A hidden box worth enough money that he could save his house? Something meaningful left by his mother, a taste that she cared all along? It seemed absurd, impossible to be true. How could something of such value have come into his mother’s possession and be lost among all that mess? Feeling sure that his mother was wrong, he was almost ready to dismiss it, yet to his surprise Tabitha seemed less convinced that it was all the delusion of a woman who had long been less than well.
“This is why she wrote to me,” Tabitha was saying. “She knew I would know what this is.” Every now and again he found her attention drawn by the mess, wonderment perhaps that such potential could be buried within it. Yet Harry found his attention drawn not by the prospect of a valuable trinket box, but instead by Tabitha herself. After ten years apart, here she was, in his house. Each time she stopped talking he found himself waiting for when she might speak again. The initial glimmer of anger in her voice had dissipated, replaced by soft intonations that reminded him of just how safe he had felt while they were together. How passionate she was about the things, and people, that she loved. How she would always find a way to touch him, and how she always seemed to know when he was lost in thoughts of his unspoken past. But also, those remembrances stirred realizations of how he had let her down when he left, how he let their relationship fail in the hope of reconnecting with his mother. It was hard to recall his own failings. But what right did he have to those feelings, when it had been his choice to leave?
“I can’t believe you’ve never heard of it,” she was saying. “I suppose you’re going to tell me next that you’ve never heard about the Amber Room either? Or The Lady in Gold? Gustav Klimt?” He shook his head and she stood up and took the photograph from him, pointed at it. “Okay, well, they were all pieces that were stolen during the Second World War. Looted by the Nazis. This,” she said, pointing to the photograph, “is The Klinkosch Box. Taken in France when Paris fell.” Pacing back and forth before him she seemed to swing between shock and laughter. “I can’t believe it’s been found.”
“Well, it hasn’t actually been found, has it?” he said, trying to stay focused. “How the hell would a piece of art lost in the war turn up in a cottage in the Cotswolds?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But what if it is here? That would be incredible.”
Her excitement for the box was infectious. Threads of the same enthusiasm were beginning to weave through him. Although the larger part of himself was certain there could be no chance that the box was here, another part of him couldn’t help but be seduced by the What if?
“Okay,” he said. “Suppose it really has been found. That it’s here in this house. Why would my mother tell you about it when we haven’t seen each other for ten years?”
Just for a moment everything was still. “Okay,” she said, as if readying herself, her fingers pressed together. “Your mother knew I worked as an art historian, didn’t she?”
Harry shifted in his seat. “Of course she did.” He spoke quietly. “I told her everything about you.”
“Then she would have known that I would know that this is one of the most famous items ever plundered by the Nazis. It was thought to have been lost forever, melted down and changed into something else. Maybe lost during a bombing raid. There have been rumors about it ever since, but this photograph is the first categorical proof that it survived the war. It’s an absolute miracle.”
“How can you be so sure?” Harry asked.
Leaning in, she pointed to the photograph. “You never were much of a detective, were you? Look at the background.” Taking another look, he saw that alongside the Klinkosch box was an old broadsheet newspaper, and the box was roughly one third of the size. “Look at the date,” she said. “That newspaper is dated 1981, which means the box was undeniably in existence some forty years after it was previously known to be. This is a major development.”
“That’s the year before I was born.” He could barely believe it, but neither could he deny it with the same certainty he could moments before. “But how would my mother have it? That newspaper looks to be written in German. And why would she wait until she had died in order to tell me about it?”
Tabitha eased back into her chair, seemingly lost in thought. “Well, I can’t answer either of those questions. I can only tell you what I know.”
It seemed surreal to Harry. Ten minutes ago, he was alone in a house full of rubbish. Now he was sitting with the woman he once thought he would spend the rest of his life with, talking about stolen art of significant monetary and historical value. All those days when his mother used to sit at the window, staring out to what he assumed was nothing. The way she had left him on a bench in the shopping center and disappeared from his life. Now he couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t a much bigger picture that he had always failed to see. Moving his right hand, he placed it against the wristwatch.
