Danny the Champion of the World Read online

  'Get them off!' screamed Mr Hazell. 'Get them away!'

  'Don't you worry, Mr 'Azell, sir,' Sergeant Samways cried out. 'We'll fix 'em for you. Come on, boys! Heasy does it! Shoo 'em right over the road!'

  'Not on my car, you idiot!' Mr Hazell bellowed, jumping up and down. 'Send them the other way!'

  'We will, sir, we will!' answered Sergeant Samways.

  In less than a minute, the Rolls was literally festooned with pheasants, all scratching and scrabbling and making their disgusting runny messes over the shiny silver paint. What is more, I saw at least a dozen of them fly right inside the car through the open door by the driver's seat. Whether or not Sergeant Samways had cunningly steered them in there himself, I didn't know, but it happened so quickly that Mr Hazell never even noticed.

  'Get those birds off my car!' Mr Hazell bellowed. 'Can't you see they're ruining the paintwork, you madman!'

  'Paintwork?' Sergeant Samways said. 'What paintwork?' He had stopped chasing the pheasants now and he stood there looking at Mr Hazell and shaking his head sadly from side to side. 'We've done our very best to hencourage these birds over the road,' he said, 'but they're too hignorant to hunderstand.'

  'My car, man!' shouted Mr Hazell. 'Get them away from my car!'

  'Ah,' the sergeant said. 'Your car. Yes, I see what you mean, sir. Beastly dirty birds, pheasants are. But why don't you just 'op in quick and drive 'er away fast? They'll 'ave to get off then, won't they?'

  Mr Hazell, who seemed only too glad of an excuse to escape from this madhouse, made a dash for the open door of the Rolls and leaped into the driver's seat. The moment he was in, Sergeant Samways slammed the door, and suddenly there was the most infernal uproar inside the car as a dozen or more enormous pheasants started squawking and flapping all over the seats and round Mr HazelPs head. 'Drive on, Mr 'Azell, sir!' shouted Sergeant Samways through the window in his most commanding policeman's voice. ' 'Urry up, 'urry up, 'urry up! Get goin' quick! There's no time to lose! Hignore them pheasants, Mr 'Azell, and haccelerate that hengine!'

  Mr Hazell didn't have much choice. He had to make a run for it now. He started the engine and the great Rolls shot off down the road with clouds of pheasants rising up from it in all directions.

  Then an extraordinary thing happened. The pheasants that had flown up off the car stayed up in the air. They didn't come flapping drunkenly down as we had expected them to. They stayed up and they kept on flying. Over the top of the filling-station they flew, and over the caravan, and over the field at the back where our little outdoor lavatory stood, and over the next field, and over the crest of the hill until they disappeared from sight.

  'Great Scott!' Doc Spencer cried. 'Just look at that! They've recovered! The sleeping pills have worn off at last!'

  Now all the other pheasants around the place were beginning to come awake. They were standing up tall on their legs and ruffling their feathers and turning their heads quickly from side to side. One or two of them started running about, then all the others started running; and when Sergeant Samways flapped his arms at them, the whole lot took off into the air and flew over the filling-station and were gone.

  Suddenly, there was not a pheasant left. And it was very interesting to see that none of them had flown across the road, or even down the road in the direction of Hazell's Wood and the great shooting party. Every one of them had flown in exactly the opposite direction!

  21

  Doc Spencer's Surprise

  Out on the main road, a line of about twenty cars and lorries was parked bumper to bumper, and the people were standing about in groups, laughing and talking about the astonishing sight they had just witnessed.

  'Come along, now!' Sergeant Samways called, striding towards them. 'Get goin'! Get movin'! We can't 'ave this! You're blockin' the 'ighway!'

  Nobody ever disobeyed Sergeant Samways, and soon the people were drifting back to their cars and getting in. In a few minutes, they too were all gone. Only the four of us were left now-Doc Spencer, Sergeant Samways, my father and me.

  'Well, Willum,' Sergeant Samways said, coming back from the road to join us beside the pumps. 'Them pheasants was the most hastonishin' sight I ever seed in my hentire life!'

  'It was lovely,' Doc Spencer said. 'Just lovely. Didn't you enjoy it, Danny?'

