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The next day was poaching day and don't think my father didn't know it. From the moment he got out of his bunk in the morning the excitement began to build up inside him. This was a Saturday so I was home from school, and we spent most of the day
in the workshop decarbonizing the cylinders of Mr Pratchett's Austin Seven. It was a great little car, built in 1933, a tiny miracle of a machine that still ran as sweetly as ever though it was now more than forty years old. My father said that these Austin Sevens, better known in their time as Baby Austins, were the first successful mini-cars ever made. Mr Pratchett, who owned a turkey-farm near Aylesbury, was as proud as could be of this one, and he always brought it to us for repair.
Working together, we released the valve springs and drew out the valves. We unscrewed the cylinder-head nuts and lifted off the head itself. Then we began scraping the carbon from the inside of the head and from the tops of the pistons.
'I want to be away by six o'clock,' my father said. 'Then I will get to the wood exactly at twilight.'
'Why at twilight?' I asked.
'Because at twilight everything inside the wood becomes veiled and shady. You can see to move around but it's not easy for someone else to see you. And when danger threatens you can always hide in the shadows which are darker than a wolf's mouth.'
'Why don't you wait till it gets really dark?' I asked. 'Then you wouldn't be seen at all.'
'You wouldn't catch anything if you did that,' he said. 'When night comes on, all the pheasants fly up into the trees to roost. Pheasants are just like other birds. They never sleep on the ground. Twilight', my father added, 'begins about seven-thirty this week. And as it's at least an hour and a half's walk to the wood, I must not leave here later than six o'clock.'
'Are you going to use The Sticky Hat or will it be The Horse-hair Stopper?' I asked.
'Sticky Hat,' he said. 'I'm very fond of Sticky Hat.'
'When will you be back?'
'About ten o'clock,' he said. 'Ten-thirty at the latest. I promise I'll be back by ten-thirty. You're quite sure you don't mind being left alone?'
'Quite sure,' I said. 'But you will be all right, won't you, Dad?'
'Don't you worry about me,' he said, putting his arm round my shoulders and giving me a hug.
'But you said there wasn't a man in your dad's village that didn't get a bit shot up by the keepers sooner or later.'
'Ah,' my father said. 'Yes. I did say that, didn't I? But in those days there were lots more keepers up in the woods than there are now. There were keepers behind almost every tree.'
'How many are there now in Hazell's Wood?'
'Not too many,' he said. 'Not too many at all.'
As the day wore on, I could see my father getting more and more impatient and excited. By five o'clock we had finished work on the Baby Austin and together we ran her up and down the road to test her out.
At five-thirty we had an early supper of sausages and bacon, but my father hardly ate anything at all.
At six o'clock precisely he kissed me goodbye and said, 'Promise not to wait up for me, Danny. Put yourself to bed at eight and go to sleep. Right?'
He set off down the road and I stood on the platform of the caravan, watching him go. I loved the way he moved. He had that long loping stride all countrymen have who are used to covering great distances on foot. He was wearing an old navy-blue sweater and an even older cap on his head. He turned and waved to me. I waved back. Then he disappeared round a bend in the road.
7
The Baby Austin
Inside the caravan I stood on a chair and lit the oil lamp in the ceiling. I had some weekend homework to do and this was as good a time as any to do it. I laid my books out on the table and sat down. But I found it impossible to keep my mind on my work.
The clock said half-past seven. This was the twilight time. He would be there now. I pictured him in his old navy-blue sweater and peaked cap walking soft-footed up the track towards the wood. He told me he wore the sweater because navy-blue hardly showed up at all in the dark. Black was even better, he said. But he didn't have a black one and navy-blue was next best. The peaked cap was important too, he explained, because the peak cast a shadow over one's face. Just about now he would be wriggling through the hedge and entering the wood. Inside the wood I could see him treading carefully over the leafy ground, stopping, listening, going on again, and all the time searching and searching for the keeper who would somewhere be standing still as a post beside a big tree with a gun under his arm. Keepers hardly move at all when they are in a wood watching for poachers, he had told me. They stand dead still right up against the trunk of a tree and it's not easy to spot a motionless man in that position at twilight when the shadows are as dark as a wolf's mouth.
I closed my books. It was no good trying to work. I decided to go to bed instead. I undressed and put on my pyjamas and climbed into my bunk. I left the lamp burning. Soon I fell asleep.
When I opened my eyes again, the oil-lamp was still glowing and the clock on the wall said ten minutes past two.
Ten minutes past two!
I jumped out of my bunk and looked into the bunk above mine. It was empty.
