Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3823/Beats
(By Special P.C. XXX.)
We have three, each with its nuances of attraction, its delicately different disadvantages. They are known as the Oil Wharves, the Generating Station, and the Sewage Station. A wise decree from Scotland Yard leaves us uncertain up to the very last moment of each evening as to which will be our allotted beat. A gambling element is thus provided to stimulate us.
The Oil Wharves gloom on a cul-de-sac of nocturnal emptiness. Scarcely does a human footstep come to rouse the petroleum-sluggish echoes. A padding pussy makes a note of cheery liveliness in the lukewarm monotony of the night-watch.
But against that dreariness must be set the four wooden chairs which the Oil Magnates (blessings upon them and upon their children's children!) provide for our comfort. Technically, it may, be undignified for a Special Constable to sit down. It is possible that a penalty of three days in a dark cell awaits the transgressor. We do not know, and we do not enquire. In that deadliest hour beyond the dawn, when the street lamps splutter out and the ruthless morning light reveals us to one another unwashed, unshaven and horribly all-nighty in appearance, it is indeed a grateful relief to sit down on the wooden Windsor chair and wait the six o'clock of release in blankness of mind.
The Generating Station, we are given to understand, does some magic with electricity. That is not our concern. We are there to pace up and down outside its walls, and watch for the man with the bomb. It has the advantage of being a bulky building; therefore a long beat. Up to midnight it looks over to a blank wall which forms a London lovers' lane. We speculate on the progress of courtship. The Generating Station is not odorous, and therefore is accounted the picked beat by the æsthetes among us.
The Sewage Station, on the other hand, is very lively with odours. They dominate our meals for at least twenty-four hours after duty. Some attribute them to a candle-factory opposite, labelling them as warm decomposing tallow. Another school of thought places them as the outcast débris of a sugar-factory. A scientist amongst us claims that they are saccharine which has taken the wrong turning. To myself the taste suggests mellow Limburger cheese.
They raised a classic law-suit a few years ago, taken up to the House of Lords. On the one side a string of tough sturdy bargees testified that a few whiffs made them totally unable to face their dinner. On the other side an array of sanitary experts claimed that they were not only pleasant and invigorating, but a potent factor in local longevity.
The machinery of the Station has hitherto been idle. Its borough officials apparently do nothing but fitfully polish brasses. It seems that these lucky sinecurists only work in times of violent storm, once every few months.
The neighbourhood may be odorous, but it is full of human possibilities. Ono midnight, two ladies started a scrap. A Special Constable, raw and without experience of militant femininity, blew his police-whistle. The whole slum-district turned out, dressed or half-dressed, like a fevered anthill. It took the regular police half-an-hour to clear the streets, the original cause of tumult vanishing in the swirl. In this neighbourhood, we are informed, it is etiquette to blow a police-whistle only when someone is being "done in."
We were also informed, in discreet whispers, that the "Guv'nor" of the Station "had it in for us." His grievance was this: that while a rival show across the river had been accorded a military picket by the War Office, he had been fobbed off with a mere guard of Special Constables. To date of writing his wrath still smoulders.
Our hours of duty are filled with dulness, but we live in hopes. That speeding motor-cyclist in the yellow oilskins—is he the mysterious rider I who has already shot down a round dozen of our number on lonely beats?
He shuts off power. He stops. He gets off and fumbles with a lamp. Is it a bomb in disguise ? Our hands creep towards the truncheons concealed in our trouser-legs. The Hour has struck, and England expects...!
Alas, he is only a belated cyclist, reputable and harmless. We console ourselves with visions of 1915, when we hope to be mobilised, packed off to the Continent in motor-'buses, and assigned to beats in Berlin (possibly renamed Berlinogradville City), while the Congress are rearranging the map of Europe.
"Yes, madam, this is Unter den Linden. Straight on and fourth turning to the left for the Siegesallee... Oui, Mon-sieur, l'auto de luxe pour Petrograd part à midi... Nein, mein Herr, es ist verboten. Broadly speaking, alles ist polizeilich verboten. You will be quite safe in assuming that anything you yearn for just now ist strengstens polizeilich verboten. Passen Sie along, bitte!"