“Okay,” he said. “Tell me.”
An hour or so later when Tabitha finally left, the house had never felt emptier. For a while he drifted through the space, nebulous and loose, fussing at the mess in a half-hearted effort to search for the box. As if such a lost piece was likely to be found sitting under yesterday’s newspaper. But he couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t even relax to sit. Tabitha was still there with him, like a ghost or a shadow, following everything he did.
She had told him what she knew about the box’s history, its seventeenth-century creation and subsequent journey through Austria, before its eventual theft during the Second World War. Then, just like that, as unexpectedly as she arrived, she was gone. And in her place, Tabitha left not only a physical void, but a mystery about who his mother really was, and what secrets had been buried in her past. Finding the Klinkosch box, he began to think, might help him understand her in ways he had never managed before. Perhaps it might even be able to silence the questions that had always gone unanswered, such as the identity of his father, and why he had been given away. But after a time, physically exhausted from the day behind him, he eventually fell asleep in his chair, dreaming about his mother, Tabitha, and, of course, what might have been.
At the tail end of a long night, sunlight bled through the windows to bring dawn, rolling in like a wave to the shore. He had been awake for several hours by then, too wired for rest, unable to shake Tabitha or her visit from his mind. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her face, the love notes she used to leave him, her smile when he held her hand. But the box too was something he couldn’t let rest. If it was here, and it was worth what Tabitha said it was worth, then he might be able to save his home. Using his phone—his mother had never allowed a home internet connection—he trawled the internet for information. Sketchy as the signal was, he managed to confirm roughly what Tabitha had told him. Tapping on the calendar icon he counted the days; he had just less than three weeks before the house would be auctioned off. Would he be able to find the Klinkosch box in time to save his home?
When the doorbell rang he was already shoulder deep in dust and paperwork. It was going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack. But as he opened the door and saw Tabitha standing on the other side, it gave him some hope that perhaps he wouldn’t have to search for it alone.
“Oh,” he said, his shock evident in the shiver of his voice. “You’re back.” Beauty stared at him, the face he had missed. Taking a few cautious steps into the hallway, treading carefully over the mounds of paper and boxes, her eyes moved from one object to another. Over piles of newspapers, dolls’ heads, and finally to him.
“I know. And believe me, I didn’t expect to be here at all, let alone twice in two days.” Some of her initial anger had returned; it couldn’t be easy for her to be in his presence after the way he let her down so badly. Choosing to live with his mother had, by default, been a choice to leave the relationship he shared with Tabitha. Ten years ago, it became obvious that his mother had needed almost constant care, her hoarding and depression tipping over into the realm of unmanageable. Tabitha had wanted a life together, a family, a home filled with love. He couldn’t be there for his mother and give Tabitha the life she had wanted. Still, he had never been able to leave the sense of guilt and regret behind.
“Well, it’s wonderful to see you again so soon.”
“I had to come. Finding the Klinkosch box is historically important. I thought maybe you wouldn’t even bother to look,” she said, her eyes still scanning.
“No,” he said, ushering her forward, amazed he had been granted a chance to spend time with her. “Come and see. I already made a start, but I admit the progress is somewhat slow.” In the shade of the stacked paperwork he sighed, as if seeing the mess for the first time. “As you might imagine.”
Arriving in the doorway to the lounge her mouth opened wide. “I had no idea it was this . . .” she began, searching for the right word. “Complicated. I couldn’t see half of it when I was here last night. It’s like each piece is holding up another piece. Like that game we used to play.”
“You mean Jenga.”
“That’s the one.” Slumping against one of the boxes to sit, she angled her head toward the ceiling, taking in the sheer mass of it all. “You’ve got your work cut out for you, that’s for sure.”
Was there a chance she was regretting her decision to come back? “It’s okay if you’ve changed your mind now that you’ve seen it in the light.”
