I slit the raisins while my father opened the capsules. He opened only one at a time and poured the white powder on to a piece of paper. Then he divided it into four tiny piles with the blade of a knife. Each pile was carefully scooped up and put into a single raisin. A needle and black cotton finished the job. The sewing up was the hardest part, and my father did most of that. It took about two minutes to do one raisin from start to finish. I enjoyed it. It was fun.
'Your mother was wonderful at sewing things,' my father said. 'She'd have had these raisins done in no time.'
I didn't say anything. I never knew quite what to say when he talked about my mother.
'Did you know she used to make all my clothes herself, Danny? Everything I wore.'
'Even socks and sweaters?' I asked.
'Yes,' he said. 'But those were knitted. And so quickly! When she was knitting, the needles flew so fast in her fingers you couldn't see them. They were just a blur. I would sit here in the evening watching her and she used to talk about the children she was going to have. "I shall have three children," she used to say. "A boy for you, a girl for me and one for good measure." '
There was a short silence after that. Then I said, 'When Mum was here, Dad, did you go out very often at night or was it only now and then?'
'You mean poaching?'
'Yes.'
'Often,' he said. 'At least twice a week.'
'Didn't she mind?'
'Mind? Of course she didn't mind. She came with me.'
'She didn't!'
'She certainly did. She came with me every single time until just before you were born. She had to stop then. She said she couldn't run fast enough.'
I thought about this extraordinary piece of news for a little while. Then I said, 'Was the only reason she went because she loved you, Dad, and because she wanted to be with you? Or did she go because she loved poaching?'
> 'Both,' my father said. 'She did it for both the reasons you mentioned.'
I was beginning to realize what an immense sorrow it must have been to him when she died.
'Weren't you afraid she might get shot up?' I asked.
'Yes, Danny, I was. But it was marvellous to have her along. She was a great sport, your mother.'
By midday we had prepared one hundred and thirty-six raisins. 'We're in good shape,' my father said. 'Let's break for lunch.'
He opened a tin of baked beans and heated them up in a saucepan over the paraffin burner. I cut two slices of brown bread and put them on plates. My father spooned the hot baked beans over the bread and we carried our plates outside and sat down with our legs dangling over the platform of the caravan.
Usually I love baked beans on bread, but today I couldn't eat a thing. 'What's the matter?' my father asked.
'I'm not hungry.'
'Don't worry,' he said. 'The same thing happened to me the first time I went out. I was about your age then, maybe a little older, and in those days we always had a hot tea in the kitchen at five o'clock. I can remember exactly what was on the table that evening. It was my favourite thing of all, toad-in-the-hole, and my mum could make toad-in-the-hole like nobody else in the world. She did it in an enormous pan with the Yorkshire pudding very brown and crisp on top and raised up in huge bubbly mountains. In between the mountains you could see the sausages half-buried in the batter. Fantastic it was. But on that day my stomach was so jumpy I couldn't eat one mouthful. I expect yours feels like that now.'
'Mine's full of snakes,' I said. 'They won't stop wiggling about.'
'Mine doesn't feel exactly normal either,' my father said. 'But then this isn't a normal operation, is it?'
'No, Dad, it's not.'
'Do you know what this is, Danny? This is the most colossal and extraordinary poaching job anyone has ever been on in the history of the world!'
'Don't go on about it, Dad. It only makes me more jumpy. What time do we leave here?'
'I've worked that out,' he said. 'We must enter the wood about fifteen minutes before sunset. If we arrive after sunset all the pheasants will have flown up to roost and it'll be too late.'