  'Marvellous,' I said.

  'Pity we lost them,' my father said. 'It very near broke my heart when they all started flying out of the pram. I knew we'd lost them then.'

  'But 'ow in 'eaven's name did you ever catch 'em in the first place?' asked Sergeant Samways. "Ow did you do it, Willum? Come on, man. Let me in on the secret.'

  My father told him. He kept it short, but even then it made a fine story. And all the way through it, the sergeant kept saying, 'Well I never! Well, I'll be blowed! You could knock me down with a feather! Stone the crows!' and things like that. And when the story was finished, he pointed his long policeman's finger straight at my face and cried, 'Well, I'll be jiggered! I never would 'ave thought a little nipper like you could come up with such a fantastical brain-wave as that! Young man, I congratulate you!'

  'He'll go a long way, young Danny will, you see if he doesn't,' Doc Spencer said. 'He'll be a great inventor one day!'

  To be spoken about like that by the two men I admired most in the world, after my father, made me blush and stutter. And as I stood there wondering what on earth I was expected to say in reply, a woman's voice behind me cried out, 'Well, thank goodness that's over at last!'

  This, of course, was Mrs Grace Clipstone, who was now picking her way cautiously down the caravan steps with young Christopher in her arms. 'Never in my life', she was saying, 'have I seen such a shambles as that!'

  The little white hat was still perched on the top of her head, and the prim white gloves were still on her hands. 'What a gathering!' she said, advancing towards us. 'What a gathering we have here of rogues and varmints! Good morning, Enoch.'

  'Good morning to you, Mrs Clipstone,' Sergeant Samways said.

  'How's the baby?' my father asked her.

  'The baby is better, thank you, William,' she said. 'Though I doubt he'll ever be quite the same again.'

  'Of course he will,' Doc Spencer said. 'Babies are tough.'

  'I don't care how tough they are!' she answered. 'How would you like it if you were being taken for a nice quiet walk in your pram on a pretty autumn morning... and you were sitting on a lovely soft mattress... and suddenly the mattress comes alive and starts bouncing you up and down like a stormy sea... and the next thing you know, there's about a hundred sharp curvy beaks poking up from underneath the mattress and pecking you to pieces!'

  The doctor cocked his head over to one side, then to the other, and he smiled at Mrs Clipstone.

  'You think it's funny?' she cried. 'Well just you wait, Doctor Spencer, and one night I'll put a few snakes or crocodiles or something under your mattress and see how you like it!'

  Sergeant Samways was fetching his bicycle from beside the pumps. 'Well, ladies and gents,' he said. 'I must be off and see who else is gettin' into mischief round 'ere.'

  'I am truly sorry you were troubled, Enoch,' my father said. 'And thanks very much indeed for the help.'

  'I wouldn't 'ave missed this one for all the tea in China,' Sergeant Samways said. 'But it did sadden me most terrible, Willum, to see all those lovely birds go slippin' right through our fingers like that. Because to my mind, there don't hexist a more luscious dish than roasted pheasant anywhere on this earth.'

  'It's going to sadden the vicar a lot more than it saddens you!' said Mrs Clipstone. 'That's all he's been talking about ever since he got out of bed this morning, the lovely roast pheasant he's going to have for his dinner tonight!'

  'He'll get over it,' Doc Spencer said.

  'He will not get over it and it's a rotten shame!' Mrs Clipstone said. 'Because now all I've got to give him are some awful frozen fillets of cod, and he never did like cod anyway.'

  'But,' my father said, '
surely you didn't load all those pheasants into the pram, did you? You were meant to keep at least a dozen for you and the vicar!'

  'Oh, I know that,' she wailed. 'But I was so tickled at the thought of strolling calmly through the village with Christopher sitting on a hundred and twenty birds, I simply forgot to keep any back for ourselves. And now, alas, they're all gone! And so is the vicar's supper!'

  The doctor went over to Mrs Clipstone and took her by the arm. 'You come with me, Grace,' he said. 'I've got something to show you.' He led her across to my father's workshop where the big doors stood wide open.

  The rest of us stayed where we were and waited.

  'Good grief! Come and look at this!' Mrs Clipstone called from inside the workshop. 'William! Enoch! Danny! Come and look!'

