Bobby on the Beat

by Pamela Rhodes

  ‘You’re all right. I’ve got your back,’ he said, and tapped his nose.

  Something about Tony gave me the impression he wasn’t taking this mission entirely seriously. But I had no choice now. I was the decoy and that was that.

  ‘Keep your eye out for anything … suspicious,’ I said.

  I could feel my hands shaking as I walked away. I felt like a young gazelle being thrown into the lion’s den, wide-eyed and petrified. But really, what do I have to fear, I thought? Just a silly old man with nothing better to do than show his bits to a few girls. What harm could he do?

  And yet, in those days, flashing was quite shocking. Young women just weren’t exposed to that kind of thing; there was no internet revealing everything to everyone, or anything like that. It could really be quite distressing for some people; the fear was it could end up leading to rape or something worse.

  I steeled my nerves, strode into the park, and wondered how you ‘make’ yourself look like a normal person having a stroll. It all felt very silly and awkward, particularly as I didn’t want to walk too fast or I would get to the other side of the park too soon and have to turn back. I stopped for a while and pretended to admire some roses. I sniffed a few, which made me sneeze, then watched a couple of bees as they darted in and out of the petals.

  From the corner of my eye, I could see Tony sitting on a bench, pretending to read a newspaper, and I felt reassured that at least he was still there.

  An elderly lady came past with two tiny terrier dogs and waited as they sniffed round a lamppost. She smiled at me as I passed.

  ‘Lovely day, isn’t it? Summer’s well and truly here now.’

  ‘Beautiful,’ I said.

  ‘These two practically dragged me out for a walk this afternoon. Wouldn’t stop scratching at the door until I brought them here.’

  ‘They’re very nice. How old?’

  ‘Just a year. They’re twins! Anyway, they keep an old lady happy. If it wasn’t for them I’d probably never go out since my Albert died, God bless his soul.’

  As she walked off I hoped she wouldn’t get the full ‘flasher’ experience before I could catch up with him. I thought it might finish her off.

  I walked a bit further into a slightly wooded area, and the air went suddenly damp and cold. I looked up ahead and caught sight of a strange-looking figure. As the shape grew closer I made out the form of a hunched-over man who was coming right towards me. He looked a little scruffy, perhaps a tramp, with a shabby long coat and greasy hair. He wasn’t that old, only about forty-five, but his stoop and the lines round his eyes made him seem older.

  He sniffed and wiped his nose across his sleeve, then stopped for a while just in front of a large oak tree and looked around the park.

  I felt for my whistle in my pocket and braced myself. I was almost tempted to cover my eyes, like you would watching a horror film, but I managed to resist, and continued on past, keeping a wary eye on him.

  The man bent over, and took several minutes fumbling for his bootlaces.

  ‘Don’t want to trip up,’ he said. His deep, gravelly voice made me jump. ‘That wouldn’t do at all.’

  ‘Of course not. Safety first,’ I replied, and stopped walking. I was keeping my distance, though.

  He stood up and held onto his back for a moment.

  ‘Not as young as I once was,’ he said and took a small bottle out of his pocket. ‘Doctor’s orders.’

  I looked up the path and saw Tony watching covertly from behind a tree. Tony looked more like the flasher from that vantage point, I thought.

  The man sat down on a bench and leant back with his arm on the rest. He took a large slug from the bottle and looked down at a one-and-a-half-legged pigeon dragging its way across the ground. He reached into his pocket, took out a piece of bread and when it came over to him he started stroking the bird’s little head. I could hear him talking with a gentle growl as he fed the injured creature.

  ‘We’re the same you and me, aren’t we, sir? Lone soldiers.’

  I found it hard to believe this odd but kindly character could be the flasher and I left him to it.

  After another hour and a half I had exhausted every possible form of leisurely strolling I could muster, and still had nothing of any interest to report. There was no sign of the flasher anywhere, so I met up with Tony back at the entrance and we walked to the station, with a mixture of anticlimax that our mission had failed and relief that I hadn’t seen the flasher in action.

