Crusaders (20 page)

Stevie threw a straight right at the side of that meaty face, which cannoned gloriously into the mouth of the glass. Another right to the head, then another, then a left hook to the ribs – Stevie’s hands weren’t fast but they had clout – and then the gadgy’s legs were failing him, his cause forlorn, collapsing him to the floor. One of his pals made a poor feint of a move, Stevie lashed out a boot at his shins, and the howl was louder than the music in the room. Two
men down, a third looking like he might shit his pants, the area clearing, and all eyes on Stevie – all in seeming awe but he. The gadgy was on all fours so Stevie booted him in his sagging belly, and he voided the watery contents of his stomach onto the carpet. Now there was a grasping hand at Stevie’s shoulder and he beat it off, before he was seized about the chest by twine-like arms. It was Dicko, bearing reinforcements, and the fire-exit doors were being kicked open, bodies manhandled from the space. But Stevie was blazingly content, for truly he had felt it – the rush of hormones from the adrenals, his fear turning to propulsive hate, hate that even now overrode the raw burning pulse in his knuckles. He
delegated
the rest of the kicking to Dicko, and waved away the
landlord’s
ferrety gratitude, as he supposed a professional would.

Donnelly exuded displeasure over Stevie’s ever more erratic hours at the Gunnery, yet seemed somehow shy of saying as much. Finally it was Stevie who determined it was time to move on – for it had become his custom to call by Dicko’s functional flat in Byker for a shit and a shower before a night’s work, sometimes sleeping over on the shedding couch, sometimes with a docile female if Dicko’s ‘entertainment’ of the evening had a friend. One day Stevie simply lingered over a pot of tea, long after the plates of egg and bacon congealed. Upon fetching his small Adidas
holdall
from the Gunnery, he had successfully swapped one small room for another.

Batman and Robin they became, two fairly carefree bachelors even with twenty years between them. Dicko, too, was on Luke Ridley’s juice, only longer and stronger cycles, heavy fuel, Testaviron and Sustanon. Over mugs of tea one morning Dicko advised Stevie that Luke had gone south and they wouldn’t see him again. Stevie was panicked but Dicko assured him they would not go short, for he knew a bloke who knew a bloke. As for Luke, it transpired that his grim old dad had been nosing around and found his stash. The set-to had resulted in Luke’s expulsion from the family home. Stevie wished he had had a chance to say goodbye, to tell his unlikely friend that these things happened,
and it was okay, dads were like that. Jack Ridley, for sure, had seemed an excessively miserable cunt.

Stevie and Dicko ate together, drank together, injected together, and double-dated. Dicko introduced him to a voluble redhead named Debbie, who seemed to like him hugely. Certainly her libido was pronounced and naked. She was not a bad looker,
compared
to her hefty mates, her complexion smoothed by copious pancake, her lips surprisingly delicious. At Morton’s, though, Stevie overheard some crack about ‘Drippy Debbie’, and his
nascent
composure cracked. ‘You, round the back wi’ me now’ was his riposte to the joker, but Dicko’s hand fell on his shoulder. Analysing his anger in quiet he understood – once again, he had found himself starting from the back of the queue, and that had to stop. He dumped Debbie double-quick and she called him a
bastard
, but the charge ran off his back, for he knew he would need to be a bigger bastard yet.

It was she, running post-coital fingers through Stevie’s hair, who had teased him for going bald. He knew it, glumly, had long sensed it getting patchy and stringy and poor, one more unsightly offshoot of the juice. He chose his course quickly, took a loan of Dicko’s electric clippers, and shaved his scalp clean. Afterward, scooping sodden wads of clippings from the plughole, he felt a powerful
tristesse
. It was almost as though he had aged in an hour, been abruptly stripped of his youth, joined Dicko on a craggy far shore of maturity. And yet there was undeniable solace: that shaven pate bestowed on him a certain sort of a look, his
strong-boned
face and ravenous grin thrown very strikingly into relief. As he strutted past the mirrors in Morton’s he practised
impassivity
, an occasional roil of his thickened neck, as though something immensely displeased were stirring within him. This man in the mirror had size and authority, and his thoughts could not be guessed. The outward Stevie was stern and fierce as an ogre. Inside he was grinning like a kid.

