Crusaders

by Richard T. Kelly

Gore’s mouth stayed closed, his mind yawning wide, suspended helplessly over his own inadequate store of ideas. Love each other or die?

  ‘It’s the drugs, really, I think.’ Janet, so quiet and attentive all evening, was risking an opinion. ‘The drugs make them awfully shiftless. They cause most of the crimes too … I know what you’ll say, Jack, they shouldn’t be taking them. And you’re right. But I think it’s hard.’

  ‘Hard. They want it given to them hard, that’s what they want.’

  ‘By who?’ Gore rallied. ‘The police?’

  ‘Police, no. No policing will ever get it back to how it was in my day, never mind what power you give ’em. It’s not down to the police, man. It’s the society. The adults. It starts with the mams and dads, and it bloody well goes to the teachers and the vicars and all.’

  ‘At least John’s not afraid to get his hands dirty.’ Gore looked up at Janet in gratified surprise. ‘It’s a fine thing you’re doing here.’

  Over dessert, a charred and deep-sided rice pudding, Gore felt Monica attempting to draw him further into dialogue with her daughter. It was true that she had read English at Edinburgh, that she now worked for British Telecom, that she indicated a willingness to assist at St Luke’s. The problem, frankly, was that she was the image of her mother. It was Janet who escorted Gore and the Ridleys to the door. Jack seemed not to want to talk or even look at John, but Meg smiled faintly and touched his arm.

  ‘I think you might have been offered more than your dinner there.’

  Gore gave her a wan smile. He was aware that had he ever found it so easy to manufacture sexual/romantic feeling then he could have been yet marooned in Dorset with Jessie Bradbeer, stepfather to a pair of bespectacled buck-toothed boys. As to Janet’s offer of help – well, help was not help unless given freely. This principle Gore felt sure he applied to all things equally. And whatever were Stevie Coulson’s flaws, he was not, as far as Gore could see, sizing him up for a shotgun wedding.

  Chapter V

  THE MYSTERIES

  Saturday, 26 October 1996

  His finger hovered over the doorbell. Was it really such an irrevocable act? Hardly. And so he pressed. No sound was discernible within. He pressed again, but silence endured. One more piece of needful repair? He knocked, then rapped at the glass, awaiting vital signs. Perhaps he had botched his timing – early, for a change – just a shade after two of a Saturday, time for shopping or lunch or whatever were the weekend’s perks.

  He was clad in mufti, a seaman’s coat of navy-blue wool over a loose tee-shirt and jeans, and he was touting a hand-sorted box of tools he thought fit to accomplish the various tasks for which he had volunteered – hammer, drill and bits, assorted screws and screwdrivers, a full set of Allen keys.

  At last he heard footfalls and the door was flung wide by Lindy Clark, Jake hoisted up awkwardly in her arms.

  ‘Hello there. Well, look who’s come knocking, eh?’

  Her face was bare of its usual slap, and for the first time Gore saw the freckles dotting her nose and cheeks. At last, the secret of her addiction to liquid foundation. Irish, he thought. Had she once been a redhead? She wore a fatigued white tee-shirt and tracksuit bottoms; warmth and bed-smell emanated from her. As she stooped and set down her squirming son, Gore saw once more the sharp-tongued snake at the base of her spine. That snake, that sceptical curl of the lip, that knowing youth of hers … all things that made Gore shrivel inwardly, deem as daft some of the idle thoughts he had been entertaining. And yet her door was open, he was bade welcome.

  *

  On his knees in the boy’s bedroom, methodical Gore cleared a space for work, slit the polystyrene round the box, dismembered the cardboard packaging, counted and set aside the panels, and turned a drawer out as a receptacle for assorted small bags of bolts. As he unfolded the instructions, Lindy looked in on him. Her face had been reinstated, black lashes and gleaming purplish lips.

  ‘Is it all canny? Y’alright there?’

  ‘Champion. I was wondering, but?’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Is your kettle broken?’

  ‘Cheeky bugger. Hark at you.’

  ‘Listen, I’ll try and be quick, I won’t keep him out for long.’

  ‘Don’t worry, he’s got the match on the radio, he’s happy. Your daddy’s there, isn’t he?’ She was shouting down the hall. ‘He’ll maybe take you next time …’ she muttered in a lower key.

