I was in love again… but I still had a job to do up at Beachy Head. With Val in my life, I was more ready than ever to devote myself to the cliff-top patrols.
I’d never deviated from my routine, but had always dreaded the end of the day when I would return home to face the demons I’d temporarily escaped while helping others. Now, I’d moved in with a wonderful woman who was there to greet me when I walked through the door of her house – and before long, her house became ‘our house’.
Val knew what I did when she met me; she’d read about me in the papers. From the word go, I was always honest about the fact that I had no intention of stopping my patrols and she had been very clear about her attitude towards them. I’ll never forget her wonderful words. ‘If Maggie was alive today,’ she said, ‘then you and I would never have been together. You’d still be with her and I’d be elsewhere. Maggie’s no longer on this planet, but I am, and I’m happy about it. I’m also over the moon that I’m with you. I’m in love with you and obviously that means I don’t like the idea of you going up to Beachy Head and putting your life on the line. Now I’ve found you, I don’t want to lose you.’
I wondered what was coming next.
‘However, I wouldn’t dream of trying to stop you patrolling. I know how much it means to you and I want you to be happy. You wouldn’t be the man I fell in love with if you stopped living part of your life because of me. If I told you to stop, you’d never forgive me. You will know when the time has come for you to pack it up, and you will make the decision, not me.’
I couldn’t thank her enough for her honesty and understanding. I still thank her today. Now, it was time to go back to work.
* * *
It was late November. The police were looking for a local girl. She had mental health problems and had gone missing before; now she was missing again. There was a strong chance that she could be suicidal. I was up at the Head and on the look out in case she’d made her way up there. Sure enough, she had.
I came across her soon enough. She was an attractive, very strongly built brunette in her mid-to-late-twenties, and had climbed on to an area of the cliff that was dangerously close to collapsing into the sea. It was a precarious position – not somewhere you’d want to stand for too long, let alone sit. But sitting she was. As usual, the sight of a person on the edge set my adrenaline pumping and my heart racing.
It was a bitterly cold day. I told the police where I was so that they could join me and then I stepped out on to the ledge to join the girl. I was glad she was sitting down, because it meant she couldn’t make any sudden movement and jump. At first she hardly responded to me at all. No matter what I said, she repeatedly told me to leave her alone. It wasn’t until the police arrived that she started talking – but she didn’t want a conversation.
‘Fuck off!’ she kept screaming. ‘Just fuck off and leave me be. Especially you, you bastards.’ In her eyes, the ‘bastards’ were the cops, who were actually a couple of lovely guys. The two officers were prevented by Health and Safety laws from joining the girl and me on the ledge – it was deemed too dangerous – but there was nothing to stop me being there. I wasn’t in anyone’s employment, so I wasn’t flouting any rules.
I was sitting about 3 feet away from her. I knew I needed to get closer, but as I began to inch towards her I became nervous – her size meant that if she decided to go she’d probably be able to take me with her. I was starting to feel nervous now because, deep down, I suspected that I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from trying to grab her if she went. What’s more, I knew I was literally on shaky ground – this part of the cliff was in danger of collapsing. As I moved closer, the girl became suddenly very aggressive.
‘Don’t you fucking come any closer!’ she screamed, wide eyed and furious. I could tell she meant business, so I stopped dead.
‘I’m only trying to help you, sweetheart,’ I told her. But it was no use. Anything the police and I said fell on deaf ears. We tried everything – from Maggie’s story, to telling her that she wouldn’t be in any trouble if she came down, from trying to ask her what the problem was, to assuring her that whatever it was there was help at hand. But our words were met only with aggression.
We weren’t going to give up – you can’t just walk away from a situation like that. We kept on trying to talk and she kept on telling us to fuck off. Finally however, after about an hour, she began to calm down. Now she was talking rather than screaming. Maybe we were getting somewhere after all…
It was obvious she was very troubled. Up until now, my experience had been that once I’d got someone talking they would open up, say what their problems were and tell me what had brought them to Beachy Head. This girl was different. All she would say was that life was no good and that she’d had enough.
The police knew her name and from what they said next I could tell they had dealt with her before. They changed tack and began talking about a subject that was obviously close to her heart. Food.
‘You must be getting hungry now,’ they began. ‘You’re cold. Surely you must want a hot cup of tea and something to eat?’
