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

by Nicholas Rhea

  I rang Road Traffic and spoke to Sergeant Browning.

  ‘We’ve a provisional listing for three weeks on Sunday, Nick,’ he said. ‘Two hours on Brantsford Road between 10.30 a.m. and 12.30 p.m., peak times for Sunday speeders!’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, and explained the reason for my call.

  ‘We’ll catch a few,’ he said, ‘but it won’t deter the others. But a show of police uniform followed by a few court cases will do some good.’

  Later, I was told that that particular speed trap had caught only three drivers and they’d only been travelling at 40 mph or less in the 30 mph area; they would not be taken to court for driving so little above the limit but would be given an official caution. It seemed, from that exercise, that there was no great speeding problem along Brantsford Road. Unfortunately, Harold had been away for the whole of that weekend and he had therefore not seen the police officers checking the drivers.

  I was again on duty in Ashfordly Police Station, this time with Sergeant Blaketon at my side, when Harold arrived at the counter.

  ‘Ah!’ he said when he saw Blaketon. ‘The man in charge! Now perhaps something will get done!’

  ‘Yes, Mr Nutter?’ I could sense just a hint of resignation in Blaketon’s voice, but he produced a sort of smile for his customer.

  ‘Speeders on Brantsford Road, Sergeant. I demand action, and I shall not tolerate any lack of commitment by you and your officers.’

  ‘We ran a speed check recently, Mr Nutter, and found only three vehicles had exceeded the limit, all travelling at less than forty miles an hour. Three offenders in a two-hour stint of duty in which more than five hundred vehicles passed our checkpoint.’ Sergeant Blaketon looked at Nutter. ‘That is hardly a cause for concern.’

  ‘I live along the road, Sergeant, and I know what the drivers do. I watch them! Now, am I right in thinking you need to follow a speeding vehicle for a considerable distance in order to assure yourselves it is not a momentary lapse?’

  ‘We do that as a matter of practice, Mr Nutter, yes.’

  ‘Then I have the evidence you need, Sergeant,’ and Nutter pulled a piece of writing paper from his pocket. ‘A sports car travelled for a mile and a half along Brantsford Road this morning, averaging fifty-two miles an hour for the entire journey. I have its registration number here. It entered the speed limit area at sixty-five miles an hour and reduced its speed throughout the journey, but always exceeding thirty, varying between forty-five and fifty miles per hour. As a witness, I demand that you prosecute the driver.’

  Sergeant Blaketon took the piece of paper upon which details had been recorded and it showed the date, time and place of the alleged offence, the registration number of the red MG sports car and a description of the driver, at least from the neck up!

  ‘This is very good, Mr Nutter,’ smiled Sergeant Blaketon. ‘Just what we need in fact.’

  ‘I am not a fool, Sergeant. I know that is all you need for a successful prosecution and I am prepared to go to court to give evidence against the accused.’

  ‘You did say you would not tolerate a lack of commitment by me and my officers?’

  ‘Indeed, I did say that, Sergeant, and if you do not prosecute this man, and make him an example to the motoring public, I shall write to the Home Secretary and the Minister of Transport to demand an enquiry into your conduct.’

  ‘Well spoken,’ beamed Blaketon. ‘But how can you prove this car was driving at the speeds you allege?’

  ‘Because I followed him right along the road in my own car, Sergeant. I checked his journey every inch of the way, with a stop watch too.’

  ‘Ah!’ smiled Blaketon and I saw the glint of satisfaction in his eyes. ‘May I see your driving licence, Mr Nutter? And your certificate of insurance?’

  ‘My licence and insurance? Why?’

  ‘Because I cannot shirk my duty, Mr Nutter, and if you admit to averaging fifty-two miles an hour in your car through a thirty-mile an hour limit, as you just have done, then I shall have to report you for exceeding the speed limit in a built-up area.’

  ‘Me, but—’

  ‘You have just admitted it, Mr Nutter. I could not have a more voluntary confession than that! Now, your licence please.’