Come the summer of 1983 Stevie could feel the sun on his face. Newcastle nightlife was reviving, several bigger and brighter and
much-fancied venues springing up near the river – Roxanne’s, the Love Boat, Club Zeus, Brilliant! Some TV pop show was
broadcasting
live from a studio on Fridays, so there were pop stars round town, and tidy-looking girls in tow. Dicko drafted Stevie into a job beside him at a club called the Matinee where the light was fluorescent, the music was funk, and the bar purveyed sickly cocktails. On first inspection the manager was bluntly
disparaging
of Stevie’s boots and bomber jacket – ‘That’s nee fucking good, son, you get yourself a black suit for here.’ Newly suited and
booted
, Stevie started to enjoy himself about the bouncer’s craft. His greatest laugh was the early expulsion of bare-legged girls
overpowered
by cocktails, some so helplessly bladdered as to require shifting by a fireman’s hold. ‘Just you mind they don’t spew up down your back,’ Dicko roared. Certain other lasses – not quite so insensible but rowdy nonetheless – Stevie simply hefted off their feet as they hammered his chest and berated him in the crudest terms, their gussets exposed to gleeful watching Geordies. When he set them down out of doors, right side up, he sometimes received a very breathless look, and then sometimes a phone number, or even a straight proposition. He preferred to think
himself
a gent in such matters, but there was a certain sort of female on whom the courtesy, quite clearly, was wasted.

Shagging then became a principle and a competition in which Stevie steadily surpassed Dicko, who in turn grew a little
censorious
– or was it envious? – of the younger girls Stevie brought back to the flat. The deed was not always a simple matter. Stevie’s
scrotum
was shrivelled much of the time by the steroids, and on
occasions
, before tackling the girl, he had to give himself a helping hand in the toilet – a quick five-knuckle shuffle, drawing on his skills of visualisation. Sometimes, to his own disquiet, he pictured himself, post-workout – stiff all over his body, biceps tight. It was a weird thing, perhaps, but it worked. And once he was on, he was on – one hundred per cent hard man, dispenser of physical sensation.

There was, he found, an upper echelon of female – certain rather foxy creatures who frequented the Matinee, consorted with the pop stars, wholly unresponsive to his rough-and-ready
routine. Perhaps it was something else they sought, judging by the flounce and effeminacy of the Flash Harries to whom they clung. But he wasn’t wholly convinced. ‘
Everybody
likes a bit naughty’ – that was the Guv’nor’s catchphrase.

Eric Manners was a professional photographer who regularly pitched up at the club and called for a bottle of Moët. He wore a burgundy leather blouson, stone-washed jeans with a hint of pink, and kept his white hair piled on his head like day-old
candyfloss
, only nicotine-stained like the net curtains in the Gunnery. It was a nonce-like ensemble, and Eric the sort of fellow at whom Stevie was inclined to look askance. He was touchy-feely too, and known for a connoisseur’s interest in the male body, since his framed monochrome photos of torsos were all over the walls of the Matinee. Yet he was usually squiring some fit lass, and over a drink Stevie found he had a wife and grown kids and could talk knowledgeably about football – Newcastle, not Sunderland. Very candidly he told Stevie that there was no job he would not take, and as such he did his fashion stuff and his arty snaps and then also shot the occasional spread for mucky books. ‘I’m not ashamed, Stevie, I work hard for me packet. I just don’t pay tax.’ And he nudged Stevie and laughed. ‘Do you know, son, what is the
sexiest
part of the body?’

Stevie hadn’t mulled it over and yet his preference leapt to mind. It was the back of a lass’s neck – that nicely hollowed and contoured shape if the hair was swept away, eliciting cascades of giggles when nuzzled. That was true loveliness. He was all for the tits and the fanny, of course, but not wedded to them. This he kept to himself and merely shook his head for Eric, who tapped his forehead. ‘The
brain
, bonny lad. That’s the bit does the most work. Way more than the owld fella doon there. See, your average bloke’s brain is thinking about sex at least once every ten seconds. Scientists have proved that. Ten seconds. That’s more naughty than your owld fella knows what to do with. And that’s where the owld muckies come in, see.’

Manners laughed and touched Stevie’s shoulder. Stevie didn’t believe any of this pontificating was quite as scientific as Eric
claimed – he was, after all, a bullshitter. But it was impressive to him that Eric had applied such thought to his game, that he was pragmatic, aware of the customer’s needs. There was a solidity to him, and Stevie saw and respected it. After Eric invested in new video gear, he came to Stevie for a quiet word, with a modest
proposal
. To Stevie it seemed a worthwhile test, even a bit of a laugh, and the offer in cash was terrific. On the appointed day he climbed the creaking stairs to a second-floor flat on the Westgate Road, where Eric and his assistant were already engrossed in fiddling with the video camera, the fluid-head tripod, the clunky cassette recorder and a large white cotton bedsheet clipped to a frame by clothes pegs. Stevie’s accomplice for the day was perched on a bed in a flannel nightgown – a dark-haired lass called Michelle who might have come directly from working the chip van outside the Matinee – no great looker, but no tart neither, and perfectly
sweet-natured
about what she was being asked to do. Stevie donned a pair of blue overalls as instructed, and Eric led them patiently through rehearsal, punctuated by Michelle’s giggles. But Stevie was soon into his stride – he had easy access to the needful
exhibitionism
, now that his body was both tool and thing of wonder to him.

