Cleaning out the shed

Jane was monentarily blinded stepping through the door of the Old Woolshed as her eyes adjusted from the harsh January sunshine to the dusty dim interior. The woolshed was old, over a century old, and everything inside the shed being covered by a thick layer of dust just enhanced the antique atmosphere. Not that anything had to be in there long to get dusty. Jane had left things in here for less than a week and come in to find them apparently as caked in dust as her old couch that had been in here for more that 6 years. If only the darn thing wasn't so uncomfortable, it would have been snaffled long ago by one or other of the members of her family. But it was the lumpiest, least comfortable sofa bed Jane had ever come across and was covered in bright yellow checked fabric to boot so in the Shed it stayed, unmolested. She should throw it away really. Surely there should be a statute of limitations on the Shed: if something is untouched in 6 years, out it goes.

But really, if that rule was imposed the Shed would lose so much of its magic. Though she didn't venture in there often, she loved that she could stumble across something at any moment that may have lain untouched since her grandmother left the property over 40 years ago. When she had moved into her first share house over 15 years ago she had found a limited edition Norman Lindsay print in a slightly battered Art Nouveau frame tat had been her grandmother's. When she breathlessly asked her father if she could have it to hang in her new home he looked at her blankly and said of course. The print still hung on her walls, keeping watch over her daughter’s cot. She kept meaning to have the frame repaired.

Jane walked between a bookshelf full of disintegrating paperbacks nearly as old as she was (Wilbur Smith for Dad, Georgette Heyer for her mother) and her stepmother's car, squeezed between a wardrobe covered in peeling creamy grey paint into the corner where the motherlode of stored paraphernalia deposited by her entire extended family was located. This time she was looking for another picture, a signed, framed poster of the Wallabies captain from the 1992 World Cup that was a gift from a friend when she was at university and which she had put into storage when she had moved to London 5 years ago. Since returning home to Australia more than 6 months ago she had not been able to find it. The Old Woolshed was the last place that left to look. There was a reason she had left it until last: it was going to be a dirty, dusty process and not a quick one.

An hour later she opened a plastic envelope and found the dozen or so gold coins. She took one out of its plastic sleeve and examined it. A certificate tucked into one side of the envelope dated sometime in the 1960s stated the value of the coins at over 1000 pounds, the receipt addressed to her grandfather, presumably, although he and her father shared the same name. Jane considered the effect of inflation and the fluctuations in the gold price since the 1960s. The coins were worth a lot of money. Enough to top up the savings account to the point where she and Paul could actually buy a home. Months worth of savings. The coins had clearly been here for years, forgotten entirely. If she took them, nobody would know, and she wouldn't have to put up with the concerned and slightly pitying looks she received from some members of her family since she had passed the age of 30 and failed to have her name registered against some piece of dirt at the land titles office.

For a few minutes she basked in the possibilities of easy money: what she could do with it, how much trouble it would save her. Then she considered how she would feel every time she saw her father, or any other member of her family, if she took the coins and sold them to make up a house deposit. It would be an act of selfishness for which there was no justification. For that matter, she wondered how she would see herself if she did this. Jane decided she would not like or want to have anything to do with a person who did this, and she preferred to live her life in a way that allowed her self respect. She looked at the coins and the certificate again. This wasn't just money, it was a piece of family history, like the print that her father had so generously given her.

Back inside the house, seated across from her at the kitchen table, her father looked up at her, eyes shining with a peculiar inner light. "Do you know my father gave these to me for my 21st birthday? I haven't been able to find them since we moved here from the old homestead". Jane was right in one respect. If she had taken them, nobody would have known. But the coins were not forgotten.