  Blaketon’s mood changed swiftly. Nutter realized what was happening, but it was too late. Blaketon was going to teach him a lesson. Nutter delved into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, extracted his driving licence and passed it to Blaketon who opened it and studied it.

  ‘You haven’t signed it, Mr Nutter.’ He pointed to the blank space where Nutter’s signature should have been.

  ‘Oh, well, I can do it now,’ he said, reaching for his ballpoint.

  ‘No, that is no good. It should have been signed upon receipt of the licence, Mr Nutter, and I see the commencement date of yours was 21 March last year. It is an offence not to sign your driving licence, Mr Nutter, so I shall retain it as evidence. I know you would not want me to shirk my duty. Now, your certificate of insurance?’

  ‘It is at home, Sergeant, I can bring it in.’

  ‘You must bring it in for me to inspect, Mr Nutter; you have five clear days in which to produce it at the police station of your choice.’

  ‘Oh dear, well, yes, I’ll bring it to Ashfordly. Look, Sergeant, I think you have made your point . . . I was only trying to do my public duty . . .’

  ‘I cannot ignore offences against the law, Mr Nutter, as you well know, and I do know that you would not want me to fail to do my duty however painful that might be. I would not wish you to write letters of complaint about my dereliction of duty. Now, shall we examine your car?’

  ‘Examine it?’

  ‘Yes, as a police officer, I have the power to examine your car for defects in its brakes, lights, steering, exhaust, windscreen wipers, direction indicators, tyres and other matters. I am only doing my duty, Mr Nutter.’

  Nutter followed the striding sergeant outside to where Nutter’s Ford Consul was parked on the street, and I followed. Blaketon then asked him to start the engine as he listened to the sound of the exhaust pipe, then requested him to switch on the lights, the indicators and wipers.

  ‘Your offside headlamp is not working, Mr Nutter, and the blade on the nearside windscreen wiper is defective.’ Blaketon was making notes as he continued his detailed examination of the vehicle. ‘I see your car is taxed and that your excise licence is up-to-date, but I wonder whether our Road Traffic Vehicle Examiners should look at your car? They execute a much more detailed and professional technical examination than I can give at the roadside, Mr Nutter, things like testing for dangerous parts and accessories, the brakes and so on.’

  Nutter said nothing, but Blaketon smiled and said, ‘I think I have enough for the time being, Mr Nutter. I shall report you for the offences of exceeding the speed limit in a built-up area, failing to sign your driving licence and for having a defective headlamp. You are not obliged to say anything, but what you do say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence.’

  Nutter said nothing. Blaketon said, ‘I will keep this piece of paper with your notes upon it, it will be good evidence, Mr Nutter.’

  Nutter left the police station without saying a word, so I asked, ‘Sergeant, will you prosecute him for these things?’

  ‘He might complain if I neglect my duty, Rhea!’ grunted Blaketon with a knowing grin. ‘But people like him need to learn that we are not all perfect. I shall recommend a written caution from the superintendent, although I doubt if a prosecution for exceeding the speed limit would have succeeded either against him or the chap in the sports car. I trust he has learned some kind of lesson, though, and I hope his insurance is in order.’

  It was. Nutter brought it to the police station within the specified five days and Ventress checked it. But that was the last time Harold Nutter came into Ashfordly Police Station to make any kind of complaint.

  * * *

  Another persistent complainer was Robina Barton, a spinst
er of the parish of Aidensfield who lived alone in Beehive Cottage. A retired matron from Ashfordly Hospital, she was a tall, severe and very large woman who terrified the children and indeed the rest of the population. Her dark greying hair was worn short and from a distance it looked like a deep-sea diver’s helmet clamped around her head. She wore curious little spectacles with round lenses and thin wire rims and those people who had been very close to her swore she sported signs of a shaved moustache. She never wore makeup and habitually dressed in a long dark-grey skirt, a white blouse and a black cardigan, clothing which was almost a repetition of her matronly uniform. Formidable might be an apt description of Robina and in addition to her demeanour, she had a very loud and very sharp voice which demanded instant obedience.

