Crusaders

by Richard T. Kelly

  Undaunted, the tyke grasped the edges of his page and held it up for inspection. ‘I done this. It’s mint, everyone says.’

  Monica tilted her head at him, in the manner of the prosecuting counsel. ‘Did teacher tell you to come show me?’

  ‘Naw, man. Everyone says, but.’

  ‘Why then get you back to class this minute. And it’s “No, Mrs Bruce.”’

  The boy stood stock-still, lower lip jutting yet further.

  ‘Well, get on with you. Don’t you dare get the huff with me, young man.’

  His chin and brow fell – then he glared up anew at the adults, with a vehemence Gore thought almost unnerving. A strangled cry came out of him and he ran at Monica’s lectern, shoving it with both hands. It teetered and fell before their startled eyes.

  ‘Right!’ Monica lunged at the boy, who somehow sidestepped her. Gore hazarded a helpful move in their direction, but the boy was ducking his head down as if to charge, and thus he ran, hard and headlong into Gore’s groin. Pained, Gore just about managed to get his hands onto squirming small shoulders and pull the boy into his grasp before Monica marched up, furious, and he released him to her.

  ‘Your mother’ll hear about this, won’t she? You think she’ll be pleased? Do you?’ She wrenched the boy’s arm and began to drag him away, calling back over her shoulder. ‘You’s stop here, I’ll send the caretaker.’

  Massaging his abdomen, Gore bent down and plucked Jake Clark’s drawing from the floor. It was a black-paint mural of a hulking man-beast – a giant, comically proportioned, with a smaller, geeky stick of a creature by his side. Above the figures was a script in a wildly looping, childish hand:

  Monica’s caretaker, a surly youth in jeans, directed the visitors without fuss to a walk-in storage cupboard. Ten feet by ten, windowless, the space was overfilled with stacked plastic chairs and boxes on shelves. Gore withdrew his notebook. Ridley put on his motoring spectacles. ‘Well,’ the older man pronounced, ‘I count eighty chairs, and I daresay that’ll do you. We don’t get that many at St Mark’s on a Sunday.’

  ‘Don’t you think, but – it’s going to need more? In the way of … I don’t know, decor? Trappings. Stuff to make an atmosphere.’

  ‘We’re Protestants, aren’t we? We don’t need palaver.’

  ‘Well, we need more than this, Jack.’ Gore shook his head. ‘Something. Even if it has to be begged or borrowed.’

  ‘Or pinched,’ said Ridley, deadpan. ‘Don’t forget pinched.’ Gore smiled as he dabbled an idle hand into an open box-load of New English Prayer Books. Ridley sniffed. ‘We’ll be wanting the Book of Common Prayer, surely?’

  ‘I can’t afford to buy new. This is a shoestring production.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got your piano at least. For your hymns.’

  ‘Hmm. I wonder, though. Do we really need them? Hymns?’

  ‘You’re joking, aren’t you, John? People aren’t going to show up just to hear you natter. They’ll want a tune.’

  ‘If they turn up.’

  ‘Divvint be soft.’

  Gore’s spirits, though, were meagre. What sort of a church could this amount to? It felt more like amateur dramatics, the humdrum worries of set dressing and helping hands and ticket sales. A crisis of legitimacy was on the horizon and here they were, he and his churchwarden, grubbing about in a dusty closet.

  ‘I don’t know, Jack.’ He sighed. ‘I’m feeling – out of practice here.’

  ‘Well,’ Ridley coughed. ‘I should say. Spiking telt us he’s planning on giving you a go or two in his pulpit? St Mark’s? Just to keep you in nick ’til you’re ready to go here. A christening, he said. Or a funeral, maybe, summat you can’t mess up for him.’

  Gore, having listened with interest, winced.

  ‘Them’s his words, not mine,’ said Ridley, looking away.

  *

  In all the reconnaissance consumed more hours than Gore had expected, and he was ready to make haste for home when Ridley suggested they adjourn to a suitable nearby pub for a quiet pint. He didn’t think it politic to spurn any more of the older man’s apparently friendly gestures, and so let him lead the way down Hoxheath Road in the sfumato of dusk.

