Danny the Champion of the World Read online

  'He didn't!' my father said.

  'Oh yes he did.'

  'What did you do?'

  'I left him sitting in the waiting-room while I picked out the oldest, bluntest needle I could find. Then I rubbed the point of it on a nail-file to make it blunter still. By the time I'd got through with it, it was blunter than a ballpoint pen. Then I called him in and told him to lower his pants and bend over, and when I rammed that needle into his fleshy backside, he screamed like a stuck pig'

  'Hooray,' my father said.

  'He's never been back since,' Doc Spencer said. 'For which I am truly thankful. Ah, here's the ambulance.'

  The ambulance drew up near the workshop door and two men in uniform got out. 'Bring me a leg splint,' the doctor said. One of the men fetched a sort of thin wooden plank from the ambulance. Doc Spencer knelt down once more beside my father and eased the plank very gently underneath my father's left leg. Then he strapped the leg firmly to the plank. The ambulance men brought in a stretcher and placed it on the ground. My father got on to it by himself.

  I was still sitting on my chair. Doc Spencer came over to me and put a hand on my shoulder. 'I think you had better come on home with me, young man,' he said. 'You can stay with us until your father's back from hospital.'

  'Won't he be home today?' I asked.

  'Yes,' my father said. 'I'll be back this evening.'

  'I'd rather you stayed in for the night,' Doc Spencer said.

  'I shall come home this evening,' my father said. 'Thank you for offering to take Danny, but it won't be necessary. He'll be all right here until I get back. I reckon he'll sleep most of the day anyway, won't you, my love?'

  'I think so,' I said.

  'Just close up the filling-station and go to bed, right?'

  'Yes, but come back soon, won't you, Dad.'

  They carried him into the ambulance on the stretcher and closed the doors. I stood outside the workshop with Doc Spencer and watched the big white thing drive out of the filling-station.

  'Do you need any help?' Doc Spencer said.

  'I'm fine, thank you.'

  'Go to bed, then, and get a good sleep.'

  'Yes, I will.'

  'Call me if you need anything'

  'Yes.'

  The marvellous little doctor got into his car and drove away down the road in the same direction as the ambulance.

  10

  The Great Shooting Party

  As soon as the doctor had driven away from the filling-station, I went into the office and got out the sign that said SORRY CLOSED. I hung it on one of the pumps. Then I headed straight for the caravan. I was too tired to undress. I didn't even take off my dirty old sneakers. I just flopped down on the bunk and went to sleep. The time was five minutes past eight in the morning.

  More than ten hours later, at six-thirty in the evening, I was woken up by the ambulance men bringing my father back from the hospital. They carried him into the caravan and laid him on the lower bunk.

  'Hello, Dad,' I said.

  'Hello, Danny'

  'How are you feeling?'

  'A bit whoozy,' he said, and he dozed off almost immediately.

  As the ambulance men drove away, Doc Spencer arrived and went into the caravan to take a look at the patient. 'He'll sleep until tomorrow morning,' he said. 'Then he'll wake up feeling fine.'

  I followed the doctor out to his car. 'I'm awfully glad he's home,' I said.

  The doctor opened the car door but he didn't get in. He looked at me very sternly and said, 'When did you last have something to eat, Danny?'

  'Something to eat?' I said. 'Oh... well... I had... er...' Suddenly I realized how long it had been. I hadn't eaten anything since I had had supper with my father the night before. That was nearly twenty-four hours ago.

  Doc Spencer reached into the car and came out with something huge and round wrapped up in greaseproof paper. 'My wife asked me to give you this,' he said. 'I think you'll like it. She's a terrific cook.'

  He pushed the package towards me, then he jumped into the car and drove quickly away.

  I stood there clasping the big round thing tightly in my hands. I watched the doctor's car as it went down the road and disappeared round the curve, and after it had gone I still stood there watching the empty road.

  After a while I turned and walked back up the steps into the caravan with my precious parcel. I placed it in the centre of the table but I didn't unwrap it.

