'And keepers, Dad?'
'Yes,' he had said. 'But there's thick bushes all around and that helps.'
The clearing was about a hundred yards ahead of us. We stopped behind a big tree while my father let his eyes travel very slowly all round. He was checking each little shadow and every part of the wood within sight.
'We're going to have to crawl the next bit,' he whispered, letting go of my hand. 'Keep close behind me all the time, Danny, and do exactly as I do. If you see me lie flat on my face, you do the same. Right?'
'Right,' I whispered back.
'Off we go then. This is it!'
My father got down on his hands and knees and started crawling. I followed. He moved surprisingly fast on all fours and I had quite a job to keep up with him. Every few seconds he would glance back at me to see if I was all right, and each time he did so, I gave him a nod and a smile.
We crawled on and on, and then at last we were kneeling safely behind a big clump of bushes right on the edge of the clearing. My father was nudging me with his elbow and pointing through the branches at the pheasants.
The place was absolutely stiff with them. There must have been at least two hundred huge birds strutting around among the tree-stumps.
'You see what I mean?' he whispered.
It was a fantastic sight, a poacher's dream come true. And how close they were! Some of them were not ten paces from where we knelt. The hens were plump and creamy-brown. They were so fat their breast-feathers almost brushed the ground as they walked. The cocks were slim and elegant, with long tails and brilliant red patches round the eyes, like scarlet spectacles. I glanced at my father. His face was transfixed in ecstasy. The mouth was slightly open and the eyes were sparkling bright as they stared at the pheasants.
'There's a keeper,' he said softly.
I froze. At first I didn't even dare to look.
'Over there,' my father whispered.
I mustn't move, I told myself. Not even my head.
'Look carefully,' my father whispered. 'Over the other side, by that big tree.'
Slowly, I swivelled my eyeballs in the direction he indicated. Then I saw him.
'Dad!' I whispered.
'Don't move now, Danny. Stay well down.'
'Yes but Dad...'
'It's all right. He can't see us.'
We crouched close to the ground, watching the keeper. He was a smallish man with a cap on his head and a big double-barrelled shotgun under his arm. He never moved. He was like a little post standing there.
'Should we go?' I whispered.
The keeper's face was shadowed by the peak of his cap, but it seemed to me he was looking straight at us.
'Should we go, Dad?'
'Hush,' my father said.
Slowly, never taking his eyes from the keeper, he reached into his pocket and brought out a single raisin. He placed it in the palm of his right hand, and then quickly with a little flick of the wrist he threw the raisin high into the air. I watched it as it went sailing over the bushes and I saw it land within a yard of two hen birds standing beside an old tree-stump. Both birds turned their heads sharply at the drop of the raisin. Then one of them hopped over and made a quick peck at the ground and that must have been it.
I looked at the keeper. He hadn't moved.
I could feel a trickle of cold sweat running down one side of my forehead and across my cheek. I didn't dare lift a hand to wipe it away.
My father threw a second raisin into the clearing... then a third... and a fourth... and a fifth.
It takes guts to do that, I thought. Terrific guts. If I'd been alone I would never have stayed there for one second. But my father was in a sort of poacher's trance. For him, this was it. This was the moment of danger, the biggest thrill of all.
He kept on throwing the raisins into the clearing, swiftly, silently, one at a time. Flick went his wrist, and up went the raisin, high over the bushes, to land among the pheasants.
Then all at once, I saw the keeper turn away his head to inspect the wood behind him.
My father saw it too. Quick as a flash, he pulled the bag of raisins out of his pocket and tipped the whole lot into the palm of his right hand.
'Dad!' I whispered. 'Don't!'
But with a great sweep of the arm he flung the entire handful way over the bushes into the clearing.
They fell with a soft little patter, like raindrops on dry leaves, and every single pheasant in the place must have heard them fall. There was a flurry of wings and a rush to find the treasure.
The keeper's head flicked round as though there were a spring inside his neck. The birds were all pecking away madly at the raisins. The keeper took two quick paces forward, and for a moment I thought he was going in to investigate. But then he stopped, and his face came up and his eyes began travelling slowly round the edge of the clearing.
'Lie down flat!' my father whispered. 'Stay there! Don't move an inch!'
I flattened my body against the ground and pressed one side of my face into the brown leaves. The soil below the leaves had a queer pungent smell, like beer. Out of one eye, I saw my father raise his head just a tiny bit to watch the keeper. He kept watching him.
'Don't you love this?' he whispered to me.
I didn't dare answer him.
We lay there for what seemed like a hundred years.
At last I heard my father whisper, 'Panic's over. Follow me, Danny. But be extra careful, he's still there. And keep down low all the time.'
He started crawling away quickly on his hands and knees. I went after him. I kept thinking of the keeper who was somewhere behind us. I was very conscious of that keeper, and I was also very conscious of my own backside, and how it was sticking up in the air for all to see. I could understand now why 'poacher's bottom' was a fairly common complaint in this business.
We went along on our hands and knees for about a hundred yards.
'Now run!' my father said.
We got to our feet and ran, and a few minutes later we came out through the hedge into the lovely open safety of the cart-track.