  As they skirted the Crossman Estate, Ridley seemed almost to avert his eyes, shaking his head as they passed the Gunnery pub. ‘Nowt good comes out of there.’ Fifty yards further on, he nodded to himself. ‘We’ll cut through here, eh? The Lord Nelson’s on the other side.’ They turned into a long alley running behind blocks of redbrick housing on the Scoular Estate, and rounding a corner they came upon a grim concrete quadrangle under yellow sodium light – a playground with swings, roundabout, see-saw and sandpit. But it was an overgrown mob of teenagers who perched on and around the swings, nursing tins of drink, a large plastic bottle being passed around. Some sort of ruction was in progress too. Gore grew wary as he and Ridley drew near. A blonde girl in a ragged-hemmed denim skirt, and her bloke – carelessly bare-chested, lean and muscled if pasty – were cursing one another over who did what to who and when.

  ‘Ah said, neebody fancies your rotten cunt.’

  Gore saw Ridley flinch as if struck – recognised, too, one of the boys in the pack, with whom he had cheerfully kicked a ball that very morning. Mackers? The boy at least had the grace to look sheepish, electric-blue beer can snug in his fist. But they were nearly through the trouble-spot, and Gore wished only to leave it well behind.

  ‘Watch that language, you lot,’ Ridley barked as they passed.

  ‘Fuck off, y’owld fucker.’

  Gore was resolved to keep walking. Ridley, small mercy, did not stop to quarrel.

  ‘Oi, you, I’m not finished wi’ you.’

  It took Gore some nervy seconds to be certain the shouted challenge was only the resumption of hostilities behind them.

  ‘You fuck off, I fuckin’ hate you.’

  ‘Pack it in, Jason man.’

  Then a shriek, and Gore and Ridley turned as one. The blonde girl had been thrown onto her backside, legs in the air, helpless as a ladybug, a streak of white underwear visible. Her bare-skin bloke strutted round her, clearly delighted, and disinclined to help her to her feet. Gore decided in a flash that this could not be permitted, and brushed past Ridley’s custodial hand.

  ‘Come on, what are you playing at?’

  He had no clue how he would enforce the warning, which seemed only to further amuse the tough now squaring up to him. Worse, he sensed that he was being encircled.

  ‘What do yee want? Yee want some? Uh?’

  Then Gore felt a hard shove into his back, and a near-simultaneous blow to the side of his head, sharp and dazzling. He staggered and pitched down onto the concrete. Shouts and sounds of rubber-soled motion flew all about him as his vision scrambled. For the duration of several heartbeats he was certain that unless he got to his feet swiftly then he would receive a boot to the belly, or skull.

  The blow did not fall. He rose, unsteadily. The group had scattered, cleared off. The tough, though, was holding his ground, glaring, his girl cowed and wet-eyed at ten feet’s remove from him. Then he issued the bold middle-finger affront, turned and stomped off in the direction of his mates, arms aloft like a prizefighter.

  Ridley was coming forward now. Gore stared at the girl, her face so pale, mouth fraught, the band in her hair so tight. ‘We’ll see you back home,’ he said, rubbing at the sore side of his head.

  ‘I only live up there, man.’ She flapped vague fingers.

  ‘Well then, we’ll take you. Come on, you’ve had a nasty turn.’

  She shrank from Gore’s open-handed gesture, but tottered along half a step behind the two men.

  ‘What’s your name, pet?’

  ‘Cheryl. I’m not yer pet.’

  ‘Okay, Cheryl. I’m sorry. Now do you want that fellow reported for what he did?’

  ‘For what, man? Nowt to dee wi’ me.’

  They walked on, Gore weighing various remarks, thinking better of each. She led them t
hrough a barren yard, down a weed-strewn path, and let herself into a front door. Within, through a dim kitchen, down a hallway, Gore could see someone buried in the grasp of a sofa before a television.

  ‘Good night, Cheryl,’ he murmured at the girl’s negligent back.

  He and Ridley walked on without speaking until they were free of the estate, Gore still massaging the top of his head, prodding its tenderness to gauge whether a keener pain was on its way.

  ‘Been in the wars, the day, you,’ Ridley grunted. ‘Are y’alright?’

  ‘Oh yeah, sure.’

  ‘Bloody little squirts. You still want that pint or would you rather home?’

  ‘No, a pint would be good now, thanks.’

  ‘Aye well, that’s it owa there.’

  The Lord Nelson was indeed before them, floodlights and flower-baskets above its awning.

  ‘You sure you’re alright?’

