Crusaders (26 page)

On the concrete patio outside St Luke’s offices John Gore stood unattended, sentry over precious little, save for the blind
windows
of the terraces past the gates and the low-hanging
blue-black
clouds above. It was a shade past eight and the augurs proposed a drab autumnal day in Hoxheath. Gore was quietly sure that rain – just the threat of same – would ward off whole cohorts of his imagined congregation. Thus by the most banal of means would a horde of high hopes and best efforts run to waste.

A scrap of memory revived in him – Audrey, years younger, chuckling through a tale of Bill’s blunt courtship, how he could only be persuaded to squire her to the cinema if it were chucking down like stair-rods, for it was only when outdoor pursuits were wholly unviable that fancy diversions like movie-shows might – narrowly – be justified. Gore was yet unsure what kind of
diversion
he offered the public today.

He heard footfalls in the corridor behind him but did not turn until Ridley drew near. For once the old man was not assembling the parts of a contemplative smoke.

‘We’d best crack on then, John.’

‘Okay. Right. What’s to do?’

‘Chairs are all locked up for starters, aren’t they? We need to get in them stores, start shifting.’

‘Chairs. Right …’

Ridley had already turned away, so leaving Gore to chase after the broad back of his olive-green car-coat.

‘Weather’s not looking too favourite, is it?’

‘Aye, well.’ Said tersely. ‘It’ll do what it’ll do, and we’ll get on with our lot, eh?’

Gore heard an implied rebuke, understood it was past the time for him to get lively.

By ten to nine the two men, aided by Monica Bruce and Susan Carrow, had set out a hundred plastic seats in ten rows of ten, cloven by an aisle, Monica’s lectern planted at the head of
proceedings
. Mrs Carrow, surveying this design, was yet unsatisfied.

‘Do we really
need
that aisle?’

Gore frowned. ‘I’d have thought so. It opens the space.’

‘If we don’t get so many along, it might be better a bit cosier.’

Monica cut in. ‘We’ve no idea of numbers yet, so let’s see, eh?’

Gore crouched down to the bulging Nike hold-all he had packed carefully at home, unzipping and beginning to withdraw his sacramental items in turn, each swaddled up in cotton tea
towels
. Aware that all eyes were observing his pains, he glanced up at Monica.

‘Now, we want a table of some sort, to lay these out.’

‘What sort of a table?’

‘We call it a credence table, but anything you’ve got, really.’

‘What
size
, but, John?’

‘Oh – just something from one of the classrooms, maybe?’

‘I’ve not got
keys
to the classrooms, John.’

‘What about your caretaker?’

‘He’s off. Not due back ’til he thinks you’re done at noon.’

‘What about your office?’

‘There’s only my desk and a little coffee table, they’ll not do you.’

‘We’re going to need
something
, Monica.’

‘I
see
that, John, that’s why thinking ahead comes in handy.’

Watching Monica clack away disagreeably, gazing anew around this sparse hall – the distressed floor, the glum windows, the childish art – Gore could do nothing to arrest the sudden plummet of his heart into his boots. Was anyone coming to his church today? The fear of a miserable failure was pressing down onto his shoulders. In his breast pocket, printed and folded, was
the text of a sermon fastidiously drafted. He had lost hours of this last month to it, time and mental energy he now felt sickly sure that he had squandered. It was plain as a pikestaff – he had
neglected
the material, the organisational, the humdrum. He ought to have pounded the streets of Hoxheath by day and by night, with a bullhorn and a sandwich board larded in scripture.

Now there was fresh commotion at the entrance, and so entered Mrs Boyle, the plump ginger pianist, in her wake a ragged
crocodile
of nine- and ten-year-old children, most looking highly
disgruntled
to have been squeezed into uniform of a Sunday and frogmarched onto school grounds.

‘Good day to you, John, I’ve brought some of my choir, they’ll give us a help with hymns. Children, this is Reverend Gore, say good morning …’

A few half-hearted chirrups. Gore trusted that they sang at least in unison. Unsure whether the initiative was a boon or a further waste, he stood watching Mrs Boyle wrangle the children into cross-legged compliance, until Monica tottered up to him with a wooden-topped side-table, large enough – perhaps – to bear a slender vase.

‘Right, John, this’ll have to do you.’

