“Don’t worry, he won’t send me to prison”

CHAPTER ONE.

A while back, I was stopped at a road checkpoint, where a garda (male) discovered that my tax and NCT certificates were out of date. Later that afternoon, at a different checkpoint, a garda (female) made the same discovery.

Afterwards, I wrote a column in which I gave 800 words of anecdotal evidence to support my theory that women officers are meaner than their male counterparts.

This theory was based on their wildly contrasting styles of reprimand, (man’s: nice, woman’s: heinous) which I observed during the incidents, while the sound of my adrenaline-boosted heartbeat banged in my ears.

Chapter two. Immediately afterwards, I did what anyone who’s irrationally terrified of ending up in prison would do: I paid my fines, bought tax, booked an NCT and presented the relevant documents at my local garda station. That, I thought was the end of that.

Until, that is, a summons arrives from the garda (female) to appear in court in two months time, on a charge that my husband has to interpret for me, enunciating very slowly because panic has turned my brain to sponge and made the print on the summons go all funny.

“You didn’t bring your insurance up to the garda station,” he says.

“I didn’t know I had to,” I say, finding that I need to sit suddenly. “I had valid insurance.”

“Well it says here, you didn’t bring your NCT cert either.”

My breathing feels laboured. “But I did,” I say.

“Well it’s obviously a misunderstanding with the garda, you’ll just have to explain it to the judge,” he says. I don’t feel right. My husband looks at me and adds immediately, “I’ll phone her now.” Twenty-five years of marriage has given him some crucial insight.

Recalling her belligerence and bad manners, I wish him all the best with the phone call. I lie rigid on my bed upstairs and listen to him through the floorboards. He sounds polite but under great pressure. He comes up five minutes later and calls her a word I’ve never heard him use before. “You’re going to have to go to court,” he says.

Chapter three. It’s the morning of my court appearance. I’ve had no sleep because the question, ‘What if the judge decides to make an example of me?’ has buzzed around inside my head like a bee trapped in a jar, all night. I ask my husband this question before I get into the car.

“For doing what, exactly?” he says, “not showing your insurance documents, which were valid anyway? He’s hardly going to send you to prison for that.”

I arrive in court, clutching my summons as if my life depended on it because it feels like it does. I’ve brought my insurance, NCT and tax certificates with me and check them compulsively; I’ve been overtaken by an irrational fear that I might have brought a shopping list with me instead.

A clerk tells me to present my documents to the garda who’s summoned me to court. I approach her. She glances at the certs and hands them back to me. She looks badly pissed off but I think — I hope — this is just her everyday face.

The court is told to rise as the judge enters the courtroom, at which point the ‘da-dum, da-dum, da-dum’ amplifies in my ears and my hands start to shake. The man standing next to me notices and tells me to breathe through my nose and out through my mouth, slowly. “Don’t worry, he says and smiles. “He’s not going to send you to prison.”

“Don’t say that word,” I think.

An hour passes, during which the judge fines a large number of people, most of whom appear to have fallen foul of the same officer as me. He says “in lieu of six months imprisonment” enough times for my fear to become physiological in curious new ways. I can’t find my voice.

My case is called. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum. The judge shuffles some papers. Da-dum, da-dum. He strikes it out of court — WHACK — just like that.

No fine, no ‘in lieu of’ anything.

The da-dum, da-dum, da-dum recedes. Words un-stick themselves from concrete. I look at the back of the woman garda’s head and say the word, the one my husband never uses, very, very quietly under my breath and tiptoe out.