Crusaders (7 page)

‘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 through 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.

‘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.

‘So who do you fancy for the next Labour loser then, Jonno?’

‘The next leader?’

Susannah’s eyelids popped as to say she meant what she said.

‘It’s got to be Kinnock.’

‘Ah. It’d be nice for him to have a proper job at last.’

Get knotted
, thought John. He had first heard Neil Kinnock on the radio in the week before the election, addressing a crowd in South Wales, hoarsely and yet with no little rhetorical fire. Kinnock was a miner’s son, and John was sure he heard the
plangent
cadence of a pulpiteer to boot.

At Embankment the tumultuous scale of the day became clear amid a mounting din of shouts and whistles. All around were vociferous men, women, children and babies, vividly disparate banners and emblems –
AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS, NICARAGUAN SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN, JAMES CONNOLLY
SOCIETY
– but above all a multitude of painted doves and rainbows heralding peace. John had never seen so many dark-skinned
people
in the flesh, and tried not to stare. On the fringes of the
teeming
congregation were stalls purveying badges and flags, booklets and pamphlets. John was drifting toward the reading matter when a hawkish skinhead in a purple Harrington stepped into his way, waving a wad of newssheets.

‘
Socialist Worker
, pal?’

‘I won’t, if you don’t mind, thanks.’

‘Your loss, pal.’

He came to a fold-out table tended by a girl with sloe eyes, a bolt in one nostril and a sheaf of vermilion hair. He inspected her wares – no doves or rainbows here, just angry splashes of red.
Straight Left, Burning Questions
. The girl smiled sleepily at him, and so he fished out some coins. On his return Susannah eyed him archly. ‘You’re in there, I think, Jonno.’ She snatched the pamphlet. ‘Tsk. Communist Party nonsense.’

Paul took an interest. ‘Aye, that’s the Marxist-Leninist faction but. They split, see.’

Susannah snorted. ‘Over what? Something that happened in 1920?’

‘Whey, you sneer all you want, Suzie,’ Paul smiled impishly, to John’s delight. ‘But it’s very important to make the right analysis. You should give it a try yer’sel.’

From set-off it took the marchers two hours just to step and shuffle halfway along the envisaged route through the city. The slow progress assumed a permanence, yet the vehemence of the crowd had its own momentum, and whenever this flagged there came a rallying cry of sorts – someone with a bullhorn or klaxon, or the first line of a song. As they approached Victoria John espied that sloe-eyed pamphlet vendor stepping hither and thither a short distance ahead, urging
Burning Questions
onto fellow marchers. He was daring himself to sidle closer to her when the
Socialist Worker
skinhead hoved into view at her flank, gesturing unpleasantly to the girl and her would-be customers.

‘Don’t be swallowin’ anything off of these
fucking
middle-class Stalinists.’

‘Oh yeah,’ she riposted. ‘Says the Trot
wanker
.’

The skin seized her arm, she shoved at him, and – to John’s
outrage
– he shoved her back. John felt his feet taking him forward into the affray. But a second skinhead had come on the scene and was already restraining his bristly friend, seizing him by the chest as his arms flailed the air. Too late John saw a sharp elbow rising to clout him in the nose. Static burst behind his eyes, he staggered and fell to the tarmac.

Strange hands tugged him to his feet, some grey-bearded bloke and his wife in a blue bobble-hat. Now Susannah had her fingers on his face – ‘Let us
see
, Jonno’ – and Paul was fending off
someone
whose apology was unaccepted. ‘Let’s get him offside,’ Paul was urging, then they were levering him apart from the hubbub, the parade passing by. They ducked into a pub, darkened in the late afternoon, strikingly quiet, wainscoted and divided into nooks by partitions of frosted glass. John was plonked in a corner while Susannah purchased drinks, in spite of Paul’s protests.

Musical female laughter drifted from a neighbouring nook. John found himself staring at the handsome youngish couple sat there, he wreathed in smoke, she running fingers through flaxen
hair, an evident intimacy he thought very enviable. He glanced aside only to see Paul’s attention similarly diverted.

‘That fella, I
know
him. Martin Pallister. Teaches politics at Newcastle Uni.’

‘How do
you
know him?’

If there was an insult in Susannah’s tone, Paul didn’t rise to it. ‘He does summer schools and that, weekend courses for union lads. Listen, I might gan and say hello.’

‘Let’s all of us,’ Susannah decided. ‘No point just nursing the casualty.’ They took up their glasses and trooped behind Paul.

‘Martin?’

A fleeting wince. ‘Aye?’

‘Paul Todd? I was in with your lot at Redhills last summer?’

‘Oh aye, Paul. How’re you keeping, son?’

‘Canny. Did you come down for the march the day then, eh?’

‘Aye, sort of. But I got thirsty, man.’ Pallister grinned. ‘You bunked off an’ all?’

‘Well, the lad here got a bash in the face off of some Trot.’

Pallister’s gaze fell on John. ‘So you did. Poor kid. Well, now you’ve earned your combat stripes.’

