England Away Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by John King

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Island Race

  No-Man’s Land

  Gates of the West

  Blitzkrieg

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Having examined England’s twin obsessions - violence and sex - in THE FOOTBALL FACTORY and HEADHUNTERS, John King completes his trilogy with ENGLAND AWAY: sex and violence abroad, under the Union Jack. The novel works on three levels - past, present and future - as pensioner Bill Farrell remembers his war experiences in a London pub, Tommy Johnson fights his way through Holland and Germany for an England football match in Berlin, and Harry considers the future fuelled by doses of Dutch skunk and German speed. John King’s powerful new novel looks at notions of what it means to be English. Exploring stereotypes of language and nationalism, the primal pulls of lust and aggression, ENGLAND AWAY culminates in a unity of the tribes and a blitzkreig in the streets of Berlin.

  About the Author

  John King lives in London. England Away is the third novel in the loose trilogy that began with The Football Factory.

  ALSO BY JOHN KING

  The Football Factory

  Headhunters

  FOR MY DAD, MIKE KING

  ‘The English don’t kill people,

  unless they fucking have to’

  Steve Thorman, the night of Heysel

  England Away

  John King

  ISLAND RACE

  A STROPPY CUNT in a grey uniform stands in front of me, acting cocky – standing there like a plum. He’s looking at my passport. Inspecting the photo but not raising his head to check if Tom Johnson is one and the same. He’s waiting for something to happen. Waiting for the face in the picture to lean forward and the mouth to tell him to fuck off. Pull the skull back and nut him on the bridge of the nose. Sending blood down that nice official jacket, running along sharp creases. He’s searching inside the lines of my forehead. Reading the script and playing his part. Holding that shitty red passport close, the proud old British version ripped up and burnt by the invisible scum in Brussels. Manky old cunts busy working through the night, nailing us with the European tag. Claiming triple time. No identity and a crisp ironed suit; sagging sweaty skin and pockmarked cheeks. Customs cunt saying nothing, just hanging there, a fucking tart inspecting the photo. Staring into space, the slag. And I can feel my foot tapping and fingers itching, fists clenched, holding back and keeping the violence down. Does he remember something from his hooligan database, or is it a routine piss-take? He raises his head with a blank expression and cardboard stance. Sucking air down so it rattles in his throat. Gagging on bad manners and the smell of a Fisherman’s Friend. Giving it the big one. Giving me grief.

  – What are you planning to do in Holland then, Mr Johnson? he asks, all curious and suspicious. Full of himself. Full of shit.

  I smile my best friendly smile.

  (Well, I’m passing through Holland on my way to Berlin, Mr Customs Cunt, where I’m going to see England play Germany and hopefully help turn the place over. That’s what. But first I’m going to stop in Amsterdam and get pissed, then service some of those Dutch birds you hear so much about. Not the whores, mind, though I might give them a seeing to as well. Reduced rates for a classic English gentleman. No, I want some of those Dutch beauty queens, with their blonde hair, black armpits and never-say-no attitude to sex. Maybe have a row with the Dutch for a warm-up. Then we’re going to do the Germans outside the Reichstag. That’s what. And by the way, mate, that wife of yours, she’s a right little raver. She fucking loves it, the dirty cow. Last I saw of her, round about nine this morning, after you’d had a wank over the ferry timetable and left for work, she was seeing the England boys off in style. Talk about catching a train. You want to keep your eye on that one.)

  – I’m going to Amsterdam for a few days to stay with friends and have a holiday. Visit some of Holland maybe. See the sights and relax.

  I watch the rest of the chaps moving away, turning the corner. Acting innocent as new-born babies. Looking at the floor, the walls, finally the ceiling. Makes me laugh how they can waltz through so easy. Blokes like Facelift and Billy Bright who look the part. Bright Spark with his Cross of St George flag under his arm tied together with a thick length of rope and covered in black plastic so it doesn’t get wet. These colours don’t run. Mark hanging back waving, smiling, laughing. Waiting for me to sort things out and catch him up. Enjoying the show.

