'There's another!' I cried.
Thump! Thump!
'Two more!' my father yelled.
Thump!
Thump! Thump! Thump!
'Jeepers!' my father said.
Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!
Thump! Thump!
All around us the pheasants were starting to rain down out of the trees. We began rushing round madly in the dark, sweeping the ground with our torches.
Thump! Thump! Thump! This lot fell almost on top of me. I was right under the tree as they came down and I found all three of them immediately -- two cocks and a hen. They were limp and warm, the feathers wonderfully soft in the hand.
'Where shall I put them, Dad?' I called out.
'Lay them here, Danny! Just pile them up here where it's light!'
My father was standing on the edge of the clearing with the moonlight streaming down all over him and a great bunch of pheasants in each hand. His face was bright, his eyes big and bright and wonderful, and he was staring around him like a child who has just discovered that the whole world is made of chocolate.
Thump!
Thump! Thump!
'It's too many!' I said.
'It's beautiful!' he cried. He dumped the birds he was carrying and ran off to look for more.
Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!
Thump!
It was easy to find them now. There were one or two lying under every tree. I quickly collected six more, three in each hand, and ran back and dumped them with the others. Then six more. Then six more after that.
And still they kept falling.
My father was in a whirl of excitement now, dashing about like a mad ghost under the trees. I could see the beam of his torch waving round in the dark, and every time he found a bird he gave a little yelp of triumph.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
'Hey Danny!' he shouted.
'Yes, I'm over here! What is it, Dad?'
'What do you think the great Mr Victor Hazell would say if he could see this?'
'Don't talk about it,' I said.
For three or four minutes, the pheasants kept on falling. Then suddenly they stopped.
'Keep searching!' my father shouted. 'There's plenty more on the ground!'
'Dad,' I said, 'don't you think we ought to get out while the going's good?'
'Never!' he shouted. 'Not on your life!'
We went on searching. Between us we looked under every tree within a hundred yards of the clearing, north, south, east and west, and I think we found most of them in the end. At the collecting-point there was a pile of pheasants as big as a bonfire.
'It's a miracle,' my father was saying. 'It's an absolute miracle.' He was staring at them in a kind of trance.
'Shouldn't we just take about six each and get out quick?' I said.
'I would like to count them, Danny'
'Dad! Not now!'
'I must count them.'
'Can't we do that later?'
'One...
'Two...
'Three...
'Four...'
He began counting them very carefully, picking up each bird in turn and laying it carefully to one side. The moon was directly overhead now, and the whole clearing was brilliantly lit up. I felt as though I was standing in the glare of powerful headlamps.
'A hundred and seventeen... a hundred and eighteen... a hundred and nineteen ... one hundred and twenty!' he cried. 'It's an all-time record!' He looked happier than I had ever seen him in his life. 'The most my dad ever got was fifteen and he was drunk for a week afterwards!' he said. 'But this... this, my dear boy, is an all-time world record!'
'I expect it is,' I said.
'And you did it, Danny! The whole thing was your idea in the first place!'
'I didn't do it, Dad.'
'Oh yes you did! And you know what that makes you, my dear boy? It makes you the champion of the world!' He pulled up his sweater and unwound the two big cotton sacks from round his belly. 'Here's yours,' he said, handing one of them to me. 'Fill it up quick!'
The light of the moon was so strong I could read the print across the front of the sack, J. W. CRUMP, it said, KESTON FLOUR MILLS, LONDON S.W. 17.
'You don't think that keeper with the brown teeth is watching us this very moment from behind a tree?' I said.
'No chance,' my father said. 'If he's anywhere he'll be down at the filling-station waiting to catch us coming home with the loot.'
We started loading the pheasants into the sacks. They were soft and floppy-necked and the skin underneath the feathers was still warm.
'We can't possibly carry this lot all the way home,' I said.
'Of course not. There'll be a taxi waiting for us on the track outside the wood.'
'A taxi! I said.
'My dad always made use of a taxi on a big job,' he said.
'Why a taxi, for heaven's sake?'
'It's more secret, Danny. Nobody knows who's inside a taxi except the driver.'
