The Football Factory

by John King

  —Try and get some rest. The doctor will be along to see you later. You’ll be fine after a couple of weeks doing nothing. You’ve got to give yourself time to heal. You’ll be right as rain and we won’t have to see you again.

  Heather walks down the ward. She’s got a nice body. I think what it would be like if we were tucked up in bed together. She stops at a middle-aged man with a sad dog look on his face. Don’t know what he’s in for, but it’s not going to be anything good. I can’t hear what she’s saying and he just nods his head up and down. I’m not interested in what the man’s about, keeping my eyes on Heather. She doesn’t look back the whole time she’s with him, then she’s moving further down the ward out of sight. She’s a nice lady, Heather, real class act, but I know I’m never going to get near her.

  We’re moving in opposite directions and if I’m honest I have to admit she’s got it sussed. But it takes all sorts, and I’m not going to sit around thinking I’m shit because thinking too much can seriously damage your health. Like the official Government warning. I’ve enough to get on with at the moment. My right arm is bandaged along with my ribs. I’m a mess. Heather says I’ve got enough bruises to open a market stall. She’s got a sense of humour. They’ve done X-rays and given me a brain scan. I’ll be okay. Got to stay patient. I’m better off than some of the poor cunts in here. I try to keep still. Feel like a geriatric confined to bed for the next twenty years. What a way to spend your life. I feel bad as fuck for all those poor sods stuck at home from the day they’re born to the day they die. Worse than the physical side, it must seriously mess up your thinking. It’s the boredom that would do me in. Even now I want to get up and move about, but at least I know that if I keep my head down for a couple of weeks or thereabouts I’ll be on my feet and out the door. Good as new in fourteen days.

  —She’s lovely that nurse. She can come and give me a blanket bath any time she wants. I won’t disappoint her. I may be getting on but I still know what it’s for.

  I say nothing and pretend to sleep. The ward goes about its routine and I’m not interested talking with the bloke in the bed next door. He’s one of those cunts who’s into every little detail. Talks all the time but says nothing. Reads all the papers and knows a million facts and figures. Reckons he’s the dog’s bollocks when it comes to politics, with the brainy papers stacked next to the comics. I don’t give a toss about committees and arguments between party leaders. They’re a bunch of wankers and their publicity stunts do nothing for me. He’s welcome to them. I keep my eyes closed. Start drifting off.

  —Wake up you ugly cunt. Rod’s voice makes me start. Pain racing up my spine. Foot on the accelerator. His words a kick in the balls.

  —You can try hard as you like but you’re never going to fool anyone you’re Sleeping Beauty. No nurse is going to creep up and give you a kiss, hoping you’ll wake up and save her from all this. Not looking like that she won’t.

  Mark and Rod stand over the bed looking down on me with a plastic bag of biscuits and Lucozade. They look fit and healthy, prime of life, though Mark’s got a bit of a shiner where his right eye used to be. Apart from that, not a scratch. Shows it can be done. You can go to Millwall and come out in one piece. Even do well out of the experience. Learn a few things without paying for the lesson. It’s the luck of the draw. They’re a couple of pretty boys looking the part. Making the effort because this is a hospital. Real end of the line job.

  —Come on, Tom. Mark is eating biscuits from one of the packs they’ve brought along. Speaks with his mouth full. Fucking slob.

  —Pull yourself together. It’s visiting time. The nurse said we’ve got an hour if we want it. Said you’re going to live and that you’re lucky to have come out of it with your head still on your shoulders. Silly cow. What does she know? She needs a good six inches up the arse. That would sort her out quick enough.

  They pull up chairs and sit down either side of the bed. I prop myself up feeling a bit useless and reckon they should give the nurse a break. I feel like I’m a pregnant housewife or something waiting for the kid to drop. Or some invalid with disease eating my insides away, working itself up to the brain so I end up a haggard old dosser talking to chocolate machines down the tube. It’s the same feeling you get with the flu but a hundred times worse. It’s being out of circulation with your defences down. At the mercy of something beyond my control. Something I made for myself.