  ‘No, I’m fine, honest.’

  ‘Well then, give over rubbing your bloody head, will you?’ And with that Ridley pushed on in through the double doors.

  It was a cosy hostelry, strewn with older-looking drinkers; as they stood at the bar Ridley was greeted by a few of same. Gore excused himself and went directly to the toilet, where under a bare bulb he inspected his right cheek. He had expected a livid stamp there, but saw only a pale pink imprint of the blow. He felt relief, but a late stirring of anger too. Should he have swung for that twerp, having found his feet? Or would he have been set upon much the worse? For sure he had received no help from the boy Mackers – one small gesture of goodwill gone to waste, then.

  Upon re-emerging Gore was introduced to several of Ridley’s acquaintances, all of whom appeared keen to meet the Vicar. An old dear with thick glasses and frizzy hair was sing-song insistent that they join her company. ‘Sit down, you, and tell us a story.’ Ridley waved her away amiably and set down two pints of bitter at a distant table.

  ‘Friendly place,’ said Gore.

  ‘Not bad,’ Ridley replied, tipping dominoes from a wooden box onto the tabletop between them. ‘Used to be a lot of canny pubs round here. The Smithy. The Block and Tackle. All for the shift workers, y’knaa, from the owld works.’

  ‘They must have been tough old places. Tough crowds?’

  ‘Rough and ready.’ Ridley shrugged. ‘Good people, but.’

  They set to their game. Gore quickly found himself in a quandary. ‘Well, I’m knocking here.’

  Ridley nodded with satisfaction at the concession, and sipped at his bitter.

  ‘I don’t want to keep you from your wife tonight, Jack.’

  ‘Aw, she’s used to us runnin’ about all hours.’ Ridley was staring at the dominoes cupped and shielded in his calloused hand. Carefully he laid down a double blank.

  ‘I’ve been wanting to ask your advice, actually. About the church.’

  ‘Oh aye?’

  ‘Yes, I wondered. What kind of a church do you think it should be?’

  Ridley peered flatly at him. ‘What kind?’

  ‘I just think it needs a theme. Something a bit different to the usual. I mean, it’s not usual, this, what we’re doing. Is it?’

  Ridley shrugged. ‘Well, it seems to me – if you were wantin’ to do a bit good – you would want a church that does something about them little buggers.’ Ridley jerked a thumb in the general direction of whence they had come. ‘Get them off the street.’

  ‘Right. We should focus on the young people?’

  ‘Maybe. I say that like it means owt. You’ll have a bother. They’re all that bloody ignorant. Ignorant and proud of it an’ all.’

  ‘It looks like they could do with something better to occupy their time.’

  ‘Whey, they’ve got it cosy, man. Slouching about, sucking up beer. You’ll not see ’em out of their pits before midday. Unless it’s to sign on.’

  ‘Do you think there’s the work for them, but?’

  ‘Why aye there’s work. They’ll just not do it. Their parents neither. But they’ve still got money for the big telly, and room to park their backsides, thank you very much.’ Ridley had won the game, and began to reshuffle the dominoes. Still, he was dissatisfied. ‘I’ll tell you this, John, far as I’m concerned? The Church ought to say what’s right. There’s nee point to it otherwise. I don’t like rubbish being talked. Not if a blind man can see things have gone to hell. We’re not to say, “Aw, people are just like that nowadays, lads have got it tough, police are all villains.” All that.’

  ‘You’re not by any chance a Conservative voter?’

  Ridley looked as if he might spit. ‘I bloody well am not. Them’s the buggers took wor job. I’m a socialist is what I am, man, always have been. Tell you what that means, but. It means you work. Support your family, do right by your wife, mother of your bairns. You do the best you can, and you pass it on to your kids, so you’ve the right to expect same off them. Off your neighbour and all. That’s the way things work. Not shirking off when you feel like. Like them lads. Who divvint want to be men. Who’ve got some – some bloody lout’s notion of what it means to be a man. Which is making themselves generally obnoxious. A quick squirt up some lass then off you skip, free as a bloody bird, so you can squirt somewhere else.’

  Gore, taken aback by Ridley’s terminology, looked at his hands for some moments.

  ‘You’ll be sorry now you asked my opinion, I daresay.’

  ‘No, no. It’s better we speak plainly.’

  ‘You sorry yet for coming? Up here? Gettin’ stuck with an owld bugger like us, after your nice place in the country?’

