Crusaders (9 page)

John mustered a shake of his head. ‘Sorry, what are you saying then? Them who are doing it now, they should just – go do
something
else?’

‘John, it’s just how the world is, man. People used to have jobs making wheels for wagons. They used to need an operator to dial America. Sometimes people just have to learn to do summat
different
.’

‘What if someone came to
you
and said, “Sorry, that job you’ve done all your life? We don’t need you any more, you’re fucking finished –”’ He saw the line of his father’s mouth harden at last. But Audrey was standing, with the help of a hand on the table, looking wan and queasy. And then Bill was on his feet too.

‘Are y’alright, love?’

‘No I’m not. I’ve got to take me pill.’

‘Do you need a hand, Mam?’ John gestured uselessly.

‘No, I said. But you two carry on by all means.’ Audrey pushed her chair in under the table and walked, a little ungainly, from the room. John stared at the dining-table surface, at the redundant champagne, then at his father.

‘She gets very weary sometimes,’ Bill muttered. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

John nodded, feeling worse than flattened, for he would have readily resumed their quarrel but that the teeth had been drawn from it so sharply. He would await another turn, then, to fight the good fight down to its right and dialectical end.

‘I don’t like to tell you your business, Father, but this is the sort of decision you want to get right.’

Gore nodded resignedly, accepting that the argument was lost, his afternoon wasted. For half an hour he had been in conference across a counter from Mrs Paulette Wicker, tiny and strident
professional
seamstress of John Dobson Street. The project at hand was the commission of a formal cloth for the altar of the new church of St Luke’s. They had discussed material, agreeing that rayon was tasteless, linen much the best. They had discussed colour, though Gore found his preference for oyster overruled, since purple was really the nicest and most popular. They had even discussed design and lettering, and Mrs Wicker let it be known she was very partial to cuneiform characters, most especially fish. Then progress had abruptly foundered on the question of the cloth’s dimensions, its exact width and fold and drop on each side. These were precision matters, and Gore now knew he was a fool not to have come armed with the information. But then how could he?

‘So you mean you’ve not actually got an altar?’

‘Not yet. Like I said, I’m starting from scratch. I thought I’d get the set dressings gathered first, you see.’

‘Well, that sounds very
novel
. Tell you what, I’ll keep a note we’ve spoken, and you come back to us when you know better what’s what, eh? Cos we don’t want to make a whoopsie, do we? Not at forty pound a yard.’

Shouldering his way down the pedestrian thoroughfare of Northumberland Street, Gore found his mood didn’t improve. It
was strange to have quit the funeral-parlour murk of Mrs Wicker’s little shop and find himself among so many who were lively and purposeful. The street was a chattering hubbub of
mercantile
activity, the world and his wife and kids streaming in and out of Next, Primark, HMV, Dixons, Marks and Spencer – larking youths, overweight couples, pushchairs and wheelchairs,
pensioners
lugging bags with chrome handles. All had come to the high-street bazaar, heralded by synthetic pop music drifting from every doorway. It seemed almost a form of recreation, no
purchase
necessary. Gore was not himself enticed, not by any glaring window. So why were so many out here, in the midst of a working day, picking up stuff just to put it down again? By the time he reached Blackett Street he was musing over themes and keywords for a sermon. ‘Adrift’, ‘rudderless’, ‘beguiled’. ‘Zombies’ was probably too rude. ‘Commodity fetishism’ too Marxian. What, though, was the true meaning of ‘popular’? Might there be
anything
in the etymology he could make instructive use of?

Then he paused and looked all about him, from the Body Shop to Berry’s the Jeweller and Gregg’s the Baker. And he knew that if he could draw a fraction of such a crowd on a Sunday then he would count himself a lucky fool. Would any of these people count it an attractive proposition to sit and listen to him for an hour or more? To sit and be with each other, quietly and
thoughtfully
, without visible gain? To ask the question was to answer it.

He had reached the broad open square of the Monument. Earl Grey stood serenely on his Doric plinth, a small bird atop his Portland stone head, two hundred feet above the afternoon trade. Citizens clustered at the base, resting their feet, some
unwrapping
takeaway sandwiches. Gore was headed homeward, down the steep wind of Grey Street, past facades of fine stone, Athenian detail and symmetry, enduringly handsome despite the wear and tear and general distress of the years and the rain and the pigeons.

As he neared the entrance of the Theatre Royal he made out that directly before its stately portico of Corinthian columns a crowd of bodies were milling – clearly composed of members of the press
as much as onlookers, for the crowd made a crescent that bore all the hallmarks of a photo opportunity, if not a car crash.