  —We just lost you. Rod shakes his head and forgets to hand over the bag he’s been carrying. Just puts it at the foot of the bed. Two unopened packets of biscuits spill out. They don’t notice. Rod continues.

  —It was mental, Tom, fucking chaos, and you’re just thinking about what’s going on in front of you and you don’t see anything else. You know who you’re with and everything, but it all gets mixed up and confused because you can’t be looking over your shoulder every other second.

  —We didn’t know you were getting a hiding till we saw Millwall kicking the shit out of this ball of clothes on the ground, and even then we weren’t sure it was you. Mark looks at the ground. Focuses on the tip of his right foot.

  —There was no way we could get to you. Rod looks guilty and I know they think they’ve let me down.

  —There’s a hundred or more people in the way and it would’ve been like going into a tidal wave. It was just the numbers. Millwall were everywhere, but we did the business alright.

  —One minute you’re there, the next you’ve gone. Mark looks up. It all happens so fast you don’t have time to think.

  They’re acting like a couple of grannies because I know the score. They’d have done whatever they could. There’s no need for explanations. Most of the blokes there would have as well, but in that kind of situation there’s no organisation and little chance going against the flow. The whole thing’s a lottery and if you’re unlucky enough to go down you’re fucked. I tell them to leave it out. It wasn’t their fault. Nothing they could do. Diamond blokes. Bit of emotion. Embarrassing really. We avoid each other’s eyes. Get into that kind of position somewhere like Millwall and you have to take what you’re given. Take it on the chin.

  The cunts in charge say there’s freedom of choice, but the options are lined up before you start. You don’t get to pick and choose. A bit of luck and you’re king for the day. Fuck up and you’re straight down Emergency. Mark and Rod look relieved. Like it’s been on their minds. I can understand it easy enough because the big thing isn’t really winning or losing, it’s having the bottle to have a go in the first place. It’s about sticking together. About getting onto Millwall’s manor and making your mark. It’s pushing yourself a bit further showing what you’ve got inside. But there’s been no overall winners or losers anyway, just a good row, though considering the odds I reckon Chelsea came out looking pretty good.

  —After we lost you it went on for ages, says Mark, cheering up, turning the Millwall game into a bit of history, something that’ll develop and grow through the years.

  —Millwall are fucking evil, but we didn’t put up too bad a show considering. Facelift got four stitches in his head where some cunt lobbed a brick. Blood down the front of him like the fat bastard had puked up. Except it was red. Thought the cunt would have blue blood or something. He was well narked about the mess. Said he’d send the bill to Millwall.

  —It was a bit tense inside but apart from a couple of scraps down the side of the ground not much going on, says Rod. But afterwards Millwall went mental and had a go at the old bill.

  —We come out of the ground and we’re held back by vans and dogs, says Mark. They’ve been at the stores and the shields are out and the truncheons oiled. Half of Battersea Dogs Home was on overtime working for their extra tin of Chum. Alsatians everywhere and vans packed with psyched-up coppers. They looked nervous as fuck. Millwall were off down the end of the street and they were going mental trying to get at Chelsea.

  —All you could hear was smashing glass and riot police legging down the road to get stuc
k in. We were penned in and the old bill shunted us down to South Bermondsey and sent us back to London Bridge. They were on the trains, everywhere. Up at London Bridge in case Millwall followed us and tried to have a go there or we tried to double back. We hung around for ages but nothing happened. A lot of Chelsea got the tube from New Cross and it went off at Whitechapel.

  There’s a sudden silence and they’re thinking they shouldn’t be going on about Millwall, especially the buzz they got out of it, because in the end it was me who got a hiding, me sitting in hospital suffering, me who Heather reckons owes his life to the Metropolitan Police. I’m not bothered. It gives it a bit of meaning and when I’m fit it’ll be another story. But last night, when I’d got my head together, I was in bed looking at the ceiling with the breathing of all these sick, sad men around me, wheezing and coughing and half drowned with disinfectant, and I started thinking about Millwall. Like it was a nightmare but real.