This seemed to strike a chord. The girl began talking about her favourite food – pizza. Before I knew it, we were all talking pizzas – toppings, bases and who liked what – you name it, we talked about it! The girl seemed to be an utterly different person now that we’d changed the subject. It was as if she’d forgotten that we were up on a cliff edge in the freezing cold and that she was intending to kill herself.
Even she seemed to appreciate the absurdity of the situation. After a good ten minutes of pizza talk, she suddenly burst into laughter.
‘What on earth is going on?’ she howled. ‘Why the hell are we all talking about pizzas?’
‘You tell us,’ we said, laughing with her. ‘Now why don’t you think about coming down so we can go and get one?’
It had been two-and-a-half hours and only now were we making progress. Still, it had been worth it. If talking pizza was what it was going to take to stop someone killing themselves, then I was prepared to discuss toppings till kingdom come.
She had let me get a little closer. We were just at the point where she was calm enough to agree to come down – and that’s when it all started to go wrong. The radio belonging to one of the policemen went off. Whoever was in charge back at the station was getting annoyed at the amount of time it was taking the officers to deal with the incident. As far he was concerned, they should have been off doing something else by now. The officer tried to assure the boss that the job was nearly done, but his superior officer wasn’t hearing any of it.
Within ten minutes, the boss and two more policemen were marching up the hill towards us. Shit, I thought, Here we go! We’d all done so well so far, but I had the feeling that all of our good work was about to come undone. I was right.
The boss arrived at the edge and started screaming at the girl.
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he yelled angrily. ‘If you’re going to jump, go ahead and do it. If you’re not, then come off!’
Psychology obviously wasn’t his specialist subject! I couldn’t believe this man was carrying on in such a way. For everyone’s sake, I wished he’d shut up. As soon as he spoke, the girl moved even closer to the edge.
If I wasn’t so anxious to keep an eye on the girl, I would have put my head in my hands. He had had more to say, too, but this time it was to me.
‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ he shouted.
I explained who I was and that I did regular patrols in order to save lives.
‘Get down from there now,’ he shot back sharply. ‘I don’t want the public there.’
‘I’m not going anywhere, and you can’t make me. I’m trying to help this young lady,’ I shouted back. ‘I’m no psychologist – I’m just Joe Public – but I can tell you that the way you’re talking to her is not helping things. I suggest you take your two extra officers and get the hell out of here because you’re no good to us!’
Needless to say, this didn’t go down too well. He told me I had a nerve to talk to him in such a way and asked me who the hell I thought I was. I told him I thought I was nobody but an ordinary guy trying to help. I added that I knew he was doing his job, but that I thought he was doing it very badly. I told him that the two police officers and I could get the girl down if only he and the other officers left us alone.
‘You’ve got half an hour,’ he said grudgingly, and marched back down the hill. I’d ruffled his feathers, for sure, but it got the result I wanted. Now we could finally focus on the girl again.
‘Well, we still haven’t got any pizza, have we?’ I said once the boss had gone. It took a little while, but before long the girl was laughing again. We were back on track to saving her, I hoped. ‘You don’t really want to die, do you?’ I said. ‘The only thing you want to kill is a pizza – I bet you could murder one!’
She laughed her head off at that. But whenever I suggested she came down, her faced turned serious once more. She was nervous of the police.
‘Can we come to a compromise?’ I asked her. ‘I can see that you don’t want to go with these officers, but if I can persuade them to walk away, will you walk down to the car park? You can go to your car, get your things, and go peacefully with the police. They won’t manhandle you, I promise.’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll come if we can do it that way.’
I breathed a sigh of relief and turned to the two officers.
‘Well?’ I said, ‘Is that a deal? No handcuffs, no heavy stuff. She’ll walk back to the car and go peacefully…’
One of the officers radioed back to the boss. The deal was on. The policemen walked away.
We stepped off the ledge. It was good to know that the ground wasn’t going to collapse into the sea and even better to know that the girl was safe. However, now the police came back to tell me they would walk her from here.
‘Oh no you won’t,’ I said firmly. ‘We had a deal, remember?’
The police insisted on walking behind the girl to make sure she was safe, but they agreed to keep 30 yd back. The girl seemed happy enough with this. Before we parted I told her that I would walk down to the other car park to get my car and then drive over to meet her and say goodbye. She nodded.
