Crusaders (34 page)

‘Oh, do we?’

‘Even if it’s just humouring them. Once they’re onside, who knows what you might get? Down the line.’

This woman had shaken him from the clutch of so many bad habits, taught him to foster his own brand – what she had done for his spirit, he could hardly enumerate. But after such scoldings he wondered – at some length – about the degree to which she truly respected him. Whether, indeed, he was to her a mere rung on a ladder. Since fucking her was now so far off the agenda, it seemed never the time to ask her directly.

Now she peered up from the page. ‘You need to look at some of this.’

‘What?’

‘Mueller aren’t sounding too happy. There’s some talk of pulling out.’

‘Jesus, they’ve not been there six month. Anyhow, it’s not my problem. It’s Mike Watt’s.’

‘You might want to comment. If you still have an eye on Trade and Industry. Oh, and they’re talking about a strike at the Freeman Hospital.’

‘Strike? For pay or conditions or what?’

‘Pay.’

‘Oh, right, easy.’ Pallister cast a drooping eye over the briefing papers. ‘Right. The usual SWP shit-stir. The Freeman, you know that’s where my dad got treated? For his arm?’

But Susannah had abruptly crushed her chin into her chest. ‘Malcolm Fairbrother, twelve o’clock.’

It was indeed the Liberal Democrat member for Leadgate – tall, suited and white-haired, a trace of rugby league in his build and gaunt cheeks, and the extent to which he clearly fancied himself, even in his fifties. But those same cheeks were blotted red, the berry-fruits of late sessions in Annie’s Bar. Even here, in transit, Fairbrother had a glass of red wine to hand.

‘Make way there, eh, Martin? Clear some of that muck of yours. Taking up the whole area, well I don’t know …’

Martin shifted his suit-bag from the aisle to beneath his seat. ‘I will always give way to the honourable gentleman.’

Fairbrother was cosying himself down beside Susannah. ‘Back to work then, eh? Nose to the grindstone.’

‘What would you know about that, Malcolm?’

Mirthless laughter. ‘Good weekend, was it? I was up in the Lakes myself. Walking, you know. Good crisp days, frost on the hills.
Marvellous
.’

‘A busy one for me. Full surgery, full appointment book.’

‘Ah, the humble tribune. His loyal constituents. Did they send you back to the Smoke with a flea in your ear?’

‘They know me well enough by now.’

‘That’s the trouble, eh? No, I must say, Martin, I find the people in Newcastle
fantastic
. Now, this will interest you, I do believe your Mr Keegan’s in the next carriage.’

Pallister fought the urge to make demanding eyes at Susannah.
Damn it
, though. Areal opportunity. How, then, to get shot of this windbag? Perhaps in a moment or two he might declare the need for a shit? There was just cause, at least, since that hotel roast had turned molten in his gut.

Susannah’s mobile rang, she clicked it and cupped it, nodded
and frowned. ‘Martin, it’s the
Journal
. About Mueller? They’re probably going to go big on it tomorrow.’

‘They want something now?’

‘We’ve got fifteen minutes?’

‘God. Let me think. Malcolm, would you excuse us? I find I need to choose some words with care …’

‘Oh, right-ho, far be it from me.’ And he levered himself up and off.

‘Thank fuck,’ Martin sighed. ‘There goes the world’s least impressive Yorkshireman. You expect them at least to talk sense, even if they’re so fucking
proud
of it.’ He didn’t bother to glance across the aisle and see onto whose ruffled feathers he had sprayed foul petroleum. Silence from those quarters was quite sufficiently pleasing.

‘Okay. Ready? “Obviously, we regret that this has come to pass” – no, “looks like it might come to pass. I’m sure we will work with Mueller and make our views clear. But the unions must make their own case …” Blah. You know how it goes from there?’

‘Yes, fine.’

Pallister slumped back into the seat, stared absently at the big bottle of sparkling eau minerale on the table between them, then caught the eye of one of his Yorkshire neighbours. ‘Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink,’ he muttered.

They were now approaching Darlington, it seemed. Martin let his thoughts lose their moorings and drift to the sound of Susannah’s scratching pen.

What the fuck are you doing here, Marty?

Thus spake the devil in his ear, the reprobate voice with which he was at war, this day as every other.

