Danny Ch. 4
Page 24-33
5. Read Story
Page 24
My Father’s Deep Dark Secret
Here I am
at the age of nine.
This picture was made
just before
all the excitement started
and I didn’t have
a worry in the world.
You will learn
as you get older,
just as I learned that autumn,
that no father
is perfect.
Page 25
Grown-ups
are complicated creatures,
full of quirks and secrets.
Some have quirkier quirks
and deeper secrets
than others,
but all of them,
including one’s own parents,
have two or three private habits
hidden up their sleeves
that would probably
make you gasp
if you knew about them.
The rest of this book
is about a most private
and secret habit
my father had,
and about the strange adventures
it led us both into.
It all started
on a Saturday evening.
It was the first Saturday
of September.
Around six o’clock
my father and I had supper together
in the caravan as usual.
Then I went to bed.
My father told me
a fine story and kissed me good-night.
I fell asleep.
For some reason
I woke up again
during the night.
I lay still,
listening for the sound
of my father’s breathing
in the bunk above mine.
I could hear nothing.
He wasn’t there,
I was certain of that.
This meant that
he had gone back
to the workshop
to finish a job.
He often did that
after he had tucked me in.
I listened for the usual
workshop sounds,
the little clinking noises
of metal against metal
or the tap of a hammer.
They always
comforted me tremendously,
those noises in the night,
because they told me
my father was close at hand.
But on this night,
no sound came
from the workshop.
The filling-station
was silent.
I got out of my bunk
and found a box of matches
by the sink.
I struck one
and held it up
to the funny old clock
that hung on the wall
above the kettle.
It said ten past eleven.
I went to the door
of the caravan.
‘Dad,’ I said softly.
‘Dad, are you there?’
Page 26
No answer.
There was
a small wooden platform
outside the caravan door,
about four feet
above the ground.
I stood on the platform
and gazed around me.
‘Dad!’ I
called out.
‘Where are you?’
Still no answer.
In pajamas and bare feet,
I went down the caravan steps
and crossed over
to the workshop.
I switched on the light.
The old car
we had been working on
through the day
was still there,
but not my father.
I have already told you
he did not have a car
of his own,
so there was no question
of his having gone
for a drive.
Page 27
He wouldn’t have
done that anyway.
I was sure
he would never willingly
have left me alone
in the filling-station
at night.
In which case,
I thought,
he must have fainted suddenly
from some awful illness
or fallen down
and banged his head.
I would need
a light
if I was going
to find him.
I took the torch
from the bench
in the workshop.
I looked in the office.
I went around
and searched
behind the office
and behind the workshop.
I ran down the field
to the lavatory.
It was empty.
‘Dad!’
I shouted into the darkness.
‘Dad! Where are you?’
I ran back to the caravan.
I shone the light
into his bunk
to make absolutely sure
he wasn’t there.
He wasn’t in his bunk.
I stood in the dark caravan
and for the first time
in my life
I felt a touch of panic.
The filling-station
was a long way
from the nearest farmhouse.
I took the blanket
from my bunk
and put it
round my shoulders.
Then I went out
the caravan door
and sat on the platform
with my feet
on the top step
of the ladder.
There was a new moon
in the sky
and across the road
the big field lay pale
and deserted
in the moonlight.
The silence was deathly.
I don’t know
how long I sat there.
It may have been
one hour.
It could have
been two.
But I never dozed off.
I wanted to keep listening
all the time.
If I listened very carefully
I might hear something
that would tell me
where he was.
Then, at last,
from far away,
I heard the faint tap-tap
of footsteps
on the road.
Page 28
The footsteps
were coming closer
and closer.
Tap… tap… tap… tap…
Was it him?
Or was it
somebody else?
I sat still,
watching the road.
I couldn’t see
very far along it.
It faded away
into a misty
moonlit darkness.
Tap… tap… tap… tap…
came the footsteps.
Then out of the mist
a figure appeared.
It was him!
I jumped down the steps
and ran on to the road
to meet him.
‘Danny!’ he cried.
‘What on earth’s
the matter?’
‘I thought something awful
had happened to you,’
I said.
He took my hand
in his and walked me back
to the caravan in silence.
Then he tucked me
into my bunk.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.
‘I should never have done it.
But you don’t usually wake up,
do you?’
‘Where did you go, Dad?’
‘You must be tired out,’
he said.
‘I’m not a bit tired.
Couldn’t we light the lamp
for a little while?’
My father put a match
to the wick of the lamp
hanging from the ceiling
and the little yellow flame
sprang up
and filled the inside
of the caravan
with pale light.
‘How about a hot drink?’
he said.
‘Yes, please.’
He lit the paraffin burner
and put the kettle on to boil.
‘I have decided something,’
he said.
‘I am going to
let you in on
the deepest
darkest secret
of my whole life.’
I was sitting up
in my bunk
watching my father.
Page 29
‘You asked me
where I had been,’
he said.
‘The truth is
I was up
in Hazell’s Wood.’
‘Hazell’s Wood!’
I cried.
‘That’s miles away!’
‘Six miles and a half,’
my father said.
‘I know
I shouldn’t have gone
and I’m very,
very sorry about it,
but I had such
a powerful yearning…’
His voice trailed away
into nothingness.
‘But why would you
want to go
all the way
up to Hazell’s Wood?’
I asked.
He spooned
cocoa powder
and sugar
into two mugs,
doing it very slowly
and levelling
each spoonful
as though
he were measuring
medicine.
