Chapter 26
26
Ben was thrilled when he heard Carmelita was likely to make a full recovery.
‘I saved her, didn’t I, Auntie Jade?’ he said as the fox got a little better each day.
It was now the last week of the summer holidays and other than when Sarah and Callum had taken him up to see Callum’s parents in Dundee so that they could tell them the wedding news, Ben was at Duck Pond Rescue practically full time. Much to Finn’s delight and Sarah’s obvious guilt.
‘Are you really sure you don’t mind him being here so much?’ she asked Jade every time she saw her. ‘He’s obsessed with that fox. I can’t even tempt him away with the prospect of Mission Dormouse.’
They were standing in reception as they spoke and Mr Spock was entertaining a group of youngsters with a rendition of ‘Here Comes the Bride, All Fat and Wide’ in his thin reedy voice.
‘I have no idea who taught him that,’ Jade said, glancing at the parrot. ‘But it’s definitely getting old.’ She lowered her voice. ‘It beats him swearing his head off with all these kids about though.’
‘True.’ Sarah laughed. ‘I can totally understand why Ben can’t drag himself away from this place. It’s all going on, isn’t it?’ She checked to make sure he was in the group of youngsters and hadn’t sneaked off to see Carmelita, who was still in the hospital block in a kennel, with a big outside run. ‘What is happening with the development anyway? Any news?’
‘They haven’t abandoned the idea, if that’s what you mean,’ Jade said reflectively. ‘They haven’t decided it would be much better to have a wildlife park next door and hand the whole lot back to nature, unfortunately. The plans have gone in for a development of seventy-five houses.’
Sarah gasped. ‘I had no idea it was that many.’
‘Me neither. They might not get them, of course. There’s a lot of resistance from locals. Mike’s on the planning committee and there’s a worry there isn’t enough infrastructure in place to build the number of houses they’ve put in for.’
‘There isn’t. It’s hard enough to get a doctor’s appointment as it is. Every time I phone up I get told I’m number sixteen in a queue.’
‘Number sixteen!’
‘OK, slight exaggeration. More like number six. But there’s always a queue, and you can’t just rock up and wait for an appointment like you used to be able to do. God knows what it will be like if we have another seventy-five houses built up the road. Are you sure you don’t want to instigate Mission Dormouse?’
‘I don’t think we can.’ Jade chewed her lip.
‘How about toads? I’m sure there’s a species of endangered toads. Chatterbox toads or something. David Attenborough mentioned them on some nature programme the other day. The male’s got a distinctive mating call that females can hear up to a mile away.’
‘They’re called Natterjack toads.’ Jade was touched Sarah felt as strongly as she did. ‘But there are no ponds next door.’
‘No pond. No problem. We know some very efficient pond diggers.’ Sarah’s eyes gleamed. ‘We could do it in an hour – then get some cute little chatterbox toads and pop them over there for a holiday. We don’t even have to get the toads. We can make recordings of their mating calls and play them.’
‘It could be worth a try, I suppose. Don’t worry, I haven’t given up on stopping the development. I had an idea the other day. I need to talk to Ursula.’ She broke off. ‘Hang on, I’ve just spotted her in the yard with Dawn.’ They both looked out of the window. ‘Are you OK to answer the landline if it rings?’
‘Course I am. It’s the least I can do. I really ought to be paying you childcare fees. Like the rest of the mothers whose kids are here.’ She winked. ‘That’s a good fundraising idea actually. You could charge kids to come here for summer camp.’
‘They’re already here.’
‘Or you could take that parrot round to schools and entertain the kids. A one-woman entertainment show. You’d make a flaming fortune.’
‘I’ll definitely think about that one,’ Jade said. ‘I just want to catch Ursula.’
As she walked across the yard beneath the late-afternoon August sunshine, Jade felt happy. Despite everything that was going on, despite the shadow of the development that hung over them like a storm cloud, this was what she’d wanted. A place of sanctuary for animals, a place where a community pulled together. It got a little bit too hectic in holiday time – she was secretly relieved when all the kids went back to school – but most of them were brilliant, and she had a rule that youngsters must be accompanied by a responsible adult, and all visitors had to sign a waiver and agree to obey the rules of respectful behaviour around all animals. Some parts of the sanctuary were out of bounds to the public. These included the hospital and new arrivals block. But most of the kids who visited were great. Jade vetted them all personally before she let them near her precious animals.
‘Hello, ladies,’ she said as she reached Dawn and Ursula, and they both turned.
‘Just the person I was hoping to see,’ Ursula said, tucking a strand of white hair behind her ear and looking businesslike. ‘I wanted to talk to you about something.’
