Danny the Champion of the World

He called the hospital and asked for an ambulance. Then he spoke to someone else about taking X-rays and doing an operation.

'How's the pain?' Doc Spencer asked. 'Would you like me to give you something?'

'No,' my father said. 'I'll wait till I get there.'

'As you wish, William. But how on earth did you do it? Did you fall down the steps of that crazy caravan?'

'Not exactly,' my father said. 'No.'

The doctor waited for him to go on. So did I.

'As a matter of fact,' he said slowly, 'I was mooching around up in Hazell's Wood...' He paused again and looked at the doctor, who was still kneeling beside him.

'Ah,' the doctor said. 'Yes, I see. And what's it like up there these days? Plenty of pheasants?'

'Stacks of them,' my father said.

'It's a great game,' Doc Spencer said, sighing a little. 'I only wish I was young enough to have another go at it.' He looked up and saw me staring at him. 'You didn't know I used to do a bit of poaching myself, did you, Danny?'

'No,' I said, absolutely flabbergasted.

'Many a night,' Doc Spencer went on, 'after evening surgery was over, I used to slip out the back door and go striding over the fields to one of my secret places. Sometimes it was pheasants and other times it was trout. Plenty of big brown trout in the stream in those days.'

He was still kneeling on the floor beside my father.

'Try not to move,' he said to him. 'Lie quite still.'

My father closed his tired eyes, then opened them again. 'Which method did you use for pheasants?' he asked.

'Gin and raisins,' Doc Spencer said. 'I used to soak the raisins in gin for a week, then scatter them in the woods.'

'It doesn't work,' my father said.

'I know it doesn't,' the doctor said. 'But it was enormous fun.'

'One single pheasant', my father said, 'has got to eat at least sixteen gin-soaked raisins before he gets tiddly enough for you to catch him. My own d

ad proved that with roosters.'

'I believe you,' the doctor said. 'That's why I never caught any. But I was hot stuff with trout. Do you know how to catch a trout, Danny, without using a rod and line?'

'No,' I said. 'How?'

'You tickle him.'

'Tickle him?'

'Yes,' the doctor said. 'Trout, you see, like to lie close in to the river bank. So you go creeping along the bank until you see a big one... and you come up behind him... and you lie down on your tummy... and then slowly, very slowly, you lower your hand into the water behind him... and you slide it underneath him... and you begin to stroke his belly up and down with the tip of one finger...'

'Will he really let you do that?' I asked.

'He loves it,' the doctor said. 'He loves it so much he sort of dozes off. And as soon as he dozes off you quickly grab hold of him and flip him out of the water on to the bank.'

'That works,' my father said. 'But only a great artist can do it. I take my hat off to you, sir.'

'Thank you, William,' Doc Spencer said gravely. He got up off his knees and crossed over to the door of the workshop and looked out to see if the ambulance was coming. 'By the way,' he said over his shoulder, 'what happened up there in the woods? Did you step in a rabbit hole?'

'It was a slightly bigger hole than that,' my father said.