'Which driver?' I asked.
'Charlie Kinch. He's only too glad to oblige.'
'Does he know about poaching, too?'
'Old Charlie Kinch? Of course he does. He's poached more pheasants in his time than we've sold gallons of petrol.'
We finished loading the sacks and my father humped his on to his shoulders. I couldn't do that with mine. It was too heavy for me. 'Drag it,' my father said. 'Just drag it along the ground.' My sack had sixty birds inside it and it weighed a ton. But it slid quite easily over the dry leaves with me walking backwards and pulling it with both hands.
We came to the edge of the wood and peered through the hedge on to the track. My father said 'Charlie boy' very softly, and the old man behind the wheel of the taxi poked his head out into the moonlight and gave us a sly toothless grin. We slid through the hedge, dragging the sacks after us along the ground.
'Hello-hello-hello,' Charlie Kinch said. 'What's all this then?'
17
The Taxi
Two minutes later we were safely inside the taxi and cruising slowly down the bumpy track towards the road.
My father was bursting with pride and excitement. He kept leaning forward and tapping Charlie Kinch on the shoulder and saying, 'How about it, Charlie? How about this for a haul?' And Charlie kept glancing back pop-eyed at the huge bulging sacks. 'Cripes, man!' he kept saying. 'How did you do it?'
'Danny did it!' my father said proudly. 'My son Danny is the champion of the world.'
Then Charlie said, 'I reckon pheasants is going to be a bit scarce up at Mr Victor Hazell's opening-day shoot tomorrow, eh, Willum?'
'I imagine they are, Charlie,' my father said. 'I imagine they are.'
'All those fancy folk,' old Charlie said, 'driving in from miles around in their big shiny cars and there won't be a blinking bird anywhere for them to shoot!' Charlie Kinch started chuckling and chortling so much he nearly drove off the track.
'Dad,' I said. 'What on earth are you going to do with all these pheasants?'
'Share them out among our friends,' my father said. 'There's a dozen of them for Charlie here to start with. All right, Charlie?'
'That suits me,' Charlie said.
'Then there'll be a dozen for Doc Spencer. And another dozen for Enoch Samways...'
'You don't mean Sergeant Samways?' I gasped.
'Of course,' my father said. 'Enoch Samways is one of my very oldest friends.'
'Enoch's a good boy,' Charlie Kinch said. 'He's a lovely lad.'
Sergeant Enoch Samways, as I knew very well, was the village policeman. He was a huge, plump man with a bristly black moustache, and he strode up and down our High Street with the proud and measured tread of a man who knows he is in charge. The silver buttons on his uniform sparkled like diamonds and the mere sight of him frightened me so much I used to cross over to the other side of the street whenever he approached.
'Enoch Samways likes a piece of roasted pheasant as much as the next man,' my father said.
'I reckon he knows a thin
g or two about catching 'em as well,' Charlie Kinch said.
I was astounded. But I was also rather pleased because now that I knew the great Sergeant Samways was human like the rest of us, perhaps I wouldn't be so scared of him in future.
'Are you going to share them out tonight, Dad?' I asked.
'Not tonight, Danny, no. You must always walk home empty-handed after a poaching trip. You can never be sure Mr Rabbetts or one of his gang isn't waiting for you by the front door to see if you're carrying anything.'
'Ah, but he's a crafty one, that Mr Rabbetts is,' Charlie Kinch said. 'The best thing is to pour a pound of sugar in the petrol tank of his car when he ain't looking, then he can't ever come snooping round your house later on. We always made sure to give the keepers a little sugar in their tanks before we went out on a poach. I'm surprised you didn't bother to do that, Willum, especially on a big job like this one.'
'What does the sugar do?' I asked.
'Blimey, it gums up the whole ruddy works,' Charlie Kinch said. 'You've got to take the entire engine to pieces before it'll go again after it's had the sugar. Ain't that right, Willum?'
'That's quite right, Charlie,' my father said.
We came off the bumpy track on to the main road and Charlie Kinch got the old taxi into top gear and headed for the village. 'Are you dumping these birds at Mrs Glipstone's place tonight?' he asked.
