by John King
—You get treated with respect when you travel to Australia because you’ve paid a fair bit for the seat. It’s not like some two-hour tube trip to Spain or Greece. You go long-haul and they look after you. Free drinks, meals-on-wheels and films. You get some crackers working as stewardesses as well.
—Maybe I’ll find myself a dolly bird and get her to look after me, you never know. I’m not past it. Even when you’re old you still get the urge now and again.
Vince was embarrassed. He didn’t want to think of his granddad on the job, shagging some British Airways bimbo on Bondi Beach, giving her a nice line of chat, pulling the rubber on and spreading the woman’s legs, dipping his winkie in a piece of BA hardcore, bony arse moving up and down in time to a brass band, voices in the distance, the blonde with blue eyes captivated by the pensioner’s charm, the medals he rarely wears because he thinks they’re rubbish, digging ten-inch purple fingernails into sand-paper skin, coming in a groaning tribute to age and experience, the skeleton shag-machine from West London on tour down under, bikini blondes flocking around the pre-war model sex instructor tucking into his early morning breakfast. Vince shook his head. That lassi must be lingering. It was disgusting. Child-molesting in reverse. He took the techno tape his brother had made up and slipped it into the cassette-player, Spiral Tribe, turned the volume down so it was just about audible.
—You get high above the clouds and next thing you’re flying over all these places you hear about on the news, Kuwait City, New Delhi, Singapore, the works, right there in space looking down on everything, the shapes of the clouds, and when the sun comes up you look through the window and you can almost see a curve in space. It’s like you’re halfway to being an astronaut riding with the gods. You feel special. Nothing can get near enough to harm you.
—It sounds good. We’ll see about it later. You might not go back.
—I will. Give it another six months or so. I love England and everything, but it’s shit really. It’s all the stuff you have to carry on your back. I mean, I know it’s the same anywhere you go, but I’d rather just be on the outside looking in, keeping my head down, rather than in the middle of things getting battered all the time.
Vince crossed Kew Bridge, indicated right and stopped, waiting for a gap in the South Circular. He pulled off towards the front of Kew Gardens and easily found a place to park. At this time of year there was always free space around the common. The houses were more like mansions and he wondered what it would be like living there. Not bad probably. It wasn’t London really, at least not the London he knew. During the summer there was a cricket pitch and the old church opposite served tea and cakes. It was more like a country village. They got out and walked to the main gates, Vince’s treat as it was expensive to get in Kew Gardens these days.
It had been five years since Mr Farrell’s last visit, a summer’s day walkabout with his wife, his former occupation adding to the attraction of the botanical gardens. Vince had been as a child with both his parents and grandparents. He especially remembered the time his brother got lost in the trees off towards the river. Their dad gave him a hiding when they found him. They went straight then turned left towards the lake, the Palm House to their right. As a kid Vince was convinced it was a spaceship, the shape and glass panelling elegantly contoured and maintained, as big now as it had appeared then. They stopped by the water. There was an elderly couple on the opposite side and three Japanese tourists, but this time of year saw only a fraction of the summer rush. The earth was black and rich, clouds blocking the sun, a relative solitude and promise of life under the soil waiting to rise up and take over.
They went to the Palm House, heavy doors sounding behind them. It was warm and humid, the glass sections above just visible through lush foliage, a regular hiss of sprayed water. They were transported to the Amazon, the rainforests of Asia, around the globe in minutes. Everywhere there was exotic life and lush vegetation. They climbed circular stairs to the walkway above, stopping to look down on enormous leaves and intricate bark formations, lost in a Victorian jungle.
—They did some good things in the old days, didn’t they, Vince said, finally breaking the silence, footsteps on metal. It wasn’t all blood and theft. You know, I read that they used to castrate Aborigines and bet on how long it took them to die, but you come here and see what other people built and it’s another story. You look at this place, the parks in London and all the museums, and you don’t see anyone doing that nowdays. It’s all cutting back and closing down, and if they could get their hands on Kew the developers would chop down the trees and flog the land as prime real estate.
