Even everyday objects can appear interesting when they form part of a cherished collection. I was shown collections of things like matchbox labels, cigarette cards, beermats, mugs bearing place names, out-of-date cameras, inkwells and ink bottles, fountain pens, dolls, teddy bears, perfume bottles, comics, series of magazines, books by particular authors or every edition of a classic novel, glassware, china, wooden carvings, whisky artefacts and drinks memorabilia such as toucans and models of Johnny Walker. Without exception, each treasured article had a story behind it, something of blessed memory to the owner.
And if I called at any of these houses, for whatever reason, I was usually shown at least part of these proud collections and regaled with stories about the most treasured items. Certainly, most collections were a talking point and an icebreaker, some resulting from a lifetime’s work.
Even police officers joined the fun by collecting helmet badges, cap badges or police uniform buttons from around the world. Some even managed to collect entire uniforms, enough to fill several large houses, while one old friend of mine collected traction engines and steam rollers. Saving old cars, motor bikes or even pedal cycles were popular hobbies too, while another friend of mine has what is surely the world’s biggest collection of post marks. These are from post offices around the world, many of which have since been absorbed into larger units so that those small village post marks have become obsolete and thus no longer obtainable. Many are now rarities, and my friend makes a good living writing and lecturing about his unique collection.
Whatever is manufactured or created is quite likely to become part of the specialist collection of some ardent admirer and, hopefully, such treasures eventually find themselves permanently housed in a formal museum.
Some collections do seem utterly useless however. I had to visit the home of an old lady in Ploatby and could hardly get into the place because it was full of old newspapers. They were neatly folded and piled high on the floors, tables, sideboards and under the table and on the staircase and in the pantry. In more than one place the piles reached the roof of the room, and in some instances, she had to scramble over piles of newspaper in order reach cupboards or even her staircase.
I have no idea when or why she started to collect newspapers, but she told me she had never ever thrown a newspaper out and had never used one to light her fire. She lived alone, and I wondered what would happen to the newspapers when she died. She was still living in that little paper-packed cottage when I left Aidensfield, so I have no idea what became of her and her tons of newspapers.
Perhaps the most appalling collection I ever encountered was in a terraced council house where every feasible space, even the sides of the staircase, window ledges, mantelpiece, tops of wardrobes, kitchen shelves, every inch of floor space and anywhere else, was full of pint milk bottles of the old, tall, slender-necked type — and each was full of the male householder’s urine. Even the downstairs toilet was full of them and the stench was unbelievable. I discovered this awful hoard when I had to interview the householder during my enquiries into the sudden death of a neighbour, but I asked him to sit in my van for my interrogation. There is no way I could have spent even the shortest time in that dreadful stinking house. I have no idea why he behaved in such a peculiar manner, but later I dropped a quiet word into the ear of a local council official. Clearly, the fellow had a problem of some kind — and some dairy or milkman was missing a few bottles!
But another prized collection provided me with something of a professional puzzle. On a hillside overlooking Elsinby stands a fine brick-built Victorian mansion which commands extensive views across the village to the front and the moors to the rear.
In its own spacious gardens and grounds it was built around 1845 by a highly successful businessman and included a range of stables, loose boxes, a conservatory complete with vine, greenhouses, potting sheds and sundry other very useful outbuildings. As I became gradually more knowledgeable about the people living on my patch, I learned that the house — called Elsinby Manor — was currently occupied by a wealthy gentleman and his wife, each of whom had wide business interests in this country and overseas. They were Geoffrey and Isabella Cunningham, a sophisticated and popular couple in their mid-fifties who had purchased Elsinby Manor several years prior to my arrival as their village constable.
Among Geoffrey’s business enterprises was a flourishing wine importing company specializing in reds and white from the Loire Valley, but he had many other interests, including a furniture production company in Sunderland, a perfumery in Portugal and a motor car franchise in northeast England. His wife was also a businesswoman with a sports outfitter in York, a restaurant in Harrogate and an upmarket shoe shop in Leeds specializing in personal fitting for ladies.
