'Yes. They fix a metal thing into the plaster. It sticks out underneath the foot. I'll be able to walk on that.'
'Should we go to the hospital now?'
'No,' he said. 'I'll just lie down on the floor of the workshop and wait till it's time to call Doc Spencer. He'll arrange everything.'
'Call him now,' I said.
'No. I don't like waking doctors up at four-thirty in the morning. We'll call him at seven.'
'What will you tell him, Dad? I mean about how it happened?'
'I'll tell him the truth,' my father said. 'Doc Spencer is my friend.'
We pulled into the filling-station and I parked the car right up against the workshop doors. I helped my father to get out. Then I held him round the waist as he hop-hopped the short distance into the workshop.
Inside the workshop, he leaned against the tool-bench for support and told me what to do next.
First, I spread some sheets of newspaper out over the oily floor. Then I ran to the caravan and fetched two blankets and a pillow. I laid one blanket on the floor over the newspaper. I helped my father to lie down on the blanket. Then I put the pillow under his head and covered him up with the second blanket.
'Put the phone down here so I can reach it,' he said.
I did as he asked.
'Can I get you anything, Dad? What about a hot drink?'
'No, thank you,' he said. 'I mustn't have a thing. I'm going to have an anaesthetic soon, and you mustn't eat or drink anything at all before that. But you have something. Go and make yourself some breakfast. Then go to bed.'
'I'd like to wait here till the doctor comes,' I said.
'You must be dead tired, Danny'
'I'm all right,' I said.
I found an old wooden chair and pulled it up near him and sat down.
He closed his eyes and seemed to be dozing off.
My own eyes kept closing, too. I couldn't keep them open.
'I'm sorry about the mess I made of it all,' I heard him saying.
I must have gone to sleep after that because the next thing I heard was Doc Spencer's voice saying to my father, 'Well, my goodness me, William, what on earth have you been up to?'
I opened my eyes and saw the doctor bending down over my father, who was still lying on the floor of the workshop.
9
Doc Spencer
My father once told me that Doc Spencer had been looking after the people of our district for nearly forty-five years. He was over seventy now and could have retired long ago, but he didn't want to retire and his patients didn't want him to either. He was a tiny man with tiny hands and feet and a tiny round face. The face was as brown and wrinkled as a shrivelled apple. He was some sort of an elf, I used to think to myself each time I saw him, a very ancient sort of an elf with wispy white hair and steel-rimmed spectacles; a quick clever little elf with a swift eye and a flashing smile and a fast way of talking. Nobody feared him. Many people loved him, and he was especially gentle with children.
'Which ankle?' he asked.
'The left one,' my father said.
Doc Spencer knelt on the floor and took from his bag a pair of large scissors. Then to my astonishment he proceeded to slit the cloth of my father's left trouserleg right up to the knee. He parted the cloth and looked at the ankle but he didn't touch it. I looked at it too. The foot seemed to be bent round sideways and there was a huge swelling below the ankle-bone.
'That's a nasty one,' Doc Spencer said. 'We'd better get you into hospital right away. May I use your phone?'