23
THE life licence meant that for the rest of my days I would have to attend monthly parole meetings and they would monitor my activities. If they even suspected me of involvement in further crime I could be recalled to prison without trial, but at that moment I did not care about any of that.
I had three weeks to wait and started giving away possessions to other prisoners. Clothing, books, shoes, all of it went. Those guys had more need for them than me, while I knew I would soon be able to get new gear. I spoke to Laura, who was thrilled by my news. She contacted Phil Bourgignon at the London Rowing Club again and arranged a time for me to see him.
When the big morning finally came, I walked down to reception and was given forms to sign, which barred me from ever coming into contact with guns or explosives (even fireworks), associating with any known criminals and possessing more than one mobile phone. My one phone number I was allowed had to be logged with authorities and initially I was only permitted to reside at my Mum’s address in Chislehurst.
The officer on duty informed me I had ten hours from release to report to probation services in London or I would be considered ‘in breach’, then walked me down to the gate. I followed along the driveway, heading out of the prison, the same way I had every day for work. This time the journey felt different. This time I would not have to be back by 8pm.
‘Good luck,’ he said simply, as he showed me out. It was a tick under eight years since Currie and Foreman had frogmarched me through the doors at Belmarsh.
I ventured out into the car park and looked around for Johnny, who was meant to be picking me up. He was nowhere to be seen. Assuming I was the victim of one of his famous pranks and expecting him to appear grinning at any moment, I searched every corner. The bastard wasn’t there.
After having thirsted for it for so long, my first 45 minutes of independence were spent standing by the side of a countryside B road watching cars come and go. The air smelt heavily of manure. It was like a bad joke.
At the back of my mind was the knowledge that if I did not get to London by the allotted time, my release would be very short-lived. Eventually my patience reached its natural limit and I walked to a nearby payphone, to call the hotel Johnny said he would stay at, in Nottingham. At first the receptionist was reluctant to put me through as I didn’t know his room number, but I pleaded with her and she agreed.
‘Hello,’ the plonker said at last, his voice thick with sleep.
‘Mate, what’s going on? I’m standing outside the nick waiting for you.’
‘Shit…I’m sorry…had a few drinks last night. What time is it? I didn’t get in until late.’
Typical Johnny, I had to get a cab. He looked like a walking corpse as he opened his hotel door in his pants, reeking of booze, but I hugged the big tosser anyway. It was great to see him. We had a bit of lunch, he perked up, then drove us back to London. First stop was the probation office, down in Orpington in the south-east of the city.
‘John McAvoy,’ I told the young receptionist on arrival, pleased to have arrived within the timeframe. ‘Just released.’
She checked her files with a bemused look.
‘John who?’
Admin had lapsed and they were not even expecting me. I had to wait for half an hour for the officer to turn up.
Once she finally emerged from a door behind the desk, the probation lady, a small, talkative woman called Marilyn, took me through the terms of my licence. She warned me to avoid situations where I could get involved in anything, even minor things like a pub fight, as the last thing I needed was to compromise myself. She also offered a few words of wisdom about dating, which was something I had not thought too much about. Apparently the most common reasons for recalling licensed prisoners are bitter break-ups, during which the ex-girlfriend files a report of physical abuse for revenge. The allegations need not even be true for dire consequences to ensue. I thanked her in thoughtful mood, shook her hand and left. This wasn’t freedom as other people experienced it. It was freedom with limitations.
Although I had been down to visit Mum a few times and had started the ultra-run in Blackheath, I hadn’t looked properly at my home city for years. As Johnny drove us away from the probation office, from one south London street to another, it struck me how much everything had changed. Coffee shops had sprung up everywhere. People on the streets locked eyes on phones with huge screens. Cars and buses looked different. Pubs I knew well had closed down. New buildings had been built, old ones had disappeared.
‘What the fuck is that?’ I asked, pointing at an ugly collection of warehouse-style pre-fabs beside the road.
‘Retail park mate,’ Johnny replied.
‘When are they gonna finish it?’
He laughed. ‘Everyone says that. That’s just what it looks like.’
It was as if I had been in suspended animation. From 2004 until 2012, the world had turned without me.
Johnny drove us around to Mum’s who waited with my Auntie Kitty. Both of them were very emotional, which I expected, but I found all the hugging and kissing difficult. Eight years of prison had destroyed my natural sense of intimacy, even with family members. I found contact uncomfortable and stiffened up.
‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ I told her as she clung to my neck. ‘This time I’m not going back.’
After a couple of hours there, I went to see my cousin Bill, which also completely unnerved me. He had kids, a baby and a six-year-old. It was the first time I had seen either. The realisation of how long I had been away hit me again.
Johnny took me to a Lebanese restaurant for dinner where we talked about work, but for the first time outside prison, I meant that word in the same sense that regular people did. For the new John McAvoy, work did not mean bank jobs or drugs or handling stolen goods. It meant turning up at an office wearing a tie and earning a salary. Johnny had a position set aside for me in his company selling carbon offsets, whatever that meant.
After dinner we hit a nightclub in the West End. I knew what Johnny was trying to do so I played along. It was supposed to give me the chance to loosen up, but in reality made me feel old. As I looked around I had to accept that at 29 I was in the upper age bracket of the clientele. There were girls in there who were little more than kids, while all the lights and noise felt bewildering. The last time I had been to a place like that was back in Spain.
The music, garish colours and smells of booze and perfume overpowered me. The old John would have been in among it, throwing money around, but I kept my distance, sat in a corner and tried to soak it all in. I was due at the rowing club in the morning and it wouldn’t make sense to get smashed or stay out late.
