August 2011
It was just an ordinary cardboard box – at least, from the fleeting glance he managed to get as he sped past, that was all it looked like. However, Arnold's heart began to race as he again snatched a glimpse of the object in his rear-view mirror, cursing the line of traffic close behind him as he searched for a place to pull over. Under any other circumstances, the road would have been littered with lay-bys, bus stops, farm entrances, minor junctions – anything just to just pull off the road for a moment; but in the end he was forced to signal left and simply bump up the wide grass verge, hearing the long grass grinding along the underside of the car above the sound of the horn from the car behind as the driver signalled his annoyance at the sudden and unexpected manoeuvre. With a final jolt the front wheel dropped into a deep rut with a sickening crunch as the exhaust bottomed on the rock hard earth and the car came to an unhappy rest.
Now, car drivers employ many different strategies to cope with the tedium of long journeys: some like to listen to music or to an audio book, others play childish number plate games, or struggle for hours trying to calculate the average speed for the trip; anything to take the mind off the mind-numbing boredom; but Arnold searched for cardboard boxes . . . or briefcases, or any other container of whatever shape or material which might, just might, contain the very object which would change his life forever.
With his sensible head on, he would grudgingly acknowledge that the chances of him ever finding 'The Box' were probably significantly less than him being struck by lightning or winning the Lottery – but, just as he faithfully purchased his 'Lucky Dip' ticket in Sainsbury's every Saturday morning, Arnold also searched diligently for 'The Box' – you never know, it just might happen one day.
It was all his Uncle Hubert's fault. After the war everything was in very short supply and the black-market was the only place to turn for those precious little luxuries the shops were unable to provide legitimately. As a child, the whole murky concept would have been meaningless to Arnold; he was not a demanding child, and provided he got his sweet ration on time he was happy, and the slowly increasing availability of scrumptious stock in the little corner shop he passed on his way to school each day seemed to re-affirm his belief in a benevolent God.
But Uncle Hubert was not such a patient man; if it was available, then he wanted it, and he wanted it now; what little savings had survived the hostilities were carefully stored in a Cadburys Luxury Assorted Biscuits tin, concealed in the furthest corner of the Anderson Shelter at the bottom of the garden, and he regularly dipped into this treasure trove in an effort to make their lives just that little bit more comfortable. Whenever Arnold stared open mouthed at the latest luxury item dropped with a smile onto the parlour table wrapped in brown paper or inside just an ordinary cardboard box, all his questions were answered in exactly the same way, 'Fell off the back of a lorry, Arnie, my boy. Finders keepers, eh?'
It was a source of constant puzzlement to the small child how the boxes and their sometimes quite fragile contents could possibly have survived the violence of the fall from a lorry's height, and he never once questioned how Uncle Hubert could have been so lucky as to have been in the exactly the right place at exactly the right time to catch them. But life was so much simpler then; children were still treated like children rather than the mini grown-ups we cultivate today, and the subtlety of adult conversation was quite lost on the lad, who was blissfully unaware of the true source of the new brown Bakelite Marconi wireless set, which allowed them for the first time to listen to programs from such magically far-away, exotic places as Hilversum and Luxemburg.
He also never questioned the seemingly endless supply of silk stockings and other unmentionable ladies' garments that his mother would hug to her delicate frame like a new found puppy. The whole process was so wonderfully mysterious that Arnold spent his every waking moment out of the house scrutinising passing lorries for signs of insecurity in their loads; living in the eternal hope that he could, just once, share in some of Uncle Hubert's incredibly good fortune.
Of course, as he grew older and adult conversation became less obscure, his naivety dwindled, but the bug, so deeply sown at the beginning, never quite deserted him. In fact, when his passion for Cops and Robbers films finally overtook his beloved Westerns, he avidly watched the car chases; occasionally, the villains would throw the proceeds of the bank robbery out of the car window to confuse the pursuing Black Maria. This only heightened his obsession and his searches were now extended to include briefcases and large, heavy cloth bags emblazoned with '£' signs.
However, as a father of two and with all the weighty responsibility of holding onto his job in times of financial insecurity and ensuring the mortgage is paid, such flights of fancy had to be relegated to the part of his brain reserved for fantasy and childhood dreams . . . but it wasn't Arnold, the adult businessman, who was running excitedly down the grass verge to the surprised looks of the oncoming drivers, it was Arnie, with his short back and sides, his pink plastic NHS glasses, his knee-length pants and his favourite stripy hand-knitted cardigan, which was big enough to 'grow into'.
But the child's exuberance exhausted the adult's slightly overweight body and as he reached the box, his lungs were screaming and his chest was heaving. He bent double for a few moments, coughing painfully until he finally got his breath back; then he advanced triumphantly on his prize.
His fingertips caressed the smooth cardboard lovingly; his hands gripped its broad sides while his brain marvelled at the weight; his eyes scanned the logo imprinted on all sides, which spelt out the singularly beautiful word, 'Panasonic'.
The hooting of the car horn dragged him out of his reverie and he looked up to see a young man in a loose brown work suit weaving across the two lanes of traffic from a white van that was abandoned at a dangerous angle on the opposite grass verge, its hazard lights flashing. His heart sank as the man held his hands out and said, 'Thanks mate – bloody doors came open, didn't they – can't have shut 'em properly – it must 'ave fell off the back.'