Gore tapped his chin. He hadn’t the heart to start laying out the sacraments on such inadequate provision. Instead – impulsively, for no reason but to cheer himself up – he retrieved from the
holdall
one of his more indulgent borrows from St Mark’s, a
free-standing
crucifix, cast in pewter, hand-finished. He set it upright on Monica’s table.

‘What do we need but the old rugged cross, eh?’

Gore turned from Monica’s frown, thus to behold new pilgrims drawing near – one of his councilmen, Phil from the
Journal
,
chaperoning
an unshaven young man in a striped V-neck sweater, vines of photographic apparatus gathered about his neck.

‘John, can I introduce you to Matt Watson? He’s one of the cubs on the paper, he’ll take a few pics, maybe get a little write-up for you?’

‘Thank you for coming out.’

‘No bother.’ Matt yawned. ‘I’m due at a lads’ football match at eleven.’

And now Rod Moncur was coughing at his shoulder, no doubt with a further query for which he would have scant interest and no answer.

‘How, John, I think we’re needing some people to move the piano?’

‘Right, sorry, could you ask Jack Ridley?’

‘I did, he said to ask you.’

Gore winced, considered the matter, chose to ignore it, and stooped again to take from his hold-all the thurible he had
borrowed
from Spikings, carefully unwinding its silver-plated
components
from cloth and tissue. As he stripped a briquette of incense and crumbled it around the pan like good seasoning, he saw a scuffed pair of Hush Puppies come to a halt before him.

‘Do you have a match, Jack?’

Ridley rifled his pockets and shoved a box of Swan Vesta under Gore’s nose. He struck a flame, touched it to the incense and held it there patiently until winsome trails of fragrant smoke were
curling
upward. Then he closed the silver cup over the pan, grasped snaky chains in a fist, hoisted the thurible aloft and proceeded with solemn tread to pace up and then down the aisle between the chairs, rocking the burning vessel gently from side to side.
Stagecraft
, thought Gore. But Ridley dogged his steps.

‘What’s the use of this, John?’

‘Just a bit of atmosphere, Jack, don’t you think?’

‘Don’t ask me, I just know Fanny Boyle’s piano wants shifted.’

‘It’s on wheels, isn’t it?’

‘Aye, and both castors at one end just buckled. It’s going to need four pairs of hands to lift and shift.’

‘Oh,
fuck
it,’ said Gore, his shoulders slumping, the thurible grazing the floor at the end of its tether. Monica, too, was cursing somewhere behind him, then – louder, heels clacking sharply – ‘I’m sorry, hinny, we’re not open yet.’

‘Nivver worry, pet, I’m here to see the boss.’

Gore turned to see Stevie Coulson striding determinedly down
the length of the hall, his great taut arms looped round and
hefting
a sturdy wooden frame that had to be all of six feet wide and three in height. All eyes in the room were naturally drawn to the strenuous approach of the colossus in big boots and old jeans and leather coat, until at last – scalp shining, perspiring slightly, his shark-like grin creasing his face – he laid down his tribute at Gore’s feet.

‘Mornin’, John, full of busy, eh? Listen, I picked this up off a lad I know keeps antiques. Will it suit, do you think? For your
communion
and that?’

Gore felt the first unforced smile of the day stealing over his
features
. Before him was, indeed, a communion rail – a first-rate model of same, an antique piece, Gothic, hewn from old oak and joined in good order.

‘Well, I’d say – it’ll suit handsomely, Stevie.’

‘Champion. Now you didn’t manage to sort yourself an altar, did you?’

‘We planned on managing without …’ said Gore, realising anew the inadequacy of that plan, for he could now see past Stevie’s brawny shoulder to where his strapping associates Shack and Simms were struggling into the hall, veins pulsing, faces ruddy with exertion, bearing between them a pool table of a size appropriate to a public house. They oriented themselves toward Monica’s lectern and lowered the table to the lino with such
delicacy
as they could muster.

The room now looked to Reverend Gore as one – a look of
surpassing
perplexity. In a trice Gore saw that he alone seemed to have cottoned to Stevie’s masterstroke. He stooped to his kitbag, drew out his borrowed altar cloth, unfolded it and shook it out. Then he cast it wide over the green baize of the pool table,
spreading
it smooth with the flat of his hand. Thus vestured, the table looked fit for an altogether finer purpose.

