Crusaders

by Richard T. Kelly

  His sense was that he had moved the crowd. He had almost managed to move himself.

  *

  The Mother of Parliaments put Martin in mind of a faded hotel, the pricey-but-dependable choice in a honeymoon city. He thought as much late each night as he walked down quiet corridors of tired carpet, wainscot and striped wallpaper, past closed doors toward his own windowless office.

  His maiden speech held no trepidation for him. He had no fantasies about rows of rapt souls on green leather benches – there were just too many buggers there already, settled in their spots, clearly preferring the sound of their own braying voices. But the first address, he knew, offered the tamest crowd he would ever have. Susannah warned him not to showboat, but he knew what he was doing. He saluted Alf Jakes with tact, hailed the spirit of Tyneside West and its proud people. Then he bared his incisors.

  ‘I appreciate how wrenching it must be for Honourable Members opposite when they confront their restive constituents in Wells or Carshalton. They must hear the most piteous cries about stamp duty – indeed the asking prices for second homes. When I hold surgery in Hoxheath, people tell me the roof is coming off their council house, locks unmended since their latest burglary.

  ‘Why do we have this state of urban decay? The answer lies very close. I can smell it from across the floor. The dividend of a failed economic policy. Two dreadful recessions. A north–south divide at which the Tories have kicked with glee until it has gaped yet further. Be it said, I welcome the government’s recent efforts to put Band-Aids on long-running wounds. But they are reaping the whirlwind.

  ‘I say, just give up. Get out of the way. Spare us the weasel words, just give us the money. Give the regions themselves the tools and tackle, the reparations they deserve, the independence and the powers to regenerate themselves. Give us a northern assembly, a Minister for Local Government, and then get off our backs. All power, I say, to the regions!’

  He strode serenely through the lobby that day, though he noted some smirks among his PLP colleagues. In the tea-room, too, he overheard the drawl of some chinless fatty. ‘He’s a Geordie Kinnock. Another windbag.’ He cared not, for it was now his special pleasure to take Jon Salter and Frank Ball for lunch at the Churchill Rooms. They all drank sparkling water. Martin was religious now about two weeks off the booze for each week on, much as he missed the delicious blurring of the edges. Before their orders were placed, though, Martin sensed he was not quite party to the mood of his fellows.

  ‘So it seems I rattled a few cages on the other side today.’

  ‘That’s not all you did,’ Salter winced, setting down his menu. ‘What the hell was that blather of yours? A “northern assembly”?’

  ‘I was speaking to my area, Jon. My passion.’

  ‘Which is what? Bureaucracy? Thought you knew better than most, Martin, it’s the hands-off approach gets things done. Softly, softly.’

  ‘Martin man, it’ll never happen.’ Ball weighed in. ‘That’s why you’re daft to get involved. Neebody wants it. More politicians clarting up the place.’

  Salter was smiling now, but meanly. ‘I mean, what’s the appeal, Martin? You after another job already? So you can start giving us all what for?’

  ‘I’m just here representing the people voted me in, Jon.’

  ‘Aye, well, we voted for you. I did any road. Dunno about Frank.’

  ‘Oh aye,’ said Ball, chuckling into his fizzy glass.

  ‘But it seems to me, Martin, you want to be directing your energies to trying to earn your spurs down here. In the big fishbowl. Not trying to get yourself made proconsul of Geordieland.’

  ‘It’s not about me,’ Martin snapped. ‘It’s about the neighbourhoods I’m responsible for now. To me I serve that interest by keeping politics local. Joining things up, making the best of your money, getting the best people involved. I’d have expected you two to be onside for all that.’

  Ball looked amusedly to Salter, then back to his protégé. ‘Loose ties is what we like, Martin. Nice and loose. If you know a politician to talk to, personal, like, why do you need a lot of them sat jabbering in a chamber? And now we’ve got you.’

  Martin could almost smell himself singeing from the flare of black umbrage. And yet, he knew, he would have to douse it down, for the moment. True, he had fought his own instinct in order to recast himself as a compromise man. But they wouldn’t make a Judas of him – not today, not tomorrow, not by swords nor staves nor whole cohorts of henchmen.

