Magpie Tales#81

A Stranding

 "Look, Willow - dolphins!" Miss Warburton held the tabby cat to the car window, supporting the little head, rubbing her forefinger behind its tattered ear. "They won't mind the rain."  It streamed down the windscreen where the wipers had stopped.

  The dolphins - she reckoned seven maybe eight - wove around the car nudging it as if it were one of them, and, rising above the surface on their tailfins, knocked against the glass and looked in at her and the cat. The water had risen to the level of her seat, and now her feet, under the water, still on the pedals, were cold.

  "Nothing to be scared of, Willow," she said. "Dolphins are friendly to people. They help. They'll wonder what we're doing here. Shall we . . " She laid the cat in its basket on her lap and tucked in its blanket. "Shall we let them in?" She pressed the switch to open the driver's side window but nothing happened.  "Water in the wiring I suppose", and yes, the water was now rising toward the dash, covering her knees, soaking her heavy tweed skirt. But she could twist round  and just . . just reach the handle that wound down the rear window. "Let's finish it," she said, and turned the handle.

  In a few minutes more the rising tide sent water spilling through the open window. Miss Warburton stroked the cat and put the basket on the dash, against the windscreen, and closed her eyes and felt the cold seeping up to her waist. She waited.  The car rocked, rocked and she thought this must be the tide-rip moving it, floating it out to sea, and she opened her eyes again and saw the dolphins had gone, all but one, whose dorsal fin cut through the water ahead of the car, heading toward the rain-shrouded shore. But somehow the car was following it, and was now higher in the water, and the rocking was because it was surely floating, surely it was floating. And then she knew! The dolphins were underneath it, lifting and guiding it on their lifeboat backs and she made a low moan  and said "No, friends, no. Please no! You don't see. You don't understand." Her eyes closed again. She tasted seawater. Her greying hair floated up behind her. For a while the wickerwork cat-basket floated too, but was soon submerged. The car settled.

 * * * *

  Next morning at low tide a police vehicle drove down the shingle beach and across the sandbars to check out an abandoned car, about four hundred metres off shore.  Two policemen got out, looked into the car, opened the driver's door, shook their heads. Seawater dribbled.

  "This motor wasn't dumped," said one."And too late for an ambulance. Poor old soul. Got bogged down . . "

 "No, she didn't. Sand's quite firm." The second policeman's heelkick barely marked the surface "No sign of  trenching where she would've revved to get free. This motor was never bogged down. Some puzzle this. What was she doing here, for any's sake?" Then they noticed a cat in a sodden basket in the floor well still full of water, and one of them said, "God Almighty."

  The coroner's inquest found that Miss Warburton, a elderly lady who lived locally by herself and kept herself to herself, driving alone and in fading twilight, had drowned when her car became immobilised, although no cause of breakdown was found.
  The tabby cat, it was noted, had not drowned and had been dead at least four days.

(The picture-prompt below from Tess Kincaid at Willow Manor, and ideas from other Magpie posts were the starting point for this one. Many more entries can be found by clicking the link.)