CONSTABLE AROUND THE HOUSES a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain’s best-loved authors

by Nicholas Rhea

  ‘He’s got it, it’s in colour, and framed as well. A very professional job if you ask me. But I thought I’d better tell somebody in case he does something to that woman.’

  ‘I’ll go straight away,’ I said. ‘Thanks. I have your card if I need to contact you,’ and I slipped his business card into my wallet.

  ‘So, what’s his name?’ asked the man whose name was Russell. ‘So our head office can send him a bill.’

  ‘Matthews,’ I said. ‘Toby Matthews, Rowan Tree Farm, Aidensfield. If you give me a spare card I’ll see he gets it; he’s a decent fellow, would you believe, I’m sure he’ll pay you.’

  And so, I hurried in my police van to Rowan Tree Farm and when I arrived, I could hear Angela shouting from one of the stables and rattling the door as I saw Toby sitting on the back doorstep with his head bowed and a large framed photograph in his hands.

  ‘Toby,’ I said, approaching him with care.

  ‘Oh, God,’ he muttered. ‘What have I done . . . look, Nick, sorry. I don’t want to get you involved. It’s between me and her, a personal matter. Nothing to do with the police.’

  ‘I was sent here. I have to make sure there’s going to be no breach of the peace,’ I said. ‘No harm done to you and Angela, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he sighed, getting to his feet but hanging on to the large photograph. It was the size of an average framed picture, some two feet by fifteen inches or so, with a good quality wooden frame. ‘I promise.’

  ‘I think you should release Angela; she could complain about illegal imprisonment.’ I thought I had better try to shock him into adopting a more reasonable attitude. ‘Where’s the key? Shall I let her out?’

  ‘If you say so.’ He appeared to begrudge this action but dug his hand into his trouser pocket and handed me a key to the padlock which secured the bolt. ‘Look, I’m sorry. This is not how I behave as a rule but, well, I don’t know what to do, it’s such a shock. I don’t know how to handle it; I don’t know what to do . . .’

  ‘How about putting the coffee on?’ I interrupted him. ‘For you, Angela and me.’

  ‘Coffee?’ He looked rather baffled.

  ‘Milk, no sugar for me,’ I said, and he trudged indoors, still clutching the framed photograph.

  I went to the stable door and before I opened it I said, ‘Angela, it’s PC Rhea. I’m going to let you out. Toby’s gone to make us a coffee.’

  ‘Coffee?’ she almost screamed from behind the solid wooden door. ‘What’s got into that man? I’ll give him coffee when I get my hands on him . . . what’s he think I’m doing? Honestly, PC Rhea, he’s been behaving like a moron lately.’

  ‘If I let you out, will you promise to remain calm?’ I put to her.

  ‘It won’t be easy,’ she shouted. ‘How would you like to be treated like this, locked up in a stable?’

  ‘Promise,’ I said loudly. ‘Promise to remain calm. Toby’s making coffee and I want you and him and me to sit down to find out what all this is about. I have no idea what’s going on . . .’

  ‘Neither have I!’ she screamed. ‘Lately, he’s been accusing me of seeing other men, sleeping with my clients, deceiving him while he’s at work, and then he had half a bottle of whisky and threw his glass at me — that’s when I rang you. Twice he did that . . . I mean, I’ve done nothing. I know he’s working hard and I know things aren’t easy at work but there’s no need to lose his head like this.’

  ‘You’ve not been seeing other men?’ I had to ask the question.

  ‘Of course, I haven’t!’ she snapped. ‘I would never do that . . . is that what he thinks?’

  ‘I don’t know, we’ll have to ask him,’ I said. ‘But I want you to remain calm, that’s important. But if you’ve not been deceiving him, what else might he be getting upset about?’

  ‘How should I know?’ She was speaking in a more rational manner and so I decided to unlock the door. She emerged looking pale and with her hair awry but considerably more calm than when I arrived.

  ‘It won’t be easy, remaining calm,’ I said.

  ‘You act as mediator,’ she said. ‘I mean it, you be referee, but I would like to know what’s bugging him. He’s never ever been like this until these last few weeks.’