May Day of 1996, and he was a bidden guest at a reception, one that demanded his presence and the raising of a fizzy glass. Other guests appeared content to sip their Veuve Cliquot, munch their sweet pepper tartlets. And yet to Dr Pallister, MP, it didn’t feel entirely like a day for giving thanks. Droplets of unease clouded his drink.

‘How did it come to this, eh, Martin? You’ve gotta wonder.’

Robson Talbot, grey-eyed stalwart of the regional engineers, clung to his side, doing nothing to lift his spirits. The Member had at least dressed for the occasion – navy suit, scarlet tie, show you mean business, the Suzie Gore credo. Robson wore the same patched tweed coat in which he had lived and worked for three decades.

The two men stood together, apart from the chattering throng, in the conference room of the new Blackwater Hotel. It was a plush space, dapple-grey carpet festooned with hypnotic spirals of dark mauve that matched the walls and became the furnishings – faux Rennie Mackintosh, spidery-black. Abstracted industrial imagery hung in chrome frames. Long windows offered similar if plainer views across the Tyne to Gateshead. Uninspired, Martin sipped his drink and considered a rejoinder to Robson.

They had heard out the announcement of the Mueller Group’s acquisition of Alderton Power and its famous Heaton Works – a great acreage of plants and depots on the Shields Road, site since
1890 of the late Sir Thomas Alderton’s industrial magnitude. Alderton’s chief business down the decades had been the making of steam turbines for electric power stations. Prosperity had come and gone, as had a succession of British owners. Now the cool blue logo of Germany’s world-renowned Mueller was to be
hoisted
over the entrance, stamped all about its perimeters. The takeover, Martin knew, was a sort of a boon for his colleague Mike Watt, Honourable Member for Heaton & Wallsend – though, in the round, it was hard to see it as aught but a pricey PR success for the government, each and every one of a thousand new jobs
lavishly
subsidised by start-up sweeteners.

Martin chanced a long look across the room, toward the power trio of Mueller executives flown in from Munich this morning, now stood approvingly by the tall nerd they had announced as UK CEO. Their Hugo Boss suits were a bit boxy and square-shouldered to Martin’s taste. One of them looked to be of his own vintage, a sandy-haired child of the sixties. Another was a doughy bloke in a wig, run to fat on Bavarian butter and beer. But their boss-man wore his fringe in a razor-keen parting, his lightweight glasses seemingly made of Perspex. It was, Martin decided, the high glint in the lenses that conjured up the war stories. Relenting to his devil, he inclined and whispered to Robson, ‘Divvint mention the war, then? None of that “Them’s the bastads bombed me granny.”’

Robson broke into a smile, finally. ‘Aye. They
did
, but, Martin.’

‘I know. Me dad never let up about the firebomb came down twenty yard from his old back door.’

‘He wasn’t fighting age, your dad?’

‘Nah, man, he was still at Chilly Road School. I always
remember
, but, the house where I grew up – his old gas mask, on a nail under the stairs.’

‘Whereabouts was that, Martin?’

‘Tosson Terrace. North end of the Chilly? Aye. I used to ride past the works every morning, on me bike to school.’

It was for Robson’s sake that Martin deigned to coarsen his accent and wax nostalgic. His true memories of those rides were pallid. In the fog of a winter’s dawn, his school-bound mood
usually 
tetchy, he had found the works a cheerless sight – sprawling and formidable, but somehow sad, somehow oppressive, a
functional
hive for drones.

He decided now to test Robson’s mettle. ‘I remember
metalwork
teacher of ours took us for a day-trip to the works. Got us shown around. When we got back on the bus he said, “Right lads, now that’s why you want to get your exams. So’s you don’t end up working
there
.”’

Robson coloured. ‘He never? Of all the bliddy – see, now
that
sort of attitude … Thirteen thousand
men
we had at the old works. Your dad among them.’

Martin shrugged. ‘Forty year ago now, Robson.’

‘What, you think
this
lot are in it for more than a fortnight?’

‘Who knows? A buyer’s a buyer. There’s a case against it. There’s a case for it. It’s not cut and dried.’

‘Whey, tell us what you
think
, man. Not all that politician’s talk.’

