When at last I could open the box, I wasn’t really sure I wanted to.  Throughout my childhood it had sat on a shelf above the TV.  Not exactly ornate, but interesting enough in itself to be on display.  Leather bound and studded with rusting rivets, it sat there with the accumulated wealth of its history.  When I was very small and dad told me stories of family members long gone – it almost throbbed with importance.

This box, only the size of a trumpet case, was my inheritance; left to me by my great, great, great, great grandfather, Ruban Slackass.  He didn’t know it was me of course. He just left it to the first direct male descendent to achieve majority in the twenty-first century.

One of his last acts before he was arrested for treason, an offence for which he was later hanged, was to give the box to his grandson, my great, great grandfather.  The key he placed with a reputable firm of solicitors in London.


All my life I’d heard stories that seemed to give an edge to being a Slackass.  Every one of my ancestors had something different or interesting about them.  I don’t know if it all started with Rufus.  No one seems to know where or who he came from.  A great aunt of mine dabbled in genealogy but never discovered anything preceding his generation.  Perhaps there’s a rogue gene in our line that makes us more prone to individuality, rebellion, independence.  I suppose I’m the black sheep of the family.  I’ve reached the age of twenty-one without distinguishing myself in any shape or form.  I’d coped with being brought up by my father after my mother was killed in car crash when I was three.  I’d coped with a four month stint living with an aunt and uncle when my father did one of his disappearing acts.  He was forever going off somewhere and returning a day or two later with no explanation.  That was the only time he was away for a long period.  On his return, we’d always pick up where we’d left off, as if nothing had happened.  To my father, it seemed like a source of pride that I could fend for myself from a fairly young age.  Although he never said, I always got the impression that when he returned from his four months away, he was vaguely disappointed not to find me at home.  But what do you do at the age of twelve when there’s nothing in the fridge and the pot with the money in the kitchen runs dry?

Despite these things, which I understand are not an average start in life, I was, and still am.

I did well enough at school and now at the age of twenty-one and a bit, I’ve just completed a degree at a pretty average university.

Dad, who is annoyingly enigmatic, often sits and stares at me.

    “What?”  he says.

    “What?”

    “Just what?”  he reiterates as if this should make it all clear to me.

It’s as if he’s waiting.  As if he expects me to revert at any moment to Slackass family form and do something outrageous.

On other occasions he’ll walk into a room and say apropos of nothing, “Well?”

    “Well what?”  I say.

Then he’ll wander off looking either confused or disappointed.  It’s as if there’s some backward legacy he’s waiting for.  He knows our family history, probably better than anyone, and he knows that all of us, from Rufus to him are marked with the scent of unpredictability.

So far, in that respect, I am the model of disappointment.

That, I suppose, was what worried me most about the box.  So far, despite all the odds, I’d managed to have a normal mediocre life.  In fact I’d assiduously worked myself into a position where that’s what I could look forward to.  Not for me dodgy dealings, thievery, polygamy, sects, black-marketing, murder, treason and probably much more besides.  It’s all there in my recent ancestry.  Even my father could be accused of child desertion – and god only knows what he got up to when he disappeared.

I was worried that when I opened the box something would knock me from my chosen path of mediocrity.  Something would bring this black sheep of the family back into the fold and begin something of which I had no foresight of or control over.

But this was my destiny.  Perhaps this was why I was different.  I’d been unwittingly singled out by Rufus to receive this legacy.  Maybe I’d been saving myself for this moment.  Perhaps I was the raw clay that the patriarch of our clan would mould his personality into.  Somewhere inside me was a small distilled part of Rufus.




    “Well?”  he asks.

This is the eighth time he’s asked this in the two days I’ve been back home.  This time I know what he means.  He knows I know and so I suppose there’s no avoiding it.

    “Pass it me then,”  I say.

He gets up, crosses the room and picks up the box, switching the TV off on the way.  I tell myself it’s just a box.  What harm can an old box do?  Just ask Pandora.  But it’s just a piece of history.  It might even be interesting.   

He places the box in my lap and leaves the room, returning seconds later with a letter.

    “Came a couple of months ago.  Thought I’d look after it for you.”

The envelope’s white, addressed to me and well fingered.  I frown.

    “Don’t worry.  I’ve not opened it.  Just had a bit of a feel,”  he says.

And I believe him.  He’s more interested in this than I am, but he wouldn’t go behind my back.  Although the box is locked, it doesn’t look all that strong and he could have forced it at anytime over the last two decades.  Come to that, so could any of the previous generations of Slackass custodians.  But it doesn’t look as though they have.  Whether this is out of respect for Rufus’s wishes or a fear he may come back and haunt any transgressor is anybody’s guess.

I’m hoping the solicitor’s letter might give me some clues as to the contents of the box, but it doesn’t.  In fact it’s very sparse.  Just a key and a brief message to say it was being delivered as instructed.

I lift the box from my knee and give it a gentle shake.  Strangely enough, this is the first time I’ve held it since being quite small.  The last time I remember, I was on my father’s knee.

It’s quite heavy but doesn’t rattle at all.  It’s clearly well packed with something.

    “Want me to stay?”  asks dad.

He’s clearly desperate to and I’m tempted to tell him no, but I know I don’t want to do this alone.  His blue eyes, something else I’ve not inherited, bore into me.

    “It’s okay.  Stay.”

He sits back but continues to stare.  I can’t work out if he’s more interested in the contents of the box or me.  Maybe he thinks he’ll get some clue to the real me – the one he imagines is buried somewhere inside of me.

I’m still not sure I want to do this but I put the key in the lock and turn.  There’s some resistance, but with a small grating sound it gives and turns.