'The vicar is very fond of roasted pheasant for his dinner,' my father said.
'Who isn't?' Charlie Kinch said, and he started chuckling to himself all over again.
We were driving through the village now, and the street-lamps were lit and the men were wandering home from the pubs, all full of beer. I saw Mr Snoddy, my headmaster, a bit wobbly on his feet and trying to let himself in secretly through the side door of his house, but what he didn't see was Mrs Snoddy's sharp frosty face sticking out of the upstairs window, watching him.
'You know something, Danny,' my father said. 'We've done these birds a great kindness putting them to sleep in this nice painless way. They'd have had a nasty time of it tomorrow if we hadn't got them first.'
'Rotten shots, most of them fellows are,' Charlie Kinch said. 'At least half the birds finish up winged and wounded.'
The taxi turned left and swung in through the gates of the vicarage. There were no lights in the house and nobody met us. My father and I got out and dumped the pheasants in the coal-shed at the rear. Then we said goodbye to Charlie Kinch and began to walk the two miles back to the filling-station.
18
Home
Soon we had left the village behind us and were in open country. There was no one else in sight, just the two of us, my father and I, tired but happy, striding out along the curvy country road in the light of the moon.
'I can't believe it!' my father kept saying. 'I simply cannot believe we pulled it off!'
'My heart is still thumping,' I said.
'So is mine! So is mine! But oh, Danny,' he cried, laying a hand on my shoulder. 'Didn't we have a glorious time!'
We were walking right in the middle of the road as though it were a private driveway running through our country estate and we were the lords of all we surveyed.
'Do you realize, Danny,' my father said, 'that on this very night, on this Friday the thirtieth of September, you and I have actually bagged one hundred and twenty prime pheasants from Mr Victor Hazell's wood?'
I looked at my father. His face was alight with happiness and his arms were waving all over the place as he went prancing along the middle of the road with his funny iron foot going clink, clink, clink.
'Roasted pheasant!' he cried out, addressing the moon and the entire countryside. 'The finest and most succulent dish on earth! I don't suppose you've ever eaten roasted pheasant, have you, Danny?'
'Never,' I said.
'You wait!' he cried. 'You just wait till you taste it! It has an unbelievable flavour! It's sheer magic!'
'Does it have to be roasted, Dad?'
'Of course it has to be roasted. You don't ever boil a young bird. Why do you ask that?'
'I was wondering how we would do the roasting,' I said. 'Don't you have to have an oven or something?'
'Of course,' he said.
'But we don't have an oven, Dad. All we've got is a paraffin burner.'
'I know,' he said. 'And that is why I have decided to buy an oven.'
'Buy one!' I cried.
'Yes, Danny,' he said. 'With such a great and glorious stock of pheasants on our hands, it is important that we have the proper equipment. Therefore we shall go back into the village tomorrow morning and we shall buy an electric oven. We can get one at Wheeler's. And we'll put it in the workshop. We've got plenty of electric plugs in the workshop.'
'Won't it be very expensive?'
'No expense is too great for roasted pheasant,' my father announced superbly. And don't forget, Danny, before we put the bird in the oven, we have to lay strips of fat bacon across the breast to keep it nice and juicy. And bread sauce, too. We shall have to make bread sauce. You must never have roasted pheasant without lashings of bread sauce. There are three things you must always have with roasted pheasant - bread sauce, chipped potatoes and boiled parsnips.'
There was half a minute's silence as we both allowed ourselves the pleasure of dreaming about these beautiful foods.
And I'll tell you what else we've got to get,' my father said. 'We've got to get one of those deep freezers where you can store things for months and months and they never go rotten.'