  I go back to this wanker in front of me. Smile again. A big yellow ball with black strips for the mouth and eyes. Cartoon gun-runner, going the wrong way. Why’s he chosen me? Luck of the draw or something more serious?

  – Going to test some of the drugs in Amsterdam are we, Mr Johnson? Is that the reason for the trip?

  So that’s it. Cartoon drug-smuggler. You have to laugh.

  (Don’t know about you mate, but d’you really think I’d spend the fare just for that? Wise up, giving me hassle when you’ve let the others through. I should kick you in the bollocks. Kick you so hard your balls jam in your gut and you spend the rest of your life sounding like you’ve been on the helium. Like we don’t have enough drugs at home. But I’ll let you off because then I’d miss the fun and games, and your mates would be pissing themselves when I get six months for castrating a member of the civil service. I’m on the move. Amsterdam, Berlin and the Germany-England game. I don’t plan on getting nicked before I’m even out of the country. Fuck that. Don’t plan on getting nicked at all. It’s worth behaving because once we’re across the Channel there’s no more of your petty rules and regulations. No more Mr Nice Guy. Get to the Continent and that’s it. The laws don’t count over there because they’re made by foreigners. Get out of England and you can do what you want.)

  I smile some more. Cheek muscles starting to ache with the effort. Haven’t smiled so much since that time me, Rod and Mark got done for a bit of puff he had in the car. Talk about taking the piss. The old bill stopped us because they said Rod didn’t indicate. Load of bollocks. Luckily Rod was sober, and we’re coming back from a Sunday drink and the old bill tug us because they want the easy life. Can’t be bothered raiding Brixton crackhouses and tracking down serial rapists when everyone else is sitting down for their Sunday dinner or on their eighth pint in front of the pub satellite. Maybe they checked us on the computer or something, found out we all had previous, because they only go and charge us. I couldn’t fucking believe it. Rod says we have to walk in the magistrate’s court stoned. Take the piss. And that’s what we did. I was grinning like I’d won the fucking lottery while this old boy’s going on about the threat drugs pose to society – ‘a very real and tangible threat, because what we must remember is that soft drugs can lead to harder drugs, and before society knows what’s happening large sections of the community become ecstasy and heroin addicts, and that means a lowering of moral standards, inevitably resulting in unwanted pregnancies and a rapid increase in lawlessness’. The wanker in the pulpit stops for a breather and tells me to wipe that grin off my face or he’ll charge me with contempt. You’re not even allowed to smile these days. They take your taxes and all you get back is aggro.

  But I’m being polite, that’s all. Don’t want to wind this Customs bloke up. He’s just doing his job. Flexing dead muscles as he drives the train to Auschwitz. No need for a row. I want to keep him sweet and get moving again. Enjoy myself and see the world. Because travelling with England is always a laugh, no matter who you’re playing. Add a friendly in Berlin and the stage is set. I remember the man in front of me and his natural concern at the drugs waiting in Holland, all those unnatural
substances pushed by subversive elements within the clog authorities.

  – I’m not really into that sort of thing. I mean, each to their own and that, but I prefer a drink.

  – A nice pint of real ale always goes down a treat.

  – I drink lager myself.

  He glares at the passport for a few seconds, then raises his head. He looks me in the eye all hurt, like he’s about to burst out crying.

  – Of course you do, Mr Johnson.

  The man looks hurt. Real ale’s the true English drink he says. Lager’s just European gas and water mixed through EC filters.

  I smile, all innocent. Not a care in the world. Chugging along. Wishing he’d give it a rest. Wishing he’d fuck off and bother some other cunt. His eyes are mean and there’s sleep in the corner of the left socket. He’s one of those sick sperms that should’ve been flushed away with the rubber, but instead hangs on under the rim growing in slime. Ends up in a uniform causing trouble. No wonder his missus spends her spare time getting gang-banged by football hooligans on the living-room carpet.

