by John King
I look back round the table and Mark’s going into one about how Rod couldn’t come along, seeing as how he’s a married man and has to behave himself. Facelift and Brighty lean back enjoying the lager and looking into space. Carter listens to Mark, nodding, with Bob Roberts nowhere to be seen. Harry Roberts everyone calls him. Nice one that. He’s our friend, kills coppers. Carter and Roberts are blokes I remember looking up to when I was a kid. They’re alright. Ready for a laugh, though they want the peaceful life most of the time. They’re the kind who if something happens then they’re ready and willing, but who don’t go looking for trouble. Not these days anyway. England is different and they’ll be up for it. Wouldn’t be knocking about with us if they weren’t. It’s a special occasion, like getting Millwall in the Cup. I think back four years to that kicking I got down in South London. Everyone comes out of the woodwork for the big games, whether it’s club or country. Then there’s Biggs and High Street Ken, a couple of herberts from the pub back home, tagging along picking up scraps.
Have to laugh thinking about Biggs and High Street. You talk about scousers and how they’re robbers and that, and the Mancs have their thieves as well, but fucking Biggs is the original tea-leaf. He’s no juvenile and still loves nicking cars and running them through shop windows. He’s a speed freak, fresh out of the nick. Did six months for thieving some drink. Imagine that. Six months for ramraiding a shop. It was the previous convictions that did him. Biggs and Ken are cousins and watch each other’s backs. They’re okay and they’ve been to football through the years. Not hundred-per-cent, but turn up for the big games. Now they’re on their way to Berlin and that makes eight of us. We’ll get to Amsterdam and meet up with Harris and the others. We’re all Chelsea. All England. With the Cross of St George blocking out the night as the waves get deeper and the Channel heavier. We’re on our way and it’s going to be a good one. I finish my drink and push it towards Ken. His turn.
I watch High Street going over to the bar with the tray in his hand, Biggs following. It’s getting deeper there as everyone starts crowding in, waiting their turn patiently because it’s still early. Give it a couple of hours and the barmen will have to get their fingers out. We need our lager and we need it now. Have to keep the blood flowing at the right temperature and thickness. They’re starting to earn their living and probably wish they were on another shift. I’m watching the men in their white shirts and black trousers, lager bubbling, taking those plastic scrapers and cutting off the head. It’s a con because you end up with a glass that’s a quarter froth. Fucking typical. Going metric and losing out in the translation. That’s the power of the exchange rate mechanism for you. Forced to sit there like a mug for hours waiting for the fucking thing to sink down so you can have a sip of lager. It’s like drinking candyfloss. Trying to drink candyfloss. You need a straw to fight your way through and taste the lager.
– This is the way to travel, says Mark, enjoying himself.
We all nod.
– No Eurostar bollocks for us.
We nod some more.
– Fuck me, talk about giving a drink some head. This is all fucking froth, the fucking Dutch cunts.
– You wouldn’t get a bar like this on the train would you? Carter says, blowing the white top to the side.
I think about this. He’s got a point.
– I tell you what, and Mark leans in, warming up. If those IRA cunts don’t blow the tunnel up, then we should do it. I hate that fucking tunnel. We should get a squad together, have a whip round and buy some Semtex. The sea would soon flood it once we’ve opened a hole. You think of the money they wasted building it, and for what? So they can drive the ferry companies out of business and make us part of Europe. That’s what they’re trying to do. Fucking slags.
Mark’s right. What’s the point? Fuck knows what’s going to go wrong with the tunnel in the future but, more important, it’s symbolic. In truth, it should make long crossings like this unnecessary and one day you won’t have to deal with every wanker who works for Customs, but it’s missing the point. Thing is, we shouldn’t have all that hassle in the first place. It’s only small-minded cunts with the rule book jammed up their arses and let loose on the general population who cause the problems. Those people will just go and find a job somewhere else. They’re not going to disappear.
