Bobby on the Beat

by Pamela Rhodes

  ‘Northallerton. This is Northallerton.’

  I woke with a jolt as the guard shouted up and down the corridor. I grabbed my suitcase off the rack and made it out just in time. On the platform, Sergeant Baker and a woman I assumed was his wife were looking out for me, smiling as the train pulled away with shunt and a blast of the whistle.

  Mrs Baker was tiny, only about four foot eleven, with a great pile of grey curly hair on her head, which threatened to unbalance her at any moment. She had a much louder voice than you would possibly have thought her tiny frame could produce.

  ‘Miss Rhodes.’ She embraced me with a huge hug for such a small woman. ‘You must be as hungry as a boar. We’ll have a nice cup of tea and some proper teacakes, baked only this morning by my sister, who’s a baker in town, you know. Funny that, with me marrying Mr Baker, and all.’

  She laughed extremely loudly at the thought of it. Sergeant Baker, his silver streak of hair flashing, shook my hand with vehemence and the grip of a vice, and took my suitcase.

  The Bakers lived in a police house in a little brick terrace near the station. I was to sleep in their son’s bedroom as he was away doing his National Service. I sat down on the bed and unpacked my suitcase: some books and a smart skirt and blouse for the interview. It felt funny to be in someone else’s bedroom, and a boy’s bedroom at that. It was nothing like my brother’s, though. His was always full of toys and cars and soldiers in mid-battle. This was tidy and ordered to the extreme.

  There was a neat little row of animal skulls on the mantlepiece, arranged in size order, neatly labelled in scratchy green ink. One said ‘Dog. 1946. Devon’, another ‘Fox? 1949. Northallerton’ and there was one which just said, ominously, ‘Rodent’, with no record of date or location. Next to this was a collection of beetles of all different colours: green, red, a brown spotted one and, in the centre, an enormous black stag beetle, its giant pincers pointing right at me. A shiver crept up my spine and I was relieved when Mrs Baker called up the stairs that tea was ready.

  The next day I walked to the station with Sergeant Baker, who told me about the history of the town. As he droned away, I was distracted, trying to remember facts for my exam. I didn’t know what questions to expect. What’s the largest lake in the world? Lake Malawi, was it? And who’s the Home Secretary again? Oh God, I thought, I can’t remember it all.

  Northallerton Police HQ was a large, imposing red-brick building with lampposts outside and a big ‘Police’ sign. Inside, officers walked past us urgently in all directions, essential cogs in the giant clockwork of official business. It felt overwhelmingly busy and important. I wondered what kinds of secret and heinous crimes were being solved and detected right then under that roof.

  In a room someway up the corridor I heard the crackle of a police radio: ‘Ten four. Over.’ A sergeant sat me down outside the exam room; there were two young lads sitting there already. One was rather spotty with really thick glasses; as I sat down he picked his nose vigorously and flicked its contents across the room. The other was very tall with ginger wavy hair. After a while, the ginger-haired one said coolly, ‘They didn’t say there’d be lasses here. No one ever said anything about that.’

  ‘They’re quite common in the police now actually,’ I lied, and vowed to make sure I passed that exam, just to prove to him that girls were just as good as boys, if not better.

  A bored-looking sergeant yawned and ushered us into the exam room, where we sat at small tables. It felt like being back at school. The questions are a blur now in my mind, but I remember being asked to name the Home Secretary, and there was a geography section that asked us: ‘How many counties are there on the east coast?’ There was also a current affairs section, and a dictation test.

  After that was over, I had to be interviewed by the Chief Constable. Lieutenant Colonel J. Moran was a very tall thin man, with a squeaky nasal voice and yellowy-white hair. He sat behind a big oak desk in an old-fashioned swivelling chair.

  Above his head was a painting of a country scene in which a man on a horse, a general maybe, was trotting past a group of peasants lounging about in the sun. Next to that there was a photo of himself, receiving an award.

  We shook hands. He gave me the distinct impression of a dead frog, which gave me a terrible sense of foreboding.