He inveigled himself into the back of the throng. All attention was facing forward, its unlikely object a portly man in a grey suit, his bootlace hair slicked over his scalp, a sheet of paper clutched in one hand that quivered as if in want of a drink. Beside him, a similarly nervy, somewhat androgynous young woman in a shapeless blue smock. Beside
her
– indeed towering over her, tucked into the base of a column – was an extraordinary oddity: a square-sided monolith, seemingly constructed of white Perspex, perhaps ten feet tall and five feet wide with a doorway cut into one side, immaculately blank and madly incongruous.

‘What’s going on?’ Gore whispered to a man adjacent who toyed with the levers and triggers of a Nikon camera and flash.

‘Better listen,’ came the shrugged response.

‘Well now, as you may know, I’m Bob Muir –’

A ripple of presumably sardonic cheers. Mr Muir’s scalp flushed.

‘Aye, aye, and I just want to say – briefly now, you’ll be glad to know – I want to say a few words about why we’re here, on behalf of the council.’

‘Sweating like a rapist,’ Gore heard the photographer mutter.

‘So, as you see, we’re here outside our marvellous theatre that we’ve given a bit help to in the past. And this street, you might know, is known all over, really, by all the knowledgeable people, for the fine architecture of Grainger and Dobson, which I’m told they call “Tyneside Classical”. Brilliant, eh?’
Muir cast a more hopeful eye about the gathering.
‘And, really, we’re in one of the best spots in the city right here, a
conservation
area, all your listed buildings and whatnot. Now, we know, of course, these great streets of ours have seen their better days. But it’s a big hope for us on the council that we can find a way to give ’em back their former glories. Revive the spirit of Grainger, if you want. So – and, well, but before that we want to start it all off by – aw, hang on, sorry.’
Muir peered avidly at his piece of paper.

‘Eh, Bob, I’ll bet you mean to tell us you’ll be listening to the
people
…’

The heckle – if heckle it was, for it issued affably from
somewhere
to Gore’s right – seemed to tickle the crowd more than
anything
the councillor had yet mustered, and Muir looked piqued. ‘Aye well, of course I defer to the Member for Tyneside West, knowing his expertise. You’re a good mile out of your jurisdiction but, Martin.’

‘Hey, Bob, man, I’m only here to help.’

Gore craned his neck and saw a familiar – an unmistakeable – figure, blue-eyed and blue-suited, rocking on his heels at the head of the spectators, fists in pockets, chomping on a wad of gum.

‘Pallister gets his oar in as usual …’ This muttered by another near to Gore, into the photographer’s ear – presumably his
scribbling
sidekick.

‘Right, so the name of this game is consultation with the people of Newcastle, what we want is, yes, to listen to local people and take their input onboard and – and do summat with it. So I’m delighted to unveil today this installation which we hope will get us kicked off. We were pleased to commission Anthea Morrow here, who’s a fine artist and a canny lass, and we thank her for her thought and effort on this here – piece.’

‘Can you tell us what it is, Bob?’ Gore’s neighbour had his biro poised.

‘Oh aye, well, it’s sort of a suggestion box, really, isn’t it, Anthea pet?’

Ms Morrow looked sceptical. ‘If you like. On a certain scale …’

‘Yes, that’s what it’s for, anyhow it’ll be stood here for a couple of months and – well, you can see – people can just walk in through the doorway there and write what they want to on the walls. Pens will be provided.’

‘You mean
graffiti
, Bob?’ enquired Martin Pallister, as if
innocent
.

‘Aye, like in a pub netty?’ offered one of the hacks, emboldened.

‘Well, eh, no. Because, inside, you’ll see, there’s, like, questions already printed on the walls – proper questions about the city and that. So I fancy there’ll be smarter things get said than what
you’re
saying. Any road, let’s just wait and see what the people say, eh?
Let’s have a bit faith in that.’

‘C’mon, Bob, you can’t tell us lads aren’t gunna walk in there of a Friday night and piss in it.’

‘Eh now, fellas, I mean for God’s sake show a bit of enthusiasm. And a bit of respect for what Anthea’s done here.’ Some faltering applause was mustered, and one or two hoots. ‘Alright, whatever you’s want, get your bloody photos then.’

As the gathering began to disperse, Gore kept his eye on Martin Pallister, for the MP lingered meaningfully, apart from the VIP contingent yet fraternising easily with the members of the press – as though the day were all about him, or indeed had anything to do with him. Why did they pay him such courtesy in turn? Because he was better-dressed, better-groomed than the hapless Councillor Muir? It was, by any standard, peerless effrontery. Discreetly Gore planted himself near enough to hear what
sounded
for all the world like a briefing.