  ‘Let’s talk,’ I said, leading the way indoors.

  Toby had brewed three mugs of coffee and they were sitting on the kitchen table as we entered. He had the photograph on his knee with its back towards us and so I sat down next to him, motioning to Angela to sit opposite.

  ‘So, Toby,’ I said. ‘What’s all this about?’

  ‘This!’ he snapped, banging the picture on to the table. ‘This photograph.’

  ‘What about it?’ I put to him, with Angela deciding not to say anything at this point.

  ‘This car, see? Between those buildings . . . hidden so nobody could see it . . . I know whose that is; it’s Alec Black’s, I’d know it anywhere. A white Rover with a black top . . . see? It’s as plain as a pikestaff . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ said Angela. ‘That is Alec’s car.’

  ‘And I’ve heard about others being here, on and off, folks talking in the village and in Ashfordly; somebody said they’d seen Jeff Wilson leaving. Now what’s he doing here? He’s not one of your clients, he’s not one of mine and he has no cause to come here when I’m out.’

  ‘You think I’ve been having affairs? Is that it?’ She spoke very quietly.

  ‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? All this odd behaviour, secrecy, phone calls when you thought I was at the other end of the house, letters you don’t want me to see . . . you think I haven’t noticed all these things? You stopping conversations on the phone when I’ve come into the room, then cars coming to the house while I’m out, and now this one hiding in the buildings, so he could get away without me seeing him . . . if the policeman wasn’t here, I’d wring your neck, Angela, after all these years . . . all these years,’ and he started to weep.

  ‘Oh, Toby.’ She rose from her chair and went to his side, putting her arm around his shoulder and nestling her cheek against his hair. ‘Poor, poor Toby.’

  He began to sob, and I thought it was time to leave but Angela pulled a chair to his side and sat next to him, kissing him on the cheek and hugging him with obvious love and affection.

  ‘Toby, listen. And PC Rhea. I didn’t want to break this news to you, Toby, but in view of what you’re going through, perhaps I’d better be open with you. PC Rhea, in six weeks’ time Toby is fifty. I’ve been trying to arrange a surprise for him, a secret party, with a marquee, caterers, music . . . that’s what all the calls and secrecy have been about. I thought I could arrange things here, without you knowing. You’d have seen me in town and people would have talked . . . we didn’t want you to know . . .’

  He looked up at her with his eyes full of tears, then rubbed them away and said, ‘Have I made a fool of myself?’

  ‘No more than usual,’ she laughed. ‘That’s why I love you so much.’

  ‘So, I needn’t have drunk myself into a state, or thrown things, or gone all moody and angry and morose . . .’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘I should have trusted you,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, you should,’ she told him firmly. ‘Then I could have arranged a lovely surprise for you. Now, you know all about it. Anyway, there’s nothing I can do now so let me see this photograph. Was it taken by that little aeroplane that was buzzing around here a while ago?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and then I remembered the salesman’s visiting card. I placed it on the table between them. ‘If you keep the photo they’ll want money from you. The price is on the back.’

  ‘I might buy you this for your birthday,’ she said, then added, ‘Oh, and PC Rhea, would you and Mrs Rhea like to join us? I’ll send an invitation.’

  ‘We’d love to,’ I smiled, wondering how many other secrets had been revealed by those cameramen in the sky.

  Chapter 7

  There is li
ttle doubt that the duties of a village constable in the 1960s were extensive and embraced a broad range of responsibilities, but there was a part of our work which was ill-defined, and which might not have been considered police duty. It entailed visiting people who were alone and vulnerable, often for nothing more sinister than a chat or a cup of tea, but sometimes involving extra chores such as lighting the fire, cutting the lawn, doing bits of necessary shopping, or taking the cat to the vet’s surgery. When doing this kind of thing it might be said we were exceeding our role as law enforcement officers, or that welfare of the community was not our job or responsibility, or that we should not interfere with the private lives of others, but in remote rural parts there was often no other person with the time or opportunity to carry out this vital kind of on-the-spot social work. It was not, as some left-wing critics tried to pretend, a means for the police to go snooping or spying upon the private lives of others; it was, and still is, nothing more than a desire to help those less fortunate than ourselves. And, I might say, such offers of help or practical demonstrations of active support and interest by the local constable were always appreciated.