Another thing with the Channel Tunnel is the rabies they’re going to let in. You might as well put up a sign inviting all the diseased dogs of the East to come over and milk the benefits. Every other cunt is taking their share, and we’re a nation of animal lovers. I know it’s the future and they’re not exactly going to turn round and fill it in, but it’s unnatural. One day they’ll probably build a bridge as well. Everyone will be forced to speak a new language and there’ll be tunnels boring in from every angle. Even the Vikings will be at it, tunnelling in from Sweden and Norway. Taking the fast train through to the new shopping precincts of Central London. Looking for the excitement of football mobs, punk rockers and traditional London boozers. But all the Londoners will have been forced out to the new towns by then, the city overrun by Britain’s yuppies and the world’s rich tourists. You can’t afford to buy a house where you grew up, so if you want to get ahead you have to move down the arterial roads. Maybe it’s always been like that, but the way everyone sits back and lets the rich of Britain sell the silver to the rich of the world makes you wonder. They might as well not have bothered fighting the war, while our part in beating the Germans is dismissed by do-nothing intellectuals with no pride or culture of their own.
Even the East End is changing and that was a fucking bomb site not so long ago. Every time you pick up the paper there’s some tale of rich-son-and-daughter artists in Hackney and Hoxton, or football-loving yuppies who’ve just discovered the game even though they’re in their thirties. None of this reflects what you see around you day-in, day-out. There’s no-one telling the truth, so you make do with the tabloid piss-take. By the time the Swedes get through there’ll be nothing left but a maze of empty galleries, Jack The Ripper tours and coach trips out to the shires to view the natives. Europe is one more attempt to crush England. London run by some faceless wanker in Brussels banning bitter because it’s a different colour to lager, insisting that everyone raises their metric measure at exactly the same time.
Europe’s a plot by big business to centralise power and create a super-state with a super economy. Hitler had the same idea, though he was a nationalist who saw Germany at the heart of the union, controlling things from Berlin. Now the financiers are doing the same, but without the publicity. Everything is through the back door. Endless regulations piled on the already top-heavy stack of English laws. I just don’t fancy some fat German or French businessman ramming Deutschmarks down my throat and telling me my vegetables are illegal because they haven’t been genetically engineered by Dr Frankenstein. Fuck that for a game of soldiers. Could be worse I suppose. Could be the Spanish getting control. That would be a disaster. Least the Germans like their football and drink. None of your Real Madrid, red wine bollocks. It’s going to be a meeting of old enemies in Berlin. Time to put them in their place. They can have their penalty shoot-outs, because it’s the fighting that counts. Someone starts singing TWO WORLD WARS AND ONE WORLD CUP at the bar and we all join in.
—You’re an English tommy fighting the Nazis wondering what’s coming next. You can feel the breath of the men surrounding you and the thump of the sea below. You’re bobbing up and down on a waiting graveyard. The sea is cold and powerful and will pull you under if it gets the chance. Maybe there’s a special smell, that’s what they say, but you don’t notice anything because you’re struggling down the rigging and into the landing craft. The waves are big and you feel sick. You’re scared because this is the real thing. You don’t hear the breathing of your mates because you’re too busy thinking of your mum, and if you’re old enough or married young, then your wife and kids as well, making sure you don’t lose your grip and fall into the
sea. You don’t look at the others because you’re more concerned with keeping your dinner down. You don’t want to get sick in front of the other lads, but you can feel the breathing inside your head and the landing craft keeps jumping in and out of the waves.
You’re pressed in with everyone else and you keep quiet. You bide your time, not that there’s much choice. Once you’ve been loaded onto the landing craft you start moving. The sea is rough and choppy and dangerous. There’s thousands of men going the same way. Thousands of men are on the way to their deaths and everyone thinks about this. You don’t say anything, of course, because that’s how things are. You resist the fear and this makes you stronger. You want to fight and are a tiny part of a machine, but to you and yours the most important part. The years of waiting mean you’re glad things are moving at last, but part of you wishes you could go home. Nobody wants to be one of the unlucky ones lost in the Channel. You keep your fingers crossed as the landing craft moves away from the ship and hope God will watch over you. Before going to Europe most men believed in God, but a lot were probably unsure after it was all over. One of the boys, a big man from the East End, passes some gum around and winks as the landing craft starts to plough through the waves. He’s flash and makes you feel better, pulls everyone together with some hard cockney humour and disrespect for the sergeant.
