The sign in the shop window had everyone talking: Opening Soon. No clue as to what might be opening soon, just a hand written sign proclaiming that something would shortly be occurring in the premises that had, until recently, by common consent been the strangest shop along the quayside. A junk shop was how most people described old Thomas Handy’s establishment. But junk shop wasn’t quite right. Oh yes, there had been junk in there, and plenty of it. Junk that had remained unsold to the day the shop closed down; items that many people remembered as having been there on their first visit to Handy’s Store. But he had sold other things as well: things that you wanted. It was common knowledge that if you couldn’t get a thing anywhere else, then Handy’s would probably have it. Not necessarily out on display, you understand, but maybe in a box under the dusty old glass counter or on a shelf in the backroom. Whatever it was you were after, it was a rare day when you couldn’t obtain it from Handy’s. You’d have thought that a shop like Handy’s would have been most people’s first port of call but, in truth, a visit there was usually one of last resort. The locals shied away from its door and the tourists, well, why would they want to enter a dusty, forbidding-looking junk shop when they were supposed to be enjoying themselves on holiday? It wasn’t even that the items were expensive; in fact, what old Handy charged always seemed to be a year or two behind the times but, as they say, everything has its price and sometimes what you had to pay couldn’t always be quoted in monetary terms. Many times, people who purchased something at Handy’s often found themselves dealing with a mishap a day or two later, either to themselves or a loved one: not that the two things could possibly be related, you understand. The word ‘curse’ was not spoken out loud but that did not mean that some people did not privately harbour this thought. It wasn’t even that people did not like Thomas Handy; very few could really say that they knew him well enough to know whether they liked him or not. He had appeared a little aloof, maybe even a little eccentric, but the way most people had described him was ‘harmless’. If only they had known. To most, it had been the shop itself that prevented them from setting foot inside its doorway. Smelling of age, an odour perhaps accumulated from the range of goods inside, the odour actually reminded one of little used libraries or old churches, overlain with that peculiar smell pervading the home of an elderly person clawing their way towards death’s door. In short, there was nothing you could really put your finger on; it had just not been a particularly welcoming establishment. It was only when Handy’s failed to open, one Wednesday morning, that people began to talk. Was the old man ill? Had he died? Just how old was he anyway? The consensus was, that despite his dapper looks, he had to be among one of the town’s oldest residents; no one could remember a time when the strange little shop had not been there. Two days later, a large removal truck arrived and the contents of the store were unceremoniously trundled into its interior. The three men, who had travelled over from the mainland to perform the task, were quizzed unmercifully for details but could yield nothing more than the fact that they had been assigned to collect the shop’s contents and ferry them to Inverness. No, they had no idea as to what had happened to the old man and no, they did not know what was to become of the shop. In the manner of small communities, a week or two later there were more pressing concerns to occupy the local gossips – Were the ferry prices really going to be increased again? Had young Jock McKenzie gotten his young lady friend into trouble? Who would take over from the postman, now that Angus McPherson was approaching retirement? The shop and Thomas Handy were all but forgotten. For six weeks or so the shop lay desolately dormant; its whitewashed windows looking for all the world like giant unseeing cataracts. The day after the ‘Opening Soon’ sign appeared in the window, the day after Kerratamory refocused its attention on the empty premises without having settled the question of what had become of old Thomas Handy, another commercial vehicle rolled off the ferry: smaller than the removal truck, the van’s sides proclaimed ‘Sign of the Times’. It took less than two hours for the sole proprietor of the company to affix the gleaming new sign above the shop, during which time – despite the offer of a cup of tea from the adjoining newsagents – the man did not, and apparently could not, provide any additional information as to the nature of the new business nor indeed, just who was going to run it. At first glance, the sign did not appear to shed any further light on the matter. Intricately woven black lines slashed against a cream background in a complicated but apparently random pattern. It provided an optical illusion: depending on just how you looked at it, or how the light caught it, a word seemed to float in and out of view but no two people could agree as to what the word actually was. To Angus McPherson, anticipating that delivering mail to the shop that might give him the edge in the race for information, the word ‘Patience’ danced in front of his eyes one cloudy morning. Squinting his eyes up at the sign, he could no longer see the word but was so sure he had seen it there that he nipped into the newsagents to impart the fact of his discovery. Connie Fraser, adeptly wielding her Stanley knife as she released the daily papers from their over-tight bundle, thought he had got it wrong. “Patience? Why would anyone call a shop ‘Patience’?” Her sing-song voice suggested that perhaps even the three months Angus had until his retirement might be ninety days too many. “Revelations. That’s what it says. I saw it the other morning, clear as day.” Eighteen-year-old Misty McDonald was sure the shop was called ‘Exquisite’. Of course Misty wasn’t her real name; Misty was far too exotic a name for the likes of her Highland born parents to have come up with. Theresa had been her given name but she had often been referred to as Miss Theresa or, more affectionately, Miss T, which had struck her as being somewhat mysterious and exciting. She had encouraged the name. Andrew Woodman, who had been born on the island but whose parents originated from London, saw himself as the island’s official photographer – if only because no one else was attempting to make a living from the art form. As well as being a photographer, and succeeding in sustaining himself by producing postcards and calendars, he also considered himself ‘a bit of an historian’ and had produced a book on what he had gleaned of the town’s history. The book, entitled ‘Kerratamory Remembered’, sold well enough to the summer visitors and his postcards and calendars had been sent all over the world by tourists wishing to show off the wonders of the beautiful island they had visited. Andrew, or Andy as he was more commonly known, had photographed the shop with its new sign and, as he laboured in his dark room, the word ‘Focused’ jumped out at him from the developing fluid, with the letters seeming to disappear before his eyes as he plunged the glossy paper into the photographic fixative. Abigail Dunn, who worked in the gift shop at the small Sea Life Centre, was sure the sign read ‘Overtones’. The pub landlord, Rodger Milestone (That’s Rodger with a ‘D’, as he told everyone on first meeting them) was convinced it said ‘Homecoming’. Just what that might mean was debated long and hard with anyone who cared to listen. Thirteen-month-old Jamie Callaghan just burst into tears on seeing the new sign there. His mother was forced into buying him an ice cream in order to get him to shut up. They all agreed to disagree and to wait and see what the opening of the new shop would bring.

MARCUS LYNDALE