Visiting Mrs. Nabokov: And Other Excursions (6 page)

Esquire, 1987

WATFORD IN CHINA

In 1983 Watford Football Club paid an off-season visit to China. A modest, obscure, suburban team, Watford were newcomers to the higher ranks of the sport — where they have not remained. Their controversial 'long-ball' game (the mid-field punt towards the big blokes in the opposition's penalty area) lifted them from the Third Division to the First. Star player: John Barnes (now of Liverpool). Manager: Graham Taylor (now of England). Chairman: Elton John.

Fearing the worst — and hoping for the best possible copy — I expected Watford to play the China card. That is to say, I expected half the squad to play pontoon and drink beer in their hotel rooms, while the other half would play pontoon and drink beer out by the pool. I expected the players to eat steak and chips, do
Sun
crosswords and make frequent calls home, to the wife, the girlfriend, the agent and the bookie. I expected the team's only cultural concession to their historic tour would be the odd racist taunt, the occasional self-destructive experiment with rice wine, and one or two requests for a Chinese takeaway. How would these stormy individualists fare, how would they cope, in the unsmiling termitary of Red China?

Wearing a Billy Bunter suit, a banded boater, purple sunglasses and a diamond earring, Chairman Elton John gazed down fondly at his proteges. Kippered and sallowed by the twenty-hour flight, in regulation blazers, flannels and club ties, the players impassively awaited their baggage in the chaotic kiln of Peking Airport. For a moment they looked far more inscrutable and regimented than the quacking Chinese who bustled about them ... I knew then that all my expectations were misplaced. And so it proved.

The Press has often been blamed for the poor image of footballers and football in general. There
is
a tacit conspiracy in Fleet Street - but it is a conspiracy of silence. The world of the athlete — where unnurtured youth is confronted by adulation and money — provides opportunities for yahooism rivalled only in the rock-music business (of which more later). Off the field, and especially away from home, footballers behave so outrageously that it's a full-time job looking the other way.

And yet, one by one, the Watford squad approached the Hall of Preserving Harmony, peered into the Pavilion of Universal Tranquillity and passed through the Gate of Benevolence and Longevity. Somewhat reluctant, homesick and disorientated, they broached the Forbidden City, and emerged as creditable ambassadors.

The man responsible for this, as for so much else at Watford, is the manager Graham Taylor. Six years ago Watford were a nothing club in the dregs of the Football League. Elton John, a fan since his schooldays in Pinner, took over the chairmanship, injected a good deal of money (the usual estimate is £1.6 million) and hired Taylor from Lincoln City. In 1983 Watford finished runners-up to Liverpool in the First Division. But Taylor wants more than success from his players: he wants to form them as individuals. It is a little-known fact, for instance, that the Watford team are contractually obliged to do seven hours of community work each week. Footballers are often no more than chattels to their clubs; and when the game is finished with them, they blunder out into the world like stranded adolescents. But Watford remains a paternalistic, smalltown outfit, as I saw for myself. The stands and terraces are dotted with women and children, not with National Fronters and bald hooligans. Compared to most other grounds in the First Division, Vicarage Road is a vicarage tea-party.

The day after our arrival Watford turned out for a joint training session at the Workers' Stadium, the 80,000-seater where they would play China the following night, the first of two meetings with the national side. Taylor was wearing full strip and throwing off as much sweat as anyone in the ninety-degree heat. 'Work! One touch and go!
Give
it. Go.
Give
it. Go.' Stocky, grinning, intense, Taylor puts his men through their hoops with a spurring candour, a flattering brutality. There is intimacy in his bellowed orders: he is the canny schoolmaster who knows your vanities and soft-spots, who forces you beyond your limits and then sues for peace with a slap on the back. Taylor told me that he had had to gear himself to use the hefty obscenities of the footballing idiom — that he wasn't accustomed to 'the industrial language' that is the language of the game. Well, he seems accustomed to it now, jovially effing and blinding as he stokes his players to the boil.

Elton John (also present, in Humpty Dumpty outfit, baseball cap and purple shades) would later admit that it was Taylor who had saved him from the traditional immolation of the rockstar life. Elton had showed up to a Watford match, looking more like Big Ears than usual, and bearing all the signs of bodily abuse. Taylor summoned him to his house that night and offered him a pint glass brimmed with brandy. 'Here. Are you going to drink that? What the fuck's the
matter
with you?' Elton mended his ways, and not before time. All superstars, it seems, must get off the fast lane before they crash. Some find religion, some find family life. But Elton has found Watford F.C. He delights in his team; and he also enjoyed the anonymity of China, where his music is unknown and he is no more than an exotic curiosity, like a video game or a Beefeater. Only the tourists recognised him.