  ‘Sit down, Miss, ah … Rhodes,’ he said, peering down at his notes. ‘I see you hail from Scarborough.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Colonel. Chief Constable. Sir,’ I said nervously, wondering if that was somehow a bad thing.

  ‘I once had an aunt in Scarborough,’ he said, taking a huge puff on his pipe. ‘Renie. She fell under a horse and cart. Terrible, messy business.’ He looked back at his notes then snapped, ‘So why do you want to join the force then, hmmm?’

  I had prepared a full and heartfelt answer, but my mind suddenly went completely blank.

  ‘Because … umm …’ I looked up at the painting, the man on the horse and the laughing country folk, hoping for some inspiration. ‘Because I want to serve my country and do my bit to protect the law and order of the nation. And,’ I added, ‘I want to get on in the world and see more and do better and I’d love to ride in a Black Maria.’ Oh god, why did I say that last bit? That was so stupid.

  The Chief Constable let out a single burst of laugh, before assuming a seriousness more appropriate to the situation.

  ‘Well, I think I have everything I need. We’ll inform you by letter presently. Thank you, Miss Rhodes. Sergeant Gaunt will see you to the medical room. Next.’

  Sergeant Gaunt appeared out of the shadows and whisked me through to another room, where a balding, monocled doctor, who didn’t say a single word except for ‘Please lift your arm,’ checked my blood pressure, noted my height and weight, and took a blood sample. And then, before I knew it, everything was over.

  On the train home, I slept with exhaustion the whole way.

  At work, I couldn’t stop re-running the whole surreal experience, the interview and the exam, over and over in my mind. Had I answered the questions right, had I said the right things to the Chief Constable? I felt sure his tone of voice at the end meant I hadn’t got in. I had also been trying to avoid Mrs Preen all morning, in case she tried to corner me again about the cardigan. But I hadn’t seen her at all, which was strange.

  On my way back from lunch, I was walking past Mr Richardson’s office when I heard muffled raised voices from within. I stood on tiptoes and peered through the little glass window in the door. Sitting down was a policeman, looking very serious, with his hat on the desk in front of him. Mrs Preen was standing up, looking agitated. I strained to hear through the door but could only make out the odd sentence here and there.

  ‘Well, she never said a word to me,’ Mrs Preen said.

  ‘But didn’t you even suspect?’ whined Mr Richardson.

  The policeman then said, ‘So what did she do here exactly?’ and ‘But is she a hard worker?’.

  I couldn’t quite catch the answer. It looked like the officer was getting up to leave so as they shook hands, all smiles, I slunk away round the corner. I ran back to my department and pretended to fold some clothes. A few minutes later a voice cracked like Jupiter in the heavens.

  ‘Pamela Rhodes. MISS RHODES! Mr Richardson wants to see you. Now. In his office.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Preen. Right away, Mrs Preen.’

  When I sat down, Mr Richardson was smiling and being far too nice for my liking.

  ‘You know how much we rely on you here, don’t you, Pamela?’ He smiled, fiddling with a paperweight in the shape of the Eiffel Tower. He never usually called me by my first name. ‘All your years of hard work have not gone unnoticed, you know.’

  ‘Did you think you could hide it from us? We’re not stupid,’ Mrs Preen burst in, unable to contain herself.

  Although she was called Mrs Preen we had never heard hide nor hair of a Mr Preen. We all wondered whether she had murdered her husband and kept him hidden, maybe stuffed, in their house, so
she could shout at him when the mood took her and he wouldn’t answer back. Her screeching voice shook me back to reality.

  ‘I put in all that time, training you how to count the coupons, how to fold and to iron, and to get the best sales figures. There are literally hundreds of girls, like you, who’d give their arms and teeth for this job. And you throw it right back in my face.’

  ‘If it’s the wages,’ reasoned Mr Richardson, ‘I’m sure there’s some arrangement we can come to. There may well be an opening,’ he declared grandly, ‘in Furs! Now, what do you think about that?’

  ‘Well, yes, the police wages are higher,’ I said. ‘But that’s not the only thing.’

