COUNTRY LIFE PETER QUINCE
`What we have had this year,' a farmer neighbour was remarking to me the other day, 'is a six-months' drought.' He may have exaggerated a bit, as farmers have been known to do: but all around us was the dry earth to prove his point. I don't know any- one who can remember a year which brought so little rain to my part of England.
Such a freakish spell had to end, and it has now ended in appropriately freakish
fashion. The countryside has been suddenly soaked and flooded. The rain fell steadily all one night and continued no less steadily through the next day. Then, as darkness returned, a new fury entered into it and storms hammered and lashed the drowned scene for hour after hour.
The trickling fords which lie like outposts at each entrance to the village suddenly turned into formidable torrents. As the wild evening wore on, a line of cars accum- ulated at each of these points. Some motorists had rashly driven through the water and found their engines swiftly put out of action. Others, more prudent but also impotent, stopped short of the rushing flood and stared helpless and miserable, as though awaiting some miraculous parting of the waters.
Fifty yards away from my door, the lane disappeared beneath a long, dark lake— negotiable in gum boots. as I found when I went out to explore with the aid of an electric torch, but strangely sinister in the furious atmosphere of wind, and downpour, and darkness.
Next morning the storm and its effects were discussed with some animation. We are the first country people in history, I suppose. to expect as a matter of course that our com- munications With the outside world shall remain always open. Our forebears, all the way back to the days of prehistory, would have taken it just as much for granted that the weather would isolate them, frequently and for long periods. The modern country- man is accustomed to regard the elements as being held permanently at bay by the science of the road-maker and the drainage engineer. It may have been a salutary ex- perience for us to be reminded that, for all the cleverness of those experts, the elem- ents still possess a few. trump cards.
However, the morning after the storm was brilliant and clear. I went down to our river, which has been reduced to a humble and depressed condition for months past. Instead of the barely-perceptible flow of clear water we have become used to there was a strong, purposeful flood surging high up the banks. Branches of trees and other storm wreckage swept beneath the bridge from which, a couple of days earlier, I had looked down upon a motionless carpet of fallen leaves. A moorhen's nest which had rested securely on a tangle of twigs since its brood moved out in the spring had van- ished. The low-lying fields had turned from green to. silver as the flood water over- flowed and spread across the land.
Up on the higher ground, it seemed that the dry earth had gratefully swallowed up all that even that torrential storm could offer. The world had a marvellously fresh, washed appearance. As we approached the wood there was the usual cheerful crowing of pheasants and clattering of woodpigeons from within it, and blackbirds signalled our advance over the stubble with their panicky screams. But there was also a less familiar sound—a gentle, musical chirrupping emanating, it seemed, from every twig and branch of an oak tree which still held fast to its brown leaves.
As we came nearer we could see that the tree was alive with delicate little chestnut-
breasted birds, melodiously calling and singing. They flew a short distance away with a nimble, swooping flight, then gathered up again and returned. so that all around us the clear air was filled with the enchanting sounds and movements of a party of linnets, evidently enjoying the sunshine after the storm as much as we were.
High above, up in the blueness of the sky as it seemed, a sparrowhawk circled slowly across the valley, soaring and gliding with scarcely a movement of a feather as he scanned all the sunlit country beneath. I think I have never before envied so much that godlike view.,
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