  Chapter VI

  COMRADES

  Thursday, 14 November 1996

  Feeling rain spatter on his brow, Gore hastened his steps down the Quayside promenade, passing under the skeletal steel stanchion of the Tyne Bridge that vaulted up and over his head to the under-floor of the mighty arch, toward great grey slow-shifting clouds in a dirty-white sky. The clocks said it was nearly nine, late again, de rigueur. But the Blackwater had to be close. And he refused to rue the spurning of an offer of collection. He had quailed at the thought of some sleek black BMW rolling up and into Oakwell, some chauffeur rapping at the door of number seventy-three as though he were bought and paid for.

  Power House, Titanium, Teflon – the awnings and facades of the waterfront pubs and bars were mute and still at this early hour, though chalked boards left out in the drizzle still sang of VODKA JELLIES, HALF-PRICE DOUBLES, HAPPY HOUR X 2! He passed the row of legal chambers and the Crown Court, the promenade then making a graceful curve lined by new-planted poplars drawing the eye to a granite-faced warehouse building of ten storeys, its revamped awning adorned by silky blue-black flags hanging limply from poles. Cars and taxis were trundling up to the drop-zone of the paved piazza, people in suits and macintoshes making haste up stone steps to a revolving door. This could only be the place. As Gore too mounted those steps, a familiar carnival barker’s cry assailed him.

  ‘Socialist paper, get ya socialist paper, all the latest on cash for questions and Tory sleaze, Blair’s hobnobbing in Tuscany, where’s the difference?’

  He saw then, non-too-discreetly to the side of the entrance, the ghost at the feast – the declamatory figure whose existence those preceding him had staunchly ignored. It couldn’t be, surely? And yet it so clearly was. There couldn’t be more than one uni-dextrous pension-age vendor of the Socialist Worker on Tyneside. Gore kept his head low as he ploughed on. To pause for even an affable word would have felt like disloyalty to his patron. The years, too, had given Joe Pallister a craggier, more forbidding look.

  *

  ‘John!’ the Member shouted over heads to the threshold where Gore teetered, gripped by shyness in the face of a teeming room. Momentarily his sister had seized his arm and was leading him through the throng. He was plonked into a line-up of smart suits, flashbulbs flaring in a short fusillade. ‘Gotcha,’ Martin Pallister whispered into his ear.

  The conference lounge had a muted grey-mauve elegance, mellifluous piped music, air-con, superfluous art. The top table was illuminated tastefully, FORWARD TO THE FUTURE stamped cleanly upon a flat board behind, place markers and microphones and little blue-glass water bottles lined in a row. Gore kicked his heels in the group of seven being readied to mount the dais, until his hand was seized by Chris Carter, suited and booted but none the less breezy, and he was jostled from one to another in the cluster of substantial men, their names familiar from the literature – Delavel, Salter. Wallace, aged-rock-star casual in sports coat and jeans. Talbot, a querulous older bird. And Chase, a thickset emphysematic American. Now a blonde girl in a charcoal suit was herding them onto the foot-high stage. Gore blinked through the trained lights toward seating set for two hundred, more or less full. Who were these people? He fixed on his sister, dutifully leading applause from the front row.

  Pallister stepped to a lectern, gave thanks to an alphabet soup of sponsors, exhibitors and unions, then commenced a keynote address that seemed to Gore as if it might have been written by – rather than merely upon – a computer. Leafing his agenda, he dr
ifted in and out of the frequency.

  ‘The nature of work is being transformed … what we used to do, what we do now, from production to services … outsourcing, downsizing, partnership … information and communication technology, the knowledge economy … we need to put these things together. Today is about options for development of our vision.’

  Carter introduced an opening session on Education. Gore, unsure of what role he would fulfil, quickly understood that none had been allotted him. For no sooner had all agreed Britain stood in need of ‘a world-class education system’ and ‘best practice in all our schools’, than the discussion seemed to turn entirely to computers.

