The Promise

by Michelle Vernal

  By the time she found herself walking away from her third port of call, however, a beautifully restored Victorian residence on Queens Road, her earlier positivity was beginning to waver. The phrase, needle in a haystack, sprang to mind and given it was now approaching 10 a.m. she needed a mid-morning caffeine hit. She supposed she should do something about sorting out a place to stay too.

  As she turned right, The Esplanade had a steady flow of people going about their day and making the most of the blue sky on offer. She caught a whiff of brewing coffee on the breeze and was following the direction of her twitching nose when a sign in the window of a gallery caught her eye. She would have missed it if it wasn’t for the bold beach scene canvas displayed on an easel that had initially grabbed her attention. The handwritten sign next to the artwork said “Room to Let Enquire Within.” It was worth checking out, she thought, as something tickled at the back of her brain, something Brenda had said. What was it? It was no good; it would come back to her when it was good and ready.

  The gallery, she noted taking a step back for a better look, was called A Leap of Faith – Art and Sculpture and the flat above the yellow and white striped awning was two storeys with two sets of large Victorian sash windows on each floor. The establishment looked perfectly presentable from the outside she decided, pressing her nose to the window pane to see further inside.

  She jumped back from the glass, narrowly missing colliding with an older woman walking her dog, as a man appeared from behind the canvas. He was smiling at her, and her hand flew to her chest. He’d given her a proper fright, and she waited for her heart to return to its normal rate of beats per minute. She turned back toward the window, but he’d disappeared, and she stood there for a tick feeling rather foolish at having been caught out like some Peeping Tom. She tossed up whether or not she should go inside and see how the land lay. What did she have to lose? Isabel decided, pulling the door open with gusto and smacking straight into the solid frame of the man she’d seen a second or two earlier.

  She had to wait to get her breath back before replying to his concerned questioning that yes she was okay. His voice was rich and melodious with the almost incoherent musical quality of a thick Welsh accent. ‘I’m sorry about that; I’m Rhodri Rees, the proprietor. Now then, was it the canvas in the window you were interested in?’

  ‘What?’ Isabel felt wrong-footed and unsure of herself as she gazed up at his welcoming face.

  ‘I asked if it was—’

  ‘No, no, that’s not why I’m here.’ She gathered herself. Good grief. Did she look as though she could afford expensive pieces of artwork? ‘Not that the painting isn’t lovely—I wondered about the room you have to let. My name’s Isabel Stark, and I’m over from Southampton, but I’ve found some work at the Rum Den up the road, and well, it looks like I’ll be staying here on Wight longer than I initially thought.’ She stopped to draw breath.

  Rhodri looked amused. ‘I quite often pop in the Rum Den for a pint. It’s a lovely old pub.’

  Good for you, Isabel thought annoyed by his twitching mouth. ‘So are you letting a room or not?’

  ‘I most certainly am. Would you like to have a look upstairs?’

  Isabel hesitated. She did want to have a look, but it wouldn’t be the smartest of moves going to view a stranger’s flat when nobody knew where she was. Her mum’s voice rang in her ears, for the second time that morning. ‘Stranger danger, Isabel.’

  ‘If you don’t have time now—’

  ‘No its fine.’ She fished her phone out having had a bright idea. ‘My friend’s waiting for me in the coffee shop a few doors down. I’ll just flick her a quick text and tell her not to order my latte just yet.’

  He smiled. ‘Good idea. Nothing worse than cold coffee.” He busied himself straightening up a rack of postcard-size prints while Isabel texted her pretend friend.

  ‘Right all sorted. I told her I'd be about ten minutes or so.’ She put her phone back in her bag.

  ‘We’d better go on up then. I’m glad I cleared the breakfast things away.’ He laughed.

  The Welsh accent, when thick, could sound like a very beautiful form of flowing gibberish, Isabel thought watching as he hung a “Back in five minutes” sign in the door before locking it. Her eyes narrowed. He didn’t look like a nutcase. In fact, he was quite good looking in a dark and brooding way. He’d most likely have a girlfriend called Myfanwy or something like that, she reassured herself. Besides it was too late to change her mind now, and crossing her fingers behind her back she followed his long-legged stride the length of the gallery to a door behind the counter.