  I hear the renegades from the train coming along behind me. Pissed on bottles of fuck-knows-what singing their heads off on the train from Liverpool Street. I don’t reckon they’ll get out of Harwich the way they’re carrying on. Been at the cider probably. They look the sort. We could hear them in the next carriage and Brighty reckoned they were Black Country boys with their farmhand look. Facelift wanted to go and have a word because they were making a racket and he wasn’t in the mood, a hangover lingering from last night. We laugh it off telling him to calm down. Take it easy. This is England on tour and you have to know your enemy. All that club stuff goes out the window – most of it, some of it – but it’s his first time travelling with England so he’s not to know. He’s got a few things to sort out and it was the same for me first time I saw England play abroad. You turn up at Liverpool Street or wherever all lairy, but then you get moving and there’s other clubs around, and you realise that it’s all about people, that you’re all basically the same but doing it in different places, that you’re all English and patriotic and standing under the same flag. Somehow it works. Give it ten minutes and it makes sense. England, united, we’ll never be defeated.

  One of the Bully boys is wearing an England shirt. Asking for trouble. Big red face puffed up on the cider and a bottle of spirits, tattoos right up his arms. Covered thick so you can’t make out the details. A Union Jack, young Noddy Holder face and several snakes mixing together under a layer of matted hair. He can’t wait to get stuck into the duty-free this one. We only left London two hours ago and I’ll be surprised if we see him in Berlin. The old bill will be on the look-out for English hooligans, and though we’re a few days early the shirt gives the game away. But they’re farmhands from the piggery and we’re Chelsea boys and that bit smarter. We’re taking it slow and easy. The old bill can do what they want and not let you on the ferry. Rights and wrongs don’t come into it. Just keep your head down and think of those fräuleins waiting over the Channel. Legs wide open. I can’t wait to get away and have some fun. To be honest, I’m sick of working in the warehouse day in, day out. The same old boozers and clubs. All the familiar faces. Same old birds. The football season’s over and it gets boring when Chelsea aren’t playing. I need a break from London and England, because then when you get back you love your life even better than before.

  Some more coppers and Customs appear; smiling and rubbing their hands together. Thank you very much, thank you very very very much. Hurrying now towards Strongbow and his Steve Bull mates, so fucking excited they’re almost running to the ice-cream van filling their trousers. Mr Drugs looks over my shoulder and he’s not interested in Tom Johnson any more because he knows what to expect from the drunken scum coming his way. He reads his papers and studies his cartoons, and the sad fucker’s probably even gone out and bought the fucking video. Replayed it a thousand times with his knob out and the missus banging him off – because here they come . . .

  THE FAMOUS FOOTBALL HOOLIGANS.

  He hands back my passport and says thank you Mr Johnson. Sorry to have bothered you sir. Enjoy your stay in Holland. He says Amsterdam is a beautiful city with canals and barges and tasty continental breakfasts. They serve fresh bread, ham, cheese and various jams. There’s fine architecture that escaped the kind of bombing that wrecked the East End and levelled Coventry. That’s what being pacifist does for you. The same goes for Paris. That’s what cowardice does. Bunch of wankers the French. It’s a private joke that shows unity. Before moving on to the pissheads he laughs and warns me not to overdo things in the bars. Watch those women of the night as well. He starts rambling suddenly saying those darkies are pure filth, getting worked up, pure jungle filth even though they come from Surinam and Indonesia, they’ll do anything for a price, and I’m looking at the bloke and have to hold it back. I don’t need this. Leave me alone. Just fuck off and leave me alone. He’s doing my head in so I push past the cunt. Say nothing and hurry to catch up with Mark and the others. Fucking slag.

  The old bill and Customs don’t care about me now because they’re moving in on the cider drinkers. These men in uniform are all self-important because they know what’s what and they’ve got the intelligence, know their hooligans. Just shows you how intelligent these wankers really are because it’s all boot boy vintage recordings. Black and white tabloid snapshots and archive news reels. Customs picking on a few drunks who, if they don’t watch their step, are going to be spending their time in the local nick sobering up while the Expeditionary Force filters through and assembles in the half-lit skunk bars of Amsterdam. Hands forming Bomber Command goggles over our eyes, humming the Dam Busters tune. Have to laugh. Customs and the old bill. Stroppy cunts the lot of them.

