Danny The Champion Of The World Part 3

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 paint-work,' 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 around the corners of his mouth.

'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. '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. My father explained to me they were checking up to see if we were mixing some of our second-grade petrol in with the first-grade stuff, which is an old dodge practised by crooked filling-station owners. Of course we were not doing this.

Hardly a week went by without some local official dropping in to check up on one thing or another, and there was little doubt, my father said, that the long and powerful arm of Mr Hazell was reaching out behind the scenes and trying to run us off our land.

So, all in all, you can see why it gave my father a certain pleasure to poach Mr Victor Hazell's pheasants.

That night we put the raisins in to soak.

The next day was poaching day and don't think my father didn't know it. From the moment he got out of his bunk in the morning the excitement began to build up inside him. This was a Sat.u.r.day so I was home from school, and we spent most of the day in the workshop decarbonizing the cylinders of Mr Pratchett's Austin Seven. It was a great little car, built in 1933, a tiny miracle of a machine that still ran as sweetly as ever though it was now more than forty years old. My father said that these Austin Sevens, better known in their time as Baby Austins, were the first successful mini-cars ever made. Mr Pratchett, who owned a turkey-farm near Aylesbury, was as proud as could be of this one, and he always brought it to us for repair.

Working together, we released the valve springs and drew out the valves. We unscrewed the cylinder-head nuts and lifted off the head itself. Then we began sc.r.a.ping the carbon from the inside of the head and from the tops of the pistons.

'I want to be away by six o'clock,' my father said. 'Then I will get to the wood exactly at twilight.'

'Why at twilight?' I asked.

'Because at twilight everything inside the wood becomes veiled and shady. You can see to move around but it's not easy for someone else to see you. And when danger threatens you can always hide in the shadows which are darker than a wolf's mouth.'

'Why don't you wait till it gets really dark?' I asked. 'Then you wouldn't be seen at all.'

'You wouldn't catch anything if you did that,' he said. 'When night comes on, all the pheasants fly up into the trees to roost. Pheasants are just like other birds. They never sleep on the ground. Twilight', my father added, 'begins about seven-thirty this week. And as it's at least an hour and a half's walk to the wood, I must not leave here later than six o'clock.'

'Are you going to use The Sticky Hat The Sticky Hat or will it be or will it be The Horse-hair Stopper?' The Horse-hair Stopper?' I asked. I asked.

'Sticky Hat,' he said. 'I'm very fond of he said. 'I'm very fond of Sticky Hat Sticky Hat.'

'When will you be back?'

'About ten o'clock,' he said. 'Ten-thirty at the latest. I promise I'll be back by ten-thirty. You're quite sure you don't mind being left alone?'

'Quite sure,' I said. 'But you will be all right, won't you, Dad?'

'Don't you worry about me,' he said, putting his arm round my shoulders and giving me a hug.

'But you said there wasn't a man in your dad's village that didn't get a bit shot up by the keepers sooner or later.'

'Ah,' my father said. 'Yes. I did say that, didn't I? But in those days there were lots more keepers up in the woods than there are now. There were keepers behind almost every tree.'

'How many are there now in Hazell's Wood?'

'Not too many,' he said. 'Not too many at all.'

As the day wore on, I could see my father getting more and more impatient and excited. By five o'clock we had finished work on the Baby Austin and together we ran her up and down the road to test her out.

At five-thirty we had an early supper of sausages and bacon, but my father hardly ate anything at all.

At six o'clock precisely he kissed me goodbye and said, 'Promise not to wait up for me, Danny. Put yourself to bed at eight and go to sleep. Right?'

He set off down the road and I stood on the platform of the caravan, watching him go. I loved the way he moved. He had that long loping stride all countrymen have who are used to covering great distances on foot. He was wearing an old navy-blue sweater and an even older cap on his head. He turned and waved to me. I waved back. Then he disappeared round a bend in the road.

7.

The Baby Austin Inside the caravan I stood on a chair and lit the oil lamp in the ceiling. I had some weekend homework to do and this was as good a time as any to do it. I laid my books out on the table and sat down. But I found it impossible to keep my mind on my work.

