The Football Factory

by John King

  We’re outside the Holte End and nothing’s happening. There’s no Villa mob in sight and even the groups of three or four young lads hanging around look like the last thing on their minds is a row. We walk back the way we came with Villa fans hurrying the other way. They’re real Brummies this lot with their dodgy gear and accents. It’s obvious we’re ready for a bit of conflict, but for something to happen you’ve got to have opposition. We’re up here for the day, all the way from London, ready and willing, but there’s no-one worth steaming. We’re walking up and down the street outside their ground and it’s up to them to do the business. They should be having a go at us. We need a Villa firm to make things work. These cunts around us with their programmes and rip-off club shirts don’t count.

  —Don’t know what’s the matter with them. Harris is laughing because if you make an appearance there’s nothing more you can do. You’ve done your bit and it’s the other side that looks bad.

  —There’s a few pubs round the back of the away end, says Billy Bright. Let’s take a stroll down there. See if we can flush the wankers out.

  —They’ll be shut up, says Mark. Worth a try though.

  We turn through a set of gates leading to the away end. There’s a mesh fence with a crowd of people peering through waiting to see the players. I hate that kind of thing. Real hero worship. I mean, I support the team and everything, but I don’t want to talk to the players. At least not through a fence with my tongue hanging out like a demented polar bear in the zoo, like the players are something better than me. You get enough of that during the week. It’s bollocks and we keep going through a small car park and down to the away entrance. Suddenly it’s all Chelsea and it’s good how you just walk round a ground and the people all have a different accent and way of dressing.

  —Down here. There’s a couple of pubs at the bottom of the street. Billy Bright plays the Pied Piper and leads the way.

  There’s a transit with a riot shield across the window full of old bill. They watch us pass in silence. Make no move to interfere. We’re going against the flow of Chelsea coming the other way. It’s sunny out, but cold as well, and the area around the ground is dead. No character till we come to a stone pub on the corner which is closed and then a junction that’s more Midlands depression, crumbling in front of our eyes. There’s a pub across the street with a couple of police horses and a transit van parked outside. There’s the sign HOME FANS ONLY in the window. Now and then some cunt in an anorak knocks on the door and goes inside. It’s not exactly going to be a major Villa firm inside so we take a wander. There’s nothing. All the pubs are closed and there’s no Villa in sight. We’ve done our best and turn back to the ground for the kick-off. Have to admit I didn’t expect much. We have to queue for ten minutes and there’s some kid copper explaining that having too much to drink before the game means you’re pissed and not allowed to watch the football.

  I get a cup of tea inside and we sit in small plastic seats waiting for the match to start. Villa are singing in the Holte End but Chelsea always give it some good vocals when we play away. It’s all end to end stuff which warms us up and takes Rod’s mind off Mandy’s missing period. I start thinking about this bird I went out with when I was a kid. Two years it was before I found out she was knocking off some bloke from Kilburn. Claire thought she was in the club one time and I made the mistake of telling Mark, who passed the news on. Soon I was getting the piss ripped out of me left, right and centre. She was black and they were giving me stick asking what the kid was going to look like, whether it was going to come out half man, half baboon.

  I was shitting it because I didn’t want to be a father at fifteen and they were trying to ease the agony with a bit of humour. It turned out alright in the end because she came on and we went out and got pissed on snakebite. We were out of it and I shagged her in the back of some car we broke into and the next morning I was red as a beetroot. She was alright Claire, really into the old music and that, and became a dancer when she grew up. She moved out of the area years ago and went up to North London. Moved in with some kebab merchant. She was one of those birds who if you met her twenty years later you’d probably end up staying with. I remind Rod about Claire to get him looking on the bright side.

  —She was a cracker, he says. Well tasty.

  —I’d have fucked that if I’d had the chance, Mark joins in.

  —Fit body on her. She made a bomb as a dancer, didn’t she?

