And so I agreed. After all, I hadn’t ridden the old black upright for some time and felt it was time to put it to some good use. I let Jonathan take it away and settled back to await being the owner of the world’s first fully automatic gear-changing pedal cycle.
In the weeks that followed, Jonathan kept me informed of his progress, inviting me into his shed to examine highly confusing plans which included exploded diagrams containing gear wheels, cogs, ratchets and wires, along with mathematical calculations about stress, gradients and gear ratios. He tried to explain the theory to my numbed mind and I simply nodded and accepted what he told me. I gained the impression that the system would entail something like a conventional three-speed gear of the kind fitted into the hubs of cycle rear wheels, with an added mechanism established in the bottom bracket of the frame, where the pedal spindle passes between each crank. The pressure upon the pedals and thence upon the chain and rear-wheel sprocket would determine the gear to be automatically selected; the steeper the hill, the higher the pressure upon the pedals and thus the lower the gear that would be selected. If this theory worked, the gears would automatically change to suit the climb. Certainly, the theory seemed to point to a feasible invention.
The first breakthrough in his quest for acceptance came with a letter from Raleigh, the cycle manufacturers in Nottingham.
Jonathan had sent them detailed plans of his gears and the experts’ response was that, in theory, his system was feasible. It looked as if Jonathan had produced a winner and Raleigh asked him to construct and test a prototype; if that was successful they would examine it with a view to production. Matters like patents and royalties would be discussed if the new gear system was functional. Jonathan was delighted, Daisy was ecstatic and my old bike was to be the test machine.
For several months afterwards, Jonathan would explain that it wasn’t quite working properly just yet; things kept jamming, the gear refused to change when necessary, the internal springs did not disengage bottom gear when he reached a flat or downhill run, the pedals sometimes whizzed around without engaging anything but all these problems were, said Jonathan, minor difficulties along the route to building a world-beater.
Eventually, he asked me to witness his first test run. There would be no one else to share in his triumph, apart from the loving and supportive Daisy. Jonathan had selected a short route on the outskirts of Aidensfield. One of the routes in from the moors is via an area known as Ewe Wath, ewe referring to the moorland sheep and wath being a word meaning a ford or foot crossing-place over a beck or stream. Here, years ago, sheep descended from the moors and waded the beck to gain access to the grassy village green in Aidensfield.
Their arrival from the moors was a sign of impending bad weather, but now there is a narrow bridge which accommodates all traffic. The approach to the village comprises a narrow, steeply dropping lane which levels out to cross the stream via that narrow bridge, and after a short flat run, the road twists and then rises gently to cross the railway, followed by a steep climb into the village. George Ward’s pub stands at the left of the hilltop, like a sentinel.
From a vantage point on the moorward side of Ewe Wath, it is possible to view the entire route, which is less than a mile, and so it was that on a brisk spring morning, Daisy and I stood at that place to witness Jonathan’s journey into the annals of the greats in the history of the pedal cycle. She was armed with a camera and I was simply there to observe. It was my day off, so I was in civilian clothes.
He climbed aboard my old bike and I must say it did not look much different from normal, although he did say he had removed the internal workings of the rear-wheel hub to accommodate his own invention. The bottom bracket had changed too, appearing to be more bulky, but the bike itself was my old faithful friend. As he busied himself with the final preparations such as checking the brakes, spinning each pedal, testing the tyres for pressures and so forth, we heard the hoot of an approaching train.
“It’s shouting that this is a momentous day in the history of transport,” laughed Jonathan.
“And in our lives, darling,” beamed the proud Daisy.
“I’m ready,” he said, taking a deep breath. I shook his hand and Daisy took his picture astride the machine. And as the oncoming train pulled out of Aidensfield station on its journey across the moors, Jonathan pushed off, raised his leg to the pedal and began to propel the bike towards the first downward incline — it was the steep drop towards the bridge across the beck.
“It’s working, she’s moved into top!” he yelled as he sailed down the slope. “Smooth as satin . . .”
He was travelling at a very fast speed indeed but his legs were moving slowly, as if he was in a gigantic top gear, and in this manner, he hurtled across the narrow bridge and began the short climb to the railway bridge. He must have been travelling at sixty miles an hour but the true testing time was to come — the bike must now change gear automatically to cope with the steep climb at the other side, a leg-aching ascent which led into the village. I watched, willing him to succeed and then something unexpected and terrible happened.
Something seized up. There was a shout, the bike was brought to a sudden and slithering halt and Jonathan was catapulted from it into the middle of the road. The bike flew across the narrow verge and hit the low parapet of the bridge, then toppled over it — right into the path of the oncoming train. It hooted, there was a screech of iron wheels on metal rails and the entire train shuddered to a halt, but not before it had run over and destroyed my bike.
Daisy was in tears as she ran to the aid of her husband as he struggled to his feet and I went to have words with the engine-driver.
“What bloody fool threw that bike on to the line?” he yelled from his cab. “It could have gone through a carriage window and killed somebody
“An accident,” I shouted back as passengers lowered their windows to watch the drama. “But he’s okay, no bones broken.”