We grew up around men who’d fought in the First World War and heard the stories. We were raised with the aftermath. Those men were part of our childhood and we saw the leftovers. They were treated badly and, what’s more important in some ways, everyone knew what the upper class had done. It doesn’t matter what anyone says now, because in the forties there was an impatience with the officers. They had to prove themselves and earn our respect. The mistakes of the trenches cost the ordinary man dear and the stupid games of the politicians were despised. We were fighting a different kind of war, but it wasn’t until we got into Europe that we understood just how different. There was a spirit that said there was a job needed doing. We weren’t blind and Kitchener’s boys were pitied for their faith. We knew what was what. We got on with the job and made do. It wasn’t like us to complain about things for the sake of it, but nobody was pushing us around. Once the landing craft started moving we were more of a unit, knowing we only had each other. Our minds were working fast, but we were strong and knew there was no turning back.
It’s a terrible thing. The sergeant behind you with a machine gun pointing at your back and the Germans ahead waiting above the beaches with their guns trained on the Channel. If you don’t go when the door opens the sergeant will shoot you and when you get on the sand the enemy will do their best to blow you to smithereens. There’s no real choice when the moment comes, but at least you’ve finally got the chance to pay the bastards back for Dunkirk, the Blitz and the whole bloody war. It really is a terrible thing and you don’t want to remember it too often. You want to keep the memories under control. You have to battle with time and your own mind if you want to find the reality. You don’t want to make a fuss. That’s not the English way.
It was time to move. The coast had vanished, the waves were rougher and the drizzle had turned to rain. Harry wasn’t exactly soaked, and it wasn’t a storm, but he was feeling left out, sitting there on his own with everyone inside having a laugh. He could fall over the side and no-one would notice. The rest of the lads wouldn’t miss him till they arrived in Holland. Maybe they’d be so pissed it would be Amsterdam but, knowing that lot, it would probably be Berlin. They’d be enjoying a stein or two and Carter would suddenly look round all surprised and ask where the fat cunt was, looking left and right and then losing the thread as he focused on some Nordic tart strutting past in a G-string.
Harry had been miserable the last year, since Balti was killed, but this trip was going to put the past in its proper place. He felt better since he’d puked up over those girls. Fucking hell, he felt bad about that, and laughing didn’t help, but there again, bollocks, those screaming teenage brats got right up his nose, with their repeat fashion and too-loud chatter, screaming so everyone could hear them, fucking and blinding their way through life. He didn’t need to get sick in their hair, it wasn’t nice, not really, but that’s the way it was, and if a cooked breakfast was all they had to worry about in life then they were lucky. The same went for all of them, because you could moan about how the country was going to the dogs and everything, but you could also cross the wrong person and end up getting your fucking head blown off.
Harry hurried along the walkway. He opened the door and the light hit his eyes. It took a couple of seconds for him to adjust and take in the warmth and artificial smells of the ferry, the cheap carpet and blank faces. He could’ve murdered a pint an hour ago, but now he didn’t fancy it. He turned left and walked through the passages, having a scout. He passed the canteen and the smells hit home, the counter doing a roaring trade in bangers and mash. One hour out of England and it was like everyone had to get in there and have a good feed, because they knew what was coming. The older ones were the worst, because for most of their lives they’d never had much choice in what they ate, making do, controlled by price and availability, so now they were faced with a couple of weeks eating foreign muck they were going to make a stand and go out with a bang. They were building up a supply of starch to see them through the coming ordeal. Harry smiled, because it was worse coming the other way.
When you got on a ferry from Calais to Dover, say, you could tell the English who’d been away for more than a few days – and it was the Scots and Welsh as well, he wasn’t being prejudiced here. It was mental, because as soon as the boys and girls from Doncaster and Dorking and Derby were off the coaches and up the stairs it was a race to the canteen. Big queues formed and the kitchen had to work hard to keep up with the demand for pies, sausages, chips and bacon-eggs-beans, all the gourmet cuisine that made you what you were. Harry liked all that grub, who didn’t, but he liked the other stuff as well. The paella in Spain and the fish dishes he’d had in Portugal. French food was shit, he had to be honest, unless you found an Arab cafe doing couscous. When everyone had had their feed and felt better, the strength back after starving for two weeks, they were straight in the bar looking for a pint of bitter or at least a decent pint of lager, sitting happy with their guts back to normal and the relaxing simmer of alcohol, feeling the sunburn ease as they looked forward to developing the holiday snaps.