He and Michelle were bollock naked, atop one another and near enough engaged, when Eric called a brief halt for a change of
setup
, asking them both to hold very still. The assistant fiddled with the white balance and the clothes pegs. Eric patted Stevie’s
shoulder
. ‘You’re a pro, you are, my son.’ Underneath him, Michelle made a cooing sound, ran a fingernail up his taut bicep. Not the girl of his dreams, not by any means – any more than the many lasses he had been diddling of late without the benefit of today’s pay-wedge. But she was out there somewhere, that special girl, and his ongoing graft and application would surely only bring her closer.

Gore believed he was making a passable show of immersion in the logbook before him, and so at intervals he let his gaze flick upward and fall upon the girl. A young woman, in truth –
mid-twenties
, he supposed – seated on her own, slowly wreathing
herself
in smoke as if resolved to inhabit fully the role of pariah. Thirteen souls had presented themselves thus far to the assembly hall, and most had tried to spread themselves evenly about the available seating – sixty-four red plastic chairs set out with
exacting
symmetry in eight rows of eight.
She
, though, had made like a shot for the back row. She wore a chocolate velour tracksuit, her brownish hair hennaed and pinned into slides, her face painted, traces of purple about her cheekbones detectable from thirty paces. With a slight frisson Gore placed his recognition of her – the newsagent, on the morning he first walked out to St Luke’s. The prettier of the two … though this particular prettiness he sensed as brittle, bought across a counter in a shop, put in place carefully each morning. But allure was allure, however sulky or cosmetic.

He turned again to the ruled columns of the registration book he had asked allcomers to inscribe. Before him, Albert Robinson, Pensioner. Rod Moncur, Retailer. Sharon Price, Housewife. Sean Goddard, Porter (Hospital). Alan Day, Teacher. Lizzie Spence, Legal Secretary. Kully Gates, Community Worker – no doubt the intently bespectacled brown-skinned woman four rows back. Susan Carrow, the former hairdresser on his parish council, had sat herself briskly without signing her name. At the foot of the page, one Lindy Clark had neglected to make an entry in the
occupational
column, but gave her address as Oakwell Estate.

‘Are we getting marked for wor handwriting?’

The jest came from the front row, where sat a pug-faced fellow with a toothy grin, his hair a mop of dark curls, an affable mien only damaged by an unfortunate resemblance to the murderer Fred West.

‘I’ll let you know, Mr Moncur. It’s just for my reference, a
database
, you know?’

An elderly gent – Albert Robinson, surely – sat with his flat cap on, hands folded in his lap, now and then peering about him as if troubled. His face was milky and craggy, a cupid-bow purse to his upper lip, a trait Gore considered distinctively Geordie. He sucked on his dentures doggedly and loudly, as though an entire meal – rather than remnants thereof – were adhered to their sides. His visible scepticism was the outward gauge of Gore’s own inner doubt. The clock said 7.23. He had taken some cares, and they now contributed to his feeling a little foolish.

The assembly hall of St Luke’s was chill and unwelcoming, as if hostile to the intrusion. Aperiodic clanking and groaning
emanated
from the radiators arrayed down its length of the hall. Gore watched as the caretaker bashed at one with a hammer. ‘I can’t blame him for being peeved,’ whispered Monica Bruce, now at Gore’s side. ‘They’re not in his job description, nights. Not this night anyway. At least he showed up.’

‘Quite. So where are our punters, do you think?’

‘Well,’ said Monica. ‘I told the kids in assembly, be sure and tell their parents. You put your little posters up?’

Gore nodded. He had visited the library, the town hall, newsagents, he had pinned up on every available pinboard.

‘We maybe would have been better in the staff room,’ said Monica.

‘This is the space we’ve got to fill. We might as well start trying.’

Evidently Moncur had been eavesdropping from the front row, for now he chipped in. ‘We could always move to the Gunnery.’

‘Oh, there’ll be refreshment,’ murmured Gore, gesturing to a table laid with cups, a sizeable urn and plates of biscuits.

‘I must say I’m quite dry already,’ said Susan Carrow, wincing,
twee in a pink sweater, fanning her fingers before her face. Then Monica was striding down the aisle and stooping to the side of that girl, gesturing to the fuming cigarette. ‘Linda, pet. Would you mind not?’

