Never Too Late (4 page)

Ada poured the tea and they settled back for a comfortable natter. There was plenty of time just for companionship, Maggie thought, since there was no housework or gardening needed today. It was nice to put her feet up for a few minutes if she was honest.

It wasn’t until Maggie got back home that she realised she had missed out the school from her day’s agenda. She reached for the phone, annoyed with herself for her lack of concentration. At least there was the invitation to her home to discuss the history exhibition to offer by way of apology.

*

PC Whitlow turned away from the mangled Ford Escort van. He didn’t want to see the ambulance crew removing the body of the driver. The young man had apparently swerved to miss a child, seen too late in the dusky half-light as she dashed across to the ice cream van, and hit a tree. Everyone agreed it was a heroic action, but he shouldn’t have been driving so fast through the village. It was an ongoing problem, with that long straight stretch of road just before it.

Such a tragic waste of a life
, he thought
. I bet he would have survived if he’d been wearing a seat belt.

He got into his patrol car and asked for assistance sorting out what to do with the German Shepherd in the back of the van. It was seemingly unhurt, judging by the very energetic way it had tried to protect its master. It was a good job there was the mesh barrier between the rear of the van and the cab or they wouldn’t have been able to get near the driver.

As the ambulance was driving away, that his radio crackled back to life. He stopped taking details from the witnesses to the accident to answer it. He was given the message that the dog would be collected within the next half hour and the vehicle recovery wagon would be sent after that.

Stuck here for another hour, then. Oh well, that’ll finish my shift off by the time I get back and write up the report.

He’d just finished taking his notes when a van pulled up. At first he thought it was the RSPCA van but then noticed the Second Chance logo and a picture of a dog on the side. The phone number, he noticed, was local, and he vaguely remembered passing the turning for the kennels but had never had need to call in there.

A late middle-aged woman got out of the cab. She looked strong and capable, her iron grey hair cut in a no nonsense crop, but her evening dress, stole and court shoes struck an odd note. She came straight over to him, hand outstretched.

“Liz Bannerman,” she introduced herself. “Are you in charge here?”

 “Yes, PC Whitlow.” He shook her hand. “I was expecting the RSPCA to come for the Shepherd.”

“Full up,” Liz replied. “Too many post-Christmas rejects now that the cute puppy stage is over. Too many people can’t be bothered with the commitment of training and caring for a young dog. So irresponsible.”

He could hear the annoyance in her voice.

“Come on, then,” she called over her shoulder as she headed to the van. “Let’s get this one sorted out.”

He followed her over to where she was checking the situation through the rear windows of the van.

She glanced round and chuckled. “Taken you a bit by surprise have I?”

“You, er, don’t seem exactly dressed for it Ms Bannerman.”

“Oh, stop all that Ms nonsense,” she chided him. “Mrs. Widowed. Call me Liz.”

He thought it rather appropriate that her words were ‘barked’ rather than spoken and smiled.

She noticed the smile and glanced down at her incongruous clothes. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d been thought a bit – well, kind people said eccentric, others just plain odd, or crazy, or weird. Not that it bothered her in the slightest, as long as her dogs were happy.

“They caught me at a fund raising bash for the kennels,” she told him. “Getting this poor lad settled is more important than stopping home to get changed. Waste of time. Now, what can you tell me about him?” she wanted to know.

“Well, we’ve done a PNC check, obviously, and Family Liaison are on the way to inform the next of kin, his mother, a Mrs Williams.”

Liz had meant the dog, but needed the family details too in case they were willing to keep the dog. “Fatality?” she asked.

“Yes, unfortunately,” he confirmed. “So at the moment we don’t know whether the dog will be short stay or if it will need rehoming.”

“He seems quiet enough, anyway,” Liz commented, her attention once more on the dog.

“He is now but earlier on…” PC Whitlow shook his head. “It was awful. At first he was trying to attack anyone who went near the driver, but then the ambulance crew took the deceased away and the dog set up this howling. It sounded like all the misery in the world.”