‘Ditto,’ Jade said.
‘Is there somewhere we can talk privately?’
‘Round here?’ Jade looked around her. ‘Hmm, possibly not. We could go into the house.’ As they walked in that direction, she remembered Finn was in there collating some adoption packs.
‘Tell you what, why don’t we wander over to the duck pond? It’s probably relatively private over there.’
A few moments later, they had escaped through the side gate of the sanctuary and crossed the unmade lane to the duck pond. Sunlight shone through the weeping willow that stood like a sentinel, trailing long lime-green fronds over the clear water. A scattering of lilies huddled close to the bank, some of them still half open, showing creamy white flowers.
A pair of mallards drifting on the other side of the pond spotted them and came purposefully across, hoping for bread, and Jade wondered if the female was the one she’d rescued last year.
Above the lilies closest to them, a bright blue dragonfly hovered.
‘Peace at last,’ Jade said, dragging her gaze back from the rippled water towards Ursula. ‘I love that so many people are keen to come and help but…’
‘It can get a little too hectic,’ Ursula finished. ‘Yes, I get that.’
‘So…’ Jade began. ‘Keen as I am to stop the development going ahead next door, I’ve come to the conclusion I don’t want to sacrifice my principles, as in…’ She sighed as she met Ursula’s eyes. ‘I can’t relocate a dormouse family, or a bat family or any other live creature just to get what I want.’
‘I’d guessed as much.’ Ursula’s face grew serious. ‘That’s not the way you operate, Jade, is it? I know we haven’t known each other long but I knew as soon as I met you that you weren’t that type of soul. You have a great deal of integrity, a quality which I much admire.’
‘I was hoping there might have been some evidence of something endangered,’ Jade said with a rueful smile. ‘But there isn’t, is there?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
There was a little pause and in it, Jade heard the flutter of pigeon wings in a nearby tree and the plop of water as a mallard dived and resurfaced. She took a deep breath and smelled the clean pure air of the countryside. There was nothing like it, and she hated the thought that soon it would be replaced by the rumble of the diggers and the stink of diesel as the farmland was forever changed to accommodate lines of identical houses and new tarmac roads, no doubt called names like Meadow Row, and Foxglove Lane.
‘Much as it saddens me,’ Jade added, ‘I don’t think there’s really all that much I can do to stop Rural Developments building those houses now they’ve bought the land.’
‘It saddens me too, my dear. Conservation is part of my work, as you know, and I’m also a botanist. Too much of our beautiful countryside has been sacrificed on the altar of human need lately, but the wildlife is often forgotten. Despite all the promises the developers make. And on that note…’ She paused and looked at Jade again. ‘I don’t know if you noticed in the course of your research, but it’s not just endangered species of animals that can stop a development going ahead.’
‘I had noticed,’ Jade said, knowing they were on exactly the same wavelength because this thought had been going round and round in her head lately. ‘It’s plants too, isn’t it?’
‘Indeed it is.’ Ursula smiled at her. ‘Shall we walk around and have a chat?’
‘I’d love that.’
The lily pond wasn’t very big, maybe about ten metres across, so ordinarily it wouldn’t have taken long to walk around the whole thing, but today it was a slow walk, because as they went, Ursula pointed out plants to Jade, naming them, sometimes in Latin, but mostly with their common names. Green leafy hornwort, marsh marigold, and greater spearwort, which looked like floating buttercups. It was an education. Ursula was very knowledgeable, as she moved from the plants in the pond itself to the plants all around them.
She bent to pick a tiny yellow flower that was growing on the path, sniffed it and handed it to Jade. ‘Matricaria discoidea, more commonly known as wild pineapple. Try a bit. It tastes like pineapple too.’
Jade put it on her tongue. ‘Wow, it really does.’
‘You can make tea with it. It has soothing properties, a bit like chamomile.’
Ursula knew the names of everything from the tiniest mosses and grasses to the bullrushes and shrubs and even the odd fungi that grew on the trees. It seemed to Jade that they were no longer traversing a duck pond and a scrubby patch of wild land, but a whole new world of wildlife and wilderness. She knew she would never see the duck pond the same way again. It was magical.
‘I can’t believe you can keep all this information in your head,’ Jade murmured. ‘It’s truly astounding.’
‘Not really. It’s been my life’s work, and I’m sixty-six. I’ll be retiring in a year, but I don’t expect to ever stop learning. Plants have always fascinated me. Particularly wild plants. Quite a few have become extinct in my lifetime. A lot of that’s due to us destroying their habitats. Not just in England obviously, but all over the world.’
