A Dark and Stormy Night by Jeanne M. Dams Read Free Book Online

‘and I have no idea why you woke. I was trying to be quiet.’
    â€˜Quiet. That’s it. The quiet woke me. That awful wind has stopped. Well, died down, anyway. How long have you been up?’
    We’d all gone back up to bed to get what sleep we could for what little remained of the night, and I’d conked out as though I’d been hit on the head. I still felt muzzy.
    â€˜About an hour,’ said Alan. ‘I went down in search of breakfast, but the pickings are a trifle slim. The electricity is still out, and from the look of things – well, see for yourself.’
    He pulled open the draperies, letting in light. The rain had apparently stopped. I staggered to the window.
    â€˜Dear God.’
    I had seen such devastation before. On television. In the newspapers. The aftermath of tornadoes, floods, hurricanes. Of war. I’d never seen it outside my window.
    The little wood we had driven through yesterday when we arrived was gone. Just . . . gone. As far as the eye could see, no big trees were left standing. They’d been torn out of the ground, their twisted roots pointing distorted fingers at the sky. Among them, saplings looked forlorn, bereft. Nearer the house, what had been the garden was a sea of mud with a few twigs shivering, naked, in cold, unforgiving sunshine. What must once have been a greenhouse lay in a heap of glass shards, and broken slates and bits of carved stone were strewn everywhere.
    â€˜But, Alan, this is . . . what happened ?’
    â€˜Hurricane-force winds. That, coupled with the saturated ground, and the trees went down like so many wisps of straw. I listened to the car radio for a few minutes. A storm the like of which we haven’t seen since 1987. And even that one wasn’t as bad as this, not in this part of the country at least.’ He shook his head and held up his hands in a despondent gesture. ‘Joyce and Jim are beyond distraught. The house can be repaired, but the landscaping! The famous Capability Brown landscaping was one of the things they loved best about the house. They keep talking about it. It’s a bit depressing.’
    â€˜Alan, let’s go home! They don’t need company at a time like this. And I want to see what’s happened to our house, to Sherebury.’
    Alan is a lovely man. He was patient with me. ‘My dear woman, how precisely do you think we might get home? Remember the drive, that picturesque mile-long drive from the road to the house? With trees on either side?’
    â€˜Oh. I suppose they’re all down.’
    â€˜One good big one would be enough to block the drive. Not to mention the state of the roads once one got to them.’
    â€˜Trains?’ I asked hopelessly.
    â€˜Not running. Nothing’s running. The entire south-east of England is shut down.’
    â€˜We’ll go to the pub, then. The White Horse. We can walk there if we have to. Jim said last night . . .’
    Alan just looked at me pityingly. ‘It’s nearly five miles, and your knees aren’t up to that yet awhile. If they’re open, which I doubt.’
    â€˜We could call and find out.’
    â€˜Love, get a grip. The phone lines are out of service and the mobile masts are down, which between the two of them also puts paid to the Internet and email. Let’s just hope Jim and Joyce laid in plenty of food, because until crews can get the thousands of trees cleared away, we are well and truly isolated.’
    I sat down hard on the bed. It was sounding more and more like an old mystery novel, but I wasn’t having fun. ‘Satellite phone?’ I suggested – one last, feeble attempt to pretend there was some kind of normality within our grasp.
    Alan smiled wearily. ‘Joyce and Jim might have one, I suppose. But not many people do, so whom could we phone?’
    â€˜Oh, but . . . other people will be trying to reach us, and when they