Troops were billeted to Darlinghurst during the First World War, and in the second it had served as a convalescence home for soldiers once they were deemed well enough to leave the Royal Isle of Wight County Hospital. Constance herself was a child when the Second World War began, but as it dragged on and on, she’d grown into a young woman. She’d been eager to volunteer along with her friend Norma to darn the poor wounded soldiers housed at Darlinghurst’s socks. She and Norma had pinched their cheeks and applied Vaseline to their lips, desperately wishing they looked like Rita Hayworth, before setting off to the big house as they sometimes referred to Darlinghurst, to collect the baskets full of holey socks that had been put aside for them.
If she hadn’t of trooped up that garden path badly in need of weeding, things might have panned out so very differently but such was life. She did venture up the path with the formidably impressive stone masonry looming in front of her, and it did open up an avenue for a conversation with a young man that might not otherwise have come about. Cest la vie.
The house was abandoned after the war, the gaping hole in the roof left as was and the interiors removed and sold off. It had seemed symbolic to Constance. Wight was notorious for its ghosts, and Darlinghurst’s halls echoed with them, ghosts she was glad to embrace now, but ghosts that for so long had haunted her with her regrets.
The house was in far too prime a spot to just be allowed to crumble, and the corporate owners of Sea Vistas had seen a business opportunity. They’d poured a small fortune into doing the old girl up, and had relaunched her in her current guise as an upmarket care home.
Constance’s experience of care homes was non-existent but Sea Vistas she imagined, given its hefty price tag, was as good as they got. She’d never had any intention of moving from Pier View House, but age had seen fit to make it impossible for her to stay. So here she was with her own what did they call her? Key worker that was it. Jill, whose background was nursing in the public system, but who’d confided the money and hours were much better at Sea Vistas.
Constance’s hand drifted over to the bag of Maltesers she always had on hand, her only vice these days, and she popped a chocolate ball in her mouth. As she sucked on the sweet chocolate, she raised her gaze to look out the window. The expanse of foam-tipped waves betrayed the direction of the wind. When the window was open she could smell the salty coastline, and liked to think she could hear the drift of happy seaside chatter; they were the scent and sounds of her life.
She startled at the knock at the door behind her. It was the second knock of the day, the first coming at 7 a.m. when Jill popped in to help her dress before carrying on with her rounds. The second knock signified that it was 8.30 already.
‘Miss Downer, it's Jill again. Can I come in?’ her familiar cheery voice called.
Constance frowned. For goodness sake, she couldn’t understand why Jill felt the need to announce herself. She was a superb timekeeper, who else would it be knocking at her door this time of the morning?
The whole damned business of being old was exhausting and left her frustrated beyond belief. Still, at least Jill talked to her like she was an adult. Not like Monday’s visitor, Adele Stanton.
Constance’s foot had quavered inside her black slip-on shoe with the urge to boot Adele. She might have been thirty years younger than Constance, but her manner was that of a bossy mother hen as she filled her in with all the latest goings on in Fishbourne. Adele had sold the florist business she owned two doors down from Pier View House when her husband passed away a few years ago, and she’d retired to the small nearby village which, if Adele were to believed was a Sodom and Gomorrah hotbed of activity.
Constance had sat trapped in her armchair while she prattled on. It would seem Adele kept an ear to the ground in Fishbourne just as she’d done in Ryde. The woman was a gossip of the highest order, but she had remembered that Constance’s favourite flower was the early purple orchid, bringing her a cutting. Jill had searched out a vase for it, and the orchid was a splash of fragrant colour on her bedside table. For Constance, the purple bloom signified spring beginning to flower as it did on the island each April. This year, however, it was unseasonably early, given it was only halfway through March. Perhaps they were in for a long, hot summer.
Usually, the sight of the purple bloom cheered her, but this year her mind kept slipping back reliving her younger days. That was another thing about one’s golden years, you couldn’t remember what you ate for lunch that day, but you could remember clear as a bell the events of over seventy years ago. It was a peculiar thing. As though to re-confirm this train of thought, Constance put the lid back on the box she’d been leafing through earlier.
It was a blue cardboard box, slightly faded by age with a yellow stripe around the lid, and it had once contained