They’d come to a pause at the other side of the duck pond, and they stood side by side, looking over at Duck Pond Cottage and the big gates of the rescue, and the land beyond, and the land beyond that – the land Jade had once hoped she might buy.
‘Do you think there are any protected species of plants over there that might stop development at the eleventh hour?’ Jade asked Ursula wistfully. ‘And even if there were, couldn’t the developers just dig them up or work round them or something?’
‘They could do that, yes, although it’s illegal to dig up protected species of plants. There are also mitigation measures that can be taken. Planning could be held up but not stopped.’
‘So there isn’t really an option to stop developers at all, then?’ Jade said sadly.
‘I wouldn’t say that. The thing developers dislike most,’ Ursula said, ‘at least in my experience, are the kind of delays that impact on the overall cost of a project.’
Jade remembered what Declan had told her about the bones he’d once dug up on a development. She told Ursula this now.
‘They turned out to be Roman remains so the project wasn’t held up for very long. I don’t suppose there’s any chance of there being anything of archaeological interest over the road, is there?’
‘That’s always possible. But the developers wouldn’t know until they’d started digging, so it might be a little late.’
Ursula’s eyes had a hint of a twinkle, and Jade looked at her suspiciously.
‘And I’m guessing a protected species of plant might not be enough to cause the kind of delays we’d need?’ she pressed.
‘You’re guessing correctly. However, there are other species of plants that may cause worse delays.’
‘Such as?’ Jade felt a surge of hope at the merriment in Ursula’s eyes. There was definitely something she wasn’t telling her.
‘Highly invasive species of plants, such as Japanese knotweed, and also certain types of bamboo are both terribly invasive plants.’ Ursula paused for effect. ‘Both of these plants, I’m sad to say’ – she drew inverted commas in the air around the word ‘sad’ – ‘are in evidence around John Lawson’s erstwhile farmhouse.’
‘Oh, my goodness.’ Jade felt a jolt of shock. ‘Did he know that when he sold the land?’
‘He probably knew about the bamboo because he must have put it there, as fencing, or someone did, some time ago I’d say, as it’s very well established. It already has an extensive network of underground roots which are going to be a devil to get rid of. As for the Japanese knotweed, he might not have known about that, because it’s also been there a long time and it’s in a different place.’
She met Jade’s gaze. ‘Japanese knotweed, as you may know if you’ve ever read horror stories online, is also very difficult to get rid of. Its roots grow really quickly and they cause significant damage to roads and buildings. It’s possible to eradicate it. Anything’s possible, but it’s a lengthy process, which would cause significant delays. The location of it isn’t good for your developers, that’s for sure, and delays, as we’ve discussed, mean money. Suddenly, something that looks very profitable starts to have its profit margins squeezed. And, oh boy, does that hurt developers. Reputable ones anyway.’
‘Wow! So it’s possible that Rural Developments might have to stop the development then. Didn’t they have a survey before they bought it?’
‘Apparently not. They got the land cheaply enough for them to take a risk that planning permission would be granted. Your Farmer John wasn’t silly.’ She raised her eyebrows.
‘That’s brilliant news. Or at least I think it is. It’s great that the development might be scuppered. But hang on – should I be worried? I mean, how long would it be before all of those terribly invasive plants started to affect my property?’
‘Several years.’ Ursula tapped her nose. ‘It would have to be very bad to spread across to Duck Pond Cottage. There are several hectares between your properties.’
‘But didn’t you say it was very bad?’
‘I said it looked very bad on the survey. I know who did the survey. She may have exaggerated a teeny tiny bit.’ She tapped her nose.
‘But Ursula,’ Jade gasped as the penny dropped. ‘Won’t you get into trouble when they find out?’
‘They can’t find out. No one’s going to bother doing a second survey, and frankly if they ever did, I’d be retired. They’d just put it down to me being overcautious, I expect. It’s usually better to be overcautious when doing important surveys, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I don’t know what to say.’ Jade shook her head in wonderment. ‘That is truly amazing.’
Ursula gave her a little smile. ‘Consider it my very small contribution to the valuable work you’re doing here,’ she said quietly. ‘And naturally if anyone was ever to question my survey, I’d deny all knowledge of any wrongdoing.’
‘You haven’t done anything wrong,’ Jade agreed swiftly.
‘I said to you earlier that I very much admire integrity,’ Ursula said, ‘but I do find it’s one of those qualities I can admire from a distance.’ She winked.
Jade nodded. Ursula reminded her of a much older version of Sarah. Rules were there to be broken – at least they were if you didn’t agree with them. Jade wasn’t planning on telling Sarah – or anyone else – about this conversation, but she knew if she did then Sarah would have heartily approved.