  On the other side of the door was a corridor of sorts. A steep set of stairs ran up to the first floor and at the end of the corridor was a door which she guessed led to the back garden area. Rhodri took the stairs two at a time calling back over his shoulder that it was great exercise. She’d take his word for it, she thought, holding on to the railing with no intention of picking up her pace.

  The living room space she saw reaching the top was surprisingly light and airy thanks to those windows she’d spied from the street. The kitchen was at the opposite end, and she guessed a wall had been knocked through at some point to make the two spaces open-plan. The furnishings were smart but plain and functional; they smacked of a man living alone.

  ‘It’s fairly self–explanatory.’ Rhodri waved his arm around, and Isabel nodded.

  ‘It’s nice.’

  ‘Ah it’s a bit clinical. I’ve been busy getting the gallery up and running. I haven’t had much time to put my stamp on the living quarters yet, but it’s functional.’

  ‘Do you own the building then?’

  ‘I do, yes. I bought it last year from a lovely old lady, Miss Downer who’d lived here her whole life. I wanted a sea change from London, and this place was perfect. Come on, I’ll show you your room if you decide to take it.’

  They carried on up the stairs to where there were three bedrooms, the smaller one of which was being used as a study. The bathroom was at the end of the hall. He gestured to a door open just enough for her to see a neatly made bed. He was obviously a tidy sort of a person, Isabel thought, and she could be too when she put her mind to it

  ‘Here you go,’ he said, pushing open the door to a perfectly acceptable room with a faintly nautical feel about it thanks to the blue curtains and blue and white duvet on the small double bed. There was a dressing table against the wall and a freestanding wardrobe. A small set of drawers were beside the bed with a lamp on top of it.

  It would do nicely, Isabel thought, providing the price was right. ‘Erm, so how much are you looking for?’

  ‘Eighty pounds a week. It’s the going rate around here.’

  Isabel worked out what she could expect to earn a week from the Rum Den; it was doable.

  ‘Do you cook?’ Rhodri asked.

  ‘Not if I can help it.’

  He laughed.

  Even his laugh had a musical quality, Isabel thought wondering if she’d just sabotaged her chances.

  ‘That’s alright then because I’ll do you a deal. I love cooking. It's my way of unwinding at the end of the day, so if you’re happy to do the washing up—’

  ‘Would we split the food bill and the amenities?’ Isabel interrupted liking the sound of this arrangement.

  ‘We would. What do you reckon then?’

  ‘I’d like to take it, thanks.’

  ‘Great.’ Rhodri held out his hand, and she shook it feeling very pleased with the way her morning had panned out even if she hadn’t had any luck as to locating Constance as yet. ‘Welcome to Pier View House, Isabel.’

  ‘Ooh, a house with a name. I’ve never lived in one of those before. Wait until I tell my mum, she’ll be well impressed, she always wanted to call our house Maybush Mews, but Dad wouldn’t have a bar of it.’

  Rhodri grinned, and she was reminded of someone. It took her a second, but it came to her - Ben Affleck that was it.

  Oblivious to
the fact he’d just been likened to a Hollywood actor, Rhodri chatted on, ‘Miss Downer shared a bit of Pier View House’s history with me before she moved to Sea Vistas—it’s a retirement home just down the road. The gallery downstairs used to be the Downer’s family’s haberdashery shop. It opened just after World War One and survived World War Two. Miss Downer never married, and she helped run the business until her parents passed away. She told me there wasn’t much call for haberdashery once the big supermarkets began opening on the island, and that she had to think outside the square if she was going to stay in business. Apparently, she is a firm believer in the power of herbs to heal, so she began selling natural remedies which were very popular with locals and tourist alike. There was talk amongst the locals of her being a witch, and that of course added to her allure. She’s a bit of a marvel really because she ran Constance’s Curealls until she was well into her eighties and was quite the fixture around these parts. People are always popping in to ask after her.’

