V - TOO LATE!

Vacuuming! How he hated it! Ever since his wife had walked out,
taking the children with her, it had become one of the necessary - but
hitherto unknown - tasks with which he had to learn to cope.

Looking back on the situation comparatively objectively - as he could
just about do now so much time had passed - he had to admit that he was
mostly to blame for the break-up of the marriage.

His wife had, time and again, tried to talk to him about his drinking
habits, but he refused to admit there might be a problem. Sure, he
liked a drink after work, but who didn't, he thought? Soon, however,
the one drink after work had turned into several drinks, and soon he
was spending every evening in the pub.

His children gradually accepted that their father was not one who would
play ball in the evenings, take them to see a game on Saturdays, or
indeed have any time for them at all.

Rows became more frequent, and the children soon learned to keep out of
their father's way. Valiantly their mother tried to keep up the facade
of respectability, efforts which became harder as money was spent on
drink instead of necessities.

He faced being on his own with an air of bravado, he was a big boy now
and didn't need any woman to take care of him, or to tell him what to
do. And children? Who needed them? Only got in the way with their
whining demands.

He tried to stifle his conscience when he remembered that most of their
demands had been for things such as shoes for school, or a set of pens,
or a football. Things which other children take for granted, but he
never could spare the money - he needed it all for drink.

Down in the pub he boasted about how well he was doing on his own, but
in the wee small hours of the morning he knew the loneliness of being
rejected - and sometimes longed for the early days of his marriage when
life had been rosy.

Now that there was no one to exercise any control over the hours he
spent drinking, those hours gradually increased until each morning
found him with a hangover. Soon his work became affected and his job
was terminated.

This, in many ways, was more of a shock to his system than the break-up
of his marriage. Mainly because he no longer had access to enough money
to feed his habit, and so his drinking, of necessity, lessened.

In his sober moments now he started to ponder over his life, and to
realize his mistakes. He recalled how much he had once loved his wife -
still did - and how overjoyed he had been when his children had been
born, and of the plans they had made for them.

Now he devised a plan of his own. He would try to win his wife back and
start all over again. She though, would have nothing to do with him if
he was still drinking, he knew her well enough to know that. So he kept
his plan secret and longed for the day when he could spring the
surprise of a sober husband on her.

Gathering his courage over many weeks, he went along to his first
meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. It took a few stiff drinks to get him
inside the door, but once in he found it wasn't so bad. He was in the
company of others who had loved their drink as much as he did, and
hearing their stories gave him hope that he, too, could beat the
craving.

Six months later he finally thought he was ready to approach his wife -
he still longed for a drink every day, but the goal he had set himself
enabled him to resist.

So it was a sober man who was running the vacuum cleaner that Saturday
morning when the telephone rang. Answering, he was overjoyed to hear
his wife's voice. But what she had to tell him made his blood run
cold.

She was shortly to marry again - a wealthy rancher she had met (she
didn't say where), and she and the children were off to start a new
life in Arizona. She wished him well, as, too stunned to speak, he put
the phone down.

Quietly, in shock, he put the vacuum cleaner away. Too late! Too late!
were his thoughts, as, automatically, in his secret cache under the
stairs, his hand reached for his old friend - the bottle.