Constable Among the Heather (18 page)

‘Then let’s leave him,’ he said quickly. ‘If I stay until the breakdown truck arrives, Rhea, I might see the damage on his car, and I might make it an official traffic accident, which means he could be the subject of a report for alleged careless driving.’

‘Thanks, Sergeant,’ I said. ‘Can I have a word with him before we leave?’

‘Right ho,’ he said, not offering to accompany me. This was not the normal Blaketon, I realized, and I could not understand why he was so gentle with Alf.

I wandered over to Alf, who, upon seeing my approach, launched into a tirade of abuse against everyone, especially drivers of yellow sports cars. But when I removed my cap, he recognized me.

‘God! It’s young Nick!’

‘Hello, Mr Partridge.’ I used the name I’d called him in my youth. ‘You’ve got yourself into a bit of pickle, eh?’

That set him off again, but I calmed him down by saying we were leaving, and explained the reasons, adding that Eddie’s truck was on his way.

‘This’ll ruin my record, Nick,’ said poor old Alf. ‘All these years without a scratch and now this …’

‘It won’t ruin it,’ I said. ‘There’ll be no official entry in our files, especially if you don’t make a formal complaint about that yellow car.’

‘But my car’ll be ruined. Look at it, up to the doorposts in muck and plother …’

But we left it at that. He decided not to prosecute the yellow peril. If he had made a formal complaint, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to prove the case, and Alf would have been called as a witness. That alone would have destroyed his own long record. I felt we had achieved a diplomatic result.

As I drove Blaketon back to the office, I suddenly realized why he had been such a wonderful help to poor old Alf. A few months earlier, during the snowfalls of that winter, there’d been a rumour about Sergeant Blaketon’s driving into a ploughed field somewhere in these dales. He’d been off duty at the time, but it had required a farmer and his tractor to drag him out; no official report had been made and there’d been no damage to his car. We had heard through gossip, but Blaketon himself had never said a word about it. I wondered if Alf or Eddie had been involved in that. Obviously Alf didn’t remember it, but it did help me to understand why Blaketon was sympathetic to poor old Alf’s predicament.

Several months later I saw Alf in Eltering. He was driving the same car, and it looked immaculate.

‘Hello, Mr Partridge,’ I greeted him, then added, ‘The car looks great!’

‘There wasn’t a mark on it,’ he said. ‘It was mucky and wet, but there wasn’t a scratch. That sphagnum made a soft landing for it.’

‘So your record’s clean, eh?’

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Thanks to that sergeant of yours.’

Another harrowing tale involved a serious accident to a caravan unit. A couple from Norfolk, where real hills are a rarity, came to the North York Moors for a caravanning holiday. They decided to tour an area where there are numerous hills of 1-in-3 gradient (33 per cent) and where anything up to a gradient 1-in-10 (10 per cent) rarely warrants a ‘Steep Hill’ warning notice. For the local people, these gradients present no problem; for the tourist, they can be terrifying, and most certainly they do sift the good drivers from the bad or hopeless.

We call these hills ‘banks’. There is the White Horse Bank near Kilburn whose gradient was not, in my time at Aidensfield, mentioned, in case no one believed it. There’s the fascinating, winding Chimney Bank at Rosedale, which even the locals admit is ‘brant’. That means ‘steep’ in the dialect of the region, i.e. about l-in-3 (33 per cent). There are many others, especially in Eskdale, but one which causes a certain amount of angst among dithering drivers is Sutton Bank near Thirsk. It is not particularly steep, but it is a mile long with three gradients, the first being l-in-4, the second l-in-5 and the final one l-in-4.

Until recently, tourists would examine their maps to see that this A-class road led to Scarborough from the Al and would head towards it. Even if the tourist maps do include a ‘Steep Hill’ symbol at these locations, few of these dreamy visitors realize what it means, and so, during a typical English summer, these banks are often blocked by motorists for whom the normal occasions for selection of first gear are as common as their birth or funeral. In the case of Sutton Bank, it was frequently blocked by little men in Morris Minors who tried
to tow caravans to the summit. The failure rate was high, even when the towing car was a powerful one such as a Volvo or a Mercedes, and a local farmer with a powerful tractor made a fortune from towing such incompetents to safety on the plateau above. Happily, caravans are now banned from this hill – but the hills are not to blame; it is the drivers who are the problem. The local people have no trouble with the hill – even our ancient lady drivers can cope.

