England Away

by John King

  Harry respected Nicky for the photos, because her pride was obvious as she showed off her victories. Life had been a struggle, but she hadn’t given up. She pointed to a picture that showed her sitting in a posh restaurant.

  – This is in Bangkok, before we came to Holland.

  She looked happy and sad in the photo, but was making her mark and he laughed at the light-skinned waiters forced to serve this whore and treat her with respect. Harry saw it clearly. She was coming through from a poor village, coming up from the go-go bars of Bangkok and the two-on-one massage parlours of Pettaya, walking tall after years of getting the white man’s spunk drilled into her belly. Nicky was getting out on the last helicopter gunship, leaving the entrepreneurs behind to cut each other’s throats. The pimps and hustlers couldn’t touch her sitting in the Bangkok Continental. She was eating tom yum soup that cost more than she usually got for sucking off a dirty old slob who wanted to stick three fingers up her arse while she worked. She’d surrendered everything physical and come through the other side. He thought of Vietnam and the ability of the Viet Cong to take everything the Yanks could drop on them and still come back for more. Peasants in tiny villages brought down B52s with vintage rifles. All the high-tech killing power of the industrialised world failed. He’d seen it so many times on the television and now he was seeing it played back here. Nicky was fighting her own war and she’d survived. The restaurant was her medal.

  Nicky was fighting back against the foreigners taking advantage of her poverty, but more than that against the traitors who kept her poor and sold her to the highest bidder. Harry was getting a bit emotional. There was no respect, but she had used the system to escape. He saw this but what could anyone do? Thailand was a good friend of the West because its politicians accepted the new imperialism, and while the men in suits didn’t bend over personally, they were quite happy for others to do so on their behalf. Funny thing was, Harry understood what was going on, but as a kid he’d always wanted to be the gunner in one of those helicopters, the man with the machinery at his command. It was natural, really, because everyone wanted the glory and none of the mess. But you had to look on the bright side. At least she’d had the chance to work her passage out.

  – Here is our home in Amsterdam, Nicky said, pointing out the rooms of a three-bedroomed flat.

  She went through the apartment in detail, like she was shopping for furniture. She was house proud, but Harry wasn’t interested. He had to move on and fancied something to eat. He listened but didn’t hear what she was saying, and when she finished he asked if she had any food. Nicky jumped up again and put on a T-shirt. She went to the kitchen and fucked about in the fridge, coming back with some cheese and bread. He ate this and then went for a shower. He fancied a shag but Nicky was dressed now and he couldn’t insist. It wasn’t like he was the punter any more. He didn’t know whether to leg it or go down this bar she was talking about. Harry dressed quickly and had some coffee. If he went back he’d just be hanging about with the others, so he might as well see some of Amsterdam with the girl. It didn’t mean anything. She’d be off to work in a few hours and that would be that. She was skinning up again and he noticed a glass of Jack Daniels. It was eleven o’clock. He sat down and had a puff. He felt okay. He was seeing the world and wondered if they’d make it outside as Nicky came and sat next to him on the couch, coming close, fishing the rubbers out of his pocket and dropping them in his lap.

  The tour boat chugs along and gives us a different view of the city. It’s one of those things that’s shit, but you end up doing it anyway. An hour and a half to see the sights. I’ve left the others behind and paid my money. Taken a chance on the hostess pointing to bricks and mortar. Telling us about Amsterdam’s rich history. It’s the same as taking a train is some ways. On a train you pass through the back of a city and see the place with its trousers down. There’s no development-zone plastic coating. Pass through on a train and you get empty warehouses and rusted railway sidings. Terraced houses spilling into overgrown nettles. Stacked rubbish and burnt-out sheds. Derelict factories and steaming wasteland. It’s the best way to travel, though I suppose this boat’s not going to major on that sort of thing. But it’s interesting going through the back door. Don’t care what anyone says. Playing tourists.

  There’s a couple of stuck-up English in front talking down their noses about the Van Gogh Museum. I remember seeing the film on telly. The silly cunt wanted to be with the poor. Wanted to do something to help the peasants but his old man told him to get a career. He lived with a prostitute and cut off his ear. He was a fucking nutter who did his own thing, but now he’s dead the sort of scum who made his life hell when he was alive come back and claim the glory. It’s all fame and fortune and who can pay the most for his paintings.

  We pass the warehouse where Anne Frank lived. The tour guide fills us in. Gently rocking on the canal. Fat tourists with cameras and travel books. On holiday, having fun. Tickling emotions. The woman tells us Anne Frank was a Jewish girl who lived in the back of the warehouse, in what they called the back annexe, for two years with her family and friends, hiding from the Gestapo. They were helped by non-Jewish friends and survived for two years. Their spirits were getting better because the Allies were starting to win the war. Then they were betrayed by a collaborator. The families were discovered and the eight people there were shipped off to the concentration camps. Otto Frank, Anne Frank’s dad, was the only one to survive. Anne Frank and her sister died from typhus one week before the Germans surrendered.

  I remember that film as well. It was hard to watch and made me sad. The tour guide is silent for a few seconds.

