small flat brass · cylinder · brass paper-tag · the keeper
the lock is a small cylinder on the side of the green box mounted to the gatepost, where the road bends. it takes a quarter-turn and releases a sprung hatch the size of two hands. the keeper opens it most days, depending on whether anyone has been past on a bicycle.
the key is the smallest in the house. it is kept tied by hemp twine to a stamped paper tag reading no. 3 the cross in a hand belonging to the previous keeper's daughter, who left for somewhere coastal in 1981. without the tag the key would have been lost a dozen times. the tag's corner is bent now from a key turn that caught it against the box.
what the key admits, on a good week: two bills, the parish circular, a letter from the cabin's solicitor asking whether anyone still uses the cabin. on a bad week: nothing. see also the letter returned, which the keeper has neither opened nor sent back.
field-note — the key smells, in late summer, very faintly of the privet hedge by the gate. it is hard to say why a key would smell at all.
key museum · letter · garden gate · strongbox · paper tag