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You will learn as you get older, just as I learned that autumn, that no father is perfect. Grown-ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets. Some have quirkier quirks and deeper secrets than others, but all of them, including one's own parents, have two or three private habits hidden up their sleeves that would probably make you gasp if you knew about them.
The rest of this book is about a most private and secret habit my father had, and about the strange adventures it led us both into.
It all started on a Saturday evening. It was the first Saturday of September. Around six o'clock my father and I had supper together in the caravan as usual. Then I went to bed. My father told me a fine story and kissed me good-night. I fell asleep.
For some reason I woke up again during the night. I lay still, listening for the sound of my father's breathing in the bunk above mine. I could hear nothing. He wasn't there, I was certain of that. This meant that he had gone back to the workshop to finish a job. He often did that after he had tucked me in.
I listened for the usual workshop sounds, the little clinking noises of metal against metal or the tap of a hammer. They always comforted me tremendously, those noises in the night, because they told me my father was close at hand.
But on this night, no sound came from the workshop. The filling-station was silent.
I got out of my bunk and found a box of matches by the sink. I struck one and held it up to the funny old clock that hung on the wall above the kettle. It said ten past eleven.
I went to the door of the caravan. 'Dad,' I said softly. 'Dad, are you there?'
No answer.
There was a small wooden platform outside the caravan door, about four feet above the ground. I stood on the platform and gazed around me. 'Dad!' I called out. 'Where are you?'
Still no answer.
In pyjamas and bare feet, I went down the caravan steps and crossed over to the workshop. I switched on the light. The old car we had been working on through the day was still there, but not my father.
I have already told you he did not have a car of his own, so there was no question of his having gone for a drive. He wouldn't have done that anyway. I was sure he would never willingly have left me alone in the filling-station at night.
In which case, I thought, he must have fainted suddenly from some awful illness or fallen down and banged his head.
I would need a light if I was going to find him. I took the torch from the bench in the workshop.
I looked in the office. I went around and searched behind the office and behind the workshop.
I ran down the field to the lavatory. It was empty.
'Dad!' I shouted into the darkness. 'Dad! Where are you?'
I ran back to the caravan. I shone the light into his bunk to make absolutely sure he wasn't there.
He wasn't in his bunk.
I stood in the dark caravan and for the first time in my life I felt a touch of panic. The filling-station was a long way from the nearest farmhouse. I took the blanket from my bunk and put it round my shoulders. Then I went out the caravan door and sat on the platform with my feet on the top step of the ladder. There was a new moon in the sky and across the road the big field lay pale and deserted in the moonlight. The silence was deathly.
I don't know how long I sat there. It may have been one hour. It could have been two. But I never dozed off. I wanted to keep listening all the time. If I listened very carefully I might hear something that would tell me where he was.
Then, at last, from far away, I heard the faint tap-tap of footsteps on the road.
The footsteps were coming closer and closer.
Tap... tap... tap... tap...
Was it him? Or was it somebody else?
I sat still, watching the road. I couldn't see very far along it. It faded away into a misty moonlit darkness.
Tap... tap... tap... tap... came the footsteps.
Then out of the mist a figure appeared.
It was him!