The clock said half-past seven. This was the twilight time. He would be there now. I pictured him in his old navy-blue sweater and peaked cap walking soft-footed up the track towards the wood. He told me he wore the sweater because navy-blue hardly showed up at all in the dark. Black was even better, he said. But he didn't have a black one and navy-blue was next best. The peaked cap was important too, he explained, because the peak cast a shadow over one's face. Just about now he would be wriggling through the hedge and entering the wood. Inside the wood I could see him treading carefully over the leafy ground, stopping, listening, going on again, and all the time searching and searching for the keeper who would somewhere be standing still as a post beside a big tree with a gun under his arm. Keepers hardly move at all when they are in a wood watching for poachers, he had told me. They stand dead still right up against the trunk of a tree and it's not easy to spot a motionless man in that position at twilight when the shadows are as dark as a wolf's mouth.

I closed my books. It was no good trying to work. I decided to go to bed instead. I undressed and put on my pyjamas and climbed into my bunk. I left the lamp burning. Soon I fell asleep.

When I opened my eyes again, the oil-lamp was still glowing and the clock on the wall said ten minutes past two.

Ten minutes past two!

I jumped out of my bunk and looked into the bunk above mine. It was empty.

He had promised he would be home by ten-thirty at the latest, and he never broke promises.

He was nearly four hours overdue!

At that moment, a frightful sense of doom came over me. Something really had happened to him this time. I felt quite certain of it.

Hold it, I told myself. Don't get panicky. Last week you got all panicky and you made a bit of a fool of yourself.

Yes, but last week was a different thing altogether. He had made no promises to me last week. This time he had said, 'I promise I'll be back by ten-thirty.' Those were his exact words. And he never, absolutely never, broke a promise.

I looked again at the clock. He had left the caravan at six, which meant he had been gone over eight hours! he had been gone over eight hours!

It took me two seconds to decide what I should do.

Very quickly I stripped off my pyjamas and put on my shirt and my jeans. Perhaps the keepers had shot him up so badly he couldn't walk. I pulled my sweater over my head. It was neither navy-blue nor black. It was a sort of pale brown. It would have to do. Perhaps he was lying in the wood bleeding to death. My sneakers were the wrong colour too. They were white. But they were also dirty and that took a lot of the whiteness away. How long would it take me to get to the wood? An hour and a half. Less if I ran most of the way, but not much less. As I bent down to tie the laces, I noticed my hands were shaking. And my stomach had that awful p.r.i.c.kly feeling as though it were full of small needles.

I ran down the steps of the caravan and across to the workshop to get the torch. A torch is a good companion when you are alone outdoors at night and I wanted it with me. I grabbed the torch and went out of the workshop. I paused for a moment beside the pumps. The moon had long since disappeared but the sky was clear and a great ma.s.s of stars was wheeling above my head. There was no wind at all, no sound of any kind. To my right, going away into the blackness of the countryside, lay the lonely road that led to the dangerous wood.

Six-and-a-half miles.

Thank heavens I knew the way.

But it was going to be a long hard slog. I must try to keep a good steady pace and not run myself to a standstill in the first mile.

At that point a wild and marvellous idea came to me.

Why shouldn't I go in the Baby Austin? I really did know how to drive. My father had always allowed me to move the cars around when they came in for repair. He let me drive them into the workshop and back them out again afterwards. And sometimes I drove one of them slowly around the pumps in first gear. I loved doing it. And I would get there much much quicker if I went by car. This was an emergency. If he was wounded and bleeding badly, then every minute counted. I had never driven on the road, but I would surely not meet any other cars at this time of night. I would go very slowly and keep close in to the hedge on the proper side.

I went back to the workshop and switched on the light. I opened the double doors. I got into the driver's seat of the Baby Austin. I turned on the ignition key. I pulled out the choke. I found the starter-b.u.t.ton and pressed it. The motor coughed once, then started.

Now for the lights. There was a pointed switch on the dash-board and I turned it to S for side lights only. The sidelights came on. I felt for the clutch pedal with my toe. I was just able to reach it, but I had to point my toe if I wanted to press it all the way down. I pressed it down. Then I slipped the gear-lever into reverse. Slowly I backed the car out of the workshop.

