Danny  Ch. 6  
Page 42-46

6. Read Story

Page 42

Mr Victor Hazell

The following Friday,
while we were having supper
in the caravan,
my father said,

‘If it’s all right
with you, Danny,
I’ll be going out again
tomorrow night.’

‘You mean poaching?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will it be Hazell’s Wood again?’

‘It’ll always be Hazell’s Wood,’
he said.

‘First because that’s where
all the pheasants are.
And second because
I don’t like Mr Hazell
one little bit
and it’s a pleasure
to poach his birds.’

I must pause here
to tell you something
about Mr Victor Hazell.

He was a brewer of beer
and he owned a huge brewery.
He was rich beyond words,
and his property stretched for miles
along either side of the valley.

All the land around us
belonged to him,
everything on both sides
of the road,
everything except
the small patch of ground
on which
our filling-station stood.

 

That patch belonged to my father.
It was a little island
in the middle of the vast ocean
of Mr Hazell’s estate.

Mr Victor Hazell
was a roaring snob
and he tried desperately
to get in with
what he believed were
the right kind of people.

He hunted with the hounds
and gave shooting parties
and wore fancy waistcoats.

Every week-day
he drove his enormous
silver Rolls-Royce
past our filling-station
on his way to the brewery.

Page 43

As he flashed by
we would sometimes
catch a glimpse
of the great glistening
beery face above the wheel,
pink as a ham,
all soft and inflamed
from drinking too much beer.

‘No,’ my father said,
‘I do not like Mr Victor Hazell
one little bit.
I haven’t forgotten
the way he spoke to you last year
when he came in for a fill-up.’

I hadn’t forgotten it either.
Mr Hazell had pulled up
alongside the pumps
in his glistening gleaming
Rolls-Royce and had said to me,

‘Fill her up
and look sharp about it.’

I was eight years old
at the time.

He didn’t get out of the car,
he just handed me
the key to the cap
of the petrol tank
and as he did so,
he barked out,
‘And keep
your filthy little hands
to yourself,
d’you understand?’

I didn’t understand at all,
so I said,
‘What do you mean, sir?’

There was a leather riding-crop
on the seat beside him.
He picked it up
and pointed it
at me like a pistol.

‘If you make
any dirty finger-marks
on my paintwork,’
he said,

‘I’ll step right out of
this car and give you
a good hiding.’

My father
was out of the workshop
almost before Mr Hazell
had finished speaking.

He strode up to
the window of the car
and placed his hands on the sill
and leaned in.

‘I don’t like
you speaking to my son
like that,’
he said.

His voice
was dangerously soft.

Mr. Hazell did not look at him.
He sat quite still
in the seat of his Rolls Royce,
his tiny piggy eyes
staring straight ahead.

There was a smug
superior little smile a
round the corners
of his mouth.

Page 44

‘You had no reason
to threaten him,’
my father went on.
‘He had done nothing wrong’

Mr Hazell
continued to act
as though my father
wasn’t there.

‘Next time
you threaten someone
with a good hiding
I suggest
you pick on a person
your own size,’
my father said.
‘Like me, for instance.’

Mr Hazell still did not move.

‘Now go away, please,’
my father said.
‘We do not wish
to serve you.’

He took the key
from my hand
and tossed it through
the window.

The Rolls-Royce
drove away fast
in a cloud of dust.

The very next day,
an inspector
from the local Department
of Health
arrived and said
he had come to
inspect our caravan.

Page 45

‘What do you want
to inspect our caravan for?’
my father asked.

‘To see if it’s
a fit place for humans
to live in,’
the man said.

‘We don’t allow people
to live in dirty
broken-down shacks
these days.’

My father showed him
the inside of the caravan
which was spotlessly clean
as always and
as cosy as could be,
and in the end
the man had to admit
there was nothing wrong with it.

Soon after that,
another inspector turned up
and took a sample of petrol
from one of our
underground storage tanks.

(top of Page 46)

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