Roger Curtis - Lights in a Western Sky

So ended the first skirmishes in the war of attrition. George and Alma spent the winter thinking laterally and seeking help on-line. Following the advice of the Royal Horticultural Society to plant species that muntjacs don’t like (prefer would be a better term), following radical replanting in the spring the garden took on a more homogenous look with the proliferation of thorn-bearing and dull-leaved shrubs. The result was that the browsing line of the specimens that had survived had become higher. ‘They can stand on their back feet,’ Alma exclaimed, realising that the heavily-blossomed branches of the potentially fruit-laden trees would sooner or later come within reach.

‘It’s your mind-set that needs to change,’ Ferdinand, their neighbour, told them. Think of them as an asset, a decorative addition to your estate, to be cherished.’ George thought he saw Ferdinand try to stifle a guffaw of laughter as he turned to walk away, but Alma had grasped the message. ‘They are rather cute, aren’t they George? And have you seen the little ones – they’re so sweet.’

But George had one last ace up his sleeve. ‘They can’t abide male pheromones,’ a guest at one of their dinner parties had told them. ‘They see you as territorial – perhaps even sexual – competitors.’ So while it was still light, and foregoing their desserts (although imbibing an extra glass of beer each), the males, young and old, tramped into the garden, stationed themselves strategically along the flower and vegetable beds, and freely urinated. The following morning George pulled the bedroom curtains apart to reveal two stags locked in combat on the lawn. It was then that he realised outside help was needed.

It came in the form of a master’s degree student from the department of animal behaviour at Avonbridge Polytechnic. Wayne Parfitt was looking for a project for his second year dissertation. ‘One of our brightest stars,’ his tutor had assured George, adding, ‘Something of an oddball, though.’ Against Alma’s better judgement, George invited him to stay. That first morning, over coffee in the kitchen, Wayne expounded his theory of niche adaptation, for which the muntjac deer afforded an unparalleled example. This was partly because the whole population – now expanding rapidly across southern England – was derived from a single escapee from a herd imported from China, known to Wayne and his companions as Fleance. ‘When you eliminate genetic variability,’ Wayne said, ‘the data is so much more robust.’ George could just about see that. Alma was more impressed by Wayne’s apparent affinity with Shakespeare, which to George was at odds with the dreadlocks, rings in the ears and bangles at the wrist. But in spite of that they gave him the room vacated by the couple’s teenage son Tommy, who was at boarding school. Wayne kept himself to himself, at least at the beginning.

Each morning George would watch Wayne from his study in the turret of the west wing, from which the expanse of the encircling lawn was fully visible. He saw Wayne pace a full circuit around the house, following the tracks in the grass made by the muntjacs – bare streaks of exposed earth that had long eluded an explanation. ‘Creatures of habit,’ Wayne said. ‘Same pattern every day.’ ‘And at the same time?’ George asked, not really caring. Before long a map had appeared taped to the refrigerator door alongside a note to the family requesting the addition of the times of sightings. Unlike George, who saw no practical outcome to this exercise, Alma was becoming enthused, which may have had more to do with an infatuation – in a very minor way of course – with Wayne. Daily and religiously she entered her data, and on the fourth day stood back astonished. The entries for the point of vantage of the morning room were identical to within minutes. But what was more surprising, those were the only times when she had been present in the room, to rest her feet and peruse the scandal pages of the daily paper. She, like the muntjacs, was a creature of habit. She offered Wayne a coffee and was slightly put out that he for once gave more attention to his results than to her.

The following day Alma made a small detour to pass by George’s study on her way to the morning room. There he was, head down over his accounts, dead to the rest of the world. She could see beyond him into the garden and held her breath. And sure enough the same creature as before, as if on cue, emerged from the undergrowth and sidled across the lawn. It stopped momentarily, as if an intoxicating perfume had wafted for an instant across its nostrils, and then continued on. Alma moved to the morning room. ‘It showed no interest in your husband?’ Wayne asked. ‘No,’ Alma said.

Outside the morning room window the deer was idly nibbling the grass. As Alma gazed out it raised its head and engaged her in a fixed stare. Alma experienced a moment of elation, as if something of great significance had passed between them.

Then the link was broken as Fleance – for that’s what they now called him – resumed cropping the grass.

‘They do that – just stand and stare,’ Wayne said. Then he thought for a moment. ‘What I’d like to do,’ he continued, ‘is measure the stare time. Would give me data for another table, and you can’t have too many of those.’ He gave Alma a stop-watch and over the next five days she recorded the stare times meticulously. On the sixth day Wayne plotted them on a graph. It showed a consistent, if miniscule, increment one day upon the next. ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ he said.

The following week George was summoned to the Department of Extra-terrestrial Exploration, where he had been retained as a consultant – and where he and Alma had met while in their thirties. Alma, to some the more gifted of the two, had declined a similar appointment, but in bed every evening they would discuss the affairs of the department. George’s speciality – and what made him an asset – was an overt scepticism to anything that contravened conventional wisdom. So when, years back now, public awareness had been inflamed by reports of alleged extra-terrestrial phenomena – including a few ridiculous accounts of alien landings – George, in his letters to The Times , had scathingly extinguished the issue. But it seemed not quite, and it was surmised that there had been a rash of recent sightings. In all this Alma, the more open-minded of the two, had remained neutral. But, fancying a couple of days in London, she decided to accompany George.

When she returned home ahead of her husband Wayne was waiting at the door. ‘Funny thing,’ he said, ‘when you were gone Fleance showed no interest outside the morning room. He just nibbled the grass a bit and continued on. It will be interesting to see what he does now you are back.’ At this suggestion Alma felt a sudden delicious spurt of anticipation. ‘I’m looking forward to it,’ she said, then chided herself inwardly for being irrational. But, stop-watch in hand, she resumed her former relationship with Fleance. Strangely, the stare times had increased and after each communication – for that was the word that sprang to mind – she’d felt increasingly queasy and had to lie down.

‘I’ve… er… been asking around,’ Wayne said at dinner. ‘Seems you’re not alone in… well… getting their attention. I’ve had some mates do some recordings. There’s a village in Berkshire, same thing, same results, and another in Sussex. Here’s a list. I’m waiting for others to come in.’ Alma’s ears pricked up. ‘Those names ring a bell. Don’t they with you, George? Aren’t they villages that had… well… sightings?’ ‘Just coincidence,’ George said. ‘Nothing more. Get it out of your heads, both of you.’

But Wayne couldn’t get it out of his head, nor could he sleep. So tempting was the hypothesis that was forming in his brain that he’d managed to persuade his supervisor to allow him to convert his master’s to a PhD. ‘What you’ve got there,’ his supervisor said, ‘is a population ever expanding into the community and increasing their exposure to human behaviour by exploiting conducive habitats and territorial niches.’ And Wayne saw that the very places the muntjacs chose to colonise were precisely those where human intellect – and therefore position in society – was of the highest calibre: big houses in big gardens in affluent areas. Why?