  My father lay on the bunk in a deep sleep. He was wearing hospital pyjamas. They had brown and blue stripes. I went over and gently pulled back the blanket to see what they had done to him. Hard white plaster covered the lower part of his leg and the whole of his foot, except for the toes. There was a funny little iron thing sticking out below his foot, presumably for him to walk on. I covered him up again and returned to the table.

  Very carefully, I now began to unwrap the greaseproof paper from around the doctor's present, and when I had finished, I saw before me the most enormous and beautiful pie in the world. It was covered all over, top, sides, and bottom, with a rich golden pastry.

  I took a knife from beside the sink and cut out a wedge. I started to eat it in my fingers, standing up. It was a cold meat pie. The meat was pink and tender with no fat or gristle in it, and there were hard-boiled eggs buried like treasures in several different places.

  The taste was absolutely fabulous. When I had finished the first slice, I cut another and ate that too. God bless Doctor Spencer, I thought. And God bless Mrs Spencer as well.

  The next morning, a Monday, my father was up at six o'clock. 'I feel great,' he said. He started hobbling round the caravan to test his leg. 'It hardly hurts at all!' he cried. 'I can walk you to school!'

  'No,' I said. 'No.'

  'I've never missed one yet, Danny.'

  'It's two miles each way,' I said. 'Don't do it, Dad, please.'

  So that day I went to school alone. But he insisted on coming with me the next day. I couldn't stop him. He had put a woollen sock over his plaster foot to keep his toes warm, and there was a hole in the underneath of the sock so that the metal thing could poke through. He walked a bit stiff-legged, but he moved as fast as ever, and the metal thing went clink on the road each time he put it down.

  And so life at the filling-station returned to normal, or anyway nearly to normal. I say nearly because things were definitely not quite the same as they had been before. The difference lay in my father. A change had come over him. It wasn't a big change, but it was enough to make me certain that something was worrying him quite a lot. He would brood a good deal, and there would be silences between us, especially at supper-time. Now and again I would see him standing alone and very still out in front of the filling-station, gazing up the road in the direction of Hazell's Wood.

  Many times I wanted to ask him what the trouble was and had I done so, I'm sure he would have told me at once. In any event, I knew that sooner or later I would hear all about it.

  I hadn't long to wait.

  About ten days after his return from hospital, the two of us were sitting out on the platform of the caravan watching the sun go down behind the big trees on the top of the hill across the valley. We had had our supper but it wasn't my bedtime yet. The September evening was warm and beautiful and very still.

  'You know what makes me so hopping mad,' he said to me all of a sudden. 'I get up in the mornings feeling pretty good. Then about nine o'clock every single day of the week, that huge silver Rolls-Royce comes swishing past the filling-station and I see the great big bloated face of Mr Victor Hazell behind the wheel. I always see it. I can't help it. And as he passes by, he always turns his head in my direction and looks at me. But it's the way he looks at me that is so infuriating. There is a sneer under his nose and a smug little smirk around his mouth and although I only see him for three seconds, it makes me madder than mackerel. What's more, I stay mad for the rest of the day'

  'I don't blame you,' I said.

  A silence fel
l between us. I waited to see what was coming next.

  'I'll tell you something interesting,' he said at last. 'The shooting season for pheasants starts on Saturday. Did you know that?'

  'No, Dad, I didn't.'

  'It always starts on the first of October,' he said. 'And every year Mr Hazell celebrates the occasion by giving a grand opening-day shooting party'

  I wondered what this had to do with my father being madder than a mackerel, but I knew for certain there would be a connection somewhere.

  'It is a very famous event, Danny, that shooting party of Mr Hazell's.'

  'Do lots of people come?' I asked.

  'Hundreds,' he said. 'They come from miles around. Dukes and lords, barons and baronets, wealthy businessmen and all the fancy folk in the county. They come with their guns and their dogs and their wives, and all day long the noise of shooting rolls across the valley. But they don't come because they like Mr Hazell. Secretly they all despise him. They think he's a nasty piece of work.'

  'Then why do they come, Dad?'

