Headhunters Read online

  Praise for Headhunters

  ‘John King is the authentic voice of contemporary London.’

  —Michael Moorcock

  ‘Brutal, honest and poetic in the way that only a tough guy can be, King loads the gun and shoots us into the lager-filled, lust-fueled lives of five London lads. Headhunters is sexy, dirty, violent, sad and funny; in fact it has just about everything you could want from a book on contemporary working-class life in London.’

  —Big Issue

  ‘King loads his characters up with enough interior life, but it’s the raw energy of their interactions—the beano to Blackpool, the punch-ups, the casual fucks, the family skeletons and the unburied fantasies—that make this excellent book run.’

  —Steve Grant, Time Out

  ‘Headhunters is an odyssey into southern English blue-collar manners as King deconstructs the stereotype of Essex Man and his outer London contemporaries and finds rather more complex attitudes towards gender and class than the tabloid image suggests.’

  —Teddy Jamieson, The List

  ‘King’s achievement since his debut has been enormous: creating a modern, proletarian English literature at once genuinely modern, genuinely proletarian, genuinely English and genuinely literature.’

  —Charles Shaar Murray

  Headhunters

  John King

  © John King 1997

  First published by Jonathan Cape, a division of The Random House Group Ltd “In England’s Fair City” © John King 2016

  This edition© 2016 PM Press

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

  John King has asserted his right to be identified as the Author of the Work.

  ISBN: 978–1–62963–226–1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016948147

  Cover design by John Yates / www.stealworks.com

  Interior design by briandesign

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  PM Press

  PO Box 23912

  Oakland, CA 94623

  www.pmpress.org

  Printed in the USA by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan. www.thomsonshore.com

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION In England’s Fair City

  PART ONE

  Beautiful Game

  Cogs

  Pigs in Knickers

  Kicking Off

  Black Vinyl

  PART TWO

  Dreamscape

  Scum of Toytown

  Beano

  Balham on Tour

  Death Tripping

  PART THREE

  Skin-Bone-Drum-Bass

  Rent Boy

  Burning Rubber

  Northern Lights

  Happy House

  To Anita

  What was even funnier was what happened when I went to sleep that night, O my brothers. I had a nightmare, and, as you might expect, it was one of those bits of film I’d viddied in the afternoon. A dream or nightmare is really only like a film inside your gulliver, except that it is as though you could walk into it and be part of it.

  —A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

  IN ENGLAND’S FAIR CITY

  Not long after Headhunters was first published, a friend of mine—Ray—was sitting in a pub tucked into a backstreet near King’s Cross station in London. He had a pint of Guinness and a copy of the novel on the table in front of him, and was about to settle into a relaxing, mid-afternoon session. It was that time of day when a hush can settle over a pub and turn it into a chapel. Sunlight filters through frosted and even stained glass, the congregation is mainly middle-aged and over, with the more dedicated souls sitting in solitary, prayer-like reflection. The main difference is that these worshippers are male—retired, unemployed, self-employed, one or two on early shifts. There is contentment, resignation and some sorrow, but none of the noise and chaos of the night. Rough edges are smoothed and peace reigns.

  Despite being close to a major rail terminus with areas of prostitution and homelessness, the passing nature of those travelling by train, this establishment was used by locals. A big man with a shaved head came over and sat opposite Ray. Uninvited, he was nevertheless friendly and not stopping for long, just keen to explain that the bloke who had written Headhunters drank here. He had not met him yet, but knew it for a fact, went on to list the real-life regulars behind the novel’s main characters. Ray said he didn’t think that was the case, but his new friend was adamant and, in a way, he was right, because Carter, Balti, Harry, Mango and Will—the self-styled, tongue-in-cheek Sex Division of this story—do seem familiar, and they would definitely use this sort of pub.

