England Away

by John King

  I keep an eye on what they’re up to and concentrate on the one with peroxide hair who looks more punk than skin, but it’s not the hair I’m bothered about, concentrating on her tits. I’m not that bad yet that I don’t show a bit of modesty and slowly look away when she turns her head. Keep her guessing. No need to stir up a bar full of krauts. I can imagine her in the old jackboots. Nothing else except a mouthful of English. I try to push this out of my head and get back in the conversation but the bar suddenly seems hot and stuffy and the white noise fuzzy, everything harder than before. I want to move and get some air and it seems the rest of the bar feels the same way, because we’re up and moving, banging through the doors and out into the street, Harris saying how he met these blokes a few years back when he was on holiday in Majorca – imagine that, taking the kids away for a holiday and one night he gets talking with these Germans at the bar and there you go – and Billy met them when they were over in London for the weekend one time. He says they give it the big right-wing thing but most of them are normal aggro merchants. They’re not the real thing, whatever they like to think, and I remember that old woman earlier today and how the Nazis stitched her up, how the Allies followed through and fucked her as well but paid for the privilege, and she was just a kid at the time and sees one thing, and there were the Russians getting shafted by the Germans and I suppose the bad blood goes back and forward with the tide. I think about the bombed-out English cities and all the English people the Germans killed. By rights we should be steaming this little lot instead of drinking with them. Fair enough, if it was neutral territory then we could have a laugh, but this seems wrong somehow. Our job is to come into Berlin and do the cunts. I don’t know. It’s all getting confused.

  We walk for a while and come to a street with bars at fairly regular intervals. A lot of them are trendy, and looking through the windows of one or two they’re full of wankers. The music’s shit and the people look a bit too pleased with themselves and not too happy to see this mob turning up. When a bottle breaks a window our hosts pile in. They wreck the place and give some of the wankers inside a slap. It’s no real battle. This one gruppen-geezer, suppose he’s the main boy, says this is the easy place, now we’re going to do some real communists. People with real politics who’ll stand up and fight back and we’d better be ready, because they’re more anarchists than reds, and I can almost feel some hidden respect in with the hate. The mob goes along the street sieg-heiling with me and Mark tagging along at the side, Harris and the others a bit further ahead. It’s fucking mental because in my head there’s films of rallies and I’m thinking how it was all ordered and controlled and now there’s these blokes flowing along with the power as the people in the bars try to hide, a few bottles breaking glass, unreal somehow.

  I look through a window that doesn’t get the treatment and see this face looking back, watching the show, and I tell Mark to look as well because there’s the man himself, Fat Harry, with a bottle in his hand and a smile on his face, some tasty-looking bird on his arm.

  I slow down and the bar looks good enough, and it seems like it’s stacked with crumpet. I’m thinking about peeling off when I hear the sirens. That does it for me and I pull Mark back because my head’s fucked and I’m not into all this because we’re England and it’s all distorted. I call to the others but they’re turning down a side street and we take our chance . . . dipping into the bar and giving Harry the surprise of his life . . . fucking hell Harry, you kept her quiet . . . speeding up and slowing down, taking things easy now . . . and Harry looked at Tom and Mark and knew they were pissed and speeding – he’d been enjoying the show outside and suddenly these two had appeared from nowhere. The German crew had disappeared off the main street, but even with the music going Harry could hear the smash of glass. But now he had to think about Tom and Mark and he could see problems ahead, his night ending in tears, because they were stumbling through to the bar and Ingrid was looking at them and asking who they were, and she laughed when he told her they were mates of his from London and said they seemed very happy to see him.

  Harry was feeling good about life in general and this bird in particular. He’d been in the bar for a couple of hours when Ingrid turned up. It was down to chance whether she came in or not, but he didn’t mind being on his own, and maybe she wouldn’t even remember him, or if she did, then think he was a stalker. He was just the bloke by the window sitting alone, and it didn’t matter if you were somewhere foreign because it was a different set of circumstances. It wasn’t like back home, where if you sat in some club-type bar on your own you looked like a right old wanker, a sad case without any mates left to sniff bar stools.

  Everything was a bit new in Bang, but the people coming in were nothing special. There was a theme to the bar, something from a tropical island. The people were laid back and friendly enough, but there wasn’t the same warmth as Amsterdam, and it wasn’t Harry’s sort of place. Here he was in East Berlin and this line of bars and clubs wasn’t what he’d expected. The other streets were how he’d imagined this part of the city to look, run down and with a harder edge. He could imagine the secret police giving you grief and border guards shooting runaways making a break for the West, but this bar could’ve been anywhere. He didn’t mind, especially when Ingrid walked in.

  – Hello, she said, spotting him straight off.