  Gore kicked on. For the next hour he diligently bolted uprights to boards before he realised, aghast, that he had set about the job back-to-front. With less patience and more grazing of his thumb he undid the original work and recommenced, whistling for his amusement, hearing occasional crescendos in the football commentary. When he had all but the last few screws to dispose of, he took a breather, hands on his crouching thighs, and peered from the window down the alley to where a kid was kicking pointlessly at a brick wall. Then he felt a sharp prod in his kidneys and almost jumped out of his skin.

  Swivelling, he saw the familiar challenging pout. ‘Oh, Jake. You gave us a start there, kidder.’

  The boy wore shiny red foam-filled boxing gloves on his hands, and was proffering between them another matching but larger pair.

  ‘Look at them, eh? What? You want to have a go with me?’

  ‘Aye!’

  ‘Oh, I see. Fancy a dust-up, do you? Bit of a pagga?’

  ‘Aye!’

  Gore slid a hand snugly into first one glove and then the other. He shifted his weight onto his knees and made a guard of his two bulging paws. Jake began to throw jabs, left and right, shuffling about in his stocking feet, first tentative, then with vigour. Gore took care to chortle and exclaim in surprise with each blow landed, for it was good fun – a perfectly safe and pleasurable pounding of glove upon glove. The boy too seemed to be relishing it, though he looked terribly intent, not quite smiling, his backside bulging out of his tracksuit trousers as he bobbed and weaved.

  Gore blocked again, then popped a weightless jab to the child’s belly.

  ‘Gotcha. Left yourself open there, eh?’

  Lindy nudged through the doorway with the tea tray, and she was frowning.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ Gore exclaimed. ‘Is this alright?’ Then he felt a clout to his chin that made his teeth rattle.

  ‘Eee Jake, man!’

  Gore knew he had bitten his tongue, but he resolved to tough it out, and made a pantomime of seeing stars, listing over onto the carpet.

  *

  Daylight was fading as he wielded the cordless drill to secure the shelf unit to the bedroom wall. He heard the front door rapped, and voices below – Auntie Yvonne, it seemed, taking Jake into her care for the evening. Gore felt something turn over in his stomach, like appetite, or apprehension. Some minutes later Lindy came to the threshold again with a corkscrew.

  ‘So, handyman, will you have a glass of wine with us? For your trouble.’

  Downstairs the two of them sank deep into Lindy’s faux-leather sofa, nursing their drinks. Gore was tired, but not so much so as to make his excuses and leave. He glanced about him in the quiet. ‘Funny, isn’t it? These estates, how uniform it all is. Your place and mine, they’re the exact same layout.’

  ‘Keep your place nice, do you? Bachelor pad?’

  ‘I wish.’

  ‘You’re not, are you? With anybody. Not married, I mean, are you?’

  ‘No, no. Married to the Church.’ He offered a small smile.

  ‘Aren’t you meant to have a little woman, but? To do all the woman’s things …?’

  ‘You mean a housekeeper?’

  ‘Nah, I mean a wife. Your lot are allowed to get married, aren’t you’s?’

  ‘Oh yeah. There’s no – injunction, from above. None whatsoever.’

  ‘So you’re free to be with whoever you like.’

  Gore smiled softly into his chest. If she wished for his company this evening, he decided, she would have to indulge his odd mood.

  ‘What’
s funny ’bout that, like?’

  ‘Not funny, just a – oh, a feeling of mine. See, I don’t think anyone’s ever really free. In that department? It’s more complex. For being mutual. I mean, you can’t just choose who you want, can you?’

  ‘Dunno. I’ve mostly felt like I’ve had me pick. Within reason, like. I’ve stopped thinking Liam Neeson’s gunna gan out wi’ us.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Liam Neeson? Actor in the films? Irish. Dead sexy. Big hands.’

  ‘Oh, him,’ said Gore, none the wiser.

  ‘Any road, but. You’re a nice big lad. You could have your pick and all.’

  ‘Oh, that is funny. No. Nice of you to say. But it’s never worked out. It’s a funny sort of job I do.’

  ‘There’s funnier, I can tell you. Least a lass would know where she was with a vicar. I mean, you’re kind. You’re a decent sort …’ She put her hand on his arm, he felt a light squeeze of her fingertips.

  ‘Oh, well, you see, now you’re talking to me like I’m a bit of a mong.’

  Lindy looked authentically hurt. Gore recalibrated. ‘Sorry, no – I mean, look, the way I see it, to be honest – you talk about choice? See, I’m not sure the choice isn’t made for us, in a way. When two people … get together. I do just think there’s – just a bit of an element of the preordained to it.’ Her brow was still furrowed. Gore knew very well what he was thinking and decided to say it, as mad as it sounded – indeed because it was mad. ‘A good man I used to know would say, “God will have a partner for you.” And that’s a very powerful idea.’