In the end I left Johnny to it at about 1am, with a sense of relief. That was more than enough freedom for one night. If I wasn’t careful I would overdose on it.
When my alarm went off in the morning it took me a few minutes to accept my surroundings. My subconscious still lived in the billet at Sudbury, but a coffee and some porridge cleared my head.
My second experience of a rowing club was very different to my first. Where Burton Leander had basically been a shed with some gear in it, the London Rowing Club in Putney, not a part of town I knew well, dripped history and oozed class. Portraits of Prince Philip, the club patron, hung in several of the rooms which were decked out in polished wood and brass fittings. The main meeting room featured a grandfather clock and chandeliers. Trophies stood everywhere. Over the bar hung a boat that had been rowed to a silver medal in the 1936 ‘Hitler’ Olympics in Berlin. I felt like I had arrived on the set of Downton Abbey.
As I made my way inside, a tall man with glasses approached me on the stairs.
‘Are you okay?’ he said in clipped, upper-middle-class English. ‘You look a bit lost.’
‘It’s my first time here,’ I replied, keeping my voice flat, disguising my culture shock. ‘I’m here to see Phil.’
He shook my hand. ‘Mike Hill, assistant coach.’
Mike introduced himself, explaining that not only did he work at the club, but he coached at one of the top public schools in the area. He was friendly and welcoming, showing me around, taking me to the gym equipped with familiar Concept 2 rowers, and then out to the boathouse, stocked with everything from single sculls to eight-man sweeps. He pointed out famous faces among the pictures on the walls, men who had been to Olympics and world championships.
‘There’s a lot of heritage here,’ he said, smiling.
I nodded, internally processing this new environment. When I thought back to my time in Belmarsh or Full Sutton, among psychopaths like Byrne and McAteer, surrounded by junkies and violence, it occurred that this was the polar opposite.
On conclusion of his mini-tour, Mike took me back down to the riverbank where the crews were just starting to come in off the water after morning training.
‘There’s Phil,’ he said, pointing at a slim guy in a baseball cap stepping off a speedboat. Mike led me over and introduced me.
From the first instant I met coach Bourgignon, I liked him. He had intensity, and a no-nonsense demeanour. He was a winner and I could see it. These were the sort of people I wanted to be around.
‘What are your erg times again?’ he asked.
‘Six 20 and 16.39.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s right, I remember now. You’re not even that tall either, are you?’
‘Five foot nine.’
‘Impressive, especially for someone so compact. Right, the next water session I’ll let you go out on a launch with my assistant coach Brian Ulliott. You can have a look at how we do things, then we can have a chat.’
Meeting Brian helped put me at ease. A Yorkshireman who punctuated virtually every sentence with swear words, he was not a stereotypical rowing club guy. I headed upstairs with him and sat among the other rowers as they ate lunch between sessions.
Listening in to the conversations around the room revealed a surprising range of accents. A number were what might be termed middle- or upper-class voices, but there were also Aussies, Canadians, Kiwis, even a couple of Spanish guys, as well as regional UK dialects. The guys spoke about the typical things you would expect young guys to talk about, sport, work and girls. Of course it was different to jail, but I didn’t feel out of place at all.
When the time came to head back out for session two, the rowers got their boats from the trestles and I boarded a small motorboat with Brian. He explained to me the rules of the tideway, which direction you are supposed to row at different times of day, how the lanes work. The guys rowed off down towards Westminster and we followed, with the sun high in the sky and Big Ben looming ahead.
‘So where have you come from?’ Brian asked, turning to me.
‘I was err… working up north near Derby… but I’ve moved back down.’
‘Oh, so what do you do for a living?’
‘I work in carbon offsets,’ I said. I was scheduled to start work with Johnny on the Monday. Thankfully Brian did not quiz me any further on that as I had no real idea what it was.
Soon we pulled up alongside a boat full of tousle-haired, pink-cheeked lads, who eased up for Brian to shout a few instructions. The guy at the front of the boat, known as the strokeman, listened to Brian then turned and said something inaudible to the rest of crew. Brian’s manner immediately changed.
‘Stop rowing!’ he yelled.
They did. We were outside the Houses of Parliament and huddles of tourists stood taking pictures on the bank.
‘Listen son!’ he screamed. ‘I’m the fucking coach. Got it? I tell you what to do. You don’t fucking coach from the boat, not if you want to stay in it. Keep your gob shut and your mind on your fucking work or you’ll be out on your arse!’
The kid looked down at his legs. ‘Yes coach,’ he said. Suitably chastised, they began rowing once more.
The scene jolted me. Up to that point I had felt fairly comfortable with what I had observed, but not then.
‘That was disrespectful,’ my inner voice said. ‘No one speaks to me like that. If anyone spoke to me like that, I wouldn’t have stood for it. Is this how they speak to people here? Do I have to accept this?’
Adjustments would clearly be needed and I remained deep in thought until we returned to the shore. Back on the bank, Phil asked me to jump in a single scull so he could watch my technique. I obliged and rowed out to Hammersmith and back.
My form was a bit ragged, but it went pretty well, although the waves made the boat twitchier than I had been used to at Burton. Rowing on the Thames would require an intricate, more developed skill set.
‘Okay,’ Phil said, when I returned. ‘Not too bad. We’ll start you from the bottom and bleed you into the squad gradually. We won’t put you in crew boats until you’ve learned how to row well. You’ll need lots of water sessions to bring you up to scratch. But I reckon in future you can be an asset to this club.’
We shook hands. I followed him inside and signed my membership papers. Within 24 hours I had transformed from an inmate, to one of the chaps.