“There’ll be hell on if my train’s damaged,” he said, climbing on to the track to examine the engine and coaches. “I’ve got to submit reports . . .”
“How’s the bike?” I yelled from the bridge.
“Flattened,” he said with undisguised pleasure. “You’ll never ride that again.”
He couldn’t have spoken a truer word. It was a mangled mess of metal and wire and Jonathan was weeping with his arm about his wife. All his work had been ruined. It looked irretrievable. I doubted whether he would ever make another prototype of a fully automatic pedal cycle gear-changing mechanism.
“I’ll collect it when you’ve gone,” I told the engine-driver, giving him my name. “No one’s hurt . . .”
“And my engine’s not damaged either. Blood stupid people, what the hell was he doing?”
“Trying to make history,” I said limply.
But Jonathan did not make history.
I said I did not want any cash for my ruined machine, he could keep it if he wished, so that he could continue his work on the automatic cycle gear system, but he said the damage was so great that repair was impossible. To reconstruct it to the details he had originally incorporated was beyond even him — he could not remember the necessary detail and his plans would not help, so he said, but I think he just gave up that idea.
The last time I saw him, he was working on a type of side-saddle for ladies who wished to ride bikes while wearing skirts. He believed the age of elegance had not yet passed and in honour of his faithful wife, he would call it a Daisy Newbould; Daisy thought it was a wonderful idea.
I said he was welcome to use the remains of my old bike for that prototype too, and said he could help himself to the bits from the village tip, and I even offered to come and observe the first testing of the new side-saddle cycle.
But I never saw that invention in action.
7. Ain’t Misbehaving
Conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern.
MATTHEW ARNOLD, 1822–88
The way we behave in p
ublic has long been subjected to rules and regulations. The church has issued its guidance, the law has imposed additional restrictions and society itself has created its own manners and modes of acceptable conduct.
In the privacy of our own homes, however, we can virtually do as we like, albeit with some exceptions such as making too much noise or keeping dangerous animals. At home, for example, we can drop litter on the floor and leave it there; we needn’t clean the windows or polish the brasses if we don’t want to and we needn’t clean ourselves either. We can wear what clothes we want, or dress in nothing at all if we so desire. We can be awkward or even downright nasty with our family and friends, we can use filthy language towards them, the sort that might result in a fine if used in a public place, and we need never wash the crockery or dust the interior. In other words, we can live like pigs if we want to.
There is no law to say we must buy furniture, make our beds every morning or clean out the bath after using it. There is nothing to say we must flush our toilets, sweep the carpets or refrain from keeping coal in the kitchen. There is nothing to say we must house-train our pets or wash our sweaty armpits.
As a consequence of this freedom there are, in this lovely country of ours, a lot of very filthy, smelly and horrible house interiors, which are occupied by equally filthy, smelly and horrible people. But who is to say that such conduct is wrong? Who may criticize those who live in such conditions if that is their wish, even if those conditions are worse than those endured by many animals? There would be a terrible fuss if some of our zoos or kennels were as filthy as some Englishmen’s homes.
Every police officer, doctor, nurse, welfare officer and other person who enters private houses can tell their own horror stories. I’ve entered houses where the stench made my stomach turn; I’ve seen filthy living-rooms devoid of all furnishings, other than a massive colour TV set; I’ve seen cases where repairs were never done and dirt never cleaned away — and most of these miserable homes were due only to idleness. Many of the menfolk earned good money, but spent it in the pub or on the horses, many of the women spent all morning in bed asleep instead of caring for the family home . . . rarely was there any social deprivation in such cases, just plain stupidity aided by mammoth attacks of idleness. Lack of money is no excuse for low-class living standards. It costs nowt to keep one’s home or oneself clean.
One strange example I came across involved an old man who stored his own urine in milk bottles. He kept pint bottles of old urine all over the house. They lined the stairs, filled the floors of all five bedrooms save for a narrow path to his own bed, covered the floors of all rooms on the ground floor, occupied every shelf in the place, every corner and every cupboard.
There must have been hundreds of gallons of the stuff and the place stank, of course; it was nauseating but so far as I know, he was not breaking any criminal law. If he wanted to keep his own precious pee in an open-topped milk bottle, why shouldn’t he?
I’m not sure the milkman would have approved, but I never did discover why he adopted this course. I did wonder if his ancestors had sold their urine to the local alum industry — years ago, men could sell a barrel of human urine for eight pence, a considerable sum at that time, for it was one of the raw ingredients used in the manufacture of alum crystals, along with alum shale and ash from burned seaweed. Barrels of urine were collected locally or even brought from as far as London. Perhaps that old man’s long-dead family had once been major suppliers and he, like them, had been reared to conserve all his natural water?
Private behaviour of the sort which would be unsocial if conducted in public, is not always a surprise or a shock when one knows the people involved. Nonetheless, there can be surprises. The poorest and untidiest old woman can keep an immaculate house, or the most sophisticated of people can live in the midst of ordure.
During one’s duty when dealing with the public in their own homes, therefore, there are always surprises and any police officer can experience a rather unexpected jolt when entering another person’s house. Quite often, the exterior of the house, or the standing of the person in the community, bears no relation to their secret life indoors. It was a shock of this kind that greeted me when I paid a visit to the home of Mr Greville Beecham.