  We hurried over and entered the workshop.

  It was a great sight.

  Laid out on my father's bench amid the spanners and wrenches and oily rags were six magnificent pheasants, three cocks and three hens.

  'There we are, ladies and gentlemen,' said the doctor, his small wrinkled face beaming with delight. 'How's that?'

  We were speechless.

  'Two for you, Grace, to keep the vicar in a good mood,' Doc Spencer said. 'Two for Enoch for all the fine work he did this morning. And two for William and Danny who deserve them most of all.'

  'What about you, Doctor?' my father asked. 'That doesn't leave any for you.'

  'My wife has enough to do without plucking pheasants all day long,' he said. 'And anyway, who got them out of the wood in the first place? You and Danny.'

  'But how on earth did you get them?' my father asked him. 'When did you nab them?'

  'I didn't nab them,' the doctor said. 'I had a hunch.'

  'What sort of a hunch?' my father asked.

  'It seemed fairly obvious', the doctor said, 'that some of those pheasants must have gobbled up more than one raisin each. Some, if they were quick enough, might have swallowed half a dozen each, or even more. In which case they would have received a very heavy overdose of sleeping pills and wouldn't ever wake up.'

  'Ah-ha!' we cried. 'Of course! Of course!'

  'So while you were all so busy driving the birds on to old Hazell's Rolls-Royce, I sneaked in here and had a look under the sheet in the bottom of the pram. And there they were!'

  'Hamazin'!' said Sergeant Samways. 'Habsolutely hamazin'!'

  'Those were the greedy ones,' the doctor said. 'It never pays to eat more than your fair share.'

  'Marvellous!' my father said. 'Well done, sir!'

  'Oh, you lovely man!' cried Mrs Clipstone, flinging an arm round the tiny doctor and giving him a kiss on the cheek.

  'Now come along,' the doctor said to her. 'I'll drive you home. You can leave this crazy perambulator where it is. And Enoch, we'll take your birds with us and drop them off at your house on the way. We can't have the arm of the law cycling through the village with a brace of pheasants slung over the handle-bars.'

  'I am very much hobliged to you, Doctor,' Sergeant Sam ways said. 'I really am.'

  My father and I loaded four of the pheasants into the doctor's car. Mrs Clipstone got into the front seat with the baby and the doctor sat himself behind the wheel. 'Don't be sad, William,' he said to my father through the window as he drove off. 'It was a famous victory'

  Then Sergeant Samways mounted his bicycle and waved us goodbye and pedalled away down the road in the direction of the village. He pedalled slowly, and there was a certain majesty in the way he held himself, with the head high and the back very straight, as though he were riding a fine thoroughbred mare instead of an old black bike.

  22

  My Father

  It was all over now. My father and I stood alone just outside the workshop and suddenly the old place seemed to become very quiet.

  'Well, Danny,' my father said, looking at me with those twinkly eyes of his. 'That's that.'

  'It was fun, Dad.'

  'I know it was,' he said.

  'I really loved it,' I said.

  'So did I, Danny'

  He placed one hand on my shoulder and we began walking slowly towards the caravan.

  'Maybe we should lock the pumps and take a holiday for the rest of the day,' he said.

  'You mean not open up at all?'

  'Why should we?' he said. 'After all, it's Saturday, isn't it?'

  'But we always stay open on Saturdays, Dad. And Sundays.'

  'Maybe it's time we didn't,' he said. 'We could do something else instead. Something more interesting.'

  I waited, wondering what was coming next.

  When we reached the caravan, my father climbed the steps and sat down on the little outside platform. He allowed both his legs, the plaster one and the good one, to dangle over the edge. I climbed up and sat down beside him with my feet on the steps of the ladder.

  It was a fine place to sit, the platform of the caravan. It was such a quiet comfortable place to sit and talk and do nothing in pleasant weather. People with houses have a front porch or a terrace instead, with big chairs to lounge in, but I wouldn't have traded either of those for our wooden platform.

  'I know a place about three miles away,' my father was saying, 'over Cobblers Hill and down the other side, where there's a small wood of larch trees. It is a very quiet place and the stream runs right through it.'

  'The stream?' I said.