  Isabel’s mouth fell open. That was what had been tickling at the back of her mind. Brenda had mentioned Constance had owned a herbal shop that was now an art gallery. She felt a surge of excitement. ‘What did you say the name of the retirement home Constance moved into was?

  Chapter 8

  ‘I didn’t ring to talk to the dog, Mum,’ Isabel shouted down her mobile hoping her mum would hear her and remove the mouthpiece from the vicinity of Prince Charles. The dog’s howl was both deafening and mournful. She was standing outside A Leap of Faith. There was no time to call in on Constance today to see if she was the one and same woman that Ginny had asked her to find. It would have to wait until first thing tomorrow. She only had ten minutes before she was due back at the Rum Den.

  Her shouting had the desired effect, and Bab Stark cheerily stated, ‘Ah, he misses you, Bel. I’m telling you it’s pathetic to see him like this. He’s pining. You’d only just got home, and you were off again. I’ve had to buy him doggy treats to try and cheer him up. He’ll send your father and I, broke with all the Tasty Tidbits he’s chomping through even with my in-store discount.’

  ‘It’s only been a day Mum, and he’s spoilt, that’s the problem. He’s the second child you never got to have.’ She studied her thumbnail. Biting her nails was a habit she’d never been able to break. She’d have loved a brother or a sister growing up, someone to take the focus off her, someone to boss about, and someone to play with. Instead, she’d gotten Prince Charles, a neurotic corgi.

  She’d pestered her parents about fostering for a while when she was too young to understand what that would entail. It hadn’t been on the cards though, her mum telling her that they wouldn’t be able to cope with not being able to keep the child. Her parents had told her often enough the adoption process had been hard enough emotionally and that they’d all but jumped through hoops to get her. The waiting list had been so long they’d thought it would never happen, but by some small miracle one day they picked up the telephone to find out it had.

  Her mum reckoned from the very first moment she’d held her in her arms she’d been theirs. She told a story of how when they left the Barnardos Agency in London, she was holding Isabel tightly in her arms when the woman who’d been looking after their case file came running out after them. Babs had thought she was going to tell them it had all been a misunderstanding and that baby, Isabel wasn’t theirs after all, so she’d started running off down the street. Now that she had her baby, she wasn’t giving her back! It turned out the woman only wanted to give her handbag back, which she’d left sitting on the office floor in her haste to leave. She’d laugh and finish her tale by saying, she and dad had been blessed.

  Isabel had reminded them they were blessed more than once when they weren’t feeling particularly so, thanks to some teenage misdemeanour of hers. She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t known she was adopted either. The book Yours’ by Choice had always sat on the bookshelf. It was there if she wanted to look at it, but she’d never felt the need. Her mum and dad were her mum and dad, and that was that, no big deal. It was other people who saw it as being different, but for the Starks, it was just their little family.

  It was strange though because a small part of her was always aware of how old her birth mother would be now—forty-two. And she had when she was younger wondered whether she had any siblings, but it wasn’t something she’d dwell on for long. She’d tried to write a speech about being adopted once for a school project when she was ten after a snotty little madam had teased her about her mum and dad not being her real mum and dad. Her dad had offered to sit and help her with it. This was an unusual and generous offer given the football world cup had been on at the time, but for some reason just talking about it with him made her well up. In the end, she’d decided to do it on something else; she couldn’t remember what now.

  There was the time too when she’d had her first ever sleepover and had woken in a panic having dreamed her birth mother had arrived at her friend’s house to take her back. A faceless person in her dream as her adoption was a closed one, and all she knew about the woman who’d given birth to her was she wasn’t a woman at all; she was a girl, and her name was Veronica. She was just fifteen when she’d had her and had decided adoption was the best thing all around; she’d been the one to call her Isabel. Isabel was grateful her parents hadn’t changed her name. If Bab’s had been so inclined to do so, it would have been more than likely she’d have been christened, Diana or if she’d had particularly lofty aspirations for her new daughter, Elizabeth.

  She didn’t know where those feelings of fear at losing everything familiar to her had come from the night she’d stayed away from home for the first time. Wherever they’d welled up from, they’d stayed with her for a long time afterward. She’d been told she was an overly sensitive girl more than once during her twenty-six years, but to Isabel’s mind it was a fine line between sensitivity and anxiety. She gave her thumbnail a look of disgust and felt her neck burning once more.