  Ray told me about this a few weeks later in The Ship in Soho, an area at the heart of London which, until two years ago, had miraculously escaped the mind-numbing gentrification that is destroying the city. Speak, act, think the same … Do not laugh, swear, disagree … Spies monitor what is said in case they are offended on behalf of someone else, too often failing to grasp the subtleties of a common English that shouldn’t be taken too literally. At its most flamboyant, with the restraints loosened by alcohol, this language is loaded with double meaning and a self-deprecating humour. To understand Headhunters, it is important to read more than just the words.

  Listening to Ray’s story, it made me think how every group of drinking men has its archetypes, and others would make similar comments to the Kings Cross skinhead, recognising people they knew but I had never met. Perhaps people get on better when not sharing their beliefs too closely. It certainly makes life more interesting, and in a pub setting opinions are expressed freely and arguments can rage, but grudges are rarely held. There is a balancing of opposites—the yin and yang of the taproom philosophers; a brotherhood of the hop; the love and hate of bare-knuckle tattoos. In the harder pubs things might escalate, but there is generally an etiquette, a shared belief in free speech, the willingness to listen to the other person’s point of view.

  As the day progresses the chapel becomes a theatre. Evening approaches, the light fades and the doors clatter as people arrive after finishing work. That first pint slides down. The tension is eased. Night turns the streets black, lights come on and the beer has its effect, increasing the volume and intensity of conversation. The daytime drinkers drift off, followed by most of the after-work brigade, replaced by a fresh wave of thirsty people who will stay until closing time. There are no set rules, as every place is different, but most follow this pattern.

  One of the best things about Britain is its pubs, and there is nothing like a proper London boozer. This doesn’t mean they are all the same, as they are not, vary according to location and clientele, reflect a mass of local histories, characteristics that have passed down through the decades. Greater London is the result of villages linking as the city grew, populations changing their make-up as housing filled the gaps. The city is a jigsaw, the same as those gangs of drinking men, a mass of contradictions and quirks. Churches and pubs have long been focal points for communities, and while the buildings are modified and the people change, they offer a sense of continuity.

  Short for ‘public house,’ a pub is a licensed establishment where people of all ages, backgrounds, sexes and interests have traditionally come together. In London, they vary in scale, range from the small local sitting on a street corner or wedged into a terraced street, to grand gin palaces with their snugs and cut glass and maybe the remains of a music hall. The larger taverns and inns were where travellers stopped to lodge overnight. From The Ship in Soho, Ray and I walked for a minute and were in The Blue Posts, named after the coloured poles where riders used to tie their horses.

  In Headhunters, The Unity is the main characters’ pub of choice. Home
to a ‘bunch of hooligans,’ Denise and Eileen work behind the bar, while the resident nutter Slaughter looks on. It is here that the Sex Division is drunkenly formed, a soccer analogy that connects with the first novel in a trilogy that starts with The Football Factory and continues into England Away, as faces from the first two books join up and head across the English Channel to run riot in Amsterdam and Berlin, losing themselves in the kindred beer cultures of Holland and Germany.

  A good session rinses the brain, flushes out the toxins of life, frees the imagination and releases the tongue. Love and hate become more than smudged ink. Friendships are formed and mistakes made. Ideas and opinions flow, inner lives expressed as more is revealed drunk than sober. Boundaries are broken. Every gang is made up of individuals, each person influenced by events, and as youths we are introduced to the magical world of the public house by others. It is one we soon grow to love. This is our tradition and our culture, and there is always a beginning.

  •

  The first three pubs I used were The Rising Sun in Slough, The Stag And Hounds in Iver Heath and The Three Tuns in Uxbridge, all of them on the margins of West London. Standing outside The Rising Sun one evening in 1977, peering through the window to see what it was like inside, if three underage boys would get served, a man’s voice asked us what we were doing. Turning, we found ourselves facing our form teacher, mumbled a few words that included ‘nothing,’ and started to walk away. He laughed and told us it was fine to go inside, but to avoid the bar where he was meeting other teachers from the school. With its generously poured light-and-bitter and a jukebox full of ‘glam’ hits, we kept returning.

