Danny The Champion Of The World Part 7

'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 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 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 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!' 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 raisins here and there as we went, and even if they were watching watching us they wouldn't notice anything.' us they wouldn't notice anything.'

'Dad,' I said, raising my voice, 'you will will let me come with you?' 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 revolutionize poaching.' 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. .h.i.t 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.'

'And you promise I can come with you?'

'Absolutely' he said. 'And we shall call this method The Sleeping Beauty. The Sleeping Beauty. It will be a landmark in the history of poaching!' It will be a landmark in the history of poaching!'

I sat very still in my bunk, watching my father as he put each capsule back into the bottle. I could hardly believe what was happening, that we were really going to do it, that he and I alone were going to try to swipe practically the entire flock of Mr Victor Hazell's prize pheasants. Just thinking about it sent little s.h.i.+vers of electricity running all over my skin.

'Exciting, isn't it?' my father said.

'I don't dare think about it, Dad. It makes me s.h.i.+ver all over.'

'Me too,' he said. 'But we must keep very calm from now on. We must make our plans very very carefully. Today is Wednesday. The shooting party is next Sat.u.r.day'

'Cripes!' I said. 'That's in three days' time! When do you and I go up to the wood and do the job?'

'The night before,' my father said. 'On the Friday. In that way they won't discover that all the pheasants have disappeared until it's too late and the party has begun.'

'Friday's the day after tomorrow! My goodness, Dad, we'll have to hurry if we're going to get two hundred raisins ready before then!'

My father stood up and began pacing the floor of the caravan. 'Here's the plan of action,' he said. 'Listen carefully...

'Tomorrow is Thursday. When I walk you to school, I shall go into Cooper's Stores in the village and buy two packets of seedless raisins. And in the evening we will put the raisins in to soak for the night.'

'But that only gives us Friday to get ready two hundred raisins,' I said. 'Each one will have to be cut open and filled with powder and sewed up again, and I'll be at school all day...'

'No, you won't,' my father said. 'You will be suffering from a very nasty cold on Friday and I shall be forced to keep you home from school.'

'Hooray!' I said.

'We will not open the filling-station at all on Friday,' he went on. 'Instead we will shut ourselves in here and prepare the raisins. We'll easily get them done between us in one day. And that evening, off we'll go up the road towards the wood to do the job. Is that all clear?'

He was like a general announcing the plan of battle to his staff.

'All clear,' I said.

'And Danny, not a whisper of this to any of your friends at school.'

'Dad, you know I wouldn't!'

He kissed me good-night and turned the oil-lamp down low, but it was a long time before I went to sleep.

12.

Thursday and School The next day was Thursday, and before we set out for the walk to my school that morning I went around behind the caravan and picked two apples from our tree, one for my father and one for me.

It is a most marvellous thing to be able to go out and help yourself to your own apples whenever you feel like it. You can do this only in the autumn of course, when the fruit is ripe, but all the same, how many families are so lucky? Not one in a thousand, I would guess. Our apples were called c.o.x's Orange Pippins, and I liked the sound of the name almost as much as I liked the apples.

At eight o'clock we started walking down the road towards my school in the pale autumn suns.h.i.+ne, munching our apples as we strode along.

Clink went my father's iron foot each time he put it down on the hard road. went my father's iron foot each time he put it down on the hard road. Clink... clink... clink. Clink... clink... clink.

'Have you brought money to buy the raisins?' I asked.

He put a hand in his trouser pocket and made the coins jingle.

'Will Cooper's be open so early?'

'Yes,' he said. 'They open at eight-thirty'

I really loved those morning walks to school with my father. We talked practically the whole time. Mostly it was he who talked and I who listened, and just about everything he said was fascinating. He was a true countryman. The fields, the streams, the woods and all the creatures who lived in these places were a part of his life. Although he was a mechanic by trade and a very fine one, I believe he could have become a great naturalist if only he had had a good schooling.

Long ago he had taught me the names of all the trees and the wild flowers and the different gra.s.ses that grow in the fields. All the birds, too, I could name, not only by sighting them but by listening to their calls and their songs.

In springtime we would hunt for birds' nests along the way, and when we found one he would lift me up on to his shoulders so I could peer into it and see the eggs. But I was never allowed to touch them.

My father told me a nest with eggs in it was one of the most beautiful things in the world. I thought so too. The nest of a song-thrush, for instance, lined inside with dry mud as smooth as polished wood, and with five eggs of the purest blue speckled with black dots. And the skylark, whose nest we once found right in the middle of a field, in a gra.s.sy clump on the ground. It was hardly a nest at all, just a little hollow place in the gra.s.s, and in it were six small eggs, deep brown and white.

'Why does the skylark make its nest on the ground where the cows can trample it?' I asked.

'n.o.body knows why,' my father said. 'But they always do it. Nightingales nest on the ground too. So do pheasants and partridges and grouse.'

