‘Well, enjoy the rest of your day, all of you,’ I said and wished them a happy Christmas again before stepping out into the chilled air.
The station was quite empty as most of the married PCs were off with their families. Sergeant Shaw was in the office, but he was engrossed in a mound of paperwork so I didn’t bother him. I walked around from room to room, then finished some typing.
The Inspector came in for a few hours, whistling loudly, before returning home to his wife and two daughters. Then the Super came in and sat in his office, never once mentioning the fact it was Christmas. I stood briefly as usual, then went into the office and opened up my gift from Father Reilly. Inside was a thick bar of dark chocolate with a scattering of plump hazelnuts. Not so easy to come by, and proper Belgian chocolate too. The lads had been given a carton of cigarettes each, but I preferred the chocolate and savoured every mouthful as it melted on my tongue.
On my evening beat, the town was dark and nearly empty, a slight drizzle in the air. I could hear laughter and the odd strain of a carol drifting from a window, ‘Good King Wenceslas’ or Nat King Cole crooning something. Children sat in their living rooms playing with toys – or the boxes the toys had arrived in – and the smell of turkey dinners still lingered in the air. Occasionally the sounds of drunken arguments rose and fell, as that extra whisky or glass of port brought festering family feuds to the fore.
I could imagine Mam washing up, humming her favourite Christmas songs, while Dad dozed off in his big chair and my granny sat knitting endless socks.
As I walked past the churchyard, on my way home, I saw a figure in a long white gown shuffling slowly towards the cemetery. I wasn’t superstitious, but it was dark and there was no one else about so I steeled my nerves. The figure flashed in and out of view, and then out of sight through the small cemetery gate. I switched on my little torch, directing it here and there, lighting up trees and a statue of a giant angel covered in ivy, its huge wings towering upwards.
As I approached, the figure in white was hunched over a gravestone. I walked over slowly so as not to cause a shock. The figure turned its head, saw me and shrieked, startling some nearby pigeons who were asleep in the trees.
‘My ration books! I left them here. Arthur knows. I came to ask him. Can’t seem to …’
‘Mrs Colbert. What are you doing out here?’
She started to panic. ‘They put him in the ground, you know. But he was still alive in there.’ She started prodding at the mud next to the gravestone. ‘He talks to me, you know. Tells me things. I can’t for the life of me remember where they are, though. Can you?’
‘Let’s get you home,’ I said, lifting her up gently by the arm.
‘But my ration books! Do you know where they are, my girl?’ She looked up at me pleadingly.
‘I’m sure we’ll find them just where you left them at home. Everyone will be so worried about you. It’s Christmas Day. Don’t you remember?’
As we walked back in the dark together, arm in arm, Mrs Colbert chattered the whole way, apparently unaware of where she was, or who I was. Once in a while, she would have the odd moment of lucidity and then a wave of panic would overtake her.
‘I can hear his voice still,’ she said, looking off into the distance, straining for something. ‘But then, when I look, he’s not there. Just that pillow. They put him in the ground, you know. He can’t get out. Have you seen my ration books? I can’t for the life of me remember …’
I dropped Mrs Colbert back at her daughter’s house again, but by the time I got back to my lodgings the children were asleep and there were just the remnants of Christmas all around the house: bits of paper, an empty port glass, the cake no one could manage.
I wondered what Jim was up to in Germany. How did they celebrate out there, I wondered. Beer and women, he had joked.
That night seemed endless; I tossed and turned, unable to sleep. There was a loud bird singing just outside my window for hours. Its usually beautiful song seemed mechanical, even slightly menacing. I pulled the pillow over my ears and eventually dropped off just as the sun came up. Thank goodness I had Boxing Day off.
7
1952 dawned unceremoniously. We may have been one of the richest countries in the world, but we still clung on to what we saw as the best of wartime values. Those six long years still hung over the nation like an immoveable mist, and most people weren’t in a hurry to move on. Clement Attlee’s compulsory National Service also meant another generation of young men were being steeped in the rigours of military training and sometimes even front line battle.