Best of all was sitting on deck when the Dover cliffs appeared. He remembered one time and it was like a reverse of now, because he’d gone out when the sun was just coming up, the air cold and biting, and he’d sat there as the cliffs got bigger and whiter, sailing back to Kent really putting a lump in his throat. He’d been glad to get home. Even after a week away he couldn’t believe how different everything seemed. The approach was the best bit, because back in England there was the slow grind of Customs, waiting for the coach to London, passing through the countryside, which was fair enough, but then you came into London, through Deptford and New Cross, Millwall territory, with the run-down estates and broken roads, the hustle and bustle which was fine if you were in the mood but shit when you were knackered and all you wanted to do was get back to Victoria and catch the tube home, have a bath and read the paper. A nice cup of tea and a wank over Page 3. Time to spill your beans over a pure English rose.
There he was again, missing home before he’d even made it to Holland. He was a right donut sometimes, but smart as well because there was a cinema on board and he didn’t fancy getting pissed with the rest of the boys. There was enough time for that later. He didn’t fancy meeting those girls again either, and at least in the dark he could keep his head down. It wasn’t nice, but there you go, so he paid his money and went in, fumbling through the blackness to an aisle seat where he could stretch his legs out. The last advert was ending and he was ready for the main feature.
Harry had been raised on Second World War films, a wide-eyed kid taking in the dramatic music and exciting sto
ries of bravery and self-sacrifice. The Second World War didn’t get as much of a show now because the new enemies were vague and far away in the East, over the horizon where they couldn’t be seen. There was a new agenda and nobody wanted to remember the bad times, for a variety of reasons. When he was a kid he’d got his history from Battle of Britain and Dam Busters. Everyone his age did. Ask any of the England boys on the ferry and they’d mention films like The Longest Day. He laughed when he thought of Nigger the dog. Fucking hell, you wouldn’t get away with that now. Come here Nigger, there’s a good boy. No Nigger, don’t piss on Bomber’s staff car. No fucking chance.
The stories were real as well, because you were surrounded by family and friends who’d grown up in London during the Blitz, people who’d had their houses burnt down and fought in Europe, Africa and the Far East. Civilians lost people overseas and suffered along with the soldiers. Most people were touched somehow. It was a simple thing to say, but to understand it was harder. The businessmen said it was better to sweep things under the carpet and not hold a grudge, because everyone wanted peace and prosperity, but maybe they went too far sometimes. You had to learn lessons. Even so, Harry liked Europe and counted England in with the Continent. True, the English were different, but it was silly slaughtering each other like they’d done during the war. He preferred an easy life.
Harry was soon daydreaming his way through the film. It was the same old futuristic special effects for the sake of special effects. With the money and freedom these film cunts had you’d think they’d make something with a bit of soul. At least classic films had decent dialogue, even if the squaddies were generally thick as shit, either Alright-Me-Old-Cocker southerners or Ee-By-Gum northerners. The Scots were all red-haired little alkies called Jock who died early, and the Welsh had all been christened Taff and sang for their suppers, rolling dark eyes in the back of pixie heads. The stars were upper-crust and well-spoken, their superior accents naturally enough reflecting superior intelligence. The stereotypes were a load of bollocks, but Harry loved the heroes he saw on the screen, because everywhere you went there were people with stories to tell who didn’t want to talk, keeping the details to themselves. It was how the English, the British, did things. Now they were dying as the years caught up, but that war experience was still deep inside everyone, young and old, whether first-, second-, or third-hand. Even the cunts who tried to walk all over the memories and laugh off the war years spirit did so because they knew how deep-rooted these things were. They couldn’t get in and dictate like they did with everything else, so instead they sneered.