  ‘What the near future offers,’ rasped Chase, ‘is an information superhighway – an Infobahn, if you will. BT want to see every school in Britain hooked up to it, by cable. And we’re exceptionally keen to help in that roll-out.’

  ‘I’m sure BT would like a helping hand into the cable business too.’ This was Talbot, the aged union man in the patched tweedy coat.

  ‘In fairness to BT,’ interjected slow-nodding Proctor Wallace, ‘if they don’t get into that market soon then they’ll cease to exist.’

  ‘Aye, but who’s going to pay for all them machines that want “hooking up”?’

  Pallister eased into the fray. ‘Robson, you can count on a Labour government putting a new computer in every classroom. That’s the least we can do. My worry is more about whether the teachers are up to teaching the stuff.’

  There was sufficient rumble among the congregants to persuade Gore that teachers were indeed present – sufficient, too, to embolden him into a contribution: ‘I must say, I’d worry more about whether there are enough jobs out there to make the pupils want to do the work in the first place.’

  Pallister winced. ‘That’s backward talk, John. The skills IT brings, they create jobs. Kids’ll write their own ticket. Not wait for jobs to fall out the heavens.’

  That did not seem wholly friendly.

  After forty minutes or so, a dull school period, they were invited to the back of the room for cups of bitter coffee. Gore desired a quiet corner, and Talbot seemed the only one desirous to stand with him, though his chat was limited to ‘I hate these bloody things’ and gripes over the daintiness of the pastries. Already the day struck Gore as one to be endured.

  *

  KEY-PUSHING OR METAL-BASHING? That was the question after the break, and Dr Pallister moved robustly to take charge of the agenda.

  ‘To regenerate locally you have to think globally – be more ambitious. That’s why I get weary when I see people turn up their noses at inward investment. Effectively we’re talking about importing job providers – and huge numbers of jobs. Where’s the problem? Just look at Nissan, look at Mueller.’

  The flaring of Robson Talbot’s nostrils was detected by the microphones. ‘It’s not like they come for free, Martin. Why should the big boys just blow in and get all that subsidy money? Why not spend it on helping out local business?’

  ‘But it’s not just the “big boys”, is it, Robson? Once a Mueller gets set up it’s local businesses they employ to make the small parts for them. Do the engineering, or the installing – that’s thousands of jobs for your members right there. Now, do you want those “big boys” stationed in Heaton and Sunderland, or do you want them swanning off down south?’

  Chase was tapping his pen on the table, and microphones amplified that to a metronomic complaint too. ‘I have to say, with respect, I find this argument curious. To even be having it still. This is the world we live in. The nature of business today.’

  Talbot had reddened. ‘With respect to our American friend – I’m not a Luddite, but nor am I conned by a lot of corporate blather. Mark my words, Mueller’s not gunna last. We’ve seen it before. These multinationals, they’re lured up here for millions off the government, the Queen maybe comes up to cut the ribbon if she’s not too busy, then – presto – give it a few years and it’s shut. They don’t like the costs any more so they’re off to Czechoslovakia. Hundreds of jobs lost, jobs of my members, thank you very much, Martin.’

  Bravo, thought Gore. Indeed there was a light shower of applause in the room. Pallister smiled and waited for it to recede.

  ‘Sometimes, yes, they go. The bigger your global operation, the more sensitive you are to shifts in the competition. But someone else comes in. Look at the Job Centre figures. People get back into work. I have to say, Robson, you think short-term, you’re way too pessimistic.’

  ‘Oh, am I now?’

  ‘Aye, you are. Coal, it took a couple of centuries to build to what it was. That’s a long game. Things move faster today but still you’re talking decades. One thing I know, but – the old manufacturing jobs are never coming back. I was talking to a colleague of mine in the Commons, took over Manny Shinwell’s seat. He said Shinwell always said, so long as there was coal in the north-east, we’d get nowt else. Like a curse – that would be all we were good for. Now that was sad, but it’s true. What I’m saying is that nowadays we can do more. More and better.’

  Listening to Pallister knocking down arguments like pre-set pins, ignored, and preferring anonymity to grudging acceptance – Gore fell first to doodling upon his pad, then to the sketching of a notion, a scheme that descended upon him with unexpected force.