‘… No, fine, look – off the record? I’m not knocking the intention. But it’s not just about intentions. It’s got to look professional, hasn’t it? You’ve got to put the proper frame round these things. If you want to get investors interested, developers onboard – which you have to. And they’re not mugs, not in those games. See, what bothers me is how many bloody meetings it took ’em all to decide
this
was a good idea.’

Gore wasn’t sure what to make of the little pantomime he had witnessed. Without doubt, there was disrepair in the heart of Newcastle – nothing much seemed thriving about it, between the greying gloom of these Victorian streets and the outright plastic horrors of the 60s and 70s, the likes of Eldon Square. Yes, the
condition
of Hoxheath was much the more dire. Yes, the council’s efforts today had been, perhaps, a little under-rehearsed,
under-resourced
– maybe a bit shallow, a token gesture even? And yet Gore found his sympathies resting with the harassed Muir rather than the self-professed know-all.

It was dancing in his mind now, a fancy to step forward,
introduce
himself anew to Martin Pallister, shake his hand, enquire after Susannah – see what he got back for his trouble. On
reflection
,
though, this was not a hand he was well-disposed to shake. Did he have anything properly pleasant to say? No, so say
nothing
. Hadn’t this poser once presumed to tell the miners how to win a strike? How could a man face himself in the mirror after cashing in his former convictions for all the world to see? No, he could not and should not be taken seriously. Gore turned his face from the dwindling assembly.

With care John plucked one from the cluster of three-inch
figurines
set on the glass table, and raised it to his eye-level. He had guessed correctly: Anubis, the jackal-headed god, sculpted and cast in dark pewter, bearing his scales. He replaced it among its fellows, the crocodile king, the cat clutching a staff, the female
hiding
a scorpion in her coiled hair. Queer choices for the master of a Cambridge seminary. On the wood-panelled wall behind the
master’s
desk hung a Buddhist prayer shawl of shimmering white silk, pressed flat behind glass. Such were the traces of a man and his tastes, but as yet John awaited the actual presence of Reverend Gordon Lockhart, and the clock was tripping past eleven. John had straightened his tie, buttoned up his corduroy jacket and returned to his chair when at last Lockhart entered in haste. He wore his white hair swept back from his temples, with a neatly trimmed white moustache and goatee beard. His eyes were mild behind large-framed spectacles.

‘Mr Gore. I do apologise. Let us brook no more delay.’ Lockhart opened a manilla file and spread papers before him. ‘Let’s see. You were seen by Canon Botsford. You’ve done your conference in Leeds.’ He glanced up. ‘You’re finishing a degree in politics? And you want the two-year divinity course at the university, after which – you’d come to us for the certificate in ministry?’

John nodded. ‘That’s about the size of it.’

‘And you’re from Durham? You didn’t fancy keeping near your roots?’

‘No, I liked the course here best. Roots are for trees, I think.’

Lockhart smiled, not quite approvingly.

‘But you’re renouncing politics? Your devotion until now?’

‘Not as such. I still belong to the Labour Party. I just – lost a bit of the taste for politics, at university.’

‘How unfortunate. Any special reason?’

‘I think … it was a lot to do with the miners’ strike. My
grandparents
were miners – Durham, you know. So I was ashamed of the Party, really, for giving nothing to that fight. To people they were meant to fight for.’ Gore adjusted himself in his seat. ‘There was that, then there was just all the nonsense of student politics. Pushy people calling each other names. It was like being back in the school playground – only pompous as well as childish.’

Lockhart seemed mildly amused. ‘Oh dear. So what did you do to fill your time instead? At college?’

John shrugged. ‘Christian Union, two nights a week. I played a bit of football. Acted in a few student plays.’

‘Ah, drama. What sort of parts did you land?’

‘Small things, mostly. I was Angelo in
Measure for Measure
.’

‘Oh, now there’s a useful character. A study in our dual nature. “Heaven in my mouth”,’ the master recited jauntily, ‘“as if I did but only chew his name. And in my heart the strong and swelling evil of my conception.”’

Lockhart appeared to revel in a certain showmanship of his own. Again John shifted in his chair. This was proving a livelier exchange than he had expected.

‘Well, our production was a “feminist” version, apparently, so the director said. I never knew what he meant. But he asked me to make the character cold and violent and generally loathsome. So I did my best.’

‘That sounds rather fun. In a vicarious sort of fashion. You enjoyed acting?’

John nodded. ‘I don’t know that I had any great skill. But I found that I understood the words and could say them aloud so they sounded vaguely interesting.’

‘That’, Lockhart nodded slowly, ‘is a definite boon.’