Unfortunately for Mr John Plumpton, he was one of those hapless drivers. Utterly hopeless, he braked on every corner, even on level roads; he could not reverse into a parking space and had never previously towed a caravan. His wife, Sally, wasn’t much help either, because she couldn’t drive at all and was nervous at anything faster than 25 mph. For a man of his calibre to venture into our hilly moors and dales with a heavy load forever on his tail was an act of sheer stupidity. It is like climbing Everest in plimsolls.

It is times like these when police officers ponder upon their role in society, for so often we spend time clearing up the mess left by the nation’s hopeless and incompetents. In this case, John Plumpton’s lack of skill almost had fatal consequences.

For reasons which are not clear, he decided to take his caravan down Sorrel Bank, which descends from the moors into Maddleskirk. Almost a mile long, it is a narrow, twisting bank with gradients of around l-in-4 (25 per cent), which is not particularly steep for this area. At the foot, the bank emerges onto a well-used road which leads into the village via the floor of the dale. The latter is not a classified road, so at that time there were no junction markings, and in fact there was no ‘Steep Hill’ sign on Sorrel Bank. The road is very narrow, being only the width of one vehicle, and the approach along the top skirts a pine forest as it affords superb views across the Vale of York. When it reaches Sorrel Brow Farm, the road suddenly dips as it begins its rapid descent towards the western end of Maddleskirk.

John and Sally Plumpton sailed majestically into this dip, and before John realized what was happening, his unit was gathering speed. Very quickly, the combined weight of car and caravan urged the wheels to turn at an ever-increasing
pace. With no places to run off the road, it was like descending one of those fairground chutes, each corner bending so sharply and dropping ever downwards that the road beyond was out of sight. I don’t think John actually steered his car down that hill. I think the camber of the road and the high verges guided the front wheels along the road surface without any effort by him. In fact, I don’t think John had any control at all; when I interviewed him some time later, he could not remember even having changed to a lower gear.

In simple terms, he panicked. As the car and its caravan bolted down Sorrel Bank, he simply let it run free, and it knew where to go. In his panic, he either missed his brake pedal or omitted to use it; he utterly failed to make use of his gears for additional control, and it was a classic case of driving at its very worst. Men of this calibre ought to be severely tested every few years – they are a liability to themselves and to others. The outcome of Plumpton’s panic was that this huge moving combination of run-away vehicles careered down that long, winding hill totally out of control. By the grace of God, nothing was travelling the other way. The road was empty at the time. Fortunately the road which formed the junction at the bottom was also empty, and so the car and caravan hurtled across but came to an ignominious end at that point.

Opposite the exit from Sorrel Bank, the verge was high but wide, and there was a hedge containing a solid sycamore tree, behind which lay a field. That field also sloped steeply from the hedge and levelled out some yards below, at which point it produced a thick clump of hawthorn trees.

John and Sally must have had a good view of this field as it rose to meet them, but as their car just missed the sycamore, the leading edge of the caravan hit it. This demolished the caravan; it disintegrated into a pile of matchwood as the car separated from it and continued down the field, rolling over several times until it came to rest among the hawthorns. The roof was flattened, the car was wrecked and the caravan lay in exploded pieces around the sycamore.

A villager called the police and ambulance, and I arrived to find this mayhem. Of the caravan, very little remained, and the family’s belongings were scattered across the verge and
the field, with several pairs of Sally’s knickers decorating the hedge, and John’s clean socks dangling from some elderberry trees. The couple were trapped in their upturned car, and we had to cut them free, both badly injured.

As I helped Sally into the ambulance, she whispered to me, ‘Did you find Oliver?’

‘Oliver?’ I was horrified. ‘No, was he in the car?’

‘No,’ she said weakly. ‘In the caravan.’

My heart sank. ‘How old is he?’

‘Four,’ she said. ‘It was his birthday last week. He always travels in the caravan …’ and she drifted into
unconsciousness.

As the ambulance surged away to York Hospital with its casualties, I rushed back to the debris and started my search. Oliver must have been in one of the bunks. He could be trapped anywhere.

