Occasionally Pete would be asked to do house clearances. It was not really his thing, most people collected junk that had very little in the way of resale value in the current market but he would often feel obliged to go and take a look, either because he knew the people or just for the faint possibility of finding something that would be worth putting into the more expensive auctions in Chester or further beyond.
The Ffridd farm had been owned by Chris King for over thirty years, it was about three miles in land from Harlech. He had known Chris for years; he had used the run the Army Cadets in Harlech. Now well into his seventies he had had to reluctantly sell the house and contents to pay for a nursing home.
He drove up the steep hill past the Lion, did a left at the crossroads, laboriously opened and closed two gates and took the right down the half mile track to the house.
Chris’s nephew answered the door and showed him around the house, where there was nothing of much interest to him. Pete surprised the nephew by asking to see the out buildings and he spent a while finding the padlock keys for the appropriate doors. Two of these had been converted into bunk rooms, which he had slept in as a cadet thirty years ago. In the third shed he noticed some sort of wooden coffer giving it only a cursory glance they passed into the next shed. Pete offered £40 pounds for a pine side table from the main house and after that business was concluded he suggested that he could clean out the out buildings as a favour to Chris. The nephew readily agreed and he loaded what he could of the bunks into his transit, along with the rather heavy coffer, of course, and said he would return in a couple of hours. he unloaded the spider web covered coffer in the shop and returned not once but twice to the local tip. He had not yet even looked at the coffer and it had cost him £60 plus VAT in commercial dumping charges.
The next day he opened the shop at about ten as usual. After the lights, he put the kettle on, rolled a cigarette, and smoked it outside, bloody smoking laws. He managed to move the chest back out to the cobbled square so he could begin to attempt to clean it up.
Woodworm, Anobium Punctatum is a pain. It can be treated but when left can turn even the hardest, oldest oak into saw dust. He used a soft paintbrush to remove all the external cobwebs and dust. You could not describe the wood as black, it did not seem to have any lustre just an absence of colour. At about 4’x2’x2’ it seemed solid enough, no movements of the crude panelling, no hinges, no lock. However Anobium Punctatum had made its mark, dozens if not hundreds of small holes penetrated the piece, but the bore holes seemed shallow and as dark as the surrounding wood, meaning no recent activity, as if in one of their May migrations they had decided, en masse, to leave for good along time ago.
The top or lid did not have a lip, It did not actually seem to have a join. He laid a sheet on the cobbles and tipped the chest onto its end, avoiding any pressure on the wooden handles and then onto the ‘top’, He heard something light slide inside. The ‘bottom’ when brushed clean appeared to be just like the top except for more scratch marks where it been dragged or pushed across stone floors. Again no obvious joins, or nails. Perhaps it had been heavily painted, tarred or lacquered. He scratched the surface with his thumb nail, no, this was just a sort of dark, hard wood.
Pete brought the box back into the shop and concentrated on the crossword until the pub opened.
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