John omitted to share with the master what he had found to be the chief blessing of amateur dramatics, namely that it had
inducted him into female company. The Isabella to his Antonio had been a third-year chemist called Amanda, a lively girl with limpid green eyes, a bushel of kinky copper hair, and a cat-like body that John held closely but warily as he flung her hither and thither round the rehearsal room. After one such vigorous evening she led him through cold streets and up to her attic bedroom,
fitted
and straddled him like good collegiate sport, and relieved him of his virginity. In short, he had found acting an altogether
worthwhile
pursuit; and Lockhart, for as much as he knew, seemed to approve. He was smiling, at least.

‘Still, you’ve decided not to pursue the actor’s life. You’d already given up on elected office. Through all this you stayed steadfast in the Church?’

The crux
, thought John, clearing his throat. ‘Yes. The Church has always been where I’ve found all my interests. All my passions. That’s never gone away. It was affirmed for me, really, when the Church report on inner-city poverty came out. At the end of 1985?’

‘Faith in the City,’
Lockhart nodded.

‘Yes. That made me proud, that piece of work.’ He smiled despite himself. ‘My father agreed with the Tories that it was all Marxist claptrap. I mean, that’s what he read in
The Times
, I think.’

In Lockhart’s own slight smile John saw complicity. ‘Your father disputed the Commission’s findings?’

‘I don’t think he’d dispute that a lot of people have got madly richer and just as many are miserably poorer. “Multiple
deprivation
” was the phrase, I think. But I don’t waste time arguing the hows and whys of all that with my father. Or my sister, or any of the two million happy shareholders in British Telecom.’

‘You have a sister? What does she do with herself?’

‘She works for a public relations firm at Westminster. They’re very close to the Conservatives.’

‘How funny. So she’s the real political animal of the family. And you, meanwhile, seek ordination to ministry.’

John nodded, a little perplexed by Lockhart’s antithesis.

‘Well, I hope no one’s lied to you about the way we do things. You’ve read the syllabus? There are, of course, the core areas.
Doctrine, Old and New Testaments, the Fathers, Church history. Ethics we’re rather big on, with reference to philosophy and
theology
. All of that appeals?’

John nodded. ‘It’s really theology that’s my main interest.’

Lockhart closed his eyes meditatively, nodding as if to distant music. ‘Theology is fundamental to Grey.’ The eyes reopened. ‘Who do you read that you fancy?’

Strange terms
, thought John. ‘John of the Cross. Tillich, I
suppose
. Bonhoeffer.’

Lockhart’s eyebrows flicked heavenward. ‘“Religionless Christianity”.’

‘I don’t think Bonhoeffer meant Christianity without God,’ John hastened to add.

‘Oh no,’ Lockhart murmured. ‘No, I expect he had in mind the dead weight of the Church. Or some of its votaries.’

‘I should say the school of negative theology is the one I feel nearest to. The idea of God I feel I can best approach through a sense of His absence.’

‘Oh well, of course, yes,’ said Lockhart. ‘There’s that idea too.’

John was picking up something whimsical, unacceptably
ironic
, about this man, reflecting ill on the solemnity he had tried to summon for the occasion. He was unhappily put in mind of his chance meeting in the street only weeks ago – Amanda, out with her crowd, stopping and smiling brightly. But when he told her his news, his plans, she had bit her lip, her smile turning piteous. ‘Oh John,’ she had said.

‘In any case,’ Lockhart resumed, ‘we get all sorts here. But the course itself is a set menu. Lectures are compulsory. You may feel your life has been full of such stuff.’

‘It’s true, I’ve been a long time about my education.’

‘Quite. But here we believe in a proper balance between theory and practice. The true objective is to train you for your pastoral duties in the world. You are not hermits. You’re free to pursue your hobbies, whatever they are – it doesn’t have to be
bell-ringing
. There are certain domestic duties that fall by rota. How are you in the kitchen?’

‘I’m told I make a decent pot of stew.’

‘Oh well then, you’re in.’ Lockhart was turning over John’s
handwritten
statement. ‘No, I think I can understand your various
interests
, your background. What faith has meant to you.
Specifically
, though – I see you are someone who believes they “felt the call”.’

John flinched. ‘Isn’t that how everyone feels – who comes?’

‘No. No, it isn’t.’ Lockhart stared at him very levelly, then back to the statement. ‘You refer to a particularly charged experience.’

‘Yes, I had a – it was a couple of years ago – it gave me a very strong feeling. Not really … explicable, I thought. Not rational.’

‘Go on.’

‘I was in France, a village in the Auvergne region. I’d arranged some leave from my studies, I was – I wasn’t in a very good frame of mind.’