  The Stag And Hounds was a pub I went to with my father, often at midday on a Sunday, which is a tradition in England. This was and remains a small locals’ pub. It also had two bars, which made it seem even tighter inside, the space crowded with personalities that included the very different grocer and chemist, who had shops next to each other across the road. One was a big, jovial man who sold cabbages and carrots and potatoes, the other smaller and more serious, dealing in potions and plasters. Among the regulars was Dad’s good friend Hughie, a Glaswegian who had run away from home to work on a ship when he was a boy, now a man with stories to spare.

  The Three Tuns sits directly opposite the Underground station in Uxbridge, a mile or so from the RAF base, one of several that featured in the Battle Of Britain. In the late-1970s the front bar was used by greasers who played endless games of darts in a cloud of roll-up smoke, while a handful of younger Lurkers and Ruts kids preferred the lower back bar. The clientele here was older and more traditional, mainly retired couples, the men hunched over their jugs of Courage, the ladies sipping whisky and sherry. Walk outside, turn right and right again, and there was The Raj on Vine Street.

  Pubs still had Public and Saloon bars, but this was changing fast. The Public Bar was basic, where labouring men could go in their dirty work clothes, and this probably connected to an agricultural economy, continuing in the industrialised cities. The Saloon Bar was smarter, with luxuries such as carpet and framed pictures. This was the place to sit with a girlfriend or wife, a more sedate setting where women felt at ease when they were out with their friends. The bad language of the drinking men was sectioned off, but the two bars also reflected a class divide, with the better off using the Saloon, where the prices were higher.

  Those divisions are long gone, but these three pubs retain their personalities. The Rising Sun puts on bands, The Stag And Hounds remains a local, while The Three Tuns is less personal but still has low ceilings and cheap beer, the big difference being that you must turn left and left again down Windsor Street to reach The Raj. Because along with the English pub stands the balance that is the Indian curry house. And Headhunters has Balti Heaven to back up The Unity.

  By the early-1970s, Indian food was making its presence felt in the major cities. While it is referred to as ‘Indian,’ in the pre-Partition sense maybe, most of the restaurants were run by Bangladeshis. Their filling, affordable, tasty meals were soon taken to by a generation of drinkers. My first Indian was in The Raj on Vine Street and my guide was again my father, who ordered a vindaloo for himself and willed me to love my Madras. One mouthful and I was hooked. A mouthful of his vindaloo and a jug of water was drained.

  Three years later I was a regular, as Indian had become part of a good night out. The restaurants thrived, helped by the fact that they were open after the pubs closed, and the only place to get a late pint outside of a disco. The owner was the same George who runs the new Raj. In his eighties, he remains a legendary figure, the passing years raising him to cult status among the middle-aged herberts of the area, and these men have been keen to introduce their children to the experience, with George’s son now part of the business.

  To understand London, it helps to know its pubs, as each part of the city has its own flavours and they capture the differences, and reading this novel again for the introduction I was reintroduced to parts of my life spent in various locations, times that were closer to me then than they are now. When I lived in Archway with Ray in the late-1980s, the nearby pubs were all Irish-run, among them the Whittington & Cat, Archway Tavern and Mother Redcap, all serving the thirsty workers who had settled in the area.

  In North London, Irish immigration was centred in the likes of Holloway, Finsbury Park, Kentish Town, Camden Town and Kilburn. Irish navvies grafted on the railways, and among other routes they helped to build the Metropolitan Line that runs out to Uxbridge, their descendents to be found in the estates that line the Uxbridge Road, moving from Shepherd’s Bush and into the likes of Acton, Hayes, West Drayton and Slough. Before this, many worked in the docks of East London, and it is sometimes said that every Londoner has an Irish granny.