“I haven’t changed my mind,” she said, her left hand at her throat as she took a big dusty breath. “Nothing lost to history is ever found easily. There’s always effort involved. And I’m here because I’m a historian. We have to find that box. It might be the most important thing I ever do professionally.” That was the easier story, much simpler than admitting she was there for him. “So, we’ll meet here each day, do what we can by getting rid of what we must.” She sighed again. “It’s not going to be easy, but we’ll go room to room, and if the Klinkosch box is here, we’ll find it.”
“You’re offering to help me?”
“Yes. If you’ll accept it.”
“Well, I could do with all the help I can get.” Just then the doorbell rang. “Did you organize reinforcements?” he asked.
With some relief for the interruption, she said, “Nothing to do with me.”
Harry stepped back and opened the door. “Oh, good morning, Elsie. Is it Friday?”
Elsie Gillman, once tall but now hunched with a bit of a stoop and a shock of gray hair, moved slowly with her eyes to the ground as she negotiated the step. A walker guided the way. She always popped over for a cup of tea on a Friday morning. She had been calling in and seeing his mother regularly even before he was living there, and was, Harry suspected, one of the main reasons his mother had remained well for as long as she had. Harry always looked forward to her visits. Her wit was sharp, and she didn’t miss a clip. Plus, she was the only person his mother let into the house, so she was one of the few people with whom Harry had had a regular conversation in the last decade.
“It’s not, but I saw you had company, and I knew you wouldn’t have anything to offer her.” Elsie moved close to Tabitha as she pulled a used ice cream tub from a basket attached to her walker. “Cheese scones,” she said. “I assume you’ve got some butter.”
“I have,” Harry said, “but it wasn’t necessary.”
“Oh, would you stop that. I didn’t make them just for you. They’ve been in the bread bin since my last visit.” She placed a hand on Tabitha’s arm. “Hello, my love.”
“Hello,” said Tabitha with a smile.
“Or,” Harry said, smiling, “you thought you’d find a reason to call by and find out who’s here.”
“Well, yes, that too,” Elsie said, seemingly without any concern at being caught out. “So,” she said, gazing at Tabitha. “Put me out of my misery, wouldn’t you? Who are you?”
“Tabitha,” Tabitha said. “I’m an old friend of Harry’s.”
“Tabitha, eh? Not the Tabitha?” she asked, looking back to Harry.
“I think that’s quite enough from you,” Harry said, taking Elsie by the shoulders and gently steering her away. “Thanks for the scones, but we have got a lot going on this morning. I’ll pop in later with your box.” Once they were by the door, he ducked down so he could whisper in her ear. “Sorry, but it’s a bit awkward.”
“It must be. You can’t get rid of me fast enough.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll tell you all about it later. I promise.”
Nosing back over her shoulder, she said, “She’s lovely, though. I can see why you always liked her.”
“I know she is. But you’re not being very subtle. And you’re absolutely rubbish at whispering.”
“There’s no time for subtlety when you’re ninety next month, Harry. Sometimes you just need to be straight with somebody.” And moments later she was heading up the path, closing the gate behind her with a smile on her face.
“So,” Tabitha said once the door was closed. “You told her about me.”
Harry gazed down at his feet, wished his sock didn’t have a hole in it. “Might have mentioned you, once or twice.” He wanted to tell her then that he had told Elsie everything about her, about how he had lost the most wonderful person there was, who had taught him how to enjoy the world in a way he never had been able to before. But he couldn’t say any of that. “Why don’t we make a start, and then have a break for one of her scones.”
“Sounds like a plan. Where does that lead to?” she said, pointing to the crawl space that ran parallel to the stairs. Above it was a mound of paperwork that had formed a tunnel when it toppled over a couple of years before. It was all held together by forces of tension, no supporting structure to speak of, yet it had held true since the day it formed.
“The kitchen,” he told her.
“And that’s the only access? You have to crawl on your hands and knees to get there?”
“It’s not so bad. It’s been like that for years. It’s quite safe.”
