The Fallow Buck and the Lightning Fork.

Such heavy rainstorms.

What my Northamptonshire Nan would have called ‘knicker soakers.’

I walk towards the approaching thunderstorm at first; it is on the other side of the hill and this side is yet dry. A bank of heavy grey cloud deepens and white cloud moves fast in front of it, like smoke curling from a wildfire. The distant flicker of lightning comes closer, and thunder begins to close the gap, until a big fireball of light rolls like a bowling ball from the Gods along the ridgeway. There is an almighty bang.

As I turn to go, I just have time to register the big, black fallow buck, that has come into the field just 100 yards away. He seems to have materialised with the lightning, and stands looking at me. He is in his prime; his antlers, a magnificent thorny crown, as wide as if I held both my arms up to the sky. They seem to describe the lightning. He trots casually on, over the brow of the headland, and I quicken my steps home to a jog, keeping to the hedgeline. My thoughts are muddled with the awe of his sudden appearance, and the urgency to get home. I am thinking too, of the parish memorial in the churchyard, to two estate workers, Joseph Buxey, 64 and George Palmer, 32, killed by lightning under a tree near this very spot in 1837. As I reach the garden gate, a great five-pronged charge of lightning hits the hill with a reverberating crack, and the rain comes down in sheets.

Later, an hour after it has stopped, water sluices and twists down either side of the narrow lane, like twin skeins of pale grey embroidery silk – its power has already taken the edges of the tarmac down to a cross section of ‘how a road is built.’ In places, you can see the bone white gleam of chalk.

Dusk takes us by surprise.

I wander down to check the horses and the moon meets me at the gate, its reflection lighting the wet road. The horses are gently steaming, creating their own mini weather system above the downland slope of their backs. Robins and wrens are ticking the night in, like cards pegged to bicycle spokes. My iphone camera refuses the moon.  

Later still, I am called out of my writing hut by the bellows-heave groan of the black fallow buck. It is a primeval sound, hollow and indescribable – not a roar or a belch or grunt, but all and nothing of those things. A sound from the belly, a tongue in the ‘o’ of his open mouth, close and low off the hill tonight, half a mile from his usual rutting ground. I wonder what brought him here. I cannot believe another, finer buck has driven him away. He seemed mythical.

I still hear him as I go to bed, leaving the window open. The rain comes heavily again and the comfort of listening to it is thrilled and unsettled by that bugle call to the wild hunt from an Old God, and the drip, drip of water coming though, somewhere in the house.