  Bob ‘Harry’ Roberts hated ferries and hated the sea. Thank fuck he lived in London and not some grim seaside town like Grimsby, where you went to school in clogs till you were eight then the elders sent you to work strapped to the mast of a ten-foot-long fishing boat. He saw himself standing there unable to move, frozen in time and a block of ice, brought back to life by Long John Silver. The captain was hobbling through the rigging with a blowtorch, the one-legged sea dog slicing Harry’s ropes with his cutlass, the ancient mariner telling the young landlubber he was free to go – stuck on a tug miles from shore. He was in the middle of a Force 10 gale helping the fisher folk drag in nets of mutant fish, a North Sea catch of three-eyed monsters, lights pulsating through orange scales, chemical stew boiling under the waves. The young Harry was working through the night to earn enough for a loaf of Hovis. He hummed the tune from the commercial all the way up the fucking hill, past rows of cobbled streets and steaming horse shit. He didn’t fancy life in a northern fishing community. It was grim in the North. Give him London any day.

  Harry went back to the day Chelsea travelled to Grimsby and won the Second Division championship with a 1–0 victory, Kerry Dixon scoring the goal. They hadn’t seen many fishing boats that particular Saturday, and maybe there weren’t any steep hills, but never mind, because he’d been pissed like everyone else after a session in Lincoln. Pissed or sober, it was a day he’d never forget. They’d had tickets for the seats, but ended up on the terraces as the organisation inside the ground broke down, Chelsea mobbing the place. No-one was complaining, because Dixon, Nevin and Speedie were leading the charge back to the First Division and it looked like they had a team that was going to bring back the glory days, though the old bill had to go and bring on the horses at the end to show how fucking clever they were. Silly cunts almost started a riot. It was magic, getting promoted to the First Division after nearly going broke and down to the Third. They’d spent the night in Chesterfield, in a big pub packed with Chelsea drinking the place dry. There was no aggro, because the coaches often stopped there on the way back from games and everything was friendly enough. They’d had a good laugh chatting up the local girls, Harry and Balti and those Slough boys, the two Garys, Benny with his C
rossroads hat. The pub had a late licence and turned into a disco, and they’d had their guts out on the dancefloor like some select firm as the DJ played old singalong Gary Glitter and Slade numbers. There must’ve been two or three hundred Chelsea in that pub alone and not so much as a broken glass. Funny how it worked. Mind you, there’d been a big punch-up on Morecambe Pier that night, so it was luck of the draw.

  They’d had a drink with some striking Chesterfield miners, and he remembered being surprised they were so different from the tabloid pin-ups. He’d always pictured the miners in hobnailed boots and red crash helmets, and there they were, ordinary everyday blokes out for a pint on Saturday night, having a laugh. He’d got talking with these two punks and they were giving him the story on what was happening in the coalfields. He’d listened but not really heard what they were saying. Harry laughed. They were so pissed they’d got the wrong coach back to London and ended up on the North Circular somewhere around Willesden. It was a long trek home at four in the morning because no cab was going to pick them up with their cropped hair and green flight-jackets. Now he was older and wiser and enjoying an easy life in the Premiership. Wreck the old rundown grounds and the club chairmen rewarded you with brand new seats, burger bars and sponsor’s lager on tap. Crime definitely paid.

  The crossing to the Hook was going to be a nightmare. Harry could feel it in his gut. It was going to be six hours of pure fucking misery. Six hours crouched over a shit-stained bog with the boat rocking from side to side, piss running along the floor soaking his jeans. There was never any paper and always some wanker who had to start banging on the door. He needed a drink to settle his nerves, so broke off from the rest of the boys and headed for the bar, telling Carter to hurry up before the place was packed. He needed some Dutch courage, some Heineken, heading down the steps but stopping in his tracks when Carter said the bar wouldn’t open till the ferry was out to sea. It was written down in the rules somewhere, so sorry Harry you fat bastard, you’ll have to wait.