They were a busy, successful but very pleasant couple with no children who lived alone in that huge manor house, albeit with help in the form of a cleaner, a secretary, a couple of gardeners, an occasional handyman, and also an occasional cook, all recruited from the village. With Geoffrey’s overseas interests he spent a lot of time away from home, something that did not appear to worry Isabella because she could usefully employ herself with her own business interests and a busy social life.
She liked to entertain at home and her dinner parties were widely known and enjoyed by like-minded people from the locality. Sometimes Geoffrey attended her parties but quite often, when he was away on business, Isabella used those occasions to bring in her own friends rather than tolerate their joint friends or business acquaintances. Although, to some extent they lived separate lives, they were very happily married and overtly a very close couple.
Not quite six feet tall, Geoffrey was prematurely white-haired, stockily built and rather stooping in appearance which made him look older than he really was. He behaved rather like a man older than his years too; he loved his dark-red Jaguar car, his two yellow Labrador dogs, his wine, his cigars and the occasional visit to the local pub for a chatter with the local menfolk. He claimed such visits kept his feet firmly on the Yorkshire ground. By contrast, Isabella was dark-haired with more than a hint of Mediterranean blood within her. She wore her plentiful glossy hair very long, often with a bright ribbon tying it back in a ponytail, and she loved brightly coloured clothes, often wearing skirts of bright red, yellow, blue, orange and green, or a mixture of all colours, along with frothy white blouses. She behaved in ways which suggested she was ten years younger than her genuine age. Tall and buxom, she loved Spanish dancing, for example, holidays in the sunshine and loud modern music while Geoffrey preferred to relax with Beethoven, his slippers and a glass of brandy beside the fire. In some respects, they were as different as chalk and cheese, but they were a happy and contented pair who complemented one another in their private and business lives.
Or, perhaps to be truthful, their outward appearances suggested a happy and contented marriage because, as I was later to discover, there was some kind of discord within the happy household. I think it was a rather minor discord, but it took me a while to appreciate its precise form or source, but things began to happen while Geoffrey was overseas on a wine-buying mission. Unfortunately, as many of us know, if a problem manifests itself early in the day then that problem increases, expands and intensifies as the day progresses, usually compounding itself and adversely affecting other matters as the day proceeds until, as night falls, we realize the day has been one long series of linked disasters. And all because we could not find one of our shoes when we overslept, which meant we missed the train to work and then the boss arrived at the office earlier than expected that morning and he urgently wanted figures from the file which we’d left at home in our panic to catch the train . . .
And so it was with Geoffrey and Isabella on that noteworthy occasion. Perhaps, in order to provide the full flavour of this incident, I ought to first refer to Geoffrey’s passion. He was an avid collector of paintings in watercolours and oils; he collected pastels too and even colour photographs but only one subject interes
ted him: it was nude women — provided they were redheads. Whenever he saw a picture of a naked redhead he felt compelled to purchase it and then display it in Elsinby Manor. This meant that most of the walls bore pictures of redheaded nudes, some in the form of huge oils, others in miniature style and some as colour photographs, and there is no doubt Geoffrey’s fine collection was unusual — and very interesting to his male visitors.
Unfortunately, as I was to learn, Isabella did not wholly approve of his passion. In fact, there were times she positively fumed at some of his more erotic purchases, something she often mentioned to her friends in the district (which is how I came to hear about it), but Geoffrey steadfastly refused to abandon his aim to keep adding to his collection and displaying them in the house. He ignored Isabella’s regular protests about their presence — he did listen to and obey her in practically all other matters, even down to the decor and style of furniture. I believe this was part of his ploy to keep his pictures! When it came to redheaded nudes, therefore, Geoffrey was adamant. He would buy pictures of them whenever he wanted, and he would display them in the house wherever he wanted. Most of us knew that Isabella disliked his hobby because she was never afraid to say so, but whether this was because she was a raven-haired beauty of continental appearance, or whether Geoffrey had once shown undue interest in a redhead, fully dressed or otherwise, is something I do not know. I believe, however, that this was the only true discord between this happy and fortunate couple, but on one occasion it provoked a rather complicated series of occurrences.
