inactive, his spirits were round his ankles. He was up to his neck in a quicksand of depression.
Kara hadn’t been there for the last fortnight. She had taken the kids away to Faliraki with her parents, and was due back later that day. So she hadn’t been around to watch her husband exist on cold beans and takeaways. Harry froze as a thought occurred:
They hadn ’ t made love at all this year.
He couldn’t even remember his last erection. Harry stepped out of his paisley Ralph Lauren boxers and looked at himself in the mirror. Then he closed his eyes and thought of Ruth England. Then Kylie. Then Jordan. Then Kylie and Jordan. Then Zoe from Page Three of the Sun . Nothing. His cock just hung there limply, a symbol of the impotence of his new existence. He punched the bedroom door in frustration. Harry had always been the stud, the shag-meister. Now he was fuck-all. Fucking Kara! But it wasn’t her fault. He had no one to blame but himself. In that moment, Harry Dean finally allowed himself to acknowledge the truth he had suppressed for thirteen months: he should never have walked away from UC work. He had done it for his wife’s happiness but it had cost him his soul. Harry was never cut out to be a stay-at-home, Mr Average family man. It wasn’t in his blood. He was a risk-taker, an achiever. ‘A hero’, the newspapers had called him. But the hero had allowed himself to be harnessed by the obligations of marriage and family; handcuffed first by guilt, and now by bitter regret.
Harry didn’t hate his colleagues. The lads at Ipswich nick were good, hard-working, honest coppers, but he didn’t belong there. The big conversation in the canteen every day was who had what in the Tupperware box. There was an old joke he’d used to tell years ago: ‘How does a wooden-top tell if he’s going to or from work? Easy, if his box is empty he’s going home.’ But the gag turned out to be true. Harry had nothing in common with the other guys and they knew it. It wasn’t a vanity thing. Even though he never spoke about it, they all knew what Harry had been and appreciated that he was out of their league. What puzzled them was how he had come to be where he was. Harry kept himself to himself. He couldn’t be bothered to socialise. Their small talk drove him nuts. Who gave a fuck about the soaps, Ipswich Town or the price of fucking mince? The police force he loved was changing beyond recognition. You couldn’t talk publicly about anything that mattered – asylum madness, Brussels, the destruction of working-class communities or how much New Labour hated everything great about Britain – for fear of coming to the attention of the new lefty-approved management.
Harry had voted for Blair yet he believed passionately that Phony Tony and co. were out to abolish the police service as a crime-fighting force. The evidence was all around him. The police weren’t here to protect the public any more; they were uniformed social workers, agents of a corrupt state whose job was to enforce liberal values. No proper copper believed that the metric martyrs should have been nicked for trading in imperial measurements. They certainly didn’t think Tony Martin should be in jail. They thought he should get a medal. The farmer had only had to shoot that burglar because Norfolk police had let him down. Of course, Woy Jenkins started it all in the 1960s when he destroyed local autonomy, took bobbies off the beat and put them in Panda cars. Old Bill in Pandas could not prevent crime, they could only turn up after it had happened. The small felonies – petty theft, burglary and muggings – were no longer even considered worth chasing up. But nick a man for ‘racial abuse’ at a football match and see how many brownie points you’d get; if you could squeeze in any arrests between those oh-so-crucial courses on gay awareness, that is. Welcome to the brave new world of post-millennium Britain: singers who can’t sing, actors who can’t
Kara hadn’t been there for the last fortnight. She had taken the kids away to Faliraki with her parents, and was due back later that day. So she hadn’t been around to watch her husband exist on cold beans and takeaways. Harry froze as a thought occurred:
They hadn ’ t made love at all this year.
He couldn’t even remember his last erection. Harry stepped out of his paisley Ralph Lauren boxers and looked at himself in the mirror. Then he closed his eyes and thought of Ruth England. Then Kylie. Then Jordan. Then Kylie and Jordan. Then Zoe from Page Three of the Sun . Nothing. His cock just hung there limply, a symbol of the impotence of his new existence. He punched the bedroom door in frustration. Harry had always been the stud, the shag-meister. Now he was fuck-all. Fucking Kara! But it wasn’t her fault. He had no one to blame but himself. In that moment, Harry Dean finally allowed himself to acknowledge the truth he had suppressed for thirteen months: he should never have walked away from UC work. He had done it for his wife’s happiness but it had cost him his soul. Harry was never cut out to be a stay-at-home, Mr Average family man. It wasn’t in his blood. He was a risk-taker, an achiever. ‘A hero’, the newspapers had called him. But the hero had allowed himself to be harnessed by the obligations of marriage and family; handcuffed first by guilt, and now by bitter regret.
Harry didn’t hate his colleagues. The lads at Ipswich nick were good, hard-working, honest coppers, but he didn’t belong there. The big conversation in the canteen every day was who had what in the Tupperware box. There was an old joke he’d used to tell years ago: ‘How does a wooden-top tell if he’s going to or from work? Easy, if his box is empty he’s going home.’ But the gag turned out to be true. Harry had nothing in common with the other guys and they knew it. It wasn’t a vanity thing. Even though he never spoke about it, they all knew what Harry had been and appreciated that he was out of their league. What puzzled them was how he had come to be where he was. Harry kept himself to himself. He couldn’t be bothered to socialise. Their small talk drove him nuts. Who gave a fuck about the soaps, Ipswich Town or the price of fucking mince? The police force he loved was changing beyond recognition. You couldn’t talk publicly about anything that mattered – asylum madness, Brussels, the destruction of working-class communities or how much New Labour hated everything great about Britain – for fear of coming to the attention of the new lefty-approved management.
Harry had voted for Blair yet he believed passionately that Phony Tony and co. were out to abolish the police service as a crime-fighting force. The evidence was all around him. The police weren’t here to protect the public any more; they were uniformed social workers, agents of a corrupt state whose job was to enforce liberal values. No proper copper believed that the metric martyrs should have been nicked for trading in imperial measurements. They certainly didn’t think Tony Martin should be in jail. They thought he should get a medal. The farmer had only had to shoot that burglar because Norfolk police had let him down. Of course, Woy Jenkins started it all in the 1960s when he destroyed local autonomy, took bobbies off the beat and put them in Panda cars. Old Bill in Pandas could not prevent crime, they could only turn up after it had happened. The small felonies – petty theft, burglary and muggings – were no longer even considered worth chasing up. But nick a man for ‘racial abuse’ at a football match and see how many brownie points you’d get; if you could squeeze in any arrests between those oh-so-crucial courses on gay awareness, that is. Welcome to the brave new world of post-millennium Britain: singers who can’t sing, actors who can’t
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