The Golden Nugget

Isamu sat alone in the school canteen, as he always did during breaktimes, watching the other schoolchildren laugh and hang about in groups. He was not completely alone, though. In his hand, he held a pebble, the special one he had found in the abandoned quarry near his family’s smallholding. He watched some of his classmates walk past: Michael and his gang.

“Oy, what’ve you got there?” They had spotted him clutching something and headed towards him. Isamu looked around for an escape, but it was too late. Michael snatched at his hand, but Isamu closed it just in time. Michael smiled, then lunged at Isamu’s wrist while his mates joined in, holding a struggling Isamu down to prise open his clenched fist. There, in the palm of his hand, lay Isamu’s sole possession, glowing in the harsh canteen light. His golden nugget.

There was silence. Then Michael said, “What’s that? Where d’you get it?”

Isamu swallowed the rising bile of fear. The nugget twinkled at him, warm and encouraging. He opened his mouth and let out a lie. The first of many.

“It’s an heirloom.”

Michael stared at him in disbelief but loosened his grip. “You live with your aunt and uncle, who are farmers,” he scoffed, “because your parents are dead.”

Isamu closed his hand. A golden warmth spread through his body. He straightened his back.

“My parents are not dead. They belong to the old royal family of Shen-Do. They went into hiding after the revolution.” He had borrowed the name from a kingdom they had studied in Social Sciences the previous term.

Michael’s eyes widened. “For real? What, you’re like royalty or something?”

For a moment, Isamu hesitated. Then he nodded. The lies came more easily now: his parents had fled their palace and left him, still a baby, with distant relatives he called his aunt and uncle.

Just when he thought he had got away with it, he saw Billy approaching and his heart sank. Billy had a nasty streak and knew how to hurt without leaving visible bruises. He smirked at Isamu, looked around for any teachers and moved closer.

But Michael snapped, “Leave him alone. He’s OK.” He nodded to Isamu, then turned and walked off with his mates trailing him. Billy gave Isamu a hard stare before turning away as well.

Isamu breathed a sigh of relief and opened his clenched hand. The golden nugget twinkled at him, just as it had the first time he saw it, half-hidden in the soil, as if it were a practical joke. He had looked around to see whether any of the neighbourhood children were waiting behind the rocks. But he was alone. No one had walked there since the old miners trudged out for the last time with as many rocks of quartz and ore as they could stuff into their frayed pockets. The quarry was due to become a nature reserve after years of ecological damage.

He had prised the stone out of the ground and decided it would be his friend. A real one. Not like the previous year, when the twins in his class, Susan and John, had befriended him. They had invited him to their home after school. Sitting tall at their bespoke walnut table while an au pair served tea, he explained maths problems to Susan and helped John with French verbs.

As the summer holidays approached, John and Susan threw a party. Isamu expected to be invited, but no invitation came. So he asked Susan about it in the school corridor, with as much nonchalance as he could muster. His cheeks still burned when he remembered her response.

“Oh, but John’s party is only for our friends.” The way she looked at him.

He was seven again, staring at the worn kitchen tiles while his aunt twisted a tea towel in frustration. “Of course you can’t go. You’re lucky to live here at all. You should be grateful.” His parents were dead, and he was being raised by an uncle and a resentful aunt who had been unable to have children of her own. Grateful was not what he felt. He had stopped listening, but her words had seeped slowly and steadily into his heart. Now they were lodged there, a familiar discomfort, like a tiny pebble in a hiking boot.

Then, suddenly, he was invited to parties. Michael even introduced him to his father, murmuring “Shen-Do” quietly. Michael’s father shook Isamu’s hand formally and took him to meet some business associates. They had had dealings with Shen-Do in the past. The men in suits admired Isamu’s modesty. They remarked that it was a true sign of royalty.

During breaks, he was no longer alone. He sat with Michael’s group, and they laughed at his jokes. Sometimes they asked to see the nugget, commenting on its beauty and worth. Billy alone stared at him in silence.