  Gore shook his head. ‘I don’t miss Dorset one bit. It wasn’t a happy time.’

  ‘Was it not?’

  ‘No. I’m not a country person. Didn’t fit in hugely. And there was the whole BSE thing while I was there, the mad cow disease? Had a terrible effect.’

  ‘Oh aye, it will have done, I s’pose. Rotten business, that.’

  ‘It was. But, it taught me a few things. The whole experience.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Not to make the same mistakes twice.’

  Ridley nodded, as to say that was a very good one right there. Then he was up and collecting his cap, lifting their not-quite-empty glasses to the bar. Rightly so, Gore acknowledged, deciding against the offer of another round. He had no reason to believe that Ridley’s causticity would dissolve in more alcohol, or that any further explication of his past and the lessons drawn from it would receive an indulgent hearing.

  Chapter IV

  THE RIGHT ANALYSIS

  1983–1984

  ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! Out, out, out!’

  Tentative at first, mindful of a police horse clopping close by his shoulder, John enjoined his voice to the crowd.

  ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! Out, out, out!’

  It seemed the cry of hundreds, thousands, clustered all about him on a central London thoroughfare, exuding the thrill of a warrant for ungovernable behaviour in the streets of the capital. And so John clenched his fist and punched at the air, once, twice, thrice, just like his fellow marchers – with the notable exception of his sister, traipsing along to his right, chin tucked into her chest as if to deter long-lens paparazzi.

  ‘That’s right, comrades,’ some voice was barking through a bullhorn. ‘Shout it out so Reagan can hear you in Washington. Let’s send him a message, loud and clear, he’s not the boss round here, and England’s not the fifty-first state!’

  Susannah was wincing. John peered past her to where Paul Todd – his new best friend – shot him a complicit grin.

  *

  At dawn that morning of 15 October 1983, Durham CND had departed the city in a hired coach. En route down the M1 John sat alone at the back of the bus, his head stooped over a Collected Marx & Engels, hardly stirring until the cover of the thick paperback was rapped by a knuckle and he looked up to see the twentyish lad across the aisle – lofty and lean, beak-nosed and cheery, in a jacket and jeans of washed
-out black denim.

  ‘Y’enjoying the grand old man there, are ya?’

  Paul Todd wore a small headset at his neck, and John dared to enquire what was the music, though fearing the answer might as well be in Chinese. ‘Bauhaus’ was Paul’s enigmatic reply. But John had a half-notion that the term applied to certain German buildings, and Paul’s smile invited him into a conversation. He was a mechanic, it transpired, at Sacriston Colliery, and John spoke as best he could of his familial share in pit history. Paul was keener to extract John’s view on the Eighteenth Brumaire and the distinction between bourgeois and proletarian revolution. But it was affable talk that detained them for an hour or more until the coach traversed a grimy stretch of north-west London to reach Waterloo Bridge, the murk of the Thames, and the Palace of Westminster. Waiting on the broad pavement of Victoria Embankment was Susannah, in loose jeans and a waxed jacket, clutching a furled Telegraph newspaper, her hair in a glossy bob. She met John with a wan smile, Paul with a limp handshake. This was her final year of reading economics at University College, and John had been given to understand that student life bred scruffiness and ill hygiene. Yet such was Susannah’s grooming that she might have been studying deportment these two years past. She had traded her spectacles for contact lenses and looked the better for it, if now prone to oddly pop-eyed blinks.

  On foot the trio made their way amid a growing multitude toward the appointed meeting place, Embankment Underground station.

  ‘How much was your coat?’ Susannah asked, fingering the army jacket of black twill John wore over a white school shirt.

  ‘It was second-hand,’ John murmured.

  ‘I don’t doubt it. Just like old Foot in his donkey jacket, eh?’

  ‘That was a great reason not to vote for him, I’m sure.’

  ‘Oh, but Mr Foot kindly gave us a million others, just to be safe.’

  John groaned inwardly. Old Foot had led Labour to a crucifixion at the last election, even Newcastle Central falling to the Tories. Bookish, a bit scruffy, a tad gammy, he had nevertheless stood and fallen on a manifesto John considered close to godly, albeit rough-hewn – indeed much like the monthly agendas of his local Labour branch, a long wish-list, perennial wants and more recent grievances, hugger-mugger.