‘Bet I’m not the only one wants a smoke,’ she groused, eyes darting heavenward. But she offered a parody of an obliging smile before screwing the butt to death under her trainer.

Clacking back down the aisle, Monica nodded at Gore, then turned to the assembly and joined her hands. ‘Good evening, all, thank you for coming, most of you’ll know me already so you won’t want to hear me ask for money. But the Reverend will be too shy, so I’d just like to say refreshments are provided and please avail yourself, and if you enjoy them then a few coins would be appreciated, because Reverend Gore’s on a tight budget here. Over to you, John.’

Suppressing a slight irritation, Gore stepped forward, lines
prepared
.

‘Well, yes, thank you for coming out tonight to be a part of what, if you’ll, uh, forgive my borrowing the language of Tony Blair, I would like to call my focus group.’

He had hoped for chuckles. He heard only Albert sucking those plates.

‘Or – a steering group, if you like. A working party.’

He was, he decided, on the wrong horse. Back to the stalls, then.

‘These are early days and we’ve a road ahead, but my hope for this project, once we have it up and running, is that it be a resource, a
real
resource, for the community. And a platform for the community’s concerns. A way to bring us all together. So I thought tonight, rather than me standing up here lecturing at you, we might just throw it open from the start, and you could tell
me
a little of how you feel about Hoxheath. The community. What you think are its problems. Strengths too, of course. I’m here to listen.’

Gore was careful to finish with a gesture of open palms toward the seated, as if to extend the talking stick authorising the speaker at a gathering of the tribes. But there was only silence. Faces were impassive, or perplexed.

‘Sorry?’ Sharon Price, a rotund woman in a tent-like blouse, her face florid under a dark bob, spoke up. ‘Sorry, but I thought we were here to hear about a
church
.’

Gore nodded keenly. ‘Of course. I just want to be saying from the outset, the church I have in mind here is a social church. I want us to help. So I need to hear from you what you think people need help with.’

Kully Gates was smiling. Sharon Price was not. ‘Aw but this isn’t one of them
schemes
, is it? There’ll be an actual
church
, right? A service, on a Sunday? With hymns and that?’

‘Yes, yes –’

‘Cos I don’t know about anyone else but I’m sick of people
coming
round talking
schemes
– communal programmes and that. Sick to the back
teeth
.’

Kully Gates had raised her hand, thoughtful, and Gore seized on her. ‘Please,’ said Gore. ‘It’s Kully, yes?’

‘Yes. Reverend, I think we’re maybe
all
a bit confused, because you’re sounding just a bit like a social worker. Which is my area, you see. And I suppose we had come here to hear about –
worship
?’

‘Right, got you. Let me start again from the top. This is a new church, a new
kind
of church. Any new start offers new
opportunities
. So on top of all the things we normally do in church, I’m
looking
for new ways for this church to serve the community. I suppose you could say – not just to regenerate people in God but to regenerate Hoxheath itself.’

‘Aw blimey, here we go,’ groaned Sharon Price. ‘That word.’

‘Which?’

‘“Regeneration”.’ How many times we heard that?’ She looked around for support. ‘All the talk, them do-gooders coming round. We’ve had the – what all have we had? City Challenge. Hoxheath Initiative. Drive for Jobs …’

Gore suddenly wished he had a notebook. ‘These would be government schemes?’

‘Aye. People come to your door to interview you. They’re all the same, they ask you, do you wanna have “regeneration” in
Hoxheath? And you say yes, don’t you? It doesn’t sound like owt to quarrel with. If they said, “Would you like dog shite on your doorstep?” you’d say no, wouldn’t you? ’Scuse my language, sorry.’ A few hollow chuckles. ‘Aye, so you tell ’em what you’re bothered with and they nod and drink your tea then off they gan and write it up and do whatever they were minded to do in the first place.’

Sean Goddard, sour-faced behind a Zapata moustache, was nodding. ‘Right. You’re promised new this and new that, but you never get it. The things we’ve got,
they’re
not kept up. So how are we going to get new? There’s never money. Have
you
got money, Reverend? I doubt it, not if you’re asking us to pay for biscuits.’

Gore felt his neck prickling. Sharon Price leaned forward in her chair. ‘Aye. Now
I
come here to hear about a church service, thank you very much.’

‘Seconded,’ echoed Goddard.

Kully Gates spoke up. ‘Be fair, I don’t think the Reverend’s
trying
to rip anybody off.’

Sharon Price rounded on her. ‘Aye well, you
would
say that, you’re one of them do-gooders.’

‘Leave her be, man.’ This was Lindy Clark.