—Things get better in some ways and worse in others, Mr Farrell replied, the load just gets shifted around. Look at my day. World war and millions murdered, raped, tortured. That was Europe and now we build the guns for others to do the killing, but there’s nothing on that scale. It depends which way you look at things.
Mr Farrell was glad when they left the Palm House. The humidity was affecting his breathing. Vince enjoyed the fresh air as well. It made him happy seeing the old boy in a positive state of mind. He was always talking about his wife in the present, like she was still around, sitting at the table in the flat maybe, or resting in the bedroom, watching through the window for her husband’s return. It was a bit sick somehow and Vince was thinking of his gran, the way she laughed deep in her throat, but now his granddad was talking about her in the past tense. It made him feel a lot easier.
They went towards the river, past the second lake with ducks on the water and duck shit on the bank, circling around so they eventually arrived at the Evolution House. Vince read about asexual and sexual reproduction, the roles of bats, bees and butterflies in pollination, the extra strength to be gained through sexual production, the addition of new genes which made for a better chance of survival. It was all there in the bang lassis, the great British mega-mix.
—I’m glad we came, Mr Farrell said, sitting in the nearby restaurant half an hour later, a squirrel sauntering up for a piece of cheese sandwich. It gives you a lift, somewhere like this. This is the real world, what it’s all about, trees and plants and flowers and scientists looking at the medicine we can get from nature. It’s all this that you never hear about. You just get the negative angle the whole time.
Vince nodded. He was right. Kew just meant happy memories as far as he was concerned, but there was something even more positive about the place now. It was more sophisticated, like they were trying to get people involved in the work, attempting to educate as well as everything else. Maybe he’d just not been looking before. But how were you supposed to know the truth about the past when on the one hand you had stories about Aborigines getting castrated for a wager, yet at the same time there were naturalists and horticulturists travelling the globe fascinated by trees and plants and the benefits they offered humanity, trying to preserve nature.
—What do you want to go to Australia for when you’ve got this? Mr Farrell laughed. It might be nice over there but it’s never going to be home, is it? That’s probably why I never went and tried my hand over there, I remember now. It would have been admitting failure, that a part of me was no good, that the country that made me was nothing. The future’s got to be worth seeing, just finding out what’s going to happen next, even ten or twenty years down the road. That’s what keeps you going. You sit in the past and you never move forward. It’s half and half. Keep the good things and add to them, but throwing it all away and starting again is as bad as never changing anything at all.
—You sound like a politician, Vince said.
—I’ve never heard a politician worth listening to, and I’ve heard a few.
Vince was in Australia, north of Sydney along the Great Barrier Reef, sheer beauty beneath a clear blue ocean, diving down into another universe of fish and coral, shoals of minnows darting back and forward, thousands of tiny lives, bigger multicoloured fish looking at him with enormous eyes, a harmless shark in the distance. Below the s
urface life was vibrant and alive, finding its own way to survive, all the colours mixed in together, and he was thinking about asexual and sexual reproduction, vindicated in his role, thick sand and the Italian girl he met diving, that evening sitting on the beach looking into the darkness, the outline of her long black hair against a cloudless sky covered in stars and trailing meteors, waves crashing on the shore taking him back all those years to San Sebastian, trying to sleep under the boardwalk with drunks smashing bottles up above, and he’d done what he planned, got out of the rut, out of his environment, so now he could see what was under the surface, deep down, all the colour and movement, people like himself too far into their world to see there was something outside, something bigger, and the great thing was that it didn’t really matter one way or the other, just that Italian woman was important, total beauty, a soppy way to describe a human being but that’s what it was, pure magic, the realisation that he, Vince Matthews, had made it to the other side of the planet and had seen more than seven wonders on the way, almost laughing out loud thinking of the lads in San Sebastian, the bulls they were going to run and the sunburn, where were the poor bastards at that precise moment, the bulls dead, what about John and Gary and all the others, then they were gone again, as Vince focused on the red burns of space rock millions of miles above his head.