In a personal capacity? Yes, Dr Pallister respected the principle of the Mueller acquisition. As new supplants old, son supplants father, so Mueller must supplant Alderton. So ran the logic. And it
was
supplanting – not asset-stripping or carpetbagging or any such sneer. It was growth and development, the nature of
business
, sure as the turning of the earth. Such was Martin’s theory, based on long study of the interplay between base and
superstructure
. But it did not come impersonally to him. It could not have been more personal. He had now lived long enough, by his own estimation, to have seen these forces clash within the bounds of his own life. He had no interest in rehashing such a feud with Robson Talbot.

Excusing himself, he shouldered a way across the room in time to corner the lithe blonde girl in charge of Blackwater Events – dark-eyed and hollow-cheeked, in her compulsory hundred-quid charcoal trouser-suit from Next.

‘Tell me, Tessa, do you do a sort of a package rate for this kind of thing? The room and staff and catering and all that?’

‘We do a whole range, sir, depending on your needs, if you’d like to see our tariff?’

‘I would, thanks. Proctor’s a pal of mine, if that’s any use.’

‘Aw really?’ She raised a black-pencilled eyebrow, seemingly respectful of this free and easy way with the proprietor’s given name.

‘While we’re at it, what price are your bedrooms on a midweek? Any more of this fizz and I’ll be ready for a lie-down.’

He held her gaze long enough, but no, she was quite oblivious, referring him to her colleague Michelle at front desk. She was – Martin ruled – a bit delicious. But a bit sallow and fretful too, short of spark. A grafter, not the kind to be lured away from her
afternoon
chores. It was galling, for he couldn’t deny his interest in what lay under her layers, what sort of knickers she had on beneath that compulsory trouser-suit.

But Tessa was leaving him, and his reverie was disturbed by the hoving into view of a familiar beaky proboscis, a well-known derisive grin: his one-time protégé Red Paul Todd, wearing his own standard smart gear – some cheap black sports coat shiny with wear, and washed-out black jeans.

‘How do, Doc Martin. Not up at the May Day bash then? Thought that’s where good Labour members ought to be the day.’

‘Bad timing. This had precedence. I’ll get up later on.’

‘I saw Robson Talbot get himself away just now.’

‘And what about you, Paul?’

‘The paper wanted me here. Looks more like the story. The
selling
of Tyneside by the pound.’

Martin felt at liberty to ignore the halfwit jibe. ‘And what paper is it pays for you these days?’

‘Just a bit stringing I do for the
Journal
. Just trying to get on. Like yourself. You got a line for us then? Good day for the north-east, is it?’

‘A fine day for Heaton Works and its workforce. Good day for Mike Watt. And I congratulate the president of the Board of Trade for having helped make the case to Mueller.’

‘Oh, the
president
? And is it nice to bow and scrape to that Tory?’

‘I’ll shake any hand, Paul. That’s my job. I’ll say this, but,
knowing
the history of Alderton, and I know it better than you –’

‘Oh, I know you do, Martin. Your dad’s worth ten of you, mind.’

‘You’re the judge of that, are you?’

‘You know he fancies standing against you next time?’

‘My dad can do what he likes. I’ll respect him for it. Listen, but, you want to get off up to May Day, Paul, there’ll be a bottle of cider there with your name on. What we’ve got
here
is something that’s of actual
use
to Tyneside. Not like you and the comrades, all wanking in a circle. You can print that if you’ve got the nuts. Excuse us now, will you? I need a piss.’

So hadaway and fuck yourself, Toddy,
said the demon in Dr Pallister.

Stalking away down a hushed and spot-lit corridor Martin felt a stab of pain across his shoulder muscles. Maybe the strain of yesterday’s fitful squash game, more likely the raw nub of his tethered anger. Someday, this would all have to get settled one-
on-one
in the back of some car park, because the upshot of these bitchy little verbal battles was never satisfying. He could take the banter and give it back, but he would not stand to be patronised. Yes, by his own admission – he was not the man he had thought he would become. He was newly forty, the feeling every bit as dispiriting as schoolmates had led him to believe. He was on the right stage in life, yet he had envisaged a more central role. So what, though, if it had transpired that his true calling was as a conduit, an enabler for the energies of others? What mattered, plainly, was the material good.