  ‘Say again? “God will have a partner …”?’

  ‘God will – gravitate you to someone. And that someone toward you. Because it was meant to be so. In the beginning, before you ever came to be. I just – I do think our lives are fated, somehow. They have to be. People present themselves to you. And it makes sense. It’s like this guy Coulson at my church. It’s too bizarre otherwise. So I have to trust in it.’

  She was looking perplexedly at him. The wonder-working power he felt in the words, the fantasy in which he could almost believe, did not, seemingly, stir quite so much in Lindy. It was hardly a surprise. ‘Well, any road. I expect that all sounds a very sort of airy-fairy … religious way to look at it.’

  ‘No, no. It’s – romantic.’ Still, she was knitting her brow. ‘What about sex, but? While you’re waiting, y’knaa? For God to get you’s together. Cos you’d have to wait a canny bit, right? It’s not going to land on a plate.’

  ‘I suppose. You have to – kiss a few frogs.’

  Lindy seemed suddenly most invested in this discussion. ‘I mean, people shouldn’t go without. Should they? Without sex?’

  Gore shrugged.

  ‘It’s one of the good things, isn’t it? We wouldn’t have it if we weren’t meant to like it.’

  ‘No. But the Church says, and I believe, it has to be in a loving relationship. Anything else is … disturbing, I feel. The meaningfulness of the … two people coming together, reduced to a sort of a … just a physical spasm.’

  She made a face. ‘Quick squirt, you mean? Aye, right, that does sound shit.’

  He shifted. ‘I’m sorry, Lindy. This is a bit of an adult conversation.’

  ‘You’re kidding, aren’t you? Feels like I’m back at school. Talking about the birds and the bees …’ She peered at him, mouth wry. He could see her point, and it pressed acutely into his ribs, making him unsure as to whether she was mocking him or else exhorting him toward a declaration of why he was still here, on her sofa, drinking her wine. Or perhaps she was merely running down the clock before her favourite TV show. He found that he didn’t want to decide what were his own feelings, and thus he took the simpler, well-trusted option of pretending that nothing was so very serious.

  ‘I know, I know. You’re right. I do have some half-baked ideas. You’d think one of these days I’d grow out of them.’ He stood, collected the glasses and carried them to the kitchen, set them in the sink, absently found himself refilling the kettle. Always, he knew, it was easier, far easier, to disengage, drift free. He sensed her behind him but did not turn. She dallied closer.

  ‘I’m sorry, Lindy,’ he heard himself say.

  ‘It’s me sorry. What are you sorry for?’

  ‘Being what I am.’

  He felt her arms slip around his waist, saw her hands clasp in front.

  ‘I really like you, but, John. I really do.’

  She pressed her face into his back.

  ‘I like you, Lindy,’ he murmured.

  He took her hands into his and turned them, felt them squeeze, felt and heeded the firm impress that seemed to be saying: be quiet. He turned and she was smiling. He folded her into him, the warmth of her body pliable and cat-like, and he kneaded her, feeling her strain and stretch as they inclined to one another and kissed. As he tasted her perfumed lipstick a deliciousness flooded through him. In this cold kitchen he could feel blood in circulation again, a well-reckoned but long-suppressed uncoiling of desire. Her lips were up at his ear. ‘Do you want to go upstairs? Lie down?’

  He took her hand and she led him up and across the landing into her bedroom – perhaps fifteen feet by ten, scent in the air, clothes on the floor or hung upon a free-standing rail, russet cotton curtains leaking light onto a carelessly made bed, an ivory duvet fringed with small frills. Lindy perched on the edge of the mattress and yanked off her tee-shirt. He hastily removed his own tee-shirt and emerged to be faced by the hollow of her shaven underarm as she reached behind her back and unclasped a sensible white bra. She bunched the hems of her track-pants and knickers and peeled them down, baring a coppery delta. Gore glanced aside, to the MFI drawers, the bedside table bare but for a lone spent cigarette in an ashtray. And to the framed film poster on the wall, the chiselled features of a male lead. Was this Liam Neeson, he of the big hands?

  Then she was unbuckling his belt, unstudding his jeans, drawing them down. He kicked them free of his ankles, slid down, over and on top of her, and they kissed. They lay a while in the gloom, he cupping her face in his hands, she grinning up at him.