“Wouldn’t you howl if you’d just lost your family?”

They both looked at the dog, just lying there in utter dejection. He’d made no move to even acknowledge their presence. He just didn’t want to know.

Liz took a decision. “Look, his own collar and lead are hung there. Let’s get this boy back to the kennels. Settle him down for the night.”

Before PC Whitlow could protest at the potential hazard she had opened the rear of the van and was fitting the collar round the dog’s neck. A click from the spring release hook and the lead was on too.

“Come on lad, no point staying here now.”

The dog made no resistance at all to being led to Liz’s van and obediently jumped in when told.

“You’ve certainly got a way with dogs,” he commented admiringly.

Liz was looking concerned. “He’s in shock at the moment. At least he’s not injured. We probably won’t be able to do a full assessment for at least a week, but hopefully he’ll be back with the family before that.”

She closed up the van, signed for receipt of the dog, then reached into the glove compartment. She turned back to PC Whitlow and gave him her card. “There’s my mobile number – use that rather than the landline as I’m not often in. I want to know anything you can find out about him as soon as you know.”

“Certainly,” he agreed. “I’ll make sure someone gets in touch as soon as possible.”

“And anything that belongs to him,” she added. “A blanket, toys, anything like that. If they could be brought over it will help tremendously.”

She got into the driver’s seat. “Oh,” she suddenly remembered and opened the window. “Words of command. Ask Mrs Williams which words her son used so we can keep some consistency for him. He’s suffered enough without having to learn a new vocabulary.” With a wave out of the window she drove off.

PC Whitlow watched her go, then settled back in his car to await the recovery vehicle. Now how would that go down, he wondered? “Sorry for your loss, Mrs Williams, now would you write a list of commands for the dog?” At least Family Liaison had the right training and no doubt would manage it sympathetically. It would have to be done, though, or he could imagine Liz going herself and demanding to know!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

April

The clocks had changed, but even this earlier hour had found Maggie wakeful and restless. Sleep was eluding her more frequently of late. She had not lain in bed long, listening to the liquid trills of the blackbird that nested every year in the lilac, when the growing chorus from her garden residents had tempted her to join them.

Passing through her small wood she noticed the teeming new life. The willows draped their tresses over the banks of the stream, sheltering a pair of sooty grey coots and their nestlings. She saw new frog spawn lying on the bottom of the water, the jelly not yet having absorbed enough water to float to the top for the warmth of the sunlight. Silver birch catkins peeked out from the leaves, and the rowan leaf cones were unfurling.

In the meadow at the far end of the garden Maggie stood, totally still, awed by the beauty of the dawn. She watched as the vast red globe of the sun lifted above the horizon, turning the wispy cloud to raspberry ripple. The redness morphed into orange and then yellow, the clouds returned to white, then melted away in the growing power of the sun’s rays.

She could make out the acid yellow of rape coming into flower in a distant field, and nearer pasture was lush with new growth. The bleating of ewes with their lambs was clear on the still air, and she watched a vixen trotting along a hedge-line. The leaves seemed to have leapt a week in a day, vibrant green now where there had only been bare thorny twigs, and blackthorn blossom frothed in creamy clusters.

She turned away, the sun too bright to look at any longer, and wandered back to the garden. She paused to admire the creamy, pink-tinged magnolia blossom, but also spotting less welcome growth.

I must get on top of that bramble coming through the hedge before it spreads too far.

She bent to pull out some bindweed from one of the beds, regretting having to destroy such delicate, almost translucent, beauty of leaf, but knowing well what a bully it would soon become. She rather liked its white trumpet flowers where it grew up through the buddleia, but could not allow her smaller perennials to be strangled.

Purple aubretia tumbled joyfully down a wall, and daffodils and narcissi nodded greetings to her as she passed. Deep blue muscari bubbled up among the legs of multi-hued wallflowers, and crocus leaves absorbed the sun’s rays, building strength in their bulbs for next year’s show.