A day or so prior to one of Geoffrey’s overseas trips, he made a walking tour of his property with one of his gardeners — Jim Barnes — and discovered that many of the outbuildings were full of old junk which had accumulated. Over the years, these cast-offs had been dumped there because it had been the most convenient solution at the time.
The rubbish comprised all sorts — discarded furniture such as drawers, wardrobes, settees and chairs, old gardening implements, a dead wheelbarrow, some children’s toys left by a previous owner, broken and useless planks of wood, cracked vases and plant pots, bits of old cars and motor bikes, ancient fireplaces, a discarded bath and toilet basin, and more besides. Determined to clear the rubbish, Geoffrey had instructed the gardener to find someone — like Claude Jeremiah Greengrass — to shift every piece of it. He wanted the sheds cleared of every piece of discarded junk and he would happily pay for its removal; if the clearance man was able to earn himself a little extra by selling some of the items, well, that was to his benefit. Geoffrey simply wanted rid of the accumulated clutter.
Geoffrey then showed Jim which sheds had to be cleared; there were three at the end of the garden near the greenhouses. Jim said he understood perfectly and would see to it without delay. The place would be clear of junk before Geoffrey’s return from the Loire Valley. It was a chore long overdue.
Knowing Geoffrey’s business plans well in advance, however, Isabella had planned an important dinner party during his absence. It would include some of her influential friends from the locality, but also the two directors of a prestigious department store on Tyneside through whom she hoped to sell her custom-made and rather expensive ladies shoes. Geoffrey’s absence was to be from one Friday morning until the following Thursday evening, and so Isabella — with Geoffrey being fully informed of her plans — arranged her event for the Tuesday evening between those Fridays.
Being a good businesswoman, however, Isabella had undertaken some research into the two lady directors from Tyneside, only to discover they were twin sisters, both married, who did not drink alcohol, did not smoke, attended chapel every Sunday, thought Hollywood films were immoral, abhorred women appearing in public in bathing costumes and refused to stock items of lingerie because men were regular customers in their shop. They did not think men should be free to look at women’s underwear. Isabella was not surprised to learn the sisters belonged to some kind of puritanical religious sect, with its roots in the Scottish wee frees. Mrs Hester Fisher and Mrs Rebecca McDonald, however, were very successful in the business world and Isabella discovered they had no objection to other people enjoying a glass of wine or a cigarette on formal occasions — but they did not themselves indulge.
In spite of their quirks Isabella felt she could safely entertain the sisters, who would be staying at an hotel in Ashfordly for a semi-holiday, and she therefore went ahead with her plans, but with discreet warnings to her closer friends about the sensitivities of Mrs Fisher and Mrs McDonald.
As her plans were nearing completion, however, she suddenly remembered Geoffrey’s nude redheads which adorned every wall in the house; the dining-room had a particularly seductive beauty on the west wall while every picture-hanging space on walls around the table was filled with a nude redhead in some pose or other. The drawing-room boasted three massive gilt-framed charmers; the downstairs toilet was full of miniatures and the cloakroom had that very detailed colour photograph taken in what appeared to be a jungle or perhaps a greenhouse.
