Maggie Gee - The White Family

The other side of football wasn’t nearly as much fun. Dad expected him to be a good footballer. On Sundays, he took him in the Park with a ball, when he was off-duty and his mates were on. ‘This is my youngest. We’ve come in for a kick-about. His elder brother played for Middlesex Juniors.’ On an average day it took Dad around thirty seconds to lose his temper. ‘Look what you’re doing! You kick it, you fool! Come on, Dirk. What’s the matter with you?’ Then he would dribble away on his own, dancing with the ball, showing off, Dirk would think. Or showing his workmates that he wasn’t like his son, that clumsiness didn’t run in the family.

These little outings didn’t last long. ‘You’re never going to be an athlete, are you?’ Dad had said in the end, one bright winter day when he’d shouted more than usual, and Dirk had begged to be allowed to go home. ‘Never mind, lad, we can’t all be winners.’ Although Dirk wanted it over, the weekly torment, it gave him a horrible, sickening feeling to hear that he would never be an athlete.

Failure left a shadow on the game. When Alfred next got tickets, he said, ‘I suppose you can watch it even if you can’t play it,’ and Dirk said, ‘No thanks, I’d rather watch TV.’ But he didn’t really mean it. He felt a bit better for at least ten minutes, but he missed standing there with his dad sucking chocolate, shoulder to shoulder, on the same side, howling at the enemy, yelling for their heroes.

As a teenager Dirk began to go with the lads. He didn’t much care about the football but he liked the buzz. All for one, one for all. An army of men who accepted him. Then sometimes when they took an end. Taking an end was the best feeling, when they drove the fans from the other side out of their favourite end of the stand. Just shoving on through, all fists and elbows, giving a good kicking to anyone who fell. A knee in the groin and they usually fell. When they took an end, then Dirk was a king.

But he’d hardly been to football for the last three years. Frigging George had stopped him. Always frigging ill. The frigging shop. He’d been a frigging slave, he’d been a frigging fool, an idiot –

Now he was free. He was free at last.

( He had nowhere to go. He was nothing, no one .)

Darren was a winner, unlike him.

It makes it harder for me, Dirk thought. My brother was a very good footballer. (I have to take that on trust, because I’ve never seen him. Being fifteen years older than me, of course. By the time I was old enough to have noticed he’d got too smart for it, hadn’t he? He was being very good at other things instead. But I heard about it. Oh, I heard about it. I’ve always heard about how good he is. When I went to secondary school there was a master who’d been stuck there for thirty years, he’d been there when it was a grammar school and Darren went there and won all the prizes and got a scholarship to sodding Oxford. All right, good for him, but a pain to me. Because old Plummer went on about Darren whenever he saw me. ‘You’ll never be the equal of your brother, White. Now there was a boy. Scholar, athlete.’)

Scholar, athlete ! What a wanker! Fuck off!

Which is not to knock my brother, of course. I’m proud of Darren. Course I am. And now he’s come back, we can really be brothers. He’ll stick around. We’ll hang out together.

He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t like you. He thinks you’re a pain, like everyone else … ‘ You’ll never be the equal of your brother, White.’

You’ll never be the equal of your father, Dirk .

Dirk took another swig from the can in his pocket to keep the hateful little voices away.

‘Oi, Dirk,’ yelled Ozzie. ‘Give us some of that.’

‘There y’are, mate.’

Ozzie was standing on the seat of the train, trying to freak out the girl sitting opposite, a stuck-up bitch in a tiny cream miniskirt who’d hidden her twitchy little nose in a book.

He’s a great guy, Ozzie. Everybody likes him.

Well, nobody likes him that much. But I do.

I think he’s great. He’s a real laugh, Ozzie. He comes from Australia. He’s got a broken nose. People pick on him because he’s six feet four. He’s got a good body. Muscly, hard. His family didn’t want to know him, and so he came here to work in England. He worked for a removals firm until this midget started picking on him, calling him a racist, et cetera, et cetera, just ’cos Ozzie’s got a bit of a crewcut and occasionally wears a Union Jack t-shirt. I mean everyone sometimes wears a Union Jack t-shirt.

If they’ve got one, granted. So a lot of people haven’t, but thousands of people have got short hair. Why should it be racist to get a haircut? Why should it be racist to show the flag?

What’s bloody wrong with being pro-British? You had to be pro-British, in the last war. Then it was OK to be patriotic.

When Dad got going on a subject like that, it was wonderful to hear him. Dad knew facts.

He has to get better. I’d be lost without him.

Ozzie is offering that blond bint my drink. Says she doesn’t want it, does she, bitch? Not good enough for her. Well I bloody want it. I bloody want it, so don’t give it to that —

‘Ozzie, mate. I’d like that back. That tart doesn’t need it. Give it over —’

And he chucks it, doesn’t he. Joking, like. Just having a laugh, meaning no harm, but it sprays all over the slapper’s skirt, which was made of pale leather, like a whatsit, pelmet, the silly little thing at the top of the curtains. And she starts screaming, though nobody touched her, God’s my witness, we didn’t even touch her!

So then this animal sitting behind us — and nobody had been talking to him, it was none of his business, but he wanted to make trouble — and he was old, which makes it worse, he was probably forty, with a suit and tie — gets up and comes and stands in front of Ozzie and tells him to apologize.

Ozzie was provoked. So he gets him by the tie.

Then suddenly all hell breaks loose, everyone is picking on Ozzie and me and Terry and Flick, all these barmy old guys, all ganging up with the one with the tie on and going at us as if we were making trouble! They got Flick on the floor before he had a chance to get his knife out, and at the next station they sort of rolled him out the door, then pushed us after him.

The injustice! We’d paid our fare! For once we had paid our fare in full! Six of them, there were, all on to us, and the women screaming rude names as well, it was like the whole carriage was against us! It took a bit of time for them to shove us out. I had got my fingers up one old guy’s nostrils, and tears were streaming down his face, that served him right for treating us like dirt, my whole fucking life I’ve been treated like dirt …

( Dirt White that’s who you are Dirt White .)

I was kneeling on the platform as the train went out. Shaking my fist at the people in our carriage.

You wouldn’t believe the way they were going on. All sort of smiling and patting each other. I swear they’d never met each other before. Now they were thick as anything, through kicking us out!

We had to wait twenty minutes for the next one. So we got to the Gate late. It wasn’t our fault. With a load of other stragglers who I must admit I might have had my doubts about, two of them coloured, but Hillesden supporters, so I didn’t have a go at them –

The bastards wouldn’t let us in. I had good money. I had fucking earned it, I earned it the hard way, but they wouldn’t even look at it. ‘No tickets, no admittance, that’s the rule,’ the bastard told me, smug as anything. ‘You need a photocard and a pre-paid ticket. How long is it since you last went to a game?’