  I wonder what happened to Otto Frank. What would you think after going through that? Must be millions of people alive still in the same situation. More than that, I wonder about the collaborator. The wanker who grassed them up. Out of Amsterdam’s 80,000 Jews, 75,000 were killed. The tour guide says there’s a statue erected to mark the spot where, in 1941, 400 Jewish men were shipped off to Mauthausen concentration camp after a Nazi sympathiser was killed following fights between members of the Jewish Resistance and the Dutch Nazi party. Didn’t know the Dutch had a Nazi party. They were killed in retaliation for the Nazi’s death. Following this there was a strike led by the dockers and transport workers. She says it was arranged by the communist party, illegal at the time. It lasted two days before it was broken. She says it was unusual in Holland, where people did little to protest against the treatment of Jews. An old Dutch couple tut and shake their heads. The guide says that most European countries under German rule did little to save the Jews.

  I wonder what England would’ve done. Would people have stood up and tried to save the women and children? Can’t imagine the English standing aside. We’re just not like that. I know we call Spurs yids and that, but it’s different. There’s no real feeling because we’re not religious. No, the English don’t kill women and kids. We’re hard, but fair.

  The boat picks up speed and we move to more cheerful subjects. Snips of information are fed through the microphone. Anne Frank is forgotten as the water parts and tourists click their cameras. There’s camcorders recording life. Picking up on moving boats and still buildings. Eventually the tour ends and we troop off. I see Kevin and catch him up. Tap him on the shoulder.

  – Didn’t see you there, he says. Were you on the boat as well? Bit boring wasn’t it? Do you fancy a bevvy?

  We walk for a few minutes and I sit at an outdoor table while he goes inside for a piss. When he comes back we order a couple of draught lagers.

  – The only interesting thing was that girl dying one week before she was going to be free, Kevin says, emptying half the glass in one swig. Imagine being so close to freedom. They were wankers the Germans. Fucking scum of the earth. A bunch of child-molesting poofs.

  Don’t know about that, but no-one’s going to agree with killing kids. Imagine what her old man must’ve felt like when he found out what had happened. It seems unreal some
how. You can’t imagine that sort of thing actually happening.

  – I went to Dachau, Kevin says, finishing his drink and ordering another.

  He looks at my glass because it’s still two-thirds full. For some reason I finish it in one go so he can’t take the piss and call me a soft southern wanker. It’s hot now and knocking about in Amsterdam is thirsty work. He’s a big bastard and takes his shirt off. The waiter minces back and looks at the Man U crest on his arm. Takes the money and pisses off. Kevin has another swig and leans forward to continue his story. Just as he’s about to fill me in on Dachau this executive-type cunt leans over and asks Kevin to put his shirt back on because he’s causing offence. He says this is a decent bar.

  – Fuck off, Kevin says.

  The executive is with a couple of other wankers and doesn’t move, so Kevin pulls him by his collar and topples him half off the chair. He brings his fist up and holds it in front of the bloke’s face.

  – Fuck off bud. I’m trying to have a conversation I come in peace. Understand?

  He lets go and the businessman goes inside with his chums looking shaken. Kevin finishes his beer and tells me to come on, we’ll go round the corner in case the cunt calls the old bill. You never know with these Europeans, there might be a law against taking your shirt off. He says there was this time in Oslo when some of them were sitting in the park having a drink and the old bill pulled up in a van.

  – They were a bunch of wankers, he says. They stood there and poured our cans away. It was illegal to drink in a public place. They even said they were being generous, because if they wanted they could put us in the cells. They’re mad about their laws in Europe.

  He leads the way to another bar and we go inside. We get our drinks and sit in among a mixture of office workers, labourers and one or two tourists. It’s a clean bar but without the petty attitude of the last place.

  – I was in Munich for the beer festival, he continues, and we got the train out to Dachau. I was expecting something like you see on the telly, something like Auschwitz with the wire and hair and glasses. All the buildings where the prisoners were kept had been knocked down and there was this big, flat space. We went to the furnaces but it was hard to imagine that people were killed in them. The thing that made the biggest impression was the museum.

  He leans forward.

  – There were these pictures of experiments. Altitude experiments and things like that. Outside was where these things happened, but I couldn’t feel anything. Inside it was a museum and it showed you what went on. Thing was, there were all these German kids on school trips and they just looked bored. A few of them were laughing and the teachers had to tell them off. There we all were in this place where they killed political prisoners and Jews and anyone else they wanted to get rid of, and it wasn’t what we’d expected. It was like we were let down. We couldn’t imagine what had happened. You just couldn’t get a feeling. We took the train back and that night we were on the piss surrounded by big German women singing along with this small cunt dressed in shorts and squeezing an accordion. It was as though nothing had happened. We knew it had, but it didn’t feel like it. I suppose you had to be there.

