Crusaders

by Richard T. Kelly

  That seemed unnecessary – vindictive, even. Gore, blinking, found it unexpectedly hard to bear. But his sister’s eyes were dry and didn’t sympathise. ‘Though why you’re a vicar I’ve never understood. Unless you were after an excuse to wag your finger at the lot of us. Well, you can spare me the sermon, kid, I know you better.’

  *

  For the longest time Gore sat in the grasp of his living-room armchair, bundled up still in his topcoat, unwilling to unwrap himself from what seemed a kind of cold comfort. The central heating system was clunking dysfunctionally. A pint glass of water stood untouched. Vigour was entirely drained from his limbs, the need for sleep seemed tremendous, yet his eyes would not stay closed. When the telephone trilled at half past nine he expected the worst. At the seventh ring, resignedly, he answered. It was Fay MacNamara. He stumbled into a weary apology.

  ‘It’s only we’re frantic, but, Father, it’s like we’ve started having things through the letterbox.’

  ‘What things? What …?’

  ‘I hardly dare say.’

  ‘Look, you’ve called the police? Please tell me you’ve called them now.’

  The silence on the line was damning, inexplicable.

  ‘Mrs MacNamara – you put me in a very difficult position. How is anyone supposed to help you? What do you imagine I can do that the police can’t? I mean, have you thought about –’

  But she had hung up on him.

  His eyes were still fixed on the ceiling, the conversation replaying, when the phone rang again. He was not minded to apologise, rather to let the answering machine serve a rebuke.

  ‘Hiya John, it’s just me. Lindy. Wondering how y’are. When you want to meet up? Okay, will you call us? Bye …’

  The red message light blinked at Gore. Yes, he would call her back. But a headache was starting to signal dully through his fatigue, and he needed to self-medicate. He got to his feet, listing somewhat as he veered into the kitchen, rummaged the drawer into which he had tipped much ill-sorted junk on move-in day. Amid spare Allen keys and boxes of dud matches he found a crushed packet of Ibuprofen, and salvaged two pills.

  Then his ears pricked, for there were scuffing, scuttling noises coming from the patio outside. Footfalls? Or just the customary night-time garbage thrown over his wall from the alley? Might he have heard some booze bottle clinking and skittering on concrete? Perhaps it was the mangy fox he had seen dawdling down the alley one evening. He was wearily habituated to it, but it snagged at the nerves nonetheless. He peered out of the small kitchen window into the gloom of the yard, then, dissatisfied, swept out to the curtains masking the patio’s sliding doors and whisked them aside.

  A pale, wretched moon-face stared back at him through the glass. He thought his heart would kick clean out of its cage.

  But the spectre instantaneously acquired a shape, a reality, familiar and yet changed – a mere boy, one who had always looked older than his years.

  *

  Mackers sat in the armchair picking at the grubby skin of his palms, his silence oppressive to Gore, who found himself standing and buzzing uselessly, wanting to make himself active, talkative, effective – not the crushed figure into whose godforsaken evening this unbidden guest had intruded. He drew the curtains, stood over the boy, hovering, uncertain, until he saw the glum face raised to him. No, this one no longer seemed an apprentice adult – very much a child, somehow profaned and ill-used.

  ‘Have you got owt to smoke?’

  ‘I don’t. I’m sorry. But, look. Let me give you something hot to drink. With a tot of brandy. I mean, yes, it’ll do you good.’

  In the kitchen he poured water to boil, ransacked the cupboard of cooking bottles for the supermarket-brand cognac, glancing backward as deftly as was feasible. Mixing the drink in the mug, he saw the boy had his face in his hands and was rubbing at it, his shoulders twitching. He hastened out.

  ‘Look, Tony, it’s okay, it’s alright, just let it out.’

  The face was raised again, but it was not tearful. The eyes, in fact, had a fury in them. ‘Let fuckin’ what out?’

  Gore reconsidered – pressed the mug into his hand, lowered himself into the smaller occasional chair opposite. The boy slurped and grimaced.

  ‘Your mother came to me, your sister … They’ve been terribly worried.’

  ‘Don’t care. It’s nowt to dee wi’ them.’

  ‘Well, just … You should know. They’d love to see you back home.’

  ‘Can’t. Nah. No way.’