'Yes,' my father told him. 'Drive straight to Mrs Clipstone's.'
'Why Mrs Clipstone's?' I asked. 'What's she got to do with it?'
'Mrs Clipstone delivers everyone's pheasants,' my father said. 'Haven't I told you that?'
'No, Dad, you haven't,' I said, aghast. I was now more stunned than ever. Mrs Grace Clipstone was the wife of the Reverend Lionel Clipstone, the local vicar.
'Always choose a respectable woman to deliver your pheasants,' my father announced. 'That's correct, Charlie, isn't it?'
'Mrs Clipstone's a right smart lady,' Charlie said.
I could hardly believe what they were saying. It was beginning to look as though just about everybody in the entire district was in on this poaching lark.
'The vicar is very fond of roasted pheasant for his dinner,' my father said.
'Who isn't?' Charlie Kinch said, and he started chuckling to himself all over again.
We were driving through the village now, and the street-lamps were lit and the men were wandering home from the pubs, all full of beer. I saw Mr Snoddy, my headmaster, a bit wobbly on his feet and trying to let himself in secretly through the side door of his house, but what he didn't see was Mrs Snoddy's sharp frosty face sticking out of the upstairs window, watching him.
'You know something, Danny,' my father said. 'We've done these birds a great kindness putting them to sleep in this nice painless way. They'd have had a nasty time of it tomorrow if we hadn't got them first.'
'Rotten shots, most of them fellows are,' Charlie Kinch said. 'At least half the birds finish up winged and wounded.'
The taxi turned left and swung in through the gates of the vicarage. There were no lights in the house and nobody met us. My father and I got out and dumped the pheasants in the coal-shed at the rear. Then we said goodbye to Charlie Kinch and began to walk the two miles back to the filling-station.
18
Home
Soon we had left the village behind us and were in open country. There was no one else in sight, just the two of us, my father and I, tired but happy, striding out along the curvy country road in the light of the moon.
'I can't believe it!' my father kept saying. 'I simply cannot believe we pulled it off!'
'My heart is still thumping,' I said.
'So is mine! So is mine! But oh, Danny,' he cried, laying a hand on my shoulder. 'Didn't we have a glorious time!'
We were walking right in the middle of the road as though it were a private driveway running through our country estate and we were the lords of all we surveyed.
'Do you realize, Danny,' my father said, 'that on this very night, on this Friday the thirtieth of September, you and I have actually bagged one hundred and twenty prime pheasants from Mr Victor Hazell's wood?'
I looked at my father. His face was alight with happiness and his arms were waving all over the place as he went prancing along the middle of the road with his funny iron foot going clink, clink, clink.
'Roasted pheasant!' he cried out, addressing the moon and the entire countryside. 'The finest and most succulent dish on earth! I don't suppose you've ever eaten roasted pheasant, have you, Danny?'
'Never,' I said.
'You wait!' he cried. 'You just wait till you taste it! It has an unbelievable flavour! It's sheer magic!'
'Does it have to be roasted, Dad?'
'Of course it has to be roasted. You don't ever boil a young bird. Why do you ask that?'
'I was wondering how we would do the roasting,' I said. 'Don't you have to have an oven or something?'
'Of course,' he said.
'But we don't have an oven, Dad. All we've got is a paraffin burner.'
'I know,' he said. 'And that is why I have decided to buy an oven.'
'Buy one!' I cried.
'Yes, Danny,' he said. 'With such a great and glorious stock of pheasants on our hands, it is important that we have the proper equipment. Therefore we shall go back into the village tomorrow morning and we shall buy an electric oven. We can get one at Wheeler's. And we'll put it in the workshop. We've got plenty of electric plugs in the workshop.'
'Won't it be very expensive?'
'No expense is too great for roasted pheasant,' my father announced superbly. And don't forget, Danny, before we put the bird in the oven, we have to lay strips of fat bacon across the breast to keep it nice and juicy. And bread sauce, too. We shall have to make bread sauce. You must never have roasted pheasant without lashings of bread sauce. There are three things you must always have with roasted pheasant - bread sauce, chipped potatoes and boiled parsnips.'