  She didn’t seem surprised and this made Harry feel better.

  – So you found the bar, she said, sitting right next to him.

  Harry didn’t want to look but couldn’t help it. She had another mini-skirt on shorter than the one she’d been wearing on the ferry. It hitched even further up her legs when she sat down and he knew he had to get a look at the white pants peeping out. She was a fucking raver and much too good for a fat cunt like him, but you never knew, stranger things happened in life, but those legs were doing his head in. He started imagining her peeling off her panties and lying back on the bed, and it was the bed in Nicky’s flat for some reason with a closed photo album and open-eyed statue; no, he shifted the scene somewhere else. It didn’t matter where the fucking bed was because Ingrid was doing a strip, but Harry put himself in a Sunday dinner-time boozer with a plump old slapper on stage doing her routine, except Ingrid was a hundred times better-looking and stripping for fun. Then she was on Nicky’s bed again and Harry was just about to get stuck in when he pulled back and went to buy her a drink.

  – It is not my bar, Ingrid said, when he returned. I work here, but today I have the day off. I still come for a drink because the music is good. It is a nice place.

  Harry was trying to think of something to say but was getting sidetracked. Whenever Ingrid moved on her stool the mini-skirt rode further up her arse. It wasn’t fair, because she was doing his head in and didn’t seem to realise. A lot of birds were like that, not knowing the power they had over a bloke’s cock and acting like sex didn’t exist, wandering around half-dressed flashing their tits and fanny, Ingrid sitting there on the stool with her panties on show, and all he could think about was pulling them off and knobbing her. It had to be the heat because he couldn’t get his mind off her legs, and when she shifted a bit she even brushed against his knee, very faintly but still a touch, and he tried to ignore it because he didn’t want to end up with a hard-on in the middle of the fucking bar. Funny thing was, Nicky was a cracker as well, but even though she was on the game and shagging ten blokes a night, with the smell of rubber between her legs and spunk in her mouth, this German bird was more dirty somehow. It didn’t make much sense because Nicky was a professional, but she was different. He reckoned this Ingrid was a nympho, she had to be dressed like that, he bet she fucking loved it, the dirty cow. But even if she was a sex maniac he had to speak because she’d think he was dumb or thick. With a big effort he looked at her face.

  – It’s alright here, Harry said. A lot different to the bars in Amsterdam, but I suppose that’s because the place is new. There’s a lot of pictures on the wall. Where’s i
t supposed to be?

  – Hat Rin in Thailand, Ingrid said. It is a place a lot of travellers go, people who want to sit around and take drugs and go raving. I have been there a couple of times. It is not really Thailand, but it is somewhere you can live for a long time on not very much money.

  Harry thought of Nicky again and wondered if she’d been to Hat Rin. He didn’t think so, because the places she’d talked about were for men content to listen to disco covers and drink imported lager, and from what he could make out they didn’t seem short of a few bob. He saw Nicky as a kid sent down from the north to service men two or three times her age and knew it was a different scene. Funny thing was, she told him a few stories about her time there in a matter-of-fact kind of way, and they didn’t do anything for him. Watching wank videos he liked birds getting done at both ends or a couple of birds doing a bloke, or best of all two birds doing each other, but when she told him about exactly the same things in real life his cock didn’t even flicker. Knowing her took something away and it was a mistake Carter wouldn’t make, and thinking of Carter he realised he was on his own and out of the sex machine’s shadow. Harry was doing very well for himself, without any help from the professional.

  This cheered Harry up because maybe the shag man was losing his touch. There was no more total football from the flash cunt, just Sunday league leftovers, watching some tart trying to get her sagging tits to spin tassels, cheering with the rest of the lads. Harry had to laugh, the pictures on the wall a different world to the go-go bars and blow-job parlours of Nicky’s life.

  – The first time was best, Ingrid said. The second time I saw it differently, all these bums wandering around who weren’t really bums at all. They weren’t poor, and certainly not poor like the Thais, and the people who make the money from the businesses are often outsiders. They are from Bangkok. I won’t go back to Hat Rin because there is a lack of respect for the local people.

  Harry waited for her to light a fag. In Holland it would be dope, but here the drugs were designer rather than natural.

  – A lot of the people who go to these places, Hat Rin and Goa and similar areas, don’t care about the people who live there. They take but give nothing. The Thais are very traditional people, whatever the West says about them. They don’t like to see Westerners naked on the beach and taking drugs. Why should they be pushed aside so the businessmen can build cabins and the travellers fill their beaches with bottles?

  Ingrid smiled and shifted again, but Harry kept looking straight ahead, resisting the temptation.