As Taylor set about exhausting the China goalkeeper ('Catch and roll. Catch and roll. Again. Again. Again.'), I strolled across the pitch and talked to Shen Xiang-fu, the team's number eleven and major star. In what looked like size-two boots, with his square, vigilant face (and with that strange, glassy distance between eye-surface and lid), Shen answered all questions with the same laconic caution.

He was unmarried, like all the China players. He was a student and instructor at the Peking Sports Institute. He earned 75 yuan a month (£25, a fraction above the national average) plus 20 more for dietary expenses (steak, butter). Did he enjoy travelling with the team? Yes, he did. Would he like to play in England one day? Yes, he would. Which British players did he admire? This time the response was immediate: 'Cheega!' The interpreter looked at me helplessly, but I knew who this must be: none other than Keegan Kevin. I told Shen how much Keegan earned in a month. He giggled — in embarrassment, as an Englishman might giggle at the sudden mention of sex — and then reassumed his blank and watchful stare.

That night Watford dined at the Great Hall of the People, where their quivering chopsticks negotiated the usual menu of fish stomachs, sea-slugs and ancient eggs. Lustrously dinner-jacketed, Elton John was introduced as 'the world's greatest superstar' by the General Secretary of the China FA. Elton did his stuff, very nicely, and silver salvers and plastic footballs were exchanged. When it comes to banqueting, the Chinese have something else to teach the West: speeches come first, at which stage sobriety and greed can be relied upon to keep them short.

The star guest at my table was the manager of the Workers' Stadium. (His groundsman was seated at the next table along.) He looked like a handsome Thai pirate out of a documentary about the Boat People. From accounts of the West Bromwich Albion tour of China in 1978, I had gathered that the Peking football crowds were as hushed and respectful as a first-night audience at Covent Garden. No 'oooooh, wanky wanky'. No 'you'll ne
AGH
ver walk alone'. I asked the chainsmoking,
mao-tei
-quaffing bigwig about this, and his reply was reassuringly serene.

That's right - Chinese crowds do not indulge in partisanship, and why should they? If your team is winning, you're happy. If your team is losing, you're even happier — because the superior team is schooling you for the future. I wondered how this line would go down with the Anfield Kop, say, as Liverpool trailed 0-4 to an Albanian eleven in the European Cup. How thrilled were the Chinese, I asked, when their team so narrowly failed to qualify for the World Cup in 1982? But my interlocutor's face had closed and hardened. He was as relieved as I was when a voice abruptly announced: 'That's all for the banquet. Goodnight!'

From the outset the Watford Group had been split into three parties, each served by its own coach and guide: Players, Directors and Tourists. This last contingent was made up of businessmen associated with the various club sponsors, and included a cadre of epic drinkers (known as the Gang of Four) who were clearly destined to become the true heroes of the long march. Due to some administrative whim - or to Taylor's protectiveness of his players - it was with the Tourists that the small Press corps was initially billeted.

So while Watford repaired to the luxurious mosque of the Fragrant Hill Hotel, I took my chances at the musty Yan Jing on one of the great avenues of downtown Peking. Here in the bar, the Gang of Four began its nightly skit on the comic Britisher abroad. Soon their table was a float of dead beer bottles. The volume, treble and bass controls all turned steadily upwards. They sang songs, and verbally goosed the passing girls. Thus did they strive to convince themselves that they were not in a coffee shop in Fu Xing Street but in the Butcher's Arms back home.

On the way to the match, through the half-industrialised loops of urban Peking, a Tourist paused in his passionate accompaniment to 'My Way' on the coach Muzak system and said, in a tone of grieved bewilderment, 'Look at the state of that excavator. Where is the maintenance? Where is it?' But there were other things to catch the eye. The crowd, as it approached the Workers' Stadium, resembled an entire ecology on the move: squirming busloads, open lorries from the outlying factories carrying their human freight, the furtive touts at the intersections, and 50,000 bicycles soon to be stacked like forks at the stadium gates. (The match would have been a sell-out twenty or thirty times over, and was being televised live to an audience of 350 million.) We disembarked on the trampled concourse and writhed through the crush. It was only when I reached my seat that I realised, with another kind of disquiet, how little menace such massed humanity could generate.