There was half a minute's silence as we both allowed ourselves the pleasure of dreaming about these beautiful foods.
And I'll tell you what else we've got to get,' my father said. 'We've got to get one of those deep freezers where you can store things for months and months and they never go rotten.'
'Dad!' I said. 'No!'
'But don't you realize, Danny, that even after we've given birds away to all our friends, to Charlie Kinch and the Reverend Clipstone and Doc Spencer and Enoch Samways and all the rest of them, there'll still be about fifty left for us. That is why we are going to need a deep freezer.'
'But it'll cost the earth!'
'And worth every penny of it!' he cried. 'Just imagine, Danny, my boy, any time we fancy a nice roasted pheasant for our supper, all we've got to do is open up the lid of the freezer and help ourselves! Kings and queens don't live any better than that!'
A barn-owl flew across the road in front of us, its great white wings waving slowly in the moonlight.
'Did your mum have an oven in the kitchen, Dad,' I asked, 'when you were a boy?'
'She had something better than an oven,' he said. 'It was called a cooker. It was a great big long black thing and we used to stoke it up with coal and keep it going for twenty-four hours a day. It never went out. And if we didn't have any coal, we used bits of wood.'
'Could you roast pheasants in it?'
'You could roast anything in it, Danny. It was a lovely thing, that old cooker. It used to keep the whole house warm in the winter.'
'But you never had a cooker of your own, did you, Dad, you and Mum, when you got married? Or an oven?'
'No,' he said. 'We couldn't afford things like that.'
'Then how did you roast your pheasants?'
'Ah,' he said. 'That was quite a trick. We used to build a fire outside the caravan and roast them on a spit, the way the gipsies do.'
'What's a spit?' I asked.
'It's just a long metal spike and you stick it through the pheasant and put it over the fire and keep
turning it round. What you do is you push two forked sticks into the ground, one on each side of the fire, and you rest the spit on the forks.'
'Did it roast them well?'
'Fairly well,' he said. 'But an oven would do it better. Listen Danny, Mr Wheeler has all sorts of marvellous ovens in his shop now. He's got one in there with so many dials and knobs on it, it looks like the cockpit of an airplane.'
'Is that the one you want to buy, Dad?'
'I don't know,' he said. 'We'll decide tomorrow.'
We kept walking and soon we saw the filling-station glimmering in the moonlight ahead of us.
'Will Mr Rabbetts be waiting for us, do you think, Dad?' I asked.
'If he is, you won't see him, Danny. They always hide and watch you from behind a hedge or a tree and they only come out if you are carrying a sack over your shoulder or if your pocket is bulging with something suspicious. We are carrying nothing at all. So don't worry about it.'
Whether or not Mr Rabbetts was watching us as we entered the filling-station and headed for the caravan, I don't know. We saw no sign of him. Inside the caravan, my father lit the paraffin lamp, and I lit the burner and put the kettle on to make us a cup of cocoa each.
'That', my father said as we sat sipping our hot cocoa a few minutes later, 'was the greatest time I've ever had in my whole life.'
19
Rockabye Baby
At eight-thirty the next morning my father went into the workshop and dialled Doc Spencer's number on the telephone.
'Now listen, Doctor,' he said. 'If you could be here at the filling-station in about half an hour, I think I might have a little surprise present for you.' The doctor said something in reply, and my father replaced the receiver.
At nine o'clock, Doc Spencer arrived in his car. My father went over to him and the two of them held a whispered conversation beside the pumps. Suddenly the tiny doctor clapped his hands together and sprang up high in the air, hooting with laughter.
'You don't mean it!' he cried. 'It's not possible!' He then rushed over to me and grasped my hand in his. 'I do congratulate you, my dear boy!' he cried, pumping my hand up and down so fiercely it nearly came off. 'What a triumph! What a miracle! What a victory! Now why on earth didn't I think of that method myself? You are a genius, sir! Hail to thee, dear Danny, you're the champion of the world!'
'Here she comes!' my father called out, pointing down the road. 'Here she comes, Doctor!'