The Tale of the Thunderstorm

It starts somewhere out past the back fence and arrives over the top of the house about forty minutes later, and by then the household has made all of its decisions.

The pug is under the chair in the front room. Not beside it. Under it, wedged, with his back end sticking out because the rest of him would not fit, announcing at intervals that this is an outrage and somebody is going to hear about it.

The big yellow one is pressed along the length of a leg in the kitchen, apologising to the person attached to the leg, who is telling her she is fine and does not have to apologise, which she does not hear.

The small bearded one is at the window being delighted, which is its own kind of weather.

Millie is in the hall.

She is lying where she lies, square in the middle of the runner between the front room and the kitchen, with her head up and her eyes open, and she has not moved since the first one.

That was closer.

That was further.

That one was over the Hendersons.

She is not counting them the way people count them, with the gap and the arithmetic. She is just noting where each one is, the way you note a car going past, and filing it, and waiting for the next.

The lights go out for about four seconds and come back on.

In those four seconds the pug makes a sound he will later deny, the big yellow one stands up so fast she takes a chair with her, and somebody in the kitchen says a word they do not normally say in the house.

Millie’s position does not change.

When the lights come back everyone looks around to see what everyone else is doing, which is what the house does in the dark, and what they see is the hall and the runner and a black dog lying in the middle of it with her head up.

Still here. It’s a storm.

It goes on for another hour. The rain comes in a way that sounds like somebody throwing gravel at the kitchen window, and then it slows, and then there is a long gap with no light in it at all, and then nothing.

The house unpacks itself slowly. The pug comes out from under the chair in stages and has to be helped with the last bit. The big yellow one unglues herself from the leg and goes round the room checking on everybody, which takes a while. Somebody puts the kettle on.

Millie gets up.

It is the first time she has moved in two hours, and what she does is go down the hall to the front room and lie down again about three feet from the chair the pug is now sitting under the edge of, facing the other way, not looking at him.

He moves over and sits on her.

Nobody sees it happen. It is not a thing anybody in that house would think to watch for, because she was going that way anyway, and because she was going to lie down somewhere, and because she always lies down somewhere.

She goes back to sleep.

It’s over now.