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'She's a sort of witch,' he said. 'And to prove it, she has seven toes on each foot.'
'How do you know that?' I asked.
'Doc Spencer told me,' my father answered. And then to change the subject, he said, 'Why don't you ever ask Sidney Morgan over here to play?'
Ever since I started going to school, my father had tried to encourage me to bring my friends back to the filling-station for tea or supper. And every year, about a week before my birthday, he would say, 'Let's have a party this time, Danny. We can write out invitations and I'll go into the village and buy chocolate eclairs and doughnuts and a huge birthday cake with candles on it.'
But I always said no to these suggestions and I never invited any other children to come to my home after school or at weekends. That wasn't because I didn't have good friends. I had lots of them. Some of them were super friends, especially Sidney Morgan. Perhaps if I had lived in the same street as some of them instead of way out in the country, things would have been different. But then again, perhaps they wouldn't. You see, the real reason I didn't want anyone else to come back and play with me was because I had such a good time being alone with my father.
By the way, something horrible happened on that Thursday morning after my father had left me at the school gate and gone off to buy the raisins. We were having our first lesson of the day with Captain Lancaster, and he had set us a whole bunch of multiplication sums to work out in our exercise books. I was sitting next to Sidney Morgan in the back row, and we were both slogging away. Captain Lancaster sat up front at his desk, gazing suspiciously round the class with his watery-blue eyes. And even from the back row I could hear him snorting and snuffling through his nose like a dog outside a rabbit hole.
Sidney Morgan covered his mouth with his hand and whispered very softly to me, 'What are eight nines?'
'Seventy-two,' I whispered back.
Captain Lancaster's ringer shot out like a bullet and pointed straight at my face. 'You!' he shouted. 'Stand up!'
'Me, sir?' I said.
'Yes, you, you blithering little idiot!'
I stood up.
'You were talking!' he barked. 'What were you saying?' He was shouting at me as though I was a platoon of soldiers on the parade ground. 'Come on, boy! Out with it!'
I stood still and said nothing.
'Are you refusing to answer me?' he shouted.
'Please, sir,' Sidney said. 'It was my fault. I asked him a question.'
'Oh, you did, did you? Stand up!'
Sidney stood up beside me.
'And what exactly did you ask him?' Captain Lancaster said, speaking more quietly now and far more dangerously.
'I asked him what are eight nines,' Sidney said.
And I suppose you answered him?' Captain Lancaster said, pointing at me again. He never called any of us by
our names. It was always 'you' or 'boy' or 'girl' or something like that. 'Did you answer him or didn't you? Speak up, boy!'
'Yes, sir,' I said.
'So you were cheating!' he said. 'Both of you were cheating!'
We kept silent.
'Cheating is a repulsive habit practised by guttersnipes and dandiprats!' he said.
From where I was standing I could see the whole class sitting absolutely rigid, watching Captain Lancaster. Nobody dared move.
'You may be permitted to cheat and lie and swindle in your own homes,' he went on, 'but I will not put up with it here!'
At this point, a sort of blind fury took hold of me and I shouted back at him, 'I am not a cheat!'
There was a fearful silence in the room. Captain Lancaster raised his chin and fixed me with his watery eyes. 'You are not only a cheat but you are insolent,' he said quietly. 'You are a very insolent boy. Come up here. Both of you, come up here.'