  He slurped again. Gore sat back. ‘Tony, what’s this about?’

  The boy flinched as if stung on the neck. ‘Divvint wanna talk about it.’

  ‘Tony, I know –’

  ‘Mackaz, man, Mackaz. Ye sound like me mam and all.’

  Gore waited for this fresh ire to fizzle. ‘Mackers, I know it must have been an awful shock, what happened. I can’t imagine, I won’t pretend.’ The boy stared at his toecaps, unreactive. ‘Whoever did it, whatever it was about – you don’t think they’re chasing you too, do you? Meaning to hurt you?’

  ‘Might be.’

  ‘What did you see? Did you tell the police?’

  His head swung upward, the eyes hostile again.

  ‘Look, it’s just that your sister said something.’

  ‘That’s how, see. That, that’s how it starts. I didn’t tell ’em fuckin’ owt. No one believes wuh.’

  ‘Do you know something? About why it happened?’

  ‘It was my fault.’

  Gore winced, for this much he knew of, the perennial behaviour of victims. ‘No, now you mustn’t say that. How could that be, Tony? How could it?’

  ‘I canna tell yuh.’

  ‘Why not? What are you so scared?’

  ‘You’d fuckin’ be and all. So divvint start on wuh.’

  ‘Is this – look, are you scared of Steve Coulson?’

  ‘Will ya stop with aal the fuckin’ questions, man, pack it in.’

  This then was how it would have to be – awkward and scant of courtesy, perhaps even abusive. On his part – no severity, no pull-yourself-together.

  ‘Well. What are we going to do with you?’

  The boy’s response was to cloak his brow in his hands once more.

  ‘I mean – you can stay here, you know? I’ve got a little room.’

  The eyes, at least, emerged through the hands.

  ‘You’ll be okay here. Safe. No one comes here.’

  ‘You’ll not dob us in? Not to neeone, but?’

  ‘No, absolutely not. You can trust me, you have my word. Okay?’

  The boy nodded as if to himself.

  ‘But, Tony. Tony, look, you do need to know – this has got to get settled. This situation? I mean, we can’t have this … just like this. You can’t hide away for ever. We need to come up with something. You need to tell me, what we can do. To right things.’

  There was nothing in response, neither motion nor muttering, until ‘Can I use your toilet?’

  ‘Of course. It’s upstairs. The bathroom.’

  The boy got to his feet.

  ‘Would you like to shower? Or bath?’

  ‘Nah. Just the shitter.’

  Gore found himself leading the boy up the stairs, gesturing needlessly toward the small room at the end of the landing. It was shut and locked, and shortly from within Gore heard a rude gaseous eruption. He withdrew to the small room he called spare, rifled the fitted wardrobe, located the spare duvet, the one spare pillow, the one set of clean linen. One of everything had always been his life – he had travelled light for as far as he had travelled. It had been an organising principle. It was just going to have to be disturbed.

  There was no sound from the locked bathroom, but the light was plain under the door, and he was more or less glad of the respite. He returned downstairs, plucked the barely touched brandy mug from the casual table. The red message light on the phone still blinked at him. But it was past the hour. He pressed down the DELETE button a
nd held it.

  Book Six

  JUDGEMENTS

  Chapter I

  CHARITY

  Saturday, 23 November 1996

  With his one sharp knife he peeled and pared, sliced and diced, studiously sweeping clean the board as he went, dumping each rendered mound of raw cubes into his one chipped and worn stockpot. His own rigour pleased him, but glancing to the oven clock he knew that he was already behind schedule. The boy could wait, but Gore himself could not – not if he were to be dressed and out of the door for seven, as was his lot for the evening.

  This much effort, though, he believed he owed as host – something at least marginally more edifying than the carry-out stodge he had fetched home in hot plastic bags each night since the boy took up residence in the ‘guest room’. Over the days preceding, Gore assumed, it had been dinner out of dustbins for Mackers – assumed, for details were not forthcoming, conversation still clenched between them. In lieu of chit-chat he had shifted the portable television upstairs, and blue light seeped under the door most hours, materialising blue smoke, for each day too he offered the boy a token of ten Embassy Regal.