In the fraught silence that followed, Kully Gates got to her feet. ‘I should explain, John. I work for a community project in Hoxheath. So I have sat on some of those schemes the lady
mentions
, committees and so on. I don’t know
why
– no one elects me, but I do get asked. Because I’m involved. Now, we run a credit union, a crèche, we do a scheme for school leavers. All this. But people are … suspicious. They’ve been let down before.’

Albert Robinson cleared his throat. ‘Aye. Now, you take our esteemed Member of Parliament. Mr Martin Pallister. Disciple of your Mr Anthony Blair. How much hot air did that one blow off? And what’s he done?’

This seemed to Gore a fruitful digression. Albert continued, calmly, hands folded in his lap. ‘
He
was a big regeneration man, Pallister. That’s how he got hisself known hereabouts. With the TREC lot, Tyneside Regeneration.’

‘He’s
alright
, man, Pallister.’ Sharon Price was riled again. ‘He’s done some canny things – what new housing we’ve had round here was all cos of him. He’s local an’ all, used to live right next door to us – I can
tell
you he’s alright.’

‘Well, say as you like, madam. I’ll tell you, he come and
interviewed
us once. Must have been 1989. Seemed canny. Said he
wanted
all this new building, all down the river. I said, “We heard that off T. Dan Smith and we’re still paying.” And what did we get off him? Apartments selling for a hundred thousand pound. And a business park wi’ no business. Not for the likes of us. I tell you what I think. You watch. In time, they’ll want us all out. Ethnic cleansing.’

Gore blinked. ‘What, like in Bosnia?’

‘Aye. We’ve got all them lot
here
now – Bosnians. How about that? But aye, ethnic cleansing, just you watch. You’ve got land here, nowt much to look at but canny views of the river. All that’s in the way is the people. They’d love to turf us out and tear them all down, start again.’

‘So what are we supposed to do?’ Sharon Price sounded upset.

‘Move out of Hoxheath,’ rasped Sean Goddard.

‘When? After you win the lottery?’

Susan Carrow, who had twisted in her seat and listened to the foregoing exchanges in mounting agitation, now faced Gore. ‘See? All your talk about “community” this and that. There
is
no
community
.’

Moncur nodded glumly. ‘True, people aren’t neighbours to each other. Not like when I was a bairn.’

Gore stood flummoxed. This was as poor an impasse as he could have imagined. His sole hope was that the wave of
suppressed
resentment had broken and was now receding. Consensus was badly needed.

‘Okay, let me ask you this. What would you like from my church? Just take it as read we’ll have a service on Sunday, with prayer and hymns and a sermon. That’s Sunday taken care of. What else? Anything?’

Rod Moncur thrust a fist in the air. ‘Does it have to be Sunday?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Your service, does it have to be Sunday? Could you not maybe do it one night in the week?’

Albert cut in, waspish. ‘Sunday is the Sabbath day, my friend.’

‘Aye, you say that, but Sunday’s a hangover in my house, more often than not.’ Moncur chuckled, then seemed peeved that others didn’t join in. ‘Not just my house. You know how it is, the
weekend
, you’ve got a lot on.’

Mrs Carrow was nodding. ‘It’s true, but. You’ve got the family coming round, the lunch to do. Bairns want to get out …’

Moncur nodded. ‘And there’s the match on Sky. Aye, there’s a lot wants done on Sunday.’

Christ alive
, thought Gore.
Am I supposed to hire a van and call door-to-door by appointment?
‘Well, Mrs Bruce and I have a
particular
arrangement. Monica?’

‘If you’re asking for a midweek service,’ she declared, tartness to her voice, ‘I’m telling you now, Wednesday is my parents’ evening and that’s sacred.’

Gore faced outward again. ‘Let’s agree to talk again. Maybe we have a month of Sundays, then try a change.’

Heads nodded. To his right Gore detected the stirring of Lizzie Spence, a slight bespectacled young woman in monochrome office uniform of coat, blouse and skirt. ‘Will there be a crèche?’ she asked.

‘For children?’

‘No, for grown-ups,’ Lizzie scoffed. ‘Of course for children. You don’t have kids then? If you had kids you’d be wanting a crèche.’

‘Right. It’s an idea. Though, Kully, you say
you
run a crèche …? So I’m not so sure we should double up services.’

Sharon Price thumped her palm. ‘They
want
doubling, man. They want to be times-ten what they are.’

From the distant back row Lindy Clark gave out. ‘Aye, a crèche would be a canny idea. Could be a mothers’ group too. Like a
parent-toddler
thing, y’knaa? So all the mothers could get together, help each other out.’