  Chelsea break clear of the Villa defence and we’re on our feet. The ball hits the net and we’re jumping up and down going mental and Claire and Mandy are forgotten. It’s a good game of football and when the ref blows the whistle at the end we leave happy. The dark’s starting to come now and we’re going back across the park with a good chunk of the crowd. Billy Bright stands against a tree having a slash and a woman coming the other way looks at him like he’s committing a major league crime. He flashes at her and she runs off.

  The coach is waiting and we’re ready for the trip back to London, planning a stop in Northampton. The kids guarding cars are still there, but don’t look like they’re doing much business. Times are hard and those at the bottom of the pile are always first to feel the pinch. Harris has slipped the driver twenty quid to stop in Northampton so everything’s sweet. We move slowly through football traffic. Once we get to the motorway we’re off with everything moving nicely. Should be in a Northampton pub within an hour or so. Now the game’s over Rod sits frozen looking out the window watching the world pass in the opposite direction.

  —Phone Mandy when we get to Northampton. Mark is sitting next to Black Paul, leaning over the seat. She’ll have come on by now. She’s got you worried so she’ll start bleeding.

  —I’ll phone her but I’m not holding my breath.

  We’re soon pulling off the motorway and stopping at a pub we’ve used several times before. We’re straight inside lining up the drinks. Rod fucks off to the phone. I watch him and he looks like he’s talking but comes back and says there’s no answer. He’s been chatting with himself. Mandy must be round her mum’s, but there again she could be doing a Claire. You can never trust a bird because they give it the big one about honesty and everything, then soon as you turn your back their pants hit the floor and they’ve got their ankles digging in some other bloke’s arse.

  —I fucking need this, says Rod, lifting the glass to his lips. Beautiful.

  —That’ll sort you out. Black Paul is next to him drinking orange juice. It’s thirsty work waiting for women to get their act together.

  —Why don’t you drink then?

  —Don’t have problems with women. Treat them like shit and they love you. Give them a bit of leeway and they’ll take liberties. It’s a fucking war.

  —Mandy’s alright. She’s straight. Solid.

  —She might be, but what about you? Mark joins in. A few beers in your belly and you’re sniffing round anything that moves.

  —It’s different. It doesn’t count.

  —How’s that then?

  —Don’t know, it’s just different somehow. I know I don’t mean it I suppose. It’s just the alcohol taking charge.

  —You drink it in the first place, says Paul coming on like a fucking agony aunt. You want the effect otherwise you wouldn’t get pissed. You go to football and you lay off it because you know you’ll get out of hand. Go out in the evening when you’re socialising and you don’t give a fuck.

  —I don’t know. You can’t think about these things too much.

  —It’s war. Just remember that. But it’s a psychological war. Lift a hand to a woman and she’ll never forget it. You can treat them like shit, but show respect when you’re doing it. Lose your temper and it means they’ve got under your skin.

  —Paul’s right in a way, says Mark. Getting pissed is no excuse. Everyone says it is, but it’s a bottle job. But who needs an excuse in the first place?

  Rod gets the drinks in and we’re knocking them back fast. After five pints Rod
goes over to the phone and tries again. I watch the bloke and know he’s not talking to himself any more. There’s a big grin on his face. Ear to ear job. Real Joker effort. He puts the receiver down and comes back. He’s got a result and Mandy’s got a Tampax earning its keep. He clenches his fist like he’s just scored a goal.

  —One-nil. Came on this afternoon.

  —Told you it would be okay. You shouldn’t worry.

  —I know. But you do, don’t you? You just see your life going down the bog with the used rubbers. You know you’ll never fuck off out of London or do anything different with your life, just keep on going till the day you die, but you like to have the option. Kids stop all that.

  —Depends how you look at it, says Harris. I’ve got two kids myself. It doesn’t change anything. It’s all in the mind, like everything else. I see them twice a week and everything’s okay. I wouldn’t swap them for anything, even though me and their mum don’t live together these days. We get on alright and the kids are the most important thing in your life once you have them.