  Scraping rind and peel into the pedal bin it occurred to him that he hadn’t laid a table for anyone but himself since Grey College – the weekly ritual decreed by Lockhart, each staircase of ordinands taking it by rote to prepare and serve an economical meal for students and faculty, chopping and stewing and bearing out the fare to the trestles in the long hall overlooking the courtyard. Gore was turning over this memory, weighing its disparity to what was before him, when he believed that he heard the click of his front-door latch. Jerking his head from the chopping board he sliced cleanly into his left thumb.

  ‘Ow, fuck, I didn’t do that …’

  He threw down the blade, wrapped a fist round the cut, kicked aside the kitchen door, and was appalled to see Steve Coulson planted squarely under the unshaded lightbulb of his living room.

  ‘Steve, you –’

  ‘Your door’s not locked, John. Good job it were us.’

  Coulson was in his Saturday-night finery, the dark suit worn with an open black collar, a high shine on patent leather boots. His unsmiling head more than usual bore the stern aspect of a Roman stone bust, and his eyes were murky as they followed Gore from the spot. Gore could hear blood beating in his ears. ‘Sorry, I need to get a plaster. Okay? I’ll just be a moment. Just need to fetch out the bathroom …’ He was raising his voice loud enough to carry, even as he moved to get himself between Coulson and the staircase.

  ‘Naw, you get yer’sel sorted out, man. Before you give us earache.’

  Gore bolted up the stairs. Through the open door of the small room he saw Mackers framed against the darkened window, as if cornered, plight all over his face. With fraught hands Gore motioned him to be still, and wrenched the door to. In the bathroom, struggling toward composure, he located aertex strips in his toilet bag, staunched the seeping cut with wadded toilet tissue then taped it up. He looked into his eyes in the mirror, then descended the stairs. Coulson had scarcely moved from the spot, his bulk trammelling the space, cutting off all exits. He reached and rapped the bare hanging lightbulb with a knuckle, and it swung askew.

  ‘Looking for us, were you?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I thought you was looking for us?’

  ‘Steve, I’m not getting you.’

  ‘Naw? The other week? I’ve seen you since, I knaa, we’ve talked. But I was just with a few of my lads, see. Catching up on stuff. And Dougie telt us you were in Teflon last Saturday. I says, “Never. Not John Gore.”’

  ‘No, that’s right. I was there. I didn’t see Dougie.’

  ‘He saw you.’

  ‘I wasn’t there long. Just dropped in. I was curious.’

  ‘Fancied a poke about, did you?’

  ‘Yes. Since – all what I’d heard.’

  ‘You shoulda asked to see us. Long as you were there.’

  ‘I didn’t think on. I was only there for the beer, Steve.’

  ‘Enjoy yourself, then?’

  ‘It was interesting. Not my scene, you know.’

  ‘Aye. Cos I hear you got yourself in the middle of some bother. In the way of a couple of my lads trying to do their job. Big Don Boddy, he tells us he’s got this little rat outside and some bugger tries to jump on him. And there’s Dougie says, “Nah, I saw it, it was John Gore.” That Robbie, he says the same. So what I wanna know is, what’s that about?’

  ‘Steve, I saw a boy getting – I thought manhandled. That was just how I saw it. I decided I’d have a word, just.’

  ‘A word. Did you reckon that was your business, eh?’

  ‘Like I said –’

  ‘I mean, we’ve talked, you and me, haven’t wuh? ’Bout my business, your business. I’ve telt you and all, in my line I’ve gotta deal with bits of trouble. Worky tickets.’

  ‘Like I say, this was just a boy, it looked to me.’

  ‘A “boy”. Well, see, that’s cos you divvint knaa what you’re looking at.’

  ‘No, I maybe don’t.’

  ‘This is a ratbag kid brings trouble into my place. Dirt and drugs and rotten attitude. So divvint get all daft about “boys”, John.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry if I – no, I’m just sorry.’

  The heavy head was intransigent, until Coulson cast a look about him, offered some wintry version of a smile. ‘Funny, but. How yours and Lindy’s are the same. Sort of. Least she’s got hers so you can live in it.’

  Gore shrugged his agreement.

  ‘Mind if I use your bog?’

  ‘No. Go ahead.’

  Stevie moved to the staircase. Gore had to recover his voice. ‘Steve, the one down here works just fine. In the hall there.’

