Forty years ago I lived in a house share with two other young people (who I will call Joanna and Freddie) outside a village south west of Newbury. We felt lucky. It was a beautifully converted lodge house at the foot of a wooded hill on the way to a fishing lake. It was one of those houses historically sold off by the local estate to pay death duties. The new young owners had moved abroad to work for a few years and we were six months into a two year let.
We all got on together and the lodge was very comfortable. We sat out in the garden that first Summer listening to the birds in the treetops, watching the squirrels and the rabbits on the nearby tracks. We cooked together, drank wine, watched videos and chilled, with friends round to stop over most weekends.
The odd car passing by on the lane to the fishing lake, that sparkled in the distance when the sun caught it, was the only interruption. You get the picture – it was a dream home, a sanctuary, as we developed our very different careers in our twenties. There was nothing sinister about the house, it was just light, fresh and warm. A tranquil and idyllic place.
During the October, the weather changed as it normally does, bringing the remnants of the Atlantic storms round to the UK. I was working in the office in Newbury that afternoon and quite a storm had kicked up, with high winds and deep black clouds. My colleagues and I sat there working, while watching all sorts of debris blowing around outside the huge office windows, listening to this tall modern block creaking in the wind. Then the power failed and we were all sent home.
The drive was 20 minutes, but as I drove there it was clear the power cut had affected the outlying villages too. There was no power at home, so we made plans while we still had daylight to find some candles, lay the fire and prepare some supper with a gas bottle stove. It was very cosy and after spending the evening round the fire we decided to turn in early.
Waking up on that Saturday morning was being in a different place. Wall to wall sunshine, no wind and the promise of a lovely but crisp weekend ahead. Another timeless weekend stretching ahead of us.
I went downstairs to the kitchen to find the back door wide open and leaves all over the floor, in some places piled up high into piles. My house shares denied leaving the door open. It was clearly locked from the inside – dark heavy black ironwork bolts. We had not opened the door all night and I always check doors last thing. As I went to close the door I looked out, up the hill through the beech trees and saw movement. Lots of movement coming from the trees. I stepped out cautiously to get a better look and plain as day several tall thick beech trunks were rippling. I was aware that my house share, let’s call her Joanna, was by then standing next to me, jaw dropped and like me completely mesmerised.
We watched as what I can only describe as armies of squirrels and undeterminable shapes were scampering down the sides of these trees. There must have been several hundred of the things. Squirrels and larger dark grey diamond shapes which we could not identify. It was weird and they seemed to disappear when they got to the ground. I then nudged Joanna because over to my right was a large fox just sitting upright, in the morning sun, watching these things. Eventually all the animals dispersed, the scampering stopped and we were in the still morning air once more.
We set about clearing up the leaves in the kitchen. As we moved the leaves we saw tiny flashes of light, like the sort that a sparkler shoots out. Then we noticed mini tornados of leaves swirling round inside above the kitchen floor – about 4-5 feet high, a foot wide, just little swirling columns of a few leaves for two or three seconds, but no sound and no fear within us at all. Just really odd!
Later that day and over the next three weeks a number of things happened.
My father’s dog, which had been missing for two years returned home. Joanna’s brother’s progressive cancer had disappeared. My sister finally got pregnant after nearly seven years of trying. I picked up a call on the landline from an auction house. An old book collection Freddie had inherited, and had been getting valued, turned out to contain a rare edition which he eventually sold raising enough for half the price of his first house. He had been on the point of just giving the books away. Most of all, we continued to live in the lodge house for the remainder of the let and are still close friends today. Two of our children got married.
The fox turned out to be a vixen and would lay under the beech trees with her cubs, about 20 feet from the kitchen door, none of which were wary of us. I stayed in touch with the couple who owned the house. The year they returned to reoccupy the house, they woke up one October morning to find the vixen curled up on a bed of leaves in the footwell outside the back door, having drifted off to sleep for the last time.