  ‘The Sergeant’ll be disappointed we didn’t come up with the goods. Though can’t say I’m sorry we didn’t get a ringside view at that particular sideshow,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing much we could do anyway,’ said Tony, smiling. ‘Must be his day off. Although you know what that means, of course. He’ll most likely be back at it tomorrow.’

  The hours went by quite slowly on the beat in Redcar. Not a lot happened during the day, and when Friday night eventually arrived we were relieved to be going out. Maureen and I, and a few of the lads, were meeting at the Pier Ballroom for a dance.

  Tony had got hold of a load of Mexican hats from somewhere, which he produced as we all arrived. A Mexican band had come all the way from a tour in London to play in Redcar. This was in the days before package holidays to foreign locations were the norm, and the whole thing felt very exotic indeed.

  ‘How ridiculous we all look,’ I laughed as we walked into the hall.

  ‘That hat actually suits you,’ Maureen said. ‘Perhaps you should go and live in Mexico.’

  The band were all wearing big ponchos and playing a very new kind of music, to our ears at least, with an unusually jumpy beat, accompanied by panpipes and guitars.

  ‘Is that Spanish they’re singing in?’

  ‘Yes. I think so. Or is it Portuguese?’ asked John.

  ‘No, that’s Brazil you’re thinking of. That’s in South America. Mexico is Central America.’

  ‘I always get my Americas muddled up. I don’t know why there are so many Americas.’

  The lads all stood in a row in their hats. Steve was good-looking, with dark hair and a freckly nose. He asked me to dance. And then, next to him, there was Malcolm. I hardly noticed him that night, but it wouldn’t be long before I did.

  Steve was quite a good dancer and an easy talker, and we got on quite well as we shuffled around the floor to the strange Mexican beats.

  ‘There was this bloke at home who went to Mexico once. Said you could buy a house out there for about three quid. Seriously.’

  ‘What would you do with it, though? I mean, isn’t it dangerous?’ I asked.

  ‘He bought a donkey too. Or was it a mule? What’s the difference?’

  ‘Not sure.’

  ‘Anyway. It’s not like in the films any more. Cowboy films, and all that. But they do have gunfights. Out in the open sometimes, he said.’

  ‘I’ve never been abroad, ever. I’d love to one day. My dad goes to Spain and Portugal and things now, with the church. Organizes it himself. They went to Rome in Italy this year. It was so hot you could fry an egg, apparently.’

  ‘We took the boat to Calais once, just for the fun of it,’ said Steve as he swung me round. ‘My dad made me go and buy him a packet of cigarettes. I was only about nine! I’ll never forget. Un paquet de Gauloises, s’il vous plaît. I could hardly see over the counter.’

  After the dance, Maureen came over with Malcolm and Tony, laughing.

  ‘Look what we found,’ she said, holding up her glass. ‘Blue drinks! The mind boggles. Must be a Mexican thing.’

  ‘Have you tried them yet?’ I asked warily.

  ‘I don’t dare. Tony, you try it.’

  ‘Ooh, it’s bitter,’ he said and scrunched up his face.

  ‘Don’t they drink maggots in Mexico or something?’ asked Steve.

  ‘Ooh, it makes me shiver to think,’ said Maureen. ‘Tequila, isn’t it?’

  ‘How disgusting. I’m glad we don’t do that here! I’ll sett
le for port and lemon any day.’

  At the end of the night we all said goodbye, then Steve walked me back to my digs before returning to his room above the station. He was much more lighthearted than Jim had been, and it was a nice relaxing walk back, both of us freely talking and laughing.

  ‘How about the pictures then? Next week?’ he said as I put the key in the door.

  ‘Sounds great.’

  It was a date.

  Some of us were excited the next week as we had been detailed to the Redcar races. That meant getting out of town for a few days, to the racecourse.

  ‘What’s it like?’ I asked Tony as we walked over. He would be joining me on the shift.

  ‘A lot of horses.’

  ‘Well. I guessed that much.’

  ‘Actually, to tell you the truth, I didn’t do the races last year. But it’s usually fun when I’ve been not on duty.’