  ‘Aw right. I’m used to Lindy’s, right enough. Blocked for years. Might have been us that blocked it.’

  Coulson didn’t deign to shut the toilet door, merely unzipped and bowed his knees, drilled at the porcelain, flushed and rinsed. He re-emerged rubbing his hands around each other, staring still at Gore. The silence Gore was finding unendurable – whereupon came there a thump through the ceiling, muted but audible.

  Coulson’s chin tilted. ‘Not wor lass, that?’

  ‘No, no. No, that’s my two-bit DIY, I think. Everything I put up falls down again. In the end.’

  Coulson shook his head. ‘It’s poor, y’knaa. Living in a dump like this. Man of your age. Shame.’

  ‘It does me fine, Steve. For what I do.’

  ‘S’pose it might. If that’s what you want – just to get by. It’s not a crime to want a few of the better things about you, but. It’s common sense, that.’

  ‘Well, you don’t have to worry about me. It’s my life, I chose it.’

  ‘Aw, I won’t.’ He looked to the door, but not concertedly. ‘You’ll excuse us for saying, John, you maybe think too much of what’s yours. Not enough of others. Wor lass, she’s not so happy wi’ you, I reckon.’

  ‘Lindy?’

  He grimaced. ‘Aye, Lindy. Divvint act the prick. Whatever you do, John, you want to be sure you do right about her. I’d count that a favour, in fact.’

  ‘I don’t think I –’

  ‘Just a favour, John. Just that, eh? You’ve had enough out of us. Haven’t ya, man? Why aye, you’ve had plenty.’ The stare was dead-eyed again. And yet, miraculously, he was shifting at last from his impregnable stance.

  ‘Be seeing you, then, Reverend.’

  The intruder gone, the claustral confinement lifted, Gore needed a moment to feel his stomach settled, his feet firm under him again. He locked the front door and hurdled back up the stairs. The boy was pacing, rubbing his face, another Regal pinched between hand and mouth.

  ‘The fuck was that, man?’

  ‘I don’t know, Tony, I really don’t. He’s gone now but, it’s okay now.’

  The boy, Gore could tell, thought this lame at best – perhaps even ignorant.

  *

 
‘Good evening, sir, may I welcome you to St Luke’s?’

  ‘No need, thanks, I’m the vicar.’

  Gore spurned the glad hand from the smiling young fucker in the firehouse-red pullover, though he couldn’t quite shirk the handful of paper pamphlets pressed upon him by a frog-like girl in spectacles. A lively din was already audible, and through the double doors he found the hall – he had to concede, for all it meant – impressively transformed. His father couldn’t possibly have matched such endeavours – mirrorballs, bunting and painted banners laced and draped from the light fixtures, the walls bedecked with streamers, and a small stage freshly erected and flanked by lighting scaffolds, set for a rock show – guitars, keyboards, drums, microphones. Gore had never stopped to contemplate what might be the sight and sound of a hundred-plus grown men and women milling and chattering in this drab space, a dozen couples twirling each other gamely across the badminton markings to some jaunty pop tune.

  Baby baby, I’m taken with the notion …

  Behind a long table at stage-side, Stuart Grieveson was nodding his big head affably over a record deck and a short stack of long-players. Trestles set width-to-width down the left flank of the space purveyed a generous spread of hot and cold savouries. Tina bobbed behind these, attending to a microwave oven, a toothy little girl in a pink dress tugging at her waist. Gore moved through the gathering, raising his eyes to those who raised plastic cups in his direction. It was an incursion, no business of his but that it seemed a victory party at which he was the vanquished, his head already measured for a mounting on the wall. Susan Carrow sidled up to him, fruity punch in her cup, wearing a blouse with a scarab beetle at the neck. ‘Well now, Reverend, this is a bit nicer than the normal.’

  ‘Glad you like it. I can’t see any of our people, but. Just the day-trippers.’

  ‘At least they’ve not got tattoos.’

  Jack Ridley joined them. Mrs Carrow raised her cup. ‘Might we see you out on the floor then, Jack?’

  ‘Whey, these aren’t my tunes.’ He munched at a slice of pizza. ‘Not struck on this neither. Not a bit of what they’ve got. All I fancied was a sausage roll.’ Silently he proffered his paper-plate buffet at Gore.