  Harry said goodbye to Nicky and she kissed him on the mouth. He even thought he saw a small tear in her eye as they went their separate ways. He turned his head briefly and saw her disappear down a side street, a frail little thing in among the beating neon and dead corners. She kept going and he admired her, because she’d been through a lot and was positive. It had been a good day, and he’d promised to see her on his way back from Berlin. He meant it when he said it but now, walking towards Johan’s bar, he knew he was acting soft. He probably wouldn’t bother. He was asking for trouble getting involved and feeling sorry for her. She was nice enough, and had a fit body, and she knew how to look after him, but she was a fucking whore, he had to remember that she was a prostitute who sucked blokes dry for the price of a four-star meal. Nothing more and nothing less, and he had to apply standards. He’d keep it quiet because he remembered the story of Rod in the Reeperbahn, when they were in Hamburg, and he didn’t want everyone taking the piss out of him.

  Harry turned his head for another look, but Nicky was gone, off to sit in a window for the tourists cruising the streets adding some spice to their holidays. Nicky was off to service her ten men, sucking and shagging her way to rest and recreation, an inflatable doll for a troop of drunks and dirty old men. She was a tart and he had to look after himself. He was over here to enjoy himself without any hassle and now he was getting wound up about a whore. She’d done an E before leaving the flat and would be feeling good.

  He could stop for a shag on his way back, but shouldn’t look for anything else. He felt sorry for her when she didn’t feel sorry for herself. It was the photo album. Leaving the crowd ogling the fanny and walking over to the pin-ups, then making conversation, was dangerous. You were better off in the crowd. He had to pull on a human-size condom and protect himself. Start flicking about with birds like that and it would bring you down. It was all a game and he had to think what Carter would do in the same situation, but then Carter had got himself in enough bother sniffing round that nutter Denise. They were leaving for Berlin tomorrow morning and tonight he was going to get pissed. You were better off sticking with the rest of the boys and having a good old-fashioned punch-up.

  Entering the bar Harry felt like he was walking into a major convention, where the dope had been replaced by lager and the Eastern magic of a Buddhist peasant by the solid Christian realism of a select football firm. He moved through the faces – some familiar, others new – and tapped Carter on the shoulder. The sex machine turned with a drunk grin and Tom moved aside to let him through. They didn’t ask any questions, which was how things should be, and Harry looked around and saw that a good mob was already forming – Tom and Mark, Billy Bright and Dave Harris, Martin Howe, Gary Davison and his mates, plus some older faces who showed up for the high-profile games, preferring European travel to domestic games. Don Wright and some of the Slough mob were there, along with small firms from Feltham, Battersea and Camberley. There was an assortment of other English picked up along the way, but it was mostly London and the Home Counties in the bar, which was fair enough, and of those it was mainly Chelsea. Harry settled down with a bottle of lager, picking up on the conversation at the table.

  – It’s Garry Bushell, said Billy. He was the bloke who gave Oi! a chance when he was at Sounds. He was the one who ignored the middle-class wankers in the music press and gave working-class punk its chance.

  Harry asked Carter what they were on about, and the sex machine said they were arguing over who was the greatest ever Englishman.

  – I thought he wrote a television column, Mark said.

  – He does, but before that he was into music. Bands saying what nobody was allowed to say, that it was alright to be white and working class, and that it didn’t make you a fascist if you carried the Union Jack. The bands were saying that because you were proud to be English didn’t mean you hated blacks.

  – Everyone knows that, Mark said.

  – We do, but he was standing up for what normal people think against the media.

  – Those cunts aren’t real anyway, Harris laughed. Who cares what they think.

  – But the thing was, he took stick for what he did and it was a brave thing to do.

  – Maybe it was, but it doesn’t make him the greatest ever Englishman, does it? Harris said. It’s just because you like the music. Do us a favour. No, it’s got to be someone from history. Richard the Lionheart or Oliver Cromwell. They gave the Arabs and the Irish a good slap, didn’t they?

  A few of the lads laughed at that one. Harris might’ve been going a bit over the top recently, but he still had his sense of humour intact. There was a short silence then, because suddenly nobody knew if he was serious or not. Richard the Lionheart and Cromwell were going right back.

  – What about Churchill? Harry asked. He has to be one of the
top boys.

  – You can’t have a politician, can you? Tom said. I mean, he did the job and that, but you want someone like Montgomery.

  – Winston did alright, Billy said, but I know what you mean. He was safe at home when they were going through Europe. How about Bomber Harris?

  A few people nodded. The stick Bomber Harris had been getting off the trendy press gave him added attraction. It always worked like that.

  – What about Maggie Thatcher? She did the Falklands.

  – Politician again. Anyway, look what she did to football. All the undercover operations and the all-seater grounds. No football fan can vote for Thatcher.

  Harry sipped his drink and looked around. People were moving away from the conversation. It was losing its humour.

  – It has to be someone with a sense of humour, he said. That’s what makes the greatest Englishman.

  – Charlie Chaplin?

  – Too far back.

  – What about Black Adder?

  They thought about this one for a while. He was funny and Harry thought Rowan Atkinson was the choice. He was fucking brilliant in the First World War sketches, the way he took the piss out of the generals and everything. All those series were good, getting under the skin.