  During my patrols around the spectacular countryside on my Aidensfield beat I had my ‘regulars’, people upon whom I called every time I was passing provided, of course, I was not engaged upon some more urgent matter. In many cases those people lived very ordinary and mundane lives, but from time to time I realized that some of these people had wonderful stories to tell, or secrets to reveal.

  There was a war veteran who had lost both legs while fighting for this country; he loved to regale me with tales of his wartime experiences and because he never left the house, I was one of his few contacts with the outside world. We chatted and drank tea beside his fire and he wished for nothing more than the opportunity to talk and laugh with other human beings.

  Another was an old lady who lived alone and who always had trouble getting her fire lit; there was an 87-year-old man who weighed eighteen stone and who kept falling out of the bed to which he had been confined. I made regular visits to lift him back, a difficult task for me but an impossible one for his seven-stone wife, and there was a lonely man who could never get his grandfather clock to function properly even when he wound it regularly. I visited a retired farmer who wanted help with his income tax forms, an elderly lady who always asked me to put oil and water into her car engine, a shopkeeper who could never get one of his rear windows closed because he was too small to reach it properly, and a young woman who was terrified of the peculiar character who had fallen in love with her and who sent bunches of forget-me-nots at least once a week.

  Most of these visits were to very ordinary people who had led very ordinary lives and for whom the world of the policeman was exciting and romantic; for that reason, I would tell them tales about my own varied work, albeit without revealing professional secrets, and most of my regulars enjoyed this modest escape from their very plain existence.

  Among my regulars there were many who came to rely, if only in part, upon frequent visits by the passing constable and one was a lovely old lady, a widow of many years, who was confined to her cottage and whose younger son had died several years prior to my arrival in Aidensfield. Her name was Josephine Ingram and she would be in her early eighties, I reckoned; her husband had been called Ted and he had worked for Crampton Estate until his retirement, but he had died rather suddenly within two years of retiring. I never knew Ted and Josephine had been a widow for about fifteen years, she told me. The cottage belonged to the estate, with Josephine being allowed to live there for a very low rent as long as she needed.

  During the summer months she would sit in a battered but comfortable armchair in the open doorway of her home, hoping to attract the attention of passers-by, if only for a momentary chat or to join her for a cup of tea and a cake. That is how I got to know her. I was patrolling the quieter parts of Aidensfield shortly after my arrival as the constable when she hailed me and asked if I would post a letter for her. I did so, and thereafter stopped for a chat every time I was passing. Over the months I got to know her quite well and, as autumn approached, she had to retreat indoors due to the chilliness of the changing weather, but she left her door standing wide open as an invitation to possible callers.

  Over the winter months, however, the door had to be closed to conserve the heat of her fireside, and this meant she hated the winter — as she told me, ‘Once that door’s shut, folks don’t bother to come and see me. It does get lonely, Mr Rhea, believe me. You will keep popping in, won’t you? In winter?’

  ‘I will,’ I promised, and promptly made a conscious effort to pop in whenever I could. There was always a kettle on the hob and she made exceedingly nice jam tarts, scones and fruit cakes! As time went by she began to tell me more and more about herself and her family and I was surprised to learn she had had two sons, one of whom was currently working in Canada and the other who had been a Catholic priest.

  ‘We’re not Catholics,’ she told me one day. ‘None of us, but Simon got it into his head, even as a young lad, that he wanted to be a Catholic priest. I have no idea what made him want to do that because neither me nor Ted were Catholics and not even churchgoers or religiously minded. Anyway, he was set on the idea and that’s what he did. We never tried to stop him; he knew what he wanted and that was important. A lovely man, he was, so gentle and kind. He became a Catholic and then a priest after studying for a lot of years, but it was funny calling him Father Simon. He joined the monks at Maddleskirk Abbey, you see . . .’