‘Why was that?’

John held his tongue for some moments, knowing nonetheless that this disclosure would have to be complete.

‘My mother had died, very suddenly. I mean – she hadn’t been well, it was a condition, malignant hypertension. But rest had seemed the only remedy. And, I hadn’t seen her for a while but I thought that she was … coping.’

‘But she wasn’t?’

John nodded. ‘My father called – I was in my college digs, in a bad way that day, just gloomy over some’ – he sighed – ‘oh, some totally insignificant personal woes. But my father reached me and he – I mean, I knew right away from the sound of him that it was bad, then he said Mum had had an awful stroke, and I, I said, “She won’t die, will she?” And he said, “She’s gone.”’

The line of Lockhart’s mouth twitched. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It was a very low time.’ John paused. ‘But – my father told us we had lives to get on with, that’s what he and Mum had always wanted. That’s what Susannah did, my sister. I chose to get involved in this voluntary project in France. A restoration of some historical buildings.’

Lockhart raised a polite eyebrow.

‘I just wanted to get away, try to make myself useful. I was in a
team working on the sacristy of a Gothic chapel, and rebuilding a wall round an old medieval fortress. They were both stuck up on the same hill.’

‘And was it useful to you, this work? Did it serve its purpose?’

‘It did. My French got better – if only from people shouting at me for shoddy work. I learned to answer back. Learned how to cut stone. That was good – hard, hard on the hands, all the blisters and bloody knuckles. But rewarding. In itself.’

‘And this was where you had your – experience.’

John nodded. ‘It was after we downed tools one evening. We were all straggling back down from the hill, over the hay-fields to this old barn where they put us up. I was … exhausted, really a crushing fatigue, all the aches and grazes you get working stone. But I was – happy, I think. And I stopped walking and looked around me. It was that strange blue-rose light you see after sunset. There was a breeze. And I saw my friends’ shadows lengthening over the ground, and the grass seemed to glow like jade. Very curious. And I shivered, but then – it was like a warmth crept all over me. And I felt such a
sadness
, right in the heart of things. But an amazing sweetness too – like they were of a piece, made of each other, the sadness and the sweetness. And I just realised that there was nothing wrong in the world. Nothing wrong but me – us, any of us. Nothing wrong but we don’t see the
rightness
of it. The rightness of creation.’

In reliving his account, John had begun to feel a little
lightheaded
anew. Lockhart had bridged his fingers, his brow creased. ‘It didn’t occur to you that you were perhaps just suffering exhaustion. Or, I don’t know, that you’d ingested something?’

John winced – this was not the consideration he had wished for. At the same time, he knew, the shaky, groggy vertigo he had felt in that field had been not so far removed from the aftermath of his one hallucinogenic experience in college, a week or so after Amanda ended their affair, when in the depths of dolour he had let a
coursemate
talk him into swallowing a hundred dried and bulbous
psilocybin
mushrooms. Yet he was ready to insist on a vital distinction.

‘No, the feeling had come from nowhere, and it was incredibly strong – in fact it became – frighteningly so. Like a thrumming in
my head and behind my eyes, violent colours. I was scared, to be honest. I had to keep telling myself my name. Eventually some sort of calm came back to me. Some clarity. The colours faded, the noise too. Then it was as if my chest was full of fibres, all being knotted together, against my will, too tight to bear. But the feeling was exquisite, more powerful than any I’d known.’ He shrugged. ‘Then it was over. My friends were shouting for me. I could feel the earth under my feet. A greenfly on my wrist. And all was well.’

He had felt laughter, too, as he recalled – surging up his chest cavity like cool water through a brass pipe, racing to break forth. It had emerged as a wracking sob, and his workmates had seen the need to support him in the slow trudge back to the barn. But this, again, was not a detail John thought to disclose.

‘What I mean is, I knew very clearly that I had had an experience.’

‘You felt a presence.’

‘It was … I suppose I’d say it was a worshipful moment? I’d been feeling a lot of things oppressing me. Then they just lifted.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Just mainly my own self-absorption, I suppose.’ Lockhart shook his head, gently, quizzically. John was disconcerted to find more words come forth. ‘I’m sure I’d been feeling quite bereft, as you do. But after I had this … this moment … it just reminded me, I suppose, that life is short, really. And I had best get on and try to do things.’

‘Do you think that’s what your mother would have wanted?’

‘Actually it’s more my father’s sort of – credo. I don’t really know what she would have wanted. We didn’t have that
discussion
. I didn’t really pay her that courtesy. Before it happened.’ John found his throat and speech suddenly clotted.