Aided by the fire brigade who had come to cut free the Plumptons, we sifted through the wreckage but found no sign of the child. I knew that in some freak accidents children can be flung far from the wreckage, and so we arranged a full-scale search of all the shrubbery, with a more stringent examination of the wrecked car. But there was no sign of Oliver. It took us hours to examine every likely place, but the result was nil.

I radioed my office at Eltering. I explained our problem to PC John Rogers and asked if he would ring the hospital. I wanted a doctor to speak to Mrs Plumpton as soon as she regained consciousness, in an attempt to establish just where Oliver would have been lying or sitting or, indeed, whether she was mistaken. Maybe she had not brought him on this holiday? Maybe the stress of the accident had caused her to believe he was there when in fact he was with relatives? Maybe the husband could throw some light on the matter? I told John that I would remain at the scene, continuing the search, until I heard from them. I would carry out a further search of the wreckage and surrounding vegetation, even to the extent of checking every inch of the route down the bank. Maybe Oliver had been been thrown out during that nightmare descent?

With that thought dominating my mind and aided by the dedicated firemen, I climbed the hill and meticulously checked the verges and hedges, hoping against hope that I would find the boy. I did not.

Dejected, we returned to the wreckage. As I wandered among it, I noticed a movement in a man’s shoe which was lying among the miasma. I stooped and found a goldfish; it was still alive. It was flicking its tail and gasping as I lifted the shoe to show the nearest fireman.

‘I’ve some water on board!’ he laughed. ‘Here, there’s a plastic bucket over there!’

And so we filled the bucket with water from the fire tender and plonked in the fish. With a flick of its tail, it began to swim around as if nothing had happened.

‘I knew a goldfish that had been buried as dead,’ said the fireman. ‘Then hours later it poked its head out of the soil. It lived another three years …’

As we hunted yet again among the larger items, the radio called me. It was John Rogers.

‘We’ve had words with the hospital, Nick. A doctor has spoken to Mrs Plumpton.’

‘Yes?’ I wanted to get this matter settled.

‘Oliver was definitely in the caravan,’ he said. ‘We’ve checked and double-checked with her. She’d adamant about it. He is four, as she said, but …’ – and he burst into laughter.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

‘He’s not a child, Nick.’

‘Not the dog!’ I groaned.

‘No, he’s a goldfish. Apparently he leads an adventurous life. He always goes caravanning with them; he loves travelling. Last year he jumped out of his bowl and spent the night on the floor but survived. On another occasion he got tipped down the sink by mistake but was found alive. He’s a kind of James Bond among goldfish!’

I laughed quietly to myself, then said, ‘Then he’s done it again. This time I’ve found him alive and well and living in a shoe. Perhaps you’d inform Mrs Plumpton?’

‘You’re not serious, Nick?’

‘I am. He’s swimming in a plastic bucket of fire brigade water right now,’ I laughed. ‘He was found in a shoe, still alive. He’s a lucky soul,’ I added. John groaned at my awful pun. ‘How are the Plumptons?’ I asked.

‘They’ll survive,’ he said. ‘They’ve each got a few broken bones – arms and legs mainly – and lots of bruises, but they’ll recover. It’ll cheer them up to know that Oliver has survived, but John Plumpton says he’ll never drive again.’

‘Then some good’s come out of this,’ I thought, and added, ‘I’ll visit them soon. I’ll need a statement from each of them in due course. And I’ll take Oliver with me. He can visit them in hospital.’

‘He makes a nice twist to the story,’ he said, and at that awful pun I groaned as I turned away to begin the task of clearing up the mess.

I had further trouble with another animal which survived a traffic accident. In this case, a small and very decrepit van was travelling down the main street of Crampton when its steering failed. Fortunately it was not moving very rapidly at the time, a feat it was truly incapable of performing in safety, and so the resultant damage should have been negligible. It wove along the highway as its driver did his best to stop, but the brakes weren’t very good either. In those few moments, it wobbled onto the footpath, glanced off a telegraph pole, mounted a low wall and overturned.

By that stage, it had arrived in the gravel driveway of a rather nice house and thus lay on its side while the driver scrambled from the passenger seat. To escape from his small van, he had to climb upwards and then leap from the chassis onto the drive. Other than its almost totally blocking the drive, there was no harm to the house or the garden – yet.