‘Do you know
what is meant
by poaching?’
he asked.
‘Poaching?
Not really, no.’
‘It means
going up
into the woods
in the dead of night
and coming back
with something
for the pot.
Poachers in other places
poach all sorts
of different things,
but around here
it’s always pheasants.’
‘You mean stealing them?’
I said, aghast.
‘We don’t
look at it
that way,’
my father said.
‘Poaching is an art.
A great poacher
is a great artist.’
‘Is that actually
what you were doing
in Hazell’s Wood, Dad?
Poaching pheasants?’
‘I was practising the art,’
he said.
‘The art of poaching.’
I was shocked.
My own father a thief!
This gentle lovely man!
I couldn’t believe
he would go
creeping into the woods
at night
to pinch valuable birds
belonging to
somebody else.
‘The kettle’s boiling,’
I said.
‘Ah, so it is.’
He poured the water
into the mugs
and brought mine
over to me.
Then he fetched
his own
and sat with it
at the end
of my bunk.
Page 30
‘Your grandad,’
he said,
‘my own dad,
was a magnificent
and splendiferous
poacher.
It was he
who taught me
all about it.
I caught the poaching fever
from him
when I was ten years old
and I’ve never lost it
since.
Mind you,
in those days
just about every man
in our village
was out in the woods
at night
poaching pheasants.
And they did it
not only because
they loved the sport
but because
they needed food
for their families.
When I was a boy,
times were bad
for a lot of people
in England.
There was very little work
to be had anywhere,
and some families
were literally
starving.
Yet a few miles away
in the rich man’s wood,
thousands of pheasants
were being fed like kings
twice a day.
So can you blame my dad
for going out occasionally
and coming home
with a bird or two
for the family to eat?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Of course not.
But we’re not starving here, Dad.’
‘You’ve missed the point,
Danny boy!
You’ve missed
the whole point!
Poaching is such
a fabulous
and exciting sport
that once you start doing it,
it gets into your blood
and you can’t give it up!
Just imagine,’ he said,
leaping off the bunk
and waving his mug in the air,
‘just imagine
for a minute
that you are all alone
up there in the dark wood,
and the wood is full of keepers
hiding behind the trees
and the keepers have guns…’
‘Guns!’ I gasped.
‘They don’t have guns!’
‘All keepers have guns, Danny.
It’s for the vermin mostly,
the foxes and stoats
and weasels who go after
the pheasants.
But they’ll always
take a pot
at a poacher, too,
if they spot him.’
Page 31
‘Dad, you’re joking.’
‘Not at all.
But they only do it
from behind.
Only when you’re
trying to escape.
They like to pepper you
in the legs at about fifty yards.’
‘They can’t do that!’
I cried.
‘They could go to prison
for shooting someone!’
‘You could go to prison
for poaching,’
my father said.
There was a glint
and a sparkle
in his eyes now
that I had never
seen before.
‘Many’s the night
when I was a boy, Danny,
I’ve gone into the kitchen
and seen my old dad
lying face down
on the table
and Mum standing over him
digging the gunshot pellets
out of his backside
with a potato-knife.’
‘It’s not true,’ I said,
starting to laugh.
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘Yes, I believe you.’
‘Towards the end,
he was so covered
in tiny little white scars
he looked exactly like
it was snowing.’
‘I don’t know
why I’m laughing,’ I said.
‘It’s not funny,
it’s horrible.’
‘ “Poacher’s bottom”
they used to call it,’
my father said.
‘And there wasn’t a man
in the whole village
who didn’t have
a bit of it
one way or another.
But my dad
was the champion.
How’s the cocoa?’
‘Fine, thank you.’
‘If you’re hungry
we could have
a midnight feast?’ he said.
‘Could we, Dad?’
‘Of course.’
Page 32
My father got out
the bread-tin
and the butter and cheese
and started making sandwiches.
‘Let me tell you about
this phony pheasant-shooting
business,’ he said.
‘First of all,
it is practiced
only by the rich.
Only the very rich
can afford to rear pheasants
just for the fun
of shooting them down
when they grow up.
These wealthy idiots
spend huge sums of money
every year
buying baby pheasants
from pheasant farms
and rearing them in pens
until they are big enough
to be put out
into the woods.
In the woods,
the young birds
hang around
like flocks of chickens.
They are guarded
by keepers
and fed twice a day
on the best corn
until they’re so fat
they can hardly fly.
Then beaters are hired
who walk through the woods
clapping their hands
and making as much noise
as they can
to drive the half-tame pheasants
towards the half-baked men
and their guns.
Page 33
After that,
it’s bang bang bang
and down they come.
Would you like strawberry jam
on one of these?’
‘Yes, please,’ I said.
‘One jam and one cheese.
But Dad…’
‘What?’
‘How do you
actually catch t
he pheasants
when you’re poaching?
Do you have a gun
hidden away up there?’
‘A gun!’
he cried, disgusted.
‘Real poachers
don’t shoot pheasants, Danny,
didn’t you know that?
You’ve only got
to fire a cap-pistol
up in those woods
and the keepers’ll
be on you.’
‘Then how do you do it?’
‘Ah,’ my father said,
and the eyelids
drooped over the eyes,
veiled and secretive.
He spread strawberry jam
thickly on a piece of bread,
taking his time.
‘These things
are big secrets,’ he said.
‘Very big secrets indeed.
But I reckon
if my father
could tell them to me,
then maybe
I can tell them to you.
Would you like me
to do that?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Tell me now’.