Danny the Champion of the World

Except for the swift fluttering of its wings, the hawk remained absolutely motionless in the sky. It seemed to be suspended by some invisible thread, like a toy bird hanging from the ceiling. Then suddenly it folded its wings and plummeted towards the earth at an i

ncredible speed. This was a sight that always thrilled me.

'What do you think he saw, Dad?'

'A young rabbit perhaps,' my father said. 'Or a vole or a field-mouse. None of them has a chance when there's a kestrel overhead.'

We waited to see if the hawk would fly up again. He didn't, which meant he had caught his prey and was eating it on the ground.

'How long does a sleeping pill take to work?' I asked.

'I don't know the answer to that one,' my father said. 'I imagine it's about half an hour.'

'It might be different with pheasants though, Dad.'

'It might,' he said. 'We've got to wait a while anyway, to give the keepers time to go home. They'll be off as soon as it gets dark. I've brought an apple for each of us,' he added, fishing into one of his pockets.

'A Cox's Orange Pippin,' I said, smiling. 'Thank you very much.'

We sat there munching away.

'One of the nice things about a Cox's Orange Pippin', my father said, 'is that the pips rattle when it's ripe. Shake it and you can hear them rattling.'

I shook my half-eaten apple. The pips rattled.

'Look out!' he whispered sharply. 'There's someone coming.'

The man had appeared suddenly and silently out of the dusk and was quite close before my father saw him. 'It's another keeper,' he whispered. 'Just sit tight and don't say a word.'

We both watched the keeper as he came down the track towards us. He had a shotgun under his arm and there was a black Labrador walking at his heel. He stopped when he was a few paces away and the dog stopped with him and stayed behind him, watching us through the keeper's legs.

'Good evening,' my father said, nice and friendly.

This one was a tall bony man with a hard eye and a hard cheek and hard dangerous hands.

'I know you,' he said, coming closer, 'I know the both of you.'

My father didn't answer this.

'You're from the fillin'-station. Right?'

His lips were thin and dry with some sort of a brownish crust over them.

'You're from the fillin'-station and that's your boy and you live in that filthy old caravan. Right?'

'What are we playing?' my father said. 'Twenty Questions?'

The keeper spat out a big gob of spit and I saw it go sailing through the air and land with a plop on a patch of dry dust six inches from my father's plaster foot. It looked like a little baby oyster lying there.

'Beat it,' the man said. 'Go on. Get out.'

When he spoke, his upper lip lifted above the gum and I could see a row of small discoloured teeth. One of them was black. The others were brownish-yellow, like the seeds of a pomegranate.

'This happens to be a public footpath,' my father said. 'Kindly do not molest us.'

The keeper shifted the gun from his left arm to his right.

'You're loiterin',' he said, 'with intent to commit a nuisance. I could run you in for that.'