  The Cat was the best of these Archway pubs, the landlord smart and courteous in his black suit, with folk musicians sitting at a table to play twice a week, their fiddles and banjos and mandolins setting everyone’s feet tapping. Folklore says that Dick Whittington was an orphan who came to London from the countryside, believing that the city’s streets were paved with gold. The truth was very different, and he eventually decided to leave, stopped at the last minute by the famous Bow Bells promising that he would one day become mayor, which he did, in a classic rags-to-riches tale.

  The last time I saw Ray it was in The White Swan next to Highbury & Islington station, a few stops on from King’s Cross, at the other end of the Holloway Road to Archway. Cheap and cheerful and part of the Wetherspoons chain, it is where the thinkers and drinkers head these days, with so many of the local pubs lost to gentrification. Early afternoon sees rows of old Irishmen filling The White Swan’s tables, a sea of white hair matching the heads on their stout. A great place for a drink and a chat, owing everything to the characters present, these souls are the last of an era.

  Headhunters, though, is based in West London, and returning to a part of the city that gave us the Fullers brewery and its famous London Pride, Brentford has long been a haven for serious drinking men. One of its best pubs is The Brewery Tap, surrounded by industrial units close to the River Thames. My father played piano here in the 1960s and ’70s, and I would swap books with the landlord’s daughter, Dad taking my hooligan pulp and trading the likes of Skinhead and Boot Boys for the Hell’s Angels stories of Peter Cave and Mick Norman. He loved boogiewoogie, especially Pete Johnson, Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis and Jimmy Yancey, and could both interpret the classics and create his own songs. He was also a regular at Eel Pie Island, a short way down river in Richmond. There was a big R&B scene in this area in the 1960s, with the Rolling Stones the most well-known of the bands to emerge.

  Today, the Brewery Tap holds regular jazz sessions. Barely advertised, it pulls in an array of mavericks, and the piano he would probably have played is still there. Griffins have been spotted nearby, those experiencing these closing-time visions adamant they are not the herons that live on the Brentford Ait rookery. With its overgrown little island
s, derelict boatyards and a lock that links to the Grand Union Canal, it is a fine spot for dragons. Impressions may be left in bricks and mortar, but it takes imagination to give them some sort of life, while the real hauntings are carried inside us. In Headhunters, the monsters take human form and are swept along in a river of beer.

  •

  Drink fuels all sorts of dreams. Hope fights hopelessness, shifts from daytripping fantasies to nightmares and hallucinations. Everyone wants to be loved, but some men can’t admit this to themselves, let alone others, and so its physical expression is turned into a mechanical act, a way of dealing with rejection and a deeper loneliness. Sex becomes a challenge, beating it a measure of success, but unless a boaster has a very good line in humour he is soon seen as boring and then pathetic by the rest of the group. One man is an unstoppable machine, while another takes things much too seriously.

  Sex has consequences. It is wrapped up in emotion, creates life and threatens death, causes break-ups and loss of family, and in this novel, despite the denials, it shapes events. Really, the Sex Division prefer eight pints in The Unity and a feed in Balti Heaven to a one-night stand. Even so, Harry and Balti keep dreaming of change, one while he is asleep and the other when awake, while Carter tries to not think too much. Mango, meanwhile, can’t stop his mind racing, a ghost seeming to drive his behaviour. If there is a spectrum, then Will is at the opposite end to Mango, as he is loyal and romantic, but life is never easy, love never smooth. Yet the two are in some ways alike.

  Sexism is a theme of the book, how it hurts men as well as women, and is one more way for the controllers to divide and rule. From an early age boys are conditioned. A sense of duty is drilled into them and the pressure of this obligation to one day support a family becomes more and more suffocating. The education system increases this interpretation of responsibility and self-worth, and many end up crushed, as what is expected of those outside of well-off backgrounds can rarely be achieved. They must earn good money and have a decent job in order to be respected and loved, and knowing that this is how they are valued has to make them angry. Rich men chase young women as they seek out a trophy wife, but it can work both ways. A buried resentment has to contribute to the terrible behaviour of some males. Mental and physical health are affected.