  ‘So where is he now?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, he died. It was so sad. He was only thirty-two, Mr Rhea. It was leukaemia. But he died happy, that’s what’s counts, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I did not know quite how to react to her sudden revelation.

  Then she said, ‘Would you like to see his photographs?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ I had a few minutes to spare and I thought it would please her if I shared her memories.

  ‘I’ll get them, they’re in a box in the cupboard under the stairs,’ and she pottered away to bring them to me. ‘Sit yourself at the table so you can spread them out,’ she told me.

  She returned with a large cardboard box and plonked it on the table in front of me. Inside, there were several albums of black-and-white photographs, all the photos being carefully fixed and bearing titles. Even before she handed me the first album, I could see these were not pictures of her priest son as I had thought; they were photographs by him, hundreds of them, and from what I saw in those first seconds, they all looked like scenic views — trees, lakes, moors, mountains, rivers, ruined abbeys, castles, country cottages, village scenes, blacksmiths at work, farmers milking, women baking and washing, men and women at harvest time and more.

  ‘If he hadn’t been a priest he said he would have been a photographer, Mr Rhea. He loved the countryside, you see, and the people who worked in it; he’d get on his bike and take his camera with him, taking pictures wherever he went.’

  As Josephine was chatting I was flicking through the first album and although I do not claim any particular knowledge or expertise in the art of photography, I did think this collection was out of the ordinary. All the photographs — each in black-and-white, half-plate size — had an air of quality about them; where people were at work, he had captured the expressions on their faces, the movement in their arms or backs, the satisfaction of doing a worthwhile task or, sometimes, the sheer drudgery of it all. There was a wonderfully atmospheric shot of a man weeding a turnip field and he looked utterly bored and fed up.

  One of Simon’s abilities, when he chose to photograph a country scene, was to make water appear to be wet, the leaves of the trees seemed to be alive and fluttering, the meadows had an inviting appearance as the grass looked genuine, the moors looked rugged enough to deter all but the most determined and the snow scenes looked cold but beautiful. Beyond doubt, he was a very talented photographer.

  ‘Did he ever sho
w these to anyone?’ I asked. ‘Or try to get them published?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she shook her head. ‘He wasn’t interested in money, it was a hobby, he said, his work as a priest came first and the photos reminded him of the places he’d visited and some of the wonderful people he’d met.’

  ‘They’re not local scenes, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Not all of them,’ she told me. ‘Some are but quite a lot are not. If you take the pictures out you’ll see where he took them, he made notes on the backs of the pictures.’

  She indicated one I was examining. It was marked ‘Water’s Edge’ under the black-and-white print and depicted a scene which might have been in the English Lake District, or Scotland, or Wales, but when she removed it from its place, the back was endorsed ‘Loch Tay, Scotland, 25th June 1951.’

  ‘He cycled all over the place, exploring the countryside,’ she was telling me. ‘Even when he was a priest. They do get holidays, you know, priests and monks I mean, and he would tour Scotland, sleeping at monasteries up there but always with his camera. He never went anywhere without it.’

  ‘I think this is a wonderful collection.’ I meant every word. ‘It’s the kind that would make a valuable published record. These pictures are of a period which is passing us by, Josephine, a unique record of country life. I’m sure some publisher would love to reprint them, and to pay you a fee, of course.’

  ‘Oh, no, Mr Rhea, Simon would never have wanted me to do that. They’re for the family. When we die, they will go to our other son, Thomas, he’s in Canada and he has two children, you see, so the albums will remain in the family. And in keeping with Simon’s wishes, nobody will try to make money from them or to show them to the public.’

  I did not have the time to carefully examine all the photographs but flicked through a second album as I told Josephine I had to leave as I had a commitment to interview someone in half an hour’s time. But as I was preparing to end my viewing session one photograph caught my eye. It was a watery scene with what appeared to be a large animal partially submerged; its back was out of the water, but its belly and legs were concealed. Its neck was arched with the head beneath the surface and the entire picture was full of ripples or wavelets around the creature.