chapter fourteen: labelling theory

I was unpacking when a knock at the door interrupted my ruminations. I’d just got back from somewhere or other and was a bit distracted. I opened the door. There was a police woman there. It was the same one; the one who had been round to explain about ASBOs and restraining orders. She was on her own this time.
'Rachel?'
But Rachel was on business and not in the mood for first name pleasantries.
'I think you know what this is about', she said. 'I've tried to get in touch via your mobile but I kept getting the answer phone'.
Uh oh. The new mobile I purchased at the airport, duty free and loaded with devices. Hence the new sim card, the new number, and no calls from anyone I knew. Oooops.
Behind Rachel’s hat the sun was out and the day was promising. But all my plans were suddenly on hold; my life no longer my own.
'You need to come with me to the station. You'll be interviewed and charged......mdhjqwio m nsho llksfoq0[ -1 udjhn p l lfp-0e89 -i idlkjlfffhln ;.....'
Well, that's what it sounded like. Because from where I was standing the roof had just caved in and all sounds, all sense, all light was being filtered through a very heavy gauze of madness, of chaos and impossibility.
'Gary....Gary, can you hear me? I need you to come to the station'.
I muttered, breathed in.
'Why?'
'I think you know why, Gary'.
'Do I have to?'
'Well', said Rachel politely, 'I could always arrest you'.
Because it was a voluntary procedure she allowed me to drive the car to the station where she reads me my rights. I was being arrested in connection with a complaint made against me that I committed an assault and criminal damage….yaddah, yaddah, yaddah. Assault. Criminal damage. The words didn’t belong, but it seemed as if they might apply. The desk sergeant filled in some forms. He took a look at my strides and said I’d have to change. He handed me a pair of trackie bottoms. I must have looked sartorially challenged. He was almost apologetic.
‘Some people we get in here don’t want to be here. They can get a bit desperate at times’
Now depersonalised he lead me to the holding cell. It was grey and green. And metal and concrete. The only glass was high on the wall. It was clean. It was empty.
The desk sergeant, genial, joking, a man who should have been doing one-liners at the local Working Man’s Club for the Sunday lunchtime crowd promised to bring some reading material and a cup of coffee. He asked how I want the coffee. He was being a waiter. He was being human.
‘Black’, I told him.
He closed the door behind him and locked it. The sound echoed in my mind for weeks.
He was back in minutes with coffee in a plastic cup. The coffee tasted of nothing. He’d also brought me a selection of reading material. The Bumper Book of Christmas Cracker Jokes and a selection of glossy tat. The magazines ‘OK’, ‘Hello’ and similar celebrity trash mocked me with their bright vulgarity. The photos of tanned and grinning idiots seemed to laugh at my plight. If there was a mirror I could have looked at a tanned idiot for real. The ones in the magazines, they may have been vacuous fools, but they were sitting at home right then, feet up, sipping real coffee and wondering what to do with the day. They may have been brainless airheads with capped teeth, fake tans and false tits but they were lounging by the pool in Buckinghamshire, not banged up in Moss Way.
I flipped open the joke book and read at random.
A tourist couple were in the Cotswolds. They'd been out rambling all day. Glorious weather. Stopping off for a pub lunch, taking in the rural sights, snapping the rustic pics, generally doing the tourist thing and just enjoying the bucolic side of life for a weekend.
Strolling homeward down a long field towards the village where the B&B was located, the setting sun pouring like honey across the landscape, casting their giant shadows across the side of the valley when they came across a guy mending a dry stone wall. They had long since given up any gaucheness and so they brazenly approached the guy and asked if they could have a few photographs. He obliges, but with something of a taciturn demeanor.
'Can't be many left doing this job?' said the wife.
He carried on chipping away at a stone, apparently deaf to her remarks.
'Skill like that......' said the husband. But before he could finish the guy had chucked his tools on the ground. He turned to them with a tired expression.
'No', he says. 'Not many of us now. About two hundred left'.
And he gazed down to the village. The green shone like a new leaf. The pond blinked in the loitering light. The pub sign was creaking softly in the breeze, the sound carrying easily up the hillside.
'It's a lovely sight', said the wife to break the swelling silence.
'It is', he replied.
'Every time I look at it I think that same thought'.
The husband ventured an introduction. 'The name's Ted', he began.
'This is Anne'.
The guy let the introductions rest in the air so Ted asked him his name. The guy paused, thinking.
'You see that cottage down there, by the pub? The one with the thatched roof?'
The couple nodded their assent. They could see the cottage with the thatched roof by the pub.
'Well', he went on, 'I put that roof on myself. Nearly a week's work that roof'.
Ted and Anne were impressed.
'But do they call me John the Thatcher?'
It was a rhetorical question.
'And those barrels by the side door of the pub…...can you see them?'
Ted could see them ok. He'd taken a few snaps of them already using black and white film for his night class. Real wooden barrels. Not your usual metal kegs.
'Did you make them, John?' ventured Anne.
'Do they call me John the Cooper?' he pleaded.
The sun was lower in the sky but the chill in the air was not purely from the temperature.
'And what do they call you then, John?' asked Ted. It may have been a trick of the acoustics but the birds seemed to stop singing.