'It went marvellously!' my father said, breathing heavily. 'Didn't it go absolutely marvellously?' His face was scarlet and glowing with triumph.
'Did the keeper see us?' I asked.
'Not on your life!' he said. 'And in a few minutes the sun will be going down and the birds will all be flying up to roost and that keeper will be sloping off home to his supper. Then all we've got to do is go back in again and help ourselves. We'll be picking them up off the ground like pebbles!'
He sat down on the grassy bank below the hedge. I sat down close to him. He put an arm round my shoulders and gave me a hug. 'You did well, Danny' he said. 'I'm right proud of you.'
15
The Keeper
We sat on the grassy bank below the hedge, waiting for darkness to fall. The sun had set now and the sky was a pale smoke blue, faintly glazed with yellow. In the wood behind us the shadows and the spaces in between the trees were turning from grey to black.
'You could offer me anywhere in the world at this moment,' my father said, 'and I wouldn't go.'
His whole face was glowing with happiness.
'We did it, Danny,' he said, laying a hand gently on my knee. 'We pulled it off. Doesn't that make you feel good?'
'Terrific,' I said. 'But it was a bit scary while it lasted.'
'Ah, but that's what poaching's all about,' he said. 'It scares the pants off us. That's why we love it. Look, there's a hawk!'
I looked where he was pointing and saw a kestrel hawk hovering superbly in the darkening sky above the ploughed field across the track.
'It's his last chance for supper tonight,' my father said. 'He'll be lucky if he sees anything now'
Except for the swift fluttering of its wings, the hawk remained absolutely motionless in the sky. It seemed to be suspended by some invisible thread, like a toy bird hanging from the ceiling. Then suddenly it folded its wings and plummeted towards the earth at an i
ncredible speed. This was a sight that always thrilled me.
'What do you think he saw, Dad?'
'A young rabbit perhaps,' my father said. 'Or a vole or a field-mouse. None of them has a chance when there's a kestrel overhead.'
We waited to see if the hawk would fly up again. He didn't, which meant he had caught his prey and was eating it on the ground.
'How long does a sleeping pill take to work?' I asked.
'I don't know the answer to that one,' my father said. 'I imagine it's about half an hour.'
'It might be different with pheasants though, Dad.'
'It might,' he said. 'We've got to wait a while anyway, to give the keepers time to go home. They'll be off as soon as it gets dark. I've brought an apple for each of us,' he added, fishing into one of his pockets.
'A Cox's Orange Pippin,' I said, smiling. 'Thank you very much.'
We sat there munching away.
'One of the nice things about a Cox's Orange Pippin', my father said, 'is that the pips rattle when it's ripe. Shake it and you can hear them rattling.'
I shook my half-eaten apple. The pips rattled.
'Look out!' he whispered sharply. 'There's someone coming.'
The man had appeared suddenly and silently out of the dusk and was quite close before my father saw him. 'It's another keeper,' he whispered. 'Just sit tight and don't say a word.'
We both watched the keeper as he came down the track towards us. He had a shotgun under his arm and there was a black Labrador walking at his heel. He stopped when he was a few paces away and the dog stopped with him and stayed behind him, watching us through the keeper's legs.
'Good evening,' my father said, nice and friendly.
This one was a tall bony man with a hard eye and a hard cheek and hard dangerous hands.
'I know you,' he said, coming closer, 'I know the both of you.'
My father didn't answer this.
'You're from the fillin'-station. Right?'
His lips were thin and dry with some sort of a brownish crust over them.
'You're from the fillin'-station and that's your boy and you live in that filthy old caravan. Right?'
'What are we playing?' my father said. 'Twenty Questions?'
The keeper spat out a big gob of spit and I saw it go sailing through the air and land with a plop on a patch of dry dust six inches from my father's plaster foot. It looked like a little baby oyster lying there.
'Beat it,' the man said. 'Go on. Get out.'
When he spoke, his upper lip lifted above the gum and I could see a row of small discoloured teeth. One of them was black. The others were brownish-yellow, like the seeds of a pomegranate.
'This happens to be a public footpath,' my father said. 'Kindly do not molest us.'
The keeper shifted the gun from his left arm to his right.
'You're loiterin',' he said, 'with intent to commit a nuisance. I could run you in for that.'
'No you couldn't,' my father said.
All this made me rather nervous.
'I see you broke your foot,' the keeper said. 'You didn't by any chance fall into a hole in the ground, did you?'
'It's been a nice walk, Danny,' my father said, putting a hand on my knee, 'but it's time we went home for our supper.' He stood up and so did I. We wandered off down the track the way we had come, leaving the keeper standing there, and soon he was out of sight in the half-darkness behind us.
'That's the head keeper,' my father said. 'His name is Rabbetts.'
'Do we have to go home, Dad?'
'Home!' my father cried. 'My dear boy, we're just beginning! Come in here.'
There was a gate on our right leading into a field, and we climbed over it and sat down behind the hedge.
'Mr Rabbetts is also due for his supper,' my father said. 'You mustn't worry about him.'
We sat quietly behind the hedge waiting for the keeper to walk past us on his way home. A few stars were showing, and a bright three-quarter moon was coming up over the hills behind us in the east.