—There’s one or two politicians who made the effort, but they got shouted down, so now none of them bother any more and make do looking after their own little bit of power. They blend in with popular opinion and settle for an easy life. Suppose we all do. Not you and me though. We’ve been outside and seen the options. I had no choice and didn’t like what I found, but you had the nerve to do it on your own and you’ll probably be going back for some more. What are you smiling at Vince?
—Just the thought of those explorers and how they must’ve travelled. There were no round-the-world airline tickets or backpacker hostels in those days.
When they’d finished their coffee and Mr Farrell had attracted another couple of squirrels with hand-outs, they started walking again. The clouds had gone and it was a fine day. They passed through a ruined brick arch and were about to pass the Marianne North Gallery when Mr Farrell caught Vince’s arm. Neither remembered the building and they walked inside, reading the details of a Victorian artist without formal training who had travelled the world painting plants and scenery.
Hundreds of brightly coloured pictures covered the walls, each with a black wooden frame holding it in place. There was no space between individual paintings, the walls literally covered. There were details of plants, their intricate forms painstakingly recreated, and wider more general views. There were few people, just plant life and incredible scenery. The woman who painted them looked dour in a long dress, round glasses and hair held in a scarf, but that was just her appearance. She had been everywhere; Borneo, Java, Japan, Jamaica, Brazil, India, Chile, California, New Zealand, more places than either of them could absorb. There were plants and flowers and trees, seascapes and volcanoes, snow-capped mountains, kangaroos in the outback, walking from picture to picture, a monkey eating fruit, the mass of colours a kaleidoscope of impressions.
Vince had never been inside an art gallery before. Art was something for the people who lived in Kensington and Hampstead. Mind you, there’d been that time with the school when they’d gone to the Tate Gallery, but they’d had a fight with some kids from Lewisham, even at that age West London fighting South London, and Vince had hit one of them. A teacher saw him and he’d got the cane, then been banned from the next trip, a visit to the seaside which he’d have liked seeing as he didn’t go on holiday very often. But he’d done well when he grew up and had been to more places than most people managed and wasn’t finished yet, a bit like the woman in the photo at the front of the museum or art gallery or whatever they called the place. He bet she didn’t care about Victorian bullshit when she was off travelling, fighting back against her set role in society, refusing to be ground down, showing more bottle than he ever could, and he had total respect for Marianne North, though he knew nothing more about her than what he saw on the walls. She showed what was possible.
—She saw a lot didn’t she Granddad?
—Just saw the beauty. That’s the way to do it.
Mr Farrell went briskly from one picture to the next, matching images with the text below. They were nice enough though a bit close together. She was an example, someone who had a passion for a subject and really lived. That was all you could do. Then he was finished and outside waiting for his grandson, ready to go home and sort out his wife’s clothes and give them to the jumble, clear out and start again, wash the floors and scrub away any lingering scent, the wind cool on his face, refreshing and invigorating, like he was waking up after a long sleep, his grandson inside still, looking at volcanoes in Java and then a picture of a plant whose name he couldn’t pronounce, thinking of that Italian girl on the beach, an old Spanish tramp trying to teach the Englishman his language, glad they’d left the bulls alone, something worthwhile that, knowing some people were more up-front and took protest further, something beyond class, like Marianne North, daughter of an MP, just people in the end, looking inside the plant past the shape and seeing all that detail, Vince wondering whether its genetic survival depended on a bat, bee or butterfly.
MILLWALL AWAY
We’re hard as nails going into the Lions’ den, warming up on a couple of slow pints, enough to get the courage flowing in this nothing pub, something to dull the blows if things turn bad. The kids are bragging and singing while the older blokes play it calm knowing mouth and action rarely go together. It all comes from experience. Apprenticeships have been served and lessons learnt. There’s no room for chancers tonight. Everyone here has got to stand up and be counted. There’s a lot of pride at stake and self-respect is all important. If anyone bottles they better not show themselves again.