  Babs broke her train of thought. ‘Hang on a tick, will you Isabel? I’ll put Prince Charles outside, or I won’t be able to hear a thing you’re saying.’

  ‘Right-oh.’ Isabel leaned back against the rails, her back to the Pier as she chewed on a strand of muted green hair.

  ‘Oh dear, that was worse than your dad’s attitude when I make fish pie for tea.’

  Isabel laughed having borne witness to this, although she couldn’t quite understand his aversion to the humble fish pie, she was quite partial to it, and her tummy rumbled at the thought of a serving. Despite her husband’s dislike of the dish, Babs insisted on making it arguing that it was brain food and if it was good enough for the queen then it was good enough for the Stark family. She’d once read that the people of Gloucester make a fish pie for the queen each jubilee and coronation. Dad would mutter in reply to this that he’d gladly drop his serving up at Buckingham Palace.

  Her mum diverted her thoughts. ‘So, now tell me how is your search going?’

  ‘Mum, coming to Wight is working out a bit differently to how I thought it would.’ She filled her in on all that had transpired since she’d arrived in Ryde yesterday.

  Once Bab’s had gotten over her disbelief and excitement at the possibility of Isabel having

  located Constance, she moved on to her daughter’s new landlord. ‘Rhodri? He sounds like a Cornish historical romance hero.’

  ‘You watch way too much Poldark, Mum, and he’s Welsh by the way, not Cornish.’

  ‘Is he a nice young man though? He doesn’t have any peculiar habits like—’

  Isabel cut her off. ‘Yes Mum, he seems perfectly nice and normal.’ Isabel scratched at her neck.

  ‘Stop scratching, Bel.’

  She had hearing like that ruddy corgi, Isabel grumped but did as she was told.

  ‘Well, Dad and I are only a phone call away if you need us. I suppose I should count my blessings that you’ve found yourself some work to tide you over. It's a shame yo
u couldn’t find something this side of the water though, what with you only just getting home. Still, it’s only a ferry ride away. Make sure you ring me as soon as you’ve been to see your Constance tomorrow and let me know how it goes. I won’t sleep a wink tonight for wondering what Ginny was sorry for. I hope she tells you. Oh, bugger it!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The white sauce is all lumpy. That’ll teach me for multitasking.’

  ‘What are you having for dinner?’ Isabel’s tummy rumbled with more ferocity this time; she’d not gotten her morning tea in because, by the time she’d finished drilling Rhodri about his connection with Constance, there’d been no time for sitting in cafes sipping coffee and nibbling on cake. She might just have enough time to snaffle down a sandwich if she got her A into G, though.

  ‘Fish pie,’ her mum replied.

  Isabel laughed. ‘Not Dad’s lucky night then.’

  ͠

  Isabel dodged the merry punters as she pushed her way back to the bar and dumped the collection of glasses she’d just cleared down on the bar top. The pub was jumping tonight; there’d be a few sore heads on Monday morning, she thought, glancing around. It was 8 p.m. another three hours to go, and she was eager for tonight to be over and for tomorrow morning to roll around. She’d taken her pack down to Pier View House and deposited it in her new room on her dinner break, handing Rhodri a fistful of crumpled notes, her week’s rent in advance. He’d been about to head out to a pottery class; he informed her taking a key from his key ring and passing it to her.

  ‘It’s for the door to the gallery. I don’t use the back door,’ Rhodri said, grabbing his jacket before telling her he might pop down to the Rum Den after his class for a pint.

  Isabel hadn’t stayed in the empty flat long. Brenda had a bowl of mac n cheese waiting for her when she got there.

  Now, she lifted the flip top and scooted around to the business side of the bar. The dishwasher needed loading, and she grimaced at the tackiness of the bar top beneath the glasses she’d just lined up. There’d been a spillage, and she’d clean it up in a jiffy. First things first though, she thought, eyeing the glasses, she’d clear this lot away.