With something approaching horror-stricken panic Isabella realized there were nude redheads at every place the puritanical sisters would be visiting. Bearing in mind the background knowledge she had acquired about them, and unable to consult Geoffrey due to his absence, Isabella decided the nudes must be removed. None of Geoffrey’s pictures must jeopardize a possible business deal of such lucrative and socially acceptable possibilities. Isabella knew she could hire replacement pictures from some of the local galleries at short notice, and in any case, she had some of her own in the attic. Her collection comprised lots of Mediterranean scenes and English rural landscapes, and so, in a last-minute rush of conscience, Isabella set about the removal of Geoffrey’s nudes. Aided by her two cleaners and her handyman the pictures were swiftly taken down during Monday, but because Isabella did not wish them to clutter her stylishly furnished reception rooms, she told the cleaners to store them, temporarily, in one of the outbuildings.
‘Put them in a nice dry place,’ she told them. ‘And we can replace them before Geoffrey returns.’
And so it was that Geoffrey’s renowned collection of redheaded nudes — dozens if not hundreds of them — found themselves placed somewhat unceremoniously in a dark but dry outbuilding behind Elsinby Manor. They reclined among an array of discarded furniture including an old wardrobe, two washstands, some broken dining chairs and an old sideboard.
It so happened that Claude Jeremiah Greengrass had been commissioned by Jim Barnes to clear the outbuildings of their rubbish.
Claude had assured Jim that he and his helper, David, would arrive mid-morning on the Monday to load their vehicle but Claude’s trusty rusty old truck had suffered some kind of relapse, which took Bernie Scripps a considerable time to repair. The outcome was that Claude could not remove the junk on the Monday but he was able to do so the following Wednesday.
Although Geoffrey always told Isabella about his business commitments he had not said anything to her about clearing the garden sheds and so this minor hiccup — the Greengrass delay — was not known to Isabella either. She had no idea that Geoffrey had decided to clear the sheds and was more than happy that the nudes should remain in one of them, out of sight, until they could be returned in advance of Geoffrey’s return to the manor. Even though she disliked them, she did allow Geoffrey to display them — after all, he was tolerant in all other respects, not even complaining when she played loud music or played with her castanets.
On that Wednesday, therefore, Claude Jeremiah Greengrass and David Stockwell, his willing learner driver assistant, arrived to carry out their commission, driving around to the rear of the premises where they were met by Jim Barnes. Jim said everything had to go and he had recruited assistance from some of his pals and so, under directions from Claude as to the sequence of packing the rubbish, the band of men began to empty the sheds. Claude, however, had made a preliminary reconnaissance of the sheds and had spotted the stack of nudes. Realizing these were rather special he decided
they should be first into his truck — he’d drive away to dispose of them before returning for the remaining items.
I am afraid I am unable to record the delights expressed when the men handled the hoard of nudes, but I was later to learn that the Greengrass lorry had been seen speeding into York with dozens of pictures on board. Claude, it seemed, knew an art dealer who would cheerfully buy anything of quality presented to him without asking too many embarrassing questions about the source, and so Claude managed to sell Geoffrey’s wonderful collection for £550 — cash. Claude then returned to concentrate on the old pieces of furniture. It was a good day’s work for Claude Jeremiah Greengrass.
Because Isabella’s hired pictures had to be returned to the lender on Wednesday morning her helpers cleared the walls and packed them ready for return, returning her own pictures to the attic at the same time. At 10 am, a hired van appeared at Elsinby Manor and removed the hired pictures; Isabella had the rest of the day to recover Geoffrey’s nudes and all day Thursday to hang them in their original places, but at 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday she received a phone call from her mother. That call completely ruined her plans. In her anguish, Isabella forgot about Geoffrey’s nudes when her mother demanded her immediate presence because she (mother) was desperately ill. Pausing only to pack her night-dress and toiletries, Isabella therefore rushed off to Wolverhampton to tend to her mother who was suffering from a stomach disorder but who was not as ill as she had pretended. Nonetheless, Isabella thought it wise to stay for a couple of days and had the foresight to leave a note for Geoffrey to explain her absence. In it, she said she would ring to let him know mother’s progress. She left it on his desk in the study.
CONSTABLE AROUND THE HOUSES a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain’s best-loved authors Page 11