I look at familiar faces. Mark and Rod standing next to me. Harris with Martin Howe and Billy Bright. Black Paul putting coins in the fruit machine acting casual and pulling it off. Black John lucky to be back in Victoria after West Ham. Facelift and Don Wright. Everyone is primed ready to get stuck in. Doing their duty when it matters most. Behind the scenes maintaining reputations and promoting the good name of the club, our select club. We’ll put on a show tonight and if we’re the only ones who see it then so fucking what. It’s not one of those things you do for someone else. You do it for you and yours and we’re peering through the pub window seeing what’s what in the station.
There’s not a lot of drinking going on because two pints is the limit if we want all the benefit and none of the weakness. A lot of the lads make do with soft drinks. Alcohol dims the brain and kills discipline. If you want a punch-up and not just the chatter you’ve got to watch what you drink. You can’t afford to get careless away to Millwall. Make a mistake down there and you’re dead. There’s no second chance against that lot. We have to keep alert and see what’s going on. Act straight till the second it goes off and when we get stuck in take no prisoners.
Harris stands at the corner of the bar with his squad taking the nod from new arrivals, clocking faces knowing who’s who, wary of outsiders more than ever since Newcastle. We’re a tight mob tonight and it’s only the full-timers who make the trip to Millwall because it’s major aggravation down in South East London. True, there’s one or two kids knocking around, youths pushing into their twenties, but they know the score and are older than their years, keen to prove themselves and move up the pecking order. It’s games like this when a kid can arrive, getting stuck in with the best of them, building the base of a reputation that will see him alright if he stays solid. If a bloke does the business when it counts then it doesn’t matter what else he’s about.
We’re building up for Millwall away and it’s going to be nasty, yet we respect Millwall somehow, deep down, though we’d never say as much, knowing New Cross and Peckham are the arseholes of London. The Bushwhackers have be
en making people take notice for years. As far back as our memories go Millwall have always been mad. Something special, mental, off their heads. They’ve got the reputation and they deserve it, raised on docker history spanning the century. A hundred years of kicking fuck out of anyone who strays too far down the Old Kent Road.
Their old men were doing the business chasing visitors around Cold Blow Lane when we were kids into toy soldiers, before they moved up the road to Senegal Fields, and before that their granddads were handing out sewing lessons when West Ham strayed too far through the Isle of Dogs, bringing in bad habits from Poplar and Stepney. Knives, bottles and running battles before, during and after the game. All that before my old man was even born. Back in the good old days when Britannia ruled the waves while parts of London were no-go areas for the old bill on Bank Holidays, when the locals went on the piss in a big way.
Human nature translates as human nature, and if the old bill nick you and worst comes to worst and you go down for a couple of years, banged up for affray, then your mates will come along to wherever you end up for a visit, and when you get out you’ll be made. That’s how legends happen. Names from history that mean more than all your Nelsons and Wellingtons put together. Millwall, West Ham, Chelsea. F-Troop, the ICF, Headhunters. Waterloo is just the name of a train terminus and the best the blokes who died for their country got was a station named after the place where they fell. Going to Millwall is what it’s all about today and it makes more sense than fucking off to France to get your head blown off.
We’re killing time in the pub, stronger by the minute as fresh faces arrive, keeping things tight, being discreet. There’s no need to attract attention, tonight more than any other time, the old bill primed for trouble with their riot gear and half-starved Alsatians tucked away down dark side streets on standby. There’s expectation and it’s a balancing act keeping the momentum flowing in the right direction, looking for a result. Harris tells the kids to lay off the noise and they respond straight away, toning down the songs, tight lipped, understanding that Millwall away is the big one and no time to lose control, the majority of the firm older with a few well known faces who only turn up for major aggravation.