‘Magic, eh?’ said Stevie, clapping the shoulder of Shack, who dragged the back of a scarred hand across his brow and plucked a lone cigarette from behind his ear. Gore sensed Monica moving forward, lips pursed, and he laid a hand on her lightly. Blessings
were not to be spurned, not in any respect, and gratitude for same had to be made plain and unconditional. Shack sparked his tab, just as Moncur came capering toward Gore once again.

‘Reverend, y’knaa there’s people stood waiting outside? What with the weather I was thinking –’

‘People? Already? How many?’

‘Two or three dozen at least, I’d say.’

Jack Ridley grunted. ‘You want to get yer’sel dressed then, John. You’re not giving the service in them jeans, are you?’

Gore reached to the floor for his bag, empty now save for
vestments
. As he straightened, a notion occurred.

‘Steve, could you and the lads give Jack a hand with a piano?’

The clock edged past ten. Gore stood at the lectern and surveyed the hall, counting forward and back, sixty heads. He studied faces as they settled. The elderly predominated – they and the very young, under supervision and most wearing tired looks of duress. Fine – he had felt the same at their age. Monica, he knew, was keeping her own mental register of which pupils’ parents had heeded her calls. As for those he could claim as his own, he noted Eunice Dodd shuffling in among the latecomers, and the last of these was Lindy Clark, in a down-filled coat with a fur-lined hood, holding the small hand of her son. From her seat she threw Gore a forbearing smile, and he was gladdened.

He had donned a simple surplice, an alb of white linen,
ankle-length
, closed at the throat. The hall curtains were half-drawn, patchy morning light diffused, incense still in the air. The piano was shifted, the choir in waiting, prayer books and orders of
service
snug in every lap. A pair of restless boys were bombing up and down the aisle, until Steve Coulson planted himself in their way and stooped for a quiet word. The kids slunk back to their seats, and Gore’s unlikely sidesman resumed his patrol of the hall perimeter, nodding to his seconds.
So strange
, thought Gore, momentarily fixated upon Stevie’s polished black boots
crunching
across the scuffed red lino.
My church has bouncers
. The notion that they might be pressed into action made mirth bubble up
inside him. Say Albert Robinson were to heckle some irreverent part of the sermon? Might Stevie wade into the seating, seize the old man’s lapels, propel him from the hall?

He hastened down the aisle to where Coulson had paused,
statue-still
, arms folded. ‘We’re ready to go, Stevie,’ he whispered. ‘Will you sit?’

‘I won’t, John, if that’s alright. I get a bit sciatic pain from wor back, y’knaa? These chairs’d be murder.’

So the Reverend returned to his lectern, smoothed open his order of service, felt the room fall into focus. Then he cleared his throat and launched into the welcome, thinking,
Light, keep it light, John, nothing too churchy
.

‘As is written in Psalm ninety-five, let us sing unto the Lord and make a joyful noise unto the rock of our salvation. Now I don’t know how your voices are fixed first thing in the morning – I can tell you mine has never won any prizes, I daresay there are cats in the street better able to carry a tune. So – I’d be ever so glad if you could help me lift the roof off this place, and I should say we’re very grateful this morning for the presence of Mrs Boyle and her Year Seven choir. Would you all please stand, then, and we’re going to start with one I’m sure you all know, though you have the words, and that’s “All Things Bright and Beautiful” …’

Hands aloft, Mrs Boyle urged her children up from the floor, then plunged her fingers to the keys. Jaunty chords filled the air, chased by thin trebles and falsettos. For the first few bars the only other voices Gore could discern were his and Mrs Boyle’s, and so he gazed about him, with a stage grin fit to tear his face. ‘Come
on
,’ he mouthed, and, to his surprise, people began shiftily to open their throats. A respectable drone soon emanated. That’s
it
, thought Gore.
It’s only church, you remember how it works. We sit, we stand, we sing, we pray. Then I read you a story and tell you what it means
.

‘I wonder – are we gathered here this morning because we call ourselves Christians? I hope and trust that we are – that we hold this much in
common. And if we do call ourselves Christians, we have to be concerned with the welfare of our fellow man and woman. And endeavour to love them, as we love ourselves.’