Bending down, she made a rudimentary assessment. “Well, I’m no engineer, but I don’t suppose we’ve got much choice. I think it’s unlikely that the box is in among all that paperwork, but we should start here. I don’t want to die because I got buried under a pile of newspapers from the seventies. And we’re going to need the butter for the scones anyway.” For the first time since they were back together, he saw a hint of that smile he had first fallen in love with a decade before. “Come on, I’ll let you lead the way.”
It took them the best part of the morning but working just one item at a time they began to clear through the pile. They pulled newspaper after newspaper from the extremities of the tunnel, along with enough junk mail to open a small recycling plant.
While they worked, he thought of the box, and the answers it might contain. His mother’s past had always been a mystery, but now he felt as if an explanation was within touching distance. After filling eight black bags, they stacked them outside in the back garden. Harry took each one and positioned it alongside the house in a rare spot that was clear of mess. On the final journey he stopped to check on his pigeons when he heard Tabitha coming after him.
“Harry, I need you to help me with . . . Oh,” she said, pausing to look at the birds. “What are they?”
“Pigeons,” he said, poking his finger through the wire mesh, smiling to himself as one of his flock pecked at the tip. “I’ve got six.”
“Why?”
Nobody had ever asked him why he kept birds before. Nobody but his mother had seen them. Life in the Cotswolds in his mother’s cottage was a lonely affair. He had thought to acquire a cat or a dog for company, but knew it wasn’t a safe environment for an indoor pet. Then, by chance or luck, he found a pigeon in the garden one day, lame with what to him looked like a broken wing. Charging himself with the task of nursing it back to health, feeding it titbits and dripping water into its beak with a syringe from those that his mother inexplicably had, it had felt like serendipity. Trapping the second bird seemed entirely justifiable as company for the first. Tending to their daily needs became a reason for his presence, a way to justify it, and the birds became something that was just for him. In a life where his identity had been whittled down to little more than hopeful son, the birds gave him back part of himself. Plus, a daily conversation with a flock of trapped birds was better than no conversation at all if his mother was having an off day. Before long he had built a coop out of old pallets and had collected over twenty birds. Right now, he had six, following a few deaths and a handful of escapes. He felt Tabitha’s gaze upon him, still waiting on an answer.
“I just like them, I guess. I like taking care of them.”
The brief silence felt charged, vibrating between them with things left unsaid. “Well, there’s still quite a lot to clear inside,” she said. “And those scones aren’t going to eat themselves. Come on, let’s take a break.” As Tabitha headed back inside, Harry turned to follow.
They stood in silence alongside each other while the scones heated in the oven. Harry could sense a shift in mood, although he didn’t understand it or know what it was that had changed. He had a feeling that it was something to do with the birds, and his eyes were continuously drawn to a tattoo on her shoulder, a new addition to the body he once knew, and no longer did. It was a bird, the image like a splash of variegated watercolors, purple on orange on yellow.
“We’ve made good progress,” Tabitha said, breaking the silence as she took a bite into the first scone.
“I can’t believe how much we’ve already cleared. But I bet you wish you’d ignored that letter, don’t you?”
“Not really,” she said, taking another bite. As she licked her lips, she said, “It was worth it just for this. It’s really good.”
“Baking is her superpower,” Harry said. “She could probably end a war with her hot cross buns.”
“Ha,” Tabitha laughed. “Not one for beating about the bush, though, is she?”
“Er, no. Sorry if she made you uncomfortable.”
“She didn’t. It was kind of nice to think she knew who I was. It means you hadn’t forgotten about me.”
“Forgotten about you? Are you kidding?” Should he do it? Should he tell her that he still had feelings for her? Perhaps in ten years she didn’t feel the same way as she once had. But if he didn’t say it now, apologize for how their relationship ended at least, he might not get another chance. “Tabitha, I want to . . .”
“Sshh,” Tabitha said. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what? I can’t hear anything.” This was it. He was going to do it. He was going to tell her that losing her was a mistake. “I want to say . . .”
“No, Harry, wait. I can hear—” she began, but then cut her sentence short as a heavy rumble vibrated above them. She looked up toward the stairs. He saw her eyes widen. “Harry, quick, move.”