  ‘Lindy, I don’t have any protection.’

  ‘We’ll not make a baby, divvint worry.’ She stretched to kiss his mouth, then wriggled aside and reached to his groin. For a sick moment he feared for the stoutness and preparedness of his erection. Some feather-light touches of her fingers dispelled that doubt. Then she steered him inside her, their crotches met, and he began to thrust with all the tendresse as he could muster given his entire being was clenched in white-hot concentration. He was lumbering, he knew – short of practice, eager to please. But Lindy was still smiling, and keenly groaning in time, exhibiting – at least it seemed – one hundred per cent of her own capacity for excitation. He had found his rhythm – a gamut of sensations long forgotten – and she appeared keenly abreast of her own, indeed some way ahead of his. Assured that he might also start to enjoy himself, he made his thrusts short and uninhibited, then the stone in his groin dissolved into hers and he slumped to rest on his elbows above her, breast to breast. He withdrew carefully and rolled aside, but she reached and stroked him, idly, trailed fingers across his mons pubis. And so he laid a careful hand in kind upon her. The precious things of the earth and the fullness thereof was the thought that struck him, and he wanted to laugh, already short of breath and mildly elated.

  *

  Lindy reclined on her pillows, taking short draws on a Benson & Hedges, one arm strewn around Gore’s neck where she idly stroked and tweaked the short hairs there. He was conscious, disconcerted even, that he lay in the position traditionally occupied by the female at such moments.

  ‘Ahhh,’ she exhaled. ‘A tab and a big man in wuh bed. If I just had a brew and a bit toast I’d be in heaven.’

  ‘Shall I – would you like me to make that for you?’

  ‘Aw, would you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You’re the best. Masses of butter on the toast,
aye?’

  Gore shucked off the mattress, extricating his shorts from his tangled jeans, and padded down barefoot to the kitchen, where he prepared the simple repast. Lindy supped and munched keenly. She’s so physical, he mused, before biting into a slice himself and realising he was ravenous. They snuggled down in the duvet, profile to profile.

  ‘Are y’alright?’

  ‘I’m good, yeah, thanks.’

  ‘You’re funny, you are.’

  ‘Funny how?’

  ‘You had us worried a bit. Wasn’t quite sure we were gunna get there, y’knaa what I mean?’

  ‘I know. Sorry.’

  ‘Well, we managed.’ Her fingers turned around in his sparse chest hair. ‘It’s alright, you know? To say what you’re after. And you were so keen, but, to give us a hand? I knew then, see. That you liked us.’

  Gore smiled, inwardly disquieted. Here they were, snug lovers, her sharp tongue now rolled up as she replayed the highlights of the seduction, like instant lore, the story of a romance. Was this a romance? He remained, he knew, just a little in shock.

  He excused himself and wandered down the hallway to her bathroom, tidy doppelgänger of his own. There he showered hastily and dried himself with her sole bath sheet. He had stepped lightly halfway down the stairs when he saw Lindy, in knickers and a short kimono, scrambling eggs at the kitchen hob, singing off-key snatches of a pop tune. ‘But any fool can see they’re fallin’ …’

  He padded back into her bedroom, and there peered more closely at her knick-knacks on the dresser drawers. A couple of framed photos, one of Jake in an unlikely convulsion of giggles, the other of Lindy in monochrome, perhaps six or seven years younger and rather gravely doe-eyed and lovely, her hair cut in a feathery bob. Looking closer, he realised the image had been trimmed out of a magazine.

  Around the photos were snaking piles of trinkets, an ashtray like a swan, a pair of gonks, a fat envelope bulging as if with banknotes, and a portable music player flanked by small piles of CDs, the artists all surly, handsome and dark-skinned. He prised open one drawer – full of folded and slightly faded tee-shirts and little tops. The second was all bras and knickers. Her best frocks were suspended on the crowded clothes rail, mixed with skirts, jeans, coats – nothing fancy or startling, save for a short black leather dress which, Gore had to concede, looked sexy. Tucked behind the rail amid a pile of odd shoes was an orange Adidas hold-all, a gym bag, a sniff of testosterone in this otherwise girly haven. Idly Gore reached for the handles, and found the bag heavy as a pair of bowling balls. Curious, he tugged the zip but it snagged, no more than half-exposing a thickly wadded towel. Then he heard a mounting tread on the stairs, and dived for the bedcovers.