friends.
Maybe it wasn’t that I was a cop. Maybe that wasn’t the main thing at all.
And it wasn’t that she just took it out on me, she took it out on herself too, or so it seemed. She took it out on herself to take it out on me. She’d wear those awful clothes and dye her hair a different colour every month and make it go spiky like the bristles on an old brush. God knows how she got away with it at school—but we got the letters, the cautions, about the code for dress and personal appearance. And me a policeman. And Rachel up for Deputy Head. But the strange thing was her schoolwork was always pretty good.
Not like me, in my day. Poor marks all round.
(I’ve told Helen most things now, of course, most of the story.)
Then she had a stud stuck in the side of her nose. Then another on the other side. In those days that sort of thing hadn’t yet become a kind of uniform.
Her business, her nose. But at weekends she’d go out with some gang, some gaggle—we never knew who they were—and sometimes disappear all night. Being a policeman doesn’t stop you worrying, the opposite if anything. And sometimes I’d think that sooner or later I’d have to go and fetch her from some nick. Me a cop, and her in a nick. Drugs, whatever. And that would be it, that would make her day. The perfect piece of retaliation.
So when real scandal came my way, when I got drummed out of the Force and proved to be, after all, a dodgy cop, a bad cop (but a good one too—I’d made DI), shouldn’t that have been her moment of triumph?
But which way did it work? If being a policeman was bad in the first place, then being a bad one . . . Do two bads make a good?
We both knew which way it worked for Rachel. Rachel decided—almost overnight—that I wasn’t just a bad cop, I was a bad husband, a bad deal altogether. Rachel decided I was no longer for her and went her own way. That’s how it worked, in a word, for her. And Helen, I would have thought, would have jumped the same way too.
But by this time she’d left school and left home. She’d already gone her own way (to be honest, it was a bit of a relief). She was at college now, art college—so, hardly a tearaway. Underneath all the outrageousness, a good little school-girl, particularly good, it seemed, at art and art history.
Though even that she’d use like a stick to beat me with. Me, the brainless clod of a policeman.
(But I’d been to college—police college, day-release. Sweated through police exams.)
It’s true, I didn’t know, or care much, about art. I didn’t see the point of looking at pictures. Or painting them. Though I’d have said to Helen—if it had ever come to it— that that’s just why we have policemen: so that law-abiding people are safe and free to go to art galleries and look at pictures. Or whatever. Stick pins in their nose. What else is civilization for?
But I didn’t say it, of course. Red rag to a bull. I even tried, for her sake, to get interested in art.
“You’re a detective, Dad. But you don’t see things. You don’t notice things.”
I even went to art galleries, and looked—and yawned. I even mugged up on her favourite painter, Caravaggio (they all looked like waxworks to me). And found out he was a bit of a tearaway himself, a bit of a thug on the side, always running up against the law. (Was there a message there for me?) A bit of a nancy too.
Then she left home. Then two years later I left the police. Then Rachel left me. And then Helen came home. I mean, she came home to visit me, to take my side against Rachel, who became, as far as Helen was concerned, the real culprit in the whole business, for turning her back on me.
“It’s your mother you’re talking about, Helen.”
“Is it?”
She never forgave Rachel but I think she forgave me, pretty quick, even when I was still putting my hand up to say it was all my fault, I shouldn’t have done it, blame me.
I still see Rachel’s face (though it’s dim now,
Maybe it wasn’t that I was a cop. Maybe that wasn’t the main thing at all.
And it wasn’t that she just took it out on me, she took it out on herself too, or so it seemed. She took it out on herself to take it out on me. She’d wear those awful clothes and dye her hair a different colour every month and make it go spiky like the bristles on an old brush. God knows how she got away with it at school—but we got the letters, the cautions, about the code for dress and personal appearance. And me a policeman. And Rachel up for Deputy Head. But the strange thing was her schoolwork was always pretty good.
Not like me, in my day. Poor marks all round.
(I’ve told Helen most things now, of course, most of the story.)
Then she had a stud stuck in the side of her nose. Then another on the other side. In those days that sort of thing hadn’t yet become a kind of uniform.
Her business, her nose. But at weekends she’d go out with some gang, some gaggle—we never knew who they were—and sometimes disappear all night. Being a policeman doesn’t stop you worrying, the opposite if anything. And sometimes I’d think that sooner or later I’d have to go and fetch her from some nick. Me a cop, and her in a nick. Drugs, whatever. And that would be it, that would make her day. The perfect piece of retaliation.
So when real scandal came my way, when I got drummed out of the Force and proved to be, after all, a dodgy cop, a bad cop (but a good one too—I’d made DI), shouldn’t that have been her moment of triumph?
But which way did it work? If being a policeman was bad in the first place, then being a bad one . . . Do two bads make a good?
We both knew which way it worked for Rachel. Rachel decided—almost overnight—that I wasn’t just a bad cop, I was a bad husband, a bad deal altogether. Rachel decided I was no longer for her and went her own way. That’s how it worked, in a word, for her. And Helen, I would have thought, would have jumped the same way too.
But by this time she’d left school and left home. She’d already gone her own way (to be honest, it was a bit of a relief). She was at college now, art college—so, hardly a tearaway. Underneath all the outrageousness, a good little school-girl, particularly good, it seemed, at art and art history.
Though even that she’d use like a stick to beat me with. Me, the brainless clod of a policeman.
(But I’d been to college—police college, day-release. Sweated through police exams.)
It’s true, I didn’t know, or care much, about art. I didn’t see the point of looking at pictures. Or painting them. Though I’d have said to Helen—if it had ever come to it— that that’s just why we have policemen: so that law-abiding people are safe and free to go to art galleries and look at pictures. Or whatever. Stick pins in their nose. What else is civilization for?
But I didn’t say it, of course. Red rag to a bull. I even tried, for her sake, to get interested in art.
“You’re a detective, Dad. But you don’t see things. You don’t notice things.”
I even went to art galleries, and looked—and yawned. I even mugged up on her favourite painter, Caravaggio (they all looked like waxworks to me). And found out he was a bit of a tearaway himself, a bit of a thug on the side, always running up against the law. (Was there a message there for me?) A bit of a nancy too.
Then she left home. Then two years later I left the police. Then Rachel left me. And then Helen came home. I mean, she came home to visit me, to take my side against Rachel, who became, as far as Helen was concerned, the real culprit in the whole business, for turning her back on me.
“It’s your mother you’re talking about, Helen.”
“Is it?”
She never forgave Rachel but I think she forgave me, pretty quick, even when I was still putting my hand up to say it was all my fault, I shouldn’t have done it, blame me.
I still see Rachel’s face (though it’s dim now,
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