'Two hundred!' I said. 'That's impossible!'
'Just imagine, Danny,' he went on, 'what a triumph, what a glorious victory that would be! All the dukes and lords and famous men would arrive in their big cars... and Mr Hazell would strut about like a peacock welcoming them and saying things like "Plenty of birds out there for you this year, Lord Thistlethwaite," and, "Ah, my dear Sir Godfrey, this is a great season for pheasants, a very great season indeed"... and then out they would all go with their guns under their arms... and they would take up their positions surrounding the famous wood... and inside the wood a whole army of hired beaters would start shouting and yelling and bashing away at the undergrowth to drive the pheasants out of the wood towards the waiting guns... and lo and behold... there wouldn't be a single pheasant to be found anywhere! And Mr Victor Hazell's face would be redder than a boiled beetroot! Now wouldn't that be the most fantastic marvellous thing if we could pull it off, Danny?'
My father had got himself so worked up that he rose to his feet and hobbled down the caravan steps and started pacing back and forth in front of me. 'Wouldn't it, though?' he shouted. 'Wouldn't it be terrific?'
'Yes,' I said.
'But how?' he cried. 'How could it be done?'
'There's no way, Dad. It's hard enough getting just two birds up in those woods, let alone two hundred.'
'I know that,' my father said. 'It's the keepers that make it so difficult.'
'How many are there?' I asked.
'Keepers? Three, and they're always around.'
'Do they stay right through the night?'
'No, not through the night,' my father said. 'They go off home as soon as all the pheasants are safely up in the trees, roosting. But nobody's ever discovered a way of poaching a roosting pheasant, not even my own dad, who was the greatest expert in the world. It's about your bedtime,' he added. 'Off you go and I'll come in and tell you a story.'
11
The Sleeping Beauty
Five minutes later, I was lying on my bunk in my pyjamas. My father came in and lit the oil-lamp hanging from the ceiling. It was getting dark earlier now. 'All right,' he said. 'What sort of story shall we have tonight?'
'Dad,' I said. 'Wait a minute.'
'What is it?'
'Can I ask you something? I've just had a bit of an idea.'
'Go on,' he said.
'You know that bottle of sleeping pills Doc Spencer gave you when you came back from hospital?'
'I never used them. Don't like the things.'
'Yes, but is there any reason why those wouldn't work on a pheasant?'
My father shook his head sadly from side to side.
'Wait,' I said.
'It's no use, Danny. No pheasant in the world is going to swallow those lousy red capsules. Surely you know that.'
'You're forgetting the raisins, Dad.'
'The raisins? What's that got to do with it?'
'Now listen,' I said. 'Please listen. We take a raisin. We soak it till it swells. Then we make a tiny slit in one side of it with a razor-blade. Then we hollow it out a little. Then we open up one of your red capsules and pour all the powder into the raisin. Then we get a needle and thread and very carefully we sew up the slit...'
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my father's mouth slowly beginning to open.
'Now,' I said, 'we have a nice clean-looking raisin chock full of sleeping-pill powder and that ought to be enough to put any pheasant to sleep. Don't you think so?'
My father was staring at me with a look of such wonder in his eyes he might have been seeing a vision.