  – No, I will not go there again, but I think the bar is okay because it has the original spirit of places like Hat Rin. There is a world culture now of theme bars, techno, ecstasy, world music. All the cultures are blending together so soon there will be no more individual identities.

  Harry nodded, but didn’t believe all the cultures would disappear, whatever happened, though he wasn’t going to argue. He wasn’t going to rock the boat and tell her he didn’t mind having the extended drinking and relaxed laws on drugs, but knew that his mates weren’t going to suddenly start wearing berets and switching from lager to red wine, preferring Bernard’s Bistro to Balti Heaven. They finished their drinks at the same time and Ingrid went to the bar and stayed there talking to the bloke serving, while he watched the night get going and more people come in. Ingrid returned and sat down, and Harry was both relieved and disappointed to see her pull her skirt towards her knees. He moved up her body and snuck a look at a nice pair of tits pushing through a thin shirt, nipples visible, moving up to her head. Very nice.

  – I don’t want to keep you here if you’ve got somewhere to go, he said, playing the gentleman, kind and considerate.

  – I just came in for one drink, but now I have had two. It is not a problem. Do you remember on the boat from England, when you were sick on the heads of those English schoolgirls?

  She smiled.

  – They were very upset and you laughed. That was very funny. For me at least it was funny, but not for you or the girls.

  Harry hoped he wasn’t going red because it wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted a woman to have in her head when you were looking to get your leg over. He remembered that time when Chelsea played Sheffield Wednesday. They’d gone to Northampton after for a night out and he’d pulled this bird in a club, and though she was nothing special she was game enough. He’d gone back with her and one thing led to another, and there he was pissed out of his fucking skull if he was honest, and this old tart was gagging for it and he wasn’t going to disappoint her, but a couple of seconds after he’d got in and started giving it the big one he was sick on her face. He was so pissed he couldn’t help himself. He didn’t like to think about it too much because she’d gone off her trolley. At first she didn’t get what had happened and he was willing himself to come before she found out, but then she worked out what the mess on her face was and she pushed him off and started hitting him. She’d punched him a couple of times then ran off to the bog to wash. He sat down in a chair and pulled his shirt on, but he was pissed and not thinking, giving her time to get clean, and then the fucking door opened and the light went on and she was standing there with a baseball bat. She’d gone for him big time and he had to leg it. Thinking back it was funny because it must’ve looked like something from Benny Hill, Harry getting chased by this bird who was screaming her head off, and Balti was servicing some sort next door and Carter was downstairs on the couch with another one of her mates. This bird bashed Harry on the head and chased him onto the landing. He was pissed but couldn’t hit her, couldn’t do anything, and he legged it down the stairs and into the living room where Carter was standing behind this other bird giving her one, and the old sex machine kept going while this psycho chased Harry around the room and out through the back door. He’d done a runner and looked back towards the room where Carter was carrying on regardless, imagining the scene inside, the happy couple half-lit by street lights.

  Harry had hid in bushes across the road and waited. At about six he went back to the house and tapped on the window. He only had his shirt on and his balls were frozen, a bad hangover made worse by the baseball bat. He had a lump on the side of his head and one of his eyes was half shut. She’d done him good and proper, but luckily Carter was sleeping on the couch and he passed Harry’s clothes out, smiled, then went back to his pillow and blanket. Harry walked to the train station and waited on the platform feeling like shit, carrying Carter’s smug grin in his head, the sex machine well pleased. Harry couldn’t blame the woman he supposed, but she was a fucking old slag all the same going spastic like that just because he’d puked in her face. He didn’t see the others till he got back to London, and his balls were aching so much from the interrupted sex he’d had to go in and have a wank in the train bogs. That was the worst life could get – attacked by a bird and left to wank in a smelly BR bog early on Sunday morning. What a life. Still, you moved on and things were definitely looking better now.

  – I didn’t mean to get sick, he said, weakly. It’s the sea that does it. I’ve always been like that. Wasn’t the best introduction, was it?

  – I don’t know, Ingrid said, for the first time showing this might be more than a friendly chat about nothing in particular. Sometimes it is not what people do but how they react. I liked the way you laughed because it showed you did not care. German men are too serious. Even the ones who hate being German and want to escape the mentality can’t because it is inside them. They want to relax and laugh, but they can’t.

  – The Germans have always seemed friendly enough to me.

  – But you didn’t care. You didn’t care what the other people saw. Maybe they saw this man with short hair doing something disgusting, but you didn’t care if they thought you were an idiot.

  Harry thought she should go easy there. He wasn’t an idiot and he never thought anyone else thought so, the fucking tart. Just because she had a nice pair of legs that went right up the crack of her arse, and probably h
ad a perfect cunt to go with them, didn’t mean she could take the piss.