  He nodded and gave me another of his twinkly looks. 'It's full of trout,' he said.

  'Oh, could we?' I cried. 'Could we go there, Dad?'

  'Why not?' he said. 'We could try tickling them the way Doc Spencer told us.'

  'Will you teach me?' I said.

  'I haven't had much practice with trout,' he told me. 'Pheasants are more in my line. But we could always learn.'

  'Can we go now?' I asked, getting excited all over again.

  'I thought we would just pop into the village first and buy the electric oven,' he said. 'You haven't forgotten about the electric oven, have you?'

  'But Dad,' I said. 'That was when we thought we were going to have lots and lots of pheasants to roast.'

  'We've still got the two the Doc gave us,' he said.

  'And with any luck we'll have lots more of them as the weeks go by. It's time we had an oven anyway, then we can roast things properly instead of heating up baked beans in a saucepan. We could have roasted pork one day and then if we felt like it we could have roasted leg of lamb the next time or even roasted beef. Wouldn't you like that?'

  'Yes,' I said. 'Of course I would. And Dad, would you be able to make your favourite thing of all?'

  'What's that?' he asked.

  'Toad-in-the-hole,' I said.

  'By golly!' he cried. 'That'll be the very first thing we'll make in our new oven! Toad-in-the-hole! I'll make it in an enormous pan, the same as my old mum, with the Yorkshire pudding very crisp and raised up in huge bubbly mountains and the sausages nestling in between the mountains!'

  'Can we get it today, Dad? Will they deliver it at once?'

  'They might, Danny. We'll have to see.'

  'Couldn't we order it now on the telephone?'

  'We mustn't do that,' my father said. 'We must go personally to see Mr Wheeler and we must inspect all the different models with great care.'

  'All right,' I said. 'Let's go.' I was really steamed up now about getting an oven and being able to have Toad-in-the-hole and roasted pork and stuff like that. I couldn't wait.

  My father got to his feet. 'And when we've done that', he said, 'we'll go off to the stream and see if we can't find us some big rainbow trout. We could take sandwiches with us for lunch and eat them beside the stream. That will make a good day of it.'

  A few minutes later, the two of us were walking down the well-known road towards the village to buy the oven. My father's iron foot went clink clink on the hard surface and overhead some big black thunder-clouds were moving slowly down the valley.

  'Dad,' I said.

  'Yes, my love?'

&nb
sp; 'When we have our roasted pheasant supper with our new oven, do you think we could invite Doctor Spencer and Mrs Spencer to eat it with us?'

  'Great heavens!' my father cried. 'What a wonderful thought! What a beautiful idea! We'll give a dinnerparty in their honour!'

  'The only thing is,' I said, 'will there be enough room in the caravan for four people?'

  'I think so,' he said. 'Just.'

  'But we've only got two chairs.'

  'That's no problem, Danny. You and I can sit on boxes.' There was a short silence, then he said, 'But I'll tell you what we must have and that's a tablecloth. We can't serve dinner to the doctor and his wife without a tablecloth.'

  'But we don't have a tablecloth, Dad.'

  'Don't you worry about it,' my father said. 'We can use a sheet from one of the bunks. That's all a tablecloth is, a sort of sheet.'

  'What about knives and forks?' I asked.

  'How many do we have?'

  'Just two knives', I said, 'and two forks. And those are all a bit dented.'

  'We shall buy two more of each,' my father said. 'We shall give our guests the new ones and use the old ones ourselves.'

  'Good,' I said. 'Lovely.' I reached out and slid my hand into his. He folded his long fingers round my fist and held it tight, and we walked on towards the village where soon the two of us would be inspecting all the different ovens with great care and talking to Mr Wheeler personally about them.

  And after that, we would walk home again and make up some sandwiches for our lunch.

  And after that we would set off with the sandwiches in our pockets, striding up over Cobblers Hill and down the other side to the small wood of larch trees with the stream running through it.

  And after that?

  Perhaps a big rainbow trout.

  And after that?

  There would be something else after that.

  And after that?

  Ah yes, and something else again.

  Because what I am trying to tell you...

  What I have been trying so hard to tell you all along is simply that my father, without the slightest doubt, was the most marvellous and exciting father any boy ever had.