  If, for example, a child got in her way in the shop she would snap, ‘Out of my way, child!’, and the startled child would leap out of her way without question. Similarly, if she attended a parish council meeting and someone raised a rather stupid point she would bellow, ‘Don’t be silly, man! We don’t want to know that. Give us something sensible to discuss’, or if she crossed the street while a horn-blowing motorist was approaching she would shake her fist and shout, ‘People were made before cars, you know! You’ll have to wait’.

  In other words, Robina was one of the village characters and none of us was surprised that she lived alone without having married. I could not imagine the sort of man who would have had Robina as a wife, nor could I imagine her finding any man with whom she would be content.

  I think she missed the drama of working in a busy hospital and, in her retirement, she developed a keen hatred of rubbish and litter. That is why she attended all meetings of the parish council where she complained about it persistently. She wrote to the papers too and compiled pieces for the parish magazine in which she grumbled about litter outside the post office, the shop, the pub and the bus shelter; she grumbled about litter in the street, the churchyard, the grounds of the village hall and other places of public resort especially the village green. As if that wasn’t enough she even resorted to grumbling about litter and rubbish in people’s private gardens, particularly those which fronted the main street of the village and which could be seen by the passing crowds. Worse still, she made her objections to untidy gardens widely known throughout Aidensfield, which was, in my view, not a very wise thing to do.

  In addition to the parish council she harangued the rural district council, the county council, the vicar, the secretary of the village hall, the bus company and anyone else whose premises attracted litter in any shape or form. I don’t think she actually wrote to the owners of the untidy gardens, but she did make veiled comments about them either verbally to people she knew, or in comments printed in the parish magazine. It seemed that her entire life was dominated by litter in the street and rubbish-strewn private gardens. The snag with her private campaign was that if she did not know to whom she should direct any particular complaint, she would come to see me, demanding my immediate attention and stressing that I must prosecute the offender or offenders without delay.

  ‘When I was in charge of the wards in that hospital,’ she would often say to me, ‘I did not tolerate litter or rubbish of any kind, Constable. Everything has its place and the place for rubbish is the waste bin, and all my staff knew that. Mine was the cleanest hospital in this kingdom, I am sure of that because I made it the cleanest. It was spotless, night and day, no matter how busy we were, and I see no reason why this village cannot be the tidiest in the realm. The people need advice and training, Constable; they need to be told, quite forcibly, not to dump litter and that is your job!’

  ‘We did win the best kept village competition,’ I reminded her on one occasion. ‘The villagers were marvellous, they worked really hard to keep the place neat and litter-free and thanks to their efforts we had the tidiest village in the whole of the North York Moors National Park area.’

  ‘Well, it’s evident they have not remembered those lessons!’ she retorted, before stomping away to tidy up someone’s discarded cigarette packet or chocolate wrapper.

  One afternoon some time afterwards, she hailed me outside the Aidensfield Stores. Her face was thunderous as she snapped, ‘Constable, have you seen the state of that garden at number ten, round the corner?’

  ‘It’s untidy,’ I had to admit, ‘but it’s always like that. Those people are the scruffiest in the village, everyone knows that. You should see the inside of the house!’

  ‘Untidy? That is not the word I would use, Constable. It is a disgrace. There’s an old abandoned mattress, rotting armchairs, a pushchair with no wheels, a motor cycle without an engine, half a wardrobe and a chest of cheap drawers, a discarded toilet basin, old clothes . . . really, Constable, it is disgusting. Why don’t those people take their junk to the council tip? Or get the council to move it? You ought to do something about it. I shall complain to the parish council.’

  ‘It is on private land, Miss Barton,’ I told her. ‘I have no jurisdiction over people littering their own private grounds with their own rubbish. It is illegal for anyone to throw litter into someone else’s premises from a public place, like the street, or, of course, drop it in the street, but for me to be able to prosecute those people who do drop litter in public places, I need to catch them in the act or to have a witness who could provide the necessary evidence. And,’ I added, ‘I have to be sure they have abandoned the litter in question. If I tell the dumper to pick it up and place it in a bin, and he or she does so, there is no offence.’