I left her ticking over and went back to switch off the workshop light. It was better to keep everything looking as normal as possible. The filling-station was in darkness now except for a dim light coming from the caravan where the little oil-lamp was still burning. I decided to leave that on.

I got back into the car. I closed the door. The sidelights were so dim I hardly knew they were there. I switched on the headlamps. That was better. I searched for the dipper with my foot. I found it. I tried it and it worked. I put the headlamps on full. If I met another car, I must remember to dip them, although actually they weren't bright enough to dazzle a c.o.c.kroach. They didn't give any more light than a couple of good torches.

I pressed down the clutch pedal again and pushed the gear-lever into first. This was it. My heart was thumping away so fiercely I could hear it in my throat. Ten yards away lay the main road. It was as dark as doomsday. I released the clutch very slowly. At the same time, I pressed down just a fraction of an inch on the accelerator with my right toe, and stealthily, oh most wonderfully, the little car began to lean forward and steal into motion. I pressed a shade harder on the accelerator. We crept out of the filling-station on to the dark deserted road.

I will not pretend I wasn't petrified. I was. But mixed in with the awful fear was a glorious feeling of excitement. Most of the really exciting things we do in our lives scare us to death. They wouldn't be exciting if they didn't. I sat very stiff and upright in my seat, gripping the steering-wheel tight with both hands. My eyes were about level with the top of the steering-wheel. I could have done with a cushion to raise me up higher, but it was too late for that.

The road seemed awfully narrow in the dark. I knew there was room enough for two cars to pa.s.s each other. I had seen them from the filling-station doing it a million times. But it didn't look that way to me from where I was. At any moment something with blazing headlamps might come roaring towards me at sixty miles an hour, a heavy lorry or one of those big long-distance buses that travel through the night full of pa.s.sengers. Was I too much in the middle of the road? Yes, I was. But I didn't want to pull in closer for fear of hitting the bank. If I hit the bank and bust the front axle, then all would be lost and I would never get my father home.

The motor was beginning to rattle and shake. I was still in first gear. It was vital to change up into second otherwise the engine would get too hot. I knew how the change was done but I had never actually tried doing it. Around the filling-station I had always stayed in first gear.

Well, here goes.

I eased my foot off the accelerator. I pressed the clutch down and held it there. I found the gear-lever and pulled it straight back, from first into second. I released the clutch and pressed on the accelerator. The little car leaped forward as though it had been stung. We were in second gear.

What speed were we going? I glanced at the speedometer. It was lit up very faintly, but I was able to read it. It said fifteen miles an hour. Good. That was quite fast enough. I would stay in second gear. I started figuring out how long it would take me to do six miles travelling at fifteen miles an hour.

At sixty miles an hour, six miles would take six minutes.

At thirty, it would take twice as long, twelve minutes.

At fifteen, it would take twice as long again, twenty-four minutes.

I kept going. I knew every bit of the road, every curve and every little rise and dip. Once a fox flashed out of the hedge in front of me and ran across the road with his long bushy tail streaming out behind him. I saw him clearly in the glow of my headlamps. His fur was red-brown and he had a white muzzle. It was a thrilling sight. I began to worry about the motor. I knew very well it would be certain to overheat if I drove for long in either first or second gear. I was in second. I must now change up into third. I took a deep breath and grasped the gear-lever again. Foot off the accelerator. Clutch in. Gear-lever up and across and up again. Clutch out. I had done it! I pressed down on the accelerator. The speedometer crept up to thirty. I gripped the wheel very tight with both hands and stayed in the middle of the road. At this rate I would soon be there.

Hazell's Wood was not on the main road. To reach it you had to turn left through a gap in the hedge and go uphill over a b.u.mpy track for about a quarter of a mile. If the ground had been wet, there would have been no hope of getting there in a car. But there hadn't been any rain for a week and the ground would surely be hard and dry. I figured I must be getting pretty close to the turning place now. I must watch out for it carefully. It would be easy to miss it. There was no gate or anything else to indicate where it was. It was simply a small gap in the hedge just wide enough to allow farm tractors to go through.

Suddenly, far ahead of me, just below the rim of the night sky, I saw a splash of yellow light. I watched it, trembling. This was something I had been dreading all along. Very quickly the light got brighter and brighter, and nearer and nearer, and in a few seconds it took shape and became the long white beam of headlamps from a car rushing towards me.