  I look at Harris a bit different. I’d never have guessed it, but that’s not unusual. You see some blokes at football and you’ll only ever know some of them one way. Then they melt into everyday life. They don’t walk around with a sign round their neck telling everyone they’re the hooligan element or anything. They’ve got their jobs and their loves, though that’s not to say they’re saints. Football is just a focus, a way of channelling things. If there was no football we’d find something else. Probably be a lot more indiscriminate as well. The aggression’s got to get out some way and the authorities know the score and want you signed up, standing to attention killing Arabs or Paddies or whoever’s flavour of the month on their behalf.

  —I’m a free man, says Rod. I feel like I’ve been let out of the nick. Ready to pass go and collect my cheque.

  —No you don’t. Mark speaks up. That’s something you’ve got to go through to understand. It’s a different thing being inside, like nothing else. Take my word for it.

  —You know what I mean.

  The night passes quickly and we’re hammered by ten. The coach driver says he’s leaving at eleven. We’re trying to persuade the cunt to stay on, to come along to this club we know, but he’s not interested. Says he’s got a wife and kids at home waiting for him. We’re undecided, not fancying the hassle of trying to get back to London at three in the morning. Rod makes the decision. Says he fancies a bit of bloodsport when he gets home. It’s the man’s night so we let him have the final word. He tells us to drink up. We’ve still got another hour till we head back to London.

  ASHES TO ASHES

  A cheerful young man said a few words, the mourners sang a song of remembrance without musical accompaniment, and the deceased’s remains were sent below to melt into nothingness. Mr Farrell caught his line of thought, stopped it dead. It wasn’t emptiness but a new beginning; if that’s what Albert Moss really believed, then why not? He had no deep-rooted faith of his own and doubted whether his Spiritualist friend would have trusted in a greater, all-loving creator if he’d been inside a concentration camp, but that was the democratic way.

  With Albert’s corpse went visions of Mrs Farrell. Her husband was finally at rest; one day he would visit the headstone, read the inscription he had chosen after much careful thought and days of indecision, then trim and arrange her favourite red and white carnations. He saw flesh slowly rotting, skin sucked into itself and wrinkles exaggerated, below ground with the sewage pipes and broken bones. A shudder passed through his body, starting at the shoulders and racing down to his feet, forcing him to lean forward in his pew. Nobody paid attention. They just saw an old man expressing his grief.

  When the congregation filed out of the chapel, Mr Farrell stayed behind, sitting with his head in his hands. Tears trickled beneath strong fingers but didn’t reach his lips. He hadn’t cried properly since he was a child, though he couldn’t remember even that, and he wasn’t exactly sobbing now. He was sad but at the same time relieved. He remained solid for a long while, flashbacks coming in bursts then slowly melting away, the stacked corpses and rotting bodies of his army experience swamped by happy memories; family and friends and a pride in his role in the war.

  While others his age fumed at antagonists who had only ever known peace, Mr Farrell just didn’t care. Perhaps Bomber Harris had been wrong about Dresden. There was no glory in fireballs and burning human beings, how could there be, yet he couldn’t see what could be gained attacking pensioners who had done what they thought best. They had been kids at the time. Teenagers in uniforms. But he marvelled at the spiral of history, rewritten and revised and turned inside-out. He was living history, for as long as his memory held, and he would be dead in a few years, perhaps sooner. Then it would be left to books to tell the story secondhand.

  Eventually Mr Farrell stood up and pushed through the weakness, because that was all tears could ever be. His sex and class meant he was denied the right to act soft, to shed tears and openly mourn. That was for the privileged, with time on their hands and a need for excessive psychology. He wasn’t complaining, because you needed an inner strength to get through life, the ability to face everything and come out on top. The weak sank into depression, names unknown and reason lost. Perhaps he’d been on the brink himself, suffering hallucinations and seeing his wife where she couldn’t possibly exist, hearing her voice in his head, allowing himself to drift towards Albert’s way of thinking. But he was finished with all that now. She was dead.