As I was driving my car towards the girl’s, I looked across the headland from the road. I could hardly believe my eyes. There was a police car halfway up the hill. It was behind some bushes and out of sight of the girl who was walking towards them. Immediately, I sensed that they had set a trap for her. So much for our deal.
I got out of the car and began running towards them. But it was too late. By the time I got there two police officers had jumped from behind a bush and grabbed the girl. Naturally, she was beside herself with panic and rage. As soon as she realised she had been deceived, she began shouting and screaming – and that gave them the excuse they needed to arrest her.
They swept her legs from under her and she went crashing to the ground. In a split second one of the officers was on top of her and putting the handcuffs on.
‘You bastards,’ she was screaming. ‘You fucking bastards! You promised, you promised…’
‘Leave her,’ I shouted, ‘leave her alone. There’s no need for that.’
‘Oh yes there is,’ said the boss. He told me it was his responsibility to manage the situation and that the girl could easily have run back and jumped. From the way she’d been when we’d made the deal, it was pretty obvious her frame of mind had changed. If anything was going to make her want to run and jump again, it was being manhandled by the police.
The girl turned to look at me. She was hysterical, exactly as she had been when I met her hours before. ‘You’re a fucking bastard,’ she yelled at me viciously. ‘You knew this was going to happen and you betrayed me!’
There was no point in proclaiming my innocence to her. I could see how she thought I was in on what had happened, but I was absolutely mortified about how things had turned out, and gutted that she thought I’d tricked her.
Once again, I appealed to the officer in charge to stop what was happening.
‘I have to do this,’ he shot back, flatly. I was livid. The girl screamed and writhed.
‘No you don’t,’ I shouted. ‘There’s a humane way of doing these things, and this isn’t it. You’re treating her like an animal!’
‘It’s for her own safety!’ he retorted. She may well have become very agitated, but only because she’d been betrayed. In my opinion, there’s no way that girl wasn’t going to keep her side of the bargain.
The police bundled her into the car and drove off quickly as she hollered and cried. I never saw her again. I assume they took her to the station – and I don’t know what treatment she received there. All I know is that I witnessed a troubled girl who was obviously struggling with her mental health, and she was treated like a common criminal. The last thing a person in a fragile mental state needs is to be manhandled, cuffed and bundled into a car.
I felt sick to my heart at what I had witnessed and as I drove home I was so upset that there was a moment where I wondered if all my patrolling was worth it. For the first time I thought about giving up.
I walked into the house drained and very upset. But after a stiff drink, a big cuddle and a chat with Val I’d managed to put some perspective on what had happened. When I thought about it, I felt it was only the boss who had so unnecessarily turned things sour. The two lovely Bobbies had been wonderful and I don’t doubt that together we would have managed to get the girl down without a scene. I wasn’t bitter about the police, I was annoyed at what I considered to be the insensitivity of the boss, and I had to keep that in mind. I had to refrain from making any sweeping comments about the incident to friends, because the last thing I wanted was it getting back to the press that I thought the police were horrible, or doing a bad job. Most of them do a fantastic job. It just seems that it’s those at the top – confident that they know best – who are the problem in so many areas of life. This incident was just a classic example of authority getting in the way of humanity and common sense.
In the future I would encounter problems of a similar nature, though not with the police. But whenever bad situations arose, I would always tell myself that for one arsehole in charge there are 20 wonderful people doing their best!
* * *
It was around this time that Songs of Praise got in touch. They wanted to film me talking about my experiences in Eastbourne and then move up to Beachy Head. Thinking the nationwide coverage could help my campaign, I agreed to it. Jonathan Edwards interviewed me and at first everything went very smoothly. As we approached Beachy Head with the intention of filming some reconstructions of incidents I’d been involved in, I explained that if a real incident were to happen while we were up there, they would have to turn their cameras off out of respect.
No sooner had we unpacked all of the camera equipment than I spotted a man standing at the edge. I told them I would have to go on alone. Obligingly, the crew stopped filming.
The man was middle-aged and in a complete state. Marital issues were at the heart of the matter: his wife had left him and he didn’t know what to do. He only knew that he wanted to end it all.