My turning place must be very close now. I was desperate to reach it and swing off the road before that monster reached me. I pressed my foot hard down for more speed. The little engine roared. The speedometer needle went from thirty to thirty-five and then to forty. But the other car was closing fast. Its headlamps were like two dazzling white eyes. They grew bigger and bigger and suddenly the whole road in front of me was lit up as clear as daylight, and SWISH SWISH! the thing went past me like a bullet. It was so close I felt the wind of it through my open window. And in that tiny fraction of a second when the two of us were alongside one another, I caught a glimpse of its white-painted body and I knew it was the police. the thing went past me like a bullet. It was so close I felt the wind of it through my open window. And in that tiny fraction of a second when the two of us were alongside one another, I caught a glimpse of its white-painted body and I knew it was the police.

I didn't dare look round to see if they were stopping and coming back after me. I was certain they would stop. Any policeman in the world would stop if he suddenly pa.s.sed a small boy in a tiny car chugging along a lonely road at half-past two in the morning. My only thought was to get away, to escape, to vanish, though heaven knows how I was going to do that. I pressed my foot harder still on the accelerator. Then all at once I saw in my own dim headlamps the tiny gap in the hedge on my left-hand side. There wasn't time to brake or slow down, so I just yanked the wheel hard over and prayed. The little car swerved violently off the road, leaped through the gap, hit the rising ground, bounced high in the air, then skidded round sideways behind the hedge and stopped.

The first thing I did was to switch off all my lights. I am not quite sure what made me do this except that I knew I must hide and I knew that if you are hiding from someone in the dark you don't shine lights all over the place to show where you are. I sat very still in my dark car. The hedge was a thick one and I couldn't see through it. The car had bounced and skidded sideways in such a way that it was now right off the track. It was behind the hedge and in a sort of field. It was facing back towards the filling-station, tucked in very close to the hedge. I could hear the police car. It had pulled up about fifty yards down the road, and now it was backing and turning. The road was far too narrow for it to turn round in one go. Then the roar from the motor got louder and he came back fast with engine revving and headlamps blazing. He flashed past the place where I was hiding and raced away into the night.

That meant the policeman had not seen me swing off the road.

But he was certain to come back again looking for me. And if he came back slowly enough he would probably see the gap. He would stop and get out of his car.

He would walk through the gap and look behind the hedge, and then... then his torch would shine in my face and he would say, 'What's going on, sonny? What's the big idea? Where do you think you're going? Whose car is this? Where do you live? Where are your parents?' He would make me go with him to the police-station, and in the end they would get the whole story out of me, and my father would be ruined.

I sat quiet as a mouse and waited. I waited for a long time. Then I heard the sound of the motor coming back again in my direction. It was making a terrific noise. He was going flat out. He whizzed past me like a rocket. The way he was gunning that motor told me he was a very angry man. He must have been a very puzzled man, too. Perhaps he was thinking he had seen a ghost. A ghost boy driving a ghost car.

I waited to see if he would come back again.

He didn't come.

I switched on my lights.

I pressed the starter. She started at once.

But what about the wheels and the cha.s.sis? I felt sure something must have got broken when she jumped off the road on to the cart-track.

I put her into gear and very gently began to ease her forward. I listened carefully for horrid noises. There were none. I managed to get her off the gra.s.s and back on to the track.

I drove very slowly now. The track was extremely rough and rutted, and the slope was pretty steep. The little car bounced and b.u.mped all over the place, but she kept going. Then at last, ahead of me and over to the right, looking like some gigantic black creature crouching on the crest of the hill, I saw Hazell's Wood.

Soon I was there. Immense trees rose up towards the sky all along the right-hand side of the track. I stopped the car. I switched off the motor and the lights. I got out, taking the torch with me.

There was the usual hedge dividing the wood from the track. I squeezed my way through it and suddenly I was right inside the wood. When I looked up the trees had closed in above my head like a prison roof and I couldn't see the smallest patch of sky or a single star. I couldn't see anything at all. The darkness was so solid around me I could almost touch it.

'Dad!' I called out. 'Dad, are you there?'

My small high voice echoed through the forest and faded away. I listened for an answer, but none came.

8.