  But before I could go on, Mrs Preen was right back in.

  ‘Yes, but you know you have to spend half of that money on your lodgings. I mean, really, a woman joining the police. Whatever next? Women politicians? I don’t object to women in the workplace as such, obviously, but fashion is so much more … suitable.’

  ‘But money’s not the only thing,’ I said, surprised at my sudden confidence. ‘And anyway there are more women doing it now and Sergeant Baker says … things are changing.’

  After a short pause for consideration, Mrs Preen dropped her voice and changed tack.

  ‘I have connections, you know, Pamela. In London. I could easily secure you a position as a top sales girl at one of the big department stores – a situation much more befitting a young lady.’

  ‘You know policing can be dangerous work too,’ added Mr Richardson.

  ‘Exactly! You have to suffer such unsavoury characters. Thieves and beggars and …’ Mrs Preen paused for effect and whispered, ‘ladies of the night’.

  After what seemed like hours of this unseemly joust, they let me leave. I managed to hold my ground, saying I was really very grateful for all their guidance but I had made up my mind. It had felt like another job interview all over again but, in the end, neither had managed to convince me to stay. In fact, everything they said made the police seem even more exciting than ever, and only stiffened my resolve.

  But that evening, as I lay in bed and stared out of the window at the wide open sky, I reflected on what they had said, the offer of work in London, and how dangerous police work would be. Maybe they were right after all, maybe I was making a terrible mistake.

  A few days later I had sort of forgotten about the whole thing, and it seemed like a distant dream. Then an envelope arrived, blue with an official-looking stamp. I scooped it up and held on to it for ages, while I ate breakfast and then tidied my room. I carried it around with me all morning, not daring to open it.

  Mam and Dad were in the garden, heads down in the vegetable patch. Eventually I ran upstairs and sat in my favourite spot, a window ledge on the landing, and pulled the letter from the envelope carefully to extract the neatly folded contents without tearing them. My stomach turned somersaults as I read the typed words.

  Dear Miss Rhodes,

  Further to your application to enrol on the training course with a view to becoming a probationary Police Constable, we regret to inform you …

  Oh no!

  … we regret to inform you that, although you have passed all the exams and were otherwise a highly suitable candidate, your medical tests have revealed that you have a condition called anaemia, which makes you unfit for service at this point. You will therefore need to attend a further medical. If you then meet the approved health standards, we will consider offering you a position.’

  Anaemia? What on earth was it, I wondered. I hoped it was not serious. I rushed into the garden.

  ‘It’s something to do with the blood, isn’t it?’ said Dad. He was on his knees, pulling up a particularly stubborn weed.

  ‘It’s nothing to worry about. You just need to eat more iron,’ said Mam.

  ‘What does that mean?’ I asked, my mind boggling at the thought.

  ‘How about this for starters?’ she said, and pulled up a great big handful of spinach.

  So, for the next two weeks, Mam fed me up on as much liver and greens as she could get her hands on, even doing deals with some of the neighbours to get me more of the wretched stuff. It was liver every which way: fried, boiled and cooked in a big stew, liver mashed up on toast and liver casserole. I even dreamt of liver.

  When the date for the medical check-up came, all I could do was cross my fingers and hope I was cured of the blessed illness.

  I returned to Northallerton and the doctor took another blood sample and checked me for all the symptoms again, then tested my eyes and measured and weighed me. A few days later, the results came through: I was cured, fit as a fiddle.

  So it was official. I would be going on the police training course in Lancashire the following week. I was later told that two boys I’d sat the exam with had failed to pass the test, and the other boy failed the medical because he wore glasses. But as for me, before long, I’d be a real live bobby on the beat.

  2

  ‘Right, Miss, if you just lift your head forward slightly. And … Ready.’

  The camera flashed and I blinked in shock.

  ‘Right, just one more. That’s lovely! Eyes up. Beautiful.’

  Click, flash.

  I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to smile or not, so I attempted a kind of half-hearted effort. Later I learnt you are definitely not supposed to smile.