  *

  Over the lunch hour Pallister sought him in his corner. ‘Not a bad gaff, eh, John? Listen, sorry you’ve not had much of a day of it yet.’

  ‘At least I got my picture taken.’

  ‘Right. But have you found it interesting?’

  ‘Vaguely. I wonder, though, what any of it’s got to do with Hoxheath.’

  ‘Blue-sky thinking, John. Something’ll come of it, you watch.’

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking – all that time on my hands up there – and I’ve figured out what I want from you. From this.’

  Pallister’s brow was sceptical. ‘What you want? Didn’t your mam ever teach you, “I want never gets”?’

  ‘Okay, what I need. What I think would be useful. If you’re interested.’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘I need a church, right? A building fit to purpose. My own place. Instead of being stuck in a school hall. The thing is, I’m not sure any more that the Church can afford –’

  ‘John, John, look, that’s not going to suit what we’re about here –’

  ‘No, but listen, I’m not just saying a church. This could be a proper full-on community centre. Purpose-built. Different rooms for all different functions – a church hall would just be one of them. If someone else built it, the Church could just as happily lease the space, I’d bet on it.’

  ‘Oh, could it now?’

  ‘Yes, or even – the trick of it would be – I mean it doesn’t have to be this, but there is a rather fine old building within the school grounds at St Luke’s that just needs a roof on it and some work –’

  ‘No, hang about, John. I know a guy at Historical Buildings. There’s Europe money for that sort of thing too, there’s Lottery money. Listen, I’m not opposed to … whatever you’d call them, “faith projects”. I’m for them. They have to be in their proper place. We can’t just do something here that fits right inside your pocket. All for the good of the Church.’

  ‘That’s not what I’ve said. I mean … Okay, if not that, then what? What do you actually want the Church to do here? Run soup kitchens?’

  ‘That hadn’t occurred but hey, look, if you’ve a mind to it then I’m right behind you, John. ’Scuse us a minute.’

  Susannah was nigh, and the MP stepped aside to loan her his ear. For all her smartness Susannah still scuttled a little as she walked, shoulders hunched and bobbing, as if perpetually late, or apprehensive.

  *

  He contributed nothing to the next session on the single European currency. Despite high expectations, he found himself unable to join the discussion of ‘A Cultural Renaissance in Newcastle?’, which mired i
nto a disagreement from the floor as to whether football and fine dining qualified as cultural pursuits. The room thinned a little of its contingent of schoolteachers, but seemed to fill up anew with print media. Chris Carter was calling for any final questions from the floor. That was when Gore began to notice a fixedly frowning aspect to Pallister’s expression, one that had previously seemed imperturbable all day long.

  Then a rangy figure clambered to his feet, accepting a baton microphone from an usher. And Gore registered a hawking clearance of the throat, a long and probing nose pointed in the air, a black but washed-out denim uniform – familiar defining lineaments, seeming to make the past a tangible presence even in this very contemporary room, and all before the questioner had so much as identified himself.

  ‘Paul Todd, from the Journal …’

  Pallister leaned to his microphone, planting a fist on the cloth before it. ‘Sorry, are you accredited here, Paul?’

  ‘Whey, I’ve sat here all day and listened like everyone else. We’ve heard plenty out of you, Martin. Quite the speaker, you. Does a lot of it, this fella. Nicely paid for it and all. Few grand a go, if anyone’s interested? Got a wedding, bar mitzvah?’ Todd rocked easily on his heels, as if the floor were entirely his to expound from. ‘It pays for his office, maybe. Cos it’s a nice flash office he’s got. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe someone sat up there might know how Martin pays his rent?’

  ‘Paul, have you got an actual question or do you just want to –’

  ‘Oh aye, I’ve a question for you, Martin, I’m wanting to know if there’s a price on every word comes out of your mouth. I’ve been looking into this man, see. Do you know even half what this honourable gentleman gets up to?’

  Todd was brandishing a wad of paper, A4 pages in scarlet, waving them before him. Gore watched Pallister throwing up volatile hands, looking to the ushers, to Susannah.