‘Have you heard this series on the BBC?’ called out Janet one early January morning. She was washing up at the sink, and I was at the table eating some toast and jam. ‘Been on for a while now. All about farming. Can’t see why anyone’d want to listen to that on the wireless, when we get that every day here in real life. Why, you only have to go to the market to hear farmers complaining about this and that.’
Her words faded into a blur as I opened a letter I had just received from Jim. He had been stationed in Germany, but his latest news was that they might be redeployed soon. I hoped he wouldn’t have to fight in real life. My memories of the war as a child were of wives and mothers mourning the loss of husbands and sons, and then there was my own experience when the battleship Repulse sank, and its crew with it, and all we schoolgirls were shocked to the core.
I walked to work with a heavy heart. Inspector Armstrong called me in to his office. He was sending me to Northallerton HQ for a week, to see what they did there.
‘We like all our new recruits to see life at HQ. It’s where it all happens. You’ll be staying up with Sergeant Freeman and her husband.’
A few days later, I had packed my bag and was leaving the house to catch the train when I saw a new PC, Peter Palmer, across the road. He had joined us after Christmas and was still wet behind the ears.
‘Hello, Peter. How’s it going? Are you settling in OK?’
‘I’m just making a “point”,’ he said, proud to be using the official police jargon.
He always looked a bit awkward in his uniform, which seemed somehow too big in every direction, even though he was very tall. His front teeth stuck out and he had a slight stammer when he got nervous. Now that Peter had arrived, it meant I wasn’t the newest PC at Richmond station.
‘So if the Super drives past,’ he said, ‘do we salute or not?’
‘Yes. Salute and make sure he sees you so he can mark in your pocketbook that you were there. But only salute when you first see him.’
‘Right, I see. And what about the Inspector?’
‘If you’re out and about salute the Spec. But not in the station. But you do call him sir.’
Peter started asking another question, but before he finished there was a huge screeching sound on the road behind us and a terrible scream.
‘What on earth was that?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Peter and we ran across the road. Behind a coach, underneath the wheel, a woman lay, white with pain, on the road. The vehicle had driven clean over her leg, and you could see a good deal of blood soaking through her stockings.
By the time we arrived she had stopped screaming and was shaking, letting out the occasional moan.
‘Oh my goodness, that’s quite a lot of blood,’ said Peter, looking quite queasy.
‘All right,’ I said, ‘you go and ring for an ambulance and I’ll sort her out.’
I remembered my first-aid training and looked for something I could use as a tourniquet, but couldn’t find anything. So I ran back into the house and grabbed a tea towel from the kitchen table and the first coat I could find on the hanger. When I got back, the woman had almost fainted with the pain. Her head was lolling to one side and her face had gone from grey to almost pure white. She was muttering to herself lightly.
‘Can you hear me? What’s your name?’ I asked her.
‘No … it hurts. My leg … the noise.’
; I held her head up but she didn’t respond again, just nodded her head up and down slightly as her eyes flickered open and shut.
‘Can you feel your leg? Can you tell me your name? I’m just going to stop the bleeding.’
‘Is she all right, constable?’ asked a passer-by. A couple of the curious and concerned had gathered at the side of the road, peering over.
‘She’ll be fine. Could you just clear away, please? She needs some space.’
They inched back, but continued to hover as I made the tea towel into a tourniquet for her leg. There were further gasps from my audience, but I managed to stop the worst of the blood, although the tea towel was soon soaked a deep crimson. I put the coat over her shoulders to keep in the warmth and kept talking, trying to keep her conscious.
I could hear some of the passengers on the coach complaining that they were now late for various appointments. The driver was stood in shock on the pavement, his head in his hands, as Peter interviewed him. After about five minutes the ambulance arrived, and two young men carried the woman onto a stretcher; as they lifted her up, she let out another almighty scream.