  As we got closer to the racetrack, there were lots of people milling about. Men in cloth caps, some taking bets, scribbling with chalk on long boards and passing around bits of paper. Others held up their binoculars, inspecting the horses, and the women were quite smartly dressed in their best hats and dresses, tottering along in the mud.

  As we got nearer, I thought we were about to enter the ground itself, but instead Tony steered me towards a small white van on the edge.

  ‘This is us, I think,’ he said, looking around.

  ‘Hoy!’ yelled a voice. ‘We’re over here.’

  It was a lad I had met once at HQ. They called in police from all over the area, but I was the only woman.

  ‘I’ve seen you before.’

  ‘Yes. You were there when I had my photo taken at HQ, I think. With Sergeant Gaunt?’

  ‘That’s it. I’m Kevin.’

  ‘Pam.’

  ‘You mash the tea here and serve here, in these mugs. And the sink’s here for washing up.’

  As I surveyed the scene, I realized to my disappointment that, stuck in this van, we could only just about see the racecourse through a gap in the trees. My job, along with the other PCs, was to make the tea for the officers out in the grounds. We could hear the loudspeaker calling each race, and every now and then the roar of the crowd would swell up, rising and falling as the horses sped around the track.

  ‘Two teas, please,’ said a voice through the hatch. I turned round and filled up a mug from the big urn, and watched as the policeman ran back to where he was supervising the crowds in the thick of the action.

  ‘That rain’ll cause havoc with the track,’ said Kevin as a light drizzle began to fall. It wasn’t long before it became heavy rain.

  ‘My father’s into racing,’ Kevin said. ‘I once saw a horse slip so badly its legs nearly split in two.’ He demonstrated a mock fall in the tea van, which nearly sent the urn flying. ‘Another time a woman – this was before my time – ran right into the tracks. Protesting she was, for some cause, women’s rights or something. The vote. You know. Had her head knocked right off. Are you a betting man?’ he asked Tony.

  ‘Only the Grand National. I wouldn’t want to get hooked. Haven’t got the money for it.’

  ‘My mother swears she knows which horse to put her money on. Waits until the horses are all lined up at the starting line. Then she watches carefully, to see which one does his … business. And which business is the biggest. And she puts all her money on that horse, quick as she can, before the race starts. Says they’ll be lighter and faster. More often than not she’s right, you know. She has a real knack for it.’

  Just then, the crowd let out an almighty roar, which was followed by an eerie silence. A few policemen began running from different directions, like ants in the distance, and we strained our necks to see what was going on. Gradually we began to hear what had happened from a variety of sources.

  ‘Rider fell at the last jump,’ said a young PC who was just walking over to get some tea. ‘Lost his grip on the reins, and the animal just reared up. Slipped in the mud. Then the jockey had a heart attack right there on the track.’

  ‘I heard the rider had a stroke,’ said another. ‘Then fell off. The horse just kept running and won the race on its own. Although it doesn’t count, of course.’

  We heard a few more variations on the story, including one in which the jockey actually managed to get back on the horse and went on to win the race. But we never did find out what had really happened.

  A while later, as we were packing up the tea things, we saw the jockey himself being stretchered off into an ambulance. He looked pale, possibly even unconscious. A little way behind him, a skittish-looking horse, neighing and snorting frantically, was being led away into its box by two stable lads. I wondered whether that would be the end of its track career.

  And that, I’m afraid to report, was my one and only glimpse of the action at the Redcar races.

  9

  The air was shimmering in the heat above the road, and there were streams of people packing out the beach each day as summer hotted up. Some dipped in the sea to cool off from the heat, others just lay stretched out like smoked kippers on the beach, too hot even to speak to one another.

  I walked past the donkey man, who smiled out from under a broad-brimmed straw hat. He was red in the face and sweating as he led the animals along the seafront. A little girl was intently trying to maintain her grip on a fast melting ice cream as she clung onto the reins of the smallest donkey, an undertaking which was proving increasingly difficult with every step. The little boy next to her was kicking his animal, trying to get it to go faster, but it just stared straight ahead and plodded on in the heat. As I made my way up and down the promenade, day after day, in my uniform, sometimes I could really identify with those poor beasts.

