THE BOX OF ENCHANTMENTS
Across the pastures of Hyde Park, down the boulevard where the mansion flats stand, around the back of the hotel where the old coach house sits – and up the creaking stairs to the attic. Here, Miss Pettigrew lives alone. Hers is a simple existence: Mondays to Fridays in the post office; Saturdays at a jumble sale with her maiden aunt. These are the patterns of Miss Pettigrew’s life – on all but one hallowed day of the year. The day of the first frost.
When Miss Pettigrew wakes to the first frost, she makes her annual odyssey to Papa Jack’s Emporium, London’s premier merchants of toys and childhood paraphernalia. She has been coming here since she was a girl. At 36 years old, she comes here still. Each year, Miss Pettigrew purchases the same gift. Peeling back its wrapping, she sees the familiar words: THE BOX OF ENCHANTMENTS. Inside are the thousand puzzle pieces she will spend the next hour painstakingly putting together.
She remembers the first puzzle well: an angelic little boy, peering back out. The next is even more vivid: the same little boy, a year older, a year more mature. Every year, from girl to woman grown, she has put these puzzles together; and, every year, she has seen the face growing up alongside her. Sometimes, even in summer, she has thought of that man and wondered what is happening to him, how different he might look by Christmas.
This year, the man in the puzzle looks greyer, his face scored in lines. The years of his life are passing by, and this makes Miss Pettigrew think of her own years. She has wasted enough already. It is time, she decides, to do. The Emporium is thronged when she comes through the doors. She fights her way to a counter, where a shop clerk is stacking up tin soldiers. Who, she asks, is the man in the picture? Why does he beguile her so much? Does everyone who buys the puzzle see the same bewitching blue eyes, growing older each year? “Oh,” the storekeeper says, “The Box of Enchantments. I’m afraid I can’t help. My papa made those, but he’s been gone five years already.”
When Miss Pettigrew steps back outside, she is shaking with such disappointment she hardly notices the man barrelling along the mews. Outside the Emporium doors, they collide. When she picks herself up, she sees that he has eyes of cerulean blue. Under his arm hangs another edition of The Box of Enchantments, as if he too is marching back into the Emporium to question its purpose. “It’s… you,” the man gasps, disbelieving. “Me, sir?” He steadies himself, because this might take some explaining. “This is the most incredible thing. I’ve been coming to Papa Jack’s Emporium since I was a boy. Every year, my father bought me gifts. A set of toy soldiers. A patchwork dog. But the toy I always wanted was one of their jigsaw puzzles. Well, the first year, it was just the face of a girl. The next year, well, it was the same girl again – only slightly older, as if she’d lived a whole year in-between. And then, year after year…”
He pauses, because Miss Pettigrew’s eyes have been widening as he speaks, and a new kind of hope is radiating out of them.
“It’s… you,” she whispers, thinking back to all the puzzles she has painstakingly pieced together.
This is how people fall in love.
Author Robert Dinsdale grew up in Yorkshire, but now lives in Leigh-on-sea in Essex. His writing day is spent walking along the seafront, “hunched over a computer screen” and loitering in his local library. His latest novel is The Toymakers (Del Ray). His simple thing is “Hot mint tea – leaves straight from the garden.”