Even as they drew up stools John was certain Pallister’s manner wished them gone. The girl at his side he introduced as Polly, and the corners of her mouth flickered, but her throaty chuckle had been silenced by the invasion. As Paul tried to engage Pallister, John made a discreet inspection of the man. His build was
compactly
sportsmanlike, his eyes very blue, and he was fine-planed of jawline and cheekbone. He wore a jacket of black corduroy over a half-buttoned grey shirt, a silver chain at his throat, his
crow-black
hair spiked on top but shaggy at the nape, more befitting a rock’n’roller than a college lecturer. Clearly his nose had been
broken
once upon a time, yet it added some useful rough to his good looks. Engrossed in this admiration, John suddenly saw those blue eyes turn on him anew.

‘You still a bit glakey there, son? So what did you do to earn the smack?’

Paul leapt in, as if perched in the front row of a tutorial. ‘He got
between some Trot skin giving out to a little Commie lass for being middle-class.’

Pallister sniffed. ‘Not a bad analysis. Mine wouldn’t be much different.’ He reached for his packet of Silk Cut, set squarely on the table beneath a distressed silver Zippo. Paul produced papers and pouch from his pocket and began to craft a roll-up, his eyes never leaving his hero.

‘CND’s a sweet idea,’ Pallister exhaled. ‘But there’s nee real
politics
to it. ‘“Give peace a chance”, aye, right. But they’ll never achieve owt. End of the day? They’re in bed with Labour. Meaning they’ll take whatever a Labour government gives them. Meaning nowt.’

Susannah wrinkled her nose. ‘What “Labour government” would that be?’ Pallister flicked a wry eye in her direction, and she seemed pleased. ‘Sorry, but you want to mind your language too, my little brother’s red-hot Labour.’

‘Christian Socialist,’ John corrected her, feeling it was time he imposed himself properly on the symposium.

‘Dear me how,’ said Pallister, breathing another blue cloud. ‘That’s called an oxymoron, son. You can’t absolve the rich of their sins by holy water.’

John made a face. ‘That’s not what Christian Socialism’s about, it means –’

‘I
teach
this stuff, sunshine.’ Pallister wore a slight grimace of his own. ‘For a living. So I think I know what I’m saying.’

‘Well, then you’ll know the Bible made as many socialists as Marx ever did. I mean, the churches are what Labour was founded on.’

‘Oh,
Labour
, aye – Labour’s a party of preachers alright. All the churchy types sign up there. I’m talking
socialism
, kidder.’ John was confused, Pallister jabbing his lit cigarette as if to skewer a stray and offensive argument. ‘Look, you’ve gotta know your
history
when you say “Christian Socialism”. It was a proper
movement
, eighteen-nineties –’

‘I know,’ John blurted, keen to be profligate with his learning. ‘F. D. Maurice, the small band of brothers.’

Pallister paused, his stare a shade darker. ‘Oh, you know all that, do you? And do you know what they achieved? Nowt. Just a load of dog-collars sniffin’ round the East End of London.
Missionaries
, y’knaa? Reckoned they’d sort out the proles. But the working class was organising
itself
, see. It wasn’t in need of
sermons
.’ He stubbed the cigarette pointedly. ‘So aye, you’re right, the Church gave Labour a start. But Labour outgrew the Church. We all outgrow it, don’t we? You will too. I bloody hope you do.’

John could feel the burn of Susannah’s thin smile in his
peripheral
vision.

‘You don’t give Labour much credit, do you?’

‘I’ve not forgot what they’re like in power. Divvint get us started.’

Susannah leaned in. ‘Exactly. What’s Thatcher doing that Callaghan wouldn’t have loved to? If he’d had the bottle?’

‘Well,’ Pallister chuckled, ‘to be fair – I don’t know if he’d have sent men to the Malvinas to fight for a rock and some seagulls.’

‘I’m sure he wouldn’t. Then where would we have been? Kowtowing to Argie fascists? No, that was true leadership.’

‘Blimey, where’s your tin hat, love? Is it under your chair there?’

‘Sorry,
flower
, am I a bit too tough for you?’

‘Not at all,
pet
. I just never met one of your lot before. Hail the blessed Margaret, eh?’

John studied his sister and Pallister as they glared at one
another
. However guiltily, he relished seeing Susannah take a turn in the lions’ den. He was conscious, too, of how silent the delicious Polly had been throughout these charged exchanges.

Susannah emitted a short laugh. ‘You make me laugh, your lot.’

‘My lot?’

She had plucked up Pallister’s cigarette packet, defying his raised eyebrows, and drawn out a smoke. ‘You lefties. Talking like you’re for all the good things, and against all the bad things, and it all got decided ages ago. What you’re actually
saying
is utter shit.’ She had coaxed the Zippo into flame, and she lit and drew, a little clumsily. ‘I mean, what do you think politicians are
for
? It’s just a
job
, man. Governments aren’t there to make
everything
sweetness and light. They’re not Jesus Christ and his bloody disciples.’