Maggie sighed and headed back indoors.

So much life and beauty, and not a soul to share it with.

Her mental list of things that needed to be done was growing and she needed to write them down
.

Coffee, toast, and then on with the day.

*

That night, while she plumped the cushions, Maggie surprised herself with a huge sigh. It had sounded unnaturally loud in the night-time hush of the house, now that she had turned off the TV. She thought back over the day just ending. Yet again it had been busy, but she felt she had, in fact, achieved nothing of any real significance.

She glanced around, confirming the room was spotless. How else would it be now that her husband was rarely home and the children had moved on, living their own lives in their own homes?

Her children had been her whole life from the very early days of her marriage, James having arrived significantly earlier than the nine months after their brief honeymoon that were required to still the gossips’ tongues. All in all it had been a good life but now she was faced with the prospect of having to reinvent herself. Who and what was she to become now? She could not continue as nothing more than a spare part rattling round this house. It had every modern convenience needed to remove the drudgery – and the time requirement – of looking after it. What was she to do with the rest of her life?

Gently she picked up the photo on the mantelpiece that showed a young James grinning up at the camera, his hand protectively on the hand knitted white shawl covering baby Chloe. The thought of her children brought a small warm glow of pride that she’d succeeded as a parent, in her own eyes at least, in that her son and daughter had both felt confident about leaving home when the time came.

James had celebrated his first wedding anniversary just a few months ago – a strange affair that had proved to be too. Maggie felt a small frown crease her forehead and immediately Chloe’s voice sounded in her ears, as clear as if she had been there. “Lighten up,” she’d exclaim, “Relax more, go with the flow or you’ll be looking old and wrinkled before your time.” So often these days Chloe appeared to feel exasperation with her mother. Maggie was all too aware that she who had once been so confident and sure of her actions now did nothing but dither and worry. Without a clear timetable dictated by the children’s needs it seemed so hard to make decisions.

He had always been a quiet boy, Maggie mused, running her forefinger over the surface to remove a speck of dust before carefully replacing the silver framed photo. James had never given her any of the headaches some of her friends suffered at the hands of their sons, especially during the rebellious teenage years that were part and parcel of the painful struggle to manhood, but there had been a definite change in him since his marriage. Marriage changed everyone, she knew that, but he seemed introverted rather than quiet now, even cowed at times.

She’d never quite seen eye to eye with his wife. Keela was a very striking woman physically, with her raven hair and green eyes that changed hue with her mood so dramatically. Maggie could quite see how she had swept her son off his feet. She had been well named at birth for she really was a ‘great beauty’, but she was fiery at times too. She seemed uncomfortable with the world, needing to challenge it. But then at other times she seemed so melancholy.

In the garden, though – well, what a transformation. She became a different woman entirely. There, with her hands in the soil, Keela was calm, happy, and easy to talk to, a delightful companion for the weeding and planting.

Such a complex character, so difficult to know what her daughter-in-law was thinking or feeling. She certainly wasn’t the sort of woman she’d envisaged her gentle son marrying. There was nothing she could put her finger on but Keela made her feel uneasy, almost as if she was in the presence of a wild, untamed and totally unpredictable elemental force.

Now then Maggie
, she remonstrated with herself,
stop this fanciful nonsense running through your head. It’s just the influence of the wild night.

The devil riding out, her mother used to say, when the tiles were rattling and the trees groaning at the strain on their branches.

She entered the bay window, pulling the edge of the thick lined velvet curtains behind her – best quality material, of course, that she had taken great pride in making up herself for her grand new home all those years ago. Blocking out the room’s light allowed a clearer view of the cold silver moon being harried by jagged racing clouds. She shivered uneasily and hurriedly and retreated, straightening the curtains against the night.

I just needed to make more of an effort to really get to know Keela.