‘Oh my God! Is she all right?’ asked the driver. ‘I don’t know how it …’
‘Can you describe to me exactly what happened, Mr Fletcher?’ asked Peter, taking on a sudden air of command.
‘She got off my bus. Then I thought she’d walked away. But she must have slipped or something and … and I hit the brakes as fast as I could, but it was too late. Then there was a nasty crunch and the whole coach shook. That scream. Oh God. Is she going to die?’
‘I don’t think so. Try not to panic. She’s in the ambulance now,’ Peter told him. ‘It was her leg. The wheel went over it. But I think we got to it just in time.’
‘Peter, I’ve got to catch a train in thirty minutes. I’m not even on duty today! Will you be OK? Can I leave you to it?’ I said, realizing how late it was.
‘I think I’ve got it under control,’ he said. The whole thing had quite shaken young Peter free of his beginner’s nerves.
As I looked back at the woman being loaded onto the ambulance, I saw the coat covering her, now all covered in blood. I realized with horror that it was my landlady’s special coat. The new red one she’d been bought by her husband as a treat that Christmas, and was planning to wear to a dance that weekend.
The ambulance door slammed shut and whisked the woman away, and my landlady’s favourite coat with her.
Compared to Richmond, Northallerton HQ was quite grand and exciting. It was a large red-brick Georgian building in the centre of town, with two floors. As you approached it looked a bit like a stately home, with a grand portico at the front door, and sash windows on either side. There was a blue police light above the door which was lit up at night.
It felt to me, when I entered, that this was where all the drama must happen. I sat in the reception area again as I had all those months earlier when I came for my interview, and Sergeant Freeman came to meet me.
‘Welcome to our humble abode. I hope you had a good journey.’
‘It’s lovely to be here.’
‘It certainly gets busy,’ she said, as officers in their uniforms charged back and forth carrying files, chatting urgently to one another.
A young lad was being brought in through the front door, struggling a little as he was taken to the cells.
‘Shoplifting. Not the first time he’s been in either,’ she said, leaning over. ‘We get more and more each year, I’m afraid. These young people are getting bolder by the minute. I blame the parents. Anyway, let’s have a proper look around, shall we?’
We walked down a long corridor with lots of doors on either side, the sound of voices murmuring from inside the rooms where people were engaged in all kinds of important meetings. At the end of the corridor was the room where I’d first had my interview with the Chief Constable. Sitting outside, three lads and one young woman were waiting nervously for their own cross-examinations. I was relieved I didn’t have to go through all that again.
We made our way upstairs and entered a bustling room where a group of men and a few women in civvies were operating radios. They were enormous, box-like things with buttons and wires sticking out all over the place. Nothing like the compact radios we have today. There must have been some logic to it all, but to me it looked completely chaotic.
‘Communications,’ said Sergeant Freeman with a flourish of her arm. ‘The hub of operations. Come and meet young Willis. He’ll be showing you the ropes for a couple of days.’
Willis was stooped over with his back to us, taking a message. ‘N2LA to N2XN,’ he was saying, which meant nothing whatsoever to me but must have been conveying some purposeful communication to whoever was on the other end. When he was finished, he turned round and smiled at us. It took me a while to clock it, but standing before me was Eric Willis, my childhood nemesis, the grubby little boy Mary and I had spent many a day plotting against, and calling names from across the street. And there he was, staring back at me, all grown up, tall and handsome with a neat haircut and police uniform.
‘Willis, this is WPC Rhodes. She’ll be working with you in here for a couple of days.’
‘Hello, Eric,’ I said with a half smile, wondering if he would recognize me.
For a while, he just stared back with a rather puzzled look on his face. I could almost see the clockwork whirring in his brain as he tried to place where he had seen me before. After a few moments, a glimmer and then a beam of recognition spread across his face.
‘Pam?’
‘Yes! How long has it been? What, over ten years?’