On one of our walks a weasel flashed out of the hedge in front of us, and in the next few minutes I learned a lot of things about that marvellous little creature. The bit I liked best was when my father said, 'The weasel is the bravest of all animals. The mother will fight to the death to defend her own children. She will never run away, not even from a fox which is one hundred times bigger than her. She will stay beside her nest and fight the fox until she is killed.'

Another time, when I said, 'Just listen to that gra.s.shopper, Dad,' he said, 'No, that's not a gra.s.shopper, my love. It's a cricket. And did you know that crickets have their ears in their legs?'

'It's not true.'

'It's absolutely true. And gra.s.shoppers have theirs in the sides of their tummies. They are lucky to be able to hear at all because nearly all the vast hordes of insects on this earth are deaf as well as dumb and live in a silent world.'

On this Thursday, on this particular walk to school, there was an old frog croaking in the stream behind the hedge as we went by.

'Can you hear him, Danny?'

'Yes,' I said.

'That is a bullfrog calling to his wife. He does it by blowing out his dewlap and letting it go with a burp.'

'What is a dewlap?' I asked.

'It's the loose skin on his throat. He can blow it up just like a little balloon.'

'What happens when his wife hears him?'

'She goes hopping over to him. She is very happy to have been invited. But I'll tell you something very funny about the old bullfrog. He often becomes so pleased with the sound of his own voice that his wife has to nudge him several times before he'll stop his burping and turn round to hug her.'

That made me laugh.

'Don't laugh too loud,' he said, twinkling at me with his eyes. 'We men are not so very different from the bullfrog.'

We parted at the school gates and my father went off to buy the raisins. Other children were streaming in through the gates and heading up the path to the front door of the school. I joined them but kept silent. I was the keeper of a deep secret and a careless word from me could blow the lid off the greatest poaching expedition the world would ever see.

Ours was just a small village school, a squat ugly red-brick building with no upstairs rooms at all. Above the front door was a big grey block of stone cemented into the brickwork, and on the stone it said, THIS SCHOOL WAS ERECTED IN THIS SCHOOL WAS ERECTED IN 1902 1902 TO COMMEMORATE THE CORONATION OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS KING EDWARD VII TO COMMEMORATE THE CORONATION OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS KING EDWARD VII. I must have read that thing a thousand times. Every time I went in the door it hit me in the eye. I suppose that's what it was there for. But it's pretty boring to read the same old words over and over again, and I often thought how nice it would be if they put something different up there every day, something really interesting. My father would have done it for them beautifully. He could have written it with a bit of chalk on the smooth grey stone and each morning it would have been something new. He would have said things like, DID YOU KNOW THAT THE LITTLE YELLOW CLOVER b.u.t.tERFLY OFTEN CARRIES HIS WIFE AROUND ON HIS BACK DID YOU KNOW THAT THE LITTLE YELLOW CLOVER b.u.t.tERFLY OFTEN CARRIES HIS WIFE AROUND ON HIS BACK? Another time he might have said, THE GUPPY HAS FUNNY HABITS. WHEN HE FALLS IN LOVE WITH ANOTHER GUPPY, HE BITES HER ON THE BOTTOM THE GUPPY HAS FUNNY HABITS. WHEN HE FALLS IN LOVE WITH ANOTHER GUPPY, HE BITES HER ON THE BOTTOM. And another time, DID YOU KNOW THAT THE DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH CAN SQUEAK DID YOU KNOW THAT THE DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH CAN SQUEAK? And then again, BIRDS HAVE ALMOST NO SENSE OF SMELL. BUT THEY HAVE GOOD EYESIGHT AND THEY LOVE RED COLOURS. THE FLOWERS THEY LIKE ARE RED AND YELLOW, BUT NEVER BLUE BIRDS HAVE ALMOST NO SENSE OF SMELL. BUT THEY HAVE GOOD EYESIGHT AND THEY LOVE RED COLOURS. THE FLOWERS THEY LIKE ARE RED AND YELLOW, BUT NEVER BLUE. And perhaps another time he would get out his chalk and write, SOME BEES HAVE TONGUES WHICH THEY CAN UNROLL UNTIL THEY ARE NEARLY TWICE AS LONG AS THE BEE ITSELF. THIS IS TO ALLOW THEM TO GATHER NECTAR FROM FLOWERS THAT HAVE VERY LONG NARROW OPENINGS SOME BEES HAVE TONGUES WHICH THEY CAN UNROLL UNTIL THEY ARE NEARLY TWICE AS LONG AS THE BEE ITSELF. THIS IS TO ALLOW THEM TO GATHER NECTAR FROM FLOWERS THAT HAVE VERY LONG NARROW OPENINGS. Or he might have written, I'LL BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT IN SOME BIG ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSES, THE BUTLER STILL HAS TO IRON THE MORNING NEWSPAPER BEFORE PUTTING IT ON HIS MASTER'S BREAKFAST-TABLE I'LL BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT IN SOME BIG ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSES, THE BUTLER STILL HAS TO IRON THE MORNING NEWSPAPER BEFORE PUTTING IT ON HIS MASTER'S BREAKFAST-TABLE.