His body language was bad. Hands shaking, fists clenched, he paced around in a very agitated manner, talking to himself about dying, crying, blaming his wife for everything. His tone was even and calm, but his words were worrying nevertheless. By now, I had been joined by the coastguard, who kept talking about Health & Safety issues; he was worried that I might end up doing something dangerous, or put myself at risk, while trying to help this man. I didn’t think the risks I took were any business of his and I tried to tell him to leave me alone, but he wasn’t having any of it. After all, it was his job to make sure things were safe. However, I was more concerned about saving a life, so I just ignored him and got on with it.
‘Is this an official incident?’ I asked him. It wasn’t. That was a good thing. By ‘official incident’, I meant one where the police had been called out because someone was missing. It is an official incident if someone is in mental care and they go missing, or if anyone calls the police to say that a loved one may be up at Beachy Head. It doesn’t matter who is involved in an incident – the chaplains, the coastguard, me or anyone else – once the police take over there is nothing anyone else can do. When the police arrive at the scene, it is their job to take the person to a police cell for safe keeping under the Mental Health Act. There they remain until a doctor is free to assess them and decide whether they should be sectioned or released.
I’d been through my usual routine with the man. I’d told him all about Maggie. At last, he was starting to calm down, so I asked him if he was confined by the mental health system. He wasn’t. Nevertheless, I suspected that the coastguard would soon be calling the police, if he hadn’t done so already. I knew they would be here soon.
‘Listen,’ I said forcefully. ‘Can we get down to brass tacks here? Within the next 15 minutes the cops will be arriving, and you’re going to be taken away to a police cell. You won’t be arrested but it won’t be pleasant. You will be locked up until they have time to deal with you.’
I had his full attention now.
‘Unless you feel you really need help,’ I continued, ‘I would go back to your friends and do your best to talk to your wife. If you need the police, and if you need a doctor, then stay here. Otherwise, get in your car. Now.’
I didn’t really have the right to be doing this – it was a police matter, after all. Yet I had a strong feeling that this guy would be better off where he’d come from, so took the decision to urge him to leave. I walked him back to the car park where the Songs of Praise camera crew were waiting. A friend of mine was with them – he was there to act in the reconstructions – and before we said goodbye to the man we asked him where he was going.
‘Brighton,’ he replied before thanking me and driving away.
The coastguard soon caught up with us and asked where the man had gone.
‘He’s gone back to Eastbourne,’ replied my friend.
We threw them off the scent and I’m pleased to say I never saw or heard of the guy again. Not that I would always let someone go so easily. I did it then because I felt that, having talked to hundreds of troubled people, I was by now experienced enough to judge how much of a danger to him or herself someone was. In fact, I’d come up with a system for categorising incidents.
A ‘Category One’ was what I called a ‘real jumper’. These were individuals who were quite obviously about to go. They were deadly serious and once I spotted them I could immediately tell it was truly a matter of life and death – with those incidents I would always have the feeling that they could go in a split second.
A ‘Category Two’ was someone who obviously had serious problems, who may well jump if left to their own devices, but didn’t seem so completely determined to do it. With them, I always had the feeling that they were still able to listen to reason.
‘Category Threes’ were people I felt just needed a bit of TLC. They were troubled, for sure – anyone pacing the edge of a cliff and thinking about death is certainly that – but from their body language it was plain they simply needed a good talk and somebody to reassure them that they were not alone in the world.
Despite his body language, once I had started talking to the man from Brighton, I quickly realised he was a ‘Category Three’. If he was in any other category, I would have simply kept him safe until the police arrived.
The man was gone. The coastguard was gone. The police were probably looking around Eastbourne. The only ones remaining were me, a BBC crew and Jonathan Edwards. All of them were gobsmacked – we’d come up to reconstruct an incident or two for the cameras and they’d ended up witnessing a real save. Some of them were still stunned as we got on with the reconstructions.
In the middle of filming, we were stopped. The coastguard had obviously been doing his job very well because he’d told the council we were filming. Before we knew it, the council were on to us to demand that we stopped filming the reconstructions. They also insisted we didn’t use any of the footage that had been taken. It was very annoying because we’d been filming with the best of intentions – we wanted to raise awareness about the problems up at Beachy Head.
It was time to go home.
Songs of Praise aired (minus the reconstructions) and I was delighted by the emails and letters of support I received as a result of it. As always, the kindness of strangers inspired me to keep up the work – whatever obstacles I met with.