Around about 1971, I met and was fond of an Italian boy called Marco. Marco had come over here to the UK to avoid going into the army, which was compulsory then in Italy. He came from the South of Italy, a village up in the mountains.
In this village lived an old man who was a recluse, who always wore a silver ring on his finger. When this old man died, his home went up for sale, and Marco’s parents decided to buy it. When they moved in; there was nothing in the house except that on a nail in the kitchen wall, there hung the ring that the old man wore throughout his life.
Marco took the ring, and it ended up here in England. Well, on this particular day, Marco met me after work, and as we were coming home on the bus, he was telling me this story.
He told me that from the day he took the ring, nothing had gone right for him, everything he attempted, failed. He had also become ill with a mysterious illness; no one could get to the bottom of what it was. Only when he stopped wearing the ring, did things improve.
When Marco came to this country, he bought the ring with him. By now he believed that it was evil and didn’t want to leave it for any members of his family to find. After a few weeks over here, his luck had not improved. Even though he wasn’t wearing it, he believed it had something to do with bringing the ring out of Italy.
Marco, hoping to end his bad luck took the ring and buried it about six feet away from the church wall in a local churchyard. Ten months had gone by since the time he hid the ring and his telling me his story. We had gone through winter, spring, and it was now summer. I just had to see this ring, and after a lot of naggings, he finally agreed to take me there to dig it up so I could see it.
The following day, spade in hand, we set off to the church. God only knows what people would have thought if they had seen us. Between the graves, the grass had been freshly mowed. I asked him where it was, and he said, “Over there.” When we looked, there was one big tuft of grass where the ring lay buried; I pulled at the clump; it was well rooted in the ground. All around this tuft, the grass had been mowed, but it seemed that the lawn mower had jumped this piece. We started to dig, and I swear, when we took the ring, which had not wrapped in anything, out of the ground, there was not one bit of dirt anywhere on it. After all the bad weather, rain, snow, and whatever else we had had during that winter, the ring was clean, bright and shiny. If it had not been for the tuft of grass growing on it, you would think that it had just put there.
To cut a long story short, I kept the ring. One day I took it to work with me, where the customer saw it. The customer inquired about it, and after telling him the story, he offered me £500 for the ring. In those days that was a lot of money, and it started me thinking that the ring must be valuable, so I took it to a jeweller.
This Jeweller was a little old Hungarian man with his own small business. He had come over to the UK just after the war as an immigrant. He took one look at the ring and told me to get out of his shop. I argued with him that I only wanted some information on it.
After a lot of persuasions, he finally said, “The ring is solid silver. It was handmade, about two to three hundred years ago. The eyes are rubies. You are the keeper of the ring. Keep it safe. Now get out of my shop!”
The ring had been in my care in a locked box in my attic for the last forty years having only until this past two years been moved once, from my loft in London to the attic in the house where I live now. Since placed in the box, it had not seen the light of day.
Marco emigrated and became a wealthy man but never married. And I, well, since taking on the ring, I have always had to struggle for everything. Maybe the curse goes on.
Written by Irene Allen-Block.
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