Buried Treasure

 


The road through our village was straddled by a street of about 90 houses on either side. One side had the mountain behind, the other side broken half way along with a street of seven houses (where I lived) running down to the small primary school, the railway line, and the river Taff at the bottom of the valley.
Apart from about fifty prefabs and a pub, that was it.
I think the council must have bribed the locals into allowing them to tip their rubbish between the houses and the railway line which was right in front of our house, with a promise that when it was finished  and covered over, a playing field with swings and suchlike as well as a football pitch would be put in place. To be fair this did happen, but not until what seemed like years later. When tipping started, the local adults and children alike, myself included, sifted through the rubbish looking for ‘luckies’. We were always being told to clear off while they were tipping but never took much notice, afraid we would miss something or it would be covered over.

I was the eldest boy of three, with three older and two younger sisters. The third eldest sister was at the tip with a friend after school one day, and found a pair of shoes in her size. The tops were in really good condition but the soles would need tapping and Dad could do that she thought. Too embarrassed to take them home in front of her friend, she casually threw them one side and moved further along the tip. In truth, she had hidden them and went back later, retrieved them from the ferns where they lay hidden from view, and took them home to Dad.

A few days later with new soles and a good polishing, she wore them to school. Standing around in the school yard waiting for the bell to go in, she thought she had done too good a job with the polish. They were gleaming and drew the attention of her friends. A few asked where she had got them from and she was just about to tell a big fib when one ‘friend’ chirped up ‘She found them on the ash-tip last week when I was with her’. The sudden silence that followed was broken by the bell being rung, with shouts from the teacher to ‘line up, line up’.
Each line was marched into school in turn and when it came to my sister’s line, she could barely see where she was going as her eyes filled with tears of embarrassment. They were running down her face by the time she entered the main corridor and she was taken into the staff room to be comforted by one of the teachers, desperate to know what she was so upset about.
It took all the time that the rest of the school spent in the Gym Hall having Assembly for her to explain. With Assembly over,
she was ushered along the corridor amongst the others to her classroom, and the rest of the day went without further incident.

There almost seemed to be a pattern linking what we found to what day of the week it was. It may have been a Wednesday for example, when collections were from a more affluent part of the borough which yielded a ‘better quality rubbish’ therefore more than the usual amount of lucky finds.
It was on one such occasion when three of my sisters, among others, were watching more or less the last load of the day being emptied. A large cardboard box tumbled out spilling it’s contents of brand new handbags all down the tip which were almost getting buried with the rubbish that followed. There was a mad free for all as everyone filled their shoes with ashes as they scrambled up to where most of the bags had came to rest.

My sisters managed to grab about a dozen between them, and with the price tickets still dangling from them headed for home. They were grinning like the cat that got the cream when they burst in through the door with their treasure to cries of ‘Mam, look what we have found’.  Mam must have thought, well that’s Christmas sorted. Their joy was short lived however, when the following morning my mother opened the door to find a police constable on our doorstep. Apparently a large stock delivery was taking place at a shop on the high street. The boxes of goods were stacked on the pavement outside the shop and taken in a few at a time on a sack truck. The driver was unloading the truck in the stockroom with the last one remaining outside. The high street was less busy at this time of day with shops getting ready to close. That was why this time was chosen to do the weekly refuse  collections. The remaining box was collected along with the rest of the rubbish, and they were gone. Imagine the driver’s face when he came out of the shop to find it gone and the street completely empty. It took them a while to work out what may have happened, but all the lorries were back in the yard by then and it was closed for the night. The following day, the police were called by the shop to see if they could trace the box. With the help of the council, the lorry and crew were identified, and where the load was tipped. Discreet inquiries in the village pointed them to our house, among others, and all the bags were recovered. Everyone had a good laugh over the incident, including the police, but I can tell you, there were a few sad faces in our house that night.


This story is completely true and I used it an as inspiration to write another short story loosely based on it.
Its entitled A GIFT FROM GOD.