'We have to be careful of that dog,' my father said. 'When they come by, hold your breath and don't move a muscle.'
'Won't the dog smell us out anyway?' I asked.
'No,' my father said. 'There's no wind to carry the scent. Look out! Here they come! Don't move!'
The keeper came loping softly down the track with the dog padding quick and soft-footed at his heel. I took a deep breath and held it as they went by.
When they were some distance away, my father stood up and said, 'It's all clear. He won't be coming back tonight.'
'Are you sure?'
'I'm positive, Danny'
'What about the other one, the one in the clearing?'
'He'll be gone too.'
'Mightn't one of them be waiting for us at the bottom of the track?' I asked. 'By the gap in the hedge?'
'There wouldn't be any point in him doing that,' my father said. 'There's at least twenty different ways of reaching the road when you come out of HazelPs Wood. Mr Rabbetts knows that.'
We stayed behind the hedge for a few minutes more just to be on the safe side.
'Isn't it a marvellous thought though, Danny,' my father said, 'that there's about two hundred pheasants at this very moment roosting up in those trees and already they're beginning to feel groggy? Soon they'll be falling out of the branches like raindrops!'
The three-quarter moon was well above the hills now, and the sky was filled with stars as we climbed back over the gate and began walking up the track towards the wood.
16
The Champion of the World
It was not as dark as I had expected it to be inside the wood this time. Little glints and glimmers from the brilliant moon outside shone through the leaves and gave the place a cold eerie look.
'I brought a light for each of us,' my father said. 'We're going to need it later on.' He handed me one of those small pocket torches shaped like a fountainpen. I switched mine on. It threw a long narrow beam of surprising brightness, and when I moved it around it was like waving a very long white wand among the trees. I switched it off.
We started walking back towards the clearing where the pheasants had eaten the raisins.
'This', my father said, 'will be the first time in the history of the world that anyone has even tried to poach roosting pheasants. Isn't it marvellous though, to be able to walk around without worrying about keepers?'
'You don't think Mr Rabbetts might have sneaked back again just to make sure?'
'Never,' my father said. 'He's gone home to his supper.'
I couldn't help thinking that if I had been Mr Rabbetts, and if I had seen two suspicious-looking characters lurking just outside my precious pheasant wood, I certainly would not have gone home to my supper. My father must have sensed my fears because once again he reached out and took my hand in his, folding his long warm fingers around mine.
Hand in hand, we threaded our way through the trees towards the clearing. In a few minutes we were there. 'Here's where we threw the raisins,' my father said.
I peered through the bushes. The clearing lay pale and milky in the moonlight.
'What do we do next?' I asked.
'We stay here and wait,' my father said. I could just make out his face under the peak of his cap, the lips pale, the cheeks flushed, the eyes shining bright.
'Are they all roosting, Dad?'
'Yes. They're all around us. They don't go far.'
'Could I see them if I shone my light up into the branches?'
'No,' he said. 'They go up pretty high and they hide in among the leaves.'
We stood waiting for something to happen.
Nothing happened. It was very quiet there in the wood.
'Danny,' my father said.
'Yes, Dad?'
'I've been wondering how a bird manages to keep its balance sitting on a branch when it's asleep.'
'I don't know,' I said. 'Why?'
'It's very peculiar,' he said.
'
What's peculiar?'
'It's peculiar that a bird doesn't topple off its perch as soon as it goes to sleep. After all, if we were sitting on a branch and we went to sleep, we would fall off at once, wouldn't we?'
'Birds have claws and long toes, Dad. I expect they hold on with those.'
'I know that, Danny. But I still don't understand why the toes keep gripping the perch once the bird is asleep. Surely everything goes limp when you fall asleep.'
I waited for him to go on.
'I was just thinking', he said, 'that if a bird can keep its balance when it's asleep, then surely there isn't any reason why the pills should make it fall down.'
'It's doped,' I said. 'Surely it will fall down if it's doped.'
'But isn't that simply a deeper sort of sleep?' he said. 'Why should we expect it to fall down just because it's in a deeper sleep?'
There was a gloomy silence.
'I should have tested it with roosters,' my father added. Suddenly the blood seemed to have drained right out of his cheeks. His face was so pale I thought he might be going to faint. 'My dad would have tested it with roosters before he did anything else,' he said.
At that moment there came a soft thump from the wood behind us.
'What was that?' I asked.
'Ssshh!'
We stood listening.
Thump!
'There's another!' I said.
It was a deep muffled sound as though a bag of sand had been dropped to the ground.
Thump!
'They're pheasants!' I cried.
'Wait!'
'They must be pheasants, Dad!'
Thump! Thump!
'You may be right, Danny!'
We switched on our torches and ran towards the sounds.
'Where were they?' my father said.
'Over here, Dad! Two of them were over here!'
'I thought they were this way. Keep looking! They can't be far!'
We searched for about a minute.
'Here's one!' my father called.
When I got to him he was holding a magnificent cock bird in both hands. We examined it closely with our torches.
'It's doped to high heaven,' my father said. 'It won't wake up for a week.'
Thump!