  ‘That is very silly, Constable!’

  ‘Effective enforcement of the Litter Act of 1958 is not easy,’ I added.

  ‘That is your problem, Constable, your job is to enforce the law, not to find pitfalls with it. If you are not going to do anything about it, then I shall! And have you seen the state of number fourteen? And seventeen?’ And off she stalked to go about her self-imposed task of tidying-up Aidensfield.

  ‘Be careful if you’re thinking of grumbling about those gardens! You’ve no right to complain about the state of people’s private premises,’ I reminded her as she strode away.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ was her battle cry.

  In truth, she did have a point. Some of the gardens on the council estate were dreadful, a genuine eye-sore; not only were they completely neglected from a horticultural point of view, they were also the dumping ground for anything which could not be accommodated in the dustbin. They contained pieces of cars, vans and motor bikes, and even scrap entire cars and motor bikes, cast-off furniture and clothing, unwanted items like broken fridges, television sets and lawn-mowers, household bits and pieces — anything in fact which could not be placed in the bin was often just dumped in the garden and left to rot. If Robina could persuade those people to move their offal she would be doing a service to society, and although the council had tried they had usually failed. In spite of her fervour, however, I felt she should not involve herself with junk left in private gardens.

  From what I was told, though, it seemed she could not restrain herself from letting her views be known to those whose gardens had become her most recent target for reform and, if the people concerned did not heed her grumbles, she would intensify her actions. She’d taken to regularly walking past the offending places and during such outings she would deliberately halt to peer over the fences and to wrinkle her face in disgust at the appalling sights which confronted her. I am not sure what she hoped to achieve by this personal display of disapproval but it did lead to a noteworthy development.

  The man who lived at 10 Council Houses, Aidensfield was called Elvis Wayne Satterthwaite and he was an unemployed labourer. In his early thirties, Elvis had no talents and no skills and could never retain even the most mediocre of jobs because he was useless at whatever he tried. Although it was doubtful whether he could read or write, he was very good at claiming the dole and used that considerable skill to keep his council house, his six children and his large, untidy and very dirty
wife whose name was Tracy. He did tend to accumulate junk because if he bought a car, it would be a heap of old rusting rubbish for which he would pay very little with the inevitable result that it broke down within days. Because he could not afford to repair it he left it wherever it had breathed its last, which was usually his garden, and bought another — which also died within days of purchase.

  And so it was that Robina chanced to be passing Elvis’s home one evening when he was endeavouring to fit a new starter motor to his most recent acquisition, a battered and rusting Ford Anglia.

  A neighbour, painting a bedroom with the window open, happened to note their meeting.

  ‘I say,’ Robina called to him over the fence. ‘Don’t you think it is time you cleared some of this junk from your garden, Mr Satterthwaite?’

  ‘Sod off,’ he replied, or words to that effect.

  Robina, being an ex-matron of considerable experience, was not at all daunted by this unhelpful response. Some of her past patients had been similarly uncooperative.

  ‘I shall not sod off until I get a civil reply from you,’ she said, and promptly came to a standstill outside his garden gate. ‘I am merely suggesting you consider those who live around you and rid yourself of this litter. It is most unsightly, and it lowers the tone of this area and also the standard of the whole village --’

  ‘I said sod off,’ and Elvis continued to curse the broken starter motor as he tried to make the piece fit.

  ‘And I said I shall not leave here until I get a civil response.’ Robina, a towering form at the garden gate, folded her arms in a show of determination.

  ‘All right, stay there, you silly old bat,’ was Elvis’s reaction as he continued his repair job. He continued to work on his car without any further reference to Robina and she stood at his gate, arms folded, awaiting some kind of reaction. But she got none. She was there for quite a long time.

  It seems she realized her presence was serving no useful purpose because she stalked away as darkness was falling. Round One to Elvis.