  He didn’t care for religious ceremony or images, the only reality body fat melting in intense heat, bubbling up and dripping from the oven, turning to stone. Deep down he envied Albert his Spiritualism, yet could never become immersed himself. Belief was ingrained. If a person created their own afterlife then who was to say it wouldn’t come true; like wishing on a star. Time was the crux and while the past was reinvented daily it was too hard an exercise for him to follow at his age, all the bickering back and forward, the future an easier and more positive option.

  —How was it? Vince asked, his grandfather opening the passenger door and getting into the car.

  —A funeral’s a funeral, though this one was better than most because there was no organ player going through the motions and hitting all the wrong notes, and they kept the speech short. At least there wasn’t the fuss of your gran’s burial. I remember everything like it was yesterday. The organ blasting away out of tune and echoing through my head driving me mad. Then the vicar rabbiting on about someone he’d never met, not even knowing she was born a Jew in Budapest and died an atheist in London, that she was a million miles beyond his forgiveness and taking a plot in his graveyard. I swear if he’d gone on much longer I’d have swung for him.

  Vince Matthews nodded his head, not knowing what to say. He turned on the ignition and pulled to the edge of the road, looking for a way into the traffic. The old boy’d had a rough time of things since his wife died, but seemed to be pulling through now. He found a gap and put his foot down, leaving the crematorium behind as quick as possible. The lights were rolling in his favour and before long they were cutting along beneath the Chiswick Flyover gunning towards Kew.

  —You should come out to Australia when I get set up over there, Vince said. Give me a few months to get things going then come and stay for as long as you want. I’ll get work no problem, I know enough people, and we can drive into the outback and see the sights. It’s relaxed and you don’t have to worry about politics and getting mugged, or how much the council’s going to tax you next month.

  —I could have gone years ago you know. A mate of mine emigrated after the war and wanted me to try my hand, but I didn’t fancy it somehow. Mind you, maybe I’ll take you up on the offer, though it’ll cost a bit to get over there. I didn’t know what was going to happen after the war. It was an exciting time in its own way, coming out of something like that with all your limbs and half your mind left, then after a while the relief just turned to s
adness. There was no help in those days. Nobody you could go and talk to about what you’d seen and done, and your gran was such a mess after everything that happened to her. You got through it though. You had no choice. It was either that or the madhouse. Maybe we were stronger then, I don’t know. Not like you nancies today with your counselling and social workers.

  They both laughed. Vince wondered if he’d killed anyone during the war, but would never ask. Even as a kid he had known enough not to put the question. That would be hard to handle, even though it was war and a fight for survival. He thought about the punch-ups he’d been involved in when he was younger. He couldn’t link the two characters even though he was the same person. If he got himself in the situation he would fight for survival, but he preferred overseas travel to a trip up to Liverpool or Manchester. Losing his head over a bang lassi was better than a two o’clock kicking outside some dodgy club with your eyes bleary from the drink and your brain about to get another pounding from some nutter out to do you serious damage.

  —I’ll pay your flight over, don’t worry about that. You’ve done enough for me in the past, when I was a kid and all that. You just get yourself down Heathrow and enjoy the ride. Don’t let me down either. Mum and Dad said they’d be over but you come on your own and we’ll have a good laugh. You drive out in the desert over there and there’s nothing to see but sand and the horizon, burning mountain ranges the Aborigines say are sleeping animals that created the world. It does something to your head. There’s no crowd mentality in the desert, just kangaroos and maybe some Aborigines out in the heat living the dreamtime.

  —It’ll be my second youth, let alone childhood, my first time abroad since 1945. I’ve never been on a plane you know. They say it’s an experience, a bit better than jumping out of a landing craft with German machine-gunners trying to cut you in half if you get to the beach and a bastard of a sergeant at your back with a machine-gun threatening to chop you down if you don’t get out quick enough. It was like that, you know, because if you didn’t shift you risked the other blokes as well as yourself.