Greville lived alone in a large roomy country house set in its own grounds along the Elsinby road, about half a mile outside Aidensfield. It was called Beecham Hall and had been the family home for generations, Greville being descended from the aristocracy, but during this century most of the land had been sold to neighbouring farmers which had left Greville with some two acres, in the middle of which was the magnificent house on its lofty site. He enjoyed a private income from the past investments of his ancestors and had interests in several large department stores in Leeds, York and Hull. He was a director of several companies and was regarded as an expert share dealer by members of the Stock Exchange.
Greville had never married and lived a somewhat solitary home life, although he did seem to have a fairly active public life. On regular occasions, he would drive out of the village in his old Bentley car to attend to business and social matters.
In addition to being a member of the county council, he was chairman of various local organizations, such as the British Legion, the Aidensfield Historical Society and the parish council. Greville was considered a useful fellow to have on a committee and was a member of several. He was also very generous towards local and national charities.
Intelligent, charming and popular, he was respected and liked by everyone who knew him, including myself. An impressive figure in his middle forties, he was some six feet three inches tall with powerful shoulders and a handsome, slender figure. He had a very healthy-looking clean-shaven face with clear pink skin, blue eyes and a head of thinning fair hair; he was, I suppose, a modern example of what a Viking warrior might have looked like and I was surprised he had never been captured by a good-looking woman. He was always smartly dressed in expensive clothes which had a rural appearance — tweedy suits or checked sports jackets and cavalry twill trousers, brogue shoes and thick, woollen socks. He was a stylish man, the sort who would turn heads at any gathering.
I had met him at various village events and had always found him courteous, charming and warm but, as the months passed, I realized he never invited people into his home. On the other hand, Greville received plenty of invitations to dinner, often in the homes of the local aristocracy but also to the homes of local business and professional people.
But, being a bachelor, he never returned their hospitality by inviting them to Beecham Hall. If he wanted to entertain anyone, he booked a table in one or other of the best local hotels or restaurants. People were not surprised — after all, Greville was a man, he had no wife or resident cook, and so they understood. Or they thought they understood.
That was my understanding of his lifestyle until I made an unannounced visit to Beecham Hall. I had had no cause to visit Greville until the locality suffered a spate of night-time attacks on local licensed premises. A team was touring the north-east of England and raiding village pubs by gaining entry through the cellar flaps. They were stealing large quantities of spirits, cigarettes and, in some cases, cash from the tills in those establishments where the landlords had not emptied the drawers after the night’s business. A vehicle was being used — no one could carry off heavy cases of whisky or brandy or large cartons of cigarettes without some form of transport and so we circulated warnings to all the local pubs. The means of entry was usually the cellar flap, this being prized open with a crowbar or similar tool, although in some cases the back door had been forced.
I warned the landlords and proprietors of all the inns on my beat, including George Ward, and asked them if I might inspect their cellars, rear doors and windows to offer security advice. In George’s case, the cellar flap was practically useless.
When the twin coverings were closed, they were bolted from the inside, but the wood surrounds into which the bolts slotted were old and r
otten. It was possible to move them by hand — thus it was an easy matter to force open the cellar flap from the outside and enter via the short wooden ladder. I advised George to replace the old woodwork and make the flap more secure. He assured me that he would.
But he didn’t. One night, someone forced open the flap and removed several crates of whisky, brandy and gin, six crates of beer, ten cartons of cigarettes, umpteen boxes of potato crisps and £87 cash from the till. George was furious and so was I.
“I thought you’d warned your landlords, Rhea?” snapped Sergeant Blaketon down the telephone when I reported the crime to him. “This one sounds easy pickings to me.”
“I did warn George, Sergeant, I inspected his cellar and his doors and windows and advised him to make them more secure . . .”
“We want this lot caught, Rhea,” he said. “Making fools of us, raiding our pubs at night, you should have been alert to this possibility
“Yes, Sergeant.” I listened as he rambled on and promised I would do my best to trace the culprits. Later that morning, a farmer rang my home and left a message with my wife. He had found some discarded whisky and brandy cartons on his land, and I got the message at lunch-time.
When I inspected the boxes, I asked George to have a look at them and he nodded.
“They’re from my cellar,” he said. “I recognize them, that’s got my mark on it, after I’d checked it over on receipt. See? G. W. My initials. I wrote it. It means I checked the contents and found everything correct. So why dump the empty boxes here?”
“To get rid of the evidence, George. One bottle of whisky’s just like another and they know that. So having got rid of this evidence, if they’d got stopped after leaving here, who could say they’d stolen the booze they carried in the car? There’s nothing to say where their whisky came from, is there? If it had still been in those cartons, though, and we’d stopped them for a check, we would have known where it had come from. We could have proved they’d done it. They’re professionals, they must have spotted your initials on the boxes and decided to get rid of the evidence.”
CONSTABLE AROUND THE GREEN a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain's best-loved authors (Constable Nick Mystery Book 12) Page 14