‘Do you two know each other?’ asked Sergeant Freeman, looking confused.
‘From old times,’ said Eric. ‘Pam was a neighbour of mine. When we were children.’
‘Well, what a small world! I’m sure you’ll have a lot to catch up on. But remember you’re on duty, Willis. Not too much chat about old times, eh?’
I couldn’t believe that the spotty little boy, who had caused me to have so many vengeful thoughts, had grown into this handsome young man. And to bump into him here, of all places!
‘Well, I’ll leave you to it anyway,’ said Sergeant Freeman. ‘Meet me outside at the end of the shift and we’ll walk back to my house.’
The communications department, it turned out, was where all the messages were relayed to and from all the different stations in North Riding, including Richmond. Messages were sent back to Traffic Patrol, and all the officers who were out in their cars as well, letting them know where to go, and they fed back their own information to HQ.
Eric showed me how to use the radio, which was a little scary at first.
‘Do I have to speak into this?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Pick up the receiver, like this.’
I spoke into it and my voice sounded funny, all echoey and loud.
‘Shall we call … which station are you from?’ Eric asked me.
‘Richmond.’
‘Shall we call there and see who answers?’
‘OK,’ I giggled.
So we rang through and Doris the clerk answered.
‘Any news for HQ?’ I said, lowering my voice so she didn’t recognize me at first.
‘No, nothing to report here, over,’ replied Doris.
‘Doris, it’s me, Pam! Rhodes. I’m at HQ!’
‘Pam! Ha. I didn’t recognize your voice!’
‘Anyway, better go, stuff to do here. We’re just being naughty. Maybe we’ll talk again, though,’ I said.
‘Over and out,’ said Doris.
‘So this is what you do in here all day, is it?’ I said to Eric.
‘Yes. Well, no, not exactly. There’s a whole lot going on here. Murders and all sorts. It’s where it all happens.’
It was certainly a far cry from our little station, with our one radio and one telephone. But for me Richmond was still home, for the time being at least.
All around the office in police headquarte
rs there were other people taking messages and the room was alive with noise and excitement. As the messages came in and went, Eric showed me the ropes. By the end of the day, my head was whizzing with buzzes and bleeps and codes and who knows what.
‘What a day!’ I said, as we walked downstairs. ‘So what have you been doing since we last met, anyway?’
‘I did my National Service. Went to Germany. That was quite an adventure. I think everyone should have to do it, personally. Then I wasn’t sure what to do. Village life seemed deadly dull after that. A friend had just joined the police, so I thought why not give that a go. Been here three years now. I’ve got a little boy, George. And my wife, Carol. Pam Rhodes. Well I never did!’ said Eric as he put on his coat.
‘Seriously, you were probably the last person I expected to bump into here,’ I said.
‘I know. Funny how life turns out.’
We stood for a while in the corridor and both thought about times gone past. Neither one of us mentioned what enemies we had been. It seemed that the past was just that now, like a distant dream, and we were both completely different people.
I was staying for the week at Sergeant Freeman’s house. She lived with her husband in quite a small police house on the edge of town, with a very neat garden full of rose bushes, and other shrubs which I didn’t recognize. Her husband was also in the police; they were quite a contrast to my landlady and her husband.
Sergeant Freeman was a stickler for etiquette. She asked me to lay the table for dinner, so I put out the usual knife, fork and spoon. But when she came in with the meatloaf, her face dropped.
‘My dear, you’ve put out soup spoons for dessert. And what’s this? Butter knives?’
‘Sorry. I’m not used to so much … equipment.’
‘A table badly laid is like a mind out of form. Nothing should be out of place, even the simplest of daily rituals. It’s a mark of a shoddy outlook on life.’
Her husband looked at me and smiled knowingly as Sergeant Freeman bustled around the table and replaced the erroneous cutlery, before dishing out the meatloaf and greens.
Bobby on the Beat Page 16