Beaumont Park, Huddersfield — Ladies' Court Shoe, Black, On the Bench

I want to take this one carefully because there's a bit to it I do not understand, and I would rather set it down plain than try to make sense of it before I've sat with it.

Half-day at the merchant's. Stuart had a kitchen delivery booked for the morning so I were in at half six and out at one. Came home, had a piece of toast, said to Our Linda I'd take an hour at Beaumont Park if the rain stayed off. She said it would and it more or less did. Drove down Crosland Moor way and parked on the road by the upper gate.

Beaumont Park is on a slope above the Holme valley. Victorian. There are stone stairs that go down through the trees, a bandstand on a flat bit near the top, and a row of benches along the path that looks out over the valley. The trees were just coming into leaf, properly. Not many folk about — a couple with a pushchair, a man on a bench reading the Examiner, two lads on bikes who shouldn't have been on bikes there but I weren't going to be the one to say. Mid-week afternoon.

I'd come in the upper gate and were heading down towards the pavilion when I saw it on one of the benches along the valley side.

A ladies' shoe

I'll put that down plain because there it is.

Black. Court shoe — low heel, an inch and a half at the most, square front, the sort a woman might wear to the office or to the shops if she didn't want to bother with anything else. Polished but not new — there were a small scuff along the right outer edge of the toe, and the inside of the heel were creased to someone's foot. Left foot. Inside the heel were a label I could just about make out: a "5" for the size, and a brand starting with a "C" — Clarks I think but I would not swear to it. Sat upright on the bench seat near the right-hand armrest, facing out across the valley.

I stood there a minute. It is the second ladies' shoe I have come to in seventeen years of doing this. The first were in Nerja, two weeks ago Tuesday. I want to note that and move on, because I do not want to make a thing of it. I will sit with it later. The work in the moment is the shoe.

Got the camera out and took a few from various angles. Two from in front, one from the side, one from behind so you got what the shoe were looking at — which were the rooftops of Crosland Moor and the trees and the valley going off down towards Honley. The light were flat but it'll do.

Summat in the toe

I went to crouch down for one more from a low angle. As I did I could see into the shoe, into the toe end, and there were summat in there that weren't shoe. A bit of dark in the dark. I straightened up.

I do not, as a rule, pick the shoes up. I do not move them. That is the rule and it has been the rule for seventeen years. But I had to know what it were because if it were a leaf or a bit of paper that had blown in I did not want to write up half a thing. So I took the shoe off the bench by the heel — gently, with my fingertips — and tipped it.

What come out into my palm were a key.

A small brass key. Old looking. About an inch and a quarter long. The sort of key that opens a small drawer, or a box, or maybe a clock — I am no expert. The bow at the top were a simple oval. The bit at the bottom — the part with the teeth on — were small, two notches. Brass, not yellow brass but the sort of dull brass that has been about a while.

Threaded through the bow were a length of green ribbon. Satin. About six inches of it, dark green, the sort you'd find on a chocolate box or a wedding favour. The ribbon were knotted at both ends to make a loop, and the loop were knotted again in the middle so that the key sat at the bottom of it. Two knots. Tidy work, whoever had done it.

I sat down on the next bench along with the key in my hand.

Not a shoe. Pigeon on a bin at the Sainsbury's at Salendine Nook, Tuesday morning before work. Come out well so I'm putting it up here. I had nowhere else for it.

I do not understand it

I want to be plain. I do not know what the key is for. I do not know what the ribbon means, if it means owt. I do not know if the key were placed in the shoe by the same person who placed the shoe on the bench, or by someone else, or whether the shoe and the key are two separate things that have come together by accident, although I will say that on balance I do not think it is accident. The key were in the toe. Not loose. Tucked.

I had a few thoughts and I will set them down only because if I do not write them down I will turn them over for the rest of the week. None of them feel right.

• It is a token of summat. A keepsake. Someone has left it deliberate.
• It is a child's game. The key fits a box in the same park and there is a trail. I had a look round the bench. There weren't owt.
• It is not for me at all. It is for someone the person knew would walk past. I am not that someone.
• It is a thing I do not need to know about.

The fourth one is the closest to what I think.

What I have done with it

I have put the key back in the shoe. I tipped it gently into the toe the same way it had come out, ribbon and all. I set the shoe back on the bench, upright, near the right-hand armrest, facing out across the valley, in as close to the same position as I had found it. I do not think I got it perfect. I got it close.

I took two more photographs after I had put it back. They look the same as the first ones. You wouldn't know to look at them that owt had happened in between.

I sat with it about ten more minutes. I did not get the flask out — I had not brought a flask, it were a half-day and I had not planned to be out long. A robin come and sat on the back of the bench for a moment and then went off again. The wind picked up. I left.

At home

Told Our Linda about it over tea. She'd done a piece of haddock and some peas. I did not say much for the first ten minutes. She said "you're quiet Keith." I said I'd had a strange one. I told her about the shoe, and then about the key, and then about the ribbon. I were careful with the order because I wanted her to hear it the way I had it.

She put her fork down when I got to the ribbon.

"Did you take it?" she said.

"No," I said. "I put it back."

"Good," she said. She picked the fork up again. "Leave it alone Keith."

I said I would. We had a Müller Corner each after.

A note on the count

It is the second ladies' shoe. The first were in Nerja and is filed in Away Fixtures because it were abroad. This one is in Huddersfield. It belongs in the main sequence. I have given it #319.

I had thought, after Nerja, that the ladies' shoe were a thing of going abroad. That is what I said at the time. "It took me going abroad. That is the truth of it." I said that and I meant it. I do not know what to do with the fact that there is now another one, two weeks later, on a bench in Beaumont Park.

I am not going to make more of it than that. The count is the count. The shoe were where it were. I have logged it.

Aye. A ladies' court shoe on a bench at Beaumont Park, with a small brass key on a green ribbon tucked into the toe. I have put it all back where it were. I do not understand it. I do not need to.