Bursting into action she pulled him back toward the kitchen, and only seconds later, panting from their position of relative safety, they watched as the paperwork from the stairs began to shift and slide. The overhanging mass avalanched toward the hallway. From their position at the back of the kitchen they watched as the paperwork settled in a dusty heap, a few solitary pages still drifting to the ground like clumps of snow from a warming roof during a period of sudden, unexpected heat.
“What the . . . ?” she said, taking a step forward.
Harry made to follow but realized after a moment that he was struggling. Tightness gripped his chest, his inhaler on the other side of the mess. Dust circulated like thick fog, and his lungs were about to give in to it, wheezing as they did. Leaning down as he knew to, hands on his knees, he desperately fought to stay calm, and not to chase the breath that was trying to leave him.
“Harry, we’re going to need some professional help here. I don’t think we can do this on our own. Harry?” she said, turning, wondering why he wasn’t responding. But by the time Tabitha turned around Harry was on his knees, bent over double, wheezing as his chest rocked back and forth. “God, Harry,” she said, rushing toward him. Grappling at his pockets while he struggled to breathe, she screamed, “The dust has set off your asthma. Where’s your inhaler, Harry? Tell me where it is.”
Gasping for one good breath, he managed to say, “Living room. On the table.”
Without a second thought she bounded toward the hallway and Harry had no choice but to listen as she stumbled over the shifting mass of paperwork. Watching as she disappeared into the haze, he felt the return of the fear that always came with the fight for breath. But moments later there she was, his inhaler in her hand. Prepping it with a shake, flicking off the cap, she handed it over ready, as if she had last done it only yesterday.
“Hold it in,” she said, as he breathed on the inhaler, sitting at his side, rubbing his back. Once his breathing settled a little, she was back on her feet, and before Harry could stop her, she was calling for help.
“I would have been fine,” he said as she arrived back alongside him, his condition almost back to normal.
The look on her face didn’t suggest she was open to changing her mind. “You’ve just had an asthma attack, Harry. You don’t have a choice about it.” For another moment he couldn’t breathe again when she reached down to take his hands in hers. “The ambulance will be here soon. Until then just sit up straight. And take another puff. Come on, Harry, just do as I say. I remember what to do.”
In that moment it was as if he never left, that Tabitha was still his, and that he was still the man she called hers.
“You gave me quite a fright,” she said later that day from a chair beside his hospital bed. “It’s been a long time since I had to deal with an asthma attack.”
“Me too,” he said. “I don’t remember when I last had one.”
“Then it’s all the better that you stay here tonight like the doctors said. You can’t be too careful with something like this, Harry. Don’t worry about the house for now.”
The tension that had simmered between them, the weight of what had been left unsaid, all seemed to have evanesced in the aftermath of his asthma attack. Perhaps not gone, but certainly assuaged. “What about the birds? They’ll need feeding.”
“What the pigeons need is to be set free,” she said. Captivity was not something she could get along with. Her free hand reached up to her shoulder, her fingertips brushing the tattoo. It was one small way in which their lives had changed. Walls had been built between them, each formed of a different shape and size. One happened to be the size and shape of a pigeon coop. Only then had he begun to recall the tender way she cared for animals, the hedgehog she nursed through the winter, the spiders she would carefully trap, before returning them to the wild. One day he had suggested a trip to London Zoo, and she had spent the next two hours educating him on the inhumanity of keeping animals, in her words, hostage.
“I’m sorry. I’d forgotten your feelings about that.”
“They’re wild birds.”
“I take good care of them. I promise.”
“In the wild they could take care of themselves. But I suppose for now I could stretch to feeding the poor things.”
“Thank you,” he said then. “I appreciate it.” Trying to picture himself letting them go wasn’t very easy, but once the house was sold he supposed he’d have to anyway. Still, he could cross that bridge when he came to it. “But I don’t just want to say thank you for your help with my birds. Also for coming when she wrote to you. For being here now.”