But during the game the anthill buzzed. Despite the squawked chidings from Big Sister on the PA system, there were regular cries of 'Suit! Suit!' (shoot),
'shou-qiu'
(handball), even a cautious chant (translated for me as 'More grease! More grease!' — more fuel, more work), as well as the ceaseless groundswell of coughed and spluttered comment: Ay! Tsk! Ayuh!
Eehyahah!

The female voice-over sounded scandalised. 'The Department of Public Security asks the audience on Platform 20 to sit down . . . Strive to become a peaceful and civilised audience.' But the applause for the Watford goals, when they came, was immediate, spontaneous, containing a hint of stoic humility. From then on, moments of weird silence punctuated the game, and you could hear Taylor's hoarse ballockings from the bench — 'Hit the goal, Nigel! BE ACCURATE!' — right across the length of the field.

Weakened by the heat, and by the absence of their four key players (still on domestic duty in the Home Internationals), Watford struggled to contain the swift and skilful Chinese — particularly my pal Shen Xiang-fu, who ran them ragged on the right. A sun-helmeted Elton quit his throne in the stands and frolicked on the pitch as Watford plodded off, 3-1 winners. They could have lost 3-4, as Taylor was quick to admit. 'Do not molest or beat up the performers or referees,' cautioned the loudspeaker. As the tame multitude quietly siphoned itself into the night, the advice sounded unnecessary, even sarcastic. It would sound deeply pertinent after the return match, but that was still a week distant, by which time the mood of the crowd would inexplicably worsen.

The easiest way to get to know the players, I reckoned, was to get to know their nicknames - not for my personal use so much as to shine a light into the dark frat-house which all teams erect around themselves. A footballer's nickname takes any of three forms: a handy diminutive of the surname (as in Greavesy, Mooro, Besty, etc); a TV tie-in based on some fancied resemblance to a small-screen star; plus a third alias of a physical, usually offensive tendency. The players showed a cunning readiness to fill me in, and I was especially indebted to David Johnson, the reserve player whose almost ludicrous charm has long established him as the team mascot.

Goalkeeper Steve Sherwood is called Shirley or Concorde ('because of his nose'). His deputy Eric Steele is called Steeley or Hadley (TV tie-in). Captain and senior player Pat Rice goes under the names of Ricey, Stoneface, Anvil Head and Father Time. Wilf Rostron - Wilfy, The Dwarf. Steve Terry - The Big M, Frankenstein. Richard Jobson, or Jobbo, is remorselessly teased about his effeminate good looks: aka Curlers and Boy George. Paul Franklin — Gower (after David Gower). Ian Bolton - Webby ('he's got webbed feet'). Jan Lohman, who is Dutch, is called Herman (the German), Adolf, and Psycho ('because he's barmy. He is. He's mental'). Nigel Callaghan - Cally, Stump ('his hair') and Beaver ('his teeth'). Les Taylor — Little Legs or Rampant. Ian Richardson — Richo or Shaky (non-existent resemblance to Shakin' Stevens). Steve Sims, Simsy, is called Plug. 'No I'm not,' he said. 'They call me Male Model.' 'No we don't. We call him Plug.'

The nicknames of the four internationals I learned later. They are more respectful in timbre, but only marginally so. Kenny Jackett: Jackdaw or Chinaman (because of his sloped eyes — he was guyed about this almost as much as Rice was guyed about rice). Gerry Armstrong: Your Man ('Your what?' I asked. 'Yuhmahn.' 'Your what?' 'Yuh
mahn
.' 'Sorry. Your what?' 'Jesus Christ. Y,E,R,M,O,N'). Luther Blissett: Luth or Black Flash. John Barnes: Barnesy, Digger (TV tie-in:
Dallas's
Digger Barnes) and Caramac (a reference to the light-hued chocolate bar). As for David Johnson himself: 'They call me DJ. Or Abdul. Or Gupta - that's G,u,p,t,a. Or Elephant Boy. Anything to do with Africa.'

But were Watford having anything to do with China? The day after the match they tackled the Great Wall. The section open to tourists splays off in two excitingly steep ascents, and the players confronted the challenge as a macho hangover cure. 'Gor. I hope the Boss doesn't use this for pre-season training,' said a player, from beneath the antennae of his Sony Walkman. Elton puffed his way to the top in his Humpty Dumpty suit, his startling pallor unaffected by the heat. It was left to one of the Gang of Four to leave a distinctive calling-card on the only human artefact visible from outer space: he vomited down the parapet, as over a ship's side.