  I was fucking scared when I went down, though I feel a bit of a wanker now and wouldn’t tell anyone. Never known anything like it. Norwich was a playground punch-up in comparison. At first I was thinking I must be a bottle merchant, but it wasn’t that, not really. You just realise you could get yourself killed, crippled, blinded, brain damaged, something that would stay with you your whole life. Suddenly you don’t want to be there any more. You want to turn the telly off and tell everyone that it was only a joke. One big grin. No hard feelings. Why take life so seriously? Because, after all, we’ve heard the soundtrack and football’s only a game.

  —How long before they let you out? Rod moves the conversation on. You look a mess. That yokel nurse told us she thought you’d get better quick. She said you’re young and strong so you’ve got a head start on the old men. Nice bit of skirt. Reckon she fancies you the way she was going on. You should get her out for a drink. When you get yourself fit. They reckon nurses are dirty as fuck. They see so many bodies and that, they’re not scared of getting stuck in.

  I think about what Heather was saying. Men kicking lumps out of each other and she has to put the pieces together. I know what she says is right. I understand the argument. But it can’t change anything. She’ll never know what it’s about because her thinking is different. Suppose the whole country works along a million different wavelengths. Getting battered at Millwall was bad news, but I know why it happened and it’s not a surprise. Other people would feel disgust. I just feel the pain through my body. Head to toes kicking. Right now I care because I’m hurt. In a couple of weeks, who knows.

  —I spoke to that Scottish bloke at the warehouse, Mark cuts in. Told him what happened and he said he’d pass the message on. The foreman phoned up and said anything he can do I’ve only got to let him know. He said some of the lads would try and get down to see you. Seemed like a decent enough bloke.

  —Your old girl phoned up as well. Wanted to know what happened. Then your old man got on the phone. They came down yesterday but you were out of it. Said they’d come again tonight. They were worried.

  I wonder how they found out. It’s not the kind of news you want the old girl hearing secondhand. When I was a kid and the old bill came round my dad used to give me a whack, but Mum just cried and drank half a bottle of whatever was handy. Went on about how she’d failed her kids. That was the only time I felt guilty. Like if I got done as a juvenile for nicking a car or something she was gutted like it was her fault. It’s a dumb way to think and it makes you feel a cunt. I never forgot that, but you get older and you don’t want your parents involved.

  Mark and Rod stay until their time’s up. The hour goes by fast. When they’re about to leave they remember the biscuits and Lucozade. Hand it over a bit embarrassed because they say they should have brought some porno mags and lager to ease the pain. I tell them the biscuits and Lucozade will do fine. They laugh. I watch them walk down the ward. They look back and give me the wanker sign. Laugh again as they turn the corner.

  I’m soon dozing. Down in South East London again. It’s six o’clock Sunday morning and the streets are empty. The sun’s shining so hard it must be summer. There’s this gold plaque on a wall that’s just been rebuilt. The only clean bricks in the area. The plaque reflects sunlight. I have to cover my eyes to read the words. I’m an old man. My hair is grey and I walk with a limp. I’m suffering from arthritis. I’ve got a walking stick with the Chelsea crest painted on the handle. The name on the plaque is mine. Says I died for my country and have been buried where I fell. I look around but there’s just concrete and a cross in the street.

  I jolt awake. Remember the dream. A load of old bollocks. I drift off again and I’m with Heather in the nurse’s hostel. She’s got a room on the tenth floor overlooking London. I watch trains cutting through houses like mechanical snakes. There’s no sound. It’s late at night and the lights make the trains stand out. I can see miles of vague terraces. No detail. The Post Office Tower in the distance with a flashing light on top. I’m in the spotlight but nobody can see me. I like Heather. She’s different. I turn around and she’s naked, her back to me, opening a cupboard full of whips and vibrators. She reminds me of that posh bird after Horseferry Magistrates. She lies on the bed and tells me I’ll be fine in a couple of weeks. Mark and Rod are laughing on a television screen. They tell me she’s just another money grabber. In it for the dosh. That there’s good money in bed pans and shovelling shit. Cold hard currency.

  —Tom. You alright son? I jolt again. It hurts. My old man’s standing next to the bed. I look past him and it’s dark out. Must have been asleep for ages.