There were about sixty boys and girls in our school and their ages went from five to eleven. We had four cla.s.srooms and four teachers.

Miss Birdseye taught the kindergarten, the five-year-olds and six-year-olds, and she was a really nice person. She used to keep a bag of aniseed b.a.l.l.s in the drawer of her desk, and anyone who did good work would be given one aniseed ball to suck right there and then during the lesson. The trick with aniseed b.a.l.l.s is never to bite them. If you keep rolling them round your mouth, they will dissolve slowly of their own accord, and then, right in the very centre, you will find a tiny little brown seed. This is the aniseed itself, and when you crush it between your teeth it has a fabulous taste. My father told me that dogs go crazy about it. When there aren't any foxes around, the huntsman will drag a bag of aniseed for miles and miles over the countryside, and the foxhounds will follow the scent because they love it so. This is known as a drag hunt.

The seven- and eight-year-olds were taught by Mr Corrado and he was also a decent person. He was a very old teacher, probably sixty or more, but that didn't seem to stop him being in love with Miss Birdseye. We knew he was in love with her because he always gave her the best bits of meat at lunch when it was his turn to do the serving. And when she smiled at him he would smile back at her in the soppiest way you can imagine, showing all his front teeth, top and bottom, and most of the others as well.

A teacher called Captain Lancaster took the nine-and ten-year-olds and this year that included me. Captain Lancaster, known sometimes as Lankers, was a horrid man. He had fiery carrot-coloured hair and a little clipped carrotty moustache and a fiery temper. Carrotty-coloured hairs were also sprouting out of his nostrils and his earholes. He had been a captain in the army during the war against Hitler and that was why he still called himself Captain Lancaster instead of just plain Mister. My father said it was an idiotic thing to do. There were millions of people still alive, he said, who had fought in that war, but most of them wanted to forget the whole beastly thing, especially those crummy military t.i.tles. Captain Lancaster was a violent man, and we were all terrified of him. He used to sit at his desk stroking his carrotty moustache and watching us with pale watery-blue eyes, searching for trouble. And as he sat there, he would make queer snuffling grunts through his nose, like some dog sniffing round a rabbit hole.

Mr Snoddy, our headmaster, took the top form, the eleven-year-olds, and everybody liked him. He was a small round man with a huge scarlet nose. I felt sorry for him having a nose like that. It was so big and inflamed it looked as though it might explode at any moment and blow him up.

A funny thing about Mr Snoddy was that he always brought a gla.s.s of water with him into cla.s.s, and this he kept sipping right through the lesson. At least everyone thought thought it was a gla.s.s of water. Everyone, that is, except me and my best friend, Sidney Morgan. We knew differently, and this is how we found out. My father looked after Mr Snoddy's car and I always took his repair bills with me to school to save postage. One day during break I went to Mr Snoddy's study to give him a bill and Sidney Morgan came along with me. He didn't come for any special reason. We just happened to be together at the time. And as we went in, we saw Mr Snoddy standing by his desk refilling his famous gla.s.s of water from a bottle labelled Gordon's Gin. He jumped a mile when he saw us. it was a gla.s.s of water. Everyone, that is, except me and my best friend, Sidney Morgan. We knew differently, and this is how we found out. My father looked after Mr Snoddy's car and I always took his repair bills with me to school to save postage. One day during break I went to Mr Snoddy's study to give him a bill and Sidney Morgan came along with me. He didn't come for any special reason. We just happened to be together at the time. And as we went in, we saw Mr Snoddy standing by his desk refilling his famous gla.s.s of water from a bottle labelled Gordon's Gin. He jumped a mile when he saw us.

'You should have knocked,' he said, sliding the bottle behind a pile of books.

'I'm sorry, sir,' I said. 'I brought my father's bill.'

'Ah,' he said. 'Yes. Very well. And what do you you want, Sidney?' want, Sidney?'

'Nothing, sir,' Sidney Morgan said. 'Nothing at all.'

'Off you go, then, both of you,' Mr Snoddy said, keeping his hand on the bottle behind the books. 'Run along.'

Outside in the corridor, we made a pact that we wouldn't tell any of the other children about what we had seen. Mr Snoddy had always been kind to us and we wanted to repay him by keeping his deep dark secret to ourselves.

The only person I told was my father, and when he heard it, he said, 'I don't blame him one bit. If I was unlucky enough to be married to Mrs Snoddy, I would drink something a bit stronger than gin.'

'What would you drink, Dad?'

'Poison,' he said. 'She's a frightful woman.'