Encouraged by Michael’s father, Isamu went to university to study economics, even though he was more interested in art history. There he met Aisha, a beautiful girl with dark hair and watchful eyes. One night, he showed her the nugget. She reached out to touch it, and he said, “Go on, take it.” He watched her hold it in her hands, twisting it between her fingers, her eyes wide. She smiled at him and said, “Almost as beautiful as you are.” That was when he fell in love. He wanted so much to believe her.

She took an interest in Shen-Do and sought out exhibitions. “There’s a speaker this time who is also Shen-Do. Come on, wouldn’t it be great to meet him?”

“How could you be so insensitive?” he asked. “You know I have no memories of my parents.”

He saw the distress in her eyes as she apologised. “But don’t you want to find them?”

“If they truly loved me, they would look for me.”

But she did not hide her love for him and spoke proudly of his origins to others. His modesty drew admiration. He was offered more opportunities. Through Aisha, he found work at a company and became successful. Sometimes someone would look at him the way Billy had.

The nugget began to feel different in his pocket. Colder. Rougher. New scratches marked its surface. The stone had lost some of its sheen. As he went about his day, it felt heavier, like his heart. Doubts about him were creeping in at work, too. His colleagues never said anything aloud, but he recognised the suspicion in their looks. He began taking the stone out at night when Aisha was asleep, turning it round and round between his fingers. Where once he had been mesmerised by its golden sheen, he now saw an ugly, twisted figure of cheap gilt. It resembled a gremlin. Or perhaps the person he had made of himself.

One evening, he walked through the park on his way home. Clouds had gathered, and a dark threat thickened the air with the smell of rain. The wind grew rougher, pulling at loose coats and slapping the placards outside shop doors. He walked hunched against it. Thick drops of rain began to fall, one by one at first, then in twos and threes, and suddenly, as though someone had turned on a tap, a downpour came. Isamu closed his eyes. The rain on his face felt like tears running down his cheeks. With his hands thrust deep into his pockets, he reached for the nugget and felt nothing. He searched again, but his pockets were empty. The nugget had gone.

He looked up instead of down. The clouds were clearing, and a streak of blue had appeared between the dark banks. Then and there, he decided to leave Aisha and his job and start over somewhere else. He would return to the subject he had abandoned and begin again with art history. Behind him, in the cold, wet grass, lay the little nugget, sinking into the soggy earth until it was almost hidden, its glint nearly extinguished.

The following day, an old man who had once worked at the quarry crossed the stretch of grass and stopped to take in his surroundings. He could not explain why afterwards, only that he had felt compelled to look down at that particular spot. A little awkwardly, because he was no longer young, he bent to pick up something glinting in the grass. As he held it to the light, the sun broke through the clouds and drew out a yellow glow. A smile spread across his face as he admired its form and shape. He closed his hand and placed the object carefully in his pocket to take home.

Years later, a woman called Maria walked through the impressive entrance of the museum, holding a brightly coloured tote bag close to her body. She checked her watch and gazed around. The museum’s cavernous entrance hall rose through two storeys like an enclosed courtyard. Black metal railings ran around the first floor and ended at a flight of stairs opposite her. Down them came a grey-haired man in a suit a shade darker than his hair, one hand resting lightly on the railing. With a brief smile, he introduced himself as the director and beckoned her to follow him.

They made their way through a ground-floor exhibition about early settlers, past glass cabinets filled with arrowheads, rows of muted greys and browns illuminated against a sterile white background. At the end of the hall, they came to a door marked “Private”. The director opened it, and Maria followed him into his office. At his gesture, she took the chair across from him at the desk. The museum director slid into his seat and folded his hands.

“You said your late father wanted to bequeath an artefact to the museum?”

Maria nodded, rummaged in her bag and took out a small white box.

“It’s very precious. My dad loved it dearly, but he wanted others to enjoy it after he died.”

She prised open the box carefully and turned it to face the director.

The director stared at its contents. There was silence. Then, tentatively, almost as if he were afraid to touch it, he reached towards the little box. There, on the dark-blue silk lining, lay an object of gold. Tears pricked his eyes as Isamu looked up at Maria.

His golden nugget had come home.

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