  As I arrived at the pier, one of the lads from the station was approaching from the other direction. We both stopped as we reached the entrance.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, ‘we’ve overlapped.’

  I hadn’t spoken much to Malcolm over these past few weeks. Just the odd greeting here and there. He seemed to be the quiet one, a little offhand the few times we had spoken, so I had it in my head that he was a bit grumpy.

  ‘Afternoon,’ he said, putting his hand on the wall of one of the onion-domed brick buildings which marked the way onto the pier, and wiping his forehead. ‘Sweltering, isn’t it?’

  ‘I know. I just want to put my swimming costume on and dive right into the sea, right now.’

  We both stared out across the beach for a while at the hundreds of holidaymakers.

  ‘Look how red that bloke is. Like a big lobster.’

  ‘Where do they all come from, anyway? A month or so ago, this beach was almost empty and now you can’t move. Who are they all? That’s what I want to know,’ said Malcolm.

  We stood for a while on the pier, near the ballroom. A pair of elderly ladies arrived next to us. They looked out to sea, sharing a packet of chips.

  ‘Do you think seagulls talk to each other?’ asked one of the ladies. ‘I mean, what do you think they’re saying?’

  ‘If they do it’s all probably very mundane, telling each other to go away and things like that most of the time, I would have thought. You know, marking their territories. They’re not called seagulls, actually. They’re just called gulls. That’s a common gull. My Frank’s quite the birdwatcher, you know.’

  ‘Really? I thought they were called seagulls. I could have sworn.’

  Just then, a huge bird with a big, yellow beak glided down and made a dive right for their chip packet.

  ‘Cheeky! Get away! Did you see that?’ she called over to us. ‘You should arrest that blessed gull, whatever its name is.’

  The gull swooped round, circling above, and seemed to laugh, squawk squawk, as it flew away into the distance.

  ‘Hey, do you fancy a dance here one evening?’ Malcolm asked, out of the blue.

  Well, that was the last thing I’d been expecting. I didn’t even think he liked me.

  ‘Um. Well,
I’m not really free,’ I said quickly, trying desperately to think of an excuse.

  ‘What about the variety show?’ he said, almost desperately, as though he couldn’t bear to lose. ‘It’s fun. I suppose. Some comedian, a fat woman who sings, apparently. And some dancers, and …’

  I looked up at Malcolm as he spoke. I hadn’t noticed how clear and blue his eyes were before. And now, with the sun shining on his hair and his lovely complexion, he really did look quite handsome.

  ‘One day I’m going to leave a bottle here with a message in it and see who gets it.’ He stared away and out to sea. ‘I wonder how far it would go, anyway. It might just end up down in Scarborough or something. Or would it go all the way across and end up somewhere exotic, like Denmark?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What? Scarborough or Denmark?’

  ‘Yes. I’d love to go to the variety show with you,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, that. OK. I’ll pick you up next Friday then, shall I? Around seven.’

  I couldn’t figure Malcolm out. One minute he seemed keen as mustard and now he didn’t seem to care at all.

  As we walked back towards the promenade, everything seemed like it was in glaring, cartoon Technicolor. The sky had never been so blue, the sea never such a rich mix of greens and frothing whites, and the sand was so yellow it seemed to spread like butter out into the sea.

  ‘See you then,’ I said, continuing on my beat. He hardly looked back as we went our separate ways.

  ‘So, anyway, there’s been another incident and I need you to go and check it out.’

  Sergeant Ditchburn’s voice had been murmuring on in the background for quite some time but I hadn’t been able to concentrate on what he was saying.

  ‘Sorry, Sergeant? What incident?’

  ‘With the dogs. Aren’t you listening?’

  Everyone was getting hot in the station, and we were all finding it hard to do anything. This was long before the days of air conditioning, and as the day went on the room just got hotter and hotter, like a huge brick oven.

  ‘Sorry. I was distracted.’

  ‘We’re all hot. It doesn’t mean you have to shirk your duties. Anyway, as I was saying, there’s been another report of dangerous dogs. Where these animals are coming from I don’t know. Must be something in the water. Up by the park. I need you to go there now and check it out.’