  'Because it's the best pheasant shoot in the South of England, that's why they come. But to Mr Hazell it is the greatest day in the year and he is willing to pay almost anything to make it a success. He spends a fortune on those pheasants. Each summer he buys hundreds of young birds from the pheasant-farm and puts them in the wood, where the keepers feed them and guard them and fatten them up ready for the great day to arrive. Do you know, Danny, that the cost of rearing and keeping one single pheasant up to the time when it's ready to be shot is equal to the price of one hundred loaves of bread!'

  'It's not true.'

  'I swear it,' my father said. 'But to Mr Hazell it's worth every penny of it. And do you know why? It makes him feel important. For one day in the year he becomes a big cheese in a little world and even the Duke of So-and-so slaps him on the back and tries to remember his first name when he says goodbye.'

  My father reached out a hand and scratched the hard plaster just below his left knee. 'It itches,' he said. 'The skin itches underneath the plaster. So I scratch the plaster and pretend I'm scratching the skin.'

  'Does that help?'

  'No,' he said, 'it doesn't help. But listen, Danny...'

  'Yes, Dad?'

  'I want to tell you something.'

  He started scratching away again at the plaster on his leg. I waited for him to go on.

  'I want to tell you what I would dearly love to do right now.'

  Here it comes, I thought. Here comes something big and crazy. I could tell something big and crazy was coming simply from watching his face.

  'It's a deadly secret, Danny' He paused and looked carefully all around him. And although there was probably not a living person within two miles of us at that moment, he now leaned close to me and lowered his voice to a soft whisper. 'I would like', he whispered, 'to find a way of poaching so many pheasants from Hazell's Wood that there wouldn't be any left for the big opening-day shoot on October the first.'

  'Dad!' I cried. 'No!'

  'Ssshh,' he said. 'Listen. If only I could find a way of knocking off a couple of hundred birds all in one go, then Mr Hazell's party would be the biggest wash-out in history!'

  'Two hundred!' I said. 'That's impossible!'

  'Just imagine, Danny,' he went on, 'what a triumph, what a glorious victory that would be! All the dukes and lords and famous men would arrive in their big cars... and Mr Hazell would strut about like a peacock welcoming them and saying things like "Plenty of birds out there for you this year, Lord Thistlethwaite," and, "Ah, my dear Sir Godfrey, this is a great season for pheasants, a very great season indeed"... and then out they would all go with their guns under their arms... and they would take up their positions surrounding the famous wood... and inside the wood a whole army of hired beaters would start shouting and yelling and bashing away at the undergrowth to drive the pheasants out of the wood towards the waiting guns... and lo and behold... there wouldn't be a single pheasant to be found anywhere! And Mr Victor Hazell's face would be redder than a boiled beetroot! Now wouldn't that be the most fantastic marvellous thing if we could pull it off, Danny?'

  My father had got himself so worked up that he rose to his feet and hobbled down the caravan steps and started pacing back and forth in front of me. 'Wouldn't it, though?' he shouted. 'Wouldn't it be terrific?'

  'Yes,' I said.

  'But how?' he cried. 'How could it be done?'

  'There's no way, Dad. It's hard enough getting just two birds up in those woods, let alone two hundred.'

  'I know that,' my father said. 'It's the keepers that make it so difficult.'

  'How many are there?' I asked.

  'Keepers? Three, and they're always around.'

  'Do they stay right through the night?'

  'No, not through the night,' my father said. 'They go off home as soon as all the pheasants are safely up in the trees, roosting. But nobody's ever discovered a way of poaching a roosting pheasant, not even my own dad, who was the greatest expert in the world. It's about your bedtime,' he added. 'Off you go and I'll come in and tell you a story.'

  11

  The Sleeping Beauty

  Five minutes later, I was lying on my bunk in my pyjamas. My father came in and lit the oil-lamp hanging from the ceiling. It was getting dark earlier now. 'All right,' he said. 'What sort of story shall we have tonight?'

  'Dad,' I said. 'Wait a minute.'

  'What is it?'

  'Can I ask you something? I've just had a bit of an idea.'

  'Go on,' he said.

  'You know that bottle of sleeping pills Doc Spencer gave you when you came back from hospital?'