John turned to look at them. He stooped to pick up the hammer he had let fall. Then he picked up a piece of rock the size of a small dog. He picked it up easily, one handed, and cleaved it neatly in two equal pieces with a light tap. He turned away and placed the pieces expertly into the wall like he was finishing a jigsaw.
'You shag one lousy sheep............................'
It was a perfect example of labelling theory in action. I was still smiling when the avuncular desk sergeant opened the door before I’d even sipped at the coffee properly.
‘Phone call for you, Gary. The duty solicitor.’
I followed him out into the corridor to a wall mounted phone with one of those little plastic hoods that offer an illusion of privacy. The desk sergeant and Rachel stood a few feet away and chatted. They were probably listening.
The solicitor introduced himself. The first part of the conversation was pure business. Basically he informed me that this was a free service…………in the background I could hear kids whining to someone, probably the mother, who was telling them to get ready because they were going out to feed the ducks. The mother? Wonder what she looks like? Is she a solicitor too? Have they got a big house? Probably in S10, maybe S11. But no, the duty solicitor wouldn’t be living in S11. He wouldn’t be fielding calls from losers on a Sunday morning, sweeping up the detritus from the Saturday night mayhem that litters the city streets.
'Listen', I told him, 'you probably hear this all the time...but I don't know why I'm here'.
The solicitor sighed. He has indeed heard this may, many times before.
‘You’ve hit your girlfriend. No biggie’.
The whole tabloid horror of it washed over me in a Burberry checked wave.
'My best advice to you is to admit the charge. You’d be better off just putting your hand up and taking whatever comes your way. The alternative is a trip to Surrey to appear in court with a not guilty appeal and a guilty verdict a certainty. Jail time is an option but I think a caution is the more likely outcome in this case. Now if you'll excuse me I have other clients to attend to'.
I could hear the other clients shouting in the background and an increasingly exasperated adult female voice imploring them for some quiet while daddy was on the phone.
I replaced the receiver.
‘Is he coming out, then?’ enquired my new uncle.
‘I’ve hit my girlfriend’.
Uncle took me aside immediately.
‘Listen, mate. You’re new here. You don’t belong, I can tell. But whatever you say, save it for the interview room. Keep it simple, you’ll walk out of here with a caution. No more than that. Got it? It’s just procedure. Nobody’s judging you’.
He winked as he locked the cell door.
‘Keep smiling’, was his best advice. And it was at least as good as the legal crap I’d just been given. Same price, too.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, Sara’s twenty first birthday party was going to be a very glitzy affair. People I’d never heard of but who were apparently known to millions for their television work were queuing up to attend. Sara’s dad owned a media company. Sara’s fiancé worked in the City. Sara’s pet Afghan was called Percy. Sara’s mum was in rehab. Whatever happened to Sara? Did she get lots of nice pressies? I’ve often wondered.
And what’s all this about hitting my girlfriend? As if. He must have gotten his clients mixed up in the Sunday dinner confusion. Could I sack a duty solicitor? I didn’t find out because my new uncle, Uncle Dennis the desk Sergeant (I’d overheard Rachel) was back again.
‘You’re on’, he said. ‘Now….remember what I said’.
I followed Rachel into the interview suite, docile as a dog. There was a tape recorder in a box on the wall. Sitting in the interview suite I had to focus on my breathing. She was going to ask for my side of the story. Rachel recited from an internal script. She asked me to confirm my name and that we were the only two people in the room. I wanted to be flippant but it wasn’t going to work so I nodded meekly, then realising the tape wouldn’t get it I said 'Yes'.
She told me that she was investigating a complaint from my ex-girlfriend, Caroline Cross, that I hit her and damaged some property in her bedroom. She told me that the police were duty bound to take any complaint of domestic violence very seriously.
Domestic violence? The effect of this revelation was stunning. Was the solicitor right after all? Well, that meant I was the one being labelled. Could this really be true? Fragments of memory started to reassemble. Did I really do that? Ten seconds of madness and I was labelled for life. I wanted to tell Rachel that there was no natural justice but she’d have heard it all before. And besides, a woman cop, how was she going to respond to this sordid tale? She wasn't wearing a ring but maybe that was a uniform thing. So I just looked at the floor. It didn't open up. There was no escape.
She then asked me to begin by telling her how I met Caroline. So I told tell her.
'We met online. We didn't actually meet up for a couple of months but we were in love by then. And for nearly a year it was wonderful'.
Odd; the interview room as confessional. It was very liberating to be telling a complete stranger the story. Nobody had ever really got the full version of events before.
'But the distance got in the way. We split up, twice. It just wasn't working. The kids, the jobs, the distance mostly. Then sometime this March, completely by accident, we got in touch again. It was a Sunday night, about ten thirty, the football was still on, and we got talking on the phone and it was clear that the feelings were still there, still as strong and I said to her, "I'm coming down to see you. Now."
She said, "Oh, don't", but it wasn't as if she didn't want me to. I packed a few things and the phone rang again.
"Are you really coming down?"
'I told her not to phone again because I'd be in the car.
I left about 10.50. I proceeded south along the M1 driving at a steady 70 mph'
Rachel smiled at this.
I got there about 1.30. We got to sleep about 4.