  I was having my official photo taken, for the records, at Northallerton Police HQ. It was the same place they photographed all the offenders. When I got my photo back I did look a bit like I had just committed mass murder myself, and hidden the bodies where no one would ever find them.

  After the photo room, they took me to a corner of a big office where fingerprints were being taken. There was a large desk with ink-pads and piles of record books. The police had been using fingerprints to confirm identity in Britain since around the turn of the century and, in the early 1950s, it was still one of the few scientific methods we had at our disposal.

  The same bored-looking sergeant who had shown me into the exam room for my interview now lifted my hand nonchalantly, and as he took my fingerprints he explained what he was doing.

  ‘So you roll them this way,’ he yawned. ‘And then that way …’

  I seriously thought he was about to fall asleep right there and then on the desk.

  ‘… to get an even spread of ink.’

  It felt funny to be ‘on record’. My own unique identity, the prints of my fingertips, now preserved in black and white. When you leave the police, I had been assured, they destroy your fingerprints and return the photo.

  After that, I got my uniform and all the pieces of police kit I needed from the storeroom, and I was given two large books, Stone’s Justices’ Manual and Moriarty’s Police Law. These were given to all new police trainees, in order that we would learn about the law. Now I had everything I needed as a new recruit.

  ‘Have you got everything? Your books, whistle? Have you got enough clothes?’

  Mam fussed as she stood at the door to see me off. It was the first time I would be away from home for this long, thirteen weeks in total.

  As I walked along the seafront, I looked at the two cliffs of Scarborough and felt a pang of regret at leaving its fresh sea air. That funny town, stuck out there on the edge of the world, or so it felt.

  Up St Nicholas Street, as I went past Marshall & Snelgrove I saw Jane looking out of the window. We had arranged to say goodbye when I passed by and she ran out to meet me. She had another girl with her and they both looked excited.

  ‘Here,’ she said, handing me a small cloth packet. ‘It’s a “survival package”. Open it on the train,’ she grinned. ‘This is Maureen, by the way. She’s at Marshall’s, in Furs.’

  Maureen looked up shyly from under a small felt hat.

  ‘She wants to be a policewoman too. Don’t you, Maureen? Tell her.’

  ‘Really?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Maureen quietly. ‘Just wondered if you had any
tips. You know, about exams or whatever you have to do.’

  So I told her what I’d experienced and gave her a few hints. I said I’d put in a good word if I could.

  Funny that, I thought. I had been the first woman I knew to think about joining the police, and now everyone wanted to.

  ‘Anyway, make sure to write and tell me all your police adventures,’ said Jane. ‘We’d better get back in. I’ve got the dreaded Smith on my back again.’

  I would be sad to say goodbye to the laughs we’d had together. Our dreams of escape to the other side of the world. We shook hands, and with that she was gone.

  When I got to the station, there were only a few minutes before my train. I decided not to look back at Scarborough and I found myself holding back a few tears. Although it was a thrill to be going it was also a scary jump off into the unknown.

  The only people in my carriage were a snoring man in a pork pie hat and a nun, who was knitting.

  No one spoke and the journey seemed to take for ever. By the time we were out in the countryside I was too nervous and excited to read or do anything. Eventually, I opened up Jane’s survival package. It contained a paper bag of my favourite sweets, Liquorice Allsorts, and some writing paper with rabbits up the side, with a little note on the first sheet from Jane saying ‘Write to me!’

  When I arrived at Warrington, a policeman stood leaning against the wall. I wandered over and said I was here for training and asked was I in the right place. He nodded and introduced himself as Sergeant Wooding. Two other lads, who had been on the same train, turned up and we all walked up the hill together.

  One of the lads introduced himself as Ted; the other was Neville. As we wandered up the country lane, Wooding told us a little about the history of the training site.

  ‘Bruche was originally built on open fields, in 1940, to provide temporary accommodation for workers at the nearby munitions factory at Risley.’ He waved his hand vaguely and spoke as though he was reading from a guide book. ‘It was never actually used for that purpose, though, and in the end the US Army took it over for a while as a transit camp. It opened as a Police Training Centre in 1946 …’