“It’s okay,” she said, as if this was nothing, as if it hadn’t been unthinkable only a few days before. “But I think we’ve established the house is going to be more work than we anticipated. We should call a clearance company.”
His chest was still feeling tight. “No,” he said, determined. “I have to do this. It’s what my mother wanted, and it’s my . . . my last chance to . . .” he said, stumbling over the truth.
“To what?”
He owed her this, didn’t he? He owed Tabitha a chance at knowing the truth after all this time. “To prove that,” he said, clearing his throat, “I could have been a son worthy of being kept, if I’d have been given a chance.”
Her silken fingers slipped through his. “What do you mean?”
“I’m sorry I never told you ten years ago, because I know you never understood my reasons for staying with her, and for leaving as I did. But I only found my mother as an adult. I grew up in foster care. Mum couldn’t look after me, not the way she was. She gave me up when I was little.”
“Oh, Harry. Why did you never tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to think badly of me.”
Filling with tears, her eyes glassed over like snowdrops at dawn. “Badly? Why would I?”
“I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to stay. That there was something wrong with me.”
“Wrong with you?” Pausing, she looked away for answers in thin air. “You thought that you weren’t good enough?”
“Maybe. It wasn’t always easy to understand, because I never knew the reason she gave me away.”
“Oh, Harry. Is that why you decided to stay in that awful house with her? To try and understand?”
The pulse of his body shook under the weight of his honesty. “I suppose so. And this is why I have to find that box. I need to know who she really was, so that I might understand why she couldn’t keep me. Maybe this box can help me answer those questions, or even tell me who my father was.”
“You never knew?” she asked, and he shook his head, glanced down to his wristwatch. Moments later he felt her hand on top of his. She could still do it, ground him and make him feel safe with just a touch. “Then yes, we really must do this ourselves,” she said, as if taking a decision. “In which case, if it’s that important, I’ll stay and help.”
“What?”
“Until it’s done. I’ll stay.”
“No, I couldn’t ask you that.”
“You didn’t,” she said, smiling. When he turned to face her, he found pale eyes without the dark punctuation of mascara. It was as if he was looking into the past, and that made it impossible to look away. “I offered. And anyway, she wrote to me too, remember? Plus, if Elsie Gillman is going to come over with her baked goods every once in a while, that’s got to be worth the effort alone.”
“Thank you,” he said. The words didn’t seem enough somehow, but he didn’t know what else to say.
Reaching down into her bag she pulled out a slip of paper and a pen. “Now, there’s no fridge for me to pin it to like I used to, but the idea is the same,” she said, pressing a folded piece of paper into his hand. How many little notes had she left while they were together? Hundreds, maybe more. Unfolding the note, he read what she had written. “I promise you it’s true.” Fighting against tears, he read the words and held the paper to his chest. You have always been enough, Harry. “And I mean it. Just like I always meant it. If she wanted us to find that box together, that’s what we’re going to do.”
“Tabitha, I don’t know what to say. Just the fact you are here and helping, it’s . . .” His words caught in his throat.
“You don’t need to say anything, Harry.”
His feelings were too big and confusing to navigate in that moment, but perhaps he could focus on the practicalities. “I don’t even know if it’s worth your effort. I’ve lived in that house for ten years and I’ve never seen it. It could have been lost years ago.”
“Nothing’s ever really lost, Harry,” she said, standing up to leave. “It’s just that sometimes things are so well hidden that you stop being certain they exist anymore.”
He slept soundly that night, remembering what she had written on her note. It was his first night in a comfortable bed in years. Since the stairs had become impassable, he had taken to sleeping in the chair pushed back in the reclining position. Now he was stretched out, comfortable, with a soft pillow and warm covers. He’d rather hoped that Tabitha would be there when he woke up, but as he looked across to the chair the next morning, in her place he saw another little note, promising to pick him up when he was discharged later on that day. But perhaps what he didn’t realize then was that there was no such thing as a simple note exchanged between two people who had once loved each other so much.