothing but emptiness. He opened and closed the lid several times before placing the screwdriver inside and carrying on with other things he had to do.

That night Martin fell asleep wondering, now the box was open, what use he could make of it. Dreams seldom make any sense and neither did Martin’s. The interior of an old hardware store appeared, worn pine floorboards and the warm pervasive smell of paraffin heaters. A bespectacled gent in a brown warehouse coat serving customers, weighing out screws and nails surrounded by boxes and packets, new shiny tools, rolls of tape and bags of string, paint and brushes, and everywhere shelves full. Then the dream shifted through darkness into a workshop and woodworking tools, planes, mallets and chisels on a bench with a vice, the sound of sawing. Visions came and went, making things, repairing things, putting screws in, taking them out.

A few days past and Martin thought no more about the box, other than its purpose was still to be defined. Gill wondered if Martin could keep some of his ‘mementoes’ in there and pointed to a cricket ball that she thought pointless, but then said it wouldn’t be any good unless the box could be opened, and suggested Martin return it to the shop.

Sure enough when Martin tried to open the box it was stuck again. Borrowing a knife from the kitchen only bent it but after Martin in frustration mumbled something about returning the box, by coincidence, it opened. Puzzled, nevertheless he did what he was told and started with the cricket ball, a souvenir of a glorious fifty, rolling around in the empty box.

Thinking what else he could put in his box of souvenirs, he lay down to sleep that night as pleasant recollections of cricketing triumphs drifted into less comfortable visions. Several times Martin jumped uncontrollably, there was a feeling of vertigo, of falling, the grasping of hands, of the ground hitting him and being hit, scuffed, rubbed, twisted and spun. He awoke disorientated, went to the box blaming it for his sleepless night and removed the cricket ball.

At the office he couldn’t help but wonder what it was that had caused the dream. It could hardly be the cricket ball. It was during the afternoon that he recalled the previous dream, the hardware store. That had occurred after he had opened the box, and left the screwdriver inside. It was ridiculous but it seemed that whatever was in the box, he would dream about. The object became free to tell it’s own story. At first this was too absurd to believe but if something else was put into the box, and the same thing happened, how wonderful and enlightening it would be to see the world from an objects point of view. What historic events could be witnessed, what secrets uncovered.

Martin could not wait for that night and already had a list of things to try in the box, but the first thing he noticed when he arrived at home was that the box had been moved.

‘Gill!’ Martin called out, ‘Where’s the box?’

‘Oh,’ she told him, ‘a dealer had called by on the off chance we might have something to sell.’

She told him she had tried to open the box but as it still remained stuck there seemed no point in keeping it. 

It took Martin a few seconds before he could speak.

‘What did he look like?’ Martin asked.

‘A bit strange, old man, all in black, except for a white silk muffler.’

‘How much did he give you for it?’ Martin asked

‘Twenty pounds,’ she replied.

‘Can you show me the note?’ Martin asked, but no matter where she looked she couldn’t find it.

Martin tried every different route home afterwards but he never came across the shop again, or even the same street, and nobody knew of such a shop, or had ever seen such a dealer.