  'I never used them. Don't like the things.'

  'Yes, but is there any reason why those wouldn't work on a pheasant?'

  My father shook his head sadly from side to side.

  'Wait,' I said.

  'It's no use, Danny. No pheasant in the world is going to swallow those lousy red capsules. Surely you know that.'

  'You're forgetting the raisins, Dad.'

  'The raisins? What's that got to do with it?'

  'Now listen,' I said. 'Please listen. We take a raisin. We soak it till it swells. Then we make a tiny slit in one side of it with a razor-blade. Then we hollow it out a little. Then we open up one of your red capsules and pour all the powder into the raisin. Then we get a needle and thread and very carefully we sew up the slit...'

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my father's mouth slowly beginning to open.

  'Now,' I said, 'we have a nice clean-looking raisin chock full of sleeping-pill powder and that ought to be enough to put any pheasant to sleep. Don't you think so?'

  My father was staring at me with a look of such wonder in his eyes he might have been seeing a vision.

  'Oh, my darling boy,' he said softly. 'Oh, my sainted aunt! I do believe you've got it. Yes, I do. I do. I do.'

  He was suddenly so choked up with excitement that for a few seconds he couldn't say any more. He came and sat on the edge of my bunk and there he stayed, nodding his head very slowly up and down.

  'You really think it would work?' I asked him.

  'Yes,' he said quietly. 'It'll work all right. With this method we could prepare two hundred raisins, and all we'd have to do is scatter them round the feeding grounds at sunset, and then walk away. Half an hour later, after it was dark and the keepers had all gone home, we would go back into the wood... and the pheasants would be up in the trees by then, roosting... and the pills would be beginning to work... and the pheasants would be starting to feel groggy... they'd be wobbling and trying to keep their balance... and soon every pheasant that had eaten one single raisin would topple over unconscious and fall to the ground. Why, they'd be dropping out of the trees like apples! And all we'd have to do is walk around picking them up!'

  'Can I do it with you, Dad?'

  'And they'd never catch us either,' my father said, not hearing me. 'We'd simply stroll through the woods dropping a few raisi
ns here and there as we went, and even if they were watching us they wouldn't notice anything.'

  'Dad,' I said, raising my voice, 'you will let me come with you?'

  'Danny, my love,' he said, laying a hand on my knee and gazing at me with eyes large and bright as two stars, 'if this thing works, it will revolutionize poaching.'

  'Yes, Dad, but can I come with you?'

  'Come with me?' he said, floating out of his dream at last. 'But my dear boy, of course you can come with me! It's your idea! You must be there to see it happening! Now then!' he cried, bouncing up off the bed. 'Where are those pills?'

  The small bottle of red capsules was standing beside the sink. It had been there ever since my father returned from hospital. He fetched it and unscrewed the top and poured the capsules on to my blanket. 'Let's count them,' he said.

  We counted them together. There were exactly fifty. 'That's not enough,' he said. 'We need two hundred at least.' Then he cried out, 'Wait! Hold it! There's no problem!' He began carefully putting the capsules back into the bottle, and as he did so he said, 'All we've got to do, Danny, is divide the powder from one capsule among four raisins. In other words, quarter the dose. That way we would have enough to fill two hundred raisins.'

  'But would a quarter of one of those pills be strong enough to put a pheasant to sleep?' I asked.

  'Of course it would, my dear boy. Work it out for yourself. How much smaller is a pheasant than a man?'

  'Many, many times smaller.'

  'There you are then. If one pill is enough to put a fully-grown man to sleep, you'll only need a tiny bit of that for a pheasant. What we're giving him will knock the old pheasant for a loop! He won't know what's hit him!'

  'But Dad, two hundred raisins aren't going to get you two hundred pheasants.'

  'Why not?'

  'Because the greediest birds are surely going to gobble up about ten raisins each.'

  'You've got a point there,' my father said. 'You certainly have. But somehow I don't think it will happen that way. Not if I'm very careful and spread them out over a wide area. Don't worry about it, Danny. I'm sure I can work it.'