  I’ve got a depressed kind of hard-on under the covers because Heather’s turned out different to what I wanted, but I’m expected to perform. It disappears in seconds. Heather is forgotten as I get accustomed to the light. The old man’s got a pile of newspapers under his arm. Something to read, he says. A good draw in the next round. Home to Derby. He smiles a bit uncertain and sits down. Stands up again to take his coat off. Lays it across the bottom of the bed. He starts talking to me a bit nervous like, but his eyes are checking the bandages and bruises. After a while he gets used to the scenery and I don’t feel so awkward.

  —Your mum was going to come down with me, but we didn’t know how well you’d be, and she’s got some overtime tonight, but she’ll come along in a couple of days. We were here yesterday but you were sleeping, then we phoned up this morning and they said you’d be alright.

  The old man looks healthy. His eyes are burning like he’s been on the piss. Silly old sod probably thought I was going to snuff it or something. Suppose you worry a bit when it’s your kids. Least he knows not to go into any lectures or anything. Unable to move much you’ve got no chance getting away.

  —I spoke to a couple of the nurses and they said you’ll be good as new in two weeks. We heard from Gary Robson’s old man. Gary heard it off Rod. We got a bit worried at first. We thought you might die or something. It was a shock. Still, you don’t seem too bad. I mean, I know you’re not in perfect health and all that, but at least you’re not maimed or anything.

  For some reason I think he should be more upset. Don’t know why. A bit daft really. I mean, I don’t want a fuss or anything, and I’d prefer it if he didn’t come along at all, but now he’s here the least he could do is see that though I’m still alive I’ve been through the grinder and it’s going to take a while for the pain to go away. Mad I know, but these ideas spring up from fuck knows where and before you realise what’s happening you’re thinking gibberish. Must be the drugs. Dad stretches his legs out. He’s going to tell a story. Give me a few pearls of wisdom. Real father and son job.

  —There was this time when we were kids. Me and your Uncle Barry. We went down Acton to this Irish pub with a load of lads from the area. A couple of them had been in a bit of bother down there and these Paddies knocked one bloke’s teeth out with a hammer. We took the train down and had a drink in a pub round the corner. We knew what we were doing. We were in the pub for three hours and when we ca
me out we were raring for a punch-up.

  —We got to the Mick’s pub about closing time. They were coming out blind drunk. Real hard bastards they were. Navvies the lot of them. They beat the shit out of us. I got stabbed in the stomach and lost two pints of blood. I could have died but I survived. Someone got an ambulance and the hospital stitched me up. I remember the doctor. Indian he was. He said he was from West Bengal. There weren’t that many of them around then and he stood out. Looked a bit like Gandhi. It’s funny the things you remember. They’re good people.

  I look at the bloke a bit cockeyed. I’m surprised. Couldn’t imagine him doing the business like that. It’s not that I’m amazed those kind of things went on, and you always know your parents weren’t lily-white like they try to make out when you’re a kid growing up, but even so. I wonder what he’s telling me for now. Probably his way of saying that he understands. I don’t care if he does or doesn’t, but he keeps going. It’s all good stuff, and I’m interested now, but he doesn’t need to say anything. Some things don’t have to be said. Families and mates don’t need big speeches.

  —Then I was in the army. We were doing our basic training. It was down near Salisbury and it was hard work, but it toughened us up. There was this bloke from North London, Edmonton I think it was. He thought he was the king. He was a bit of a spiv but liked having a go at the boys who were easy targets. He tried it on with me once. He just went on all day, taking the piss. He said I had no guts. I was frightened of him. I don’t mind saying it, but by evening I’d had enough. Something in my head clicked. It was like I’d got a big dose of strength from somewhere. It’s like the stories you read in the papers about crack.

  —He went out of the barracks and was shining his boots round the back. I walked straight up behind him and put my knife across his throat. I had him in this lock they’d taught us in training. I nicked his throat with the knife and the blade was over his jugular. It was just like they taught us. I wanted to kill him but held back. If I could’ve got away with it I would have done it and been pleased, but I controlled myself. He started crying. I told him if he hassled me again he was a dead man. He was sobbing and said he didn’t want to die. He said he was sorry. I walked off and he never spoke to me again.