Their house on Tosson Terrace had survived the Luftwaffe, but Martin would not have minded so much had it been targeted and firebombed into cinders. It was of 1920s vintage, a bit of a hutch, lacking the bay-and-lintel bearing of certain nearby Victorian
terraces
where the neighbouring street names were all posh – Sackville, Craythorne, Huntcliffe – though the standard of
construction
didn’t match the aspiration. Heaton as a whole had once been considered quite fancy, or so the lore went, before the
Alderton Works. For the works wanted a workforce, so much the better if they were housed en masse within its shadow.

In his ambulant boyhood Martin liked to stray from Heaton to the wider space of nearby Jesmond, where the air felt finer. The house rows were elegantly Georgian, and larking students were much in evidence. Jesmond people carried themselves differently too, seeming to work at nicer occupations. Then there was the ample civic parkland of Town Moor, its boating lake and bowling green and gravel tennis courts. Quickly diligent in his practice on those courts, Martin was further gratified to find that the game was favoured by a lot of rosy girls in pristine white, some of a
surpassing
blondeness, most of whom wore pleated thigh-high skirts that flipped pleasingly in time with their exertions. At courtside he made his first girlfriend, the blushing daughter of a city
councilman
. Her dad would roll up in his Austin De Luxe to whisk her back home, but he was markedly unfriendly toward her young swain.
Sod you, then,
swore the little devil in Martin. His own father heard out and endorsed his complaint. ‘You get some snobs in life, Martin. Even your mother, y’knaa, she’s got a bit of it.’

Jenny Pallister – ash-blonde, fine-boned – did seem to carry
herself
a cut above the norm. ‘However did I marry such a madam?’ Joe liked to chuckle, throwing a brawny arm round her shoulder. He got away with it, most of the time. Other times, Martin noted his mother’s wince.

She was the force behind his admission to the local grammar school, where the classroom windows were black-leaded, teachers affected flowing capes, and certain older boys were designated prefects, with exceptional powers to humiliate. But no bugger ever shoved Martin Pallister’s head down a toilet bowl. Though a bright lad and a pretty face, he was a sportsman too, physically dauntless. He embraced the quagmire mud and freezing rain of midwinter rugby, keenly retrieved house-bricks from the
chlorinated
floor of Chilly Road Baths.

Rugby was no more Joe’s game than tennis. It was books, of all things, that helped he and Martin stay pals. Fiercely autodidactic, Joe made sure to share his learning with his lad – ‘You want to
read
this
, you do.’ And so Martin battled through the density of Thompson’s
The Making of the English Working Class
, and
God’s Englishman
by Christopher Hill. He fancied himself one of nature’s roundheads, subduing cavaliers with the flat of his sword. Above all, he fell for the figure of Cromwell, Lord Protector. Joe warned him that history was not about great men, though one might want to recognise certain unsung heroes. Martin couldn’t agree. Surely somebody had to do the hard
shifting
, and so take extra credit? In time he saw that Joe viewed human agency in light of a greater cosmic struggle, due in part to the influence of the man Martin knew as Uncle Marcus.

Joe finished school at fifteen, served an apprenticeship, earned his HNC, and – after national service Down South – got himself hired at Alderton, where he attained the rank of foreman-fitter. Through the society of the canteen and some after-hours meetings he got matey with a design engineer, a pale, intense man called Marcus Chambers who, improbably, was forging a name as an eloquent and unbending orchestrator of strikes, work-to-rules, even an occupation of premises.

Joe had always called himself a Labour man, like his father before him, holding it as an article of faith that the Party had made great strides for the working class in general and the north-east in particular. Yet over pint mugs of tea Marcus Chambers had impressed upon Joe that those strides had not been so broad – and, indeed, were followed by craven retreats. Martin could
imagine
the effect upon his father once he, too, had been made to hear out Uncle Marcus’s stock speech.

‘Whatever they promise you in opposition, once they govern they’re just the party of business. What’ll history say of Wilson? But that he froze wages, cut spending, raised prices? No, under Labour just like
anyone
else, the boss class get the gravy. Just like Morrison said – socialism is whatever Labour decides to do in power. If that’s what we’ve to settle for, then – I’m sorry – isn’t it Labour that’s stopping us from ever getting
real
socialism?’